Pod Save the World - Trump's disastrous European vacation

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

Tommy talks with Julianne Smith, a former Pentagon official and advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, about Donald Trump’s truly awful trip to Europe, and why his terrifying press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki is only a piece of the lasting damage it might cause to some of America’s most critical relationships.

Welcome back to Potta of the World. This has been a very weird week, everyone. We had the president of the United States go to Brussels to insult NATO. He went to the UK to insult British government and the Prime Minister Theresa May, maybe even the queen. It was very weird the way they walked. He sort of waddled there for a minute. And then the coup de grasse was he went to Helsinki to have a long solo meeting with Vladimir Putin and then possibly the most bizarre press conference I have ever seen. in my life. So I asked Julie Smith to join me to talk through Waddall. She has served in a whole host of senior roles. She was a deputy national security advisor to the vice president. She has worked at the Pentagon. She's an expert on European defense policy and NATO defense policy. So she could really help explain what damage Trump is or isn't doing, what will be lasting and what policy, if any, was discussed at this bizarre meeting and how senior officials, like the head of the CIA or the Director of National Intelligence should respond. Should they all keep working or is it time to go? I'm incredibly grateful to Julie for joining and I would be incredibly grateful

to you if you like the show to rate and review us in the iTunes store. And with that, here's the interview. So Julie, Trump's European vacation is over. He visited Belgium. Yeah, he backpacked through the UK. He stayed at a hostel in Finland. He managed to frighten and offend most of Europe, basically everyone outside of Russia and North Korea. And here, you and I are today trying to make sense of it on a podcast. So simple first question, what did you make of that press conference in Helsinki? Well, first and foremost, I have been speechless since the press conference occurred. It really, I mean, literally was breathtaking. I think at one point my jaw was hanging open as I was listening to it. I mean, let's be clear. All of us went into it with pretty low expectations.

expectations, including some members of the president's own team. And so it's hard to go lower than the very low bar that was set in advance. But in fact, Trump did surpass expectations. I mean, so let's chop it up a little bit on the positive side. And it's hard for me to say that. But I guess given how low expectations were, he didn't sell Ukraine upriver. Now, he didn't talk about Ukraine. But I think we were worried that suddenly we were recognizing Crimea as part of Russia. So that didn't happen. And he didn't cancel a military exercise. As far as we know, I mean, let's be clear, we don't know exactly what was discussed in the room. But there were a few things that I thought could be possible that didn't come to pass. But other than that, I do think it

was a train wreck. And it was a train wreck because you had the president of the United States standing there shoulder to shoulder with President Putin throwing senior members of his own team, his own cabinet members under the bus in real time. So he was pressed on a couple of occasions to speak about election meddling and acknowledged that he had been briefed by Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coates, and yet in the same breath said, you know what? I take Putin's word. And Putin has strong feelings about it and he says he didn't do it.

And in that moment, Trump abandoned the United States. he abandoned the West. He had a few days prior abandoned NATO allies and basically turned everything over to Putin saying, I believe you, your word is more valuable to me than Dan Coates's word. And that was mind blowing, truly. It really was. I think it left us all in a state of shock. You make an important point, which is we all saw the press conference. We have no idea what happened in the one-on-one meeting, nor probably does Trump's team because it was just Trump, Putin, and two translators. How unusual is that set up in your experience for a head of state, the U.S. head of state, to talk to a counterpart with nobody else in the room? It's unimaginable.

I mean, these meetings are absolutely critical in terms of understanding what is being agreed on. And you do not want to send the president into a meeting without a note taker with someone to nudge him on occasion and say, actually, Mr. President, that's not what we agreed to, or you may want to mention this, or to slide a piece of paper across the table. To send Trump in alone with no one other than a translator to meet with a former KGB agent who is as crafty as they come was a very dangerous gamble. And what I worry about is as shocked as we are in terms of what we witnessed live on television, we may be more shocked down the road to find out later either through some press release that comes out or a leak or a translator that's just had too much and finally wants to say something about what was actually said in that meeting.

