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1:02

Hey,

1:02

everyone. John and welcome to Helen High

1:04

Water in my podcast about politics and culture.

1:06

On the Edge of Armageddon, It's

1:09

determined if dubious committed

1:11

if KUKU for cocoa puffs often

1:13

wrong, but rarely in doubt exercise, in

1:16

elevated gas baggery. Than

1:18

neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom

1:20

of night nor the toxic

1:22

rantings of the not house right, a

1:24

president attempting to invalidate legitimate

1:26

election and stage an auto coup complete

1:29

with an armed dissection of the United States capital

1:31

nor more broadly and arguably

1:33

even more disturbingly, The capture

1:36

of a decent sized chunk of our political, social,

1:38

and civic spheres by a cadre of

1:40

incoherent, insidious, Conspiracy

1:42

idled, autopsy cravings, authoritarian

1:45

worshiping lunatics, hustlers, grookerters, nihilists,

1:48

and nincompups. None of it. None

1:50

of it. Has kept us from our

1:52

duly sworn duty and obligations,

1:54

giving you our listeners a fresh

1:56

episode of this podcast week after week

1:59

after week after week Maybe not

2:01

without fail because, you

2:03

know, hashtag epic fail

2:05

is one of our many models around here,

2:07

but certainly without a pause. We're

2:10

doing that for more than two years.

2:13

Haven't had a break. All of

2:15

which is to say that I am

2:18

plumb shagged out

2:20

and desperately in need of some R and R.

2:23

And with the midterm election now comfortably

2:25

in the rear view mirror, And our democracy,

2:28

amazingly, if I will admit a little

2:30

unexpectedly, still intact.

2:33

It seems like a suitable time. For

2:35

the Heilemann Water home office to

2:37

give itself a fucking break. And

2:39

so for the next few weeks, that is

2:41

exactly what we are gonna do. And we'll

2:43

see you back here on the other side of the holidays.

2:46

Tanned, rested, refreshed, revitalized, and

2:48

raring to go. Ready to

2:50

get back to cranking out more

2:53

tasty content. In the meantime,

2:55

don't despair. We're not leaving

2:57

you entirely in the lurch for these

3:00

weeks. To the contrary, every

3:02

Tuesday morning, per usual, you

3:04

will find a hopefully unfamiliar

3:06

episode of the podcast doing

3:08

the backstroke in your feed. Drop

3:11

there by the Abel AI fact totems

3:13

who'll be mining the store while we're away.

3:15

And while these episodes, come

3:17

over the next few weeks, may not be fresh

3:20

or strictly speaking new,

3:22

they will be piping hot, a carefully

3:24

curated series of high water golden

3:26

oldies

3:28

which those of you who've been around from the start

3:30

may remember, I

3:32

hope fondly. And those of you who came

3:34

along sometime later may never have encountered

3:36

at all. Given our focus

3:38

on politics these past few months and our desire

3:41

not to take a dump on your mood of holiday inspired

3:43

good cheer, we've decided these encore presentations

3:46

will avoid that topic like the plague and

3:48

focus dead on culture, entertainment, technology,

3:50

and such with a run of some of our most favorite guests

3:52

in those realms over the past two years. Including

3:55

this beauty right here, which

3:57

whether or not you've heard it before, you

3:59

will not want to miss. And so with

4:01

that, We leave it to it with a

4:03

hearty and heartfelt namaste. Everyone,

4:20

John here, and welcome to Helen High Water.

4:22

My podcast for the recount about politics and

4:24

culture on the edge of our McGadden. With big

4:27

ups, my pal rizah, the presiding genius beyond

4:29

Santa Butane clan, and the producer

4:31

of our dope theme music. It's now

4:33

nearly a month since the Russian invasion of Ukraine

4:35

began, and the emerging consensus in

4:37

the west is the war has settled into an

4:40

ugly, wretched grinding

4:42

stalemate due in parts of the lumbering

4:44

incompetence of the Russian military and

4:46

in larger part to the determined, skillful,

4:49

and resilient resistance by Ukraine's

4:51

defense forces and its people, Vladimir

4:53

Putin's war plan a shock and

4:55

awe campaign using ground and air power

4:58

to quickly seize keys, hard keys,

5:00

and other major Ukrainian cities, to force

5:02

a change of government and effectively take over the

5:04

country has, to

5:06

put a fine point on the matter, bailed.

5:09

With Russia now making only marginal gains

5:11

each day, while suffering unexpectedly

5:14

large battlefield losses of as many as fourteen

5:16

thousand troops. But as anyone watching

5:18

cable news can tell you, The military and

5:20

strategic failure of the initial Russian campaign

5:23

does not mean that the war is over

5:25

or close to over or even heading in the direction

5:27

of being over Instead, Russia is

5:30

increasingly and indiscriminately targeting

5:32

civilians with a brutal and barbaric

5:34

assault from the air raining down

5:36

bombs and missiles and mortar fire on

5:38

apartment blocks, businesses, schools,

5:41

hospitals, and even bomb shelters.

5:43

As the Institute of War studies put it in a

5:45

comprehensive and authoritative assessment of the situation

5:47

on the ground released last weekend, quote,

5:50

Stalemate is not Armistice or SeaSpire.

5:52

It's condition in war in which each

5:55

side conducts offensive operations that do

5:57

not fundamentally alter the situation. Those

5:59

operations can be very damaging and

6:01

cause enormous casualties. If the

6:03

war in Ukraine settles into a stalemate condition,

6:06

Russian forces will continue to and bombard

6:08

Ukrainian cities even as Ukrainian

6:11

forces impose losses on Russian attackers

6:13

and conduct counterattacks of their own.

6:16

Ukraine's defeat of the initial

6:18

Russian campaign may therefore set conditions

6:20

for a devastating protraction of the conflict

6:23

and a dangerous new period, testing

6:25

the resolve of Ukraine and

6:28

the West, unquote. A

6:30

grim forecast indeed, but when we all need

6:32

to come grips with, as this terrible conflict

6:35

could easily dominate the news, US

6:37

foreign policy, and domestic politics in

6:39

the state of international relations for many months

6:41

to come and also have enormous repercussions

6:44

for the great power rivalries and the global balance

6:46

of power for even longer. To

6:48

help us sort through and suss out the

6:50

Russia, Ukraine shit show. Where things

6:53

stand where we're headed and just how fucking freaked

6:55

out whale should really be. We are lucky

6:57

to have with us this week for a special

6:59

two part episode of Helen High Water.

7:01

A man whose brilliance when it comes to

7:03

all things military, geopolitical,

7:06

and Russia specific is undisputed.

7:09

And almost as titanic as

7:11

his reputation for three other things:

7:13

a, ath ability, b

7:16

accessibility, and c,

7:19

having literally the worst tasted music of

7:21

anyone with a public platform in the Western

7:23

Hemisphere. That's right. Here

7:25

he is, the one and only Tom Nichols. I

7:27

think the high watermark of Russian power

7:30

passed a month ago. And you're

7:32

never gonna see a Russia that powerful and

7:34

capable again. I think if

7:36

anything Putin might be in some kind

7:38

of an existential funk because somewhere

7:41

inside he realizes how

7:43

completely badly he has screwed

7:45

the pooch here.

7:56

Before Donald Trump became president, you'd probably never

7:58

heard of Tom Nichols unless you moved in lead academic

8:00

military or foreign policy circles or his

8:02

reputation as one of the biggest brains out there

8:04

on international affairs, and in particular

8:07

on Russia, nuclear weapons and strategy

8:09

and national security was solid

8:11

gold. Born in Chicopy, Massachusetts in

8:13

nineteen sixty, Nichols managed by the time he was

8:16

thirty five to have earned a bachelor's

8:18

degree from Boston University, a master's from

8:20

Columbia, and a PhD from Georgetown served

8:22

on the faculty at Dartmouth, and worked as

8:24

a legislative aid to Pennsylvania senator John Hines

8:27

and become a five time undefeated jeopardy

8:29

champion, which is still, to be honest,

8:31

and to this day, his most towering personal

8:34

achievement. From nineteen ninety seven

8:36

until stepping down earlier this month, Tom

8:38

occupied a prestigious Perch on the faculty

8:40

of the US Naval War College He's

8:42

the author or editor of eight books,

8:45

the most recent of which, is our own worst

8:47

enemy. The assault from within on modern

8:49

democracy and is now a contributor to

8:51

the Atlantic for which he writes the excellent

8:53

newsletter, Peacefield. It

8:55

was Donald Trump, however, or rather Tom's

8:58

righteous, articulate, and often hilarious

9:00

denunciations of Trump that gained him a

9:02

wider following in the wider world. In twenty

9:04

sixteen, Tom urged his fellow conservatives to

9:06

vote for Hillary Clinton even if they hated her.

9:09

Because Trump, he said, was, quote,

9:11

too mentally unstable to service commander

9:13

in chief. Two years later in the fall

9:15

of twenty eighteen, discussed it by what he saw

9:17

as the unprincipled Republican support for Brett

9:19

Kavanaugh's nomination of the Supreme Court,

9:21

Tom announced his membership in the Republican Party,

9:24

and became an independent. By

9:26

then, Tom had become a bit of a fixture

9:28

on cable TV, and in particular, on

9:30

MSNBC's Morning Joe where I would frequently have

9:32

the pleasure of company, his insights, and his

9:34

bottom me. Right around that time,

9:36

Morning Joe was also the site at Tom's greatest

9:39

public humiliation. A moment I was

9:41

lucky enough, and I'm proud to say

9:43

I took gleeful part in. If you don't

9:45

know what I'm talking about, you'll have listen to this podcast.

9:47

Where we rehearse it and re litigate it

9:50

in detail. There will be no

9:52

spoilers here other than a

9:54

simple two word hint, lead.

9:56

Zeppelin. Even though his taste in

9:58

music is truly and utterly appalling, Tom

10:01

owns his strange and inexplicable preferences from

10:03

loving Toto and Barry allow to hitting the velvet underground

10:06

at preferring Billy Joel to brew springsteen

10:08

with pride arguing for those

10:10

insane positions with vigor and

10:12

he takes the abuse that he routinely gets. It

10:15

absolutely deserves for all of it with good

10:17

humor, grace, and equanimity. As

10:19

it happens, those qualities are all present in his

10:21

analysis and commentary on his areas of intellectual

10:23

expertise, which comes in handy right about now when

10:25

the situation in Ukraine and Russia is so grim

10:27

and ominous and for boating, Now

10:30

listening to people who know the most about what's happening

10:32

over there often makes you wanna pull the covers

10:34

over your head for, you know, like the next six

10:36

months or even stick

10:39

your head in the oven instead. Listening

10:41

to Tom Nichols isn't like that. He is serious, sober,

10:43

deeply knowledgeable in a no way inclined towards paint

10:45

glossy and bromides. ROCE

10:47

scenarios. But he also brings a welcome

10:49

perspective to the conversation, a sense of level headedness,

10:52

carefully measured and ever cautious optimism

10:54

a firm conviction that even in the worst of times,

10:56

maybe especially in the worst of times,

10:58

it's essential that we find a way to look away

11:01

now and then and have a laugh He

11:03

also has an irrepressible firmly grounded sense

11:05

of, dare I say it, hope.

11:08

So, kick off your shoes, crack a cold one,

11:10

rev up the vape pen, or pack the biggest bowl

11:12

you own. And settle in for the first

11:14

part of my epic apocalypse now

11:16

style trip upriver with Tom Nichols, who

11:19

may be hopeful that this war marks the

11:21

beginning of the end for Putin and

11:23

Putinism, but who is still too

11:25

smart and too honest to try to

11:27

convince you that what lies ahead for

11:29

Ukraine and Russia, for Europe, China and

11:31

America and, yes, for all of us, isn't

11:34

a really hairy and most definitely

11:36

world historical stretch of

11:38

hell in that water.

11:50

Was a simple verb,

11:53

mainly a part of speech used

11:55

in everyday life. But

11:57

it's not that simple for us

11:59

because now the everyday Ukraine

12:01

illnesses, they cannot say more

12:03

without bursting. In tears.

