Ben Rhodes on America's Changing Role in a Changed World

For our final episode of the season, we present a conversation with Ben Rhodes recorded at in Washington, D.C. at the end of May. Democracy Works is going on summer break. We'll be back with new episodes in September!

The Democracy Group's first live podcast recording featuring foreign policy expert and fellow podcaster Ben Rhodes  in conversation with Kamy Akhavan of Let's Find Common Ground and Stephanie Gerber Wilson of Freedom Over Fascism about America’s place on the world stage and how the health of American democracy impacts other democracies around the world. They also discuss how podcasting can shape messaging and narrative in a fractured media environment.

About Ben Rhodes

Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, and The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World. His work has also been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs.  

From 2009-2017, Rhodes served as a speechwriter and Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. In that role, he led the secret negotiations with the Cuban government that resulted in the effort to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba.

To learn more about each of the featured podcasts, visit the Shows page at democracygroup.org/shows.

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Jenna Spinelle
Good evening, everyone. We're going to ahead and get started. I've been told this is a town where people like events to start and end on time. So we're going to try to keep to that here tonight. My name is Jenna Spinelle. I'm the founder of the democracy group Podcast Network, which is the organizer of tonight's events and part of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. We are so thrilled to be here at the USC capital campus for tonight's conversation with Ben Rhodes on America's changing role in a changed world. So the democracy group is a network of about 18 podcasts, all devoted to democracy, civic engagement and simple discourse. You might have already learned a little bit about us when you were registering for tonight's event, but if you haven't, I encourage you to check out our member shows, many of whom are in the room tonight, so they would be happy to tell you all about their podcast if they haven't already. And tonight's conversation will be recorded and put out as a live as a recording on the democracy groups podcast feed as well, as I hope, on some of our member shows as well. So stay tuned for all of that, you can sign up for the democracy group's newsletter to be notified when that is made available. I'd also like to thank the Louis raken foundation for the funding to support tonight's event and to help us bring Ben in for this conversation. So we have quite the lineup for you here on stage. Two of the hosts will be leading the conversation. Let me introduce them before I introduce the main speaker as well. So seated furthest from me is Kamy Akhavan, who is managing director of the USC Dornsife center for the political future, and one of the reasons we're all sitting here today at USC, so thank you Kami for the connection there. The center's podcast is, let's find common ground, and it's hosted by veteran political strategist Mike Murphy and Bob Shurm. Kami is the former CEO of procon.org the nation's leading source of non partisan research on controversial issues. He writes and speaks on numerous topics, including the oranges, the origins of and solutions to political polarization, improving interpersonal communication, the power of debate, civics, education, and how to teach controversial issues. And then seated in the middle is Stephanie Gerber Wilson, the creator of freedom over fascism, which is a podcast and sub stack that you should all subscribe to. She has more than 25 years of strategic communications experience, including positions as the director of communications for a state representative and co founder of a nonprofit to strengthen democracy in Indiana. She holds a PhD in history, and her research focused on how present day ideology reflects understanding of the past. And last but certainly not least, we have Ben Rhodes. Ben is a writer, political commentator, national security analyst and a fellow podcaster. He is the author of The New York Times bestsellers after the fall being American in the world we've made and the world as it is a memoir of the Obama White House. He is co host of pod save the world. And his work has been published in outlets including the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the New York Times and foreign affairs from 2009 to 2017 he served as a speech writer and deputy national security adviser to President Obama. In that capacity, he participated in all of President Obama's key decisions, oversaw President's National Security communications and public diplomacy, and led secret negotiations with the Cuban government that resulted in the effort to normalize relations between the US and Cuba. So quite the panel we have for you today with that, I will turn it over to Kamy to kick things off. 

Kamy Akhavan
Thank you. Jenna, for a very generous introduction. We are thrilled to have all of you join us here today. Before I get started, let me just ask. How many folks in the room are USC alum or USC affiliated? There's the fight on hands. All right. Good to see you. Good to see so many old friends and new friends. How many of you are listeners of the Ben Rhodes great podcast, pod, save the world? Oh, look at that. Most of the hands in the room went up for that. That's good. Well, well, we're thrilled that you're all here, folks, and we're very grateful to the democracy group podcast Coalition for putting on today's event. And you are going to be able to hear this lay. And rekindle the tremendous memories that you're going to form tonight when you listen to this podcast on democracy group, including on the center for the political futures podcast, let's find common ground and Stephanie Wilson's freedom over fascism. The gist of the questions that we're going to go over today are roughly in three areas. Number one is, what the hell is going on? Number two is, how bad is it really? And number three is what can realistically be done about that. So thanks to Stephanie, I have the privilege of asking question number one. And the question is, really, it's a follow up from your book Ben, which is, what is the state of democracy globally? Have you seen their strength rising or falling since you wrote your brilliant book after the fall, and what is driving those changes?

