Pod Save the World - We won the House! What does it that mean for the world?

Episode Date: November 9, 2018

Tommy talks with foreign policy expert Jake Sullivan about what Democratic control of the House means for US foreign policy, including US relations with Saudi Arabia, the Iran deal, Trump's ties with Russia, trade and North Korea.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. The first edition of the show that has been recorded since Democrats took the House. I just want to breathe that in. It feels very nice to say. Congrats to everyone who's listening, who knocked doors or donated money or got your friends to register or took a friend to the polls. It made an enormous difference. And you guys should all be very, very proud of the results on Tuesday night. We just keep getting better as these recounts go on as results come in. So it's very exciting. So what I wanted to talk about today is what Democrats taking back the House could mean on foreign policy. So I invited one of the smartest people I worked with at the White House and in the State Department on the show to talk me through it.

You guys have heard from Jake Sullivan before. He was Joe Biden's National Security Advisor. He was one of a top aide to Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign and during the State Department. He is currently the co-chair of National Security Action, which is an organization dedicated to advancing American global leadership and opposing the rest of. policies of the Trump administration, a very important organization in this time of us being mostly out of power. We talked about Iran. We talked about Saudi Arabia. We talked about Russia and all the oversight possibilities there. We also got it to North Korea and to trade and into our best friend John Bolton's crazy Troika of tyranny speech down in Miami. So without further ado, here is the interview with Jake. Jake, we took back the house.

How are you feeling? I'm feeling great. I'm feeling very excited about the performance of the candidates in the house, not just because we won on the numbers, but we won with incredible people. So we've got a crop of young, really talented leaders for the next generation who are going to bring a lot of energy and spirit to Washington and people who,

in keeping with the theme of this podcast, care deeply about America's place in the world, about America's national security. And so it's going to be exciting to watch them thrive next year in D.C. Yeah, there's some really, really smart people that work in CIA or a DOD or in government generally that are now members of Congress. But let's talk about committees for a second. We Democrats have the gavel. Pelosi will be speaker, I think. Adam Schiff will run the Intelligence Committee. Elliot Engel will likely take the reins at the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Adam Smith will

probably become the Chairman of Armed Services. So long story short, we can finally do stuff. So I was hoping to ask you a couple questions about specific issues and see, like, Like what, if anything, the House or Democrats controlling the House can do to put some pressure on Trump to be better, generally? So let's start with Iran. Trump recently reimposed sanctions on Iran that had been waived under the Iran deal that Obama signed. These sanctions target Iran's economy, including oil sales, shipping, banking, the insurance industry, etc., to prevent other countries from buying oil from Iran or otherwise doing business with them. Just some scene setting here, some context. How much do you think the reimposition of these sanctions will impact Iran's economy?

And do you think that European allies who are pissed that we pulled out of the agreement in the first place are going to follow our lead on these sanctions? Well, I'd say there's no doubt it will have some impact on Iran's economy, negative impact, because the power of the U.S. economy and our secondary sanctions is really significant. And we've already seen that in a drop in the export of Iranian oil just over the last couple of months in anticipation of these sanctions. But, and this is a big but, there are two things that I think are going to hold this sanctions effort back from being truly effective. The first is what you just mentioned, which is if your entire strategy rests on coercion and not cooperation, over time, all of the other countries you want to help you in these sanctions are going to get less enthusiastic about doing so. So there'll be leakage, they'll be cheating, and our ability to really squeeze Iran tight will decline. And then the second, and this is super important, and you'll remember this from government. enforcement. Enforcing sanctions is a complicated business. It requires you to run the government

really effectively, you know, so that day by day you're implementing this stuff. And so far, it's not clear to me that the Trump administration has its arms around the actual execution of this. And as a result, I think in addition to getting resistance from other countries who don't like the U.S. just holding a gun to their heads, you're going to have challenges within the U.S. government because there's a lot of incompetence in this administration. That is very true. Yes, that's an important point. You don't just sort of wave a magic wand and voila,

sanctions are in place. It is a constant ongoing big-time intelligence operation and that enforcement effort. But also complicating things is the fact that Trump gave waivers to Japan, China, India, Italy, Greece, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey, which are some of the biggest consumers of Iranian oil. So this means that they can keep. buying Iranian oil on a temporary basis. Does that just seem like part for the course because you need to give them time to wean themselves off Iranian oil, or will those waivers actually really soften the blow to Iran?