12:07

This was my home. This

12:10

was my friend. This

12:12

was my dog. And

12:15

this was my car, this

12:18

was my job, and this

12:21

was my father. And

12:25

this beautiful name was my

12:27

daughter. The

12:29

millions and millions of fresh wounds

12:32

obliging with that hold

12:34

of a broken victory now.

12:36

Russia has thrown Ukraine

12:39

in tears and blood and children

12:41

horses. But

12:43

there is one thing Russia doesn't

12:46

get was in the

12:48

world that describes its

12:50

life. And we, Ukrainians, already

12:53

know what will come next.

12:56

We will win. So

12:58

there he is. President Zelensky, the new

13:01

global icon of our time, Tom, and with a new

13:03

fresh Sunday Twitter video in

13:05

English for all of us who don't speak of the Ukrainian

13:07

or Russian. How are I good to see you, by the way?

13:09

Yeah. Good to see you, John. Thanks for having me.

13:11

So I wanna ask you just, you know, to

13:13

place this in context. Right? When we all talk

13:15

more about Zelensky as we go, but just this

13:17

video, which is defiant. And also, she sent

13:19

me the language in this thing. Like, the guy is like, you know,

13:21

that the driven you can or Ukraine

13:24

into tears in blood and shoot up corpses.

13:26

Like, I'm powerful just as

13:28

a speech to congress was. But I ask you

13:30

everything you read right now today on Sunday

13:33

is stalemate. You know, protracted

13:35

stalemate, quagmire, that's where we're

13:37

headed for. It could be longer or shorter, but it's

13:39

gonna be an ugly thing, and that's certainly what we're seeing

13:42

in cities in Ukraine. So when you hear Zelensky

13:44

say, we will win. Is

13:47

that

13:47

bravo or is that rooted in some possibility

13:49

of reality? And what's the against the backdrop of

13:51

what you think the state of the war is right

13:53

now. I don't wanna parse this as, you know, depends

13:55

on what the definition of win is, but

13:58

it's pretty clear that Putin's strategic

14:00

objectives aren't gonna happen. So

14:03

whatever Putin thought he was gonna

14:05

get by going into this war, like capturing

14:07

Kiev, regime change,

14:09

turning Ukraine into, like, the nineteenth province

14:12

of Russia kind of thing. It's

14:14

not gonna happen. So, you know,

14:16

can Putin keep leveling buildings

14:18

and killing people? Yes.

14:20

You know, when the Zelensky says Ukraine

14:22

will win, not like he's gonna march into Red

14:24

Square and hand over, you know, the instrument

14:27

of surrender. But has Putin ever

14:29

going to get what he thought he was gonna

14:31

get the day he launched this war? And I think

14:33

the answer is no. And that's what

14:35

Zelensky is saying. Is that Ukraine will win?

14:37

Is there still gonna be a sovereign Ukraine? They're

14:39

not gonna occupy Kiev? They're not gonna

14:41

I mean, it's just Ukraine in some

14:44

sense without sounding overly

14:47

enamored of bravado

14:48

myself, in some sense that Russia

14:50

has already lost this war. Right.

14:52

When I was in Estonia not that long

14:54

ago talking to the secretary state and others

14:56

around and I won't reveal all the record conversations

14:59

here, but there's a pervasive sense among a lot

15:01

of people in American foreign policy world that

15:03

that the problem is. Russia

15:06

will not take over Ukraine. May

15:08

not even be able to capture keep, but

15:11

the Ukrainians will never be strong enough to drive

15:13

Russia out. That's what leads to some of

15:15

the stalemate analysis. Like, there's sort

15:17

of micro stalemate analysis of, you know, resupply

15:19

lines and all this stuff. But the general sense of, hey,

15:22

the Russians having accomplished their strategic objectives

15:24

or their tactical

15:25

1, as you said, but they can

15:27

last for a long time as long as Putin just keeps

15:29

shoving bodies into the fire and

15:31

treating every Russian conscript as cannon fodder.

15:33

They can stay there for very long

15:34

time. That's a war that nobody wins

15:36

potentially. Right? Right.

15:38

And the other thing that the Russians have a

15:40

lot of and that they love dearly is artillery.

15:43

And they can just keep dumping artillery on

15:45

innocent people until they're just bouncing

15:48

the rubble around. But there is a

15:50

danger of an unintended consequence I mean,

15:52

that's what happened in the eastern

15:54

provinces in Ukraine. Well, that was

15:56

eight years ago, and it's been just going on and

15:58

going on. And, you know, the killing but that's also

16:00

created as we now see a battle

16:03

experienced Ukrainian military. Right.

16:05

You know, the the pushover military

16:08

that Putin thought he was dealing with, ironically,

16:11

you know, Putin created this military.

16:13

Putin created this country that he's now

16:15

at war with. That he might have

16:17

to just keep pounding. Because the other thing

16:19

to be careful about saying because I think people

16:22

throw this right and they say, well, you know, Russia holds

16:24

this area or they hold that area. Almost

16:27

inevitably, what that means is they happen

16:29

to be standing in that area at this

16:31

moment.

16:32

Like, I hold my office right now. But if someone showed

16:34

up if someone showed up here with enough artillery, I'd probably

16:36

have to leave. You know? You're right. If we were walking down,

16:38

you know, fifth Avenue at three in the morning, there was

16:40

no traffic. We hey, we're holding Midtown

16:43

right now. You know, we're not. Yeah. I

16:45

mean, if the reports of the Russian losses are

16:47

even remotely accurate, the ones

16:48

that, you know, the Pentagon's putting up. Well, let's say fourteen

16:50

thousand is right. What the Ukrainian government's claiming,

16:52

and that's what the Red Cross is getting ready to carry out of the country, I

16:55

believe, if according to the news last week.

16:56

Cut that in half to make it the Pentagon's

16:59

estimate and that's still catastrophic.

17:01

Right? Here's my thing, like, we all want to root for Zelensky.

17:04

We all are root for Zelensky. Everybody is. Right? I

17:06

mean, there's no again, we'll talk a little more about him

17:08

in a second, but My question is,

17:10

if you have Putin deciding that

17:12

he doesn't care in the end about casualty

17:14

numbers and he doesn't care about state of the economy,

17:17

And this is the view of a lot of very pessimistic

17:19

cold eyed Russia watchers. Michael McFall,

17:22

I did meet with Marsha Gessen on Friday. He

17:24

doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care.

17:26

He's a classic totalitarian. He doesn't

17:29

mind depopulation. It's okay. Right? That's

17:31

the Han Hurant definition of totalitarian. You

17:33

gotta be okay with the population of your own country.

17:35

And if that's right, if

17:38

Ukraine is locked in a brave

17:40

struggle that last months of shelling,

17:43

losing thousands, then tens of thousands,

17:45

then maybe hundreds of thousands of lives

17:48

is one definition of loss. If you can't

17:50

get them out and they're willing to basically

17:52

take any cost, you could be in

17:54

a situation where you're just stuck in this endless

17:56

quagmire where your ability

17:58

to absorb those losses eventually becomes

18:00

intolerable just because too many people are dying

18:02

and fleeing.

18:03

Right? That's why I didn't wanna get into any

18:05

kind of parsing about win or loss because

18:08

I think a better way to ask that because you initially

18:11

said years or maybe months. Whose side is

18:13

time on

18:13

really.

18:14

Yeah. I'm not gonna quite agree that

18:16

Putin has no limits in

18:18

terms of losses he can take. Really didn't

18:21

give a shit about public opinion. He wouldn't

18:23

be at one of these stupid, you know,

18:25

you know, fascist rallies with

18:27

everything done up in, you know, the Russian tri

18:29

color. They give me a Trump

18:30

rally, Tom. That'd look like a Trump rally.

18:32

Yeah. If he didn't really didn't give a shit, he

18:34

wouldn't be doing those. Yeah. You know, he's

18:36

got something like fifteen thousand people

18:38

in detention right now. People are

18:40

fighting. I don't know if you saw the video of, you know, old

18:42

ladies fighting over bags of sugar.

18:45

Yeah. You know, that can't go on forever

18:47

either, even the Soviet Union, which

18:49

had a lot more control over its population

18:52

than Putin does. Even the Soviet

18:54

Union couldn't risk that kind of level

18:56

of discontent. And when those body bags

18:59

well,

18:59

they are coming home. And when more body bags

19:02

start coming home, Pratton has a problem.

19:04

Of course, he can just say fine. I'll stay in power

19:06

and I'll crack heads and I'll put

19:08

people in jail. But

19:11

is unwinding a system that

19:13

had come to depend on the international system

19:15

in a way that the Old Soviet Union didn't. You

19:18

know, when you were getting body bags coming on from Afghanistan,

19:20

You didn't care about things like sanctions. You didn't

19:22

care whether the Russian stock market would ever open

19:24

again because it didn't exist. So

19:27

he does have to live somewhat

19:29

in the real world, but I also agree with you

19:31

that the guy's just a murderer. I mean, he will

19:34

throw Russian boys into this thing

19:36

like a meat grinder

19:38

But I think, you know, we're all struggling with.

19:40

And then what?

19:42

Right. Yes. Yes. You know, what

19:44

does he get out of it? The biggest problem

19:46

I'm having is that every in the head

19:48

that I talked to. Regardless

19:50

of politics, you know, we all kind of check

19:52

notes and talk with each other. And

19:54

none of us can answer the question of how

19:56

this ends.

19:58

Right? And it's funny because, you know,

20:00

you don't want to be the person who's always skipping

20:02

to the end game, you know, in these situations, especially when

20:04

thousands of people are dying and you're watching these images

20:06

you want. I mean, don't wanna in the moment, but you

20:08

wanna kind of be respectful of the moment and not be just

20:11

kind of kinda still trying to use war games that are speculative

20:13

and who the fuck knows. Right? But it is

20:15

obviously everybody wants it to end. And so the question

20:17

of what the end is, it kind of presents itself.

20:20

Here's a question skipping a head to where

20:22

I wanted to ask about this. It's probably right in front

20:24

of us

20:24

here. And then I will shift and talk about the three

20:26

big dramatic personae in this conflict.

20:28

But

20:29

in my conversation with Marsha,

20:31

Gessen, the other day, they made a point

20:33

that others have made including the prime minister

20:35

of Estonia, who I met when I was in Estonia.

20:38

I was like, okay. So here's a scenario where Putin

20:40

wins. Eventually, he's a super

20:42

peace. They make deal with Zelensky. They

20:44

partition the country. He gets to keep

20:46

some land. He gets them

20:48

to agree to some kind of at least partial demiliters

20:50

and a pledge to not join NATO. And he goes home

20:53

and says, I won. Thank you. And

20:55

then hangs out until Trump or

20:57

some other more pro Russian

20:59

president who wants get America out of NATO,

21:01

get it reelected. Now I'm not saying Trump will get

21:03

reelected, but I'm saying, from Putin's standpoint,

21:05

it's not a implausible crazy scenario

21:08

to imagine, those things all happening. And

21:10

Putin going back in a place where he's repressed

21:12

the dissent and the press. And where the country

21:15

doesn't largely know exactly how many Russians

21:17

have Heilemann the soldiers can't take cell phones with

21:19

them into the field anymore. And there's just disappeared

21:22

Russian boys all over the place. He

21:24

goes back and says, yeah, we lost a few thousand, but

21:26

we secured lot of Eastern Ukraine, which we always

21:28

wanted to do, and we kept them out of NATO. Now

21:30

the sanctions go away. And I hunker down and hope

21:32

for a better more conciliatory

21:35

and conducive

21:36

attitude towards me in the west, which we know at

21:38

least one major presidential candidate has. Yeah.

21:41

It's interesting because there's separate audiences

21:43

here. One is if he takes that

21:45

deal, that's basically a loss to

21:47

the crazy kind of right wingers

21:50

in Russia that have been pushing this,

21:52

that are his closest advisors now.

21:54

And one thing you've heard me say this before.

