Tangle - Joe Biden speaks at the U.N.

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Yesterday morning, President Joe Biden delivered his first-ever speech to the U.N. General Assembly, a gathering of leaders from across the world. You can read a transcript of his remarks here.In the address, President Biden focused on Covid-19, climate change, emerging technologies and defending human rights. He reinforced the United States' commitment to keeping nuclear weapons from Iran and out of the Korean peninsula, as well as our commitment to defending the state of Israel and pushing for a two-state solution. He issued warnings to nations like China for their human rights violations while also calling on global leaders to lean into diplomacy instead of armed conflict.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at https://www.readtangle.com/--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about President Joe Biden's speech at the United Nations yesterday, his address to the UN General Assembly, some pretty interesting stuff going on in there. And

I actually end up not agreeing with either side, either of the groups of punditocracies today. So that's something. Before we jump in, as always, some quick hits for the day. Number one, House Democratic leaders will not delay a September 27th vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, despite the larger reconciliation package not being ready. This means the two bills will no longer be moving through Congress together, which is a pretty big change of plan for Democrats. Number two, former President George W. Bush is planning to campaign for Representative Liz Cheney as she faces a Trump-endorsed Republican in the 2022 midterms. Number three, Johnson & Johnson says a booster shot following its single-dose vaccine increases protection against COVID-19.

Number four, Democrats pulled $1 billion in funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system after progressives threatened to vote against a stopgap funding bill if the money wasn't removed. progressives threatened to vote against a stopgap funding bill if the money wasn't removed. Number five, thousands of Haitian migrants in Texas are being released into the United States with notices to appear at an immigration office within 60 days. And those are our quick hits for today. Just a heads up, I am sending this out, have sent this out in the newsletter but I'm interviewing John Segoe who's the legislative director of the Texas Right to Life and one of the people who helped orchestrate the anti-abortion law in Texas we're going to be chatting in a forthcoming podcast or a transcript of the interview one or the other maybe both coming

out later this week but I told readers in the newsletter that they can submit a question if they want that I might ask him or try to ask him during our interview. If you want to do that, you can go check out our newsletter. I left a link to a forum where you can submit the question in that newsletter, which came out today around noon Eastern time. All right, so that's it for all the pre-stuff talk. Here we go. Today's topic, the UN General Assembly and President Biden's speech. Yesterday morning, President Joe Biden delivered his first ever speech to the UN General Assembly,

a gathering of leaders from across the world. In the address, President Biden focused on COVID-19, climate change, emerging technologies, and defending human rights. He reinforced the United States' commitment to keeping nuclear weapons from Iran and out of the Korean Peninsula, as well as our commitment to defending the state of Israel and pushing for a two-state solution. He issued warnings to nations like China for their humanitarian rights violations while also calling on global leaders to lean into diplomacy instead of armed conflict. Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past, we are fixing our eyes on devoting our resources to the challenges that hold the keys to our collective future. Ending this pandemic, addressing the climate crisis, managing the shifts in global power dynamics, shaping the rules of the world on vital issues like trade, cyber, emerging

technologies, and facing the threat of terrorism as it stands today, Biden told the audience. We've ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan, and as we close this period of relentless war, we're opening a new era of relentless diplomacy, of using the power of our development aid to invest in new ways of lifting people up around the world, of renewing and defending democracy, of proving that no matter how challenging or how complex the problems we're going to face, government by and for the people is still the best way to deliver for all of our people. I stand here today, Biden said, for the first time in 20 in with some of the reactions to this speech from the left and the right, and first up, the left. The left was mostly critical of this speech, arguing that Biden's words have not matched his actions. Few people sum this up better than Jen