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, well, look, it's great to be here. We flew all the way across the country to have a conversation in Washington. I look it's funny. My last book was about essentially the authoritarian playbook. And I think the jumping off point for me was I wanted to profile different authoritarian playbooks around the world, and one of them was going to be Viktor orbans in Hungary. And I met a young Hungarian anti corruption activist. There's a lot of corruption in Hungary, so he had a lot of work to do. And I said to him, I said, How did Viktor Orban transform your country from a liberal democracy to essentially single party, kind of soft autocracy in a decade? And he said, Well, that's simple. Orban got elected in a right wing populist backlash to the financial crisis and globalization, he packed the courts in Hungary with far right judges who would find in favor of his power grabs. He redrew the parliamentary districts to entrench his party in power and de legitimized his opposition. He changed the voting laws to make it easier for his supporters to vote, harder for his opponents to vote. He enriched some cronies through corruption, who then financed his politics. He changed the civil society laws to punish civil society that he didn't like and favor civil society that he did. He had people buy up the media and turn it into kind of right wing propaganda. He used social media kind of demoralize his opponents and troll them, and he wrapped it all up in an us versus them. Message us, the real Hungarians against them, the immigrants, the Muslims, the liberal elites, George Soros, and this was in 2019 and I remember thinking, Well, that sounds familiar. And the reason I say that is that we have these conversations about whether there's democratic backsliding. It's already happened like we are on the other side of democratic backsliding in this country and around the world. The predominant trend in global politics is towards this kind of corrupt, transactional, strongman politics. Trump is actually very aligned with the direction of politics in the world, more so than his opponents in this country. Some of that is because of Trump, and some of that is because of how Trump has stepped into like what was already a trend. And I think that the why I would just say is that I do think that there were these body blows to the system of globalization, the financial crisis, prominent among them, where people fundamentally lost faith in the systems that were governing their lives, and they looked to the far right for a populism that was a familiar identity for them, right the the ultimate, most traditional form of politics is tribal identity, politics, us versus them politics, and so that the kind of anger and sense of backlash was captured by a certain flavor of, I'd say, far right politics and large parts of the world. At the same time that the Chinese model, which is different and is obviously rooted in a different tradition was gaining traction in parts of the developing world as well. Wait a second, maybe that's a better way for us to organize our societies than what the Americans have been selling all these years. And so those two forces within democracies, this kind of state capture, is happening at the same time that the Chinese are also offering an alternative model that is also gaining traction, and there's kind of been this almost convergence, in the sense that the enemy of both those forces is liberal democracy and liberal democracy and liberal Democrats. When I say liberal, I don't necessarily mean left. I just mean liberal. I. Um, were kind of made to wear the clothes of globalization. Even though we weren't responsible for a lot of things that made people angry, I would actually argue that the right was more responsible for certainly, you know, open free trade agreements and and the Iraq War and some of the things that obviously generated anger we as the defenders of democracy became defenders of a system that had lost a constituency.

Stephanie Gerber Wilson 
So so this is a worldwide trend, and you talked about both the Orban model and the Chinese model, but there have been several elections in the last couple of weeks. Do any of the elections which seem to show some sort of backlash, at least, against Trump? Does that change the calculus in any way?

Ben Rhodes
It does a little bit. And I should say, like, what's interesting about this model is that, I mean, actually, I taught a class at USC a few years ago where each week we did a different autocrat, and it was meant to go through the how the playbooks are similar, but slightly different flavors. And we did Orban Putin Trump. We also did Modi and Netanyahu and Erdogan and Bolsonaro, right, and and reason that's important is that that's global. That's not just Europe and the US, right? That's, that's in every part of the world. And we did the Chinese, so we did eight autocrats. I say that to make the point that we have to understand this as a as a global phenomenon that takes a certain form in, you know, the US and Europe. What I'd say is, if you look at the recent elections, what I find hopeful about them, and I'll highlight three of them, Canada, Australia and Romania. And really I think Canada and Australia are the most analogous to the United States, is that sure some of that was in Canada. They didn't want to get invaded and annexed, and so, you know, they kind of stood up behind the person that was most aggressively challenging that in the Mark Carney. But I think more interestingly, in both Canada and Australia, and in Romania, you had very kind of Trump adjacent people running for office, right Pierre poilievre, in Canada, had kind of taken on some of that strong man, you know, in a very Canadian way. But, you know, he was, he was not a conventional Canadian conservative. He was a more of a, you know, shake it up, anti system guy and came out got a lot of traction out of the kind of anti lockdown movements, right? And COVID obviously played a big role in this. And I think part of what informed Canadians and Australians, based on some my conversations, is not just fear of Trump, but fear of selecting a Trump like, person like, oh, wait a second. Do we really want to do this? Looks pretty chaotic in the United States. That looks kind of scary. What's happening United States? And so I do think there's a bit of a reconsideration. I'm angry. I'm actually pretty angry at these center left or social democratic parties. But maybe this isn't the answer. So I don't take those victories as big validations of kind of my brand of social democratic global politics, but I do take them as a sign that people are looking at this and thinking, maybe we don't want to do this. And if there's one, to kind of hint at the second category and maybe the third, the first time we did not get the full Trump experience. We got Donald Trump's Twitter feed, and we got a pretty conventional Republican administration, right? So you've got Reince Priebus and John Kelly, Chief of Staff, and Mattis and Tillerson. It's Defense and State and HR McMaster, NSC and and you got a big tax cut written by members of congress this time around the government is not those this time around is it's the full Trump experience, and it's the full authoritarian playbook. It's targeting law firms and universities and civil society. It's widespread corruption as a norm. It's bullying of the media. It's, you know, hounding of political opponents. And so we're going to get the full experience this time, and that full experience is more likely we didn't get it swing back. I mean, I don't think Joe Biden would have won the last election absent a pandemic. Even with that, he, like, barely eked out a victory. It wasn't like a correction. And if we can withstand four years, and I'm obviously speaking from a partisan perspective here, I think the possibility of a swing in a different direction in this country and in other parts of the world is much greater than last time, because we're going to go through the full experience. The question is, do. Or are we still here after that experience?