And I never saw anything like it when I was in government. You don't send principles in alone like that. I mean, occasionally you could have a meet and greet for a few minutes standing behind a closed door. But to leave a president without senior staff in a meeting that that's that critical is unheard of and deeply, deeply troubling with this guy in particular. And we should be honest, somebody probably has audio of that meeting, whether it's the Russian intel services or one of our many friends in Europe or otherwise. Definitely. They probably weren't alone in the broader sense. They were not.

There were probably many years tuned in to that actual meeting. Yes. Many, many years. Hopefully ours. Yeah. We've been talking about Trump's little summit with Putin in Helsinki, but I mean, the broader trip was not much better. Like you said, I had very low expectations.

I don't have a lot of faith in Trump to conduct himself diplomatically or to do the work necessary to understand complicated issues. But I'm still really bold over by the sheer number of unforce errors. I mean, he attacked British Prime Minister Theresa May in an interview that he just didn't have to do. He mocked the mayor of London. He unfairly criticized NATO and lectured member countries. He called the EU a foe. And all of this was before the press conference in Helsinki.

What do you think like the reaction was from European allies? Are you hearing from people that you work with or have worked with in the past? Yeah, I've heard from a lot of Europeans in the last couple days, including from some of the ministers that were in the room with Trump during the emergency session. And one minister said to me, I'm tired of lavishing sick praise on your president. That was a strongly worded email that came across the Atlantic. Others have said, quote, everything has changed. And yet others have talked about the complete erosion of trust and how irrespective of what Mattis may tell them when he has these very constructive and positive meetings. with Europeans on a regular basis, they no longer are willing to take that at face value,

that they have seen Madison and others repeatedly undermined by this president, and he's doing lasting damage to the relationship. So the reviews coming out of Europe were grim, and I think it is also put Europe in a really awful position because for a while I think they thought they could do one of two things. They could ignore him and focus on the policies, which is the big line you get from members of the administration. Focus on the policies, not the tweets.

So they were willing to do that for a little while. Or they were willing to go the Macron route. And the president of France decided early on to kind of flower the president with praise, high praise at every opportunity he had. And now Macron can see that that strategy didn't really play out. And he really doesn't have anything to show for it. But similarly, the Europeans that were trying the strategy of, follow the policies and ignore the tweets also feel like that no longer holds water. And so the question is,

are they going to aggressively stand up to him, publicly shame him? Will they call him out? We did see Macron and some members of the Italian delegation actually calling Trump out at the end of the NATO summit. They said, Mr. President, you claim that defense spending is going to go higher than 2%. Actually, we never agreed to that. so I don't know what you're talking about. So that's rare. Trump didn't really have anything to say in return to that. But it's kind of an open-ended question right now where Europe goes with this. They're feeling down. They're feeling frustrated. And they too are just in a total state of disbelief, particularly after the press are in Helsinki. But I don't know where they're going to go from here, really. I don't know what the plan is. You're European defense expert. You're a NATO expert. You worked on those issues of the Pentagon. Can you just kind of give us a level set here? Like, why is NATO important in 2018? And, you know, why might Vladimir Putin enjoy seeing Trump slap it around? Well, so here's the deal. The Europeans do need to spend more on defense. So, you know, I'd be willing to say that Trump's right on that broader point. And by the way, that's a point. Countless U.S. presidents and secretaries of defense have made over many, many decades. So, you know, So that's the first point. The second point is, even though they need to spend more on defense, no group of countries in the world brings more capacity than the European continent. So when you're sitting in the situation room and suddenly you're facing a crisis that you never imagined

in your wildest dreams, the first question that's asked is who's going to call Europe? Because you know that you're going to find real capacity there. They've got real diplomatic heft. They've got trading relationships all over the world that carry great influence. And they actually have real military capabilities. I know we like to beat up on them, but the best place to find capable partners who exercise and train with us on a regular basis is in Europe, even though some of them don't spend 2% of GDP on defense. So I think for the president to fail to appreciate that reality and instead believe that you can just repeatedly trash allies with no consequence. And the fact that he sees no value in this relationship is just devastating,

