The Chris Cuomo Project - America Is Losing Its Grip On The World

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Josh Rogin (Lead Global Security Analyst, WP Intelligence, and and Columnist, The Washington Post) joins Chris Cuomo to discuss Trump’s handling of the war in Iran, the consequences of America’s changing role in the world, and why Rogin believes the U.S. keeps getting distracted from the long-term challenge posed by China.  Rogin explains why he sees few good options remaining in Iran, how declining American influence could create opportunities for adversaries, and why Taiwan’s dominance of advanced semiconductor manufacturing makes the U.S.-China relationship increasingly consequential.  They also discuss the failures of American foreign policy, the lessons of 9/11, political polarization, and what the next generation of American leadership could mean for the country’s role abroad. Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Head to https://superpower.com/cuomo for $50 off your membership. Get 150+ biomarkers tested, a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod  Head to https://cozyearth.com and use code CHRIS for an exclusive 20% off on home and sleepwear! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Economy sucks, but that's not the only point that is going to manifest in these midterms. I mean, you know how I feel about the economy, and I definitely think that it should be the primary thing. But the reason that the economy is screwed up is because of what this administration has done with its foreign policy. And you have to see that. And you have to understand the architecture of it and how we got here and why we're stuck here and how they're playing with that. Josh Rogan has been covering this so well for so long. Washington Post, he's their chief global policy guy, and he does intelligence work as well, but he understands China, he understands Taiwan, he understands the Middle East,

and he understands the state of play in our politics and the state of play within the media industry. So I asked Josh to come on and talk about where we are and where we're headed, and he said, yes, let's get after it. Josh, always a pleasure. I have been watching you. I've been reading you. I have been listening to you. And as somebody who has worked with you for a lot of years, it is really interesting to see the ascendance and the maturity. And you kind of like negotiating the space of reporting, and also trying to balance right and wrong in the coverage of right and left. How hard has your job gotten? Well, honestly, Chris, you know, watching you all those years, I kind of feel like we have the same philosophy on this business, which is you do the reporting first,

figure out what's going on before you figure out what you think about it. Then you try to be authentic and honest with your viewers and readers. Those are the two rules, okay? and that will, if you do that, and it's not easy, no one said it's supposed to be easy because you've got your sources interest, you've got your boss's interest, you've got corporate interests,

I don't need to tell you about that. But if you do that, if you actually do the reporting to try to best you can, the best obtainable version of what's going on, and then you're just authentic and honest, that will get you through most of the shifts in politics and in our industry.

It doesn't always land well, People don't always like it. People don't like hearing hard truths. People don't like hearing uncomfortable truths. Your bosses don't like it when you tell uncomfortable truths that they don't also agree with. But at the end of the day, to have a long career in journalism, the only contract that matters is with that reader, with that viewer. That's the most important relationship. And if you start to color outside the lines or if you start to pick one team over the other,

and now I'm going to think this because this team thinks so, and that's the team that supports me, the readers can see that. Everyone can see that. It's pretty obvious. Now, what we're dealing with now, as you know, is that we're living in a broken information ecosystem, where everyone can get whatever information they already want. So, again, if you're going to be, you can't make everybody happy, but if you're going to be someone who survives in an ecosystem, you just have to do, it sounds crazy, but you have to do the right thing. You have to, in that moment, when you're on TV and someone asks you tough question. You just have to think to yourself, what's the most honest answer I can give, given the information that I have? It doesn't always work, but on balance, that's how I think about

it. And I thought that's what you always did all those years that we were on TV together. You were just speaking actually from the heart, which is, again, why people liked watching you because they didn't know what you were going to say, but they knew that you weren't going to try to fool them or do someone else's bidding. And again, it's not a perfect solution. It's just the way to survive, I think, in this broken information environment we're all operating in. Broken information environment. What does that mean in terms of how the job has changed? Right.

I mean, I think, you know, I've been working as a journalist for 22 years, eight different major news organizations, you know, basically doing the same thing, trying to figure out what's going on in foreign policy and national security, inside our government around Washington and around the world, and then add my own reporting analysis and, yes, sometimes my opinion, and as transparently as I can. What changed, of course, is that we had this sort of imperfect arrangement with the people who govern our country, whether that be Congress or, in this case, the Trump administration or the billionaire class or whoever it is, that you could get to some sort of working relationship where you could get to the best obtainable version of the truth. They didn't always like it.

They would play games. Like, don't get me wrong. There's no partisan thing here. The Democrat administrations would play games. Sometimes they lie to you. Sometimes they'd catch you in a lie. But there were rules to this game. And essentially, that's how we all functioned.

It wasn't perfect, but you could check information. You could reasonably find out if your information was wrong. Now it's like the moment that you have anything, you know, and you try to check it out, someone's going to attack you, they're going to expose that you're working on it, they're going to run to their own, you know, outlets and try to screw over your story or they're just going to lie to your face and force you to try to prove. in the worst case, they'll sue you or try to get you fired. So that personalization of the job of journalism

is really something I think that's really corrosive and toxic because it makes the honest good faith effort, which is antagonistic by design. You're not supposed to like the government. They're not supposed to like the journalists writing about them, but you're supposed to be professionals. It's pretty much gone, okay? And now we just live in a culture where, you know,

if you get a piece of information, you want to check it out, man, someone's going to come after you and they're going to, I mean, just look at what happens at the Pentagon. They actually hired the trolls to do the work of the government to attack the journalists. That's crazy. And so that's the environment where we're operating in. So to me, what does that mean? It means you have to measure twice, cut once, you know. Like, you actually, there's a lot of stories that just don't make it out because they have to be extra, extra bulletproof.

