Pod Save the World - Kim Jong-Un found love in a hopeless place

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

Tommy talks with the Washington Post's David Ignatius about Trump's visit to the UN general assembly, including potentially explosive claims by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu about Iran's nuclear program, Trump's love affair with North Korea and some legitimately hopeful signs, and escalating tensions with China.

We'll go back and forth, and then we fell in love. Okay? No, really? He wrote me beautiful letters, and they're great letters. We fell in love. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. That was President Trump talking about his unexpected love affair with Kim Jong-un at a rally in West Virginia.

We will talk about that and more in today's Pod Save the World with one of my favorite reporters and journalists and opinion writers on planet David Ignatius of the Washington Post. You guys have heard David before. He writes amazing spy novels. He writes brilliant columns. You should check out his stuff. I pay for the Washington Post just to get his stuff. So we talked about some interesting announcements about Iran's nuclear program that happened at the UN General Assembly this week. We talked about North Korea and what David thinks might be the outlines of an actual deal, which could be hopeful. you know, it's a positive sign. So trying to give Trump credit where credit is due, if it is due. So dig into that. We talk about the people literally laughing at Trump's UN General Assembly speech.

And then we spend a good amount of time on China and how dangerous or not this ongoing trade war and war awards is. It's a great episode. He's a hell of a journalist. And I think you guys will enjoy it. So here's David Ignatius. David Ignatius, thank you for jumping on the line. I was hoping we could start with last week's UN General Assembly. because while it was largely wiped out of the headlines by the Kavanaugh news and by, you know, will he, won't heed debates about Trump firing Rod Rosenstein. There were some interesting things that went on up in New York that I would like to touch on. So the first was the Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, revealed what he called a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran that he said Iran used to store equipment and material for its nuclear weapons program. That announcement comes not long after the Mossad, who had the Israeli intelligence services,

smuggled, you know, I think 100,000 nuclear-related documents out of a different Iranian facility back in February. How big of a deal was this announcement from Netanyahu at the General Assembly? I didn't think it broke all that much new ground. You have to wonder about Iranian security in Tehran. The Israelis seem to be able to make off with documents, equipment, everything in sight. The basic point that Netanyahu has tried to make that the Iranians were seeking to build a nuclear weapon, that's now well established. It goes to the question of the credibility of Iranian promises in the JCPOA, the nuclear deal, that they're going to stop those activities. But I didn't see a sort of fundamental step change in our perceptions of what Iran was doing. The Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called Netanyahu's presentation.

quote, an arts and craft show by a country that he says needs to come clean about its own nuclear program. Does he have a point? Is there a bit of hypocrisy there? How should we view this response? Well, Israel's nuclear weapons capability, on the one hand, is something that Israel has wanted the world to know about, but has always wanted to deny formally. They've liked to have it in this ambiguous state, but there have been many histories written about how Israel built nuclear weapons at DeMona many years ago and has its own nuclear arsenal. So I think it upsets the Iranians, but this is something that the Middle East has lived with now for decades. I just don't think there's any way in the world that Iranian protests about this are going to

change Israel's commitment to wanting and feeling it needs to have a nuclear deterrent. Yeah. Well, here's hoping the Iranians never get a nuclear weapon. Also at the U.N., Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, gave this blistering speech, warning Iran that there will be hell to pay if they cross us. But it was interesting to me that at the same time, there were all these rumors about maybe a possible meeting between Trump and the Iranian president, Mr. Rouhani. It seemed like reading between the lines that Trump's team was genuinely nervous that he might try to meet with Rouhani. Trump ultimately knocked on those rumors by tweets. He said, I have no plans to meet with Rouhani, maybe someday in the future. I am sure he's an absolutely

