The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 24 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Editor’s note: Trump’s speech prompted alarm from many other observers, too.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Donald Trump gave a speech to the United Nations on Tuesday that was really strange, both geopolitically and psychologically. He offered up what you might call a Trumpist vision of the world, but combined it with some really bizarre personal obsessions and boasts. This got us thinking, what if the self-obsessed craziness from Trump is itself the key message the world will receive about the United States? Many nations were closely monitoring what Trump said today, But what if they look at the fact that we elected this man president as a sign of just how unreliable an actor in the world the United States has become? I’ve got to think that many countries around the world are still hoping for something better from us. Should they just give up at this point? And if so, what does that mean? We’re trying to parse our way through all of this with international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, one of our favorite observers of global affairs. Nick, thanks for coming on in this great day.
Nicholas Grossman: Great to be with you, Greg.
Sargent: So in his speech, Trump tore into the United Nations on many levels, describing it as a failure and even saying to all those assembled, “your countries are going to hell.” He reiterated that the United States is basically withdrawing from the global battle to constrain climate change. And he essentially made it clear that the U.S.’s official position now is utter contempt for global institutions. Nick, what was your bottom line takeaway on what Trump did here?
Grossman: That it was essentially a middle finger to the world and to the UN and it was something where I don’t know how intentional this was on the U.S. part, but where a lot of these international diplomats have been telling themselves that it’s not that serious or you know, lot of it’s a show and negotiating tactic. It’ll blow over. And in watching this speech, a lot of them seem to think this guy seems really crazy. And like you said at the beginning, America didn’t just elect him, they reelected him. And that was after things like when he gave speech at the UN in his first term, they laughed in his face because when he lied, would just, you know, they’re not Fox News. They’ll take that seriously.
And with the vision of the world of everybody more isolated and divided that the whole post-World War II vision of the UN as a way to solve joint problems together is something that the United States, which helped set up the UN and even got the headquarters in the US first in San Francisco, now in New York, to show how the U.S. played a central role to reject that worldview and those institutions that have helped make the world more peaceful and prosperous than it otherwise would’ve.
Sargent: Well, I think one of the most alarming things for other countries will be what Trump said about global warming. He said something bizarre about heat deaths in Europe resulting from expensive air conditioning. And then he said this, listen.
President Trump (voiceover): What is that all about? That’s not Europe. That’s not the Europe that I love and know. All in the name of pretending to stop the global warming hoax. The entire globalist concept of asking successful industrialized nations to inflict pain on themselves and radically disrupt their entire societies must be rejected completely and totally, and it must be immediate.
Sargent: So Trump did more than just float the nonsensical line that global warming is a hoax. He instructed other countries to also abandon their efforts to combat it. To forget entirely about international cooperation in the face of a huge threat to future human civilization, how will that be heard around the world and from many of these people assembled there?
Grossman: At two different levels. One where the United States, which has not been the best on this stuff, especially under previous Trump administration when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, has not been the best on this already, is essentially out and that this makes a big problem for dealing with climate change because there is essentially a free rider problem, that unless everybody is all fighting it, or at least all major economies are all in on carbon reductions, it doesn’t work. If the United States increases carbon production, that could then dwarf the reductions that are done in other places. So already that’s going to make them less likely to try on their own and have less faith in the possibility of collective action that could then address the problem. It also, from a national interest perspective, is one showing that the U.S. is effectively abandoning the future. That China is announcing record amounts of solar and wind production. They are far ahead of the rest of the world. They’re exporting it to a lot of other people. And the United States is throwing away what in some cases were advantages in these new technologies. And so a lot of the world is looking to it as we’ll have to buy from China. And you know what? Who is going to be the responsible leader? I mean, a lot of them don’t want to work with China. There are all sorts of problems with Chinese authoritarianism. And yet, the Chinese are offering something that is at least stable and based in reality, which the United States is telling the world that we’re not interested in.
Sargent: Well, Nick, I want to jump in and say that this wasn’t just rhetorical from Trump right here in the United States. He and the MAGA movement are absolutely crippling our efforts to build a new green energy economy and to subsidize and use the government to encourage the development of renewable technologies. At precisely the moment, as you say, that China is leaping forward in those very technologies. He’s committing us to a kind of fossil fuel maximalism that ensures that we can’t really compete with China for the energy industry of the future. It’s not just him making crazy comments. They’re actually crippling the industry here in the United States.
Grossman: Yes, and causing problems, additional ones with foreign relations. Recently, that Hyundai plant that the Trump administration raided and really infuriated South Korea. A lot of South Koreans were setting it up, this multi-billion dollar investment in Georgia, setting up the plant to then run and ICE raids them and arrests them. And they are quite angry about it. And one of the things that factory was working on was batteries.
