Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Is the Resistance Era of Democratic Politics Finally Over?

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Jessica Tarlov is joined by Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker, for a wide-ranging conversation on where American politics stands heading into the fall. They open with this week's primaries, starting with Alex Vindman's loss in Florida to DSA member Angie Nixon in the Democratic Senate primary. Is the average Democratic voter genuinely moving on from the "Resistance" era? Susan also weighs in on whether establishment-coded, cable-news-famous Democrats losing to base-energized challengers is the real story of this primary season — or whether the DSA narrative is being overblown. And where does anti-establishment sentiment go from here, on both sides of the aisle?When it comes to foreign policy, there continues to be a lack of cohesion in the Republican party, a problem that Glasser says is likely to persist in the post-Trump era. Trump is now promising "unprecedented" economic warfare against Iran, but there seems to be little end in sight. They also touch on what happens with Ukraine in the absence of the late Senator Lindsey Graham.  Plus: the far right fringe and the young men being drawn into it. James Fishback finished a distant third in the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary, but the fact he gained any traction at all is notable. Nick Fuentes described Fishback as what a “proto-groyper president is gonna look, sound and act like.” What does the rise of this movement among young people tell us about the future of the American right? Get your tickets now for our live show at 92NY: https://www.92ny.org/event/scott-galloway-and-jessica-tarlov For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Vanta gives you continuous coverage across every vendor, automatically, so you actually know what's in your stack and what to do about it. AI on, risk off. Vanta.com slash TPS. RM. From the raging moderates, I'm Jessica Tarlove. Scott is not here. Susan Glasser is, which is an incredible upgrade he would agree from wherever he is flitting

about the world as staff writer at the New Yorker, co-host of the politics scene podcast. Susan, it's wonderful to have you. Oh, and so happy to be with you, Jessica. Thank you so much. Before we jump in, I have a very exciting live stream tomorrow about my new book. I disagree. We'll be live on Substack and YouTube. I'm going to share some practical everyday tips from the book.

I disagree. Winning arguments without losing friends, which you can pre-order now. Extra special. I'm doing it. One of Regie Mauder's most fabulous producer is David. So you get to meet him. You won't want to miss it 1 p.m. tomorrow, Eastern Time. And now let's get into it. I don't know what the right term is. I've been consuming you for a very long time from books and Politico, foreign policy, all of it. So this is a real treat and a lot of politics to talk about, which you are obviously covering very closely. There has already been a lot of discussion about the primaries from Tuesday and the big implications. And I want to double tap on Alexander Vindman's primary in Florida for a second with you. Obviously, he testified during Trump's first impeachment, covered all of that. Losses primary to DSA member Angie Nixon, who has been on the interview.

circuit and I think it's been doing a pretty exceptional job, which I want to talk about separately from this first point about Alexander Vindman, because what stood out to me in this was obviously you need to take all of your opponents seriously and hash doesn't win elections, you know, knocking on doors, showing up, being in people's lives, caring about the things that they care about, not having a spouse, insult your opponent online, all of those things. But it did kind of sit with me that it feels like a bit of an end of an era of these resistance heroes that we had from the first Trump administration with Finman being a great example of that. But we also had other impeachment managers like Eric Swalwell, Diana DeGette, who are now not on the political scene. One had to withdraw, obviously, because of accusations of sexual assault. Diane lost her primary. What do you make of that angle? Dan Goldman, who is my congressman, who is my congressman, won't be returning. What do you think about that? Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. I might have a slightly counterintuitive view on this, Jessica, in the sense that, you know, my basic take is that we

often, and I remember going back to my very first years, you know, reporting on Capitol Hill for a roll call about congressional races. Like, you know, we national writers, we love to nationalize individual congressional races. We're talking often in a democratic congressional primary in the middle of the summer, you know, a few hundred thousand voters as opposed to millions. And then generalizing off of that can be a challenge. I also, you know, as a proud Washingtonian for many years now, I do think we have this sort of institutional hazard of to a certain extent overstating the role of ideology, particularly of policy differences in individual races, which makes sense, right? You know, we come to