That's how I look at it. Or, and then you have to worry about if they're going to come after you and your family and your job and try to get. rid of you for reporting the truth, you know. So that's, that's different. That's, that's no rules, okay? And the amount of secrecy inside the government is way up, the amount of, you know, just Michigas that goes on between the government and the report is way, way up. And, you know, that's that, and anyone who has a real story can either can easily go to the influencer or content creator that is going to peddle it exactly the way that they want it. So why wouldn't you do that? you know and you don't always have to hire the trolls but you could just use them so why why why

does laura loomer get more scoops than any journalist in town because she's doing the bidding of the people who are are giving her this information and some of it's wrong and some of it's right but it doesn't really matter so that's an atopsy-turvy world but also i think the broken information environment uh and then of course you have the business of journalism which again and something i'm to tell you about, which is always been chaotic. I mean, I've never, you know, I remember in 22 years where I could sit at a journalism organization and be like, oh, yeah, they've got all the business of this figured out and it's all going to be hunky-dory. But it's worse, you know, the ad traffic is down, the search traffic is down. That means the revenue is down. Subscriptions, well,

you know, you subscribe to a lot of things. People subscribe to Netflix and Spotify and Disney and peacock. And, you know, so there's only so many things an average person can subscribe to. And, you know, essentially people have a lot of options. So you have to be extra excellent to fight for that dwindling dollar and the model's changing faster than the institutions. The Trump administration is unusually leaky in my experience, which helps. They're just also very mobish. and you're right now it's all a team sport, as I had a senator say to me on my show,

that if you're not with them, you're against them, and they're going to go after you. So it's an interesting duality you have there. There's a lot of information that these people leak, either because they want Trump to like them or to know that they didn't screw it up. I think that's especially true around a Homeland Security right now.

I think a big reason that ICE has taken the beating that it should be taking is because of how much leaking they've been doing about, you know, priorities and vetting and all these other things. How do you balance those two? That they try to kill you if they don't like you, but there's a lot of information coming out of them. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit unique for my beat, you know. So if you're on the national security foreign policy beat, there's actually not that many people who are actually in the, the know. You know, I remember the first Trump administration. You had factions. You had sort of like the Bolton-Pompayo Pence faction. You had the Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon faction. Then you had sort of like, you know, the congressional Republicans. Then you had some people inside the system. And you

could sort of map it out more or less. So you knew where the leak was coming from. You could check it against some of the other factions and sort of triangulate it, right? But, you know, now what you have is sort of like a, like the real stuff, the real important national security information, very, very closely held. Okay, they don't trust the intelligence community. They don't trust the CIA. The National Security Council used to be 400 people. Now it's like 50 people.

They fired all those guys. State Department is marginalized. And so when it comes to that kind of war and peace stuff, it's very, very few people who really get to make those decisions. They're all in one single chat. Unless they accidentally add you to the signal chat, it's very tough stuff to get, okay? Now, then what you have is, so, you know, let's say there's like cabinet people and sub-cabinet people. Those are the only people in those rooms. And then what you have is a lot of people

trying to speak to Trump through the press. So they can't get into those rooms. Again, they're totally different from Trump one, although some of this did go on. So they'll use the leaks to try to get their idea in front of Trump's face, you know. And, you know, maybe I'm not the first guy they go to because I'm, you know, I'm not going to present it exactly the way they want, or I might actually check it out or they can just go to Fox News or Laura Luma or whatever. But I do catch a lot of that. We need to get this in front of Trump's face somehow. But then that's also a kind of a corrupted process of its own because, you know, you can't

represent that as real policy. You can just represent it as like one person in the system's chirping. And so it's just very chaotic. And it just takes a lot more due diligence and a lot more reporting. So, yeah, there's a lot of noise, a ton of noise. But finding that signal was actually very, very difficult in this administration unless you're, you know, again, on a team doing the bidding of that team. But that's just not who I am as a journalist. I don't think that's who you are as a journalist.

So you just have to do it the old-fashioned hard way. Fair assessment that when it comes to the mapping of strategy and execution thereon, this administration is unusually inept. Yes, it's completely incompetent. I mean, look at the Iran were. I mean, the way you know we don't have a strategy in Iran is because the strategy changes every day. If the strategy changes every day, that means you don't have a strategy. Objective change every day, the tactics change every day, the messaging changes every day. And when it's one of these things that President Trump is actually super involved in, there's no solution to that.

Because, you know, I don't know if you read Maggie and Jonathan's book, but there's a ton of these stories where, like, Trump will put out a crazy idea. and everyone in the room, be just like, yeah, sounds good. If that's what you want to do, that sounds great because the person who says, no, it gets thrown off the ship. So for those issues, like war and peace and the big things that Trump really cares about,

there's no mechanism inside the system to say, wait a second, what about the obvious, horrendous consequences if we attack Iran with no plan on how to get out and no idea of what comes next and no support for the opposition? no protection for all the bases and no connections with the actual Iranian people and no idea of what happens when the straight closes. But those things, that's exactly what happened. And sure, there was a ton of people like outside of the system, including me on TV,

everything like, there's a lot of predictable and predicted consequences of that that you're going to have to, no, no, no, no, no, Josh, don't worry. You know, the Iranian regime's going to collapse. Trump said it's going to collapse if we just do X, Y, and Z. None of it turned out to be true. and that's a calamity, not just for Iran, the United States, for the whole world, the entire world is suffering every day under the strain of this Iran quagmire that there's absolutely nothing at anyone, they don't even try to really tell you how we get out. What is your best guess as to why they did this? You know, I think it's a combination of factors.

You know, I think the number one factor is that Trump got a big steam of after Venezuela and he thought Iran would be just like Venezuela. And he's like, oh, I can toppled it. You think he thought it would be that way or he was told it would be that way? Both. Both. Again, because nobody's telling him anything he doesn't want to hear it on these things. But yeah, they said it was going to be easy.

Now, who said it was going to be easy? Yes, Netanyahu, but also Heg Seth, also Rubio, all these guys. Although Rubio, I guess, was a little bit more careful, according to the reporting in Maggie and Jonathan's book. But the bottom line is he had no. no idea what he was getting himself into. And he thought it was going to be easy and he was wrong. And now he doesn't want to admit defeat, so we're stuck. And can you believe they're playing with whether or not it's a war again?

