Podcast appearances and mentions of Robert Kagan

O que acontece quando o mundo muda tanto em tão pouco tempo? Neste episódio, o politólogo João Pereira Coutinho e Manuel Cardoso analisam as dinâmicas que estão a redesenhar o mapa do poder global e que vão constar nos futuros manuais de História.A conversa revisita o famoso «Fim da História», de Fukuyama, que proclamou a vitória definitiva da democracia liberal após a Guerra Fria, e contrasta este otimismo com a visão mais cética de Huntington sobre o choque das civilizações.Explorando a tese de Robert Kagan sobre os americanos serem de Marte e os europeus de Vénus, questiona-se o futuro da NATO, a vulnerabilidade de uma Europa desarmada e o papel da China – essa potência de «Saturno», que parece operar num horizonte temporal bem distinto do ocidental.REFERÊNCIAS E LINKS ÚTEISALLISON, Graham, «Destinados à Guerra: Poderão a América e a China escapar à armadilha de Tucídides?» (2017, Gradiva)FASTING, Mathilde, ed., «After the End of History: Conversations with Francis Fukuyama» (2021, Georgetown)FUKUYAMA, Francis, «O Fim da História e o Último Homem» (1992, Gradiva)HUNTINGTON, Samuel, «O Choque das Civilizações e a Mudança na Ordem Mundial» (1996, Gradiva)KAGAN, Robert, «O Paraíso e o Poder: A América e a Europa na Nova Ordem Mundial» (2003, Gradiva)KAPLAN, Robert, «Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis» (2023, C. Hurst & Company)KUPCHAN, Charles, «Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World» (2020, Oxford)BIOSMANUEL CARDOSOÉ humorista e um dos autores do programa de sátira política «Isto É Gozar Com Quem Trabalha», da SIC. Faz parte do podcast «Falsos Lentos», um formato semanal de humor sobre futebol. É o autor da rubrica radiofónica diária «Bem-vindo a mais um episódio de», nas manhãs da Rádio Comercial. Contribui semanalmente para o Expresso, desde 2023, com uma crónica semanal.JOÃO PEREIRA COUTINHOProfessor do Instituto de Estudos Políticos da Universidade Católica, onde se doutorou em Ciência Política e Relações Internacionais. É autor dos livros «Conservadorismo» e «Edmund Burke – A Virtude da Consistência». Ao longo de 25 anos tem assinado artigos na imprensa nacional e é colunista do diário brasileiro «Folha de S. Paulo», o maior jornal da América Latina.  

Zapraszamy na kolejny #PoranekGeopolityczny z Jamalem Szpalerskim!

Per eliminare un tiranno bisogna capire le ragioni della tirannia, dicevano i vecchi filosofi. Con un po' di ironia, si può provare a giocare con l'aspirante tiranno americano provando a capire da dove viene: tutta una tradizione illiberale, antiegualitaria, di suprematismo bianco che ha accompagnato (e già altre volte avvelenato) la storia americana. Ma anche questo viaggio nelle tenebre non può ridimensionare la novità della ribellione populista di questi anni e della figura che la incarna. Con in mano il mondo. Insurrezione di Robert Kagan, Linkiesta Books Questo e gli altri podcast gratuiti del Post sono possibili grazie a chi si abbona al Post e ne sostiene il lavoro. Se vuoi fare la tua parte, abbonati al Post. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The winds are picking up again and the death toll is rising in what could be the worst wildfires in California's history. It's an all-out race against the environment as firefighters battle to keep the blazes contained and maintain what progress they've made in the past few days. More than 20 people are confirmed dead, dozens more are missing, over a hundred thousand people are under evacuation orders, and thousands of homes are destroyed. Correspondent Veronica Miracle has the details from Altadena. Also on today's show: Robert Kagan, Contributing Writer, The Atlantic; Director/writer Halina Reijn ("Babygirl"); Co-Directors Slava Leontyev and Brendan Bellomo ("Porcelain War")  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite being stricken with what feels like (but isn't… probably) bird flu, I finally managed to get around to addressing a rather interesting query from LRFotS Randale6, who wrote in to ask about the monumental illiteracy and idiocy of Clown World: Didact, looking into the history of commies and world war two I find this, the death of Patton is essentially a commie masterminded assassination (nearly killed by a cart two times before the third attempt finally does it, across two continents). At least from what I was reading on Unz Patton had planned to do a political tour of America to expose communism and push the population to both oust the commies at home (FDR and his cronies were effing commies, where is Pinochet when you need him) and finish off the Soviet Union while it still lacked nukes. This brings up a question in my mind, are the clowns as historically and politically illiterate as we think they are or do they actually have a clue? On the face of it the hollowing out of the USA military doesn't make sense at all for a bunch of neocons hellbent on world domination. It does make sense though if those clowns don't think they can take over the world, rather they want to ensure that nothing domestically can pull a Caesar or Pinochet on their cockroach asses. The short version is: yes, they are that stupid. In fact, they are far more stupid than you can imagine. The longer version is, of course, in the podcast below. In it, I unpack this issue through an exploration of the ways in which Clown World denizens think. I have made a few simplifying assumptions, which are not actually particularly strong, starting with the notion that you can equate “clown world” with “neoclowns”, as they are basically one and the same (barring some minor factional differences). From that point, I examine the reality that neoclowns are astonishingly poorly educated, given their backgrounds in non-mathematical subjects that provide them with no intellectual toolkit whatsoever to permit an understanding of the true factors of military, economic, and political power. Using the Ossipov-Lanchester Equations as a starting point, I explain how no neoclown can possibly comprehend the complexities involved even with a relatively simple set of ordinary differential equations. I then use a recent article from arch-neoclown (and, evidently, Krispy Kreme enthusiast) Robert Kagan, one of the intellectual (*snerk*) leaders of the movement, to show just how fundamentally RETARDED these people are. This is the bit of the podcast where you can practically hear me doing my best to physically restrain myself, because his writing is a perfect example of the blithering idiocy and total incompetence of the neoclown paradigm. I wrap up by explaining that the reason why Clown World (which is to say, neoclown world) is so historically inept and stupid, is because their founding premise is completely wrong. They see America as an idea, not a nation, and because of this, they have zero connection to the American nation, and therefore to the inherent limitations that confront any nation which sponsors an empire. Reading List Randale6's Substack; The Russian Art of War by Col. Jacques Baud - superb book, very highly recommended; America's Final War by Andrei Martyanov - I got the name of the book wrong in the podcast, I mentioned Disintegration, which was his PREVIOUS book, my bad; The blindingly stupid article from Robert Kagan that got me all bothered in the podcast, to the point where I had to somehow restrain myself from yelling incoherently into the microphone; Support the War College If you like what I do, and you would like to express your appreciation, please feel free to do so here via my Buy Me a Coffee page. All funds go to upkeep of the site and podcast (well, whatever is left over after buying good Scotch, obviously…) Protect Yourself From Big Tech I make some pretty incendiary statements in this podcast, and in most of my podcasts. I can only do so because I take steps to protect myself from the Big Tech companies, and preserve my identity. You need to do the same – this is no longer optional, because if you don't, the gatekeepers WILL come for your head. If you don't know where to start, then I've got you covered right here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take: Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 80% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark; Be sure also to check out Incogni, the new data and privacy management tool offered by Surfshark, which simply works behind the scenes to ensure that no malign actors can take advantage of your data ever again; Another solid VPN option for you is Atlas VPN, brought to you by the same company that creates NordVPN; The best SSD drive that you can get right now, with blazing fast speeds and near-native storage capabilities, is probably the SanDisk Extreme 1TB Portable SSD with NVMe technology – I bought this myself to keep a moving backup of all of my files, it's the size of a credit card, and it's absolutely superb; Build Your Platform Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap; Put your site onto a shared hosting service using A2Hosting for the fastest, most secure, and stable hosting platform around – along with unlimited email accounts of unlimited size; Create beautiful websites with amazing, feature-rich content using Divi from Elegant Themes; Stand for Western Civilisation Buy yourself a proper Bible; Get your Castalia Library books here; Buy yourself a proper knife for personal defence;

For some reason, the highly Christianized west seems to neglect, maybe even punish, Christians elsewhere in the world. From Nagasaki to Syria, not to mention Lebanon, Christians are slaughtered en masse with the backing of conservative Christian Zionists and Israel. Israel has been bombing Christian villages in Lebanon for months, and despite a recent cease-fire, has continued to drop bombs. Now with the fall of the Syrian government, this past weekend, admittedly at the hands of Israel and the United States, Christians are going to be the target of an ongoing genocide throughout the Middle East. Syria, furthermore, has what is probably the highest Christian population of any Muslim country, about 12%. Yet Christians, especially of the conservative variety, continue to blindly back, or zealously support, Israel's attempts to expand into an even greater state by overthrowing governments and installing puppets, and slaughtering Christians in the process. As of today, Israeli forces continue to advance in Syria, taking up military positions around the country despite the fact that the regime was supposed to be overthrown by independently, organized terrorist groups, which are called rebels.All of this is par for the course with an incoming neocon administration which paints itself as America first and independent of the Bush era military industrial complex Zionist leadership. It's no coincidence that Paul Wolfowitz, at the pentagon, and the two authors of the Project for the New American Century, Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, are Jewish. Paul was not only deputy Secretary of defense for Bush, but was investigated by the FBI for providing intelligence to an Israeli government official. He was accused of handing over a classified document, via an AIPAC intermediary, which detailed the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government. The incoming fake America first administration, is packed, maybe more than any other, with Zionists and Christians, who are demanding the continued expansion of Israel. Even anti-war appointees have suddenly become pro war. The new defense secretary openly calls for Islam to be stripped of its religious status in America, and for the US government to wage war on all of Israel's enemies. He is literally a crusader, tattooed with such insignia. This is the kind of thing that inflames the Arab and Islamic world, justifiably. Although there are without doubt radical Muslims, the real question is how many of those groups are actually financed, controlled, and directed by the west? Considering that the Saud family themselves are descended from Jews, those that converted to Islam during the Ottoman Empire, and not Muslims, it would make sense that further considering all of the fake Jewish hate crimes, much of the perception of Islam is merely a projection of the crimes committed by those who hide under the cloak of Mohammed. The sexual abuse of children, the pushing of gender, dysphoria, and the belittling of Christianity, can all be found in the Jewish Talmud, not the Koran. Furthermore, both of the corporate and private porn industry, porn, hub, and only fans, are run by rabbis and Jews. Yet Muslims are accused of doing all of these things.At the front of the Syrian overthrow, are the Golan Heights, which feature a village named after former president Donald. Why? Because he, after a five minute history lesson, gave away what was supposed to be non-settled to Israel, as if the United States has the authority to do that in the first place. He was then paid $100 million by Miriam Addison, who believes he is the Messiah of the Jewish people. But don't worry, everything is kosher. As the book of Isaiah reads: “See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins.”-FREE ARCHIVE (w. ads)SUBSCRIPTION ARCHIVEX / TWITTER FACEBOOKWEBSITEPAYPALCashApp: $rdgable EMAIL: rdgable@yahoo.com / TSTRadio@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tst-radio--5328407/support.

Ernest Hemingway is famous for the terse economy of his writing. And in one of the most resonant examples of that quality, he captured the essence of catastrophic failure in just a few words, in his novel The Sun Also Rises. The alcoholic veteran Mike Campbell is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he says. “Gradually and then quickly.” As it is with one person going broke, so it is with an entire economy crashing, or countless other catastrophes. There isn't only a single failure, but a first, and then more — and then a cascade. And so it is when a democracy fails: it happens slowly and then all at once. Facing the possibility of a vindictive autocrat becoming president, the LA Times decides not to endorse his opponent, or anyone. Then the Washington Post does the same. Then USA Today and all the other Gannett newspapers follow. Some of their journalist employees protest, but almost no one walks off the job; a few editorial board members are rare exceptions. We can feel for those who keep their heads down. Given the precarious state of journalism, they know that if they lose the job they have now, there's almost nowhere else for them to go. Businesses, too, begin signaling their loyalty and obedience to the potential dictator. Their executives are driven by what they see as their duty to protect against risk — even as far larger risks gather. Nearly all their employees act essentially the same way. And as the cascade accelerates across society, a democracy that has survived many shocks fails. The last shock is sudden, even though the preparation was long. Until recently, it seemed unthinkable to most Americans that our democracy could fail. But it would be far from the first, as historians of democracy know well. One of the most insightful is Robert Kagan, who until recently was a member of the Washington Post editorial board. Kagan immediately recognized the meaning of the Post's endorsement surrender. He resigned. It wasn't the first time he had made such a choice. In 2016, he left the Republican Party after it nominated Donald Trump. He sounded an alarm in an essay for the Post called “This Is How Fascism Comes to America.” But as Kagan's principled choices demonstrate, fascism doesn't have to come. Our democracy doesn't have to fail. Some failure cascades are like avalanches: impersonal and irresistible. But when a human system fails, each step is a choice by an individual human being — by each of us. And sometimes, we make the right choice. Nothing is stopping us from doing that now, or at any time — nothing but our own character. “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” as Shakespeare's Cassius tells Brutus, with the Roman Republic falling around them. More: https://dastardlycleverness.com/slowly-and-then-all-at-once/

