The core theme of the content is an analysis of Donald Trump's rhetoric and actions, particularly his questioning of election legitimacy, his administration's dismantling of the post-WWII international order, and the potential mental and political instability of his leadership, all framed within the context of a critique of Republican policy and a call to action for the American public.
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So, you asked a lot of questions. I'm
going to see if I can pull them all
together today. Um, but I wanted to
start in a different place than you
asked about because you may have not
seen this. Uh, President Donald J. Trump
spoke today to the House of
Representatives, which is back in
session for a really long time. And he
was all over the map. But he did say
something that really jumped out to me.
He said, and I quote, "They say that
when you win the presidency, you lose
the midterm." And then he said to the
people to whom he was speaking, "I wish
you could explain to me what the hell is
going on with the mind of the public
because we have the right policy.
Excuse me. Because we have the right
policy." They, meaning the Democrats,
don't. They have horrible policy. They
do stick together. They're violent.
They're vicious. They're vicious people.
They have the worst policy. How we have
to even run against these people. I
won't say cancel the election. They they
should cancel the election because the
fake news will say he wants the
elections canled. He's a dictator. They
always call me a dictator. Nobody is
worse than Obama and the people that
surrounded Biden.
There's an important rhetorical piece
there in uh what Trump was saying that I
think explains an awful lot of what's
going on in his administration. And that
is for uh 40 years now, since the 1980s,
the Republicans have insisted that their
policies are the only ones that will
work. And that the Democratic policies,
which are actually really quite popular
if you strip away the parties, people
like what the Democrats do. If you strip
away the names, the the polls show they
like the kinds of policies that
Democrats embrace. Republicans have
insisted that those policies are
socialism, that they are handing money
from the uh hardworking white taxpayer
to uh undeserving minorities and so on.
Even though since 1981
um actually I think it's since 1976
uh more than $50 trillion has moved from
the bottom 90% of Americans up to the
top 1%. So they have really pushed this
rhetoric, the idea that any democratic
policy is by definition bad and that the
people who vote for it, often women,
people of color, black Americans, are
either illegitimate voters. They talk a
lot about voter fraud, although there's
never been any evidence um that they're
of anything other than a few odd ducks
um voting twice or whatever, never
anything to change an election.
um that they that they either insist
that there has been voter fraud or that
the people who are voting for Democratic
policies are illegitimate. They
shouldn't vote. They should lose their
vote. And this is what's behind voter
suppression. Well, the logic of that
says that
uh Republicans should win all the
elections, that Democrats should never
win an election.
And that really jumped out to me in this
moment, of course, when we're looking at
a president who is extraordinarily
unpopular. He's in at historic levels of unpopularity,
unpopularity,
facing a midterm election, which most
pundits think the de the Democrats are
really going to romp the Republicans in
that election. And here he is saying,
"Well, maybe we shouldn't even have
elections because um you know the our
policies are so much better than the
Democrats are." And I want to chase that
down a little bit before I actually talk
about the difference in those policies.
So if you think about this idea that the
Democratic policies are terrible and
only the Republicans know how to rule,
then you can see the logic behind
January 6, 2021. Uh an election an
attempt to overturn the election of
November 2020 in which Democrat uh Joe
Biden won election by more than seven
million votes. The election was not
close. It was not close in the electoral
college either. In fact, somewhat
ironically, um, uh, Biden won that
election in the electoral college by the
same margin that Trump won it in 2016
over Hillary Clinton, the Democratic
candidate. Although Trump in 2016 did
not win the majority of the vote, you'll
remember that's one of those occasions
on which more people voted for the
person who did not end up in the White
House. Um, so the um the uh that idea
that a Democrat could not be
legitimately elected, all evidence to
the contrary,
is something that Trump has increasingly
latched on to. And one of the things
that came out today was an attempt of
the official White House website to
insist that January 6 was caused not by
Trump, not by the Republicans who were
trying to destroy our uh peaceful
transfer of power and the election of
Democrat Joe Biden, but rather it blames
the Democrats by saying that they
refused to recognize that Trump had been
the the true winner in that election by definition
definition
and that is going to be a really
important frame I think going forward.