Remember, it started this way with them playing with the idea. And some people thought, including me, and I think I was wrong, that, oh, this is very clever. They're trying to ignore the War Powers Act and they're trying to deal with the day. And so call it a war, don't call it a war. I don't think that's what it was at all. I think that there was nothing clever about it. I think it was completely ham-fisted.

And it was, well, if we say it's not a war, then it's not a war. It was almost like right out of wag the dog. Right. It's gaslighting. They're gas-liding people. But here's the problem, Chris, is you can't gaslight the families of the dead Americans and wounded Americans. 750 wounded Americans. You can't gaslight the military members who want their wartime benefits, you know,

People have been displaced. Their families are a wreck, and they can't get the benefit because it's not a war. And, yes, you could avoid the war powers act, but you can't, you know, gaslight the American people. They know, you know, it's pretty clear that this is a war. Do they know? Or is it which group are we talking about? Because another thing that makes it so weird and different is the fealty of MAGA and the quiet of people who know better, because they do not want to get sideways with him and get primary.

so they'll say nothing like Ron Johnson, Senator of Wisconsin, coming on News Nation and saying to me, listen, I don't like him taking this money. I don't like his sons getting these defense contracts. I wouldn't let my sons get them. But look, you know, you're curious about it and you don't investigate your own side. He said it to my face on live television.

So do the people really know, or are we in a suspension of disbelief mode when it comes to political fealty where the lawmakers don't say shit because they're worried about the fallout. The influencers don't say anything because they're getting paid to be on your team.

That's how they're making their money, right? And they go for it. And they go for it. And we're going to see it with their convention that starts for the midterms. They're going to say shit that they know isn't true. And people will agree with them even though they should know better.

I've never dealt with it at this scale before. Right. It's, it's, again, Chris, it's like one of these things. It's like, yeah, that kind of always happened, but it's a lot worse now. Yeah, we always had self-dealing, and, you know, Hunter Biden made a few million, but like the Trump kids are making billions. So they didn't, Trump kids didn't invent corruption in self-dealing. They just did it way, way better and way, way bigger than anyone had ever done it before. And it's kind of shocking. And I think people do know about it. You know, when you talk about the influencers, the congressman and the MAGA influencers who are getting paid, yeah, they know. Because,

you know, you've been on these shows. Every time you're on a show with any of these guys, they, the camera turns on this. Let's look to, I mean, Scott Jennings, okay? Yeah. To me, he is the archetype. Because again, he knows what Trump is about. He condemned him roundly. Nothing changed except his ambitions just like Vance. But Vance gets a different analysis from me. Why? He's a politician. He went where the power was. Let the voters deal with that. Jennings is a different animal because CNN is platforming him, paying him a lot of money because he's bringing them ratings,

but he's bringing them ratings by not just making the case. He's lying and he's fomenting a lot of bad division. And again, I'm not, I don't want to see him hurt. It's not about hating, none of that. But that didn't used to exist. Pat Buchanan was a good faith arguer about the position in the orthodoxy. They didn't just make shit up in the moment to keep justifying the status quo. That's what he does.

That's what you have to do these days. Yeah, I mean, you don't have to do it. You can choose not to do it, but there's a lot of money in it. That's for sure. And, you know, here's the tell for Scott. And, you know, I'm on TV with Scott a lot. And the thing I always do is like, you know, if you follow Trump's policy, oh, this Trump policy is great, whatever it is Iran or Ukraine, and then Trump completely changes it. And then you still say it's great.

That's the tell. So usually if I'm on with Scott and I want to, you know, expose that tell, I'll just ask him about the time that Trump said the opposite thing of the thing that he just said, which is it? Do you believe in the thing that Trump said today or the thing that he said yesterday or the thing he said the day before yesterday? Because those are three different things. you can't honestly believe in all three of those things. Trump can because he's Trump and nothing matters when he talks and he can just change his mind every day. But if you ever find a commentator who changes his mind at the exact same Trump time, Trump changes his mind, that's the guy who's not being intellectually honest.

It's pretty obvious. And, you know, what are you going to do? Never have any Trump people. They're all like that. So you've got to have one. But it's, again, I have a lot of faith actually in the viewer. I have a lot of faith in the readers. there are some who don't want to climb that curve.

But if you look at the polling, for example, on the Iran war, yes, there's a bunch, like some percentage of MAGA people who think everything's going great. It's wonderful. We're an inch away from the Iranian is just folding and admitting Trump's amazing and they're going to call it the straight of Trump, and they're going to give us the oil. It's going to be beautiful. But that number is a lot less than it used to be. And in Republicans, that number is a lot less than it used to be.

And what that tells me is that the number of people who are, suffering under the Iran, or who know that it's not true because they're feeling it, is up, up, up, and we'll go up over time. So I have a lot of, I'm not a lot of faith, but I have a good amount of faith in the American people to look at a Scott Jennings and be like, oh, I get it. I know what he's doing. He's saying the thing that Trump wants them to say for money, which is fine because there's money in it, but that doesn't mean that they think that he really thinks that. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from superpower. Look, here's the good news. When it comes your wellness, the answers are all in the blood. And your blood is individual and specific and special.

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Now, after you sign up at Superfower, they're going to say, where'd you hear about us? Tell them, Cuomo sent me. Before I forget, he wrote a book five years ago. Josh. He actually wrote it like seven years ago, but it came out like five years ago. And it's a must read about what's happening right now and not happening with China. It's called Chaos Under Heaven. And it was years ago. But it is necessary to read this weekend for you to understand the state of play that is extant in this moment. It's just being ignored for really bad political reasons. But please, read Josh's book.

