Pod Save the World - North Korea nothingburger?

Episode Date: June 13, 2018

Tommy talks with defense and Asia policy expert Kelly Magsamen about Trump's just-completed summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un. What did they accomplish? Are we safer? Should we worry about the optics of meeting with a dictator? 

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I am broadcasting live from Pyongyang, where I accidentally went for several days thinking the summit was here. I'm just kidding. We're still in Los Angeles. It has been a weird, weird couple of days. Donald Trump went to Singapore. He met with Kim Jong-un. They had a summit about whether or not the world will end in nuclear annihilation. It seems to have gotten maybe okay because nothing really bad happened. But, I decided to get a real bona fide expert on the phone to help me figure it out. You guys have heard from Kelly Magsman before. She's over at the Center for American Progress running their national security and international policy. But she's worked at the White House on the National Security Council. She worked at the Pentagon. She's worked on North Korea policy. She's worked on China policy.

She's one of the smartest people I know, period. And we talked through the whole thing, the substance, what wasn't in the agreement, the optics and what the hell happens next. So I think you guys will really enjoy hearing from Kelly. She is funny and smart as hell and very worth your time. So here's the interview. Will he shake the hand of peace and enjoy prosperity like he has never seen a great life or more isolation? Which path will be chosen? Just kidding, that wasn't the interview with Kelly.

That was from a movie trailer Donald Trump literally made to play in his bilateral meeting with Kim Jong-un. Here is Kelly. Kelly, thanks again for being with me. Great to be here. So this morning, Trump tweeted, just landed long trip, but now everybody can feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong-Lung-Len was interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future.

Kelly, are you going to sleep well tonight? Did he bring all the nukes home with him on Air Force One? Peace on Earth, my friend. Peace on Earth. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that he sort of has this standard of success in his life. mine. I kind of want to rage about it. But North Korea has like 60 nuclear weapons, up to 60 nuclear weapons. It's got, it can, has enough fissile material to essentially, which is the stuff you need to make nuclear weapons. He has enough of that to do six a year. He's got 11 different

types of ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles that can range the United States. So Kim Jong-Gun still has all of that that he had the day before the summit, the day after the summit. So I'm personally very confused by the president's tweet. I think either he has delusions of unicorns and puppy dogs in the morning for breakfast or his advisors are briefing him badly or he's just trying to message success to his base because he realizes that he came back pretty much empty handed. Yeah. I mean, or I think most likely is that he's sort of full of shit and he wants to put on a good show for the various people watching at home and in the media and realizes that we have tiny attention spans these days and the details will never get covered

as thoroughly as the main event. But some key important context here. I mean, this is not the first time the North Koreans have said they would work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. They agree to hotlines and arms pullbacks with the South Koreans in 92. They agreed to halt plutonium protection with the Clinton administration in 2004. In 2005, they said they'd abandoned all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in return, you know, and continue a process to get us to a treaty. They said they would agree to International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguard. So in all of those instances, they said they would do the same, if not more than what they apparently agreed to in Singapore, but they never did it, right?

Right. I mean, the challenge with the North Koreans is always the follow-through, the verification of the things they've promised to do, and that's usually where all of these agreements with the North Koreans fall apart. I mean, President Trump is not the first American president to secure a diplomatic agreement with North Korea. He may be the first president to secure one of the worst diplomatic agreements with North Korea thus far. I mean, if you go and look at the language on this agreement, it's in some places actually weaker than prior agreements. So it's much more general.

I think my biggest worry about the declaration is the issue on denuclearization. And the way that it's framed in the document, it refers to, you know, North Korea will work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. For the North Koreans, that's a different definition than what the United States says. For the North Koreans, that includes everything from the U.S. extended deterrent in Asia. That's, you know, fancy speak for a nuclear umbrella to U.S. forces on the peninsula. So my concern at this stage is that Trump, maybe not necessarily understanding the true details of the different definitions, feels he came out of that room with a pretty good understanding, but North Korea is coming out of the room with a very

different understanding. And if you send your negotiating teams to then at that point begin discussions without a sort of agreed idea about what you're working towards, that's a recipe for disaster down the line. And I think it potentially could collapse the talks. Yeah. And like that that has been the thing that experts have been screaming about the whole time, that these terms were sort of made up for the North Korea challenge. And they mean very different things. to our side and to the North Korean side. I think they were designed to give both sides a little bit of political space and wiggle room to sell things back home or to feel okay about what they agreed to. But pinning that stuff down is really, really important, right? It's really important.

