The Opinions - Thomas Friedman Has Given Up on Politics — but Not on the World

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

President Trump appears ready to cut a deal that could end Russia’s war in Ukraine without ever consulting Ukraine. In this episode, the deputy Opinion editor Patrick Healy talks to the Opinion columnist Thomas L. Friedman about Trump’s unpredictable approach to foreign policy.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Patrick Healy, deputy editor of New York Times Opinion, and this is the first hundred days, a weekly series examining President Trump's use of power and his drive to change America. So I wanted to talk to Tom Friedman this week because we seem to be on the cusp of a major international realignment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio just met his Russian counterpart to talk about ending the war in Ukraine, but without Ukraine there, without the rest of Europe there. This came right after Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave speeches in Europe that boiled down to,

you guys, what are you good for? And then there's Trump and Putin, acting as thick as thieves. Are the presidents of the U.S. and Russia playing a giant version of that old, old board game risk with the future of the West hanging in the balance? Tom, thanks for being here. My pleasure, Patrick. Okay, so we're a little over a month into the second Trump administration. And you've written about Trump how he sees himself as a disruptive figure, as someone

who thinks that his stock and trade is to be a great negotiator, kind of a great dealmaker. Yet he's a guy who doesn't do his homework. And I find myself thinking, what is Trump really up to with these moves? I mean, he can't actually think that he can move all of these people out of Gaza. He can't actually think he can wave a magic wand and end the Ukraine war. Is something bigger kind of going on with him when he makes these radical ideas in the foreign policy space? You know, what concerns me about Trump, Patrick, is that he's got a real upside. The upside is being ready to shake up the game board.

And the game board sometimes really does need to be shaken up. Why are we still talking about the Israeli-Palestine conflict? Why are there still Palestinian refugees, you know, 75 years after the birth of Israel? Why is this Ukraine war just dragging on as a war of attrition? So I think there's something actually quite. healthy about kind of going back to basics and really asking those questions. But Trump at the same time is a chump. And it's this combination of being ready to ask really radical questions. And then when it comes to the answers, just buying everything Putin says?

Buying it all time. And BB Netanyahu and Putin. That's the thing that when I said thick as thieves, I don't understand how Trump sees these guys who are clearly acting in their own interests, not in America's interests. And it makes me wonder, for President of the United States, does he think about America's interests, or is it just Donald Trump's interests, whatever those are in the moment? So I want to run my theory by you and have you slice it, dice it or Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi, Bibi Netanyahu. I think Trump looks at these figures as people who are the strong men of the world. And then there are all these weak societies, these weak peoples.

He looks at something like Europe, and he sees it as a collection of failed economies and open borders and weak national identities. And he basically sees the world as up for grabs, as available to be carved up by the strong people. And I find myself wondering in two years if we'll have a situation where the U.S. takes Greenland. Putin has done what he's wanted in Ukraine. Netanyahu is a free hand in Gaza in the Middle East. Xi does what he wants in Taiwan. I'm just wondering if this flows from a big assumption that Donald Trump has about the world,

where in this day and age, we've reached the point where societies are so weak that the strong must prevail and must kind of reorder the world. Yeah, I think that's a fair description of how he looks at the world. It looks at the world really like it's the retail section in a Trump Tower. And, hey, you know, Mr. France, you're not paying enough rent for your baguette shop. and everything is purely transactional in that sense. What is he missing? Well, you described that kind of world, kind of a dog-eat-dog world,

you know, where survival of the fittest and the strongest. And we had that world, actually, before World War II, and how did that work out? We have had the most remarkable long run of global peace and prosperity, all relative-speaking, since World War II. And during this 75-year period of relative peace, absence of great power conflict, we've seen more people come out of poverty faster anytime in the history of the world. And we've enjoyed a remarkable degree of global stability.

Yes, there have been wars in between, but they have not been world wars, the kinds of things that overturn everyone's life. You're going to miss that period when it's gone. I want to say a few words about Europe in particular. So I happen to believe that the European Union may be mankind's greatest creation. A continent known from time immemorial for religious tribal sectarian wars, the last two of which, actually the last three of which, if you come to the Cold War, we had to come over and help quell and intervene, builds the center of free markets, free people, the rule of law, and human rights. That is a remarkable thing.

The EU is the other United States of the world. But, Tom, Trump sees, I think, the EU and these countries as chumps in their own right. I mean, that's the thing. He sees that collection and that shared values, and he just sees ultimately as like, okay, what can I get from them? How do I break them? Well, he sees them as a trading block that can exercise more leverage on the United States than he'd like. So he'd like to break them up and then negotiate with each one individually. But he has no clue about the cost of that if the EU were to break up, the instability of that.

