Latest / The Morning Edition / Trump unloads on Australia, and MAGA official quits over Iran war

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Trump unloads on Australia, and MAGA official quits over Iran war · The Morning Edition

0:03
S1: For someone who has said that he's already won the
0:06
S1: war in Iran. Donald Trump sure is angry, lashing out
0:10
S1: the other night against allies including Australia, who have declined
0:14
S1: to send ships to the Middle East to help put
0:16
S1: a stop to the current oil crisis. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris,
0:21
S1: and you're listening to The Morning Edition from The Age
0:24
S1: and The Sydney Morning Herald today, international and political editor
0:29
S1: Peter Hartcher on the attacks that Donald Trump is now
0:32
S1: facing from within his own party over this war. And
0:36
S1: who's really winning in this conflict? It's March the 19th. Peter,
0:44
S1: welcome back to the podcast.
0:45
S2: Good to see you, Samantha.
0:46
S1: Okay. Talk about timing, because just the night before we're
0:50
S1: recording this, Donald Trump had a tantrum on social media.
0:54
S1: Now he's no stranger to the dummy spit, but this
0:56
S1: time he's unleashed his temper on us amongst other people. Peter,
1:01
S1: what did he say?
1:03
S2: Well, he put out this, uh, Truth Social post as
1:06
S2: he does every five minutes. Uh, to say that, well,
1:10
S2: he didn't really need or want help from allies with
1:14
S2: the Strait of Hormuz, even though he'd asked them for it.
1:18
S2: And he didn't want or need the assistance of the
1:21
S2: NATO allies or Japan or South Korea or Australia.
1:25
S1: Right. Okay. So give us some background to this. I mean,
1:28
S1: or to put it in another way, I know that
1:30
S1: neither you nor I are mind readers, but do you
1:33
S1: think in all likelihood, this is coming from a place
1:36
S1: of real stress because the war is going so badly?
1:40
S1: Perhaps you can tell us A about how the war
1:42
S1: is going for the United States, and also just how
1:45
S1: Maga is sort of splitting over this.
1:48
S2: Well, you know, we aren't mind readers, but the fact
1:51
S2: that this man has so much power and operates so
1:54
S2: unconventionally requires us to try to get inside his head,
1:58
S2: which must be a very ugly place, and I'd rather not.
2:01
S2: But we're forced to try and sort out what otherwise
2:06
S2: seems incomprehensible. In response to that tantrum, I noticed that the.
2:11
S2: For anybody not familiar with Australian politics, Andrew Hastie is
2:14
S2: a member of the conservative opposition party and he's on
2:17
S2: the conservative wing, the right wing of the of the
2:21
S2: Liberal Party in Australia. And he described Trump's comments as petulant.
2:26
S3: Look, I thought it was a petulant post from a
2:28
S3: president under immense pressure. Yesterday, he said.
2:31
S2: And I think that's very apt. I think what we
2:34
S2: see in Trump increasingly and and confirmed, you know, day
2:39
S2: by day is somebody with the mindset of a of
2:44
S2: a petulant, adolescent, insecure bully with the tactics of a
2:50
S2: sociopath and the weapons of a superpower. And this is
2:55
S2: being inflicted on the world with an increasingly baffled world
2:59
S2: with increasing force. The tantrum over the allies is relatively mild,
3:06
S2: and as far as I can tell, nobody's been killed
3:08
S2: as a result of that one. But why the oil problem?
3:12
S2: It was eminently predictable. And yet the world now finds
3:16
S2: itself in an oil crisis. The Wall Street Journal reported
3:20
S2: late last week that the Pentagon had actually said to Trump, now, Mr. President,
3:26
S2: the Iranians could close the Strait of Hormuz. Let's plan
3:30
S2: for that. And he brushed it aside, according to the
3:32
S2: Wall Street Journal. Trump dismissed the possibility that the Iranians
3:36
S2: would close the strait and said, oh, they'll collapse before
3:40
S2: they have a chance to shut down the oil. So
3:43
S2: he was warned. He dismissed the warnings and proceeded with
3:46
S2: an ill advised war, which he's never been able to justify.