Ralph welcomes Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. They'll discuss the crucial role that the Postal Service plays in our democratic process, and how organized labor is impacting this year's elections. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist James Bamford to talk about his latest article in The Nation: "Israel Is Killing Whole Families in Gaza—With Weapons Made in America." Plus, how candidates' positions on Israel may win or lose them voters on Election Day. Mark Dimondstein is the President of the American Postal Workers Union. Since 2013 when Mr. Dimondstein was elected, he has turned the APWU into a fighting activist organization. Mr. Dimondstein advocates for the rights of postal workers as well as the right of the American people to a vibrant public Postal Service. The American Postal Workers Union supports Medicare for All and belongs to the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. The APWU believes in paying a living wage and providing benefits to all workers.We have about 200,000 members. And we definitely represent people throughout the entire political spectrum and throughout the whole country. So we represent people from right to left, left to right, everybody in between, and we represent people from the most rural outpost in the country to the urban centers. So first, the way we handle it is we don't try to tell people how they should think and how they should vote. We're all adults, we vote for what we think is in our best interest as workers, as family members, as community members, as citizens and so on. So we don't try to dictate to our members how to vote, but we do have a responsibility to lead…So I think leadership has a responsibility to educate our members, to activate our members, and to get our members to be involved in the political electoral process.Mark DimondsteinI'm a proud Jewish American. Jewish Americans should be the first to say “never again” when it comes to genocide, when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and when it comes to war crime. And we're not going to solve all the problems of the Middle East and the complicated history of the Middle East on this radio show. But let's at least be clear that the crimes committed against the Jewish people should never be allowed to be committed against anybody else—no matter who's doing it. Mark DimondsteinKamala Harris sent her two closest advisors to Wall Street about a month ago to get advice on her economic and tax policies and not connecting with the Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a progressive proposal. She doesn't connect with citizen groups. She goes around campaigning with Liz Cheney…It's quite amazing that the most popular incumbent elected politician in America today is Bernie Sanders…And she's ignoring Bernie Sanders and going into one state after another with people like Liz Cheney. Ralph NaderWhatever happens next Tuesday, our work isn't done. The divisions that have been created by white supremacy, by this anti-immigrant fervor out here—these things aren't going away. Issues that divide workers instead of unite workers—the growing bigotry, the attack on women's rights to reproductive freedom and health, the attacks on voting rights—these are issues that are going to be here with whoever wins the election. So the working people and the trade union movement have a lot of work to do, whatever the outcome.Mark DimondsteinJames Bamford is a best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker for PBS, award-winning investigative producer for ABC News, and winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting for his writing in Rolling Stone on the war in Iraq. He is the author of several books, including Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence.The reason I wrote [my article] was because people read about the bombs blowing up schools and refugee camps and hospitals and killing scores and scores, hundreds, thousands of people… But few people realized that it's middle America, largely, that's building the bombs, sending the bombs, and the American taxpayers are paying for the bombs. All the Israelis are doing is dropping the bombs.James BamfordI think the only way is international pressure. I wrote about this in my last book, that the only thing that you can ever do to affect Israel is to have an international boycott sanction. We have to treat it like the worst country on earth. That's what happened with South Africa. That's what stopped apartheid—once they couldn't buy anything.James BamfordRECOGNIZING TIME-PRESSURED HEADLINE WRITERS' CONTRIBUTIONS TO READERSIn Case You Haven't Heard with Francesco DeSantisNews 10/30/241. A crisis is unfolding at the Washington Post following billionaire owner Jeff Bezos' decision to block the paper's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. In a statement signed by 21 opinion columnists at the Post, they write “The…decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake.” Signatories include Karen Attiah, E.J. Dionne, and Dana Milbank among many others. Since the publication of that statement, two opinion writers have resigned: David Hoffman, who has written for the Post since 1982 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize just last week, as well as technology columnist Molly Roberts. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan also resigned his position at the paper. This from Semafor. Responding to the outcry, Bezos himself published an op-ed in the paper arguing that Americans see the news media as too politicized already and an official endorsement would merely make matters worse. As of October 29th, over 200,000 Washington Post readers, nearly 10% of the total readership, have canceled their subscriptions, per NPR.2. Like the Washington Post, the LA Times also opted not to endorse Kamala Harris. Similar backlash followed, with the New York Times reporting “Thousands of readers canceled subscriptions. Three members of the editorial board resigned. Nearly 200 staff members signed an open letter to management demanding an explanation, complaining that the decision this close to the election had undermined the news organization's trust with readers.” Nika Soon-Shiong, the activist daughter of LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, publicly stated “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process…As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.” Per Vanity Fair however, her father disputes this narrative, saying “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion…She does not have any role at The L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.” The murkiness of these circumstances has left readers with many questions that likely will not be answered until well after the election.3. According to Slate, “Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [last] Saturday…According to Trump, the Israeli leader said he disregarded President Joe Biden's warning to keep troops out of Rafah in southern Gaza.” In other words, Trump is conducting foreign policy independent of the sitting president, a flagrant violation of the Logan Act and the Constitution itself. This collusion between Trump and Netanyahu is reminiscent of the Nixon campaign's collusion with the South Vietnamese to prolong the Vietnam War and thereby undermine the Hubert Humphrey campaign and similarly, the Reagan campaign's collusion with Iran to prolong the hostage crisis. Yet again however, it seems unlikely that there will be any consequences to this open criminal activity.4. Reuters reports that on Monday, Israel formally banned the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency from operating inside Israel. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who has worked extensively in Gaza since this campaign of slaughter began is quoted saying “If UNRWA is unable to operate, it'll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza…So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.” Reuters reports “over 13,300 children whose identities have been confirmed have been killed” in Gaza, while “Many more are believed to have died from diseases due to a collapsing medical system and food and water shortages.”5. The Muslim Mirror reports “In a landmark diplomatic move, Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly elected President of Mexico and the country's first Jewish head of state, officially recognized the State of Palestine.” Sheinbaum is quoted saying “Today, Mexico reaffirms its commitment to human rights and justice for all. Recognizing Palestine is a step toward peace and a signal to the international community that the Palestinian people deserve dignity, statehood, and the right to self-determination.” Neither the United States nor Canada recognize the State of Palestine.6. Over 20,000 workers have lost their lives working on Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman's Saudi Vision 2030 project, per the Hindustan Times. These workers, almost exclusively migrants, say they feel like “trapped slaves” and “beggars,” and allege widespread exploitation including “unpaid wages, illegal working hours and human rights abuses.” While rumors of the workers mistreatment has been circulating for years now, a new ITV documentary has brought more attention to the issue in recent days. The deeply suspect NEOM mega-city project alone, which is just one aspect of Saudi Vision 2030, is expected to cost at least $500 billion.7. BRICS, the loose multi-polar alliance of countries forming an alternative economic bloc to offset the United States, recently concluded their latest summit. Per Democracy Now!, the alliance voted to accept 13 more countries to the bloc, including Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. These were chosen from nearly three-dozen applicants. The outpouring of applications indicates a substantial appetite for an economic alternative to the United States throughout much of the world.8. On October 22nd, Congressman Ro Khanna re-introduced the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act, intended to curb the trend of private equity gobbling up housing stock across the country. The bill was first introduced in 2022, but the crisis has only grown since then. According to NOTUS, “In the first half of 2024, one in four ‘low-priced' homes were purchased by investors…In that same time, the percentage of Americans with a ‘high degree of concern' about housing costs rose to 69%.” If passed, this bill would raise taxes on home acquisitions by private equity firms that hold over $100 million in assets and “bar government-supported lenders from backing new mortgages for such purchases.” Both presidential campaigns have made housing a major issue on the trail, though only the Kamala Harris campaign has offered viable policy to address the crisis.9. E&E News reports Argus Insight, a conservative research firm is “collecting information that could be used to discredit officials involved in a multibillion-dollar climate lawsuit against fossil fuel companies.” The suit, filed last year in Oregon, accuses “Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, McKinsey…and hundreds of other defendants of being responsible for a dayslong heat wave in 2021 that killed 69 people. Multnomah County, home to Portland, is seeking more than $51 billion to pay for damages from the tragedy and to prepare for future disasters.” It is unknown why exactly Argus is seeking this information, but experts speculate that they are “using the same tactics that the tobacco industry deployed against its critics decades ago.” Benjamin Franta, an Oxford professor of climate litigation, is quoted saying “The strategy is to ‘try to figure out who is helping to inform these cases and…discredit them in some way…If someone loses on the facts, they try to shoot the messenger.'”10. Finally, the Popular Information Substack reports “On October 10…[Attorney General Merrick] Garland held a press conference and announced that TD Bank had illegally laundered over $670 million of drug money.” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo added “Time and again, unlike its peers, TD Bank prioritized growth and profit over complying with the law.” Surely such a clear, textbook case of corporate criminality would result in criminal charges…except Garland and the DOJ brought no charges, instead settling for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement and a fine of $3 billion. Only two low-level employees were hit with criminal charges, despite clear evidence showing the involvement of high-level executives. Senator Elizabeth Warren said of the deal “This settlement lets bad bank executives off the hook for allowing TD Bank to be used as a criminal slush fund.”This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Just days ahead of the US election, Alan and Lionel are joined by Steve Coll, a double Pulitzer prizewinner, senior editor at the Economist and former managing editor of the Washington Post. Steve reflects on one of the most fraught US elections in history, analysing how the candidates' relationship with the media has changed and what a Trump win would look like. Political scientist Robert Kagan also joins the podcast, in the aftermath of his resignation as editor-at-large at the Washington Post. Last week, the newspaper broke with five decades of convention and announced that it will no longer endorse presidential candidates. Robert discusses what he sees as an attempt by the Post's owner Jeff Bezos “to curry favour with a likely Trump presidency”. But what does this mean for the newspaper whose slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”? To watch this interview, search for ‘Prospect Magazine' on YouTube, where Media Confidential is published every Friday morning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By de-prioritizing The Washington Post in his business empire, Jeff Bezos is showing exactly how a free press gets dismantled. Other corporate titans are also falling in line so they're not on the wrong side of Trump. Meanwhile, with the Klan-like rhetoric at Sunday's rally, MAGA is baring its teeth and showing us that its true essence is about white Christian supremacy. Plus, the Senate races, and Tim's reporting from outside MSG.  Bob Kagan—who resigned from WAPO on Friday—and Bill Kristol join Tim Miller. show notes: Bill and Bob's conversation on authoritarianism in 2019 Bob's book, "Rebellion," published in April Bob's 2016 piece warning how fascism could come to America Tim's message to Haley voters

Get the SCOOP on this week's news.   --- ✓ 3:00: A Capitol Hill Ghost Story.  ✓ 8:00: An Important Halloween Head's Up.    ✓ 10:00: 3 Foreign Policy Stories to Know... first up, Israel and Iran.   ✓ 12:00: Russia and Ukraine. And why North Korea has entered the conversation.  ✓ 14:00: Islamic terrorist groups in Africa.   ✓ 16:00: We switch gears to domestic politics.    ✓ 18:00: Swing states, strategic media and more.   ✓ 20:00: Former Pres. Trump appears on Joe Rogan's podcast.  ✓ 26:00: We listen to the primary sources to dig deeper on a viral moment in this week's news.  ✓ 33:00: How will mudslinging land with voters?   ✓ 37:00: Will VP Kamala Harris appear on Joe Rogan's podcast?  ✓ 38:00: Some industry insight on strategic communication.   ✓ 42:00: RealClearPolitics and polling.   ✓ 43:00: We hear from RealClear Politics' founder, Tom Bevan on the one story the media is missing. ✓ 46:00: Presidential endorsements by major newspapers.   ✓ 51:00: The trend.     ✓ 53:00: A statement from the publisher of The Washington Post.   ✓ 56:00: We hear from Robert Kagan, who just resigned from The Washington Post's editorial board. ✓ 1:00:00: Why a free press matters.     SHOW NOTES    “The Speaker's Lobby: Ghosts of the Republic” (Fox News)    “Israel Attacks Iranian Military Targets” (SmartHER News)    “Sec. Defense: ‘There is evidence there are DPRK troops in Russia.'” (SmartHER News)  RealClearPolitics  2020 General Election Editorial Endorsements by Major Newspapers (UC Santa Barbara's The American Presidency Project)   SUPPORT OUR MISSION     If you'd like to help support SmartHER News' mission of a free, independent, nonpartisan press – here's how you can become a SCOOP insider.    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarthernews/ Website: https://smarthernews.com/   YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/smarthernews  

Stati Uniti. A pochi giorni dal voto ancora testa a testa tra Harris e Trump. Quando mancano meno di due settimane dal voto del 5 novembre, permane una sostanziale incertezza nelle elezioni presidenziali americane, e i due candidati, Kamala Harris e Donald Trump, restano testa a testa nei sondaggi, anche se l'ultima rilevazione di Abcnews vede di nuovo in testa la democratica. Per ritrovare il feeling con gli elettori, Harris conta sull'appoggio di Michelle Obama che arriva sul palco a nella speranza di migliorare le chance di vittoria della vicepresidente democratica. Michelle Obama ha attaccato duramente Donald Trump in Michigan, in un comizio con la Harris, e ha sfidato gli elettori a sostenere Harris come primo presidente donna degli Stati Uniti. "Sotto ogni punto di vista, ha dimostrato di essere pronta. La vera domanda è, come paese, siamo pronti per questo momento?". D'altro canto Donald Trump, nello show al Madison Square Garden, si è rivolto ai ventimila suoi sostenitori giunti a New York. "Kamala Harris sei licenziata. Sei la nemica del popolo: voi dem siete nemici interni più pericolosi di quelli di Paesi stranieri. Avete distrutto il Paese. Ma io ricostruirò il sogno americano", ha detto Trump. Una campagna elettorale a colpi di endorsement. La partita tra Harris e Trump rimane aperta, tanto che i candidati chiedono l'appoggio esterno. La Harris incassa gli endorsement di Swift, Springsteen, Eminem, Beyoncé, Gates. Trump punta invece su Elon Musk. In una decisione inaspettata, il Washington Post non sosterrà nessun candidato alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti, rompendo una tradizione che dal 1976 ha visto il giornale appoggiare i democratici. La decisione di non pubblicare l'endorsement a Kamala Harris, già redatto dagli editorialisti, sarebbe arrivata direttamente dal proprietario del quotidiano, Jeff Bezos. Secondo il commentatore più famoso, Robert Kagan, Bezos ha ceduto a Trump. "Il Corsivo" a cura di Daniele Biacchessi non è un editoriale, ma un approfondimento sui fatti di maggiore interesse che i quotidiani spesso non raccontano. Un servizio in punta di penna che analizza con un occhio esperto quell'angolo nascosto delle notizie di politica, economia e cronaca. ___________________________________________________ Ascolta altre produzioni di Giornale Radio sul sito: https://www.giornaleradio.fm oppure scarica la nostra App gratuita: iOS - App Store - https://apple.co/2uW01yA Android - Google Play - http://bit.ly/2vCjiW3 Resta connesso e segui i canali social di Giornale Radio: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/giornaleradio.fm/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giornale_radio_fm/?hl=it

Stati Uniti. A pochi giorni dal voto ancora testa a testa tra Harris e Trump. Quando mancano meno di due settimane dal voto del 5 novembre, permane una sostanziale incertezza nelle elezioni presidenziali americane, e i due candidati, Kamala Harris e Donald Trump, restano testa a testa nei sondaggi, anche se l'ultima rilevazione di Abcnews vede di nuovo in testa la democratica. Per ritrovare il feeling con gli elettori, Harris conta sull'appoggio di Michelle Obama che arriva sul palco a nella speranza di migliorare le chance di vittoria della vicepresidente democratica. Michelle Obama ha attaccato duramente Donald Trump in Michigan, in un comizio con la Harris, e ha sfidato gli elettori a sostenere Harris come primo presidente donna degli Stati Uniti. "Sotto ogni punto di vista, ha dimostrato di essere pronta. La vera domanda è, come paese, siamo pronti per questo momento?". D'altro canto Donald Trump, nello show al Madison Square Garden, si è rivolto ai ventimila suoi sostenitori giunti a New York. "Kamala Harris sei licenziata. Sei la nemica del popolo: voi dem siete nemici interni più pericolosi di quelli di Paesi stranieri. Avete distrutto il Paese. Ma io ricostruirò il sogno americano", ha detto Trump. Una campagna elettorale a colpi di endorsement. La partita tra Harris e Trump rimane aperta, tanto che i candidati chiedono l'appoggio esterno. La Harris incassa gli endorsement di Swift, Springsteen, Eminem, Beyoncé, Gates. Trump punta invece su Elon Musk. In una decisione inaspettata, il Washington Post non sosterrà nessun candidato alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti, rompendo una tradizione che dal 1976 ha visto il giornale appoggiare i democratici. La decisione di non pubblicare l'endorsement a Kamala Harris, già redatto dagli editorialisti, sarebbe arrivata direttamente dal proprietario del quotidiano, Jeff Bezos. Secondo il commentatore più famoso, Robert Kagan, Bezos ha ceduto a Trump. "Il Corsivo" a cura di Daniele Biacchessi non è un editoriale, ma un approfondimento sui fatti di maggiore interesse che i quotidiani spesso non raccontano. Un servizio in punta di penna che analizza con un occhio esperto quell'angolo nascosto delle notizie di politica, economia e cronaca. ___________________________________________________ Ascolta altre produzioni di Giornale Radio sul sito: https://www.giornaleradio.fm oppure scarica la nostra App gratuita: iOS - App Store - https://apple.co/2uW01yA Android - Google Play - http://bit.ly/2vCjiW3 Resta connesso e segui i canali social di Giornale Radio: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/giornaleradio.fm/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giornale_radio_fm/?hl=it

Marta Peirano explica como Jeff Bezos ha generado controversia al cancelar el respaldo editorial del Washington Post a Kamala Harris en las próximas elecciones, rompiendo con una larga tradición del periódico. Esta decisión provocó la dimisión de Robert Kagan, un destacado editor, y la renuncia de varios columnistas, quienes criticaron el acto como un abandono de los valores democráticos. En medio de tensiones históricas con Donald Trump, algunos sugieren que la cancelación busca evitar represalias políticas que podrían afectar a Blue Origin, su empresa espacial.Escuchar audio

