00:00And joining me now, my first guest today is a special one joined by Pulitzer Award winning historian and journalist
00:06Anne Applebaum.
00:07Appreciate Anne Applebaum you joining us.
00:11What do you make out of Donald Trump's mixed messages that are coming out once again?
00:17He says that at one level, U.S. will knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in
00:24Iran if there is no deal.
00:26And yet says, expect a major nuclear deal this week.
00:30What are we to make out of these conflicting messages once again coming from the president?
00:37I'm sure it's very hard to accept, but I think you're hearing a president who doesn't have a strategy.
00:46He changes his view depending on the day, on the moment.
00:50He's primarily guided by a sense of whether he is or he isn't winning.
00:56And he's trying different strategies.
00:58So sometimes he's trying to bully the Iranians.
01:01Sometimes he's trying to do a deal with the Iranians.
01:04Sometimes he's sending a message to Americans.
01:08It's confusing to you, but it's also confusing to the people who voted for him.
01:13It's a moment when his lack of a vision for what the United States should be doing in the world
01:20just becomes very clear.
01:22It's not just confusing, but it's putting the world and Applebaum on the edge.
01:26Because you've got a situation where an Iranian vessel has been captured by the U.S. Navy.
01:34You've got the Iranians in turn saying they're not opening the Strait of Hormuz.
01:38And you've got reports that the U.S. vice president is flying all the way to Islamabad.
01:42All of this has sent the world not just into confusion, but into a complete tailspin.
01:50I'm sorry.
01:52I apologize on behalf of the United States.
01:57It is profoundly irresponsible.
02:02He isn't able to accept the damage that his actions have done to the world.
02:09I'm not sure that he really understood when he began the war with Iran.
02:13I'm not sure that he understood that there would be secondary implications that the Strait of Hormuz could be blocked,
02:20that the war might affect international oil prices, that it would affect the prices of other things,
02:26of fertilizer, of other goods that are produced in the Gulf or that are sent to the Gulf.
02:33I just don't think this is a president who thinks strategically or thinks much beyond, as I said, his own
02:40interests.
02:41And so really, it's now the responsibility of the rest of the world and of countries like India
02:47to work together with other like-minded powers and to do their best to create alternative trading systems
02:56and alternative diplomatic communities that can perhaps balance or make up for the lack of predictability
03:06that we now have coming from the United States.
03:08But that's in the long term, Anne Applebaum.
03:11In the short term, you've got a situation where every day seems to bring a new twist.
03:17And that's the concern, the unpredictability that you spoke about.
03:21Is it just about the president or the people around him?
03:23Surely there are people, advisors around him, who are guiding him, telling him what the strategy should be?
03:29Are you saying this is a White House which entirely runs on the whims and fancies of one man?
03:36So there are people around him who do have strategies, and there are people around him,
03:41or there should be in Washington, people who understand the region or who understand the oil markets.
03:48It seems, though, that they compete for his attention.
03:52It's not clear who are the main advisors, whose advice really reaches him.
03:57It's not clear which of the U.S. agencies who study these different issues have access to him.
04:05You know, for many years, the United States had a system.
04:08We had a National Security Council run by a national security advisor,
04:11and it was that person's job to manage these different bureaus and agencies in Washington
04:17and to present the president with a range of options in any situation.
04:22This administration doesn't have a national security advisor.
04:26Marco Rubio, who is the secretary of state, also has that job.
04:29And the National Security Council, as it was, doesn't exist, doesn't function in the way that it once did.
04:36So, yes, I'm afraid we are in a situation where the whims of one person are deciding how the president
04:44acts and how he behaves.
04:45I mean, you also see that rather than speaking through official messaging,
04:50rather than using his secretary of state or even his vice president,
04:53that the president often speaks in the middle of the night or early in the morning on his own social
04:59media accounts,
05:00which, of course, nobody else has seen or advised him on necessarily before he makes these posts.
05:06And so, yes, it is a very strange and whimsical presidency.
05:10And again, I know that it's hard to absorb that idea or get used to it.
05:14But that is the case at the moment.
05:17So what happens to the ceasefire?
05:21In 48 hours, the ceasefire deadline expires.
05:23There's some talk that it could be extended.
05:27Is it possible to even predict what Donald Trump does next?
05:31One day there's a blockade of Iran.
05:34The next day he's talking of doing a deal with Iran that will give prosperity to Iran.
05:39Do you even think that it's possible to predict what will happen come Wednesday when the ceasefire ends?
05:47I wouldn't put money on predicting anything, no.
05:51I mean, I do think that it's in Donald Trump's interest for there to be a ceasefire.
05:56I think he would like the war to end.
05:58There is some evidence that he's upset by and disturbed by the war and at the same time that he's
06:05tired of it.
06:06He doesn't understand why it's gone so badly for him.
06:09He was, I think, incorrectly advised by some of the people around him.
06:13Again, I spoke of these conflicting groups of advisors.
06:17He was incorrectly told that it would be easy, you know, if you knock out the leadership of Iran, which
06:22he did do,
06:23or the American military did do on the first day,
06:26that the Iranian regime would quickly change into one more friendly to the U.S. and to Western interests.
06:32I mean, when that turned out not to be true, he didn't seem to have a plan B.
06:40Again, his interest is in ending the war.
06:42The region's interest is in ending the war.
06:44The Saudi Emirati interest is in ending the war.
06:48And so there are a lot of pressure to do so.
06:54But, I mean, you know, again, I'm afraid to be offering you the bad news that nothing is guaranteed.
