Fareed Zakaria on the Midterms and What Comes Next

Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, joins Scott Galloway for an Election Day conversation about whether the midterms could mark a turning point for Trump and the global rise of right-wing populism. They discuss shifting voter loyalties, the political fallout of the Iran war, and why Democrats need a vision beyond opposing Trump. Plus, Elon Musk’s power in Ukraine and what it would take to rebuild America’s credibility abroad. Recorded on Election Day, before polls closed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:28Speaker 03

  Welcome to a special episode of the Prop G Pod. Today is November 3rd, election day, and we're joined by Fareed Zakaria for a last-minute breakdown of this year's midterm elections and where America goes from here. We discussed with Fareed why today feels different from past elections, what the Iran war, Musk's actions of treason in Ukraine, and other foreign policy issues mean for the future of our politics, and what the US needs to do to restore its global reputation. Simply put, I can't think. If I had a list of anyone I wanted to speak to on this day, we got them. Anyways, we hope you enjoy this conversation with Fareed, and make sure to get out and vote if you haven't already. Thanks very much.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Fareed, where does this podcast find you?

• 2:12Fareed Zakaria?

  In New York, in my study in New York City.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Just another day, but it does happen to be what is, what feels like a fairly important election. It's November 3rd. What do you see is special or different about today versus other midterms?

• 2:29Fareed Zakaria?

  I think that, you know, we are at a moment where this wave of backlash of right-wing populism is now thoroughly entrenched throughout the world, right? You look at Australia, I was reading about the, there was this woman, Pauline Hanson, a kind of right-wing populist. 20 years ago, she had a brief flurry, seemed like it was dead. Well, she's back. She's now turned into the AFD or the Marine Le Pen of Australia, right? And so we're seeing, we're seeing this movement almost everywhere. And we're wondering, is there a break? Is there a, you know, is it peaking?

• 3:14Fareed Zakaria?

  It certainly seems as though in many places it is not providing many answers. You know, you look at Brexit and Britain is, without any question, worse off than it was before. You look at the Trump policies, by and large, they have not been successful. Manufacturing is not back in the United States. We were not able to somehow decouple the entire American economy from China. And yet, there is this appeal for largely cultural reasons. So the question is, are we witnessing a break? Is, could this, could this midterm be the first moment where people say, you know what, this tide is, has peaked.

• 3:59Fareed Zakaria?

  It is now more of a contest. It's receding. Obviously, a lot depends on how the midterms play out. But that, you know, there is a potential here for the first significant breach where you say, all right, you know, maybe we're moving back to, we're moving to something else in this tenure phase of right-wing populism.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  And you had, I always watch your show, GPS, you said something that really stuck with me, and that is, generally speaking, the two parties, it was typically a smaller and smaller number of people were deciding elections in a smaller and smaller number of states. Now, the biggest registration is among quote-unquote independents. And that is, we have never had as many quote-unquote swing voters. Elections have never been this up for grabs. Talk more about that and what it means for today's election.

• 4:53Fareed Zakaria?

  So 45% of the American electorate is now independents, the highest number ever. And the most interesting new data is around exactly what you said, the sort of malleability of voters. You know, we have this picture of America as totally polarized, tribal. People are dug into their positions. They don't listen. They don't change their minds. And that is true, but it's true of a fairly narrow base on both sides of the, of the spectrum. What you're now witnessing is this much larger group of independents who are beginning to shift. And in a way, Trump has, in some ways, made that happen by first bursting onto the scene, being this renegade Republican,

• 5:38Fareed Zakaria?

  attracting a bunch of Democrats who weren't that interested in the party. But then, you know, if I can be honest, screwing it all up, you know, particularly in this second term, massively under-delivering, Iran war tariffs, cost of living, inflation, massive overdoing of the ICE immigration raids. And as a result, you're seeing people who had flocked to him move away almost as fast as they're flocked. This is unusual. As you know, Scott, people often say about American politics, if you get a voter to vote twice for a party, they're usually locked in for life.

• 6:20Fareed Zakaria?

