The Jackpod: Outside the beltway
41:25 Share

Start your next California adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota Hybrid. With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you. Every new Toyota Hybrid comes with ToyotaCare, a two-year complimentary scheduled maintenance plan, plus an exclusive hybrid battery warranty and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability. Visit your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. WBUR Podcasts. Boston.

I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is The JackPod, where On Point news analyst Jack Beattie helps us connect history, literature, and politics in a way that brings his unique clarity to the world we live in now. Hello there, Jack. Hello, Meghna. We are at episode 71, and your headline? Outside the Beltway. Oh, I'm desperate to get outside the Beltway, so tell me more, Jack.

Well, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin is...

is a 16-hour drive away from the Beltway, north by northwest. If I can situate it for you, this will put it on your metal map. It's halfway between Warsaw and Menominee. You know the area I'm talking about. So I'm reading a story in the Washington Post just recently, a couple of days ago, about the Republican congressman from that district,

His name is Van Orden. He's refusing to hold town hall meetings with his constituents or even really to meet with them in his office. And he's denounced people who were attending these kinds of things around the country as agitators, lawbreakers, paid troublemakers,

And this piece in the Washington Post focuses on four of his constituents sitting around having coffee in Jim Bob's Pizza, a local restaurant. And they were outraged. One fellow in particular was just so mad at being called a paid troublemaker that he just started to run over with anger. But when he did—

Cindy Greening, 68, a retired teacher, spoke up. She said, you know, it just means it's working. That Van Orden's response means that their protest is working. And the piece went on to identify Cindy Greening as head of the local chapter of the activist group Indivisible.

It turns out that Indivisible had 28 members in Chippewa Falls on January 20th. It now has 500 members. Oh, wow.

And so it's growing. And, of course, Indivisible is an activist group. It formed organized protests in the first Trump administration. And now it has a new lease on life all around the country, apparently, in places like Chippewa Falls, way outside the Beltway, where something like popular politics protest happens.

is brewing. And I went on their website, Indivisible, and they are calling for a, quote, national day of action.

Saturday, April the 5th. And on the website, you can type in where you're from, and it'll tell you where the nearest demonstration is going to be. So I found two or three within a 10-mile drive of my house up here in remote New Hampshire. Here we are, Chippewa Falls, New Hampshire, and

That makes me think this is going to be a big deal. Jack, if you don't mind me interrupting here, just to play devil's advocate for a moment.

You know, the criticism from members of Congress who have similarly decided to no longer hold town halls is what you were saying, that paid actors, et cetera, or just more generally activists with an anti-Trump agenda. I mean, it sounds like describing based on what you described about Indivisible, that part may not be entirely wrong.

Oh, no. I mean, they are activists indeed. But paid activists is another way of saying concerned citizen. So I don't take that as a – that's not a negative. Paid troublemakers. That's what was incensing the folks at Jim Bob's Pizza. Paid troublemakers. We're concerned citizens. And we've got together in the way that Tocqueville said was the genius of American life in a voluntary organization –

to protest for redress of grievances. What could be more American? So what are they trying? Yeah. What are the what is the congressman trying to avoid by not meeting with his own constituents?

Well, here is an example of it. This is from last week when Congressman Chuck Edwards held a town hall in Asheville, North Carolina. I was proud to vote recently for the House budget resolution, which provides the framework to...

We should abolish the U.S. Department of Education. The decisions need to be made back on the state level. I believe that the president is very supportive of Ukraine. Like him or not, Elon Musk has brought a lot of really smart people to Doge. And you wonder why folks don't want to do these town halls.

You know what was interesting to me in that, Jack? I think one of the off-mic voices from a member of the audience was a gentleman saying, I'm a veteran. Very interesting because some 30% of federal workers are veterans of the U.S. Armed Services. I think they're going to be playing a very critical role here in terms of responses to the Trump administration's changes in federal bureaucracy. Yeah.

Oh, indeed they are. And in fact, here in five congressional districts from Iowa to New York, a group called Vote Vets came

is putting on ads like this really having at Elon Musk and Trump. I was at Barnes and Noble's with my two children, four and ten, and my husband, and I received a text from my coworker, and he said, "Have you seen the email?" I served in the military for over 33 years, just accepted a new position in the VA. Come into the office, fire up my computer, and I come back.

