Pod Save the World - The Deep State Strikes Back

Episode Date: March 2, 2018

Tommy talks with Jake Sullivan and Ben Rhodes about their new organization to oppose Trump’s foreign policy and promote a progressive vision of American leadership. Then they discuss what it means for Jared Kushner to have his security clearance downgraded, the status of the Iran deal, and the NSA Director’s plea for a directive to combat Russian hacking.

Welcome back to POTSafe the world. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you guys for joining me today, as always. The conversation today is about the question, what is a democratic or liberal foreign policy? In the Trump era, what do we stand for? What should we be fighting for? And maybe most importantly, how do we explain our ideas and positions in a way that moves voters and actually wins elections? How do we draw that connection between the think tanks and the people out in races fighting on the front lines? My guests are Ben Rose and Jake Sullivan, who are longtime friends of the pod. They are co-chairing a new organization that they believe is part of the solution. We talk about that work, and then we talk about some of the news of the day,

including Jared Kushner's downgraded security clearance and what that means, the fate of the Iran deal, the crying out for help from the intelligence community to stop Russian meddling in our midterm elections, and why Jake thinks the international order is more resilient than the naysayers would have you believe. Here is the interview. My guest today on Pod Save the World are Ben Rhodes, the former Deputy National Security Advisor during the Obama administration and Jake Sullivan, who was Hillary Clinton's former chief policy advisor and also a top aide to Vice President Biden. They are the co-chairs of a new organization called National Security Action. Guys, thank you for being back on Pod Save the World.

Always glad to be your time. Thanks for having us. So, okay, let's start with National Security Action because it's a good idea. The thinking is, call out Trump's reckless foreign policy decisions. help develop messages that can articulate and sell democratic foreign policy ideas and priorities, help candidates get dedicated to a progressive vision of American global leadership and build a platform. Tell us more about the organization. How does this work? And why is it a temporary organization stood up during the Trump era? Well, you know, the basic point, Tommy, is that I think there's a vacuum

on the Democratic and progressive side of the infrastructure. You know, a president takes up so much attention. So Obama kind of set the agenda for the national security policy for Democrats. And when you're in opposition, you know, you don't have that megaphone. And frankly, Democrats don't naturally gravitate to these issues in the same way that you saw kind of organic mobilization around health care. So the basic concept is let's take a network of what I think will be over a thousand people. Wow. Who served in government, who helped advise the Clinton campaign or other campaigns, who worked in Congress, and let's activate them in the political debate. These are people, you know,

frankly, almost all of your guests on your show, who, you know, who are sitting at think tanks or universities, but they want to be involved in the political debate. And so what National Security Action can do is channel their voices into public messaging campaigns against Trump's reckless foreign policy or in favor of alternative progressive policies who can help advise and strategize with members of Congress on issues of oversight and how they're focusing their efforts and amplify, frankly, things that are being done by progressives in Congress. But also importantly, be active in the political space. And so we want to work with other progressive organizations, you know, whether it's a move

on or an indivisible and helping their membership think through core national security messages and lines of effort against Trump or for progressive values. And in the midterms, frankly, you know, support candidates who want to be active this space and pushing back on Trump. So if we can leverage this network of people to, again, make progressives better in the national security debate, we'll have fulfilled our objectives. And frankly, we're not trying to set up a think tank here or a platform for ourselves. We're just trying to deal with this emergency moment of Trump. And ideally in three years, this thing goes out of business because we don't have that emergency moment anymore.

Ben, so you and Jake, like, you guys are people who are able to understand in Mary. politics, policy, and messaging in the foreign policy space in a way that you don't see very often. A lot of times you have very smart thinkers siloed off into think tanks, cranking out white papers that kind of get emailed off into the ether. Jake, how will this organization translate those good ideas into political arguments and make people feel comfortable doing that? Well, the first thing we have to do is recognize one of the challenges in the past year in trying to hold Trump accountable on foreign policy, and that is that people seize on the story of the day, the tweet of the day, the outrageous comment of the day, but never build it up into a larger thematic narrative, a story about why Trump represents a danger to the United States, why he represents an embarrassment for the United States, why his corruption and his personal financial dealings are actually – there's a throughline of that that began from the day he stepped into the White House where he is putting his personal business interests ahead

of the national interest. And so what we really want to do is be able to build these larger campaign-like narratives around Trump's corruption, around his reckless decision-making on the use of force, around the ways in which he's ceding leadership so that the world now looks to China and respects their leadership more than America as in global public opinion surveys, and then take the news of the day, whatever happens and be able to show people, look, this isn't just a one-off, this fits into that larger storyline. That's going to require us working across multiple platforms using a whole bunch of different tools and techniques from digital communications,