  Well, now what you are seeing is a huge, you saw a huge Hispanic surge toward Donald Trump in '24, and all polling indicates that has collapsed. That is, if Texas goes to Tarrico, it will be, the single biggest issue will be the collapse of Hispanic supporters. Something like, he's down close to 20 points from where he was in '24. But also Asian-Americans, though they're not as significant. Black Americans had a, there was a small surge among black men for Trump. That seems to have collapsed. Young people, small surge for Trump, not so small, maybe 10 points, completely collapsed. We're back with young voters to the split that we saw in '08 with Obama,

• 7:03Fareed Zakaria?

  when Obama managed to get this huge number of young voters. So you see, what I'm saying is you had a huge wave of people going toward Trump, but that wave is almost entirely receded. So could this be, you know, the new, the new pattern? A large number of independents in the middle. They, you know, for idiosyncratic reasons, for ideological reasons, for God knows what reasons, they move back and forth. And so finally, we get, we get back to actual contestation in American elections. This is what I'm hoping for, because in this election, because of gerrymandering, there are only 38 competitive seats in the House of Representatives. It is quite possible that the Supreme Soviet,

• 7:49Fareed Zakaria?

  the legislature of the Soviet communist system had a higher turnover in its legislature than the House of Representatives currently has among itself.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  But that is changing, no? There's, I'm saying, South Carolina's in play. None of us, that would have been solid Republican just three months ago. Kansas is in play.

• 8:12Fareed Zakaria?

  And, you know, a lot of these, the gerrymandering could turn out to backfire. Again, we'll have to see how the results come out. But you see, what happened with gerrymandering is they, they took a bunch of very solidly Republican seats. Seats Republicans would win by 20 points. And they turned them into two districts that Republicans would win comfortably by eight, nine points. But if you have a D-plus-12 Democratic wave, and it translates into 12 in that local district, well, all of a sudden, you lost two Republican seats where you would have won the one. So your gerrymandering also could backfire

• 8:54Fareed Zakaria?

  if you start to see genuine shifts and genuine, you know, malleability among voters.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  In investing, we like to think there's such a thing as an uncorrelated asset, that if you buy a Japanese bond, it has nothing to do with them buying, you know, Nvidia. And the reality is, over time, everything's become somewhat correlated.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Because of global media, and if the guy has to sell bonds in Japan, that probably means he has to sell some of his Nvidia stock to fund his margin call or whatever. I find that's true of politics, too, that generally speaking, elections or themes, broader themes across the world are somewhat correlated. When you look across the world at recent elections and recent trends, does what's happening in America give you echoes of anything else that's happened around the world recently? What is this most, what is this election most like in other parts of the world that you've been observing?

• 9:51Fareed Zakaria?

  That's a great question. So I think that the general trend we have seen toward right, right wing populism is very much a global trend, as I was saying. And I think it's basically a reaction to 30 years of increasing acceleration technologically, economically, culturally. I mean, this is what I wrote my last book, A Asia of Revolutions about. And it's a backlash against that. It's a bunch of people saying, "Stop, I want to get off this train. I don't want more globalization. I don't want more technological acceleration. I don't want more multiculturalism." Tough to do, because all these societies have become what they have become, and you're not going to be able to stop the clock. But that is the, you know,

• 10:34Fareed Zakaria?

  and, and what the right does in situations like that, often, this has happened historically, is offer a kind of politics of nostalgia. You know, "I'll take you back to before all this turmoil, all this uncertainty. I'll take you back to a comforting place." You know, the most important word on Trump's slogan, on his hat caps is "again", "Make America Great Again", because it's kind of hearkening back to some utopia. And what I am, I think there is nothing right now going on globally that suggests

• 11:07Fareed Zakaria?

  that, that, in a sense, echoes what might happen in America. America would be, I think, the trend setter here, because it would be the first time you got a break from that. Lula in Brazil was a little bit of that, and it's, by the way, an astonishing election. He, he was down decisively in the first round. No Brazilian president has ever lost the first round and won the second round. He, he shifted 10 million votes in three weeks. And that was a whole bunch of different reasons, but that's the only precursor I can think of. But I think this one is much more important, because it is really fundamentally about this issue.

• 11:48Fareed Zakaria?

  Okay, the right wing nostalgia sounds great, but can it deliver? And what you're seeing fascinatingly is that the issues that we would wonder, Scott, why people are not more worried about, the corruption, the abuse of executive authority, they have finally started to bubble up, because in a way, they get tied to people's personal situations and to practical issues people are concerned about. John Ossoff has done this very well, by linking the corruption to the affordability crisis. "You can't afford, you know, groceries, but the Trump family and cronies are making billions",

• 12:30Fareed Zakaria?

  you know, that kind of rhetorical ploy, where making these connections seems to have worked. The abuse of executive authority wasn't making much headway until people started to see ICE agents firing on people, arresting people with, with very dubious explanations for why those people were suspicious. So I think you're finally seeing a kind of human connection to the misgovernment that the, that the Trump people have, have represented. And so, in a way, it may be, you know, they, this would be, this would be the trend setter. I wouldn't be surprised if, if this happens in the United States and you get a genuine

• 13:14Fareed Zakaria?

  blue wave, does it, does it make people at the center everywhere think, "You know what? There is a path forward"? Now, a lot will depend on what the Democrats do after. Do they take advantage of this and fashion a kind of viable energetic centrism?