It's also an important way to think
about what Trump and his cronies people
like Russell vote at the office of
management and budget and uh Steven
Miller as the deputy white house chief
of staff have done since they've been in
power because what they are doing is
they are erasing the US government that
has been in place since World War II. uh
a time when you started to see the
democratization not only of um domestic
policy but also of world policy. They're
trying to get get rid of all that alto
together because those policies, those
incredibly popular policies that seek to
restrain power and use it in fact to
deter wars rather than cause them and
seek to use power domestically in such a
way that people create laws that that
create um systems in which people have a
say in their government and have equal
access to resources. They're trying to
get rid of all that to go back before we
had that system, arguing that that
system is in fact no good, as Trump
said. But I've pulled for fun um a quote
from um
Peter Baker of the New York Times when
um Joe Biden took office after Trump had
been in office before. On January 5th of
20 um 25, Peter Baker wrote that um the
the US that Biden was leaving was in
better shape than the US had been since
at least 2020. I'm sorry, since at least
20 2000. And he explained why. He said,
"There are no US troops fighting in
foreign wars. Murders have plummeted.
Deaths from drug overdoses have dropped
sharply. Undocumented immigration is
below where it was when Trump left
office. Stocks have just had their best
two years since the last century. The
economy is growing. Real wages are
rising. Inflation has fallen close to
its normal range. Unemployment is at
historic uh near historic lows. Energy
production is at historic highs. The
economy has added more than 700,000
manufacturing jobs among the 16 million
total created since 2020. Uh the chief
economist of Moody's Analytics, Mark
Xandandy, said quote, "President Trump
is inheriting an economy that is about
as good as it ever gets." that is the
system of government that um the United
States really pioneered under Franklin
Delanor Roosevelt, although it had its
roots in the progressive era under
people like Republican President
Theodore Roosevelt. Uses the power of
the federal government to as I say
restrain power internationally and at
the same time um uses the power of the
federal government to make sure that
people have equal access to resources.
They have things like education. They
have health care. They have decent
roads. They have opportunities to um to
get an education. They have
opportunities to uh to be entrepreneurs.
They have opportunities to buy houses.
That sort of an economy uh benefits the
most people. It creates a roaring
economy. It always has for all the
rhetoric to the contrary. So Trump has
this idea that if only people like him
can be in power,
everything is going to be great. America
is going to be great again. And that
means erasing everything that Democrats
have done. So, where has that gotten us
of late? And I I may not have the time
to go into domestic policy now, but I
very well might do it with uh with Jim
in a little bit, but um but the the
obvious place to start here is with what
whatever is happening in Venezuela. And
I will get there in just a second. I
want to start by saying a lot of you
asked about the 25th amendment and its
policies for removing the president of
the United States in case that person is incapacitated
incapacitated
and the answer to that is it's really
quite complicated. Uh you have to have a
majority of the cabinet. Um there's a a
number of different places that the 25th
is a problem and yet one of the things
that we are not talking about enough is
the fact that the president of the
United States does not appear to be
mentally competent. He cannot keep an a
a solid idea in his head. He's flitting
all over the place. He is falling asleep
at meetings. Uh he looked the other day
at the announcement of the Venezuela
strikes as if he were going to fall
asleep standing up. And remember we and
he's his behavior is enormously erratic.
It is sometimes um unusually aggressive.
So when he went after that journalist by
calling her piggy, uh if you notice the
next day he was all happy and jolly and
and touching MBS, uh the the crown
prince of Saudi Arabia. And he's not a
touchy kind of guy, but he was no, you
know, he was happy and jolly and
touching him. And the next day he did
the same thing with Zoran Mandani, the
now mayor of New York City. And I looked
at that and I am a thousand% not a
doctor, at least not a a medical doctor.
And um and I thought this looks
medically induced to me. Um this
extraordinary aggression followed by,
you know, the laughter and the he's a
nice guy and and the touching seemed to
me to be an indication that there is a
real struggle behind the scenes to keep
Trump able to function. um at least
enough for the cameras because remember
when we see him we see him at his best
and and a lot of people said well isn't
JD Vance gonna be worse and the answer
to that is under zero circumstances
do you ever want to have the leader of a
country who appears not to be in control
of his mental facilities mental
faculties um you just you just don't
know what he's going to do and you don't
know if people are going to stop him.