3:50
S2: Still struggles to justify with justifications that vary day to
3:54
S2: day where he didn't bother to advise or bring in
4:00
S2: on the war. Any allies apart from Israel? And then
4:05
S2: when he finds himself in this predictable muddle where the
4:09
S2: oil supply is shut down out of the Strait of Hormuz,
4:12
S2: he turns to allies, asks for help. The allies, having
4:15
S2: been insulted by Trump for years, dismissed in every possible way.
4:19
S1: To their face in some instances.
4:21
S2: In some instances to their face, and in some instances
4:24
S2: to their political detriment. And in the case of Ukraine,
4:30
S2: not not a traditional ally, but to to the potential
4:33
S2: danger of of the existence of their country, then expects
4:37
S2: the the allies to set aside all of that and
4:41
S2: then send their assets, their militaries, their personnel to risk
4:45
S2: death in the Strait of Hormuz to help Donald Trump
4:48
S2: with a problem that he has manufactured entirely of his own.
4:54
S2: So all of that then, is for Trump's political purposes,
5:00
S2: which seems to be the only thing that concerns him.
5:02
S2: When I call him a sociopath, I mean by that,
5:05
S2: that he's a person who doesn't seem to take the
5:07
S2: existence of other people seriously. Yeah. When the expressions of
5:11
S2: concern to him over the American soldiers who had died
5:14
S2: in this war. Oh, gosh, he seemed completely uninterested and
5:19
S2: merely remarked that that's what happens in wars.
5:22
S4: The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and
5:25
S4: we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But
5:30
S4: we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for.
5:34
S2: There seems to be a complete lack of empathy, even
5:36
S2: pretending empathy or sympathy for the dead and wounded that
5:40
S2: he is. He is responsible for ultimately. I mean, the
5:42
S2: Iranians killed them, but they were there in in prosecution
5:46
S2: of Trump's war. So the only thing that he does
5:50
S2: seem to matter to him are two things. The share market,
5:53
S2: Wall Street and what's happening in the markets. And as a.
5:57
S2: Some sort of wealth barometer, I suppose. And second, his
6:00
S2: political stakes, his political fortunes. And they have come under
6:06
S2: increased strain because of this war. And the strain is
6:10
S2: showing inside the Maga movement itself.
6:13
S1: And I guess a really notable one happened just about
6:16
S1: 8 or 10 hours before. We're recording this on Wednesday morning,
6:19
S1: and that's that Trump's counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, has quit.
6:24
S1: And not only has he quit, but he has lobbed
6:27
S1: some really damning accusations against Trump with regards to his
6:31
S1: decision to pursue this war. So tell us what he said.
6:35
S1: And yeah, whether you think this could actually hurt Trump politically.
6:38
S2: Yes. The resignation of Joe Kent, terrorism chief, is the
6:43
S2: first high level Maga official that Trump had appointed, who
6:46
S2: has now quit in a state of protest at Trump.
6:51
S2: Mind you, he didn't do it at the outset of
6:53
S2: the war. He's waited two and a half weeks. So
6:55
S2: if you like, he's a weather vane that indicates which
6:57
S2: way the political wind is blowing. And the fact that
6:59
S2: in Maga it's blowing, it's increasingly against Trump. He accused
7:04
S2: Trump of, first of all, running into this war simply
7:08
S2: because the Israelis wanted it, which has instantly been branded
7:12
S2: as anti-Semitic. So that's another dispute, another divide. A lot
7:16
S2: of the Maga people are anti-Israel, and a lot of
7:20
S2: the Maga people have taken had already formed the view
7:23
S2: that Trump was gulled into this war by Netanyahu, the
7:27
S2: prime minister of Israel. And there was that was fueled
7:31
S2: a little, at least, by Netanyahu. He said he'd brought.