I read it at the time. I reread it like a year and a half ago. No, like a year ago. And then I was just going through it again because I see China everywhere. Yep. So, but anyway, you got to read it. And it's just one more reason to value Josh's depth of insight. So how does 9-11 change the calculus of what's happening in the Iran

war. Yeah, I mean, listen, you know. Because I'm worried, by the way. Let me give you the context for my question. Yeah. It's 25 years. That's something. But we're playing with Islamophobia in a way that we really haven't since 9-11.

Yeah. And that's a tragedy. And, you know, I think beginning after 9-11 and continuing to this day, we've treated our Muslim and American brothers and sisters cruelly. as a, from a policy level and in a personal level, and I don't think that's, again, specific to one party or another. And that's wrong. But I think, you know, as a foreign policy reporter, listen, two things happened on 9-11. One is that we took our focus away from the China problem completely, okay, because everything became about terrorism for understandable reasons.

But, you know, remember George W. Bush, he was going to be a China, not anymore. You know what I mean? And that's what we mean. And that's what we? see with every president since, there's always something on fire. It could be Ukraine, it could be Iran, it could be Iraq, Afghanistan, that seems urgent to deal with that takes the attention of all those senior leaders away from the biggest shift in world politics in our lives, which is the rise of China and what are we going to do where it affects us. Not that it's good or bad, not that we have to beat China or contain China. Just the fact that, in my view, the U.S.-China relationship is the most important relationship in the world, obviously, will be for the rest of our lives, obviously.

China will be the biggest and probably richest country, biggest manufacturer, one of the biggest innovators, superpower for the rest of our lives. And how we handle that, it's like climate change. It's like the two things we can't get wrong, depend on our survival. How do we deal with the planet and how do we deal with the rise of China where it affects us? Some things it doesn't affect us, but when it comes to our security, our public health, there was a pandemic. China had something to do with it. You can talk about that. I know that's something that you're interested in. But the point is, we're always taking our eye off that ball. So, you know, even took her, even that ball, you know, China virus was Trump's phrase, okay? Right. And look, obviously he came up

with it out of expedience, which is the same thing that's going on with the Islam hates us. My concern is that the Iran war is about to become okay because we're going to be reminded on 9-11 that Muslims hate us and they're bad people. And they're not like that. the rest of us. And I hate each and all of those statements. And I also hate having to be on the defensive about what happened on 9-11. Like, you know, I didn't lose dozens of people who I cared about and it changed my whole life that day. But I got engaged 11 days later because of what happened that day. But see that as it may. That's what's about to happen. Because if Muslims are bad, then anywhere you're fighting them is kind of justifiable. And you can just easily say, you can just say,

that the regime, you know, those are really the same guys as 9-11. No, they're not, but that doesn't matter to people, the people you're trying to convince, and they're going to say it. The other concern for me is that my biggest fear is I can't believe we put the future of our economy right off China shore in Taiwan. I can't believe we did that. It's so stupid that, you know, no disrespect to the Taiwanese, but the idea that there's such a concentration. of economic need being manufactured there and not here. It's crazy that we put it there, but we did. And nobody wants to deal with it.

So I would love to have that fight. I would love our next election to be about that. I think it's the number one national security issue that we have, is that if they want to, all they have to do is just put a blockade around Taiwan. And it's game over for us in terms of getting what we need for the AI economy. am I missing? Right. Well, I'm going to answer your Taiwan question because it's a great one, but one last word on the 9-11, 25 years later fallout. You know, what I see is a generation of young people who don't know weren't around in a pre-9-11 world. And what they have grown up with

is 25 years of failed interventions in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan. And that has formed their worldview in a way that is totally different. And now I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so I remember in America that could intervene for good, that could intervene in places like Bosnia and stop a genocide of Muslims. And, you know, a system whereby American power was used to the benefit of America and the world. And that's just not what people 25 years and under have experienced. So they're against that. And now we're going to live in a world where those people are going to come up and vote and elect their leaders. And it's going to be a world where American power is not treated as something that's a force for good in the world. And that's a damn

shame. Now, on your Taiwan question now, I don't know if you've ever been to Taiwan, but the number one thing I would say is go there, talk to the Taiwanese people, meet them. You'll instantly realize two things. One is that we did not let the Taiwanese build the greatest technology manufacturing system ever known. They did that. They did that because of their, they have a small country of 23 million people under constant threat, spent 40 years. becoming the best at the technology that runs the whole world. Okay. And they deserve credit for that.

And when I look at them, I think, oh, it's not that that's a problem for us. It's that they're an asset. They're our friends. They want to be our friends. We can be their friends. Now, the thing that you're saying is true is that it's also a vulnerability. But to my mind, that means we support Taiwan to make sure that they don't get swallowed up by China. And the best way to do that is to deter China.

if we treat Taiwan like a chip factory that we want to destroy or steal their chips, and then we can tell them to go F themselves, well, then we'll be pushing them into Beijing's arms. And the thing about Taiwanese people is that they're all different. You know, they don't all think the same thing. Some of them are pro-China. Some of them are pro-China. Some of them are just pro-Taiwanis and don't want to choose. And we have a dog in that fight because we offer them something other than domination by the Chinese Communist Party, which is not fun, by them. the way. It's not like any other than the Taiwanese look across the street. They're like, oh, you know who I really want to rule me? Xi Jinping. Wouldn't that be awesome? No one says that.

But what they will say, again, if you go there, it's like, we may have no other choice because the Americans don't see us as anything but a chip factory, not like a democracy where people have rights and dignity. Taiwan is the most pro-LGB country in Asia. Okay. It's the most successful multi-party democracy on Chinese soil. And think about that. That's why the Chinese, government hates it because it shows you that it's not actually about culture, that all humans are the same. We all want dignity. We all want human rights. And we all want to have a say in the future of our country and our families. And that's what the Taiwanese have now. So I think the fact that they also hold the key to the technology of the future should be another reason to be friends with them,

not a reason to say, oh, we have to take that from you and then throw you to the wolves, which is essentially the Trump administration, Taiwan policy at this point. I agree. Does that make sense? Oh, it makes 100% sense. However, on the dick side, it's too close to China. It's too close. It's too close and too vulnerable to be so imbalanced in importance to us in a way that is almost existential. It is almost existential.

