In this episode, Alan Elrod, Founder of The Pulaski Institution, discusses the importance of improving political discourse and outreach. Then, Zaha Hassan, Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Lara Friedman, President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, lay out the current challenges for the people of Gaza and Palestinian American activists. Finally, Economics Professor Rick Roberts brings us up to speed about the impact of President Trump’s tariffs.
Link to Zaha and Lara's book: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/suppressing-dissent-shrinking-civic-space-transnational-repression-and-palestine-israel?lang=en
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast.
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00:01:11 --> 00:01:16 The following program is hosted by the NbG Podcast Network.
00:01:21 --> 00:01:56 Music.
00:01:57 --> 00:02:02 Welcome to another moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:07 And today we have a jam-packed podcast.
00:02:08 --> 00:02:13 Yeah. You know, what started out, maybe a couple of guests,
00:02:13 --> 00:02:20 we got four, four of the sharpest, most intelligent people that come on and
00:02:20 --> 00:02:27 talk about the volatility that's going on, whether it's dealing with American politics,
00:02:27 --> 00:02:31 what's going on in the Middle East, or even the economy.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:38 We are living in some volatile times. And so I have four people coming on who
00:02:38 --> 00:02:44 are going to break down this volatile moment in our society.
00:02:44 --> 00:02:48 And hopefully you will get some enlightenment.
00:02:48 --> 00:02:55 Hopefully you will get some hope and some encouragement and maybe get us to
00:02:55 --> 00:02:59 start thinking more about solutions,
00:02:59 --> 00:03:06 whether it's changing of the electorate or lining up on issues,
00:03:06 --> 00:03:12 shaping your opinion on issues more clearly, that kind of thing.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:18 So this is really, really a challenging time as well as being volatile.
00:03:18 --> 00:03:24 And so I am really grateful that I've been able to have these guests come on,
00:03:24 --> 00:03:28 and hopefully you will enjoy this program as well.
00:03:28 --> 00:03:33 So, since it's a jam-packed show, we're going to go ahead and get it started.
00:03:33 --> 00:03:37 As always, we start it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:03:39 --> 00:03:44 Music.
00:03:44 --> 00:03:49 Thanks, Erik. President Trump reversed steep tariffs on multiple nations,
00:03:49 --> 00:03:53 citing financial market turmoil and surging bond yields as motivators.
00:03:54 --> 00:03:59 Millions globally protested President Trump and Elon Musk over perceived attacks
00:03:59 --> 00:04:05 on democracy and billionaire overreach, with demonstrations in all 50 states and internationally.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:11 A second unvaccinated child with no underlying health conditions died from measles-related
00:04:11 --> 00:04:18 pulmonary failure in Texas amid an outbreak of nearly 500 cases across Texas and New Mexico. The U.S.
00:04:18 --> 00:04:23 Senate and House each passed their version of a budget plan to extend Trump-era
00:04:23 --> 00:04:27 tax cuts and reduce spending A federal judge allowed a defamation lawsuit by
00:04:27 --> 00:04:33 the Central Park Five against Donald Trump over his 2024 campaign comments to proceed.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:38 The National Park Service restored mentions of Harriet Tubman's slavery and
00:04:38 --> 00:04:42 the Fugitive Slave Act it had removed from its Underground Railroad webpage.
00:04:43 --> 00:04:47 President Trump dismissed NSA Director Timothy Haw following a meeting with
00:04:47 --> 00:04:49 far-right activist Laura Loomer.
00:04:50 --> 00:04:54 The U.S. Supreme Court blocked a federal judge's order requiring the Trump administration
00:04:54 --> 00:04:58 to rehire thousands of dismissed probationary workers.
00:04:58 --> 00:05:03 The North Carolina Supreme Court temporarily halted an appellate ruling that
00:05:03 --> 00:05:08 would invalidate over 60 ballots in a contested state Supreme Court race.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:13 A federal judge ordered the White House to restore the Associated Press's access
00:05:13 --> 00:05:19 after restrictions were imposed over its coverage referring to the Gulf of Mexico. Three U.S.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:23 Citizens imprisoned in Congo for a failed coup were transferred to American
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 custody after their death sentences were commuted.
00:05:26 --> 00:05:31 Three U.S. aid workers in Myanmar were abruptly laid off during earthquake relief
00:05:31 --> 00:05:39 efforts amid USAID budget cuts, hampering disaster response as the death toll climbs to 3.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:47 And a nightclub roof collapse in the Dominican Republic killed 221 people and injured over 189.
00:05:48 --> 00:05:52 I am Grace Gee, and this has been A Moment of News.
00:05:53 --> 00:05:58 Music.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news.
00:06:01 --> 00:06:06 And now it is time for our guest, Alan Elrod.
00:06:07 --> 00:06:11 Alan Elrod is the president and CEO of the Pulaski Institution,
00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 a new think tank dedicated to
00:06:13 --> 00:06:18 the connection between global politics and economics and heartland areas.
00:06:19 --> 00:06:22 He lives outside Little Rock, Arkansas.
00:06:23 --> 00:06:27 Ladies and gentlemen, it's my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 on this podcast, Alan Elrod.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:41 Music.
00:06:41 --> 00:06:48 All right. Alan Elrod, Professor Alan Elrod. How are you doing? So you're doing good?
00:06:48 --> 00:06:50 Doing well. I'm doing well. How about you?
00:06:51 --> 00:06:57 I'm doing good. I'm glad to have you on. I want to talk about this think tank
00:06:57 --> 00:07:00 that you've put together and
00:07:00 --> 00:07:04 just some of your thoughts about what's going on in the political world,
00:07:04 --> 00:07:09 especially from your vantage point, which is the great state of Arkansas.
00:07:09 --> 00:07:13 At one point in my life, I was designated as an Arkansas traveler.
00:07:14 --> 00:07:18 So I hold that in great distinction. All right.
00:07:19 --> 00:07:21 I love that. Yeah.
00:07:22 --> 00:07:28 So normally how I start the interviews, Alan, is that I throw a couple of icebreakers out there.
00:07:29 --> 00:07:36 So the first icebreaker is a quote. And the quote is, never has our future been more unpredictable.
00:07:36 --> 00:07:42 Never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 follow the rules of common sense and self-interest.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:51 Forces that look like sheer insanity if judged by the standards of other centuries.
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 What does that quote mean to you?
00:07:54 --> 00:07:59 Well, I mean, you know, that's Hannah Arendt. And I used this recently in a piece I wrote.
00:07:59 --> 00:08:05 And, you know, in Origins of Talentarianism, she's talking, I think,
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 about obviously a very specific moment in history.
00:08:07 --> 00:08:12 But I think that what that quote evokes speaks a lot to our moment now,
00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 because a lot of things don't feel rational.
00:08:14 --> 00:08:19 I think, you know, people don't seem to be behaving to the kind of normal rules
00:08:19 --> 00:08:23 of politics, right? We just, you know, Donald Trump, even this week,
00:08:23 --> 00:08:28 is taking a certain degree of pain in his approval polls.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:32 But, you know, after everything, right, after self-sabotaging the economy,
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 after these sort of really clearly authoritarian deportations,
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 he's at negative four in his approval.
00:08:38 --> 00:08:43 You know, I remember right before Barack Obama was elected, and yeah,
00:08:43 --> 00:08:47 it was a recession, but George D.B. Bush was in the 20s in his approval rating.
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 And so I think there's something kind of astounding about where the country
00:08:50 --> 00:08:55 is at mentally in its willingness to kind of go along with some of this stuff
00:08:55 --> 00:09:00 in the policies that are being enacted that seem to have no real actual rational
00:09:00 --> 00:09:02 purpose of helping the country.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:07 And at the same time in our our i think our unwillingness to accept what's happening
00:09:07 --> 00:09:12 a lot of us i think are still in denial about it we want to tell ourselves you
00:09:12 --> 00:09:16 know that he he won't really do tariffs then he did them we want to tell ourselves
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 that he doesn't really want to invade
00:09:18 --> 00:09:22 canada or greenland he keeps saying he does you know we want to tell ourselves
00:09:22 --> 00:09:27 that he won't blow up right america's position in the world he has so i think
00:09:27 --> 00:09:32 you know that kind of inability to accept what's happening around us, to me,
00:09:32 --> 00:09:36 is also what's evoked by that. It feels like everything feels crazy.
00:09:36 --> 00:09:40 And I think that that's true. But I also think that that's sort of the place
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 we have to start from now, that a lot of the old rules are gone.
00:09:44 --> 00:09:48 Yeah. All right, so give me a number between one person,
00:09:49 --> 00:09:54 And 20? Well, let's say 13. All right, 13.
00:09:55 --> 00:10:01 Do you think there is such a thing as unbiased news or media and why?
00:10:01 --> 00:10:07 Yeah, I do. Now, I think that always has to, you know, if what we mean is do
00:10:07 --> 00:10:12 you think that human beings can do anything without some of their own, I guess, you know,
00:10:13 --> 00:10:17 decision making and whatever guides that playing a role, then no.
00:10:17 --> 00:10:24 But do I think, you know, news that is reliable and objective and rigorously
00:10:24 --> 00:10:29 checked and, you know, presented in a way that's meant to inform can be made?
00:10:30 --> 00:10:31 Yeah, I think, of course.
00:10:31 --> 00:10:33 And there are places that still do a really good job of this.
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 You know, I mean, the AP is a wonderful news outlet.
00:10:36 --> 00:10:41 You can tune into PBS NewsHour every night and want really great reporting.
00:10:42 --> 00:10:46 Cable news, I think, often is where we get into the problem with this.
00:10:46 --> 00:10:50 But the issue is that most cable news is actually editorialism.
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 It's opinion journalism in primetime.
00:10:53 --> 00:10:57 And opinion journalism has a place in the ecosystem of journalism.
00:10:57 --> 00:11:02 It's just that I think if people assume that opinion journalism is the only
00:11:02 --> 00:11:03 journalism that's out there,
00:11:03 --> 00:11:07 you're going to end up with this idea that there's no such thing as news that's
00:11:07 --> 00:11:12 trying to be sort of rigorous and objective about its reporting. And there is.
00:11:14 --> 00:11:22 So what motivated or inspired you to get involved in politics well you know i had the,
00:11:23 --> 00:11:27 for i guess fortune misfortune being raised by a political scientist for a father
00:11:27 --> 00:11:31 i've always been interested it's always fascinated me politics has always been
00:11:31 --> 00:11:35 something that i enjoyed like learning about the history of politics i care
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38 about certain you know issues i think that's how a lot of people tend to get involved.
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 They're passionate about an issue here or there.
00:11:43 --> 00:11:47 You know, I think it helped that when I came of age, right, to vote,
00:11:47 --> 00:11:51 18, my first election was Obama's election. And that was a pretty great election.
00:11:51 --> 00:11:56 You know, Barack Obama and John McCain are kind of two wonderful paragons of America.
00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 They, you know, we had a great, you know, Sarah Palin, I don't have as many
00:12:00 --> 00:12:04 charming things to say about, but, you know, we had a great election where we
00:12:04 --> 00:12:10 elected the first black president and he ran against a war hero.
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 It was kind of the best America had to offer, right?
00:12:14 --> 00:12:18 And so if that's your coming of age into elections and politics,
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 you kind of feel pretty good about the country.
00:12:20 --> 00:12:25 So when I was younger, there was a lot, I think, to be excited about in a sense
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 that we're all trying to make the country better in different ways.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:32 And, you know, those feelings are complicated now.
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 But certainly when I was younger, the things that drew me into politics were
00:12:36 --> 00:12:40 both personal interests, and I really think, you know, it was kind of a fun
00:12:40 --> 00:12:41 time to be interested in politics.
00:12:42 --> 00:12:49 Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, a lot of people don't put it in that perspective.
00:12:49 --> 00:12:54 You know, here was an African-American running for president of the United States
00:12:54 --> 00:13:00 based on the history of what African-Americans gone through running against a legitimate war hero,
00:13:00 --> 00:13:06 which, you know, in other times, the military hero usually is the victor.
00:13:06 --> 00:13:11 And so, like you said, when you put it in that perspective, yeah,
00:13:11 --> 00:13:17 that's probably really the last great election we have had, you know, as far as choices.
00:13:18 --> 00:13:23 And it means something for me because I was on the ballot in Mississippi in
00:13:23 --> 00:13:26 that 08 election. I was running for the U.S. Senate.
00:13:26 --> 00:13:31 So, yeah, that's just kind of a cool reflection on that.
00:13:32 --> 00:13:36 What is the Pulaski Institution and why did you feel the need to create it?
00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 So we're a new nonprofit. You could call us Think Tank. I do.
00:13:41 --> 00:13:46 And what we are is an organization that's dedicated to really looking at heartland
00:13:46 --> 00:13:52 areas in the context of global politics and particularly with this notion of
00:13:52 --> 00:13:53 place-based democracy.
00:13:53 --> 00:13:59 And the idea is that we're seeing, not just in the United States,
00:14:00 --> 00:14:06 a retreat in a lot of wealthy democracies from the commitments to liberalism, pluralism.
00:14:07 --> 00:14:12 You know, certain economic freedoms that have guided these countries over the
00:14:12 --> 00:14:19 last, you know, especially 80 years to places of remarkable freedom and prosperity.
00:14:19 --> 00:14:23 And that it's important to look at why that's happening, but also to actually
00:14:23 --> 00:14:29 try to bolster the sort of democratic values and culture that's being developed in these places.
00:14:29 --> 00:14:35 It's not just in the United States. It's not just in upstate New York or Maine
00:14:35 --> 00:14:41 or Arkansas here, but also in places like the north of England,
00:14:41 --> 00:14:43 where there was a significant Brexit vote, Right.
00:14:44 --> 00:14:48 Or the parts of France, right, in post-industrial France and southern France,
00:14:49 --> 00:14:52 where, you know, the politics of Marine Le Pen are quite popular.
00:14:52 --> 00:14:56 And to me, there's a sense that if we don't start really having conversations
00:14:56 --> 00:15:01 about these places and also understand that they exist, they still do exist
00:15:01 --> 00:15:02 in a globalized context,
00:15:02 --> 00:15:08 then we are setting ourselves up to just keep getting buffeted every couple
00:15:08 --> 00:15:16 of years by another wave, right, of sort of populist angst in different countries, right?
