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COMMENTARY WASHINGTON WEEK ... JULY 6TH, 2025 Washington Week PBS: Trump’s instability and the potential of a post-American world PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WibnG33Wy0 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
Trump’s instability and the potential of a post-American world Washington Week PBS 155K subscribers Jun 6, 2025 In President Trump's first administration, he was surrounded by buffers and filters. In his second, he's surrounded by amplifiers. Jeffrey Goldberg and Thomas Friedman discuss the chaos of Trump's conflicts, how world leaders are viewing the instability and Trump's explosive feud with Elon Musk. Watch the latest Washington Week with The Atlantic here: https://pbs.org/washingtonweek Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2ZEPJNs Follow us on X (formerly Twitter): / washingtonweek Like us on Facebook: / washingtonweek Transcript 0:00 Good evening and welcome to Washington Week. I want everyone to know that I take the Trump Muk breakup drama seriously. In part because Donald Trump gave his former best friend Elon Musk, access to enormous amounts of secret government data, and there's no predicting what Musk could do with it. But the world at large is in a state of seemingly permanent tumult, and so it's a good time for a general checkup. My guest tonight is Thomas Friedman, a 3-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times. Tom, thanks for coming in for our seemingly annual, annual checkup, um, uh, the, uh, I, I, I want to ask you about this Elon Musk, uh, business, um, and maybe we can put it into some serious context. Before I, before we, we jump to that, I want to Read something that my colleague Charlie Warzel writing in The Atlantic this morning had to say, uh, the sun rises every morning. Spring turns to summer, water is wet. Donald Trump and Elon Musk's relationship has ended with a post about Jeffrey Epstein. And then, of course, uh, you know, 1:04 he, he tweeted, these guys really do escalate quickly. um, Trump, Musk tweeted, time to drop the really big bomb. Real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have Nice day, DJT, um, So Put this into some kind of context that makes sense for ordinary people. What is going on here? Well, I confess, Jeff, on the way over, I thought you'd asked me about this and the first thing that popped into my mind was the Iran-Iraq war. What do we say about the Iran-Iraq war if only both sides could lose, OK, so, uh, there's no hero in this story. Um, what it really is, is the latest manifestation to me of the central truth of the Trump 2 administration. Trump one was surrounded by buffers. Trump too is surrounded by amplifiers and therefore stuff that used to begin at the Mar a Lago bar and then get muffled in the Oval Office, now goes from the Mar a Lago 2:01 bar right to the Oval Office, right to you and me, and whether it's what he feels about you know, Musk or his role. He wants him in the government. But to me the whole Musk phenomenon is part of a much deeper and more disturbing phenomenon from an American citizen point of view, which is nothing here is modeled. Nothing here is stress tested. Everything is a riff. The country is being run like the Trump Organization today, not like the United States of America. And so as a result of that, Jeff, there's no second order thinking. All right. What's second order thinking? I'm going to put on tariffs, OK, 10% across the board, including Canada and Mexico, even though I'm violating an agreement I signed with them when I was president last time. Second order thinking is, oh my God, you mean the Ford F-150, only one third of its parts are made in America. Um, and the other 2/3 now are going to be tariff. I will bet any amount of money, no one told him that. And that's true now of everything. And so, you know, for the first trimester of this administration, 3:00 do you think the 1st 3 months, all of this was kind of entertaining, but now he's running up against a wall. It turns out he can't solve the Russia-Ukraine war overnight. It turns out tariff wars aren't easy to win. It turns out Musk is not going to, you know, do the revolution and the government for. Turns out courts sometimes don't like what you do. So I think the second, you know, uh, 3 months are going to get very interesting as he runs into this reality, and I don't know where it's going to go, but it leaves me disquiet. That's interesting. I was thinking as you were saying this, I was thinking about John Kelly, General John Kelly, being, uh, and along with General Mattis and others being those buffers