And the EU is our wingman in the world. Let's just take a conflict I know a lot about, the West Bank conflict. EU aid is what keeps the Palestinian Authority basically operating. If the Palestinian Authority collapse, Israel would have to actually then run all the civil affairs of administrative affairs of the West Bank. Of course, Trump isn't thinking in those terms at all, and that's what really concerns me. You know, I was saying to earlier, Patrick, as we were coming here, that to me, the single most underestimated force in international relations is actually stupidity, and that leaders just doing stupid stuff, okay? What Vladimir Putin did in Ukraine was just flat out stupid. He thought he was going to pluck this fruit from the tree.

He was going to fall, you know, often. And he'd be in and out of Kiev in a few weeks and install a new government. He got it completely wrong. I mean, he couldn't have gotten it more wrong. But he got it wrong because he was uninformed, misinformed, and just making a stupid bet. So how does that Tom Friedman theory of stupidity apply to Trump's steps toward Putin right now in terms of what he's doing with Ukraine, sort of really elevating? Putin, caring more about what the Russians want to do in kind of an end game. How does that kind of theory apply here? How could it even backfire? Well, let's put Trump in his own world. He's trying

to buy a casino. He finds out that the guy who owns the casino he wants to buy is got one foot in receivership, you know, one foot out. Okay, basically he's on his, he's run out of cash. Yeah. The bank doesn't want to lend him any more money. And Trump comes in. And Trump comes in. and says, you know what, I'll pay double your asking price. So basically, what Putin wants is he wants Trump to come in and save him from the battlefield failures that he engendered. His casualties are about 800,000 killed and wounded. This is a colossal failure.

He's got 21% interest rates. His economy now is, again, everything's going up in price with inflation because he had to shift so much production capacity to the war. He didn't have the people in capacity to take care of the housing, cars, eggs that people need. So prices are going up there. This guy is playing an incredibly weak hand. And Trump is basically saying, let's see, I've got, you know, four of a kind, but I think I'll fold. You know what I mean?

So why is Trump throwing him this lifeline, Tom? What is he up to here? Well, again, I think part of it is, I think it operates at three different levels. One is I think, you know, I'm going to go back to ignorance, but also if Vladimir Putin were an American party, he'd be a proud boy. A white Christian nationalist who's super anti-immigration and super anti-diversity, LGBT, everything. He feels common cause. Because, again, Trump and Putin both think that the greatest danger to their countries internally is woke in immigration. Yeah, dissent.

Putin's a proud boy. He'd be a Trump voter. You know, he'd have been there on January 6th. So he feels a certain cultural affinity with him. They certainly doesn't feel with Zelensky and authentic, you know, sort of Democrat. So I think that's going on at the cultural political level. I think at the geo-economic level, I think Trump's Ukraine strategy is all about his midterm election. That Trump thinks if I can actually end this war and lift sanctions on Russia, Russian oil will swamp the global market.

it'll drive down the price of gasoline at the pump, and I will win the midterms. Just Trump saying, I'm ready, I talked to Putin for 90 minutes, actually drove the global benchmark crude oil price down at one point. So you can see where the market is going. They smell this. What is Trump doing with both the Russians and Putin? With Putin, he basically said, well, as we know NATO in Ukraine, and you're going to be able to keep some of the territory.

Who goes into a negotiation for a casino by saying, you know, I'm going to let you, you know, keep this part of the land that you need, even though you're going bankrupt and, you know, I'm going to hire all your staff. No, man, you're slipping them cards left and right, you know. So basically, just in Trump's own terms, this is not a way to negotiate with preemptive concessions. And also to tell the leverage you have on your side, Zelensky and the European Union, I got this. You guys stay home. Tom, I really wonder if part of Trump and Vance's worldview ideology is actually that history doesn't repeat itself if you have the right strongmen in power, that somehow you can take a country like Germany and if you have, you know, the right populist leaders in place, you can keep a lid on the really dangerous, you know, neo-Nazi elements. as long as you have everyone in your thrall. It feels like a command and control approach.

But, you know, you've been covering international relations for more than 40 years. It feels like the story doesn't end well if you just ignore history, if you just believe so much in yourself as kind of a godlike leader who could control events. You know, to your point, you know,

you end up in World War I. You end up in places that you really don't want to be? Well, there were three major leaders on the world stage who wanted to be president for life, a she, Putin, and Trump. She managed to make himself president for life. Putin managed to make himself present for life. We stopped Trump from doing it. And thank God, how did it work out for China? How did that COVID thing work out in a low information system where that no one wants to tell the top guy the truth? Eventually, he changed course, but had great pain for the Chinese people. Russia is a similar low information system.

Very little bad news ever gets to the guy at the top. That's the only way someone like him could have invaded Ukraine. So low information systems are always dangerous. They're particularly dangerous in a world where we have rapid change. Look, if Trump's tariffs and his simultaneous removal of subsidies for green vehicles, if he's able to implement that, our car companies, particularly Ford and General Motors, could get crushed. So this is not a small thing.

Again, it's just math, okay? I've kind of given up on politics when dealing with Trump because at least until the midterms, there are no levers to pull. Okay, the Senate is all in on him, the House is all in on him, the Supreme Court is all in on him, his media ecosystem is all in on him.