• 13:34Fareed Zakaria?

  Or do they, do they go to the far left? Do they, you know, do they identity politics? Do they, you know, do they kind of fulfill all these progressive fantasies, which in my opinion, would turn people off? And, and there's fairly, fairly good polling data on this. A majority of Democrats think the Democratic Party should be in the center, not, not in the, you know, in the far left. But so, you know, you can't just be, right now, there's a kind of anti-Trump, right now, there's an anti-Trump atmosphere. To translate that into a governing majority, you need to be, you need to be able to fashion something that people can be affirmatively in favor of.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  So typically, Americans are famous for not caring about foreign policy, quite frankly. They're just focusing on the economy and what puts money in their pocket, and then occasionally getting somewhat activated around a domestic issue. Is it different this time? What role do you think Iran actually played in this anti-Trump sentiment?

• 14:35Fareed Zakaria?

  I think it is different this time. The Iran War is the most unpopular war in American history. It is the first war in the, really, in the modern era, that has been unpopular from day one. So the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War were all popular when they began, and then became unpopular as they dragged on, as they, you know, seemed to be reaching kind of inconclusive, unsatisfying finishes. The Iran War has been unpopular from day one, the most unpopular war in American history. And I think it's for two reasons. One, nobody really understands why Trump began the war.

• 15:17Fareed Zakaria?

  After having six months earlier done this massive bombing campaign, which rather effectively set back Iran's nuclear program by months, if not years, probably years, I would argue, and that is borne out by some evidence. But then suddenly on a whim does it, seems to be about regime change, fails within the first three days, when it's clear the Iranian regime is going to survive. And that's one piece of it. And the second piece is, there is such an obvious tie to inflation with this war. There's such an obvious tie to the simple pocketbook issues that everybody cares about, that is very hard to, to deny. I mean, nobody, even the administration has not tried to make the claim

• 16:01Fareed Zakaria?

  that the Iran War has not directly affected inflation. The, Trump's only argument is, "Well, it'll go away once the war ends", but we're six months into the war and it hasn't ended. So I think those two things make this, this case different. And I think, I hope, also, again, this is where the Democrats can play a role. I hope it will make people understand that we have created a system in this country with just too much broad authority to the executive branch. This was completely the opposite of what the founding fathers wanted. They, Congress is the first branch of government. The phrase for the president is, "The president is meant to faithfully execute

• 16:46Fareed Zakaria?

  the laws that Congress passes, faithfully execute the laws." He was really seen as a kind of steward, trying to make sure that laws were appropriately implemented. He has become a kind of king, particularly with the way the Supreme Court has ruled. And maybe this Iran War gives the Democrats an opening to say, "Look, we have to rein in this out of control executive that can do all these things without any congressional approval, authorization, vote of confidence, or nothing."

• 17:19Speaker 03

  We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 17:27Speaker 05

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• 19:21Speaker 03

  You said something really powerful on your show on Sunday. And that is, great powers have always made the mistake of assuming that force and might was the primary enduring attribute. And that Secretary Rubio in America has made the mistake of believing that's the case here, when in fact, America's power has come not only from its might, but its values. A general belief that dignity, rights afforded to someone by virtue of the fact that they were human, what I'll call mutual vested interest in your success and my success, kind of the idealized version of capitalism and democracy. And I found that, I found that very moving.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  And it feels like this administration, I mean, turning Japan and Germany from enemies who were brutal towards us, and we were brutal towards them, we decided to tax American households to rebuild these great societies. And now we have these amazing allies. That that was really the transformative, that was the difference between America being a fleeting power and an enduring power. And we may be giving that up. Can you expand on that notion? And is there an opportunity, we're going to move back and start perhaps strengthening those alliances and moving back to what I'll call, quite frankly, a more mutually beneficial, we're in this together, if you will, foreign policy standpoint?

• 20:49Fareed Zakaria?