Washington, we care a lot about policy, we care about ideology, and, you know, what seems safer to generalize this year is a kind of visceral rage. Actually, in both parties' primaries, we can talk about that in the different ways it manifests itself, but certainly for Democrats, I think it's absolutely fair to say that people who are seen as complacent, who are seen as insiders or too tied to the establishment, they're going to face an uphill fight right now. in the sense that democratic voters, in particular primary voters, what are they looking for? They're looking for resistance, but not of the go-along to get a long variety. They want something that feels much more in your face, a loud, scream of protest in many ways,

is what individuals want to feel about the state of the country, about the state of their own party. I think there's a legacy hangover, frankly, as well, about Joe Biden. And the idea that, you know, Democrats were not served well by a party leadership that told them just everything's going to be okay and we're going to restore normalcy and that didn't happen. So that's a kind of long-winded way of saying, I don't, I'm wary of overgeneralizing. But I think it's definitely true that we're moving on. Whatever the view of resistance was in Trump 1.0, it definitely looks different this time. I think you're going to see voters coming and voting. for people who they think are going to shake things up. Yeah, I guess, I mean, that's a very valid point. And I'm in New York, so not D.C., but we have a similar obsession with trying to find these big trends in everything when sometimes it just boils down to the obvious, either like it's the economy stupid or it's the person who you met, who asked you for their vote and told you what they were going to do to make your lives better, which a lot of these candidates, even if they are running in local races, that get, you know, tens of millions of dollars poured in from all over the country don't always do on the same level. But I do think that this idea of closing the door on the old way of doing business vis-a-vis Donald Trump is something that is very salient today and how members of the DSA, whose ideology in a lot of ways, runs counter to where most of the Democratic base is when you look at the platform, for instance.

you know, and watching your colleague David Redneck with Megan Romer, for instance, you know, one of the co-chairs were she didn't have an answer for the most basic questions, certainly about foreign policy, a lot of the accounting that goes into making these policies on a domestic level happen, et cetera. But there is that visceralness to the way that they're talking about income inequality that is making people more lenient with their vote than I think they would have been stereotypicalness. typically. Yeah, I think that's exactly the point in many ways for me, that it's not that we tend to think that people are just going down the line and trying to match up their set of personal policy preferences with an, you know, what does the DSA say about this, this, this, this, and this. And I don't think it's about checking the box like that. I think it's about who's channeling, you know, the feeling of the electorate right now best and who's best perceived as being able to wage a kind of active politics of confrontation with Donald Trump and what the Republican Party

under Trump has become. And so there are two different axes, right? You can look at it as sort of the traditional left-right axis in American politics and in both parties, or you can look at it as the sort of in-out axis. And, you know, we'll see which is driving that more ultimately in some districts. It makes a lot more sense, frankly. The voters have moved left in certain districts. in New York City, for example. That doesn't mean that what works in Dan Goldman's district to defeat an incumbent congressman is going to work in a battleground state district in Michigan

or in Wisconsin, for example. And so, you know, I think, though, we are seeing both parties in very, very different ways, reflect this long-running rage at the system. You know, think the last time there was a consistent view among Americans, of all political persuasions that the country was moving in the right direction, was in 2004, George W. Bush's era, right? So combine that with Democrats having a specific, you know, urgency and hunger to do whatever it takes, I think, for many voters to change the

status quo. And that's powering a lot of these races right now. Yeah, I want to get your take on the other side, because you even mentioned, you know, the lights talk about what's happened in the Republican primaries. But at first, I do want to play this clip from CNN this morning with Boris Sanchez and one of the leaders of the DSA when Boris talks about his family's own experience under Cuban dictatorship. I get your criticism of foreign policy. As I said, it's not an uncommon one. But lauding Fidel Castro is a different story. You talk about what things were like before the revolution in Cuba. I'll give you a personal example. My grandfather was a revolutionary in Cuba during that time. He was affected by a previous dictator,

Francisco, having his friends disappeared in the street for speaking their minds. My grandfather found that revolution hoping to bring democracy to Cuba. And then what happened? Phil Doug Hastero locked my grandfather up, sentenced to 20 years for doing what you're doing now on live TV, for speaking his mind, for expressing himself freely, for trying to organize politically. So I wonder again how you think that lands with people who suffered under that dictatorship, who now you were trying to court as voters when your organization comes out and, like,

odds a hundred years of Castro. I don't think it would land well with Emishik. We're seeing many people in the United States who are who are seeing there who are struggling under massive inequality in the United States. So putting out a statement about Fidel Castro courts those people? We want to expand democracy everywhere in the United States, in Cuba and everywhere else. And that does not come at the barrel of a gun. It doesn't come at under the threat of economic blockade, that only makes the, that limits democracy everywhere. So if we want to improve conditions for Cubans.

