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Journalist Nathan Stone and Producer Josh Carmody invite you to sit down for deep dives on the rapid changes happening in Trump’s new America.
00:02
President Trump put on quite a show at the United Nations General Assembly last week. Between criticizing allies and the United Nations itself, spreading conspiracies, and complaining about the floors, escalators, and his teleprompter, Trump, characteristically, didn't hold back. Far more than just harsh words, Trump's disdain for the UN has led to America withholding vital funding to the organization, the result of which will be mass layoffs and a rollback of humanitarian programs.
00:32
Welcome to the politics of New America. On the show today, America's abandonment of the United Nations and the consequences for both the nation and the world. We'll also talk the more likely than ever government shutdown. I'm Nathan Stone, and with me today is producer Josh Carmody. I can't wait to talk about escalators and teleprompters. A sentence I never thought I would say in my lifetime. For a few hours.
01:01
It was really the top news story in the whole world was this escalator stalling out and some of the headlines, some of the quotes, especially from the right-wing side of America's media landscape, basically calling for war on the United Nations over this escalator, the conspiracy theories abounded. It just absolutely was the perfect, I think, topping to the
01:31
the wild speech that Trump gave as well. I don't think that day could have gone more insane. But yeah, what was your takeaway, Josh? I didn't actually listen to what his full speech was. I kind of stayed away from this one a little bit. It's a doozy. So I knew that the escalator thing happened. I watched that video. It's quite funny just watching everyone go up. I did love the kind of torrent.
01:58
of other people posting their delegates going up the escalator with no problem. That's some true classic stuff right there. I was happy about that. ah The teleprompter, and again, yeah, watched really just the clip where he was like, and the teleprompter's not working. I'm gonna have to just, someone's getting fired for that one. I'm trouble, you know. And he's doing that. So I saw that. So I didn't actually see what his speech ended up being.
02:24
I think he did wing it. don't know if they ever got back on track to the teleprompter and then did all that too. But yeah, I'm still the escalators really just like getting me good. I'm going to tell you, I have the full transcript of the speech and I've read the speech and I've listened to it. And I honestly couldn't tell you if he got back onto the teleprompter because Trump, the way he speaks is just so off the cuff normally that I feel like there's really
02:54
no good way to to differentiate between the two of them. Trump speaks like an edited montage. He does stuff is like connected to other things like his speeches are like a uh Marvel catch up. So before we get into kind of the more depressing stuff about all of the cuts to UN agencies and that, I did want to go over a few of his more
03:24
Esoteric uh erratic exuberant quotes from please from this uh and actually the the fact that you have you have not heard the whole speech Maybe makes this a little bit better. I will sit back with restrained jubilance excellent. So
03:46
Towards the beginning of Trump really wasted no time just flying off the rails here. He got into criticizing the UN, but specifically criticizing the UN building, which was a choice. This is kind of the context here. Many years ago,
04:15
A very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex. I remember it so well. I said at the time I would do it for 500 million. Rebuild everything. It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, I'm going to give you marble floors. They're going to give you terrazzo. The best of everything. You're going to have mahogany walls. They're going to give you plastic. But they decided to go in another direction, which was much more expensive at the time.
04:45
which actually produced a far inferior product. This was right after he criticized the UN for not doing enough to broker peace deals. It just kind of slid down into this. By the way, 32 years ago, you guys built a really terrible building. It's terrible. People are telling me it's terrible. Everyone's saying so. uh Yeah. So I had to look this up because I'm not a real estate developer.
05:14
I had no idea what terrazzo was. Terrazzo, a very expensive flooring, has marble in it. It's not pure marble, which is what I assume Trump claims he would have given them, but terrazzo is used in uh prestigious buildings around the world. But clearly not good enough is what we're hearing from Trump here. From a man who sold prepackaged Salisbury steaks. Yeah.
05:45
That was probably my favorite of them. He also got into pretty heavily criticizing the European Union. also, do you remember during and kind of after COVID, the conspiracy theory that it was a lab-designed superweapon or disease that got out?