[This blog will always be free to read, but it's also how I pay my bills. If you have suggestions or feedback on how I can earn your paid subscription, shoot me an email: cmclymer@gmail.com.]Yesterday, just before noon, The Washington Post, through CEO William Lewis, announced it would not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, the first time the nation's third-largest daily newspaper by circulation hasn't done so in nearly four decades.The announcement was shocking for two immediate reasons.The most grave—and, frankly, terrifying—reason is that the United States is obviously at threat of sliding into a horrific dictatorship from which it's difficult to see how we'd ever recover. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have made it abundantly clear that they aspire to devolve our nation into the world's most powerful authoritarian regime. One need look no further than the chilling plans outlined in Project 2025.But there are many other warning signs, too. A small sampling:There's Trump openly praising Hitler's generals, according to his former chief-of-staff John Kelly (himself a retired four-star Marine Corps general), just the latest marker of fascist narcissism in Trump's very long and documented history of being obsessed with dictators.There's Trump repeatedly pledging to carry out the largest deportation of undocumented migrants in American history, a sweat-lipped plan made in blustering tones that somehow manages to exceed its inherent cruelty with an inexplicable failure to understand basic economics.(Not only is it logistically impossible to deport our nation's 11 million undocumented migrants, not only would it cost taxpayers an estimated quarter trillion to do so, but the American economy would completely collapse from the loss in labor force.)There's Trump's flagrant disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law: an indictment that resulted in a guilty verdict on 34 felony counts (his sentencing for that is on Nov. 26th), three other pending indictments on 52 more felony counts, two impeachments, being found liable for defamation of a woman he raped, etc.Oh, and, of course, there's Trump's frequent statements to serve past the constitutional limit of two terms as president (I'm sure he's just kidding), and the extremist conservative majority of the Supreme Court ruling last year that Trump is essentially a king beyond accountability for official acts in office.That's all an abbreviated version of why Donald Trump is obviously unfit.The second reason is The Washington Post's abdication of journalistic integrity under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, a development that is especially chilling for a publication that has long prided itself on being the vanguard for American democracy and free speech.The storied newspaper has won 76 Pulitzer Prizes over its history—second only to The New York Times—one of which was for the investigative reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon. Another was for the reporting on the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.The Washington Post has long been synonymous with the essential role of the free press in a healthy, functioning democracy in the same manner we associate Babe Ruth with baseball or July Fourth with fireworks or Dolly Parton with a clean soul.And so, it was with great confusion and incredulity that I read Mr. Lewis' painfully shameless attempt to justify the decision. He sure did try to put on a powdered wig and insist that the bowl of s**t he wanted to feed to the American public was actually chicken soup for the American soul.Most curiously, in writing about The Washington Post's history of largely declining to endorse presidential candidates prior to 1976, he stated that year's endorsement for then-Gov. Jimmy Carter was made “for understandable reasons at the time…”Did you catch that? He's obliquely referencing Watergate, the scandal that brought down Nixon with reporting by the paper — Nixon, who, by any measurable standard, comes across like Lincoln when compared to Trump.Mr. Lewis, for some odd reason, thought it persuasive to essentially say: “Look, we don't regret endorsing Carter because Nixon was terrible, but also: Trump is not nearly terrible enough to justify continuing this dangerous practice of presidential endorsements.”Furthermore, aside from the dollar store cheap imitation of logic, he failed to mention in his desperate, sorry excuse for rationalizing that The Washington Post, for the past several weeks, had been drafting an approved endorsement for Vice President Harris.He failed to mention that the endorsement was still on track a week ago, and there was no indication that it would be halted for any reason, let alone on the rather cringe-inducing reasoning he put forward in his announcement.He failed to mention that Trump met today with corporate leaders of aerospace company Blue Origin—also owned by Bezos—which is, at best, godawful timing or a pretty clear signal of Bezos' reasoning in killing the endorsement. Maybe both.Probably both.If none of this makes sense, you're far from alone. It completely failed to persuade the staff and alums of The Washington Post. Conservative columnist and editor-at-large Robert Kagan immediately resigned in protest. Sixteen other Washington Post columnists—Perry Bacon Jr., Matt Bai, Max Boot, E.J. Dionne Jr., Lee Hockstader, David Ignatius, Heather Long, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Alexandra Petri, Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin, Karen Tumulty, and Erik Wemple—published this statement on the paper's website:The Washington Post's decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump's opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post's important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn't the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein issued this statement:We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 12 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post's own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos's ownership, the Washington Post's news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.Retired WaPo executive editor Martin Baron, who led the paper from 2012 thru 2021, including the tumultuous years of Trump's presidency, responded with a scathing statement: “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as invitation to further intimidate owner Jeff Bezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”The Washington Post Guild—the paper's employee union—had this to say:We are deeply concerned that The Washington Post—an American news institution in the nation's capital—would make the decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates, especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election. The role of an Editorial Board is to do just this: to share opinion on the news impacting our society and culture and endorse candidates to help guide readers.The message from our chief executive, Will Lewis—not from the Editorial Board itself—makes us concerned that management interfered with the work of our members in Editorial. According to our own reporters and Guild members, an endorsement for Harris was already drafted, and the decision to not publish was made by The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos. We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers. This decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers' trust, not losing it.Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes published this jarring work on the paper's website, titling it “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” referencing WaPo's official slogan that was introduced in 2017, just a month after Trump took office.As of 7:30pm yesterday, Semafor's Max Tani reported that at least 2,000 subscriptions to the paper had been canceled in the previous 24 hours, the overwhelming bulk of those likely being in the seven-and-a-half hours following the announcement from Mr. Lewis. Numerous public figures—including Stephen King, Mark Hamill, Jon Cryer, and former Congresswoman Marie Newman—publicly announced they were cancelling their own subscriptions.Last night, I made the same decision. I had heard rumblings early in the morning from friends in media that WaPo was about to announce a non-endorsement, credible enough that I mentioned it during a 10am meeting with colleagues and they were understandably shocked.I spent most of yesterday morning and afternoon, in the midst of a very busy schedule, privately agonizing over what I would do as a subscriber.Over the years, I've published a number of op-eds in The Washington Post, pieces of which I'm quite proud in a paper I've put on a pedestal since I was a kid, and I've worked with numerous editors and reporters at the outlet whom I admire for their professionalism and public service.It is not lost on me that cancelling a newspaper subscription will not hurt Jeff Bezos but will hurt those employed at the paper.And yet, as much as my heart breaks for the staff of The Washington Post, who haven't done anything to deserve this, I am still left with the simple truth that if Bezos is willing to kill an endorsement 11 days out, whether out of fear or ambition, what else is he willing to do with the paper?There are numerous journalists at the outlet doing critical work, but how we do know anymore when Jeff Bezos is putting his thumb on the scale, backed up by a complicit CEO who blatantly lies about the paper's direction?There have to be consequences for an action this brazen and irresponsible and dangerous for our democracy. Something's gotta give. I respect the decisions of other subscribers, but I simply cannot stomach giving another dime in reward to a publication with such great influence that can be used to do such great harm moving forward.It is my hope that there will be a time, after Vice President Harris is elected, after Trump is held accountable, after the craven capitalists of media have learned there's not much to be made in the long run from these corrupt and shameless tactics, that The Washington Post will be restored to its former glory.In the meantime, I will pay for my news elsewhere.Charlotte's Web Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Charlotte's Web Thoughts at charlotteclymer.substack.com/subscribe

If you needed any more evidence that the establishment does not care for you, this latest piece by Robert Kagan should be sufficient. https://mcclanahanacademy.com https://patreon.com/thebrionmcclanahanshow https://brionmcclanahan.com/support http://learntruehistory.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/brion-mcclanahan/support

It's a dog days of summer special! This week, we are releasing a live interview from last April, that's more timely today than when it was first recorded. Dictators and their sychophants; democracy imperiled by foreign policy misadventures. Sound familiar?For almost a century, American intellectuals of different political stripes have been in thrall to dictators. They've either projected utopian ideals on to them, or been seduced by their charisma and alleged effectiveness. The story of left wing intellectuals falling for figures like Stalin or Castro has already been told. In a new book, America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, Jacob Heilbrunn, author and editor of the National Interest, tells the story of the American political right and its dalliances with overseas despots. Joining Damir as co-host is friend of the pod Professor Jennifer Murtazashvili, head of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets, which graciously supports our work.As usual, Damir veers the discussion towards first principles. Are people more likely to be seduced by dictatorships when liberalism is perceived to be failing? Is liberalism perceived to be failing more often during wartime or peacetime? Just what is attractive about despotism? Should liberals accept that a certain amount of “ineffectiveness” is part and parcel of the liberal order? Tune in for a riveting discussion of these questions and more.Required Reading:* “Apologists without Remorse,” by Jacob Heilbrunn (American Prospect).* America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators by Jacob Heilbrunn.* “Trump's anti-Ukraine view dates to the 1930s. America rejected it then. Will we now?” by Robert Kagan.* U.S. Military Interventions since 1890 (Evergreen State College).This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets.Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wisdomofcrowds.live/subscribe

PREVIEW: OHIO RIVER VALLEY: 18TH CENTURY: COLONIALS: NATIVES: Conversation with Professor Robert Kagan, his new book, AMERICAN HEART OF DARKNESS, re the shocking cruelty and violence of the frontier as the colonists pushed the tribes more and more west before and after the Revolution. This is part of a two hour conversation, last Friday and this. More tonight. 1700 Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Heart-American-Darkness-Bewilderment-Frontier/dp/1324091770 We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. Drawing skillfully on Joseph Conrad's famous novella, Heart of Darkness, he demonstrates that imperialism in North America was neither heroic nor a perfectly planned conquest. It was, rather, as bewildering, violent, and haphazard as the European colonization of Africa, which Conrad knew firsthand and fictionalized in his masterwork. At the center of Parkinson's story are two families whose entwined histories ended in tragedy. The family of Shickellamy, one of the most renowned Indigenous leaders of the eighteenth century, were Iroquois diplomats laboring to create a world where settlers and Native people could coexist. The Cresaps were frontiersmen who became famous throughout the colonies for their bravado, scheming, and land greed. Together, the families helped determine the fate of the British and French empires, which were battling for control of the Ohio River Valley. From the Seven Years' War to the protests over the Stamp Act to the start of the Revolutionary War, Parkinson recounts the major turning points of the era from a vantage that allows us to see them anew, and to perceive how bewildering they were to people at the time. For the Shickellamy family, it all came to an end on April 30, 1774, when most of the clan were brutally murdered by white settlers associated with the Cresaps at a place called Yellow Creek. That horrific event became news all over the continent, and it led to war in the interior, at the very moment the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Michael Cresap, at first blamed for the massacre at Yellow Creek, would be transformed by the Revolution into a hero alongside George Washington. In death, he helped cement the pioneer myth at the heart of the new republic. Parkinson argues that American history is, in fact, tied to the frontier, just not in the ways we are often told. Altering our understanding of the past, he also shows what this new understanding should mean for us today. 42 illustrations

On this week's episode of 'The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart': Countdown to history. In just 100 days, voters will make their choice between two firsts: the country's first female commander in chief in Vice President Kamala Harris or its first felon president in Donald Trump. I'll discuss the high stakes and shifting landscape of this unprecedented election with DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan. Vice President Harris was only the second Black woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate. Two women hoping to join that history-making club join me today: Delaware Senate candidate, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Maryland Senate Candidate, Angela Alsobrooks, Prince George's County Executive. Finally, my political panel and Aunt Gloria will weigh in on the racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Harris and other Republican nonsense. All that and more on “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart.” 

This week on Face the Nation, President Biden continues to further his bid as he recovers from coronavirus, while Republican candidate Donald Trump holds his first rally since last week's attempted assassination in Butler, PA. House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner gives us the latest on the security failures leading to the attempted assassination of the former president. West Virginia Independent Joe Manchin makes an appeal to President Biden to pass the torch and exit the race. We sit down with Rep. Dean Phillips, a former primary challenger to Biden, as he urges his party for an alternative candidate. We ask Biden-Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond about the state of the Democrat Party and the challenges facing the campaign. Finally, Fiona Hill, former Deputy Assistant to Trump, and Robert Kagan, editor at large at The Washington Post, reflect what a Trump-Vance ticket would mean for U.S. foreign policy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Martin Wolf is worried about the threat autocrats pose to liberal democracies. Across the world, billions of citizens are being asked to cast their vote in elections taking place in more than 50 countries, but in many places, populist, illiberal and far-right parties are either growing in support or consolidating gains they have already made. In this episode, Martin spells out his concerns to the FT's executive opinion editor, Jonathan Derbyshire, and they discuss what Martin has gleaned from his conversations with Robert Kagan, Fiona Hill, Anne Applebaum and Raghuram Rajan. Did they ease his concerns in any way?Links: Martin Wolf column: Fascism has changed, but it is not deadFor Martin's other FT columns click hereThis episode is presented by Martin Wolf. The producer is Sandra Kanthal. Production help from Sonja Hutson. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa and the sound engineer is Nigel Appleton. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's rarely a week in which Donald Trump doesn't make the headlines but the last few have been particularly potent with the former US president having been served justice in a US courtroom. One voice who has been vocal in lamenting the transformation of the Republican Party into a vehicle for Trump's agenda is Robert Kagan. He's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a historian and contributing columnist at The Washington Post. He has advised on policy for the US State Department for both Republican and Democrat administrations. and some of the Republican party's most prominent voices in recent decades. His latest book is Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again; a reflection on the increasing radicalisation of the Republican Party. Joining Kagan in conversation to talk about it for this episode is Edward Luce, chief US commentator for the Financial Times, based in Washington DC, and author of books including The Retreat of Western Liberalism.  We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to Indeed.com/IS for £100 sponsored credit. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all of our longer form interviews and Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events - Our member-only newsletter The Monthly Read, sent straight to your inbox ... Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series ... Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. ... Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Across the world, billions of citizens are being asked to cast their vote in elections taking place in more than 50 countries, making this a pivotal year for democracy. But these polls come as populist, illiberal and far-right parties are either growing in support or consolidating gains they have already made. In the first of this five-part series, the FT's renowned economics commentator Martin Wolf tells executive opinion editor Jonathan Derbyshire why he worries about the consequences for the future of democratic institutions. Martin then speaks to Robert Kagan, a neoconservative scholar and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, about what a victory, or defeat, for Donald Trump might mean for the future of US democracy.Links:Martin Wolf column: Fascism has changed, but it is not deadFor Martin's other FT columns click hereClip: CNBCThis episode is presented by Jonathan Derbyshire and Martin Wolf. The producer is Sandra Kanthal. Production help from Sonja Hutson. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa and the sound engineer is Nigel Appleton. The FT's global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Historian and Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan joins The Post's Jonathan Capehart for a conversation about the stakes in the 2024 presidential election, the historical parallels to this moment in American politics and what he calls the “anti-liberal rebellion.” Conversation recorded on Thursday, May 16, 2024.

Today on the show, former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni joins to discuss the way that the war in Gaza is being received in Israel, and the prospects for a ceasefire.  Then, former Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa discusses the state of the Israel-Hamas war, and who should govern Gaza after it ends. Next, Susan Shirk, founding chair of the 21st Century China Foundation, joins the show to discuss Xi Jinping's recent trip to Europe and China's foreign policy strategy.  Finally, historian and author Robert Kagan comes on the show to discuss his new book, in which he argues that Trump's brand of anti-liberalism has strong historical roots.  GUESTS: Tzipi Livni (@Tzipi_Livni), Nasser al-Kidwa, Susan Shirk (@SusanShirk1), Robert Kagan    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spurred by Robert Kagan's new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart--Again, and by Thursday's Remnant, Jonah spends the majority of this interminable episode responding to Kagan's critique of conservatism, from contextualizing William F. Buckley's role on the right to recounting the left's history of intellectual anti-liberalism. Also, kudos to the frat bros who saved the American flag. Show Notes: —Jonah's Wednesday G-File —"Metabolic rift" wiki page —King-Slutzky answers questions —Gee Officer Krupke Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonah is joined by Robert Kagan—a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Rebellion: The Antiliberal Tradition That Is Tearing America Apart - Again—to debate Robert's theory on the anti-liberal history of conservatism and why he thinks Trump is a logical product of the American right. Show Notes: —Robert's profile at Brookings —Robert's new book —Why the South Must Prevail —Miles Taylor's book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the fate of Israeli hostages and a Gaza ceasefire hangs in the balance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told hostage families that, deal or no deal with Hamas, Israel's offensive on Rafah is going ahead. With the prospect of a ceasefire dim at best, even as the US Secretary of State crisscrosses the region, Christiane reached Riyad Mansour in New York. He's the Palestinian Observer to the UN, appointed by the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  Also on today's show: author Robert Kagan; Stuart Stevens, Senior Adviser, The Lincoln Project  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You actually have to fight in every generation, if you want to preserve liberalism. It's not just going to preserve itself. It's not just the end of history. It isn't just the final resting place of humanity - not by any stretch of the imagination. It's a continual struggle.Robert KaganAccess Episodes Ad-Free on PatreonMake a one-time Donation to Democracy Paradox.Proudly sponsored by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Learn more at https://kellogg.nd.eduProudly sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Learn more at https://carnegieendowment.orgA full transcript is available at www.democracyparadox.com.Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of many books including most recently The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941 and Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart--Again.Key HighlightsIntroduction - 0:20Traditions of Liberalism and Antiliberalism - 3:04Antiliberalism as an Idea - 8:35Tension Within Ourselves - 21:25Future of Liberalism and Antiliberalism - 37:42Key LinksRebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart--Again by Robert KaganThe Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941 by Robert KaganFollow Robert Kagan at the Brookings InstitutionDemocracy Paradox PodcastRobert Kagan Looks to American History to Explain Foreign Policy TodayHeather Cox Richardson on History, Conservatism, and the Awakening of American DemocracyMore Episodes from the PodcastMore InformationApes of the State created all MusicEmail the show at jkempf@democracyparadox.comFollow on Twitter @DemParadox, Facebook, Instagram @democracyparadoxpodcast100 Books on DemocracySupport the Show.