but also incredibly ignorant because someday he is going to face a crisis and he's going to need partners and allies that can bring lots of tools to the table. And you're not going to want to look in some corners of the world for that. You're going to call Europe. You're going to call London and Paris and Berlin and lots of other cities. So I think he completely misses the point. there and it's a loss for all of us. It makes us less safe. It makes Europe less safe to continually chip away at this relationship. In terms of the relationship about Putin, I mean, Putin's just doing the jig on the other side of the Atlantic. I mean, he couldn't wish for a better outcome. Putin wants the transatlantic partners to be weak. He wants us to be divided. He wants us to be

arguing with each other and incapable of taking a stand against all his various acts of aggression in and around Europe. And so what Trump's doing is he's handing that to him. He's making us more divided. He's chipping away at transatlantic unity and resolve. And it's just an incredible win for President Putin. Yeah. You mentioned slapping around close allies.

What do you make of Trump's fixation with Germany? I mean, last week alone, he went out of his way to say things like Germany is captive of Russia because of energy the Germans get from Russia, that Germany is giving money back to the country. We're all supposed to be focused on in defending. ourselves from. Is this a personal thing with Merkel? Is there merit to his arguments? What did you make of that? I wish I had an answer on that one. I mean, he's got three policy disagreements with Merkel. So one, he thinks they don't spend enough on defense. Okay, he kind of has a point there. Two, he thinks that our trade relationship is in tatters and America's kind of getting a raw deal and there's this horrible imbalance.

And I mean, we could do better, but it's not as horrible as he makes it out to be. And three, he's got this problem with Nord Stream 2, the pipeline that the Russians and the Germans want to build together. And personally, I hate the idea of Nord Stream 2 and I'd like to see the project die. but there's no reason to publicly shame Germany at every turn. So I think the reason for all of this has to be personal. And maybe because he's decided anything Obama ever touched in his life is something he doesn't like. Trump now has recognized that Merkel and Obama had a really close relationship. And maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's because she's a strong female leader. Maybe it's because she's one of the strongest leaders in Europe. Maybe it's because she's because she's has stood up to him on different occasions. I don't know what it is, but there is something very anti-Germany, anti-Merical in his whole view of U.S. foreign policy. And it pains me to see that because Germany is one of our closest allies and, again, brings enormous capacity and has worked with us on countless crises over the years. And it's just a shame. But it really,

some days I can't make heads or tails of it. Yeah. Alienating the Germans and then browbeating them to build up their military. What could possibly go wrong with that combination? Exactly. Setting aside the weirdness of the press conference, there was some discussion of policy, especially in the opening salvos,

that I think was worth mentioning. They talked about non-proliferation. They mentioned Syria. Interestingly, Putin criticized Trump in the room at the podiums for pulling out of the Iran deal, although albeit gently. They talked a little bit about Ukraine. Did you hear any significant policy changes or announcements that got drowned out by all the treasony vibe? No, it was kind of the standard play. What usually happens is Putin promises you the moon, particularly in the area of counterterrorism cooperation.

And then shortly thereafter, you find that there's really nothing there. So you'll remember when Putin and Trump meant. Last year they met at the G20, and they came out and announced this new cyber unit that somehow was going to allow us to work together on cybersecurity, you know, blah, blah, blah. Well, great idea. Yeah, brilliant. So that actually turned in nothing. That's a giant nothing burger. And in fact, this administration's making fewer investments in staff members and the tools we need to enhance our cybersecurity. So I think on the counterterrorism front, of course Trump fell for the line that, oh, we could work together in Syria and we take the radical terrorism challenge very seriously.