And there's an email sitting there for me. I knew then. I knew what was coming. I have not had a single negative performance review in my 10 years. It feels like veterans are being personally attacked.

by Elon Musk. I did not put my life on the line for some tech bro billionaire from South Africa to come in here and try to destroy our country. We're going to bear a lot of this, a lot of this cost with rising cost inflation. I'm literally donating plasma to buy eggs. And our congressperson does absolutely nothing. Congresswoman, stop Elon's war on veterans now. Wow, that's something, Zach.

Yes. And this is their congresswoman is in Iowa. And there are there are similar things, as I say, in five different congressional districts. So people outside the Beltway, they turn on their television set. They're looking at ads like that.

That's happening now. And as you say, there's a particular point and poignance to veterans speaking out. The sense that we all owe them something can't be far from any patriotic sentiment.

Of course, that's to exclude Elon Musk and company, I guess. So that's happening out there. And then there's something else happening. There's something called Tesla takedown.

And this is a group that just organized to protest Tesla and to get at Musk via hurting his product. And in fact, the product has hurt. Sales are down. There's been a nearly 50 percent fall in the share price just since the first of the year.

as opposed to the Dow in general, which is 7%. So this shows you how steep the declivity is here for Tesla. And some of these protests have turned violent. And sure enough, last night on Fox News, there was stills of burning Teslas all over the country, different places around the country.

At the peaceful protests, there are signs like "Boycott Swastikar," a reference to Musk's seemingly Nazi salute at a rally earlier this year.

And there was another sign, send Musk to Mars now. Musk wants to go to Mars and these people want him to go now. Sheryl Crow, the singer, she has come out with a video. She donated her Tesla to NPR. How about that? Great. And in her video, she says, there comes a time when you have to decide who you're willing to align with. So long, Tesla.

she says, as the car is being towed away. The BBC reporting from a Burbank, California protest outside a Tesla dealership quotes Karen saying that she had tried a sticker on her Tesla and the sticker was, bought this car before we knew. But that wasn't enough for her, she told the BBC. She said, it was embarrassing. It

It wasn't what I stood for. How could I drive that car? I have principles. So Karen traded her Tesla for a Cadillac. I take your point. Like you're stringing together a lot of evidence of protests well outside of Washington, D.C., of concern, of even repulsion that people are having about the way the Trump administration is enacting its transformation of the federal government.

But if I may, I mean, many of the examples you've brought up so far kind of sound like they come right out of central casting for like Democrats, like Sheryl Crow. Does it surprise me that she's like completely opposed to Elon Musk and Donald Trump? Not really. But I think what's even more interesting is there seems to be some evidence of concern, dare I say, even remorse amongst some people who voted for Trump in 2024. Well, yeah.

Yes. And here is a soundbite from a from a focus group held in Michigan among Trump Trump voters. Here we are. They're sounding off in a focus group co-conducted by Axios. It's a group that consisted of 13 voters from Battleground, Michigan, who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but then for Donald Trump last year. Axios reported that most expressed frustration and worry using words like erratic, negative.

frightening, disruptive, and dictator to describe their concerns. It's getting to the point where I'm almost scared to watch the news. A lot of his actions have just been disruptive and creating chaos. I don't think anyone would have voted for him if they expected to see what we're seeing now. I was voting for him based off of the economy the first time around, and I'm seeing a significant decline. It's very scary.

Oh, Jack. This is a test of my life's principle of exercising empathy. Yeah.

I'll let you go first. What do you glean from that focus? Well, you know, it's very hard for people. It was just 60 days ago or so that they voted for Trump. And now they're having second thoughts. And it's very hard for that. That hasn't emerged in the data, by the way. Trump is as good in terms of his popularity as he's ever been.

So it hasn't crept into the data yet. And in fact, when CNN, you know, when the announcers came back, they said only one person out of the 13 said they would have voted for Harris if they could do it over again. So even these second thoughts are not really second thoughts. Yeah, not really. But they're qualms, aren't they? These people aren't unconscious. They did not vote for.

for Elon Musk to ravage the federal government. They did not vote for all of this, for the crazy king-like behaviors of Mr. Trump. And maybe there's some evidence that this is...

beginning these stirrings to affect Trump, at least around the edges. Here is a soundbite from the Democrats. Wait, wait, wait. I want to jump in. You've got to forgive me. I will hold fast to my desire to, like I said, have empathy and compassion and seek to understand every American that I ever encounter in this job.

At the same time, I have to ask, what did they think they were voting for? I mean, like, look, our jobs, your job, my job is to really, like, be on top of the news, to literally be those news addicts and follow every headline, every story, every little development. That is not the job of most Americans, thank goodness. But at the same time, even if folks are only watching Fox News...

