Original Coverage & Source Attribution: joecirincione.substack.com
On Election Day, Bill Press posted an interview that he and I did on Monday afternoon. We look ahead to how a Democratic victory in the House and possibly in the Senate could impact the most incoherent and ineffective foreign policy the United States has ever had. I am optimistic that this election will be the beginning of the change we need.
If possible, I urge you to listen to the podcast. It is an energized, fact-filled discussion. If you use Apple Podcast, click here. But reading the (slightly edited) transcript below is the next best thing. Please tell me what you think.
Go, Blue!
Bill Press: Well, with voters heading to the polls as we speak, we won’t know until late tonight or tomorrow whether Democrats will succeed as many polls predict in taking back control of the House and maybe even the Senate. But if they are successful, we do know that things are going to change big time on domestic policy and also on foreign policy, which we focus on on today’s podcast.
Post midterms, what happens with the war in Iran? Will Donald Trump be able to continue forever, a war he promised would only last a few days? And what about the war in Ukraine?
Under Trump so far, our support for Ukraine’s been on again, off again. Will we finally give Ukraine the support it needs or continue to make deals with Putin? And could Congress repeal Trump’s tariffs and bring USAID back to life?
So many exciting possibilities with the change of leadership in Congress, which we’re gonna explore today with our good friend, national security analyst, Joe Cirincione.
Joe welcome back to The Bill Press Pod. Good to talk to you again.
Joe Cirincione: Thanks for having me back, Bill. Exciting times.
Bill: Very, very exciting. And Joe, you know, as we speak, the voters are flocking to the polls. We don’t know what’s gonna happen.
Most people, most prognosticators, if you will, say the Democrats have up to a 90% chance of taking back the House. Maybe the Senate, a 70% chance.
And if either house goes to the Democrats, Joe, the question I like to ask you about is: What could this Congress do and what should the Congress do about certain policy initiatives?
Let’s start with the war in Iran. Inevitable that we have, as the president has sort of predicted, a brand new big bombing campaign immediately after the midterm.
Iran War Policy
Joe: Right. This will be the first challenge that this new Congress is going to confront.
We should start off by saying, even before the Congress meets, even before they start doing something, you’re going to see a collective sigh of relief around the world when the Democrats take the House back, which I now believe is almost certain.
If they take the Senate, it will be even a bigger sigh. But it will be interpreted by many countries in the world, particularly in Europe and Canada and North America, as a check on Trump’s chaotic foreign policy, and perhaps the beginning of a return to a common sense collective security foreign policy that reinforces the ties between the US and our natural allies, and weakens the ties between Trump and Putin and Xi in this authoritarian axis he’s building.
So right away, even before anything happens, you’re going to have that positive outcome for the election on the global stage.
It will be a sign that Trump has driven the MAGA car off the cliff.
Bill: Do you think that’s true of Democrats only, or do you think there may be some Republicans who say, okay, now’s the chance to show a little independence, which and about some of the things we never “really privately supported?
Joe: Absolutely. It will be a sign that Trump has driven the MAGA car off the cliff. Many Republicans have felt this, but have been afraid to buck Trump for all the reasons you’ve discussed on the show over these last couple of years.
You could see that hold break, and Republicans will now feel that they can break with some of these Trump policies. In fact, for their own political future, they have to break with him.
Therefore, even if the Democrats don’t take the Senate — it’s quite possible that we could see a 50-50 Senate — you could start winning over Republicans who are naturally inclined to do things like stop the war in Iran, and aid Ukraine in its efforts to repel the Russian invaders, and take down tariffs, three big issues that will come right to the fore.
You could see bipartisan support for all of that. So yes, I believe that the MAGA fractures will ripple through US foreign policy.
Bill: Okay. So let’s start with Iran. Is there any way that the Congress could defund the war?
Joe: Absolutely. This will be one of the top issues confronting the new Congress. You may even see some action on this in the lame duck.
Democrats are very clear. They are going to reintroduce war power resolutions which they expect to pass handily, I think, in both houses, and you’re going to see them use the power of the purse.
The president right now has an almost $400 billion reconciliation bill teed up, where he wants to add additional funds to the $1 trillion military budget, including for continuing the war on Iran.