Kamy Akhavan
Will it be, will it be too little, too late and and to that, to the extent of the whether you see it as a good or a bad of that full experience, can we recover from it? And I'm thinking specifically about something I've heard folks talking about our it's our, our international agreements, it's looking at long standing alliances through organizations like NATO, and seeing those kinds of large party alliances be less relevant, if at all, relevant than bilateral agreements that are brand new and being forced to be re examined and re engineered and renegotiated, and I wonder, from your point of view, whether or not those kinds of bilateral agreements can achieve what the Trump administration hopes they can achieve, where we can, in his view, correct some historic wrongs against the United States and balance the playing field, or is it doing major damage to international alliances and not helping our foreign policy at all.

Ben Rhodes
I think what's interesting to me about Trump is like I share some of his diagnosis of the creakiness and outdated nature of the international system and of aspects of US foreign policy, particularly kind of us, interventionism, my diagnoses just lead in completely different direction than his. But, I mean, he is like a hurricane that's going to come through and blow all the houses down, and we're going to have to rebuild from a new place. And I guess what I'd say is that, like Trump is been a massive accelerant. You know, the US led order, rules based order. When I was in the White House for eight years, you could feel it, you know, the seams were popping on it. You know, the Russians were trying to destroy it. The Chinese were trying to build their alternative to it. It was increasingly the US and kind of our like minded countries, Global South. Countries were kind of shopping like on some issues we work with the Chinese and others with the American Americans, Trump has been a massive accelerant to that just kind of coming apart. And I don't think in four years it's going to be there in any way that is recognizable to us, even today, right. There may be a NATO on paper, but it's not going to be the same. You know, center of activity in security space between the US and other we, we may very well annex NATO territory from, you know, Greenland in the next four years, right? So this is going to change in terms of the bilateralism. I mean, I think what Trump is is he's entirely and those who listen to podcast know I'm not just coming up with this take after the recent trip he went on. I've been saying this for a while, like he's an entirely transactional person, and he wants a transaction to be between two parties that both makes it very easy for him to serve his own personal interests, financial interests, and I don't think you can underestimate the importance of those. And there's plenty of evidence this is not an alarmist thing. You've got Emiratis paying $2 billion for Trump coin, the Qataris gifting in Air Force One Eric Trump going to Vietnam, which is under threat of tariff, and collecting over a billion dollars for Trump properties like this is happening. This is not me like surmising. It's happening. But also, I think he fundamentally believes that we can kind of pressure these countries into buying more of our stuff and and that will have a positive benefit. I don't think that's the case, because there are alternatives for these countries. And sure, they'll try to manage through Trump, but they'll hedge in the direction of China, I think in particular, in the medium and long term. And so they'll kind of try to keep Trump at bay over here, you know, give Eric Trump a billion dollars for some Trump coin. I think tonight there's a dinner that people had to pay a certain amount of money if Trump meme coins to have dinner with him, like that kind of stuff will be happening. They may agree to buy more of our, you know, widgets, but they're going to start to realign some of their trade and supply chains away from the US to other to China or at other places. So I think if we get to the other side of this and and whether, by the way, whether it's a Democrat or even a Republican, I mean, because I actually don't think I mean, Trump is pretty distinct, there's going to be a hollowed out government, right? We don't have a development agency. We're shouting personnel across the US government. We don't we won't have these alliances in the same way, the opportunity in that is to build them differently. And I think where I've been critical of the Democratic Party, including the Biden administration, is there was kind of this desire to run it back, you know, like play the old hits, you know, like, talk about NATO a lot, you know, that's not where anybody is, you know. And and so some of the young people in the room who I was talking to, like, when I was a young person going into this field in Washington, you know, 25 years ago, you. I was going to operate within a set of institutions. Young people today are going to have to actually imagine a new US government and a new set of international institutions and a new set and I believe, a new set of negotiations with the Chinese and other countries about what international order replaces ours, on climate, on technology, on nuclear weapons, on the main issues, we're going to have to renegotiate the terms of international order.

Stephanie Gerber Wilson 
So I've been thinking a lot about lately, and one of my recent interviews was talking about imagination and how we have to kind of bypass the limits of what has been to create something new. What do you do? You think that beyond college students and lone voices here and there, there is enough energy toward creating something new if we get through the next several years to create both a new beneficial United States and international order?

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I think there has to be, like, it's a necessity. I mean, this system, this society that we're living in is just kind of not working like it should. And I think we're kind of all aware of that, you know, think we all have friends or family members who work more than one job and like cannot, literally cannot get by, right? I think we see billionaires and tech companies becoming more and more powerful, while people feel less and less empowered. I think we're looking at a world order in which we are tolerating a degree of risk, not to use, like a financial term, but like there's wars going on all over the world right now. Like there's a major war in Europe right now. There's a major war in the Middle East. There's a war waiting to happen in the Taiwan Strait, like there's just this is not sustainable, right? This model, and to kind of jump ahead to the alarmism, usually there's like a World War that happens. And I was gonna be my next question, then we rebuild the system and or there's like a Great Depression Scale, kind of financial crisis, and then we do a new deal, you know? And so I do, I think that feeling that we all have is foreboding, even Trump voters who kind of see Trump as a disruptive event that might get us to some different future we are in. We are in an age of disruption right now. Like the question is, is that, like the 1930s or like the early 20th century, before something really bad happened, or can we kind of manage through it without that shock to get to the other end? Either way, we are going to have to reimagine what American identity is. We're gonna have to it's not sustainable to just have this big of a different disagreement about what who is American and what it means to be American. We have to reimagine an economy with AI poised to do massive job displacement, and we have to reimagine a social safety net that can exist in a world in which people can expect to work one job their whole lives these things. And we have to reimagine how countries interact at a time when China is going to rise and or already has, and there there's increasing centers of power around the world. And so to me, the question is not whether that will happen, it's whether that will only happen after it gets much, much worse, or whether we can kind of be on a plane that's going through a bunch of turbulence until we kind of hit like some clear air. 

