63. Will Trump Make Europe Great Again?

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1:20Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US. I'm Cathy Kaye. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. It's always nice to be with you, Caddy. What are we talking about today? First of all, hold on a second, because we have people from all over, which is so fun. We've got Karen joining us from Germany. That's great, Karen. We're going to be speaking about the German elections in the second half of this. We have Linda from Delaware joining us. Another, Clara, is also in Hamburg, Germany. And we have Fiona, who's joining us from Bermuda. I'm sorry, Fiona, we're not going to be talking about Bermuda's politics, but we're kind of envious that you are joining us from there.

1:54You just had an election there. actually in Rome, Europe. Well, so we could do that. No, we couldn't. We could talk about the sun and how much we'd like to be there. Anthony's just got back from the Caribbean, so he's going to be particularly jealous. So we are doing this live stream on Monday morning here in Washington, DC, 1130. That's afternoon for our friends in the UK who are streaming from there. It is great to have our founding members watching us live from wherever you're joining us. Do put your questions in the comments and we'll get to those as we go through the podcast. And then, of course, this will air for the general public on Tuesday.

2:33If you want to watch live again next time, we're going to be doing more of these every Monday. Just sign up at the rest is politics us.com. And we are going to be talking today about the Ukraine situation and Europe. And I think we we've have spoken about this recently, but so much is happening and it's so decisive the way that Donald Trump is breaking from Ukraine and this deal that as we are talking, the Ukrainians are trying to go through the finer points of it and feel like if it's any deal at all or if they're just getting robbed and what this impact is from the Europeans. But I have a question which we can get to, which is actually, is all of this going to make Europe stronger?

3:15I mean, forget making America great. Maybe this is the chance to make Europe great too. And then we'll talk about those German elections as well. But okay, I have a question for you, Anthony, on Ukraine. This is actually on Iraq. Do you remember who Baghdad Bob was? I actually don't remember Baghdad Bob. Who was Baghdad Bob? At the beginning of the war. I remember Chemical Ali. Chemical Ali. So Baghdad Bob was famous with us in the press corps because he was the guy in about early 2000s as America was preparing its shock and awe campaign against Iraq, who was wheeled out to talk to all the journalists who were in Baghdad to try and put the position of the Iraqi regime, of Saddam Hussein's regime.

3:59And he was actually a smart guy who would literally, as you would say, turn himself into a pretzel to try to justify what was happening and to try to kind of explain Saddam Hussein and what a wonderful guy Saddam Hussein was. And I listened to the Sunday shows, the political shows here over the weekend. And I listened to one administration official after another do exactly what Baghdad Bob had to do at the beginning of the Iraq war. And they had to just, these people like Mike Waltz, who had to kind of say, defend President Trump's assertion that Zelensky is a dictator, but also that it was not Russia who started the war.

4:43And you've got this kind of white is black, black is white moment happening in the regime. And it is a reflection of how afraid Republicans are, and how terrified these members of the administration are, as they try to do what they know Donald Trump wants for them. But in so doing, they are patently having to say things they know aren't true. And I just was struck by listening to Pete Hegseth when he was asked, do you accept that it was Russia that was the aggressor here? And his answer was, it's complicated. It's really not very complicated. I mean, Russian tanks rolled over the border and tried to get to Kiev and wanted to take Ukraine in three days.

5:25And then you had Mike Waltz, the national security advisor saying, look, there's no need to get into a characterization of who invaded who. You invaded, you didn't, it's not useful. Except that actually, it's the whole premise of this situation. I mean, it does reflect Donald Trump, who was on Brian Kilmeade's show on Fox News. I mean, even on Fox News being pushed five times, Brian Kilmeade pushed Donald Trump to say that Russia was the aggressor here, that Vladimir Putin was the aggressor here. And on the very last time, Trump said, okay, yeah, they invaded, but that's not important. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't done it.

