SIO66: North Korea and the REAL Trump

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 66. I'm your host Thomas Smith. I've got so much I want to talk about today. Day. Several things. I suppose three main things. First is I've been wanting to talk about the leaks of the transcripts of Trump's phone calls with Turnbull and Peña Nieto, the leaders of Mexico and Australia. They really, really were eye-opening, or at least eye-confirming, sight-confhirming. And it's something I want to talk About. And It feeds into what's going on in North Korea. I also want to talk about the fact that the State Department has been gutted by Tillerson at a crucial time, so there's a lot to go into there. I want to talk about what that means in terms of what Trump is actually doing regarding North Korea and I guess how scared we should be.

0:01:36 Thomas: So all kinds of stuff to get to. I've got all kinds of links and sources for you. It's one of my favorite kinds of episodes to do where I've done a lot of research and and tied it all together, and hopefully presenting you guys some useful information. So let's get into it. Let's talk about these phone calls.

0:01:57 Thomas: So it turns out the real Trump, you know, because there's the Trump that we see in the media, there's Trump in the debates, making comments about potentially his penis size, and threatening to sexually harass, or bragging about sexual assault. There's that Trump. And then it turns OUT behind the scenes, there's another Trump. And this Trump is exactly the same as the Trump in front of the scene. So they're the same guy is the thing. So to cut to the chase, that's to give away the ending, because there was a time where reasonable people could and did disagree about this very thing. There are people to this day, by the way, and not all of them Trump apologists. There are there are people who are it's kind of in the middle, who will insist there's a different Trump behind the scenes.

0:02:46 Thomas: And these phone calls show, the leaked transcripts of these phone calls, show, I think, incredible amount of evidence, along with a lot of evidence we already had, basically every time he's been recorded in a sort of hot mic situation. And by most accounts that I trust, there is no different Trump. There was never a pivot. We always thought that was another thing reasonable people said. They said, oh, there'll be a pivot. He's sure he's saying stuff before they're like, he'll pivot. Constantly, there was a pivot incoming. It's never happened. He still tweeting the same garbage. And reasonable people did think in back in like the middle of 2016, there's got to be a real Trump behind this facade. I mean, nobody could be this. Nobody could be that. This, but it turns out someone is this. So, let's get into it.

0:03:32 Thomas: I cannot wait to, if you haven't read these, I, of course, like I said, I mean, I always link everything. I encourage reading these transcripts. I read these and just, even though I already have the lowest, kind of the lowest possible opinion on Trump that you could have, really, well, short of thinking he's actually Putin's stooge.

I don't actually think that, but I have one of the lowest opinions of Trump, and it even to me this was was shocking to see just how childish his thinking and tactics are But first, I think we have to talk about these leaks in general.

It has been an ongoing tactic to, whenever there's a leak about anything, to, for Fox News and the Republican media machine, the Trump media machine to only focus on the leaks and the leakers, you know, so there'll be some horrible thing Trump said, it turns out, you know, there's the leak about what he did, what he said, its horrible, and then the defense is always to say, hey, look over there, there are leaks, we need to focus on on the leakers. We're not even going to talk about what the actual substance was. So that's a common tactic. However, I do have to say that in this instance, there's definitely a real good argument for this leak, in particular, not being something we should encourage. I do think, and Democrats and Republicans are saying this, that there does need to be confidentiality in terms of negotiating with foreign leaders really would jeopardize foreign relations, I think, to have leaders not know whether or not their conversations are going to be leaked. So that is a real consideration.

0:05:11 Thomas: It's a real concern. It doesn't seem like a good thing, it's not something I would have wanted to happen to Obama, but now there's always that, but, and I don't know, I, I'm sort of 50/50 on this. I just want to talk about the arguments either way. There is an argument out there, and maybe it's one of convenience, you'll will have to judge for yourself. But there is an argument that it's sort of like with Snowden or somebody, like one of those whistleblowers, where, yes, the leaking was and should be illegal and shouldn't be encouraged, but perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps it's the kind of thing that, because you have to look at the context in which these phone calls happen. This happened in a week, last week, by the way, it was unbelievable. Trump fabricated two phone calls. So there's So there's four phone call problem last week.

0:05:58 Thomas: There were two that Trump fabricated. That was the Boy Scouts when he claimed that the leader of the Boy Scouts called him and said, oh, we've never had such a good speech. He just made it up. He just paid it up! We live in a day and age where he can just make this up. It's out there. It's a fact that he made that up. And the leader the Boy Scout said, no, that didn't happen. And no consequences, really. It's just the same. Blame, because again, we're getting to the baseline. Talk about a swamp. We're getting to just the sludge of the 38%, 37% of people in this country who will support Trump no matter what he does. They just don't follow any of this. So they don't know that he's lying to that degree. And then he also lied in saying that Peña Nieto congratulated him, called him and congratulated him on immigration policy or something that he wouldn't have done.

0:06:47 Thomas: So we've got two fabricated phone calls. I don't want to focus on that. But we've also got two phone calls that Trump just lied about the nature of. So these were in January. So it's a little bit dated and you can certainly bend your expectations a littlebit because this was shortly after Trump took office. One could forgive him a littleb it for being slow to get off the ground. But as we're going to see, this is not merely that. This is a fundamental attitude problem Trump has. And he lied about the nature of them.

So you can argue that when your leader is taking phone calls from foreign leaders and lying about the contents of them, that maybe that's circumstance enough to warrant leaking them to say, hey, this man is lying, like the president is lying about I don't know, though, because ultimately they were negotiating and in some ways they did like both Turnbull and Pena Nieto did kind of seem OK with Trump characterizing the calls as not as hostile as they were. So I don't know that this leak was justified. It's a tough call. I think we need to be very wary of hypocrisy and arguments that are really convenient for us, like, okay, leaking is okay when it's against the guy we don't like, not okay when it isn't. We do need to Be wary of that. I would say that ultimately, I don't think this leak was justified, and I think we can't encourage this kind of leak.