Get 50% off your first order of CookUnity meals — go to https://cookunity.com/whatif50 and use my code WHATIF50 at checkout to try them out for yourself! Thanks to CookUnity for sponsoring this video! Link to Pluribus. Cancellation Insurance-https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter-https://twitter.com/whatifalthist?ref... Link to my Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlyn... Bibliography: The New Map by Dan Yergin The Human Tide by Paul Moreland The First World War by John Keegan Long Cycles by Goldstein The Great Wave by David Hackett Fischer Ages of Discord by Peter Turchin The Economics of Discontent by Jean Michel Paul The Next 100 Years by George Friedman A Secular Age by Charles Taylor The World in Conflict by John Andrews The Global Crisis by Geoffrey Parker The Military Revolution by Geoffrey Parker Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan The Best of Times and the Worst of Times by Michael Burleigh A Quick and Dirty Guide to War by James Dunnigan Destined for War by Graham Allison War, What is it Good for by Ian Morris Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary The Invention of Yesterday by Tamim Ansary World Order by Henry Kissinger Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall Global Catastrophes and Trends by Vaclav Smil Asia's Cauldron by Robert Kagan

Make sure to follow this week's guest Mark Sleboda on X at @MarkSleboda1 Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   Announcer (00:06): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Dr Leon (00:14): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to see the broader historical context in which events take place. During each episode of this program, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and why does the United States keep throwing good taxpayer dollars after bad. To discuss this, we are joined by my guest Mark Sloboda. He's a Moscow based international relations and security analyst. Mark, as always, welcome back Mark Sleboda (01:18): Dr. Leon. Thanks for having me. It's always an honor and a pleasure to be on connecting the dots. Dr Leon (01:23): So it's been reported that an attack on a convoy of Ukrainian military equipment in the esque people's Republic was carried out with the use of short range ballistic missiles. And it also seems as though with all of this hand wringing in the US Congress about funding for Ukraine, all the US and NATO is doing, or seems to be doing, is sending more targets for Russia to destroy your thoughts, mark. Mark Sleboda (01:52): Yeah, there's some rather dramatic developments really under-reported in the Western press that have very large implications going forward for the conflict in Ukraine. The current situation on the ground, I think the Western mainstream media has finally their propaganda narrative bubble has finally burst. Look, in a span of how short a period of time we have gone from Ukraine is winning to (02:34) Stalemate, it's a stalemate on the battlefield to, oh my God, we're losing to Nigeria with snow. I mean, that's the rather dramatic change in the propaganda narrative, and I think we can see it reflected in the political elite as well with the panic and desperation that is starting to sit in and become rather obvious among European leaders who really have the most to lose from this conflict, rather other than the Kiev regime in Ukraine itself. And this all occurs, these latest incidents in the final weeks of and the aftermath of the Russian breakthrough of the Kiev regime's most heavily fortified fortress city, these extensive defenses and fortifications trenches, concrete bunkers, pill boxes, networks of tunnels, layers of minefields, you name it, Inca, which is really quite close to Dan City, and a western journalist a couple of years ago already referred to it rather poetically if quite awfully as a knife pointed at the heart of Dansk. (04:10) They meant that in a good way. Another way, of course, looking at it was a Jack boot pressed to the neck of the people of Donbass because it is from aca and the settlements shielded behind it that the Ki regime forces brutally shelled the people of Dansk for the last decade pretty much regularly. They didn't shell military facilities, they shelled civilian areas with artillery, with cluster munitions, with pedal mines. And this was to punish the people of done bus for choosing wrong, for not accepting the overthrow of the government by the Westback Maan butch back in 2014, and with the intention with driving Russian ethnic people who did not accept the new Ukraine into Russia. That was the intention and one of the primary reasons for the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict, not the only one. There were security concerns as well, but this was loudly voiced as well. (05:22) And when the Russians broke through it aga, they did it rather dramatically towards the end. It ended up much shorter than say the siege of Bach Mu, despite the defenses in a DKA being considerably stronger, and this is because of a sea change on the battlefield. The KI regime's initial a integrated Soviet legacy air defense network, the backbone of which was the formidable S 300 systems had been largely deteriorated at this point already a few months ago. And on top of what hadn't been destroyed, they were absolutely out of interceptor missiles for it, and there were none left in countries that are now part of the west former Eastern Bloc countries. Their supplies were all exhausted. So there was an attempt to put together a hodgepodge piece meal air defense system not properly integrated with using Western systems, but that has also been attributed away over the last few months. (06:35) Russia launched an extensive campaign over the winter, and that was a primary target of their missile and drone campaign. So in afca, Russia fully unleashed the fab guided glide bombs on these defenses. And these are old dumb munitions with smart glide kits that turn them into precision weapons being able to fire from air at a distance of tens of kilometers. And because these are bombs, not artillery shells, they have a considerably bigger payload. They come in 500, 1000 and 1500 kilogram capacities and they just annihilate. I mean, if the Ki regime turns, say what they did pretty much to every building in the city, turning it into a mini fortress that has to be individually stormed one fab bomb, and it's gone. And particularly at the larger end, the 1500, they have an incredibly demoralizing effect on anyone within the radius of experiencing the explosion, the concussion and the like. (07:57) And in the closing days of a dka, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, they dropped over 500 of these, oh my God, on the fortresses in just the last few days, right? So that's why they collapsed so quickly and dramatically at the end and why there was such a route. And they're able to do this now because they can fly with a considerable degree of impunity over the battlefield because first, the Soviet legacy and now the Western Air Defense system sent us a replacement, have largely been destroyed. And immediately in the aftermath of Dfca, the Russian forces far from being exhausted, as many Western military analysts drinking their own propaganda Kool-Aid tried to claim claiming high casualties as they always do without evidence to back it up other than the say so of the regime in Kiev. Russian forces were not exhausted because they had not suffered any considerable attrition because they had been standing off and dropping an extremely large bombs from Sue, 30 fours from fighter bombers on ev dca, which is what did at least at the end the majority of their work for them once they were already ensconced in the outskirts of the city. (09:24) So they continued on fallback positions in the next line of villages that Kiev regime forces had retreated to and were hastily trying to dig themselves in because they had not built proper defenses. And for instance, Laska and Severna lasted two or three days, and as Russia moved on the second line of villages even further, and we faced a real breakthrough in the Kiev regime defensive lines at this point, the Kiev regime became desperate to try to at least slow down. We're not even talking stop, but to slow down the Russian advance to give themselves more time to hastily dig as the Western headlines have now been talking about what the Kiv regime needs to do to dig new trenches, to dig new fortifications. So they moved a large number of what air defense systems they had left elsewhere in the country into an area far too close to the battlefield. (10:32) And Russia at this point, not only of course, enjoys air superiority over the contact line, but they also enjoy drone superiority. And Russia has put a rather larger number of military satellites into the orbit in the last year, last few months that have started to come online. So they were able to track these air defense systems fairly well, and it's more than just three patriot launchers that have been destroyed. Also, one of the remaining older S 300 air defense systems, several NASS air defense systems supplied by the US and Norway, and also a number of books and smaller systems. By my count at least 11 air defense systems have been destroyed in the last two weeks over the area immediately to the west of F dca. And this is adding to the butcher's bill. Previously, the Kev regime has adopted a new tactic in several areas. (11:50) We saw it over the sea of, we saw it also in Belgo where that Ill 76 transport plane shut down the KI regime shut down its own plane full of prisoners of war A couple of months ago, if you remember forced to admit it, they've been sending in an attempt to try to stop the Russian dominance of the skies. They've tried to use essentially not mobile air defense systems in a mobile capacity to set up ambushes for Russian planes to instill a degree of caution and restraint. But that has proven very costly for them because they've also lost air defense systems in that way as well, because of course, Russia was actively hunting them down and despite their claims to have shut down large numbers of Russian aircraft, there is zero evidence providing this zero. I mean, and there have been plenty of evidence, for instance, of the Kev regime's own aircraft, remaining aircraft being shot down when they're shot down. (13:06) There is video footage, there is air wreckage and the like. So really questionable claims they may have sacrificed other than this, of course, the POW plane, which everyone noticed, but that was an undefended transport plane flying in what it assumed a mission of peace bringing POWs for an exchange. So they've lost a huge degree of whatever hodgepodge air defense they had left. Now, Forbes speaking just of the events in F dca, not of the rest of it, says that just in those engagements that the Kev regime lost 13% of its air defense capacity speaking specifically of the Patriot systems provided to it. And that's on paper because they're not acknowledging earlier patriot systems that have been shot down. So I would suggest that they have at this point lost far more. They probably have a number of patriot launchers in the single digits left in Kiev, for instance, possibly in Odessa. (14:22) But the implications of this going forward is that Russian use of air superiority and even now close air support over the contact line is going to dramatically increase because there is no air defense left to deal with them, which means the pace of Russian advances are going to increase. And this is when even Western analysts and Ukrainians are talking about rather large concentrations of Russian forces behind the lines that have been built up but not committed yet. And there is the suspicion that they're going to launch a large scale big arrow offensive sometime later this year. In fact, the Kiev regime has just in the past week evacuated the entirety of Harko region. Some 85 settlements ordered the civilian evacuation because they fear a big offensive in the harko direction in the coming probably months, perhaps weeks. Dr Leon (15:36): President Biden told us during his State of the Union address that Ukraine can stop Putin, Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons that it needs to defend itself. That's all he says. In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. My question is, who's operating these US supplied Patriot air defense systems and are there US special forces trainers that are on the ground training these forces? Mark Sleboda (16:14): Okay, so first to the last point, Joe Biden is lying genocide. Joe is flat up lying and we know it because the Western mainstream media has told us already in the summer of 2022 in the New York Times and the Washington Post talking about unusually large numbers of US intelligence and US and European commandos on the ground in Ukraine. Then later we heard there were hundreds of uniformed US troops on the ground, again from the western mainstream media that were doing tracking of Western supplied weapons. Now, if that's really what they were doing, then they weren't doing a very good job because it was only weeks after that we heard that the West couldn't track these weapons at all. So I mean either they were completely incompetent or they are doing something else on the ground Dr Leon (17:15): On top of them. Wait a minute, are these also, aren't these the same stories that a lot of these weapons are showing up in other battles in other countries? Mark Sleboda (17:24): Yes. Yes. With the idea that a tithe essentially of Western weapons is being sold through corruption in the Ukrainian military and the distribution networks off because of the prevalent corruption in the country to pad their own pockets. And then I don't think there's anything question about that. The Western mainstream media has long reported about that. In fact, early on, CBS noted that some 70% of the weapons supplied by the west were not reading the front lines. This was early on in the conflict. So on top of those commandos, we now the Russian government has long complained that these high-tech systems supplied by the west from the US in particular the high Mars and multiple launch rocket systems in the Patriot air defense systems, as well as some French air defense systems, Polish crab artillery systems, British storm shadows, cruise missiles, that these are all being operated by western military specialists who are being sent there under the guise of mercenaries or humanitarian and aid workers and the like, because it is impossible to train the Kiev regime forces in such a short period of time to operate these advanced western systems. (19:09) The Russian government's been saying this for a considerable amount of time, but this was confirmed by no less a person than the German chancellor Olaf Schultz, who in an apparent spat back and forth with the French leader, Emmanuel Macron, and to the British as well, when the British were pressuring Germany to deliver the Taurus missiles, the context of Ola Schultz is we can't do what the British, the French, and the Americans are doing and have people obliquely. He admitted that the West had their military forces on the ground operating their systems and that Germany could not be seen as doing that. And this was reinforced in these leaked military calls from the German Air Force planning, a series of cruise missile attacks inside Russia with the expected to be delivered towards cruise missile system, at least expected by them. The political elites in Germany aren't saying that, but they also revealed that the German cruise missiles could perhaps be operated on the ground by the rather large number of Americans of people on the ground wearing civilian clothes with American accents, which of course is a roundabout way of saying US military personnel not in uniform on the ground in Ukraine. (20:58) So I mean, they just have to Dr Leon (20:59): Be curious from Kansas that are wandering the fields and the step of Germany and Russia and Ukraine. Mark Sleboda (21:07): Yeah, they're not wearing boots. They're wearing ballet slippers or figure skates or something, I guess. So that's a lie. Second of all, the Kim regime can defeat. Well, Ukraine can beat Putin, right? The childish way that western leaders and media try to demonize any opponent down to just one leader and so forth. But if that was true, if Western military aid in Ukrainian regime hands was enough to beat Russia, then what happened over their failed summer counter offensive that was armed trained, financed intelligence planned and war gamed out by nato, primarily US by the Pentagon, that's who did it. They failed. They failed badly. They were mauled. They never even got past the first of Russia's five echelon defensive lines and suffered horrible casualties in the process. No one denies that. So there is no indication that however additional tens of billions of dollars of aid are sent that the West will ever again able to build an offensive force like they did for Ukraine in the summer offensive because they simply don't have the weapons in inventory to replace everything like that. (22:50) They do have some things, they got plenty of Bradleys if they want. Obviously they're very reticent to allow the rather small number of Abrams that they've sent to be used in combat. Four of them have been destroyed after just appearing on the battlefield in the last week. But the rest of the Western militaries that supplied weapons, they're tapped out. France, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, they've all said, we can't supply anymore because we've already dug past our stockpiles into our own military supplies and we can't replace these systems fast enough. For instance, one French Caesar self-propelled Howitzer, a total of 36 of these between France and Denmark were supplied to the Kiev regime for the course of that offensive. And they're practically through all of them, they have very few of them left because Russia's been hunting them down. And also they are subjected to considerable wear and tear, and they're not actually built for high intensity combat like this, much like the US' M triple sevens and the Paladins and the like. But it takes the French 18 months, the French military industrial complex, 18 months. 18 months Dr Leon (24:20): To Mark Sleboda (24:21): Build one Dr Leon (24:22): That's a year and a half Mark Sleboda (24:23): One Caesar. But we heard that they have shortened that time to 15 months. Oh Dr Leon (24:30): Wow. That makes me feel a whole lot better. You just mentioned the leaked recordings from the German Air Force, and is it a coincidence that after these conversations were leaked where the Germans were talking about taking out bridges in Russia with cruise missiles that Victoria Newland resigns because there are some who say that her name was mentioned in on these tapes and that the German Air Force officers were really talking about conversations either they had with her or ideas that she was presenting about these attacks inside Russia? Mark Sleboda (25:16): Yeah, there's a possibility there, and if that is the situation, then it appears that she was probably forced out by the Biden administration. But are I think there are other considerations in play. Victoria Newland, the Queen NeoCon of the us, she's married to Robert Kagan who is the arch NeoCon of the United States. Robert Kagan, his books, check them out if you're unfamiliar with his sinister work. I would say she has long dominated through several presidencies US policy towards Ukraine. She was instrumental in the actual Westpac, my Don pooch, if not the key architect of it. She was caught on recordings with then US Ambassador Jeffrey Piat, talking about how they needed to midwife this thing, bring then Obama's Vice President Joe Biden into midwife it picking the new Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arsen Ya from the leaders, the figurehead leaders of the Maidan, and then famously saying F, the when the idea that the Europeans might want someone else for Ukraine's next prime minister was presented. So I mean she's been instrumental and she briefly left office during the Trump administration and then came right back. She has been serving as under Secretary for political affairs, which despite the rather kafkaesque bureaucratic name is actually the third highest official within the US Department of War. I'm sorry, not the US Department of War, US Department of State. My bad. Dr Leon (27:23): I can understand the confusion. Mark Sleboda (27:24): I said the difference. Yeah, she a third highest official and she was actually operating as the second highest official just below the Secretary of State for about a half of year when Wendy Sherman, the previous Deputy Secretary of State stepped down. So she was doing the number two and number three job and it was widely expected that she would be permanently assigned to that position, a permanently elevated to Deputy Secretary of State. But we found out that just a month ago she was passed over for this position by Kirk Campbell. The Biden approved someone else, and Kirk Campbell is an Asia specialist. He's a specialist on China, which to my mind tells me that the Biden administration is tiring of this conflict in Ukraine and they're already looking past it despite the bad situation. Their proxy regime is in to China, which may indicate a planned change of policy or at least prioritization or at the very least an unwillingness to escalate further, I say may. Dr Leon (28:48): So does that mean then that the Biden administration is now following along the previous Obama administration's tilt towards Asia? Mark Sleboda (29:02): Yeah, that's entirely possible. I believe that's what the Biden administration always wanted to do. They wanted the Middle East to remain quiet and it was not a priority for them. That didn't go out down so well. Just a week before the October 7th, seventh launching of the all Axel flood operation by Hamas on Israel, Jake Sullivan was in an essay talking about how nice and quiet the Middle East was, which allowed the US to concentrate on other areas. Well, that didn't go so well then since then. But they wanted the Middle East to be quiet. They expected to finish off Russia quickly. They expected their sanctions to destroy the Russian economy, Putin to be overthrown, and because of the economic commiseration of the country Dr Leon (29:58): They wrong Mark Sleboda (30:00): And that they would now, their biggest concern would be dividing up Russia into smaller pieces and how to go about that. That appears to have been their plan. Okay, so not so good on the plan thing, but then they hoped they thought that would be finished quickly and then to pivot hard to China. I think that was always their plan to finish Russia off quickly, ignore the Middle East and pivot hard to China. And none of that, of course has gone according to plan. So with A and B having failed, they're trying to go to C anyway in very likely the months at this point that they have remaining to them. And I think that the passing over of Victoria Newland for that is a sign that the Biden administration is already lost interest, possibly due to inability to achieve their desired goals and is shifting to the next goals that they can't probably accomplish even more so I would say if they think that they're going to defeat China in some type of conflict off of their own coast in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea. But anyway, I expect that Victoria Newland was extremely unhappy about being passed over. She was probably, she can see the bureaucratic writing on the wall that the prioritization is changing away from her reason for existence, which is fighting Russia. And I think that that probably at least as much if not more so played a role in her deciding to quit or being forced out. We don't know the real truth