Pod Save the World - How former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon views the world

Episode Date: February 20, 2019

First, Ben Rhodes calls in from Europe to talk about the Munich Security Summit, Steve Bannon running around Europe, and Trump selling nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia. Then, former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon joins Tommy for a ranging discussion of how he got the job, best and worst days, relations with China, Russia, Trump's second North Korea summit and more.

Welcome back to Pot Save the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you all for listening this week. I greatly appreciate it. We have a packed show for you guys. First, Ben Rhodes calls in from an undisclosed European capital. He had just been at the Munich Security Summit where he was maneuvering his way around the blob. Steve Bannon has been in Europe. So we talked about that for a while. We also talked about reports that the Trump administration is thinking about selling the Saudis, the infrastructure you need to create new. nuclear energy, seems like maybe a bad idea. Then I have a conversation in studio with my former boss, the former National Security Advisor in the United States, Tom Donalyn. I worked for Tom for a very long time. He was an incredible mentor and friend to me. And I was so grateful to have him in studio. We really went on just a tour of the world. We started with like, how did you get that job? How does one become national security advisor? Tom was born in Rhode Island, worked in politics, and had this incredible career. So we talked about how that happened. Talked about what his day-to-day was like. What was it like leading the PDB every day? What were some of your best days and your

worst days? And then, you know, Tom really played a role in the White House as an emissary for Barack Obama. He went to China constantly to spend time with the senior leadership there. He went to Russia to meet with President Medvedev or Putin. And so we talked about those trips and those relationships and his assessment of how Trump is now dealing with them. We also got into the upcoming North Korea Summit version two between President Trump and Kim Jong-un and Tom's assessment of the potential risks of those talks. And, you know, we also talked about nuclear weapons, some other big-ticket issues. It reminded me of the days when I used to go into Tom's office with a press request and learn more in 10 minutes than I ever could have from reading articles, intelligence,

press reports, books. I mean, the guy just is an encyclopedic memory of events and places and things, and I learned a lot just seeing him again this week, so I think you will love the conversation. So with no further ado, I'm going to start with the conversation with Ben Rhodes. On the line from, I don't even know where you are, Ben. I believe you're in a European capital as part of a book tour. Where the hell are you? Yeah, I'm in Madrid. This is my last stop on a two-week European book tour. Oh, Madrid.

My book came out eight months ago in the United States, but I've been all across Europe on this trip. The world as it is, people. Get it well. hot. So in addition to being in Madrid, you were just in Munich at the Munich Security Summit, which is just like, it is like a blob of paradise. And if people don't know what the blob is, it's a term you coined for the DC foreign policy establishment. What were you doing in Munich? And were you there when Vice President Pence sent his greetings and salutations from Donald Trump to the world and literally no one clapped or reacted in any way? Yeah, so I was in Munich, but it was kind of a microcosm of my experience of the blob.

in general because I was there on my book tour. So I missed Vice President Pence because I was actually speaking to several hundred young people at a university in music, kind of the pod state of the world audience in another country. But I was around the conference and I went to the Munich Security conference and I interacted with the blob and studied their habits and definitely got a sense of the reaction to Vice President Pence's remarks there in Munich. The reporting coming out of it seemed to suggest that the Munich Security Summit, was a reminder of how isolated the U.S. seems from traditional allies in Europe. Is that a fair characterization and overreaction?

Like, what were you hearing from people you talked to? Well, actually, you know, I think that just as important as Pence's speech was Angela Merkel's speech. Yes. And that's actually what a lot of people were talking about. You know, Angola Merkel gave a speech in which she did not hold back in really going after Trump. I mean, her entire speech was kind of a rebuke of Trump's approach to the world. And Trump's pulling out of agreements. And Trump's, you know, she said, you know, declaring German cars a national security threat.

And she said, you know, look, we make BMWs in South Carolina. How is that a threat to the United States? And so what you saw was not just this kind of silent response to Vice President Pence, who had a kind of Jet Bush please clap moment as he gave, you know, a bunch of Trump slogans to the rest of the world. But you also have leaders like Merkel who are now very comfortable just eviscerating Trump in his worldview in front of a global audience. People are not shy anymore about not just, you know, being silent in Pennstock, but also about voicing the disagreement with Trump's Iran policy and his NATO policy and his approach to Russia and his approach to the

entire world. And you did get a very strong sense that the Europeans, like much of the world, are trying to wait Trump out, and they're just trying to wait and see what happens in the 2020 election. And they're not at all shy about expressing their enormous concern about what's happening in the U.S. about the direction of Trump Trump. Yeah, I mean, the clip I saw from Merkel's speech was her expressing great confusion by the fact that German automobiles, many of which are assembled in the United States, could be declared a threat to national security by the U.S. and thus have a tariff slapped on them.

And then they cut to a reaction shot of everyone in the crowd clapping and very happy and a stone-faced Ivanka Trump who was there for some reason. Well, Tommy, I heard something pretty interesting. from a number of the participants are there, which is that when Pence gave his speech, he gave a speech that he could have delivered, you know, at a Trump rally. Yeah. Donald Trump is the leader of the free world, silence. You know, Donald Trump has restored American standing silence.

We must pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement silence. And what I heard from a lot of people there is that Pence seemed to be delivering the speech to two people. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were. sitting in the front row. And what I heard is that Penn seemed to be looking at them for approval, as if the views of the entire world don't matter. The only views that matter are the daughter and son-in-law of the president. And, you know, you talk to people at this conference, and, you know, they react with incredulity at how bizarre it is that, why is Ivanka Trump there in the first place, and why is Jared Kushner there in the first place? And why are these the people who seem to be

the most powerful players in the most powerful nation in the world. And, you know, it makes us look ridiculous. You know, one of the things that is useful about traveling is, you know, in America, like we're used to the kind of craziness of our politics, when you look at it from abroad, it looks even stranger, you know. Like, what is Mike Pence talking about in these capitals? You know, he'd been in Poland at a conference that was supposed to highlight international support for their Iran policy.

And instead, when he demanded that Europe leave the Iran nuclear agreement, he got met with silence. And the Europeans made very clear to me that they have no interest at all in leaving the Iran nuclear agreement. That they see no reason to follow the leadership of the United States on that issue. And so, you know, what you get come away with is a sense that we are totally isolated. And nobody wants to go along with this project. Yeah. I love that Jared still claims that he is traveling to work on his Middle East peace deal. He's like a dilettante, L.A. kid that's been working on a book or a screenplay for like a year, two years, going on three. No one's ever seen the thing. Not sure if it actually exists. But, you know, a lot of time in coffee shops with final draft up for Jared. Yeah, we're just right on the cuts of Middle East peace.