0:08:28 Thomas: Leak. However, the information is out there now and we can't analyze it. So having touched on that, the fact that I do not think we should encourage this, I think is really would jeopardize our foreign policy and our relations with other governments. But the leaks are out there. They happened. They weren't, there was no secrets revealed. There was no state secrets. We can put it in context. The potential harm, you know, is not that great because for one, the two foreign foreign leaders, as we'll see, look really good in these calls because they're competent human beings. I know maybe my Australian friends won't like me saying that, they are at least competent individuals in comparison with Trump. So it really didn't harm them that I see. And it did enlighten us as to what's really going on behind the scenes.

0:09:16 Thomas: So I don't think there's that much harm. But anyway, having said that, let's get to what was actually in these transcripts because, boy, it is just, it is mind-blowing. The first one is with the Mexican president, Peña Nieto. And one thing to note is Trump is always, as always, an asshole in how he deals with people. He does say Mr. President once, and then after that he refers to the president by his first name, Enrique, the entire time. He never, after that, calls him President, President Pena Nieto, nothing like that. He calls him Enrique. And he does the same thing with Turnbull. He just calls him by his First Name, despite the fact that each of the other leaders, Pena, Nieto and Turnbull, are saying Mr. President, Mr. Trump, they're being respectful and using his title. But Trump's too good for that.

0:10:03 Thomas: He's not going to do that. Maybe it's one of his negotiating tactics, to use their first name. Another Of noteworthy thing is that Jared Kushner is Trump's everything. And I just have to say, Andrew has covered in opening arguments, Jared Kushner should not be in this position. This is a violation. The nepotism laws, it's an ongoing joke and opening arguments that it's clear as Kushner, like it's such a clear violation of the rules, but it's just not being enforced, because, I don't know, I forget. It might be the Justice Department, I know, someone would have to actually do something about it, I think, but check out LA for that. But yeah, so just to emphasize, he refers to Jared Kushner dealing with, the foreign minister in Mexico, and they've been working together, and it's very clear that Jared Kushner is responsible for way too much, and he should not even be there in that position.

0:10:59 Thomas: So that's the first thing. And then also, the biggest thing about this phone call is that Trump, as I think I covered a year ago or so, you know, back in 2016, Trump does not understand what a trade deficit is.

He thinks this is the president of the United States thinks that if we are paying for more goods from Mexico, like we're buying more things from Mexico than Mexico is buying from us, that we are losing money and that they owe us big time and therefore that's why they should pay for the role. Is because there's, there's a billion dollar trade deficit over the bogus figury sites, and that that's what's going to pay for the road.

They're making, they're ripping us off, they're making money on us by this logic. I have a gigantic trade deficit with the grocery store, because for my entire life, as long as I've been an adult, I've be buying food there, but I did never bought anything from me, so that I have a deficit. They owe me tens of thousands, I'm sure. I'm not sure how much my lifetime grocery supply is. I could probably more than that, actually, if I think about it. They own me so much money. They ought to pay for my wall.

It's just so mind-boggling that someone could have that facile an understanding of it. Now, this is a complex issue. It's not quite as simple as that, and and I'll link a very good explainer from the New York Times from over a year ago about how Trump doesn't understand this very thing. It's like there are downsides to

0:12:39 Thomas: A trade deficit. It's a complex economic issue, but Trump's own simplistic understanding of it fails on its own terms, because the whole time I'm in a trade deficit with the grocery store, guess what, I'm I'm full, I'm not hungry, I'm I'm eating, I'm using their product. It's just that I'm buying more of their product than they're buying of my products. It doesn't matter really on that, on those terms. Now there are other downsides, like involving, uh, not being able to deflate our currency because our currency is the basis for a lot of international currencies, and there's a very complex thing, but again, I'll link this New York Times article, I recommend you check it out, it's a complex issue, uh, and there are downsides to a trade deficit, but it's not as simple as Trump lays out. Like, it's very possible that there's no downside, uh, and if there are downsides, they're different than what Trump thinks they are. And so during this call with, again, the President of Mexico, Trump is giving his normal elections spiel.

0:13:38 Thomas: He's exactly the same as you would think he is. Like, that is the most, Again, it's not shocking to me, but it's almost shocking to see it in print, to see the print of Trump speaking to another president, another leader, as though he's just doing another bullshit Fox interview about anything. And he just does these things. He says, well, I won in this state. You know why I won in this date? Because we're losing a lot of jobs. And he brags about his numbers. Oh, I won by this much in Michigan. He's doing the same spiel. And I got to imagine Peña Nieto, it must have been a very weird experience to be like, are we really? We're we're going to talk about our election?

0:14:23 Thomas: Like, notice Peña Nieto doesn't talk about his, how much he won by in Mexico, for, like, Trump's not interested in that information. And you know why? Because it doesn't matter. Like it doesn't matter to either of them who won in what states of their own countries. What matters is, are you, like, what deal you're negotiating and what you want to get done here. But Trump starts talking about a tariff that he wants to impose, he starts saying, I don't want to talk to you in the week a, because he can't call him Mr. President or anything respectful, he says, I don't even want to tell you, I just want to impose a tarif, but you know, Jared Kushner said you're a good guy, so I guess I gotta tell you. That's actually almost literally what he said. But But Jared Kushner and Luis, the foreign minister from Mexico, they said we should maybe talk about this, so that's what I'm doing here.

0:15:08 Thomas: And Peña Nieto says, I don't know what tariff you're talking about. If this is a new proposal, do we want to talk about it? And Trump says, this is not new. This is what I've been saying on the campaign trail, as though Peña Nieto should have been following his campaign. And again, he has to do the thing where he brags about, I've be telling this to my group of 50,000 or 25,000 people at my rallies. He has to brag about the size of his rallies. He is more Trump than you could possibly, he is the epitome of Trump. In a private phone call, by private I mean at least, it wasn't intended to be released to the public. There's other people on the line, there's translators, there's all that. I'm sure there's State Department officials on it. But anyway, he's bragging about the siziness of rallies, he saying, you know, I've been promising this for a year and a half, but Pena Nieto says, yeah, that's a campaign problem.

0:16:02 Thomas: That isn't, you weren't president then, you haven't been negotiating, this is something, Trump just does not know how it works. And Peña Nieto realizes, I'm talking to a moron who doesn't know how economics work, he doesn't knows what a trade deficit is, and he thinks that him talking about an issue on the campaign trail means it's been a proposal that we've negotiated. And he just has to speak in generalities. It's really hard, like, what you see is Peña Nieto doing his best to say, like well, to stick to like positive generalities in order to just try to maintain the relationship.