Hill Oversight, voices that you bring onto your program, for example. And we want to mobilize all of that in service of a consistent, strong narrative that really drives some of these core themes. And Tommy, you know from our government, the Republicans are good at this. Yeah, they are. And, you know, I think they're disingenuous and we're obviously going to be rooted in facts and truthful arguments. But I mean, we face this in government. You know, they had their narratives, right? If Obama, you know, nodded his head in the presence of a foreigner, he was apologizing for America. Literally. They slotted it. Yeah, literally. No, and they slotted everything into that. Or Benghazi, you know, the repetition of Benghazi, nobody even.

even really knew what it meant by the end of the story, but, you know, we're going to release terrorists in the United States from Gitmo, even though we weren't going to do that. I mean, so again, they did it, I think, often in a disingenuous way. But if you look at what they did, they had an infrastructure of think tanks, but also action arms and mobilized experts and social media campaigns that were constantly driving negative narratives about a bomb farm policy. Now, we want to, forward looking, also put forward to an alternative. And so not just be against Trump, but before something as an alternative. But again, we have to be systematic and organized and coordinated in order to make these issues relevant to people in their own lives. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean,

the Republican critique is that they are strong and Obama was weak, that he was apologizing for America. It was unrelenting, simple, and negative. The Democratic Party has not done a great job of telling a broader story about what we believe in. And I think part of that is because foreign policy can be a big factor in presidential elections, but usually that's a conversation about wars. There was Iraq in 2004 or 2008. Vietnam was a major campaign issue in 72 and other elections, but you don't hear a bigger conversation about development, diplomacy, our role in the world. Those conversations are even harder to find in congressional races. How do we get candidates to focus on foreign policy and how do we get voters to care? Well, the first thing is, I think on some of the

arguments against Trump, I think you can look at what he said and turn it around on him. On the corruption point that Jake made. This is a guy who went around the country in the campaign saying he'd stand up to these foreign countries, and he sold us out to these foreign countries, often for potential personal and financial interest or Trump organization interest. That should be a relevant campaign message. This guy said he was going to stand up to these other countries and said he's selling out. Or with war, you know, where diplomacy and development come into it is this guy's complete absence from caring about diplomacy is going to get us into a war. could be a catastrophic war in North Korea if we don't pursue smart diplomacy there, or it could be

a kind of escalation that leads to U.S. troops being in harm's way and more places in the Middle East. I also think that Americans, and you remember from the O.A. Cambay and Tommy, sure, they may not, not everybody may be following the ins and outsary farm policy issue, but they want to feel like we're respected around the world. Yeah. And they look at Trump, and he's an embarrassment around the world. He's toxic around the world. And I actually think that is relevant. So I think there are some arguments that can be marshaled against him. I also think, frankly, inevitably, the Republicans always marshal arguments against progressive candidates. And you can already see them mobilizing to do that in this cycle on immigration and ISIS. And we have to be ready

for the attacks that are coming our way as well. If you think back, Tommy, to both 2002 and 2014, the Republicans really mobilized around the midterm elections on national security arguments. Right. In 2014, it was some combination of ISIS and a bowl. maybe, you know, Ebola infected ISIS fighters coming to America to, you know, districts in whatever it was, New Hampshire or Georgia or what have you. And this is a traditional playbook of theirs that has an extra twist this time around because what Donald Trump laid out in the state of the Union and frankly really how he built his whole campaign is this attempt to mush together immigrants and terrorists and refugees and all of this. these people coming from out there to harm you here. And it's mixing up personal security with community security, with national security. And Democrats are going to have to be ready to answer that and to fight these battles not just in an immigration silo, but to think about the broader

national security foreign policy dimensions of these as well. And part of what we want to do is help figure out how to do that most effectively. Got it. That was a real thing. Ebola-infected ISIS members coming across the border. That really was. It was actually an attack. It was so crazy. Where are we? Yeah. So this time it'll be ISIS guys who joined MS-13 and entered the diversity lottery and then got their family in through chain migration.