lovely man was the end of the tweet. What did you make of all that? Are Trump and his team on the same page when it comes to Iran? So I don't think that Trump and John Bolton are. Pompeo is a bit of a mystery, the Secretary of State, but you'd have to say Trump dropped a hanky, as it were, last week in New York in comments, tweets, and what I'm told he said privately to other leaders. He now has a model in his mind from North Korea that if he talks really tough, makes a credible threat to use military force, puts on tough economic sanctions, That, in the end, the other side will be prepared to come into negotiations that they had claimed earlier they wouldn't and that he'll be able to get the great deal that alluded his predecessors. He clearly believes that's what's happened with North Korea. And I think looking at him, he's trying now to execute the same thing with Iran. I'm told that what he says to diplomats from other key countries is there'll be a time for negotiations with the Iranians. They'll come around. They have no choice, but not yet. They need to feel the squeeze more. So we're going to have, starting in November, very tight, tough sanctions.

The effort is going to be to cut Iran essentially off from the international banking system by withdrawing the swift payments exchange that allows Iranian banks to fund transactions. That really is going to hurt. And I'm told by Europeans that there's not likely to be any way to stop that. So we are going to be looking, starting in November, at a much tighter squeeze in Iran. And it's clear from Trump's comments. He thinks sooner rather than later that that will bring them back to the table. I have to say, I kind of like hearing that. I love the thought of Trump being enamored with negotiations because it feels like otherwise there would be an awful lot of momentum towards a regime change policy with respect to Iran.

So the problem with this, you know, little mechanism that Trump has created is that it essentially, is going to create havoc in the Iranian economy. The idea is to create severe pressure that forces the regime to negotiate with a country that has now thoroughly mistrusts after the withdrawal from the JCPOA. It's, I think, as likely that the result of this policy will be to create a failed state in Iran, you know, a crumbling economy, an angry public regime struggling to hold on that becomes more hard-line, not more liberal. And you have to ask, given all we've been through the last 15 years, is another failed

state in the Middle East really something that's in the U.S. national interest? Maybe it will turn out the way Trump wants, that they'll feel the pressure, they'll feel a squeeze, and they'll say, okay, you know, let's start a negotiation. We'll put on the table things we haven't been prepared to before. To be honest, that would be a good outcome. Who wouldn't be happy to see that? But it's a course that has all sorts of risks, and it assumes that I have to, Tola Hamini, who just, you know, hates the idea of compromising of America is going to be prepared

to compromise with Donald Trump because the pressure is so tough. Like the Iranian economy, my hope, is now crushed. But you're right. If you read on recent history is that regime change always leads to a good outcome, I think. You're reading the wrong books. It's another collapsing regime in the Middle East. Hard to see that as really being. Not great.

You recently wrote a great piece about North Korea and how we might actually be starting to see a real deal take shape. It could include North Korea dismantling some test sites, its main nuclear weapons facility in Yangtian. All of that would be conditioned on the U.S. taking some sort of reciprocal action, maybe getting U.S. service members out of South Korea over some time frame. I've been pretty skeptical about the Singapore summit actually accomplishing anything. And as recently as August, John Bolton was saying that North Korea had not taken any necessary steps to denuclearize, but are you starting to see more hopeful signs? So in the immediate aftermath of the Singapore summit, there was absolutely nothing specific.

And the North Koreans just kind of played Ropa Dope. And Trump, in his enthusiasm, post-Summit, blush, kept saying nice things. And I think people rightly said, wait a minute, there's nothing here in terms of substance. Then the administration began to get a little tougher. And a trip the Secretary of State Pompea was going to make to Pyongyang was canceled. I'm sure that private messages were passed that were more serious. And over time, it appears the North Koreans began to say, okay, yes, we will allow international inspectors to come in and verify that we have destroyed one of our missile test sites. They hadn't done that before.

They don't like inspectors. Then they said we would be prepared if there were reciprocal U.S. gestures to destroy their major nuclear facility at Yongbyon that you mentioned a moment ago. That was also interesting. What reciprocal concessions are they looking for? It appears that what they want is a declaration of the end of the state of war between the U.S. and North Korea, North, South Korea, etc. That is the track that President Moon of South Korea has been pursuing in his own bilateral diplomacy with Kim Jong-un, including this recent summit that they had. And my sense is, is that the U.S., the key negotiator is Pompeo, the Secretary of State, has been prepared to go along with that.