So, no matter what else happens, uh,
keep a watch on Trump's mental ability.
The fact that this is not headline news
every minute of the day is simply beyond
me. Um, the the things that people seem
in the media to be shrugging off that if
any other president had done them would
have been headline news for weeks is is
sort of mind-boggling. But there we are.
So when you look at what happened in
Venezuela, I will emphasize Trump's
mental uh acuity, but I will also
emphasize the fact that under this
administration, it is extremely
difficult to tell what is happening. Um
that is normally in an administration
and the Biden administration was like
this. Um you you can't really shut them
up. They they they want everyone to know
what they're doing except when they
don't. And that's when you uh look at
the public announcements and you have to
to have sources within an administration
or make guesses about what's really
going on. And that's kind of what people
like me are trained to do. Now, in this
administration, they've made it a point
to make sure we don't know what's going
on. The White House is not reprinting
Trump's speeches. Um he they're putting
up videos for when he he seems like he's
saying, you know, they they clip them so
that he sounds like he's better than he
really is. One of the reasons I print
his speeches in full uh is that people
understand what they're really seeing
here is not the clips that you're
getting in places like the White House
um uh website. So um the at the same
time, you know, we just don't know
what's going on. So what has happened in
Venezuela seems to me and and I am
prefacing this by saying listen I read
all the stuff that comes out everything
I can get my hands on and I cannot give
you a definitive account of what just
happened behind the scenes on the way to
American strikes against the uh
president of Venezuela uh Nicolas
Maduro. Um, I can tell you what I have
read and I have a much clearer picture,
I think, of what's happened with the
small boats. But in terms of that
strike, here's what it looks like to me.
And again, please recognize that I'm
telling you what I've seen in the
reports, but I would expect a lot of
this will be revised. It [snorts] appears,
appears,
emphasize on appears. Again, historians
hate to do this. I mean, I would never
put this in print because you want to
make sure you got a footnote for
everything. And in this case, I can give
you footnotes for everything I'm going
to say, but a lot of it's going to turn
out to be, "Oops, we were wrong."
There's one piece of information that
appeared, then got retracted, and I
showed it, and then retracted it, and
now it's back on the table again. And at
this point, I'm like, "Okay, I'm I'm out
until we have a better a better idea."
Anyway, I'll stop putting up hedges
around what I'm going to say. It appears
that what happened is this. the Trump
administration um under Secretary of
State Marco Rubio um and under um Deputy
White House Chief of Staff Steven Miller
have been putting real pressure on
Maduro in Venezuela because they wanted
him to step down. They wanted uh that to
put somebody in place there who was
going to be more malleable, somebody who
was more likely to permit American oil
interests to have better um access to
the Venezuelan oil fields which are uh
very valuable oil fields although they
produce quite a crude form of oil. So,
they were putting pressure on him and
Trump moved down uh huge amounts of
American military forces. And the one
thing I would like to see, I do know it
costs about $6.5 million a day to um
deploy a carrier group. Um that's just
to deploy it. Um, I would love to know
how much this escapade has cost us
because one of the things again that
we're not talking about is that the US
uh deficit and debt has skyrocketed
under Trump for all the idea that uh the
Department of Government Efficiency was
supposed to cut our costs. They're going
through the roof and that's just going
to get worse now that those tax cuts
have been extended in the the July
budget recon uh um uh budget
reconciliation bill. Um anyway, um it
appears what happened is they were
putting pressure on Maduro to step down
so that they could have somebody who's
more malleable. And when he didn't do
that, it got personal for Trump. And so
they decided to make this strike, this
lightning strike that would just grab
Maduro and his wife.
Uh leaving in place Maduro's vice
president who has now taken the oath of
the presidency. a woman who's last. It's
Delsey Rodriguez. [snorts] Um, but
what's really interesting about that is
that happened. That's what they did. And
then the the next day, uh, Trump told
the had that press conference. First, he
called into the Fox News Channel and
then he had that press conference. And
at the press conference, he said, "We're
going to be running Venezuela."