Yeah, we're almost there, man. One meeting away. Another story that jumped out of you and me today was a story that we're preparing or in the midst of providing the Saudis with the stuff you need to make nuclear power. That seems like an interesting follow-up to a leader of Saudi Arabia who had a journalist murdered and dismembered, you know, like a month ago. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are two elements of this. One is, as a matter of policy, we're supposed to try to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to the Middle East,

and providing Saudi Arabia with the raw materials that could then allow them to shift to the potential of pursuing a nuclear weapon, you know, is the opposite of what should be the normal U.S. policy interests. I mean, also, if you look at Mohamed and Palman, a man who has brutally murdered a journalist in a conflict, a man who has pursued a policy in Yemen that has put millions of people's lives of risk. Someone who's shown a kind of sociopathic tendencies, this is not the kind of person that you want to deliver nuclear power to.

So it makes no sense as a matter of foreign policy. There's no U.S. foreign policy interest that is advanced by building nuclear power plants, in Saudi Arabia, and there are actually a lot of U.S. interests that are undercut by building nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. By the way, that will only encourage the Iranians to get their own nuclear weapon. You know, if they look at Saudi Arabia and they look at us building nuclear power plants, the risk is, you know, the Iranian say, okay, you know, now we have to restart our program. But the other thing is it raises this question of corruption, and, you know, why is it that Mike Flynn and all these Trump people were so eager to make these deals,

nuclear power plants. Why is Donald Trump still reportedly considering this proposal? And, you know, I think the Democratic House really needs to dig into and investigate this question of what is motivating Trump. And, you know, the obvious answer is it could be money, either money that is already flowing into Trump and Kushner properties or money that is promised on the back end. Either way, it's something that we should all be worried about. Agreed. Hopefully Congress will actually do some investigation into that whole set of meetings, the deal, everything else. The other person with you this week in Europe was Steve Bannon.

Did you guys travel together or was he there independently? It feels like every time I come to Europe, it feels like I'm literally walking in the footsteps of Steve Bannon. You know, I've been doing interviews across France and Germany and Spain, and the name Bannon comes up, you know, more than anybody. And I think Americans don't realize what's happened with C. Bannon, you know, he gets kind of chased out of the White House, seems to be discredited. He's actually opened up an office, Tommy, in Brussels. I didn't know this until I, you know, was on this most recent trip. And essentially, he's got this base in Brussels, and he travels around Europe,

and he travels around trying to bolster far-right parties. And so in France, you know, you have the far-right National Front movement, and Bannon is along with that. In Germany, where you really don't want far-right parties. parties, you don't want neo-Nazi. You have this new party called the AFG that has emerged on the far right. And here in Spain, where I'm now, there's a new far-right party called Vox, not the website that we all enjoy reading, but same spelling. And all of them have in common that they're focused on immigration. It's a familiar message, right? The problems should be blamed on the

immigrants and people should vote on fear. And there's this very real concern here. There are European elections coming up in the spring. There's an election coming up here in Spain. And Bannon is traveling around and kind of peddling the same bullshit, the same hate, the same division, the same media strategies that he used in the United States here in Europe. That is not the American export that we want to Europe. You know, we've got Mike Pence giving speeches about Donald Trump is the leader of the free world, and we've got Steve Bannon teaching literally far-right parties in Europe how to demonize immigrants and how they win elections based on fear. Yeah. And like we all know that I dislike Steve Bannon enormously, but the broader context

is important too because we have a White House and a state department that has all but given up on democracy promotion. And I don't mean that in the awful Bush sense where we invade countries to encourage them to be democracies, but where we push for democratic norms and institutions and freedom of the press and universal rights the way presidents, Republican, and Democrat have for decades, for centuries even. Trump has abandoned that. Yeah, and he's abandoned them. And I have to say, you know, in each of these countries, you know, I meet with progressive activists.

And they feel totally cut off. You know, they wish the United States was playing its normal role of pushing back. against far-right nationalism and neo-Nazis. And, you know, what I tell them, you know, is that people like Steve Bannon and Trump, you know, what they count on is cynicism. You know, they want young people to feel like they're powerless. They want young people to feel like this wave of right-wing nationalism is inevitable. So it's not even worth voting or, you know, unless you support the far-right, you're going to lose.

And I was very worried by this sense of defeatism, you know, that the future belongs to people like Trump and people like Victor Orban and Hungary and these far right parties that are emerging and Steve Bannon is coming here. He's going to – he's going to help them win these elections. The United States normally should be playing the role of organizing the response to that and pushing back against undemocratic. values. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen for two years, but I think that makes it even more important for society and media and others to say, you know, this is not inevitable and that if young people get involved and they vote and they organize, the same message that you guys use so well in positive American in the United States, that can happen here, too. Young people can reject this. And again, it's depressing the extent to which people feel like the United

States has vacated that role of standing up for certain values. And that, in fact, the face of America is C. Bannon, we can be better than that. We should do better than that. And I hope it's something we can continue to focus on because, you know, if Europe, you know, in some ways that these are in America, we just have to win one election in 2020 to get rid of Trump. Here, you have elections across the whole continent. And we have to beat back these far-right movements across the continent. And I know that can happen, but only if people feel like, you it's possible. Well, Ben, it looks like you're going to have to park your ass in Europe for a little bit longer

and be a counterweight with all this ban in messaging. I hope you're ready. I feel a little bit like that, Tommy. I feel like it might be necessary to set up shop here. But I will tell you, there are some friends of the pod over here. You know, I would walk into the Munich Security Conference, and the Bob was there, and that is what it is. But then these kind of young people working there would come up to me and kind of almost

whisper to me like, I would listen to me. in the parts of the world. So I'm glad that we have listeners in these countries, and I hope they continue to be part of the conversation. Yeah, me too. And frankly, let's find a bunch of them and get them on the show, because it would be interesting to hear their perspective as young people in countries that are growing authoritarian. Who does it? They love David Lammy. I'm building a following here, you know. So there are leaders like that in Europe. There is leadership. There is progressive leadership. That's good. And hopefully we can put a spotlight on some of it. Well, that's good. We'll end on a high note, because that does make me feel better.

unless there's anything else that's really jumped out at you from the week. No, no, I think we covered it, and I know we've got, you know, Tom Donnellan, our former boss. Yes. So you used to prepare him for interviews like the one you conducted. I know. I was brutally difficult. You will hear it. It was harsh.