Don't give them. Don't give them ideas. And Tommy, some of the issues that you guys have talked about on Potsave America, right, so blending national security and domestic policy have a national security dimension, the gun debate. Like we shouldn't have, if we care about ISIS and preventing ISIS attacks, we shouldn't make it easier for them to go by an AR-15, you know. So some of these issues that, or corruption, you guys have talked about, you know, people don't like cabinet secretary is flying around on vacation on private planes. They should also care about like the Kushner family trying to sell visas in China or whatever the hell they were doing. I mean, so I think that there's a national security dimension to some of the issues that are already getting traction among progressives, you know, from guns to corruption that we can help amplify.

Yeah. I just literally talks about access to weapons in the United States. propaganda. That should be usable for us. So, I mean, Jake, one thing you mentioned that I think Trump used in a potent way on the campaign was he, he blended traditional partisan lines on a lot of issues, including foreign policy. He called the Iraq War disaster. He called for less engagement around the world and appeal to nationalism. Obviously, he hasn't followed through on that vision. And as you guys said earlier, he's been completely corrupt. But like, how do we articulate a democratic or progressive foreign policy vision in the wake of that scrambling? What

is the elevator pitch of things that Democrats care about and are fighting for on foreign policy? You know, it's interesting. A lot of the things that I think now should be front and center for Democrats were the kinds of things that the three of us would have said were just total banalities, the sort of stuff you wouldn't even say because it's so boring. But now Trump has made it relevant again and to be advocated for. So, for example, the idea that the United States actually uses diplomacy to solve conflicts and advance its interest around the world rather than relying on the military, sounds pretty simplistic, but at a time when the Trump budget guts the State Department by a third and you even have the Secretary of Defense saying that when you're cutting diplomats,

you've got to be buying more bullets. We ought to be making the case that diplomacy, that peaceful resolution of disputes, that not increasing our military deployments in country after country as Trump has done has got to be a cornerstone of how the United States leads in the world and protects our interests. So that's one. Second thing is, to be able to rely on alliances, to have other countries who are an asset to the United States, our friends, our like-minded partners around the world, helping us solve these big problems. Because at the end of the day, the major issues of our time, whether it's climate change or a terrorist getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction or the next epidemic

that could sweep across the United States, all of these are problems that require us having friends in the world who help us solve them. And if you're left with no diplomacy and a world that looks at the United States, not as a beacon, but as an embarrassment, you're not going to be able to solve those problems. These kinds of things, these back to basic simple messages about the core propositions of what has made America the leader of the free world. In a typical election, you might roll your eyes at that and say, you know, that doesn't sound so interesting or novel to me. But in an election where these are being contested by the President of the United States, it seems to me that we should be driving very hard at them.

And, of course, there's a whole series of other issues, specific issues as well, that we can make those kind of more abstract principles come to life with. North Korea would be a great example of that. The whole issue of President Trump and Jared Kushner being taken advantage of by foreign dictators at the expense of America, very evocative ways that you, you can bring to life these basic issues. But I think that's the ground that we're going to have to stand on in both 2018 and 2020. And Tommy, I think there's some real estate that the Republicans have given up on this. You know, they've spent decades since Ronald Reagan portraying themselves

as the party that promotes American values around the world, like democracy and human rights. Well, Trump has, you know, overtly turned his back on that. And so I think, again, adding to Jake's list of, you know, getting to the back to the basics and a place that we can all stand on, the the idea that we should defend democracy at home and around the world is a principle that actually needs to be defended right now. Similarly, the Republicans used to, and they still claim to be the party of law enforcement. Well, Donald Trump has spent, you know, weeks assaulting the credibility of the nation's chief law enforcement agency, the FBI. And that's not just about the Russian investigation. Those are the guys who have to catch MS-13. And he's making us

less safe every day he attacks the intelligence community of the FBI. He's attacking the people who have to disrupt terrorist plots and go arrest gang members. And that's making us less safe. So I do think that there's some foundation that we can stand on that, frankly, is more relevant because of Trump and it's frankly more available to progress us because clearly, you know, Marco Rubio can mouth words about freedom, but he's supporting a guy who is turning his back on it in the United States and around the world. Yeah, Marco can barely mouth the words. Let's be honest. I want to ask you guys a couple questions about one of the great foreign policy minds of our generation, Jared Kushner. Jared had his security clearance downgraded from TSSCI or top secret sensitive compartmented information to the secret level.