That’s not going to pass. That will not happen. So you’re going to see, and for those of your listeners who were around during the Vietnam War, this was the fight in the Vietnam War. This is how the Democratic Congress ended the Vietnam War by defunding it, and you will see that start to play out.
They just won’t give Trump the money for his war. There’ll be some other issues about replenishing used munitions and things like that, but not for operations.
Bill: How about oversight, Joe? This is one thing that’s been totally lacking under the last two years. Oversight over this war, like how much money has been spent, how the money has been spent, what happened really to our US military bases in the Middle East?
Joe: Bing, that is exactly right. We haven’t had a briefing by the Pentagon since May 5th on this war. We’re now eight months in, we’re in our ninth month of the war, and there’s been no serious oversight hearings, there’s been no information coming from the Department of Defense.
We could be seeing a momentous shift of US basing structure out of the Persian Gulf,
One of the key issues is what’s happened to our bases, and this is a big, big deal. We’re only now beginning to understand, thanks to efforts like Senator Chris Murphy — and we hope he’s doing well in his recovery from his stroke — and his trip over to the Persian Gulf recently, where he said they wouldn’t even let him into the bases. They won’t let you see the damage.
We now know that our major bases have been effectively destroyed, and the Pentagon is questioning whether they should even try to rebuild them. So, we could be seeing a momentous shift of US basing structure out of the Persian Gulf, because it’s impossible to defend it at this point.
So, I think you’ll start with kinds of hearings. In addition to that, there’s also new reports that we’ve lost over 100 airplanes.
I didn’t know that. We’ve lost major military equipment in this war. You’ll start seeing oversight hearings on that. You’re going to have Republicans and Democrats wanting to find out the answers to that.
Bill: And to what extent do you think that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsatz will be called to task?
Joe: Pete Hegseth’s head is on the chopping block in the lame duck.
The reason the House went out of session so early is because Congressman Thomas Massie had introduced an impeachment resolution. He is a Republican. He introduced an impeachment resolution that would have passed. So to stop that from passing, Speaker Johnson put the House on recess.
Hegseth is a dead man walking.
You’re going to see that introduced almost immediately. Hegseth is a dead man walking.
And in the process of that, you will see investigations and hearings and statements about what he’s been doing all this time, particularly his purge of over two, maybe three dozen military officers; his failure to promote qualified people simply because they were women or they were not white.
You’re going to see his complete mishandling of military operations during the war. All that’s going to start coming out.’d be surprised if Hegseth lasted into December.
Bill: Right. I’ve been told that by several members of Congress too, by the way, I think. I don’t know, maybe everybody knows that except Hegseth himself.
Would Trump Nuke Iran?
Bill: Joe, there’s a disturbing rumor maybe or account in the last day or so that Tucker Carlson, who does have many sources inside the Trump administration, said that the White House, Trump particularly, is getting pressure from Bibi Netanyahu to use a tactical nuke in Iran. It’s hard to believe that anybody could agree with this, but when you put Bibi and Trump together, who knows what’s your thought?”
Joe: Yes, that is an outside possibility, but it is still a possibility.
He could do this for several reasons. First, both Netanyahu and Trump are now going to be on defense, trying to preserve their authority, trying to preserve their rule.
One of the ways people traditionally do that is “wag the dog.” You take military action, you try to unite the country. That’s more effective for Netanyahu, where the country would like to see military action.
The Israeli public would support military action against Iran. It’s the opposite here in the United States, but you could still see it.
Trump is in a jam here. He cannot win this war. There is no military solution to this conflict, no military way to open up the Strait of Hormuz, even though you might increase the traffic, you’re never going to control it by military means alone. But he doesn’t want to take the political humiliating step of retreating, which is really the only option, which is what we’re eventually going to have to do.
So he may lash out. He may do a Hail Mary. And what we know is that the Pentagon has drawn up plans that again, quoting Senator Chris Murphy, who’s seen these plans, are “insane.” Meaning this is probably a very big attack on Iranian energy facilities, infrastructure, which would of course trigger an Iranian attack on Persian Gulf energy facilities and infrastructure, which will send the price of gas through the roof.
You think it’s high now? Wait till you try this kind of gambit.
