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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Wednesday, September 3rd, my birthday. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day, the show that has said that West Point is reinstalling a portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Sad because Robert E. Lee was a loser. He lost the Civil War despite having the tremendous luck to fight against Union General George McClellan, who was an idiot. Why are we encouraging safe spaces and participation trophy culture for our troops? What happened to winning? [music break] On today’s show, the American dream is dying, and the Trump family reaps financial success from a new cryptocurrency. But let’s start with foreign policy. Because while President Donald Trump spent Tuesday explaining how he enjoyed his very normal, very quiet Labor Day weekend. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I did numerous shows and also did a number of truths, long truths, and I think pretty poignant truths. No, I was very active over the weekend. They also knew I went out to visit some people at the club that I own pretty nearby on the Potomac River. And, no, I’ve been very active, actually, over the weekend. 

Jane Coaston: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping had a fun-filled weekend of meetings and handholding. They met at the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting. It was the first time in seven years that Modi and Xi met in person. And they were meeting at a time when the relationships between Russia, China, India, and the United States are complex. I mean, China and the U.S. have been global foes on pretty much every front for decades now, battling over trade, and most recently, AI policy. But according to the New York Times, Indian leader Modi is upset with Trump because of Trump’s tariff policies and because Trump claimed that he had, quote, “solved” the long running dispute between India and Pakistan and wanted Modi to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Donald Trump did not, in fact, solve it. And Russia? Well, the war in Ukraine has lasted for more than three years and shows few signs of stopping anytime soon. And Putin has shown markedly little interest in America’s diplomatic outreach. Speaking to conservative pundit Scott Jennings on Tuesday, Trump said he was disappointed in Putin over the war, but also felt it necessary to bring up the 2020 election because of course he did. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I’m very disappointed in him. He and I always had a great relationship. I’m very disappointed that thousands of people are dying, they’re not Americans that are dying but they’re Russians and they’re Ukrainians and there’s thousands and it’s a war that makes no sense and it would have never started if I were president and that’s what bothers me even more because the election was totally rigged and it is a shame. We’ll see what happens but I’m very disappointed in President Putin. I can say that. 

Jane Coaston: So to talk more about Putin, Modi, Xi, and our maybe new world order, I spoke with Tommy Vietor. He’s the co-host of Crooked Media’s Pod Save the World. Tommy, welcome back to What a Day. 

Tommy Vietor: Great to see you. 

Jane Coaston: So let’s start with Vladimir Putin’s–

Tommy Vietor: Okay. 

Jane Coaston: –new beautiful romance. A very friendly meeting over the long weekend with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. I guess it’s more of a throuple sort of situation, but I don’t judge whatever they’re into. Anyway, they met in northern China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit. Can you give us a bit of context? Like what is the SCO exactly and what was the main purpose of this summit? If not romantic handholding. 

Tommy Vietor: Yeah and I’m just thinking of like a gigantic key party. So thank you for putting that in my head. 

Jane Coaston: I love giving you the worst possible mental images. 

Tommy Vietor: Thank you so much. So the SCO, it’s this regional security cooperation organization. It was founded in the early 2000s by the Russians and the Chinese. And it’s sort of their counterweight to Western alliances like NATO. Uh. And the focus of this whole weekend was a whole bunch of criticism of the United States, some thinly veiled, some not veiled at all, especially US trade policy and tariffs. 

Jane Coaston: So we had a moment with Putin and Modi where they had a private meeting in the back of Putin’s armored limo and they were spotted literally holding hands. 

Tommy Vietor: Yup. 

Jane Coaston: On their way to the meeting with Xi and Putin called Modi his quote, “dear friend” and praised India and Russia’s quote, “friendly and trusting relations.” This is all coming as you point out, just days after the US doubled tariffs on India to 50% as punishment for buying Russian oil or arguably because uh Modi won’t nominate Trump for a–

Tommy Vietor: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: –Nobel Peace Prize. 

Tommy Vietor: Uh huh. 