7:34
S2: At the beginning of the war, he said he had
7:36
S2: brought Trump brought America into the war. That's right. Which
7:38
S2: Trump resisted and said no. If anything, I forced Israel's hand.
7:43
S2: So that's a point of contention. But it does give
7:45
S2: enough ammunition to the people who want to criticize him
7:48
S2: within the Maga movement as being some puppet of Netanyahu, which.
7:52
S2: Cairns picked up on. But Cairns gone further and said
7:55
S2: that the country has been lied to. That there was
7:57
S2: never any threat, no imminent threat to the US from Iran.
8:02
S2: This is really damaging.
8:03
S1: I mean, that's sort of the killer blow in his
8:05
S1: resignation letter, right? I don't know how much damage it's
8:07
S1: going to cause, but tell us why that is such
8:09
S1: a big deal.
8:10
S2: Because it means the war is not being fought for
8:14
S2: any legitimate national purpose. It still leaves open the option
8:19
S2: that Trump has gone to war, as he'd originally claimed,
8:22
S2: to support the protest movement in Iran, that he was
8:26
S2: doing it in pursuit of regime change, which he sometimes
8:30
S2: returns to that and sometimes doesn't. But to suggest that
8:33
S2: he would go to war at this scale and with
8:37
S2: these consequences for this long, just to support the protest
8:42
S2: movement in Iran doesn't satisfy the Maga movement. Whatever happened
8:45
S2: to America first is what they want to know. So
8:48
S2: for Kent to say that there was no imminent threat,
8:51
S2: that the country has been lied to, effectively calling Trump
8:55
S2: the liar is damaging. And of course, it's consonant with
9:00
S2: many of the facts as we see them.
9:03
S1: After the break. Is this going to be a forever war, Peter?
9:08
S2: I doubt it.
9:09
S1: Why?
9:10
S2: Well, there are two things.
9:17
S1: Your column that just came out on Tuesday. This is just,
9:20
S1: of course, one day before we're recording this. You know,
9:23
S1: you argued that there are still very clear winners in
9:25
S1: this war. Who are these winners and does this still
9:28
S1: stand today? Because of course, this changes day by day.
9:32
S2: Well, looking at the two main combatants, it's difficult to
9:34
S2: say either of them is winning. The Iranian regime may
9:38
S2: still be standing. The ayatollah is dead. Long live the Ayatollah.
9:42
S2: His son simply taken over and the regime is in place,
9:46
S2: with no real sign yet of it cracking. There are
9:48
S2: some internal dissent, but its grip on power isn't cracking
9:52
S2: and it is being hit and hit hard. It will
9:54
S2: be at the end of this a diminished, weakened country,
9:58
S2: a poorer country. So it is suffering. There's absolutely no question.
10:01
S2: But is America winning? You can't say America is winning
10:04
S2: with this economic war, this petrol and inflation war that
10:10
S2: they're now suffering with the loss of not only some
10:14
S2: of their service people, but an enormous stockpile of munitions
10:18
S2: being sacrificed. The first two days cost 11 billion USD plus,
10:22
S2: according to the Pentagon, and that was now two and
10:25
S2: a half weeks into this war. So it's hard to
10:28
S2: see that the US is actually winning. And if the
10:33
S2: nuclear capability of the regime was the target of Trump's
10:38
S2: original intention, which was one of the many and varied
10:41
S2: explanations he's given, then he has yet to explain why
10:45
S2: the US has not yet attacked those facilities, or tried
10:49
S2: to seize the estimated 400 kilos of enriched uranium that
10:52
S2: the Iranian regime has. So it's hard to see that
10:57
S2: either of them is winning. But that doesn't mean that
11:00
S2: no country is winning. And my point, Samantha, was to
11:03
S2: say that in the constellation of global power, which is affected,
11:06
S2: whenever there's one big shift like this, it redistributes power
11:10
S2: around the world. And that's what we see. And I'm
11:13
S2: I'm positing that there are three principal winners so far
11:17
S2: from this. One is Israel, which gets the US support
11:20
S2: in this war to conduct a war against Iran and
11:23
S2: now against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
11:26
S1: Which, of course, we know Netanyahu has wanted to do
11:28
S1: both for a very long time. Yes.