Kamy Akhavan
Well, you talk about a lot of the maybe there's opportunity and chaos, and maybe there's a lot of Dysfunctional Systems anyway. I mean, who was happy with income inequality gap and all these other things that we can point to and say things weren't good then either? Right? And so you said he's going to come and the hurricane will destroy all the houses so and I also hear what you're saying, Stephanie, you're saying that you asked about opportunity and whether there's hope and optimism. And you're saying, then that maybe the mother of invention, not hope or optimism, but creativity and ingenuity and imagination, maybe it comes from necessity, like you're saying. But what I wanted to understand a little more closely is, is the global backlash to what Trump is doing from other countries who are looking at these other alternatives. They're looking at China, they're looking at authoritarian regimes and thinking, you know, maybe, like you said, shopping around the global backlash. To Trump. I wonder how much of that is going to stick to the United States, regardless of who is the next leader. Is it an anti Trump sentiment, or is it turning into an anti American feeling, and regardless of which one you think it is, how do you think that affects our national security and our global power?

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I want to say, I'm going to, I'm going to try to appeal to your common ground work. One, I don't know if it's hopeful, but one opportunity is it's kind of interesting to me. There is a, there's an element of the Trump voter that I have a I share a lot of their critiques, not the ones that I think become more identity based or racialized, but the ones that are like these systems don't work. So let's just try I understand the Obama, Trump voter that makes total sense to me, like we ran. I mean, the campaign. I mean, if you think about every election since, like George Bush is re election 2004 was somebody running and saying, this whole system is totally broken and we need change. That was Obama no eight. That was Obama in 12, and that was Trump in 16, and and Joe Biden was again. That was a kind of weird election, right? But the point is that, like, we, one consistent message American voters are delivered is we don't like this system, and they don't like income inequality, and they don't like we're I could, I'll spare you the you know, complaining of like, wow, Trump's not the answer to that. But anyway, that's a hopeful point in terms of the system. As I travel a lot around the world. I engage a lot with people internationally in politics and civil society, and I can tell you that it is going to stick to the United States this time. And what everybody said to me in the first Trump term is like, we're waiting to see if this is an aberration. But when you do it twice, you know when you select this knowing full he said what he was going to do. I mean, everything he's done with some weird, eccentric exceptions. You know, he ran on mass deportations. He ran on tariffs. So it's, I mean, people might have thought, well, he's not actually going to do that. But if you're in one of these other countries, just to kind of give you a few examples, Denmark, no Ally has done more for Ukraine in terms of as a proportion of their military than Denmark. They gave all, all of their shells to Ukraine, all of them, 100% of the kind of short range artillery that is sustaining that fight, only to then find the United States wanting to whatever you think of Denmark's claim on Greenland, have their ally that asked them to do that now wanting to take their territory. And that's you know, all the European countries feel like this rug pull has happened to them. How would you like to be African and watch that spectacle in the oval office yesterday where the president of South Africa has to sit there and have like, a presentation made to him about, like, white genocide, that is just not happening. What message are you going to take from that we have these debates in this country, like, Is Trump racist or not? Like, that's not a real question for people in South Africa today, is it, you know? I mean, and that's something that is seen not just by South Africans, it's seen across that continent. If you are in Vietnam, and you literally did free trade agreements with the United States, and we encouraged you to reassure the production of Apple watches and Nike shoes from China to Vietnam as part of our strategy of dealing with China, and then you get a 49% tariff put on you because of the trade deficit, because you do the things that we asked you to do. These countries don't believe that they can rely on us, and they think we're totally hypocritical. They like I said, we're not going to see like, what is hard to explain to people is, of course, their leaders come and they try to say nice things to Trump. That does not mean that that's what they're saying when they go home. And so what it's going to mean is, I think you're going to have, I mean, if you look at what China's done economically, they're ahead of us on clean energy. They have their own AI like they have all the critical minerals sustain certain important supply chains on energy and medicine and other things like these countries are just going to start to kind of reallocate their economies in the direction of China. Or the Europeans will look to India, or they'll they'll form alternative trading blocs. They'll start to de dollarize. I mean, not to be too nerdy here, but like the dollars reserve currency. You want to know how we're allowed to run up trillions of dollars in debt, it's because other countries buy US Treasuries, and we like the trade deficits that Trump complains about. That's our credit card. The trade deficit is a credit card. It's what allows us to. Consume more than we produce. And if these countries move away from the dollar, that could all fall apart for us, and suddenly you think standard of living aren't good in this country now, like, wait until that happens, right? And so what I worry about is this kind of realignment of the global economy and geopolitics that is not going to be evident next year. And like, this is the, you know, as a Democrat, like we came in after the financial crisis, the next president is going, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, is going to inherit this. And it's, it's, it's not going to be pretty.

Stephanie Gerber Wilson 
So given this, how do you see, what if we separate domestic policy and foreign policy, which you really can't but if we were to, what would the United States, assuming we got, you know, less crazy need to do in order to build up trust again from our present former allies?