He says stuff like, look, we all want, we both, both our nations want economic well-being, and prosperity, and we want a fair agreement, and like, let's just, just, I encourage you, let's just talk about, like, let's have a dialogue. Like he has to resort to really unspecific stuff because the only other option would be for him to say everything you're saying is stupid and untrue. I mean, it's negotiating with a school bully essentially. If you try, if you do the thing where you logically break down what the school bully is saying, uh, you're just gonna get punched in the teeth, you're juste gonna get a school bully reaction, and that's

0:17:21 Thomas: What we've got. We've got a moron school bully who, I don't know, look, we can argue about how smart Trump actually is, I think he's intelligent in some ways, but he certainly has no regard for the intelligence of others, uh, as evidenced in this talk where he's again bragging about the size of his crowds to president of Mexico, as though that makes any difference in anything. Believe there's a part of this phone call that I have heard, in my opinion, in my take on this, that I think has been misrepresented on the left, because at a certain point, Trump says that the wall, because here's what he's trying to do. This entire thing, I believe, my interpretation from reading it and what I understand, is that I believe Trump is trying to bully his way, again, in his advanced negotiation techniques.

0:18:12 Thomas: He's using this threat of a tariff to try to bully his way into Mexico, agreeing to pay for the wall. I believe that's what he's trying to do. And at a certain point, he says this, it or not," quote, "believe it not, this is the least important thing that we were talking about, but politically it might be the most important to talk about." And And some people on the left have latched onto this to say, hey, look, he's such a liar, this was his main campaign issue, and now he's saying it's not even important. And I actually think that's dishonest. I don't think, well, it might not be dishonest, I don't know if it's intentional, but I think it's misleading. I think it's actually not the right interpretation. I think this is yet another one of those 13 year old level Trump negotiation tactics that Scott Adams and other people think is actually brilliant.

0:19:01 Thomas: But I think it's just nonsense kid stuff, because what he's trying to do here, in my opinion, I think the more plausible explanation is because he says this this is not this is just not important. Look, dollars wise, you know, I can he says here I can get the wall built for for so much cheaper than people think. You know, I think it'll only cost $8 billion. And the Washington Post fact-checking here says, no, it's actually, the estimates are it'll cost $21 billion.

But he's trying to downplay it. He's doing his best to downlay it because he needs, and he expresses this a lot of places, he needs Peña Nieto to, if not agree to pay for the wall, at least say he's not going to not pay for it.

It's like the entire, Trump's entire motive in this call, what he's been working toward, Like his stupid, just naive negotiation tactics and strong arm tactics is trying to get Pena Nieto to just say he's not, not going to pay for it or just not even comment because he's, what he's worried about is Peña Nieto saying, I'm not paying for the wall and it being a gigantic failure blowing up in Trump's face immediately. Immediately. So in order to do that, he does that little third grade, you know, juvenile tactic of like, this isn't important. The wall, I mean, it's going to cost a few bucks, it's really not a big deal. What's way more important is our trade deficit and other more important things.

But politically for me, it is important, which he actually says, politically, this is important, so can you please just not say anything about it. This, it's so funny to read when he says, oh, you know what I should do and what I wanted to do, not even have this conversation and just put a tariff on, on Mexico, just, uh, studio, and he brags a certain point, you know, I have the power to do that, you know, the president, uh, wide latitude on, on taxes, so I

0:20:46 Thomas: Can do that. Yeah, I probably should do that, but I'm just thinking, you know, it's just, it's so childish, it's so, he thinks he's so brilliant and he's not. And then another thing he adds in is, well, you got a big police problem down there, you got, uh, organized crime, all that, well, let go do something about that, we can definitely help you. And so he talks about that in Peña Nieto, because he's competent and he was doing his best when dealing with just a moron. He says, well, I really hope we can talk about that tariff, I think it's, you know, we need to discuss it when we discuss trade, and I want to find a solution that works for both our countries. However, my position, he says here, my condition has been and will continue to be very firm saying that Mexico cannot pay for that wall. And then Trump says, but you cannot say that to the press.

0:21:31 Thomas: The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances. So that's where Trump tips his hand if he hadn't already hours ago with the president. That is what he wanted this whole time. And I would be so insulted if I were Peña Nieto of just how unintelligent Trump must think he is to be doing this. Peña Nieto starts offering what is probably the only sensible political solution at this point to Trump, which is Trump, let's just stop talking about it. Or, well, he says, Mr. President, because he's actually respectful. He says, let's not talk about the wall because we're not paying for it. And apparently it's going to kill you if I say that. Let's just not talk About it. That is really all you can do when you've promised something absolutely insane, like that Mexico is going to pay for a border wall.

0:22:24 Thomas: It's not going to happen. And it's just so hilarious to see the extent of Trump's brilliant negotiating tactics, because that was what the Republicans, the true Trump supporters said, oh, he's going to get in there. He's a master negotiator. He is a dealmaker. He and Trump himself said he knows how to make deals. He will he will make Mexico pay for that wall. And then he runs into what what is by all accounts or at least by this account, Peña Nieto, who is a competent leader. I won't say he's like like a super company. I don't know that he's a master negotiator, but he's at the very least an intelligent human being. Who's just like, no, we're not doing that. Uh, sorry.

0:23:02 Thomas: Sorry. I just, I just defeated your master negotiating Trump by saying, no we just can't do that. And we're not doing it. And And toward the end of the call, it ends with, again, this is third grade level tactics. Trump said, I was embarrassed when I read that. Like, I'm literally embarrassed that adults had to hear this and that Peña Nieto had to do this. He said, it is you and I against the world, Enrique. Do not forget. The kind of thing that Trump thinks is like, yeah, I'm really making this guy think it's me and him. Like, I'M MAKING HIM FEEL LIKE I'M ON HIS SIDE. BUILDING RAPPORT. WHICH, WHEN AN INTELLIGENT PERSON HEARS THAT, IT'S JUST, OKAY, THIS IS A BULLSHIT ARTIST TRYING TO MAKE ME THINK. IT'S SO TRANSPARENT.

