The Ricochet Podcast - Chaos Agents

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

H.R. McMaster joins James, Peter and Steve Hayward to discuss the Biden administration's feckless policy on the war in Gaza; he explains Hamas' battalion strength and the IDF's delayed invasion of Rafah, along with the political balancing act that's keeping the president from doing what he must.Plus, the hosts enjoy the overdue campus crackdowns and consider the Trump campaign's pitch for a return to normalcy. 

You tell that birdie to keep its trap shut for now. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. All of it began the first time some of you who know better, and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they have the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward sitting in for Rob Long.

I'm James Lilex and today we talk to H.R. McMaster about the world and the war. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 690. 10 to go until 700, at which point, nothing happens except the usual conversation you've come to expect here. You can join us at ricochet.com. Why don't you? No good reason not to. Be part of the most stimulating conversations in the community on the web. I'm James Lalix here in sunny, beautiful spring Minneapolis. Couldn't be lovelier. Rob Long is peregrinating somewhere. Don't know.

Stephen Hayward is in for Rob and Peter Robinson in California. Gentlemen, welcome. Last week we discussed what was going on in the campuses. It seems to be winding down in some places and flaring up in others. And what I'm curious about is what you guys think is going to be the lasting, if any, impact on the 2024 election. Are you going to have the old silent majority types

that might have gone over to Biden because they're sort of instinctively, dispositionally kind of old liberals looking at this and saying, oh my God, it's a replay of these smelly hippies of 68 again. And no, sir, I don't like it. What do you think it's going to play out to be? Well, I look at the protesters, the pro-Palestinian protesters, the encampments, and even more, the irony strikes me, is even richer when faculty at these institutions back them up. Because here's what, I look at that picture of the faculty linking arms in Columbia and I think to myself, congratulations.

You are aiding the campaign for re-election of Donald J. Trump. You are providing unpaid what what is it called the unpaid advertising for you in any media free media free media for donald trump they could not assist his campaign more directly if they'd written checks to him steven you've probably seen the famous picture now famous a statue of george George Washington on the left and on the right of the statue, the same statue, after the encampment had had their way with it. And it's covered with Palestinian stickers and Arab headdress and the rest of it's faces covered. It's turned into a symbol of Islamist resistance, which somebody said, there's Trump's 2024 ad right there. Yeah, I mean, there are two notable,

more than two, but two notable infuriating ironies of this whole scene. I think you guys mentioned last week, I, you know, we really have to do this again. You spent all last week's episode kvetching about this and. Kvetching.

That was not kvetching. It was full-throated denunciation. Oh, that's right. Kvetching. He says, kvelling. Maybe,

maybe I was, am I kvelling? I could have been kvelling. It wasn't kvetching. says kvelling maybe maybe i was am i kvelling i could have been kvelling wasn't kvetching well things things have gotten worse in the last week just when you you know i've been saying for a while or asking for a while are things going to get worse before they get worse and the campuses seem determined to prove the answer is yes uh i think you guys mentioned or somebody has mentioned a lot recently that it was not but six seven years ago that uh you know 100 or 150 tiki torch bearing young white kids caused an international crisis at charlottesville and trump was miss uh taken out of context about fine people on both sides that was about the

statue controversy right and just to you know again correct the record briefly trump said don't think this is going to stop with taking down the statue of robert e lee they're going to come after jefferson and washington next and reporters were incredulous at this so how can you say that and trump said they were slave owners that's why the left is going to come after those statues qed the scene you just saw or just described james at columbia with um people trying to be mini Christos, I guess, and wrapping the George Washington statue, but without the imagination behind it, right? The other one is, and I don't think anyone has commented on this, but we have been hearing for decades now that, oh, if the United States or Israel does anything tough in the Middle East, the Arab street will

explode. The street, yes. I'm not aware of any Arab streets exploding in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. The streets that are exploding are on American college campuses. And that ought to tell you something about how deranged we are, that that is where you're seeing the unrest about all this. Finally, Peter, your point about the faculty. What an amazing scene that in the last two or three weeks, Google, of all places, managed to fire 40 or 50 employees who had protested on their grounds. And yet no one is going to get dismissed from a university for canceling classes, for impeding students getting into classes, for all the disruption.

I think those ought to be fireball offenses. It is possible- Absolutely right. It is possible to cancel tenure of professors, but nobody has the guts to do it anywhere, it seems. And so, I think it's going to fester for a while. And if the war widens to the northern front with Hezbollah, then I think we have a whole other round starting in the fall. So, this takes me back a little bit to the themes we discussed last week, but I'm going to do it anyway, because this feels good. god bless america and here's why the institutions that

have seized up over gaza we know we name them and the columbia above all at the moment and they dominate the news but there are two wonderful aspects about the united states of america one is federalism ben sass is not putting up with a moment of this nonsense. Ben Sasse, former senator from Nebraska, now the president of the University of Florida. Florida is not putting up with this. And down at the University of Texas, they brought in, I think it was the Texas Rangers, they brought in some force and just moved the encampment out. There are places in the country where we're used to this notion of the red and the blue

