The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1032: Tony Blinken: America Alone

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

For 80 years, the United States built strong economic, military, and political alliances around the world. But in just 100 days, that trust has been dismantled, and our friends are now working without us to forge new relationships. Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken joins Tim to discuss how hard it will be to rebuild after what Trump has done—plus the Biden administration's response to the Gaza protests, and the continuing questions over why Biden did not step aside earlier. And, Alex Wagner joins from Hungary to discuss the mass protests there. Tony Blinken and Alex Wagner join Tim Miller. show notes Alex's "Trumpland" podcast Tim on Trump's ABC News interview

Hey guys, we got a double header today that is focused on foreign policy. So if you want to go deep on all the insane stuff that's happening in politics, like Donald Trump's interview with ABC last night, where he got tricked by a Photoshop image of Kilmar, Briego Garcia's knuckles, or we're going to talk about the absurd spin coming from the Republicans, we got all your politics over on the next level comes out on Wednesday evenings. So make sure to subscribe to that feed and check it out. This pod, as I mentioned, foreign policy only, we've got Joe Biden, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, have so much to go over with him. And then in segment two, my friend Alex Wagner is just back from Hungary, where she was

covering the protests there. And I gotta tell you, it's just so inspiring. It's something that I just haven't been following closely. And so I'm happy that she went over there to see it firsthand to give us a report. So do stick around for that. So there you go. Big show. Hope you enjoy it. Up next, Tony Blinken. Hello and welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Could not be more delighted to welcome former secretary of state during the Biden administration, Tony Blinken. How you doing? Are we in the post secretary of state world?

Are we going by secretary, Tony? Do you have another preferred name? We're going by Tony. Tim, it's great to see you. Back to Tony. All right. It's good to see you too. I don't know if you know this. I was John Huntsman spokesman for a while. Ah, yes, I do. Yes. I'm used to that Diplo speak. So I'm going to use that experience to try to break you down over the course of the interview,

you know, break you into normal. John's one of the best. So he is good, but he, you know, he had a little bit of Diplo talk. We had to try to retrain his brain to get from Diplo, Diplomat to candidate, and we're going to try that for Diplomat to podcast. You know, it's a little different. The world is so fucking crazy that- Well, there you go.

Those are the first words that's probably something that wouldn't be part of Diplo speak. Exactly. And so I was looking at all the different topics, deciding where I wanted to start with you, and I figured it'd be best just to kind of let you pick. You look at what's happening the three months since you left Foggy Bottom, and I'm wondering what is worrying you the most right now. Well, the big picture is this, Tim. I think what's really frustrating is we put the country in a position of strength, both at home and around the world, at home by

investing in ourselves in really historic ways so that our competitiveness would be as strong as possible. You know, everything from the Chips and Science Act to the Inflation Reduction Act to the Infrastructure Act, all of these investments, but designed to make sure we could compete around the world and that our workers, our companies had what they needed to compete effectively. But what I was working on around the world with others in the administration led by the president was to make sure that our alliances and partnerships were as strong as possible. Because when we're dealing with all of the problems that we're likely to talk about around the world, whether it's Russia and Ukraine, whether it's China, whether it's Iran, whether

it's anything else, we're so much better off when we're doing it with allies and partners than when we're doing it alone. And where we're headed now is a world not where it's America first, but where it's America alone. And that's not good for us. It's not good for getting stuff done that matters to the American people. Yeah. All right.

Well, so let's just do a Cameron San Diego trip around the world there and figure out where America alone is the most problematic. I mean, I guess the trade war is probably where you start. And maybe let's look at it through the context of China first, since that's the most acute. You know, I was talking earlier to somebody and we're discussing kind of how the tariff pressure on China could potentially have worked, right? If it was in concert with all of our allies, if we

had Japan and Australia and Europe and Vietnam, et cetera, on board. But that's not exactly what's happening. So talk about kind of this tariff battle with China Allies, if we had Japan and Australia and Europe and Vietnam, et cetera, on board. But that's not exactly what's happening. So talk about kind of this tariff battle with China and how maybe it differs from what you guys were doing, because you guys had some tariffs on China as well. Look, I think we got to start with this. Back in his first term, I think President Trump was right to put more focus on China

and to put more focus on some of the egregious practices they were engaged in that were doing real damage to American workers, to American companies, to American communities, including for example, this notion of overcapacity where they flood the market with certain products that have been subsidized and otherwise given an unfair advantage, pushing American companies, American products, American workers out of that sector. And it was important to focus on that. But the way you do it really matters. And here's the thing, if we're dealing with something that China's doing that we don't

like and we're doing it alone, we're what about 20, 25% of world GDP. When we're doing it with our European allies, our Asian allies, suddenly we're 50 or 60% of world GDP. That's something that China can't ignore. But instead of focusing intensely on those areas and on those products where China was trying to get an unfair advantage and lining up allies and partners to join with us, we've gone at this with a machine gun spraying everything in China, but also our allies and partners, the very people that we need with us to deal effectively with what China is doing.

So I think there's clearly a role for focused targeted tariffs, for example, on certain Chinese products, especially in areas where they're trying to dominate the sectors of the future in ways that are unfair, solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries for those vehicles. That's where you want to put the focus. That's what Biden was doing. But now in broadening this out and basically having what amounts almost to a trade embargo with China and doing it in a way

that's alienating our allies and partners who are not with us. We're pushing them toward each other away from the United States and maybe even toward China. And that's simply going to undermine everything that we're trying to do to protect our workers, to protect our companies, to protect our people. Give me a psychological analysis of what you think's happening in China right now.

And you had to deal with counterparties over there for a few years. You know, you've got the Kool-Aid man coming through the door here, and he's just like, it's 45%, it's 80%, it's 145%. And like, you got to call us. And you know, Scott Bessence on the shows over the weekend saying they're going to fold you know their their business model doesn't work without the US

and you know they're claiming they're having negotiations that don't seem to be actually happening. How do you think the Chinese are processing all this? What do you think their strategy is? I think they have the ability in many ways to to wait us out. They can take more pain by the nature of their system than we can take, and partly that's what they're counting on. So they match the tariffs in a dramatic way, and it's now a little bit of a game of chicken to see who's going to pull their punch first. I hope we can find a way to navigate this in a smart way.