I wouldn't say that. The pause was very notable, and he looks shell-shocked by the story. And these stories are shell-shocking to a lot of people who even know about them, but then certainly those who haven't, I'd say, read enough, at least about the history of socialism. and like in countries like Cuba, do you think that moments like that are going to resonate with younger voters where they will want to see a shift, like keep the talk about taxing the rich, universal child care, pre-K, I'm in New York City, mom, Donnie just gave parents four hours of free babysitting.

It's a glorious thing. I mean, parents need to get out and have a date, right? But stuff like that, I don't think anyone wants that. Yeah, you know, I mean, first of all, let's just say that policies that are pro-family, that are pro, you know, the working and middle class in this country, they don't have to be illiberal, right? And what, you know, Boris really channeled very effectively is the idea that the history in the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century of state socialism as it has morphed in places like the former Soviet Union or in China has been fundamentally. illiberal, unfree. You know, I spent four years covering Russia and the former Soviet Union for the Washington Post in the early 2000s at the very beginning of Vladimir Putin's tenure. And I'll tell you, you know, 10 years only, not even after the fall of the Soviet Union, you know, you can't spend time in places like that that were just so recently unfree and sadly and tragically have gone

back to being unfree in a new form of 21st century dictatorship, which Putin has managed to impose there and be so cavalier about, you know, what these values of liberalism and rule of law and the freedoms in our Constitution, those freedoms are under assault, not just from the far left, but from the far right in a very active way in this country. And I think that it is not incompatible to have American liberalism enshrined along with some of these very popular policies. support American families. And so I find a lot of the conversation around this almost unbearably uninformed, to be honest, Jessica. It just, it makes me so sad because the idea that there is some

kind of a contradiction, right, between supporting child care, you know, for women and, you know, freedom. I mean, come on, come on. That's just buying into bullshit talking points of, you know, the 20th century, that kind of red baiting that Trump engages in, you know, to me, it can only work with an electorate that, you know, is not primed to be able to sort out the difference here. And, you know, frankly, I worry as living memory fades of what the excesses of the 20th century were, that people are much more vulnerable to that kind of uninformed political discourse. Yeah, Republicans definitely benefit from us living in information silos and, you know, not having decent education, frankly, though. I'm very into the story about the Mississippi miracle and how they have turned things around there. But I see this all the time, especially because I work between conservative media and more liberal media. So I see both sides of it. And you look at the kind of source material that people are using and just how bifurcated we are as a society. And I worry about it for the left as well that people are too in love with their content creators.

And then their content creators' ideas become Bible to them when a history book or, frankly, travel and experience could do a lot more good. You mentioned our rights being under assault by the Trump administration. And you are seeing fracturing in his base that we have not seen before. We have not seen this with white men without college degrees. We're seeing it with white women as well. He has lost all the gains that he made with Latinos and black voters in the 2024 election Gen Z voters, too. How long do you think that lasts? Like, do you think this is the real deal that people are looking around and saying we're getting nothing that we were promised?

Or is this something that when you get into? the voting booths and you see D versus R that you still go with the party that you've been a part of probably for generations. Yeah, no, these are like really core questions and anybody who claims they have a, you know, sort of solid answer, you know, I would definitely discount that. And, you know, to the point, I do think in the liberal media world, of course, we're understandably obsessed with the kind of ideological debates inside the Democratic Party, you know, we're talking about the Florida primary, but in many ways, like, to me, the more consequential vote this week was in Alaska, where, you know, you had, I think, a development that pretty strongly suggests that Democrats

are in a much better position to pick up a Senate seat there as a result of the performance of a, you know, much more mainstream or whatever you want to call it, Democratic candidate. You know, in the end, Alexander Vindman was very likely to lose the Senate race in November. And so is Angie Nixon, in the person who beat him, right? So that is not necessarily the most consequential ideological fracturing. Now, on the right, I think, first of all, the dynamic that we are starting to see that I think is a real one and is a lasting one is the ebbing of power as Donald Trump moves into a lame duck status. And that is inevitable. And I think it's already coming into play here, people looking over the horizon, whether it's possible 28 candidates or Senate, candidates who'll be in there for six years and looking to a time when Donald Trump is not the leader of the party anymore, or it's voters on the ground in states that are so dominated by Republicans, that ultimately it's the Republicans, whatever caucus they come from who need