What would you have us do? I would have America do what the Taiwanese don't want us to do, which is make our companies not give them the chip business, not give it to them. And yes, they deserve it. Yes, it's a free market. 95% of the advanced chips. We don't make those.

It's not like you can turn on a chip industry in a second. No, it takes time. It takes 40 years. And Trump getting rid of the Chips Act the way he did was, in my opinion, the dumbest thing he's done in terms of undoing. That was the dumbest thing because it's everything. It's everything. So look, the way to do it is to do both. You support Taiwan.

You support what they're doing. And you do a lot to build up your industry here that you're not doing right now. Or anywhere else, by the way, that's closer. to us because, you know, I tell people all the time, if Mexico were Iran, we would, to use Hillary Clinton's word, obliterate them. We would raise the place. It would be, and it would have been done right away. Why? Can't risk it. All they have to do is just lob one thing over the border into Texas that kills a handful of people, and we would have decimated them. And that's, That's what the young generation doesn't understand either because we didn't have this when

I was running around in Pakistan and Iraq and Afghanistan watching a hellscape for months and years and years on end as we all endured. If they had seen that in real time, they would have felt just the same way they did watching what was happening with Israel. and that's the part that people don't get is that you can feel any way you want about Israel. It's just as Americans, this is why it's so important for them to go bad on America.

They have to go bad on America as young Americans because they cannot rationalize being against what they see Israel doing when we do the same thing and way worse. You know what I mean? So you have to reject America. You have to. That's their only way to stay consistent

is that we are, genocidal agents as far as a lot of people in this generation feel. And it's very complicated, and that's why any good politician avoids it. And that's why Trump's solution to it is, remember, Muslims bad, which is his new way of getting out of blame for this Iran war. He is probably one of the few people in the country who's hoping we get attacked. You know what I mean? Like a nice sleep or sell attack would be exactly what the president needs to justify what's happening in Iran and give him a winnable bad guy that's not him. And I hope it doesn't happen because I don't like to see terrible things happen. I hear what you're saying, Chris. I can't disagree with your analysis

that people are down on America, including young Americans. And who could blame them, you know, but that's because we're not living up to our ideals. Not that we were always perfect, not that mistakes weren't made, but that on balance, we're doing a lot worse in living up to our ideas and values than we ever have before. So yeah, that's the impression people around the world and especially people inside America are going to come away with. But I don't know, call me crazy. I still think the only way out of it is actually to rededicate ourselves to those ideals and those values and to do better. And not to train young Americans to hate the idea of America using its power both abroad for the good, but to,

show them and to actually use it for good. And that's why the destruction of U.S. aid by the Trump administration was such a tragedy for less than 1% of the budget. Millions of people were being saved. You can't, I mean, you can buy that kind of soft power, but you can't, once it's gone, you can't get it back. And, you know, we don't understand, like, in my view, American power is really not about how many dollars we have in circulation or how many ships we have in the bay, it's about the ability to rally other countries and other people around the world to work with us, to do things that are in our common interest as we define them, hopefully for the benefit of the planet.

That's the scariest thing about the Iran campaign to me. That's what we've done. We've destroyed that. We have never, you know, since the war on terror began, we were never alone. Right. Even the Iraq War had a coalition of 40 countries, which at that time was seen as very, very bad. And what do we have in Iran? Zero. Really zero. Maybe one.

Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from Cozy Earth. Look, I dig it. I like companies that do well and do good. Okay? I like that they use bamboo instead of other textiles to make a lot of their stuff. And why? Because it's better for the planet. It makes me feel better that I'm supporting a business that does things the right way. And I like the products. You know, the bamboo and the way that they mill the textiles and process them, make them soft. The more you wash them, the softer they get, they wear really well. The leisure wear is cool and it holds up well. There's technology in these textiles the way they put them together so that it actually helps you be cooler when you sleep, which is a huge benefit, and it's one of the reasons I like CozyEarth. So head to CozyEarth.com right now and use my code, Chris, and you'll get up to 20% off of home and sleepwear. The code is Chris, and you'll get up to 20% off on home and sleepwear, okay? And they're going to ask you post-purchase.

Where'd you hear about us? Tell them Cuomo sent you. So the question then becomes, you said, you know, we have to rededicate. Do you see things in the midterms and the two years beyond getting better or worse? And do you believe there will be midterm elections and a presidential cycle? Yes, yeah. Now, we're going to have the elections. They're going to play some games with the voting, but the elections will come off.

I think it's pretty well understood that the Democrats are very likely to take one house. I doubt that they'll take both the House and the Senate just because of the way the races are shaping up. And essentially, what we'll be returning to is a system of divided government policy paralysis. Now, there's two ways to think about that. One is that actually we do better when the system is divided because neither party can really run roughshod over the other. And that's a measure of stability and predictability that we don't have. So if you're coming from it from business perspective, you're like, oh, okay. It's good that the Democrats have some power because they'll be able to stop the worst things, influence the better things.

And basically, even in a stuck government, at least we know what's going to happen tomorrow, which is not what we have now. Now, the fear, and again, I don't know, but the fear is that once Trump has nothing else to run for it and he has nothing to lose, and he won't care about any of that, and then the worst instincts will come out because he doesn't even have to worry about another election. and if he's willing to ignore the law to build a ballroom or an arch or to drain the reluctant pool or go to war with Iran, God knows what he would do once he realizes that Congress matters even less because he can't even work with the House because they're not under his control. I think there's a good opportunity for more transparency. I think when the Democrats get these committees, they're going to start a bunch of investigations, hearings on things that we never figured out.