And I'm sure Putin came up with all sorts of really nifty sounding initiatives for the U.S. and Russia to work together. I have no faith that any of those will go anywhere. What we could have done is actually made progress in the area of nonproliferation. I mean, we have to be talking about what happened. when new start kind of reaches its limit and whether or not we want to renew that or kind of where we take our relationship in the area of nonproliferation going forward. And that be a win, I think, for all of us, if Trump and Putin were to have a substantive conversation about that. But alas, I didn't hear anything in the presser that gave me an indication that we were really moving the

ball forward in any significant way. So I heard a few things mentioned, but I have little hope that anything of substance will come of it. Yeah, Newstart was the arms control agreement that Obama and Dmitri Medvedev negotiated, once that 2011-2012, to reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons that both countries have. It does feel like, in fact, Trump has, despite his rhetoric about nuclear weapons and how he's concerned about it, he thinks it's the number one issue, hasn't he increased our development, investment in nuclear weapons or production of nuclear weapons? Yeah, absolutely.

That's a priority for him as part of. of the increased defense budget. So, I mean, as is the case with most subjects, you get two contradictory answers on the same subject. You know, on the one hand, he seems to be deeply interested when it's convenient in the topic of nonproliferation and arms control. We'll kind of giving it a pat, he'll give it a passing mention. And then on the one hand, he talks about, you know, getting bunker busters and all the rest and making new investments. So who knows what the real policy is, or if he even has one. It's just like Syria.

You know, we're getting out of Syria on a Thursday and on a Friday. We're lobbying strikes into Syria after the CW attack. So, I mean, things turn on a dime. And I'm not convinced that Trump is really going to make nonproliferation a big agenda item. I mean, he brought it up in his kind of post-Helsinki interview with Fox again. But I don't see that being an area where we can really forge. more cooperation with the folks in Moscow. Yeah.

You served in a whole bunch of very senior roles in government with political appointees, with civil servants, with members of the military and the intelligence community. If you were Dan Coates, the director of national intelligence or Gina Haspel, the head of the CIA, what would you do? Do you think it's possible to lead these agencies effectively if you have a president who won't accept your word against Vladimir Putin? Well, it's funny. last year, anytime you're having this is kind of a typical Washington dinner conversation,

anytime somebody raised something like that, I would say, well, I'm glad that Mattis is there. I'm glad that some of my friends are serving at the State Department and DOD and the NSC, and they should stay. You go to the sense of duty and purpose and that they're preventing train racks, blah, blah, blah. But now I think in 2018, my answer has changed. And I'm now of the mind that these folks actually do need to step down and they need to resign. And I don't see how Dan Coates walks into his office over the next couple weeks and gets to work knowing that the president just threw him under the bus in front of the entire world while standing next to President Putin. And I feel that way for a number of people across the administration.

They used to look at me and kind of whisper behind closed doors because I do go in and see them from time to time. Julie, I know it's a little crazy, but trust me, I'm doing a lot of good work here. You've got to have faith in that. And I bought that for quite a long time, and I think they were being very serious. But honestly, if any of them said that to me today, I would just roll my eyes and say, it's time. It's time to walk out and publicly resign and call this what it is, a sham. And only then, I think, would maybe Congress wake up and understand what's going on. I think actually having somebody like Mattis there or Dan Coates or Pompeo, they're enabling the Republicans to continue to support this administration.

And I hate to even imagine a world where Mattis isn't Secretary of Defense, but he has to be asking himself, what kind of impact am I actually having today? And I don't know if I could get out of bed in the morning. You know, these jobs, as you'll remember, you work long days, you know, see your family. You know, a great sacrifice. Sometimes your health is not in great order. And all of that's happening. And, you know, you're not seeing your kids. And for what, you know, for you to be publicly humiliated?

I just, personally, I don't think I could justify it anymore. And so, yeah, my tune has changed on that a little bit. but maybe it's just too hard to imagine a world where some of these really competent people aren't around him. I don't know. It's a tough one. I'm with you. I'm with you. Also, you know, with Vice President Biden, with President Obama, I felt like a lot of very professional experience, people who didn't agree on things, go into a room and argue it out and then get a steer that came from a core set of beliefs about any given topic, whether it was Afghanistan or North Korea or cyber warfare.