07:01And I can't tell you for certain what will happen on Wednesday.
07:05How much is he affected by public opinion?
07:07Today he said in an interview, I don't care about these polls.
07:10These are all fake news.
07:11I don't believe any of these polls in the United States suggesting that the opinion is against the president,
07:17against his handling of the war.
07:18Does he live in this make-believe world where he doesn't accept now outside opinion?
07:23Is he the kind, you believe, who simply cannot accept that Iran has stood up to him
07:29and that perhaps his calculations have gone wrong?
07:33So he's somebody, you know, this has been a trait that he's had for 10 years,
07:37really since he's been in public life.
07:39So this is not new.
07:42You know, even during his first election campaign, during his first term,
07:47when he sought to overthrow the results of the election in 2020,
07:50he's always been someone who refuses to accept reality
07:54and who seeks to impose his own version of events on the facts.
08:00This is nothing that's new at all.
08:02I think the difference between his second term and his first term
08:06is that in his first term he was still surrounded by people who'd had influence on him
08:11and who were still connected to the American military, to the American intelligence,
08:19to traditional conservative people and movements,
08:24you know, people who understood and had a good grasp on the world.
08:26This time around, he's chosen to appoint in many jobs people who have no experience,
08:34people who are against the own institutions that they control.
08:39For example, Tulsi Gabbard, who is his chief of intelligence,
08:42is somebody who's very suspicious of the American intelligence system.
08:45And if you have somebody in charge who's suspicious, it doesn't create a great atmosphere,
08:50it doesn't create conditions of trust that we were used to in the United States before now.
08:54There may be a grain of truth in him saying that he doesn't care what public opinion says.
09:00I don't think he is running for election again.
09:03I don't think the fate of the Republican Party interests him that much.
09:08You know, he's still interested in his own, you know, he has his own business interests.
09:12He has his own personal interests.
09:14He wants to build a ballroom at the White House.
09:17There are other things that he cares about.
09:19And public opinion, it's probably true that it doesn't bother him very much.
09:23But you're certainly right to point to the fact that the majority of Americans don't like the war,
09:30they disapprove of the war, they disapprove of his handling of the war.
09:34And the number of Americans who strongly disapprove of Donald Trump
09:38is, according to one poll that I saw, higher than we've ever seen for any president.
09:44So, in conclusion, and I want you to put your hat on as someone who's written several books,
09:49particularly, of course, on this rise of a sense of illiberalism across the world.
09:56Where will Donald Trump be seen in the context of the times in which we live in, let's say, 20
10:03years from now?
10:03Will this be seen as a period where you had this president who ran arguably what was once seen certainly
10:12as the most powerful country in the world
10:14on his own whims and fancies, thereby, as you said, putting this complete sense of unpredictability across the world?
10:22How will historians judge this period of this Trumpian age?
10:27So, first of all, yes, Donald Trump ran as somebody who had illiberal, even autocratic instincts.
10:35He's tried to run the United States for the past year without much regard for the rule of law,
10:41for judicial precedent, for the norms of governance.
10:46And he had some people around him who were pushing him and cheering him on.
10:51That's, again, the difference between his first term and this one in that effort.
10:55There were, after January the 6th in 2021, there were a lot of people who were attracted to Donald Trump
11:00who also sought to make radical changes to the American political system.
11:05And you can see them pushing him in these illiberal directions.
11:09But the nature of your question, I mean, I think you've answered it yourself already with the kinds of questions
11:15you've been posing.
11:16I do think Trump will be seen as somebody who poses a radical break with the American presidencies of the
11:26past.
11:27He's someone who has appointed people to jobs, people of a kind who would never have had government jobs before.
11:33He's somebody who doesn't really understand how much America's allies, America's allies in Europe and Asia,
11:41also America's alliances and relationships with countries like India,
11:45how much those relationships contributed to America's power
11:49and how much stability and predictability were part of holding those alliances together.
11:55I think he doesn't understand that.
11:57And I think you're seeing the result.
11:59And we can only hope that whoever follows him will once again return to the understanding, as I say,
12:07of the importance that America's international relationships had to America's own prosperity and power.
12:12It almost seems as if he's more comfortable, Anne Applebaum, with the Pakistanis in terms of dealing with military dictators,
12:19dealing with strongmen leaders, whether it's Vladimir Putin, whom he seemingly seems to admire almost,
12:25or indeed the Pakistanis who have become the mediators of sorts in this conflict with Iran.
12:32He does seem to instinctively admire other autocrats.
12:36So he admires people who don't need to worry about public opinion,
12:39who don't have to care about the press, who don't have to worry about judges.
12:44He does have some relationships with other world leaders who have either invested in his companies
12:50or who have business relationships with his children.
12:53That's also completely unprecedented.
12:54We've never had an American president with those kinds of conflicts of interest before.
12:59And so, yes, he often instinctively prefers people who seem to be able to offer him deals
13:06rather than people whose, as I said, whose long-term alliances and support
13:10would make America as a country more powerful and more prosperous.
13:16So, in conclusion, Trump always chickens out.
13:20Will it be another case in the next 48 hours, the taco phenomenon,
13:24or do you believe we are going to see this soap opera playing out day after day
13:28with the world on the edge?
13:30What's more likely?
13:32So, as I said, I think he wants to end the war,
13:35and him wanting to end it is a good sign.
13:38But if I was able to predict what would happen,
13:41then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
13:43Anne Applebaum, on that cryptic and rather sharp note,
13:45I appreciate you joining me.
13:47Thank you so much.
13:49Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic joining me there from New York.
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