And that apparently was news to
Secretary of State um Marco Rubio and
possibly to Defense Secretary Pete
Hexith. It was maybe not such a surprise to
to
Steven Miller
and who is angling to become the person
in charge of Venezuela in part because
he wants to deport a lot of Venezuelans.
Right. So, it appears that that was a
surprise. And so, on Sunday, you had
Marco Rubio walking all that back and
saying, "No, no, no, no. We're just
going to pressure Venezuela by
continuing our capture of oil uh tankers
that are sanctioned and and that's that,
you know, that's actually legal. What a
when an oil tanker is sanctioned and
doing something it shouldn't be,
countries can grab it." So, that was a
real walk back. But at the same time, it
appears appears from where I sit that
this was actually um somewhat of a work
of genius uh in the on the part of uh
the Venezuelan ruling party and on the
part of um perhaps Cuba and quite
possibly on the part of Russia in the
sense that of this anybody knows even if
you don't study foreign affairs, if you
know anything about the American Civil
War, for example, you know that the best
way to unify a population behind you is
to have someone attack you. Look at
Netanyahu after October 7th. Uh look at
the American um uh war effort in the
Civil War when the Confederacy invaded
Gettysburg um invaded Pennsylvania. You
know, once somebody is on your turf, it
changes the equation. So what has
happened since the US grabbed Maduro is
that his vice president who was not
popular. Remember they lost the election
in 2024
um has cracked down on the opposition
and has um taken the oath of office and
when doing so she embraced the foreign
ambassadors from Russia,
Iran and Cuba uh if I recall correctly.
So what we managed to have done is to
solidify the power of that group that
Trump theoretically was going to weaken.
And that's put him in the position of
going, "Oh, well, you know, we might do
a second strike against whom?" I mean,
law enforcement operation, which is the
fig leaf that um Marco Rubio is using.
Who's next? I mean, what are we going to
do, right? I mean I it just that it
there is just a complete fog over
everything that's happening there. At
the same time that Trump has this
fantasy that the oil companies are going
to want to rebuild the Venezuelan oil um
oil uh facilities and they don't uh they
uh the the facilities have been
degrading now for at least 20 years.
They don't know what they're getting
into and they don't know who's going to
be running the country. So why would you
want to invest a hundred billion dollars
into bringing those back online in a way
that they in the way that they could be
at the and and now you've got Trump
saying, "Well, maybe the US will um will
subsidize that." And and that's simply
not going to fly. All right. So So we
don't really know what's going on there.
But at the same time, it certainly
appears that Trump perhaps and maybe um
maybe with the pushing of Steven Miller,
who's been the the face of this out in
the media, is really really pushing the
idea of overturning the rules-based
international order, which is what I
spoke about last Saturday when we had
first uh gotten the news about Venezuela.
Venezuela.
And that is uh fitting for somebody like
Miller who uh is all about power, is all
about um you know he seems quite a
disturbed individual and really is
pushing the idea that the with the might
of the United States,
the people in charge can do anything
they want. apparently not recognizing
that the real power of the American uh
uh country has always been in um in its
restraint and in its deterrence and in
its trade and its soft power, its
welcoming of other people and its work
around the world through things like the
Voice of America, for example, which
Trump has gotten rid of, or through the
um you know, public broadcasting system,
which uh they've also gotten rid of. So,
uh, Steven Miller seems to think that
the way to go is for the United States
to stop being the global power that it
always was, uh, since World War II,
which has been, uh, you know, it's been
a huge boon to the United States. It's
also been not a bad boon for the world.
We've done a lot of, uh, things that we
are not proud of, and as a historian,
that's the kind of thing that I focus
on. But one of the things that a lot of
people focus on is the fact that the
rules-based international order has
lifted more than a billion people out of
poverty um since it went into place. And
that's everybody. That's not just um
people in the Western Hemisphere or in
the United States of America and so on.