to be accountable to them. You mentioned the Mississippi thing, which is a great example of a very heavily Republican state where ultimately the Republican Party decided it needed to deliver in a different way for voters. I am fascinated by the results this week in Wyoming, where this is one of the only states that was basically completely dominated by the Freedom Caucus faction. There was essentially, there were two parties in Wyoming

for the last couple years. There were the mainstream Republican Party, the old-fashioned Republican Party, and the Freedom Caucus Republican Party. Democrats basically didn't count at all. And yet, amazingly, when it came to the state offices and the primaries this week the governor's primary and other statewide offices, legislative offices, the Trump-backed Freedom

Caucus candidates got clobbered. They got clobbered at the state level because I think they weren't delivering the kind of governance that Wyoming voters wanted. So to me, that's a very interesting question about where is the Republican Party headed post-Trump. I do want to caveat this because I think it's really important. Just because Donald Trump is a lame duck, Not only does that not mean he's going to go away quietly, but from my perspective, it suggests that Trump is very likely to escalate, to get louder, more disruptive, more erratic, more willing to challenge norms as he fears his growing irrelevance in politics. So I think when I say Donald Trump laying duck, that might give people the impression, well, he's just going to, you know, he's slowly riding away into the golden sunset. You know, it's not going to be like that. Whatever it's going to be, it's not going to be like that.

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Upround payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12-month plan required $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial term only greater than 50 gigabytes and slow when network is busy. See terms. I'm glad you brought up Wyoming. I want to throw in there also the Pennsylvania State House and also some exciting independent candidates that are popping up all over the map. I was disappointed for Montana Senate, for instance, that the Democrat didn't bow out by the time of the deadline because now there'll be

three candidates on the ballot. And I think the independent there might have a better shot. But the board seems to be opening up differently, either for Normie Republicans or the possibility of considering a common sense Democrat like we're seeing in Kansas as well. And, you know, Chuck Schumer is spending in places you didn't expect him to be. spending. I think all in Trump-back candidates, 10 of them lost their primaries or races on Tuesday. I want to shift to foreign policy because, you know, a lot was made of Darlene Graham's response about Taiwan, Lindsey Graham's sister, who is mine now to win the seat on her own, not just being appointed to take over. And, you know, she was asked about, what do we do about Taiwan? She said, I don't really know. I'm focused on South

Carolina, and has tried to clean that up. But it got me thinking, especially vis-a-vis Ukraine, where Lindsey Graham was such a dogged and committed supporter friend of Ukraine, you know, Zelensky sitting there at the funeral. Like, Lindsay Graham changed a lot in the Trump era, but certain things didn't change about him and this commitment to the post-World War II world order and knowing who our friends are and our enemies in a case like Russia versus Ukraine was one of them. And as someone obviously covered the part of the world very closely, what do you think happens in this next iteration of Republican leadership? I mean, Mitch McConnell won't be there anymore either.

I mean, it's not there right now, but that's a different story. So what do you think that looks like? Yeah, I think you're exactly right to kind of focus on this because whatever happens in November in terms of the Senate, it's going to be a different, and I think. think much trumpier Senate Republican conference, whether they cling on to the majority or not, you'll see people like McConnell gone, people like Lindsey Graham gone, you know, even the other Republican senators who, you know, were more supportive, I would say, of a traditional view of America's role in the world. And the Republican foreign policy, you and I associate with

the Republican Party pre-2016, you know, TILUS, Cassidy, some of the others, it's going to be a trumpier Senate Republican conference, at least for the next few years, and likely a smaller one as well. And I think that that is some of the turf on which the 28 Republican primary is going to be fought is this vision of what a strong America means in the future. And I don't see a coherent vision. And anyone who tells you that Donald Trump's vision of foreign policy is going to be the vision. going forward. I mean, that's frankly... America first.