Well, the Obama administration, we did the same thing because the design of these sanctions is such that you're trying to get these countries to reduce a certain percentage, and then you do the waiver for a period of time, then try to get them to reduce more than another waiver, et cetera. So the logic of the sanctions is consistent with them offering the waivers, but this comes back to the competence point and to the good government execution point, which is, as I look at the waivers and the way they're designed, it suggests to me that there's going to be a lot of leakiness in this sanctions regime as we go forward. And the result is going to be that Iran's not going to feel the same kind of pressure that it would have felt if actually the Trump administration was genuinely bringing the

rest of the world along with it, and if the administration had built and designed a strategy that could withstand the test of time. I just don't think they've done that here. Yeah, I don't either. So back to the Democratic Congress for a minute. So Elliot Engel, who, again, is going to likely be the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He initially opposed Obama's Iran deal. He later wrote an op-ed saying he thought we should stay in it when it looked like Trump was going to pull out. Trump hates the deal for wholly political reasons. But given that sort of odd dynamic. Is there anything Congress can do to pressure Trump to get back into the deal or more broadly to explain what their endgame is in terms of their Iran policy? Because sanctions aren't a

goal in and of themselves. It seems like they need to get Iran to do something, to take some action. And I don't know if that's a negotiation or, you know, more disconcertingly, regime change. If you listen to John Bolton. Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned that Trump hates the Iran deal. He would go around saying it's the worst deal. ever negotiated in human history. And as somebody who worked on the deal, I have to say, if that's actually true, that's kind of an accomplishment, because there've been a lot of deals in human history. And if this is the very worst one ever, then, you know, we've achieved something. Congrats. So I think he's pretty well committed to making sure the U.S. doesn't go back in. And I don't think

that Congress can force his hand on that, certainly not just a Democratic-led house. But the question you pose about Congress being able to hold him accountable to actually lay out what the strategy is here, that is a real opportunity for Elliott Engel and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I mean, if you look at what has unfolded since we pulled out of the deal, essentially sanctions aren't part of the strategy. Sanctions are the strategy. The pressure is the strategy, and they have no endgame in mind. They have no sense of what this pressure is supposed to be building too. And so it seems to me that some very hard question should be posed to Mike Pompeo and other key leaders in the administration about how they actually achieve an outcome here

that is consistent with America's national interest. Because remember, when the deal was in place and the United States was in it, it was working. And people like Secretary Jim Mattis went before the Congress and testified that we should stay in it because it was in our interest. Being out of it is not in our interest. And I think effective oversight and hearings in the House Foreign Affairs Committee can expose that. Mike Pompeo, man, he loved to call hearings and demand people come before his committee when he was in Congress. It'll be fun to watch him have the roles reversed. Yeah, I remember a little thing called Benghazi that Mike Pompeo was involved in, which I had the pleasure of spending six hours before the select committee.

So I'm going to be interested when Pompeo and others start complaining about too much vigorous House oversight to remind them of the ways in which they used the gavel when they had it. Yeah. A good four years of Benghazi hearings and committee meetings, et cetera. A lot of the excitement around Democrats retaking the House revolves around what we were just talking about, which is the chance to finally conduct some real oversight, especially when it comes to Russia. So this does touch on foreign policy. That includes Trump's business ties, his conflicts of interest in Russia. But beyond just digging into those records or demanding, you know, financial documents, et cetera, the House could push maybe to sanction Russia for interfering in our elections or for messing around in Ukraine or for what they've been doing in Syria. What do you expect House Democrats will do when it comes to Russia?