That'll be great. That'll be a lot of information for the American people, which is better than nothing. You know, but... Is it great or is it lawfare and them just trying to impeach Trump again? And if that's what it is, is that enough? Yeah, I don't, I mean, from what I hear, I don't think they're going to rush to impeach anyone because they know that it's politically, you know, kind of like a jump ball. But think of all of those committees and all of those subpoenas to get all that information

that the government is behind it. Yeah, I'm for that. Checks and balances, absolutely 100%. It's really the only thing that can save us. We got the judiciary. It's not perfect, but they're doing a lot of checks and balances on this administration all over the place. I know organizations all over Washington who are getting abused by this administration who find solace in that lawfare. So, yeah, that's our system. And, you know, it has to be some sort of balance. The fear is that the power gets concentrated amongst Trump and his billionaires more than it already is. And then absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's the first thing they teach you. absolute power corrupts absolutely our system was designed not to have that be the case and it's more out of whack now than i've ever seen it i mean i do believe that that's a fair statement i've never seen the american mentality where it is right now and i've got nine eleven on the brain i'll be honest

uh 25 years is affecting me in a way that i hadn't expected it to um i've got nine 11 on the brain i'll be honest 25 years is affecting me in a way that I hadn't expected it to. I was there that day. I lived the coverage. I lost a lot of people there. It was more of a personal story than a professional story for me. And I am not sure that if it happened again, that we would respond the way we did.

I think that it would almost immediately be a blame game in a way that never happened in 2001. There was plenty of reason to say, wow, how did you let this happen? What an epic fuck up. And yet, Bush, who was already seen as a dope, wound up getting a pass on the past and just do the right thing right now. And I don't know that that would happen today. Yeah, I agree. It would be more politicized, but I, again, call me a crazy optimist. I'd like to think that we might not also repeat some of the mistakes that we made as a country after 9-11. Here I'm talking about the attack on privacy and the rise of the surveillance state and the use of national security as a justification to erode our civil liberties. And that happened and that affects, you know, reverberate to where we are today. And then, like you said, the demonization and attack on Muslim Americans and Arab Americans, that's at a peak right now. And that was a mistake that we could correct.

And then, of course, the invading of countries that had nothing to do with it and the expending of American life and treasure. And, you know, Ari Fleischer is still out there saying that there was this yellow cake thing and this weapons of mass destruction. What are you talking about? Like, it was real. It was all real. It's crazy.

So, you know, I think there are things that will be worse. But hopefully, God forbid, there is another attack on this country of that scale. maybe we learned a couple of things. Again, it's not necessarily going to turn out that way. But, you know, again, like if we have, like, call me a crazy optimist, but, you know, I think that, you know, there were big mistakes made in the wake of 9-11 for somewhat understandable reasons that are part of why we're here. It's a big reason that Congress won't own its constitutional duty when it comes to war.

They got so burned voting for that. And, you know, guys like Bernie haunting them about voting. for it. It lost Hillary the 2008 primary. It definitely put a big X on her. And I get it. But I just hate that they now just pretend like they're not supposed to do anything with it. You did, though, give me a quick yes that I want to go back to. Why are you so confident that he's going to leave and that there'll be another cycle? Because I've changed something. I used to say to people, it's going to be fine. Don't worry about it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't say it anymore. I'll tell you why. It is wrong of me. You're not doing this, but I was doing it.

It is wrong of me to condescend to their concerns. No, no. Look, we're going to have our election. He's going to leave. I get why they don't believe it. Least of which is he keeps saying he may not leave, which I know it's just jackassery, but it's scaring people. They are really scared. So I don't answer it that way anymore. You know, I say, look, you know, we got to hope for the best and check everything we can. Yeah, I guess that's a good check because I didn't think he was going to try to stay in 2020, and he did. And he fomented an attack on the Capitol that was intended to keep him in power despite the fact that he lost of lunches. So anything's possible.

I'm not here on record saying that he's not capable of it. I'm just saying, based on the best reporting that I really seems to be grooming his successor. And he seems to see that as his legacy, whether that's Vance or someone else. I can't believe it's going to be Vance. I can't believe that when Trump leaves, there will be a massive flight to, I don't know. I guess today would be quaint to say traditional conservatism. I think they are going to fly back to God and character counts. and all that stuff that Pence used to say he was about before he signed up to be next to Trump.

I think they're going to fly. Pence did save our democracy. I mean, you got to kind of give him that. He could have walked away, but he stood and completed the election and almost got hanged for it. So, you know, just like one note on Pence in his defense. But, you know, I'll tell you what I'm hearing from my sources. You know, right, the Republican, any party is run by the donors, right? So you've got all the money, right?

So, of course, all the money is going to the Trump. grift because it's just such an obvious grift and there's no other way to get around it. And when that goes away, you know, from what I'm hearing, if you're a really smart donor with a really smart Republican politician that you want to anoint, the smart play is to wait to 2032. And it seems pretty smart if you're a Republican billionaire and you've got like a Marco Rubio or a Senator X or a Governor X, the last thing you would want to do is run him in 2028 for two reasons. One is that you'd have to go against Vance, which is going to be a bruising fight that's

going to cost you a lot of money. You could lose that fight. And two is that Vance is not very likable. He's probably going to lose. Maybe, I don't know, depending on who he runs against. And Trump's at that point, the economy is going to be in the shitter. The round war could still be going on. People are going to be upset. Trump's numbers could be even lower maybe, right? We don't know. And so that's a really good year for Democrats. So if you were smart, you would wait for an AOC and then run against her in 2032. That's the smarter Republican play. And then in 232, you get your resurgence of like a Republican Party that cares about things and democracy, and freedom, et cetera, et cetera. But for 2028, it's Vance. You know what I mean? They're going to

line up behind him for better or worse. Now, I don't think he's very likable, but again, you're running against somebody. So we don't know who that is. But I, from what I'm told, like, they're going to clear the field for Vance, especially his rivals. because they'd rather let him fall in his face and then come back four years later. That part of it is savvy. The AOC part, I would have laughed at if not for her obvious moves that she's making now, which is where she does not have to carry the crazy anymore. So she is now, and the socialism does not become communism.