Yeah, that's a joke. It's a joke because nobody can define a coherent, you know, version of foreign policy. And it all comes from Donald Trump's extreme personalization of the office and that that's the definition of foreign policy. Now, obviously, that's not a doctrine that a party can run on in the absence of the candidate who was created and promoted that doctrine around his own identity. So what that tells me is that there is no... consensus Republican foreign policy right now. And anyone who's trying to tell you about the brilliance

of, you know, the Don Roe doctrine or whatever, you know, that that's not a serious person when it comes to talking about what it's going to look like after Trump. I do think that you've seen both parties expressing a fear that the U.S. can no longer extend itself so much in the world. And frankly, Donald Trump's disastrous decision to embark on a war of choice against Iran and the Middle East will reinforce that feeling in the electorate and in politicians, I think, in both parties. You're looking at a situation right now where the war with Iran is the most unpopular war since the Vietnam War, and that took years to get to that point. Whereas I think Americans intuitively understand there was never any rationale offered for the conflict, and it seems to have. resulted in a national humiliation for the United States, which is desperately trying to claw back to a status quo ante that's not going to be possible when it comes to Iran's in effect weaponization of the Strait of Hormuz. So, you know, I think it's really up in the air in many respects in both parties. You know, you have an ascendant faction, as you pointed out, as we saw with Boris Sanchez there. You have an ascendant faction among the Democrats who don't have a coherent form.

policy, except that Israel is bad, which might be an overwhelming consensus of Democratic voters, but it doesn't exactly tell you what the United States should do when faced with Russian aggression against the Baltic states or against Romania, which might be something that we face sooner rather than later. Yeah, there are definitely a few folks around the globe who are most enjoying what's going on. I mean, Putin has the struggles, obviously, with Ukraine, but has seemed plenty happy with what's going on with our leadership. And then I guess North Korea got a big boost this week since we're choosing them over South Korea. It looks like, you know, you're not a fortune teller. You don't have a

magic eight ball for foreign policy. But the latest news about the war in Iran is that there are no talks going on, not even the secret ones that get leaked out. And it's clear that the Republicans and that it has penetrated to Donald Trump's level, that something, this is. needs to be some sort of exit strategy-ish, at least to survive the midterms in some way, like get gas prices back down, you know, below $4, for instance. Do you have a sense of where this stands? And do you think that Iran is going to be in at least somewhat control of the Strait of Hormuz going forward? Because it feels like they're just going to work at a deal with the Omanis.

and we're all going to be paying for, you know, any future traffic through there. Yes. I mean, look, the bottom line is why would Iran seed this incredibly valuable thing in a fact that Donald Trump is given? They've suffered a lot. Obviously, you know, Trump and Israel have taken out the country's leadership. They have inflicted enormous amounts of physical damage, human damage. Once again, it's the people of Iran even more than, you. their extremist leadership that suffers as a result of this. But the bottom line is it's very hard to see any kind of either a long-term peace deal or even an interim arrangement in which both parties at this point have an incentive to make. And so that's where you get these frozen

conflicts. We've seen that happen in Europe with Russia, by the way. Now, unfortunately and horrifically, Ukraine is a hot war four years in. But the incentive for both sides has not matched up in any of that time to create even a short-term peace agreement. There's never been even a short-term ceasefire in that conflict. And unfortunately, my worry is that that's what we're looking at here with Iran, because the political cost for Trump of making a bad deal, they increase every single day that you get closer to the midterm election. And for Iran, again, what is it that Trump is demanding that you could possibly agree to when the most important thing that you now have is the one thing that Donald Trump needs to take away from you,

which is your control of the Strait of Hormuz. I would also point out that, you know, technologically, militarily, you know, what we've seen unfold in the Middle East over the last few months is what we've seen happening on the battlefields of Ukraine as well and Russia, which is the future of war. The future of war is right now. And what we've seen about the future of war is that it is highly asymmetric. It means that a drone that costs $30,000, $40,000, you know, is one of the most potent weapons that there is. Not only that, but that Iran very likely would continue to be able to use weapons like that to have the possibility of disrupting almost at will

global energy supplies. And I honestly do not see, given the technology and the geography, I don't know that I see a world in which Donald Trump is capable of solving that problem that he himself has made much, much worse in the last few months. I'm glad you brought up the drones because I remember the early days of reporting on the war in Iran where we were all kind of gobsmacked by the fact that we had to spend something like $3,4 million to take out a $30,000 to $40,000 drone.