But one other thing you could do is focus it on, again, trying to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program.
Bill: Which of course the president said he did two years ago or whatever.
Joe: Right, back in June of 2025. Well, the problem with that is that the Iranians have moved most of their equipment and their stockpile of highly-enriched uranium into an underground mountain facility near Natanz called Pickaxe Mountain. This is under 200 meters of granite.
Nuking Iran is a possibility that is on the table that would be truly insane, but it’s not ruled out.
This is not just dirt and gravel. This is a deeply buried site dug into the mountain. You cannot destroy that with conventional munitions alone, even the very big “Mother of All Bombs,” the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb that we have.
But you could try to take it out with a tactical nuclear weapon. And we have such tactical nuclear weapons that we could deliver. Either by launch from a missile submarine, where we have now have, thanks to Trump in his first term, small Hiroshima-size nuclear bombs that could be used for this.
We have air-dropped bombs that could be used for this. It’s even unclear whether those bombs would be powerful enough to destroy that much granite, but it’s possible.
People have loosely talked about this in the past. You’ve had people in the MAGA coalition talking about it. So yes, that is a possibility that is on the table that would be truly insane, but it’s not ruled out.”
Ukraine Aid Foreign Deals
Bill: Let’s switch to Ukraine, Joe.
Again, under Donald Trump, our support for Ukraine has been on again, off again. Recently, an agreement by the administration to sell Ukraine patriot missiles, which won’t be there on time, but certainly this waffling support for Ukraine, is this another place where Congress could step up and say, look, we’re on their side, they were invaded, we got to give them whatever help they need to end this war?
Joe: Yes, absolutely. Whether it’s just the House or it’s the House and the Senate, you will see efforts to again aid Ukraine and to get US munitions to Ukraine. For example, Trump has only very recently agreed to once again give them some Patriot missiles, but they haven’t been delivered.
Congress could bring pressure in that area to just get those weapons going. On the flip side of this, you will see efforts to stop the Trump deals with Putin. What’s basically going on right now is Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner are making deals with Putin that take Putin’s side in the war.
They want to end the war in Putin’s favor. They want to pressure Ukraine to give up the 20 percent of the territory that Russia now occupies. And a big part of this scheme is not for some geopolitical gain. Whitcoff and Kushner want to make money off of this.
This feeds into this old general theme we’ll be exploring. US doesn’t really have a foreign policy anymore. It has a Trump policy of grift.
Everything we do now with other nations involves making money. In this case, we now know because of leaks and some very good reporting over the last few weeks, that Whitkoff’s trying to work this deal where US companies aided by Arab sheikdoms would buy Russian oil resources in order to bring Russian oil on the market — and at a very nice profit for the people involved — and bring Putin and the Russian oil industry back into the world markets. Well, Congress doesn’t want to have anything to do with that.
That will be part of both the Ukraine efforts and the general oversight efforts that you’re going to be seeing investigating the deep, deep corruption in all our foreign policy right now. Whether it involves Russia or China or the Middle East, it’s all about a few people making a lot of money. There’s going to be hearings on that.
Even if it’s just the House, there’ll still be hearings if it’s the Senate too. Well, you’ll get double the investigations.
Bill: Yes. In effect, they are making deals which give Putin more money to pursue his war continuous war against Ukraine, which is exact opposite of what the Lindsey Graham sanctions bill signed by Donald Trump would have done. Trump, in fact, basically gutted that bill with his executive order, Joe. This is something Congress could reverse, correct?”
Joe: Absolutely. This will be harder, though, because what happened is that the Congress-passed the bill was supposed to go into effect two weekends ago. But Trump signed a waiver, saying, no, we’re not going to put sanctions on Russia. So, the Congress can override that, but it takes two-thirds of both houses.
Could you get two-thirds? Well, that partially depends on how big a victory Tuesday is. In the House, for example, if the Democrats get 10 seats in the election, then probably not.
But some people are looking at 20, 30 seat gains. So you might have a House with 240 Democrats. They have 214 now, it goes up to 240. Well, that’s a landslide.
Then, you could see everybody recalculating where their interests lie. And the same with the Senate. If you get 50-50, it’s going to be hard.