I don't ever get the sense that Trump invests. any time in the issues and provides leadership. And it would just feel rudderless and awful for these folks. It would. It would feel awful. If you're never in the room and you know he's not reading the briefings and nothing that you're saying or doing is relevant to his decision making, I mean, how do you justify getting out of bed in the morning?

I just, I don't know. You mentioned Secretary Pompeo. He gets out of bed in the morning having been handed the cleanup on this major North Korea summit. Trump met with Kim Jong-un in Singapore. They put out the shortest joint declaration or statement in the history of diplomacy that agreed to essentially nothing. And then now it does feel a bit like it's unraveling after Pompeo's last trip. Do you have any hope for success? I mean, we all want that effort, those negotiations to work. But do you think that it's looking good in North Korea? No. The short answer is no. I,

don't think this is going to go anywhere. And I disagree with Pompeo on many different policy issues, but I have to say I kind of feel for the guy because he's been left holding this bag. And he knows, he has to know that the chances of him sitting down with his counterparts, the North Korean team, and really coming up with anything that remotely resembles what was promised in Singapore, those chances are almost nil. And so I just, it's a thankless, hopeless job for Pompeo. And now not only does he have the North Korea stuff, I mean, they said in the presser in Helsinki, you know, oh, our teams will be following up. And so it was a little less pressure than the North Korean situation. But still, I think Pompeo is going to be on a plane going over to Moscow, trying to

cook up some deliverable for this meeting that in fact had zero deliverables. The deliverable was the photo op for Putin to be standing next to Trump. That's all he needed. But Pompeo will probably be shipped off to come up with some sort of plan. And so I just, at every turn, Pompeo's left with this impossible, I guess you call it mission impossible, to carve out deliverables where the prospect for deliverables are near zero. Okay. I'm going to search for a little. hope here. I read a piece over the weekend in the New York Times that the White House is now encouraging direct negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan after 17 years of war, I believe. It seems like we're finally taking another strategy where diplomacy is being prioritized. I was excited to read

that announcement or leak or whatever the hell it was. But what do you make of it all? Well, I mean, I'm with you. I'll take that as encouraging. Who knows where it will go or where it will end up and if it'll ever come to pass. I do feel like this team is just overwhelmed with its current list of foreign policy challenges and all the things it wants to achieve. I mean, the State Department could just churn on North Korea for the next couple of years and be all consumed by that. But I'm hopeful that somebody is at least entertaining the idea. It's ironic. because, of course, the administration we served in was so heavily criticized that every turn for anything resembling engagement with our adversaries. And now we have Trump talking about the importance of diplomacy while standing next to Putin and supposedly thinking about negotiating or meeting with the Taliban. But I'd like to see that. I just can't imagine how they take that on while they're trying to figure out what kind of. comes after the Iran nuclear deal. They've now got to come up with some deliverable for this Russia meeting and then the Big Kahona, you know, trying to make this North Korea thing work out,

which again I don't see happening. But I hope there's some small team in the administration that's ready to move out on this. It's an idea I certainly would support. And I think it's time. And you're right. We've been at it for what seems like forever, 17 some years here. So, yeah, Again, it's a bandwidth issue, but let's hope somebody takes the reins and runs with it. Yeah. Do you think it's strange that Trump hasn't visited Afghanistan or Iraq? Oh, my God. Yes.

Or anywhere where U.S. troops are serving in common. It really is striking to me. Well, what we've come to learn, and we kind of learn this during the campaign too, I mean, this is a guy who's not, he doesn't love traveling. I mean, even to glitzy castles and venues, you know, in Europe. You sense that he's always just itching to get out of there, back to his comfort zone, you know, a big bowl of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I don't know what it is, but wants to be home. Big Macs, yeah. I can't imagine that he could even fathom a visit to a war zone, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, as we know, that's not the easiest travel in the world, even when you're president in the United States.