06:09
And that was that was what had happened. wasn't. No, I never came across. Did you never come across? OK, lucky you. I'm sorry to share this with you. I'm joking. OK. Yes, of course. Crazy person said this. Yeah. So and Trump repeated it at the UN just a few years ago. Reckless experiments overseas gave us a devastating global pandemic. Yet despite that worldwide catastrophe, many countries are continuing.
06:37
extremely risky research into bioweapons and man-made pathogens.
06:42
This uh was at the UN, and this was just casually. He just sandwiched this between other ramblings. for a moment when I read it, I thought maybe I should be taken more aback. I should be more like, what, are you kidding me? The president of the United States is doing this? But I don't even know if it matters anymore.
07:11
have we reached the point where even at a forum like the UN, Trump can just kind of say anything and we're all just like, ah yeah, but that's just kind of his thing, right? I feel like spreading dangerous conspiracy theories isn't something you wanna do at an international forum, but that may be why I'm not president.
07:40
I wanted to save the best for last here. I ended seven wars. And in all cases they were raging with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, a vicious violent war that was, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia.
08:08
and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
08:12
So if you- he, were there conflicts in some of these areas or is he just occasionally just listing countries next to each other? I'd be curious to know that. Yeah, he actually, now I'm taking this quote off the transcript here, but when he said it in person, he actually said Albania and Azerbaijan. And it was, it got corrected after that, which was quite funny.
08:41
But I decided to look up each of these conflicts.
08:50
And uh so here's kind of the list. um Starting with Cambodia and Thailand, they have had border clashes. And those border clashes are still ongoing. They are not at war, although several troops on each side have been killed. It doesn't seem like the president has really done anything to end or to address this conflict. uh Pakistan and India.
09:19
So we'll remember the brief conflict that went on there following attacks in India. India has disavowed that America was involved at all in negotiating that particular deal. Armenia and Azerbaijan, uh that was actually a multi-nation effort in which America was involved. However, the main deal was done through a Russian effort.
09:49
Israel and Iran. Well, he did bomb Iran, which might seem to some to be the antithesis of uh brokering peace. uh But it's worked for the Americans. It's worked for the Americans before. There is a ceasefire as of June 25th that has held between Israel and Iran. Technically, that conflict hasn't ended, but there is a ceasefire. So we could give him maybe partial points for that one.
10:17
And then we get into the the the last two which are kind of the best. Celebrity Jeopardy rules here with this one. Yeah, I'll throw you a couple bucks. Yeah, you were close. Congo and Rwanda. Now there was actually a peace agreement for this one. However, it has stalled. And the the. Peace agreement was supposed to remove Rwandan troops, get them to withdraw from the DRC.
10:46
But they have not done that. right now there isn't actually any ongoing peace there. uh Kosovo and Serbia have some long simmering tensions, but the countries aren't actually at war. And Egypt and Ethiopia, these countries are not and were not at war.
11:13
the most tensions that seem to exist are that Ethiopia is building a dam on their side of the Nile and uh Egypt is worried about this with the water flow But these countries are not fighting so of the wars that he said that he ended Mostly it seems to be fictional and the the ones that are actual conflicts Don't look like they have wrapped up in any meaningful way, but a bold claim to be sure
11:43
I brought peace to Wakanda. He'd put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. He'd definitely go weird with it. uh Wakanda. Wakanda. Wakanda now has peace. We're bringing the Olympics to Wakanda. So, yeah, you did see this uh speech, it was probably one of the more unhinged
12:13
at the General Assembly. don't say. Certainly in a long, long time. I was trying to think of other examples of... Well, I mean, we could go back to Trump's first administration when he went to the UN and they publicly laughed at him. There was that, yeah. This time they were just like, oh boy. So I was thinking, yeah, because I remembered uh Khrushchev and his shoe, banging his shoe.