00:15:21 --> 00:15:24 You know, the AFD is still surging in Germany.
00:15:24 --> 00:15:28 You know, France is going to have an election in 2027. And right now it's not
00:15:28 --> 00:15:34 obvious who's going to run that's going to be able to be more popular than the national rally.
00:15:34 --> 00:15:38 So I think there's a lot of concern still, even outside the U.S.,
00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 for where these forces are going.
00:15:41 --> 00:15:46 Is there a true natural connection between global politics and the heartland?
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 Absolutely. You can't escape it. It's all coming here, right?
00:15:50 --> 00:15:55 One is the fact that the things that a lot of these people are upset about are
00:15:55 --> 00:15:59 globalized processes, or at least they perceive them in the sense of like,
00:15:59 --> 00:16:03 well, you know, we're being dislocated or we're being undercut,
00:16:04 --> 00:16:07 right, by big cosmopolitan cities, you know.
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 But also, you know, the world is globalized.
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 So the ideas travel internationally, right?
00:16:13 --> 00:16:17 You know, we had a lot of conversations in the past couple of years about great replacement theory.
00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 Well, great replacement theory is a French idea. Originally,
00:16:20 --> 00:16:22 these ideas are traveling.
00:16:22 --> 00:16:28 You know, we see, you know, the Ottawa rally where a lot of the Canadians who
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31 participated in that came from sort of prairie provinces, right,
00:16:31 --> 00:16:33 where they sort of took over downtown Ottawa.
00:16:33 --> 00:16:37 You know, there's a lot of things about that that were evocative of January
00:16:37 --> 00:16:41 6th and frankly, a lot of online networks that are overlapping with certain
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 American far right influencers.
00:16:43 --> 00:16:49 So one is to understand, I think, that there's a reaction against certain aspects
00:16:49 --> 00:16:53 of globalization, but also understand that globalization itself is actually
00:16:53 --> 00:16:57 shaping and feeding some of the forces that are being unleashed in these places.
00:16:59 --> 00:17:06 Yeah. So you are based in Arkansas, the home of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Tom
00:17:06 --> 00:17:12 Cotton, the poster children and Johnny Cash.
00:17:12 --> 00:17:16 Well, that's true. That's true, too. As a matter of fact, there is a little
00:17:16 --> 00:17:22 restaurant right behind the state capital, Little Rock, that Bill Clinton used
00:17:22 --> 00:17:24 to go to. And I think Hunter Thompson.
00:17:24 --> 00:17:26 So I got to eat there. So that was pretty cool.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:33 But Sanders and Cotton are considered like the poster children for violence
00:17:33 --> 00:17:34 and cruelty in American politics.
00:17:35 --> 00:17:39 Why do you think that that kind of politics or those kind of individuals are
00:17:39 --> 00:17:44 appealing in the political atmosphere here?
00:17:45 --> 00:17:50 So I think I should say that obviously I don't think that not everyone who votes
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 for a Republican candidate or someone like Sarah Hickory Sanders or Todd Cotton
00:17:53 --> 00:17:59 is doing so because they're just thrilled by the sort of violent elements or
00:17:59 --> 00:18:01 the more authoritarian elements of their politics, right?
00:18:02 --> 00:18:08 The South has a long history of being a kind of one-party region that shifted
00:18:08 --> 00:18:13 from Democratic to Republican, right, largely on the back of the changes in the civil rights era.
00:18:13 --> 00:18:18 But it means there's a lot of people who have, frankly, just a sort of reflexive loyalty.
00:18:19 --> 00:18:23 But I've made this argument before I did a piece of the bulwark for it,
00:18:23 --> 00:18:28 which is that I just don't think that the South ever fully took to liberal democratic
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 culture in the way the left of the country did.
00:18:30 --> 00:18:35 That there's some excellent histories on this, probably the best one being Heather
00:18:35 --> 00:18:37 Cox Richardson's How the South Won the Civil War,
00:18:37 --> 00:18:42 that really argue that it's not just the failure of Reconstruction,
00:18:42 --> 00:18:46 it's the way that these ideas are cemented after the failure of Reconstruction.
00:18:46 --> 00:18:51 You know, the South goes right back into being essentially a racial hierarchy
00:18:51 --> 00:18:53 system. But not just that.
00:18:53 --> 00:18:57 They invent new ways to, now that they have to deal with the fact that there
00:18:57 --> 00:19:01 are technically free black citizens living in the region, they invent new ways
00:19:01 --> 00:19:04 to impose, right, that system electorally.
00:19:04 --> 00:19:10 And they managed to package those ideas in ways that can be sold to the public, right?
00:19:11 --> 00:19:15 Limited, you know, limited government and kind of these ideas about Washington
00:19:15 --> 00:19:18 corruption and a certain paranoid attitude as well.
00:19:19 --> 00:19:23 And the reality is that I think that, you know, that culture has never been
00:19:23 --> 00:19:25 fully uprooted. We never really
00:19:25 --> 00:19:31 did the kind of thoroughgoing dealing with what this meant in the South.
00:19:32 --> 00:19:35 And civil rights came essentially almost a century later.
00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 And even then, I think there has been a tendency to sort of,
00:19:39 --> 00:19:42 you know, dust our hands off, pat ourselves on the back and say,
00:19:42 --> 00:19:43 we accomplished that, right?
00:19:43 --> 00:19:46 And, you know, probably the culmination of that attitude comes,
00:19:46 --> 00:19:48 right, with the Shelby v.
00:19:48 --> 00:19:51 Holder decision, right, and the Supreme Court saying, well, actually,
00:19:51 --> 00:19:55 it's no longer essential that the federal government sort of rigorously enforce
00:19:55 --> 00:20:01 these sort of parts of the Voting Rights Act because, you know, mission accomplished.
00:20:01 --> 00:20:06 And I would say, no, mission not accomplished, not just in sort of actual sort
00:20:06 --> 00:20:10 of measurable data points, but in the culture, which is a little harder to measure,
00:20:10 --> 00:20:15 but I think is still very much one where people do just kind of accept a certain
00:20:15 --> 00:20:19 degree of illiberalism in their politics here, because it's always been there.
00:20:21 --> 00:20:25 Yeah yeah i i agree with that you know a lot of people.
00:20:27 --> 00:20:31 You know that don't really understand the south i've been now in the south,
00:20:32 --> 00:20:40 god 42 years of my life and you know people are very nice people are very very
00:20:40 --> 00:20:46 hospitable they're very cordial you can sit down and have a beer and eat barbecue
00:20:46 --> 00:20:51 and play football watch football You can do a whole lot of things.
00:20:51 --> 00:20:57 But when it comes to the politics, though, it's almost like a switch clicks in.
00:20:57 --> 00:21:04 And it's just like anything that's related to change, they're allergic to it. Right.
00:21:04 --> 00:21:09 It's just like, you know, every human being loves sugar, but we're all addicted
00:21:09 --> 00:21:10 to it. So that's why we get fat.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:16 It's the same way it would change to me in the South it's like,
00:21:17 --> 00:21:22 they just it's like well you know that's just not that's always was the common
00:21:22 --> 00:21:25 line that's just not how we do things around here,
00:21:26 --> 00:21:32 it's like and how's that working out for you that usually just frustrate me
00:21:32 --> 00:21:35 to death in Mississippi because Mississippi is one of the poorest states in
00:21:35 --> 00:21:38 the nation and anytime we used to try to push for things,
00:21:40 --> 00:21:44 to try to make life better or at least go in a different direction than what we've been doing,
00:21:45 --> 00:21:48 well, you know, I don't know if our folks are ready for that.
00:21:49 --> 00:21:53 And so how do you get around it?
00:21:55 --> 00:21:58 Well, you know, I think we would probably both agree that our frustrations with
00:21:58 --> 00:22:02 the South coexist with our love for the South. I do love it.
00:22:03 --> 00:22:06 And that has to be there, right? You really aren't going to be able to change
00:22:06 --> 00:22:10 this place, this region, without doing it from here, you know?
00:22:10 --> 00:22:14 And that's kind of the logic that Pulaski has in general, is that the work has
00:22:14 --> 00:22:15 to be done from different places.
00:22:15 --> 00:22:21 You got to try to find people who are willing to talk and think and advocate
00:22:21 --> 00:22:25 with at least having at least one foot planted in the place they're trying to talk about.
00:22:26 --> 00:22:32 I think that's really important because, you know, people need to see that you're invested in it.
00:22:32 --> 00:22:37 People need to see that this is a place you're not just talking about to them from a distance.
00:22:37 --> 00:22:44 So, you know, that's to me the starting point is you cannot possibly effect
00:22:44 --> 00:22:52 chain in a place in a really rich and meaningful way that lasts without being
00:22:52 --> 00:22:54 invested in it. And so I think that's the other side of it.
00:22:55 --> 00:22:57 A lot of people reacted to that piece I wrote with a kind of like,
00:22:57 --> 00:22:59 well, the South is terrible. I hate the South.
00:22:59 --> 00:23:02 And I was like, I don't hate the South. I love the South.
00:23:03 --> 00:23:07 I just want so much more for it. Yeah.
00:23:08 --> 00:23:12 Well, there's an old politician in Mississippi. He's going on to the other side
00:23:12 --> 00:23:15 now. But he used to say, in order to lead the people, you got to love the people.
00:23:16 --> 00:23:20 Yeah. So I agree with you. In order to do what you need to do,
00:23:20 --> 00:23:23 you've got to have a love for the place that you're in, and then you've got
00:23:23 --> 00:23:28 to love the people that are there and just do the best you can.
00:23:29 --> 00:23:36 Why do you think American Christianity has moved from right-wing activism to outright idolatry?
00:23:37 --> 00:23:41 Well, I think there's a lot of different forces at play there.
00:23:42 --> 00:23:47 When you look at what a lot of the scholars of sort of Christian nationalism
00:23:47 --> 00:23:51 will talk about, I think one thing that's important is there's different strains, right?
00:23:51 --> 00:23:55 So, you know, the people who've moved into extremism out of,
00:23:55 --> 00:23:59 say, the Catholic right are not talking in exactly the same way as the people
00:23:59 --> 00:24:03 who come from a more charismatic evangelical background.
00:24:04 --> 00:24:10 But what I do think is true is, if we're going to try to talk about this specific
00:24:10 --> 00:24:14 moment we're in, a lot of Christians decided that Donald Trump was an imperfect
00:24:14 --> 00:24:17 vessel for accomplishing a lot of things that they thought were important to accomplish.
00:24:18 --> 00:24:25 And the problem with that, I think, is that is a bet in which they had to keep sort of anteing up.
00:24:25 --> 00:24:28 They had to keep going deeper and deeper in, right?
00:24:29 --> 00:24:36 I think in 2016, the tone to a lot of it felt more transactional, right?
00:24:36 --> 00:24:39 Donald Trump, maybe he's not perfect, but he's going to do some things.
00:24:39 --> 00:24:42 And Christians have to accept that we live in a world, right,
00:24:42 --> 00:24:48 of flesh and blood. And therefore, if you want to get certain things done for
00:24:48 --> 00:24:51 the purpose of God, that you don't always get to pick who you work with, right? Right.
00:24:52 --> 00:24:58 That I think what happened with that is that they had to get they got deeper and deeper in.
00:24:58 --> 00:25:03 And as you start to justify that, right, I think that the arguments in the kind
00:25:03 --> 00:25:08 of ways in which that was sustained, right, that relationship was sustained,
00:25:09 --> 00:25:16 it started to push more towards if all of this is worth it, then there must
00:25:16 --> 00:25:18 be something really special here. Right.
00:25:18 --> 00:25:22 And so Trump becomes not just a kind of, well, we can use him to get done what
00:25:22 --> 00:25:25 we've done. He becomes the special chosen man of God.
00:25:26 --> 00:25:30 You know, I don't think that's the whole story. And obviously there are nuances,
00:25:30 --> 00:25:35 like I said, depending on the sort of theological milieu you come out of within Christianity.
00:25:36 --> 00:25:41 But I think that that kind of paints the broad picture for what's happened in the last decade.
00:25:42 --> 00:25:46 Yeah, it's kind of a, staying with the religious thing, it's kind of like,
00:25:47 --> 00:25:54 instead of getting the Apostle Paul, you're settling for Saul of Tarsus,
00:25:54 --> 00:25:56 right? Oh, yeah. It's like. No conversion.
00:25:57 --> 00:26:02 That's right. No Damascus Road experience. It's just, we like Saul the way he is.
00:26:02 --> 00:26:08 We just want him to go ahead and do his thing, you know, and not elevate himself.
00:26:08 --> 00:26:19 And I just wonder why people really, really feel that way, why they feel that
00:26:19 --> 00:26:21 they have to settle for that.
00:26:21 --> 00:26:28 I guess maybe in their mindset, somebody who actually was pure probably wouldn't
00:26:28 --> 00:26:29 get close enough to be president.
00:26:29 --> 00:26:35 I don't know. I mean, I think it's astonishing how under siege American Christians
00:26:35 --> 00:26:39 feel despite living in a pretty, I think, actually Christian-friendly country.
00:26:39 --> 00:26:45 You know, when you have convinced yourself that you are this persecuted minority,
00:26:45 --> 00:26:49 I think the kind of things you start to think you're willing to accept to assert
00:26:49 --> 00:26:52 your own power get pretty dark, right?
00:26:52 --> 00:26:55 I do think a lot of you'll hear a lot of the justifications are,
00:26:55 --> 00:26:59 well, it's like war has already been declared on us.
00:26:59 --> 00:27:04 Therefore, we should not be afraid to deploy, you know, whatever weapons are in our arsenal.
00:27:05 --> 00:27:11 And Donald Trump happens to be, you know, right now the big one in the repertoire. Yeah.
00:27:12 --> 00:27:16 What will it take for liberalism to be dynamic and inclusive?
00:27:18 --> 00:27:21 You know, one of the things I'm really convinced of right now is that we live
00:27:21 --> 00:27:23 in a moment where we need lots of new ideas.