Donald Trump was very clear about what he wanted to do. Elon Musk was on the stage with him multiple times during the campaign saying, we're going to take down government. You know, I don't understand. There has to be not just on the part of Trump voters, but in a sense like everybody, some kind of willful blindness that kicks in. I really believe these voters when they say, well, I felt the economy was good last time under Trump, so he's going to do it again. Right.

But that's like a kind of willful blindness that just ignores every other truth about the candidate. And I don't get it. And I'm not entirely sure people should be left off the hook for having that kind of perhaps chosen ignorance. Yes, willful ignorance. It's absolutely right. I mean, they...

Yeah. And there is a limit to the empathy. I mean, my God, where were you? But you know what? A lot of people are just too busy to have paid attention. And there's overwhelming evidence that, in fact, I saw one poll, that if only newspaper readers voted, this was when Joe Biden was still the candidate, I think, in early 2020.

July. Biden would have won by nearly 30 points. But if voters who didn't pay attention at all to the news voted, they would have gone by almost as much for Trump. Oh, so that's how we end up in the middle. I see. Yes, yes. So, you know, many people just don't have time and they vote on vibes and

And they vote. And I really think, too, they voted on something like leadership. Trump exudes a dark energy. You can't...

deny it. It's a kind of charisma. And he never flags. He's just forever talking, never making much sense, but forever responding. Whereas look at Biden. He hid. He was hiding. I mean, speaking of willful ignorance, right? I mean, you were sounding the alarm about like, here is a Democratic president and

soon-to-be candidate falling apart before our eyes. But the Democratic Party was willfully blinkered about that until it was basically too late. So it's not just a one-party thing or another.

No, absolutely not. I mean, people were just – and how many of the leaders in Congress were saying, oh, no, there's nothing wrong with Joe Biden. We saw him last week and he was just – that had to have been a lie. Yeah. Well, Jack, my little – thank you for bearing with me on my –

mini tirade. But I had interrupted right when you were making a point about while there's this sort of growing frustration outside the Beltway, I think you were talking about, meanwhile, inside the Beltway, what's going on?

Well, you know, there this this, as it were, a sorceress of dissatisfaction with Trump is creeping in, at least according to Simon Rosenberg. We've had him on our program. He's really a democratic strategist. Here he is talking about Trump's numbers on the economy.

The perception that he was – that what Trump meant to many people was he was successful. He made money. He – and if you supported him, you also would be successful and you could make money because he had been a successful businessman. He was a winner and he had winners like Elon Musk around him. I think that part of the late breaking vote for him that happened with Hispanics and young men in particular –

was coming out of COVID, two groups that had been really devastated by COVID. Trump just looked like a guy who meant that they would have a better life, right? That they would be able to make more money. Well, all of that positioning, which has been central, the most important attribute of his brand going back to 2015 has evaporated.

And he now has the most negative job approval in the economy that he's ever had. So on all these economic measures, he's in a deeply degraded place from where he ever was in his first term. Jack, go ahead.

Well, and Rosenberg goes on to cite the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey, which is used often by investors to sort of gauge where the economy is going. And it turns out that it is lower now, consumer confidence in the economy, than it's been in 45 years. Wow. Of course, it wasn't all that high under Biden either. So it's not like this is some dramatic change anymore.

But it's something. It's perhaps a straw in the wind. And then we read today that by 17 points, voters in a recent survey say the economy is getting worse rather than improving. And by 18 points, that their personal financial situation is getting worse. Now, that's kind of new because back in the Biden era—

people would say, oh, the economy is getting worse, but my situation isn't so bad. Now we seem to have an agreement. The economy is getting worse. And by the same percentage, people are saying, and so are my finances. Interesting. That can't bode well for Mr. Trump. Jack, I'm going to steal that. We're going to do an hour on it in the regular daily show. But can I plug that, by the way, for you jackpot listeners, whom I love?

If you don't listen to the daily On Point program, which is in that same feed that you find the jackpot, please do, because we'd love your input over there on the stuff that we crank out every day. And as I just said, we kind of steal Jack's ideas sometimes and make them into a big hour for On Point. But anyway, just shameless plug there, Jack. Continue your thought.