Kirby, who wrote in Vox that Biden is still trying to convince the world America is back. Biden, since his 2020 campaign, has promised to deploy American leadership to help solve the world's problems and to do so alongside allies and partners, Kirby wrote. He has repeatedly framed his presidency as a defense of democracy in a global struggle against authoritarianism. But that rhetoric has not always matched Biden's foreign policy reality to date. For example, though Biden is raising the U.S. refugee cap to 125,000 as of this fiscal year, in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of allies were likely still left behind, and the administration is deporting Haitians at the southern border and returning them to uncertain futures. The withdrawal from Afghanistan also raised questions among allies about whether the U.S. did enough to consult with them,

and the U.S.'s new deal with the United Kingdom and Australia over nuclear submarines shows America is still flexing to counter China while angering France, another close ally, in the process. At the same time, the U.S. is debating whether to give out booster shots, which the World Health Organization has said should not be a priority because of unequal vaccine access across the world. On climate change, Biden reiterated the emergency and repeated the U.S.'s climate commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement. But actually achieving some of these goals requires real policy steps, and a lot of that depends on Congress. Right now, the future seems uncertain for the Democrats' big bill on climate, social spending, and more, and that could endanger the scaled-down bipartisan infrastructure climate bill, too. In the Washington Post, Max Boot criticized Biden for alleging the U.S. is

no longer at war and has turned the page. Most of these deployments are relatively small in scale, Boot said, and the nature of the extent of the operations remain classified. But, Boot argued, in a recent letter to Congress, Biden noted the presence of U.S. troops on counterterrorism missions in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, East Africa, Lake Chad, and the Sahel region of Africa, and the Philippines. The biggest deployments are in Iraq, with 2,500 U.S. troops, and Syria Syria with about 900 troops, Boot said. The battle is much reduced from its peak when the United States had tens of thousands of combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it hasn't ended. As the U.S. military likes to say, the enemy gets a vote, and militant Islamist organizations are still fighting. So the United States and its allies

are fighting back. That means, contrary to what Biden said on Tuesday, we remain at war. In the New Republic, Alex Shepard asks what the Biden doctrine actually is. The Biden administration was savage for failing to communicate and coordinate with European allies on the withdrawal. Similarly, the U.S. did not give France an advance warning that it would be replacing it as Australia's go-to nuclear sub-manufacturer. These communication problems could be chalked up to incompetence, a defining characteristic of the Trump era. If Biden's speech at the United Nations had one theme, it was simple. I am not Donald Trump. But there wasn't much beneath the feel-good veneer, Shepard said. Biden offered little clarity as to his foreign policy priorities. Some greater transparency might have been appropriate given his administration's actions over the past six weeks.

It's still not clear why the Biden administration failed to consult with NATO allies on the Afghanistan withdrawal, for instance. The French submarine issue is sillier, and it should be noted it is also being exploited by French President Emmanuel Macron for domestic political reasons. He has a tough election coming up. But the failure to communicate with an ally over the matter is a head-scratcher. All right, so that's it for the left's criticism.

The right, as you might imagine, was also pretty critical. The New York Post editorial board said Biden's, quote, empty platitudes won't fix his tattered global image. We're rebuilding alliances, Biden insisted, even as allies across the world are furious at being shut out of the planning that produced his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. France just withdrew its U.S. ambassador in protest after Biden announced a security deal with Australia that sank a $66 billion plan for the French to sell Canberra 12 submarines. We've reengaged with the World Health Organization, the press also boasted, and never mind that organization's cooperation with China's COVID cover-up. We're back at the table, Biden promised. In other words, U.S. interests will again take a backseat to whatever the world bodies thugs and corruptocrats prefer. He means to restore the

Iran nuclear deal, no surprise there. Pretending that Iran's terror-sponsoring regime will truly abandon its drive to become a nuclear power is no more absurd than Biden's belief that the Taliban may run Afghanistan as peace-loving, rights-honoring, good global citizens. In Fox News, James Carrafano said the speech was a guaranteed delight to inept globalists. Suffused with promises of multinational cooperation, it addressed all of the standard progressive pet projects, from climate change to global equity, universal labor, and environmental standards. He even promised to build back the world better and open up the American ATM for still more foreign assistance for everybody. What Biden's speech lacked was context on how America is actually leading. Among the more shocking statements in the wake of his catastrophe

in Afghanistan was his declaration that America stands up for allies and friends. Coming right after his administration abandoned 38 million Afghans to the mercies of the radical Taliban, who have already started beheading children and torturing journalists, this was borderline laughable. He had the gall to talk about democracy for Cuba only weeks after abandoning the protesters, opting instead for policies that shore up the stability of its authoritarian regime. He declared he would help bring peace and democratic values to places like war-torn Yemen and Ethiopia, both examples of countries where Biden's policies have so far only managed to make things worse. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said, nowhere was Biden's rhetoric more divorced from reality than on women and Afghanistan. In his speech, he highlighted the expectations in which we will hold the Taliban when it comes Nowhere was Biden's rhetoric more divorced from reality than on women and Afghanistan. In his speech, he highlighted the expectations in which we will hold the Taliban when it comes to respecting universal human rights.