Look, Tim, here's the thing. We spent a lot of time talking about de-risking, not decoupling from China. Now, that sounds like Diplo speak, but basically it means let's focus on the specific areas where either China is taking unfair advantage of us economically or where we've got a national security issue or question. For example, we don't want to be selling them the highest end microchips because that's going to go into their military and pose a threat to us or throws a threat to our allies and partners. But it doesn't mean cutting off trade.

It doesn't mean cutting off investment. That's beneficial to both of our countries. We both need it. But now what we're seeing is instead of de-risking from China, we have the rest of the world that's looking at de-risking from us because we've lost the most important thing that undergirds any trade relationship, political relationship, military relationship, and that's trust. People don't know that they can trust the United States. They don't know what we're doing. They don't know where we're going. They don't know if what we say today is going to be reversed tomorrow and then reversed again the day after. So I think China's looking

at this too and thinking on the one hand, look, this isn't great, it does hurt us, but we have some ability to endure and to take more pain by the nature of our system than the United States does. So I'm afraid they're gonna try to outweigh this. The other thing that isn't like a direct China issue, because we aren't doing a ton of USAID with China, but relates to our competition with China, but relates to, you know, our competition with

China, great power competition is just the fact that we've completely gutted a lot of the soft power that we use throughout the world. Talk about that and like the impact of cutting USAID, not just on, you know, the people that are being harmed, which is important, but also on the competition with China. Look, I get that people are not necessarily enthusiastic about foreign aid or diplomatic programs. We're in a safe space for people being enthusiastic about foreign aid here. You know, the remaining, the handful of renegade former Republicans, the McCain Republicans and the liberals, you know, that less than, we're good here.

We don't need, you know. Well, for those who may still be in a different place, look, you know, it's interesting in survey after survey, you ask people, how much money are we spending on foreign assistance? And they say, oh, 25%. How much should we be spending? 10%. How much are we spending? 1%. One penny on every dollar covers basically everything the State Department and USAID

do or in the case of USAID, we're doing in the past. And the bang for the buck is incredible, because not only are we helping countries solve problems that if not solved are going to come back to bite us, because in the absence of solving them people are going to go to war, you're going to have mass migrations, you're going to have disease that spreads across the planet and hits us. You're also building incredible goodwill through what we've often called soft power. If we're in retreat, if we're pulling out of that, if we're ending this very, in the

context of our own budget, modest support to helping to feed people, to helping provide basic health security, to making sure that they can deal with some of the challenges posed by climate change, you name it, go down the list. We're going to see problems get a lot bigger and come and bite us, and we're going to lose that goodwill. And who fills in? Who takes advantage of the vacuum? China.

We see it now with China getting into the position we were in with so many of these programs. And that means that China will get the benefit of whatever successes they have, and their influence is going to go up, not down. That's an America that's in retreat. Look, we were working hard to get ambassadors to all of our embassies around the world. We had confirmation problem after confirmation problem because people would hold up our ambassadors for one unrelated reason or another. Meanwhile, China was putting in place more embassies than the United

States has around the world. What does that mean? That means that when an American company is trying to win a contract in a given country, we can't send our ambassador in to see the president, to see the prime minister, to see the finance minister. The Chinese can. And guess who wins the contract? It plays out in so many different ways to the detriment of our own people and our own interests. I wonder what folks are saying in those countries as you think about it. I mean, obviously, you began by talking about America alone, and we can just discuss the

degree to which this administration has been, I guess, doing everything possible to hamper the relationship with our traditional allies, both with their public talk about acquiring Greenland, but also leaked private signal messages, talking about how much they resent the Europeans and Canada's 51st state. What are you hearing from the folks that you talk to in those countries over the course of the past couple months? Well, I've got a lot of friends around the world that I've made over the years. Most of them now are no longer in positions

of responsibility. Those are the folks I talk to. I tend not to talk to people who are in government now. And the last thing I would do is to give them advice about what they should do. But I'm hearing from a lot of people I know. And again, it comes back to this question of trust. You spend 80 years building up this trust by building strong economic partnerships,

by building up military alliances, by building up political alliances. If that is then taken down in a matter of 100 days, the trust is gone. That makes it incredibly hard to rebuild. If you look at the idea of, can we put this genie back in the? Not so easy. So what does that mean? What does that mean in terms of what they're doing? It means that countries are now looking for ways to work around us, to work more closely together, but without the United States. And that I think is the trend that we're seeing, because the unpredictability, the possibility that what's said today will be reversed tomorrow and then

reversed again means that they simply can't count on us. You know, President Biden used to like to say it's never a good bet to bet against America. The problem we now have is that people will not be betting on America and that will play itself out for many, many months and many, many years. All right. Well, I talked to a lot of political operatives. That's my world. I don't talk to a lot of diplomats. So I hear you. That was nice. It was a little Diplo speak.

It's like two retired guys. I don't know. You're in Zurich or something. You're having a bottle of wine. Give me a little bit of a picture. What are these guys really saying? I don't think they're saying, Tony, the trust deficit has increased. I think they're probably a little bit more alarmed than that.

Well, I think the diplomatic language that I typically hear is, Tony, what the F is going on? That tends to be how the question is posed because look, there really is confusion. Here's the thing, we were talking to him about tariffs a little while ago, but we don't even know what the administration is trying to accomplish because we keep hearing different things. Is this about raising revenues? Maybe, except at some point that doesn't work because the tariffs go so high that trade stops and you

don't get the revenues. Is this somehow about bringing manufacturing back to the United States? Maybe, except that that takes years and it takes massive investment and people are loath to make those investments in an environment of unpredictability. Is it about dealing with the trade deficits that we have with some countries? And it seems that this is something that has motivated President Trump for a long time. Maybe that's what's going on, except that the link between tariffs and trade deficits is not so obvious. We have 27 countries in the European Union, right? They all basically have the same tariffs. They basically have the same trade policies. We've got surpluses with some, deficits with others.