21:56

I mean, one one reason I'm very sensitive about this

21:58

is, I'm an Orthodox Christian, and

22:01

think people in the West are not paying attention

22:03

to how much of this is being driven by this kind

22:05

of crackpot messianic Russian

22:08

orthodoxy that the patriarchate

22:10

of Moscow was pushing. So Putin

22:12

just comes home and says, alright, you know,

22:15

the LDR and the DPR, you know,

22:17

it's secured and they're not gonna join, you know. I mean,

22:19

to take a Blue's brother's line, he he's on

22:21

mission from God. And that's

22:23

pretty scary. On the other hand,

22:26

he may have to just say,

22:28

I've got to define something as a win and

22:30

come back for another bite, another

22:32

day down the road. But here's the thing.

22:34

He's doing so much damage to his own military

22:37

that there is a kind of capacity problem

22:39

here. I know a lot of people are really fearing

22:41

that if we don't stop him this time, he

22:44

partitions part of Ukraine, he kinda sits

22:46

on that he builds up his muscle

22:48

again, and then it's like Stalin said

22:50

at the end of world war two, Stalin was standing in

22:52

front of a map of Europe. And he said that Germans

22:54

will recover and then fifth sixteen years from now, we'll

22:56

have another go at it. don't

22:58

think Putin can do that. I think this is

23:00

it. I think the high watermark of Russian

23:03

power passed a month ago.

23:05

And you're never gonna see a Russia that

23:07

powerful and capable again. I

23:09

think if anything Putin might be in

23:11

some kind of an existential funk because

23:13

somewhere inside he realizes

23:16

how completely badly he

23:18

has screwed the pooch here. So don't

23:20

wanna give away Ukraine. I don't wanna advise

23:22

Lindsay. I think it is incredibly presumptuous

23:25

for us, Western journalists sit here and say, you know what's

23:27

you know, the deal is Lindsay ought to take

23:30

because, you know, that's easy for us because we're not sitting

23:32

in a bunker somewhere. But I also

23:34

think that Zelensky has more

23:36

room to accept bad deals

23:38

because I don't think those bad deals are gonna last

23:40

because I don't think this regime's gonna last. And

23:42

I certainly don't think Putin's gonna last. Because

23:45

I think part of what drove this is

23:47

he has some and I'm guessing

23:49

at this. don't have any insight in foreign guy's

23:51

health or what, but it seems to

23:53

me Like, this was the end result

23:55

of the world's worst mid life crisis of

23:57

some kind. And he just decided, this is the

23:59

moment, so

23:59

they should have bought the fucking guy a Porsche, you know, just like

24:01

just No. He already got the young girl friend.

24:04

Hi. He's got the thirty thousand dollar

24:06

watches and I mean, you know, I guess

24:08

for the man who finally has the big mid life

24:10

crisis, he's gotta go get another

24:12

country and add it to his belt, but

24:14

but I think there is some of that. If you have

24:17

all the money in the world and all the power in the

24:19

world, then you run a mafia state basically,

24:21

you're not even an oligarchic, but a technocratic state

24:23

like that. And you'll currently have all the cars and you have

24:25

the watches and you have the girls. What else is there? You know? Another

24:27

another guy's territory. Another guy's territory. Let's

24:30

go get another guy's territory. So let me ask

24:32

you about Zelensky. Like I said, I wanna talk about Zelensky

24:34

about Biden and we've talked about Putin little bit. Let's

24:36

talk about Zelensky because really Coast,

24:38

quite weak. You know, the guy went

24:40

and spoke to the Canadian government.

24:42

He went to spoke to the German government, of course, most

24:45

importantly, from his point of view in the world,

24:47

virtually beamed himself into Congress,

24:49

and I I wanna play this a little bit of that

24:51

for history.

24:52

Today, the Ukraine and people

24:54

are defending not only Ukraine, We

24:57

are fighting for the values of Europe

25:00

and the world sacrificing

25:02

our lives in the name of the

25:04

future. I'm addressing

25:07

the president Biden. You

25:10

are the leader of

25:12

the nation. Of the appreciation.

25:16

I wish you to be

25:18

the leader of the world Being

25:22

the leader of the world means

25:24

to be the leader of

25:27

peace. Thank you.

25:29

Stavo

25:30

crane. I don't like a gush.

25:32

You know, I'm not a big gush or Tom. But, you know,

25:34

I have been just stunned by the whole thing. The speech

25:36

is great. Sixteen minutes, super tight, part

25:38

in Ukrainian, part in English with the video in the middle

25:40

that had people in tears. Right? You can't watch

25:42

it more you can't watch it more than once without

25:44

being like, okay, I've seen it 1. I don't really wanna see

25:46

that again. Right? Right? All new things out

25:49

of the bag of tricks and this guy's bag of tricks

25:51

as a wartime leader and a modern

25:53

media figure has been inexhaustible. I've

25:56

never seen anything quite like it. Someone who's gone

25:58

from total

26:00

anonymity, point one percent of the world knew who the

26:02

guy was, could've picked him

26:03

out of the

26:03

wild way. And did him the wild way. The people who never did because

26:05

of the Trump thing. Right. Or thought

26:07

he was kind of a clown or kind of a universe

26:10

head, you know, a lot of the Cognizant, he had that view.

26:12

And now it's like, he's really the

26:14

third, you know, along with Putin and Biden, who everyone

26:17

in the world knows who the US president is. He's,

26:19

like, one of the three most well known political

26:21

leaders and leaders in the world he's a little

26:23

bit of a combination of like Nelson Mandela

26:26

and Cheguwara. I mean, it's gonna be on

26:28

t shirts. We're gonna have that moment where people

26:30

used to remember world enough to remember when Shay was

26:32

on t shirts, people who know what was for. He was

26:34

a good looking guy in a beret who

26:36

looked little like Jesus and was kinda radical

26:38

in revolution some way, no one really really did.

26:40

But that's the way Zelensky is now. People

26:43

call them churchillian. Right? And they say it seriously,

26:45

and it's across party, and it's across classes.

26:48

And he said in three weeks -- Yeah. -- you know,

26:50

for almost four now. Right? And first of all, just

26:52

tell me what we thought of speech and then what you think about

26:54

the broader

26:55

Heilemann? I'm like, how this happened? Listen,

26:57

I'm one of those people that said the guys in over his

26:59

head. Because after he was elected,

27:02

he kind of wasn't over his head. I mean,

27:04

the kind of day to day running of a big complicated

27:07

government was, like,

27:09

Jackie Mason had a great joke about Ronald Reagan

27:11

back in the day he said he's a great president and he's

27:13

just politics is in his field. Zelensky

27:15

had this kind of great presence as

27:18

an actor and as a national figure.

27:20

But, you know, what's been really interesting is

27:22

war and tribulation and hardship

27:25

reveal character. They're

27:27

the asset test of character and under

27:29

this asset test Pooten has

27:31

gotten smaller and smaller and

27:33

withdrawn and, you know, that's why I think they're

27:35

pushing him out in front of crowds.

27:38

And Zelensky has emerged as

27:40

this guy who is just

27:42

fearless, who has balls of steel walking

27:44

around Kiev, you know, when there's teams

27:47

out to whack them. Think it's a very simple

27:49

issue of, you know,

27:51

the guy has the heart that everybody

27:54

thinks he has now. And You

27:56

don't see that yeah. I'm going back to this question

27:58

of how did you get underestimated? You don't

28:00

see this kind of courage or heart

28:02

when you see a guy based like trying to reform

28:05

his interior ministry or figure

28:07

out, you know, tax rates. It

28:09

took a crisis like this to say, what is

28:11

this person made of? And it turns out the

28:13

guy is just made of really strong

28:16

stuff. Now with the other thing, going

28:18

back to the information war because I've been my

28:20

mind's been blown by this too, you know.

28:22

I think this is what happens when you have a

28:24

free, young, democratic,

28:28

cohort of people and you say to them

28:31

kind of unleash your creativity, whereas

28:33

Putin's information warfare

28:35

is people that are scared shitless of

28:38

the government that they work for,

28:40

of the country they live in, and that doesn't

28:42

produce very good propaganda. What

28:44

you get in that case is You know,

28:46

good crackdown. Good crackdown. It's good crackdowns,

28:48

but, you know, but if if you turn to them

28:50

and say, now do something inspiring

28:53

that puts people on our side during this war,

28:55

The best they can come up with is nazis.

29:00

You know, like they go to the off the shelf villains,

29:02

and I think it shows you the democracies. When

29:04

they're with young creative people

29:07

putting out their message do lot better

29:09

than decrement

29:10

autocracies, just like we were better at

29:12

this than the Soviets were. I think it's obviously

29:15

clear that the first element

29:17

of what makes this situation different

29:19

is Putin's role in the world we

29:21

can both remember when there were guys like Chernyanko

29:23

and and drop off and knowing even American even who they

29:25

were. A lot of people know who Brezhnev was. Right?

29:28

The only Russian leader who was ever like this

29:30

Putin on the other side of the coin was Gorbachev.

29:32

Right? Who became the positive version of,

29:34

like, a global superstar because of the end of the Soviet

29:36

Union. Right? And putin

29:39

took on the, like, where's the black hat with

29:41

pride? Right? He's not, like, Paul

29:43

Pott or EDI mean who's like, hey, I'm a

29:45

good respectable leader in my country. I'm telling you which people

29:47

don't look at that. Poon's like, hey, I'm

29:49

Darth Vader. I am happy to be the global supervillain,

29:51

and I'll go mess in an American election. So

29:53

I become part of the vernacular.

29:55

Step away from like wearing mau jackets like

29:58

blow felt or something.

29:59

Right. Right. So he's a global supervillain.

30:02

So if you get a Darth Vader, it gives

30:04

you an opportunity for a Luke Skywalker. How do you

30:06

be Luke Skywalker? You gotta be brave? You gotta

30:08

do the stuff. You can't just it's not an image

30:10

manipulation thing. If you're not being brave and resolute

30:13

and courageous and smart and surviving,

30:15

you can't be that. But there's

30:17

also this thing that those guys have done, the

30:19

people around 1, Zalenskien himself. You could see it in that

30:22

speech to congress. You could see it in the speech with the Twitter video.

30:24

Everybody says this war is the first TikTok war

30:26

and that's the first one with social media. They were like,

30:28

we get that. We play high

30:30

media. We do the Lester Holt interview. We did this speech. Congress,

30:33

we play low, we're on TikTok, we're on Twitter, we're on Instagram,

30:35

we speak in Russian, we speak in Ukrainian, we speak

30:37

in English. We're on telegram all day

30:39

long. And the guy is, like, please, like, spamming me. There's

30:41

so many videos He's ubiquitous, elite,

30:45

and populist. He's playing at every

30:47

level of the game in a way

30:49

almost like the only people will kill me

30:51

for saying

30:52

this, but in this element only, not in terms

30:54

of quality or normative value

30:56

to say of Trump. He's got little Trump

30:58

in it. Yeah. I mean, that's what Trump did. That's what Trump

31:00

would do when he was underdog running for president. I'll

31:03

go everywhere. I'll talk to anyone. I'll do anything.

31:05

I'll be on all the media. I'll just beat your face

31:07

all the

31:07

time. You know? You know what's interesting, John,

31:09

as a longtime, you know, Putin

31:12

watcher and and, you know, Kremlin I

31:14

don't know. I was just a Kremlinologist. know,

31:17

the Putin and his team

31:19

used to be really good at this. Mhmm.

31:22

You know, I'm talking even before the bear

31:24

shirt, you know, wrestling the

31:26

bears and playing hockey and

31:28

all that crap. They used to do

31:30

some really smart stuff

31:33

that said, this guy is not

31:35

a Stalin. He's not a supervillain.

31:37

He's just a really tough leader

31:40

and said they had these great framing and they

31:42

would put them in the right kind of videos. But

31:44

something happened, and I think that thing that

31:46

happened is a cult of personality.

31:48

You know, if we wanna keep making the Trump comparisons,

31:50

this is where Putin and Trump became alike, that

31:52

when you have

31:53

a cult of personality, the information

31:55

stuff you put out gets cheesier and cheesier

31:58

because the team working on it is

32:00

more and more afraid. The kind of arena

32:02

in which they connect gets narrower and narrower.