I mean, I think Mike Pompeo's job is going to be a lot harder because of it. Now, listen, I mean, the good news is that we have a process, a diplomatic process that has begun and that the Trump administration is going to put its political weight behind this process. Clearly, the president of the United States is bought into it on the front end. So in that sense, it's good. So there's part of me that struggles, I'll be honest, between like this feeling of, well, thank God, we are not in fire and fury land. But on the other hand, I feel like this is basically a process potentially set up for failure. And we could easily find ourselves back in fire and fury land because of that. And so I just struggle with, you know, how much to give him credit when I feel like at the end of the day was a

relatively empty agreement and that the summit was essentially a huge spectacle and a giving up of massive leverage on the front end by the president of the United States, not just the summit itself, which gives Kim Jong-un the status of a nuclear power, but the comments he made about exercises that you alluded to, et cetera. I mean, he really just kind of blew his wad right up front at the beginning of the process. And so I'm just worried about how this plays out. Yeah. I mean, I'm sort of with you. Like, one, I think that, you know, big picture, I'm glad they're talking to. It's hard to call that an accomplishment because I think that almost any of the previous North Korean leaders would have agreed to talking with any U.S. President, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, or George

Bush, George H.W. Bush, if they had so agreed as well. But, you know, Trump was the first one to jump to do it. I'm glad like you that he is talking about talks and not still tweeting about, you know, blowing everybody up. But I'm struggling with this too because I think like our side's a little more intellectually honest. I think we prioritize diplomacy over military options. But like when people are saying, well, talks are better than war. We should be happy that Trump pulled us back from the brink of war.

He brought us to the brink of war. There was no need to tweet about fucking fire and fury until he decided to do it because he was in a bad mood or stay at a press conference. Totally. I mean, you know, you could make the argument that some of the tweeting and the rhetoric is part of what we call a coercive diplomacy, which you basically try to convince to your adversary that the other options are far more negative for him. But I think it's important to remember that diplomacy is really a means to an end. It is not an end in and of itself. And in the case of North Korea, I think there is a false choice between this idea that if we don't have diplomacy, we're going to have war. We haven't had war with North Korea for. decades, we've got a pretty strong nuclear deterrent. I mean, we have, you know, thousands of nuclear weapons that have only up to 60. I mean, I think we have to be clear-eyed about the fact that there are options short of going to war, deterrence, containment, other policy options that are not just

accepting a bad deal versus going to war. Part of me thinks, I mean, I think, you know, I was thinking this morning, and as I was reading the president's tweets, that, you know, yeah, it's basically a non-deal. And maybe a non-deal is not that bad. It's better to have a nothing burger versus a shit burger. Yeah. So there's part of me that's like, okay, so clearly Trump, you know, thinks this is a good deal. I did a great job. And then he's going to move on from this. I sort of think, I sort of feel like just like JCPOA, the Iran agreement, you know, he blew it up. He's moved on from it. You don't hear about it anymore. It's like, and the Europeans are currently trying to save the Iran deal with the Iranians to basically contain Trump. So part of me is wonder is if you can do the

same on North Korea. Basically, like, his negotiating teams now pick up the ball. They try to make progress. They kind of keep it as far away from him as possible as much as that's possible. Yeah. And he just kind of moves on. Like, that's my hope in some ways. He clearly likes to do this as like TV episodes, though. So that, that worries me because I think he had the episode in Singapore. he's going to do, he wants to have the episode in the White House, maybe has the episode in Pyongyang. Like he, he does foreign policy by television episode. So I think we could come back to this again with him.