No, but Tom, we'll take us on the tour of the globe, so that will be interesting. I think people really enjoy that. All right, buddy. Well, good luck with the end of the book tour. Travel safe. I'm excited to have you back in studio so we can go through all. all the weird events that have been happening as we speak. Yeah, no, I'll see you back in the studio.

Can't wait to be back in Sunday, L.A. Me too. All right, buddy. Talk to you soon. All right, see you. See you, bet. And here is a conversation with former national security advisor, Tom Donnellan. I am honored to have in the Crooked Media HQ today,

President Obama's former national security advisor, my former boss, Tom Donnellin. Rhode Island's finest, I should have added. Thank you so much for being here. I'm sorry. It's monsooning, literally, as we speak. Tommy, it's great to do. be here and great to see you. It's great to see you. So many memories come flooded back of literally hours and hours and hours in the situation room grinding through really hard issues and

watching the seriousness with which you and the team around you took those issues and wondering if that's currently happening today. I don't think, I think, well, it's a different approach, right? Yeah, it is a different approach. It's a very different approach. And, you know, in all seriousness, you know, President Trump has brought a different style, a different approach to. A different approach the U.S. leadership and a different approach to making foreign policy. Yeah. And which has been a real departure from the way that American presidents have approached foreign policy for the last three quarters of a century.

Decades. And a very different style. It's been highly disruptive. And we can talk about this during the course of the podcast. And without the kinds of process, I think, that ensure that you can make the best decisions possible. Dwight Eisenhower once said that good process won't guarantee you a great outcome, but a bad process will almost always guarantee.

that you're not going to get an optimal outcome. And I think there really bit has been a lack of that kind of really serious process. And some of this has been due to the fact that they haven't been able to staff, the government. And there's been a high level of turnover. But a lot of it is due to the president's approach, I think. Yeah, I totally agree. I can't wait to get to all of that. But the first thing I'd love to ask you or have you talk about is how the hell you become

national security advisor? Because there is no linear path to sitting in the upper suite, as it's called, the office you occupied in the corner of the West Wing. How did you get there? Like, what prepared you for that job? Well, basically, I've worked for, been fortunate enough, had the privilege to work for three U.S. presidents during the course of my career.

I grew up quite interested in politics. I grew up in Rhode Island, as you mentioned, with a family that was kind of immersed in local politics, and it was the topic of conversation every evening at the table. I ended up in Washington, and right out of school, through the help of a couple of important professors, Norm Ornstein, who's obviously a very prominent political scientist in Washington

and his colleague, Michael Robinson, who recommended me really a couple of weeks after I graduated from college to friends of theirs who worked in the Carter White House. So I worked for President Carter and began in the political sphere, ultimately doing his delegate selection work and managing the convention in 1980. And you were like 21, 22? I went to work in the White House. I was 22. Were the youngest person in the whole building? I was the youngest one of President Carr's aides in the White House. And ended up doing the campaign in 1980.

Of course, that campaign was, you know, really the last real floor fight for the nomination of the Democratic Party. Against Ted Kennedy. Against Senator Kennedy. And we went to the floor of the convention in Madison Square Garden with the, really with the nomination at issue. And so I managed that. That must have been wild. That convention was 24 years old. Unbelievable.

That's a hell of a lot of responsibility. So I guess that, I mean, so. It was. But at that age, you don't really, you don't really have a full sense. It may be able to do the job. Right. Because you don't have as full a sense of the responsibility. as you might when you were older.

Right. But it was a wonderful experience. I worked with wonderful people, and President Carter has been a friend ever since. And then I worked for President Clinton, and went in, I first prepared him for his debates, led the debate preparation team in 1992, and then went to the chief of staff of the State Department.

But in between had been a turn from politics to foreign policy under the mentorship of someone who was a leading citizen of this city, Warren Christopher, who, when I started practicing law, came to me and said, you know, there's a different way to do this. I think he'd really enjoy national security and foreign policy. And he really put me on a path for now over 30 years of, you know, serious study and practice in foreign policy.

And in the 1980s, and by 1992, I was the chief of staff of the State Department. And then came into the Obama administration in a similar way, you know, helping to lead the debate preparation, as you know, Tommy, when we first started working together for then-Senator Obama in the 2008 campaign. and then was the director of the State Department and National Security Council transition and went in as Deputy National Security Advisor and the National Security Advisor. So it's a long path.

It was a non-traditional path. You know, I'm not a military officer or a PhD in international relations, but it was a path through three administrations and great mentors and, of course, a lot of fortune. So you had incredible mentors that got you to become National Security Advisor. I had mentors who led me to sell underwear ads

on radio on your phone. So thank you. Thank you for all. You did for me. So, I mean, I got to watch you every day firsthand in the way every White House job can just be upended by events, right?

I mean, for us, it was, you think you're going to work all day on Afghanistan, North Korea tests a nuclear weapon, and that's all consuming for weeks. But a constant for you was the president's daily intelligence briefing. Every morning, you let a small group of people in the Oval Office

for an intel briefing with Obama, by the time you left, I think I remember counting you had done it 700 times. Can you take us in the room and sort of what that briefing is like and how that conversation unfolds every day? Well, it's part of the job of the National Security Advisor. There's multiple roles. We might start with that. Sure. The National Security Advisor runs the National Security Council staff, which is about 400 people in the White House,

who are the principal staff to the president. The National Security Advisor chairs the so-called principals committee, which is the cabinet-level committee that advises. the president, serves the options up to him, dives into the issues that country needs addressed. And our, you know, in the first term, when I chaired the committee, it was a, it was a really an incredible group of people from, from Vice President Biden, the Secretary Clinton, Secretary Gates, the IA director Panetta, General Petraeus. A lot of big personalities.

It was a lot of big personalities around the table, as you can, as you well, as you well remember. You know, you're responsible for the interaction between the president and foreign leaders, including summits, which we worked a lot on together. And you coordinate the intelligence, diplomacy, military aspects and Homeland Security aspects of the United States government. I was blessed to have tremendous deputies, right? People reflect on this, the deputies that I worked with with Dennis McDonough, John Brennan, and Mike Frommon, Ben Rhodes. So we had a really terrific crew. Now, as you said, one of the responsibilities for the National Security Advisor is to provide the President's daily briefing, typically called the PDB, the Presence Daily Brief.