of that yet, although I imagine that she won't be able to keep her mouth shut forever on that score Dr Leon (31:51): Or her husband. So political reports that France finds Baltic allies in its spat with Germany over Ukraine troop deployment, that France is building up an alliance of countries to open potentially that are open to potentially sending Western troops to Ukraine. That Mark sounds to me like there's a lot of tension within nato. And going again back to President Biden State of the Union, he told us America is a founding member of nato, the Military Alliance of Democratic Nations, and that to prevent war, we've made NATO even stronger, which is the point that I was trying to get to about this element of his speech that we've made NATO even stronger, and now he also assigns or attributes Finland joining NATO as evidence of NATO's strength. It doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like it's all good in Mark Sleboda (32:59): Yeah, I mean definitely. I mean, Hungary and Slovakia of course are the most egregious examples of this because they are completely against the proxy war now being fought on Russia in Ukraine completely. They won't have anything to do with it. But yeah, there are definitely, I think tensions and cracks emerging and a bit of a panicked blame game going on right now with different European countries all trying to blame each other saying You haven't done enough. And with Macron coming out now in the aftermath of the taking of a DKA coming out and openly talking about putting NATO troops on the ground, I think this is not something that is a secret, something that has not been discussed for, and something that contingency plans are not already in place to do in the future. They just aren't in a political situation to have it said out loud. Now, I think that's the real problem that Germany and other countries have. It's causing them, no one is ready to do it now, and the fact that it has been brought up now, they see as politically detrimental to them in their own countries Dr Leon (34:29): As in the farmers' protests in Germany, Mark Sleboda (34:32): Yeah, in Poland, yes, Poland. I mean there are protests across Europe, but also, yes, the fragile coalition government in Germany, the rise of the A FD, the alternative for Germany, the alternative for Deutsche Man, yeah, party in Germany. These are all blowback from the European involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, and they just did not need this. Now, I think Macron has pointed out two things. One is that levels of escalation in this conflict, red lines that we will not cross in terms of escalation have been passed again and again and again. I remember back in February and March of 2022 when Joe Biden saying that US tanks and jets us would never supply tanks and jets to Ukraine because that would mean World War iii, right? But US tanks are now burning in the urban agglomerations of the Donez region, and US F sixteens are supposedly on their way within the next couple of months to the Kiev regime. (35:55) So again and again, these lines have been crossed, and I believe this line will be crossed eventually, but not yet. The second point, and Macron pointed this out, what we once thought was unacceptable has become normal operations repeatedly during this conflict as they've crawled further up or down the escalation ladder, however you choose to look at it. And he also then made a point that when French troops might be sent into Ukraine, when Russian forces move on Kiev or Odessa, which is most likely some time away, probably more than a year, maybe longer than that. So yeah, I mean, right now fighting Russia has a lot of advantages on the battlefield, but big advances can still be measured in a handful of kilometers, a tree line, a small village. (37:04) The writing is on the wall in terms of the logistics of a war of attrition and everything, but I think there's still a lot of hard ground slogging into the future. Macron sees that as well, so they're panicking now. I think he's right that when Russia moves towards Kia or Odessa, there will be probably greater support for his suggestions, but we've already seen support from the Baltics. The Baltic leaders have come out and said, yes, we're ready to send the handful of troops that we have now, because if there's anything the Baltics country need is to come out on the losing end of this conflict, having sent their own troops to war with Russia and having a NATO either fall apart or turned into a toothless tiger as a result of this really, really bad geopolitical move to my mind. I mean, because they're of course the most vulnerable. (38:05) They've got large populations of Russian ethnic populations that they have been rather seriously politically and linguistically culturally repressing, particularly over the last two years, even trying to expel as many Russian ethnic people from their countries as they can, practically inviting some type of Russian backed efforts against those governments in the Baltics, really not a smart move, but also Poland has made the Polish foreign minister Sikorsky back again, by the way, has also seemed to suggest contrary to statements by the Polish president, that at some point down the line, Polish troops could be sent into Ukraine and also Canada. Trudeau has also volunteered Canadian troops as well in non-combat roles of course, because that's what you do with your military troops. You send them into a conflict zone Dr Leon (39:16): Very as non-combatants Mark Sleboda (39:19): Like trainers. First you have trainers and advisors, then you have non-combatants. We know the way this goes, so obviously there is already, and check the Czech president has also suggested he is a former NATO official himself, a very big hawk on Russia, and he has also hedged his words and seemed to suggest that Czech might be able to consider it. So these are countries who are already coming out and we're just past aca, which is really only about 12 kilometers away from Donis city, right? I mean, there's a lot more to come and the panic and desperation will increase, and I think Macron will definitely find more countries down the road when it becomes completely impossible to deny as it will become in the future, the writing on the wall that the regime cannot hold militarily. The New York Times has already talked about the possibility, and I think it's a very strong possibility of later this year cascading collapses along the Kiev regime's, defensive lines, not me, but the New York Times has raised that as is talking to anonymous western military intelligence analysts about the probable course of the Ukrainian battlefield over the next half a year. Dr Leon (40:51): We mentioned Sweden joining NATO and Finland has joined nato, and we know about the very strong and robust social programs that those countries have because they, up until this point, have had a position of neutrality in conflict, which means they haven't had to send the public resources over to a defense budget. Now that that seems to be changing, are we looking at Finland and Sweden as having to shift those resources? We now see more NeoCon policy as well as what we'll call austerity measures. Can we expect austerity measures to creep their way into social policy in Finland and in Sweden? Mark Sleboda (41:49): Yeah, inevitably, I think we've already seen it to a certain degree. They've already, of course, suffered heavy economic consequences from their own sanctions on Russia, probably more significant than have been experienced by the Russian economy. Finland in particular did a very good cross border business. I was on the Finnish Russian border just a year ago at kind of a wilderness vacation place on the border there, well, actually a couple of years ago before the conflict, but very nice, and it was normal to cross the border from Russia and Finland to go to the store, for instance. Someone had this better, someone had that better, and there was a great deal of cross border business that has immensely suffered as a result already hurting the finish economy. The Swedes have suffered the same thing, perhaps to a lesser degree without sharing an open border, but experienced it as well, and now, I mean they've exhausted a great deal. (42:58) Finland and Sweden have both provided outsized military resources to the Kiev regime already, and those resources like so much else, are largely gone. They're either up in smoke or filtered away in the Kiev regime's corruption, so on top of the Kiev regime, of course, loudly demanding more, more, they also have to replenish their own military stocks, and now they have to militarize their own borders, which were UNM militarized, particularly in the case of Finland, which has a very large border. It was demilitarized, it was not a militarized border. There was police presence, but it was not a militarized border that is now changing and of course, facing the prospect of Finland joining NATO and US forces on finished soil, Russia has reordered, completely changed military districting on the border there and provided tens of thousands of new troops to be placed on the border as having to potentially deal with US troops being stationed in Finland as defensive contingencies, Finland is going to bear an increased burden with military. I do not see how this makes them more secure than they were before. I mean, they weren't targeted with nuclear missiles, and now they will be. (44:36) I guess that is the price of joining the cool Western Kids Club in nato, which it seems that the Finnish political elite wanted more than not creating economic and military problems with their much larger southern neighbor. Dr Leon (44:57): I read a story recently that elite units of Ukrainian armed forces are discussing overthrowing zelensky. Is that a rumor? Any traction of that story there in Moscow and any insight into commanders and soldiers in elite units of the Ukrainian armed forces? They're dissatisfied with the reshuffling of the leadership and they're talking about ousting VMI Zelensky. Mark Sleboda (45:30): Yeah. When Zelensky got rid of zany, and let's be clear, this didn't happen because of his military failures on the battlefield. It was done for political reasons because he saw zany as a threat as possibly running for president himself for staging a military coup and the possibility there were plenty of signs that the US was actually for a time considering switching horses, which is why he forbade elections in Ukraine, citing the martial law emergency powers, and so that he didn't have to face zny in an election, which the polls say he would've lost because zany has more support in the country than he does now. He didn't only get rid of ny, he got rid of whole streams of top down to low level commanders who were seen as loyal to ny. There was a huge reshuffling or replacement of Ukrainian of the Kev regime's military leaders. As a result of this, there's a lot of embittered military people because of this. We don't need to look in secret telegram chat rooms to hear this discussion because Dr Leon (46:56): Regime, which is where this story was originally attributable, yeah, the Mark Sleboda (47:00): Story is sourced from here, but there have already been open public statements by Kiev regime, military commanders on the battlefield saying to the Ukrainian journalists, this is wrong. There was a list signed by hundreds of Ukrainian military commanders serving on the battlefield, a petition asking Zelensky to get rid of Ky, whom he chose to replace Zelensky, whom is known as the Dr Leon (47:38): Butcher, the butcher Mark Sleboda (47:40): By his own forces, not because of the opponents that he kills, but because of his careless attitude towards the lives of his own people. So they made an Dr Leon (47:54): That's not a good moniker. As a commander, you don't want your own forces seeing you in the light of butchering them. Mark Sleboda (48:04): Yeah, I mean, my military experience tells me that that would not be the type of military commander that I wanted. Certainly, and I seriously doubt that they do as well. Plus Sirki is actually ethnic Russian. He was born in Russia in the Soviet Union. His family still lives in Russia, and they're actually quite Russian patriotic, so it's a rather bizarre situation, and in many ways there's a lot of Dr Leon (48:30): Parallels. It makes for a tough Christmas dinner. Mark Sleboda (48:32): I don't think it makes for a Christmas dinner at all. I'm pretty sure, and there are definitely parallels with the US Civil War to be drawn there and with so many other families across Russia and Ukraine. But yeah, they've made demands of Zelensky public demands that they replace, that they bring back zany and get rid of ky, and of course that was ignored and large numbers of those commanders were replaced. But if they're discussing it openly and he's already taking this vengeful action against them, there's no great surprise that they are talking about it in what they believe to be secret chat rooms about taking it into their own hands. It's rather interesting, of course, that the Russian intelligence chose to make this public because if they have penetrated this chat room, you can be totally sure that the key regime's military intelligence, let's say Ka bov loyal to Zelinsky, has penetrated this as well, and by going public with it, Russia might be forcing Zelinsky hand to take action against these coup plotting, even if it's in the very nascent, we hate this guy, why can't we get rid of him? Stage of, shall we say, trash talk. It might be forcing Zelinsky hand to take action now, probably because Russia sees Zelensky and KY in charge of the key regime, political and military as far better for them than ny, whom was not a brilliant military commander, but perhaps not an entirely incompetent one either. Dr Leon (50:36): Switching gears, the cradle is reporting US proxies fear, Afghan style withdrawal from Syria. The Syrian democratic force is the SDF. They're fearing that their US patrons will abandon them in favor of closer ties with Turk, what's happening here with the US military, their Kurdish proxies occupying northeast Syria and fearing a Afghan like pullout. Is that a serious cause for concern? Mark Sleboda (51:13): I mean, that has been a serious cause for concern since 2016, right? The Kurds have been thrown different Kurds, but Kurds have been thrown under the bus by the US government after having been turned into proxies again and again by the United States in Iraq multiple times in Syria, previously against Turkey. Turkey Dr Leon (51:38): Going all the way back to HW Bush, Mark Sleboda (51:40): Yes, Dr Leon (51:42): Throwing the Kurds under the bus. Yes, Mark Sleboda (51:44): It's primary routine, which really amazes me that Kurds keep willing to be US proxies when they see the long history, not just of the US abandoning proxies like say in Afghanistan, but the US specifically abandoning Kurdish proxies before and abandoning these same Kurdish proxies. When Turkey advanced into northern Syria, they still, of course controlled northern Syria while the US illegally military occupies East Syria. They with just withdrew their forces and said, we're not going to defend you. Sorry. You should probably pull back or the Turks will wipe you up. I mean, that has already happened. The Turks regard the SDF as the YPG, the Syrian branch of the PKK, which is opposed to the Turkish government and fighting for the cause of a Kurdish ethnic nation state that would have to be carved out of parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and perhaps Iran. They are the biggest ethnic people in the world that do not have a nation state. (52:55) And it was inevitable that at some point, if the US failed to overthrow the government in Damascus with their jihadi regime change, that they would at some point leave East Syria and they haven't done so yet. And despite the rumors to the contrary, I don't expect them to do so in the near future, but it is inevitable at some point is you can't maintain an open-ended occupation of a very large amount of territory forever, despite sitting on the Syrias valuable oil and wheat fields preventing the economic stabilization of the country seemingly out of spite geopolitical spite. If nothing else, you can't maintain this forever, especially with the increase in the number of attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq from local resistance groups like Katai, Hezbollah who don't want the US occupying their countries, right, meaning Syria and Iraq. There's certainly a cost that has to be paid there, but the cost is still not extremely high, and Biden already being seen as responsible for the disastrous Vietnam style withdrawal from Afghanistan leading the Taliban to completely retake the country in rather embarrassing fashion. (54:40) He does not want to be seen the same role in Syria, I think certainly not in the next year. Perhaps if he wins reelection against all odds, then there might be a possibility in his next administration. But a word of warning, if we do see Biden moving troops out of Syria and Iraq, the reason would probably be that they intend to strike Iran and they're moving their forces out of the range of Iranian ballistic missiles that would target them if that happened. There's a history of us withdrawals preceding attacks elsewhere when the US pulled out of Afghanistan. We found out later from the US Secretary of State that withdrawing from Afghanistan allowed the US to provide the resources to the Kiev regime in Ukraine that they would not have been able to do otherwise. So it seems that they already had intentions towards that regard, so watch it. If Biden does pull out of Syria, it may not actually be good for the Syrians or for anyone else in the region. It might actually be a signal that the US intends to escalate towards Iran. Dr Leon (56:08): Is there a possibility in terms of signaling here that we look at, of course, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah is now talking about escalating in terms of coming through Lebanon. If this thing were to grow even more full, great even more bringing Iran in, you've got Ansar Allah in the game, does Syria get in the game as well? And so could the United States move out of Syria, be in preparation for a larger conflagration of that nature? Mark Sleboda (56:52): Yeah, I don't see that. First of all, I think the US and Iran are still doing everything possible to avoid direct conflict with each other, hence the stand down by Katai Hezbollah saying they wouldn't attack US military bases any further. And it is actually Israel who is talking about escalating against Hezbollah in Lebanon. I think the US and Iran are both doing everything they can to maintain their state's dignity and still dance around each other, avoiding direct conflict in the Middle East. That said, Israel is doing everything possible to incite conflict between the US and Iran, which makes that a non guarantee. But the Syrian government is in a very weak position economically. The US is still illegally occupying the entirety of the east of the country, including the country's oil and wheat resources. The country is, the government is unstable, it's economic, very hard times, and Turkey is still occupying the entirety of the north of the country, and they still have a hundred thousand jihadi under arms occupying those territories in northern Syria. And of course the US military occupation forces alongside the Kurdish YPG in East Syria. The Syrian government is in no geopolitical or military shape to contribute to a fight. I do not see this blowing up because no one wants to go to war with the US over Gaza. No one except for our sala. Dr Leon (58:45): Final question for you. The United States relative to Syria developing stronger ties with Toa, how can the US make Reproachment in this manner when Erdowan is so erratic and undependable? Mark Sleboda (59:05): Yeah, I don't think they can. Does Dr Leon (59:06): That make sense? Mark Sleboda (59:08): Yeah. I think Erdowan has become a perennial thorn in their side that they constantly need to keep appeased to prevent him from, shall we say, flipping into the bricks Eurasian camp, and Erdogan routinely plays the US and Russia off of each other to what he sees as his country's advantage. The US support of the Kurds in East Syria, of course, has infuriated him, as has the US withdrawal of the F 35 program from Turkey when Erdogan bought the S 400 Air defense system Dr Leon (59:50): From Russia, Mark Sleboda (59:51): Yes, from Russia, he also regards the US as at least being, if not complicit, then at least having knowledge of the coup attempt against him several years ago. Very bad relations there. The US cannot rely on Turkey and Turkey. Well, it sees itself as being betrayed by the United States. I don't see any ability to improve relations between the two until there is regime change perhaps in the United States, but more than likely it will require Erdogan passing on one way or another for a substantial change in Turkish US relations. Dr Leon (01:00:37): I know I said that was my last question, but this is my last question. Since you mentioned the coup in Turk a few years ago, Golan is still, I believe, somewhere in Pennsylvania at a property in Pennsylvania. Are you surprised that he has not been turned over to Turk as a way of appeasing erdowan, and do you think that Golan can be fairly confident that he's not going to be turned over as a fig leaf for better relations? Mark Sleboda (01:01:16): Yeah, I think the US constantly sees him as a bit of leverage. The US likes to keep shadow governments in place for just about every country in the world. Somewhere in the United States, leaders forces Dr Leon (01:01:30): The Shah's Sun is still roaming around Northern Mark Sleboda (01:01:32): Virginia. The Shah's son, Joe Biden just declared Yulia Navalny and then Yolanda, whoever she is, to be the new leader of the Russian opposition. You've got Juan Gau still out there. This is actually absolutely normal. There are entire communities outside Langley that are just exist of us backed shadow governments ready, waiting to be installed in foreign countries. But I have to say that I don't actually think the Golan movement had anything to do with the coup against Erdogan that occurred several years ago. This was almost entirely, once again, a military attempt to restore a kaist state in Turkey against Erdogan's Islamism. It was just sprung early by the Turkish government under what it believed to be controlled conditions, and then rather than admitting a secular Islamist divide in the country, they simply blamed it on a convenience scapegoat, which was the ING gong. I don't think that he actually had anything to do with that QI think that's just a rather vocal if unconvincing bit of Turkish propaganda that everyone has just played along with. So as not to anger Erdogan. In fact, the Russian president when asked about it a couple of years ago, when asked about their responsibility for the coup, his comments were pretty much to the point of if Erdogan says that's what happened, who am I to say otherwise? Dr Leon (01:03:26): Mark Sloboda, man, thank you so much. I always appreciate you carving out the time for me and for the show that you do. Mark Shada, really appreciate you joining me today. Mark Sleboda (01:03:38): Thanks for having me. Dr Leon (01:03:40): And folks, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wiler Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please, please follow and subscribe, leave a review, share the show. We're growing tremendously, but we can only grow as you allow us to follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, folks, that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we do not chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a great one. Peace. We're out Announcer (01:04:31):  