32:05

I mean, I used to be really impressed going over

32:07

and watching Russian television, they

32:10

had very fast paced shows and everybody

32:12

was standing behind podiums and,

32:14

you know, a lot of give and take and and at

32:16

least mimicked Democratic debate, but there

32:18

was a lot of real debate. Now

32:21

every single thing on Russian TV

32:23

looks like the stupidest goddam game

32:25

show in history. It's all like some

32:28

crazy version of who wants to

32:30

be a millionaire or a Nickelodeon kids

32:33

show. Because as Putin became more

32:35

and more of a dictator, they realized

32:37

that there just wasn't room to do

32:39

and the people that weren't Totally

32:42

on board left. So the only people

32:44

left doing this stuff on the information side

32:46

in Russia are, you know, these people

32:49

like Sumignon at our teeth, and

32:51

they're just not great at it. They used to have

32:53

people that were better on it. And I think Zelensky's

32:55

people totally understood as

32:57

you say, they get it. They understand that

33:00

to mobilize

33:01

support in the world, op eds in the New York

33:03

Times aren't gonna do it anymore. Right.

33:06

Well, and the other thing is and again, I don't wanna

33:08

overstretch the Trump thing because I'll just say for everybody

33:10

who's listening, I'm not saying Zelensky is like Trump

33:12

morally, politically, in was a valor or anything

33:14

else.

33:14

You're just reading a little bit of a cancel average.

33:17

I'm talking I'm talking about I'm talking just about

33:19

media savvy and no one can deny

33:21

the Trump's media savvy. The fact is that,

33:23

like, when Trump put that red hat on, we all

33:25

thought he was a fucking clown. Like, make America

33:28

great again, that's a douchey thing that no one's like

33:30

that. He was like, no. No. No. I'm gonna trademark this.

33:32

I'm gonna sell millions of these hats, and it's gonna

33:34

be Goesh. A lot people are Goesh

33:36

out there in the world. I'll do this populist, like,

33:38

basically trucker hat. And here comes in

33:41

his green t shirt. Yep. Anywhere is it everywhere? Yep.

33:43

And, you know, he's not served in the military to my knowledge.

33:45

It's an affectation. It is. It's like as

33:47

much of an affectation as Steve Jobs as black turtlenecks.

33:50

Steve Jobs used to say were those because he won the same

33:52

time in the morning, so he wouldn't have to choose to make any decisions

33:54

about what to wear. It was an application. It was about

33:56

branding. Right. Consistency, and

33:58

ubiquity. That was Trump, consistency,

34:00

ubiquity, and no fear of going into

34:03

the really hokey. And Zelensky has basically

34:05

been like

34:05

that. So what I gotta do to win be the what

34:07

I need to be or to lead my country, keep my people

34:09

alive. And do the counter factual. Right? Imagine if Zelensky

34:12

had done those things like with the Congress, or

34:14

the Canadian parliament, and he somebody had

34:16

got him a nice, you know, pulled out nice savile

34:18

row suit, and they put a silk tie. And everybody

34:20

said, no. I guess things aren't that bad. Yeah.

34:23

No. No. No. No. I'm sorry. I thought you were in

34:25

a bunker, but apparently, you brought your tailor

34:27

with you. Yeah. No. He what he did

34:29

was, you know, was smart.

34:31

Smart. Also, I think it's authentic.

34:34

think that is how we work around all

34:35

day. The only things that work are the ones that are authentic

34:38

if you're faking it, you can't make it. But I think it's

34:40

just I mean, I heard people on Twitter, they're like, you should

34:42

have worn and fucking crazy. It would have been

34:44

the biggest mistake he ever made. People

34:46

would have

34:46

thought, what a fraud? What a fraud? There was

34:48

a -- Yeah. -- whoever told him to wear a suit.

34:50

You gotta wonder it's like, Who cider you

34:52

on, man? Because Tom was the soonest, certainly

34:55

than, like, the worst advice you could give

34:57

him. There's that. I'll just wanna

34:59

play one quick thing because I think it's hilarious.

35:01

This is how you know that you're in a weird moment.

35:04

The weird moment you you have somehow transcended

35:06

something. When you give a speech to a joint site,

35:08

of

35:08

Congress, and you hear Nancy Pelosi

35:11

and Mitch McConnell talking like

35:13

this. President Zelensky's courage

35:15

and leadership of R and

35:17

D attention

35:19

and the admiration of the entire free world.

35:22

The president's fearless heroic leadership

35:24

has rallied his nation and

35:26

inspired the entire

35:28

world. His presentation was powerful

35:31

and heart wrenching. It

35:34

reinforced our sympathy, our

35:36

outrage, and

35:38

our

35:39

resolve. And our members were

35:42

very moved by his powerful remarks

35:44

today as well as the heart wrenching

35:47

footage he shared showing

35:49

Putin inhumane terror,

35:52

brutally committing war crimes

35:55

against children.

35:56

I read those speeches. It was like, is it for one

35:59

day? The same speech writer was writing for

36:01

Nancy Pelosi and and Mitch

36:02

McConnell. It doesn't really happen all that often. Tom, that's

36:04

something that I've been realistic. It's like conversation

36:06

I was having the other day with somebody about how for just

36:08

an hour, or two, Marco

36:11

Rubio came out of his Trump zombie

36:13

trance and actually started talking like a real

36:15

senator for about ten minutes Yeah. You know,

36:17

you're seeing this with a lot of folks. And I think

36:20

it's almost like you could believe for a moment

36:22

that Mitch McConnell cares about something because

36:25

there aren't a Ukrainians in, you know,

36:27

it's not a big Ukrainian population

36:30

in Kentucky. And so he didn't

36:32

risk the kind of unforced error that J.

36:34

D. Vance brought on himself that, you know,

36:37

slagging the Ukrainians. I think, look,

36:39

there is a generation of people. I'm

36:41

one of them. You we remember

36:43

the Cold War. This is the Cold

36:46

War nightmare. This is exactly the

36:48

one thing we can always agree on is

36:50

that we didn't wanna see in the Russian army

36:53

trying to steamroll its way west.

36:55

And Putin said, I'm gonna do it anyway.

36:58

And think there is a legitimate kind

37:00

of visceral reaction. I think by the way, this

37:02

part of the reason that Putin made

37:05

such a strategic blunder because I think he said,

37:07

well, they didn't care if took Crimea. They didn't

37:09

care if I beat up on Georgia. They didn't

37:11

care, you know, that I was helping Assad,

37:13

drop bombs on people. They won't care

37:15

about this. And like so many other

37:17

Russian leaders in the past, just

37:20

didn't understand that at some point the

37:22

West hits a line where they say,

37:24

no, we actually care about this. Now when, you know, we're not

37:26

gonna go to war over it or not go to war over

37:28

it yet. He didn't understand that

37:30

at some point. And the Soviets

37:32

made the same mistake with Afghanistan. Right? They

37:34

said, they didn't care about Budapest, they didn't care

37:36

about Prague, they won't care about Kabul and yet

37:38

we cared about Kabul and for years

37:41

helped to make Afghanistan the graveyard

37:43

of Soviet power. And I think

37:45

Putin has made that same mistake. There's something

37:48

in the water. I said this the other day. It's almost like

37:50

there's something in the water that makes people in the

37:52

Kremlin stupid. Over time.

37:54

Okay. Because they they'd sabotage

37:56

themselves when they're winning. The Soviets did this

37:58

to themselves in the seventies. They

38:00

were beating us on points, if nothing

38:03

else. And then, again, with Putin,

38:05

if Putin hadn't done this, imagine

38:08

the problem we'd be dealing with of looking at this

38:10

long term emergence of Russian power,

38:12

the Russo Chinese, you know,

38:14

actions that everybody worried about. And instead,

38:17

he has just dashed his

38:19

military and his economy to

38:21

bits over this on the

38:23

assumption that people like McConnell and Pelosi

38:26

couldn't possibly have a moment like that

38:28

and then vote to send weapons to

38:30

Ukraine. So listen, Tom, I wanna ask you one

38:32

last question about Putin before we move on. There's

38:35

still a long running debate you know, about

38:37

sort of the state of Putin's

38:39

mental stability. Right? And, you know,

38:42

I I've seen you do battle with people over the question

38:44

of the misuse of the term rational actor,

38:46

which is, you know, an academic thing that

38:48

relates to states and not humans. And I'm enough

38:50

of an academic, or least I have enough memory of having

38:53

been in in graduate school that

38:55

I will not make that mistake. I will not allow

38:57

you to then poke holes in my use of the phrase

38:59

rational actor we're talking here. But we are talking

39:01

about rationality. We're talking about about this guy

39:04

and what constitutes rationality. And, you know,

39:06

even even people with extreme delusions

39:08

people who have extreme mental disorders,

39:11

they still often have, you know, an internal

39:13

logic to what they think. They don't necessarily think

39:15

the moods made of green cheese or that gravity

39:17

doesn't work or the sun's gonna rise in the west.

39:19

I mean, that's like you're out of your fucking mind

39:21

if you think those things. But that's not what we're

39:24

talking about here. We're talking about, you know, someone

39:26

who has, you know, I think it's Mike McFall, the former

39:29

US ambassador to Russia, who says

39:31

that, you know, it's not that Putin's irrational.

39:34

He just doesn't think like you. You

39:36

know, he doesn't share your sense of what

39:38

rationality is. He has a different frame

39:40

of reference. He has different objectives. He

39:42

has different historical perspective. His different

39:45

cultural perspective, you can't understand

39:47

his rationality because it's so different from

39:49

yours, but it's not that he's irrational

39:51

And that think is a powerful point. And I

39:53

think it I against kind of the view that I have had.

39:56

But I wanna ask you this though because, you

39:58

know, Putin's reaction to Zelensky's speech

40:00

last week that seem more

40:02

different to me, you know, not like

40:05

this guy's got his own compass and it's

40:07

not my compass. His true north is not my

40:09

true north. It seemed more genuinely unhinged.

40:12

You know, the the language was, you

40:14

know, really wild and he's going after,

40:16

you know, about his own people. He's going after the

40:18

oligarchs, some of the people who you know, he helped

40:20

make Rich who he put into positions of

40:22

power and has made really wealthy. You know, he's talking

40:25

about, you know, the the decadence of Fagron

40:27

oysters and gender freedom and

40:29

how these Russians are enjoying all those things.

40:31

And the concept is that insects and

40:34

kind fifth column and and the traders

40:36

and all the stuff that he talked about, there was just a

40:38

different quality to it, and it felt a little

40:40

more to me like Nixon in seventy four. Right?

40:42

You know, in the midst of Watergate,

40:44

drunkenly wandering around the White House talking to the paintings

40:47

on the walls. You know? I guess it raised the question

40:49

at least for me. Is that where where Putin

40:51

is now? Or is there a chance that that rep Putin is

40:53

now? Like, like Nixon. He's 1 around the

40:55

Kremlin, drunk on vodka instead of red

40:57

wine talking to the paintings on the walls.

40:59

And and if that's true, you know,

41:01

what does that mean? Despite

41:03

my totally natural inclination to

41:05

be overly pedantic. There

41:09

is a good question about rationality here

41:11

because you say when people say, well, he's irrational, it

41:13

means they're like full goose bozo, you know,

41:15

talking to the cat and yelling at

41:17

paintings and all that stuff. But there is a a

41:20

bigger problem of rationality and, you know, Mike McFarland

41:22

uses the term unhinged. And I think

41:24

that's a good way to put it that Putin

41:26

has always been a highly emotional

41:29

guy. I don't understand how years of watching

41:31

this. Let other people say he's cool customer,

41:33

you know, he never loses his cool. He loses

41:35

his cool all the time it shows. He would

41:37

suck at poker. I mean, you always know when he's

41:39

angry because he can barely hold it back.

41:42

My concern about his

41:44

rational state of mind

41:47

And this is one thing you always see with leaders

41:49

who become irrational but

41:51

not crazy. And they start to

41:53

have problems processing information.

41:56

Right? They become delusional. They go into denial.