Jane Coaston: Which is the wildest possible storyline out of many wild ones. So is this a general statement of alliance between Russia and India, which isn’t new? Or is this also just a fuck you to Trump? 

Tommy Vietor: Yeah. This is a fun one. We should dig into this. So, I mean, Putin, as you know, is at his heart. He’s a troll. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: Um. So everything he does is a fuck you to the United States or to Trump or to like Europe or democracies generally. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: Like our entire system. Right. And so, you know he loves nothing more than to be at the center of the action on the world stage and let everyone know that you don’t get to lecture him about human rights or not invading your neighbors or any of the things he doesn’t care about. He still here. Um, for Modi, Modi has played a different game over the years. And he’s sort of tried to straddle both worlds. He was Trump’s good buddy for a long time. Remember those howdy Modi events? That they–

Jane Coaston: Yeah. No, that was the very, I think, under covered story of like, you know, both 2016 and 2020 elections was Trump really going hard after Hindu Americans and Modi doing his best to help. 

Tommy Vietor: Yes, there was this weird alliance between Trump’s sort of authoritarianism and this Hindu nationalist movement. Modi essentially endorsed Trump in 2020. 

Jane Coaston: Yup. 

Tommy Vietor: So you’re right, there there was this close relationship. But also, you know, Modi, um he straddled both worlds. He tried to keep close ties with the Russians and the Chinese. Part of it was like just to be his own man, but also, um you know he wanted to show that uh that he could buy oil and gas from whoever he wanted and just sort of like have this broader economic set of relationships. 

Jane Coaston: What is Trump’s relationship with Modi going to look like now? 

Tommy Vietor: Yeah, well, let’s just start with this weird peace prize thing just for a second. Because–

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Tommy Vietor: So if you remember, there was a flare up on the border between India and Pakistan. There’s a horrible terrorist attack. 

Jane Coaston: Yes. 

Tommy Vietor: And it led to this exchange of fires that got really dicey for a while. And that’s a big deal, because you have these two nuclear-armed–

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: –countries with you know decades of tensions and armed conflict. And so. India and Pakistan, basically they brokered a ceasefire and then Trump jumps the gun and tweets out that he had basically brokered this deal. 

Jane Coaston: Right, and that he had, quote, “solved.”

Tommy Vietor: Solved. [laugh]

Jane Coaston: The India-Pakistan thing. 

Tommy Vietor: Whatever you want to call it. 

Jane Coaston: Which is like. 

Tommy Vietor: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: I don’t think you solved a, what, 75-year ethnic and religious conflict in like two days.

Tommy Vietor: No, no. As far last time I checked, they still have militaries. They still have nukes. And so Trump comes out and says, I want a Nobel Peace Prize for this. The Pakistani side is like, yeah, sure, whatever. Like freebie for us. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Tommy Vietor: And then Trump, in addition to ratcheting up tariffs on the Indian government for buying Russian oil and for other trade related things, is like whining to Modi in a series of phone calls about how he’ll never get the Nobel Peace prize. And Modi’s like, buddy, that’s not what happened, first of all. 

Jane Coaston: No. 

Tommy Vietor: And also for him, I mean, he’s got this strongman image and for him to suggest that the U.S. had to come in as big brother and broker a ceasefire between the Indian government and Indian military and a much weaker government and military in Pakistan was just a non-starter. So this was like politically impossible– 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Tommy Vietor: –for Modi and Trump’s demand basically led to this unraveling of you know not just years of effort from Trump to be put into the Modi relationship. But also like decades of presidencies. I mean. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: US presidents have seen India as this counterweight to China, this, you know, growing economic engine that could be an important partner. Um. And Trump just decided, you now, it’s all about me and I care about my Nobel Peace Prize and I’m just gonna unravel all of this. 

Jane Coaston: Well, the private car meeting between Putin and Modi happened just weeks after obviously Putin and Trump shared a similar moment in the U.S. Presidential limo known as the beast that was during their summit to discuss a potential peace deal with Ukraine that they had in Alaska. That feels like it took place 10 years ago. 

Tommy Vietor: A billion years ago. 