It is the fact that countries like China
with the freedom of the seas that is
protected by the rules-based
international order were able to
increase their trade dramatically and
that did wonders for Asia among other
places. So he wants to get rid of that
and get rid of the American power around
the world and instead reduce us to being
a regional power taking over the western
hemisphere. And this is why there is now
all this talk from Trump of attacking
Cuba, attacking Colombia. Um and and
Trump, I think, doesn't really
understand what's at stake. He thinks
the United States military can continue
to do these kind of strikes, which the
US military probably can, but um but
it's not at all. And Trump is saying,
well, you know, we we don't care about,
you know, we'll do regime change. It's
okay with us to have people there.
probably not going to fly in the United
States to have more forever wars. But
what a lot of people asked about was um
the um the attack the the rhetorical
attacks on Greenland. Those are really
interesting because remember Greenland
is an autonomous territory that is part
of the Kingdom of Denmark. Um, and
Denmark and the United States were two
of the original signitories to the
creation of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization or NATO. We've been allies
since NATO began in I'm going to go with
1949 off the top of my head. Um, we've
been allies. Greenland is our ally. We
have a base on Greenland.
So, if the United States really wanted
to beef up our presence in Greenland,
the way to do that would be for the
president to pick up the phone and say,
"Hey guys, we'd like to increase our our
footprint in Greenland." And Denmark
would almost certainly say, "Sure, come
on over."
Because that's the relationship that we
have had now for 80 years. But Trump
doesn't want that. He wants control of
Greenland. And that's a different thing.
And that I think goes back to where I
started here. The idea that what Trump
is really looking for is a world where a
very few people who make all the right
decisions, right, can simply take the
resources of other countries. They can
take Venezuelan oil. They can take the
rare earth minerals in Greenland. They
can and and mind you, Canada is also
very much something he wants. Um whereas
the rest of us recognized that the real
power of America was was global because
what we were doing was we were
facilitating trade. We were facilitating
the exchange of ideas. We were facilitating
facilitating
uh the ability of populations to avoid
disease which we destroyed with when we
pulled out of US aid. we at USAD, you
know, we were we were the the the
anchor, the backs stop of the
rules-based international order. Again,
not to say that we didn't screw that up
on more than one occasion, but what
Trump is saying is, I want to get rid of
all of that. Anything that involves the
voices of people who I consider
Democrats, because any Republican who
opposes him, he promptly just calls a
Democrat, is is going to be erased. We
want to get rid of all that because
we're the only ones who know how to run
a society.
When he does that, what he is doing is
he is echoing people like Vladimir Putin
and he is believing that it's better for
him to be in a position of extracting
the resources from places like Venezuela
for himself and his friends than he is
being part of a system that forces him
to share with women and people of color
and other countries.
And the thing about that is twofold. Let
me start small and go big. The first
piece of that is Trump's attack on
Venezuela and his statement that he's
going to take it over is again was
apparently news to a lot of the people
around him, but it's not news to
somebody like Vladimir Putin. And
there's been a lot of discussion lately
of the fact that Putin had made a
suggestion that Trump could have
Venezuela if he could simply take over
Ukraine. That idea that big countries
can take smaller countries is what got
us into World Wars one and two. And what
happens when you do that, of course, is
that smaller countries need to take
protection from the bigger countries,
but they also start to band together in
order to protect themselves against
those bigger countries and other
countries nearby. And pretty soon,
people are using their power not for
deterrence, which is what NATO is about.
You t attack us, you're going to get all
of these countries coming back at you.
And that's really worked incredibly
well. We will lose that and that will
give us a world that that led to World
Wars one and World War II with the
addition now of nuclear weapons. And I
talked about that last Saturday. So
there's that, but there's also something
that just is so stupid. I can't even
believe I have to say this. If the
United States takes over the Venezuelan
oil fields, yeah, it gets a lot of crude oil.
oil. Um,
Um,
oil is the technology of the 19th
century and the 20th century. It's it's
done. I mean, I know we use it still,
but but it is not the the the technology
of the future. But if we do that, we
essentially give Xi Jinping the green
light to take over Taiwan. Guess what's
in Taiwan? 60% of the semiconductors in
the world. That's the technology of the
21st and the 22nd se century. And so by
giving Trump this little here you can
have a lollipop.