I was hoping we could explain to folks kind of what that means in practice. And if you guys think there's any way that he can continue doing his job with the secret level clearance, by way of background, I should say both of you have read it participated in the PDB, the president's daily morning intelligence, briefing. Jake, you helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal. Ben, you helped negotiate the detente with Cuba. So you understand Jared's role as, you know, floating foreign policy advisor slash apparently Middle East envoy. What does it mean in practice to be denied access to TSS intelligence? And how does Jared keep attending the PDB acting as shadow secretary of state in Middle East envoy with a downgraded clearance? Well, I mean, first of all, you can attend the PDB, which is entirely, you know, a higher level

of classification. I mean, just for people, for the basics, you know, secret level of classification is basically like a diplomatic cable, you know, something that is secret because it's kind of proprietary information of the U.S. government, our analysis of events or our reporting on events, but not something that relies on sources and methods of intelligence collection. And that would be top secret and above. And so frankly, I don't know, you know, Tommy, every situation room meeting we in was generally, unless it was just about communications, was generally the top secret level. I'd say 99% of it. 99% of it.

Yeah. Yeah, we're too. You know, if we walked into that room, it was TS or above. Certainly the PDB was, certainly any discussion where the President of the United States is making a decision about foreign policy and national security. So I think it's literally impossible to operate in that way without that level of security clearance. And, you know, if you're trying to be a frontline negotiator with foreign counterpart,

with, in this case, the Israelis, the Palestinians, plus all the Arab states that have a stake in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Trying to negotiate without access to intelligence information that gives you some sense of leadership intentions on the other side, some sense of what's possible. It's literally like driving a car with, you know, a bunch of crud on the windshield that you can't see through. Like, you're flying blind. You cannot effectively, to mix my metaphors from cars to planes. land the plane because you're not seeing the whole picture. And if either Ben had tried to manage the entire Cuba process or I had tried to help negotiate the Iran nuclear deal without access to intelligence information, I mean, President Obama would have fired us for

dereliction of duty because you just can't effectively pull off something like that. And the same goes for even things that aren't of, you know, quite the diplomatic magnitude of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I mean, ostensibly, Jared Kushner is supposed to be one of the point people dealing with the Chinese on certain issues. He's supposed to be the point person working that, yeah, exactly, on NAFTA. None of these things can be effectively handled at the, just the interim secret level that he's been assigned at this point. That's so bizarre. I mean, I guess Trump could give him a waiver, right, and say, you know, you have clearance now. You can read whatever you want. But we all know Trump doesn't read the PDB, so I'm not sure how that would work in practice either.

Well, I mean, the whole thing makes you wonder just how they were managing information for all these months, right? I mean, like, I don't, you know, the staff secretary didn't have permanent clearance and Jared didn't. And these are people who are either handling or supposedly in the most sensitive meetings. It does make you wonder. I mean, and this is where, you know, if you had real oversight from Congress, you'd be low. looking into, you know, how are they handling this classified information? Who saw it? And were they following any protocols? Because you've also been in that one thing that's hard for your, you know, listeners that have been in government, the West Wing is tiny space, you know. Like our office

was a skiff, a place where you could have secure compartmental information, which is TS information. And so it's almost hard to be physically present without seeing that information. And it does seem like they had been pretty cavalier with it. I mean, obviously they were when Trump apparently told the Russians some highly sensitive information. But I mean, that paints a picture of a place that is not safeguarding this information. And I can tell you, like, from negative experience, you know, we're all obviously still dealing with the fall out of the Russian meddling in the election. Foreign governments will take advantage of you being sloppy. I mean, the Chinese, the Russians, and any number of other governments, like literally have huge resources devoted to trying to find

the vulnerabilities that could allow them to gain some intelligence advantage on us. And if they're being this sloppy with who has access to information and what's happening in that information and who they're talking to, that will compromise our national security. Well, this is, I mean, with Jared Kushner, it goes to a whole other level beyond sloppiness, of course, because you had this incredible story about how at least, Four governments have been essentially scheming internally to figure out, hey, how do we most take advantage of this guy? Because we think he's got personal financial interests that he wants to look out for.

And so maybe he'll cut us a good deal on something. The Chinese, for example, some Middle Eastern countries, Mexico. That adds another dimension to this that is genuinely shocking. a person who's being charged with senior foreign policy decision making and statecraft is being looked at by other countries as essentially a target for some combination of enticement or extortion. And like that leaves the United States incredibly exposed at the highest levels. Yeah.

