00:00We can now bring in William Lawrence, a former U.S. diplomat and professor at the School of International Service
00:06at American University.
00:08I believe we've sorted out the technical glitches, William.
00:13So yesterday, Donald Trump used his speech to speak to this domestic audience.
00:17Do you think it was unifying at all?
00:21No, not at all.
00:23I mean, there were a few moments, as the other guest said about, you know, the hockey speech.
00:27And a couple of times where he stated generic principles like no political violence, where the Democrats joined in the
00:33applause because they had to.
00:35Also, a lot of things related to Israel, which surprised me a little bit.
00:38But when it came to most of the speech, it was classic Trump.
00:45He was bullying.
00:46He was taunting.
00:47He was trying to embarrass the other side.
00:50He called them crazy.
00:51He called them corrupt and fraudulent, accused them of fraud when his administration is probably the most corrupt in U
00:59.S. history, you know, between the airplanes and the cryptocurrency and the huge mega deals for the Trump organization and
01:06around the world.
01:08So it fell on deaf ears.
01:11And so it was an interesting spectacle because you had sort of recalcitrant Democrats usually biting their tongues except for
01:19a couple of outbursts.
01:20And then this spectacle of the Republicans cheering on things that everybody knew weren't true.
01:27Like the price of beef is up.
01:29He said it was down.
01:30You know, tariffs are supposedly improving the economy when they're hurting the entire economy, including manufacturing, which was the point.
01:37You know, and so it was it was falsehood after falsehood after falsehood after falsehood.
01:42And when you're listening to that, what should your response be?
01:45If you're on the Republican side, you stand up and applaud, even if you know it's not true, as Republicans
01:51will privately say when they're interviewed, or you're the Democrats and you look sullen and confused.
01:58What do you think U.S. allies will take away from that speech?
02:01And will they be reassured?
02:07No, I think the world has to some degree figured out Trump.
02:11And so, you know, if you have the proper mix of sycophancy and staying out of his way and making
02:19short-term deals that seem to make concessions to him, like we saw with the Denmark-Greenland quote-unquote concessions,
02:28you can get your way with Trump.
02:32Narcissist, diagnosed narcissists like him, 32 leading psychologists diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder.
02:39You usually can't get them to sort of move with you in concert in any way, but you can get
02:45them to back off, which is why one of his nicknames now given to him by Wall Street is Taco
02:49Trump, Trump all his chickens out.
02:51So you sort of, you make a move that seems sycophantic and agreeable, and then you sort of get out
02:56of his way.
02:59But there's no reassurance because Trump prides himself on being unpredictable.
03:03And unpredictability is bad for markets.
03:05It's bad for international relations.
03:08It's bad for peacemaking.
03:09It's bad for, you know, the stock market and business deals.
03:14It's like if you're a business right now, you don't know, is the tariff going to stay at 10 or
03:1925 percent?
03:20Is it going up?
03:21Is it going down?
03:21It's been overruled by the Supreme Court, but it's going to try to bring them back in other ways for
03:26150 days or not.
03:27So it's deeply, deeply confusing, which means if you're a businessman or a politician, you have to hedge and guess
03:33and hope you're right.
03:35Donald Trump campaigned on being a non-interventionist U.S. president.
03:40Do you think he's justified his actions in Venezuela or what he's planning to do with Iran?
03:49No.
03:50I think by non-interventionists, Trump is thinking, you know, the Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan model of long deployments and
03:59troops on the ground.
04:00But Trump loves quick strikes that seem to get him what he wants.
04:06I mean, he went and kidnapped the head of state of Venezuela after six months of bombing, fishing boats and
04:14drug boats off the coast of Venezuela and the Caribbean and a little bit in the Pacific.
04:19And after he grabbed the head of state, he got the Venezuelan regime, which is the same regime minus its
04:25president, to make concessions.
04:26And he says, I did regime change in Venezuela.
04:30So if you apply the Venezuela model to Iran, it's not sure what he's going to do.
04:36But he's going to try to either get radical regime change behavior or regime change in some symbolic way where
04:44somebody gets killed or somebody gets removed and then try to compel Iran to act in a different way.
04:49And now, again, the Iranians have sort of figured them out.
04:52We had five rounds of negotiations last spring and two this winter.
04:56And they're already bracing for the strike that's coming.
04:59But I think they're preparing for a strike that's not too lethal and not too much of a regime change.
05:05And then the negotiation that comes afterwards in which they'll seem to make concessions without really making concessions.
05:13So, again, it's as much political theater as geopolitics.
05:19And people kind of know the game now, even though it's disconcerting and not always fruitful to play the game.
Comments