12:42
on the thing, uh Castro going on for hours and hours. But I think Trump's closest, other than him last time, his closest uh proximity in terms of wild speeches was probably Gaddafi. Because Gaddafi just kind of got up on stage, gave a 96-minute long address after being introduced as King of Kings.
13:12
And he talked about the assassination of JFK, of uh fixing the uh Israel-Palestine issue by creating a new state called Israelstein. That would be a one state solution. uh And that level of out there, I think, is probably the closest we got to Trump's energy.
13:41
He definitely had like Trumpian energy, like before Trump a little bit. uh I don't know too, too much about him, but he was definitely flamboyant in comparison to other people in the region. Yes. So. A lot of what went on at the UN was, think Trump.
14:07
playing to his base, which is generally what Trump does. He doesn't tend to play towards anyone else than except, you know, the mega base. And he really doesn't have any kind of diplomatic bone in his body when it comes to dealing with international bodies, other other countries, other other leaders. Generally, everything is kind of a domestic play for the most part.
14:36
And for when he told Jared Kushner to bring peace to the Middle East. Oh, right. Yeah. But again, like that's going back to the first administration. There's like very little in terms of international diplomacy in the second administration that is it's all kind of the tariffs and, you know, these like brief behind doors meetings and stuff like there seems to be no attempt to really like bridge any gaps.
15:06
cooperatively or do anything that's, you know, for everyone's benefit. Yeah. And I think that just goes back to like his sense of business is that there always has to be a winner and there's always always has to be a loser. And so he as far as he's concerned, I think he won. He won international diplomacy after his first term. So now he just doesn't have to do it. That might be one of the.
15:32
better explanations I've read or I've heard since this point. uh Yeah, and I think the UN is definitely on his list of losers. And this isn't super surprising. Conservative America has always had a bone to pick with the UN, whether it's about the efficacy or the waste of money that they...
15:59
happens at the UN, waste of American money, or just the idea of kind of a supernatural government that is one world government kind of thing, right? Even if you get into the conspiracy theories with it, conservatism just doesn't play well with international bodies for the most part. And it's also where
16:26
America gets its isolationist tendencies, right? Whenever you get a real surge in conservative populism, there's always a withdrawal. This is one of the, I think, biggest withdrawals we've seen to the point where the nation will harm its own interests in the name of this kind of newfound isolation. And to that point, uh federal government is slashing UN funding.
16:56
Now, the way UN funding works traditionally is that it is set up on an economic scale. Basically, the bigger your economy is, the more uh you owe to the United Nations, kind of a progressive tax system almost. And it's just kind of part of membership. There are membership dues to the UN. The United States used to pay... uh
17:23
up until I believe the early to mid 90s, 25 % of the UN's overall budget. After some arguments and finagling, that went down to 22%. But it's still a very significant portion of the overall budget of the UN comes from the United States. It's not the majority, but it is the biggest single donor.
17:52
Now, next year, the core UN budget or the regular budget for the UN and this is for the base organization itself. And of course, the UN has uh multitudes of agencies within it. So UNESCO is a big one, the heritage sites, uh but they have all sorts of various human rights bodies.
18:22
But the core organization itself is losing $500 million in funding from the United States. Their budget this year was $3.7 billion, and it'll be $3.2 billion next.
18:40
And because of this, the numbers that they're working with right now, they're going to have to cut 20 % of its staff.
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which involves kind of a minimum of 3,000 job cuts out of around 35,000 people that work for the main UN organization.
19:07
Now
19:12
It's the kind of thing where you can say, well, at least they're funding it to a degree. And American funding for the organization and American support for the organization is very bipolar. If the Democrats are in office, they tend to be pro-UN. They tend to have no problems funding the UN in various programs.
19:38
If the Republicans are in office, Republicans tend to have more problems with funding. So the UN has to kind of deal with whatever American administration they are dealt, generally. And sometimes in the past, when you've had Republican governments where the UN hasn't really been in the news that much, right? In the American news cycle. And sometimes they can kind of skate under the...
20:07
the radar with it.