As the reporting trickled out, and I think this was part of one of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's big scoops, that the Ukrainians had come to Washington and had a PowerPoint and said, we'll teach you. We'll show you how to do this. because they, you know, they've completely remade their country into a smart warfaring place. I was reading a, you know, a big article about a 33-year-old woman who was like a clothing designer who turned her factory into a drone factory. And what's your sense of where the resistance is within the Pentagon to updating the way that we do war in the positive direction? I know the currents coming from Secretary Hegset going in the reverse direction, you know, talking about like we've got to do it like we used to, which I understand the nostalgia for the bravery of past American soldiers and the incredible things that we've done like in World War II. But like we got to go in this direction, not in that direction. And I listen to someone like General Kane who seems incredibly sensible, right, and someone that you do want on your team for this. So do you have a.

reporting sense or just from being around there of where the block is in fully transitioning to the year 2026? Yeah, I mean, look, there's an enormous number of problems here. Partially, it's, of course, we have this gigantic national security infrastructure and spend, I think we can spend our way out of problems when, in fact, the reverse is off in the case. But just to the point about nostalgia, you know, if you want to be nostalgic for how America came in and helped to win World War II, then you should be nostalgic for the idea of a fast, adaptive, industrial powerhouse

that is leading in technological innovation, which is the exact opposite of Pete Hengs-S-Lughead approach to the Pentagon, the idea that you can, you know, have push-ups as your way to, you know, reform the military. Give me a break. I mean, it's just, you know, we've never had a more unqualified Secretary of Defense. And, you know, for all Dan Cain,

being, you know, perhaps not the maga hat-haring loyalist that Donald Trump thought he was when he appointed him to the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I think it's worth remembering that Dan Kay never would have been chairman of the Joint Chiefs under any other president of the United States, Democrat or Republican. He simply doesn't have the background, wasn't qualified, and, you know, would never have had that position under anyone else. and is not familiar, frankly, with the incredibly complex requirements of evolving in real time against such a multiplicity of threats. I think these stories that have come out in the last few weeks, Jessica, are fascinating and really important for people to pay attention to about how quickly the United States has spent down its arsenal of anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapons, Patriot missiles, things like that.

in the course of the conflict in the Middle East. Remember when we were told that the United States military had to spend this much money because we needed to be ready and prepared to fight a two-front war if necessary against our great power adversaries? Well, how is it possible that a one front war without any troops on the ground causes us to immediately and dangerously deplete our supplies of this crucial capacity in war fighting? This is going to have knock-on effects, by the way, this winter in Ukraine, where the Ukrainians are already facing the biggest missile barrages from Russia of the conflict in four years because the Russians are aware that they do not have the capacity right now.

They simply don't have the supply of anti-missile batteries that they need. South Korea, Donald Trump already unilaterally took away from South Korea a thad battery that they had paid for, by the way. the United States as a result of needing the munitions for this conflict in the Middle East. And so you'll see a whole wave of spillover effects from America's lack of preparedness. Right now on Capitol Hill, Republicans are talking about spending $1.5 trillion, $1.5 trillion on the budget. And again, it's taking this classic Pentagon approach of wanting to spend your way out of errors.

and it's not going to result in a short-term pivot. And, you know, people have spent their whole lives better than me trying to understand the particular disfunctions of, you know, America's weapons procurement system and the like. I will just say this. I was just speaking with, you know, a few very well-informed people on the subject. They pointed out that part of what happened in the last four years was that the Russia-Ukraine more underscored the need for changes in America's procurement system or to, you know, get ammunition cranking out at a different rate from American factories and then also getting drones

at a different rate. But the response signal that matters is contracts and actual long-term planning. So an abstract demand for innovation is not one that our company. right now are set up to fulfill. So I think it's frankly a mess. And, you know, you can be sure that the Chinese and the Russians are paying close attention to this. And my question is, what happens when a drone swarm, you know, is unleashed by somebody in the continental United States, God forbid, or in Europe right now? The Russians are every day conducting probing attacks of our NATO allies. There was a explosive-filled drone found at the airport in Germany just a few weeks ago. There have been drones that have crossed the border into NATO states in recent weeks.