model, but it goes deeper, I believe, than we may even have supposed. We tend to think of it as tax policy. Now we're thinking of it as states trying to sort out abortion policy. That's true. Now Texas is enforcing the border, even if the feds don't want them to and california isn't and now we see that there are even different approaches to higher education that is a glorious thing because when bits of america aren't working you can be pretty sure there are bits of america that are going to work and then of, of course, the other piece of this is, what do Americans do when

institutions fail? They start new ones. They start new ones. The one that seems to be getting a lot of news right now is the University of Austin in Texas. Close to my heart, because full disclosure, my oldest son works there. They'll be accepting their first incoming class, their first students this fall. But there are a lot of little Catholic schools that have been founded in recent decades. There are between 4,000 and 5,000 universities and colleges in this country, and maybe 20 of them have been dominating the news. There are opportunities all over the educational landscape for institutions in the Midwest, for smaller institutions, for trustees and creative trustees and presidents to make moves here. And some of them will, I think. We hope so. Trying to cheer you up, boys.

No, no, no, that's good. That's good. What I like is for people to self-reveal, for the revelatory aspects of these things to be chewed upon and digested by everyone. And I think a lot of people have seen, obviously, that the left in this country valorizes protests, but only a certain kind. They may talk about how they admire the protest tradition, and that's what it's really about, free expression and the rest of it. But everybody knows that if this had been a group of ultra right-wing people who had done any of these things, that the whole country would be up in, the media would be absolutely a Twitter and inflamed with horror over this imminent fascist takeover of America. Without a doubt, somebody taking down the American flag and put up a thin blue line flag,

this would be a sign that the fascist boot of the police state was about to smash down on the poor faces of the people in college. People would be irrevocably shaking at the sight of that thing. If you had genial kids in MAGA hats who occupied a college office and didn't trash it, didn't spray paint the walls, didn't put demands all over everything of things that they wanted to be done now, because they're basically toddlers, that itself would be, again, tied directly back to the brown shirts and the way that Hitler disrupted civil society. Everybody knows it. So the reason that these things are being encouraged and winked upon and given the blessing

is because they adhere to a specific set of ideas. And those ideas are manifestly outside of the general conversation that we have about the future of America. They are not about whether or not we should be pushing more towards liberal policy or conservative policy. They're about whether or not we should end the systems and institutions that define this country and replace them with some sort of transnational communist nonsense. And I mean, when you see the hammer and sickles, take them at their word.

When you see everybody get up there and talk about the necessity of dismantling capitalism with a worldwide intifada and shouting with glee over these things, take them at their word. So, between the anti-Semitism and the anti-capitalism, which, okay, fine, they're under 30, they can do it. And the inflation of these academic know-nothings to avatars of the generation speaking deathless truths, everybody sees, they've revealed themselves to be anti-American, and maybe it's okay to call them that, because they are, and they've revealed themselves to be profoundly ignorant of history and economics and the rest of it. So, yeah, I'll shut up with this. The one thing I always notice is that after they're done occupying a place that it's trashed, it's filthy, strewn with a lot of plastic for some reason.

They love their plastic. There was a building, I think, at UCLA, this beautiful landmark in a sort of late Romanesque style. And they'd spray painted it, of courseistic, it's not animalistic, animals don't know beauty. This sort of anti-human joy in defacing beauty is one of the most telltale things about these people. I'll shut up now. Okay, may I ask a question of the two of you? No, you may not, because the thing of it is, Peter, is that you may ask that question if you pay me a dollar. You want to pay me a dollar for that? And you're saying, James, we're on the air. How can I possibly pay you a dollar? And the answer is simple. There's an electronic way to do it. There is a way to do e-commerce better than

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Go to shopify.com slash ricochet, all lowercase, to take your retail business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash ricochet. And we do thank Shopify for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Boys, I wasn't in Rome when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine ceiling. I never got to know Leonardo, but I have lived to see James Lilacs perform segways. Yeah. And it is enough. It is enough. I have to leave a little early to complete your nomination for the Nobel Prize for Segways. Yes. Right.

Or I'll take it for rants, perorations, philippics, and also, you know. Well, but only one prize a year, I think. I think they limit them. All right. And now we welcome to the podcast H.R. McMaster, retired United States Army Lieutenant General, served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor. He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Dereliction of Duty and, more recently, Battlegrounds,

The Fight to Defend the Free World. And then there's The Fight to Defund the Free World, as we're seeing. Welcome to the podcast. Let's the fight to defund the free world, as we're seeing. Welcome to the podcast. Let's go right to Israel. We all know that Joe Biden was quite proud of telling the Israeli government that they should not invade Haifa. But we have the situation where we're looking at Rafa and wondering exactly what the delay is. Can you give us your take on the machinations, the negotiations, who stands to lose? Where do you think this is going to shake out? Well, the Israeli Defense Force is going to go into Rafah.