So the realest part of the deal, as best I can tell, is the pause on these joint military exercises. Let's talk about that for a minute. Sure. We do lots of big military exercises with South Koreans. We have 28,500 troops, U.S. service members on the Korean Peninsula. I was one of the people you could talk about what the. exercises are for a minute because some experts I talk to say, these are really important. These guys

need constant training to stay prepared. Readiness is key. And the South Korean troops are kind of green. Their conscription, a lot of them, so it's even double as important for them. Others say, yeah, you know what, these exercises are kind of provocative. We could pause on them or ditch them for a while and probably lose out on a bunch of readiness. Where do you land on that? What's your take on whether these are important? Listen, they are, they're very important. But I also think that it's a place. that we can adjust. So I don't think it's unreasonable for us to suspend some of the bigger exercises as long as productive negotiations are ongoing. Right. We've done, we've actually done that before. It's not that new of an idea. Freeze for freeze. They freeze their test. They freeze

their nuclear test and ballistic missile testing while we freeze sort of a big high-end exercises. And that's like flying big bombers over to test run bombing or ships in the sea. Like what kind of stuff is that? So we have, so we have two sort of a big exercise. We have Olchee Freedom Guardian, which is in August, which is coming up, which is a terrible name. I just think of like sea urchins for some reason. I don't know why. It's not, it doesn't say sea urchins. Anyway, Ulci Freedom Guardian is one of the bigger exercises. That's a late summer exercise. That's a pretty massive exercise. Then in the spring, we have full eagle and key resolve, also ridiculous names, that involve, you know, amphibious landings and

all sorts of things. So they're pretty significant. They involve thousands of troops. months and months of planning, they are really important for the South Koreans. They're really important to ensure that our forces can be ready to, what we say, fight tonight on the peninsula because, you know, Korea is really far away. So if war breaks out, our forces on the peninsula need to be ready to fight. So in terms of readiness, it is important because if we're not ready for all contingencies, you're going to have a higher number of U.S. casualties. So you may, readiness will definitely go down. I think it only goes down if they're suspended for a long period of time. So I do think there is space to sort of test this diplomacy and see if we can get it going.

That's not the part that bothered me about what he said. What bothered me was he called them provocative, which is basically adopting North Korean language. And China's language. And China's language. And like, frankly, Russia's language. So, you know, he basically internalized the language of our adversaries as it relates to our defensive exercises. You know, what I find provocative is, you know, North Korean missiles flying over Japan and landing in the sea, you know, in the sea of Japan. Like that, I find that provocative. So it's strange to me that he sort of internalizes. So if you're like Russia, if you're Vladimir Putin right now and you've got the NATO summit coming up in July, like, of course I'm going to start talking about, well, you know, American and NATO exercises, they're provocative to us too. And like Trump, I just, I find it very disconcerting.

Yeah, he called him provocative. I think he also used the words inappropriate and expensive. And expensive is his go-to. And sure, it is absolutely expensive to have a large standing army. But, you know, kind of part of the deal being commander chief, right? It's kind of the deal. And you know what? You know what? It's a lot more expensive, American casualties. Very true. Very true. It's bothersome to me. And I think for a lot of us, you know, who see the North Korea challenge in a broader context vis-a-vis our adversaries like China and Russia, He just keeps giving them gifts. Yeah. And I don't know how you walk back that language if you decided to restart them. Nick Christoph, the New York Times, talked about what wasn't in the deal. That's an interesting column.

He said, there's nothing about freezing plutonium and uranium programs. There's nothing about destroying ICBMs. There's nothing about returning inspectors to nuclear sites. We didn't get a full inventory of their nuclear program. That's something people are talking about a lot that I think is important to understand. There's no timetable or verification steps or clear pledge to halt testing. I guess Pompeo today said he wants to see the process started by the end of Trump's first term. But most experts talk about a decades-long process.

I mean, were you worried about that sort of basket of issues that Christoph wrote about or the broader timetable question? Yeah, I do worry about it. I mean, I do think, however, that those kinds of details will come through in the discussions that Pompeo will start. I assume next week the president said he was starting next week. So some of those details will come out. But those are the key details. I think first and foremost is actually getting a full scoping and understanding of the North Korean nuclear program. We have good intelligence, but we don't know everything. And it's going to be essential that up front, just like with Iran, we have a full accounting of what is in their program.

Timetable is also important because, you know, the North Koreans are very good at drawing things out. If they're going to try to extract concessions from us, we have to have a clear sense that there are big steps being taken. And Sig Hecker, who's an academic, who's been studying this for a long time, estimates it could take up to 15 years to completely denuclearize. Is that just because it takes a long time to take apart a nuclear weapon? It takes a long time to take apart weapons, all of the research facilities, all of the uranium enrichment, plutonium facilities. I mean, it's a pretty extensive program. Keep in mind, like, Iran didn't have nuclear weapons. and the JCPUA was 159 pages.

