Donald Trump's U.N. Speech on Iran and 'Super Intelligence'

0:29This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. President Trump addresses the United Nations General Assembly while taking a range of diplomatic meetings in New York, including one with Mayor Zoran Mamdani. Plus, how much headway at reforming the United Nations has the Trump administration made? Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues on the WSJ's opinion pages, editorial board member Elliot Kaufman and columnist Kim Strassel. The 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly begins Tuesday in New York, and high on the agenda was an address from President Trump of about 40 minutes.

1:13The president covered a range of topics. The beginning struck me as sounding almost like a State of the Union address, talking about rising incomes in the United States, the crime rate in Washington, D.C. He then moved on to some old standards, bragging again about the great honor of having settled the eight wars, defending the arrest of Maduro in Venezuela, the United States intervention there. Elliot, perhaps the biggest news, though, to my mind was the unwavering line that President Trump took on Iran. Listen to this, and this is delivered with a representative of the Islamic Republic looking on from the audience.

1:49But I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? And do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to. Ellie, what do you make of that? On one hand, President Trump has issued those kinds of threats before.

2:39On the other hand, it seems notable to me that even as the midterm elections approach, he is still standing by that hard line. I think the most important words there were after the midterm election, meaning Iran thinks it has that political pressure that it can use on President Trump precisely because those midterm elections are looming. And so they don't have to concede as much for a deal. They can leave it unclear yet again what will happen with the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, only to try to claim ownership of it afterward. That's what we saw in the last deal. But President Trump right there, it's not the threat.

3:25It's not the annihilate. I've heard that from him before, and surely so have they. It's the after the midterm elections point. If President Trump can wait like that, well, then Iran has what, five, six weeks under a really crushing US economic blockade? They must not have been happy to hear that in particular, I would say. Another line that stuck out to me, Kim, this is from President Trump. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran. It doesn't even enter into my mind. The only thing that does is Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. And then, Kim, astoundingly, he had to stop for applause.

4:13There was applause in the United Nations General Assembly for that statement that Iran will never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. On the point about the election, though, interesting as the polling continues to get worse for Republicans, candidates are certainly worried. One of the ideas that's now being floated, including by Ashley Hinson in Iowa, I think Mike Rogers in Michigan as well, is to put a halt on U.S. exports of diesel fuel. What's your read of that speech? And what do you make of this idea of banning exports of diesel fuel, at least in the short term, as a way of addressing the concerns that voters are feeling when they go to fill up their cars and even their tractors?

4:53Well, the problem is very real, and I don't think anyone should minimize it, especially the huge ramp up we've seen in diesel prices. And you really need to think about what that means for a moment for small businesses, farmers. I mean, you mentioned a tractor, and that's actually kind of the big deal here. You've got some of these tractors, I got 200, 300 gallon tanks, and suddenly you're paying twice as much to fill them up for work on the farm for a day or two. I mean, those are enormous prices. Just do that times diesel at six dollars a gallon. It's really quite prohibitive. And that's why Republicans are panicked, in particular, in farm states.

5:31That all being said, this is not going to fix issues. the diesel export ban. It's one of those political ideas you throw out there and you hope it sounds good, even if it were enacted. And so far, I think the administration has rightly not been very interested in it. It could result in a short-term depression of prices, but with a lot of additional problems going forward as a result. So just to understand, the U.S. is not short of diesel. We are actually a surplus provider. We make more than about 5 million barrels of diesel a day. We only use about 3.5, 3.6 million barrels a day domestically.

6:11But the issue, as with oil, is that prices for diesel are set globally. And those global prices are being driven largely by Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refining capacity, which is one of the other huge diesel producers in the world, also by the Strait of Hormuz and the blockage of refineries from there. But when that price is set globally, when you keep diesel here, it doesn't change that price necessarily, especially because even if you were to tell diesel refineries in the Gulf that they need to move diesel northward, it's actually more expensive in many ways to do that than it is to put it offshore, which is what a lot of them are set up to do.

6:55So again, it might temporarily depress prices, but also not by much. And at the consequence of maybe driving down interest in further refinery capacity or causing global players to move away as U.S. buyers of diesel, which is not great because one of the other options is Russia. So there's a lot of complications there and not necessarily good policy outcomes. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. Why can't we get AI to production? Our competitors are all ready. How do we keep data secure? When do we actually see ROI? All this talk about AI, but talk doesn't transform businesses. AWS AI cuts through the noise, making AI easier to securely deploy and scale.