20:10
But I think to sum up this administration's feelings on the UN, the best quote we can pull is Marco Rubio. So he is, of course, the Secretary of State. And he said, the post-war global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us, which is an incredibly wild thing to say.
20:39
Because the post-worlds, the post-war world order was the American world order. This was an order set up by America to benefit America, and America has benefited to an incredible degree when you think it is 4 % of the world's population, and yet the wealthiest country in the world, the country that consumes the most,
21:08
They have been the ultimate beneficiaries of the last 80 years of global politics. think they're also the only country to invoke the article from the UN that kind of forced other UN countries to come to their aid when they decided to mess around in Iraq. I don't know if it was for Afghanistan or Iraq, actually. that was Afghanistan. That was Article 5. Right, because it was because of...
21:35
Yes, that was because of 9-11 and that was actually uh NATO and not the UN. But oh you are right that they are the only nation to ever invoke Article 5 of NATO. uh yeah, remember. Weighing out more welfare Queen America's great things they benefited from. And they have. Yeah. And NATO is a huge part of that post-World order.
22:05
So to see the Trump administration and this generation of Republicans really turn their back on a system that has benefited them more than anyone else is, I think, really telling of what just just the absolute disdain that the administration holds these these organizations in.
22:33
Now, the United Nations itself, of course, comes on the heels of the Second World War, starts in 1945, because everyone is exhausted from war. They say, let's not do this again in another 20 years, right? You go 20 years between the end of World War I and World War II.
22:59
And most of Europe is rebuilding the eastern half is rebuilding, but also all have new new communist governments. There's a brand new bipolar world order that is taking shape. And so the United Nations comes into being during a time where. Everyone's just trying to.
23:29
avoid the world ending. And so from the perspective of early American administrations, the UN was a it's a useful tool. Right. Because not only do you have to balance diplomacy with with the former great powers, with the new Soviet Union,
23:57
And with this this growing American superpower, not only are you trying to balance diplomacy with the former great powers, the new Soviet Union and the kind of growing American superpower, you've also got the end of the colonial period that that takes place as a result of the Second World War. And you have new nations being coming to the fore.
24:27
old nations kind of shedding the chains of uh colonialism and trying to assert themselves, you need a world forum like this. And a large part of the failure of the League of Nations, which was the preceding organization which uh failed to prevent World War II and didn't have American involvement,
24:53
was, was- Bitchin' name though, I gotta say. League of Nations was a much better name than United Nations, 100%, yeah. The Americans didn't want anything to do with the League of Nations, they thought it was going to be a very British Empire dominated organization. And they weren't entirely wrong about this, because you had, of course, all of Britain's uh kind of-
25:19
colonies. So you had Canada. The was rising on the British Empire back then. exactly. And they all would have had a seat. Right. So the Americans felt very uh like they would they would be just we already have this war. Yeah, they would only be one voice out of a kind of a British dominated uh diplomatic system. But by the time the Second World War ends, the shoe is very much on the other foot. uh
25:48
The Americans are the only power to come out of the Second World War that is basically untouched in terms of their infrastructure, And, you know, no one bombed New York. And so they find themselves in this place of leadership for these uh broke, rebuilding powers. And so the United Nations is really, really useful for them.
26:17
And even kind of in its first decade or so, uh the Suez crisis being a perfect one, was Britain and France, two members of the UN Security Council invade Egypt and occupy the Suez Canal because they don't want to lose access to it. that, the process of negotiating and getting the British and French to pull out was all done through the UN.
26:47
So this was an organization that while toothless to some degree and toothless by design is still a very useful forum for just talking to people, right? Just getting the ball rolling on things. That was kind of the original intention. It was never designed to be some kind of overarching one world government. It was never designed to have teeth.