6:05Well, he also said he was sick and tired of hearing it. Does it matter that these people in the administration, I mean, I suppose the question is, does it matter in this stage of the war where the deal is kind of on the table, does it matter that the United States is now taking a position that it doesn't matter who the aggressor was? No, I think it matters because, I mean, this is right out of the... See, I thought when I read things like Animal Farm in 1984, I thought that these were allegories and warnings. But there was a group of people that thought that these were playbooks and manuals on how to deal with things.

6:52And so if you read Orwell as a manual, then you're supposed to tell lies when you're a strong leader. You're an autocratic leader. You tell lies, and so you get enough people to believe those lies. And so I guess the real question is, is Donald Trump a cult leader, yes or no, Gadigit? I don't know. I would not. Well, I don't use the term cult leader because I associate cults with kind of religious movements. I mean, I'm thinking, what was the name of that cult? Jim Jones. Jim Jones, exactly. And then there was the one down in Waco as well, right? I think that is a cult leader. I think there is a cult of personality in the MAGA movement.

7:34I think that he is, for some reason, Donald Trump has a huge amount of power in the Republican Party and seems to provoke fear in those around him. him let me rephrase the question you know me i'm always the one that doesn't like to use this extreme term we've had this discussion about fascism like you're like the dominic stanbrook you're you're much more put together than dominic by the way but anyway you're and i love dominic although anyway all right but let's go back to this is donald trump somebody that people listen to and they'll believe whatever is coming out of his mouth yeah i think i think people who follow a percentage of his followers and supporters that vladimir putin was an awful person who invaded ukraine and should be hammered and i think that would then be the narrative okay all right and then by the way pete heggseth and walsh and all these guys would go on the air and say that right yeah yeah i think they were so So, I mean, there's a lot of questions here.

8:40So the question is, let's say he's not a cult leader, but he's somebody that knows that he can lie with impunity and get a very large group of people to believe that lie. Is that right? Yeah, there's a very good article. So then lying makes sense for him because he's trying to get a deal for Vladimir Putin better than Joe Biden would like for Vladimir Putin, better than Western European leaders would like for Vladimir Putin. He's trying to get that deal. And so therefore to lie and get a very large group of people to believe the lie is going to work in his favor. Is that not right or am I not seeing it right?

9:19Yeah, I think you're on to something there. which the senator from Oklahoma, Republican who's very close to Donald Trump, talked about on one of the Sunday shows on Meet the Press this weekend. And he said that Donald Trump needed to be, effectively, he was saying Donald Trump needs to be in the strongest possible position to negotiate this peace. And therefore, what he says is acceptable because it's giving him strength. We didn't quite say it's okay for him to lie, but he did say people should back off what Donald Trump is saying about who's a dictator and who invaded who, because that weakens Donald Trump's position.

10:10Now, I think if you are at this point, if you are prepared to compromise reality and fact so much in order to put yourself in a strong position, you're probably actually not in a very strong position. Because Donald Trump can negotiate whatever he wants, but the Ukrainians have to accept it. And the Ukrainians have to stop fighting. They have to put down their weapons. And the risk for Donald Trump here is that he negotiates whatever he thinks is a good deal for him. And the Ukrainian public says, we're just going to have a guerrilla war, right? Okay, we may not be having US intelligence, which they desperately need, and obviously US arms supplies, which they desperately need, but they'll get some from the Europeans.

10:53And there's no guarantee that they accept, the public accepts whatever deal he thinks he's imposing on them. you know that this is a related topic but i want you to answer this as well it's three years since the war started we were on the anniversary of the uh the war starting has this worked out for latimer putin has this been a good war for him i think it's too early to determine i mean the obvious answer is right now if we're going to do the checks and balance of this you know run up the accounting, you get your little calculator out and you say, how many people have I lost and how much damage has this done to my economy?