The precise shape of the way the U.S. is going to phrase this, you know, in effect, confidence-building declaration. It still isn't clear, but I think they're ready to offer something, and that's probably going to be enough to move the ball far enough down the road. But when there's another Trump-Kim summit, there'll be something for them to sign. Well, the good news is that Trump recently told us that he and Kim Jong-un had fallen in love after Wasn't that great? He wrote him beautiful letters. I was so touching. I mean, it's one of those funny moments where if a Democrat said that the Republican Party would spontaneously combust,

impeach, and invoke the 25th Amendment. Well, it's just goofy. But, you know, in a weird way, you have the feeling that this president falls in love with his own diplomacy. I mean, in a sense, it's, you know, it's a narcissistic love. He loves the fact that he's making this deal with Kim Jong-un, but it was a bizarre comment. I think about Trump and North Korea is he seems to keep falling uphill. He does and says things that you think, oh, that's the end of it.

And then a couple months later, they're back on track. You mentioned South Korea and President Moon earlier. I mean, if we're really scoring this thing, I mean, how much credit do you think President Moon deserves for the ongoing efforts to get to a peace process? So I think that in my book, Trump deserves credit for seizing the opportunities that have arisen. I'm for diplomacy on North Korea and I think falling in the president for agreeing to the Singapore summit and other steps is a mistake. But the people who have been moving the ball here really are the North and South Korean leaders, Kim and Moon. Kim, at the end of last year, made very clear in some speeches and government statements that he felt they had successfully completed their nuclear program.

They had tested weapons and the missiles to deliver them. And they were now going to pivot towards an economic program that in a sense leverages their nuclear capability. Moon initiated his own fascinating bilateral diplomacy centered around the Olympics. inviting North Korea to be part of this Winter Olympic event show. And it ended up working out. And I felt in that period, the U.S. was sort of dragged along with a north-south Korean diplomacy that initially it wasn't all that comfortable with.

Remember when Vice President Pence went to the Olympics and he seemed really, really uncomfortable? But in the end, that was the driver. And when the proposal for a summit between Kim and Trump was presented to the president, He said, yep. Well, you know, the more I look into this, I keep hearing that Trump has been sending messages pretty much since the day he got into the Oval Office that he was ready for a summit meeting with Kim. All that bluster talk was accompanied by private messages that he was prepared to sit down and meet with the North Korean leader. So I think this has been hatching a long time. But again, the decisive framers of these issues have been the North and South Koreans, not the U.S.

The U.S. has been a receiver. It's welcomed the diplomacy. It's now beginning to frame what the agreement would actually look like. But it didn't initiate it. I hope sincerely that it works out in the end. And I do also give Trump credit for bucking conventional wisdom and being willing to take a chance on diplomacy. This is a key pot say of the world moment in which Tommy Vitor says something about Donald Trump's foreign policy. I do think if you ran back the tape eight years and asked Obama, like, what do you wish he'd done a couple more times?

It would probably be, every situation room meeting has 15 people telling you why you can't do something and just telling them to get out of your face. And I'm going to do it anyway. It would have been a probably useful exercise every once in a while. You know, I just would add one thing, Tommy, from last week. One of the more outrageous things that went all but unnoticed was when Donald Trump said that if Barack Obama had remained president, there would have been a. nuclear war between the U.S., North Korea, because Obama was on the edge of pulling the trigger, I think he actually said. What Obama said to Trump, as we understand it, is this is a really serious problem.