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I think. And first of all, the reason the US will never even five years, 10 years, we're still going to be really important. Our military is so far ahead of anybody else's. Our global presence, our innovation like there are going to be assets that we have as we reimagine this future. I think that, and I was talking to some Democrats about this today, but like, first of all, I think we have to eliminate the artificial barrier between domestic and foreign policy. It's been very bad, I think, for the United States and for the Democratic Party in particular, that it's like, well, that it's like, well, we have these we talk about things a certain way at home, and then there's this whole other language we speak abroad, and this whole other set of issues. No, I actually think that the basic things that people the small d Democrats should care about in this country should guide our approach to the world. We believe, and actually, Trump has helped, helpfully clarified what you when you fall back and you peel the whole system back, what do we really want and need? We need laws. We need rules that people follow, and not rules that only apply to some people. And if you're Elon Musk, there are no rules that apply to you, right? We need fairness. Like this is a word I keep trying to, like, introduce more a sense of fairness. People don't think that this economy in this country is fair. Countries around the world don't think that the system around the world is fair. We need to see diversity as fundamental strength of the United States. And this is an argument that I'm sorry, like Democrats are going to have to make and not hide from. And that doesn't mean, you know, woke ideology. It just means saying the fact that the world is globalized, the fact that we are comprised of people who come from every part of the world is a huge advantage for us, like everybody's here, like somebody is here from everywhere or in the world, and that is good for us. That makes us smarter, that makes us more interesting. Imagine how boring our culture would be if it was just white people in this country, right? Like they're running our largest businesses. Yeah, yeah. Look who's running. You know, I my one private sector thing is with Microsoft. Satya Nadella is like the best tech CEO. And so the point is that we have to kind of defend these basics of if we want a system where everybody follows the same rules, everybody's treated fairly, and diversity is a good thing. That's how I would like to steal my worldview and that can inform your domestic politics, and it needs to inform your foreign policy. And we have to kind of go the extra mile to treat people fairly and to treat people with respect and respect the diversity of their systems and beliefs, and to follow rules instead of, as the United States has done for a long time, say that there's one set of rules for every country in the world, they usually don't apply to us.

Kamy Akhavan
Well, let me ask a question that maybe touches on some some issues of fairness, and I want to pivot to the Middle East, and I will not ask you about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I won't ask you about the US religion you want with, with Saudi Arabia. I won't even ask you about Qatari jets. What I am curious about is Syria. You called balls and strikes on that one and said, credit to the Trump administration for some action in Syria. I'm wondering if you can explain what it was that you thought was a win for the United States with Syria policy. 

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, well, this is actually a good example of the kind of opening of like using a different kind of imagination and treating people fairly. So, I mean, the short version is, right, like the US has a massive amount of sanctions that were put in place on Syria. When Assad was President, we sanctioned the Assad regime for being a murderous de. Tater ship that was imprisoning its own people. And even the name, the name of the legislation, the Caesar Act, is named after a photographer who smuggled out 1000s of pictures from inside Syria's military prisons. We have a insurgency that successfully oust the Assad regime. It is led by someone who fought with al Qaeda in Iraq, and was, you know, in league with every form of extremist group in Syria as Would anybody who was in the Syrian opposition be? Anybody who tells you differently, like, I read all the Intel, like there was not some, you know what, when you're fighting a dictator, you don't ask the person next to you, you know, whether they're an ISIS or not, you just fight with them. And this guy has basically tried to say the right things and do the right things since he's become the de facto leader of Syria. Ahmed al Shara or not, de facto, he's the leader of Syria now. And yet, the Biden administration kept all the sanctions in place, and we're like, well, we're going to use those as leverage to pressure them to make sure that they're treating everybody fairly, and they're pluralistic, and they're democratic and all these things, to me, that's insane, because first of all, if those sanctions are in place, not $1 of investment can go into Syria, not $1 This is a country in which 90% of the people are in Extreme poverty. A lot of the infrastructure is destroyed, and there are Gulf Arabs who are ready to write really big checks to fix all that stuff. Qatar was willing to pay the salaries of everybody in the Syrian government, but they couldn't because of US sanctions and and the reason that people don't do this is they're afraid Well, what if, like, I get criticized because this guy was once in Al Qaeda. Or what if five years from now, he ends up being a bad guy, and then they'll say, Why did you do this? This is the kind of mindset in the American national security establishment that drives me absolutely insane, because you put sanctions in place for a reason. That reason is fulfilled. And if we wait and for Syria to be a democracy, to lift the sanctions. We are not a democracy. 250, years after we founded this whole experiment, like you could find a reason to sanction thus for some of the stuff that's happening in this country right now. So it's an insane criteria. And I think with the opportunity Trump presents is he's not, and again, I don't, I don't like most of what he does, but I call Yeah, and that one, he was right. It's the right thing. Why are we sanctioning these guys? Let's meet this guy. Let's try to help him succeed and be the better version of himself. Let's not hold him to some standard where he's got a the country has to look like, you know, name it, you know, Switzerland or something like, this is the real world and and we should want to help this guy succeed. And I everything. I mean, like, you mentioned, Cuba is still in my bio, you know. But, like, that's another example. Like, how are those sanctions? The most sanctions countries in the world, by the United States, are Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran. Is that working like like those countries become more like we would like them to be during the course of those sanctions, or not? And so I think part of what Trump has to do when I challenge the people in the national security establishment, like you guys, just got to let go of what we've always done it this way, and you've got to let go of this constant fear of being called weak or being, you know, like and yes, I mean, it's easier for Trump, because the bad faith right wing attacks don't come his way in the way that they would. But guess what? If you just Just do what you believe in, people will? People will follow you if you look like you're afraid to do it like, then they're gonna smell that too. And I think that's a lesson we can take is just we can do things differently than we did them in the past and not be afraid to do that.