There's no doubt about it. And I think what's happening now is that Israel's dealing with the administration's calls or exhorting them to not go into Rafale, which, of course, makes no sense. If you're going to destroy Hamas, you have to destroy the entire organization. The Israeli Defense Forces have destroyed about 18 of 24 battalions of Hamas. And for their own population, after the heinous attacks of October 7th. How do they say, well, we just thought that was enough, and we're going to call it a day and not really destroy the organization. Also, you have these negotiations that are ongoing about the release of hostages

and so forth. So I think that the Israeli government is just letting that play out. But certainly there's going to be a military operation against Rafah. And what I hope is there'll be an opportunity to evacuate civilians And screen them in advance of that operation And then they can go after what remains of Hamas Including the leadership in a less constrained manner In terms of the use of firepower For the people who don't have their head around this yet

Let's define what battalion strength means for Hamas. How many fighters does that mean they've eliminated, and how much of a force is the idea of face now? Yeah, it varies, right? Because these terrorist organizations, they organize along the lines of battalions, katabs in Arabic, but they really depend on what the purpose of that battalion is. You have to remember that there are two purposes for Hamas battalions. Purpose number one is to make good on their pledge to try to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. I mean, that's what they're determined to do.

So those people who lament that Israel may not be fully committed to a two-state solution, how does that sound about Hamas' point of view in connection with a two-state solution. How does that sound about Hamas's point of view in connection with the two-state solution? But the other purpose for these Hamas battalions is to intimidate the population, the Palestinian population, to maintain Hamas's iron grip on power in Gaza, which they use, obviously, to divert international assistance, economic aid, economic activity, to enrich themselves, the Hamas leadership, and to build up terrorist capabilities and infrastructure to attack Israel. So those who are concerned about the welfare of the Palestinian people in Gaza have to recognize that the principal cause of the grievances of that population, the destitution in Gaza, is Hamas itself. And so these organizations use

their monopoly on power to coerce and intimidate the population, to brainwash the youth, and to mobilize the entire population toward the destruction of Israel and the killing of all the Jews. I mean, that's really their mission. And so it's important. I mean, so the battalions vary based on their overall purpose. But what you have now is you have the remaining combat power from Hamas, whatever that is,

you have them with their leadership cowering in the tunnels while they leave the population exposed. I think it's important to point out that none of Hamas's tunnels have been used for the purpose of civil defense. And the reason is, you know what one of hamas's tactics is to get as many uh people from their own population killed as possible you know most military organizations all that you know that are i think legitimate exist to protect their populations hamas acts in ways to deliberately cause casualties so they can use them on the world stage and tap in to this kind of stream of self-loathing youth that we have in the West who then can champion the cause of a heinous criminal organization like Hamas.

General, it's Steve Hayward out in California. And, you know, I don't think I've ever had the honor to meet you. And I've long wanted to say that almost 30 years ago now, I did a very deep dive in the Vietnam literature. And I tell everybody still here, 25 years later, that Your Dereliction of Duty is one of the four most significant books for anyone who wants to understand the whole Vietnam scene. And I won't list the other three now, unless Peter asked me. Okay, Steve, we give one of the other three. Well, all right. I'm sorry. That was bad of me. I think Gunter Louis' book, American Vietnam, which was a fairly early book, is one of the best. Louis Sorley's actually more than one book

from Louis Sorley, I think, understands the endgame best of all. Absolutely. This is a better war. A better war. Right, exactly. And you know what? Lewis Sorley is just a fantastic human being, by the way. He's a dear friend of mine, and he's one of these people that you really want as your friend, because he's one of these people who, if you ever need anything, he pops everything to help you he's a wonderful person really yeah that that's what my ex-marine vietnam vet mac owens always tells me about him and you know what mac owens is a phenomenal human being too oh yes that guy i think may be the most underrated scholar of his era if you go back to an essay he wrote in 1999 in orvis magazine uh journal uh he predicted everything we're seeing today in terms of the return of geostrategic competition now he's a he's a phenomenal

phenomenon and the last book has real contemporary relevance it's Peter Braystrup's book called the big story about the misreporting of the ted offensive so it not only tells the media malpractice but also it tells the story of what really happened on the ground in ted and you know what an important revisionist work and you read those four books those three other authors in you and you will understand what you need to know well and i would add now since those works mark moir's works you know as well great revisionist of the revisionist wait a minute wait a minute boys what about michael lynn the necessary war michael lynn's an odd character but that book i think that book is indispensable no but there look there are a lot of other books that are very good i can name four or five others

you started it hayward i know i know i didn't well i actually did want to extend uh the dereliction of duty question to a contemporary version of it, which is, I mean, a couple forms of this. The general form is, have our Joint Chiefs of Staff learned, well, really from your book and reflection on what they did wrong in the 60s and so forth? And the more specific form of the question, and what makes me raise it, is we know that President Biden ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs and a lot of senior military people about what should be done about Afghanistan, how we should get out, and I don't know, what do you make of all that? Have the chiefs still have a ways to go, or military leadership have a way to go in civil military relations advising the president? Well, you know, a president can get

the military advice he wants, but by virtue of the way he structures those relationships, what his expectations are, and he can just ignore it. In the case of President Biden, President Biden didn't want to hear it. Remember when he was vice president, he said that the advice he got from the military that President Obama was getting from the military was painting President Obama into a corner. Well, what he meant was he wasn't getting the military advice he wanted. He was getting honest military advice and didn't want that from his senior military leadership. And so I think President Biden,