This is a sort of red line for Trump. CNN says that 84% of the public thinks Trump should follow court orders, including 79% of Republicans. This says that if Trump

He defies the court order, makes it official, as it were now. They're kind of, you know, they're sending the Venezuelans in the dark of night and they were in, you know, they haven't come out and said, yeah, we're defying the judge. They just call for his impeachment. But if he comes out and says, I'm not going to do what these judges say, that if even 79 percent of Republicans think that would be a step too far, then

Well, that's a, you know, that is a red line for Trump, it seems to me. But, you know, on the other hand, there are the Democrats. Gosh, yes. While we're inside the Beltway. They're not benefiting from, you know, this stirrings of Democrats.

of angst about Trump. Only 27 percent, the worst apparently ever since 1990, have favorable opinions of the Democrats. Jack, when I saw that number, I have to say my first thought was they're so far down the well that if you shouted down to Democrats like, hey, how's it going? The echo of your call would come back for a response.

But it says a lot. They can't even leverage this actually, like if you're Trump concerning rising tide, but they can't even leverage that to say, well, turn to us. We're the party with answers.

No, and in fact, here's some further bad news. This is from a research firm, a polling firm that just came out with a study. Voters, majorities, Dems don't respect work. Dems don't share my values. Dems don't care about people like me. And by 47%,

Dems don't get things done. That same poll shows, for all the weakening, talking about weakening among Trump, by 20 points, quote, working class voters still prefer Trump. So the Democrats...

Haven't made any progress there. And Brookings is out with a study that says that the Dems won all the states with the share of degree holders at 40% or higher. But there were only four such states. And they won only one of 29 states.

where degree holders were 35% lower. And the same polling shows it is now official that Democrats in the 2024 election lost voters under 30. Well, you know, one of the theses about American politics is

You know, there's a path dependency in voting. You came in with the New Deal. You stayed with the Democrats. You came in with JFK. It's the Democrats all the way. That first vote, well, voters under 30 went for Trump. Mm-hmm.

Well, Jack Potters, here's what I want to know from you, because thankfully, the vast, vast majority of you live well outside the Beltway. So tell us, what are you hearing from your family, friends, neighbors, folks that you work with about, you know, how they're feeling about the actions that the Trump administration has taken so far, how they feel about Elon Musk and Doge? We want to know. Give us your view.

of Americans' responses to the Trump administration thus far from outside the Beltway. That's what I want to know. You know the routine. On Point VoxPop app. If you don't already have it on your phone, tap those fingers to wherever you get your apps and look for On Point Vox and send us your message that way. Jack, we've got to take a quick break here, and I want you to know that the jackpot community here

Even though they may feel beleaguered by the news, they never fully let you go. Joe, who's a regular, he said he had tuned out the news lately, but then he came back to say this. To be honest, I was so dispirited after the election, I had to tune out. I completely turned off any news, podcast or social media. Of course, this was like a committed carnivore suddenly becoming vegetarian.

I felt so much better, but I missed meat, especially that well-seared medium rare filet that is the jackpot. And dang, did I pick a good time to come back. A well-seared medium rare, Jack. We'll hear more of what Joe had to say in just a second.

Support for On Point comes from Indeed. You just realized that your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy, just use Indeed. There's no need to wait. You can speed up your hiring with Indeed.

And On Point listeners will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash On Point. Just go to Indeed.com slash On Point right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash On Point. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Indeed is all you need. And just as a quick reminder for folks, last week, Jack...

worked his way through a paper by Professor Barry Posen that was explaining the point of view of Vladimir Putin and Russia regarding the threat they believed that Ukraine imposed and that Ukraine poses on Russia. And Jack, you had gone through this mental exercise and framed it as strategic empathy, that in order to best understand how to potentially end the war in Ukraine, it was a worthy approach.

Exercise to understand Russia's point of view. That was just my recap from last week. And let's pick up with more of what our chef de cuisine, Joe, from Los Angeles says. He kind of tuned out of news, including some of the jackpot for a while after the election. Then he came back to give us this message of his respectful but passionate disagreement with you, Jack. Strategic empathy for Russia? Yeah.

Russia has been an imperial power for centuries. Lacking the industrial and technological might, as well as any sort of attractive culture or ideology, it cannot maintain its empire the way Western powers have. It can only hold on to empire through the barrel of a gun. And it will also hold on to the power even if it means the impoverishment and premature death of its own people. Ukraine and other members of the former Soviet bloc are not a threat to Russia.

Russia is a threat to Russia.

Hence, any strategic empathy for Russian leadership will always be misguided. Jack, what do you think about Joe saying, no, I disagree? Well, you know, I'm not saying forgive Russia. I'm saying understand. And I borrow the phrase from Barry Posen, the MIT strategist. And his point is the United States, that's not one of our long suits. We don't tend to see things as other nations see them.