Wow. Yeah. And the nuclear agreement that the president reached this week with North Korea was, what, one quarter page? Yeah, there's four index cards. Very extensive. So, I mean, that just tells you how complicated the depth of these kinds of discussions are going to have to be. Yeah. There's been a lot of talk about the optics of the summit.

Some people say that just by showing up, it's a gift to Kim. Others were offended by the backdrop of literal U.S. and North Korean flags. side by side. There was the bizarre movie trailer style video of Trump and Kim together as the next Marvel hero duo. What do you make of the optics debate? I am certainly in favor of diplomacy, but is there a point where it goes a little too far and could help prop up or help someone that is a horrific dictator like this clan? Yeah, I have to admit. I mean, listen, you have to deal with your adversaries to advance your national security interests sometimes. And it's often uncomfortable. It's not like we liked the Iranians all that much in terms of dealing with them

on the nuclear issue, but you have to protect the United States. So that part is not what bothers me. I think the spectacle of the situation, it was a little, I mean, I'll be honest, I kind of wanted to throw up as I was watching it. But it was like the news media sort of came in and was like OJ Simpson style following the motorcades and, you know, they get to the palace or whatever the hell they were and do the flag thing. The flag thing really bothered me personally. It was just, is definitely potentially a gift to Kim Jong-on. I think that video that they played at the beginning of the press conference was propaganda, and it was deeply disturbing to me as an American to watch it and to know that the White House put that together.

The NSC. I know, right? Can you imagine our NSC putting, like, who has, I don't know, Final Cut Pro? Like, what are they doing in there? I don't know who has those skillset. Do we even have a video team? I don't even know if we had a video team anyway. We had like gateway computers from 2002.

I don't think we had shit. Yeah, so they've definitely upgraded Tommy since we've been there. Good. Thank God. But, you know, yeah, of course, could potentially be a propaganda victory. I think it's important to remember with Kim Jong-un. This guy has over 120,000 people currently in labor camps. You know, this is a regime that executes people, summary executions, forced abortions, rapes.

You know, this is a real, this is the worst government on the place. planet. Right. And the North Korean people, as much as we have at stake in this summit and in these discussions, the North Korean people, frankly, have as much at stake. And so, yeah, it really bothered me. I thought it was a little over the top. I get the idea that he's trying to build a relationship with the guy and you've got to do a little bit of, you know, some of that relationship building. But it just felt like he almost admired him. He kept using language about him that was just like, almost like, hey, this is my son. And he's like a really good businessman. It reminded me of how he talks about his kids. Well, his kids were also awful, so maybe

that's the connection. But let's give everybody some context. Like when Madeline Albright went to North Korea, she was hammered for raising a glass and toasting Kim Jong-il. When the Obama administration sent Bill Clinton to North Korea to bring back a couple of people, women who have been taken hostage, they made sure not to even smile in their photos with Kim Jong-un. Now, Trump was crazy over the top. He said it was an honor to meet Kim Jong-un. He said he's very talented. He has a great personality. He says he trusts him. He said, quote, his country does love him. You can see the fervor, I guess not remembering that people are literally forced to cheer with the threat of death if they aren't sufficiently enthusiastic. So on top of that, I guess he invited Kim to Washington. He said he'd visit North Korea. I mean,

here's what I wonder. My default is to think, wow, this propaganda could really help him back home. But then I remember that North Korea has spent decades telling their people that America is evil and the root of all their problems and, you know, the person they must fight. So I guess I just struggle with how to handle something, a situation that's weird. Yeah, no, it is weird. I'm interested to see whether the North Koreans actually publish as much of the video footage and pictures from the summit in their local press, which is, as we all know, not a free press. Right. But, yeah, no, I think Kim Jong-un, you know, like his father before him and his grandfather, really press this idea of economic independence from the evil American led West. So it is going to be

interesting to see whether Kim Jong-un really does want to open up and do a pretty significant strategic shift. And so, you know, you never know. I just think, you know, experience is that the regime is really about one thing. It's core survival. I worry that any economic opening would be just delivered to the regime friendlies in Pyongyang. So, it's, you know, the president is definitely taking a risk, but it's a lot on the front end to do. Yeah. The point you made about media in North Korea was really interesting because I saw a lot of people were surprised at the North Korean media's coverage of Kim Jong-un taking a stroll through Singapore, you know, down cities that have more electricity in a night than Pyongyang has in several