when he heard, hey, you know, it's a bad idea to evacuate the military before you evacuate civilians. Hey, it's important to keep Bagram open if we're going to have any hope of supporting Afghans who are still in the fight. You know, it's important for us to not adhere to this timeline that actually the trump administration agreed to when when actually the trump administration signed a surrender document uh to to to uh to the taliban i mean which is which is terrible whoa whoa hr you want to hold on you just said the trump administration in which you served not at the time you served but in which you served, signed a surrender document to the Taliban. Do you want to stand on that statement? Oh, absolutely. This is in February of 2020, when Zal Khalilzad signed the document in the presence of the Secretary of State. And essentially, you know, what happened is,

the Trump administration replicated the policy of the Obama administration in the latter years. President Trump made, I think, a courageous, important decision in August of 2017 to fundamentally change our approach to Afghanistan. He put into place the first reasoned, sustainable approach to that war that prioritized U.s interests and and uh and incentivized the kind of by the way he explained himself to the american people in a detailed speech on the matter correct it was the best speech on afghanistan in the long history of that war you know i would i would encourage you know your viewers listeners hey dig it out uh that afghanistan speech in 2017 but But then, you know what, he

abandoned that whole approach, you know. He listened to the mantra of end the endless wars, you know, and the Taliban, you know, they're really different from the way they were, you know, before 2001. They're going to respect women's rights. They're really separate, you know, from all these other terrorist organizations. Utter bullshit is what that was, and self-delusion, you know, and then you kept hearing, well, you know, there's no military solution in Afghanistan. Hey, guess what? The Taliban came up with one, didn't they? And so, you know, I think, you know, I think that what he did is he just bought into that nonsense. Now, the Biden administration continued that policy. Remember, you know, when the disaster happens in August of 2021, the Biden administration said, oh, well, we couldn't change that policy. Really? You changed every other Trump policy. You stopped securing our borders, you know, with Mexico. I mean, you couldn't go back on that policy in Afghanistan. So what I'm saying is, you know, this is a disaster, a catastrophe, a stain on America

for the responsibility for which is shared by both those administrations. HR, you finished, I understand, I ran into your assistant the other day, I understand you have finished the manuscript. In fact, I think you have it in galley form of your new book, At War With Ourselves. I want to advertise the book and the show that we are going to do. We're going to do an Uncommon Knowledge together on that book. So, the book is on your service in the Trump administration, correct? It is. All right. So, everybody who loves H.R. McMaster, which should be everybody, the book is At War With Ourselves. It'll be out in August.

H.R., could I ask, I would like to return to the Middle East to the extent of one or two questions and then sort of step back and ask a question about this country, the politics of the current moment in this country. Not the partisan politics, but the overall mood of the country. But first to Israel and Gaza, what would victory look like if you were advising Bibi Netanyahu and even more miraculous, he were listening to you? Yeah. In other words, one of the things that I find just perpetually exasperating about this conflict is this goes on to another topic, which is the corruption or at least the degeneration of the american press there's really very good very little good military reporting so

that the hamas fighters do they simply fade away into the civilian population the way the viet kong did how do they how do they surround the bad guys how do they know who the bad guys are? Do they fill in the tunnel? What is the end state in Gaza that represents a victory for Israel? Well, the victory is, first of all, to destroy Hamas, to kill or capture every single one of those fighters they can get their hands on or get in the sights of their guns. That is immensely important. And they can identify those fighters? They have the intel to know who they are where they are absolutely they can oh they do okay yeah now now now what will happen is hamas will come back in right they'll blend back into the civilian population maybe in the areas of the north you've already seen you know some uh some instances where uh where they've coalesced back into small groups and attacked Israeli forces.

But if Israel is in control of that territory, they can identify those fighters and use their asymmetrical advantages in terms of their vast military capabilities against them. But to your question about what is enduring defeat of Hamas, how does that happen? Well, it's particularly difficult for Israel to do that because they don't have a great deal of credibility, legitimacy among the Palestinian population for a number of reasons, some of which go back to 1948, but some of which are attributable to the brainwashing to which the Palestinian population has been subjected since Hamas took power by force in 2005. And this is the systematic

fomenting of hatred among the youth in Gaza. And to use that hatred to justify in the minds of these people who are sort of brainwashed, subjected to this propaganda, the heinous crimes that you saw on October 7th of last year. so how do you break that how do you break the cycle there's really a cycle you know of like of ignorance which and using ignorance to foam and hatred and hatred to justify violence and the only way that that's going to be able to to happen i think in gaza is with a multinational security force that is a peace enforcement force that when hamas shows its head which it will that they just they crush them and that's not the un and that'll that's not the un look at unifil in southern lebanon it's a disaster so it has to be a multinational force with that

mandate could it be egyptian led well the egyptians haven't been very cooperative they didn't they didn't let they didn't let palestinians which I think we should have put more pressure on them to do that. Maybe it's a conglomerate of nations. I mean, heck, maybe it's Kenyans. Who knows? But bring a multinational force together, probably with American support and some degree of American logistical and communications and intelligence backbone to lift the pall of fear off the population. There cannot be a restoration of some form of governments in Gaza without a strong security arm that can prevent Hamas from intimidating the population and regaining control like they did in 2005. And then what can happen?