I've really struggled with this, and it's going to be the most important foreign policy issue ahead for you. For Trump to translate that into the idea that he saved America from the war that Barack Obama would have started was really, you know, even by Trump's standards, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, man. You're right. I saw that. I was like, come on. You're just lying. But another day, another press conference. That's right. That's right. 81 minutes. Last question for you about the UN. Trump gave the speech to the UN General Assembly that included a line about how he's accomplished more than any other administration in history, history of our country. And the assembled diplomats literally laughed. And when asked about it later, he said, you know, they didn't laugh at me. They laughed with me. My question is, I mean, it was one of those moments where you just put your head in your hands. But do you think this reflected any sort of. of sincere expression of how countries may have changed their opinions about the U.S.

or is it just a funny, maybe even silly moment with people not used to his bluster? So as I've talked to foreign diplomats in the days since Trump was at the U.N., I keep hearing this the same thing, which is that the world is really reckoning now with the reality that Donald Trump is president and that he has changed some of the fundamentals of American foreign policy. I mean, I think the reason there was that awkward laughter at the president's boast was, in a sense, people know how much he's changed, but to see it as a positive accomplishment for the U.S., that so many of our alliances are now more ragged than they were, that we've withdrawn from so many global agreements that really most of the rest of the world supports, I think that just made people laugh. Like, what are you talking about? But I think the problem for our country is that the rest of the world is now trying to figure out, okay, we never thought this could happen, but it's happened.

And even if Trump is defeated, even if the midterm elections go for the Democrats, we have to now reckon with the possibility that it could happen again, that America is a different place than what we thought. And that's what I see people struggling to deal with. I thought that was behind some of the tension that you saw last week in New York. Yeah. Speaking of tension, we have a ongoing trade war and often war of words with China. Over the weekend, the Chinese canceled a high-level security talks dialogue that included Secretary Mattis to Secretary of Defense. President Trump has recently accused them a meddling in our elections, and apparently Vice President Pence is going to outline more of the case for that argument in a speech coming soon. soon. How bad do you think tensions are with China right now?

Pretty bad. I think that Trump, as in most aspects of his foreign policy, wants to destabilize his adversary, the Chinese, and he's succeeding. I think the Chinese are really flummoxed. This trade war, trade dispute now increasingly trade war, has gone further than they ever thought it would. They kept thinking that there'd be a kind of compromise point and they kept putting more on the table. and it hasn't been enough. I think the one point that reasonable people should agree on is that China's behavior in international trade

has been a problem for the United States and for all of its trading partners. I mean, every time I go to China, I hear stories from American and European companies that are operating there. The executives tell me, we are sick of having our intellectual property stolen, basically being, in their view, mistreated in this market, not given fair access.

So the idea that it's time to have different rules that are a little fairer is correct. That's not just Trump saying that, but I think almost any Western business person who's done business in China. It's probably better to try to redress the terms of trade, the rules for this game now, as opposed to 10 years from now when China will be even more powerful. So I think, again, reasonable people should say, okay, I think the question is how much crockery, I was going to say China, it gets broken along the way in doing that. And what's the damage to the global economy, to living standards in China and the U.S. around the world in that process? And I think that's the delicate issue. And, you know, if Trump plays true to form, he'll do the same thing he did with Mexico and with Canada, which is he'll take.

this as far as he thinks he reasonably can go and then he'll cut a deal. Yeah. But, you know, maybe not. Maybe, maybe the Chinese won't give him that opportunity. That's the risk. Right. I mean, and it's interesting because, again, I mean, he just recently authorized another round of tariffs on like $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. And there are reportedly voices in the White House who think that the only way to really stop China from doing the bad things you just described is to really make them feel economic pain. But again, interestingly, when this trade World War was first suggested, we were all warned by the same experts that it would be a cataclysmic event for the U.S. economy, but the stock market is still through the roof.

The economy's humming along. I mean, is there a problem of crying wolf or, you know, are we just sort of on the precipice of something pretty bad here? Well, you know, it could get much worse. I think the first thing I'd say is that if you wanted to really go after China and change of the trading relationship, the stupidest thing you could have done to start with was to get rid of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was the gathering of all the nations but China in a trading group that gave the U.S. strength in dealing with the Chinese issue.