So that whole link is not clear. And by the way, trade deficits are not necessarily a bad thing. It basically means we import a lot of stuff, so people have cheaper prices, they've got greater choice, and then our manufacturers can take the inputs for their products that they bought more cheaply and produce a product that they can sell at a better price. So there's just general confusion about what is the president trying to accomplish. And I'd say really quickly two things.

As I'm trying to decipher this myself and trying to have these conversations and at least try to explain what I see going on. One is this notion of what the economists call autarky or economic self-sufficiency. Basically, let's make everything and build everything and do everything in the United States. Sounds good, right? Except that many, many years ago we figured out that this thing called comparative advantage was actually a pretty good thing for us where some countries would make some stuff, we'd make other things, and everyone would be better off because

again, lower prices, more variety, an ability to make our own products less expensively. And then the countries that have tried over the years to do self-sufficiency did not work out so well. The Soviet Union tried that, it went off the cliff. North Korea's tried that, it's gone off the cliff. But that seems to be one thing. The other thing is this. My sense is, as the president's looked at history, he's attracted, and we've heard him talk about it, so it's not a surprise, to something that was characteristic of the 19th century. And that was this notion of having a sphere of influence. And it basically means this.

The big countries, the big guys, the strong guys get to carve up the world. And we get our part, and the other big guys, and in this case, it would be Russia and China, get theirs. We get to do what we want in our sphere, they get to do what they want in theirs, the Chinese get to do what they want theirs. And that's kind of the way the world looked in Europe in much of the 19th century, except it didn't work out so well. Because inevitably what happens is one country that has one sphere decides it wants to get bigger, it wants more, so it tries to take some more territory.

And then these circles rub against each other and you get conflict. Or within one area, one country tries to keep its people down, and then the people rebel and they get pushed down again, and then it eventually blows up. And in this case now, you've got Russia and China that may have a sphere of influence. These are autocratic countries. We're a democracy. They also in a world of instant communication can't afford to letocratic countries. We're democracy. They also, in a world of instant communication, can't afford to let their people see a successful democracy. So they're going to

meddle in ours to try to make sure that ours is not succeeding. And they can say to their own people, see they're no better than we are. All of these things lead to conflict. They lead to destruction. They lead to economic chaos. They lead to a bad place for America and for Americans. Can I offer a third potential option for your pals who ask you, Tony, what the F is going on? I'd like the Brookings options of they're interested in autarky or sphere of influence. I think the third option is that we elected a megalomaniac criminal who doesn't actually care about the country and

only cares about himself and his feelings. And everybody should just batten down the hatches and buckle up because there's no sense trying to put a fancy explanation on what's happening. What do you think about that? One thing is this, and maybe it's a little bit related. I think one of the things that President Trump understands, knows, and has a tremendous instinct for is the so-called attention economy and dominating it every single day. In a sense, it doesn't matter what you do or what you say as long as you're dominating

the attention economy, which he does. If you look at a newspaper, these 10 people still look at that, whether it's online or a hard copy, and you see 10 headlines, probably seven of them are going to have his name in them. So, if that's how you gauge your success, and you know, that's not totally crazy, then it almost doesn't matter what the substance is as long as you're in the headline. And that's tough for the counterparties, the allies to predict, right? Because it's like, well, who the hell knows who's going to say something to get them attention, right? Like this gets back to this basic predictability. When Biden left office, we had, and sorry again for the long speak, but it, but it actually is meaningful to people.

You know, we had the highest level of foreign direct investment ever. That means that countries, companies were pouring money into the United States because they saw this as the best place to invest. And part of the reason for that was predictability, whereas other countries might be chaotic. You pretty much knew what you were getting with the United States. Things like the rule of law, things like no political retribution, things like transparency, all of these things were what attracted other countries to us and had them making massive investments here in ways that created growth, that produced more jobs, helped us produce better products to sell around the world.

When you lose that, and that's what I'm afraid we're at risk of losing, then you're heading again to a bad place. Hey, did you guys know that 60% of the clothes we buy end up in a landfill within a year of being made? Well, I guess that was the step before the Trump tariffs. Who knows? The clothes might have a little bit more sticking power once we can no longer get any t-shirts from China anymore.

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This takes us to a question I asked one of my friends who would have been on you know, on Earth 3, if we had elected a normal Republican president at some point in the last 10 years, would have been, you know, in the inner circle of the national security kind of advice world. And I was like, what do you think I should ask Tony? And he said, I'd be curious to what he thinks about this. What dimensions of US foreign relations will be hard to unravel, right? Like, in other words, like where will the changes that have happened over the next four years

have hardened to such a degree that it will be challenging for any new administration to kind of fix it? So like what do you assess as a potentially permanent change here? So Tim, I think there are a lot of things that are on the chopping block and we'll see how it plays out. But for example, for 80 years, we've had allies and partners that could sort of count on us as necessary because of these alliances that we built to protect them if they got into

hot water. And now they don't know. And that means they're going to have to make their own bets for the future if they can't bet on us. So, for example, countries like Japan, like Korea, like even Poland, we heard this the other day, that have forsworn nuclear weapons may decide that, you know what, we have to go down that road because we can't count on America. And once you go down that road, it's very hard to go in reverse.

They will get together amongst themselves and away and around from us. Now, maybe for example, you'll have countries coming together to figure out different kinds of supply chains to make sure that they have access to the stuff that they need and can trade with each other without making themselves reliant on the United States, because then based on the whims of whoever's in office, something could go off, go bad, and that relationship, that dependency could be used as leverage against them. All of these kinds of things take a lot of time, a lot of investment, but once they're unleashed, they're really hard to pull

back again. So, you know, now we see, look, we've seen just in the last hundred days after Europeans and the Northeast Asians moved away from creating dependencies on China, de-risking, as we urged them to do for the last four years, now all of a sudden the Europeans are talking again to China about a big free trade agreement. Japan and Korea come together and talk to their Chinese counterparts about the same thing. At the same time, the European Union and Latin America, they just finished a big free trade agreement. All of this around the United States, not with the United States.