If you get 52, 53 Democrats, well, it’s not that hard to get another 10, 12, 15 Republicans to come over to your side. You could do it. This will be a fight.
Bill: Right. So Joe, one aspect of the war in Ukraine, which really has troubled me, a couple of weeks ago, the startling, the defense satellite system that Ukraine has been depending on, particularly to defend itself, the Russian drones coming in, was disrupted. Service was disrupted because Elon Musk said they weren’t following the rules or something.
And I saw an interview with Hegseth, where somebody asked him about this, why did the Pentagon allow this to happen? And Hegseth said, well, we’re not in charge. It’s Elon Musk’s decision.
Have we really turned the defense policy of this country over to a private company?
Joe: Yes, we have.
Bill: I mean, it’s unbelievable.
Joe: It is. It is unbelievable that a major defense asset is controlled by an authoritarian oligarch. But that’s what it is.
This used to be something we’d see in the movies. I don’t know if you remember the late 90s film Tomorrow Never Dies, a James Bond film, where the villain was a tech mogul with a communications firm. He owned a global television network. He was like a combination of Ted Turner and Elon Musk.
And, he had a constellation of satellites that turned out to be laser weapons, etc. It gets wild after that.
But that’s the idea behind Musk’s vision of the world. These guys think, no, they’re the rulers of the world. Governments are just bit players. They, the oligarchs, should control things like military forces. We’re going to see a lot of attention to that issue. It’s already happening because our allies are worried about this.
Bill: Yes. Who would make that deal? You never made a deal like that with Lockheed Martin, right, or Boeing, or any of the other defense contractors.
Joe: Well, but this is where we’re going. I mean, look who’s launching our military satellites now. It’s not NASA. It’s not the Air Force. It’s Elon Musk. And so you see the companies are moving in basically to privatize US military capabilities. That’s a very dangerous slope.
Reviving US Foreign Aid
Bill: One other issue before we take a break, Joe. So I don’t know whether you know this, Carolyn and I just got back from a great trip to Egypt and Jordan. We’re in the new library in Alexandria, which is, by the way, worth the trip to the Middle East.
It’s an incredibly beautiful building, just magnificent on the site of the old Wonder of the World Library of Alexandria. And we’re there in the lobby and we’re looking at the list of countries that provided financial support to build this magnificent library. And right on the list is USAID.
And I turned to Carolyn and I said, look at that. USAID. And our guide immediately picked up and she said, yeah, but you know, they killed that. And she said, “This is one of the reasons we always loved the United States because they gave so much support to important cultural, historical, archaeological projects like this.”
So my question is, I think we got more bang for the buck in USAID than any other government program period. Could that have a new life under this Congress, a new Congress?”
Joe: Yes, you were going to see efforts to increase, or I should say restart, US foreign aid for exactly the reason you said. “We loved the United States because of what we did for us.” That is a huge sentiment.
We used to hear it all the time, whether it was cultural assistance, health assistance, bags of grain from Iowa and Kansas being shipped to famine areas. We cut that off. It was incredibly short-sighted.
Elon Musk did that. He took the chainsaw to US foreign aid and in so doing, undercut a major pillar of US strength in the world, the so-called soft power, the goodwill we get, the relations that people want to have with us because they get something out of it directly. They get aid they desperately need.
That’s not lost on the US.Congress. If the Senate goes Democratic as well, and Chris Murphy is the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, bang, you’re going to see major efforts to get that going again. Meaning, they will pass bills that will fund that aid and then fight with Donald Trump to get him to sign them.
Bill: Okay, on that point, Joe, we’re going to take a quick break and then come back to some of the other foreign policy hotspots we haven’t talked about yet, including a recent election in Israel. We’ll be right back.
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Bill: I’m back on today’s podcast. Delighted to welcome back our good friend, Joe Cirincione, national security analyst, former head of the Ploughshares Fund. We’re talking about the global impacts of the midterm elections here in the United States, with at least one House of Congress and maybe both going to Democratic control.
So Joe, let’s talk about the election in Israel. Bibi Netanyahu didn’t lose.
He didn’t win either. Gadi Eisenkot, he didn’t win. He didn’t lose either.”