  So on the right, there has been a fantasy that what we really need is for America to kind of stand up for what it is, and for the West to stand up for what it is, which was this great, mighty imperial civilization that conquered the world and reshaped the globe. And that that was the distinctive quality of the West that, you know, all these namby pamby liberals are forgetting. And what's striking, is striking in that Marco Rubio speech that he gave in Athens is that he talks about all the strength, the courage, you know, the resourcefulness

• 21:32Fareed Zakaria?

  of Western civilization and how we have kind of started to apologize for it. But what he's describing, strength, power, resourcefulness, might, Genghis Khan had all of that, the Russian Empire had all of that, the Germans had all of that. What was distinctive, as you say, about America was actually, and the West more generally, what sets the West apart from other civilizations is the Enlightenment, is the idea that all human beings have equal rights, is the idea that we have, you know, even a soul, the Kantian idea that you cannot, you know, use power to control individuals, that the individual is sacrosanct. I mean, there's a deep Christian belief that all human beings are children of God.

• 22:16Fareed Zakaria?

  All these ideas are what made the West distinctive. Every, every society practiced slavery, but it's only in the West that we came up with an anti-slavery movement, an ideology, and eventually freed the slaves. Every major, great power was imperial, but it's only the West that began to reflect on that imperialism and ask, well, you know, was this, was this fair to the Native Americans who were, after all, also human beings, also children of God? Those kind of questions are what made the West unique. And I think that that goes directly, leads directly to the point you make, which is so important. After 45, what the United States did was unprecedented in human history.

• 23:01Fareed Zakaria?

  That is, it took its defeated foes and said, not only are we going to welcome you back to the, you know, to the table as equal partners, as great nations, we are going to help fund your reconstruction. We are going to give you the money, or loan you the money, to make that happen. And as you said, these were, they're not trivial sums of money. This is something in the $200 billion range right now, the Marshall Plan. And there was much more. We opened up our markets to these countries because we wanted to create an ecosystem that was more stable. This was Franklin Roosevelt's dream, having seen the collapse of Versailles in World War

• 23:40Fareed Zakaria?

  I and how, you know, it resulted in the forces that then produced another world war. He was like, we've got to stop this. We've got to find a new way. And the United States did find a new way, which was mutually beneficial to everybody. I hope we can get back there, but it gets to a central question, which is, are other nations so burned by the two Trump elections? One could be a fluke, but two makes them think, look, do we need to buy insurance? Okay, you guys come in, some, some nice Democrat comes in, he starts saying all the right things, just as Joe Biden did. But what happens if 10 years from now, or even just six years from now, we get another

• 24:25Fareed Zakaria?

  Trump-like character? We get J.D. Vance, we get Don Jr. We need some protection. We need some insurance. And we are going to, so I see this, for example, with Canada. Canada, Canada made a fundamental decision decades ago on Brian Mulroney and George Bush Senior, to bind the U.S. and Canadian economies together, to almost create a North American economy. And the car industry, for example, is currently a North American car industry. The parts move 15 times across borders to make the most efficient North American cars. The Canadians are thinking, if, if that dependence on America has proved to be a

• 25:07Fareed Zakaria?

  vulnerability, because America will use it to squeeze us, to punish us, to bully us, we've got to get some leverage back. And so he's making, Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, is making deals with the European Union, with China, with India. Now, I think he's going to keep doing that, even if, even if a Democrat is elected in '28. India was going to wean itself off its dependence on Russian arms. But then watching what, the way that Trump behaved towards India, but also the way it behaved towards Ukraine, I'm sure the Indians, I know the Indians are thinking, well, you know, we'll wean ourselves off the Russians a bit, but maybe slower than we planned to.

• 25:50Fareed Zakaria?

  And we'll diversify, we'll buy, the big order they placed out this year was actually for French fighter planes, not American. And there had been a hope that India would essentially trade its dependence, 80% of Indian weaponry comes from, comes from Russia, we trade that for America. And there were many people in India advocating that. But the Trump administration's attitude has completely changed the way Indians, at the elite level, look at, look at America. In general, Indians are still wildly pro-American, but at the elite level, it's changed. So this gets to the, to the question you're asking.

• 26:31Fareed Zakaria?

  I think we have set in place motion, you know, kind of series of motions that people are going to buy insurance. So I think we can get a bunch of it back. I think we can, we can stabilize the system again, but we can't go back to the way it was. Because once you saw that level of mistrust, that doubt, that sense that we need a bit of insurance, it's hard to see how you, how you get, we did, we did the impossible. You know, for 50 years, the second and third richest countries in the world, Germany and Japan, said, we don't need to have, you know, major defenses. You take care of us. We are basically subcontracting our national security policy to you, the number one country.

• 27:16Fareed Zakaria?