And what do you think they should focus on? What's the smart move? I think they need to look at this. in three buckets. The first bucket is what you just mentioned, which is how do we defend our democracy against foreign interference. And that's partly about imposing costs on Russia and anyone else, including the Iranians who are messing around in the U.S. electoral system or in our democratic discourse. But it also means figuring out how you protect our election and critical infrastructure against cyber attacks, how you make it easier to vote in the United States, and how you

increase funding for combating state-sponsored disinformation around the globe. So that's one big category. It's both imposing costs, but also doing what we have to at home to increase the resilience of our democracy. Then the second category, which goes to Trump's financial ties with the Russians, but also with other countries in the Gulf, potentially in China, elsewhere. This isn't just about gotcha. This is about our national security. This is about whether the president is putting his personal financial interest ahead of the national security interest of the United States. That deserves a serious look. And then I would say the third category is figuring out how the House can stand for a set of values that Americans are proud of, values of democracy and freedom and

human rights and civil liberties. And having a voice, a clarion voice, in a key branch of government saying that the president abandoning all of these things is not consistent with what America stands for. And so I think they should be pushing on all three of those fronts. That last point is interesting because, you know, one of my frustrations in dealing with Trump for the last two years is there's no opposing voice or there's no candidate running against him, right? We have this discordant group of cacophony of Democrats. But you think that there's an opportunity here for the House committees to come together and really be key messengers. to push back on foreign policy issues like Russia, like protecting our democracy?

Well, you know, a couple of thoughts on this. We do have to be careful that it's not just all accountability and oversight and hearings all the time. There has to be an affirmative vision, too. And the rest of the world is so hungry for that. They want to hear official American voices saying, this is not who we are. We stand for something bigger and bolder and better than what the president has been offering the last couple of years. In America, an American foreign policy is more than just the

smallness of the man currently occupying the Oval Office. So I think there's a huge opportunity through the way that hearings are conducted, through the statements that key leaders in the House make, including the young people who've just been elected, and through their travels abroad to convey this message. So I think there's a legislative piece to this and pushing legislation to defend our democracy. I think there's an oversight piece to this, holding Donald Trump's feet to the fire. And I think there is actually a diplomatic piece to this, having another side of the United States represented internationally to show people that, you know, Trump may currently be president. And, you know, we have to respect that as the person who holds the reins

of most of American foreign policy. But he is not the only voice speaking on behalf of our country. I think another, you know, sort of values-based policy area is Saudi Arabia. I mean, the murder of the Saudi journalist named Jamal Khashoggi, shined a spotlight. not just on gross human rights abuses by the Saudis, but on Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince's general authoritarianism. Legislatively, it seems to me like there are two real possibilities to punish him for that behavior. The first is the White House has to respond to a bipartisan letter from 22 senators about whether the White House believes that Saudi officials were involved in Khashoggi's killing. And that response must include whether they'll impose some sort of sanctions or

cost on the Saudi government, including high-ranking officials, thanks to the Global Magnetty Act. The second is the House could vote to block arms deals with Riyadh and cut off support for the war in Yemen. Do you think that dealing with Saudi Arabia is likely to be a priority and there's a chance of actually pressuring them through congressional action? I absolutely do, and I think it must be a priority. And it connects back to the last exchange we just had, actually. There's a real question, and Congress should seek to get to the bottom of it of whether Trump or Kushner or others in the Trump extended family have financial ties in Saudi Arabia that are coloring the choices they're making. And that should be looked at. But that obviously is a distinct question related but distinct from the question you just posed, which is what can the House actually do to respond to the killing of Khashoggi and more broadly to contribute to a reassessment of the U.S. Saudi relationship. And I do think that having the gavel in the House will allow Democrats to make the Trump administration and the intelligence community come forward with all the information they have about what they know and think happened here in this brutal, grisly episode. And then I think one of the first items of business, maybe even before the new Congress has sworn in, should be a big push to put a stop to you.