The history is interesting. Those briefings began during the administration of John Kennedy when he wanted to have an intelligence checklist that he could work through because he had been surprised in the Bay of Pigs viaska. Right. So two things happened. They established kind of this daily input of intelligence to the present in a formal way. And also, Tommy, they established situation. which we're quite familiar with, which is really kind of the hub of managing national security international affairs in the basement of the White House staff by professionals from around the

government who come through for one and two year and one and two year tours. Really amazing people, too. Really amazing people. And the idea today has become a highly stylized process. It has the full weight of the intelligence community behind it. And what gets produced is the premier product for the intelligence community every single day that goes to the president. Presidents over the time have different ways of dealing with.

Some wanted to brief to them in the meeting. Some wanted to get it in advance and read it. Of course, our boss, President Obama, was someone who did read, right? And wanted it in advance. You like to read. And he wanted to come in and ask questions. So what we would do is, you know, you'd prepared, that document would be prepared and delivered to the president.

But the president would also want to know what he was going to do about the intelligence. And that was where, you know, kind of the second part of the briefing came. So the first part would be 10 or 15 minutes of briefing the intelligence to the president. And then you'd ask the intelligence professionals, they would not be there for the rest of the meeting because we in our administration, and most administrations before us, try to separate intelligence from policy. Interesting. And then you'd have a small group led by the National Security Advisor that would react to that intelligence and work through it, would take the president through different issues that were kind of moving up through the system.

And it would also allow the president every day to put his imprint formally on the process. It sounds like the highest stakes pop quiz I could have made. imagine every single morning. Well, yeah, you know, and you know, you know, you prepared early, you know, really from six o'clock in the morning until nine or nine 30 when the president came to the Oval Office. That was really the principal function that the National Security Council staff was working on each day, was to prepare that briefing and allow another national security advisor to be prepared to kind of move through the issues.

And really, essentially, it was an ongoing conversation about key challenges facing the country. And it was a tour of the world most days as to where we were on various issues around the world and allowed the president, I said, to give direction to this process each and every day. To be a fly on the wall in that meeting. I want to get into my... It's also, by the way, this is true. As you said, I think I delivered the president's briefing over 700 times. You weren't always on, and when the president would take out, you know, his BlackBerry, you knew there was time to end the meeting, right? You know, you can't have your fastball,

you know, kind of get out of here every single day. But it was a, you know, it's a really important, a really important part of kind of the presence management of the foreign policy process. I want to ask you about some specific issues in a bit, but I mean, just stepping back, when you think about your time at the White House, what days just jump out at you as you reflect on being the most difficult days and decisions? And what are the best days or high points? Yeah. Well, it's a good question. I think generically, and you saw this, the most difficult days, the most difficult decisions that you participate in and ultimately that a president has to make

is a decision to send men and women into combat. These are exceedingly difficult decisions. You know you're putting men and women at risk of casualties, deaths, and it weighs heavy, and it should weigh heavy. These are the hardest decisions, Tommy. And we had to make a number of those decisions. When we came into office, we had a large number of troops in Iraq. We had a failing effort in Afghanistan,

and we had an ongoing effort against terrorism. terrorism. And there were tough decisions that had to be made, including dispatching U.S. servicemen and women around the world into combat and into harm's way. And those were always the hardest decisions. They were the harsh decisions for the president, I think, and they are for any president. Yeah, I imagine. I mean, I guess when I think of best days, I imagine the bin Laden operation must leap to mind. Well, it's an important moment in the presidency, right? And it was a, you know, and it was, you know, the result, again, I think of a successful process, right? We began that in August of 2010, when the Central Intelligence Agency came to the White House,

and the president learned that there was a lead, the best lead, the best evidence that we had, with respect to where bin Laden was that we had had since he had had had disappeared in the mountains of Toro Bar early in the 2000s. It had really become a cold, a cold case. And the president asked for that effort to be reinvigorated at the beginning of his presidency. It was. And it was an extraordinary story over two. administrations, really, of our intelligence agencies kind of staying on the case and ensuring that the

promise that justice would be done was fulfilled. And we did that. And then that process, you know, took place over eight months. So if you begin in the summer of 2010, you know, the actual operation was in May of 2011. And during the course of those eight months or so, you constantly worked on the intelligence. You then worked on the planning. You considered all the options that would, where you could address bin Laden if he was there. It's also a important to know that, you know, the case was a circumstantial case. Right. This was not a direct evidence case. And Michael Morrell said the case for WMD in Iraq was stronger than the case for bin Laden being in a bottom box. So it was a very, very tough set of decisions that had to be made. And history was

in the room. You know, it's interesting. History was in the room where you had, you know, Secretary Gates, who has said this in his book and other books that he wasn't initially against the raid. Right. And largely because of the experience of the United States in 1980 in the failed raid to rescue the hostages in Iran, we had a number of service people killed in the desert. It was a terrible tragedy for the, obviously, for the service people who were killed, but also for the country. History was in the room because at the end of the day, I think what really tilted the president's decision, and ultimately his decision because it was a split room.

There was a split room when he went around the room and asked on the Thursday before the operation, whether people were for or against it, it was split down the middle. And what we do is we ask our presidents to make those calls. And I'll never forget walking out with President Obama after that meeting and him heading towards the mansion, walking down the colonnade between the West Wing and the mansion. And he said, you know, I'll work on this tonight and I'll call you tomorrow morning with a decision. And I remember standing watching him just walk away by himself, right, with that decision on his shoulders. And that's what we ask our presence to do.

And he did, and he called the next day. And we want to help the raid. But one of the things I think I wanted to say that kind of tip that decision, right, was his confidence in the special forces. It's the unique American asset. And he had worked on many, many operations, right, with the special forces, in this case, led by Admiral McCraven. And that gave him the confidence, right? That basically, that if bin Laden was there, that they would address that if he wasn't there, they would get out safely. And so, and that's important.

And where did they come from? They came out of the tragedy in the desert in 1980, where we put together kind of joint operations and kind of a special forces operation in the United States because of the failing sense. So history was in the room. it was a, I think, a courageous decision by the president was the correct decision, and it was executed brilliantly. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, in hindsight, I think people think, okay, should we go get bin Laden, obviously. But had he not been there, we would have invaded a sovereign nation, Pakistan, gone to a military town, humiliated their leadership, potentially been picked up on radar, fired at, maybe kicked down the door where innocent civilians live,

maybe killed the wrong person. I mean, it would have been a disaster. Yeah, well, it's, it the entire set of circumstance, everything had decision points and places where it could have gone well or gone bad, right? There could have been an accident getting in or not. It was an extraordinary operation in there, right? The fucking helicopter crashed. Well, I don't know if I briefed it exactly that way at the time time, but we did have an accident at the beginning of the operation. But, again, the training, the anticipation of contingencies, you know, the focus of our special forces was extraordinary. It was one of these operations, by the way, you know, when John Brennan led a lot of the planning,

where we were able to kind of work through every contingency, but you could have had an accident. Abadaba was a military town. You could have had a bigger reaction. The Pakistanis could have caught onto it earlier, and we could have had a confrontation. There were all manner of things that could have happened, but most were anticipated. And I think we took the right step to kind of work it through. And, of course, it was an important moment for the nation. As I said, we worked through almost every contingency, right?