months. They wondered if that juxtaposition or if exposing people to that reality might show them a future that they want a hell of a lot more than they want to support the regime. I think that was an interesting question. Yeah, I think it is an interesting question, although I think at the end of the day that the regime is so powerful and has consolidated so much of its security apparatus. I think our hope around sort of uprisings and things like that are definitely over or sold. But certainly, like, all those, I had a real problem with the selfies with the Singaporeans. I thought that was a little bit weird to have the Singaporean foreign minister taking a

selfie with Kim Jong-un and it being broadcast all over Singapore. But listen, hey, the president is making, he's placing a bet and we will see if the bet pays off. It is very hard for me not to compare this deal, how it's being covered, how it's being talked about to the Iran deal. So the Iran deal, again, included very specific verification measures. They mothballed two-thirds of Iran centrifuges. They shipped out 98% of their enriched uranium. They dumped concrete into a plutonium reactor. So like irreversible steps to slow down their program.

As we discussed earlier, Trump got vague promises on a piece of paper. The Iran deal was also criticized because it didn't stop Iran from doing other bad things, like supporting Hezbollah, screwing around in Syria, holding hostages in Iran. Trump, by contrast, seems to have raised none of the other issues that are out there. Like, he barely talked about human rights. I'm trying to figure out how to talk about this comparison without my head exploding in the interview abruptly ending. How do you feel? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely unfair.

I think, you know, the standard, what's interesting is he set the standard of JCPOA on himself. Right. By going out and saying it was the worst deal ever, we're going to get a better deal. Now if you notice, the president's using language on Iran, it's like, oh, the Iranian leaders, everything is, they're improving. They're not doing as many bad things in the region, which is like, what are you talking about? Who's your PDB breeder? Right. Like, they should be fired, John Bolton.

But, you know, it's clear to me that his advisors are telling him your sort of reckless decisions are yielding results. And if he feels that way about Iran, and it clearly, as of this morning on North Korea, like he clearly feels like he delivered a really good deal and everything's going to be fine now and he's got a personal relationship with Kim Jong-Ei. like I kind of want to, as I told you the other day, I'm like ready to like lose my mind. Yeah. And then the coverage of it is, of course, interesting as well from the media. Yeah. I mean, and like, you know, I'm sure the press will come around to sort of talking about the fact that his promises certainly haven't been delivered on. But it makes me insane.

When you see people like fucking Tom Cotton, who's just a hack, U.S. senator from Arkansas saying, well, you know, I was opposed to talking to Iran because they didn't have. have nukes, but I support talking to North Korea because they do have nukes, and that's a different kind of problem, which, you know, just incentivizes literally everyone in the world to get some nukes and then they'll be ready to negotiate with us. But there are less horrendous people than Tom Cotton make equally bad faith arguments, right? Like the Iran deal was criticized as weak because it had sunset provisions that ended some of the restrictions in 10 or 15 years. Trump lands in the United States and declares that the whole thing is solved and no one is attacking him for that. And like the reason, like obviously this drives me crazy because I am an Obama person and I support

the Iran deal, like no doubt. But it's also like these bad faith arguments get picked up by the mainstream press and it's going to hurt Democrats and prevent them from trying to conduct diplomacy because it's always going to be criticized as weak and is always going to push us towards the most hawkish militarized response, you know? Like that's what's driving me nuts. Yes. I mean, the other thing is, like, let's be honest, there's a lot of differing views in the Democratic Party about this deal and this whole process on North Korea. And, you know, there is a Senate letter that went out Senator Schumer and some of the ranking members, really kind of like a very detailed letter about what a good deal with North Korea should be and what should be contained in it. And there was a lot of criticism around it by some folks within the party as being kind of, oh, well, you were for the Iran deal, but you're going to hold the president to a different standard. I actually think, like, nobody else is holding the president to any standard.