U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. I think we should use the opportunity presented by a spotlight on the U.S. Saudi relationship to take this issue on directly and unequivocally and say that the U.S. will no longer contribute to the humanitarian catastrophe that's unfolding there. And I think there's a lot of Democrats, both currently in the House and who've just been elected to the House, who will bring real energy to that issue. God, I hope so. The flip side of that is if you and I were sitting in the White House a few years ago, and Congress was about to put its thumb on the scale on like a major foreign policy issue. You know, intervene in our ability to conduct foreign policy with a key ally like the Saudis, we might say, get the hell out of our business Congress.

Am I correct that there's a little bit of hypocrisy here in our perspective, given where we worked before, or is this the way things should work? You know, it's a great question. And it goes to kind of a broader truth about working in foreign policy and national security, which is where you stand as a little bit where you sit. And that's true, not just between the executive branch and Congress, but even within the executive branch. I remember working at state for four years and complaining about those guys at the White House, you know, that Tommy Veter putting their thumb down on us. And then I moved over to be Joe Biden's national security advisor. And literally, it was like two days after I'd left the State Department. And I'd like slam my hand down on the table and say, gosh, darned State

Department, you know, those people. And that's definitely acutely true when it comes to sitting in the executive branch and thinking about the Congress interfering. But when it comes to the issue of war powers, I don't think we're hypocritical. The Obama administration actually supported the idea of Congress taking up a new authorization to use military force to deal with the emerging ISIS threat back in 2014. Congress didn't want to do it. But the administration didn't say Congress has no business weighing in. on matters of war and peace in the Middle East, quite the opposite. And so I have no problem making the case that it is long past time for a serious conversation in the Congress about

whether what we are doing militarily to support the Saudis in Yemen makes any sense from the perspective of either our national security or our values. Yeah. And the broader point of the authorization for the use of military force, the fact that we are still fighting a war in Syria based on authorization or a vote that occurred in 2001 to deal with al-Qaeda is crazy. But I've had very smart friends who you know and have worked with say they're slightly concerned that anything a follow-on authorization or a new AUMF might be even more expansive and give the Trump administration more leeway. Do you share that concern or do you think that they should take up this issue and really

think hard about ways to limit or, you know, reauthorize the use of military force and scope it? Look, that is a concern, but that's a concern that comes with having democratic debate about policy issues. Maybe they don't turn out quite the way you want, but you need to have the debate. And here, I think it's really important for people to understand that the debate about an authorization to use military force is not some legal curiosity. The fact that Congress has not revisited that 2001 AUMF, which was passed to deal with al-Qaeda after the 9-11 attacks, that fact means there has been no serious public debate. about which countries we're operating in against which groups for which length of time with which military means, it's just kind of left to the administration to make it up as it goes along. That is exactly the kind of debate, big public policy debate this country should have.

And in order for the country to have it, the Congress has to have it. So I think it's really important that it happened. I hope it comes out a certain way. But I'll take the risk that it doesn't go quite the way I wanted to in order to force that conversation and not let this thing just drift along as it has now for 17 years. Me too. I'm with you on that. It's just crazy. Another big policy area that Trump has been focused on is North Korea. I mean, started with a bang. There was the summit in Singapore that was, you know, I think heavy on pomp and circumstance, but light on detail. And then this is faded into the background a bit while

poor Secretary Pompeo just racks up airline miles going to and from North Korea. The latest update seems to be that the North Korea canceled another round of talks, reportedly because of a disagreement over the sequencing of sanctions relief and disarmament, aka the devil in the detail that we always knew was there that you try to sort out ahead of time. Can House Democrats exert any pressure on Trump to figure out what the hell is happening? What was said in these meetings between Kim Jong-un and Trump and Pompeo and, you know, any way sort of adjust or course correct the policy? This whole North Korea issue falls squarely on the category of not just predictable but predicted. like we all predicted exactly what would happen here.