So some are seeing that not only was that another middle finger to the world and to a long time U.S. ally and ruining the relationship there, but it was also another way to use action, in that case an abuse of power, to go after elements of the clean energy industry, which at this point is not something that needs heavy state support. It’s something that is economical and getting more economical. So it’s not even an argument of, we shouldn’t spend so much money just to fight climate change. It’s now we shouldn’t spend money to fight climate change and also make ourselves money in the process.
Sargent: I want to flag what Trump said about his unilateral blowing up of boats in the Caribbean Sea. This is highly lawless. At least three boats have been sunk. This way, I’m not exactly sure what the total casualty rate is at this point, it’s around, rivaling around 20. It hasn’t been authorized by Congress. The administration isn’t pretending to offer a serious legal or substantive rationale for it. Listen to this.
President Donald Trump (voiceover): For this reason, we’ve recently begun using the supreme power of the United States military to destroy Venezuelan terrorists and trafficking networks led by Nicholas Maduro. To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence. That’s what we’re doing. We have no choice.
Sargent: Nick, note that Trump frames this as a warning to all those assembled, as if they should be on notice, that if they smuggle drugs into the U.S., they will be murdered by the U.S. military. What was the point of saying this to this audience of world leaders, do you think?
Grossman: So in part with all Trump things, there’s always the question of how much is impulse? How much is he just shooting from the hip? How much is he trying to play to a domestic audience and doing domestic propaganda and kind of indifferent to how it might look in the world? So there’s always that possibility.
But to the extent there was a message there to the rest of the world, it was of the United States lawlessness and that it would also be lawless in a way that doesn’t even really make strategic sense. So there were countries that were more forgiving, even if they were very critical of things like U.S. drone strikes against Al Qaeda, because they also opposed Al Qaeda and were also threatened by Al Qaeda. Whereas with the Caribbean, not only, as you mentioned, is it blatantly against U.S. domestic law and international law. I haven’t even seen an attempt by the administration to even link it to any actual law, which is something that is unprecedented. Again, with all those drone strikes, they would link back to, for example, an authorization for the use of military force passed by Congress.
But also that it makes no strategic sense that if the United States was actually trying to dismantle drug trafficking organizations, the move would be to stop the boat and arrest people on there, which the Coast Guard is very good at and has a good record of doing, because then they would be able to arrest people, interrogate them, possibly get information from them, try to get them to flip on their superiors. The way to dismantle an organization like that has to be going after leadership. They don’t send most of their drugs on small boats up from South America all the way to the United States.
So we’ve already got the lie that says that drugs are like a military weapon. We’ve already got on top of that, the lie that says that if there are drug deaths anywhere, that that constitutes the equivalent of a foreign army that is killing people, you know, with guns and bombs and the like. And we have all the law stuff that doesn’t make sense, but on top of that, is that the strategy on its own terms makes no sense. So I can’t even really figure out who it is that they are trying to get to do something else. Do they want cartels to use land routes more? Do they want Venezuela to do something? It’s not clear and they haven’t communicated.
Sargent: Well, I think the way this is heard by the rest of the world is Trump is essentially telling the United Nations that the U.S. military is no longer bound by international law. That’s the message.
Grossman: Precisely. And that that is a lot of international law that the United States set up that overall has served American interests, that the U.S. long had an army that aspired for professionalism and would do court marshaling and handle its own war criminals. And that has been something that Trump has thrown away not just now, but was in his first term that he pardoned convicted war criminals, ones that, you know, some pretty nasty crimes and things that are rare to convict. Eddie Gallagher, and there’s another one named Lawrence, who both got convicted for it, and [Trump] pardoned them. And so that was already sending signal both to the military and to the world that the United States plans on abandoning what amounts to hundreds of years, really centuries of developed through blood international law, things that people have heard of me. But if you don’t follow this, like the Geneva Conventions.
Sargent: It really is distressing. And Trump got really confusing on the topic of NATO during his speech. He endlessly lectured them for supposedly failing. He even mocked them for spending so much in the fight against Russia in defense of Ukraine. Then afterwards, he had this exchange with the media. He’s referring here to the percentages, the countries that are contributing to the overall defense. Listen to this.
Reporter (voiceover): Would you back up NATO allies? You said that you felt that they should shoot down the air, the Russian aircraft. Would you back them up? Would the United States help them out in some way?