Jane Coaston: Now, where does Trump stand now with Putin and could that impact the larger relationship between the US and Russia? 

Tommy Vietor: Yeah, I mean the double car ride photo sure seemed purposeful, huh? 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: [?]. 

Jane Coaston: No, it really a message is being sent. 

Tommy Vietor: He’s like, I’ll ride around with whoever I want. 

Jane Coaston: Exactly. 

Tommy Vietor: You know that’s Putin, message to the world. Yeah, so, okay. Remember going into the Alaska summit, it seemed like Trump’s focus was to get a ceasefire. That did not happen. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. 

Tommy Vietor: Putin somehow got him to walk away from his primary goal in that meeting. And and so we came out with nothing. What Trump instead announced was that there would be um a bilateral meeting between the Russians and the Ukrainians. And then if that went well, a trilateral meeting that also included the U.S. where he would, I guess triumphantly announce peace uh in the world. None of those steps have happened. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: There has been no Russia-Ukraine meeting. There’s been no scheduling of a trilateral meeting. So he’s gotten nothing. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, it seems like nobody’s moving on that. Volodymr Zelensky obviously sees no reason ever to give up any of these territorial demands that Russia has wanted this entire time. So is it possible that Trump’s just going to give up on the Ukraine war? 

Tommy Vietor: Sometimes it seems like he just gets bored of this stuff. You know, I mean, it seems like the similar things happened with Gaza. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: There was a moment where there was this acute interest in the horrible images of famine. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, yeah. 

Tommy Vietor: Trump was like contradicting Netanyahu, Prime Minister, Isreali Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Everyone thought, okay, maybe now he’s gonna push him. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Tommy Vietor: To do something and then nothing. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Tommy Vietor: And it seems like that maybe is what’s happening in Ukraine. It’s like Trump was focused on ending that war. He genuinely wants a Nobel Peace Prize, but he doesn’t want to do anything to pressure Putin, the stronger of the two parties. 

Jane Coaston: And now we have two more players, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to join Putin, Xi and the president of Iran at a massive military parade. It’s an event to commemorate the anniversary of the end of World War II. And as a World War II dork, I’m not going to get weird about this revisionist history. 

Tommy Vietor: They get some cred. 

Jane Coaston: But anyway, a lot going on here. What do you make of this? Like this is clearly a big you know. These celebrations of the end of Second World War are basically like military strength parades. That’s what you do. That’s where they’ve always been. That’s what Victory Day in Moscow has been since 1945. Like, what is this? What are they doing? 

Tommy Vietor: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, what I think about when I see events like that, images like that is I think early on, you would see meetings with Putin in North Korea or Iran, and it felt like, oh, look at this ragtag group of rogue states and kind of clowns. 

Jane Coaston: Axis of evil, I believe someone once said. 

Tommy Vietor: Someone once said, I can’t remember who. He’s on Resistance Twitter now. Um. But over time, North Korea became a huge source of shells, basically, weapons for the Russian government they were they were using in Ukraine. The Iranians became an important source of drones and drone technology. So this kind of ragtag group of rogues actually ended up having a lot of power. And I think like in summation, they all came together this week to remind us of of this new alliance that they’ve formed and how significant it is. 

Jane Coaston: Tommy Vietor, thank you so much as always for joining me. 

Tommy Vietor: Thank you for having me, um next time we’ll just talk about UNC football. 

Jane Coaston: Perfect. 

Tommy Vietor: Good. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Tommy Vietor, host of Crooked Media’s Pod Save the World. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

Speaker 5 But certainly a lot of legal issues that that is raised by this decision, not the least of which is whether or not it’s appropriate to appoint a commissioned officer in the military to these positions, whether or it not violates the Posse Comitatus Act. There are some old Office of Legal Counsel opinions out of the Department of Justice that indicate it is legal but in a very narrow sense, and whether that narrow sense is met by appointing them as temporary immigration judges is yet to be seen. 