00:27:23 --> 00:27:27 And so I think as long as what you need to do is say the guiding principles
00:27:27 --> 00:27:34 for how we think about our problems should be this mixture of respect for individual
00:27:34 --> 00:27:36 dignity, pluralism, which means, you know,
00:27:36 --> 00:27:40 lots of different people, right, being able to co-exist, lots of different groups
00:27:40 --> 00:27:44 being able to co-exist and participate, you know, mutual toleration.
00:27:44 --> 00:27:49 And, yeah, individual freedom, but then say, okay, those are the guiding principles.
00:27:51 --> 00:27:53 But a lot of the things we haven't done, a lot of things we've been doing,
00:27:54 --> 00:27:58 maybe they're not working, maybe we need new ideas, and as long as we're trying to come up with,
00:27:59 --> 00:28:04 responses to the moment, original responses, that still say we're going to adhere
00:28:04 --> 00:28:06 to these sort of guiding ideals,
00:28:07 --> 00:28:10 then I think that's opening the door for something more dynamic, right?
00:28:10 --> 00:28:14 One of the things that I think this goes back to a kind of madness conversation,
00:28:14 --> 00:28:18 which is people, I think, really have to accept that we're moving forward past
00:28:18 --> 00:28:21 some, the old status quo is not coming back.
00:28:21 --> 00:28:27 We have a chance to decide what we want to happen next. And I think that can
00:28:27 --> 00:28:31 be an invigorating thing that we could say, what do we want to do in the wake of this?
00:28:31 --> 00:28:34 Donald Trump has just laid siege to so many aspects of our government and how
00:28:34 --> 00:28:35 things are working. Okay.
00:28:36 --> 00:28:39 Is the goal just going to be to go in and sort of, you know glue
00:28:39 --> 00:28:42 the pieces back together and have a a
00:28:42 --> 00:28:46 slightly more you know broken looking
00:28:46 --> 00:28:51 but you know kind of fixed system or is the goal going to be to go in and say
00:28:51 --> 00:28:56 okay well let's be as ambitious about building something new and interesting
00:28:56 --> 00:29:01 and dynamic as these people were about trying to destroy it right i do think
00:29:01 --> 00:29:05 that needs to be there that energy for for for creating the future has to be there,
00:29:06 --> 00:29:09 being really reactive and responsive to problems, saying we're going to actually
00:29:09 --> 00:29:13 have big ideas about how we're going to fix the energy crisis,
00:29:13 --> 00:29:15 about how we're going to fix the climate crisis, about how we're going to fix
00:29:15 --> 00:29:18 some of these new challenges that are emerging.
00:29:18 --> 00:29:21 And making sure that liberalism is the guidepost.
00:29:22 --> 00:29:27 Yeah, it's like, I guess another analogy would be, it's like,
00:29:28 --> 00:29:32 we know that the president has set everything on fire.
00:29:32 --> 00:29:38 So the question is, do we put the fire out and salvage what's left?
00:29:39 --> 00:29:44 Or do we just go ahead and let it burn and then rebuild something totally new?
00:29:44 --> 00:29:49 Like you said, with more of a liberal or progressive bend to it.
00:29:51 --> 00:29:54 That's gonna be tough yeah i'm not an accelerationist
00:29:54 --> 00:29:57 i don't think that we should get rid of the constitution or anything like
00:29:57 --> 00:30:02 that but there's things where you can look at it and say look okay he's
00:30:02 --> 00:30:06 really ransacked a lot of you know agencies when we
00:30:06 --> 00:30:12 come back in if you know if democrats win in 2028 or something okay how are
00:30:12 --> 00:30:15 we going to think about putting the government back together is it going to
00:30:15 --> 00:30:19 just be okay everything goes back we're just going institute sort of pre-2025
00:30:19 --> 00:30:23 funding or are we going to say we need to think really critically,
00:30:23 --> 00:30:27 about how we want to structure these things and
00:30:27 --> 00:30:31 approach you know the future moving forward i also think we probably have to
00:30:31 --> 00:30:38 have a serious conversation about how to massively reform ice right it's clear
00:30:38 --> 00:30:43 to me that that agency is is willing to do some frankly illegal and constitutional
00:30:43 --> 00:30:46 things at the president's orders. And that's a cultural problem.
00:30:47 --> 00:30:52 And it has to be fixed. I don't know that that means, you know,
00:30:52 --> 00:30:57 destroying, like eliminating ICE as an agency, but it certainly means reforming
00:30:57 --> 00:31:00 it and probably getting rid of a lot of personnel, because that's a huge problem.
00:31:00 --> 00:31:06 You cannot have, I think, you know, you cannot be afraid to institute reforms,
00:31:06 --> 00:31:08 especially after people have seen what they've seen.
00:31:08 --> 00:31:13 You know, they can't unsee, you know, federal agents doing this stuff.
00:31:14 --> 00:31:17 Yeah. And then even a question of...
00:31:19 --> 00:31:21 Like maybe consolidating stuff, right?
00:31:22 --> 00:31:27 Because, you know, one of the things we had to deal with a lot in being in the
00:31:27 --> 00:31:34 state legislature in Mississippi was because we had limited income,
00:31:34 --> 00:31:35 limited revenue, tax revenue.
00:31:37 --> 00:31:41 And, you know, and people were out there struggling.
00:31:41 --> 00:31:47 The question became, do we really need to be as big as we used to be,
00:31:48 --> 00:31:53 right? But, you know, we had a county, it literally had 40 people in it
00:31:53 --> 00:31:55 and we had six school districts.
00:31:55 --> 00:32:02 So the question was, do we really need to have six school districts in a county
00:32:02 --> 00:32:03 that only has 40 people?
00:32:04 --> 00:32:10 You know, and what does that look like? We were electing a superintendent of
00:32:10 --> 00:32:14 education for a county that literally did not have a school in the county.
00:32:16 --> 00:32:21 And they had consolidated with another county for their kids to go to school.
00:32:21 --> 00:32:25 And so we were like, yeah, we probably need to get rid of that position.
00:32:26 --> 00:32:35 So I think, you know, the concern that a lot of us have that have been involved in politics and,
00:32:35 --> 00:32:42 like you say, respect the Constitution, is that we're not against reform or
00:32:42 --> 00:32:50 upgrades or, you know, doing what needs some tinkering, but we're not into slashing and burning.
00:32:50 --> 00:32:55 That's the problem. It's like, you just can't come in and just destroy everything
00:32:55 --> 00:33:01 and then have somebody who has no concept of government, let alone American government.
00:33:02 --> 00:33:08 Being the lead point person. I think that's where a lot of people that are rational
00:33:08 --> 00:33:11 about the conversation really have some heartburn.
00:33:11 --> 00:33:19 And I don't know, but a lot of people that line up on that side are frustrated
00:33:19 --> 00:33:21 enough where they decide to let that go.
00:33:22 --> 00:33:26 You know, it's like, well, he said he was going to shake some things up.
00:33:26 --> 00:33:31 I think that goes back to, you know, when we make the equation that Christians
00:33:31 --> 00:33:34 think that Donald Trump is a change agent for their good,
00:33:34 --> 00:33:40 they envision him as a Jesus showing up and flipping the tables at the temple
00:33:40 --> 00:33:44 as opposed to being more Herod. You know what I'm saying?
00:33:45 --> 00:33:49 I mean, that's just me. But what do you think about that take?
00:33:49 --> 00:33:53 I think it's the human, you know, this is where we get into the fact that there's
00:33:53 --> 00:33:56 a lot of things about human nature that make democracy really hard. We're not patient.
00:33:56 --> 00:34:02 We want fixes. And there's always been, since democracy has been a thing we've
00:34:02 --> 00:34:04 been trying to do as societies,
00:34:05 --> 00:34:13 there's always been the temptation to indulge people who are saying, I can fix it.
00:34:13 --> 00:34:19 I can fix it right now if you let me do it in these clearly tyrannical ways. Right.
00:34:20 --> 00:34:25 And human beings are often tempted to turn power over like that.
00:34:25 --> 00:34:29 Right. So democracy is when people say democracy is fragile.
00:34:29 --> 00:34:34 One of the things we mean is it's fragile because human beings, by their nature,
00:34:35 --> 00:34:39 do not always actually want to do things the way democracies do things,
00:34:39 --> 00:34:45 which is slow and deliberative and requires consensus and isn't always just
00:34:45 --> 00:34:48 going to, you know, smash things up a bit immediately.
00:34:49 --> 00:34:52 Now, I think the end result of that is obviously better, because that's how
00:34:52 --> 00:34:55 you protect freedoms and rights and dignity. But.
00:34:56 --> 00:34:59 That tension, I think, is always going to be there. And, you know,
00:35:00 --> 00:35:02 it comes to the surface more in different times.
00:35:02 --> 00:35:10 But that human desire to have the quick fix, to push past the sort of way democracy
00:35:10 --> 00:35:13 tries to tell us to slow down, I think that's always going to be there.
00:35:15 --> 00:35:18 So people were talking about you know you know
00:35:18 --> 00:35:21 i hear a lot of democrats saying well you
00:35:21 --> 00:35:26 know the way things are going man we we we ought to be able to flip the house
00:35:26 --> 00:35:32 and flip the senate in 2026 and you know and Donald trump will basically be
00:35:32 --> 00:35:37 a lame duck and all this stuff what is your take on what American politics will
00:35:37 --> 00:35:40 look like in 2026 because there's some people where it's like going,
00:35:41 --> 00:35:44 I don't even know if we're going to have an election in 2026 and y'all busy
00:35:44 --> 00:35:45 talking about flipping stuff, you know?
00:35:46 --> 00:35:50 What do you think American politics is going to look like a year from now?
00:35:50 --> 00:35:57 So I think we should be clear that, you know, there's people who are baselessly
00:35:57 --> 00:35:59 saying we won't have an election in 2026.
00:35:59 --> 00:36:04 There are some very serious people who are saying, hey, this is on my radar
00:36:04 --> 00:36:08 and I have some concerns about what the Trump administration might try to do.
00:36:08 --> 00:36:12 I think it's worth taking the serious people seriously when they say things like that.
00:36:12 --> 00:36:17 At the same time, we're not there yet, so there's not a lot we can do. It's speculative.
00:36:18 --> 00:36:25 What I would, I think, say in terms of how the actual elections might play out
00:36:25 --> 00:36:29 is it looks right now like Democrats are probably going to have a good midterm.
00:36:30 --> 00:36:33 I think that, you know, they had a good midterm in 2018.
00:36:34 --> 00:36:37 A lot of things are maybe even worse now. Yeah.
00:36:37 --> 00:36:41 Then in 2017, 2018, leading up to those midterms. There's lots of reasons I think Democrats,
00:36:42 --> 00:36:45 you know, the early data that we've seen out of some of the special elections
00:36:45 --> 00:36:48 in Wisconsin and even the Florida races where Republicans won,
00:36:48 --> 00:36:52 but won by much less in heavily Republican districts than they normally would,
00:36:52 --> 00:36:56 all suggest things shifting towards Democrats.
00:36:56 --> 00:37:01 What I would say to that is, I'm still worried about living in a country where
00:37:01 --> 00:37:06 every few years we're willing to indulge, people like Donald Trump.
00:37:06 --> 00:37:12 Donald Trump was president and then COVID happened and a million Americans died
00:37:12 --> 00:37:15 in part because Donald Trump actively mismanaged that crisis.
00:37:16 --> 00:37:21 And then after he was voted out of office, he staged a coup to try to stay in
00:37:21 --> 00:37:26 office where his supporters said they wanted to kill his vice president.
00:37:26 --> 00:37:29 And then four years later, because, you know.
00:37:30 --> 00:37:33 Joe Biden was pretty old and we replaced him last minute with
00:37:33 --> 00:37:36 Kamala Harris and prices were higher than
00:37:36 --> 00:37:39 some people would like we returned Donald trump to office
00:37:39 --> 00:37:44 and i think that if that's the cycle we're in that's not very encouraging so
00:37:44 --> 00:37:51 i'm not i'm optimistic about democrats chances in 2026 and even maybe in 2028
00:37:51 --> 00:37:56 but i am concerned about where the country is at that we are,
00:37:57 --> 00:38:02 going to be in a situation where if if the democrats aren't essentially perfect
00:38:02 --> 00:38:08 we just might vote back in you know and after 2028 it might not be right trump
00:38:08 --> 00:38:12 but you know a jd Vance or someone else who is just completely on board with
00:38:12 --> 00:38:15 what we've seen to be a deeply authoritarian,
00:38:16 --> 00:38:21 reckless chaotic form of of government and that does concern me because i i
00:38:21 --> 00:38:28 don't think democrats winning in 2026 or even 2028 necessarily expunges, right,
00:38:28 --> 00:38:31 that particular problem from our democracy.
00:38:32 --> 00:38:37 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, or exercise even.
00:38:38 --> 00:38:43 It's, uh, it's going to be a Herculean task, but you have decided to jump into
00:38:43 --> 00:38:46 fray with the Pulaski institution.
00:38:46 --> 00:38:51 So tell people how people, you know, how people can reach out to you,
00:38:51 --> 00:38:53 how they can get involved with the Pulaski institution.
00:38:54 --> 00:38:59 Just, just, just, just go ahead and plug away and on how people can get engaged.
00:38:59 --> 00:39:03 We are found at PulaskiInstitution.org.
00:39:03 --> 00:39:09 You can also find, we do a podcast that I put out every so often with experts and guests.
00:39:09 --> 00:39:13 It's not weekly, but I try whenever I can get good people, we do an episode
00:39:13 --> 00:39:15 or two in a couple weeks around when we put those out.
00:39:16 --> 00:39:20 That is called The Periphery from the Pulaski Institution, and it is available
00:39:20 --> 00:39:25 across all platforms. You can also find, you know, the writing I do at Arc Digital
00:39:25 --> 00:39:29 or at Liberal Currents or other places like the Bulwark.
00:39:29 --> 00:39:33 And, you know, that usually is stuff that's oriented towards the kind of things
00:39:33 --> 00:39:34 we're thinking about at Pulaski.
00:39:34 --> 00:39:39 If you're in the Oklahoma City area, we are going to be doing an event in Oklahoma
00:39:39 --> 00:39:45 City on April 24th at the Tower Theater with one of our fellows, Dr.