I mean, to put a little bow on it, Jared Kushner could not read the intelligence intercepts about the foreign countries trying to manipulate him with a secret clearance because he no longer had access to intercepts. I mean, John Brennan would have snapped us over his knee like a twig if we pulled this shit. It is stunning. Anyway, okay, so I don't talk to guys about the Iran deal because Trump is a scary thought timing. Yeah, John, I miss John. On the Iran deal, Trump is threatened to tear up the Iran deal several times, but he's stopped short. He decided to punt it back to Congress and make them deal with it. According to New York Times this week, he is demanding that Europeans fix the Iran deal by May 12th or else will pull out for good.

In your mind, what's the status of the Iran deal? Like, is it still working? And is there a chance that the Europeans might negotiate some follow-on deal that deals with some of Trump's concerns about Iran's ballistic missile program or access to military sites or the duration of the Iran deal? Is there a way this pressure could get something good or are we cruising to a disaster? Well, I would just say three things about this. The first is that even if Trump weren't president, if Hillary Clinton were president right now,

we'd be talking to the Europeans about a follow-on. Every significant arms control treaty that the United States has negotiated in the past decades has involved subsequent follow-on arrangements. So there's nothing novel or unusual about that. And the fact that the Europeans are thinking, okay, how do we extend some of the timelines or how do we deal with some of these other issues that you just described like inspections or missiles? That all makes sense. So it's not like Trump has kind of discovered something new in that. But that leads to the second point, which is what Trump is doing. by constantly engaging in this will he or won't he game of is he going to pull out or isn't

he going to pull out, he's making the United States the issue and not Tehran. He's having people go to sleep at night in European capitals worried more about what's going on in Washington than they are worried about the ways in which Iran is engaged in all kinds of malign activities across the region. That's not good for the United States. Scary point, yes. And then the third thing is that Trump coming out and saying, look, if I don't get exactly what I want, I'm going to walk, is painting himself into a corner and he may just follow through on that. I think we have to be very concerned that the deal does not survive this year. And I think that that would be a strategic disaster for the United States because

to your question, the deal is working. The Iranians have been complying with it. It has put a lid on their ability to produce nuclear fuel. It has stopped them from being able to advance any aspect of their nuclear weapons program. It has created a huge inspections regime that has given us visibility into every aspect of the program. And frankly, it's preserved all of the options that we've always had to be able to deal with the Iranian nuclear program going forward. So to walk away from this deal would create a rupture with Europe, would have Iran back very quickly spinning up the centrifuges, and it would bring the question of whether or not we were going to end up in an outright conflict with Iran front and center right now. So I'm

nervous about where things are headed. I hope the Europeans can find a way to take prudent steps on this that help address some of the issues that have been raised. But I wouldn't count on Donald Trump being remotely rational or reasonable about how he deals with this in the months ahead. Yikes. Jake, you wrote a piece for foreign affairs that was pretty optimistic, despite that last answer, or at least what counts were optimistic these days. You argued that the existing international order is more resilient than what a lot of people have characterized it as since Trump became president. And that despite his attacks, maligning continents as shitholes, criticizing allies like NATO, slapping major tariffs on other countries, that the system can endure.

What gives you the confidence that these norms and institutions that we've relied on for decades are stronger than what Trump can do to them in four or eight years? Well, first of all, what motivated me to write the piece is I just think that there is a real growing doomsday chorus in the West generally. about how it's all over, the United States can never lead again. And I don't believe that taking a fatalistic attitude will get us anywhere other than turning that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think those of us who believe that American leadership delivers more peace, progress,

and prosperity for our people and people elsewhere have to stand up and fight for it. And I think that there are signs that suggest that we can survive a term of Trump. The argument I make is that if he's elected a second time, the difference won't be one-ext. to 2x, it'll be more like 1x to 10x because the rest of the world will see that as no longer an aberration from what the United States stands for, but as the new normal. So the reason I think we can endure these next few years is because actually we've built a set of rules and institutions and principles that are helping solve problems despite what Trump wants to do to them. And I'll just give you one example, the Paris Climate Agreement. The Trump

administration pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, but it was built and designed in this really creative and flexible way so that the American private sector, American cities and states can still step up and deliver on our commitments, and the rest of the world has the flexibility to be able to meet their commitments so that it can survive a temporary American absence. And I think that one of the successes of the Obama administration was helping to move these larger global problem-solving efforts into this more creative and flexible space, precisely to be able to survive and be resilient through some of the strains and stresses

that are being imposed right now. And do you feel confident in the order here? Is Bob Mueller our best hope, or how do you feel about the norms and institutions at the year-in? I mean, that's the question, right? At home, I mean, I think it's a mixed bag. I mean, on the one hand, I think courts have been pretty good in fulfilling their constitutional role and kind of checking Trump's excesses. I think the media has found somewhat of a voice in holding his feet to the fire when he lies, for instance.