Is either party going to be able to put together a new government? And if so, do you think Gadi will get the first shot by President Herzog and the first chance to do so?
Joe: Right. President Herzog is having conversations with all of these politicians this week, and he will pick who gets the first shot at forming a new government, and then he will give them approximately a month to try to do that, with including extensions that might be possible. The best shot is really Eisenkot, and he has a clear path to doing it. If he’s willing to treat the Arab voters as genuine members of the democracy that Israel says it has.
Because with Eisenkot’s coalition and what they call the Joint List, the Arab parties there, they’re more than enough to form a majority in the government. [To form a majority requires 60 seats in the Knesset. Eisenkot’s opposition coalition has 48; the Arab-led parties have 19; Netanyahu has 53.]
And that would also be a tremendous advance for Israel in starting to come to terms with the problem it has between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, including the 2 million Arab Israeli citizens living inside Israel proper that get to vote.
So, you could do that, but it’s a huge risk, because there’s so much, well, anti-Palestinian sentiment among the Jewish voters. I’m not sure they want to let those Palestinians have a role in the ruling coalition. That’s the fight.
My prediction, we’re going to end up there, because as far as I can see, it’s the only viable way to do that.
The only other path is the so-called unity government, where Eisenkot would agree to rule with Netanyahu and allow Netanyahu to begin prime minister again. And I just don’t think… I think that’s a bridge too far for Eisenkot. I don’t think he’ll do it.
Bill: What impact do you think that Bibi has had on what we’re seeing, which is on many sides, an erosion of traditional support for Israel here in the United States has certainly played out in these midterm elections, all due to Bibi?
What you’re going to see in the new Congress, even if it’s just the House, is an effort to bring weapons aid to Israel in line with US law. Meaning ,we don’t supply weapons to countries that are committing war crimes.
Joe: Absolutely. Both his failure to prevent the October 7th attack, his scheming over the years to basically help Hamas in order to divide the Palestinian leadership, so there wouldn’t be a negotiating partner on the other side of the table. But most importantly, it’s the war crimes that he has committed in response to the horrific massacre.
You and I talked about this many times, Bill. After Israel was attacked in October 7th, the world was with Israel, the sentiment was with Israel. Joe Biden went over there and embraced Netanyahu. But he warned him not to make the same mistake we did after the September 11th attack, not to go on a war of revenge. But that’s exactly what he did, and it’s been more horrific than I think any of us have anticipated.
You can call it genocide, you can call it war crimes, you can just call it a slaughter of innocents. But the US Congress is going to put a stop to that.
What you’re going to see in the new Congress, even if it’s just the House, is an effort to bring weapons aid to Israel in line with US law. Meaning ,we don’t supply weapons to countries that are committing war crimes.
We don’t give weapons to countries that are violating human rights.
Whatever you think about Israel’s policy, they clearly are doing both of those things, and you’re going to see a sharp reduction, and maybe even a cutoff of US military aid to Israel. That is going to happen in the new Congress.
Bill: Wow. That would be a major shift, right?
Joe: It’s because of what they did. It’s not anti-Semitism. This isn’t about Jews. This is about war crimes. This is about killing 25,000 children in Palestine, killing 11,000 women in Palestine. Those people are not Hamas.
They’re innocent victims, and if you’ve seen the movie, Naza, you know it was intentional.
Bill: Yeah. In fact, the scenes that we’ve seen recently, right, about actions in the West Bank in Palestine, right, where the settlers are just destroying homes of Palestinian residents. Last week, they’re interfering with the harvesting, the olives, right, even people just out there doing their jobs, taking care of their property.
Joe: Exactly. The hard-line ministers, Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, talk about this openly. They want to force the Palestinians out of the West Bank.
This is not about security for Israel. This is about occupying the land. They’ve wanted to do this for decades, and now they see their chance. They’re taking the Gaza War tactics and they’re bringing them to the West Bank. They want to cleanse those lands of Palestinians so Israel can, in their view, regain Biblical ownership of that property.
It’s an insane strategy, but that’s what they’re doing, and they’ve been getting away with it. This election might be the beginning of US efforts to stop that from happening, to protect the innocents there from the settler violence.