27:14
It was always a place for people to get together and just maybe work some shit out before things get too bad. And it has done that to a reasonably good degree to this point. Now, it has expanded in a lot of ways since then. uh So there's a lot of very
27:42
uh specific organizations and niches that the UN fills uh in terms of uh refugee help, terms of food aid, in terms of world heritage, archaeology. So there's all sorts of things uh that the UN runs and that the UN is involved in. So like the World Health Organization, which the United States has since pulled out of, that
28:13
a of people and lot of governments use as a way to um share information and share knowledge. So I told you about the cuts to the main organization, ah 500 million, but that's not actually all of what's happening. So the U.S. can direct
28:39
its funding because it is it is the major funder of the UN. It basically tells the UN what it wants its funding to be used for. so certain things are getting more extensively cut than than others and certain programs. They're cutting the funding entirely. So. Right now the United States pays 22 percent of that regular budget that we talked about.
29:05
but they also pay 25 % of the peacekeeping budget and 40 % of the humanitarian budget. ah And they've pulled out of the Human Rights Council
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the United Nations uh Population Fund, the World Health Organization, and UNESCO.
29:28
So. Which sounds like something a super villain does. Lex Luthor becomes president and pulls out all that stuff. So. They've they've completely cut the peacekeeping there, their portion of the peacekeeping budget, uh and they've they've drastically reduced a lot of their other stuff. um But there's one that I want to kind of.
29:55
dig a little bit deeper on because it goes into something that we love on this show, which is strange, irregular, possibly illegal political maneuvers. Love is a strong word. Love is doing some heavy lifting here. is some heavy lifting. So the International Labor Organization is part of the United Nations. And strangely enough,
30:24
This Republican government, not huge on, you know, labor organizations. I don't know why. But they're cutting $107 million. Now, that is a devastating cut for them. But the thing about it is... uh
30:47
It's part of a larger series of cuts ah that the president has moved to unilaterally make. $4.9 billion in foreign aid authorized by Congress for a number of international programs, including that $107 million cut to the ILO. he's unilaterally cutting $4.9 billion of already approved ah
31:19
funding, which is not actually legal for the president to do. top of that, does it. It's not illegal. On top of that, they actually the United States hasn't actually paid its bills for the 24 25 kind of year, the fiscal year. So the the staff at the ILO is trying to is kind of poking the administration being like, hey, are you going to pay this because we kind of already
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budgeted and spent a lot of this money. um Trump, yeah, he can't do this legally. He can't just put an executive order out saying, I'm canceling this funding. uh As we always say, Congress has the power of the purse, or at least they're supposed to. uh But there is a neat nifty little thing called a pocket rescission. And it's a tactic.
32:20
uh So the president can't take away funding that Congress has already approved for something, but he can very politely ask them to rescind funding. However, if the president, now he basically they have Congress has 45 days to answer the president, they can either say, sure, Mr. President, we'll
32:49
cancel this funding or no go pound sand. But the pocket rescission occurs when when that president asks Congress to rescind funds very close to the end of the fiscal year. So close that those funds expire before they can be used for new obligations. So basically the president. The funds get frozen because the president's like oh no I want Congress to take another look at this but Congress doesn't
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get a chance to look at it before the fiscal year rolls over, kind of nullifying that spending that would have happened. So
33:33
If they don't have time to actually address it, it bypasses their normal power of the purse and allows the president basically to veto it. Now, it's always a matter of timing, but things move so slowly, especially where Congress and the president and funding are involved, that it's a tactic that you can use if you're
34:02
kind of coming up in that September, October end of the fiscal year. ah turns out you put the money back in your pocket and they can't spend it. Yeah, they can't spend it. Folks, they can't spend it. You put the money back in your pocket. That that's why it's called a pocket rescission. uh So bastards, is it legal? No, it's not. um This is the kind of thing where
34:33
There is actually no authority for the president to do this other than his being able to ask Congress about their funding and if they would like to rescind it. But this actual maneuver uh isn't legal, but it has been used several times in the past and no one has been punished for it. So, you know, it's kind of legal.
35:03
uh They actually date back to the 1970s. I wonder why the pocket resusions, but that is kind of an interesting way for the president to strangle the UN whilst uh cutting Congress and congressional funding out of the picture, right? Congress already approved it.