11:33Then your national accountant is saying, what the hell? You've decimated the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people. And by the way, you've cost us a fortune. And the Russian economy is on the point of looking seriously damaged by this. But Vladimir Putin isn't thinking about what the accountants are saying right now. He doesn't have to do his tax return on this this year. He's looking at what happens in three or four years time when he rebuilds. And for him, and he has always spoken about this right back since the 1990s, the value of having Ukraine is worth almost everything, right? I mean, it's a bit like the Trump administration, people who said there is no price on securing the southern border.

12:17It is worth everything. Well, for Vladimir Putin, I imagine he would say that this was worth the cost of what it's got to, because it's such a kind of emotional historical issue for him. And it's also possible that in three or four years time, he's managed to rebuild the Russian economy enough. He's managed to rebuild the Russian military enough that he can not only go back and take the rest of Ukraine, but he could go back and have a try at something else too. All right. One last thing, if you don't mind, and you know, I love saying one last thing. So let me just say that. Okay. So one last thing for the next two minutes.

12:50You're the president. You're the president of the United States. okay the war is about to start you pick up the phone and you call vladimir putin you say listen i'm in about to make a speech very similar to roosevelt's speech you remember when roosevelt said well i've got a house on fire my neighbor's house is on fire i'm just gonna lend them my garden hose and the americans said yeah that's what you should do and that's how the lend lease started with the brits to help the brits in the war but what if uh biden had gotten on the Oval Office speech and said, listen, my neighbor is going to be trespassed upon by his neighbor.

13:28And trespassing is not what Americans don't like trespassing. Go to Texas. They're loaded with guns down there. They don't like trespassing. So my neighbor is about to be trespassed. And so here's the deal, Vlad. You come into that area and only in that area, not in your sovereign area, we're going to attack you. We're going to hit you with surgical missiles. We're going to try to not kill your troops. We're going to kill every piece of weaponry that enters the area until you stop doing that. And oh, by the way, if you don't have the war, we're going to offer an economic package because we're going to have to give this money to the Ukrainians anyway.

14:07And we should knock this off. We should probably get back into the G8 and let's knock off the hostilities. But just let you know, you cross the border, we're going to hit you surgically. It's going to be a NATO group of people. How would that have gone down? Would that have been a bad thing to have done at that time? Would that have been, well, the US is at war with Russia, but again, it's a trespass. You're trusting. I'm not attacking you on your sovereign land. I'm not attacking you. I'm truly not trying to hurt your troops, but you're trespassing on someone's property, and we would like you to leave their property.

14:50I like that. We would like you to. They have said please as well. Yeah, but if you're not going to do this, okay, we're going to hit you with these surgically targeted cruise missiles. Well, because I mean, I think that in my conversations with people from the Biden administration, even as recently as a couple of weeks ago, I do think there is a realization that they were too afraid of the domino theory. The reason they didn't do that was because they were genuinely afraid that Vladimir Putin might launch some kind of a nuclear weapon, either in Ukraine or potentially in Eastern Europe. And that's why they didn't do it.

15:27And that's why they under-resourced Zelensky in the early stages of the war, why it took them so long to give Zelensky. And maybe, you know, maybe Donald Trump would have had a more maximalist position. And it's impossible to know now that whether would Donald Trump have said, actually, you can have if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this big. And make sure Vladimir Putin, I mean, he always says this would never have happened under him. I don't know that that's necessarily the case, that it would never have happened under him. Okay, we're going to talk about Germany too, but Peter Grief has a super interesting question.

16:01Given the Starlink communications and U.S. intelligence support, could Ukraine continue to hold off Russia if the U.S. withdraws? And I think the Starlink issue is super important. I mean, I know that the Europeans can resupply some stuff. ammunition and some hardware and the Danes and the Dutch are already supplying planes. But Ukraine really needs that satellite communications and it really needs America's intelligence support. Both the Americans and the Ukrainians deny that it is happening, but we do know that the Americans have been giving Ukrainians intelligence on where they can hit Russians and Russian forces.