Global Political Trends
Bill: So Joe, again, as you indicated, you and I have talked foreign policy many times on this podcast and over lunch and dinner for a long time. Both of us were concerned, not just the two of us, but many people concerned, about what seemed like a global shift toward right-wing politics, Trumpism worldwide.
The tide comes in, the tide goes out.
And yet lately, Joe, tell me if I’m wrong, you’ve got Hungary goes the other way, right? Serbia recently going the other way. Brazil going the other way. Is there a sea change happening? Are we reading too much into it?
What do you think?
Joe: The tide comes in, the tide goes out. The tide is going out on global authoritarianism. For the last 15 or 20 years, we’ve seen a rise of authoritarianism, of nationalism, and it’s sweeping the world.
This is how Trump sees the world. Why does he want to have a meeting in a few weeks with Putin and Xi of China? Because that’s the way he sees the world. Those are the key blocs, three big spheres of influence, three strong men controlling their country.
That is not US policy. That is not the way we’ve governed the world for the last 80 years, but it’s been heading that way under Trump.
Now we see reversals. Lula’s surprise victory in Brazi. The ending of a 14-year authoritarian government in Serbia Viktor Orban thrown out in Hungary. These countries, Hungary and Serbia in particular, are what they call competitive authoritarianism, meaning there’s authoritarian governments, but there’s still elections, and there’s still some freedoms there.
You could say America’s has that system, too. Timothy Snyder, the famous Yale professor of history, would call America a competitive authoritarian state. I agree with that.
So there’s still elections. Now, we’re going to see those elections and we’re going to see the results they have.
This is what happens when you have rulers who are trying to implement a full authoritarian state but are not yet there. And they have failed to deliver the goods for the people. Their promises are being exposed as empty.
That’s what we see now. You see it here domestically. You see it in Brazil. You see it in Europe.
I don’t want to get carried away. I don’t want to say this is the beginning of the end of authoritarianism. But as both Barack Obama and John Ossoff said at that wonderful rally they had last week in Georgia, this could be the beginning. “This election,” Obama said, “might just mark the moment when we begin to leave our worst impulses behind and start aligning our politics with our highest ideals.”
This is where we start the reversal. This is where we start the correction.
There’s so much more hanging on this US election than just which party controls the Congress. It’s what kind of government do we have? What kind of governments are we helping to establish around the world?
Bill: And it’s basically who we are as Americans, correct? And are we people that they can count on anymore, Joe? And I think you and I talked about this before.
In Europe, we have seen, and in Canada, right, a trend of more and more people saying, you can’t trust the United… Certainly, you can’t trust Donald Trump, but you can’t trust the United States anymore. And it seems to be that they’re ready to assert a little more leadership and independence of their own and not counting on us to lead the way.
Do you read it that way?
Joe: Absolutely. And that is going to continue no matter who wins the election because they don’t trust the United States. So, okay, you might have one good election, but they’ve been there, seen that.
Right?
So, you can’t trust it, which is why what’s happening with Europe and Canada is so interesting. I don’t know if you noticed, but over the weekend, Mark Carney, who many people now consider the leader of the free world, (it’s not us anymore) agreed to become an associate member of the European Union. The European Union is European countries.
Bill: (laughs) Yeah, right.
Joe: Right? And here we are with Canada, the largest country in North America. And they’re saying, look, man, we can’t trust the United States anymore. We have to make these other alliances with like-minded people.
Carney clearly articulates this. In his speech at Davos earlier this year, he talked about the middle powers forming their own alliances, taking their own control, because you can’t leave it to the great powers, to China, to Russia, to the United States.
And that is a trend that’s happening. And you saw it also in the G20 meeting. This is something that most people probably didn’t pay attention to. The foreign ministers of the G20, the 20 largest economies in the world, met in the United States last week. And Donald Trump invited Russia back into it. So Foreign Minister Lavrov comes.
The other foreign ministers refused to take the group portrait, sometimes called the family portrait, with Lavrov. So they couldn’t stop him from coming, but they didn’t want to be with him. They didn’t want to validate him.
Countries are beginning to stand up. It’s happening now. More independence from the United States, more independent action, more willingness to criticize Trump directly or indirectly. And that will only grow after the election.