That's not going to happen. It's not who we are. she tells this story. I'd like to know who the councilman is, by the way, because I don't think she's named him yet. I have this councilman who says woke one was crazy. Woke one, you know, that's a very savvy thing she's doing. Yeah.

To move from the squad towards, you know, I am way more reasonable than the new kids on the block. Right. And, you know, so now I think there's, I'd put her in from the possible into the probability market. I still think I still just can't see it. I can't see how it happens.

Well, you know, I think AOC is a very skilled politician. And I think she's a very, very prolific fundraiser. And she doesn't have to be queen. She could be queen maker or king maker from that position. And so she's going to have a big role. Now, what's interesting is that, you know, a lot of my friends on the left, especially on the progressive left, are aggregate her from the left. You know, she's taking more flak from the left now than from the right

because she's, in moving towards the center, a lot of the people on the left that saw her as her champion are now upset. And so she's going to have to worry about her left flank just as much as her right flank. But, you know, you can't deny her game, and you can't deny the fact that that money machine is going to have a huge impact. And, you know, for foreign policy, it's not great. Like when I was in Munich Security Conference and when she was there and they asked her about Ukraine and Taiwan, she didn't know what to say. It was really embarrassing. It's really pregnant pause. That's going to come back to haunt her. You know, but I think she could study up on that, you know, she's not there yet. You know, if you want to be present. No, she isn't. And look, you know, the beautiful thing about our business is tomorrow.

Yeah. Is that, you know, being a witness to history and just seeing how things happen that you didn't see happening or they matter in a way that you didn't see. see the mattering. But I will say this. I've never seen us where we are. I am relying heavily on history and reviewing what happened in the Gilded Age, what happened with Teddy Roosevelt. I think there's a lot of similarities to what we're seeing now to what Teddy Roosevelt did. And it is a reminder that sometimes it's good to get somebody from the group that needs to be targeted. You know, that Teddy being a Roosevelt and coming from money and understanding the prestige of it, but having a different sense of, I guess what they used to call noblese oblige,

of he has a duty to do for those who don't have what he has, and he's going after the people that his daddy did business with. You know, there is something to be said about that. It was fundamental for him. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's... On the other hand. I know.

But look, I mean, that's not what the Democrats want. There's no question about that. That's not the way of the world. They want new blood and they want from the progressive side, not from the establishment side. And that's where the energy is. And maybe it doesn't happen in 2020, but eventually the Democratic Party will have to reconcile the fact that that progressive side is going to take over the party, the same way that the far right took over the Republican Party on a different timeline. If you look at people under the age of 30, it's inevitable.

Yeah, maybe. Look, when I talk about MAGA, I tried, and by the way, the DSM people like what I'm about to tell you, okay? A lot of lefties don't, and they take it as an insult or anti-Trumpers. But I didn't mean it that way, and I don't see it that way. I do see this as a reaction formation to MAGA. And I do believe that this populist movement, I call it mega. It is bigger, it is deeper, and it is not motivated. by the kind of prejudice that was one, two layers deep in MAGA for a lot of the factions

that wound up joining that coalition. And they're like, oh, you think we're like them. No, I don't think you're like them. I think that in certain ways, you're motivated by feelings about your reality, feelings about leadership, desperation, disaffection. And that's, those are all legitimate grievances. Right. I don't believe that it's about keeping down a certain type of people or anything like that.

I don't believe that. But I do believe it's like a bigger populist movement than what MAGA was. And I think it's deeper and it's going to resonate more. They get mad at me and they say you're writing us off like we're a bunch of, that's not what I mean. And the DSM people get it. They like the idea of being mega versus MAGA. But I do believe it's reaction formation and I do believe they want disruptors. from outside the establishment.

And I don't think that's the best way to get the best out of the establishment. I don't think, I think it's good to have knowledge of what you're doing in there. I think there's something to being a politician that matters, but doesn't matter what I think

because that's not who they're going to elect. Right. I agree with you, Chris. What I would just say is, from my perspective, as a foreign policy analyst, I don't make a judgment as to whether or not the changes in our domestic politics,

are good or bad because, again, I think they're inevitable. I think they're structural. I think they're generational. And I don't make excuses for any of the failures of the U.S. foreign policy establishment of the last 40 years. I documented many of them. I spent 20 years writing articles about the failures of the establishment. So I'm not here to defend the establishment.

What I'm here to say is that whoever takes over on the right of the left, the far right, the far left, the socialists, the MAGA people, once you get that power, once you're in control of the levers of power of the American government, you wield an awesome responsibility to use American power for the good of America and the world, in my view. And so it's easy to chirp at American foreign policy from the sidelines. And what I try to communicate to people when I talk, especially to these young audiences, is that that, when you'll have to confront that reality if and when you get power, that but for American power, an American involvement and caring about the world, not just the war, the aid, the diplomacy, the economic involvement,

the engagement with humans who we live with on this very small planet. Without America's role in that, bad things will happen. Bad actors will fill that space. People will suffer. And to be in that game, you have to have a core belief that you can do good things in the world and that what happens outside of our borders matters and that, you know, American power, such as it is can be a force for the rising of human dignity, whether you're progressive or MAGA or whatever. And that means we don't just go and say, okay, Russia can do whatever it wants in Ukraine.

We don't just go and say the Chinese can swallow up Taiwan because that's bad for them and bad for us. So I'm looking forward to that reconciliation between what sort of these people have thought about our foreign policy and the critiques that they've had. And then once they assume the power, the realization that actually they have both a responsibility and an interest in using it for good, you know, while acknowledging that, to be honest, mistakes have been made. Do you think there is a world where the war with the regime in Iran winds up being a win for the president? For Trump? Yeah. I don't really care, you know. I don't really care what's good.