On the negative side, the Republican Party has submitted to a full hostile takeover from the Trump organization. and just no pushback. I mean, the occasional floor speech from Jeff Lake, notwithstanding, there's been no pushback from the Republican Party. I also think what I worry about at home is the gradual erosion of our expectations in the office of the presidency, you know? I mean, people talk about normalization. I think it goes beyond that.

Like we have a set of expectations for what the president does and what his staff does and how they operate. You know, even in this conversation, we've talked about people like, ignoring security clearances and potentially engaging in corrupt dealings with foreign governments. And, you know, we haven't even really delved into, you know, at a minimum not standing up to a foreign power, Russia, assaulting our democracy. And I do worry that there's this kind of just erosion of what we come to expect from the presidency. And when someone has elected, hopefully who's not Trump in three years, what are our expectations of that office? I think around the world, you know, there's similarly a mixed bag.

I mean, I think you see countries, you know, in Europe, you know, there was this fear after our election in Brexit that there'd be this wave of right-wing populism. Right. Well, it's been pretty well, you know, and the center held in France, the center basically held in Germany. You know, you see the Europeans standing up for things that America used to have to take the lead in standing up for. and the functioning of the international system continues, but they're troubling trends coming. One is, you know, little notice here, Xi Jinping just kind of became member of China. There is an anti-democratic trend that I think, you know, we kind of came of age and a generation that kind of took for granted that democracy was expanding around the world.

And I think we're entering a period of time when it's actually not the case. There's going to be kind of a fight to protect democracy where it is and try to promote. it where it isn't. Well, just to add to that point, I mean, I just, you know, made a strong pitch against fatalism, but I think we have to be equally on guard against complacency. I'm not arguing, well, everything will just be fine if we get rid of Trump. We do have a big fight on our hands against a lot of forces out there that, as Ben says, are pushing back against the basic principles of free market democracy.

And between complacency and fatalism, in my view, lies the urgency of us all coming together and saying, let's figure out how we join this fight and win it. But for me, that has to start with the proposition that there still is a chance for an American-led international order, for a world that reflects the values and principles and basic norms and rules that we've set out, that to a large extent have really worked for us. We have to stay committed to that. We cannot throw up our hands and say, you know what, the next century belongs to China, or it's just going to be utter chaos everywhere. We have to start thinking. thinking, what's it going to take for us to be able to succeed in this? And the thrust of my

article is essentially to call the action to us to step up to do this kind of work, to do the work, to be ready for the world after Trump. And where I totally agree with Jake is, and Tom, you and I used to talk about this, but nobody else is trying to play our role. You know, China's not trying to lead the international system. China's trying to advance China's interests. They don't really act just to give you a couple of examples. When a bull happened, we had to call the play, you know, and, you know, which country kicks in which resources and we'll fly your health care workers over there. When we had to put together a coalition against ISIL, we put it together and we, you know, who gives arms to the Kurds and who's bombing in Syria,

what's everybody's role? More routinely within the UN system and the G20 and the G7, all these organizations that seem like they operate on their own, they don't. And they often operate because the United States is setting an agenda and setting targets and trying to move mobilize other countries to move in that direction. I think under Trump, that is going to atrophy a little bit, but it's not going to go away. And the United States is the only country that has the capacity in terms of our size, our strength, our military, our network of alliances, our expertise if it is not emptied out of the State Department to kind of take the helm of that network of international institutions and alliances and arrangements. Because I think, again, people have to recognize that

China's not, they don't want to take our place. I mean, I remember, you know, Obama was in, was dealing with the Eurozone crisis. You'll recall Tommy in like 2011, 2012. The Eurozone risk kind of pulling us down back into a great recession, if not depression. And so he's constantly negotiating with the Europeans about what they're going to do. And I remember there was a G20 and everybody was saying that, you know, Hu Jintau was going to come over to that G20 and, you know, basically put down a check and take over the world or something. And, and Obama was negotiating late in the night with all the Europeans. and he texted a few of us like, I don't see who at this meeting, you know, because the Chinese

don't care. They need to look out for their own interests. They're not there to make sure the Europeans settle their stabilization plan for the Eurozone. So we're really the only country that can fulfill this role. And if we don't, then I think it's really just going to be, you know, a test of strength and frankly a country like China of well over a billion people is ultimately going to be able to exert itself much more aggressively in that type of scenario. It's a great piece. I'm going to link to it on the Potset for the World Facebook page, so everyone should check it out. One institution that seems to be screaming for help and no one is listening is the intelligence community who are demanding that something be done to prevent the kind of election interference we saw in 2016 from being replicated in the upcoming midterm elections. Mike Rogers, who is the director of both U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency or NSA, told lawmakers yesterday at a hearing that he has not been granted the authority by President Trump that he needs to destroy.