11:30
S2: Yeah. Very popular among Israeli Jews. We saw a poll
11:35
S2: this week that said 93% support this war that Netanyahu
11:40
S2: is prosecuting against Iran. and 82% amongst the Israeli population
11:45
S2: as a whole. So it's hugely popular. It's working for
11:48
S2: Netanyahu politically, who faces a. He faces an election later
11:51
S2: this year. It's doing a lot of damage to the
11:55
S2: principal enemy, the strongest and most important enemy of Israel.
12:00
S2: And he gets political cover from the US as well
12:03
S2: as military support. So it's a big win for Israel. Yeah.
12:06
S2: The next one I would suggest is Russia. Russia wins
12:11
S2: from this war. Putin gets a large bonus for the
12:15
S2: funding of his war chest out of this oil crisis,
12:19
S2: because first, the price of oil has gone up by
12:21
S2: more than 40% since the war began. But secondly, because
12:24
S2: Trump has allowed a relaxation of sanctions against Russia, which
12:28
S2: has now allowed Russia to ship more oil. There's an
12:31
S2: oil and trading information company, Cipla, which estimates that directly
12:36
S2: into the Russian government's coffers, there's an extra 150 million
12:40
S2: USD flowing per day that this war is running. So
12:44
S2: over the course of a month, they estimate it would
12:46
S2: be between about three and a half and 5 billion USD.
12:49
S2: Pure unearned bonus for for Vladimir Putin at the same time.
12:54
S2: Of course, this diminishes the stock of weapons available for
12:57
S2: the Ukrainians to get. Trump doesn't give them any. But
13:01
S2: the Europeans buy them from the US and supply them
13:04
S2: onto Ukraine. Well, Trump is now eating up so many
13:07
S2: of those munitions. Which now brings us to the third
13:12
S2: the third winner. And that is China, because Trump is
13:16
S2: doing a number of things that support China tremendously. Just
13:21
S2: on that last one, the munitions stock. So Trump has
13:24
S2: been transferring military assets out of the Indo-Pacific to the
13:29
S2: Middle East to support this war. The second category of
13:32
S2: material that Trump is moving out of the Indo-Pacific are
13:36
S2: missiles and missile batteries and air defense systems. He's moved
13:40
S2: them out of Japan and moved them out of South
13:43
S2: Korea to the Middle East again. Weakening the defenses of
13:46
S2: the US and its allies, or the countries that formerly
13:50
S2: were considered to be allies in the Indo Pacific. And
13:54
S2: at the same time, all of the political attention, as
13:58
S2: well as the military effort of the US, is concentrated
14:00
S2: in this Middle Eastern war from which Trump will emerge
14:03
S2: with much depleted stockpiles of munitions. Now, if you're XI Jinping,
14:08
S2: this is looking like an America that is very distracted
14:11
S2: and that is offering you an opportunity, should you wish
14:14
S2: to take it, of more freedom to move in the
14:17
S2: Indo-Pacific than the than China has had for years. Then
14:22
S2: we come to a point that Mick Ryan, a well-known
14:27
S2: military strategist, former Australian major general, has made to me
14:30
S2: that Trump was supposed to be having a meeting with
14:33
S2: XI Jinping at the end of this month that's now
14:36
S2: been postponed because of the war?
14:38
S1: Yes, but at Trump's request.
14:40
S2: At Trump's request. But Mick Ryan's point is at that
14:42
S2: meeting with all of this going on and all of
14:44
S2: these advantages falling China's way. XI Jinping will be looking
14:48
S2: into Donald Trump's eyes, as disconcerting and experience as that
14:52
S2: may be for most people. And wanting to ask this question,
14:56
S2: is this man going to fight China? If I take
14:59
S2: action to either to to claim Taiwan or to claim
15:03
S2: more territory in the South China Sea, or to start
15:06
S2: an incident with one of its neighbors, Japan, the Philippines,
15:10
S2: whom it's pressuring.