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8:39Welcome back. Here are the official numbers from the Energy Information Administration. It says that in 2025, U.S. refineries produced about 1.76 billion barrels of diesel fuel, and total U.S. consumption was about 1.42 billion barrels. So we are making more diesel already than we are consuming, which is why some of it ends up being exported. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has suggested recently, if you start putting barriers on flows, pretty quickly you will reduce the production. So his argument is that you might actually make matters worse over the long or the medium term by banning exports.

9:20Elliot, what else from the president's speech, again, 40 minutes covering a lot of topics, jumped out at you? I would look at his mentioning of the new authority he has, a tariff authority with regard to oil and gas sanctions with Ukraine and Russia in particular. He stated that he is willing to use that if he needs to. That's important. We hadn't heard that. And certainly the world stage hadn't seen that. And so look out for that. That was greater than the usual that we've heard from the president on those matters where we hear, you know, the war has gone on too long. Too many people have died.

9:59It's all true, but we've heard it before. What are you going to do to maybe change the status quo? We just heard it right there. Kim, lots of meetings also on the president's agenda in this trip to New York, including one yesterday with New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani. What might strike viewers about that was the friendly nature of it, given the diametrically opposed politics of these two men, that they can go behind closed doors and talk for an hour and then come out smiling, patting each other on the back. What do you make of that, Kim, the dynamic between Mamdani and Trump? And then what else is President Trump doing while he's up here visiting his hometown?

10:37I find that whole relationship completely bizarre. I can see the benefit for Mom Donnie of keeping friendly relations with Trump from a practical perspective, right? Yes, he gets great traction out of trolling Trump at times. But if you can sit down with the president of the United States and have the discussion that he wanted to have. So apparently they talked about policing, immigration issues, etc. Zora Mamdani got to make a case to the president about temporary protected status for certain classes of immigrants that were here. You know, you maintain those friendly relations. Maybe you ward off the possibility of the president thinking of sending the National Guard to your city, you know, and you can try to not make yourself a center of news the way, for instance, like Minneapolis has.

11:25I do not understand entirely what Donald Trump gets out of this relationship. I do think that there is a weird thing, Donald Trump being a longtime New Yorker, that he thinks that there's something kind of cool and important about having a direct line to the mayor of New York. I think there's some aspect of that that's the case. Also, you know, apparently Zoram Amdani can be quite charming. And the president, I give him this. Ever since he was first elected in 2017 and came to office, he's always said he wants to be able to work with and make deals with Democrats. They've largely refused to take him up on any of that.

12:02So maybe this is simply him pursuing a natural impulse to try to work with whomever suggests they're willing to have a discussion. In terms of the rest of his meetings, I think these are so important. what he's doing at the United Nations. He's obviously signing a new Greenland deal, and that's already been stamped and mitten. He's meeting with Andy Burnham, the UK prime minister who took office this summer. This will be the first face-to-face they've ever had. They've talked a few times on the phone. Trump is going to want to talk about the need for the UK to do more oil drilling in the North Sea and also his frustration that the country hasn't done more to help the United States in the war against Iran.

12:44Burnham is going to want to talk about AI, Ukraine, how they bring about some sort of resolution there. Also, his desire simply that the war in Iran stop because that has had some deep impact on the prices of energy and food and other things in Britain. There's going to be a bilateral with the Japanese Prime Minister, Sane Takachi, that's going to concentrate all on Taiwan. The Japanese prime minister is very concerned that Trump in this upcoming meeting with the Chinese president might trade economic deals in return for a lessened support of Taiwan's security. And then there's also going to be a kind of evening event the president is hosting at which Venezuelan leader Delce Rodriguez will be there.

13:29And one big thing to watch there is the news that Maria Corina Machado, who is the opposition leader, may be waking her way back to Venezuela. and that's going to pose a real test for Venezuela if they are going to ensure her security and allow her to be there. This is still a country that might be working with us on oil, but it's still got a secret police and it's still very much an authoritarian area. So look to see whether or not the president lays down any lines there on that front. And then Middle East meetings too. There's even a possibility. I think it's unlikely, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the Iranian president will be there and there's a possibility they could talk.

14:13We'll see. It seems unlikely, but there's a lot going on at this UN meeting. And after President Trump leaves New York, he is then heading to Washington, where he will greet Xi Jinping for a diplomatic visit from the Chinese leader. Those discussions will undoubtedly include some talk about AI. So interesting that Trump also chose to mention that in his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly. Let's listen to a clip of part of what he said there. Super intelligence, every major new technology brings challenges. And super intelligence is no exception. Yet the very same people who said we'll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming.