41:59

Was Hitler crazy? You know,

42:01

was Hitler rational? He had war aims, he pursued

42:03

them? You know, he could sit through planning. But

42:06

when they finally told him, look, Stalin

42:08

Grant isn't gonna hold. He just

42:10

said, no, I don't believe you. I

42:12

told this story on Twitter the other day, There's

42:15

a bit in Anthony Beaver's history of Stalingrad

42:17

where they were so desperate to snap him out of

42:19

this. They've literally pulled a guy out of

42:21

the trenches, a captain, covered

42:23

in, like, lights and mud and his

42:25

own shit from living in a trench, and

42:27

they put him in in a plane and fly him to Berlin

42:30

and march him into the Fuhrer's office. Because he's, I

42:32

want a status report, and he's, okay, here's

42:34

captain, deliver your status report.

42:37

And he just didn't wanna believe it. Srahm Hussein,

42:40

the allies are crossing the line of departure.

42:42

No, they're not. The French and the Russians are gonna

42:44

save us. But sir, they

42:46

are literally in the No. No. No.

42:49

No. III mean, Putin, I think and

42:52

this is why he's arresting guys at

42:54

the FSB, and there has been

42:56

this giant, you know, kind of shit storm

42:58

inside the Kremlin. He thinks

43:01

he understands Ukraine. Who's

43:03

the top Ukrainian expert in the

43:05

Kremlin? Putin thinks it's him. And

43:07

people are trying to say to him, well, it's not going

43:09

so Heilemann he's like, no. You know, this

43:11

is gonna happen this way. And I worry

43:13

about that with a guy who's in

43:15

command of a big army and nuclear

43:18

weapons. So is he crazy? No.

43:21

Is he suicidal? No. I

43:23

don't think so. Can he convince

43:25

himself that there are options

43:27

he has here that will work

43:29

that are -- Mhmm. -- really dangerously

43:32

stupid. Yes. Because

43:34

that's how his mind is working

43:35

now. A hundred percent and somebody pointed out to me

43:38

the other day, there was a book written about Putin and it's kind of

43:40

introduced into the public a long time ago called

43:42

the first person or something He likes to tell

43:44

stories about himself about being

43:46

vengeful and

43:47

reckless. It's like he's not just not a cool customer.

43:49

He likes to boast about not being a cool customer. He's just

43:51

got this up. Yes. That's right. Person he most

43:53

resembles. I I sentenced my wife all the time.

43:56

Like, this is John Gotti. You

43:58

know, look at me. I'm wearing the expensive clothes.

44:00

I'm bullet proof. The press,

44:02

you know, I can swan into these events

44:04

and control the agenda. People

44:07

are afraid of me. But, you know,

44:09

there's a reason I

44:11

was thinking about this earlier when you were talking

44:13

about, you know, the Russian position kind of unraveling.

44:16

There's a reason that, at one point, you would

44:18

have said, hey, Gotti is indestructible. Sammy,

44:20

the bull is never gonna roll on this guy.

44:22

And then boom. You know, Sammy

44:24

and the other guys finally say, you

44:26

know, our interests aren't served here anymore.

44:29

And suddenly, I mean, would you

44:31

have ever thought those of us that, you know, love

44:33

true crime stories. I mean, the day they said

44:35

Sammy De Bowl is gonna roll on Gody.

44:37

I was like, that could never happen. But think

44:39

that

44:40

is, you know, part of the problem of his personality.

44:42

Whether anybody rolls on him, that's a different

44:44

question. I'm gonna come back to Biden

44:47

question a little later because what's interesting

44:49

about Zelensky and Putin is that both of their games

44:51

are in some ways kind of simple. It's like, Let's keep basically,

44:53

I got to try to save my country. I got rally,

44:55

public support. Please help us, you know, like, very

44:57

simple messaging. It's not a lot of subtlety to that, nor

44:59

should there be as people are dying in in large numbers.

45:02

You know, prudence is also pretty straightforward, not

45:04

in terms of like the long term objectives. But

45:06

right now, it's, you know, crackdown

45:08

on dissent. Don't let people figure out what the fuck's

45:10

going on because the one thing. The whole

45:12

west is basically united around the notion that we can

45:14

undermine it. If we if we bring enough economic

45:17

pain, enough moral sanction, and there are enough

45:19

casualties eventually to will fall alive from

45:21

underneath the old

45:21

regime. So Putin's basically like, not if I could

45:23

just make sure no one knows what's happening.

45:25

Or other thing Putin's game is

45:27

is yeah, you can do all that stuff, but I am so

45:29

large and in charge and in control that

45:32

there is nothing you can do that's

45:34

gonna change any of that and

45:36

I've got the rallies and the crazy

45:38

speeches to prove it. And Biden's

45:41

situation is much much more complex,

45:43

so we'll turn to that little later. But

45:44

first, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back with

45:46

more Tom Nichols on high water.

45:54

So you think of yourself as a recount superfan.

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47:14

Welcome back to Helen Hot Water. So I wanna

47:16

talk a little bit about you, Tom. Because as I sit here

47:18

listening to you, talking about, you've called

47:20

yourself a criminologist, you could talk about how you talk

47:22

to Russia heads. Well, I was familiar with your

47:25

academic credentials, and

47:27

some of your scholarship and some of your writing. Well,

47:29

that was amazing to go back and just look at the bibliography

47:32

and how fully built

47:34

for this moment You are. Like,

47:36

for most people who know you from Twitter or from television,

47:38

they they know you wrote a book called our on worst enemy,

47:40

which isn't really about America. The assault

47:42

from within on democracy does last

47:44

year it came out. And 1 before that was the death of Expertise.

47:47

The campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. But

47:49

before that, you've got no use

47:51

of that nuclear weapons in US national security.

47:53

That's a subtitle. Eve of destruction, the

47:56

coming age of preventative war, winning the world

47:58

licensed from America's future in the from the cold war,

48:00

the Russian presidency, Society Politics

48:03

the second Russian public and the first book,

48:05

the sacred

48:05

cause, civil military conflict over Soviet

48:08

national security nineteen seventeen nineteen ninety

48:10

two. You were the perfect You're the perfect

48:12

flower of this perfect moment basically. Right? With

48:14

one exception and this is where I have to own this.

48:16

When I wrote the Russian presidency, I

48:19

wrote it while Heilemann was president and just as

48:21

it went to press. He handed it over to Putin

48:23

and I said, well, you know, I just know those guys for that

48:25

first year or two saying, this Putin

48:27

guy He's not gonna be so bad. Right.

48:30

You know? And I I think it's really important for

48:32

people to understand this. The things Putin and

48:34

his team were doing around, you

48:36

know, two thousand two thousand one. They were doing things

48:38

like shoring up the relationship

48:41

between Moscow and the federal units

48:43

in

48:43

Russia. They were performing the

48:45

Russian court which actually needed it. I

48:47

mean, he was doing things where a lot of Russia

48:49

heads were all kind of saying, you that's actually a good

48:51

idea. Somebody needed to do that. That's been

48:53

on the must do list. And

48:55

even as late as two thousand six,

48:57

two thousand and seven, he's giving interviews by

48:59

saying, listen, nobody wants the old Soviet

49:01

Union back I grieve it. It was

49:03

a terrible thing to happen, but we're never gonna

49:06

try and impose a foreign government on Ukraine.

49:08

It literally says in two thousand and seven.

49:10

Never gonna attack you. Crane, you can't impose a

49:12

government on other people. You know,

49:14

we're Paul part of the same, you know, family

49:16

here. And, you know, there's always been this debate

49:19

among the criminologists about

49:21

was Putin always this evil, and

49:23

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that yes, he

49:25

was. But hit it better or did

49:28

he change? And I think the answer is little bit

49:30

of both because I had power and

49:32

isolation and sick of fancy

49:34

and particularly this thing with the Russian

49:37

priest. Well, that was a rumor I picked

49:39

up, and I didn't have any special knowledge.

49:41

Anybody paid attention. Was hearing these stories

49:43

that he was increasingly getting surrounded

49:46

by this very right wing clack of,

49:48

you know, priests and cultural figures

49:51

And so I think the Putin, you know, I think the

49:53

guy that was elected legitimately in

49:55

that first go around was

49:57

a gangster because everybody

50:00

in Russia had survived in those days had a little

50:02

bit of a gangster in them and he was a pretty tough

50:04

guy from Leningrad, but then

50:06

he turned into something else by two thousand

50:08

and eight when he said, I'm just gonna be president forever.

50:11

So it's almost like I've kinda had this terrible

50:13

sense that something's gonna go wrong.

50:15

You know, the natural pessimism of the guy who

50:17

studies international relations. But that's the

50:19

one I got wrong. That was the call where I think

50:22

my optimism in the nineties got the

50:24

better of

50:24

me. Now, there are a lot of impressive

50:26

realities about the Nicholas of résumé,

50:29

you know. First, I mean, obviously, the United States

50:31

Naval War College student from nineteen ninety

50:33

seven to twenty twenty two, a big deal, you know,

50:35

boards of advisors and senior associates and senior

50:37

fellows and professorships and, you know, all the

50:39

stuff you've done. But there's nothing more

50:42

impressive than the

50:44

I still think I would say for most people little known

50:46

fact that Tom Nichols was

50:48

a Jeopardy champion. And

50:51

I wanna play a little bit of

50:54

why is that why imagine it's like the thing

50:56

you're proudest of in your entire life, which

50:58

is not just Japanese champion, Tom,

51:01

but a but a five time jeopardy

51:03

champion. And so let us venture back

51:06

to nineteen ninety four and

51:08

hear little bit of that.

51:09

Returning

51:10

champion is averaging over twelve thousand

51:12

dollars for each of his two wins. He's

51:14

a good player, but he may be

51:16

in some trouble today because I overheard

51:19

Jeff, one of the challengers laying over to

51:21

Judy just before they came out here

51:23

and say something

51:24

like, it's time someone beat

51:26

this guy. So, Tom,

51:28

you are warrant.

51:29

Tarebeck is like, you know, he's basically like the dude's

51:31

a stud, but they're coming after you talk. Yeah.

51:33

And I I just crushed those two folks. And

51:35

then he said that which was really fun.

51:37

Let us now venture further into our trove

51:40

of audio. And I wanna say everybody

51:42

who knows me, knows that I hate

51:44

acknowledging anything positive about Tom

51:46

Nichols. And we'll get to some of the critique

51:48

a little later. But let's play a little bit of Tom

51:50

Nichols, showing his mastery of jeopardy

51:52

here. Tom, where do we begin? Colleges universities

51:54

for hundred, please, Alex. This university near

51:57

South Bend, Indiana is run by the Congregation

51:59

of Holy Cross. Tom,

52:01

what is Notre Dame? Yes. Colleges University

52:03

is two hundred, please. It's the oldest

52:05

member of the Ivy League. Tom,

52:08

what is Harvard? Right. Colleges University's

52:10

three hundred, please. Victoria University of

52:12

Wellington is one of the six universities run

52:14

by this nation's government. Tom,

52:16

what is New Zealand? Yes. Colleges and universities

52:19

four hundred, please. This European university's

52:21

three oldest colleges are University,

52:24

Ballyall and Merton. Tom,

52:28

what is Oxford? Correct? College

52:30

is University's five hundred, please. In nineteen twenty

52:32

four, Trinity College of

52:34

Durham, North Carolina changed its

52:36

name to this. Tom,

52:38

what is Duke? Yes.

52:41

I'm gonna roll it to Tom. So it's

52:43

pretty impressive except for the fact that you lucked

52:45

out and got this category, which was right in your

52:47

wheelhouse. That's how the guy here is who's

52:50

got degree from Boston degree from Columbia

52:52

University, a degree from Georgetown University, and

52:54

has hot in all kinds of places. It happens

52:56

to get colleges and

52:57

universities. Talk about, like, luck out on the top.

52:59

Enclave in getting the service as

53:01

a category, I mean. But, you

53:03

know, it's there's a humbling thing about jeopardy,

53:06

which is that no matter what else I mean, it is wonderful

53:08

that people always love it. But there is this moment,

53:10

and it just happened. I was just down doing a talk

53:12

in in Florida. Right? And people say, Tom Nickels,

53:14

and he has a Ph. D. And he written eight books, and

53:16

he's done this and he's done that and everybody kind of nods and

53:18

goes, yeah, yeah, whatever. Then they say, 1 in

53:21

jeopardy and everybody goes, okay. Now now

53:23

we'll take him serious. Like, oh, you can do anything

53:25

else in your Heilemann the moment that really

53:27

brought this home to me was that just after that

53:29

show had aired, I was teaching at Dartmouth College.