On Washington Post Live's “First Look,” associate editor Jonathan Capehart speaks with The Post's Toluse Olorunnipa, Robert Kagan and Josh Rogin about President Biden and Donald Trump's border visits, Vladimir Putin's nuclear threats, 'eroding' support for Ukraine across the U.S. and more. Conversation recorded on Friday, March 1, 2024.

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   TRANSCRIPT: Announcer (00:37): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Dr Wilmer Leon (00:45): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historic context in which the events take place. This will enable you to better understand and analyze these events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the issue is the Guardian and other outlets have reported that the Biden campaign has decided to jumpstart its 2024 reelection by highlighting what they perceive to be a sharp contrast with former President Trump ailing in opinion polls. Biden has decided to jumpstart this campaign with events designed to symbolize the fight for democracy and racial justice against Trump. So the question is, what are Americans to do in a 2024 election when many of them don't have faith in the process and or the system? Well, for run insight into this, let's turn to my guest. He's a scholar and activist. He's an expert in WEB Du Bois, one of the most cited Du Bois scholars in the world. He's an organizer with the Philadelphia Saturday Free School. He's Dr. Anthony Montero. Tony, welcome to Connecting the Dots podcast. Dr Anthony Monteiro (02:31): Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here Dr Wilmer Leon (02:32): With you. And let's do this as a first point here, just a little data. Joe Biden's job approval. This is according to real clear politics, 40% approve, 56% disapprove. That's a negative, almost 16 rating direction of the country. Is the country headed in the right direction? About 24% say right direction, 67% say wrong direction. It's about a negative 42% spread. Tony, your thoughts on where we are right now as we look towards November of 2024? Dr Anthony Monteiro (03:30): Well, I think we have to start with the polling numbers. Over the last, almost five months now from reputable polling companies, Biden has been losing to Trump and his favorable numbers have been in decline. In fact, in many respects, Biden's approval numbers are below 40%. The real clear politics numbers are an average. Dr Wilmer Leon (04:13): Yeah, that's an aggregator. Yes, Dr Anthony Monteiro (04:15): That's right. But I think for the most part, for the most credible polls, we're continuing to see Biden in the mid thirties. This is unprecedented for a sitting president at this stage of a campaign, Dr Wilmer Leon (04:36): Not only in the mid thirties, but heading south. He's, and no pun intended as it relates to the border, but as they would say on the corner, he's hustling backwards. Dr Anthony Monteiro (04:50): Oh, yeah. There's no question this is unprecedented. I don't think this has ever been seen in the modern history of polling presidents and their attempts at reelection. I think what the public is saying is that we don't trust Biden. His presidency has failed. Inflation is still hitting working people in the lower middle class, very hard. The jobs that they are counting as showing a vibrant economy are in many cases, gig jobs, jobs without benefits, jobs without security, and in many cases at the lower end of the minimum wage. So Dr Wilmer Leon (06:00): In fact, hang on to that point because one of the things, the misnomers that people have about these employment or job numbers is that they equate job to one person working, one person, working one job. But in this gig economy, what that now means is in many instances you have one person working multiple jobs just to remain poor When you were growing up, when I was growing up, we heard these job numbers and they usually meant one person, one job. That's no longer the case. But they don't factor that into their analysis, particularly as they're explaining these numbers to the people. So when you hear, oh, unemployment down to 3.5%, there are also a lot of other factors that go into this that don't reflect a strong economy. What they reflect is a middle class, a working class in a poor group of people that are struggling to get by. Dr Anthony Monteiro (07:23): There's no question about it. And people are saying to pollsters what you, and I know that the majority of working people, the majority of the lower middle class, are not doing good at all. People cannot afford food. And that is where the rubber meets the road, where you go to the supermarket and try to buy eggs and milk and cereal and other things that you need. And there you discover that inflation is as bad as it's ever been while there's some relief at the gas pump. But when it comes to feeding your family, things are not good when it comes to paying rent or renting an apartment. Things are bad when it comes to getting a mortgage. You can almost forget that. So the Biden campaign, who in the spring and summer of last year said they're going to run on omics until they realized that that was a sure enough loser because Biden had produced an economy which was austerity for the majority and good times and big profits for the billionaire class reflecting the fact that inequality is greater now perhaps than at any time in the last 80 years. This is a serious situation for the people. And when people say that the country is moving in the wrong direction, forgive me when 70% of them say that what they are saying is things don't look good for them and things look even worse for their children and grandchildren, that is where we're at going into perhaps the most consequential election in the modern history of the United States. Dr Wilmer Leon (09:39): In fact, to that point, there have been studies and reports out recently indicating that the American dream is dying. I want to say, and I might be slightly off on my numbers, but the point is valid, that polling those who were born in 1940, almost 90% of those born in 1940 are now doing better than their parents were able to do those born in 1980, only 50% of those polled were able to say that they're doing better than their parents did. That tells us that the American dream is dying. You mentioned last year Biden wanted to run on omics, and I have to now wonder if it's been determined that omics is no more than voodoo economics, a La George HW Bush referring to Reagan's plan. So we're talking voodoo economics 4.0. Dr Anthony Monteiro (10:47): Yeah, we're looking at something like that. But we're looking at the fact that the Biden administration and the Biden campaign have no way to achieve narrative hegemony. That is, they thought that given the fact that most of the corporate media or all of the corporate media would be a propaganda arm of the Biden administration and of his reelection campaign, and given that elites, for example, university professors, politicians, part of the religious community, certain labor leaders or most labor leaders would all be on their side, that they would be able to achieve narrative hegemony, by which I mean that what they were putting forward would dominant over what their opposition would try to put forward. So the narrative would be controlled by the Biden campaign. That has not happened, and the reason it has not happened is that the nation is in a profound crisis of legitimacy where no matter what Biden says, the results will be the same in terms of the majority of people. They don't trust Biden, they don't trust insiders. They don't trust elites. Be they university professors or presidents, be they politicians, be they church leaders, be they labor leaders, be they military leaders. People do not trust the institutions and those who lead them in this country, and therefore this point (13:02) People will vote against rather than vote for necessarily. People. I think in November, and this will gather momentum throughout this year, will kind of set into a mindset that says anybody, but those who are currently in the highest office of the country, they will vote against Biden. Biden will not be able to dig out of the hole that he's in. So I would predict that in November we will have a new president, and not just a new president, but the nation will enter upon in this year a political realignment, the likes of which we have not seen since the Franklin Roosevelt years in the presidency. Dr Wilmer Leon (14:13): I wanted to throw out one more data point on the food issue because we have been seeing stories on local media affiliates about the rise of retail theft in this country, and we've been seeing the flash mobs that run into the high-end stores and steal Gucci bags and all kind of stuff. But what's not being reported as much is theft of retail in grocery stores, people stealing food and the guardian in the UK has us to the international implications of this, Brits stealing food to sell on the black market. The UK's cost of living crisis is fueling a record surge in shoplifting as people increasingly turn to black to the black market for food, the items most commonly stolen are meat, cheese, and sweets, because those are the items that can be stolen in large quantities and can be sold on the black market. So I wanted to make that demonstrate that point to show that it's not only happening here in the United States, it's also happening to some of the US allies that are blindly following the United States down this perilous rabbit hole. And you mentioned as a fellow political scientist, we were taught people tend not to vote against things. They vote for things, but in this instance, the script is being flipped because things are so bad. That's why Biden can't run on his record. He's got to run on, I'm not Trump a negative message trying to convince people to vote against something. And so I just wanted to, oh, final point. I don't think Biden's going to be on the ticket. Dr Anthony Monteiro (16:20): Yeah, why do you say that? I think that's a possibility. But why do you say it? Dr Wilmer Leon (16:24): I say that because the numbers are so bad. I don't understand how anybody in the Democrat party elite can look at these numbers and think they've got a winning ticket. That's one point. No, Dr Anthony Monteiro (16:44): That's fine. Dr Wilmer Leon (16:45): When you're at 35% approval rating, that means that you got 65% of people that disapprove. That's a losing bet. And also with his cognitive decline, I don't see, look, they're not having any debates in the primaries. They're not having any debates. They're not allowing any Democrat challengers to challenge him. And they've also come out now and said they may not even participate in the general election debates because they know that he cannot stand on a stage unscripted for 45 minutes and engage in combat, in intellectual combat. He can't do it. I don't see him on the ticket. Dr Anthony Monteiro (17:34): Well, I would agree with you, and I think given what you just said, there's a big irony here. The Democrats are shutting down all the primary opponents for Joe Biden, even though those opponents, Marian Williams and the other guy are doing abysmally poorly. I mean there's no way they can win, but the Democrats don't even want to have a public debate with those people. So they're shutting down democracy in the name of democracy of Dr Wilmer Leon (18:16): Democracy Dr Anthony Monteiro (18:18): And the claim that Trump is a threat to our democracy, when in fact what we see is that the Biden campaign is pursuing a campaign that is anti-democratic in the primaries and in the general election and supports. This is what is also interesting, supports the two states that have already kicked Biden off the ballot and the Trump Dr Wilmer Leon (18:53): Kicked Trump off Dr Anthony Monteiro (18:54): The ballot, Trump off the ballot, forgive me, and the 17 others that have legal suits that have been filed to put him off the ballot. So here we have in the name of democracy, perhaps the most anti-democratic campaign in our history. Dr Wilmer Leon (19:20): You mentioned people not trusting in the, well, I mentioned people not trusting in the system. You mentioned that as well, and I really want people to understand this conversation is not an antibi conversation. It's not an anti or pro-Trump conversation. We're social scientists and we're looking at the data, and Pew Research Center has a poll out from September of 23, public trust in government from 1958 to 2023, public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has returned to mere record lows following a modest uptick up through 21. Currently fewer than two in 10 Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right. That's the data. That's not my opinion. That's not your opinion. That's the data. So I just wanted to throw out that data point. So the people listening to this saying, oh, these guys are going into this antibi conversation. No, Dr Anthony Monteiro (20:32): We're Dr Wilmer Leon (20:33): Just giving you the numbers. Dr Anthony Monteiro (20:35): And to your point about Biden not being on the ticket by the time of the Democratic National Convention. Dr Wilmer Leon (20:45): Now that is my opinion, but Dr Anthony Monteiro (20:47): Yeah, that's my opinion. But you have leading figures in the Democratic party calling for Biden to step aside. They're usually saying on the basis of age, but they're also saying more than that when they're not speaking publicly. A lot of this is coming from the Obama wing of the Democratic establishment. As you know, the Biden wing, which is also the Hillary Clinton wing is the most powerful side of this. However, the Obama people, especially Axelrod and probably some others have come Dr Wilmer Leon (21:41): Out. David Ignatius, Dr Anthony Monteiro (21:43): David Ignatius. Well, definitely I would say, but I would say he's not with the Obama wing. Oh, Dr Wilmer Leon (21:48): No, no, but no, I was just saying he wrote, he came out before Axelrod Dr Anthony Monteiro (21:53): Did. That's right. That's right. And so these figures are saying Biden can't win. Robert Kagan who writes mainly on foreign policy is saying that for the sake of national security, Biden should step aside and allow a more capable Democrat to challenge Trump. But the thing is, the question is will Biden do it and can he do it? What do they do? Who do they turn to if Biden is not the candidate? Kamala Harris, certainly not. No, I just don't. I mean maybe the governor of California, but besides winning California, which Democrats will win anyway, what does he bring to the conversation and to the contest for the presidency? I just don't think they have an alternative to Biden. They're going to have to go with him, come hell or high water. And that is the paradox, the dilemma of the Democratic Party at this moment. (23:17) And to add more hurt to the situation with the war in Gaza and people looking at babies and children and mothers being bombed, Biden has now lost the youth vote. Trump is leading him by six percentage points among young people. I don't know when in recent history a Republican has won the youth vote, maybe Reagan, but Democrats almost could take young people as a part of their coalition, and now they are bleeding. Black voters, especially black male voters who I contend are the angriest part of the electorate, the most alienated, the most angry. And those who say, for example, if you are in the barbershop, you might hear the conversation where one of the people says, I am for anybody except Biden, and I'm for the one that the Biden people and the establishment hate the most. If Biden hates them, I can see a path to aligning or voting for them. Dr Wilmer Leon (24:55): You mentioned who do the Democrats turn to in a baseball analogy? I will say they got no arms in the bullpen. They're calling the bullpen and nobody's answering the phone. But I think the only options they have are Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. And I'm not saying that this is a winning ticket. What I'm saying is any port in a storm, and they don't have many options here. Gavin Newsom is young. Gavin Newsom is white. Gavin Newsom looks great in a suit, and he's the governor of California. (25:49) So let me say he checks off those boxes. Gretchen Whitmer is young, white female, fairly attractive, and the governor of Michigan, which is a state they can't afford to lose. And right now to your point, based upon Biden's approach to the genocide and Gaza, they've alienated African-Americans in Michigan. They've alienated Arabs in Michigan. So by putting Gretchen Whitmer on the ticket that might enable them to salvage Michigan, and by throwing Kamala Harris overboard because she's a big fat zero, by putting another female on the ticket, they may be able to offset some of that ire from females or from women who are angry about Kamala being jettison. So I'm not saying it's going to win. When I look at the options, when you have no options, that's your only option. Dr Anthony Monteiro (27:00): It's a desperate situation. And then you got Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Cornell West, and who knows who else. If there's a no labels candidate like Joe Manchin or the former governor of Maryland and they're nipping at Biden's coattails, head up, Biden Trump, it gets close. But if you throw these independents in there, Trump goes ahead. It seems like the independents take more from Biden than they do from Trump. Trump. It's a very desperate situation for Biden and the elite of the ruling class, the ruling elite, they have no answers. It's just all over the place. The president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haes, went so far as to say the greatest threat to America's national security is not Russia or China. It's the rebellion of the people here at home who are against war, who are against war spending when there is not hardly enough being done for the people here and who are angry about open borders. I mean, it's a situation that I don't admire the people who have to live it and have to try to work through it. It's a lose lose situation, I think for the Democrats. Dr Wilmer Leon (28:48): I want to mention one more name, and we mentioned Kamala Harris, and so there are those who are listening that they're saying, wait a minute, why are y'all saying they're going to throw her overboard? Well, as the sous chef of the word salad, I don't know that Kamala Harris brings anything of substance to the game. She had to leave the campaign early and she didn't even make it to the first debate. Well, she did make it to the first debate, but she didn't make it to any primaries. She couldn't get 1% of the vote. So again, folks, this ain't anti Kamala. I'm looking at the numbers and the African-American community didn't want her. Why is the nation going to want her again, sous chef for the word salad? I don't see it. But you were also talking about people, black males and others voting for Trump. How much of this do you think will be actually people crossing over party lines versus people just deciding to stay home as a friend of mine says they're going to stay home and rake leaves, they're not going to turn out to vote. Dr Anthony Monteiro (30:17): Well, we see it here in Philadelphia. We just went through a mayoral election, the Democratic primary, which is the major election that chooses the mayor because the city is so overwhelmingly democratic and the leading candidate, one of the two or three leading candidates was a black woman. And in spite of that, 75% of registered black voters did not turn out when it got to the general election where her victory was more or less guaranteed. Again, only about 25 or 26% of registered black voters turned out, and this is for black woman, which would've made her the first black woman mayor in Philadelphia. Most black voters didn't see it as a historic opportunity to do anything. But that is prologue for what will happen in this November, black Philadelphia whose turnout decides which way the state of Pennsylvania goes in presidential elections, I would suggest to you will not turn out inadequate numbers to deliver Pennsylvania, which is a major battleground state to Biden. (31:52) They are fed up, they're tired, and in fact, they're sick and tired of being used by Democrats who once the election is over, look the other way, in fact run in the opposite direction from the black community and so on. All of the issues that people are concerned about in their day-to-day life, the Democrats who run this city have done horribly for people. And the separation between the