President Donald Trump (voiceover): Depends on the circumstance, but you know, we’re very strong toward NATO. NATO stepped up, you know, when they went from 2 % to 5%, that was great unity. Trillions of dollars is being pumped in and they’re paying us for the weapons that we send, but that was a big day that nobody thought a thing like that could happen. You had countries that weren’t paying 2% and now they’re all paying 5%. That’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of weapons they’re buying and they’re buying them from us. They’re buying them from the U.S.
Sargent: Nick, here again, he brings it back to himself, hailing his supposedly great success in getting NATO countries to pay more and seems favorably disposed toward NATO in some ways, but then he said he might not back up our allies. What did you make of it?
Grossman: So he seems mostly, he does this pretty often, just kind of bullshitting to get through an interview or saying at times what he thinks he’s supposed to say. You know, stuff like when they asked him about, should Poland or NATO countries react to Russia flying to their space, should it shoot them down? He said, oh yeah, yes. And maybe that sounds tough to him or something. But then, when asked then, would the U.S. support NATO in defending itself, you know, in its actions, he says, well, it depends. And that undermines the whole thing.
So, where he’s trying to make it more about himself, but NATO defense spending increases is something that every U.S. president has tried to get. And it started in 2014 under Obama, not under Trump. And it’s not that Obama deserves credit for that. The thing that did it was Russia taking Crimea from Ukraine. So the Europeans got scared. And you know when else where there was a big defense spending increase starting in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the Europeans got more scared. And so when Trump says that it depends, that undermines the core feature of NATO.
The big thing that has made it such a success is a credible deterrent. It’s that because NATO says if you attack one of us, you’re attacking everybody, which in essence means if you attack even the smallest NATO member, you are risking war with the United States. That threat, by making it credible, has made it then that Russia has been deterred, even still now. Notice how Russia’s bombed Ukraine a lot has not bombed NATO countries, even though those NATO countries are supplying weapons that are then being used to kill Russians. And that deterrent is based on that idea that the U.S. will be there. Undermine that, it both makes Europeans more nervous, it makes Moscow more tempted that they can maybe break it. And it’s something that Putin really seems to be pursuing. And for whatever reason, regardless of how much Trump understands it, that or not he is undermining that and that makes it that NATO does not work. And without that, it invites more conflict. It does not result in less conflict or more likely to have peace.
Sargent: Then after all that, Trump did this explosive tweet rant in which he claimed, “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.” What on earth, Nick? How do we square all these things?
Grossman: I think the only way really to understand it is a combination of ignorance that is nevertheless extremely confident and that isolated kind of viewing everything as about himself. So another comment that he had that stood out to me when he brought up Ukraine in the speech in the UN was when he said something about how he was planning on starting in the stopping the war right away, but it turned out to be hard. It turned out to be hard and he said this in speeches also as if he was really surprised by it.
This is something that everybody who understood this even a slightest bit said that it was going to be difficult and that the reasons for it are larger and structural that no, this is not something where Putin is your friend and therefore will do you a favor when of course, Putin is just playing him in the first place. But even so, international relations is not driven by leaders doing favors. Putin did not invade Ukraine because he disliked Joe Biden. That is not how this stuff works at all, but it is how a lot of it works in the weird fiction of the Fox News cinematic universe, where everything is the individual president’s doing and the idea of toughness is bluster as opposed to real strength in the world, which comes from things like credibly supporting allies with military weapons.
Sargent: In fact, Trump has on many occasions said that his predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, gave Ukraine to Russia.
Grossman: Right, or claimed that Russia somehow would not have done it if he were president, which is one, obviously not true in that there’s been Russian aggression in both of his presidencies, as well as in addition to other things around the world. But that it’s just simply not how the world works.
So it’s doubly wrong. It’s something where you get almost a level of not even wrong. We can’t even have a real basis of discussion about it because he’s not actually talking about foreign policy, national security, international security, the way those things actually function in the world. He’s talking about it in a kind of shallow reality show version in which he’s the main character and everybody is just reacting to him or not. And so where he can kind of bluster his way through that with the domestic audience, at least with maybe half the domestic audience sometimes, he can’t with the international audience. They know that’s not how the world works.
Sargent: Yeah, it’s just so distressing. And then, of course, there’s the personal stuff, which we have to get into. In addition to all that, Trump boasted about his high poll numbers and told his audience he should win the Nobel Peace Prize. He again floated his silly lie about solving a bunch of global conflicts. But that aside, what’s the point of that, Nick? What’s the point of saying this stuff to this audience? Is it just to say America is done with all of you, fuck off? Is that the point?