Once you do that, hard to put back in the bottle. Yeah. Think about how bad you got to mess up to drive China and Japan together in 100 days. It takes some effort. It takes some effort. I can say it's actually quite impressive in competence to do that in such a short time period. I want to ask you about your successor a little bit. I was listening to your interview with David Remnick from three months ago,

and he asked you about Marco Rubio. I'm going to replay that for you, and we'll see if you need to revise and extend your remarks after three months. Let's take a listen. I've had a number of conversations with Marco Rubio, Senator Rubio, who I've known for years, in part because of his service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And at the risk of damning him with praise that he might not want, we've had really good

conversations about... And Chelsea Gabbard? I don't know her, have not talked to her, but I do know Senator Rubio. And I think he's extremely well prepared for the job by his service on the Foreign Relations Committee, on the Intelligence Committee. And he's deeply thoughtful about most of the things we have to confront. Would you like to dam him with some criticism now? Or do you, what do you think?

Well, look, Tim, I'll say two things. First, those words when spoken were accurate and I wouldn't take them back Second, I haven't I haven't spoken to secretary Rubio at all since he's taken on the job So I don't really benefit from you know hearing directly from him how he's seeing this how he's thinking about it I can go unusual. Did you call your past Republican? I have look I think everyone does this differently in my case I benefited tremendously from talking to my predecessors, many, many conversations with Henry Kissinger before he passed away, very frequently with Condi Rice, Jim Baker, and obviously Madeleine Albright when she was alive, John Kerry. So in

my case, I wanted the benefit of their extraordinary wisdom. But again, people do this differently. And actually, I talked to Mike Pompeo a couple of times back in the day, Rex Tillerson. The challenge that anyone in an administration has is they're following the guidance of the president or what they believe to be the guidance of the president, because in this case, it seems to shift a bit on a daily basis. And you're always trying to divine what that might be. I had a tremendous advantage on the job because I had worked for Senator Biden when he was Senator, Vice President Biden, President Biden for 22 years. So I always pretty much knew in advance what he was thinking. And when people around the world heard me speak, they knew that I was speaking with authority

on behalf of the president because of that relationship. I think it's maybe more challenging now for the secretary to again, make sure that he's seen as speaking clearly for the president. So he has to figure out what it is the president wants him to do and, and wants him to say that's, you know, part of the challenge of the job. That was pretty kind. That was very generous to Marco.

I mean, I hear you, you got to do what your boss says. Well, you also have agency. I mean, everybody has agency. You know, I don't know if president Biden had decided that after 50 years in public office, he had taken a strong turn and wanted you to use your power to take away the green card, take away the student visas from people because they wrote op-eds criticizing him. I don't suspect that's something that you would do.

I don't know, because that was on Marco's call. He did that himself, right? You know, one of the things I've learned from doing this for 32 years and being in government for much of that time is, look, there are always going to be compromises you're asked to make and everyone has to decide for themselves and it's different for every individual. What is a compromise on my beliefs, my principles, my values that I can't make? What is something that tells me that the ends don't justify the means? That's a different decision for everyone. And look, what we don't know is it's possible that the secretary is managing to

do and protect some things by being seen somewhat differently. Come on. I mean, let's go through the list. Come on, come on. He's not like the, he killed Radial Marty and then he killed USAD, something he was a big advocate for. Just yesterday, they got rid of the women peace and security initiative, something Marco was a co-sponsor on. He cut temporary protected status for Latin American, you know, citizens that are fleeing communism.

He is complicit in sending people to an El Salvador Gulag. He is the person that pulled the student visa from people based on using their free speech rights, like OzTarC at Tufts. I mean, what could be worse than what he's doing? That he could be stopping behind the scenes. And all of that is totally anathema.

And that's not even talking about Russia, which is up next. All of that is totally anathema to what Marco ran for president on in 2016. No? There would seem to be a, something of a contradiction between some of the things that he did and stood for when he was in the United States Senate and what he seems to be doing and standing for, for now. And that's a obviously good question to ask him. I don't think Marco is going to come on.

Goes back to Jeb days. Uh, he didn't like us more than I didn't like. I had no issues with Marco. Marco would have been, I thought a good president, but I've been just utterly astounded by, and to me, I think he's been like worse than a lot of the mega people that have been chosen because of the degree to which he's gone along with some of those things I discussed. Let's go to the Russia side of it though. What do you make about the state of affairs? I mean, both Marco, Steve Wichoff, the lavish praise for Vladimir Putin we've seen from

the lead negotiator there. What do you make of the state of affairs right now? Well, I seem to remember during the campaign that the President Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. So now we're at 100 days, hasn't happened. And I guess there's not much accountability for those kind of promises.

But leaving that aside, look, when we were talking about tariffs, one of the effects of tariffs is all of these companies that are trying to plan for Christmas now can't do it. They can't make the contracts, buy the stuff they need because prices are going to be too high and they won't be able to make ends meet. So people are talking about Trump has really taken a real whack at Christmas.

Here's someone who's getting Christmas early, Vladimir Putin. Just go down the list of things that he's gotten, that he's wanted, and he's gotten for free. And it's like the best Christmas ever. Somehow, the person and country that committed this horrific aggression against Ukraine, against its people, and against the entire international system, all the rules that we had put in place to try to prevent war, somehow absolved from that. Up front, unilaterally, we're talking about

basically giving him the territory that he seized by force, recognizing the seizure of Crimea back in 2014, lifting the sanctions, even lifting the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that we managed to get the Germans to stop that sent Russian gas to Germany and to Europe. Now they're talking about lifting that and recreating Europe's energy dependence on Russia and so on down the list, blocking Ukraine from ever getting into NATO. Somehow we're punishing the victim, we Ukraine from ever getting into NATO. Somehow, we're punishing

the victim, we're rewarding the aggressor. So it really is an early Christmas for Vladimir Putin. If you look back and feel like, like, was there anything more you guys could have done when you were in there as far as weapons, you know, being more aggressive early with Ukraine so that they could have been in a stronger position now? Look, first, Tim, you go back and we tried to make sure that the Ukrainians had what they needed when they needed it to fend off the Russian aggression. If you, if you look at it well before the aggression, when we were

trying to build this extraordinary coalition of countries to help defend Ukraine, to help strengthen NATO, to help punish the Russians, if they went in, we were sending weapons to the Ukrainians September before the, uh, aggression, Christmas before the aggression. So when it actually happened, they had a lot of javelins and a lot of stingers in their hands and they were able to repel the aggression. People thought that Russia was going to roll over the country in a matter of a few days.