And, you know, when we sat down for a 15-hour meeting that morning, the night after the White House correspondent's dinner, where people were coming up in numbers and saying, are you going to this party, that party? I'm saying, no, I got this thing tomorrow. Reading a good book. Got to get home, right? Yeah. But you kind of work it through, right? And it was literally a tab notebook of step by step kind of working through the various aspects of it. The thing that surprised me, though, was after it was announced.

I was walking with the president and a couple of our colleagues back from the mansion where the president in the eastern had made the announcement. And there was this noise. Really? Remember this? And there was this noise, right? You know, and I remember saying to the Secret Service, what's going on here? Where's that coming from?

He said, there's really a credible demonstration out in front of the White House, right? And so it hit me then with an important, it was an important strategic event for the country. It was also an important cathartic event. It really was. Yeah, I remember walking out. I mean, it was one or two in the morning. God knows when we left. And there was just a crowd of people chanting USA, USA all night long.

Still gives me chills to think about it. Okay. Another issue you spent a ton of time on was U.S.-China relations. You know, you were constantly taking visits to China and sitting down one-on-one with Chinese leadership. Given that history and that experience and your knowledge of these individuals, what do you make of Trump's trade war and what looks to me like a chilling of relations? Meanwhile, the cyber attacks, the theft of IP, the cyber.

the South China Sea military build up, all those irritants still exist. Yeah. It's important to focus on the trade aspect of this, but it's not the entire story by any means. You know, the president has an obsessive focus on bilateral trade deficits. He considers contrary to the advice of most every economist in the world that if you have a surplus, you're winning, if you have a deficit, you're losing. And of course, it's a more complicated a formula than that. So I think this is what's going on.

And as you said, I spent a lot of time in China, a lot of time with the Chinese leadership. over the years. We are in a much more competitive phase between the United States and China, is the first point. The second is that that competition, that competitive phase, is across a myriad of fronts. It's economics, obviously, and we're in the middle of this discussion with China about our deficit trade relationships, their conduct, and whether it's consistent with their obligations, which it isn't in many, many cases. But it also includes military issues and includes geopolitical issues. And increasingly also it includes ideological. issues, which I think we can talk about.

China really is putting a full alternative model on offer to the world. And what's happened in Washington that's been really around the country is there is a really fundamental rethink underway of U.S.-China relations. It's interesting. I think China missed this context. And I've had lots of conversations with Chinese leaders about this and acquaintances in China. I think they miss the fact that a lot of their conduct had kind of forced this rethink in U.S.-China relations.

And the rethink is bipartisan, and it's broad. And I think we'll look back on 2018 as the year when U.S. policy moved from cooperative engagement with China, which has really been the approach since Richard Nixon's trip in February of 1970, and certainly after the Cold War, to a much more of a strategic competitor phase at this point.

Does that worry? To some extent, yeah, I'll get to the challenge, right? You know, to some extent, this is also rooted in the fact that a story that we told our about the direction of China didn't happen. The story we told ourselves didn't play out. What was that story?

The story was that as China became wealthier, as China integrated into the political and economic institutions of the world, that it would become more liberal and democratic in its political system, that is not what's happening. No. Right? That is not what's happening. And so we're in a new era.

Yeah, the contours of which are still being explored and developed, and we'll need to develop new rules. rules of the road going forward because this is going to be really the central challenge for leaders in the United States coming into this, going into this century, is how to manage this relationship. You know, our friend Graham Allison at Harvard has written a book called Destined for War and it's an exploration of something called the Thucydides Trap where he looked back on 16 examples of where you had a dominant existing power and a rising power challenging it and what the outcomes were. In the 12 of the 16 cases, it ended up in conflict. And so one of the

real, you know, I'm not a believer. I was skeptical at first about this because I don't think international relations is like a subset of physics, right? There's a lot of human agency and you learn from history. But the tendencies, I think, are correct. So it's a really important management, I think, issue, an important issue for us to develop an approach. Last thing I'll say about this is it's manifest right now in the economics, in the trade conversation. Those are important. And I think they can be worked through, I think, hopefully. But that's not the main game that's underway right now. game in the economic sphere really is a technological competition. And I think that that's really kind of an effort by, you know, various, by the United States and China to really kind of

seize the commanding ground for the industries and technologies of the future. And we're moving towards a place where we may be decoupling the technology sectors. And we're certainly moving towards a place with the United States and undertaking very aggressive effort to go after with a threat from China and technology are a Huawei is the best example of that. Yeah, a Chinese telecom company. We're just arresting their executives in Canada and they tried to extradate them. Let me tell you what we're not doing. It seems fraught.

This is the missing piece for U.S.-China policy right now. We're talking a lot about how to defend ourselves against China, right? We're talking a lot about changing their conduct, and we can change some of that, you know, I hope we do. That's not really the main game. Ultimately, it's about what we do. And there's no discussion, Tommy, really, about that missing piece of China policy. policy. What is our innovation strategy? What's our research and development levels? What are we doing about educating our people? What are we doing about meeting the challenges of artificial

intelligence and the labor markets, right? What are we doing about bringing science back to the center of policymaking, which has not been the case in this administration? So I would urge us in the, in kind of the U.S.-China policy to address this missing piece. Yeah, yeah. China is one of the great power relationships that I know kept you very busy. Another one was Russia. Yeah. You know, I remember you spent a whole, whole lot of time with Dmitri Medvedev, who was the brief leader of Russia. Vladimir Putin then came back and you spent a lot of time with him and the Russian leadership, the ambassador, Sir De LaVrov, the foreign minister. Again, knowing what you know about those individuals,

what do you make of Trump's approach to Russia, their policy, the ongoing, odd, open question of whether he's compromised or why there were hundreds of contacts between Trump officials and Russian officials and the transition. Well, it's an interesting question. Indeed, I think The U.S. Russia policy right now is one of the oddest aspects of President Trump's foreign policy. You know, you can understand most aspects of at this point because he has a specific approach which has emerged. It's personal. It's transactional. It's bilateral as opposed to multilateral. It's focused on trade. Russia's and exceptions. There are inexplicable elements thus far to the U.S. Russia policy from the current administration. Russia today is actively hostile to the United States across the board. You know, I saw Putin.