0:23:49 Thomas: It's so easy to see through. He doesn't stop there. He says, good. I later on the conversation, I want you to be so popular that people will call for a constitutional amendment in Mexico so that you can run again for another six years. And Peña Nieto is like, you're very kind, Mr. President, and really the only thing I am interested in for both of our nations is to do well for your government, for you, and for us to truly have a relationship with friendship and a very constructive relationship, Mr. Trump. So the result of this conversation, which again, another just third grade level flattery that any idiot would see through, uh, the result of this conversation is Peña Nieto got everything he wanted and Trump got none of what he wanted. I mean, I guess you can argue at least Peña Nieto wasn't going to go out of the conversation saying Mexico won't pay for the wall, like, at the very least you could say, even though it was Peña Nieto's idea to say, let's not talk about the wall.

0:24:44 Thomas: So maybe that, I guess that's in the win column for Trump in a certain sense, but everything else is exactly what Peña Nieto wanted, which is not having the tariff imposed, not paying for the wall, you know, none of the threats that Trump, all Leveled just in exchange for not really talking about the wall, which is what Peña Nieto wanted anyway. So who's the expert negotiator in that one? Right, we got to get to the turnbull call.

This is more time than I wanted to spend on this, but it's just, it's hilarious to me. It is so, and it's vindicating in a way, because Because I really think anyone who tries to claim, no, it's all a show. Trump's, it is all a Show. It's not a show, it not a Show, that call, as bad as it went for Trump, Was so downright successful compared to the call with Turnbull? Because Turnbull just had to explain to Trump several times just the most basic things about the immigration deal Obama and Turnbull agreed to. And Trump seemed to understand for like a second and then went right back to not understanding. It's terrible. Let me quickly take you through it.

It starts when Trump talks about the fact that he just signed the first version of his immigration ban, this was back during those times, and he's saying, look, I just called for a ban on Syria, but somebody told me, and the fact he phrases this, somebody told He told me yesterday that close to 2,000 people are coming who are really probably troublesome. That was a quote. And I'm continuing. And I am saying, boy, that would make us look awfully bad.

0:26:14 Thomas: Here I am calling for a ban where I'm not letting anybody in and we take 2,00 people. Really, it looks like 2,0 people that Australia does not want. And I don't blame you, by the way, but the United States has become like a dumping ground, end quote. And so that's how he starts it. Like, we just can't, these are bad people, we can't take them. And then Turnbull says, okay, he literally says, can you hear me out, Mr. President? And he says, to Trump's credit, he says yeah, go ahead. And then he tries to explain the agreement. So The let me do my best to America-splain an Australian issue. So Australian listeners, feel free to let me know if I get anything wrong on this. I'm not going to try to take like a hard stance, but I'm going to try to describe what's going on. My understanding is that though the Australian government is taking in a certain number of refugees, I don't, I don't think it's, I think it was like 10,000 to 20,000 range, which which I don't know how that compares to the, to the rest of the world.

0:27:09 Thomas: I know America is terrible taking refugees, especially now, but they're, they're taking refugees. However, because they, of the so-called boat people, they have, Turnbull has decided from what I understand. Australian government has taken a hard stance that it will not allow anyone who is smuggled in via boat to resettle in Australia. And the reason, ostensibly, is to discourage this sort of human trafficking and really dangerous aspects of it. So it's saying this. It's saying we will let a certain number of people in through proper channels, but if you try to get to Australia on a boat, we will not let you in no matter who you are, no matter what. We're going to put you on one of these islands, which that's a whole different thing where the facilities that these people are living in are probably violating a lot of human rights, and that's horrible thing that needs to be fixed.

0:28:09 Thomas: However, the principle of we're not letting anyone who tries to be smuggled over here, we're not letting anybody like that in because we do not want to reward and encourage people who are essentially trafficking humans in very dangerous situations and very shady situations. I can at least understand that logic. I understand the logic of we can't encourage that behavior.

It's like not negotiating with terrorists, even though maybe it would seem like a good idea to pull a ransom to something, it's like that for me, where I can understand that logic. However, I think what couples along with that is a an absolute necessity to treat these people humanely, to have adequate facilities for them, and to not detain, detain them kind of indefinitely, which is what Australia is doing. So, This is where the deal comes in. So this ist where Obama agreed, okay, you've got yourself a real problem there, and Obama actually, the U.S. has a sort of a similar problem, not as bad, but but sort of similar with, I believe it was Costa Rica, somewhere we have some, some refugees that for whatever reason Obama and the government didn't want to take in, maybe, maybe for similar reasons. So they're sort of doing a trade.

It was sort of like, we will take 1,250 to 2,000, there was a range. We'll take 1,250 to 2,000 of these people, we will vet them as much as we want, we can, and Turnbull points out, you're not committed to take any. It's dependent on the vetting. So the agreement was, if they vet these people and they don't want any of them, they don't have to take anything, but the agreement is, subject to your vetting process,

0:29:48 Thomas: You can take 1.250 to 200, and then we'll take some of your refugees, that way Turnbull still still hasn't caved on the, you know, letting people into Australia who came on boats, which is a very firm stance of his. And, but he's still, you now, relieving some of the pressure in these islands and these facilities where they're keeping the people. So, that's the logic behind it. I mean, sounds like a somewhat reasonable solution to a really difficult and horrible problem. It seems like, if I were in charge of things, it seems like we would want to take plenty of these people because they've been vetted, they've done, And as Turnbull points out, they are economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. And they've been under supervision for three years. And he says, Turnbull says, we know exactly everything about them.

0:30:34 Thomas: But Trump won't hear this because Obama negotiated the deal. He says, who made this deal? Obama. So in Trump's mind, it has to be terrible. And he keeps going back. So he asks him, why haven't you just let them into your society? Why don't you let them out yourself? Himself, and he explains again. He's, okay, okay, I gotta go real slow for the president, moron over here, he says, we can't commit, we cannot let anyone in who came by boat because we do not want to encourage smuggling people to our country. Doesn't matter who they are, they could all be, and he said, Turnbull says this, they could be Nobel Prize winning geniuses, we won't let them in because that's, we don't want to encourage the people smuggling. So, so after this first attempt, there's a second where it seems like Trump gets it because he starts, they start talking about how horrible they are.