  The idea that the number two and number three economies in the world would subcontract their foreign policy to the number one country, again, historically, never happened in the world. And it was, it was American genius, and it has now been American stupidity and recklessness that has, that has wrecked that system.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I would argue that the most enduring damage that will take, not administrations, but generations to repair, and I look at everything through the lens of the metaphor of corporate governance and shareholders. That is, if you're a shareholder trying to acquire a company, buying 33% of the company, you're willing to pay X, but if you can get 51%, you're willing to pay 2X, because it gives you sort of control, if you will. And the U.S., arguably, with, with our allies, who depended upon our navy, settled their trades in dollars, largely based their legal systems on ours, felt that if, quote unquote, shit got real, they could count on us. That was 60 or 70% of the world's GDP, vis a vis democracies in Asia and Europe.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  We had a controlling interest in the world economy, militarily, politically. And now we've decided to go down to 33. We've essentially said to these partners, you can't trust us. Sure, we'll work together, but you can't trust us. It just strikes me as, you would never, as a shareholder, willingly go from a majority to a minority position. It just absolutely makes no sense. And when my question-

• 28:49Fareed Zakaria?

  That was totally affordable for us. It was, it was the equivalent of what these founders do when they issue a shares to continue your, right? You only have to own 20% of the company, but you can have 60% of the voting rights. That, that was the arrangement we had with the international system.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  So assuming that's a bad idea and we wanna, I'm going to Toronto today. I'm basically saying, look, the majority of Americans think of you as family. And I would understand that you think of us as the brother who's become a meth addict. Give us some time. Hopefully, we're coming back into the fold. Place like India, to me, it strikes, deploy just the entire diplomatic corps. This is the opportunity, right? To not end up with an adversary like China, but to end up with an ally like China, specifically India. It just makes so much sense. What can not only the next administration do?

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Say you were asked, and I would imagine this is a decent chance, to be vetted for Secretary of State. What would your advice, not only to the next president be, but once, if in fact, there is a blue tsunami and Democrats take the House and the Senate, what would be your advice to starting that long road back, if you will?

• 30:10Fareed Zakaria?

  I think it'll require more than words. It'll require action. You know, you'll have to commit to certain longer term policies where the United States is willing to return and to kind of join with these countries in various ways. So with Canada, you've got to, once and for all, sort out this trade thing and say, look, we basically have a great deal here. We have an integrated North Atlantic economy and we're going to move forward. We're going to lock it in in some way, whether it's a long 15 year trade agreement. And the most important thing would be to work with Republicans who hopefully, once the Trump spell is broken, who agree with you.

• 30:55Fareed Zakaria?

  I mean, NAFTA was a Republican idea. It was George Bush Senior's idea. It passed with a majority of Republican votes, not Democratic votes. It was Bill Clinton plus the Republicans in the House and Senate who passed NAFTA. Similarly, with India, I think you'll have to, you'll have to think about some long term economic technological partnerships, which, by the way, as you point out, would be incredibly beneficial and win-win. Take one example. So the US has been trying to wean itself off the mass excessive dependence on China for a variety of things. And one of them was Apple. The idea was Apple was producing too much of its production in China.

• 31:38Fareed Zakaria?

  And so the Americans went to India and said, can you, can you help produce the iPhone? And they hooked up with Tata's, which is one of the best companies in India. Three years ago, zero iPhones were made in India. Today, every new iPhone in America is made in India. 25% of all smartphones are made in India. This is essentially from almost zero standing stock.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Every new iPhone is made in India?

• 32:07Fareed Zakaria?

  Every new iPhone that sells in America.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  The new models?

• 32:11Fareed Zakaria?

  The new models, exactly.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  I did not know that.

• 32:14Fareed Zakaria?

  And this is in three years. So, and the reason is only India has the scale that you could, you know, that can offset China. If you really want to de-risk yourself from excessive reliance on China, whether it's with rare earths, whether it's with, you know, aluminum, whatever it is you're looking for, this, you're going to have to do it with many countries, you know, Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia. But India has the scale that allows you to do stuff like I just described. Nobody else could have, you know, gotten to the point where 25% of all smartphones manufactured, sold in the United States are now made in India in three years, right? Because it's 1.4 billion people and a large number of technically trained people.

• 32:59Fareed Zakaria?

  So, but you need to do things like that. You know, we have this deal with the Australians, AUKUS, to sell them three submarines. They are all convinced that Trump is essentially delaying that process and that they'll never get their submarines. So they left pissed off the Chinese and got nothing for it in return. We've got to make good on our commitments there, you know? So I think a lot of places in the world would be amenable to this idea that America has returned, but it will take actions, not words.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  We'll be right back.