00:39:45 --> 00:39:49 Allison Schertl, who's a professor at OU and some other guests.
00:39:49 --> 00:39:51 And so we're going to be talking a little bit about democracy and Christian
00:39:51 --> 00:39:56 nationalism and extremism, particularly as it relates to Oklahoma.
00:39:57 --> 00:40:00 I think that's going to be fun. And so, yeah, we try it. We're going to be trying
00:40:00 --> 00:40:04 to bring more events to different places to have that kind of local conversation
00:40:04 --> 00:40:05 about what's happening.
00:40:05 --> 00:40:09 And that stuff will usually be posted there. Or you can follow me on Blue Sky,
00:40:09 --> 00:40:13 where I talk about that stuff all the time at A.S. Elrod.
00:40:13 --> 00:40:18 So that's my spiel for for how you can get in touch with us.
00:40:18 --> 00:40:19 And, you know, I hope people will.
00:40:19 --> 00:40:23 Well, Alan Elrod, it's been an honor to talk to you, brother.
00:40:24 --> 00:40:30 I've read some of your stuff on Liberal Current. And when we connected on LinkedIn,
00:40:30 --> 00:40:32 I was like, okay, yeah, this is going to be cool.
00:40:32 --> 00:40:37 So, you know, because, you know, I'm I'm of an age now where it's like,
00:40:38 --> 00:40:43 you know, the podcast might be the extent of my political activity other than voting. Right.
00:40:43 --> 00:40:49 And so we need younger folks that are very thoughtful, very deliberative to
00:40:49 --> 00:40:58 kind of pass the torch and carry it in order to ensure that we still have a thriving democracy.
00:40:58 --> 00:41:00 And I view you as one of those people.
00:41:01 --> 00:41:04 So thank you for doing what you're doing. And thank you for.
00:41:04 --> 00:41:06 And of course, you're a teacher.
00:41:06 --> 00:41:10 So, you know, political science. I love that part from you. But just keep doing
00:41:10 --> 00:41:13 what you're doing. And thank you again for coming on the podcast.
00:41:13 --> 00:41:15 I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me.
00:41:15 --> 00:41:17 All right, guys, we're going to catch you all on the other side.
00:41:18 --> 00:41:37 Music.
00:41:37 --> 00:41:43 All right. And we are back. And so now it's time for my next two guests,
00:41:44 --> 00:41:47 Zaha Hassan and Lara Friedman.
00:41:47 --> 00:41:53 Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment
00:41:53 --> 00:41:54 for International Peace.
00:41:54 --> 00:42:00 Her research focus is on Palestine-Israel peace, transnational repression and
00:42:00 --> 00:42:04 shrinking civic space for Palestine-Israel discourse.
00:42:04 --> 00:42:08 The use of international legal mechanisms by political movements,
00:42:08 --> 00:42:10 and U.S. foreign policy in the region.
00:42:11 --> 00:42:16 Previously, she was the coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian
00:42:16 --> 00:42:20 negotiating team during Palestine's bid for U.N.
00:42:20 --> 00:42:26 Membership, and was a member of the Palestinian delegation to Quartet-sponsored
00:42:26 --> 00:42:30 exploratory talks between 2011 and 2012.
00:42:30 --> 00:42:35 Her most recent publication is a co-edited book, Suppressing Dissent,
00:42:35 --> 00:42:41 Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression, and Palestine-Israel.
00:42:42 --> 00:42:47 Lara Friedman is the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
00:42:47 --> 00:42:52 She is a leading authority on the Middle East, with particular expertise on U.S.
00:42:52 --> 00:42:58 Foreign policy in the region, on Israel-Palestine, and on the way Middle East
00:42:58 --> 00:43:03 and Israeli-Palestine-related issues play out in Congress and in U.S.
00:43:03 --> 00:43:05 Domestic politics, policies, and legislation.
00:43:06 --> 00:43:12 Lara is also a preeminent subject matter expert in the area of anti-Palestinian
00:43:12 --> 00:43:13 legislation and lawfare,
00:43:14 --> 00:43:20 including the weaponization and instrumentalization of the definition of and
00:43:20 --> 00:43:22 concerns about anti-Semitism.
00:43:22 --> 00:43:27 Lara's research on lawfare and anti-Semitism related topics,
00:43:27 --> 00:43:31 which she makes available to the public, is widely cited and widely recognized
00:43:31 --> 00:43:34 as the authoritative data in the field.
00:43:34 --> 00:43:39 Lara is a former officer in the U.S. Foreign Service with diplomatic postings
00:43:39 --> 00:43:43 in Jerusalem, Washington, Tunis, and Beirut.
00:43:43 --> 00:43:47 She also served previously as the Director of Policy and Government Relations
00:43:47 --> 00:43:49 at Americans for Peace Now.
00:43:50 --> 00:43:56 In addition to her work with FMEP, Lara is a non-resident fellow at the U.S. Middle East Project.
00:43:57 --> 00:44:02 She holds a B.A. from the University of Arizona and a master's degree from Georgetown
00:44:02 --> 00:44:07 School of Foreign Service In addition to English, Lara speaks French,
00:44:07 --> 00:44:11 Arabic, Spanish, some Italian, and moles through in Hebrew.
00:44:12 --> 00:44:15 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as guests
00:44:15 --> 00:44:21 on this podcast, Zaha Hassan and Lara Friedman.
00:44:22 --> 00:44:32 Music.
00:44:32 --> 00:44:37 All right. Zaha Hassan. How you doing, ma'am? You doing good?
00:44:38 --> 00:44:41 I'm doing okay. Thanks. Yeah, I'm trying to get your first name right,
00:44:41 --> 00:44:46 but we'll just forgive me for that.
00:44:47 --> 00:44:51 So I understand, Ms. Hassan, that you brought a friend with you to the program.
00:44:52 --> 00:44:55 Go ahead and introduce the audience to her.
00:44:56 --> 00:45:01 Yes, this is my partner in crime, Lara Friedman. She's the president of the
00:45:01 --> 00:45:06 Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, D.C. She's also a former U.S.
00:45:06 --> 00:45:08 Diplomat that was based in Jerusalem.
00:45:09 --> 00:45:14 It's good to be with her. And she's also a contributor to a recently released
00:45:14 --> 00:45:19 book that I co-edited called Suppressing Dissent,
00:45:19 --> 00:45:24 Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression, and Palestine-Israel.
00:45:25 --> 00:45:29 Well, Ms. Friedman, it's good to have you on the program. ma'am thank you
00:45:29 --> 00:45:31 so much for having me yes ma'am all right
00:45:31 --> 00:45:34 guys so normally what i do is i do like a little icebreaker
00:45:34 --> 00:45:41 thing at the beginning so the first the first one is a quote it's called well
00:45:41 --> 00:45:46 it's called the quote goes repressing speech is a net is never the end of a
00:45:46 --> 00:45:52 problem but rather the beginning of one which one of y'all want to take that first.
00:45:54 --> 00:45:56 Well, I'll start us off.
00:45:56 --> 00:46:01 I think it's also a symptom of a larger problem, right?
00:46:01 --> 00:46:06 Because when you start repressing speech, it's because there's some idea that
00:46:06 --> 00:46:11 you don't want others to know about, you don't want others to subscribe to.
00:46:11 --> 00:46:17 So how do you deal with it if you can't counter it with a stronger idea is you
00:46:17 --> 00:46:21 shut down the space for being able to express that idea.
00:46:22 --> 00:46:25 Ms. Friedman, did you? Go ahead. Sorry.
00:46:26 --> 00:46:32 Yeah, no, I agree with Zaha. I think certainly when it comes to issues related to Palestine.
00:46:33 --> 00:46:40 There have been moments across history, particularly in the 90s when it looked
00:46:40 --> 00:46:42 like there was maybe they called the peace process and all of that,
00:46:43 --> 00:46:45 when speech was much less suppressed.
00:46:45 --> 00:46:50 And it was much less suppressed because there actually was a battle of ideas
00:46:50 --> 00:46:54 And there were ways to defend against criticism if you were,
00:46:54 --> 00:46:56 you know, someone who didn't lie to your criticism of Israel.
00:46:56 --> 00:47:03 And we're in a moment here where it's been a long time coming where it's simply
00:47:03 --> 00:47:08 not possible any longer to defend what is happening on the ground.
00:47:08 --> 00:47:11 And this isn't unique to Palestine-related issues.
00:47:11 --> 00:47:15 I'm very myopically focused on this issue. But, you know,
00:47:15 --> 00:47:22 when it comes to the Palestine issue, and it dates back before the current catastrophe
00:47:22 --> 00:47:23 that we're going to talk about,
00:47:23 --> 00:47:28 for a long time now, it's simply not been possible to come up with arguments
00:47:28 --> 00:47:31 to defend what Israel is doing to Palestinians.
00:47:32 --> 00:47:35 And then what's left is to try to
00:47:35 --> 00:47:38 delegitimize discredit and suppress the
00:47:38 --> 00:47:41 people who are making the criticism so that way you don't have to contend with
00:47:41 --> 00:47:46 the facts yeah all right so which one of y'all want to pick a number between
00:47:46 --> 00:47:57 one and 20 13 okay all right do you think there is such a thing as unbiased news or media and why.
00:47:58 --> 00:48:02 That's a great question. I guess for me, the question is less whether,
00:48:03 --> 00:48:04 I mean, I don't think anything is unbiased.
00:48:05 --> 00:48:07 Everyone brings their biases to everything they say.
00:48:07 --> 00:48:10 I mean, it has to do with how they view the world. When it comes to news,
00:48:11 --> 00:48:15 I think it's less a question of whether or not there is bias in everything and
00:48:15 --> 00:48:23 more a question of whether or not that bias becomes or is used to actually obfuscate,
00:48:23 --> 00:48:25 to mislead,
00:48:25 --> 00:48:31 to effectively say, don't believe your eyes, believe what I'm telling you,
00:48:31 --> 00:48:33 don't believe the facts, believe what I'm spinning.
00:48:34 --> 00:48:38 So for me, it's less a question of the bias in the news and how that bias comes
00:48:38 --> 00:48:40 out and what role it plays.
00:48:40 --> 00:48:48 I agree totally with that. I think that the problem that we face with news is
00:48:48 --> 00:48:54 that there's a certain perspective that's given a lot of airtime,
00:48:54 --> 00:48:58 a certain perspective that, you know, the camera lens is focused on.
00:48:58 --> 00:49:03 And then there's a whole other side and a whole other history and context that
00:49:03 --> 00:49:05 is excluded from the news.
00:49:06 --> 00:49:13 And that makes for a skewed presentation of, you know, the so-called facts.
00:49:13 --> 00:49:19 And I think that's why there's been a lot of gravitation, especially by younger
00:49:19 --> 00:49:25 generation towards social media, because it's sort of this eyewitness on the ground account. and.
00:49:26 --> 00:49:31 It's filling a void that that is in the mainstream press, the mainstream TV
00:49:31 --> 00:49:37 news in particular, that doesn't focus on what's exactly happening on the ground
00:49:37 --> 00:49:40 and how it's affecting real people in real time.
00:49:40 --> 00:49:43 And so this is why there's been such an interest in such a growth in social
00:49:43 --> 00:49:50 media, precisely because certain perspectives are excluded on the mainstream. Yeah.
00:49:51 --> 00:49:55 Go ahead. Go ahead. I mean, a piece of it that I think is really,
00:49:55 --> 00:49:58 and this is clear, I think, to anyone who works on an issue,
00:49:58 --> 00:50:03 which is dealing with a disfavored or less powerful sort of political position
00:50:03 --> 00:50:09 in the bias in news is the sort of unconscious or unrecognized bias.
00:50:09 --> 00:50:14 And this is something for folks who work on anything related to Palestinians that is very clear.
00:50:14 --> 00:50:19 And it's when you see ostensibly, you know, mainstream, not biased press choose
00:50:19 --> 00:50:26 words like, you know, Palestinians claim or, you know, so it's alleged.
00:50:26 --> 00:50:30 Anytime anything, anything comes from Palestinians, it's immediately discredited
00:50:30 --> 00:50:35 with this very subtle bias in the language that's used. You know,
00:50:35 --> 00:50:39 Israel states, you know, Israel says this happened.
00:50:40 --> 00:50:44 It's actually anything Israel says is stated as fact. This happened.
00:50:44 --> 00:50:47 Anything Palestinians said is set up as a claim that is disproven,
00:50:47 --> 00:50:51 even when we have a video proving that it's accurate, right?
00:50:51 --> 00:50:54 As they're reporting on a video that shows something happening in real time,
00:50:55 --> 00:50:57 it's still framed as Palestinians claim this happened.
00:50:58 --> 00:51:02 And that sort of, there's something incredibly insidious about that sort of
00:51:02 --> 00:51:07 bias because it creeps into people's perception to just assume that you can't
00:51:07 --> 00:51:11 believe anything from one side and that you must take as fact the other.
00:51:11 --> 00:51:16 Even when, you know, in sort of in the fullness of time, it's proven that really
00:51:16 --> 00:51:21 pretty much everything that you're hearing Palestinians quote unquote claim did happen.
00:51:21 --> 00:51:25 And Israel, when it's proven that it happened, has to constantly change its story.
00:51:26 --> 00:51:30 It's this unconscious bias that creeps in and sort of tilts things,
00:51:31 --> 00:51:33 you know, tilts people's perceptions in profound ways.
00:51:34 --> 00:51:38 All right. So I'm going to put a pin on that because I want to come right back
00:51:38 --> 00:51:41 to that. You used the word perception. So I want to get back to that.
00:51:41 --> 00:51:46 I want to go back in time real quick, and we'll do it.
00:51:46 --> 00:51:49 If you want to explain your answer, cool.
00:51:50 --> 00:51:54 But a simple yes or no will do for either one of you.
00:51:55 --> 00:51:59 And this is what I call the Rashida Tlaib question, right?
00:51:59 --> 00:52:03 So should the Congresswoman have been allowed to speak at the DNC? Yes or no?
00:52:05 --> 00:52:08 Yes. Of course. Of course. Okay. I mean.
00:52:09 --> 00:52:13 It doesn't even require explanation. Right. I mean. Yeah. I just,
00:52:13 --> 00:52:15 that's why, that's why I catch the, the way.