We all must advocate for women, Biden said, the rights of women and girls to use their full talents to contribute economically, politically, and socially. Meanwhile, in Kabul, the Associated Press reports the Taliban expanded their interim cabinet by naming more ministers and deputies on Tuesday, but failed to appoint any women, doubling down on the hardline course. This weekend, the Taliban announced that girls would not be allowed to return to school, the board added. All signs so far in Kabul are that the Islamist group is reverting to the same medieval approach to girls and women it enforced the last time it controlled the country. Perhaps the administration thinks it's well-meaning gender appeals can't hurt, but the dissonance and the left's take. And here's my take.

So I said at the top that I actually disagree with both sides, and I guess that was a little bit of a spoiler. But yeah, I actually like this speech. That's right. I actually disagree with both the right And I guess that was a little bit of a spoiler. But yeah, I actually like this speech. That's right. I actually disagree with both the right and the left, which have seemed to fall into this prevailing notion that it was a horrible speech full of, you know, lies, empty platitudes, whatever. I had a press pass to the United Nations for a few years, and my office in Midtown used to be pretty close to it. So I've actually spent a lot of time kind of wandering the halls talking to people. And it is simultaneously one of the most interesting and most boring places on the planet. I mean, if you spend a few hours there, you're

bound to bump into the world's most important and inspiring people, presidents, prime ministers, children who've survived war, scientists charting the future of technology, activists fighting climate change, all of it. They're all there. They're all interesting. They all have a story. But it's also predictable. I mean, we'll work together. We'll take on these challenges. We'll fight for peace, which is an expression worth mulling, by the way, and on and on and on. Some of that was there in Biden's speech, the usual platitudes any eighth grader could write. These speeches are largely symbolic, though, and it's never an honest account of what we've done. This speech was no different. It's

absurd to suggest that the U.S. is no longer at war or has been a staunch defender of women's rights and human rights in the last year. All you have to do is look at our inaction in China, protecting the Uyghurs or the state of Afghanistan and how we've left Afghan women. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt from anybody that it's hard to say we've been prioritizing those things recently. Instead, though, I like to think of these speeches as like a State of the Union address for the globe, a roadmap of what we hope to do, and a statement of what this administration's mission is. In that sense, I thought Biden's speech was actually quite good. It was an intersection of

traditional liberal globalism, values of freedom that we like to promote, that I like hearing the president of the United States promote, and it added some dashes of that Trump-esque America first attitude that resonated with so many people when Trump was president. Celebrating a nation that prioritizes diplomacy over war, I'll take that any day of the week. Cheering for spending less on never-ending interventions and more on solutions. Yep, we'll take that. Fighting for climate change, standing up to China, refusing Iran and North Korea a nuke, preparing to address the dangers of evolving technology like artificial intelligence.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. All good things, you know. Nothing there is anything that I disagree with. And, you know, this whole question of globalism made me think of some advice my mom once gave me. She told me that in order to be a good partner in a relationship, you often need to prioritize yourself before you can give your full self to the person you're with. I thought of that today, reading Biden's speech and listening to some clips of it from yesterday.

I thought of that today, reading Biden's speech and listening to some clips of it from yesterday. You know, bad globalism is when we prioritize other nations over our well-being in service of the naive belief that our generosity will always be reciprocated. Good globalism is understanding that in 2021, the world is as connected as American citizens were 100 years ago. We can't fight a pandemic or humanitarian rights violations or climate change without global cooperation. Shoot, our stock market, your retirement funds, are now liable to be disrupted by what a Chinese real estate firm does, which is what we're witnessing right now. Biden's speech may have been full of platitudes, fibs, and even a couple outright lies. He still has plenty of work to do on prioritizing himself, quote unquote, which in this case is the United States domestic agenda. But he at least seemed to grasp the fact that our actions don't happen in a vacuum and we can't accomplish any of these goals without help from other nation states.