Stephanie Gerber Wilson 
So you said, to do things that we believe in. Do you what? And but also that Trump is very transactional guy. Do you think the Trump What do you think the Trump administration actually believes in, and how would that play out because of all of the corruption and transactionalism and all of the things that holds it back and and contributes to the foreign policy?

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, it's a really important and good question. I mean, because Trump is kind of an interesting mash up of a few ideological strains, right? There's a kind of Stephen Miller ethno nationalism, right, which is essentially, we believe in reversing diversity, not just stopping, you know, migration across the southern border, as we've seen, like they are. And again, to be to bring facts to this. So this is not just they are, literally. Deporting black and brown people to places as far flung as El Salvador Libya and South Sudan, while welcoming Africana refugees like that's what Stephen Miller believes in, right? He believes in altering the demographics of this country through immigration policy, right? And that interacts enough with Trump's own impulses that that is a core project of the Trump administration's right. Then there's a kind of project, 2520 25 like long standing, long building like right wing project, to dismantle, essentially the administrative state, to really, really shrink the federal government and to deregulate. Because the fundamental idea is that this is a form of liberal social engineering, and we just have to, we can't fix it. We just have to wipe it out. And oh, by the way, that that serves the interest of wealthy people, tech companies, fossil fuel companies, in addition to kind of being in the ideological We're hot, we also people who just don't like government, right? And that's clearly another part of their project. There's also clearly a sense that a certain kind of dissent is not welcome in this country, right? We don't want law firms representing certain causes or people. They haven't come for civil society yet, but I think they will. We don't like certain kinds of civil society. We don't want universities to be incubators for certain ideas that we don't like and that that kind of grows out of the project 2025, piece too. But Trump clearly likes that too, because those people also happen to be people who criticize him or come after him. And so with Trump, and then Trump himself is, I mean, I went back, actually, for the book I'm working on now, and I read his entire Trump Tower speech when he announced his campaign for president 2015 it's a pretty fascinating thing to read, because the number one topic He discusses is tariffs and trade deficits. You know, we've been getting ripped off. And it's he attacks Japan at length. I mean, as a New Yorker, came of age in the 80s, like, it's very familiar to me. It's like that the Japanese don't buy American cars, you know, like, but he believes the tariff thing. And I think that's like a particular Trump flavor. And so I think you have to see it as if you add, like the kind of Stephen Miller tech heritage Trump, where those circle overlap is the Trump project, you know. And I know that's like a long winded answer, be easier to say like he's an ethno nationalist who believes x, but I think Trump believes in his own power. Trump believes in power for power's sake. If you have power, you are aggrandized, you are enriched. And all these other things are means for me to have more power. You know, if I Control who's in this country, if I can control the global economy with the turning of the dial on tariffs, if I can shut down law firms that come after me. All those things are in service of him having power, while also serving some of these other ideological projects that kind of feed into that. And that's kind of peculiar about Trump, and how you have to think of it that way, I do worry about where that Trump is actually not an uncommon character in history, like most of human beings, have been governed by people like Trump for most of humanity, that kind of power does usually lead towards territorial expansionism. And so this focus on Greenland and Panama and even Canada, Gulf of America, Gulf was not at all surprising to me, because I think Trump would like to say the I made the United States bigger, you know. So I also think that even though his foreign policy is not usually interventionist, this territory aspect, as we get later in the Trump term, I'd watch that space, because he's going to want to leave with, like, a bigger map of America than he came in. All these guys do Putin's like that, you know? And so that's kind of an eccentricity of, I think the second Trump term.

Kamy Akhavan
Well, our goal in the conversation was to talk about, what the heck is going on? I think you've given us some really good insights on that. We talked about, how bad is it, really? And got some great insights on that. Well, maybe we can pivot to something that's not such a bummer and see if there's some hope here. And what I wanted to focus on, really, was talk about me as a driver. I live in Los Angeles, as you do then, and I listen to audio books and podcasts in the car, and when I hear someone's voice in my car. That's just two feet from my head. It feels like this person is very familiar to me. You seem very familiar to me because I listen to your podcast and I feel like you're on my car pools with me. I feel that way about many of the books and podcasts that I listen to. I wanted to ask you about podcasts specifically, like, is there some power to that platform, that medium, that form of communication that makes it feel like we have a relationship with the speakers. What is the magic of podcasts? Why are they so popular today?