I think that, as I look back, was just such a fundamental mistake. She can make concessions, but he is now on such a pedestal that I think his maneuvering room is limited much as Trump says. And, you know, bad things happen when people back themselves into corners and keep, you know, kind of doubling down. And all of a sudden, there isn't any room left to compromise. And then you get cracks in the economy. I mean, our stock market has done great, but, you know, you get a crack. And then, you know, it could accelerate.

Chinese economy is a little more precarious than we sometimes think. There's so much debt overhanging the system. So it's, you know, there's a fragility here that we forget about. And when Trump just keeps making an announcement, another set of tariffs, another set of tariffs, you forget that the underlying set of relationships, you know, that economies do suddenly get hit with shocks and we'll have quite catastrophic financial crises. We live through one 2008-2009. We live with many in Asia. So let's just hope that we're not heading toward that, that we're instead heading toward a deal that will lead to better, fairer. rules for trade with China. You mentioned the TPP Transp Pacific Partnership. One of the things

that would have done was update NAFTA. Trump actually announced a new version of NAFTA this week, the biggest piece of which seems to be renaming it, the USMCA. But there are meaningful changes. He negotiated to increase the percentage of car and truck components that have to be manufactured in North America from about 62 percent to about 75 percent to qualify for no tariffs. Some see that to be a positive for car manufacturing. It also has to pass through our Congress, Mexico's Congress, Canada's Congress. I mean, did you think that the announcement or the update was meaningful and do we think it has a chance of getting approved?

Yes, I think it's modestly an improvement. It's like what the Obama administration was considering. It embraces the kinds of standards that were in the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the NAFTA, U.S., Mexico, U.S.-Canada relationships. I think if it's true that a basic problem in our country is that the middle class hasn't sufficiently shared in the prosperity that the global economy has brought, then a trade agreement that says that wages for auto workers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have to be higher, and that the percentage of the total car that's made in those three countries has to be greater. You know, hard to argue with that.

it's good. Again, the question is, how much did you have to break along the way to getting that good thing? You know, was the breakage warranted because the outcome will benefit enough for American workers? And we'll just have to look more carefully. So few details of this deal are really clear yet. But I wouldn't say that it was a, you know, meaningless, simply a renaming of it. I think there was a little more in it than that. Yeah, there's some interesting. I mean, I think, you know, maybe if you're an apple farmer or dairy farmer, you know, certain unions seem to like. like it. But, um, well, thank goodness we've dealt with those terrible Canadian dairy farms. I was really worried about that. I know, but it is interesting to see, you know, someone who I think has defined a lot

of his policies by tearing things up, shredding the Iran deal. When they go and try to construct something or build something new, it's harder. It's interesting to see them bump up against that reality. Yep. I agree. It's, but it's good to see them build something as opposed to just tearing things down. Yeah. Speaking of very difficult things to build, you, you, You also wrote a piece recently about the depressing state of the Middle East peace process that was pegged off the 40th anniversary of the Camp David Accords and the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords. And I came away from reading your piece and looking at the state of the region and feeling like not only is the Middle East peace processed dead, at least in the form that we knew it, but it may be the case that U.S. influence in the region is permanently diminished. And that is not a criticism of the Trump administration. Barack Obama didn't get a Middle East peace deal by not even close despite trying very hard.

You know, it's the accumulation of decades of failure. Am I too cynical because you quoted some people in the piece that have done this a lot longer than I've been alive that remained optimistic? Well, I think optimism is in my nature, probably yours, most people's. We want there to be peace in the Middle East. We've wanted it. It turned out more than the parties themselves seem to want it. In this piece, I just reflected back over too many years of covering this story of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I first started covering the Middle East in 1980.