Well, hey, those tens of billions of dollars that have flowed in to Gaza since 2005, maybe they can actually go to the welfare of the Palestinian people. Maybe Gaza can become a viable economic entity where people want to live, instead of the diversion of all that aid. Like plumbing and fresh water and and streets right okay all that aid has been diverted into a rich hamas and and and to build their terrorist infrastructure and capabilities i wish it so if i were advising to your question about advising uh prime minister netanyahu i would say you got to do more to begin to at least be a contender on the battleground of perception,

internationally and with the Palestinians. Why wasn't there the equivalent of a Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous documentary of all the Hamas leaders and their villas on the Mediterranean, and then quick cut to the destitution of the uh of the palestinian people in gaza so i mean i i mean why isn't there uh a better effort to trace you know the to trace this back to its source which is tehran and the iranians right i mean you know if you if you're pro-palestinian, you should be protesting against Hamas and against Iran. Because Iran's strategy, cynical, horrible strategy, is to expend every Arab life in their pursuit act on his own, even in defiance of Antony Blinken and the Biden administration? I think we have two carrier groups in the Eastern Med right now. They need money from us.

They need weapons and materiel. They need our carrier groups holding down Hezbollah in the north so that they can continue to take care of business in Gaza. But now we have the Biden administration all wrapped up in domestic American presidential politics, terrified in particular, as far as I can tell, of losing Michigan, where there's a Muslim population of about 250,000 people centered on Dearborn. And so the Biden administration is saying, don't go into Rafah. We're going to keep pretending that there's a real negotiation going on with Hamas so that you don't go into Rafah. Don't go in, don't go in, don't go. Can Bibi go in without us or not? See, I think that's part of the dynamic dynamic but also i think it's going to backfire on them you know a lot of the muslim population in the united states or in michigan they they've they've been the victims of of

jihadist organizations like hamas i mean that is not a monolithic population i mean a lot of those people understand completely what israel has to do And the other factor, though, besides obviously wanting to keep the United States on side or not completely alienate, I think you're right about that, is the tension of trying to maintain the strong relationship that they have with Gulf states and Gulf state leaders who have a real problem, because even though they understand what Israel has to do, even though they know that their interests are aligned, these are the Gulf state leadership, mainly the Arab monarchies and the UAE and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and so forth, they know that their interests align with Israel on the threat from Iran. But hey, their population is not with them on this.

And so there are real checks, I think, on what Israel can do. And I think it's smart, right? I mean, if the Rafah operation happens two weeks later, does it really make a difference? I don't think it makes a difference. The only difference it might make is in preparation for the next operation, which is going to be probably in southern Lebanon. And I think what Israel has already concluded is that they will conduct an offensive operation against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon before the beginning of the school year.

And the reason is there are 70,000 Israelis displaced from northern Israel who want to get their kids back into school. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you saying they want to clean out Hezbollah or just push them back? They're going to push them back X number of kilometers, 15, 20 kilometers. And I could see a scenario in which they stay there, you know? Right. HR, so let me ask you this question about American politics, because we've got, here's the way it looks to me. On the Democratic side, we've got the Biden administration tying itself into the shape of a pretzel to try to keep one constituency, which is Jewish Americans who are largely democratic,

overwhelmingly democratic, honestly, pleased with the support the administration is offering to Israel, but at the same time, just desperate for the youth vote, which Biden will need in November. And all the statistics show that the youth are the most pro-Palestine of any demographic in the country. And so, what seems to be the case right now is that the policy is to help Israel, but the rhetoric is to slow Israel down. But this is complicated. On the Republican side, we've got a man... It's complicated and it's feckless, actually. Okay, it's more than complicated it's idiotic it will not

work feckless is a nice way to put it you're good with words hr you know you ought to consider writing sometime and then we've got and then we've got the republican side you know president trump you worked with him to sort out a strategy for afghanistan that made sense and i don't know how to put it, he lost patience, he listened to other people, he was persuaded by the endless war argument, we just got to bring him home. And now you've got very intelligent people, J.D. Vance in the Senate, Senator from Ohio, Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri. By the way, I can tell you firsthand that he's smart because I knew him when he was

an undergraduate here at Stanford. We've got Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and they are broadly signing on to the argument, no to Ukraine. We have limited resources. I would not put Tom Cotton in that camp. You would not. Okay. Okay. So, all right, then correct me to the extent that you want to correct me, but the general point I'd say, what do you want to say to Americans? What do you want to say to Americans? And in particular, what would you say to Donald Trump right now? Well, first of all, I think you have to try to understand what is motivating those who are maybe falling into this, I don't know, neo-isolationist camp, or that might be too harsh. Maybe they're not really isolationist as much as they are

skeptical, right? Skeptical about sustained about sustained u.s commitments abroad especially military commitments abroad and so so i always i believe in in you know i make the argument uh for strategic empathy in the book battlegrounds you know that's barred that's a great historian who's a these are not stupid people they're not unpatriotic they're good people no but think about their what they're what they're what they're tapping into and what they're drawing this perspective from. It's really the big transitions in the global economy that occurred in the 2000s. The loss of manufacturing jobs. The numbers of Americans who were left behind by the transition in the global economy.

Hey, toss in a financial crisis. How about an opioid epidemic? How about the unexpected, unanticipated length and difficulty and cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And the borders. Look at our national debt. You know, look at the degree to which, you know, we see that we have problems here at home, even with those who, you know, who have lost faith in our country and are part of this self-loathing movement among our youth.