They pushed them back and they pushed them back 50% of the territory that Russia originally grabbed their push back from. Then at every step along the way, we try to make sure that they had what they needed and the nature of the war change, where it was being fought, how it was being fought, what was needed. And each and every time, you know, there'd be some kind of public dispute about, oh, did we give them a certain weapon system fast enough? A lot goes into those decisions. It's not just the weapon system. It's do they know how to use it, which means you've got to train them on it. Can they maintain it, which means you've got to put that in place.

Is it part of a coherent battle plan? All of those things, you know, the Pentagon was looking at, we were looking at, try to make sure that when we were doing something, it would actually work and make sense. Are there things that, you know, I would have liked to have seen done sooner, faster? Sure, there's always something. But by and large, this was done in a very deliberate, very systematic way. And the result is a country that shouldn't be around, given the totally disproportionate force that Russia could bring to bear versus Ukraine, is still standing.

All right. I'm going to give you a DeLorean, though. You get to, this is magic. You get to go back, you get to go back five years. You have all this knowledge now. You're a little grayer, but not much, you're looking good. And you get to go back to 2020 and talk to yourself.

Is there anything you think you'd say, we should have done this thing differently? On one level, you say to yourself, there's pretty much everything you'd wanted. There's something about everything you've done. Oh, we could have done something a little bit different here, a little bit better there. There's no question about that. And I think the thing, the thing that will, you know, eat at me for a long time is obviously the Middle East and Gaza and the horrific human suffering that we saw on all sides. And, you know, could we've gotten to a better place faster than we did, which ultimately we did when we left office.

But unfortunately, that's also something that seems to have been dropped. But as I'm looking at the really big picture, what I'm seeing is this, President Biden came to office with probably the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst global health crisis in at least a hundred years, relationships with our allies and partners that had been badly frayed, if not torn apart, and of course, profound

divisions at home. And what he handed off, at least, when he left office was an economy that the economists called the envy of the world, even if people were not feeling some of the benefits as much as they needed to be. Obviously, gotten through COVID in ways that everyone's now forgotten. And we had the strongest relationships and partnerships with allies in Europe, in Asia, and well beyond, than we've had in as long as I can remember. And that put us in a position of extraordinary strength

to deal with all of these challenges that we see around the world. Unfortunately, that's all been torn up in the space of 100 days. On the Middle East thing, I mean, we could do a whole podcast on this. I don't know if it's worth the time to kind of just dig into it on a surface level. And you're also omniscient. You know, you probably couldn't change the Hamas leadership or Bibi going back. But I do look back at it and just think about the domestic side of it. You kind of ended up in really in a sour spot where we have this spike in anti-Semitism

in the country on campus. You have these protests. And you end up in a place where the protesters hated you spike in anti-Semitism in the country on campus. You have these protests and you end up a place where the protestors hated you, calling you genocide Joe and genocide Tony. And then you had Jewish voters and conservative voters and other people around the country who were like, they're on the side of the protestors actually. They're not doing enough to speak out

against the most extreme. Obviously you want people to have free speech on campus but not do anything about these most extreme examples about know, obviously you want people to have free speech on campus, but not do anything about these most extreme examples about like Jewish students being targeted, et cetera. Do you look back on that and think on the domestic side, we could have managed this better? That's exactly what I worked for President Obama for eight years. He called that the sweet spot.

The sweet spot? Yeah. You managed to alienate everyone. Yeah, not the bulwark. It was only the bulwark was on your side on this one. So, I'm sympathetic to it, but also I'm like, ugh. For which I thank you. Tim, there's so much that goes into this, even into the domestic side that we could probably talk about for a long time. But I think it comes down to something very fundamental that we see both at home

and we see around the world. And that is this notion of dehumidization. both at home and we see around the world. And that is this notion of dehumanization. This notion that someone you disagree with or have a profound difference with is somehow not only your enemy, but basically isn't human. And we saw that in the dehumanization in the Middle East in all directions. We see that in our own country

in terms of dehumanization of one's political adversaries. And for me, that is the most potent poison in our commonwealth, because once dehumanization sets in, everything bad becomes so much easier and everything good becomes so much harder. And I think we saw that in the debates or the wrong word, you know, the horrific things that people were hurling at each other in the context of this tragedy in the Middle East. But we also see it poisoning our politics in profound ways. If we can't find a way to pull back from that, we have a massive, massive problem that I think will be maybe the biggest challenge we face, never mind China, never

mind Russia, never mind Iran. That really is at the heart of what ails us. And that's what we've got to figure out. So now I got to take you to the place where you were in the sour spot with the bulwark and that is with the president's ability to, well, I'll get your take on the president's ability to do the job. From my perspective, the president's ability to prosec well, I'll get your take on the president's ability to do the job. From my perspective, the president's ability to prosecute the case for himself as he started to be less able to do that, right? Like as he aged.

I just think that regardless of what you think about his ability to do the job, you know, he wasn't Barack Obama or frankly George Bush or Donald Trump and wasn't able to go out and be an effective communicator. And, you know, to me, if I go back in the DeLorean, I got to say to him, you can't do this again. Maybe you're able to appear like maybe you're able to from a policy standpoint, but part of being president is being out there being visible, communicating, dominating the information economy, as you mentioned earlier, the attention economy. The idea that he was going to be able to do that until he was 86 was, I just think, preposterous

on its face. So I'm wondering, looking back, what you think about all that. Yeah. Well, Tim, I think you put your finger on something that's very important and probably right. There's a big difference between the ability to do the job effectively and the ability to sell the job you're doing. And yeah, I think he might be one of the first to acknowledge that we were not as effective

and he was not as effective arguably as he should have been, could have been, in actually conveying to the American people everything that we were doing for them and very, very successfully. And it was a big, big frustration. So much so that I think, you know, to some extent, people couldn't somehow connect all of the good things that were happening with what the administration was doing. And if you don't have that connection, it's obviously not gonna redound to you

in a positive way politically. And yeah, it is part of the job. And I think it's also the reason why ultimately he decided not to run again. It wasn't about doing the job in the moment. It was the ability or foreseeing the ability to be able to do the job for another four years, including this notion of, you know, communicating effectively with people. Yeah, but here's the thing, because of the nature of the threat, and you guys were talking all the time about the threat to democracy,

and we were the nature of the threat, and you guys were talking all the time about the threat to democracy and we were, and the nature of the opposition, like the responsibility on him to make the decision in a way that best put the party in the country in a position to put forth somebody that could beat Donald Trump, like A, required him to acknowledge this earlier. Like I said, it's ridiculous to think that he could have done this at age 86. It's just ridiculous. And, and then you have the debate and then there's another month or six weeks or something after that until he decides to drop out.