We're so blinded by the American solipsism. We're all, we're the world. And also we don't feel like we have to extend any understanding. Hence the 20 or 15 year push, which really began partly in the Bill Clinton's

1992 campaign for president, he was looking to get a rise out of Polish Americans in Chicago and the Illinois primary. And he made a promise about Poland is going to be in NATO. I don't know that that was the first time that came up. But the point is that originated in American domestic politics, a pitch

to an ethnic group. Perfectly all right to do, but it's not like this was some moment of high strategy. In fact, from George Kennan to the list of, and I mentioned them, or Posen mentioned, the list of Russia watchers and strategists who wrote Clinton and said, don't expand NATO to the east,

And for Russia, you know, the expansion of NATO, the movement into Eastern Europe, these still remain part of Putin's demands. He says no NATO for Ukraine, and he's still talking about rolling back NATO from Eastern Europe. I don't know how he's going to do that now.

But those have—and so I'm saying, suppose we had understood all along how—what that meant to Russia. Would we have pushed—would George W. Bush in 2008 have said, we invite, we look with favor on Ukraine joining NATO? Would he have come out with that position? I don't know. But we are ethically responsible. That's the point Barry Posen makes, and politically responsible.

for encouraging Ukraine in what seems to be this quixotic dream.

Well, it was interesting, Jack, because your use of the word empathy got some responses from people who have a professional background in therapy and social work. One of them is Brennan Kavaniss, who's from Austin, Texas. And empathy was, as a concept, was an important part of his education in social work. And he says it does help explain behavior for sure, but that there are also limits.

Empathy is only so helpful as to when you're dealing with rational actors. And while I don't think you can put Putin exactly in the same category as a completely irrational actor like Kim Jong-un, I mean, I do believe there is a certain level of irrationality. We can start to understand some of why he invaded Ukraine, but I don't think that fully gets at it.

Despite it being helpful, it doesn't fully allow us to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Okay, here's another one. This is Kyle Joyner, the heckler from Helena, Montana. Shout out to you, Kyle, who also has been a therapist and is a social worker. And Jack, he wanted you to know that strategic empathy, he believes, is not in fact useful in helping us understand Russia's point of view. Russia is essentially the abusive parent

in this particular relationship. And so it's little wonder that Estonia, Poland, Ukraine don't feel that inclined to be closer to that parent. In fact, they are very eager to

to seek help from others who might, who would want to help them get out of that abusive relationship. I have helped people get out of abusive relationships. Well, NATO or the United States is, has helped these countries get out of an abusive relationship with their parent nation. Hmm. Jack. Hmm. Hmm. That's a striking analogy. I guess the parent part of it is what I object to. Um,

He mentioned those Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and so on. Of course, those were independent countries that were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 as part of their carve-up of Poland agreement with Nazi Germany. So they were taken—it wasn't really apparent.

you know, a kind of... Kidnapping, almost. Kidnapping, really, of those countries. And then, you know, the post-war occupation of... First the occupation and then the

the turning over of Poland to its own Communist Party, that was a kind of hostile takeover too. I don't see parenting working there on that. And on the issue, with respect, Kyle, and then on the issue that Brennan raises on rational actors, it occurred to me, can anyone really think Donald Trump is a rational actor? Would you ever apply that term to him?

A man with a whim of iron? You don't know what's going to come out the next day. I mean, look at the farce back and forth on tariffs. And, you know, anyway, I thought, what about the American president? Well, my guess is that Brennan wouldn't actually call Donald Trump a rational actor. And just circling back to Kyle for a second. Yeah.

it's not just parents in general he's talking about but abusive parents which I actually think is quite a compelling um analogy there but we've got more to move forward to here is Maddie from Williston Vermont the important thing is that an explanation is not an excuse you can explain why you or others may behave in a certain way however that doesn't excuse harm to others I don't

if strategic empathy can be helpful in the peace process if only one party is engaged in it. I love jackpot listeners. They are so insightful. Okay, here's another one. This is Eric Berger in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. And he points, I mean...

Post-Second World War and Cold War is really central to a lot of what people are thinking right now, Jack, because he points to the relationship that the United States had with West Germany after the Second World War and how the U.S. worked to rebuild democracy there, the Marshall Plan. So Eric has a question for you. He wants to know if the adversarial relationship between the U.S. and Russia was inevitable. So when communism fell in the Soviet Union and Russia

During those first few years after communism fell, it seemed like democracy might actually take a hold in Russia before Putin rose to power and returned the country to a dictatorial regime. During that time when democracy seemed possible in Russia, were there any thoughts about including Russia in NATO? Jack, do you have an answer?

