Deep State Radio

In a brilliant bit of turnabout, John McCain's last act was to use his own funeral to bury Donald Trump. By excluding him from the ceremonies and featuring leaders of both parties extolling values and virtues alien to Trump, McCain made an eloquent point. But will it have any lasting impact? Within just a couple of days the President was back Tweeting, his Supreme Court nominee was being rammed into office and a new book by Bob Woodward was dominating the headlines with new revelations of the president's unfitness to serve. Join our panelists David Frum of the Atlantic, author of Trumpocracy, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University School of Law and Ed Luce of the Financial Times as they discuss a tumultuous few days in the nation's capital. Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Donald Trump's track record as an international deal-maker is perfect. He still has not made one major deal of any sort anywhere with anyone (except maybe with a nice gentleman in Moscow, but we'll leave that be for now.). He has undone a bunch of deals--from the Paris Accord to TPP to the Iran nuclear deal. He has announced some deals that weren't really deals--from the "breakthrough" with North Korea to the "breakthrough with Europe" on trade to the "breakthrough" with Mexico on trade. And he has also promised some deals that never materialized--from getting Mexico to build the wall to a Middle East peace agreement. On this episode of Deep State Radio join David Sanger of the New York Times, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law School and Evelyn Farkas of the Atlantic Council as they discuss why Donald Trump may be the worst dealmaker in modern American presidential history. Who could've predicted such a thing?! Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/pr

Donald Trump has wrapped himself so tightly in the flag he could be America’s first July 4th mummy but while his true colors may be red white and blue it increasingly appears they may look more like the Russian flag than Old Glory. First, he showed this when at a school appearance he was unable to color in a flag properly. Next, despite all his attack on NFL-ers for disrespecting the flag, he broke the law to keep the flag over the White House flying at full-staff despite the death of beloved hero Senator John McCain. Our experts David Sanger of the New York Times, Evelyn Farkas of the Atlantic Council and Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University discuss McCain, Trump, patriotism, hypocrisy and coloring inside the lines. Join us!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

While the intelligence and law enforcement communities reel from the president's attacks, Donald Trump has sent further signals that he expects personal loyalty above loyalty to the nation from all of his team across the whole of government. He has even go so far as to trash the once hallowed concept of independence of the Fed. But it may be that the biggest problem affecting the government is not the president's impulse to suppress dissenting views but rather is his lack of intellectual curiosity and his professed skepticism of expertise. It's not that he wants political loyal intelligence analysts, for example, it is that he wouldn't read what they wrote no matter what their political views were. On this episode, veteran CIA analyst Nada Bakos, Georgetown's Rosa Brooks and the Financial Times Ed Luce, discuss--and Rosa follow's in the footsteps of a giant pre-historic chicken!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week in important Steven Tyler news, the Aerosmith front man demanded that Donald Trump stop playing his band's song "Livin' on the Edge" at their rallies. And he makes a good point. Trump is past that point and may want to consider more appropriate alternatives for upcoming rallies, like "I Fought the Law (And the Law Won)" or "Jailhouse Rock." Certainly, that seemed to be the message prosecutors and jurors were sending this week as the Trump re-elect effort lost the votes of both Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen who will now, as convicted felons, never be able to vote in a federal election again. What does this mean? Where will it lead? Is this the beginning of the end? The end of the beginning? What can we expect? Our experts David Sanger of the New York Times, Katie Phang, an attorney and a legal analyst for NBC and MSNBC and Sharon Weinberger, DC Bureau Chief for Yahoo News answer these questions and more in this special limited collector's edition of Deep State Radio in which we also ask: I