Like, in other words. Do you think it ends well within the next? next two years? No, I mean, it can get worse or it can get much worse. And there's no good outcomes, right? That's the problem. That's why you won't make a decision because all of the outcomes are bad. Either you essentially have three options. You escalate, you make a bad deal, or you just get the hell out of there, okay? Those are your three options. Now, he's tried to escalate, but he can't do it because we ran out of munitions and the troops have been at sea for too long. And he used the American military to its top capacity for nine months and they're still there. So I don't think escalating

is going to work. I don't think the escalating, you know, making it worse for the whole world is going to work. Saying you've got two more, make a bad deal because that's the only deal that's on offer, or just leave. And probably those are also have bad consequences. Out of those two, I think make a bad deal is probably the less bad one. Now, again, Trump doesn't want to do that because he's got too much ego. He doesn't want to leave because then he's going to say he's lost. So his decision is to do nothing. That's the definition of a quagmire. So you can go big or you can go home.

You can make a deal or you can just sit there. Right now we're just sitting. That's the worst of all worlds. Is that good for Trump? No, it's terrible for Trump. But that's not my concern. My concern is what's good for the country, what's good for the region, maybe what's good for the Iranian people who deserve a mention as we bomb them.

They're not, they're victims of their regime too. All we've done is throw them onto the bus. All we did was tell them to rise up and then let, then entrenched their government and try to make a deal with their government as they repress them even more. So we really screwed them over. We screwed over our allies in the Middle East. And, you know, we basically put every single country in the world into economic calamity for no reason, not even an articulable reason. You don't think that.

So that's bad for Trump, but that's not my concern. Their counter is, so you wanted the regime to have nukes. And because they were about to get nukes. So silly. And we're not true. We're now doing something about that. Right. And that works for MAGA.

They will parrot that answer. And that's what Scott Jennings says every night. Right. So you wanted them to have nukes. Right. It's just a straw man. But it's a straw man-ish because, look, this is the big fight I had with Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly says, well, then you disagree with the IAEA.

I said, no, I don't. You take Grosse out of context. No, he said they wanted to make a weapon. I said, okay, and he didn't say they were close to making a weapon. Yes, he did. He said that they've been enriching at 60% that you can get right. The enriching of their uranium is troubling and is a part of the process, but there's this whole other part of the process that can take months or years if you even get there

that he also said, which is why I know it. So they were not days, weeks, months from having a weapon. It wasn't imminent. Now, by the way, that is a hyper, it happens to be accurate, everything I just said. But it is hyper-technical and unsatisfying. And I would prefer the other side of the argument, which is, yeah, they were trying to get one. And Trump had the balls to do something about it. That's their argument.

And it definitely works with MAGA. And it made the MAGA people who were anti-interventionist quiet. So they just don't say anything about it. but I wonder if it's enough, mixed with two, not 25 years of a resurgence of Islamophobia and not liking 1.6 billion people, I wonder if that's enough for him to get that to be a net neutral in the midterms. Yeah, it would be if everyone's gas prices weren't high because of the Iran were. It would be if the military families weren't suffering in all these communities because of the Iran war. it would be if the Iran war wasn't obviously causing calamity for our economy and our military.

So, yeah, you can fool all the people who want to be fooled. There's no solution for that. If you want to be fooled, you'll be fooled. I guarantee it. But, you know, at the end of the day, people feel it. Everyone feels it. And here's the other thing. The real counter to that is that, you know, it's not just about Iran, Chris.

any country in the world who was thinking about developing a nuclear weapon North Korea the obvious conclusion that they would draw is to get one as quickly as possible that's a generational

effect that will be horrible for our national security and create more problems than it solves and yet even if you buy that Trump did this for a good reason which I'm not conceding you can't argue that he did it well You can't argue that it's working.

It doesn't make any sense. The economic stuff is what they should have started with. The stuff that he's doing now going after their partners was always the smartest thing to do. They should have done that first instead of the normal sanctions they were doing because there is a cleverness to this and an effectiveness to this that's got second and third orders of magnitude of relevancy to pressure points that may get the regime to act differently. I just wish they had done it first. If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. I know, that is exactly true.

It's funny. My mother just said that to me the other day. Josh, I love talking to you. Again, I point people to a book you wrote five years ago, but it's such an interesting basis of what is still yet to be played out between China and the United States. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for the work that you do.

And I look forward to seeing you and talking to you again soon. Chris, always a great conversation. Thank you for being authentically you. You're always authentically you. That's why people like you. That's why people listen to you. And keep it up. Keep doing great work.

A lot can change. That is absolutely true without being cliche or banal. But I don't think enough can change to change what is very obvious about what this election is, which is, man, everything you've done has been screwed up and has made things worse. And I don't know how the president escapes that without a distraction, which, makes me so worried about where we're headed with the 25-year anniversary of 9-11 and the resurgence of Islamophobia and who's pushing it and why they're pushing it. I think it's really poison, really poison. And it puts people who aren't about that in a weird position because, like, what am I supposed to defend what happened on 9-11? Of course not. Of course not. Defend the kinds of people

that did it? No, of course not. Well, it sounds like you're kind of doing that when you don't let me be angry at all of them. I know it does, and that's why it's effective as propaganda and demagoguery and hate, but that doesn't make it right. And that is not an American value as to blame an entire group of people for the acts of a few. That's not what we're supposed to be about, but that is what we're becoming with this administration. So I wanted to talk to Josh. I hope you appreciate it. the conversation. I hope you're going out and branding yourself as an independent and getting your gear, showing yourself and messaging that you're a free agent, that you're a critical thinker, that you're different. You know, you're not like these lemmings that are leading us all

to a cliff. So thank you for giving me the opportunity. I'll see you again. The challenges are real, so let's get after.