• 33:41Speaker 07

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• 35:07Speaker 03

  We're back with more from Fareed Zakaria. So let's brainstorm around what's something that would show real metal. I think the economic agreements and tariffs take months, if not years, to construct. And quite frankly, aren't that sexy or exciting? They're really important, but a new agreement on auto parts between Canada and the US that restores us to where it was before, or NAFTA III. Yeah, it's important, but from a retail standpoint, it doesn't get people excited or send much of a message around the world. What would? What if the Democrats in office, what if they immediately passed a resolution saying,

• 35:50Speaker 03

  if Europe is spending, supporting Ukraine to the tune of $120 billion a year, I don't know the number, we're in for 200, we're going to give them our latest technology, we are going to ask Europe to even step up more, as we are in a profound way, and we will not stop. We have the largest balance sheet in the history of the world. We have the most sophisticated weaponry. We have the best intelligence service. We are going to, we are going to rally all of that until Putin leaves Ukraine. And let Trump veto it. Let him explain why he is not supporting an ally. But start to set the table.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  To me, there's fewer rallying points that would show America is, is back, if you will, with all caps. Your thoughts?

• 36:39Fareed Zakaria?

  Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And I think I agree with both your points. First, Ukraine is the most important struggle. If you believe in this international order we've been talking about, that the US largely built after 1945 with Europe's help, the biggest norm that was, that was enshrined in it was you cannot conquer territory by force and just annex it. Something that was routine in the 100 years before 1945. I mean, Alsace-Lorraine changes hands four times between the French and Germans in the 100 years before 1945. Since 1945, there have been virtually no brutal annexations of that kind. It's a norm that is largely held up.

• 37:22Fareed Zakaria?

  And so the Russian violation of it and against a liberal democracy, struggling to be, not just to survive, but to be part of the West, is the big political, moral struggle of our age. And Trump has basically abandoned the Ukrainians. So to push back against that, I think you're exactly right. Secondly, it would be very militarily smart, because Trump is right, we need peace there. Elon Musk is right, we need peace there. People are dying on both sides. But the path to peace is to pressure the Ukrainians rather than the Russians, to pressure the victim rather than the aggressor. It's politically stupid, it's morally obtuse. So this would get us back on that track.

• 38:05Fareed Zakaria?

  Now, the second thing you said, I think, is also important, which is, some of this isn't going to happen. But the Democrats have to start laying out, what is the world we believe in? What is the world we, you know, what is our vision for the world? And if they can do that through a series of big votes, they should make clear, these are the things we would like to see. You know, a big thing on healthcare, a big thing on Ukraine, you know, a big thing on the tariffs. I think there's an easy way to do it, because the Treasury is at this point addicted to the tariffs. So you can't really get back to, you can't go back to where you were. But what Trump has done is, I think I read somewhere that there are actually 7,000 tariffs,

• 38:50Fareed Zakaria?

  tariff rates, when you add them all up. Because Trump never, you know, it's never actually an 18% rate for some country. There are huge numbers of exemptions and exceptions. Some of them for legitimate reasons, some of them frankly seem to me all about corruption. You know, you're kind of various industries and firms are buying exemptions. So you regularize that. Say, we're going to have a 5% tariff, you know, toward all imported goods, a kind of consumption tax on imports of about 5%, 7%. It's not particularly high. You know, the economy can handle it fine, the markets will handle it fine. But you've got to, and you say to the American people, you're doing this because we want

• 39:34Fareed Zakaria?

  to lower the tariffs substantially so that you get relief, so that, you know, the prices that you are dealing with are lower. It's hard for, let's be honest, it's hard for the party out of power that doesn't have the White House to be represented and to have a coherent vision. Because the reality is, you're going to have a wild entrepreneurial free for all with probably 15 to 20 candidates running to replace Donald Trump, particularly if his approval ratings remain as low as they are. Remember, Scott, he is now basically the most unpopular president in American history. I mean, his only competition is Richard Nixon in the six month period around his resignation.

• 40:19Fareed Zakaria?