I'm now entirely betting on physics, on the hard realities of things. You cannot move 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza physically, okay? You are not going to get Ukraine to just surrender to Russia because you bat your eyes at them, okay? There is the hard physics of things.

And one of the physics is that our auto industry cannot survive a world where it has the steel components that go into it get tariffed by 25%. And you basically crush the EV incentives. The physics of that, the math, is not going to, to add up. And all you do is look at Ford's stock price to see that because, you know,

the market that, you know, they say first it's a voting machine and then it's a weighing machine. And when you weigh the weight of these things, they don't add up. And if this weren't my country, Pat, I'd put my feet up pop popcorn and watch the show. What a show, okay? But it is my country. This guy's driving. We're all in the back seat. And I think he's heading into a wall. Tom, transaction seems so central to Trump's theory of power. He governs in some ways according to a balance sheet. You know, soft power is hard to quantify. So USAID, goodbye, you know, off the table.

He'll get what he wants through a transaction or he'll take it. What does that mean for world leaders looking to, and I can't believe I'm using this word, but to manage their relationships with Trump? Let me answer that in two parts, Patrick. First, why does he have that ability to do that? Because of the complete collapse of the Republican members of the Senate and House to do their oversight job. Appetulation, Tom. I look at these people, Patrick, and I say to myself, you people clearly do not have mirrors, wives, or kids, okay?

Because you clearly, if I did what you did such craven, you know, sycophancy, I would, be able to look in the mirror, number one. If I did what you did, I would come home and my mattress and my golf clubs would be in the driveway. My wife would have thrown them out and golf balls would be spinning down the driveway. My two daughters would not be talking to me. And I look at these Republicans. I say, you people clearly don't have mirrors. Wives and daughters. How does it work? Are you living in some offshore island? Like, you're doing all of this for 185,000 a year in free parking at National Airport. What the fuck is wrong with you? Okay? Yeah. You know? And so it's just like, I just, because the thing is, Pat, I actually don't know anyone in my life who is that craven.

Yeah. So if the tight circle, you know, isn't standing up, like if you're the president of France or the chancellor of Germany, then world leaders kind of looking at this guy who's so transactional. Is it kind of deal or no deal? Is it, you know, can you just? stay to the sidelines and hope he doesn't really, you know, send in the troops to Panama or go for Greenland? Is there a way of managing Trump? It's a very good question. And right now, everybody's afraid. Yeah. Look, there are so many CEOs in America. I talk to these people. They know this tariff stuff is just crazy, you know. But he's surrounded. He was surrounded by buffers in his first term, and now he's surrounded by amplifiers.

He's surrounded by bobbleheads. And that's just really crazy. I think she and Putin probably get more pushback than Trump does now. Yeah. Between the bobbleheads around him and then the echo chamber around them, and they're all living in fear that Trump or Elon Musk, wait for it now, Pat, might tweet about them. Oh, my God. Did Elon give you an awi?

and if they're going to primary you, you know, I mean, I promise you there are other jobs in the world other than being in the U.S. Congress. And again, I say this as someone who I'm ready to see Trump disrupt things. I supported him on the Abraham Accords without flinching. You know, when he does the right thing, I want to support my country. I don't want to be in a position that we're all being put in where we have to root for the country to fail for our political position to be redeemed. And that's a terrible position to be in.

I don't want to root for the stock market to go down 5,000 points. So a dose of reality is imposed on this guy. But that's the kind of position we're in when people don't do their jobs. And the simple job of being in the House and the Senate is advised and consent. And so the first time around he broke the laws, and this time around he's destroying the norms.

and when we get done, there will be nothing left. I just wonder those world leaders who talk to you, who whispered to you, did they just see a future of Trump and Putin and G that really is kind of out of their control? Right now, they're afraid, they're afraid of Musk. I mean, this guy's the wealthiest man in the world, and he has the Twitter platform. But it's why, Pat, I keep coming back to physics. okay, well, you may take Greenland, in which case she will take Taiwan. Oh, then we'll really be off to the races in the world.

You think you just take Greenland and it doesn't have an effect on others? Maybe Putin will then, you'll take a bite out of the Baltic states. That's the world you want to be in? Let me know how that works. Tom, I really wonder, I wonder if that is the world Trump would be okay with. Yeah, when the politicians responsible for being buffers don't do their jobs. all I got is Newton and the third law motion for every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction.

And that's all I got left. I pretty much given up on politics, but I do believe in the laws of gravity. The apple actually did fall from the tree. It didn't jump from the ground into the tree. And eventually the laws of gravity will make themselves felt. Unfortunately, we are in the back seat and he's driving. Yeah. Trump thinks it can pluck all the apples, but at some point, you know, one's going to fall on his head. That's the way it works.

It's all I can hope for because I clearly don't have politics anymore. But I got the New York Times. And thank God for that. Tom, thanks so much for joining me. Pleasure. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Veshaka, Feebh, Feebillette, Christina Samuoski. and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music

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