16:43So what happens if Donald Trump says, okay, that's it, You don't take this deal giving me$500 billion worth of your minerals in perpetuity right for generations to come. They would be having to hand this over, and I'm pulling everything out. I mean, that is potential. That's the disaster scenario. I don't think Zelensky can say yes to that. I'd say no to that because of this. Well, I have to see what this new chancellor in Germany comes up with. But yeah, the Starlink thing would be a real big blow to them. I'll take the other side of that for a second. I'm not really sure how he can accept that either, though.

17:25You know, at the end of the day, what is he going to do? He's going to give half of the wealth of his country away to the American president that's blackmailing him. So this is the - With no guarantees of future aid. Of course. And this is the problem that's happening right now. Trump is trying to shift the world from the free world, protecting itself and helping its allies to this, I guess, multipolar world where him and the Russians, you know, the strong are going to take advantage of the weak. And if you're in a weakened position and I'm in a strong position, I'm going to hurt you. And, Cady, I'm telling you, study history.

18:06When the strong move on the weak, the strong always lose. Okay, they may not lose in that moment. They may win the battle, but they lose the war. The weak are going to get together, and they're going to knock out the strong. And it's a really, really bad long-term strategy to do what Donald Trump is doing or suggesting to do. His attitude is, well, we should have all the oil in the Middle East. which have all these rare earth minerals why supply them you're supplying them because you're trying to keep them free because they're guardians of the free world there's 5.7 billion people that live in autocracy you know of course the ukrainians you know should give us something at some point you know and i understand there's some forgivable loans and non-forgivable loans but we're in it together to defend you and to reject totalitarianism around the world.

19:01Trump is not suggesting that. I think it's a very bad long-term strategy. He doesn't see this has any benefit. Okay, as the boss of breaks, we're going to take a quick break and then talk about the German elections.

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20:26I think what was super interesting about what happened in Germany, two things were interesting, obviously how well the AFD did. And I know Alistair Campbell, our colleague on the rest of his politics, has been traveling around Germany. So it's very interesting to hear what he has to say about this, but how well the AFD did in the elections and what that means for other European countries. And is that an echo of some of the far right sentiment that we're seeing here and the causes for how Donald Trump even got reelected here around immigration, the economy, uncertainty, distrust of institutions, people feeling anxious, but also what the new chancellor to be Mertz said when he said straight after the vote, I mean, super undiplomatic and blunt, I mean, almost Trumpian in his bluntness, that Europe now has to find a way to beef up its own security and not have to depend on the United States.

21:29And more importantly, that it has to do so fast because the Germans are not known for moving very fast or building their coalitions or on beefing up their security. But right now you've got the incoming chancellor saying, this has to happen. He's declaring that Europe needs to become more self-reliant. I mean, I think he spoke of the kind of, so here's a thought I had listening to the German election results and watching what's happened, this stunning kind of vault fast that Washington has executed vis-a-vis Europe over the last week, is that this could end up making Europe stronger again. and that what Donald Trump is doing is actually the push that Europe needed to take care of its own defense.

22:10I don't love the way he's doing it. I don't love the bullying, especially not of Zelensky and of Ukraine. And I think this deal looks like extortion. It's not really a deal at all. It's just steel. But if you look at the reaction from the Germans, Germans was the weak link in European security. And now here you've got a new German elected politician leader saying, we have to do this and we have to do it fast. And I don't know if that's what Donald Trump intended, but I think it could have a very important impact for Europe. What do you think? Well, I do think that. I also think that the rise of AFD has to be a concern.

22:53Now, some people are saying they were trounced in the election, but I don't see that. I don't like the slope of movement of the AFD support. And so I guess if we had the new chancellor on our podcast, my first question would be, how do you stem that support? Because, you know, you've got, I don't know, you tell me. I mean, there's a there's white supremacy laced in that. There's Nazi-like behavior laced in that. And there's an American president not on watch anymore. I think the German chancellor is correct in saying that we can't consider the Americans, at least this group. He uses exact words, at least this group of Americans as our allies anymore.