0:31:20 Thomas: They're like, yeah, have you seen what's happening in Germany? Talk about letting foreign people into your country. It ruins your entire entire country. And they bond over this. Yeah, no, it's terrible. Germany, it is a mess. I stood up in the UN and said we shouldn't do that. All this stuff. So they kind of bond over it. And then all of a sudden when it seems like, okay, maybe we get it, Trump says, Malcolm, again, not being respectful with his title or even saying Mr. Turnbull or anything like that. He says, why is this so important? I don't understand. This is going to kill me. This Is a quote. I am the world's greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. What? What does that mean? I've struggled with that. I actually can't even, I'm trying to dip into what his logic even is in saying that.

0:32:06 Thomas: And now I am agreeing, continuing on the quote, and now I'm agreeing to take 2,000 people and I agree I can vet them, but that puts me in a bad position. It makes me look so bad and I've only been here a week. And then Turnbull says, with great respect, that is not right. It is not 2,000. And Then Trump says, it is close. I have also heard like 5,000 as well.

0:32:33 Thomas: Turnbull says, the given number in the agreement is 1,250. And it's entirely a matter of your vetting. I think that you could say, here's the quote, I think, that what you could say is the Australian government is consistent with the principles set out in the executive order, end quote.

He's saying, it's, he says, I've heard it's five thousand it's like no it's it's not, and then this is where it's, guys, this is so dumb, this is, this is how, how this person is the leader of our country, he says this, he says, Trump says, I hate taking these people, I guarantee you they are bad, that is why they are in prison right now, they are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people, end quote. So, He's telling the guy, just turned out, just explained to him, this is why they're detained, because it doesn't matter who they are, we can't let them in because of no thing, I mean he's explained it three times and Trump says, no, I guarantee you they're bad, that's why they're in prison, what do you, I can't believe it, I cannot believe it. Then that Trump has to say, it's such a bad deal, I can't do it.

And then he has to sneak in another, they said I would lose the election, they said I had no way to 270 and I got 306. Again, bringing in the electoral college, his incredibly modest, slight electoral college victory, bragging to a foreign leader who does not give a shit about it. He's saying this is a stupid deal. He accuses Turnbull. He says, I bet you've made stupid deals in business and I, I bet you broke a bunch of stupid deals and this is a stupid deal.

0:34:13 Thomas: Tries to make the argument, and what, what it should be, the solution is to say, you know, I didn't make this deal, this is the bad deal, but we can thoroughly vet these people, we know they're not bad people. And Trump could do this even in his xenophobic, stupid terms. He could say, oh, they're not the bad guys, they're the good guys, uh, they've been thoroughly vetted, we're, uh, we're honoring the deal, but don't worry, I probably won't make any deals like this in the future.

He, he could do that. It's easy. But then Trump, for what is maybe a fourth time, forgets again what he's talking about, who he's taking to, what this is. Here's where he says, does anybody know who these people are, who are they, where do they come from, are they going to become the Boston bomber in five years or two years, who are these people, Turnbo, I, I can only imagine internally must have just been crying, like, I don't, how do I Talk to a person like this. And he says, let me explain, we know exactly who they are, they've been on Nauru or Manis, which are the islands, for over three years, and the only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because their commitment to not allow people to come by boat, otherwise we would let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa, then they would be here, and he explains that again for the, again, like the ninth time.

Here's it, another brilliant quote. Later on, Trump says, can Australia give me a guarantee that if we have any problems, you know, that is what they said about the Boston bombers, they said they were wonderful young men. And Turnbull says, they were Russians, they were not from any of these countries. Trump says, here's this, Trump says, they were from wherever they were.

0:35:43 Thomas: I don't know, I, the U.S. And it doesn't get better. It doesn't get later. On a couple sentences later, Trump says, what is the thing with boats, why do you discriminate against boats, no, I know they come from certain regions, I get it, and that's not why. So he can't grasp the simplest things. This is where Scott Adams would probably tell us that it's all an act, and like, oh no, this is brilliant.

0:36:10 Thomas: Pretending you're a complete moron who cannot follow simple sentences. Brilliant negotiating tactic. Oh my God. He's going to have Turnbull not only taking those refugees, but they're going to take some more of our refugees, which isn't what happened, spoiler alert. Ended up honoring the deal. So there goes that. There is no deeper genius, Scott Adams and company. There is no cheaper genius to Trump. He is a moron. In this call, he cannot grasp the simplest of concepts. The simplest of concepts!

0:36:47 Thomas: Here's the final spiel from Trump that has a very famous quote now. "I have no choice to say that about it, Malcolm, I am going to say that I have no choice but to honor my predecessor's deal. I think it's a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I never would have made.

It's embarrassment to the United States of America, and you can say it just the way I said it." "I will say it just that way." "As far as I'm concerned, that is enough, Malcolm, I have had it, I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous." Little uh little quote and then he says He says, do you want to talk about Syria and DPRK?

And Trump says, and it says inaudible, this is crazy. And then Turnbull says, thank you for your commitment, it's very important to us. And Trump said, it's important to you, it's embarrassing to me, it's an embarrassment to me, but at least I get to get you off the hook. So he put me back on the hook, and he just can't handle it.

0:37:38 Thomas: He's having a little temper tantrum that he couldn't get the best of Turnbull. He is not a negotiator. He's not a master negotiator, he's a child. Killed. He's a child with no understanding and no ability to follow simple concepts. He's an idiot. Sorry. I mean, now, nearly all I said we can argue about is intelligence. I forgot just how stupid he was in this call. If you want to argue that he's secretly intelligent, but, He's all an old man with a failing brain and this was late in the day. He hadn't eaten well. Sure, but this is an embarrassment. I mean, it is It's just, just an embarrassment. Right, I need to put myself in a better mood, and the way I'm going to do that is by talking to you about something I really do love, which is HelloFresh. Today's episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. You go to www.hellofresh.com, enter promo code SERIOUSPOD to get $30 off a HelloFresh is, of course, the meal kit delivery service that makes cooking more fun so you can focus on the whole experience and not just the final plate.

0:38:35 Thomas: Guys, they offer so many different options, a classic box, a veggie box, a family box. You can order three, four, or five different meals per week designed for either two or four people. And the coolest thing is there's new recipes every week. There's step-by-step instructions to make it easy. They take around 30 minutes, reasonable time for cooking dinner. I would find it hard to reproduce that on my own without the help of HelloFlesh and the great instructions. And, oh, my favorite part.