And so they're saying, hey, we got problems here. Like, hey, let the Middle East solve their own problems, damn it. Well, I mean, the counter argument, I think, is that challenges to our security that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores. And you know much better than I do, because you work for him, I think Ronald Reagan's peace through strength is more relevant today than at any other time since the end of the Cold War. And so there is this dissonance among many of those, especially in the Republican Party,

who make the argument for our disengagement from complex challenges abroad, because they too believe in peace through strength. But it actually communicates weakness if we don't have the ability to sustain a commitment in Afghanistan, for example. I mean, hey, even the Obama administration, when they left Iraq, they didn't negotiate with al-Qaeda when they left Iraq. I mean, the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban to leave Afghanistan. If you're going to leave, just freaking leave. So I think that this argument is either, it's like often an all or nothing.

We're not going to solve all the problems in the Middle East, so we need to get the hell out. Well, you know what? Actually, the problems in the Middle East don't get better when we disengage when we demonstrate our irresolution when we demonstrate weakness that emboldens ayatollah hamane that's what emboldened putin look what the biden administration did they withdrew our naval vessels out of the black sea they suspended lethal assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces. President Biden went over, you know, to meet with Putin in Geneva and said, hey, you know, here's all the things I won't do to support Ukraine. Here's our red lines, you know.

Then they evacuated all of our advisors. They evacuated our embassy and they scuttled our embassy. Right. And and so, you know, it's like they green-lighted the invasion of Ukraine, but they threatened sanctions, and man, they had some stern, tough words, you know, in the United Nations for Vladimir Putin. What the hell good did that do? You know what matters? You know what matters? Hard power matters, you know? And so, I think that there is a certain dissonance among those who call for our disengagement, because many of these same people also recognize that peace through strength is the right approach. Right. General, I know you need to go.

So let me give you an exit lightning round question that draws back from the Gaza theater and whatnot. It's a general geostrategic one. You know, all the discourse right now is about war in the Middle East and Gaza, Iran, China and Taiwan, possibly Russia, Ukraine. Are there any other sleepers out there? Are there any other potential conflicts we're not paying attention to? And one in particular that makes me think this question, about two months ago, you know, the news was about how Guyana had a major oil discovery, one of the largest in the world. And Venezuela said, well, actually, that belongs to us. And Venezuela, it was reported, was massing troops. And now I've heard nothing. I mean, are there any sort of spots that the public and our leaders are ignoring that you think could be

a surprise, maybe even in our own hemisphere. Absolutely. And I think it's really important to point out our inattention to our own hemisphere. Just yesterday, or a couple of days ago, Colombia ended diplomatic relations with Israel, with the far-left government. You have Lula da Silva, who stood next to... Was that Colombia the nation or the Colombia the university? I'm not clear right now. They both got it now. But, you know, Colombia was our staunchest ally, you know, in the region.

We partnered with Colombia when everybody thought that was going to be a totally failed state, you know, and President Uribe showed strong character, and so did so many others, who sacrificed to wrest control of that country away from the drug cartels and we've had a strong partnership with them and they've become uh they've become part of the pink wave in in the western hemisphere now melee in argentina he's bucking that right there's a pendulum this one's back and forth chile is is resisting the the pink wave but lula da silva in bra and his relationship with Russia and China, his supplication to them. Look at what's happened in South Africa. There is, I think, a movement happening in the world into these blocks,

blocks of free and open democratic societies who have confidence in our democratic principles, institutions, and confidence in our free market economic system and those uh who who are are lean toward the statist mercantilist uh socialist model and um and i think that's what we're not paying enough attention to is that competition that's going on in other in other theaters there are a lot of people and this peter this is goes back to your point about disengagement from certain areas. There are some who think we should play little kids soccer because the Indo-Pacific is really important, and we should just all run to the Taiwan Strait and stand there. China would love that because China then could kick our ass everywhere else

in the world. And so it's important for us to recognize that there's a competition going on across the world and that we have to work together with our like-minded partners to advance freedom, the mission of the Hoover Institution, promote our free societies. Well, you know, we ignore Brazil because, according to the left, it doesn't matter because the guy cannot be described as Trumpian as Bolsonaro could. So they just, if he's not Trumpian, they can ignore him. And the Argentina thing will be interesting because you have people on the right rallying to this gentleman as an example of how much you can change a country quickly while having a bad haircut. I mean, people are really impressed with him. So I'm waiting for him to throw down the other card and say that the Falklands now belong to Argentina

and watch that whole thing play again. But, that's for another podcast, and we hope to have you on it. H.R. McMaster, the upcoming book is At War With Ourselves, My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, scheduled for release in late August. Can't wait, and I hope to have you

back on then, or probably with Peter, or both on Unaccommon Knowledge to talk about it. It's been a pleasure, sir. Always an instructive interval. wait and uh hope to have you back on then or probably with peter or both on on the common knowledge to talk about it it's been a pleasure sir always always an instructive interval it's so great to be with you thank you take care well that was fun and now it's just us lads here um let's see peter you had something you wanted to bring up yeah so we touched on the politics of all this a little bit in our conversation with hr that was the politics of foreign policy let me just go to the politics of politics i this is this strikes me as so strange that i'm mentioning it to the two of you

to check my own sanity for almost four years ago four years years ago, Joe Biden ran on normality. And he said, in effect, Donald Trump is too chaotic. He has brought us, Trump didn't bring it to us, but Biden claimed he did. Trump has brought us COVID, demonstrations in the streets, cities burning across America. Vote for me and it will end. And now, four years later, Donald Trump is emerging a couple of times a week from a trial in Manhattan to say, folks, things are so bad that now I'm the normal one. The border, we're being invaded on the southern border. The campuses are erupting. The world is on fire.