And then after that, like there is a lot of the reporting coming out about how he was really not like giving the vice president the space to kind of get the distance that would be necessary from him. And to me, I just think that I said this with respect because I know you have a deal of respect for him and I do too. But I think that he showed a great deal of selfishness over the last year in how it was handled. And I wonder if you look back on that and think, man, I wish I could have encouraged him to do it a little differently. As you say, you go back in the DeLorean machine, hindsight's always 20-20 and on just about

anything or everything you do, you always think there's something I could have done a little bit differently or maybe more than a little bit differently. But here's the thing. First, every decision that we made, every judgment that we made, every policy we pursued, that was him. That wasn't someone else. That wasn't me. That wasn't any of the other advisors. Everything that we did was the product of the decision that he made and an informed decision through discussion, debate, argument that he was more than fully engaged in. So you can say, I don't like the results of those policies. That's fine.

But you can't say that he was not the person responsible for them, who decided them, who made those decisions, made those judgments and got those results. And that's fundamentally the bottom line. I think that's the bottom line that he saw. Now, again, coming back to your point about, well, did we communicate that effectively? I think the answer is no. Does that mean he could be confident about being able to do that same job, making those decisions, making those judgments for another four years with

advanced age? That's something different. But, you know, these decisions about what he should have done, when he should have done it, what difference might that have made in political outcomes? Yeah, it's easy to prognosticate about that, but no one knows. Pete So, you don't wish you would have had a little talk with them about it earlier? Pete One of the things that I've learned too, over working for three presidents over the course of the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations is, you know, keep whatever counsel you gave to the president to yourself. Pete Slauson rapid fire. Do you think that Putin wants peace?

Pete Slauson No. Pete Hortense Okay. Do you think that all of the people that we have sent to the El Salvador, Cicote are actually MS-13? Pete Slauson I haven't seen the evidence, so that suggests… Pete Hortense Excuse me, or Trent Aragwa? Pete Slauson Trent Aragwa, yes. I haven't seen the evidence. It sure would be good to see it. And again, I know this is rapid fire, but this is not about, you know, immigration. It's about the constitution and it's about due process and it's about the rights that everyone needs to be afforded.

Because when you short circuit those rights for one person, you're going to wind up short circuiting for lots of other people, including people who may be listening to this podcast. Can I see your knuckles? We're going to make sure you circuiting for lots of other people, including people who might be listening to this podcast. Can I see your knuckles? We want to make sure you don't have MS-13. Do you have MS-13 tattooed on your knuckles? No.

Okay, watch out. No. Stephen Miller might put something on there and it might trick the president. Did you see the president last night? He was tricked into thinking that a Photoshop- I missed that. Yeah, a Photoshop of a Brego Garcia's knuckles. It said MS-13 and like Ariel Font.

It was a Photoshop. And the current president thought it was real and started yelling at Terry Moran about how he needs to look at the knuckles. We're in a pretty bad place, Tony. Well, that and all of my Chicago Bulls memorabilia and, you know, shirts, I'm obviously giving those to goodwill. Do you have a favorite bowl on the current team? I have to say I'm originally from New York,

so I'm really a Knicks fan, but. Oh, you're back to the Knicks. Oh, okay, got it. All right, Jalen Brunson. It was a tough game last night. Yeah, tough, I know, I know, but keep the faith. Big win for the Nuggets. Okay, last thing, your music, man.

I was looking at your feed. You were given a JJ Kale wreck. We always have an outro song today. Do you have a JJ Kale song or something else that's speaking to you in the moment that we can use as our outro today? I mean, look, I'm stuck in the 70s and a lot of classic rock. There are a lot of people that I love today. Let's see. Maggie Rogers? Love Maggie Rogers. Check that out. Okay, Maggie Rogers. We'll find a Maggie Rogers or a JJ Kelsang to take us out with. Tony, thank you so much. Please come back and do it again.

We'll slowly but surely. By your third time, you're going to be cussing, you're going to be cussing, you know, using slang. We'll see. You might even have a high fastball for Marco Rubio. It's going to happen. It's going to happen by the next time. Tim, I'm going to get together with John Huntsman

and try to figure out how to resist that and make sure we uphold the dignity of the offices that we once held. He would be the exact right person to talk to because he also totally rebuffed all of my advances on this front. I appreciate your service. Thank you very much.

Thanks Tim. Up next, we've got Alex Wagner. All right, we are back. She's a senior political analyst at MSNBC. She's been hosting a limited MSNBC podcast series called Trump Land with Alex Wagner. It's Alex Wagner. What's up girl? What's up guy? Thanks for having me on the pod again. What's up guy?

Yeah. So this is what happened basically. You're in Hungary. We had somebody, you're doing the camera folks of the circus crew. Yeah. That we worked with. I don't go anywhere without them. They're the best in the biz.

We call this a dark circus, dark circus. Well, I love the dark circus crew. Obviously, I follow them on social media and so I see in the behind the scenes. And I'm like, you know, I have a daily podcast. I think I should probably know what's happening in Hungary. I didn't really even realize these protests were happening. And I did it. And then I googled it.