Democratic party elite and politicians and the masses of black people who regularly vote overwhelmingly for Democrats is so wide that the way I see it right now, Biden would have a very difficult time winning the state of Pennsylvania. Dr Wilmer Leon (32:57): What do you think about the discussion that if in fact he loses or whoever they decide to put on the ticket does not prevail, they're going to blame black people for failing to turn out? We're seeing a number of articles. There was a New York Times article, black voters shift to Trump, why black, Latino and Asian voters are leaving the Democratic Party as black voters drift to Trump. Biden's allies say they have work to do. Some black men lose faith in Biden and Democrats In 2024, I remember the Hillary Clinton campaign, and when she lost, there were many and many African-Americans and African-American women of Democratic note that were coming out and saying we did not turn out. Therefore, we got stuck with Trump never taking into account that Hillary Clinton ran a horrific campaign in Philadelphia. She ran a horrific campaign. She didn't campaign in Michigan. She rolled out Barack Obama the last two or three days of the election, just as my older brother would say, just felony stupid kind of things, but then turned around and blamed us. Your thoughts, Dr Anthony Monteiro (34:32): My is so what I mean the blame game is going to be played however the election goes. And I think as a black man, most black men don't care anymore who blames us for whatever. We are the most politically alienated group in the electorate. We feel that we have nothing to lose by abandoning the Democratic party, which most black men feel, especially as you hit into the working class and the working poor, most black men feel that we have gotten nothing from the Democratic party. And let me tell you another thing, black men have a longer memory than people give us credit for. We haven't forgotten the crime Bill of 1994 and Joe Biden being the major spokesman for it publicly and in the Senate. So we haven't forgotten that. We haven't forgotten mass incarceration. We haven't forgotten the unequal treatment that black men experience in every sphere of social life in this country. There is deep resentment among black men. Polls can't fully detect and explain what black men feel, but it's a deep resentment and a sense of betrayal. So I think black men, no matter what elites say, don't care anymore. Dr Wilmer Leon (36:29): So now the Biden administration has decided that they're going to, they're going to retool. They're going to talk about democracy and saving democracy when in fact, not having democratic primaries, not allowing candidates on the ballot to run against Joe Biden not having debates is anti-democratic. So they want to save democracy by being anti-democratic. Help me understand that. But people also don't, probably many never knew and don't remember that after the 2020 election, Joe Biden was basically forced to have a meeting with African-American leadership, those that were responsible for putting him over the top. It was probably about 10 days, maybe two weeks after his inauguration that they finally got him into the room. And the readout from the meeting was that he was so disrespectful to the members of leadership that Reverend Sharpton and so many others, mignon Moore and all of these black Democrats begged him for the meeting. He comes to the meeting and I think it was a teleconference that they had or a Zoom meeting, and folks had to pull his coat and say, Hey, man. Instead of the leadership hanging up on him saying, Hey, dude, you talking to the wrong people, they, of course, they went ahead and took the whipping, but just another data point. So now they want to come out and talk about saving democracy and racism under Donald Trump, Dr Anthony Monteiro (38:27): Why people are not going to buy it. The whole country is in a state of protest against the establishment. I don't think people understand this very well. A crisis of legitimacy means that the people do not accept the leaders of the society. And that means in universities, it means politicians, it means journalists. It means wherever a dominant elite figures run things, people reject them, soundly reject them. I always mention the Italian revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci who said from a prison cell where he was confined by Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy in the 1930s, Graham, she said, the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born. I think in this country we see that the old system of political rule of the organization of political power is dying. However, I do see that the new is being born and it's from the bottom up, not from the top down. (40:03) And if you are a black leader who is connected to white elites, black folks see you as much illegitimate as the white power structure. They don't see a difference between the black leadership class as it is now called and the white establishment. So black people do not generally protest blacks in high spaces being fired by whites that control those spaces because they don't see those people as black in the sense of standing up for ordinary black people. So what is the end goal? What is the objective of this logic? It is a profound political realignment of the country. You see it in the labor movement. Labor leaders take one position and all the workers in those unions vote in the opposite way. Not all, but the majority of them vote opposite to what the leaders say or how the leaders say they should vote. That is a crisis of leadership, a crisis of legitimacy. (41:32) The same true in the black community. Most black leaders, the overwhelming majority of so-called black leaders are going to come out and say to black people, we should vote for Biden. I would say a huge part of the black electorate will not vote, and a considerable part of the black electorate will vote for Trump or one of the independent candidates, either Cornell West or JFK Jr or whoever else is out there. They're in rebellion, in the labor movement, in the black community, in the Mexican and Hispanic communities. There's a rebellion against the established order and the elites can't rule. They're not trusted. We have not seen this. We have not seen this, I don't know, even in the time of the Civil War, if it got this bad. Now, desperate times often produces desperate measures. Let's hope that the elites, especially those institutionalized in the deep state, don't attempt to do anything crazy like a provocation that could be used to justify calling the election off or a provocation that could lead to a major war, let us say with Iran or something serious with China where they could declare a national emergency and say that if Biden does not remain in office, the nation faces a foreign threat that could undermine our nation. (43:47) I don't rule any of that out. I think the easy way would be to remove Biden and put somebody else as the candidate. But that does not guarantee very much Gavin Newsom or anyone else might not do as well as Biden can do, even though they look good in a suit. But I think it's a more than desperate situation. It is an existential and a systemic crisis for the ruling elite for the political order as we have known it. And so Biden and knows who are the elites. The Democratic party is the party of elites. In fact, the two parties are almost the direct opposite of what they were 50 years ago where the Democrats were a party of black people in the working class and women and so on. Now, it is becoming the opposite that the Democratic Party is the party of the rich. (44:57) It is the richest party, the most wealthy party perhaps in human history. There's nothing like it. Whereas the Republicans have become what the Democrats were. And so it is a deep undoing of what was and the possible replacement with something that we have not seen since The Great Depression in Franklin Roosevelt. His administration was the result of a political realignment, and his presidency redefined what the Democratic Party was leading to John F. Kennedy. And finally, the alignment of the Democratic Party with the Civil rights movement. That was the last time we saw anything like this. But we are coming close to that happening similarly in this period, Dr Wilmer Leon (46:07): And you mentioned Black Elite coming out and telling African-Americans that they need to vote for the Democratic party, and let's unpack quickly what they're advocating that we vote for. They're advocating that we spend more money in Ukraine, that we waste more money in Ukraine, that we pay for the salaries of Ukrainian civil servants, that we pay for the retirement plans of Ukrainian civil servants that we pay for the healthcare for Ukrainians. We don't have those things here. That's when the Black Caucus votes in favor of this funding. This is what they're voting for. They're voting for us to send more weapons to commit genocide in Gaza. Your taxpayer dollars are paying for genocide. It's paying to try their damnedest to start a fight with China. We haven't won a fight since 1953. Dr Anthony Monteiro (47:23): Yeah, that's true. Dr Wilmer Leon (47:24): Unless you want to throw in Grenada and Panama. Dr Anthony Monteiro (47:31): Yeah, I think we won that, right? Maybe you could throw Iraq in there. No, Dr Wilmer Leon (47:38): That was an ass whooping too. Dr Anthony Monteiro (47:40): Oh, I didn't know that. I was going to say I wouldn't include Korea in there because that was a standoff. Dr Wilmer Leon (47:47): That fight still hasn't ended. Dr Anthony Monteiro (47:49): Yeah, that's right. Dr Wilmer Leon (47:51): So you mentioned Gramsci. I'll mention Fred Hampton as he said. That's why we come up with answers that don't answer explanations, that don't explain, and you come up with conclusions that don't conclude. When you have members of the caucus that want to convince black people that we need to pay Kenya to invade Haiti, these are the things that they are advocating that we do. And how do I know that? Because that's the stuff they voted for. Again, you just got to look at the data, Dr. Montero. Dr Anthony Monteiro (48:33): Well, of course, and I think, well, we've been talking about these matters for a long time. In a sense, the majority of black people have caught up to where we have been, and they don't trust the Black Congressional Caucus. They might sometimes trust their individual Congress person, but not the caucus, not the Congress Dr Wilmer Leon (49:05): As a body, Dr Anthony Monteiro (49:06): As a body. That's what I'm saying. Right. And certainly the more they learn about their individual Congress person, the less they will trust them. And you are right. Black people have returned after the Obama years to our historic position of being anti-war and anti-military spending, and most in the Congressional Black Caucus are big military spenders. They are big spenders on aid to Ukraine and now to the genocide in Gaza. Well, some people say that the Jewish lobby or better the Israeli lobby in the United States controls the Congressional Black Caucus and many of the mayors, black mayors in the United States, for example, the one in New York and the one here in Philadelphia who are embarrassments given the historic peace attitude, anti-war attitude of black folk. Dr Wilmer Leon (50:20): So really quickly to that point, help me with what I perceive to be hypocrisy here. We get our shorts all in a bunch when Russia is tampering with our election and our hair gets set on fire. China is tampering with our election, but somehow the Israeli lobby can spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying votes and influencing electoral outcomes at the state and local level. I see that as being somewhat hypocritical. Dr. Montero, what Say you? Dr Anthony Monteiro (50:59): I agree with you, Dr. It's profoundly hypocritical, but isn't that what American politics has descended into where money talks? The Congress for the most part, is bought and paid for, and it is really a grotesque thing for we black people to look at black elected officials who overwhelmingly are elected because of the black voter, and we have to be for real about it. We didn't actually, as a people have the vote until 1965, and now the people who have benefited from the struggle for voting rights and benefited from black people voting in hope, that by putting black people in high places, some things can change. We are now looking at, as you say, a hypocritical group of opportunist who dance to the piper that pays the most. Dr Wilmer Leon (52:18): That's why I called it. I wrote a piece called The Dangers of Menstrual Diplomacy. Dr Anthony Monteiro (52:24): I saw that. Yes. Dr Wilmer Leon (52:25): Because it's basically a black face on white folks foolishness. Dr Anthony Monteiro (52:31): That's right. Dr Wilmer Leon (52:32): Really quickly shifting gears are what has happened with the resignation of Harvard's president, Charlene Gay, and I bring that up because she's one of a few that have lost their positions recently. Do you see this as an attack on free speech? Do you see this as an attack on intellectualism at the academic level? Dr Anthony Monteiro (53:06): Well, yes, but it did not start with the president of Harvard or the president of the University of Pennsylvania or of MIT or the faculty at Cornell University or wherever. The universities, especially the elite ones, had been captured by the billionaire class some time ago. If you were looking for freedom of speech, maybe the last place that you should have gone would've been to a university. The professoriate has literally been subdued, silenced. They know how to keep their mouth shut, and they know that if they speak out on issues, they shouldn't speak out on the Palestinian cause, that they will be fired and driven out of the university and driven into poverty. Now as to the first black president of Harvard University, she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, and in it, she drew attention to the fact that what she was going through was much larger than her and much larger than Harvard University. (54:40) And it was a matter of speech and the rights of students to speak as well as the rights of faculty. But I cannot believe that she did not know what she was getting herself into when she was made the president of Harvard, she had been around Harvard for some years. She knew, for example, that Cornell West was denied tenure while she was there. She wasn't president, but she was in the administration. Cornell West was denied tenure because of his views on Palestine. You knew that. So why is it all right to reduce Cornell West and to diminish him as a scholar and a public intellectual? And nothing is said by most of the black faculty, if not all of the black faculty and administration at Harvard, but suddenly, when it happens to you, it's something that we should all rise up and be concerned about. No, Harvard had done away with effective free speech several decades ago. The American University is a scandal of corruption, of money controlling what goes on of professors and departments being bought. It's a scandal. So yes, she is right. It is an attack upon free speech. But has it been free speech any of the time that Professor Gay has been at Harvard? I don't think so, Dr Wilmer Leon (56:49): And I go back to the George W. Bush administration. When Dick Cheney was vice president, his wife Liz, was one of those crusaders against liberal thought in academia, and I can't remember whether it was the Heritage Foundation that she was part of, but she led a crusade across this country getting what they deemed to be progressive thinking academics removed from their institution. So this goes back quite a while. Dr Anthony Monteiro (57:32): Yeah, no, when you said his wife, I think that's his daughter, Dr Wilmer Leon (57:36): Liz. His daughter is Lynn. Dr Anthony Monteiro (57:39): Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Well, Dr Wilmer Leon (57:41): Either way. Either way. It's either Lynn or Liz. Dr Anthony Monteiro (57:44): Yeah, Lynn or Liz. Okay. Dr Wilmer Leon (57:46): One of the Dr Anthony Monteiro (57:46): Two. I recall that very vividly. I know I had a situation at Temple University where what I stood for and the speech that I was trying to defend was not acceptable. Dr Wilmer Leon (58:05): Lynn Cheney, you're right. It's Lynn Cheney. Dr Anthony Monteiro (58:08): Yeah. It was not acceptable to the head of the department, and so I was fired. So this is not new. I'm saying to those who are now saying, well, I'm a victim because it happened to me. Well, why were you silent when it was happening to other people? Dr Wilmer Leon (58:30): It happened to me too. Dr Anthony Monteiro (58:32): Yeah, it happened to you too at a historically black college to show you that it does not end at the color line. And black people have learned well from white people how to silence, freedom of speech. But yeah, the American University has to be remade. It is a corrupt enterprise. It is a billionaire's playground. Universities are more interested in gentrification and building up their endowments than they are with educating students educat or discovering new truths. I think there was a recent article in one of the major newspapers, the New York Times, Washington Post or somewhere that said that at Yale University, everybody is given an A one. It's less work for the professors. They don't have to grade papers and so on, and everybody walks away happy. And so we find at universities this transactional relationship between professors and students. Students say, I'm going into debt to get a degree at a university, and the professor work for me, and you must give me what I want because I'm paying for an A or high grade. (01:00:03) I read someone somewhere where Professor said that, well, I gave a student an A, and they came to him. The student came to him and said, well, why didn't you give me credit for that outside presentation I gave? He said, because we don't give a pluses. Well, you could have made an exception. In my case, it's just that bad. And professor Gay, I think there's the other question of her scholarship and whether she plagiarized, and I think the university has acknowledged, or the committee that was looking into it, acknowledge that in fact, plagiarism did occur, but let's keep it real. That's normal in the academy where careers and tenure are the most important thing. So a professor might write on a very obscure matter that is published in a relatively obscure journal, which claims to be peer review and use that obscure article, which may be plagiarized for tenure. (01:01:27) And so the question is, what is going on among elites? Let's be real. The president of Harvard is part of the elite class. Professor Gay, as was the case with the president of the University of Pennsylvania, got caught up in elite conflict having to do with the question of Israel and Zionism, and whether or not Jews are a protected group, who stand above society and whose interest have to be defended. Even if in defending the rights of Jews and Zionists, you violate the right to freedom of speech of students and professors. That's what they got caught up in and that's what brought them down. Dr Wilmer Leon (01:02:36): And by defending that, you also are defending genocide. Dr Anthony Monteiro (01:02:39): Yes. Oh, no question. Dr Wilmer Leon (01:02:41): You mentioned plagiarism. Well, Joe Biden has plagiarized. He became president, so that seems to be the order of the day. Professor, Dr. Anthony Montero, my brother, thank you so much for your time. I greatly, greatly appreciate you joining me today, Anthony Montero Dr Anthony Monteiro (01:03:06): And thank you and good luck with your podcast Will. Dr Wilmer Leon (01:03:09): Amen. With interviews with brothers like you, this is nothing but success. I got to thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Woman Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'll see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a good one. Remember, folks, that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history, converge talk without analysis is just chatter. We don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace. I'm out  

On Washington Post Live's “First Look,” associate editor Jonathan Capehart speaks with The Post's Dan Balz, Robert Kagan and Jennifer Rubin about the final stretch before the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump's courtroom appearances and the increasing number of political threats. Conversation recorded on Friday, Jan. 12, 2024.