00:52:16 --> 00:52:22 More than Rashida, I mean, it's the concerted effort that was made to prevent
00:52:22 --> 00:52:26 any Palestinians from speaking at the convention,
00:52:26 --> 00:52:34 even though there was an Israeli speaker that was speaking to the harm to Israeli
00:52:34 --> 00:52:40 families by the taking of hostages after October 7th or on October 7th.
00:52:40 --> 00:52:45 There was an opportunity to have a Palestinian speaker to talk about the harms
00:52:45 --> 00:52:49 to Palestinians by the aftermath of October 7th.
00:52:49 --> 00:52:53 And a Palestinian speaker who also happens to be an American,
00:52:53 --> 00:52:58 who also happens to be a Democrat, who also happens to be a legislator in Georgia,
00:52:58 --> 00:53:03 a state that the Democratic Party very much wanted to see a win in,
00:53:03 --> 00:53:06 and they excluded that Palestinian speaker.
00:53:07 --> 00:53:15 Why? Because she didn't fit the profile of what's considered an acceptable speaker on the main stage.
00:53:15 --> 00:53:20 And and and they threw an election over this idea of not being an inclusive
00:53:20 --> 00:53:26 party, which is bizarre and just shows you how deep it runs in our politics.
00:53:26 --> 00:53:30 This this idea that, you know, Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs,
00:53:30 --> 00:53:36 they're not legitimate. They're not a part of our party, the Democratic Party.
00:53:37 --> 00:53:45 There's something just wrong with this group of citizens, and somehow it's okay to exclude them.
00:53:46 --> 00:53:51 And to exclude them even when there's clear popular demand for them.
00:53:51 --> 00:53:53 I mean, that was the part that is the most surreal.
00:53:53 --> 00:53:57 Over the many years I've worked on this issue, I've had people say to me,
00:53:57 --> 00:54:01 listen, Palestine is not the most important issue in the world. There's other issues.
00:54:01 --> 00:54:04 Why do you keep trying to get this into—why do you keep wanting to get this
00:54:04 --> 00:54:08 into the conversation? And I can explain why I think it's important to be in
00:54:08 --> 00:54:09 the conversation all the time.
00:54:09 --> 00:54:14 But now, given what's happening, the grassroots that, in theory,
00:54:14 --> 00:54:19 that convention was supposed to be appealing to and responding to wanted to talk about Palestine.
00:54:19 --> 00:54:23 And a leadership decided it was simply not permitted. Yeah, I think it was a
00:54:23 --> 00:54:25 missed opportunity. I was there in Chicago.
00:54:26 --> 00:54:28 I was fortunate enough to talk
00:54:28 --> 00:54:34 to some of the demonstrators and had one young lady on on the podcast.
00:54:34 --> 00:54:40 And I just felt it was a missed opportunity. I think Congresswoman Tlaib probably
00:54:40 --> 00:54:45 would have been the best person to really articulate. I don't have any problem
00:54:45 --> 00:54:47 with the young lady that's the state representative here.
00:54:47 --> 00:54:55 But I think Congresswoman Tlaib would have been the perfect person to reframe the issue.
00:54:55 --> 00:55:00 And again, this all goes into this perception question I'm going to lead to.
00:55:00 --> 00:55:04 But I'm going to go ahead and skip on because I know we've got a limited amount
00:55:04 --> 00:55:08 of time. What is the current situation now with the people in Gaza?
00:55:09 --> 00:55:13 No, I don't have a word, to be honest with you.
00:55:13 --> 00:55:17 I think we overused catastrophe, apocalyptic.
00:55:18 --> 00:55:23 I mean, I don't know what word to use anymore because I don't think we've ever
00:55:23 --> 00:55:24 seen something like this,
00:55:24 --> 00:55:29 where you have people now for over a month have been cut off from food,
00:55:29 --> 00:55:33 water, from any kind of supplies outside, from the outside.
00:55:34 --> 00:55:39 Humanitarian assistance is a population that's completely dependent on humanitarian
00:55:39 --> 00:55:44 assistance because of sort of how Gaza has been de-developed and how it's become
00:55:44 --> 00:55:45 dependent on Israel for everything.
00:55:46 --> 00:55:52 It's a population that also has been facing regular bombardment since the ceasefire ended.
00:55:52 --> 00:55:58 And we know that, you know, more than 50 people have already been killed.
00:55:58 --> 00:56:03 We know that over 100 are injured. We know that we've got the most population
00:56:03 --> 00:56:11 of children that have lost limbs, the highest population of children that are orphaned in conflict.
00:56:11 --> 00:56:14 It's a nightmarish situation.
00:56:15 --> 00:56:20 And we are, unless something's done, unless, you know, the borders are opened
00:56:20 --> 00:56:24 and supplies are brought in in the next couple of weeks, we're talking about,
00:56:24 --> 00:56:26 you know, mass starvation.
00:56:26 --> 00:56:33 I mean, just today, we heard reports about that we're already seeing children,
00:56:33 --> 00:56:36 you know, facing starvation and famine.
00:56:37 --> 00:56:44 It's unbelievable that in these modern times that we could allow this to happen.
00:56:44 --> 00:56:50 We, I say we, meaning the United States, a country that's supposed to be sort
00:56:50 --> 00:56:56 of this bastion of democracy and human rights and, you know,
00:56:56 --> 00:57:02 this light unto the world, that we're actually partners with Israel in the prosecution
00:57:02 --> 00:57:03 of what's happening in Gaza.
00:57:03 --> 00:57:11 And it seems like there's no one else around the world that's willing to, you know,
00:57:12 --> 00:57:16 to stand out and push Israel to end the blockade that it's imposed,
00:57:17 --> 00:57:23 that it's had really in place for, you know, the greater part of the, you know, two decades.
00:57:23 --> 00:57:29 But now strictly imposed to really force the Palestinians to want to leave.
00:57:30 --> 00:57:37 And those who don't will have to face the consequences of what we're seeing right now.
00:57:37 --> 00:57:42 And I just, you know, again, I don't have words for what's happening on the
00:57:42 --> 00:57:48 ground, but I also, you know, I can't explain the lack of humanity that I see as well.
00:57:49 --> 00:57:53 Not from good people that we've seen, you know, especially on these college
00:57:53 --> 00:57:57 campuses, students risking everything, but just from elected officials,
00:57:57 --> 00:58:00 this sort of apathy to what's taking place.
00:58:00 --> 00:58:04 It's really been shocking to me, to be honest.
00:58:05 --> 00:58:12 Laura, did you want to add anything to that? Look, I mean, this is a year and
00:58:12 --> 00:58:17 a half into what is almost the unimaginable reality of a live stream genocide.
00:58:18 --> 00:58:23 Live streamed. Anybody who wants to know what's happening in Gaza, get online.
00:58:23 --> 00:58:29 We have a year and a half now of either Israeli soldiers putting the videos
00:58:29 --> 00:58:30 up themselves showing what they're doing.
00:58:31 --> 00:58:34 We have drone footage of cities just reduced to rubble.
00:58:34 --> 00:58:39 We have statements from Israeli officials stating exactly what their intention is.
00:58:40 --> 00:58:46 And for those of us who very early on in this war on Gaza, because it's not
00:58:46 --> 00:58:48 really a war with Gaza, it's a war on Gaza,
00:58:48 --> 00:58:53 said the clear intent that is being expressed and that we are seeing implemented
00:58:53 --> 00:58:58 from almost day one in response to the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel,
00:58:58 --> 00:59:04 the clear intent here is to eradicate Palestinians from Gaza, erase them,
00:59:04 --> 00:59:08 get all the people out, erase every trace of them ever being there, and then move forward.
00:59:08 --> 00:59:13 And today, that is pretty much the explicit policy of the Israeli government.
00:59:13 --> 00:59:18 They are now demolishing the ruins of any homes that are left in areas because
00:59:18 --> 00:59:20 they don't want Palestinians to come back.
00:59:20 --> 00:59:21 They are declaring that more than
00:59:21 --> 00:59:25 50% of Gaza is now a buffer zone where Palestinians will never be again.
00:59:26 --> 00:59:31 And they are day by day with more of these orders demanding the Palestinians move.
00:59:31 --> 00:59:34 These are Palestinians who've been moving over and over and over,
00:59:34 --> 00:59:38 carrying whatever they can on their backs less and less as their family members
00:59:38 --> 00:59:42 are slowly picked off and get sicker and hungrier and moving them into a smaller
00:59:42 --> 00:59:45 and smaller area of Gaza, which they are still bombing.
00:59:45 --> 00:59:50 And the clear intent, which they are now unabashed in saying because they say
00:59:50 --> 00:59:52 this is Trump's policy. We love it. We agree with Trump.
00:59:53 --> 00:59:55 We need to get everybody out. Palestinians can move somewhere else.
00:59:56 --> 00:59:58 If they stay here, they're all going to die.
00:59:58 --> 01:00:02 And they should be permitted, quote-unquote, permitted to voluntarily leave.
01:00:03 --> 01:00:06 Voluntarily means they can stay here and die or they can get out.
01:00:07 --> 01:00:11 That's not voluntary. That is ethnic cleansing, and is ethnic cleansing as part
01:00:11 --> 01:00:18 of a policy of genocide, which is systematically erasing Palestinian presence, Palestinian history,
01:00:19 --> 01:00:22 Palestinian possibility of ever existing again in Gaza.
01:00:23 --> 01:00:26 What got me sorry i just wanted to add this was
01:00:26 --> 01:00:30 the most sickest sort of cynical statement
01:00:30 --> 01:00:33 from the israeli prime minister netanyahu when
01:00:33 --> 01:00:37 he was saying you know it's it's so unbelievable
01:00:37 --> 01:00:42 how you know Palestinians you know should have a choice of where to go and they're
01:00:42 --> 01:00:47 not being given choice because the rest of the world won't absorb the Palestinians
01:00:47 --> 01:00:52 you know and you know without any self-consciousness that most of the Palestinians
01:00:52 --> 01:00:56 in Gaza are refugees from inside Israel,
01:00:57 --> 01:01:00 what became the state of Israel, or the descendants of refugees.
01:01:00 --> 01:01:05 So the place that they should go that's not preventing them to return is actually Israel.
01:01:05 --> 01:01:11 But he was able to say this statement as though the rest of the world is heartless.
01:01:11 --> 01:01:15 Why won't they take these Palestinians that clearly want to leave?
01:01:15 --> 01:01:19 Why would they want to stay after Israel's taken away every essential item of
01:01:19 --> 01:01:22 life from them and destroyed the entire Gaza Strip.
01:01:22 --> 01:01:26 Of course, they want to leave, he says, and the rest of the world won't take them.
01:01:26 --> 01:01:31 I mean, as though the rest of the world needs to, you know, needs to comply
01:01:31 --> 01:01:38 with his interests in seeing Gaza completely emptied of its population to further
01:01:38 --> 01:01:40 his greater Israel designs.
01:01:41 --> 01:01:47 Well, you know, hypocrisy and irony is, seems to be common speech in politics nowadays.
01:01:48 --> 01:01:54 What would be the impact of the United States gentrification of Gaza in the
01:01:54 --> 01:02:02 realm of not just with the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also in that Middle
01:02:02 --> 01:02:03 East region? What would be that impact?
01:02:04 --> 01:02:08 I mean, I just don't even think it's a real idea. You know,
01:02:08 --> 01:02:15 I hope that President Trump is saying these things because he's trying to spur
01:02:15 --> 01:02:21 the Arab governments in the region, including the Palestinians,
01:02:21 --> 01:02:31 to come up with a plan on governance of Gaza, come up with a plan for Gaza security that could work.
01:02:31 --> 01:02:34 And they have done this. They have come up with a plan.
01:02:35 --> 01:02:40 It's consistent with international law. It's consistent with Palestinians being
01:02:40 --> 01:02:46 in control of their own future and rebuilding Gaza in a way that supports a
01:02:46 --> 01:02:52 political solution in which Palestinians can self-determine and have sovereignty.
01:02:53 --> 01:02:59 This is not a plan that Israel likes. Obviously, they want to see no Palestinians,
01:02:59 --> 01:03:01 not only in Gaza, by the way.
01:03:01 --> 01:03:03 I mean, they don't want to see Palestinians in the West Bank either.
01:03:04 --> 01:03:11 They are moving just as fast in the West Bank to try to deploy mechanisms to
01:03:11 --> 01:03:12 force Palestinians out.
01:03:12 --> 01:03:18 They're using settlers to drive Palestinians out with pogroms.
01:03:18 --> 01:03:22 They're having soldiers destroy Palestinian refugee camps.
01:03:23 --> 01:03:30 We've seen 40 Palestinians forced out of their homes in these camps without anywhere to go.
01:03:30 --> 01:03:34 So, you know, I don't think President Trump's ideas are.
01:03:35 --> 01:03:40 Serious, but let's pretend that, you know, he does intend to do this,
01:03:40 --> 01:03:47 that he intends to take over Gaza and force the Palestinians out and start to rebuild.
01:03:47 --> 01:03:53 I mean, I don't, you know, this is not something that Egypt's going to be down
01:03:53 --> 01:03:57 with. It's not a plan that any of Israel's neighbors are going to be down with
01:03:57 --> 01:04:01 because they understand what this is going to mean. It's going to mean perpetual conflict.
01:04:01 --> 01:04:04 It's going to mean a destruction of the
01:04:04 --> 01:04:07 peace agreements that Israel has with its neighbors because this
01:04:07 --> 01:04:11 is going to turn the entire region into just
01:04:11 --> 01:04:14 one big violent mess so i
01:04:14 --> 01:04:17 i hope president trump's using using these kinds of
01:04:17 --> 01:04:23 statements to goad others but i i don't think it's serious solution here obviously
01:04:23 --> 01:04:30 it's it's it violates every notion we have of international law or human rights
01:04:30 --> 01:04:34 to think that in in this day and age we're going to have a colonial settlement
01:04:34 --> 01:04:37 constructed by the united states in the middle east,
01:04:38 --> 01:04:42 I sadly actually do take him seriously.