35:30
going to the UN? ah well, not so fast. It's actually not. It's going in the pocket. So
35:42
It kind of illustrates how there's always a way for, especially the executive it seems nowadays, to...
35:52
put his finger on the scale ah when he wants to and make sure that things don't happen that he doesn't want to have happen, even with things that he should have no authority about.
36:07
So the fallout of all this of Trump's speech of these cuts, the cuts are going to be quite large and they're going to be felt by a uh number of UN organizations. They're already having to deal with less staffing. going to do they're going to have to do less aid work. um The peacekeeping we'll talk about in a second here. But one thing I want to illustrate is just that even if you're someone who has
36:36
serious criticisms of the UN. uh
36:46
You have to keep in mind that sometimes the United Nations is the only option that people have. They're the only ones that can help in a specific area. So in the humanitarian side, there's about three million uh Afghans who aren't getting enough to eat. And there's a there's the UN is is on the ground in Afghanistan.
37:15
helping these people and that's one of the things that they're going to have to cut back. They're not going to be able to afford the food. They're not going be able to afford to send people there. uh They're thinking there's going to be a shortfall of maybe even a million people that they were feeding that they will no longer be feeding. And that's kind of the devil in the detail of all this is no one is going to step in like that. Right. The UN is not
37:45
a perfect organization. It's got so many flaws, but there's a base level of trust even even for a, you know, a regime as hardline as the Taliban to say, OK, you can come in and, know, this relief agency can can feed people because it's not wearing one nation in particular's flag. It's not. The kind of thing where.
38:14
You know, the UN is going to try and a coup in Afghanistan, right? So this is going to affect people. is going to cause more suffering than if you if you didn't have these cuts.
38:31
Beyond that.
38:35
There was, I think, just a continuing illustration of the decline of American influence, the self-inflicted decline of American influence, because, of course, Trump isn't the only one to speak at the General Assembly. uh I found a speech by uh a Colombian president.
39:04
Gustavo Petro.
39:07
who in the General Assembly called for criminal proceedings against Donald Trump, who he compared to Adolf Hitler uh in his speech. And this is the kind of thing that would have been absolutely unthinkable 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago, especially a country that is not on the greatest terms with the United States, but certainly not
39:37
adversaries. This isn't Venezuela, right? But they're, they're starting to be a little bit more, I don't even want to call it pushback, but just an acknowledgement that the United States is no longer on the same page as a lot of the rest of the world. I think they're in a different book at this point. Yeah. So one of the one of the quotes I thought was was a really
40:05
uh succinct one from Petro was, The old societies of Europe are collapsing, and the United States is applauding its new Hitler. It's not listening to its own young people or its older people who died in the battlefields of Europe fighting against Hitler and his criminal ideology. Today, the same thing is being done as Hitler did, building concentration camps for migrants, it's stated that migrants are an inferior race and they blame them just like Hitler blamed the Jews.
40:32
They call them drug traffickers and thieves. So we are starting to see real diplomatic consequences for the antagonism coming out of the Trump administration. uh so he, Petro stressed the need for basically Trump to be arrested um as well as uh
41:01
Calling him an accomplice to genocide in Gaza. And this is the kind of thing that old American soft power would have dealt with. Right. And there would have been a gentler pushback, I think, from a country like Colombia. But this is the thing. And it's not just that the pullback creates these tensions and these antagonisms. It also creates a vacuum.
41:31
So uh China has stepped into the void created by the pullout of the American Americans in the UN. Before we get too far away, I was just going to say, speaking of Hitler, have we all seen Alex Jones' new mustache? I have not. Oh, look at it. Look it up. Oh, favor here. Drink your water and look up Alex Jones' new mustache. OK.
42:01
Oh, Jesus. It's the Hitler. It's just the full. Did you do the full Hitler? He shaved his head and did a full Hitler mustache. Maybe maybe he's a big fan of Charlie Chaplin. Yeah. So China is stepping into the void left by the United States in the UN. uh They the CCP has succeeded in in placing.