Vote for me. I'll take us back to normal. Am I losing my mind or is that what's happening? No, I think it's actually uh even deeper than you put it peter um first of all i think trump right now what i think is trump's gonna win and i think he might win big and you know we see these new poll numbers showing him opening up a lead and it's fun to speculate that maybe they should keep him in court more often because yes yes his speeches are more disciplined i think right well you know when he does speak now

i mean he's getting his game on he's really getting back into top form i think but there's two things here that play into this so you know in 2016 and actually going back to 1980 big question marks about ronald reagan right is he too extreme and all the rest of that and right he ends up winning in the landslide because people decide that we can take a chance on him trump in 2016 oh my goodness right all the crazy things he said and that. Okay, I don't need to recite that litany. But he's been president now. And as the polls show that a majority of Americans now look back fondly on the Trump presidency, at least the results for the first three years. And yeah, maybe he's chaotic and maybe his personality is repellent, but they certainly liked the way the country was governed.

And the fact that he's been president, which means he's less of a chance for undecided voters, is something that I don't see any of the pundits or pollsters talking about. You're right about that. But then the other thing you said about Biden's own chaos and craziness, political science, as you probably know, they have the famous median voter theory, which is, you know, there's an advantage of the person who's clustered around the issues that attract the median voter. That person in this election is Donald Trump. Trump's opinions on the issues, and Republicans generally, are much closer to the median voter. That's another reason

to think that he has an edge in this election, why he is likely to win. And so the only question mark is, are there going to be some surprises? Is he going to be thrown in jail? Is he going to make some crazy mistake? Is Iran going to launch a missile at us and people rally around Biden? I don't know. But as of right now, the shape of the race, I think, is fixed, and I think it favors a solid Trump win. And could I, you mentioned that something was even deeper than it seemed, or seemed

to me. I've also, again, this is a sanity check for me because I have these thoughts in my head, but I don't have very many people to check them against. My wife doesn't want to hear it, but you do. So, here's something that I have the feeling is deeper than is assumed or supposed. This notion of Biden's age. Everybody can see that man. He walks stiffly, he loses his place in speeches, A, and B, he has failed before our very eyes. You can see it happening in real time. Go to a clip of him even two years ago and he was in better shape. All right. So, people see that and the press presents it as Americans have reservations about whether he's too old to do the job. And that's true. But the deeper bit I feel,

I don't know it, but I feel it. The deeper bit is that Americans are sick of being lied to. And the press and the administration is saying, no, he's fine he's up to it he's absolutely fine and i believe that there are lots of people people on who may be otherwise swing voters who just in some way this represents the way they feel that the press and the the liberal establishment has been lying to them all along, and they're saying, no, damn it, don't tell me to disregard the evidence of my eyes. We assume there's going to be a lot of lying. We assume we're going to be lied to, and we factor a lot of that in. We never would think that the administration would say, you know what, we screwed the pooch getting out of Afghanistan. We scuttled out without honor, and that's not going to happen again.

We're taking a good, hard look at it. If they continue to insist that it was by the numbers and it was a great thing to do and a complete success, let them. I mean, we know that they're going to lie about stuff like that. But when it comes to lying about Biden's obvious dissent into Joe Gillism, his inability to craft a wake-up persona. Who knows what kind of B-12 cocktail they'll shoot in his butt before he debates Trump, but everybody knows it, and that's baked in, and you're right there, Peter. But there's another lie, and the other lie is that the economy is great,

and we're not paying 37% more for groceries. Everybody knows that. Now, whether or not an administration will have the guts to get out there and say, look, we absolutely know what you're paying at the grocery, and it's ridiculous. Here's why your eggs went up. And tell us why that. Here's why your cereal went up. Here's why meat is so expensive.

We know. There's only so many things we can do, but we are well aware. Instead of that, they tell us, wait a minute. What are you talking about? I mean, yes, the price of hamburger did go up a bit, but your wages went up 14%. Don't you realize that? And nobody's looking around and looking at their paycheck and looking at their groceries and saying, boy, I feel richer. I feel richer, and nobody is doing that. People are seeing that. They're seeing changes like when they go to McDonald's or to Wendy's

to find out that McDonald's now costs as much as some of the premium burger places like Five Guys and the rest of it. It's stunningly expensive to get a hamburger at McDonald's, which used to be the thing you got for a buck on your way home, just to plug a hole in your stuff. Everybody knows it. And everybody, you know, whether or not they have a complete and encyclopedic economic knowledge of why we have this inflation and why spending is to blame and who did the spending

over the last few years, they know it. And they're being lied to about whether or not it matters. And even if they don't, they're going to say, was I paying this much for a burger under Trump? I was not. Ergo, that's the guy. And, you know, that's what it comes down to for an awful lot of people. And it's not a stupid decision to make because they can't afford to take the kids to McDonald's anymore. Matters more, perhaps, than leaving Afghanistan.