14:54And they've since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming. And nobody was dead. these are the same people that are now saying that ai is going to kill us all that robots are going to attack us and that everything is going to be a total disaster same group of people this is the group that came up with the russia russia russia hoax the ukraine ukraine ukraine hoax climate change open borders whoever wins ai you have to remember this and now i say whoever wins si whoever wins super intelligent wins ellie a few things there first obviously president trump's attempt to rebrand artificial intelligence as super intelligence wants to talk about si instead of ai i don't know if that will take but he said that artificial intelligence could be bigger than the industrial revolution and he obviously is not buying the narrative that it It is a real danger to humanity that robots are going to all come kill us.

16:01And so he does not seem inclined to go along with any sort of regulatory effort to pause AI development in part because he says, and I tend to think he's right about this, that this is an important technology and the United States has an imperative to be a leader in it. Yeah, it might be a little late in the day for the rebrand of AI, but give him credit for trying. I think the analogy to the industrial revolution is a useful one because it both illustrates the futility of pretending we can stop it, of pretending this simply won't happen if we wish it away, if we make the right rules, and how disastrous any such attempt would be.

16:48because, I mean, China won't do that. China is going to pursue this, as will other nations and other US adversaries. So the American attitude toward new technology, a new frontier, can't be to hide from it. It has to be to win the battle in those spheres. But at the same time, I think we can recognize that the industrial revolution led to all kinds of political challenges, issues, dislocations, disruptions that in fact did lead to substantial regulation because there was political demand for it. I would not be shocked to see the same thing happen in this sphere. The challenge will be to not cede the open field to China on this issue, but at the same time respond to the concerns of the American public in a way that allows us to pursue the technology and still win the battle.

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18:33From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, This is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. There are many models of oversight for artificial intelligence that have been floated for various reasons. One that President Trump explicitly rejected at the UN was the idea of any kind of global regulatory body. And Kim, thank goodness, the United States and China are really the two players in advanced frontier AI, it seems to me. And so the question is easy for other countries. If you're not one of those two countries, you'd love to have some global body slowing things down and maybe giving you a chance to catch up or a chance to have your say.

19:17But from the standpoint of the United States, it seems like that would only be a negative. And whatever conversations between President Trump and President Xi are going to happen this week about red phones to notify each other if some model has gone rogue or whatever, that is really the way it's going to go. Yeah, I think that if there is any lesson to have been learned from the United Nations over our long history now, is it ceding most elements of any regulation to that body is a poor idea and does not work to America's favor. And that is something, by the way, that I think Donald Trump has recognized and has tried to change the direction of what had been this sort of globalism idea of the UN just presiding as a super body.

20:02There is likely to be discussion between the United States and China about, as you note, some sort of kind of almost like a bat phone situation where maybe the countries alert each other if they have a breakout problem. Of course, the problem with that is, can you really trust your adversary to be honest with you about a situation like that, especially in the wake, for instance, of us still trying to figure out how it falls on China in this Wuhan lab about COVID, etc. Like, are you really going to fess up and be honest that you had an issue? Washington is at least beginning to get its arms around.

20:40I think we've still got a long way to go, but it's arms around the idea of how you might do some regulation of this internally, whether that be third party verification, the government looking at new models, etc. So we're starting to walk our way toward that. But it was very reassuring to have Donald Trump come out and simply say, here's where we're not going with that. We're not going to have the United Nations now in control of superintelligence. I mean, that phrase is just terrifying. Elliot, Kim mentioned the United Nations' record over decades. And of course, the Trump administration has been pushing for changes and reforms.

21:16How much headway is it making? And we'll give you the last word. It's made some real progress on these issues, primarily with cutting the budget, which never happens at these international organizations. It only goes up and up. If it wasn't for U.S. pressure, I would give a 0 % chance of any cut. Instead, we've had a 15%, a real shrinking of the United Nations. We've also seen the end of a aimless, failing peacekeeping mission to Lebanon after decades. There are efforts by other countries to revive that now, of course. So vigilance is important as ever. But other things include quitting various agencies and treaties, blocking a sort of international carbon tax from the International Maritime Organization.

22:07The issue, though, is that the IMO's ability to impose such a tax hasn't been disabled. And similarly, we haven't seen the kind of structural reforms that would be necessary to stop aimless failing programs from continuing on for decades. That kind of thing might require sustained U.S. use of the veto power at the U.N. Security Council to grind everything to a halt in order to get that kind of real change so that this can't go back the way it was the next time a Democratic president says it's business as usual. Thank you, Elliot and Kim. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com.

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