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, and I want to make sure I'm, like, not depressing people too much in the sense that, like, no because, like, if we can avoid the worst outcome. This will have served a real purpose, you know, like, this was not sustainable. This month, globalization, the liberal order, as it was for 80 years. And this is going to get to podcasts like, there was going to have to be a disruption, like, and it's now, it's happening, and we have an opportunity. I think it's kind of interesting to think about, hey, USAID is great, but, like, it's actually kind of not how I design things like, what's a new international development agency look like, you know, like there are all kinds of things like that, where I actually think, if we can come out of the disruption, minimizing damage, this could actually be huge opportunity, you know, to instead of renovating a house that's falling down to just rebuild, right? And actually, that does relate to podcasts, because another thing I'm hopeful about is in not to play the role of aggrieved author, but I'm going to do it. You know, when my last book came out, the most common thing I got was like, that's kind of depressing, man, that's kind of dark. And why didn't you give us you worked for Obama? Like, I thought there's me more hope in this book, you know, and it was a hard conversation to have about. Like, this authoritarianism is everywhere. You gotta understand the hope people know what the hell is going on now, like, maybe they don't know what the hell's going but they know that shit is going on now. You know, like people are aware that this is different. This is not normal. Some people like it. If you like Trump, you're excited about it. Some people are really scared. Some people are angry. But there's no need to convince somebody that these are unusual times, you know. And that leads to the podcast point. I think people desperately want to unpack what is happening, you know, I can't. I actually do listen to a lot of like, you know, NBA podcasts. Unfortunately, my Knicks, like, didn't, yeah, I don't want to talk about last night, yeah. But So this, obviously, like in any format, podcasts, allow for a level of intimacy and familiarity with the host you're listening in on a conversation. What I always tell other podcasters is we're not there to, like, tell people things you want someone to just think that they happen to be overhearing you having a conversation with somebody. But but also, what it's allowing for is like, as someone not to be critical of one of my other employers, but as someone who's an MSNBC contributor, my ability to kind of like, have a conversation what's happening in a two minute interjection on MSNBC is so minimal compared to, like, being able to unpack issues, draw connections, let something breathe simultaneously, make light of something, while also being very serious about something. I think, I think podcasts both provide the kind of intimacy that, particularly younger people who grew up with social media, expect from their media. They expect it to be more curated, like it's not just like I'm going to watch the evening news and read this newspaper. I'm going to curate my experience, and I want to curate these people's voices, but at a time in politics and democracy space, at a time when people really don't know what's going on. Again, I'm sorry to be critical, but like, you would not be able to figure out what's going on if you watch CNN or MSNBC all day, like, in the same way that if you listen to like, a podcast, it's like, oh, these people can draw the connections, and these people and and, you know, maybe I, in my head, I'm arguing with these people. Sometimes, sometimes people will say why I really doesn't disagree with you on that one thing. I'm like, you agree with everything I said. That'd be kind of weird, you know. Like, so also think in podcasts, you get to know these people, and you kind of, you know, I don't like your take on that, and you're kind of interacting with it, you know. And so I think podcasts are part of this answer, because people are looking, you know, for my book, I that I'm writing now, I studied the Lyceum movement, right? Which is like, where, basically, speakers would travel around the country, right? Frederick Douglass, most famously, and they were, like the pop stars of their time, like they would go to they'd show up in town and they give a lecture on something, and everybody would come and listen to the lecture, and then the then people would then go have sessions where they talk about it, you know? And a guy like Frederick Douglas would give like, 150 speeches in a year, right? And it makes sense, actually, there weren't pop stars back then. There was no amplified music. There was no so. But in a weird way, podcasts are a version of a deep American tradition of, like, lengthy discussion and debate of topics of interest. And actually, interestingly, I see them wasn't just politics, it was culture and sports and other things too. And so I think that there's something pretty American in this idea of, like, I want to select different people who I'm I want to hear what those people have to say, and then I want to go talk to my friends about what I heard on that podcast.

Stephanie Gerber Wilson 
So okay, so what else so talking in this deep conversation being an American way. What is also deeply American is a deep division in American society, and it seems that one side has this set of podcasts. One says, this is your dance space. This is my dance space, and there's no overlap. How do you get past the different realities that people live in given the different information that they take in? Sorry, that's not hopeful.

Ben Rhodes
I don't have the answer to that question, and I think it's a defined I mean, when I wrote my last book, I shared it with Obama, and he read and he's like, Oh, he's like, that's pretty dark. And he was like, But Ben, what's different? I mean, there's always been a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. There's always been, you know, all these forces. What is distinct about now? And I thought about it, and I was like, what's different about now is technology and social media, sorting people into these different information systems and different belief systems fundamentally. And I said to him, I was like, you know, I always was struck by the fact that more people thought Obama was born outside the United States at the end of his presidency than the beginning. You know, Q anon was impossible in 2008 like, like the the idea that, I mean, the capacity to deepen the experience of a conspiracy theory, for instance, like didn't exist when people had to like, write letters to each other instead of like. And so this is the big change and the big shift and the big problem that we're dealing with. I think that the look part of it is yes, like people, you know, if I was advising Democrats, like, show up more places show up everywhere try to have conversations. But I also think that what the what the right understands about this ecosystem that the left has been slow to understand, is that their conversations usually begin about something other than politics. I was talking to a couple people about this right before we started, but essentially, like Joe Rogan, is not a political podcaster. He's a UFC stand up comedian with a popular podcast who occasionally talks about politics. You know, Logan ball, Logan Paul, Theo Vaughn, all these guys, and they're almost all guys. It's sports, it's culture, it's MMA, it's, it's something other than politics. And then it evolved into politics over time, crypto, whatever the thing is, and Democrats, it's like, we have some politics conversations, and then there are these, like, you know, other spaces. And I think we have to come we when, again, I say Democrats, I just mean, like the political party. I basically just mean more people, you know, need to go into different spaces. And, you know, I'd be really interested in as an NBA I'm just gonna take basketball, because there's a lot of really good NBA podcasts, you know, like, show up there, you know, and talk about, by the way, and talk about basketball. This is the other thing, and this me criticism Democrat politics. They they go on these podcasts, and then they give them talking points about, like, the middle class, and it's like, no, no, you're supposed to go on and talk about basketball for 40 minutes, and then for five minutes at the end you talk about something else. You know, Obama intuitively got this. He used to do this all time. You know, our most successful communication for the ACA sign ups, literally, in terms of sign ups among young people, was he went on between two firms as alkas, and he didn't talk about signing up for the ACA at all until after he had a really funny appearance and that at the end, he's like, and I want everybody want everybody to sign up and you know, so the point is, like, we need to take the political conversation and in a strange way, move it to the back of the line and just show up in more cultural spaces as because Americans don't share culture anymore, like when I grew up. Everybody, like, watch the same movies and listen the same music and, you know, watch the same, you know, every watch like TGIF. Is anybody else late Gen X or enough to remember that? Like, that doesn't exist anymore. So you kind of have to rebuild a common culture. Get curious about some of this stuff. I mean, not like some racist podcasts, but, I mean, like, you know, there's, some, I can find some, something interesting in the ovum, you know, like, like. So I do think we have to just kind of expand and enlarge the places where we're showing up, the conversations we're having, and weirdly, before we can talk about politics, we have to remember how to talk about other things.