53:31

I was a young professor. I was, you know, even

53:34

more full of myself than I am

53:35

now, John, if that could possibly even

53:37

happen.

53:38

Unfathomable. Unfathomable. A

53:40

student really took me down multiple pegs. He

53:42

walks up to me Professor Nichols, I saw on jeopardy

53:45

last night. And I

53:46

said, yeah. What'd you think? He said, I had no idea

53:48

you were so smart. Right.

53:50

I was like, no. Hand. Dude,

53:52

I'm your professor. He's like, yeah. But, you know

53:54

and so it really does kind of take you

53:56

down peg to realize

53:58

that, yeah, you can do a whole bunch of other things. But until

54:00

you do it on TV. It's not real.

54:02

Now just just before we let the impression

54:04

go, the, like, five time jeopardy champion, there's

54:07

some story about that they had to bring you back when you

54:09

lost because a guy named answer rights that they

54:11

had to admit later that that that that is the

54:13

worst possible thing for the inflation of your ego. It's

54:15

like, oh, fuck. He lost. But

54:17

we realized now we were wrong. Happened by

54:19

worst. But before anybody gets the impression that Thomas

54:22

infallible, he does not always get the questions

54:24

right on jeopardy. And here's one that may cause you

54:26

to question -- Oh. -- slightly smaller. What did you do?

54:28

Some of his current expertise because, you

54:30

know, you think this is another category that should be right

54:32

up his

54:33

alley, but apparently not. A world

54:35

capitals a thousand. Answer there, ships

54:37

once paid a toll at Helsinki or

54:39

before proceeding to this capital twenty

54:42

five miles to the south. Tom,

54:44

who's Helsinki? No. Capital

54:47

South was Copenhagen.

54:49

So, like, World capitals is the one

54:51

you fucked up? I mean, come on. Just in

54:53

a perspective, if you're gonna if you're gonna slag me,

54:55

I'm gonna even give you the material to do

54:57

it with because I'm the tournament of champions. Now

54:59

everybody on Twitter knows I am Greek american.

55:01

I'm partnering with Martin Irish. I speak

55:04

Greek, went to Greece, all that stuff. What

55:06

did I blow the question on in the tournament

55:08

of Champions, the last king of

55:10

Greece? And I got a ride. Literally,

55:12

he was going to church. I was

55:15

going to church in the

55:16

like, the little ladies in black walking up to me

55:18

saying, Tommy,

55:18

how you're non mother? This is cut you're so stupid.

55:21

You know, you're great. You're not know this and I'm like,

55:23

oh my god. I gotta get yelled at for the next

55:25

ten years in church. It happens. I

55:27

mean, your brain freezes and

55:29

You stand there going, I knew that.

55:31

Yeah. It's a terrifying experience sometimes

55:33

to go on jeopardy because that's it.

55:35

Right? You say, boy, this is the moment where I can really

55:38

show people. I'm really smart. Or I will have

55:40

a moment like this, like when your friends,

55:42

you know, thirty years later, dog you with

55:44

the one thing you got wrong. So thank you, John. I really

55:46

appreciate

55:47

that. I mean,

55:48

world capitals like, you know

55:49

I know.

55:50

I I heard housing for us and I thought

55:52

it sounded like housing key and my brain just

55:54

kind of engaged And I think, like,

55:56

literally, the minute Alex said, no. I'm like,

55:59

well, of course not. It's Copenhagen and

56:01

then, you know, doughy. And that that

56:03

is one of the worst. That and when you

56:05

ring in and you blank and

56:08

you stand there and it's like the longest fucking

56:10

eight seconds of your

56:11

life. Right. You know what I'm I'm

56:13

running in. Tom.

56:15

Yeah. Tom, you're going, hi. So,

56:19

Tom, what what is Moscow?

56:22

Yeah. Well, there are questions about Russia that

56:24

came up and they would clutch me with your you

56:26

know, this Soviet leader died in nineteen

56:28

fifty

56:29

three, and I'm like, I I have to resign from teaching

56:31

if I don't get there. That's right. Yeah. So

56:33

here's my question for you. Just explain to

56:35

me the more serious thing

56:37

of the arc of the career here and what

56:39

led you down the path that you ended up going down

56:42

and, you know, how you ended up at the War College

56:44

as long as you were and I know you kind of were gonna

56:46

retire and you kind of the world just kind of sucked you back

56:48

into it. So I'm just kind of curious about, like, what the animating

56:51

impulse of this intellectual pursuit that you've

56:53

been on, which have been largely

56:54

around, you know, military strategy,

56:56

foreign policy, national security, particularly

56:58

with an emphasis on Russia and the former Soviet

57:00

Union. What was that? I started college as chemistry

57:03

major because, like, every working class kid. Right?

57:05

You just said, well, I don't know what jobs

57:07

are available, and STEM is always a job.

57:09

So like all the kids that go

57:11

to college in those days from a blue collar background.

57:13

It's like, well, I'm gonna be an engineer. I'll be doing

57:15

major business or what. I had a decent

57:18

aptitude for chemistry and it bore

57:20

me to tears after about six months.

57:22

But I had taken some Russian classes and I

57:24

was actually good at them. So I go

57:26

for advising, and this is really kind of

57:28

shows you how, you know, how old I am in the historical

57:32

contingency of things. My adviser at

57:34

that time at BU says, Well, if you can

57:36

learn Russian and get a master's degree,

57:38

you'll always have a job because there's always gonna

57:40

be a Soviet Union. And,

57:42

you know, because there's always government consulting

57:45

and contracting and all that stuff. And

57:47

that actually did lead me to

57:50

the war college but indirectly because when

57:52

the Soviet collapsed, one of the reasons

57:54

that I didn't get kept on at Dartmouth, aside

57:56

from the fact that I was a really annoying junior

57:59

faculty member that I probably would have fired

58:01

as well, was that they just didn't want

58:03

Soviet guys anymore. Right. And

58:05

I had done all this stuff on the Soviet military

58:07

and all that, so the War College took me in for

58:09

a couple of years, and then, really, it was a temporary

58:12

job. I thought I was gonna go back into a

58:14

political science department or something And

58:16

so my temporary two years turned into

58:19

twenty five years because it just kinda

58:21

worked out that

58:22

way. Tom, I'll say, if annoying was

58:24

a disqualifier professionally, you would have been

58:26

sleeping at a bus shelter for the

58:27

last, like, three years. Sometimes, like, oh, you know what I

58:29

mean? But definitely, if you're annoying

58:32

and grading and, you know, outside spoken as

58:34

an assistant professor, you're kinda asking

58:36

for it in those

58:37

days. And I definitely was. I think

58:39

about the various things that have made you more

58:42

more of public figure you're in

58:44

that cadre of people who were a

58:46

Republican your whole

58:46

life, basically. Right? In your opinion, can consider it? And

58:48

you thought of yourself as a conservative? Yeah. I mean,

58:51

I was, you know, but I was a Massachusetts Republican.

58:53

Again, again, the the Republican Party in Massachusetts

58:56

in nineteen seventy eight seventy

58:58

nine when it was, like, Ed Bourne, the communist

59:01

party basically. I mean, you know and when I

59:03

worked in the Senate, I worked for John Hines who,

59:05

you know, today would have been hounded from

59:07

the Republican party. Yeah. So I was never

59:09

a movement conservative I was never one of

59:11

those guys. And, you know, in the Mia

59:13

Culpas, since Trump, think part

59:15

of the mistake that people like me made is

59:18

we just wanted to believe that everybody on the bus

59:20

was like us. We didn't wanna look at who else was

59:22

riding with us in

59:24

that party and on that bus. Of course,

59:26

I was obsessed with foreign policy. I was

59:28

a national security conservative. So

59:30

I wasn't paying attention to, you

59:32

know, what the federalist society was doing. I

59:34

just didn't really click with all that stuff. And

59:37

that

59:37

was, you know, that's on

59:38

me. You know, in this period, like, a lot

59:40

of Republicans we know, not certain at all, but

59:42

lot who are kind of what we would think of as being Republicans

59:44

intellectual class. You had the moment where you decided

59:46

you had to leave the Republican party in a public

59:48

way. You announced it and and then talked about it

59:50

on morning, Joe. Should we both go on with some freak see,

59:53

in October of twenty eighteen, I'd like to play that

59:55

to Tom talking about his decision to leave

59:57

the GOP in the time of Trump.

59:59

I've been a Republican since nineteen

1:00:02

seventy nine. To leave a party you've

1:00:04

been a member of for forty years is not

1:00:06

something you take lightly. I think to

1:00:08

leave for good really require me to say there is

1:00:10

no future in this party. I finally came to

1:00:12

believe that the Republican

1:00:14

party just cannot recover. From

1:00:17

the compromises that it's made. I mean, at

1:00:19

some point, you saw your soul, you don't get it back.

1:00:22

So the never Trump Republican phenomenon is

1:00:24

one people are familiar with, and guys you point out,

1:00:26

we're not exactly like a hardcore either

1:00:28

rock ribbed, let alone like far right conservative

1:00:31

anyway, movement conservative. But

1:00:33

it seems to me that things that were going on

1:00:35

with Trump in that period twenty seventeen to twenty

1:00:37

twenty 1, dovetail in an important

1:00:39

way with the last book that you wrote our

1:00:42

worst enemy because you're you're doing a very dark

1:00:44

kind of diagnosis. Obviously, by

1:00:46

the way, all your book titles are very dark. Like, every

1:00:48

single one of them is, like, every single one is, like,

1:00:50

litany of negativity. Holiday reading

1:00:52

for the whole family.

1:00:53

Yes. But you basically do it a diagnosis of

1:00:55

what's fucked up about American democracy. You put it on

1:00:58

really on the people. You can talk about it yourself better

1:01:00

than I can, but essentially it was like, yeah,

1:01:02

democracy is kind of fucked up and it's really

1:01:04

your fault. Mhmm. And that seems to me to

1:01:06

be also kind of in inexorably that

1:01:08

linked into kinds of things that were going

1:01:10

on in the Republican Party that drove

1:01:12

you out of it. So just talk about both of those

1:01:14

elements of it. You know, that there's a sickness in the

1:01:16

Republican Party, a sickness that isn't just

1:01:18

in the Republican

1:01:19

party, I think, in your view. Well, first,

1:01:21

I have to say the first time I deregistered as a

1:01:23

Republican, but I didn't kind of go public and make

1:01:25

a big deal about it. That I just felt like I had

1:01:27

to walk away. I called it my trial separation

1:01:30

before the divorce. It was actually twenty twelve

1:01:32

when Newt Ginkridge won the South Carolina

1:01:34

primary And I said, I'm I'm sorry,

1:01:37

you cannot be serious. Nobody

1:01:39

could possibly think of Newton Kingridge as a president

1:01:41

in the United States. I mean, it's just not possible

1:01:43

to do this. Because I was always a bipartisan

1:01:46

voter. You

1:01:47

know, I split my votes. In Massachusetts, everybody

1:01:49

was a Democrat. Even the conservatives were Democrats.

1:01:52

Right. You know, I worked in state politics

1:01:54

for a working class guy

1:01:56

from my town who was

1:01:59

a liberal. He was a democrat, but he was

1:02:01

Polish Catholic. We had a lot

1:02:03

in common. But what I what I keep

1:02:05

to realize, I think, at least in terms of this

1:02:07

diagnosis with the Republicans, is that

1:02:09

the thing I wrote about Nora and Warren were enemy about

1:02:11

resentment and grievance and envy

1:02:13

and this kind of awkward anger had really

1:02:15

just become the only thing the Republican party

1:02:18

was about. In nineteen eighty, And, John,

1:02:20

you remember this 1 Daniel Patrick Moynihan

1:02:22

said, the Republican Party has become the party of

1:02:24

ideas. Like the Democrats are out

1:02:26

of ideas, like the Republicans

1:02:28

are the party of ideas in nineteen eighty.