And like there hasn't been a bunch of news. There was a month ago, there was a little spate of news about this but there just hasn't been a lot of discussion about it in the international news. And so you're back, you have the last episode coming out. I went to one of the protests. That's where we got literally got off the plane and went to these Tuesday protests they've been having every week to protest Orban's crackdown on pride but really it's sort of framed in the broader context of his attack on democracy,

civil liberties, the freedom of assembly. And it's really amazing, I got to say. I think in the US we're a little bit, we have kind of a high bar for what protests sort of stop us in our tracks, but Hungary does not have a culture of civil unrest. It is a very big deal that people are coming out and amassing and under threat of government crackdown. Orban said

he will use facial recognition technology to prosecute people who are seen at these protests. And it was absolutely exhilarating. But sorry, you probably had a question in there. No, no, no. That's a good start. That's where my question is going to be because there was this kind of crackdown, I guess, around Hungary banning the Pride events. That was maybe like a month ago. So I was like, are these protests still the same? Is it a spinoff? But it is related to the Pride crackdown.

It is. I mean, I will say, I talked to one of the leaders of the opposition movement, and his name is Martin Tompos. And he was like, you know, this is about pride. This is of course about the LGBTQ plus community, but it's also, you know, this is about standing up against Orban. And it's happening at a time when Orban is weak.

I think people haven't really focused, and we've been focusing on our own little autocracy here in the United States, right? But there's so many similar parallels between Trump and Orban, not just in terms of policy, the focus on marginalized communities, immigrants, the media, the courts, but in terms of posture, the obsession on the part of the far right wing with Orban. He's a regular at CPAC conferences. Trump very much fashions himself in terms of Orban and, you know, being a strong

man, but- The similarity. So he's getting weak. He's politically getting weak. Yeah. He's politically weak. Why? Because he's steered Hungary's economy into the dumpster.

Ah, another parallel. Yeah, exactly. And there's a challenger in the wings. His name is Peter Magyar and he's a wild man. He's not a progressive, but he has been really speaking out about corruption. He's been putting in a lot of time speaking across Hungary. He's kind of a traditionally handsome man. He is a traditionally handsome man. He is very traditionally handsome man.

I think that that's not hurt his case. But I think part of the reason people feel emboldened enough to do what they're doing to come out every Tuesday is because they think this could be the turning point. They think the 2026 elections could be where Orban is ousted finally. He's been in power for 15 years, Tim, and he has transformed that country. He has consolidated the media landscape. He has attacked civil liberties. It is stunning what he has done.

I know part of the reason we wanted to go over there is because I think America can learn a lot about its near future by looking at Hungary and its recent past. Yeah. And here's the thing that struck me, you know, kind of just watching the social media clips. I look forward to the full pod later this week, but like they're doing this every Tuesday, you know, to me, there's a parallel with the kind of immigration question here where it's like, you know, gay pride is probably not the issue that is going to galvanize the broadest swath of people in Hungary, of Hungarians, right? And there's nobody over there that's like, oh, well,

is this a politically potent, or shouldn't we be focused on kitchen table issues, or are they focused on, or what's that a little bit about? I mean, I actually think that's the thing. I was talking to Marta Pardavi, who's like, is an amazing civil rights, civil liberties lawyer. And she said, actually in 2015, Orban was really successfully able to scapegoat the migrant population, the European refugee crisis. You know, she said, we thought because Hungary has this history of being a place for refugees and immigrants, that there would be more pushback, but there wasn't. He was really successfully able, I mean, in similar ways to Donald Trump, right?

But the pride thing, because I think the opposition movement has learned something in the interim, they framed it not just as an attack on that community, but as this bigger question of like, can we have protests? Can we speak out? We are under threat of prosecution for just being here. Because Orban has been so punitive in his attack here, they see this as a much bigger affront to basic tenants of democracy that Hungary purportedly stands for. And so in a way, surprising, I think both of us, you know, pride has become more of a galvanizing issue, in part because they don't think of it just as pride, they think of it as like the sort

of seminal attack on basic tenets of freedom. So, I mean, there's something to learn there, I think, in the US as well, right? How do we frame these issues so that it doesn't feel like, you know, the libs are too woke, but it's like, no, no, an attack on one is an attack on all. And I guess that's what I was kind of getting at is that you can kind of see that in the immigration thing. I think you could imagine a way here that that is for the attacks on, you know, the sending people to El Salvador is less about, oh, you know, we want open borders. It's more about, oh, do you really want Donald Trump disappearing people off the streets?

Yes, over and over again, that has to be the line. It has to be a broader context. And Martin Tomposh, that opposition player that I spoke to was like, the Democrats have made this stuff too narrow and too siloed. It needs to be bigger. It needs to be something that people feel brought into, even if they have no particular stake in the fight. What about any other lessons from them about

like not getting beaten down? I mean, to your point, it's been 15 years and it was such a, and Hungary is really like a boiling frog, like even more so than we are kind of, because Trump was like Kool-Aid man coming through the wall. Whereas Orban initially positioned himself kind of as like a Bush style, like center, like a center right European kind of typical leader initially. Right? I got to say, and I'm obviously, I'm a little bit biased in terms of my interest, center right European kind of typical leader initially, right?

I gotta say, and I'm obviously, I'm a little bit biased in terms of my interests, but the way Orban consolidated the media and cracked down on the fourth estate is, first of all, he was so successful, right? He basically had his friends and allies buy up all the newspapers, all the media outlets, all the editorial outlets that were once, you know,

real robust journalistic endeavors. Like the New York Times of Hungary was purchased and then shut down within a several week period. But there is a real robust independent media landscape in Hungary and these guys are reporting on real shit. They're reporting about corruption. They're doing exposés on the son-in-law, Orbán's son-in-law, who, oh, the son-in-law thing is a thing that's universal, I guess.

Own some hotels, is that right? Exactly, hotel and tourism industry. And they're doing it and they're so tenacious. And I said, you know, just like, do you ever wonder why you're still doing this, given how much money the state funnels into state propaganda in the form of these news outlets, the just the steel, what is the metaphor, the iron fist with which Orban and his allies sort of censor and rule the national media. And they said, you know, we're doing this because this is, they believe in democracy, they believe in the fight.