Kamy Akhavan
I think that's so right? I often think about the food pyramid, and the same way that I think about our information diet, I think of our food diet, and if you only ate from one layer of the food pyramid, you'd be enormously unhealthy. 

Ben Rhodes
Can I give one other example on the Cuba? So the first time I met with the Cubans as the highest ranking White House official living with the Cubans in long time, decades, and I was meeting with Alejandro Castro, Fidel Castro's nephew, Raul Castro's Son, and the first three hours, he gave me a speech about all the horrible things the United States had done, you know, Bay Pigs Invasion tried to assassinate Fidel Castro and all this subversion. And by the way, most of it was true, you know. And and then I'm like, Oh, this can be pretty tricky negotiation. But, and I was like, I'm not gonna argue about that. I'm not here to talk about that. And then we broke and we're standing there nibbling like sandwiches, and we started to talk about like baseball, because the Cubans like baseball, and they're like, Oh yeah, Cespedes is on the Mets. And we and then we talked about, like food and and we made friends talking about things other than politics, so that when we return to the conversation about politics, we had developed a relationship as human beings, right? That made it easier to talk about politics. And weirdly, in this country, we've got it backwards, like we're only talking about politics that's a good That's an insane way to try to get along with people, like, like, like, it doesn't work, you know, think of your family like, like, you kind of don't want your uncle to talk about politics and thanksgiving. You'd rather talk about the Knicks. And then maybe at the end of the night you say, like, you know, you know. So I think this is basic human behavior stuff.

Kamy Akhavan
Yeah, I think that sounds right. And I was just curious by show of hands. Does that sound right? That you want to connect as humans first and then as political actors second, like this, that just sounds that's that feels right. It feels right. It feels true. And we've known it from our own lived experience, that sometimes we don't lead with politics, but that's kind of become our culture to live that way. And I think that that's a really great point, and perhaps a good point for us to think about, because Washingtonians are, I don't know, notoriously, is perhaps not the right word, but famously punctual. So as we approach the end of the hour here, I just want to see if there's any concluding thoughts you want to leave us with. Ben about advice you have for podcasters, advice you have for us who are experiencing what we're experiencing as Americans living through Trump to 2.0 for better or for worse. Any final thoughts?

Ben Rhodes
Yeah, I think that, in keeping with the theme that this is a disruptive moment, and we're gonna have to get through it and but then there's opportunity, you know, for podcasting, for politics, for public speaking. Like advice I always give is from a lot of trial and error. So there's a lot of error behind this. So I'm saying this with humility. Took me forever. I'm still working on this. But you know, what I realized is obviously what people people don't gravitate to expertise. They gravitate to authenticity, right? In politicians, but I also think in podcasters, right, like, say what you will about some of the people I name check they're pretty authentic people, right? There's not another Joe Rogan, right? He is who He is and and so when, if you're for the podcasting advice I give is, truly be yourself and actually use the podcast to figure out a little bit more of who you are, right? Because the other thing I always tell people about public speaking is, don't tell people what you think. You have to tell people why you think that. Like, why do I believe this? Like, why is this the right answer? What in my personal experience? What are my background, what anecdote, what thing makes me believe this? And and to kind of end on, like a meta note to that sense, like we all should be, whatever your politics are, and you can disagree with 90% of what I said, but I do think we're going through like, even if you like Trump, like, this is not normal like, and that's actually why they elected Trump, right? And so we should all be thinking about. Is at core, like, not just winning an argument about tax policy or foreign policy or whatever the thing is. Like, really be thinking about, and I've tried to do some foreign policy, and it's really changed my views. If you listen podcasts, it might be able to hear a little evolution. But like, what do I actually believe? Like, what do I think this country actually is good, bad and ugly, like, what? Why do I care to have an opinion about it? You know, I think we all have to kind of check our first principles again in a way that we haven't before. You know, because we are going to go through some stuff here as a country, even if you like it, it's going to be different. And when you go through something like that, I think you really need to know kind of what, what that motivation is that you have, what is going to inform a decision you make, to either maybe stand up or not, or to say something or not, or when to say something, or what to say, right? Like, where is that going to come from? Not just, how am I going to sound smart on my podcast? Or, you know, like, why am I here? Why am I speaking into this microphone? You know, in that, I think that's an opportunity for people to really and again, maybe I'm too California now, but to kind of figure out who you are, right, like, to figure out, like, not just again, what you believe, but why you believe it. Because when you're pressure tested like this, like you're gonna need that, that depth and people can hear it like you can hear it on the podcast. Like, is this person being authentic, or this person just kind of like, spout opinions and facts at me? You know,

Kamy Akhavan
I think that that's great parting advice, and thank you for it. I do want to thank the folks at the USC capital campus Sydney. Felicia Elise, thank you for hosting us here today from the democracy group. I want to thank Brandon and Jenna and Chris for even hosting this conference and allowing this discussion to take place. And, of course, big thank you to Stephanie. If you haven't listened to her podcast, you must. And, of course, to Ben Rhodes, Ben, thank you so much. I'll see you back in that way. Thanks for coming tonight. Applause.

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