HelloFesh sources the freshest ingredients. They're measured to the exact quantities you need so there's no food waste. This is my favorite point. There's another... My biggest pet peeve in my life is throwing away food that has gone bad and as for the moment it's just my wife and I at the house. Buying for two people is so difficult. You can buy in bulk to try to save money, but then you end up with all this extra food that you don't use. That is my favorite part about HelloFresh. It's exactly the amount you need, the quantities you need. There's no waste. I just hate wasting food. I really do. And this is less than ten dollars a meal, and for that price you're getting a a nice, different, varied diet. You're getting a delicious meal.

You're giving a fun experience of cooking that meal. I really recommend it. It's I not easy to eat healthy these days. It really isn't, but HelloFresh helps you because they employ two full-time registered dietitians on staff and they review each recipe to ensure it's nutritionally balanced. Love cooking with HelloFresh. It makes me far more useful in the household because, like I said, there's the instructions.

0:40:08 Thomas: We've got the box delivered right to our door. It's got all the food, again, and the quantities we need, and I can cook it. I can actually help. It's fun. Despite the fact that I have zero cooking experience, HelloFlesh makes it easy so I can get in there and be helpful, which I really do enjoy. Right now, if you go to HelloFlesh.com, enter the promo code SERIOUSPOD, you get a great deal, $30 off. Go do it at a time where it is really hard not to be depressed about the state of our country and the state of the world. This is something that can make you happy. It really can. I love doing it. We, Lydia and I, sometimes, not now because she's pregnant, but in times past, we would open up a bottle of wine, get the HelloFesh ingredients out, follow the instructions, cook it. It's really fun. It is a fun cooking experience that we kind of do together. I really really love it. So please take advantage of this offer, HelloFresh.com and promo code SeriousPod.

0:41:10 Thomas: Oh, where was I? Okay. Well, in case you were getting too optimistic about how things are going, Rex Tillerson has completely gutted the State Department. There is currently no ambassador to South Korea. There's more, there's more of that. That's a highlight I wanted to get to first, but this is a time of obviously tremendous pressure. This is a time when we have the worst possible person in the White House, but you might think, okay, well, maybe we've got some experience in the State Department and maybe in some of the the other people Trump has put in charge.

Well, the problem is, while Tillerson has done an okay job of trying to manage Trump's horrible, just absolutely reckless comments about North Korea, he's done an ok job trying to management. The problem was fundamentally he has guided the State Department. He has, uh, not hired so many people in key positions. Here's some stats I've got for you. He only has one undersecretary, so one person directly under him. Uh, Carrie had six of the top 130 State Department posts that require Senate confirmation, only 44 have been nominated and 23 have been confirmed. This now is according to an LA Times article that I will link.

And it says that Congress is now on a month long break. So they can't confirm anybody else while while they're on a break. There's also reports that they get from a lot of people. These are, you know, you can put what stock in these that you want, but there are numerous reports across multiple media that morale is just tanking because nobody knows if their bureau is going to be shut down or combined with another thing, or there's just a tremendous amount of uncertainty.

0:42:53 Thomas: It's a typical thing. I mean, it happens in actually a corporate setting when a new leader comes in, new CEO, new whatever, manager of some kind, and they're going to optimize things and they'll going to have everybody justify what they're doing there. Now, there's a certain amount of that that I think is good and natural in the state because because in, I said the state from my experience, but coincidentally that worked because I was talking about the State Department, but in government in general, there are things that to try to take a very positive view, the most positive possible. He has hired a consulting firm to collect opinions from all the employees. I think they got, it said they've had half of the employees participate, which is a lot. 35,000 would be half ofthe 70,000 currently employed.

0:43:39 Thomas: And they've tried to get opinions on how to improve, they've got this consulting firm working. I'm not totally opposed to the idea that, like, hey, government gets bloated. This has happened in my experience with government. Like, people, you don't fire people, you don't get rid of people ever, pretty much, unless there's a really dire budget situation, and people just expand to the work that whatever it is, whatever the job is, that that's how much work they do. I haven't worked for the State Department and by all accounts it seems like it's not the most lax environment. Like, it seems like it's, it could be doing, sorry, however, it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, I've seen opinions that, like, yeah, they need to restructure some stuff, they need a merchant unit, so there definitely could be some constructive, productive, I suppose, deconstruction, some constructive changes that could be made. I'm sure things could be done a little better.

0:44:25 Thomas: But this is not what this is. This is an absolute crisis because nobody's there. Nobody's working there, nobody knows what's going on. And according to another article by Politico, there's this insulated group of leaders that Tillerson has sort of promoted to the top who don't listen to anybody else and think they know know what they're doing. Now, again, these are sources inside the State Department. It's hard to know how much stock to put into it, but I put a little more credence into it because this is something I'm seeing. I've got three different sources here, Washington Post, Politico, LA Times, and that's just because I took the best three that I saw. There's plenty of branches of every different media reporting that people are saying this.

0:45:13 Thomas: This is a pretty widespread attitude throughout the State Department. Here's a great point, too. In case that weren't enough, This Politico article makes a great point that the State Department has already been operating on a shoestring budget because of the 2011 Budget Control Act, because of the whole, you know, government shutdown, like there hasn't been a budget in forever. I think there's been one, but because they already were on that tight budget from when things were shut down and there's all that nonsense in 2011, things were already tight. And so from that already diminished capacity, Tillerson has tried to cut, he's cut a quarter, He wants to cut a quarter of the budget, which is a ton. A Washington Post article makes a great point that this is an incredibly bad time.

0:45:59 Thomas: Here's just some incidents going on around the world. In Russia, Putin just ordered the diplomatic missions to slash 755 staffers from their ranks, a retaliatory move, in response to the U.S. imposition of sanctions, which Trump reluctantly signed into law. So you saw that Congress passed this and they made it veto proof, so Trump had to sign into law even though he actively was, uh, opposing it. So that's, that's some, uh, some drama going on there. That's, that's a very interesting situation to navigate. And also this week Putin prepared to dispatch up to a hundred thousand troops to a massive military exercise, which would be the largest despair of Russian military power since the fall of the Soviet Union. There's a lot going on in Venezuela. I don't know if you've heard about this, but the political situation is terrible because there's violence on the streets. Oh, I saw a horrendous video of a shooting. There's just widespread violence because once the price of oil tanked there, it completely just destroyed their economy because it was just entirely oil-based.