As reports have come in of Russia escalating its attacks on American democracy, our President has hopped into action escalating his war against the people who are protecting us from the Russians. Trump has begun a campaign of stripping security clearances from America's most experience national security officials in an effort to punish them for disloyalty. Our experts, Susan Hennessey of Lawfare, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law School and Ed Luce of the Financial Times, discuss which of the effects of this misguided policy will be worse--chilling free expression, alienating the security community, reducing the expertise available to the government or just ushering in more authoritarianism. But don't worry. You don't have to choose. All will be bad. Also: we discuss the president's lawyers and why they may mean he needs more lawyers.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With great fanfare Donald Trump did the presidential equivalent of stuffing a pair of athletic socks down his pants and announced the new defense spending bill. It was, as might be expected, yuge. Once again we will outspend China by four or five times and Russia by perhaps a dozen times. Are we safer? Does it matter that if we spend that much we can't have the schools, roads and health care system we need? Does it matter that the future of warfare may be a lot cheaper than the old-style industrial military we keep building and rebuilding? Kori Schake, Rosa Brooks and David Sanger discuss and debate. Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nothing is more core to the life of the Deep State than marking documents classified. After all, if just anyone could read them, who'd want to? On the other hand, if documents are classified, they can't be shared which is a bit of a problem in the cyber era when our most important defenses may be in the private sector. What's a secret-loving country to do? The NY Times' David Sanger, Georgetown University's Rosa Brooks and IISS' Kori Schake discuss. (And, yes, they also discuss Omarosa and Peter Strzok and all that other mishigas as well. So tune in for goodness sake!)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Summer Reading Edition: On this special episode of a podcast so special it doesn't need special episodes but can't help doing them anyway, we delve into the world of books. Georgetown's Rosa Brooks, IISS' Kori Schake and the Financial Times Ed Luce reveal what they're reading, what they're avoiding, why they are academic pariahs, what sucks and what sucks so bad they don't even feel comfortable discussing it. Summer fun!!! Join us.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Did you know that Ed Luce was once on a cricket team that Imran Khan occasionally would coach during breaks in his high profile high society dating life? That Rosa Brooks briefly played on a cricket team at Oxford? That Kori went to a cricket match and was not bored to tears? Well, you will if you listen to this episode of Deep State Radio which also has the president admitting to a felony, America's Iran policy going from bad to worse and Israel's Nation-State Law giving apartheid a fresh new look for the 21st Century. Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In which we start with cricket get to Imram Khan, discuss how hunky he was as a young cricketer and how his populism and the nukes he now controls may make him somewhat less attractive. Then on to the expanding realm of hybrid warfare, what it means in Clausewitzian terms, what that may all mean in terms of Metternich and then of inevitably, on to the proliferation of vegetables of mass destruction (VMDs). Rosa Brooks, Kori Schake and Evelyn Farkas join and elucidate. Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the latest Deep State Radio our friends Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University, Kori Schake of IISS and Evelyn Farkas of the Atlantic Council offer secrets into how they remain so well-informed. It all turns on fiction, apparently and those who remember what they read last will tell you what it was. Then we turn to Trump, Italy's new prime minister, a whole slew of lies and misstatements from Trump and the gripping prospect of a US-Italy strategic alliance which should come in handy should elephants ever start coming over the Alps again. Oh, and the decline of the West, again. But from a new perspective. What a great accompaniment for a summer barbecue.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If only someone had told us that Trump has distrusted alliances and the international order his whole life, that he was close to Russia and Russians, that he was unhinged and wholly unqualified for the presidency! If only we had known! Maybe then we would not be inviting Vladimir Putin to come to the White House to give him a hero's welcome commemorating his successful 2016 election hack...just in time for the 2018 elections which all signs suggest he will try to hack again. If only. Our panel including Laura Rosenberger of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, Loren DeJonge Schulman of the Bombshell podcast, Kori Schake of IISS and Ed Luce of the Financial Times discuss where we are and how we got here. Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A lonely old man wandering the White House late at night in his bathrobe, perhaps with a half-eaten McDonald's cheeseburger in his pocket gets angry at the world...so angry that he hits the ALL CAPS button on his cellphone and starts to Tweet out threats at a foreign nation. "ALL CAPS?," says his target, "this means WAR!" That's very nearly where we were this week when Donald Trump lashed out at Iran. Was a clever distraction? A mental misfire? We may never know, but we know this: as long as the president can Tweet, none of us are really safe. Our great panel including Loren DeJonge Schulman of of the Bombshell podcast, Kori Schake of IISS and Ed Luce of the Financial Times discuss this, playing politics with security clearances and the rest of the week's latest developments. Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As Richard Nixon might have said, "What are we going to do when we don't have Western Civilization to kick around any more?" Things happen fast in this bad old world and a few years is a enough time for the wheels to come flying off the damn cart. And if you don't get our point, that may have been a wheel that went flying by on Monday in Helsinki. Our panel of IISS' Kori Schake, Georgetown Law School's Rosa Brooks, the Financial Times' Ed Luce and New Jersey's own David Rothkopf, contemplate where we go from here and why recent experiences with bedtime stories are not altogether comforting. Tune in! (While you can.)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Donald Trump completed the most unsuccessful foreign trip of any president since Theodore Roosevelt, who took the first foreign trip, with a disastrous summit for the ages. Critics on the right and left called it an embarrassment, a disaster, or worse. And honestly, it was all that and more. A turning point in the history of US foreign policy perhaps. Our experts, Georgetown's Rosa Brooks, IISS' Kori Schake, the New York Times' David Sanger, and the Financial Times' Ed Luce, discuss...lament, wail, and generally gnash their teeth...but in constructive way. Listen in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders alleged, it was a lousy breakfast that had White House Chief of Staff squirm while President Donald Trump kicked off the NATO Summit with an attack on Germany, then someone needs to get a Denny's Grand Slam to Rosa Brooks, Julie Smith and Ed Luce pronto. Because as our great panel looked back on Trump's NATO performance, they certainly did more than just shift uneasily in their chairs and purse their lips. Join them for a discussion of what has already been one of Vladimir Putin's best weeks ever...and where things are as we prepare for the Helsinki love fest that will kick off the week ahead!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With America's foreign policy savant, our president leaving the country this week it's easy to understand the fireworks and celebrations last week. Now we get to share him with the rest of the world--including our NATO allies, the keepers of our special relationship with England, the patrons of a Trump resort in Scotland (ancestral home of his immigrant mother) and then with the main man in his life, Vladimir Putin. Like US and UK politics at the moment, we can expect it all to be in the language of our own Ed Luce, shambolic, but who knows? It may even be worse than that! Ed, Rosa Brooks, Kori Schake and host David Rothkopf discuss all that...while educating Ed about Moose and Squirrel. Tune in!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The GOP could win in November and maintain its hold on both houses of Congress. Which Donald Trump would find encouraging. And might lead him to be even more like...himself. And that might lead his base to re-elect him. And we could have six and a half more years of Trump. So...what would that look like? Is there enough box wine in the world to help you get through this? Who knows? It can be an experiment. Join host David Rothkopf, Rosa Brooks, Kori Schake and Joe Cirincione for an episode that is scary as shit. Fun!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

50 years ago the multilateral agreement that kept us all from blowing ourselves to smithereens was signed. And look, we're not smithereens, so that's good, right? On the other hand...North Korea. And Iran. And a president who wants new nukes that are smaller and easier to use. So, there's that. We discuss. You should listen. With Rosa Brooks, Joe Cirincione and Kori Schake. Tune in.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.