You know, this is going to continue at a low level until something really explosive happens. And I fear that neither we nor our close partners are really prepared for it. Well, it feels like they are prepared for it insofar as they are aware of this and they are, whether it's an official meeting of like, how do we talk to Donald Trump at next NATO meeting or G7 summit or whatever it is, like they know that they have to be pushing this boulder up a hill to make it clear to him that this isn't a far-flung war anymore. This is a European front war. And I have a lot of sympathy for other world leaders and also like Secretary Ruta who has to make this work. Right. Like has to. We elected him freely and fairly.

And so this is what you have for the next four years. But my concern is something happens. It's really bad. And we recede even further because the person who has actually, whether it's things that he said out loud or the. pointed leaks that his team has made, who is at least, you know, waving the flag of what is going on here is J.D. Vance, who I think has a very dangerous foreign policy view for the future of the entire world. Like, he's the one who's talking about, you know, blows it and says our munition stock is down. Right. Like the rest of them are out there lying about what's going on. And J.D. is like, well, yeah.

Like, actually, this is a problem or, you know, sending those leaks into the. Atlantic, which it seems pretty clear to me that it was coming from his orbit. So how do you think a 28 candidate, no matter their politics, can talk about this very real threat in a way that matters to Americans? Because we feel like we're in a very insular moment because when prices are this high, you're just concerned about dinner, right? Like the story about what's going on in Germany or what's, you know, flying into Poland or Finland, like that's hard to make. You know, feel important to someone who's struggling to get by. Is your house in absolute flames right now?

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Even more than normal, it strikes me. This is a moment where Donald Trump's catastrophic foreign policy has come to bite American consumers. in the pocketbook, right? And so there is actually, from my perspective, a much more direct connection than is often the case in many of our elections because Donald Trump is driving up the cost of energy, which is driving up the cost of almost everything. And not just in the conflict in Iran, of course, the more that there is an escalation in the conflict between Russia and our European partners, Russia as an energy power, that has the possibility of driving up costs further. The tariffs, another great example. You know, every time Donald Trump threatens the EU

and Canada with tariffs, the people who potentially would end up having to pay more for those products are American consumers, which to me has never been, it's amazing, you know, that it's taken so long for people to absorb this. So that's one thing. I think the other thing, though, I'm really glad you brought up J.D. Vance, and, you know, is it possible that one result of the Trump's botched conflict in the Middle East will actually be America further pulling back. Because it strikes me that that's certainly a direction that you're going to see a big faction of the Republican Party pushing for. So you mentioned Vance.

I also noticed reports this week suggesting that the Pentagon was going to evaluate, you know, whether we wanted to keep the same footprint, military footprint in the Middle East after the conflict. This is one of, I think, the underreported stories of the war. in the Middle East that Trump launched, which is the extensive damage on U.S. military facilities across the region that the United States and its partners have paid billions and billions of dollars for. And not only does it appear, and again, they've not been very forthcoming and have not really testified in any clear way about the extent of the damage, but from what public reporting we have,

it strongly suggests that key facilities in Qatar, for example, where there's an enormous American airbase that they've been damaged are possibly currently not usable and might not be usable in the future, not just because the U.S. decides to pull back, but also because of this new era of drone warfare, this new era of asymmetrical threats to American capabilities. And this is also why you may see America's alliances and partnerships across the region with the Gulf allies suffering, no matter how much Donald Trump has sucked up to the American. mirrors of the Persian Gulf, they may be now finding that that bargain with the United States is not nearly as attractive because they thought they were purchasing at a minimum security

by having these American bases here. I just heard, you know, a comment the other day from someone who was speaking to a very senior Gulf official who said, you know, well, why would we want to have these bases if they're now getting us attacked? We thought the purpose of the bases was to make us more secure. And so I can already envision a world in which the pressure comes on the ground from the Middle East for the U.S. to pull back. And there's the political conversation here among Republicans who already wanted to have an American foreign policy that was far less forward-leaning. Yeah, all really good points. And that Washington Post article was pretty scary when you think of what could happen to our footprint there and then the idea that something happens

and we have to like load up on these ships and it takes us like months to get there versus that there are people on the ground ready to help. If God forbid something happens or an ally, closer by, needs our assistance. I don't know how to make this connection elegant. So I'm just going to say, I want to talk to you about young men and what's going on specifically with the far right with young men because that was one of the plotlands. I probably should have done this earlier in the show. But, you know, James Fishback, who was running in Florida primarily open kind of like Nazi stuff that he would say, anti-Semitic, racist, all the things, was primarily campaigning on college campuses.