Russian election hacking operations. I'm trying to read between the lines here and figure out what he's talking about, given that he's probably talking about wildly, incredibly highly classified operations in a public setting. Do you guys think that this means Trump hasn't given him the authority to conduct certain offensive cyber operations to disrupt or take out what the cyber units are doing that are currently hacking us? What authorities does he need?

And what did you make of these comments? Well, first of all, Mike Rogers. is like the least. I mean, I was stunned to see that. I mean, the guy, I always assumed that like whoever was running the NSA is a Republican. He's not a partisan figure. And he's also not a hyperbolic figure. He's a very, you know, understated guy. So I was shocked by that testimony. It's one of these things that if we weren't 700 other things happening that day, I mean, every now and then there's something like that that happens that I kind of have to watch several times to believe that it happened. So I guess my point is, Mike Rogers would not be saying that

in public testimony if he wasn't like really alarmed by something. These guys know how to kind of when to do that. Speak more carefully, read the talking points. He just came straight out repeatedly over and over again and said, I don't have what I need. They're getting the drop on us. They've got an advantage over us. And I don't have authority. It was the equivalent of a, you know, a civilian lighting their hair on fire at the witness table. That's how dramatic this was for a uniformed officer to speak in these terms about his own commander-in-chief. And what I took time is putting aside whether it was censored or not, that he has no, there's basically, he's been asked to do nothing. So he's seeing this threat.

And the way I took it is you don't even have to think it's the most sensitive stuff. The appearance he was giving was basically that nobody had asked him to do anything about what is clearly a threat. And this is consistent. This fits into a larger pattern. The FBI director Christopher Ray testified a week or so ago that President Trump hasn't given any direction to the FBI to take on the Russian interference threat. The Congress, by overwhelming bipartisan majorities, passed sanctions on Russia and the administration hasn't levied a single sanction despite the law requiring them to do so for Russian interference. So on the sanctions front, on the law enforcement front, and now on the intelligence, and cyber operations front, it's bufkis from the administration on this. And, you know, this is pretty striking. It almost makes you wonder, Tom, if there's something that went on between the Russians and Trump. I know. I mean, Jake, you live through the 2016 hacking in an excruciating way. How worried are you by this failure to respond? And, like, what should we be looking out for for the midterms and, I guess the 2020 reelect that needs to get done? Like, how can the public lobby to push the administration

to do the things they need to do? It's just really hard to see. how as long as Donald Trump is president, and as long as the whole question of Russian interference is bound up in his sort of psychology about his own legitimacy, it's hard to see how pressure on him is going to amount to much. And so I think that the effort has to be in Congress. There are bills up on the hill right now. There's one called the Deter Act, which would add a whole bunch of costs on Russian would go into effect automatically if the DNI found that they were continuing to interfere in the election going forward. So I think people, should be putting pressure on their members, both Democrats and Republicans, they should feel

some pain for this. And I think basically Mike Rogers was giving a rallying cry to the country to join him and pushing Congress to hold the administration accountable. I guess for me, there's sort of three categories of things I'm worried about heading into 2018. The first is what we saw in 2016 with the hacks and then the leaks of documents. You know, we could easily see that again in congressional campaigns. And so I think all of the campaigns have to be thinking very hard about their own email hygiene and cybersecurity. The second thing is these disturbing reports about how the Russians have probed and penetrated

state election systems and critical infrastructure. And we are not at all ready to deal with that. And so I think figuring out how we move in an emergency way to harden our critical infrastructure and protect our state election systems would be very important. Then the final thing is the hardest. And it's these trolls and bots and the information warfare campaign on social media, which has never stopped. It's been going on every day. It was happening in respect to Parkland and Charlottesville and all these other things. And there, I think, it's just, that's going to take a really broad combination of tools. But as long as you've got a guy sitting in the Oval Office

who is looking at a foreign adversary threatening the United States and is basically shrugging his shoulders, it's just going to be very difficult for us to do anything. And Putin can continue to do what he's doing at low cost. On the third one, the tech companies do need to do more in this space. And, you know, they're beginning to move in that direction, you know, Facebook and Twitter and trying to think through ways to at least have greater public awareness about where is – I mean, one of the things, you know, I think I've said this to you before, but like, you know, Wikipedia at least tells you what's a verified source and what isn't. Right.