Bill: Right. So Joe, given all that we’ve talked about, right, from Iran to Ukraine, to authoritarianism around the world, to what happened in Israel, how important are these midterm elections today in determining the future direction of the United States?”
Election Significance for Tariffs
Joe: They could not be more important. I know people have said this, but this is the most important election of our lifetimes. And you and I, Bill, have had long lifetimes.
So, this is critical for US domestic policy, for our constitutional rule of government, and for the global international order. There’s a lot hanging on this.
And we haven’t even talked about tariffs, which is the other thing the Democrats can do, which have a huge impact on our trade policy anda huge impact on what our foreign relations are.
You’re going to see determined efforts to repeal those tariffs, motivated primarily to provide relief to the taxpayers who are paying this tax. A tariff is a tax. But also to try to bring some sense and sensibility to our foreign relations with our closest neighbors, including Canada.
Bill: Tariffs — where the Constitution clearly gives the power to Congress and not to the President of the United States.
Joe: Article One. They know where the power lies. Who has the power of the purse, who has the power to level taxes? It is not the President, it’s the Congress.
Bill: Joe, before we let you go, I have to ask you this. You’ve been a staff member on Capitol Hill. I was a staff member in the California State Legislature. If someone that you worked for suddenly endorsed a member of the opposite party who is running for office in your state, how would you handle it ?
Joe: I would have done exactly what Haley Stevens’ staff did while they were waiting for her at the Unity rally.
The Chief of Staff was there, Communications Director was there, they were waiting for her to show up and show unity, and she goes to another black church, uses it as a prop to back MAGA Mike Rogers. As Chuck Schumer said, an outright “betrayal.” As Nancy Pelosi said, “horrific” action.
And it’s done something very, very interesting. Number one, whatever she thought she was going to do. By the way, I forgot, I would have done what her staff did, which is resign.
Bill: Yeah, right. A Chief of Staff who’s worked for her for eight years resigned on the spot. Okay.
Haley Stevens has also discredited this faction in the party. They are seen as small and petty and elevating this one issue above all the other issues facing the American people.
Joe: They quit, and you’re now hearing stories come out from former staffers about the relationship she’s had with AIPAC. Some of her staff are saying that she was bought and sold by AIPAC, etc.
I think in her mind, she was standing up for this heroic pro-Israel faction of the Democratic Party, was going to stand up against this Muslim radical. But what’s it’s done is unite the party like never before around Abdul El-Sayed.
He raised over $2.4 million on Sunday. The volunteers flocked into Democratic headquarters to volunteer, go door knocking for him. The party is now united around Abdul in a way that I never thought was going to happen.
She’s also discredited this faction in the party. It’s always going to be there. So you’re always going to have Democrats who take this line.
But now they’re seen as small and petty and elevating this one issue above all the other issues that face the American public and saying, no, no, no, forget reproductive rights, forget healthcare, forget your cost of living, forget the price of gas. No, no, this is the issue where I draw the line. That is not a winning position.
Bill: And two days ago, she was on CNN saying, I am voting absolutely right down, straight down the Democratic ticket, right? Right. Yeah.
Yeah. So it rebounds.
Joe: So clearly, you can’t trust anything she says, and that’s going to fall over into other people who hold those same positions, who say those same things. You’re not going to trust them.
Bill: But here’s the good news, Joe. Abdul El-Sayed was endorsed yesterday by Bruce Springsteen. Now, I think anybody would say that his endorsement is worth a hell of a lot more than any endorsement by Haley Stevens.
Joe: There aren’t going to be many people talking about Haley Stevens on Wednesday, but I bet Bruce Springsteen is going to be celebrating.
Bill: Indeed. Joe Cirincione, boy, I feel better about the world. I feel better about how things are going, having talked to you.
Thank you so much for all your great work over the years, and thank you for joining us today on The Bill Press Pod, and let’s hope everything comes out the way you think it will. Thanks, Joe.
Joe: The times, they are changing. Pleasure to be with you, Bill. Thank you.
Bill: Thanks so much. And there we go. A great big thank you to Joe Cirincione.
I always love having him on the podcast because he’s so good, knows foreign policy so well, and just tells it like it is. And thanks to all of you for joining us as well.