And we've seen this huge uptick in anti-American, certainly what are they called like Groyper's, like Nick Fuentes, kind of proto-Groopers. And you have a Genzi's son who is not part of this group, obviously. Definitely not. Definitely not. But I want to ask you about this because I understand how social isolationism and lack of opportunity breeds bad things. And Scott, if you were here, like, this is his wheelhouse. He's like obsessed with the young men, like the good ones, like your son.

But do you have any insight into what's going on here? And if this is part of their core ideology or like they just won't need to belong to something and this is in front of them. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, I think we should start by saying, you know, by the numbers, it looks like young men as well as young women are moving to the left and not the right in this country, you know, in the aggregate. But what you're also seeing, and this is not true just of the youngest people, but it certainly accented there is moving to the extremes of both parties, right? So part of the fear is that not just that there is a fringe, there's always been. a fringe in both parties, but that there's more movement in that direction, that the momentum in each party is toward the outer edges, right? And so I think we're aware of that dynamic. How much of that is generational, stylistic, whatever? That strikes me as a key question,

because again, it goes back to the very beginning of our conversation, Jessica, which is, are what we seeing from Democratic primary voters actually an ideological embrace of socialism, or is it much more of a stylish, stylistic embrace of the politics of protest and resistance and, you know, screw you Donald Trump, right? And so I think that applies in spades to this question of how do we parse the politics of a new generation that's just coming into its own electorally amend all this dysfunction. I will say this, having, you know, a son who's grown up, it's such a different moment than we did. I do think it's really important for, you know, older voters to understand, like, you know, these kids, they came of age, the youngest of them, have only known

essentially what we would call the Trump-era in American politics. I was, you know, a fellow a year ago in, you know, at a university. And the students were like, can you old people, please stop talking about like what's normal in American politics and, you know, that this is some kind of aberration, this is all we've known if you're a college, first year or second year student, you know, you are a product in effect of the Trump era. Even the older, slightly older, Gen Z voters essentially came of age consciously in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and all the disruptions, including, of course, most importantly, the COVID pandemic that really, you know, sort of uprooted social norms and political norms at such a fragile,

moment. So I really think that's the most important thing we can do is not trying to like, you know, as like, you know, older people be like, well, I'm going to, you know, explain the TikTok generation to you. No, I don't want to say that. What I want to say is that we need to stop talking about what is normal and recognize how much we've screwed up, frankly, generationally, to give our young people a situation where it turns out that they think that, you know, this Trump era and American politics is normal. What does that say about us as a country? So that's one observation. I do think the reckoning has not occurred, and I wish that it would, but I doubt that it will, for what this kind of social isolation and technology fuel disruption has done to young people. I mean, honestly, we see what

the power of social media and endless scrolling does, you know, to grownups who have a foundation and a mooring and a connection already in our society, and it's terrible. And I just think it's horrible. I mean, you know, I really find it remarkable how disconnected Washington and our politics has been to addressing this radical transformation of our society. Washington has passed essentially zero laws that address this technology-fueled revolution in our country. And that tells you that there is a broken disconnect.

between what's happening in our business and our technology and our social life and, you know, the government that we have created for ourselves. It's broken. Totally broken. And you see it. I mean, it's manifesting in basically every piece of technology folks can get their hands on. So it's a flock camera problem. It's a data center problem. It's a social media algorithmic problem. And you're right about this disconnect. Washington, and there's some, you know, very smart thinkers on it, even some in older generations, like Mark Warner, for instance, you know, who's far from a Gen Z at this point. But everyone is just letting it sit there. And it's also remarkable to find something that is bipartisan. Like, it is across the board concerns because we're all united by this, right? Like, we're all moms and dads and sisters, brothers, whatever it is, who are concerned. concerned about people and quality of life and the impact of these technologies on them.

So I appreciate you putting a bow on my very awkward transition, but I wanted to get it in because I was fascinated watching the results tick in that, you know, Fischback was just routing Byron Donald's on college campuses. And I was like, oh, this is where this is manifesting, right? This kind of hateful rhetoric pushed out to you through your algorithms. So, Sister Glasser, this was awesome. Thank you for your time. It is so great to be with you. Thank you, Jessica. It's really nice to get a chance to talk. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only

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