In your Facebook feed, everything looks like a news story. Like, I don't know why Facebook can't do that. I certainly know Jake doesn't have to make point I'll make it for him. Like, why were Hillary's ads three tons more expensive than Trump's? I mean, that's a separate issue. But clearly the social media platform model was wide open for the type of manipulation that Trump pursued. And somewhere we had to find a way to recognize. the openness of those platforms, with the fact that if people are getting their news on Facebook,

like, they shouldn't, like, have thousands of Russian bots who are basically deciding what's in their news feed. I mean, that's not, to me, an open Internet. You know, that's an internet, that's an unsafe environment where basically people are being manipulated. And, you know, what you've seen in Europe is, yes, and it helps have governments who are invested in the problem, but like almost public awareness campaigns about like, you know, how do you identify something that is true and something. It's not. Now, the problem we have is not only is Trump not doing that, but by yelling fake news about real news. I mean, he's creating this kind of post-truth environment, right, where there really is fake news. There's Russian bots creating literally made-up stories

and trying to get them into our news feeds to sow division and to help Trump. And then there's actual news that Trump is calling fake news. And this is, to go back, your question about kind of where we are, that to me is maybe the most dangerous thing that's happening, the kind of debasement of, like, truth and facts as something that exists in our discourse. Yeah, I totally agree with that's what Russia wants. You're right. Trump is obviously obsessed with the election result looking legitimate and flips out every time that's questioned, but the only other thing that he seems to care about more is looking strong. And so it's surprising to me that time and time again Putin comes out and looks tougher than him he doesn't mind.

Like today, he announced a bunch of new military hardware, you know, ICBM that makes missile defense useless, a supersonic missile, an unstoppable drone submarine. Like, I don't know if any of this shit is real or true or even if it's a significant threat. But he doesn't seem to worry about the optics of looking weak and feckless in the face of Russian aggression. And that surprises me. Yeah. I mean, I, look, you know, we'll see what Bob Mueller's got. But there is something deeply, deeply strange about the fact that Vladimir Putin is literally the only person I can think of that Trump has not decided to lay love on. And everybody should be questioning that because every day Russia is doing something that we would normally find cause to criticize, whether it's in Ukraine or in Syria or in their attacks on us or what they're saying about our allies and threats they're making.

and there really is something chilling about the fact that Trump, I mean, when he meets with Putin, he comes out afterwards and basically gives Putin's, well, Putin told me that there was no interference and he seemed very sincere in that belief. Or Putin said there was no interference in our intelligence community made this up. I mean, it's, again, you can get kind of like desensitized to Trump, but that's crazy. And it's really deeply alarming given that Putin basically represents. a strain of Russian revansionism that is like the antithesis of what I think most us believe is Americans.

Well, I think, look, there's something Ben's exactly right. And I watch this on the campaign even before the specter of Russian interference had really been raised. The just bizarre fascination with the guy, the effusive praise, the way in which he sort of kowtas. And I think, look, I think part of it is now the psychology around the election, as we were just talking about. I think part of it is that Trump probably thinks, hey, the Russians will keep helping me, so why would I get in their way? I think part of it may be that the Russians

have something on him. But this other factor for me is the more psychological factor, I think, is he has some envy of Putin. Like, he sees Putin and thinks, this is a tough, strong guy who bestrides his country like a colossus and like, I should be like that, you know. And so I think part of what is motivating him here is almost a more elemental human thing where it's hard for him to see Putin as an adversary because in a funny way he kind of looks up to him. And I think that's, if true, like I do not have a degree in psychology. But if true, is a pretty disturbing fact about the person who is supposed to be occupying the position of leader of the free world.

Yeah, I agree. everyone should go to National Security Action.org check out what these guys are working on. It's a phenomenal group of truly brilliant progressive thinkers on foreign policy. Ben Rose, Jake Sullivan, thank you both for being on the show. I love talking with you both,

and I learned a lot, as always. So appreciate it. Thanks, Tommy. See you guys. Thank you again for listening to Pod Save the World. If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes, and there will be more stuff that we discussed today

linked on the Pod Save the World Facebook page. that out too. Thanks, guys. Have a great weekend.