1:02:31

And by twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,

1:02:33

the Republicans are the party of pure emotion.

1:02:35

I mean, I was always reluctant

1:02:37

to kinda throw in with people on some

1:02:39

issues on the left because I always felt like the left

1:02:41

was, you know, overly emotional and

1:02:44

it turns out now we're hopkins are the drama queens.

1:02:46

But I think the left and the right together,

1:02:49

the one thing that is common to both of them, and this

1:02:51

is what I talk about in our own worst enemy, is

1:02:53

this incredible sense of entitlement and

1:02:56

narcissism and anger

1:02:58

and this kind of solid cism

1:03:01

that makes it completely impossible to have a rational

1:03:03

conversation about anything where

1:03:06

you don't completely get your way and people

1:03:08

totally validate your point of view.

1:03:10

You know, one of the things in the book that struck

1:03:12

me this takes me back little bit, but one

1:03:14

of my journalistic mentors was a guy named Michael

1:03:16

Elliott who was an editor at The Economist

1:03:18

magazine when I first ready for the economist in nineteen

1:03:20

ninety. And Mike was running the Washington Bureau.

1:03:22

He invented all basically, all the political columns in

1:03:24

the economist and then went on to be the editor of Time International

1:03:27

and the editor of Newsyek International and then running

1:03:29

campaign for Bada before he died

1:03:31

very sad and premature death in twenty sixteen of

1:03:33

cancer. And Mike

1:03:36

wrote a book at one point in this period,

1:03:38

which I was happy to

1:03:40

help along with a little bit, but it was called the day

1:03:42

before yesterday. And the book was about this

1:03:44

notion that the extraordinary period

1:03:47

of time after World War two America had

1:03:49

raised everyone's expectations of what normal

1:03:51

was that the productivity gains,

1:03:54

the GDP growth, the social cohesion

1:03:56

even with the obvious black marks for the

1:03:58

fact that African Americans were not fully integrated American

1:04:01

society, all of that, those things

1:04:03

were all really unusual. Like it was so unusual

1:04:05

when we came as a culture to think

1:04:08

that that was normal and and then

1:04:10

our expect and permanent. Right? And part

1:04:12

of what's in your book is a little bit of that is that

1:04:14

the entitlement that you talk about and the

1:04:16

ways in which entitlement has allowed

1:04:18

for democracy itself to atrophy

1:04:21

seems to me at least partly a function of that. People

1:04:23

can look at that period and say, wow, this is a

1:04:25

freak. A historical freak accident

1:04:27

is after World War two and what that meant

1:04:29

for American society, and we'll never see that

1:04:31

again. And that's okay because you just that's not the way

1:04:33

societies are. That's Eden. You know, that's

1:04:35

Balhala. You know, it seems to me part of

1:04:37

your analysis kind of is rooted in that, is that that's

1:04:40

where some of the solopsism, some of the entitlement,

1:04:42

some of the kind of out size that's

1:04:44

unreasonable expectations without being willing to

1:04:46

work for shit come

1:04:48

from, including work for democracy. And

1:04:50

I think some of it is generational. I have to

1:04:52

take all this shit all the time. People call me a boomer

1:04:55

because I was born in nineteen sixty. But

1:04:57

I think very much that my approach

1:04:59

to this problem came because I don't have anything

1:05:01

in common with the boomers. I always point

1:05:04

out, first year I was in high school, there were absolutely no

1:05:06

US combat troops. It was nineteen seventy five.

1:05:08

No US combat troops in Vietnam. I mean,

1:05:10

Vietnam, to me, is a high school freshman,

1:05:12

was ancient history. I knew there was a

1:05:14

draft. I was never in danger of any of that stuff.

1:05:17

So the emotion that I

1:05:19

am really at war with here in

1:05:21

the book and that I do associate

1:05:23

with the boomers and with their grandchildren

1:05:26

is nostalgia. Because

1:05:28

I get so tired of this.

1:05:30

Because to me when you say, oh, the seventies,

1:05:33

you know, Those were great days. I'm like, I'm

1:05:35

sorry. I graduated from high school in nineteen seventy

1:05:37

nine. Those days were miserable. So

1:05:40

I never had the expectation that

1:05:42

the high gains we're gonna stay, the jobs are gonna

1:05:44

be plentiful, the interest rates are gonna be low

1:05:46

because that was over by the time I

1:05:48

got to high school. By the time I got to

1:05:50

high school, it was whip inflation now

1:05:52

and the misery index and, you know,

1:05:54

houses at eighteen percent, all of that stuff.

1:05:57

And it drives me nuts when

1:05:59

I wrote our own worst enemy, I got letters.

1:06:01

I even got letter from a guy who had grown up in

1:06:04

my hometown, but, like, fifteen years before

1:06:06

me, he like, I don't know, tell me. So I remember it

1:06:08

was a really great time. And I said,

1:06:10

because you were working class white guy with

1:06:12

a union job

1:06:13

and you weren't you weren't getting drafted

1:06:16

you know, and the drop forge or

1:06:18

the tire company. For that golden

1:06:20

shining moment, it was okay for you. But what's

1:06:23

really nuts is when their grandchildren,

1:06:25

the younger kids come to me and say, you had

1:06:27

it easy. You grew up in the sit. That that

1:06:29

was a golden era. It's like, that's

1:06:31

a nostalgia for a time that never

1:06:34

existed. And both

1:06:36

the older people and the younger

1:06:38

people have constructed this

1:06:40

fantasy of how great things

1:06:42

once were. And if the United States

1:06:44

can't deliver that now, then democracy

1:06:47

sucks. And democracy has to be

1:06:49

replaced. And it's just it's all based

1:06:51

on lying to yourself about

1:06:53

a

1:06:53

nostalgia. And it's really startling. It's

1:06:56

juvenile. Is what it really is. It's childish.

1:06:58

And yet, here we are. Here we are. We

1:07:00

are gonna take one more break

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And

1:08:06

we'll be back with more of the great Tom

1:08:09

Nichols on High Water.

1:08:25

Welcome back to Helen Howard. 1

1:08:27

of the places where the questions of nostalgia

1:08:29

creep in in some quarters is if it might comes

1:08:32

to the topic of music. We

1:08:34

have to go there because, well, we just

1:08:36

have to. So I will start this in a narrative

1:08:39

fashion and say that, you know, Tom Nichols, someone kind

1:08:41

of becoming a public figure in a way, in there are other

1:08:43

time you go with party just, you know, in the kind

1:08:45

of twenty eighteen period. Smart guy

1:08:47

invited on television to talk about foreign policy.

1:08:49

We quit the Republican party in October.

1:08:51

And then in November, when everyone

1:08:53

had good feelings basically about Tom, the

1:08:55

world was, like, on his side for having bailed on

1:08:58

Trump and taking the standard principle. Conversation

1:09:01

took place on MSNBC's Morning Show,

1:09:03

Morning Show, one unexpected conversation,

1:09:05

I would say, which I was, like, unfortunately, present

1:09:07

for it, and it now lives in Infamy because it began

1:09:10

a defining kind of framework for

1:09:12

how people think about Tom

1:09:13

Nichols. And I will play the sound right now.

1:09:15

This is, you know, well, it still hauls me

1:09:17

with those play. Jay Caruso, actually,

1:09:21

sent me a message and said that

1:09:23

you hate led Zeppelin. We just want

1:09:25

to we just want to mark that down as a

1:09:27

lie here and give you a chance to

1:09:29

defend

1:09:30

yourself. I've

1:09:32

been out in on national television about

1:09:34

led Zeppelin. I have to admit it I've

1:09:37

never been a led 1 Oh god.

1:09:40

This is I know it's I it

1:09:42

was nice being with you. I

1:09:44

was willing to --

1:09:45

Yes. It's over. -- I was willing to stand up

1:09:47

for you on the on the Boston debut,

1:09:50

but you're telling me that you're

1:09:51

up. You think that Boston is

1:09:54

a better band than led Zeppelin.

1:09:56

I I'm telling you that I would rather listen

1:09:59

to the side 1 of really has

1:10:01

been any led Zeppelin time to

1:10:04

hang it up, bud. Yeah. Time to hang it up, bud. Yeah. Time to hang it up. I think

1:10:06

my car's outside. Gotcha.

1:10:09

I better

1:10:09

get in it fast. Thank you so much,

1:10:11

Tom. I guess. Holy cow.

1:10:15

Holy cow more or less. Excuse it now.

1:10:18

Gonna give you a little chance, and then we're going in

1:10:20

here. But do you have and I know you you on Twitter,

1:10:22

you pretend like you don't regret making these obviously

1:10:25

idiotic statements, but you can't really

1:10:27

think that it's good for your public

1:10:28

image, or or it's true that,

1:10:31

like, like, Boston is a better

1:10:33

band of lens effort. Well, let me just say

1:10:35

that if anything proves that I don't say

1:10:37

shit just to be

1:10:38

popular, this

1:10:39

ought to do it. Yeah. I'd say so. You

1:10:41

know, I never expected to become a public

1:10:43

I don't know, public figure, public intellectual, you

1:10:46

know, coming from the war college, by the way, we were kinda

1:10:48

discouraged to be I mean, we're a military

1:10:50

institution. We're gonna do that kind of stuff. But, you

1:10:52

know, I say what's in my heart, John. I

1:10:54

would never say that Boston is a

1:10:56

better or technically more competent

1:10:59

bin than led 1. I'm gonna say,

1:11:01

that I grew up with a very pop

1:11:03

sensibility and as actually on

1:11:05

a serious note, my friend, Dennis,

1:11:07

hearing and I talked about this at length. I think

1:11:09

part of it is that I grew up and the whole part of

1:11:11

my musical education is a kid that's missing, so

1:11:13

I never listened to the blues. So have

1:11:16

no place in my heart where

1:11:18

that was, and I was totally

1:11:20

a kind of pop music Beatles top

1:11:22

forty guy But I will

1:11:24

still say and I'm gonna come back

1:11:26

at you here because that conversation began

1:11:29

when Joe Scarborough called you a music snub

1:11:32

which you most certainly

1:11:33

are. You aren't a curator of music.

1:11:35

You are.

1:11:36

Yeah. I have I know a lot of that music, and I have a lot of a

1:11:38

very good taste.

1:11:38

That's what I'm saying. Exactly. It's like me and, you know,

1:11:41

my other great Internet moment when I said

1:11:43

that I I hated Indian food. And of course, it's

1:11:45

because I my taste buds, you know. But

1:11:47

while your taste buds are clearly like your

1:11:49

earbuds. You know, it's like the same thing. You know, like,

1:11:51

a defective defective It's a size of

1:11:53

defective. Right. My belly button. But

1:11:55

I I admit it. I mean, I have tried I when

1:11:57

you went off about Valvin underground.

1:11:59

I think I told you that day, I said, okay, you

1:12:01

know, John's a friend. He's telling

1:12:04

me to revisit this and I sat and I kinda put my

1:12:06

feet up and I put on an hour of Heilemann

1:12:08

underground and I'm

1:12:09

like, nope. This spell doesn't do

1:12:11

it for me. And I I

1:12:12

think it's almost like, you end up liking it

1:12:14

because you have this notion of its importance

1:12:16

and where in musical his

1:12:17

three. No. But does that mean people listen to

1:12:19

it? Yeah. That's not that's not true. Tom, the thing

1:12:21

is that that I think you're really making a point here is,

1:12:23

like, there's people who, like, can't taste cilantro. Right?

1:12:25

Like, they have taste buds don't

1:12:28

work on some level. And that unfortunately

1:12:30

applies to all of your musical taste. And I can't here's

1:12:32

how I prove it. Right? This is how I prove it. I

1:12:34

and I always like people to speak their heart, you

1:12:36

know. Again, unfortunately, your heart apparently doesn't

1:12:38

have ears attached to it either. Here's the thing.