Well, in fact, in 2000, just after he took power, Vladimir Putin spoke of that. He said it's something we could look into. A couple of generations before that, in the 50s, Soviet Russia had said that they would like to be part of NATO. Why? Because they were worried about a renaissance militarism from Germany. They wanted to be protected against Germany. And of course, the

NATO rejected any Soviet involvement in an alliance that was sort of formed against the Soviet Union. Was it inevitable that the victors of World War II would fall out and sort of try to carve up the world? Nothing's inevitable, and there were steps all along the way. But between Russian fears and American hubris...

interacting and atomic weapons. Oh my gosh, you know, if it isn't inevitable, it was heavily determined that there should be a falling out between these great powers. Yeah.

You know, I completely understand why we had so many people sort of respond. They were they had bristling responses to this idea of strategic empathy. Maybe it's just the word or concept of empathy that they strongly disagree with.

But I would say I stand in your defense, Jack, because of what we talked about last week, that the United States has launched...

Preemptive wars. You talked about it last week. We have literally done the same thing that Russia did. Not that it's okay that Russia invaded Ukraine. No. Because it similarly was not right that the United States invaded Iraq. So perhaps empathy isn't the right thing.

to have here, but just an honest understanding that motivations may be more familiar to us than we'd like to think. But I want to end with Susan Powell today. She's in Santa Barbara, California. She's a longtime listener and a big fan of yours, Jack, but she's been kind of a lurker in terms of not having picked up her phone and, uh,

fired up Vox Pop yet. But she did it last week because she disagreed with you, Jack. Here she is. In my opinion, Putin's goal is to reconstruct the USSR and Ukraine is not the first country he's invaded and it won't be the last.

And NATO, after all, is a defensive military alliance, not an aggressive one. And Trump, at least in this particular case, doesn't care about peace. What he wants is for Ukraine to surrender, which isn't the same thing, because for whatever reason, he wants to please our enemy, Putin. As to the question why Russia is attacking Ukraine now, while it's true that Putin didn't want Ukraine to join NATO,

It was not because Ukraine would invade Russia, but because Ukraine would be better able to defend herself against an imperialist invasion from Russia. I get it. And I have no empathy for that. Wow. Susan, I thank you for that comment because that was she said much more articulately what I was trying to say last week that like, what about Ukraine's point of view here? But I'll allow you to have a response, Jack. Go ahead.

Oh, that's such a sweeping comment of Susan's, it's hard to take it in. Well, let's just start at the fringes. Trump's feeling about Putin. The State Department under the Biden administration had a bureau that was documenting the kidnapping of Ukrainian children. There were thousands kidnapped and taken into Russia.

They had a database where these children were and the best as they could figure out. And they were following what was happening to them. Donald Trump has disbanded, ended that program. I saw that. Let Russia keep the kids. You know, I can't imagine a more odious gift. So that's how abjectly...

he has surrendered to Putin for whatever reason. And then the question about NATO. Well, yeah, sure, NATO is a defensive alliance. But you know, Barry Posen points out that if NATO infrastructure were in Ukraine, the time to send a nuclear weapon to Moscow would be as short as 10 minutes.

It is now from the USA more like 25 minutes. So that would shorten the nuclear fuse dramatically. Equally, if NATO were there, they could botanize on the Russian signals for their nuclear deterrent. Many of the missile sites are in sort of southern Russia, and NATO could listen to that. And if there were a nuclear confrontation, they could know what was happening.

And then the issue was NATO is a defensive alliance, but that's not how nations see these things. There's this thing that Jack Schneider at Columbia years ago talked about, the security dilemma, where under the conditions of anarchy, which prevail in international relations, there's no policeman saying, you know, you've got to obey the law. There's no higher authority. Each nation is its own authority.

Again and again, nations construe defensive alliances and defensive buildups as potentially offensive. They don't distinguish the intentions from the capabilities. They see the capabilities and the intentions differently.

Who knows what the intentions are? What we have are the capabilities. And the security dilemma spiral happens when Russia responds to Ukraine by boosting its spending, Ukraine and NATO boost theirs, and then you have an arms race because neither side, under the conditions of anarchy which prevail in international relations, can acknowledge that the other side is only defensive. That's not how nations act.

Well, Mr. Beattie, I thank you as always. Thank you. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is The Jackpot from On Point.