And there was a lot of, oh, you guys were a bunch of naysayers and like. And then it's happened exactly that way. And on the issue of oversight, the Trump administration has been absolutely stonewalling Congress on what type of conversations it's been having with the North Koreans, what promises have been made, what expectations have been set and alike. And I do think that while Republicans let them get away with it for the last year, Democrats shouldn't and won't over the course of the next year. demand answers on this. And, you know, one of the areas that I think they should focus on is how much is Donald Trump using this issue merely to score political points without really caring about the substance? A good indicator of that is when Mike Pompeo got asked, when do you expect to have

progress in all of this? He said, by January of 2021, which I don't think was a random date. It's sort of like after the next presidential election, before the next term, we'll have answers. then. For the next two years, don't ask any questions, just accept that we've got this whole thing under control. And I think that Congress should cast a skeptical eye on that and demand that the administration actually come forward with a plan and a strategy for dealing with this. Yeah, that's a long punt. Presumably the key members in the House and the Senate and all the relevant committees are getting briefed on North Korea's nuclear program, right? So if we had indications via intelligence it means that they had further progressed in their nuclear program or were cheating or, you know,

whatever, they would know it, right? Well, ordinarily, the answer to that question would definitely be yes. But I actually think this administration has taken some unusual steps to lock down information, even intelligence information as it relates to North Korea. So there may be some members who are aware, but I don't think that most people up on the hill are getting the kind of information or briefings that they deserve. and that's part of what oversight can produce. Staying in the region, we are in this ongoing trade war with China.

Trump has imposed tariffs on, I believe, $250 billion with a B worth of Chinese goods. The Chinese have retaliated by cutting off purchases of soybeans and imposing their own tariffs. I know that these tariffs were done mostly by executive order, so it doesn't seem like there's a ton Congress can do to stop them. But I have also seen some analysts suggest that House Democrats might give Trump even more latitude to impose tariffs on Iran because the unions support them. Do you think that's right? Do you think there will be any change in this trade posture with China?

You know, it's interesting. There is such a wide variety of positions among the Democratic Party on this issue that my guess is they don't do much at all and they kind of leave it to the administration to carry it forward and either kind of hang themselves with it or make some progress or whatever. I'd be surprised if you actually got a coherent position among House-Destown. Democrats because there are going to be some who think this whole thing is total folly. There are others who are on the record cheerleading it. But I do think one place that all Democrats ought to

be able to come around, no matter what they think about the particular tariffs or the issue of Chinese trade abuses, is that it is far superior as a strategy to get China to play by the rules, to have all of our friends with us than to do this alone. And instead of building a coalition of countries in Europe and in the rest of Asia, countries that honestly comprise two-thirds of the world's economy that we could bring as leverage to the table against China, Trump has decided, let me throw tariffs on a bunch of them, too. So in my view, a part of the way to transcend the divides and debates within the Democratic Party on some of these trade questions is to find common ground to stand on.

And one piece of common ground is when you're taking on a big challenge like China, it's a lot better to be standing with a bunch of friends who've got a bunch of leverage to add to your leverage, and you're much more likely to make progress that way. And I think the House, through various committees, should be putting pressure on the administration to go more down that road than they have so far. Yeah. Stay on trade. I mean, Trump is also revamped NAFTA, and that is a different story. He has to submit that trade agreement, that deal to Congress for approval, I believe, in the spring of 2019. Does that mean Democrats can meaningfully change what Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico? Or do you think they want to? Or is it just an up or down vote on approval?

It's an interesting question. It will Democrats have leverage on this because they can obviously, with a majority in the House, vote it down. It will likely come as an up or down vote on approval without being able to dig into particular provisions. And I actually don't know sitting here today how that's going to go. I don't know where, for example, labor is going to land on the whatever he's calling it, the YMCA or the something, USMCA, the new NAFTA, the rebranded NAFTA 2.0. So I'm actually kind of waiting to see how this ends up playing out because it wasn't really an issue coming down the stretch in the midterms. You haven't heard that many Democrats get definitively on the record on it. So I think this is still very much up in the air and a jump ball.