1:12:41

Here's the thing. You know, on Twitter, this has

1:12:43

become now a running thing. And Tom, you do a thing on

1:12:45

on the weekends on Twitter that hashtag a t forty,

1:12:47

America's top forty, there's some discussion among

1:12:50

bunch of I don't like call boomers

1:12:52

with a bunch

1:12:52

of, like yeah. Wow. I'm not I'm not gonna go there.

1:12:54

There are bunch of people there

1:12:55

who are age. Let's just 1 enjoyed

1:12:57

who enjoyed trashing Tom and sometimes enjoys,

1:13:00

sometimes enjoyed defending him on these matters. But

1:13:02

here's one of the things that was said by

1:13:04

you on Twitter, which I which I thought it was

1:13:06

one thing to claim that I would rather listen to Boston

1:13:09

and listen to the led 1. But then

1:13:11

came this, December nineteenth

1:13:13

twenty twenty, this tweet. I

1:13:15

will listen to toto all

1:13:18

day overlaid to that point. Now, III

1:13:21

wanna I just thought would you want to pause before you

1:13:23

say anything? Okay. I would like now for us to

1:13:25

play a SOC sixteen,

1:13:28

please. You

1:13:38

need schooling. Baby

1:13:40

are not schooling. Okay.

1:14:11

So that famous led's Evelyn song called Whole Lotta

1:14:13

Love. I would now like to play dodo.

1:14:40

Now, I'd like to ask, you know, I

1:14:44

mean, the funny thing about this frame of view, distancing

1:14:46

here is that Tom like, look like he was about to bomb it

1:14:48

when the WhatsApp link is playing whole lot loves playing.

1:14:50

Look at his butt throw up. And, actually, that was enough to

1:14:52

do the podcast for just to watch him this pleasure on

1:14:54

Tom's face. And then the weird, like, kind

1:14:56

of, slightly satisfied smile listening to

1:14:58

the beginning of the Tono song, you're gonna stand

1:15:00

up here right now and you're gonna stick by this

1:15:02

you. The totem Right. I know that toto

1:15:04

is a better band. Oh, that's up. You

1:15:06

know, is is But you like the

1:15:08

toto better And I like toto better.

1:15:10

Yes. Because it's not that

1:15:12

toto see, your your problem is you

1:15:14

say, lead zipline is so great that to like

1:15:16

something better, you're arguing that they are

1:15:18

yet greater. I'm just saying lead Zeppelin is so

1:15:20

terrible that almost anything is like

1:15:22

a bomb to the soul after you turn it

1:15:24

off and put something else on. You

1:15:27

playing that lead Zeppelin clip, and all I could think

1:15:29

of was, why you do this to me, Demi? Why

1:15:31

aren't you torturing me this way? And, you know,

1:15:33

I I'm a yacht rock guy. I'm

1:15:35

a top forty guy. It's just Robert

1:15:38

Plant's voice literally

1:15:40

like gives me arrhythmias or something.

1:15:43

It just annoys the shit out of me and I

1:15:45

can't listen to

1:15:46

it. Well, I think this is actually sort of proving the

1:15:48

point that there's just something wrong with you, which has

1:15:50

really always been my kind of position. I wanted just

1:15:52

for the sake of it, this will make illustration just

1:15:54

a little bit more because there's no point not having time on here without making

1:15:56

listen to just a little more heads up when for exactly this

1:15:58

reason. Let's play a rocket roll. And then gonna play

1:16:00

another song on the other side, but not todo, but

1:16:02

another song that Tom loves. So let's

1:16:04

play what ends up on here Rocket Roll. Now

1:16:35

a song that Tom Love's and I'm certain Love's.

1:16:38

I've never asked the question directly, but apparently on the

1:16:40

basis of what he's written about this is a song that he would

1:16:42

prefer to listen to any day and twice

1:16:44

on

1:16:44

Sunday, then listen to the great Lids Up

1:16:46

on Classic Rock and Roll here. Let's play side number thirteen,

1:16:49

please.

1:17:01

Will never be together again.

1:17:06

If you wake up in my my

1:17:08

bed, I wanna be

1:17:11

long away because

1:17:14

the things you did. My

1:17:16

goodness. This

1:17:21

David Gates, while I played a band called Bread

1:17:23

at one point and that Tom had made the claim

1:17:26

in a tweet not long ago. In this

1:17:29

month, March of twenty twenty two,

1:17:31

the goodbye girl, this is a great movie theme.

1:17:33

And I want none of 1 cynical slagging

1:17:35

of this lovely song. You heard me.

1:17:37

Tom.

1:17:38

John, I bet

1:17:39

there are people listening to this right now saying, why

1:17:41

did you not let that song finish. No.

1:17:44

No. Anybody who's anybody who says

1:17:46

that can now unsubscribe to the

1:17:48

podcast. All you download all episodes,

1:17:50

I have to tell you this personal connection to

1:17:52

rock and roll by Led Zeppelin, which is that when I was

1:17:54

a teenager, my buddies all had a band, you

1:17:57

know, typical basement band. And

1:17:59

I was kind of like just a hanger on and a

1:18:01

sort of a rowdy Heilemann because

1:18:03

I I, you know, it was Heilemann they were

1:18:05

my friends. And I helped them move their stuff

1:18:07

around and, you know, all that stuff. And

1:18:10

they played that. That was like one of their big

1:18:12

they did rock and roll by Led 1, and it

1:18:14

struck me that, like, Music ly,

1:18:16

this was a pretty simple song. It's

1:18:18

a few chords. High school kids can play

1:18:20

it, the drum hard, you know. Yes. And I'm less.

1:18:23

Yes. Hey. That's what we call rock and roll time. I think

1:18:25

is thing I mean, I think we're getting really to the core of

1:18:27

this now, and I'm gonna feel good about it because we discovered

1:18:30

basically that

1:18:31

rock like, you know, he says on our yacht rock

1:18:34

rock fan. The yacht rock is not

1:18:36

rock. Okay.

1:18:36

But I insisted Christopher Crosses about

1:18:39

this.

1:18:39

Christopher Crosses sailing. He's

1:18:41

not a rock and it has not it says another

1:18:43

rock song, what I like that's rock and roll. I'm

1:18:45

a big fan for example of the who and not only

1:18:48

that, but I think the best who album is who

1:18:50

by numbers which who

1:18:51

phonetics, you know, you know, it's not the early

1:18:54

stuff. I just kind of like, you

1:18:56

know, that that

1:18:57

that to me is rock and roll. I like the

1:18:59

kings. I like lot of other stuff. I

1:19:01

just don't like what was it somebody once

1:19:03

called? Led 1 like the grandest garage

1:19:05

band plagiarizers in history

1:19:07

or something. I think just to me,

1:19:09

it's just noise. Led Zeppelin to me is

1:19:12

pretentious noise. Yes.

1:19:14

There is plenty of rock and roll that I love that

1:19:16

I will turn up so that it shakes the house.

1:19:19

Of course, in more intimate moment, I think

1:19:21

I'd prefer David Gates to the

1:19:23

immigrant

1:19:23

song. And you'd prefer Christopher across to any

1:19:26

of these things, I think. And at gentlemen, I think there

1:19:28

is some therapy you could seek or some chemicals that

1:19:30

I could get you prescribed as licensed pharmacologist.

1:19:32

I'm sure I can take care of it. But In the

1:19:34

end, that's the core of it, I think, is

1:19:36

that, you know, the whole notion of, like,

1:19:38

I mean, like, I'm sure, like, Iggy and the stooges would

1:19:40

be, like, you would rather, like, have ice pick driven

1:19:43

in your ears that listen

1:19:43

to, like, Epoxy. You know, it's just yesterday. I don't

1:19:46

know if you saw this on Twitter, it lives picked right.

1:19:48

But when I was in DC yesterday, it was about guys

1:19:50

that were

1:19:50

on, like, leather and goth up and stuff.

1:19:52

And we were talking about music because I said, you're

1:19:54

giving me this kind of form because she

1:19:56

said because

1:19:57

she said my name is Tom Nichols, and I'm widely hated

1:19:59

for my shit. Good taste. Those are being pretty flicks

1:20:01

up of an odd thing. I didn't tell them any

1:20:03

of that because I wanted the conversation to last more

1:20:06

than a few minutes. But I but I said you guys

1:20:08

are giving me this kind of warm feeling about Kenmore

1:20:10

Square in Boston

1:20:11

in, like, nineteen eighty two. And the other

1:20:13

thing is when you say Rockpoint, you have this

1:20:15

very kind of boomer ish sixties

1:20:18

I really don't talk about I

1:20:20

I was a new I was a new wave

1:20:22

guy. I was all about now I wasn't a huge

1:20:24

fan of Iggy and the stooges. But, you

1:20:26

know, I remember the New York Dolls. I remember the dead

1:20:28

Kennedy's. I remember Mission of Burma. I remember,

1:20:30

you know, all that stuff that was

1:20:31

happening. And I didn't I didn't hate it. Okay.

1:20:34

Now now this is getting confusing. The fact that Tom

1:20:36

Nichols like likes the dead kennedy's

1:20:38

and the goodbye girl. I'm now like really

1:20:41

do actually think you need therapy because don't understand.

1:20:43

I thought it was just like missing gene or

1:20:44

something, but it turns out that there's some I mean,

1:20:46

the like, you like the egg candidates. Okay. Like, that's now

1:20:48

we have an interesting thing. Because it was part of my

1:20:51

youth. I mean, it was part of the the music that was

1:20:53

surrounding me, and I liked the

1:20:55

cars. A band, you probably wouldn't cross the

1:20:56

street. I love this. Oh, go. I love it. I love the car. The

1:20:58

commercial.

1:20:59

I love

1:20:59

the cars by motor for the black all the whole family 1

1:21:01

plan. Alright. See, now that surprised me about you

1:21:03

because I figured they'd be too slick and commercial.

1:21:06

We're fine. this is the thing is I have very actually

1:21:08

very Catholic musical taste, but I

1:21:10

I don't, like, think there's no point in talking to you about

1:21:12

bands that I like that started after nineteen ninety

1:21:14

because I assume you're unfamiliar

1:21:15

It's, like, there's not, like, any music that you No.

1:21:18

No. I'm being I'm being snotty. I'm being snotty.

1:21:20

I'm being snotty. That was a that was a purely snotty comment.

1:21:22

I mean, there is a point you're you're right. And

1:21:24

I think, you know, I I of agreeing with that,

1:21:26

you know, rock and roll is a kind of youth oriented,

1:21:30

you know, art form. But after the

1:21:32

nineties, Yeah. I mean, I had a harder

1:21:34

time relating to some

1:21:35

stuff, but I also I also am very happy

1:21:37

with my Decemberist albums and, you

1:21:39

know, something like that. So

1:21:41

man, you're sort of sliding into your

1:21:43

La Z Boy with your wine spritzer

1:21:45

and your Dan accent

1:21:46

kind of a little toteau. And nodding off a little toteau.

1:21:49

Alright. I wanna I wanna get to hard turn back to

1:21:51

our real topic here. And I said I wanted to come back

1:21:53

to Joe Biden. There are a number of issues that I wanna talk

1:21:55

about related to politics again. That was a very good

1:21:57

very good in this these dark

1:21:59

times, Tom, keep trying to tell people, it's

1:22:01

like, you know, in these dark times, you need to have the occasional

1:22:03

walk in the woods. And

1:22:04

we gotta be able to talk about something else now and then

1:22:06

and have a drink or have a smoke whatever your

1:22:08

thing is, and come back to the seriousness of the moment

1:22:10

and it is obviously very serious moment. A

1:22:13

very serious moment indeed and one that

1:22:15

requires apparently a lot more words

1:22:17

to get to all the topics that we wanted to

1:22:19

cover with Tom Nichols. And so that's

1:22:22

why we ended up with a two part episode here

1:22:24

with Tom Nichols on High Water. Tomorrow,

1:22:27

tune in again, please, for

1:22:29

part two in which Tom and I discuss.

1:22:32

Joe Biden, prospect that

1:22:34

We might be headed for or maybe we're already in

1:22:37

World War three, chemical weapons, nuclear

1:22:39

weapons, and the stakes even beyond

1:22:41

Russia and Ukraine in the new

1:22:43

Ukraine, fiasco. See

1:22:45

you tomorrow.