Friday night before he was not inaugurated. And it was even clear then that he was taking Russia in a different direction. Were you in Russia? That was in Moscow. Oh, so you went over? Yeah. And it was clear that he was taking Russia in a different direction. Lots of reasons for this.

As is always the case, a lot of it has to do with domestic politics. Some of it has to do with his image of Russia. Some it has to do with these concepts, which we may consider kind of an acronistic, spheres of influence, zero-some outcomes. But he thought very real concepts to him. And they have become, as I said, actively hostile to the United States, including and attacking the elections in 2016. And to believe our intelligence services, which I do,

in their latest global threat briefing before the Congress, and plan to do so again in 2020. And so the resistance of the president to address these issues is, I think, a failure of policy and inexplicable. You know, the willingness of the president is really to kind of believe representation, this president to believe representations from Vladimir Putin and not the assessment of his own intelligence services is kind of inexplicable. It's an odd.

And I think dangerous part of our foreign policy. Now, you know, it's interesting on Russian contacts. I was the co-chair of the Clinton transition, 2016, and was charged with overseeing the planning for the national security aspects of the next government for a person whom everybody believed was going to be the President of the United States. I don't remember any Russian contacts. They weren't. They were not.

They were not. This has been, this has been, this was an, odd relationship between the Trump campaign and his associates and the Russian government. You weren't calling the Russian ambassador from your beach vacation like Mike Flynn. Well, this just hasn't been fully explained, right, you know, at this point. And it has really restricted us from putting together the kind of all of government effort to resist the kinds of interference that we saw in 2016. And it really has caused us not to have the kind of conversation we have to have in this country

I think should be led by the leader of the free world, the president of the United States, about how to protect the democracy. This is a really important piece of this. And we're not, I've never really heard the president discuss democracy. I haven't either. No. A lot has been made of Trump's meetings with Putin. Often they were on the sides of summits.

They were one-on-one, maybe just a translator. When you heard that and you thought back to your time staffing President Obama in one-on-one meetings with Putin or any other leader, what did that make you think and feel? Well, you want to have, you know, typically we want to have someone else with you when you're having a meeting with a foreign leader in order that you have your record. Yeah. What happened? Right. You know, there's obviously an interest in having, you know, kind of presidential records and historical records of what went on between nations and between leaders.

But more importantly, kind of in the short term here, right, and kind of managing foreign policy, you want to have a couple of things. You want to make sure that you have a record of your version so that you're not subject to a version of that meeting that these, other side puts out. Right. That's a real danger. And that's just kind of classic statecraft, right? That's just common sense, common sense state craft. And you also, you want to have a record and a report out of what happened in these meetings

so that the government knows where we're going, right? You know, and can assess, by the way, also what you heard from the foreign leader, so you can take advantage of, you know, the vast kind of analytical skills that we have in the, we have. And I don't know what the root of that is. I don't know whether it's a, whether he has. kind of a distrust of the professionals and even the political appointees that he works with, or there are other reasons that the president doesn't want to have these conversations,

you know, kind of any notes taking these conversations or explored or analyzed by the rest of the senior people. But, you know, you have to be able to trust your most senior people in these conversations. And it was a, again, it's an odd aspect, Tommy, of, of this, of these kinds of this relationship between the president and in, and Vladimir Putin, which, by the way, is in sharp contrast with the relationships that he has with our European leaders, European leaders, and our closest allies, where the president is constantly critical. Yeah, literally. Shuffing them if you're a matzoed macro.

And pushing away, right? And really not taking up this mantle of being the leader of the free world, but really, unfortunately raising questions about whether he feels more comfortable on the other side. Yeah, yeah. I keep saying this, but another issue that occupied a lot of your time was North Korea. I mean, I remember our first trip, I believe, in Europe. I think we were in Prague in the middle of the night, 2 a.m. 3 a.m. I believe the North Koreans tested a missile.

President had to be woken up to address it and deal with it. I hope I'm getting this right. But, you know, it was a major, major threat to the point where I believe President Obama has been reported that President Obama told President Trump in their final Oval Office meeting, that this would be one of the biggest things he'd work on. Fast forward, I mean, Trump's about to embark on his second major summit with Kim Jong-un. I think all of us are happy that they're not tweeting about fire and fury and smack-talking our way into war. But I think, I know you're worried about the trajectory of these talks, and I was curious

why that is. Yeah. I mean, it'd have to, it is a good thing that the tensions have been decreased. Yeah. But a lot of those tensions have been built up by President Trump during the course of the first part of the administration. But that's a good thing. And I think it's a good thing that we have direct conversations going on between the United States and North Korea. And I think highly, for example, as well of our special envoy, Steve Began, who is, who's now the chief diplomat, if you will, leading up the conversations with the North Koreans. But I am worried about the specifics in the direction for this reason. One, it was clear coming out of the Singapore summit that in fact the North Koreans had not agreed to the concept of a complete, irreversible denuclearization

of its program in North Korea. They didn't agree to the classic language. They had a different formulation, which essentially meant that they were looking towards a longer-term denuclearization that was linked to what our pulling back in the South Koreans pulling back in various respects. So we didn't get the kind of core commitment that we had insisted on for many, many years. That wasn't in the documents that came on. The second thing is that you have had a situation where you haven't had a nuclear test and you haven't had missile tests for a period of time.

But that doesn't mean the program's frozen. Yeah. And so you've had the Secretary of State testify in front of the Congress. You've had a report put out by a prominent student in North Korea, said, Hecker, Stanford University, just this past week that says that the North Korea is a continuing to develop this all material, which the more you develop, the more potential weapons you have. There have been reports and actually overhead imagery put out by CSIS and Victor Cha, who was going to be the ambassador to South Korea, showing a number of missile bases, missile bases that are being hardened and protected going forward. So the bottom line is, again, not going to know details.

I think that the bottom line is that the program continues. So when the president says, I'm not in a hurry, we'll see how long it takes. You know, that's an analytical mistake. It's an analytical mistake because it makes a difference how many well. the weapons in North Koreans develop. It makes a difference from a whole variety of issues, including non-proliferation risk and missile defense risk. Right.