And the Trump administration will find out when they actually send it up to the hill just what kind of resistance it's going to meet. Yeah, it is a mystery to me too. I was hoping to ask you about our dear friend John Bolton, our friend, our mentor. Just kidding. On November 1, Bolton gave this speech in Miami where he singled out the Troika of Tyranny, which is Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. it sounds like a, speaking of reboot, it's a warmongery sequel to the Axis of Evil from the Bush administration. The gist of the policy proposals, he wants to roll back diplomatic ties with Cuba, put more sanctions on Venezuela, demand a bunch of things from Nicaragua. Taken together, it does feel like a major shift in our posture and our aggressiveness in Latin America. Oddly, at the same time, the White House extended an olive branch to Yaira Bolsonaro, the new president of Brazil, who's the scary far right-wing populist. I was curious if you saw the speech, what you made of it, and if you think Latin America, in particular, Venezuela, could be a big challenge for the Trump administration over the next couple of years.

I did see the speech. When I heard him say Troika of tyranny, my first thought went to an image of the room where that speech was getting written. And you've been in that room working on some of these national security speeches for a national security advisor for the president. So they're all sitting around and speech is kind of boring. you know, they're trying to spice it up. And so they just start throwing terms around. And then someone says, Troika of tyranny, it's like, yeah, jackpot, let's put that in there. You know, you can just imagine how this actually happened. And then when he gives the speech, two guys in the back of the room are like high-fiving each other. Oh, man, we nailed it. We got them good.

Sick burn with Troika of tyranny. You don't know how right you are. I'm going to read you a passage. This is a passage from the speech. This troika of tyranny, this triangle of terror, stretching from Havana to Caracas to Managua is the cause of immense human suffering, the impetus of enormous regional stability, and the genesis of assorted cradle of communism in the Western Hemisphere. Oh my God. Get this man a fucking editor. Help us. Well, so here's probably what happened. This is speech by

committee and everybody came to the table with their favorite tagline. And the way they've resolved it was just put all three of the taglines in there. Cradle of communism, triangle of terror, they just stuck them all in. And yeah, that's John Bolton in a nutshell. On the actual substance of it is not surprising, but it is dispiriting that Bolton's trying to sort of dial U.S. policy back to the dark days of the Cold War when it comes to Latin America. I mean, I really thought Democrats and Republicans, the Bush administration and the Obama administration had really collectively moved beyond that. When it comes to a kind of overall approach of hectoring and lecturing in the region,

Cuba is obviously more complicated and the Obama administration took a really impressive and brave and right-minded step forward there. I think it's going to be hard for them to completely go back on that. I just think the weight of common sense behind that decision and the support for it across this country are such that fully unraveling it feels to me like it may be a bridge too far. But I think people like Bolton will keep putting pressure on it. The last thing that I will say is that Bolton, in a funny way, has been looking for places to exert himself to just cause mischief and destruction. And he's founded to a certain extent on the nuclear side by the announcement that they're pulling out of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty with Russia. But I think he also now looks at Latin American and says, hey, there's a little playground where I can just muck about a bit. So let me get to work on that.

And that's part of what seems to be going on here. Yeah, that is a really good point. I saw this speech pop up on November 1st, right before an election. It didn't seem like, I mean, I guess maybe there was an effort to, you know, rally some Cuban voters in Miami or something. And maybe that's why they did it then and there. But it did seem like an odd thing for him to peel off. I'm glad you mentioned the INF Treaty.

I should have raised that. There are a lot of people who look at them talking, threatening to pull out of that treaty as a precursor to pulling out of the new START treaty or not extending the new START treaty. and that leading to a general unraveling of the entire world's nuclear nonproliferation regime. That is scary. And I think an undercover story and one that I don't understand why Bolton thinks that will make anyone more secure. I just don't get it. Well, this has been his hobby horse for decades.