0:46:59 Thomas: And so Maduro, the president or leader there, he's trying to maintain his power. He's cracking down on people. So the U.S. put sanctions on him. That's a really complex situation that requires a lot of maneuvering, and and that's it's really delicate. Situation Pakistan, it says here, the nuclear nation just kicked out its prime minister and his, after his family's corruption was outed in the Panama Papers, which was a bunch of leaked documents. So the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, stepped up its information offensive against Qatar, producing a documentary accusing it of having links to 9/11. And then all of that, of course, right now might pale in comparison to what's going on in North Korea with another intercontinental ballistic missile launch. And then, of coarse, the tensions flared, as I'll get into in a minute.

0:47:47 Thomas: The point is, this is about the worst possible time to be doing something like that. And while I don't actually think Tillerson is the worst, like, I don't think he's Trump level bad. I think that he's capable of doing some okay things. He does have some relevant experience. What he's doing with the budget, I think, is just way too much. Like, it's just, it's too much reduction at a too critical of a time. And if there's anywhere where I want to reduce, it's not in diplomacy. You know, like the State Department is an incredibly valuable thing. There's the age old, or no, it's not age old. I think it's actually a McMaster quote that if you cut the State Department, I'm going to need more money for bullets. And that's one of Trump's guys saying that. So I think this is the worst time for this happening. And this all frames what's going on here with North Korea when we've got the worst person as described in part one in charge.

0:48:41 Thomas: And we've got the State Department that is absolutely just vacant, as just described. And that all sets us up for what's going on with Trump and North Korea. North Korea, as I, I'm sure you guys are familiar with, but just, just a quick broad stroke thing, but the issue is, uh, how do you stop a state like North Korean from developing nukes?

We're, the Obama administration tried a lot of really interesting hacking and programs to try to sabotage the rocket, and there's reason to believe that actually worked because of so many rocket failures that they had in a row. There's a reason to be that possibly the, the sabotage they were attempting was working, but that was not too long ago. It feels like, I, I don't know, six months ago that that was happening, maybe it was a few more, but now they've had several successful tests in a row, and it seems as though they have the capability to launch a nuclear weapon, not quite to the mainland yet, but it's getting there, and let's face it, at this rate, it probably will be true very shortly, within, I don't know, a year, that North Korea could hit the United States with a nuclear weapon.

The problem has been, the reason that nobody, not even Bush, nobody did anything about this or could really do much about it, was that South Korea had It is home to millions of people, tens of thousands of Americans, actually, as well. Not that that, in my book, that doesn't really matter who they are. But they are well within the sights of the conventional weapons of North Korea, so it almost didn't matter.

0:50:15 Thomas: In some ways, it almost didn't matter whether or not North Korea developed nukes. I know it's been some sort of red line for a lot of people, but in some ways, anything we did, no matter what, would be responded to with just a massacre of Seoul and surrounding areas, too. Japan, they're a major player in this. China, I mean, they are very close, so they are worried about the fallout of some sort of conflict, which would lead to people fleeing to their countries, all kinds of instability. So there's a lot of people with stakes in this, and it's always been a problem. So enter somebody who's an idiot who thinks he can solve things that have always been a problem that nobody else has been able to solve, and you get Trump. Same reason. So right after he's done solving Israel-Palestine, I'm sure he'll, just as soon as Kushner is done with that, Kushner will be there to solve the North Korean problem.

0:51:09 Thomas: No, what does he do? He makes it worse with some really idiotic statements and some tweets. So he said there will be fire and fury, the likes of which will never have never been seen before. And then when that wasn't good enough, he said, well, also power, the power that will never be seen because that wasn't quite like a good enough quote, a soundbite. So he had to add that to it. And that inflamed Kim Jong-il and he threatened Guam of all places. I guess the closest sort of American target. So, he threatened to attack Guam. And there'S a reason, and everybody's pointed this out, this has been known for forever, and it's been a key of American foreign policy or an American policy regarding North Korea for a while, you don't make threats that you're not going to back up.

0:51:55 Thomas: This was a big problem with Obama's red line. I mean, although I did an episode on that, he sort of backed it up in some ways. But this is why you don't say, boy, you better not do X, because there's going to be fire and fury, the likes of of which the realm has never seen, some weird quote like that. The reason you don't do that is because there's only two possibilities once they inevitably don't back down, because North Korea doesn't back up. We've seen it time and time again. They don't pack down. So there's only two possibilities. Either you're going to be shown to be a liar and your words will be empty and your threats will be meaningless, or you will actually have to do what you're saying, which will be horrible and result in the deaths of tens, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. So there's only two possibilities and they're both horrible, and that's why previous presidents who a shred of intelligence and moderation and thought things through haven't done that.

0:52:51 Thomas: So that's why you don't do that. That's what's going on. That now Tillerson has gone on a bit of an active campaign to calm down the rhetoric, which is again, I mean, it's, it's, to be, I guess, praised that he's trying to do that. That's good. I mean, we would be in a worse situation if everyone just fell in line with what the moron at the helm is saying, so I guess it's good that he is trying, trying to do that. He's trying to calm tensions.

He has said that there's actually, despite the rhetoric, there hasn't been any change in the situation, and there's no reason for us all to believe that we're going to be nuked at any given time. So, oh, and by the way, mixed in with this, today the president, well, today for my time, to yesterday for you guys, I guess, the president tweeted what does, did what he does so well, which is take credit for what Obama did when he said, "My first order as president was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before. Hopefully we'll never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world." And as everybody pointed out, the improvements were carried out by the Obama administration.

So once again, stepping in, claiming credit for something he didn't do, sort of like claiming credit for the unemployment numbers, that magically are legitimate now. They were illegitimate six months ago, seven months ago. Now they're fine. And it's not as though just now they're fined. The minute he took power, even though they kept the trend that has been happening for the past several years, the minute Trump took power, oh, they were legitimate. They, they were totally, that was a lie that not even Sean Spicer could get out without laughing.