And so, like, it's not that, you know, of course Democrats support diplomacy with North Korea. But, like, it has to be good diplomacy and it has to yield an outcome that is a good outcome for the national security of the United States. That's our North Star should be that this deal and whatever comes out of it improves the national security of the United States and its allies. That has to be our North Star, regardless of party. And what I fear is that everyone's so eager to embrace the process of diplomacy, which I am, too, that we lose sight of the fact that this could end up in a very bad place. So, you know, it's a fine line, and I understand there's arguments on all sides, but it's essential that, you know, the president is held accountable now. We should be supportive of what they do. We have to be realistic about the outcome.

I do not think we're going to end up necessarily with all nuclear weapons coming out of North Korea. So I think we have to be realistic, but we certainly shouldn't be absent from the conversation. Yeah, we have a harder job because our argument is more complicated. And the thing that makes this all easier for Trump is he has no right flank, right? Breitbart is never going to criticize him for anything he does. Fox News will literally never criticize him for anything he does. And attacks from the right from Democrats never seem to be taken seriously by the mainstream media. when they're on Republicans just because no one is used to that.

So you literally have staffers sitting in the White House, like a woman named Mercedes Schlapp, who is like a top communications person, who attacked Barack Obama for shaking hands with Raul Castro and said, who's next, Kim Jong-un, or though she was too stupid to get his name right, and I think she called him Kim Un-jong. But, you know, this person now works for Trump

and is out there selling everything he's doing with North Korea. And so it's tough, Because, like, again, like, we want him to be talking, we don't want him to be bombing anybody. But the hypocrisy is just so glaring. And it doesn't seem like the full story will ever get told or there will be no accountability. You're known to hold him to account for actually getting done the things he said he's going to get done. See the idea, the verifiable denuclearization. Yes, and we tend to like to call on our airstrikes in our own positions.

So, listen, I mean, the way I look at this, and I've been telling friends of mine, who are involved in this, you know, we should be holding President Trump and the team to the standard that we would hold ourselves to if we were negotiating this. Right. You know, like, that's what should be guiding us in this. That's a good, honest way to do it in a good place to end. Kelly, thank you for setting me straight, allowing me to vent and helping me understand what the hell happened.

I totally want to vent more, man. What else you got? Fill me in. I don't know. I'm just, it's been a rough week. Yeah. Who knew the G7 summit was going to be the controversial one. I mean, can we just talk about there for one second?

I mean, just a quick note of context, right? So the North Korean News Service released their readout or their take on what happened in the private talks with Kim Jong-un and Trump and the broader set of meetings. And they said that Trump was moving a lot faster on sanctions relief than he said. If Justin Trudeau had given a readout like that that somehow contradicted Trump, Trump would be savaging him. But when Kim Jong-un does it, everything is hunky-dory, right? I mean, it is completely bizarre that everything they said about Obama,

that he was hard on his allies and coddled his adversaries. It actually literally true of Trump. And I don't know how to understand that or internalize it in any way. Yeah. I mean, my overall observation of this foreign policy week between the G7 summit and the North Korea summit is that we just feel very unmoored from our democratic values. and I don't understand how to explain the president's perspective on this because I just can't internalize it. But he is just much more comfortable dealing with authoritarian.

He's just more comfortable talking to guys that he thinks are in charge. They don't have to worry about democratic process. It's a strange. I'm not a psychologist, but there's definitely something behind this. You're totally right. I mean, you see it in North Korea and people say, hey, what do you think about Kim Jong-un, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps, starving millions of people. He's like, look, he's a rough guy, but that's in the past.

When it comes to bringing Russia back into the G8, getting the G7 to the G8, he seems ready and willing to move on from the fact that they invaded Crimea. They invaded a part of Ukraine. He seems to not care about things that happened before him as long as they benefit him, which is a troubling place to be. I mean, history can't begin with his own. inauguration. Totally agree. Buh. Yeah.

All right. Well, that's a depressing place to end, but we might as well in there. Kelly, thank you so much for what you're doing. Thanks for the work you guys are doing over at CAP, the Center for American Progress. Everyone should check it out, check out the website, because you're doing smart things on foreign policy, domestic policy. You're one of the key think tanks that the party has. So we appreciate all the work you guys are doing.

Thanks, Tommy. Keep it up out there too. We'll try here in Los Angeles. It's very hard to find a good assay bowl, but you know, the struggle continues. All right, Max. Talk you soon. Talk to soon. Bye.