Those people interested in grabbing the
resources of other countries have given
themselves the fig leaf to take over the
future. And Trump doesn't even appear to
understand that. And that that is the
the the other major piece of this. But
then there is the larger piece of it. If
we give up the rules-based international
order, we are giving up what has kept
the world at relative peace and relative
prosperity since the 1940s. And
And
even those people who aren't paying
attention to that don't want us to take
over Venezuela. This is enormously
unpopular. So when I look at today with
January 6th and the the attempted
takeover of uh Venezuela and the
destruction of the rules-based
international order, what I see is first
of all a president who is demented, who
is in who does not have the facilities
he needs to be in that position, but
also somebody who has so internalized
the idea that only people like him have
the answers that he is no longer
operating in reality. You know, it is
just a fact. If you have a healthy
population, the country does better. So
what are they doing? They're getting rid
of health care and they're getting rid
of our vaccine schedules. You know, not
getting rid of, but significantly
trimming them down. Um, that sort of
magical thinking that I'm the only one
who knows how to do anything strikes me
as being very much a hallmark of this
moment. And it is long past time for the
American people to say we are not going
to follow grandpa down this road. And
part of that, of course, is that he is
100% responsible. He's the president of
the United States. But if your
grandfather were driving a car and
repeatedly ran over toddlers,
at some point it would be your
responsibility to take those keys away.
And this is where I wanted to end today.
The Republican party owns this at this
point. They need to stop this from
happening. And the way that that's going
to happen is not for them suddenly to
get touched by an angel and rethink the
way that they are proceeding. The way
for them to recognize that the American
people don't want this is for us to
speak up more and more. Talk about the
Epstein files because Trump is blatantly
breaking the law on that front. Talk
about the fact that things you care
about have been cut because those are
things Congress voted for and the
administration just decided it was going
to stop. Uh talk about tariffs. those
tariffs are illegal and it looks as if
the Supreme Court is going to decide
against him. Talk about the deployment
of troops in the United States, which
again looks as if the Supreme Court is
not going to stand behind. and then say
to your Republican representatives,
you're never going to see our votes
again, and we're going to make sure that
our neighbors don't vote for you either.
Because it's going to take a huge push
among everybody in the United States,
the same way we pushed during the
American Revolution, to say, "You are
leading us to destruction, and you must
stop." So, a lot of people are
frustrated with the Democrats. Yeah,
they should speak up more than they are.
Um, but there are times when the
political parties because of the way
they're constructed, because of the way
that uh their leaders have been chosen
over time, parties have um have uh come
and go, not come and go. Parties uh
change like everything else does. There
are times when the American people have
to be the ones to step up and make
demands. And I think you could see this
today um when today I don't know if you
saw George Conway, the former um
Republican um ran is running for
Congress in New York as a Democrat. And
he's like, I'm a new kind of Democrat
man. I'm taking Trump down and I'm going
to destroy everything he's doing because
I love America. And um uh and I thought
that was a really that was really
interesting. The same sort of thing
pattern that we saw in the 1850s. So uh
Americans hate this. There's there the
the numbers for Trump and for what he is
doing are, as I say, historically low.
But we got to bring that home to those
people still supporting him to say,
listen, you might not like what the
Democrats do. You might not like um some
of the democratic policies, but what you
are doing is you are voting to get rid
of a government that has provided your
social security, your Medicare, that has
made sure that we could actually have
products from around the world, that has
kept us out of foreign wars. You're
voting for all of those things so long
as you support this Republican party.
And the minute MAGA actually gets
isolated, the minute MAGA becomes, you
know, you can see they're going down the
not Nazi rabbit hole as it is. The
minute they get isolated, the Republican
party could and should return to its
historic roots, which was as a
centerright normal party. And so you
really kind of have to think of this as
getting the car back on the road from
the ditch that it has been in for so
long now. Thank you for being here and
uh and we'll keep doing this, man. You
know, this is it. As I said, this is
this is our time and um and your voices
matter so much. um both in terms of
pushing back on electeds but also saying
to your neighbors, you know, uh a
rules-based international order is
what's kept Americans from
uh facing another world war. And
actually, uh we're about to run uh the
uh the history of the Battle of the
Bulge. You know, we don't want to do
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