And again and again, as hard as the United States tried to bring peace, what I said in this article was that peace just kept receding, attitudes hardened. I described individual Palestinians and Israelis that I'd known who had been eager for compromise, who've been the very soul of this peace process, over time becoming more and more just frustrated and alienated, that willingness to compromise just beginning to slip away. There's not much land left in the West Bank. When I travel to West Bank looking for how you'd create a viable Palestinian state there, man, I mean, it's just harder and harder.

The settlements do make a difference just in terms of the physical area that's available. So I've ended up, sadly, feeling pretty pessimistic about this. I think as the Israelis live with a one-state solution and the dilemma is that that creates for Israel, I think maybe there'll be a rebirth of interest in a two-state solution. But I think for the next while we're going to live with the reality that the peace process, as we've conceived, is dead. Yeah. Last question for you. Over the weekend, Indonesia dealt with a horrific earthquake and a tsunami. I mean, you're seeing hundreds, if not thousands, dead. Normally, when something like this happens, the U.S. ends up leading a coalition to respond. You know, we saw it in the Fukushima disaster in Japan. We saw it in Haiti. When there was a similar massive tsunami disaster all over the Indian Ocean, President Bush really pushed. to get relief. Is there a similar effort underway or, you know, like, are we just, have we abandoned

international relief support and efforts like we used to do? If there is such an effort, it has not been forcefully made visible to the America and the world. You know, this is, I guess, part of the America first mindset that we'll worry about our own disasters and you worry about yours. I found myself thinking this week, we have signs of the perhaps a new, Ebola crisis in Africa. And one of the things that President Obama got very little popular credit for was the way he mobilized American resources to deal with a really scary outbreak of Ebola during the second term of his presidency.

And it takes that commitment. You have to work to mobilize the resources of the U.S. government to make a difference. Climate disasters, natural disasters in Indonesia. outbreaks of disease in any part of the world end up affecting us. I mean, that's one thing that I thought we'd learned during the Obama years and we seem to be forgetting. It is one world, baby. Yeah.

And, you know, you may not think that it matters, but, you know, it's just sort of like the famous quote that's attributed to Trotsky. You may not be interested in the revolution, but the revolution is interested in you. It's a great quote. You may not be interested in the world's disasters, but they're interested in you and they're coming to you. They are. And I think you need to mobilize for that.

I think about that Ebola period of time all the time because it didn't just take the marshalling of resources, but it was a temperament issue because Donald Trump was among the many voices saying shut down the airports, stop all flights from Africa. You know, like we shouldn't provide support for U.S. doctors who went over there and who are now sick. And all of those things while, you know, feeling, you know, maybe they made sense on paper, but all the experts were telling you actually that could make. things worse and not better. And I just, I truly fear what President Trump would do in the moment in an extreme disaster like that. I don't have a high confidence. I sure that. President Obama, your former boss, gets a ding sometimes for retreating from the world from weak leadership. If you want a model of what good reassuring leadership is in crisis, Ebola is a perfect example. I mean, you know, the United States population was ready to panic. And if there hadn't been

steady, clear explanation of what it was we were doing, how we were going to keep this contained. You know, you could have had the kind of hysteria that then leads to a really severe public health crisis. So, you know, man, let's not forget how that do it right, which in this case, Obama did. Yeah, agreed. David, thank you so much for your time. It is always so much fun for me getting to catch up with you because, you know, write great opinions that people should check out on the Washington Post website.

but also you're doing tons of reporting and talking to these foreign diplomats and actually helping us understand what's happening on the ground in these places. So thank you again. Well, get back to D.C. I will. I mean, we're sick of having you out in the Illinois. It's really sunny here, though. It's nice.

All right. Thanks again. I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you again to David Ignatius. And thanks to all of you guys for listening. If you like the show, you know what to do. Share it with your friends.

Review it in the iTunes store. More importantly, go to Votesaveamerica.com. registered a vote. Make sure your friends were registered. These registration deadlines are coming up very, very quickly and we need everybody to be ready to rock on election day. So thanks guys. Talk to you next week.