42:30
around 39, 40 Chinese nationals in UN positions. And before anyone freaks out about that, there's still hundreds of Americans in UN positions. But this is the largest amount that the Chinese government. I like how people freak out like either one is better than the other. Oh, no, we can't let the Chinese get there. We've to make sure the Americans are still in charge. It's like.
42:57
I don't know guys. I don't know if there's really a difference here. China has also stepped up as far as funding goes. They've made a 500 million dollar contribution to the World Health Organization after uh the United States withdrew. And well, all the stuff, as you were saying, all the stuff that America was paying for and paying into were beneficial to them. Oh, absolutely. Especially aid to countries that are then even if they are small are
43:26
on your side or it stops unrest from happening there, which in turn creates problems that, you know, kind of echo around the world. And China obviously understands that and they want people in certain places to see them in a certain light. Yeah. It's it's the kind of thing where.
43:51
You have to, you can't just know the price of everything. You have to know its value, right? To paraphrase a famous quote, it's like a uh cynic is someone who sees.
44:12
the price of everything in the value of nothing. And this American administration is just that, right? They see the price tags of social programs. They see the price tags of uh United Nations agencies. The building itself. The building itself. Well, I could have been Marvel, guys. But they don't see the value in it, right? And the United States, the United States
44:41
The empire that America kind of created in the wake of the Second World War, even before it to some extent, isn't a formal empire like the old British empires or the French empires or the Ottomans. It was an informal empire based on an incredible influence and everything that made the United States a valuable partner, but also
45:10
you know, an adversary to be feared, something, an entity to be courted rather than, you know, to be denied.
45:21
And that honestly is something that I think declined over the decades, but what we're seeing is almost a complete collapse of American soft power to go with the collapse of American institutionalism. And I think...
45:43
inertia will will, you know, the just the sheer size and scope of what America is kind of keeps it rolling for a while. But eventually, and I think we're starting to see it, uh this is going to start to hurt. This is going to start. You are going to have countries that are going to choose China.
46:11
as partner over the United States. You're going to see that with the decline of American soft power, the allies or the adversaries that used to really listen, right? When you spoke are now just doing their own thing. And you move from this hegemonic world that we've had for the past like 30, 40 years to
46:41
one that is far more multipolar. And the thing with a multipolar world that you quickly find is it's a lot less stable than either the bipolar world of the Soviets and the Americans or the era of American power. If everyone's going their own ways and no one's really kept in line,
47:11
I think we're entering a much more fraught era of international politics and one that for a long time the United States kept a lid on. And just to get to get back on China for a little bit, they're also contributing more than peacekeepers ah while the United States is completely pulling out of peacekeeping work.
47:40
in the United Nations. to set up that Department of War. Yes. Got to to got to pull all the top brass off their assignments back home so we can talk about warrior ethos. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. I didn't want to mention that before we go. That's what I've been following. Yeah, that's that's a strange, strange beast of a thing. So for anyone who doesn't know, and I don't know if I mentioned this on the show before, but my day job is reporting around kind of
48:10
the Canadian military and the absolute absurdity of getting all of your senior officers, all of your flag officers together in one building for a whatever pep talk rally, loyalty tests with Pete Hegseth and now also the president.
48:39
is just operationally the most insane thing I think anyone could ever conceive of in the military. sounds like the inception point of a 90s action movie and Nicolas Cage is going to have to rope in and save everybody. Like, yeah, I'm pretty sure the beginning of Star Trek Nemesis is this and they all die in a weird gas.
49:07
This is the thing, so there's two outcomes possible, I think, from this meeting. And the first one is...