Grossman: In part, a lot of it seems to just be ego boost or the idea this is, you know, that all these UN bureaucrats are the libs. So this is owning the libs. You you go into this place where people take things like rules and institutions and international peace seriously and you, you know, show them that you don’t or you act like you’re the only one who knows what’s going on and they’re all ignorant. With such up-and-down lies, you know, what I’d say actually is that reaches a level of pushing a worldview—not just of everybody isolated on their own, things like immigration is inherently bad, trade is bad, for example, of a much more isolated, divided world—but also one that, much like Trump has tried to do domestically, abandons truth. That there were so many of the lies that were just sheer up is down. This thing is really high, it’s actually really low. Or things that are impossible. There’s no more illegal immigration to the United States. Yes, of course there is. That they can’t monitor all of it. That’s been one of the running issues.
And when you mentioned the lie about the seven wars, if we look into that, the wars that he’s claiming that he stopped, some of which are still fighting, like Congo and Rwanda, they’re still fighting there. Some of which say he was not involved, like India, Pakistan. And India and Pakistan would certainly find it news to them that their whole issue has been solved. But one that stands out to me was he claims to have made peace between Israel and Iran, which first off are not at peace. But if you notice, the claim there is the U.S. bombed Iran and then stopped without achieving its goals and all the underlying issues remain. But that mere act of bombing somebody and then stopping is an achievement in some way where that’s not something that is peace, let alone something that is deserving of a peace prize.
Sargent: Yeah. Well, I’ll say, where do we go with all this, Nick? You know, there’s gonna be the usual dim-witted pundit voices saying, well, this was just crafty Trump trying to keep everybody on edge. He’s trying to make everyone feel destabilized to maximize his leverage. It’s a leverage play, that kind of stuff. But what does it actually mean? How seriously do you personally take this speech as a signal to the world about the future United States posture towards it. Where do you end up on all this?
Grossman: So, I take it extremely seriously. It is just it is a speech. The speech by itself doesn’t mean all that much. But because the speech is connected to it is a distillation of a worldview and of dramatic changes in US foreign policy of no less than the U.S. switching sides in the world from where it has been. On the really broad high level sense of like democracy versus authoritarianism of where it has been since World War II, you know, for nearly 80 years and the U.S. has effectively flipped in its stances on there and everybody is adjusting to it. But as they tell themselves, maybe it’ll just blow over or maybe it’s just a negotiating tactic. And I got to say for all those pundits, if it really is some sort of savvy negotiating tactic that is increasing leverage, is there even a single example where that has yielded some sort of benefit for the United States?
It seems more like trying to, you know, [put] lipstick on a pig, just trying to find some way to spin this as positive and not as the like, he knows what he’s doing, even if I disagree with it, where perhaps an even more unsettling fact is he and the people around him really do not know what they’re doing. They have this impulse to be negative towards a lot of the world, especially traditional U.S. democratic allies, but don’t really have any sense of what would replace it. And so this was an articulation of that. Kind of throwing that in everybody’s face and made it harder for people to accept that’s not the case anymore, which granted, you know, maybe have some benefit if they adjust to it, but they know that this is not something that is going to end soon. At the earliest, it’ll end in three plus years. And then after that, who knows? And the world knows because this was a reelection that the U.S. is at most four years from going back to something like this anyway.
Sargent: Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you just to wrap this up very briefly. Can the Democratic president repair this?
Grossman: Sort of yes and no. So we saw that both with Biden, a lot of countries were very eager to rush back to the U.S. side once they had a more reliable U.S. president. You can even see in things like the relationship with the U.S. and Germany and Japan, you think the bitterest of enemies and now close allies. So given time and changes domestically, people get over this stuff, can move on from it. But the U.S. in say 2029 if then there’s a Democratic president turning around to the world and saying don’t worry about that. You can trust us. They’re going to find a lot of wariness that even allies that would really like it to work are going to be doing long-term strategy that says maybe it won’t.
And a concrete example of this one’s that I think a lot of people outside of national security spaces maybe don’t pay attention to, but it’s things like purchases for high level military technology, things like think stealth fighters, it takes a long time. There’s a long leeway. You don’t make that, you don’t buy it this year and get it in a few months. You take these really long multi-year plans and already a number of the Europeans have shifted away from American military equipment. And that means less U.S. [geopolitical reach], we’re not as close with them anymore. It’ll mean less U.S. leverage. It’ll mean less help for other U.S. activity in the future. And that’s not something that’s about to be reversed because they know that they can’t rely on the U.S. promises long term, which really sucks, but I can’t blame them for it because that’s just the reality of it.
Sargent: Nick Grossman, thank you for that rather bracing picture of where we are right now. It’s looking pretty damn grim. We really appreciate you coming on, man.
Grossman: It’s not great, but thanks for having me.