0:54:24 Thomas: When it comes to North Korea, though, we did, we were just able, credit to whoever was responsible, people in this administration, I mean, you have to give them credit, uh, with the UN, they were able to impose sanctions on North Korean, a pretty, pretty, pretty hefty sanctions, too. Now, who knows, like, again, the response has always been to double down, like North Korea hasn't done a whole lot of giving in ever, um, so it's just a really intractable situation. It's not something that I'm an expert on. It's not something that I'm going to solve on this show, but it's also not something that simply a change in leadership and a business attitude, like a more businessman experience level, is going to change. Like, what's going to happen with North Korea, hopefully, in the ideal circumstances, and what is currently happening, is, despite Trump's outbursts, what's happening behind the scenes is exactly what was already happening with Obama, because there really aren't any options.

0:55:20 Thomas: Like, there just haven't been any options, sort of the same with Israel-Palestine, with a lot of these problems that people campaign on. Oh, no, once I'm in there, there's just a bunch of idiots managing things. Now, once I'm in there, it'll be better. The truth is, you, that's usually not true, especially with these perennial problems that have been problems for decades. There's a reason that they've been a problem through multiple administrations. It's because there's some things that you can't just solve easily with a business experience attitude, with the key experience of having inherited a bunch of money and blown it in a bunch of businesses and then miraculously branded yourself well enough enough to make some money on some TV shows and stuff, it's that kind of, even that kind of experience isn't enough to completely get the job done that hasn't been able to get done in decades.

0:56:08 Thomas: So ultimately, I think my opinion is for what it's worth, for what little it's worth, again, not being an expert, I do think for That while Kim Jong-un, did I say Kim Jong Il earlier? I might have, sorry if I mix that up. While Kim Jong Un is not the sanest of people, I still don't think, which has always been the guess about the North Korean leader, whoever it is, I Still don't Think they're stupid enough to Make one of these attacks.

Now, because while it would be terrible for the people around North Korea, it would really be terrible for North Korea if they launched some sort of nuclear attack, and then they would be obliterated by our arsenal, despite the fact that we don't want that to happen, because of course a lot of innocent people would die. I still don't think that they would ever make that calculation, That Kim Jong-un, or whoever, I don't think they ever would make that choice, but one thing that I would want to do is test that by challenging him on Twitter and on a bunch of unnecessary inflammatory statements, that would be one thing. I wouldn't want to, so who knows, but I, I'm not, I guess my point is, you know, you could start digging your fallout shelter, but I wouldn't panic about it.

You can, you can calmly complete your fall out shelter if you live in a major in this city, you could take your time for now. All right, well, that's what I wanted to talk about for today. I know I set that up really negatively with how little we can expect from this administration and from the State Department, but fortunately, I think there are reasons that behind the scenes,

0:57:39 Thomas: It's being handled pretty much the same way Obama handled it, because that's really the only choice we have in the matter. So, with now we might be okay.

0:57:49 Thomas: There's one more thing I want to talk about. I guess I need to issue a correction. I got an email from someone because when I mentioned, I made a comparison in the, the, I guess it's been a few weeks now, in the Linda Sarsour episode, where I talked about people holding people to account forever for things they've done in their past. And I mentioned that Majid was arrested. I apparently I said arrested as a terrorist, and I just want to clarify. Someone sent me an email. I'm always down for being corrected if I get something wrong. He wasn't arrested for terrorism. He was arrested for Islamism, because it was right after 9-11, and he was following some guy who had a really, really sketchy view of Islam and was potentially going to lead to violence. So he was arrested. He was imprisoned in Egypt.

0:58:35 Thomas: But I had always thought, maybe I misheard, but I always thought it was for terrorism charges. But no, I guess he never actually was suspected of actual terrorism. He just was radicalized in certain ways. And but the thing was, the the emailer, I have to say, it was kind of annoying, they accused me of slandering him in that moment, and you, as we've learned from Andrew Torrez, there's intent to slander, so if I had said, yeah, let's all criticize Majid for having been arrested for this thing, sure, that would be potentially slanderous, because I got something wrong and I intended to say something bad about him, but what I actually intended to do was say the opposite. What I said in the context was no reasonable person would continue to hold Majid accountable for something he did in his past when he has worked afterward to combat that.

0:59:22 Thomas: And the comparison I was making was actually C.J. Werleman, which I know is not a popular thing. No one likes C.J. Werleman, and there's good reasons to not like C.J. Werleman. But to hold him accountable for things he tweeted in 2010, when he's now working against those those things seems to me to be kind of an irritating maneuver. It's not really an actual attack on someone's positions. It is kind of a an annoying gotcha. People can't be held accountable forever for their positions if they've gone back and apologized and worked to counter those previous positions. That was the point I was making, but I did misstate that about Majid. So apologies to Majid for that. That, I want to thank my new patrons this week over at patreon.com slash seriouspod.

Thank you guys for making the show happen. You really are the reason that it happens. And also, enjoy your ad-free content, because if you're listening on the Patreon feed right now, there weren't any ads for you, because it's ad- free over there. So, if you want to get a hold of that ad- free content, go to patreon.com slash seriouspod. Thank you to Mariusz 'Kot' Butrykowski, Ullrich fischer, the Re-Pledge, Justin Wright, MW Unicorn, and Ryan Heinen. Thank you guys so very kindly for pledging to the show. And of course, now it's time to thank my all-time greats. And they are Matt Garrett, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borszczow, the honorable Roger Metcalf, best patron in the universe.

1:00:56 Thomas: Well, there you go. Matthew Maxson of the Odd Atheist Friends, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, Clear as Kushner. Hey, reference that today. Cool.

1:01:33 Thomas: Dang Griffith, Jonathan Moyet, Michael Rops, Michael Schaefer, host of soon to be acclaimed podcast, Reasonable Risk. I was on that podcast. I don't think it's out yet, but I'll let you know. And Hunter Ash. Thank you guys so much for being my top patrons, making the show happen. You really do. It would not be here without you. And with that said, I am excited to bring you Mr. Andrew Torrez on Monday. We've got a very interesting, he's got a response actually to the Michael A. Wood Jr. episode. And also we're doing a little bit of a coordinated crossover. We're going to cover some stuff on this show, and then the next day's Opening Arguments will cover some of the other aspects of it. So going to be really fun. Looking forward to that. Thanks for listening as always, and I'll see you next time.