Jane Coaston: James McPherson, a former undersecretary of the Army during the first Trump administration, spoke to PBS NewsHour about the Pentagon’s new immigration plans. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it will authorize hundreds of its military lawyers to temporarily serve as immigration judges. Why, you might ask? Well, the administration needs some extra hands to process the massive backlog of cases facing the courts right now, thanks in part to Trump’s arrest and deportation frenzy. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department, which is nuts. The military services should choose the first round of attorneys, 150 of them, both military and civilian, by next week, according to a memo reviewed by the Associated Press. At the same time, more than 100 immigration judges have been fired or left voluntarily after taking deferred resignations offered by the Trump administration. The Labor Union for Immigration Court judges said in July that at least 17 immigration judges had been fired, quote, “without cause” in courts across the country. So once again, the Trump administration fired almost everyone who had the job and then put people who aren’t in that job into those jobs. The Trump administration is considering a ludicrous plan to turn the decimated Gaza Strip into a high-end luxury resort after a, quote, “voluntary relocation of Palestinians.” That’s according to a slide deck put together by a consulting firm and seen by The Washington Post. Per the deck, landowners would be offered crypto to give up their property rights. The token could be redeemed for an apartment in one of the territory’s new AI-powered smart cities. Are you fucking kidding me? But really should we be surprised by this? Trump literally told us his plans back in February with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] As far as Gaza is concerned, we’ll do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we will do that. We’re going to take over that piece, and we’re going develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of. 

Jane Coaston: Oh, and he also said this. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so mag–, this could be so magnificent. 

Jane Coaston: And clearly the authors behind the slide deck were listening to Trump. The deck’s stated goal is quote, “a thriving Gaza at the crossroads of a new Abrahamic architecture.” No, thank you. Hey, speaking of crypto, I wonder if there are any connections between that plan and the fact that the Trump family keeps getting richer off weird coins that make no sense to me. The Trumps amassed as much as $5 billion after launching a new cryptocurrency Monday, which can now be purchased on the open market by anyone who wants to curry favor with the president in a shady kind of way. Here’s Bloomberg television talking about the token’s debut. 

[clip of unnamed Bloomberg television host] Let’s take a look at a two-day chart here of the market cap of WLFI. This is the cryptocurrency tied to President Trump and his family. It’s issued by World Liberty Financial, thus the name, the ticker. It began trading yesterday and can now be bought and sold on the open market like a listed company’s share. 

Jane Coaston: Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., posted on Twitter, quote, “ahem, this isn’t some meme coin. It’s the governance backbone of a real ecosystem changing how money moves.” Reminder, Donald Trump owns many of these tokens, while former president Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid corruption accusations. On that note, Americans no longer believe that hard work leads to building wealth, according to a Wall Street Journal Nork poll. That poll found that just 25% of Americans feel confident they can improve their standard of living, the lowest number since 1987, which, older listeners might recall, was the year of one of the worst stock market crashes in American history. So not great. According to the polling, 70% of respondents said that the American dream, work hard you can get ahead, was either no longer true or maybe never true. 55% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats said that they were feeling negative about their prospects and those of their children. There’s also new data showing that the middle class, which is usually categorized as households that make about $53,000 to $161,000 a year, is increasingly strapped for cash. According to the Wall Street Journal, while high earners keep buying flights and spending on retail, middle-class households are tightening their belts. Spending less in general and looking for bargains wherever they can. And yet the first family made $5 billion over the weekend by creating its own funny money. I’m sure that will make American families feel just fantastic. And that’s the news. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, distract yourself with a sentence about a celebrity and a sort of celebrity that might cause your brain to short out completely, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how according to Curbed, and I quote, “Richard Gere and Paul Simon’s daughters’ feud over a Connecticut mansion has ended in demolition,” like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and you want more details? Like how Paul Simon’s daughter grew up in that mansion? Or that she hates Richard Gere for buying that mansion, or that she posted on Instagram at Richard Gare, quote, “I hope my dead pets buried in that backyard haunt you until you descend into a slow and unrelenting madness.” Good times, everyone. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Shawn Allee, and Gina Pollack. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. We had help with our headlines from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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