or filters, uh, there's literally no one in the White House or in the whole system who does anything but amplify. Is that fair to say? I mean, I, I just don't Treasury Secretary, I, I, I just don't see it, you know, I mean, yeah, you hear these stories that the Treasury Secretary had to wait, you know, for, um, uh, one of the other, you know, economic guys that Peter 4:01 Navarro to be out of the room for him to come in to try to change 4:04 the tariffs. This is crazy stuff. Now, I happen to be in China, uh, 4:08 twice in the last 6 months. I've watched a lot of this from China 4:11 actually and, and when you see it from China, I mean, they say a 4:14 couple of things. One is, you know, we are never going to put our 4:17 president in a situation like Zelensky. in the Oval Office where 4:20 he can be embarrassed, number one, the second thing they say, Jeff, 4:24 is that this isn't cute. We just saw Donald Trump tear up a trade 4:27 agreement that Donald Trump made with America's two closest neighbors 4:31 and allies, Canada and Mexico. What is the value therefore of a trade 4:37 agreement with him now and um you know, the Chinese, uh, uh, these 4:43 are, these are you like them or hate them. These are serious people, 4:46 you know, and they are not spontaneous. No, exactly. So when Trump 4:49 put 10 47, um, uh, 44% tariff on them, they said, uh, you're talking 4:55 to me? You talking to me? Do you realize that we control 90% of the 5:01 rare earths that make the magnets that go in every car you make. 5:05 Do you realize that? Which he didn't, which is why Ford and GM and 5:09 Stantis had to announce this week we may actually have to curb some 5:14 production because we're running out of Chinese magnets. Right. 5:18 The stay stay with, uh, stay with this Musk question for a minute 5:21 and, and, and this, this, this, this issue of Musk as a, as a radical 5:24 isotope in a kind of way. He's been given access to the government 5:29 secrets across the board in order to cut your government agencies 5:33 through the Doge operation. Um, that seems like an operational security 5:39 nightmare if he goes rogue 5:43 surprising to you? I mean, how, how, where does this, where does 5:46 this relationship go? Can they bring it back from the brink? Is there 5:49 anybody who's trying to bring it back from the brink, or is this 5:51 just more chaos? Well, you know, I think the best way to understand 5:56 this is not with the analogy of Political science, but world wrestling 6:01 Federation. And, and those, uh, uh, in World Wrestling Federation, 6:05 there are breakups and comeback and new teams and whatnot. 6:09 I put this all in the area of entertainment, you know, not in, in 6:13 something serious. We're dealing with two extremely unstable characters, 6:16 but what really is, is more important is what's the wider world audience 6:21 saying? What's the wider world audience saying? They're saying, you 6:24 know, for, for all of our lifetime, Jeff, sort of post-war America. 6:28 If I had an extra $1 and I'm a foreigner, I'm going to put it in 6:31 America. If I have an extra, you know, brain power and, and a, and 6:34 a brainy person, I'm gonna study in America. And if I have a little 6:38 extra dollop of trust, I'm going to trust America. Now you take all 6:42 three of those things away, and you end up with a, a very different 6:47 relationship between America and the world. OK, so I have to ask 6:51 you, and by the way, it's interesting. right? Miami is Miami because 6:54 it's a safe place for people's money. Harvard is or was Harvard because 6:59 people want to come from around the world and so on and the United 7:04 Nations is headquartered in New York, you know, you know, I mean, 7:08 everybody, for, for a reason. We were the, we were the, we wrote 7:11 the the rules of the road for the post-war international order. The 7:15 question is, You're an ally or an adversary, and you're looking at, 7:22 at, at this, uh, clown show, by the way, on the weekend that marks 7:27 the 81st anniversary of D-Day, noting just for the record, um, you, 7:32 you put yourselves in the shoes of an ally and adversary. Are you 7:35 thinking that this is a midlife crisis America's having 7:40 a nervous breakdown, or is this some kind of weird terminal illness. 