01:04:43 --> 01:04:47 This is an administration that in its first term, it basically created a new
01:04:47 --> 01:04:51 concept of international law when it said that Israel had a right to annex the Golan Heights.
01:04:52 --> 01:04:55 We recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israel. And the framing for that decision
01:04:55 --> 01:05:00 was, of course, they have a right to keep land that they have acquired in a defensive war.
01:05:01 --> 01:05:04 Nobody should have to give back land that they're being attacked from.
01:05:04 --> 01:05:09 I think that framing, which was just treated as obvious and,
01:05:09 --> 01:05:13 you know, matter of fact, you can claim land and, you know, it's as if people
01:05:13 --> 01:05:15 don't matter and the rights of the people on land don't matter.
01:05:16 --> 01:05:20 I mean, that was the policy under the first Trump term.
01:05:21 --> 01:05:24 I take him seriously when he looks at this and says, this is an easy problem.
01:05:24 --> 01:05:26 Get rid of the people and redevelop it.
01:05:26 --> 01:05:33 You know, Israel has basically, since its birth as a state, has operated from
01:05:33 --> 01:05:36 a, you know, we will achieve fait accompli on the ground.
01:05:36 --> 01:05:40 We won't ask for permission. We won't ask for forgiveness. We'll do it and the
01:05:40 --> 01:05:42 world will accept it. And we'll spin it as, this is why we're right.
01:05:43 --> 01:05:46 And anyone who disagrees with us is an anti-Semite and doesn't know what's good for them.
01:05:46 --> 01:05:50 And in this context right now, with the Trump administration as a partner,
01:05:50 --> 01:05:54 I think the intent is to achieve as many of these faits accompli as they can,
01:05:55 --> 01:05:59 including in Syria, where they're taking more and more land, including in Lebanon,
01:05:59 --> 01:06:05 including in the West Bank, with the idea that this is an historic opportunity to change.
01:06:05 --> 01:06:08 It's not just changing the rules of the game, it's clearing the board and creating
01:06:08 --> 01:06:12 a new board that the region will go forward with.
01:06:12 --> 01:06:18 And basically, assuming that between Israel's military strength and the support
01:06:18 --> 01:06:23 of the world and the alliances that they will make out of convenience against
01:06:23 --> 01:06:28 Iran or because of the transactional alliances with Arab states that are prone
01:06:28 --> 01:06:29 to that, that they'll get away with it.
01:06:29 --> 01:06:35 And, you know, I think it's possible to imagine from the perspective of an Israeli
01:06:35 --> 01:06:39 who views this as, you know, their greater Israel agenda given to them by God,
01:06:39 --> 01:06:43 that they think they really do have this opportunity. They don't see obstacles at this point.
01:06:43 --> 01:06:49 All right. So my final two questions is based off of this premise that I brought out.
01:06:50 --> 01:06:57 Some would argue that the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict has created a new era of McCarthyism.
01:06:57 --> 01:07:03 So, one, why do you think it is acceptable in the United States to muzzle the
01:07:03 --> 01:07:06 free speech of Palestinians and their supporters?
01:07:06 --> 01:07:12 And two, what can be done to change public perception of the Palestinian people?
01:07:13 --> 01:07:18 I actually don't think that people are accepting this notion that you should
01:07:18 --> 01:07:25 muzzle Palestinians and not allow them to protest or dissent or to show opposition to U.S.
01:07:25 --> 01:07:33 Foreign policy or to show disapproval with the policies of a university administration.
01:07:33 --> 01:07:36 I think that people are waking up to like, this is very dangerous.
01:07:36 --> 01:07:43 If you can silence one group of people, one vulnerable group of people,
01:07:43 --> 01:07:48 in this case that what we're seeing now, immigrants, people that are visa holders,
01:07:48 --> 01:07:49 lawful permanent residents,
01:07:49 --> 01:07:55 if you can silence those individuals, who's next?
01:07:55 --> 01:08:01 And so people are making the connection with this idea that, you know, the U.S.
01:08:01 --> 01:08:07 Should not be allowed to shut down protests against the government,
01:08:08 --> 01:08:13 against government policies, because it doesn't like, you know,
01:08:13 --> 01:08:16 it doesn't like the ideas that are being advanced.
01:08:17 --> 01:08:22 That's a very, once we set that precedent, that will be used with every other
01:08:22 --> 01:08:24 group. It will be expanded.
01:08:24 --> 01:08:29 We've seen it time and time again, where we've adopted policies,
01:08:29 --> 01:08:34 first testing them out on the most vulnerable among us, seeing whether it can
01:08:34 --> 01:08:37 fly, especially through the court system.
01:08:37 --> 01:08:41 And then we start to apply them more broadly.
01:08:41 --> 01:08:48 I think about sort of before 9-11, for example, the first people that were being.
01:08:49 --> 01:08:54 That had used against them terrorism laws to try to silence them,
01:08:54 --> 01:09:02 to try to prosecute them without being able to show evidence by having secret
01:09:02 --> 01:09:04 evidence, the use of secret evidence.
01:09:04 --> 01:09:10 And these were Palestinians that were being prosecuted with secret evidence. And then 9-11 happened.
01:09:11 --> 01:09:16 And because they got away with it with Palestinians, it started being used more
01:09:16 --> 01:09:21 broadly, not just with Muslims and Arabs, but it started being used with anyone
01:09:21 --> 01:09:24 that was, quote unquote, a terrorist.
01:09:24 --> 01:09:32 And that terrorism label got thrown around to a lot of different people, domestic and foreign.
01:09:32 --> 01:09:35 So, I mean, we have lived through that.
01:09:35 --> 01:09:38 It's in people's memory and they're seeing
01:09:38 --> 01:09:43 this happen now with speech on campus and they're understanding that they have
01:09:43 --> 01:09:48 to stand up for what's right here and what's consistent with our constitution
01:09:48 --> 01:09:53 and our freedoms in a democratic society because if we don't push back against
01:09:53 --> 01:09:55 this, This is going to become the new normal.
01:09:58 --> 01:10:01 I agree with everything Zaha just said. I'll just add, I mean,
01:10:01 --> 01:10:05 I've been using the term new McCarthyism, feels like we're going to Red Scare,
01:10:05 --> 01:10:07 the claim that this is anti-American.
01:10:07 --> 01:10:11 I mean, we've seen this building since under the Biden administration.
01:10:11 --> 01:10:13 I think a lot of where we are right
01:10:13 --> 01:10:17 now, the path was laid by the Biden administration, which is what it is.
01:10:18 --> 01:10:22 But I think that what is maybe different right now, I think all of us are.
01:10:23 --> 01:10:26 None of us lived through the McCarthy era, but we've all studied it.
01:10:26 --> 01:10:29 I mean, one of the things that is, I think, very different right now is that
01:10:29 --> 01:10:36 in that era, you had an administration cynically weaponizing fears about communism,
01:10:36 --> 01:10:40 which were massively overblown, massively overstated, right?
01:10:40 --> 01:10:44 There wasn't a massive communist support within the US.
01:10:44 --> 01:10:47 There is massive support for Palestinians now.
01:10:47 --> 01:10:51 This is why there's this absolute imperative to shut this down,
01:10:51 --> 01:10:57 because so many Americans, not just students, have over the past year and a
01:10:57 --> 01:11:00 half seen what's happened and said, this cannot be, this cannot be permitted.
01:11:00 --> 01:11:03 I don't want my taxpayer dollars supporting this. I want us to stand up to it.
01:11:03 --> 01:11:08 So it's a very different thing to try to shut it down and expect people to kind
01:11:08 --> 01:11:11 of, you know, hide and say, I don't want to get in trouble. People are very
01:11:11 --> 01:11:12 far out on a limb already.
01:11:12 --> 01:11:18 And if the argument is going to be that, for instance, the young man from Colombia
01:11:18 --> 01:11:19 who they're trying to deport.
01:11:20 --> 01:11:23 Well, yesterday we saw the government statement for why they're trying to deport
01:11:23 --> 01:11:25 him. They're not saying he broke any laws.
01:11:25 --> 01:11:30 They're saying his ideas, what he believes are a challenge, are a problem for U.S.
01:11:30 --> 01:11:34 National security. Well, if what he believes are somehow illegal,
01:11:34 --> 01:11:36 so he has to be deported for U.S.
01:11:36 --> 01:11:41 National security, then what a huge tens of thousands or millions of Americans believe?
01:11:41 --> 01:11:45 Effectively, they're saying that that's also not allowed for national security reasons.
01:11:45 --> 01:11:49 It's not for nothing that they started their attack on immigrants and their
01:11:49 --> 01:11:53 attack on visa holders with people focused on Palestine.
01:11:53 --> 01:11:57 They saw it as a political winner, right? Democrats are afraid to defend them
01:11:57 --> 01:11:59 because they don't want to be called anti-Semites and pro-terror.
01:11:59 --> 01:12:01 Republicans love it. It's red meat. And what they're seeing,
01:12:01 --> 01:12:05 I think, is a lot more pushback than they expected, which I don't I think that's
01:12:05 --> 01:12:08 just going to get stronger. All right. Well.
01:12:10 --> 01:12:13 Hassan, I know you got to go, Ms. Friedman.
01:12:13 --> 01:12:19 I greatly appreciate both of y'all coming on to the podcast and talking about this issue.
01:12:20 --> 01:12:25 I wish we had a little more time, but both of y'all have an open invitation to come back.
01:12:25 --> 01:12:33 I know Ms. Hassan has basically said you can reach her at Zaha Hassan on X.
01:12:34 --> 01:12:37 Ms. Friedman, how can people get in touch with you and how can people get a
01:12:37 --> 01:12:39 copy of the book that y'all put together?
01:12:40 --> 01:12:44 So you can find me also on X at Lara Friedman, D.C., L-A-R-A,
01:12:44 --> 01:12:47 Friedman, D.C., and you can get a copy of the book.
01:12:48 --> 01:12:50 It's available on any place where you buy books.
01:12:51 --> 01:12:54 I don't want to recommend any specific booksellers, but it is widely available
01:12:54 --> 01:12:56 anywhere you want to buy books.
01:12:56 --> 01:13:00 I'd encourage people to go to independent bookstores and buy it in person. That's always better.
01:13:01 --> 01:13:05 Yeah, and give the name of the book again. I'm sorry. Oh, now you tricked me.
01:13:05 --> 01:13:06 I don't have it in front of me.
01:13:07 --> 01:13:13 Can you pull that up for the show notes? Yeah, I'll tell the listeners how to get it.
01:13:13 --> 01:13:16 The Time Moved So Fast, the book, which only came out recently,
01:13:16 --> 01:13:19 feels like it came out a lifetime ago at this point.
01:13:19 --> 01:13:26 Well, I know it's been a lifetime work with you and Ms. Hassan in speaking up.
01:13:26 --> 01:13:34 And hopefully, my wish is that, you know, the majority of Americans will have an open mind on this.
01:13:34 --> 01:13:39 I think part of the problem has been, as you had stated earlier,
01:13:39 --> 01:13:41 it's been very one-sided.
01:13:42 --> 01:13:48 And politically, we've been socialized that way. But I hope with the work that you and Ms.
01:13:48 --> 01:13:52 Asana are doing and this new generation of leaders coming up,
01:13:52 --> 01:13:54 that we'll have a more open dialogue.
01:13:54 --> 01:13:59 So I thank y'all. I join you in that hope very strongly. And thank you for all you do.
01:14:00 --> 01:14:02 All right, guys. We're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:14:04 --> 01:14:14 Music.
01:14:14 --> 01:14:18 Ladies and gentlemen, as a bonus treat, even though the subject is not necessarily
01:14:18 --> 01:14:22 a treat, I have my good friend Rick Roberts.
01:14:22 --> 01:14:25 Rick has been a guest on the program.
01:14:26 --> 01:14:32 He was scheduled to come back on and he submitted some information that I read
01:14:32 --> 01:14:36 to y'all dealing with these tariffs and the basics about what tariffs are.
01:14:36 --> 01:14:40 Rick is a specialist professor in the Department of Economics,
01:14:40 --> 01:14:43 Finance and Real Estate at Monmouth University.
01:14:44 --> 01:14:47 And he is a true believer in the open invitation.
01:14:47 --> 01:14:53 When I said, anytime you want to come on, you can, and Rick is taking advantage
01:14:53 --> 01:14:57 of that either at being a guest or submitting some information.
01:14:58 --> 01:15:00 So Rick, it's good to have you on.
01:15:00 --> 01:15:08 Thanks. Always happy to be here, Erik. Well, I need you to explain now what is.
01:15:08 --> 01:15:19 So President Trump has decided to lift the tariffs off of some of the countries
01:15:19 --> 01:15:21 that he had the tariffs on.
01:15:21 --> 01:15:26 He still got it going on with China and China has responded,
01:15:26 --> 01:15:30 but he took the tariffs off.
01:15:30 --> 01:15:39 And one of the issues that he cited was the surging bond yields as one of the
01:15:39 --> 01:15:44 reasons why he decided to lift a lot of those tariffs.
01:15:44 --> 01:15:52 Explain why bond yields or surging bond yields, however he put it out there.
01:15:52 --> 01:15:57 Would make him make that kind of a decision.
01:15:58 --> 01:16:03 Great. That's a great question. The bond yields were increasing.
01:16:04 --> 01:16:07 Let's first answer why were they going up anyway?
01:16:07 --> 01:16:12 And then why, given that they went up, did that encourage Trump to pull off
01:16:12 --> 01:16:16 the tariffs or back off on many of them?
01:16:16 --> 01:16:25 So the bond market interest rates were going up, frankly, because of the tariffs that Trump had.
01:16:26 --> 01:16:31 Was threatening, and then on so-called Liberation Day, he was calling it,
01:16:32 --> 01:16:38 he announced, as you correctly stated, a broad set of very high tariffs against
01:16:38 --> 01:16:43 most trading partners and extremely high against China.
01:16:44 --> 01:16:49 I mean, as an aside, there was no rhyme or rhythm to his calculations.
01:16:49 --> 01:16:54 I don't know any economists, serious or frankly not serious,
01:16:54 --> 01:16:57 I see Khan was a good figure out where he came up with those numbers.
01:16:58 --> 01:17:02 But nevertheless, he announced some pretty meaty tariffs across the board.