But if we haven't kind of an open-ended negotiation and the North Koreans continue to run the program, we're going to put ourselves at the end of the day in a much more difficult circumstance, and we likely are headed towards a circumstance where we end up having to accept North Korea as a country with a lot of nuclear weapons. Yeah. So some sort of freeze and cap on what they're doing during the pendency in negotiations seem to me to be kind of absolutely.

essential moving forward here. So we need to have, when they meet at the end of February, we need to have more details here and hopefully a stop in the program during the penancies the negotiations. That was certainly what we did in the Iran, in the Iran circumstance. Right, right. When you look around the world, you pick up the New York Times in the morning and read the international section, what do you see, what various geopolitical trends were you? What do you think we're not talking about enough? You know, I don't think we've kind of fully appreciated the major change, which is the reemergence of, of great power competition and the need to develop a strategy to deal with this,

with respect to China. And as I said earlier, I don't think we're having anywhere near the conversation that we need to have about the missing piece of China policy, which is, what's the United States going to do? You know, why isn't this a Sputnik moment for the United States? You know, you remember after, you don't remember, but if you heard about it, right? You know, in the late 1950s when the Soviets launched a Sputnik satellite, the United States undertook an enormous national effort that changed the way we taught math, that established

NASA, that established kind of, you know, really this golden triangle of technological and innovation development between the government and research universities and private companies. It was an enormously important moment in American history, and we face a similar challenge, I think, at this point in terms of technology, competition, and continuing our lead. And so that, I think, is something we need to be talking about a lot. Yeah. And that includes, by the way, a lot of things. It includes, I said, R&D.

It includes immigration policy, by the way. It includes infrastructure investment, education investment. And it includes the second thing I think we're not talking about enough. And that is the impact of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation on labor markets. You know, populism is not at its peak right now. Populism, in my judgment, is not, at this point, is typically a cyclical thing in response to economic ups and downs. We have a much more fundamental populist challenge in the Western democracy is underway right now. And one of the essential things to dealing with this going forward is having a really serious discussion about how we're going to manage the future of work in the face of technology.

We just had a $2 trillion tax cut that was passed last year. I don't remember a single discussion about investments in this kind of essential thing for the government to do. Who's going to do this? Is our company's responsible about it? Is the government responsible? Where are we going on this? Right? That, I think, is a fundamental discussion that we're not having.

I don't think we're having enough of paying enough attention to cybersecurity. The president's given two stadium addresses. He's never mentioned cybersecurity. Really? No. So, and why is that kind of, again, kind of this disconnect? Yeah. The intelligence services go in front of the Congress once a year, and they have over the last five

six years said that the principal threat facing the country, one of the principal threats facing the country is a cyber threat. And yet the president really hasn't mentioned it. They disestablished the cybersecurity coordinator job in the White House, which I think was a real mistake, right? It is not possible to have an all-in-government effort to protect the country on cybersecurity and develop cyber policy without having it driven from the center. It's too hard. There are too many divergent interest in the government. There are too many different capabilities in the government. It has to be driven from the center. And we've just established it. You know, and the president really hasn't talked about kind of the basics that we needed to make ourselves a more resilient to society.

So I think that's one where I'm concerned that we don't have the kind of focus. And instead, of course, we've had this dramatic focus on the southern border, which was never mentioned as a threat by the intelligence services when they went in front of the Congress. And I think last time, I think we're heading towards having an important conversation about nuclear weapons. You know, I wanted to ask you about that. I saw recently that Elizabeth Warren and Adam Smith, Congressman Adam Smith, Senator Elizabeth Warren, have introduced legislation that says, quote, it is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons for a so-called no-first use policy. What did you make of that? Well, I think it's an important discussion to have, you know. There are, and that's a complicated issue. It's a complicated issue in terms of assurances that we have given allies in terms of extended deterrence and there be. able to rely on the United States to defend them.

So, wow, it's like Japan, South Korea. And in Europe, right? Including in the event of attack, right? And so those are important kinds of conversations to have. I think they're important conversation to have about, you know, what the United States would do in the face of a biological attack, for example. Okay. But it's an important conversation, I think, that they're driving to have given the development

of our conventional weapons, which are substantial and can address a lot of these, a lot of these issues. So I think that they're driving an important. conversation, but it's part of something bigger. Yes. You know, I oversaw the coordination of, you will, the 2010 nuclear posture review that we did. And, you know, President Obama's driving principle in that nuclear posture review, indeed, and it's been the driving principle of most presidents over the last half century, has been

to reduce U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons. And I fear the administration is moving in a different direction, right? Where they're trying to establish types of nuclear weapons, which they're they quote-unquote see as more usable, right? Lower yield, more usable nuclear weapons. And I think blurring this distinction between nuclear weapons and conventional weapons really is a really important policy for us to address, right?

And to have a president of the United States, as President Trump did the other night of the State of the Union address, really kind of welcome an arms race saying to the Russians, you know, if you want to have an arms race, go out intermediate range missile capabilities, we'll bring it on, we'll have it. That is not the direction to go on Tommy, right?

So we've seen here, this is this change, right, from a policy that drove hard towards reducing reliance on nuclear weapons as part of the national arsenal and limiting sharply the context in which you would ever use nuclear weapons. And having a realistic conversation about this, I think is really an important thing to do. So that the conversation that Senator Warren and Congressman Smith are driving here is an important conversation to have. And to ask ourselves whether it is that kind of moment. You also have to ask where it would fit in the negotiations and things like that. But I'm concerned about the direction in which the Trump administration is driving the nuclear discussion. Yeah, me too. Speaking of things that make me concerned about the Trump administration,

John Bolton is now sitting in your old office. The things I know about him based on what I've read is he seems to be taking a lot of trips and serving as emissary. It seems like he's really skinning down meetings or moving away from the traditional principles committee process. that you'd mentioned earlier and locking people out of all of government conversations or what should be all of government conversations. He's also tweeting more about, you know, like regime change in Venezuela. Do you have an impression of his tenure so far or things they're working on?

Listen, a couple of things. One, every president designs the White House that he or she thinks best works best for them at their first point. And it's interesting. Ultimately, every president gets the people that he or she is most comfortable with. And, you know, so you can have conversations about different kinds of people and their effect on the president and moderating the president. Ultimately, ultimately presidents get the team that they want. And the president seems more, seems comfortable with Ambassador Bolton at this point. So that's the first mega point. And as part of my introduction to this answer, it's always easier from the outside. Yeah, yeah. To take shots at and criticize people who are doing these jobs, which you and I know from personal experience are enormously difficult jobs. brutal. And with tremendous amounts of responsibility.