Even if his actions aren't yet matching his words in this day and age, I can at least appreciate some admirable goals. And in this case, Biden was calling on other nations to step up to the plate and help address these global issues just as much as he was promising that the United States would. That's something I can get behind. All right, so that's it for today's main story. We have a reader question in today. This is kind of an unusual reader question, but I wanted to address it because it's actually pretty important to me. Matt from Quakertown, PA wrote in and said, I am a ninth grade American history teacher. I was wondering if I could have

your blessing to share some of your newsletters with my students. I plan to collect some from variety of topics over time and let them choose and analyze which ones interest them for an assignment. I didn't want to just do it without asking if it was okay with you first. Okay, so the reason I want to address this is because, yes, you can. Please, please do. Please share them with your students. I have been trying and failing to get Tangle in front of a younger audience. The single smallest demographic of Tangle readers I have is under the age of 18, and it's not even close. I have more 80-year-olds reading Tangle than

teenagers right now. In Tangle's early days, I used to offer a membership tier of $1,000 that was basically to generate seed money for the newsletter, and in return, I promised to donate as many Tangle subscriptions as anyone wanted to a high school of their choice. It's not pure altruism either, though. It's actually a win-win for me because I want younger readers in my audience as well. Long-term, 10 years from now, if kids who are reading me in high school

are still reading Tangle, then that's a really good business decision for me. So, you know, A, I really want the next generation to be engaging both sides of the political world. I think that's super important. B, I think it'd be awesome if I got some younger readers because I don't have enough of them. They're the most underrepresented in the newsletter. And C, long term from a business standpoint, donating a bunch of subscriptions now is pretty smart because if I can hook readers,

I'll have an audience for the years to come. So if you are a teacher, you work in a classroom with kids, let me know. I will donate subscriptions. I will give them out. I would love to get some more young readers. You can just reply to a newsletter and write in, and you can reach me at Isaac, I-S-A-A-C, at readtangle.com. Speaking of schools, today's story that matters is actually about schools. Charter schools in the United States have picked off hundreds of thousands of students from public schools during the pandemic. That's according to a new report from Axios.

With many public school teachers still in Zoom classes and teacher fatigue and student disengagement taking their tolls, parents are trying a new strategy to keep their kids in classrooms. taking their tolls, parents are trying a new strategy to keep their kids in classrooms. U.S. charter school enrollment increased by 7% in 2020-2021 school year compared to the 2019-2020 school year. During the same time, non-charter public school enrollment dropped by 3%, which is a loss of about 1.5 million students. Axios has a great story on this today. million students. Axios has a great story on this today. All right, and today's numbers, a few fascinating ones I came across today. 3.5 million, that is the estimated number of women who became new gun owners between January of 2019 and April of 2021. It's the first time that women have made up nearly half of all new gun owners

for a period of time as long as a year or two, which is pretty fascinating. 33%, that is the percentage of voters who said they would blame Democrats if the U.S. were to default on its debt. 16% is the percentage of voters who said they would blame Republicans if the U.S. were to default on its debt. And 42% is the percentage of voters who said they would blame both parties if the U.S. were to default on its debt. 193 is the number of member states in the United Nations. 14 is the number of times the word climate was in Biden's U.N. speech. Eight is the number of times the word COVID was in Biden's UN speech. And today's have a nice day story is just a little bit of financial optimism for once. Six in 10 young Americans say they are more financially confident than they were before the pandemic. That piece of optimism is according to a new poll of

2000 Gen Z and millennial Americans. That's Americans born between 1981 and 2003. The same respondents also said they're being more financially responsible with over 30% admitting they're budgeting for the first time and 39% using new methods like apps or dedicated spreadsheets to make their budget. Alyssa Schaefer, who's the chief experience officer at Laurel Road who helped conduct the survey,

said it's encouraging to see that young Americans are feeling more financially confident throughout what continues to be a very difficult and challenging time. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, please consider giving us a five-star rating. It's super important for us. It helps us get in front of new listeners, new readers, all that good stuff. If you want more from Tangle, the newsletter is obviously our core product. We have a website. All things Tangle related that you want, you can find at www.readtangle.com. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman,

and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. We'll see you next time. inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.