01:17:02 --> 01:17:10 And, well, as I believe, yeah, in fact, I heard what you said on your prior podcast.
01:17:10 --> 01:17:13 You referenced some notes that I'd shared with you.
01:17:15 --> 01:17:19 Tariffs increase inflation. There's not much debate about that.
01:17:20 --> 01:17:25 There's not much debate about that, right? If the good that you buy that's made
01:17:25 --> 01:17:31 overseas is now getting taxed at our border, it's going to be more expensive when you buy it.
01:17:31 --> 01:17:35 So your Amazon products or whatever, not that they're all from overseas,
01:17:35 --> 01:17:39 but I know many of the ones I purchase are, you know, are made overseas.
01:17:39 --> 01:17:42 They're going to now be more expensive. That's inflation.
01:17:42 --> 01:17:47 And even more importantly, U.S. producers of products, U.S.
01:17:48 --> 01:17:53 Manufacturers, now how would they be impacted by tariffs on foreign products?
01:17:54 --> 01:17:55 Well, they are because U.S.
01:17:56 --> 01:18:06 Manufacturers largely rely at least some on foreign inputs into their manufacturing process.
01:18:06 --> 01:18:13 So, for example, if I own a bicycle company, I'm making bicycles in the U.S.
01:18:13 --> 01:18:17 And I import my tires because they're cheap.
01:18:19 --> 01:18:24 This is hypothetical, but just to give you and your listeners an example here.
01:18:24 --> 01:18:29 So if I'm making a bicycle here in the U.S. and I import my tires because they're
01:18:29 --> 01:18:35 cheaper overseas, if those tires now become more expensive, that increases my
01:18:35 --> 01:18:37 cost to make my bicycle, right?
01:18:38 --> 01:18:41 And, you know, what am I going to do? Where am I going to get that money to
01:18:41 --> 01:18:46 pick up the extra cost associated with the higher import prices,
01:18:46 --> 01:18:47 the higher cost of my tires?
01:18:47 --> 01:18:52 Well, I have two options. And the extremes are I could be super nice and take
01:18:52 --> 01:18:57 that extra money for the tires that I now have to pay out of my profits.
01:18:57 --> 01:19:05 And at the other extreme, I could just pass that whole extra cost on to my consumers,
01:19:05 --> 01:19:07 the buyers of my bicycle.
01:19:07 --> 01:19:11 I could say, hey, it's costing me more to build this bicycle now.
01:19:11 --> 01:19:16 My tires are more expensive. You have to pay more. And the fact is,
01:19:17 --> 01:19:19 the reality is somewhere between the two,
01:19:19 --> 01:19:25 a company will typically eat some of that increased cost from their profits,
01:19:25 --> 01:19:28 but pass the bulk of it on to the consumer.
01:19:28 --> 01:19:32 So that's a second example of inflation hitting the consumer.
01:19:33 --> 01:19:38 It's not that they're buying the products from overseas like the Amazon example, right?
01:19:38 --> 01:19:42 It's more they're buying a U.S. product, but that product made in the U.S.
01:19:42 --> 01:19:49 Relies on inputs from overseas, and that will raise the product price.
01:19:49 --> 01:19:52 And that's inflation as well. And, you know, even U.S.
01:19:52 --> 01:19:56 Cars, there's only two cars made in the U.S.
01:19:57 --> 01:20:01 That are totally made with U.S. products.
01:20:01 --> 01:20:05 And oddly, those cars are Tesla and Rivian.
01:20:06 --> 01:20:09 They're produced totally with U.S. products.
01:20:09 --> 01:20:14 Even, you know, your Ford trucks, your GM trucks and so forth, these are U.S.
01:20:14 --> 01:20:22 Produced. but they rely on about anywhere from 25% to 50% or even higher in
01:20:22 --> 01:20:26 some situations of the truck itself.
01:20:26 --> 01:20:30 The parts are made overseas, so they have to get these parts from overseas.
01:20:30 --> 01:20:33 And if they're going to be more expensive, those products are going to be more expensive.
01:20:33 --> 01:20:38 So that's the tariff story as you relayed to your listeners last time.
01:20:38 --> 01:20:43 I repeat it because it's a little confusing for most folks who don't deal with this. Right.
01:20:44 --> 01:20:48 But so that, so we think higher inflation because of tariffs.
01:20:48 --> 01:20:52 Now the federal reserve is the policy maker. Right.
01:20:53 --> 01:20:58 And what's a policymaker do? They stare at an economic policymaker,
01:20:58 --> 01:21:04 stares at the economy, and if it's going fine, that's the end of their job, basically.
01:21:04 --> 01:21:09 But if it's not going fine, they try to fix it.
01:21:09 --> 01:21:13 And the Federal Reserve is a policymaker, so if they're looking at the economy
01:21:13 --> 01:21:18 and they look at it and say, is it going fine? They look at two things.
01:21:18 --> 01:21:22 They look at employment and they look at inflation. And either one of those
01:21:22 --> 01:21:29 readings, the employment numbers or the inflation numbers aren't to their liking.
01:21:30 --> 01:21:34 They try to fix that. And the way they fix that is they use a tool that they
01:21:34 --> 01:21:37 have in their toolkit, if you will, and it's interest rates.
01:21:37 --> 01:21:42 So, for example, inflation, as you know, has been high since COVID.
01:21:42 --> 01:21:46 It's come down quite a bit, but it's not back to where it needs to be.
01:21:46 --> 01:21:51 The Federal Reserve targets 2% inflation, and it's been, you know,
01:21:51 --> 01:21:55 although it has come down from 7%, it's been hanging around 3%,
01:21:55 --> 01:21:57 a little lower this morning.
01:21:57 --> 01:22:02 Although those numbers are a little misleading, we shouldn't get too excited about it.
01:22:02 --> 01:22:06 But inflation's been high. It hasn't never returned to normal,
01:22:06 --> 01:22:10 and the Fed was continuing to fight it.
01:22:10 --> 01:22:17 However, now we have these tariffs in place that if they go through as written,
01:22:17 --> 01:22:23 are going to pose a lot of upward pressure on prices, and we're going to have even higher inflation.
01:22:24 --> 01:22:30 And how does the Federal Reserve deal with inflation? That means they're going
01:22:30 --> 01:22:35 to raise interest rates. So the market was anticipating, and this is what led
01:22:35 --> 01:22:37 to the higher rates in bonds.
01:22:38 --> 01:22:44 The market participants were out there saying in so many words, wait a second.
01:22:45 --> 01:22:50 Get it, tariffs probably mean higher inflation.
01:22:51 --> 01:22:55 And higher inflation probably means the Federal Reserve is going to have to
01:22:55 --> 01:22:56 raise interest rates again.
01:22:56 --> 01:22:59 So we better get in front of the curve on that.
01:22:59 --> 01:23:06 And bond rates went up. And of course, higher rates in the economy is not good
01:23:06 --> 01:23:09 generally for the economy. It causes the economy to slow down.
01:23:10 --> 01:23:13 You and I spend less because loans
01:23:13 --> 01:23:17 are more expensive you know that car we were looking at we
01:23:17 --> 01:23:20 were ready to pull the trigger now we're not gonna purchase
01:23:20 --> 01:23:24 it because the monthly payment's too high the rates went up so we pull back
01:23:24 --> 01:23:31 on spending same with mortgages right and and others so and and businesses don't
01:23:31 --> 01:23:36 expand because it's more costly to borrow money and so forth so higher interest
01:23:36 --> 01:23:39 rates are not good for the economy and Trump knows that.
01:23:40 --> 01:23:45 And this is why he stepped in and said, I see the rates going up.
01:23:45 --> 01:23:52 I understand why they're going up because there's fears of these tariffs causing inflation.
01:23:52 --> 01:23:58 So what I need to do is try to remove that fear of inflation and then hopefully
01:23:58 --> 01:24:02 we'll see bond rates go back down. So that's what happened.
01:24:02 --> 01:24:11 So it's more or less the, He caused the problem that he ran out and claimed
01:24:11 --> 01:24:13 he saved the day regarding.
01:24:13 --> 01:24:19 So he basically tried to fix a major problem that he had caused by threatening
01:24:19 --> 01:24:22 these tariffs, which put upward pressure on interest rates.
01:24:23 --> 01:24:26 I know that's a mouthful, but that's the gist of what's going on.
01:24:26 --> 01:24:31 Tariffs led to higher interest rates in the market, in the bond market.
01:24:31 --> 01:24:36 They're bad for the economy and Trump said all right I gotta I gotta back off
01:24:36 --> 01:24:42 on these tariffs yeah so here's here's a question that that I have right because
01:24:42 --> 01:24:44 you you know the stock market.
01:24:45 --> 01:24:52 Is used, well, the general purpose is to raise capital for businesses so they can operate.
01:24:53 --> 01:24:58 They have a little more money other than whatever profit margin they get.
01:24:58 --> 01:25:03 If their stock goes up, then that's more money that they can leverage for loans
01:25:03 --> 01:25:04 or wherever the case may be, right?
01:25:04 --> 01:25:18 But why would companies in the stock market feel that they have to lose capital, right?
01:25:18 --> 01:25:24 That they have to sell these stocks in order to make sure that,
01:25:24 --> 01:25:29 well, to offset what these tariffs are going to do.
01:25:29 --> 01:25:37 Explain the logic behind that. I would look at it maybe as I would talk to my
01:25:37 --> 01:25:40 class about it, maybe with a simple example.
01:25:40 --> 01:25:48 If you think inflation is going up because of the tariffs, that's going to lead
01:25:48 --> 01:25:53 to higher interest rates and slower economic growth.
01:25:53 --> 01:26:02 Slower economic growth leads to less production by companies and companies make
01:26:02 --> 01:26:06 up the stock market so if the economy is going to slow.
01:26:07 --> 01:26:13 Companies don't need to produce as much, and they're not as profitable as a result.
01:26:13 --> 01:26:16 Additionally, they start laying off people. That's a second story.
01:26:17 --> 01:26:21 But they're not as profitable if they're not producing and selling as much.
01:26:21 --> 01:26:24 And in a higher interest rate environment, they're not going to be.
01:26:24 --> 01:26:29 So what we saw was, you know, why do you buy stock?
01:26:29 --> 01:26:34 Whether it's a wholesale buyer of stock in the market, a big,
01:26:34 --> 01:26:39 sophisticated buyer, or a retail buyer like you and me,
01:26:39 --> 01:26:45 less sophisticated, or I'll speak for myself on that, a smaller dollar, right?
01:26:45 --> 01:26:48 We call that retail investor versus a wholesale.
01:26:48 --> 01:26:54 Why do we buy stock? Generally speaking, we buy stock with the anticipation
01:26:54 --> 01:26:59 that that stock is going up in value, right? We want to profit from it.
01:27:00 --> 01:27:05 And what would cause the stock to go up in value? It's when the company becomes
01:27:05 --> 01:27:07 more profitable than they are now.
01:27:07 --> 01:27:16 So we buy stock in anticipation of a company doing better than they're doing
01:27:16 --> 01:27:22 now. They're going to maintain solid, if not increasing profits over time.
01:27:22 --> 01:27:28 That's why we buy stock. If suddenly we fear increased rates are going to come
01:27:28 --> 01:27:32 into play in the future as a result of the higher inflation,
01:27:32 --> 01:27:33 as we talked about earlier.
01:27:35 --> 01:27:39 That's the same as saying we don't think these companies are going to be as
01:27:39 --> 01:27:43 profitable in the future because they're not going to be able to sell as much
01:27:43 --> 01:27:44 in a higher interest rate environment.
01:27:45 --> 01:27:51 And we're not interested in buying their stock at this point. And in fact.
01:27:52 --> 01:27:58 If I own their stock right now, I bought it in anticipation of them doing very well.
01:27:58 --> 01:28:04 I didn't know about this higher interest rate coming because of Trump's tariffs.
01:28:04 --> 01:28:11 So the price of the stock that I was anticipating is probably not going to increase like I thought.
01:28:12 --> 01:28:17 So I better get rid of it. So what we ended up seeing here with that big drop
01:28:17 --> 01:28:22 over a number of days and really sharp drop after he announced the high tariffs
01:28:22 --> 01:28:27 is that people said, certainly we're not going to buy any stock.
01:28:27 --> 01:28:32 This is going to be bad for the market, these higher interest rates that result from the tariffs.
01:28:32 --> 01:28:40 And if I own the stock, I anticipate the company doing worse and their stock
01:28:40 --> 01:28:43 price as a result will drop too. So I better sell now.
01:28:44 --> 01:28:48 So that's what we saw, people dumping their stock wholesale and retail,
01:28:48 --> 01:28:51 and the price in the markets really collapsed.
01:28:51 --> 01:29:00 Over a short period of time, the stock market dropped near record levels in percentage terms.
01:29:00 --> 01:29:07 And then interest rates started to go up, as you mentioned, and that further
01:29:07 --> 01:29:11 led to the downward movement in stocks.
01:29:11 --> 01:29:17 Oh, we thought inflation higher rates, but the bond markets really move in that way and quickly.
01:29:18 --> 01:29:23 So the decline accelerated. And then Trump came out and said.
01:29:24 --> 01:29:28 Let me pull back a bit on what I said earlier.
01:29:28 --> 01:29:32 And it's important for us, and I'll pause here to take your question,
01:29:32 --> 01:29:42 to clarify, I think, for your listeners, what exactly he did in terms of pulling back on the tariffs.
01:29:42 --> 01:29:54 It's not what certainly the press reports, and it should be concerning to you, me, and your listeners.
01:29:54 --> 01:29:58 But I can get into that. But let me stop and see if you have any questions at
01:29:58 --> 01:29:59 that point, at this point.
01:29:59 --> 01:30:05 Well, I want you to clarify that. But the one last question I was going to ask
01:30:05 --> 01:30:11 you was, you know, in light of the stock market, you know, dropping.
01:30:12 --> 01:30:19 And then he took the initiative. He took the step to end, quote unquote,
01:30:19 --> 01:30:22 the tariffs on certain countries.