  But to be in the 36, 37%, you're pretty much as low as it gets. That is going to invite a huge number of Democrats to run. So the danger is you end up with cacophony. And Hakeem Jeffries and Schumer can provide that coherent message by coming up with four or five totemic things. You pass big bills, you make it, you make it a big deal. And as you say, let Trump veto it.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  I want to propose this scenario and have you respond to it. It's, it's the 30s. We're contemplating re-entering Europe, paid a huge price in World War I. It's a very unpopular idea to go back where it feels like we just left. And this innovator, Charles Lindbergh, is saying, no, we should partner with the Germans. Imagine, if you will, that Charles Lindbergh was able to raise a ton of money and buy McDonald Douglas, an aircraft manufacturer, and put in place this unbelievably innovative guidance system. And FDR decided to loan to the RRF B-17s, an amazing bomber in defense of Europe as this fascist begins to invade Europe.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  And then the CEO of McDonald Douglas decides mid-flight to turn off the guidance systems. And as a result, the blitzkrieg increases in fury and UK citizens are killed. I believe that has almost exactly played out in the last few weeks with Elon Musk throttling back Starlink. And my question is, or my thesis is, we took the Rosenbergs and put them up against a wall and executed them for being traitors. And I realize this is an incendiary statement, but I'll make it and I believe it. I think Elon Musk is a traitor to the West.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  And I think what is even more dangerous is this zeitgeist within America that the idolatry of innovators and money has created a cloud cover such that traitors to the West are not seen as traitors to the West. That if this had happened in any other age where we were not obsessed with innovators and money, a much different reaction would be playing out to Elon Musk. Your thoughts on Elon Musk's actions, America's response, and if you're willing to speculate what might happen if the Democrats take control of Congress? A lot there, I apologize for the word salad.

• 42:52Fareed Zakaria?

  There is a lot there. Look, I think you are, first of all, 100% right on this really sad spectacle in America where people who, who managed to get very rich are then idolized as geniuses about everything. I think Elon Musk is one of the world's great engineers, one of the great, world's great technologists, one, maybe one of history's great technologists. But he does not have the depth of understanding on issue, complicated issues of politics like identity, you know, Islam, Europe. And you can see that when he, when he talks about them.

• 43:35Fareed Zakaria?

  He's often wrong with, in terms of the statistics he uses, he's often wrong with, about the history he uses. Give you one example, he retweeted on a tweet of these before and after photographs of a few African countries, you know, Johannesburg before the end of apartheid and after. And the before picture is this beautiful manicured picture of a lovely stately British, you know, colonial sort of set of buildings. And then, you know, ugly, dirty, modern South Africa today. You know, so you get the point. What he doesn't seem to understand is the nature of societies like South Africa and

• 44:18Fareed Zakaria?

  Rhodesia and Kenya was that you had a small, I'm talking 5% of the, of the population that was white, privileged, had first-class citizenship status, was allowed to own as much of the land of the country as they were able to. And the other 95% of blacks were, were literally slaves and servants to these, to these people and were supporting that lifestyle. You can have a very good photograph when you have those dynamics, you know? The pyramids look fantastic, but you know, it was, it was built for one person by hundreds of thousands of workers. Is that the society you're really advocating? Or take a look at his Doge nonsense, right?

• 45:03Fareed Zakaria?

  He comes to, comes in and says, I'm going to cut $2 trillion out of the federal treasury. Only somebody who knows nothing about the, the budget of the United States could, could imagine that. And he thought he was going to find it by reducing admin costs, you know, not understanding that the, the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. If you're going to reduce costs in the, in the federal government, it's not by taking out people at the Social Security Administration, it's by cutting people's social security checks. The, the money is not in the people writing the checks, the money, the money is on those checks, that, you know, the people, the benefits people are getting. He understood none of this.

• 45:44Fareed Zakaria?

  And so the idea that he, as a private citizen, should have these kind of powers to decide what is a life and death struggle for an ally of the United States, you know, one of the most important allies of Europe, is totally tragic. I completely agree with you that, that it has been, you know, a huge body blow to the Ukrainians, but it's also been terrible for the United States. I'll tell you a story about India. Again, the India, Musk tried to do one of his very Musk-like efforts to rattle the Indians. He applied for, he thinks that Starlink's biggest market outside of America would be India.

• 46:27Fareed Zakaria?

  And he's correct on that because, you know, China won't let him. So India, 1.4 billion people, it would be a goldmine for Starlink. So they applied for it, they followed all the rules that the Indians wanted them to, which is to set up a separate company for digital privacy reasons and such. And it was stuck in the application process. And meanwhile, a big Indian company, the biggest Indian company, Reliance, decided it was going to launch. It's a, it has a telecom brand, a wing called GEO, they were going to launch low orbit satellites. And so then Musk tweets out saying, the owner of the, of the Indian company is called, is Mukesh Ambani. Dear Prime Minister Ambani, because I know that's where the real power of, of India lies,

• 47:13Fareed Zakaria?

  please allow Starlink in, it would be so good for the, you know, the many peasants and farmers of India to get connected. He thought he was doing this genius, you know, Hail Mary, getting around, getting the ordinary Indians to rally for him. It totally backfired. Everybody rallied around Ambani and GEO, this, you know, India's richest man, Asia's richest man, against Musk. Why? Because it became a point of nationalism. And they look at how Trump and Musk wield Starlink and they say, do we Indians want to be vulnerable the way the Ukrainians are? If we got into another skirmish with Pakistan, do we want the Indian army to be dependent