He does not believe in arms control, period, full stop. He doesn't believe in negotiated arms reductions between the U.S. and Russia. He doesn't believe in trying to resolve diplomatically the nuclear issues in Iran or North Korea. And he has looked for every opportunity to unravel and undo them. And part of the reason for why is, honestly, he's quite comfortable with using military force to resolve issues like North Korea and Iran. And then with ratcheting up tensions with, well, the Soviets when he started, now the Russians. Right, right. And finally, I think he's very much invested in the idea that.

that the United States should get back in the business of building new kinds of nuclear weapons and deploying them. And, you know, at a time when we have so many strategic challenges with the rise of China and elsewhere, we need to be investing in innovation and education and technology, artificial intelligence, cyber, the idea that we're going to go back down the road of the nuclear arms race just seems insane to me, not merely from a bad for world peace perspective, but from a just hard-headed American national security perspective as well. Yeah. Last question for you. Are you shocked that President Trump has never visited U.S. service members fighting in Afghanistan? Doesn't it seem like something he would want to do because it

gets in good press? Because it's inherently a great photo or a great news clip that evening. It blows my mind that they haven't sent him over there yet. Donald Trump loves being with the troops. It's like the apex of him kind of playing at president. He loves the idea of the pomp and circumstance of Air Force One landing against dramatic backdrops. He loves the idea that the president can go do the kind of, you know, the cloak and dagger of the surprise announcement of having landed somewhere. So all signs would point to him having done this three, four, five times, which suggests that there's really only one credible explanation for one. why he hasn't, which is that he's basically scared to do it, that he just, you know, his staff

comes and says, this would be good, it'd be presidential. And he says, what do I want to do? Be in anywhere near Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria. And that is really disappointing. This is a guy who has no trouble increasing our troop deployments in all of those places, but seems to have no interest in actually going there. Maybe his first visit to the troops will be showing up, you know, down on the southern border where he's sent 5,000. Plus, as part of a toxic blend of immigration, identity, and security that really has become the core of Donald Trump's national security strategy is turned it into this political fearmongering campaign that, you know, these caravan of refugees all of a sudden was the biggest national security threat the United States was facing. Yeah, it's odd. It's not on the news anymore. And they're not talking about it. Right. Exactly. The threat seems to have dissipated. You know, and I asked the question about him visiting. the troops in Afghanistan in a cynical way because I think we have a cynical president,

but I should note that it means a lot to those service members when their commander-in-chief plops down on Thanksgiving and serves, you know, Turkey in the Chow line or does whatever he or she does in those situations. And it is not unnoticed, I think, by veterans, service members, the whole country. It's a, you know, it's a bigger issue. I'm glad you said that, that you may have political differences with the president. And you and I certainly have many of those with Donald Trump. We object to his character. We object to lots of things about him. But you still hope that the office of the presidency, the person who's occupying it in moments like this, supporting our service members to put themselves in harm's way, dealing with the aftermath of a national tragedy,

that in moments like that, at least Trump could meet the kind of high expectations that the whole country should have of the person who is the commander in chief. He is just, he hasn't been capable of doing it. And it's easy enough to deride that, but mostly I think we should just be disappointed in it. Yeah, definitely. And we should also be disappointed in sending a bunch of men and women down to the border for an imaginary threat and having them miss yet another Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever. I mean, it's not an insignificant thing for a force that's been extended for 17 plus years because of global war on terror. No, exactly. Yeah. And the human dimension of that should not be understated. That's, I mean, the corrosive impact of playing politics with troop deployments on the lives, families, and the overall psychology of badly overstretched armed forces.

It's really disturbing. Yeah, it really is. Jake, thank you so much for talking me today, man. I really appreciate it. I feel hopeful that Democrats have in the House can actually, you know, course correct some things on foreign policy or at least get us some more information or, you know, transparency, what have you. I totally agree. think they can not only conduct oversight and hold this president accountable, I think they also can start doing the work appointing the way towards a better alternative. And all of us should do

what we can to help. That's exactly right. Jake Sullivan, thank you again. Great to have you back on the show. And I hope to see you soon in D.C. or somewhere. Sounds great. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks again to Jake Sullivan for doing the show. And thank you all for listening. It is great to be back talking about foreign policy with you all. And I look forward to catching up again next week.