7:45 I don't know which. All I know is I'm completely disoriented. If 7:48 I'm an ally and I'm completely disoriented if I'm the foreign affairs 7:52 columnist for The New York Times because I've never covered this 7:54 world and you know, um, uh, our friend, you know, Freed Zakaria wrote 7:58 a book, um, uh, uh, 15 years ago or so called the post-American world, 8:02 and Fred's book was really about a change in relative power, you 8:06 know, between that there'll be the rise of Brazil and India and other 8:08 countries, so we won't have as much power as we had before. What 8:11 really, if I were writing a book today, Jeff would be called the 8:14 post-America world. OK, that's what I'm really worried about because 8:18 America stood for some things. It stood for universal values. 8:22 It stood for stability. It stood for the rule of law. It was a loyal 8:26 ally. We were always against the dictator versus the people seeking 8:29 freedom. What really worries me that at the end of my, you know, 8:34 career basically. I'm, I'm dealing with the post-America world, America, 8:39 I grew up and loved and was devoted to and as someone who lived abroad 8:43 like you have, know how important that America is to the whole world. 8:47 American ism and stability makes the world go around. You take us 8:51 out of the equation. It's not like anybody else comes in. I'm sorry. 8:54 You have, you have a no superpower world, you know, but, but come 8:58 back to this, is this, do you think that this instability that we're 9:04 experiencing emotional, political, all the instabilities that we're 9:08 experiencing. Could it be temporary, or is this 9:13 Can we not come back? reputationally to start. Well, the thing I'm 9:17 worried about most is that, and it may seem like a simple thing, 9:20 but you know, uh Donald Trump came in and he told all the Democrats 9:24 on the board of the Kennedy Center, you're gone. Now traditionally 9:28 every president sort of left the other party's people there and then 9:30 he put in his people. So when you enter into a kind of zero-sum politics 9:35 now in America. When you fire the head of the NASA, after you appointed 9:41 him because he made a donation, a tiny donation to a Democrat, 9:46 you're into a kind of politics that I grew up with in the Middle 9:48 East. What was that rule or die. OK, you're either in power or zero 9:53 sum, OK? I'm on top or I'm 9:56 in and, and so there's a book about African dictators called It's 9:59 Our Turn to Eat, you know, and we're just gonna eat everything. So 10:02 then, no, no, if you're a Democrat, and, and guess what, we do have, 10:05 God willing, if we still have elections, rotations in power, did 10:08 they come in now and treat all the Republicans in these traditional 10:12 bipartisan forum, you know, the same way. And if that happens, we're 10:16 really off to the races and then the whole thing just starts to what 10:19 country does that remind you of that, you know, you, you, you, you, 10:23 I mean, so many dictatorships just in general that I've covered over 10:27 the years. That's what you come in, you wipe out all the other guys' 10:29 people. Well, that's not how we do things in this country, right, 10:33 right. Let's talk about a country that's not democratic for a second, 10:36 um, you know, the, the, I, I want you to watch this. It's the latest 10:41 analysis by President Trump of the current state of play in in Russia's 10:47 war against Ukraine, and he's talking about Putin here. 10:51 He got hit. He's been doing hitting, so I understand it, but he got 10:56 hit hard. And I don't think he's playing games. I said, President. 11:03 Maybe you're going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot because 11:07 both sides are suffering 11:08 before you pull them apart before they're able to be pulled apart, 11:11 but it's a pretty known 11:13 analogy, you have two kids, they fight, fight, fight. 11:17 Sometimes you let them fight for a little while. You see it in hockey, 11:19 you see it in sports. Not Henry Kissinger, but he's trying to impose 11:27 his own realpolitik understanding of what is he misunderstanding 11:30 from your perspective, Jeff, do you know how flat out crazy that 11:34 is. I mean, that's like saying, well, you know, I mean, Hitler in 11:37 Poland, they fight, they fight, they come back, you know what I mean? 11:40 Um, yeah, Trump came in and said I can end this war, all right, 11:44 there's one way to end this war. You say to Vladimir Putin, um, if 11:48 you don't stop the war, um, uh, and, and we agreed to the ceasefire 11:52 terms I dictate. We are bringing Ukraine into NATO in 30 days. Which 11:56 part of that sentence don't you understand? Do you want to mess with 11:59 me? Test me. That's how you end this war. What you just heard of 12:02 Donald Trump, that sounds like a commentator on Fox TV. He's not 12:06 the commentator. He's president of the United States. Well, he hit 12:09 him and he hit them and he hit this guy invaded a country. He's basically 12:14 tried to rape a country. That's what Putin did, OK, and the Ukrainians 12:18 with incredible bravery stood up and defended basically the Western. 