• 47:56Fareed Zakaria?

  on a, for its communications, on a satellite system that can, that Trump and Musk control? And so it completely backfired in a predictable way for anyone who understood nationalism and the history and the India-Pakistan thing, which of course Musk doesn't understand at all.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  Curious, Fareed, as someone who's an immigrant and has been successful.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  On a deeper level, you look at stuff and you have to be pretty PG 13 and reasonable. But how does what is going on resonate with you personally? Like you have seen, you're, obviously you have this incredible sort of intellectual perspective on the world and the role America plays in it. But what, what does this all mean for you as someone who's come here and has been successful and has seen where we are? I know you, my understanding is your mom passed away during COVID, but she was still in India, is that correct?

• 48:58Fareed Zakaria?

  Correct.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Like, how does this hit you personally?

• 49:03Fareed Zakaria?

  I think for me, as probably for many immigrants, this is all heartbreaking because the reason we came to America, the reason we left behind, you know, people forget immigrants, yeah, it's a happy story of coming to America and the great adventure of America, which I massively have benefited from and enjoyed. But you're also leaving something behind. You're leaving behind a country, a culture, a family, friends that you love. And the reason we did it was we believed America was this city on a hill, this extraordinary country, unlike other countries, that welcomed people in, that had this distinctive role in the world,

• 49:46Fareed Zakaria?

  that was able to really live up to its enlightenment ideas, that all men are created equal. You know, so there's a certain amount of maybe excessive belief in that, that I think we all have and that I certainly have, and I believe is still largely justified. But to see this side of America, you know, the nastiness, the crudeness, the decimation of USAID, for example. I was always very proud that the United States was the richest country in the history of the world, was also the most generous country in the history of the world. We invented foreign aid. Foreign aid as a thing didn't exist. The idea that the rich countries of the world

• 50:31Fareed Zakaria?

  had some moral obligation to the poorest countries in the world is an American idea. It actually begins after World War I with Herbert Hoover administering the largest aid relief program. And then after 45, we almost make it one of those norms and it becomes, you know, part of the whole industry. And has there been abuse? Sure, but has it also lifted huge numbers of people out of both poverty and just ill health? Undoubtedly, yes, and there's overwhelming evidence for that. And the idea that we would not only do it, but we do it so callously, or the way in which people now routinely talk about immigrants, talk about Hispanics, talk about Indians, talk about Muslims,

• 51:15Fareed Zakaria?

  all of this has become much more crude, sort of upfront. People almost gloat in their ability. It's, you know, apparently this is now the new sort of, you know, we're not going to be VC, so we're all going to be openly racist. And you see that in so many places. And it's very sad because it's definitely not the America I came to in 1982. I came to Ronald Reagan's America, conservative Republican, but a conservative Republican who deeply believed in America's special mission, in America as the place that welcomed people from all over the world. The last speech Reagan made was all about how you can come

• 51:57Fareed Zakaria?

  from anywhere in the world and you can be an American. And now we have the Vice President of the United States saying, no, no, no, if you came, you know, if you came a generation ago, you're not as American as my family that came eight generations ago. So all of it, yeah, very, very disheartening. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't go so far as to say disillusioning because I still have so much faith in America. I still think this is a passing phase. I still think most Americans don't feel this way. I think there's a lot of anger and confusion and hurt. And it's easy to, when we're in those circumstances,

• 52:40Fareed Zakaria?

  to get people to blame somebody else and things like that. So I think it, I think it comes back. I know it comes back. It's, I mean, it's one of the reasons I've never even remotely contemplated leaving. You know, people will say, oh, if Trump gets elected or reelected or something happens, I'm going to, I'm going to go to Canada. I've never had that feeling at all. I mean, I feel like I made my decision. This is my country. I will try to work for it to be a better place. But, you know, in the worst case scenario, I'm going down with the ship.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  I know it comes back. This is my country. Fareed Zakaria is a journalist, author and political commentator. He hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN and is a columnist for The Washington Post. Big day, Fareed. Thank you for taking time on such an important, an important day when I know the demands on your time are pretty exceptional. Thanks so much, brother.

• 53:39Fareed Zakaria?

  Always a pleasure, Scott. Thank you.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez, Laura Janir and Asher Schwartz. Our video editor is Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Kami Reek is our social producer. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thanks for listening to the Prof G Pod from Prof G Media.

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