But it just seems like such a disservice to our service members in uniform to all the civilians that are serving over there. I mean, again, we could make just books listing all the ways in which this president has just broken all traditions, protocol, procedures, whatever it is, it's different. And this one is striking. it is always expected that the president would travel to an area where we have thousands of men and women deployed. And the fact that he has failed to do that in 18 months is astounding and really says something about him almost a, I don't know, selfishness or something, but short-sightedness too. And so for the guy who talks about patriotism and all about America and supporting America and fighting for America, I mean not to be. make a visit to either one of those countries is, I mean, again, it's just so disappointing. And I'm sure the men and women serving in those two countries have certainly taken note. Yeah, I mean,

you're right. It's not easy to jump on a plane in the middle of the night and fly over Thanksgiving and land a secret trip to Kabul or whatever. But I think most presidents find that that's actually one of the most rewarding things they ever get to do as part of the job. But you're right, Trump wants to be back home in Washington so we can spend less time with his family and go to a golf course or whatever he does during the weekend. It's pathetic. So my last question for you in my eternal search for hope is I was asked this the other day, like how much of the damage he's doing to our relationships around the world is temporal. You know, Teresa May was insulted unnecessarily. It was disgusting what Trump did and said to her,

but she might not be the prime minister in a few years, right? So, you know, relationships change, leaders change, but how much of the damage that's being done is unrecoverable, like the attacks on NATO or, you know, what have you? Like, what's your assessment of where we are in the, uh-oh, we're screwed? Well, so you always get a little bit of snapback with a new person. So if Trump is voted out of office in 2020 and you get somebody new of either party, whoever shows up, I think the world would breathe a sigh of relief and give thanks that we've got someone else at the helm and they'd work to develop a better relationship with them. But here's where I worry. If you look at the polling data in terms of how Americans look at Russia, for example, for the past 20 years or so, Democrats and Republicans have largely felt the same way.

They either liked Russia, they didn't like Russia somewhere in the middle. But over the last year and a half, we've seen this really noticeable split among Democrats and Republicans. Republicans and how they look at Russia. What I worry about is that in another year or two, suddenly support for Europe, interest in the NATO alliance, commitment to the transatlantic relationship will also become a partisan issue. And that would issue a devastating blow to the alliance because for the last 70 plus years or so, Republicans and Democrats have agreed on the important of NATO, even the importance of the EU-US relationship, on the importance of working closely with our partners in Europe, and to have all of that become a partisan issue where one party

supports the relationship and another one doesn't, and that would spell disaster for our relationship with Europe. And also, the second part to that is he's on the verge or in the middle of launching a pretty significant trade war with Europe, and that could have lasting damage on our relationship with Europe in many, many ways. That usually has been left untouched, even when we've been bickering over the Iraq War or some other policy. And so those are two examples how I think things are changing quite significantly. But sure, if you have a new face in the Oval Office in 2020, you know, Europe will give that person a shot. We're still losing credibility and trust. But there'll be a tiny snapback. But I think we have to appreciate

that Trump is doing lasting damage and God help us if he's around for eight years, then we could see some really severe consequences, I think, for the transatlantic relationship. It's a really good point, though, the politicization of traditionally apolitical things, like support for the NATO alliance, like, who in the past has had a critical word for the NATO alliance, unless you were Bob Gates demanding more money? But I see the same thing happening with support for Israel. It's becoming a Republican initiative. It's become partisan.

And I worry that that is long term very bad for those who want a strong, vibrant Israel. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks Donald Trump for occupying so much space in our mind and upsetting all of our friends. But I really appreciate you taking the time to put this all in perspective and help me understand just how worried I should be. And the answer is pretty nervous. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Have a great week. You too.

All right. That's it for POTS of the World this week. It was a little bit depressing, not as fun as talking about World Cup soccer, but important nonetheless. So thank you for tuning in. And if you enjoy the show, please share it with your friends. Rate and review us on iTunes. It helps people discover the show. And I would really appreciate it.

Have a great week.