That's the first point. The second point is that the government is not staffed to the extent that it needs to be. And that is a real failure. And it's interesting. It had its roots in the transition. It has its roots in President Trump's management style. We had a busted transition here. And I was part of the other transition that ended it on an election day.

But we now have a book by the person who ran the Trump transition, former Governor Christie of New Jersey. which I think is probably the best window we have to date what happened. And it was really kind of all the work that had been done, preparing names for people for jobs, planning, thinking about the opening gambit of the administration was all literally, I think, thrown in the trash barrel. Going forward, it is really important for people

who want to be president to think hard about how they would transition to governing. Because a lot of the roots of problems can be found in that failure. I've done three transitions. Some have been better than others. But that's a real... So the place isn't staffed the way it should be. Third is that process would help this administration, frankly. It would.

And I've heard the same kinds of reports, right, that you're talking about that there aren't as many kind of inter-agency sessions where policies are fully ventilated, right? All the thinking of the government's going to have brought to the table and the president gets the best options. If that's not taking place, it's a mistake, and he won't get as keen.

and as good of kind of national interest outcomes as you want. Now, we've seen examples of this where the president, for example, has announced that he wants to pull all the U.S. troops out of Syria. Now, that's a perfectly legitimate conversation to have, a perfectly legitimate policy issue to be discussed. But we also now know that it wasn't discussed, for example, with the head of CENTCOM, you know, and kind of military leadership, right?

And you're just not going to get their kind of quality decisions that the American people deserve if you don't do that. So if I were advising, I would advise to kind of get back to kind of some more. regular order here. It's essentially a system that was put in place by General Skowcroft and Bob Gates during the Bush 41 administration. And it's not perfect, but it's been exercised a lot. And so this kind of not have, not seeking out views that may disagree with yours, making decisions without process, having the president announce things, then having the government catch up, you'll confuse

allies, you confuse the government, and you're not going to get best case outcomes. No, you're not. My final question for you, which is annoyingly a two-parter, when you think about, you know, let's say the next president will not be Donald Trump and it will be in 2020. What issues do you think he or she is going to face? And in preparation for that presidency, what would you like to see Democratic candidates talking about on foreign policy when they hit the trail? Because, you know, I think unfortunately, look, fortunately maybe elections tend to be domestic. Really, they tend to be about dumb bullshit like emails, but that's a side point.

But I would love to see foreign policy more front and center. And I wonder if their ideas you think should be talked about. Yeah, of course. A couple of things. One is that I do think that the key to a strong and effective U.S. national foreign policy is a strong domestic economic circumstance. The relationship between our ability to project abroad, to lead abroad is absolutely inextricably related to the strength of our economy.

And so I do think this conversation about the future of work, investment in the kinds of things that we need in the future. I think people will look back on this period and ask this question, how possibly could it be that the United States didn't invest heavily in infrastructure when they can borrow money at almost zero and do things that are going to get a certain return?

So I think that kind of domestic renewal conversation, Tommy, particularly taking into account technology. You know, we have these conversations about trade and trade has had impacts, negative impacts, in communities in the United States. There's no doubt about that. but it's not at the same scale, frankly, as these technological impacts are going to be.

And so that, I would like to see a lot of discussion about that. I consider that to be a national security discussion. That's the kind of thing that keeps the society together, you know, and gives us a kind of strong economy going forward. Second, a lot more discussion about democracy and values. You know, the United States is a special country, and we have our flaws and we have made mistakes, but the style of leadership, the values-based leadership that the United States has undertaken since World War II

has worked spectacularly to our benefit, right? And it's been to the benefit of the world, and we've lost that discussion. You know, for example, you know, you look around the world. You look in Asia, for example, not to talk about values and democracy really pulls back and deprives us as one of our strongest tools, frankly, in the world. So I think that that conversation about the pressure that democracy is under, and it is under pressure. It's under pressure from technology. It's under pressure from Russian interference. It's under pressure from populism. It's an important conversation to have. And I would like to say our candidates talk more directly about that

because I don't believe the United States has undertaken the kind of leadership we need to undertake in this area. Third is that we need to really kind of reacquaint ourselves with the value of allies. It really is the unique American asset. And we have had really kind of a diminution in the quality of our allies. relationships, I think, the last couple years, and that'll be really kind of front and center going forward. And I also think last terms of foreign policy, it is also, and this will happen, I hope, during the course of the campaign, and it won't surprise you when you hear me say this,

given who my spouse is, but it really is important to keep a focus on the importance of women's empowerment around the world. It is really key to economic performance. It's key to the overall positive performance of societies, and I hope we have a lot of discussion about that. I think in the context of our foreign policy thing. As you know, I should, you know, my wife is Kathy Russell, who is Egos ambassador for women's issues.

And it's, it is absolutely essential, I think, to have that conversation. And last, I do hope we have this nuclear discussion. Yeah, that's true. And where we're going on nuclear weapons. Yeah. Credits of Senator Warren for coming out early and talking about something big and weighty in pushing this forward. Yeah, career disagree.

I think you're exactly right. I think having the conversation come front and center, it's important because it's been happening, you know. You had the Trump National Nuclear Poster Review, which had a lot of continuity, but it had changes, right? Essentially, the key changes around this, are you pursuing a policy which reduces as much as possible to reliance nuclear weapons? Or are we going in a different direction? Some of this is amnesia, by the way. I was going to say, I feel like I'm back in that beautiful office you had, right?

You'd walk in, there were the couches on the left. There was that nice table on the right, sort of glass color. We do a lot of meetings there. So you said about eight people. Then your desk was just past it, and there were probably 35 binders, as thick as your fist, full of, you know, the most classified material on the planet that you were reading through. I mean, this is like old times. And every time that Tommy Beater came in, I knew this was not going to be a good day.

You'd say, hide that shit. Now I have you at a plywood mock-up of a resolute desk, and, you know, we're yelling at to microphones. It's fun. Tom, thank you so much. Tommy, it's great to see you, and congratulations all the success of your operation here. It's a great team. I literally could do this all day. And congratulations on the work that you're doing to get people interested in politics and turning on and participating.

It really is really important because I said during the course of this discussion, we cannot take the democracy for granted. It is under pressure. And we can do something about it, including, by the way, something we should do a whole conversation on, which is civic education in the United States. We can do a lot about it that we're not doing now. I hope it's part of the discussion. Thanks, Tom.

Agreed. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to POTS Save the World. share it with your friends. You know you want to. You know they love it when you spam them with random links to podcasts and rate and review us in the iTunes store because it helps people find the show. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week. Talk to you soon.