And it was so inspiring, I think for like a jaded, you know, fourth estateer from the US, it's like, what the fuck are we complaining about? First of all, our institutions still remain strong. There's so much of an appetite for information. Donald Trump has not shut down the White House briefings as yet, even if one American News Network is getting in a front row seat. You know, there's still- Just before we got on, there was a weird briefing video of like a Draco Malfoy type character

asking Carolyn Levin about how she's such a good mother. And I was, I did have a moment, I was like, is this a real video or am I getting AI'd? Am I getting spoofed? But that was real. Yeah, totally. There's some baby steps, but we got a ways to go. We do. And it's all the more reason. I mean, it's like go through the looking glass, go to Hungary and see the people who've been doing it and continue to do it at, you know, at great peril. And the audience that still wants it, the information is essential. And I came back exhilarated by, you know, first of all, the privilege that we have in

the US and the opportunity we have to still fight, you know, the encroachment of autocracy in a real, real way. Yeah, I love that. What about the actual protesters? Because again, and this is something everybody's kind of thinking about here, right? And you're seeing people like, I don't know, is it dangerous to go out to these things, to travel, to speak out, right? So talk about what you heard from the people there.

If we're scared, then everyone else is fucked, right? So these guys were supposed to have, they've been marching across this bridge, the Elizabeth Bridge, and the Orban government was like, oh, it's Tuesday, you're going to try and do this again, we're not going to give you the permit. So instead of marching across the bridge, they start jaywalking across the street. And then the cops were like, yeah, we're going to, there's like hundreds of riot police there with helmets and tear gas. And they're like, you can't jaywalk across the street.

So they have this purple smoke bomb. It's like a smoke candle that the leader of the opposition uses to signal to everybody, it's time to move. So they walk literally hundreds, if not thousands of people across town to a different bridge. And they cross that bridge and they sit on the bridge and they're there and the police come up and eventually they have to be moved, but they get it done. The sense of tenacity,

and I don't want to say this the wrong way, but there is a joy in their resistance that seems real absent in ours. And I think part of the way you win is by bringing back a zeal and an optimism, maybe even some humor. There's a sort of very central European dark humor in all of this, right? That they're fighting.

It's almost Sisyphean sometimes it feels like, but they continue to do it. And I think, I'm not saying that we have to categorize or think of our work as Sisyphean, but the joy of it, the joy of trying to fight for a better thing is like we need to bring that back, I think, to the American sort of protest movement and the opposition. I love that so much. That's true. And it just gives you such a perspective because like you said, there's a 2026 election, but still a way out, like doing this every week and happening for a decade and a half.

I mean, it's a grind. So it better be joyful. Totally. It's going to be such a fucking grind I mean, it's a grind. So it better be joyful. It's going to be such a fucking grind. But, and you know this, Tim, the thing that people miss about Trump and those Trump rallies, it's a dark joy, but there's a joy there.

It's a church revival. And like the left needs to find its own sort of spiritual belonging in all of this, some sort of catharsis and joy. And I think that that's got to power it as much as the anger and the discontent and the rage. All right, last thing, you've been popping out to other places as well, you know, just in Hungary,

you're here in America, you're down here in Louisiana. Yeah. Is there anything that you've heard from people that you've covered that you think people are not like appreciating, like what the impact of it is or something that's a little under covered, or maybe something that just moved you in particular. I mean, there's just so much happening.

There's been such a, I don't even want to give them credit for shock and awe, but chaos and shock of the first 100 days. I just wonder if there's any other thing that really jumps out at you. Well, I'm like sad that this is the end of my 100 day experiment, in the sense that, God, there's so much more work to be done.

I think we as media have really failed the American people by being so focused on the Eastern corridor of the United States. We don't tell the stories of the human beings who are directly affected by this stuff and really on both sides of the aisle. I was super moved by the story of the cancer survivors and the cancer deaths in Louisiana, your state,

and what it means to dismantle environmental justice programs at the EPA and the human cost of that. Likewise, I was fascinated talking to January Sixers who had just gone out of jail, and the sense of renewal and belief and the sort of like waiting army that exists for Trump, should he choose to mobilize it. And on the same note, talking to farmers

in the center of this whole tariff war, who are still, you know, they're still standing with Trump. And I'm not saying that they converted me to like, oh yeah, Trump's really got, he knows what he's doing. But I think in order for anybody to sort of move this country forward in a real way, that you have to talk to people. You have to listen to what they're saying.

You don't have to agree with them. But we as journalists need to do a better job of covering that. And I'm like so grateful in a way, this has been so exhausting. My kids are so angry at me. But like it's been eye-opening and I hope to do, you'll be hearing more about my projects in the next coming months, Tim. Deep tease.

All right, good. I hope so. I just, once you talk about it, we could do a whole Louisiana thing. I've just been thinking about the, Lisa, and we have the migrant detention center here. You talked about the EPA issues in the cancer alley. Yes. The Hondurans. That state. That were citizens, Honduran children that were citizens, the children that are citizens, they were here. Yeah. I mean, in every state you could do the tariff thing.

But I've talked a couple of times about a woman I met recently who's got like a tchotchke shop of like tourist stuff. Yeah, totally. They're like, she's fucked. Wait, you're saying it's not made in that state, Tim? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's not. It's not being made in Louisiana. On the other hand, the Shrimpers are thrilled and the crawfish people. So yeah, it's a mixed story. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. On the other hand, the shrimpers are thrilled

with opening. We'll put up some little pictures from the protests for people to look at on the YouTubes and we'll be seeing you soon. Thanks Tim. All right. Thank you so much to Tony Blinken for coming and dealing with my bullshit. Thanks to my friend Alex Wagner for her report from Hungary. To all of you, we'll be back here tomorrow with one of your favorites. It's been a little too long since we had them, so it's going to be a good show. We'll see you all then.

Peace. I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you, The sun, so high And do you think of me when you're alone? If you've got my name all round to wherever I'll be on my way tomorrow. Can't wait. Ain't nothing, no nothing, last forever. But I'm not too far, not too far,

not too far. I'll be there anyway. If you need me, I'll be there in an hour. Take away if you know that you want me tomorrow. Can't wait. The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.