49:20
Hilarious it because it'll be like the ultimate this could have been an email like pep rally and everyone's gonna make fun of it Or it will be deeply disturbing and I don't think there's there's room for any other possibility because this is either a Setup for some kind of major operation that that is going to be announced either foreign or domestically or This is just
49:48
Pete forgot his cell phone at the Pentagon mixer and wants to know if anyone found it, so he called everyone back. Like, there's two options there. It's either gonna be stupid and hilarious or very deeply worrying. Guys, uh not funny. Really need someone to return my leather-bound flask. It's very specific to me. So we're recording this on...
50:16
Uh, the weekend just before, uh, the Wednesday deadline for government shutdown. And before we end tonight, I did want to just touch on it a little bit. I know we, just did an episode on government shutdowns. Um, so a lot of the thinking around it right now is that the Republicans are probably fairly comfortable with this government shutdown.
50:46
and the Democrats are ah also kind of willing to make a stand on this. And if that's the case, then the government shutdown becomes inevitable. So there's arguments being made though that the Republicans are kind of bluffing here that they would take the brunt of the blame, right? Because the big thing it's gonna come down to is
51:15
Who gets blamed for this in the public eye and the media? Obama. It's probably Obama. How could he do this? uh So I've said this on the show before, but this new breed of Republicans are really apt to tell you what they're thinking and what they're planning. um
51:39
And so I was looking at a Politico report and I just wanted to share this. There was a senior White House official that they quoted saying, um so this senior White House official, of course, blames the Democrats here and says, historically, it's the aggressor that always loses. And quite simply, their constituencies and their priorities are all going to get chewed up and ours, not so much.
52:05
That along with the administration releasing, ordering basically a furlough and firing plan from various government agencies and looking at very deep cuts makes me think that they are quite comfortable with this. And if that's the case, they're going to use it as cover to uh gut more agencies.
52:33
more federal service jobs than we already saw in the Doge cuts. Yeah. And I do think that's probably the most likely. We'll have to see now by the time you're listening to this, maybe one side or the other has already folded. But if the Democrats stand their ground here and it's going to depend on Senate Democrats, which are the Democrats where you're kind of like, guys, could you maybe do a thing here, Chuck? Maybe.
53:06
They could fold by Wednesday. ah It does seem though that the Democrats have a little bit of fight in them with this. The big question then is how long does this last in face of what would be probably quick sweeping Republican cuts to the federal service? And if that's the case, what does a deal look like? We saw a huge shutdown during Trump's uh first administration.
53:37
This could be that on steroids, honestly, and it would be a great distraction from a lot of the the woes that have been, you know, hitting the Republicans lately with the stalling economy. The fact that we are still waiting on the Epstein files. I think their own infighting. I Marjorie Taylor Green just recently said.
54:01
If I kill myself, I didn't. And you need to find out who killed me. It's wild time to be a Republican. these days, other than staring off into the middle distance and seemingly seeing the spirits that cats see? Yeah, yeah. I feel like Mitch might just be playing his life in reverse and hoping to hope he can...
54:27
astrally project back in time to maybe do something about this, considering he was the architect of a lot of this, you know, Mitch.
54:39
Maybe you should have thought of that beforehand. Yeah, so all I kind of wanted to say on this, because we'll touch on it a lot more if the government does shut down, is that I do believe the Republicans are 100 % willing to go the distance on this. The only thing I'm not sure about is will the Democrats have the stones to stick to their word and actually shut down the government.
55:10
Yeah, that's gonna about do it for us tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, everything is terrible. Yeah, everything is terrible and everything's super weird. Just really, really weird. Yeah, Alex Jones mustache, Marjorie Taylor Greene kind of saying things I agree with. The worst person you know makes an opinion that you agree with. Oh, man.
55:39
Let's see where we get to next week. That's gonna about do it for this one. Thanks so much for listening and check in next week when things will be different in some way, or form and we'll talk about it. Bye.
55:56
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, give us a five star rating on your podcast platform of choice, and tell all your friends. The Politics of New America is hosted by Nathan Stone and produced by Josh Carmody. You can follow us on Blue Sky at Politics New America. This episode is sponsored by Leverage Assistance. Finding the right assistant can turbocharge your career, your business, and give you back precious time every day.
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