23:45Yeah, he said this American government does not care for Europe. Yes. And this group of people, it was very clear saying that there are people in the United States that do care about Europe and want there to be solidarity with Europe, just not this group. And so what I would be worried about if I was the German chancellor is a lot of culture comes out of America. Whether we like it or not, America's greatest export is its culture. And you have the American president now exporting these hard right ideas. idea. So you've got the American leadership exporting this idea that it's the weak are going to get vanquished by the strong.

24:27This is just an antithetical message from the last eight decades of American leadership. And so then the question is, how do you countermand that? And then how do you deal with that as it's affecting your own society? Because whether you like it or not donald trump has influence in these countries yeah and which is why you've got um emmanuel macron in the white house today i'm glad somebody gave you a cup of coffee anthony so anthony's just having a coffee break but we know he didn't make that cup of coffee somebody just gave it to him look at the trust but verify yeah i see that i got that from the reagan library get it Okay.

25:06I'm going to drink it now. Emmanuel Macron. You talk while I drink my coffee that was made for me. That was made for you and passed to you. Emmanuel Macron turns up at the White House. I don't know if he was even given a cup of coffee because Donald Trump didn't need a Thank you, honey. Thank you. Tell your mama's boy. All right, go. Keep going. I think my son once came in and gave me a cup of coffee on the course of this podcast. It wasn't well made, though. Your son made it. I guarantee you it wasn't well made. So Emmanuel Macron turns up at the White House. Donald Trump doesn't even bother to come to the front door to greet him, which is the protocol of what you do.

25:43Sends a signal in and of itself, right? It's a kind of classic bully move. Keir Starmer is going to be at the White House this week. And I think the question for the Europeans is, do they all try to appease Donald Trump in the way that all those cabinet members and Republican senators are doing? because they're worried about what he might do to Europe? Or do they act strong in the way that the chancellor, new incoming leader of Germany seems to be doing, saying actually, okay, you know what? We can't just keep bending over backwards to appease Donald Trump. We have to find a way to unify. And what I hope is that when you've got Emmanuel Macron, Kierstahmer, you've had Donald Tusk, the president of Poland here, that what they need is not three separate voices or for and throw in the Germans, but actually some kind of unified voice.

26:32And if Europe could find some kind of coherent unified position, look, it's a huge trading block. It's a massive economy. There are three pillars in the world. There's China, Europe, and the United States. If they could actually have some kind of unified position, not just on Ukraine, but on tariffs and trade generally, then this could be a moment where actually Europe could stand up to Donald Trump. I mean, the only thing I would say is that it's not just Donald Trump, though, Anthony, exporting these ideas. The seeds in Europe are giving growth to these ideas separately from the US. I mean, there's so much discontent in Germany about stagnant economic growth, about influx of migrants, about green energy policies.

27:17And I think those that's giving rise throughout Europe, that's not just a Donald Trump export. I think that kind of slightly doesn't take care of the matter. This is a global issue, and the people who are trying to, from the center, trying to fend off the extremes on either the left or the right, need to acknowledge and find some kind of response to those concerns, whether they're in Germany or in Texas. Yeah, well, I think that you're bringing up a brilliant point. And I think that this is what guys like Donald Trump and Elon Musk rely on. They rely on fracture and fragmentation. And so if you've got Starmer, Macron, you pick the people.

28:04If they're not singing out of the same choir book, that's good for Donald Trump because he wants everybody to be shooting off in different directions while his team is organized in one direction as sort of a battering ram. But I think I think I think the I want to just go back to this sentiment. OK. And Mark Carney said this, by the way, it broke my heart when he said it. But he said, you know, we're no longer allies. We're just your neighbor to the north. And, you know, that broke my heart when he said that. And and Mark Carney's a tough guy. Canadiens feel right now. There's questions in the block here where people are saying, well, do you think Carney could roll Trump if he got in the position of being the prime minister?