We discuss the Saturday Free School on the cusp of the Year of James Baldwin and in the throes of the deepening political crisis in the U.S. We also discuss Robert Kagan's recent article in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...

SERIES 2 EPISODE 87: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Dictator-On-Day-One Trump continues to measure the windows for the new curtains in his White House, and I don't know if that has been PROCESSED on the fascist side or if we have properly done so on the, you know, Non-Dictatorship Side but it is increasingly obvious that Trump is increasingly confident that he will seize power next year. That is the ONLY possible explanation for what he has now done: leaking, to the gullible and willing stenographers from Axios Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei for publication yesterday, a set of choices for his administration that would make Jair Bolsonaro blush: Vice President Tucker Carlson, Chief of Staff Steve Bannon, CIA Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Stephen Miller, or Attorney General Mike Davis, or Attorney General J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Tom Cotton, Secretary of Denial Kari Lake, Secretaries-of-to-be-announced Kristi Noem, Byron Donalds, Johnny McEntee, and of course Secretary of Lecterns Sarah Huckabee.  We will never fully now, not even after the autopsy, what PRECISELY is wrong with Trump's brain but it seems clear that whatever it is one of its symptoms is that he must convince himself that he IS winning, WILL win, will ALWAYS win. Jack Smith is right and he IS a serial election denier but it's deeper than that: at his advanced age and with his advanced diseases, if he ever believed he was defeated, he would die – figuratively or maybe literally. So the greatest relief he could possibly have would be to believe, 334 days before it happens, that he has already won the 2024 election and that is how he is behaving and I'm not sure WHAT to do with that but it HAS to make him sloppy and vulnerable and better minds than ours can problem figure out which soft spot on his head to PUSH. What VALUE is there in saying “here's Tucker Carlson: psychopathic white supremacist whose career stability makes Keith Olbermann's look like that of Bob Cratchit – I'm going to put him in government. Along with Kari Lake, whose highest elected office was weekend weather-girl in Rock Island.” It's the kind of things you do NOT to rally your base and NOT to scare your opponents but because you really can't STOP yourself from doing them, and suddenly you are more convinced than ever than you can get away with them. And if that isn't a motto for the entire Trump Nazi Party I don't know what is. PLUS: Matt Gaetz is about to get Robespierred, J.D. Vance wants to get a head start on prosecutor writers. And competing January 6 Truthers fight it out over whose bullshit is true. (17:35) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: MAGA Congresswoman McClain makes a fool of herself but not as much as would-be MAGA Congressman Philip Sean Grillo does. The NFL coach who really doesn't have to "hand it to" the 9/11 plotters. Poor Nick Fuentes and Vivek Ramaswamy pushing white supremacy without realizing that if the Trumpers run out of brown immigrants, the next people they'll purge will be... Fuentes and Ramaswamy. B-Block (33:31) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Mr. Preble Gets Rid Of His Wife C-Block (43:32) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A Box To Hide InSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's episode:Matt Taibbi and the anti-censorship perspective of "the left"Liz Cheney worries about Trump as dictator book tour / "presidential campaign" on CBSVictoria Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, writes a 6000+ word op-ed for WaPo about how Trump will be an unstoppable tyrant.Connect with Be Reasonable: https://linktr.ee/imyourmoderatorHear the show when it's released. Become a paid subscriber at imyourmoderator.substack.comVisit the show's sponsors:Make life more comfortable: mypillow.com/reasonableDiversify your assets: kirkelliottphd.com/reasonableOther ways to support the work:ko-fi.com/imyourmoderatorbtc via coinbase: 3MEh9J5sRvMfkWd4EWczrFr1iP3DBMcKk5Merch site: https://cancelcouture.myspreadshop.com/Follow the podcast info stream: t.me/imyourmoderatorOther social platforms: Twitter, Truth Social, Gab, Rumble, or Gettr - @imyourmoderator Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/be-reasonable-with-your-moderator-chris-paul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode:Matt Taibbi and the anti-censorship perspective of "the left"Liz Cheney worries about Trump as dictator book tour / "presidential campaign" on CBSVictoria Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, writes a 6000+ word op-ed for WaPo about how Trump will be an unstoppable tyrant.Connect with Be Reasonable: https://linktr.ee/imyourmoderatorHear the show when it's released. Become a paid subscriber at imyourmoderator.substack.comVisit the show's sponsors:Make life more comfortable: mypillow.com/reasonableDiversify your assets: kirkelliottphd.com/reasonableOther ways to support the work:ko-fi.com/imyourmoderatorbtc via coinbase: 3MEh9J5sRvMfkWd4EWczrFr1iP3DBMcKk5Merch site: https://cancelcouture.myspreadshop.com/Follow the podcast info stream: t.me/imyourmoderatorOther social platforms: Twitter, Truth Social, Gab, Rumble, or Gettr - @imyourmoderator Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/be-reasonable-with-your-moderator-chris-paul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Headlines are everywhere: The Washington Post: "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending." The Nation: "This is How Trump Becomes a Dictator." The Guardian: "The US could be under a rightwing dictator." Vanity Fair: "Trump Makes it Clear He'd be an Out and Out Dictator if Reelected in 2024." The Atlantic, The New York Times, and, of course, TV News have all written and produced stories that lay out how Trump's people plan to Hijack our Republic and chang our form of Government from Democratic to Dictatorship. Today, some of Trump's allies pushed back on social media. Senator JD Vance wrote, "Everyone needs to take a chill pill." Those seven words aren't comforting when all you have to do is log on to the PROJECT 2025 website. You can find a visible step-by-step plan to reshape the executive branch of the US Federal Government if Republicans/Trump wins the Presidential Election. The plan includes consolidating the power now shared by three branches of Government into a stronger Executive Branch. Hmmm? Rewriting the Constitution to destroy "Separation of Powers?" It sounds very "Dictator-leaning" to me. For this Political Woman Podcast Episode, I share parts of the 6,000-word plus Opinion Essay by Robert Kagan. "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending." Please Subscribe. I'll have more information and links on gloriamoraga.com.

My new book Reframe Your Brain, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/3bwr9fm8 Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Politics, Date Cost, Bill Maher, MK-Ultra, Klaus Schwab, WEF, Bill Ackman, Harvard Anti-Semitism, Claudine Gay, Dana Bash, Trump Dictator Accusations, President Trump, Tucker Carlson, Jared Kushner, Governor Abbott, Elon Musk, Cenk Uygur, Thomas Sowell, Liz Cheney, TikTok Ban, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland, Mike Benz, Hamas Death Count, Scott Adams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

Dueling columnists offer vastly different predictions of the 2024 presidential election. Robert Kagan, in the Washington Post, says It's inevitable that Donald Trump will be elected once again. He argues that there is too much money to be made off of Trump. Glynn Wilson, with The New American Journal, disagrees. He says he predicted Trump's win in 2016, his loss in 2020 and that there is no way Americans would select Trump in 2024 or at any other time. He predicts Trump will be facing jail time next year, and Americans will turn away from him.We'll welcome in our favorite Britisher Anthony Davis, with MeidasTouch to discuss Here's a link to Anthony's podcast for reference: https://youtu.be/_w9kRUu7Nnc?si=_KbaItXRQRUGh-9-his and more. We lighten things up with comedian and actor Taylor Williamson. He will be at the Punchline in San Francisco on December 6th-9th. His new comedy special is also being released on YouTube December 6th.. It's rebranded and ready for action: Mark's True Crime Corner with Courtney debuts today. We love the animals here at The Mark Thompson Show. Karen Dawn with Dawn Watch will join u

On Washington Post Live's “First Look,” Jonathan Capehart speaks with The Post's Marianna Sotomayor, Hugh Hewitt and Robert Kagan about the Biden administration's response to the Israel-Gaza war and the leadership vacuum facing House Republicans. Conversation recorded on Friday, October 13, 2023.

In this episode, three of our most cogent and influential writers on global affairs and history – Anne Applebaum, Robert Kagan, and Evan Osnos – discuss the geopolitical ramifications of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing battle between democracy and authoritarianism, Vladimir Putin's endgame, China's power plays, and the future of the Western alliance, among other urgent questions. Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the author of such books as RED FAMINE: STALIN'S WAR ON UKRAINE; GULAG: A HISTORY; and, most recently, TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE SEDUCTIVE LURE OF AUTHORITARIANSIM. Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at Brookings, a contributing columnist at the Washington Post, and the author, most recently, of THE GHOST AT THE FEAST: AMERICA AND THE COLLAPSE OF WORLD ORDER, 1900-1941. Evan Osnos is a New Yorker staff writer, and the author of WILDLAND: THE MAKING OF AMERICA'S FURY as well as the National Book Award-winning AGE OF AMBITION: CHASING FORTUNE, TRUTH AND FAITH IN THE NEW CHINA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ar West Ltd., World Anti-Communist League (WACL). private military companies (PMCs), private intelligence companies (PICs), Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists -Bandera faction (OUN-B), Banderites, Stephan Banderas, Banderite links to Far West, Banderite infiltration of Ukraine's government, Mykola Lebed, Prolog Research Corporation, Roman Kupchinsky, Oleksandr Skipalskyi, Vladimir Filin, GUR (Ukraine's military intelligence), SBU (Ukraine's CIA), Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko, Kateryna Yushchenko, Lev Dobriasnky, Roman Zvarych, 2008 Russo-Georgian War, John McCain, Barack Obama, 2008 US presidential election, Far West's links to both candidates in 2008 US election, Joe Biden, Robert Gates, Wagner Group, Euromaiden, Paul Manafort, Angola, UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, Executive Outcomes, southern Africa in Reagan-Bush years, Manafort's role in Africa, Oleg Deripaska, Manafort's role in Ukraine, Polina Yumasheva, Tayana Yumasheva, Boris Yeltsin, the Yeltsin "Family," Dmitry Firtash, Viktor Yanukovych, Rosukrenergo, Yulia Tymoshenko, Semyon Mogilevich, Robert Maxwell, Svoboda party, Chechnyan Wars, Abkhazia region of Georgia, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland, Mikheil Saavashvili, David J. Kramer, Project for a New American Century, Paula Dobriansky, Randy Scheunemann, Christopher Steele, Steele dossier, Kramer's role in leaking Steele dossier, Russiagate, Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Fiona Hill, Fritz Ermarth, Al Gore, Al Gore's Russiangate (1999) and Far West's role, Burisma, PrivatGroup, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Oleksandr Turchynov, Petro Poroshenko, Kaalbye Group, Zelensky, Cofer Black, Erik Prince, Blackwater, Hunter Biden, Arkady Babchenko, Vyacheslav Pivovarnik, Vladislav Surkov, false flag, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner "coup," Obama's détente with Russia sabotaged, Trump's set-upMusic by: Keith Allen Dennishttps://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/Additional Music by: Chay & the Hostageshttps://chaythehostages.bandcamp.com/track/bluephoria Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Far West Ltd., private military companies, PMCs, World Anti-Communist League, WACL, Ukraine, Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Captive Nations, Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America, UCCA, Atlantic Council, Heritage Foundation, World Economic Forum, Lev Dobriansky, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Trilateral Commission, decline of the TriLats, Paula Dobriansky, Project for a New American Century, "soft coup"/"velvet coup"/"color revolution," Gene Sharp, National Endowment for Democracy, Peter Ackerman, weaponization of democracy, velvet coups undermining democracy, velvet coups fueling totalitarianism/authoritarian governments, George Soros, velvet coups and low intensity conflict, velvet coups and the Republican Party, January 6th, Jan6th as velvet coup, Kateryna Yushchenko, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Banderites, OUN-B, Kateryna Yushchenko's family ties to the OUN-B and WACL, Far West's role in Yushchenko's administration, "Ritchie Boys"/Military Intelligence Service (MIS), MIS' links to counterinsurgency/Phoenix Program, MIS' links to Charles Manson, Russo-Georgian War, John McCain, Far West's role in Russo-Georgia War, Russo-Georgian War as false flag to get McCain elected, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland, Barrack Obama, Joe Biden, Far West courts Joe BidenMusic by Keith Allen Dennis:https://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/ Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WARNING: The following episode contains multiple references to a certain American president who shall not be named. Due to the high volume of mentions, The Dispatch production team used discretion in playing the musical cue which normally follows all such mentions. We apologize in advance. On today's Remnant, Jonah is joined by Robert Kagan—leading scholar of foreign policy and senior fellow at the reviled Brookings Institution, where the sweet taste of candy never gets old—to discuss his new beach read, a 700-page history of America's role in the world in the first half of the 20th century. Their conversation covers everything from the origins of the League of Nations to the wackiness of Charles Beard, with some fiendishly nerdy musings on isolationism, nativism, and conservatism mixed in for good measure. Predictably, Jonah does not make good on his initial promise to “not get too deep into the weeds.” Show Notes: -Due to the insane amount of "Wilson" name drops in this episode, there will only be one Wilson theme music play -The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of the World Order, 1900-1941 -The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History -American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis -“Challenging the U.S. Is a Historic Mistake” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The period between World War I and World War II has long been a reference point in foreign policy debates, yet much about the period remains in dispute. Why did the United States turn away from internationalism after the First World War? Could the US have shaped an enduring liberal world order in the 1920s? To discuss these questions, we are joined by Robert Kagan, the historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. According to Kagan, Usually the peace is lost at a time when the threats are not obvious, and the need to do something is not obvious. Drawing on his recent book The Ghost at the Feast, Kagan highlights the centrality of American leadership to any peaceful world order, and contends it was not inevitable the US would turn away from Europe and Asia in the 1920s. He draws particular attention to the interrelation of domestic politics to foreign policy, and considers the possibility of how under different domestic circumstances Woodrow Wilson's internationalism might have succeeded. Kagan points to an enduring paradox of American foreign policy: Americans will not tolerate a real serious assault on liberalism in the world writ large, but they are perfectly willing to ignore what's going on until that challenge appears unmistakably—and they feel they have no choice. Yet the decisions of the 1920s and 1930s, and of the last eighty years, reveal the profound consequences of inaction as well as action.

The period between World War I and World War II has long been a reference point in foreign policy debates, yet much about the period remains in dispute. Why did the United States turn away from internationalism after the First World War? Could the US have shaped an enduring liberal world order in the 1920s? To discuss these questions, we are joined by Robert Kagan, the historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. According to Kagan, Usually the peace is lost at a time when the threats are not obvious, and the need to do something is not obvious. Drawing on his recent book The Ghost at the Feast, Kagan highlights the centrality of American leadership to any peaceful world order, and contends it was not inevitable the US would turn away from Europe and Asia in the 1920s. He draws particular attention to the interrelation of domestic politics to foreign policy, and considers the possibility of how under different domestic circumstances Woodrow Wilson's internationalism might have succeeded. Kagan points to an enduring paradox of American foreign policy: Americans will not tolerate a real serious assault on liberalism in the world writ large, but they are perfectly willing to ignore what's going on until that challenge appears unmistakably—and they feel they have no choice. Yet the decisions of the 1920s and 1930s, and of the last eighty years, reveal the profound consequences of inaction as well as action.

The role of the United States in the world is in question but it isn't the first time. David talked with Robert Kagan author of the new book "The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941" and what lessons we can take for it into our current moment. What pushed America into its super powered status? What resonances does an "America First" foreign policy have with his point in history? Find out the answer to these and other questions during this informative conversation.z Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to The Realignment to access our exclusive Q&A episodes and support the show: https://realignment.supercast.com/.REALIGNMENT NEWSLETTER: https://therealignment.substack.com/JOIN MARSHALL & SAAGAR AT OUR LIVE CONFERENCE IN DC ON 1/25/2023: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/realignment-live-tickets-443348436107?aff=erelexpmltPURCHASE BOOKS AT OUR BOOKSHOP: https://bookshop.org/shop/therealignmentEmail us at: realignmentpod@gmail.comRobert Kagan, author of The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941, joins The Realignment to discuss how the U.S. responded to the collapse of world order during and after WWI, how the acquisition of economic and military power permanently shifted America's relationship to Europe and Asia, debates over intervention, and how the pre-WWII period rhymes with today's conflicts.