01:30:22 --> 01:30:25 He then got on his social
01:30:25 --> 01:30:29 media platform i guess true social and said
01:30:29 --> 01:30:32 he basically told people to buy stock is
01:30:32 --> 01:30:38 what he did he now the question was did he i can't remember did he do it before
01:30:38 --> 01:30:44 he made the announcement about the tariffs or or after i want to say it was
01:30:44 --> 01:30:50 before he he he told people to go ahead and start buying stocks and then he dropped the tariffs.
01:30:50 --> 01:30:58 So some people are concerned that that was, if it wasn't illegal, it was unethical. So.
01:30:59 --> 01:31:02 Kind of you know what what's
01:31:02 --> 01:31:05 your take on it let's put it that way you know
01:31:05 --> 01:31:08 i it it's sad to
01:31:08 --> 01:31:15 say but you almost assume you know most things that trump and his administration
01:31:15 --> 01:31:23 do you know are questionable at least on the margin it's the same it's a shame
01:31:23 --> 01:31:28 that we just kind of just assume that anymore but That's just what he's all about.
01:31:28 --> 01:31:34 I don't think he comes to the table with a degree of integrity and ethics,
01:31:34 --> 01:31:36 and I'm not a partisan at all,
01:31:36 --> 01:31:44 but a degree of ethics and integrity that we've come to expect out of our national leaders.
01:31:44 --> 01:31:52 So I don't know if he did that or not, but, you know, I just assume he and his
01:31:52 --> 01:31:57 friends handsomely profited from that turn in the market.
01:31:57 --> 01:32:03 You know, certainly, you know, I would, you know, be pretty confident on the
01:32:03 --> 01:32:08 evidence of this, that certainly folks knew that he was going to make that announcement,
01:32:08 --> 01:32:10 folks in his inner circle and beyond.
01:32:11 --> 01:32:16 And, you know, they got in in anticipation of that sharp increase in the market.
01:32:16 --> 01:32:19 Is it ethical? Certainly not.
01:32:20 --> 01:32:28 Legal? Probably not. You know, do we have much time to mess with that issue?
01:32:29 --> 01:32:36 Probably not. We could have, you know, many people employed gainfully chasing
01:32:36 --> 01:32:39 down Trump and his questionable antics.
01:32:40 --> 01:32:43 Well, Rick, is there anything else you want to add to this discussion?
01:32:43 --> 01:32:47 I think what you've contributed has been very helpful for the listeners.
01:32:48 --> 01:32:56 Well, I do. I think the press has more or less reported that Trump has changed
01:32:56 --> 01:32:58 his mind and he's pulled back on the tariffs.
01:33:00 --> 01:33:03 Against all countries except for China.
01:33:04 --> 01:33:11 That's not what's happened. And let me clarify. He has pulled back but not eliminated the tariffs.
01:33:11 --> 01:33:18 He has still left 10% tariffs in place against most countries.
01:33:18 --> 01:33:22 There's a couple exceptions here and there, but let's just say 10% across the
01:33:22 --> 01:33:26 board for most countries, against most countries.
01:33:26 --> 01:33:29 That happens to be, just to give you a historical perspective,
01:33:30 --> 01:33:33 That would be much higher than, you know,
01:33:33 --> 01:33:38 in a historical sense than any tariffs we've seen, even these smooth hollows
01:33:38 --> 01:33:42 that we talk about from around the Great Depression times.
01:33:42 --> 01:33:50 So this, you know, what he left in place, although much below what he was barking
01:33:50 --> 01:33:54 about and threatening, is still meaningful.
01:33:54 --> 01:33:59 Now, he says, you know, his phone's ringing off the hook with,
01:33:59 --> 01:34:04 you know, depending on who you listen to, 20, between 20 and 70 countries are
01:34:04 --> 01:34:07 calling and wanting to negotiate and so forth.
01:34:08 --> 01:34:12 Who knows what's going on with that? But as it sits right now,
01:34:12 --> 01:34:16 there's still some meaningful tariffs in place against countries.
01:34:16 --> 01:34:20 10 percent. That's meaningful. That means something in terms of the prices we
01:34:20 --> 01:34:27 pay, potential Fed interest rate moves, et cetera, and slower economy,
01:34:27 --> 01:34:28 as we were just talking about.
01:34:28 --> 01:34:34 It's not a zero. We didn't go back to no concerns at all. We still have some meaningful concerns.
01:34:34 --> 01:34:41 10%, granted, isn't 30 or 60 or these other numbers you threw out on so-called
01:34:41 --> 01:34:44 Liberation Day, but it's still meaningful.
01:34:44 --> 01:34:54 Secondly, he raised the tariff as part of a trade war, I'd say, with China.
01:34:54 --> 01:34:59 And it's currently, you know, I think it went from maybe 34%,
01:34:59 --> 01:35:06 35% to near more than 130% against China.
01:35:06 --> 01:35:10 Okay, so there's two ways to look at that. You say, well, he lowered it all
01:35:10 --> 01:35:13 the way down to 10% for everybody else.
01:35:13 --> 01:35:16 And then he just bumped it up for only one country
01:35:16 --> 01:35:19 so this isn't that you know he's just picking on china big
01:35:19 --> 01:35:24 bad china right and there are and there's some you know truthness to this big
01:35:24 --> 01:35:29 bad comment right i don't think they play fair all the time and so forth so
01:35:29 --> 01:35:35 i'm not saying that but he certainly imposed massive tariffs against china just
01:35:35 --> 01:35:37 one country however forever.
01:35:38 --> 01:35:46 China is our third largest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, okay?
01:35:46 --> 01:35:53 So that country, China, that is going to have its imports to the U.S.
01:35:53 --> 01:36:00 Face substantially higher prices is our third biggest trading partner.
01:36:00 --> 01:36:07 So we, as consumers and businesses, as buyers of inputs from China,
01:36:07 --> 01:36:13 are going to face much higher prices. And that's inflation as well.
01:36:13 --> 01:36:16 And that leads into higher interest rates.
01:36:16 --> 01:36:21 I would say, just doing back-of-the-envelope calculations,
01:36:22 --> 01:36:34 that the impact to inflation before he pulled back was less than the impact
01:36:34 --> 01:36:37 to inflation will be to the U.S.
01:36:37 --> 01:36:44 After he pulled back. So the fact that he pulled back, it doesn't eliminate
01:36:44 --> 01:36:50 inflation concerns and as a result, high interest rate concerns and so forth.
01:36:50 --> 01:36:55 He pulled back in a way he left a little bit there for most countries,
01:36:55 --> 01:37:03 but he really jacked up very high the rate for the country that we trade a lot with.
01:37:03 --> 01:37:07 In fact, third most with China, and we're going to face overall higher inflation.
01:37:08 --> 01:37:16 If those tariffs remain as is 10% and 130% against China, that change,
01:37:16 --> 01:37:18 people are interpreting it as it's a great change.
01:37:19 --> 01:37:23 No more worries about inflation. No more worries about high interest rates in the economy.
01:37:23 --> 01:37:27 I go the other way, and this is where the market's starting to go as they start
01:37:27 --> 01:37:33 thinking more about what he did, is that this is not a good move,
01:37:33 --> 01:37:36 this pulling back the way he did. This is still going to lead to big-time inflation.
01:37:37 --> 01:37:42 As a result, when he announced the pullback, we saw the markets rally.
01:37:42 --> 01:37:47 Record levels went up very high, you remember, just two days ago, right?
01:37:47 --> 01:37:52 But what happened yesterday, as some people started thinking more about this
01:37:52 --> 01:37:58 And talking somewhat along the lines of what the manner that I just described to you,
01:37:59 --> 01:38:04 the thinking is, wait a second, this isn't the best thing since sliced bread.
01:38:04 --> 01:38:09 In fact, this is pretty confusing. This may be just the opposite of that. And you saw the market.
01:38:11 --> 01:38:14 Down yesterday. And today it's probably just bouncing around.
01:38:14 --> 01:38:16 So it's very confusing times out there.
01:38:17 --> 01:38:22 You know, we, you and your listeners should be very careful with,
01:38:22 --> 01:38:26 with jumping into the market saying, well, this is a good time.
01:38:26 --> 01:38:27 It's a good buying opportunity.
01:38:28 --> 01:38:30 It's, it's reach bottom and so forth.
01:38:30 --> 01:38:36 You know, my personal opinion is not so fast. I think we have a ways to go and
01:38:36 --> 01:38:38 maybe I'll lead you with that thought.
01:38:39 --> 01:38:43 Well, well, Rick, thank you for that. I mean, and that was, that's that,
01:38:43 --> 01:38:49 that, that all of it was, was very enlightening, but that last little bit was very, very helpful.
01:38:49 --> 01:38:55 Cause I know some people who, who like to, you know, invest in the stock market
01:38:55 --> 01:38:59 and invest heavily and you know, they, they play it.
01:38:59 --> 01:39:04 And so a lot of them might've thought, okay, now I might be able to get in.
01:39:04 --> 01:39:11 But, you know, after further reflection, it's still too volatile for a lot of people.
01:39:11 --> 01:39:18 And the biggest concern is those of us who have 401ks or are on public pension plans,
01:39:19 --> 01:39:24 the way the volatility of the stock market affects the money that you think
01:39:24 --> 01:39:26 you're going to have when you retire.
01:39:27 --> 01:39:33 And so I think that, you know, Your advice basically is to tell everybody,
01:39:34 --> 01:39:38 just kind of hold your horses, wait and see what's going on,
01:39:38 --> 01:39:41 and before you do anything.
01:39:42 --> 01:39:48 Correct. Well said. All right. Well, Rick, thank you for coming on and doing this, man.
01:39:48 --> 01:39:52 I look forward to talking to you. I think we've got you scheduled later on in the year.
01:39:52 --> 01:39:58 But as always, if something's going on and you say, hey, Erik,
01:39:58 --> 01:40:01 I need to talk to the folks about this. They need to get the heads up.
01:40:02 --> 01:40:07 Just keep doing what you're doing, you know, as far as teaching the future economists
01:40:07 --> 01:40:12 of the world. But, you know, just enlightening the listeners on this podcast.
01:40:12 --> 01:40:14 I greatly appreciate you coming on.
01:40:15 --> 01:40:18 You bet. I appreciate it. I appreciate the work you do. Keep it up.
01:40:18 --> 01:40:21 All right, guys, and we'll catch out on the other side.
01:40:22 --> 01:40:32 Music.
01:40:33 --> 01:40:39 All right. And we are back. So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank Alan Elrod,
01:40:40 --> 01:40:46 Zaha Hassan, Lara Friedman, and Rick Roberts for coming on the program.
01:40:48 --> 01:40:51 I hope that y'all got a lot out of that.
01:40:53 --> 01:41:01 Just picking the brain to some of the smartest, more committed people in this nation.
01:41:01 --> 01:41:06 Dealing with issues that impact us all, whether it's politics,
01:41:06 --> 01:41:12 our relationship, and what's going on with the Palestinian people in America
01:41:12 --> 01:41:17 and in Gaza, and the economy itself,
01:41:17 --> 01:41:23 and all this dancing and shaking that President Trump is doing with these tariffs.
01:41:23 --> 01:41:31 I really am glad that Rick reached out to explain that and to let us know that
01:41:31 --> 01:41:37 regardless of the games that's being played, we're going to be the ones hurt by that.
01:41:38 --> 01:41:47 And for Alan and Zaha and Lara, just the type of work that they're doing to
01:41:47 --> 01:41:50 increase the political discourse, right?
01:41:51 --> 01:41:57 Whether it's a specific issue like what's going on in Gaza or just overall American
01:41:57 --> 01:42:00 politics, we've got to have intelligent discourse.
01:42:00 --> 01:42:03 We cannot suppress free speech.
01:42:04 --> 01:42:08 We just can't do that. And that was the one thing Lara wanted to make sure
01:42:08 --> 01:42:13 that I mentioned that the name of the book is called Suppressing Dissent,
01:42:14 --> 01:42:19 Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression in Palestine-Israel,
01:42:20 --> 01:42:27 dealing with the book that her and Zaha worked on to highlight the concerns
01:42:27 --> 01:42:29 that they have and others,
01:42:29 --> 01:42:33 you know, what we're seeing with the mass deportations and all that stuff,
01:42:34 --> 01:42:41 you know, specifically targeting folks that are speaking up for the Palestinians in Gaza.
01:42:42 --> 01:42:50 Yeah, we just got to get to a point, ladies and gentlemen, where we need to
01:42:50 --> 01:42:55 be respectful to each other, but we also need to be able to say what we need to say.
01:42:57 --> 01:43:05 And, you know, the reason why we have all this volatility, the reason why we have all this unrest,
01:43:06 --> 01:43:12 the reason why we have all of this discontent is because people feel that they're not being heard.
01:43:14 --> 01:43:21 And you can't have a one-way conversation. It's got to be at least two ways, right?
01:43:22 --> 01:43:26 The old saying is you can't listen with your mouth open. Right.
01:43:27 --> 01:43:32 So, you know, hopefully y'all are getting something out of this.
01:43:32 --> 01:43:41 Hopefully y'all feel that, you know, we're contributing to increasing and improving the dialogue.
01:43:42 --> 01:43:48 So I'm still looking for 20 subscribers, guys. Because, you know, that's the goal I set.
01:43:48 --> 01:43:53 Whenever I get to it, it's not like, oh, we got to do it by next month and all this other stuff.
01:43:53 --> 01:43:57 I'm being realistic about it. But that's the goal.
01:43:57 --> 01:44:03 I'm trying to get to 20 subscribers so that we can continue to expand this
01:44:03 --> 01:44:11 dialogue in these volatile times without, you know, any interference or encumbrance. Right.
01:44:12 --> 01:44:15 It's time. It's time for us to raise the level.
01:44:17 --> 01:44:24 So I just thank y'all for listening to the podcast.
01:44:24 --> 01:44:28 I thank y'all for, you know, spreading the word.
01:44:28 --> 01:44:33 For those of you who are going to subscribe or have subscribed,
01:44:33 --> 01:44:34 I greatly appreciate that.
01:44:35 --> 01:44:38 And we're just going to keep it going. We're just going to keep pushing.
01:44:39 --> 01:44:44 So again, thank you to my guests. Thank you all for listening. Until next time.
01:44:45 --> 01:45:32 Music.
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