12:23 On something that's very important because if Ukraine were able to 12:26 join the European Union, Jeff, then you have a Europe that's really 12:29 whole and free. That's actually a big deal for Europe and for us, 12:32 and this guy is talking about it like it's some schoolyard fight 12:35 and they're morally equal. It's nuts and it's, it's disgusting. Right. 12:40 Is there any issue from a foreign affairs columnist perspective. 12:43 Is there any issue in which Trump is not transactional. Have you 12:48 ever seen have you ever seen a sign of a, um, what we would think 12:51 of as in a bipartisan way, American idealism. Out of Trump? Yeah, 12:57 um, none comes to mind. What I would say, I, where I thought you 13:01 might be going is, um, uh, you know, some things are also true even 13:04 if Donald Trump believes them, and by the way, his transactionalism 13:08 sometimes can also be an advantage, for instance, I'm glad he's sitting 13:12 down with the Iranians. Let's see what you got. I'm glad he told 13:15 the Syrian president, um, uh, I'm gonna give you a reputation to 13:19 live up to. I didn't mind him talking directly to Hamas. If I can 13:23 get the hostages out, so there is that. transactional side of him 13:27 that I think could be an advantage, but it's not grounded in any 13:31 moral, you know, framework of what we stand for as a country. What 13:35 we've always stood for 13:37 if it's just a kind of free floating thing. It becomes very, very 13:41 dangerous in, in his non-sophisticated analysis of the current state 13:46 of play, uh, in, in Russian and Ukraine. He didn't really talk about 13:52 the drone attack that Ukraine launched on Russian. aerial assets 13:56 deep inside Russia, does that change? This war, um, you know, you 14:01 know, Joe, I'd say two things, and again, it's part of the craziness 14:04 of this moment. Let's start at 30,000 ft and then come down to the 14:07 battlefield at 30,000 ft, you and I are having this discussion on 14:11 the eve of the greatest technological revolution in human history. 14:15 We are very close to a birthing a new species, not a new machine, 14:19 a new artificially intelligent species. Um, and it's going to be 14:23 with us under sometime, sometime, while Trump is president, it is 14:27 not going to change one thing, it's going to change everything. We 14:30 are not talking about that at all. So that's, I would say number 14:33 one. Under that technological revolution, um, and you know, one of 14:36 the things they say about AI, it'll actually be mankind's last invention. 14:40 Because once we invent that, it will invent everything else. That's 14:43 going to be a big deal under that though, we're seeing a revolution 14:46 in military affairs. Basically Ukraine 14:49 spent $20,000 to to knock out, you know, $20 million planes, $20,000 14:56 that was probably because they couldn't get Costco online, you know, 14:59 from Kiev, and they had to buy them from Amazon, you know, um, so 15:02 the, the, the asymmetric warfare world that we're entering now, um, wow, I mean if you're the US Navy and you're sitting 12 aircraft carriers and you just recovered from the fact that the Houthis, you know, you lost an FA Hornet because you had to swerve your cafeteria in the in the plane fell off the back because you were getting out of way of not a sterling moment naval history because you're avoiding a Houthi missile, a bunch of guys in flip flops, basically, um, in a country that's based water starved, the asymmetry we're going to be dealing with right now, um, uh, I think we have, we, these, these events are really disturbing and and going to require a huge revolution in how we think about military as I'm listening to you about AI, AGI, and, and drone warfare. I, I'm just thinking that the, the, the preoccupation this weekend in America is the emotionally febrile relationship between this ketamine taking billionaire and our reality 16:02 TV star, president, and it's like there's something that's so deeply unserious about, and I think, I think it's been. two of our country that basically everything became politics. Um, and so we don't have just ESPN now. We have ESPN, you know, sort of politics sports network and it's, it's, it's a testament to the the underlying strength of our country, Jeff, that our economy goes on, we still invent amazing stuff, and we think we can afford this, and, and you know what Jeff, we, we can't afford it until we can, right

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