By the way know one of my favorite pictures of trump of all time was the when he had the athletes in and he had a huge spread of all the fast food burgers i think that should be a campaign you know you want a cornucopia of this back and at a price you can afford then you know what to do i think that was a great moment the principle the principal argument sorry this is my i'll'll let Steve comment and I will fall silent after this, but the main argument, in some ways the only argument that Biden has is Trump is crazy. You can't vote for him because Trump is crazy. But you know, here's why that argument is now losing its effect, its purchase on the American psyche psyche because lots of voters are admitting it and saying yeah trump is

crazy but you know what there are things that would be worse and another four years of you buster is starting to look just like that or another one of three in camel harris or exactly exactly you know peter you uh this is something this is something that is often said that people in the White House are in a bubble or parties are in a bubble. That's, of course, true. You know, one of the things I show to students often on the first day of class, depending on the class, is the great time series from Gallup and other pollsters going back to the 50s of trust in the federal government.

Ah. You've seen that, right? It's all downhill with the significant backtracker into Reagan years. That's the only significant restoration of confidence in the federal government in the last 60 years. So, I went from 78% people saying they think Washington's doing a good job. Now, it's in the mid-teens. And so, don't people in Washington and sort of the rest of the establishment, for lack of a better term, don't they understand that confidence in our institutions is so low that calling someone a chaos agent will bring smiles to the faces of a lot of ordinary citizens, right? And that's what I want.

The line in trust goes down as the line of government involvement in our lives goes up. And from that, they learn nothing about our attitudes towards their competence and their occasional intrusiveness. Sounds like we're in agreement. No, no, the other thing, so this, Steve, Steve, Steve, this is a, Steve would actually comment on this, I think, both of you, but Steve has written books, whole books about Ronald Reagan and Reagan and Churchill, and I draw this distinction, although part of it is, I have to admit, is supp to be limited. One way or the other, he's about ready to retire, either into four years at the White House or back home in Delaware.

But these people have careers to consider. And whereas, I believe, Steve would confirm this and maybe elaborate on it. Winston Churchill, by the time he became Prime Minister, of course he became Prime Minister in time of war, but even apart from that, by that point, he had close advisors and supporters who would do anything for him. And Ronald Reagan, by the time he took office in 1980, had Ed Meese, and he was surrounded by people who would do anything for him, because they loved him, because they believed he was the way forward for the country. There are no such people around Joe Biden with the possible exception of Dr. Jill, I think. Yeah, no, I've been saying, can you please define for me a Biden Democrat?

We knew what Clinton Democrats were, and it was a little fuzzy, but it was sort of that new Democrat vibe, and Obama was a cult of personality. But yeah, Biden, look, I mean, this is not an original thought with me. I think I got it first from Henry Olson, who you guys have had on a couple times. Oh, we all steal from Henry all the time. of course we do right no no need to credit him yeah well but the point is is you know biden's political ability was always to find the center of the democratic party figure out where it was going and then get in front of it you know he saw parade going down the street and he gets in front of it and thinks he's leading it the problem is

he is helpless when the party is divided between these factions and correct it has no it has no core principles of his own. Did you know, Peter, that not only did Biden vote for all of the tax cuts, starting with the capital gains tax cut in 78, all of Reagan's tax cuts, he was endorsed for re-election in 1978 by Howard Jarvis. Wow. Because he was known as a conservative Democrat. I mean, it's all on the record. You can quote Biden against himself now from the Biden of the 70s and the 80s. There is no core principle to the guy. That's what made him attractive, I think, in this last election cycle when the party panicked that Bernie or Elizabeth Warren were going to win the nomination.

And that's what they grabbed onto him. And he's very pliable. And I think, as you say see now by the way did you notice this week not only did he let fly with impromptu remarks about how the japanese and the indians are xenophobic but then there's now a phalanx of people around him who surround him when he walks out to the helicopter on the south lawn because they don't want it visible that he can't walk like a normal human being i mean i don't know why don't they just put him in a sedan chair and bear him out on their shoulders for goodness sake right have him toss have him toss sesteres out as as he passes yes indeed both sides well and there is no there it's it's it's

you're right the division i mean joe biden would probably see a nuclear missile that we had paid for coming out of iran heading towards israel there's the Iron Dome system knocking it down, which we have helped them to develop and think, well, you know, my work here is done. It's extraordinary. But time moves on, and next week, who knows what we're talking about. I almost hope we're talking about the same things, because it's fascinating. All of this stuff is tremendously important to where this country is now. I mean, this is not just the usual politics stuff. And I always say it's the most important election

in my life ever. But, you know, this one does seem to have more heft and weight and meaning than the rest. It feels like a culmination in a lot of ways. And it's hard to say that, you know, it's culminating with two old guys, but here we go again. Anyway, we'd like to thank you for listening to the show. Of course, go to Apple Podcasts, give us four stars. Did I say four stars? I meant to say five stars. I wanted to see if you were listening. You were, weren't you? And of course, go to Ricochet.com, join up, and you'll find the member feed, which is where the internet that you've been looking for all of your life is waiting for you. We'll see you there. Thank you, Steve.

Thank you, Peter. Thanks, guys. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week. Ricochet. Join the conversation.