15:12
S1: Which I guess just to wrap up, Peter brings us
15:14
S1: back to the United States. As you've mentioned before, we
15:17
S1: know that Donald Trump, he campaigned on this vow, you know,
15:20
S1: no more forever wars. But it would seem that Trump's
15:24
S1: window for pulling back from this war and being able
15:26
S1: to declare victory. It seems like that window is over.
15:30
S1: So is the United States. Does it look like it's
15:33
S1: likely that it is becoming embroiled in a forever war
15:35
S1: because it's expanded, right? The targets keep expanding. Iran's hit,
15:40
S1: I imagine, more than 13 countries now. You've got an
15:44
S1: airport in the UAE, which which has been hit. So
15:48
S1: this really is expanding. You know, Europeans are being pressured
15:51
S1: to join. Obviously, NATO has said no, but I don't
15:55
S1: know how long they'll be able to say no for.
15:57
S1: So is this going to be a forever war? Peter.
16:01
S2: I doubt it.
16:02
S1: Uh, why?
16:03
S2: Well, there are two things. First, your point about declaring victory.
16:07
S2: There are still possibilities of being able to declare victory.
16:10
S2: Who knows what's next? If the regime cracks, he can
16:14
S2: declare victory. If the Israelis or the Americans manage to
16:19
S2: inflict serious damage on the nuclear development facilities of Iran,
16:25
S2: even though Trump claimed he'd obliterated them last June, then
16:28
S2: he may be able to claim victory. Out of that,
16:33
S2: he may redefine victory and simply say, we've destroyed their
16:37
S2: navy and all of their missile launchers. Therefore that's victory
16:40
S2: and pull out so those options remain open to him.
16:45
S2: But on the other side of it, which is the
16:46
S2: ability to continue the war, I don't think it's a
16:49
S2: forever war because politically, well, the allies politically, it's very
16:55
S2: popular for the allies to stay out of this war,
16:57
S2: which they didn't start, weren't consulted on and have no
17:00
S2: interest in joining. But second, the the pressure on inflation, prices,
17:05
S2: gasoline and petrol prices in America makes it politically difficult
17:10
S2: and economically damaging. It's the it's a measurable. It's a
17:13
S2: tangible economic harm that will become more evident and more
17:17
S2: painful as the weeks go by. Plus, at some point
17:19
S2: the US runs out of munitions. It doesn't have an info.
17:22
S2: Trump has declared the opposite, but it does not have
17:25
S2: an infinite supply of missiles.
17:27
S1: It'd be able to go for a while though, right?
17:29
S2: Well, we don't know exactly, but experts say depending on
17:35
S2: the munition, that they have weeks rather than months at
17:38
S2: this rate. Wow. At this rate. And they're already apportioning
17:42
S2: them from other parts of of the planet. So and
17:46
S2: Trump's been urging the US defense contractors to accelerate the
17:50
S2: pace of output. So it's straining their supply.
17:52
S1: Wow.
17:53
S2: So for all those reasons I think this is going
17:55
S2: to be a shorter war than a forever war.
17:58
S1: Okay. Well it is such a fast moving space. So
18:01
S1: much has even happened since you last wrote about this.
18:03
S1: And that was only a couple of days ago.
18:05
S2: Indeed.
18:06
S1: So we are so lucky to have you on weekly
18:08
S1: because God knows what will be happening.
18:10
S2: It's a dizzying pace. That's right. And it's always a
18:12
S2: pleasure to talk these things through with you, Samantha.
18:14
S1: Thanks, Peter. In other news today, the response of China,
18:24
S1: Australia's largest single supplier of jet fuel to the war
18:28
S1: with Iran, has put a question mark over future fuel
18:31
S1: supplies for the nation's aviation sector, a radical option to
18:35
S1: shutter tobacconists and sell cigarettes only in places like supermarkets
18:39
S1: has been put on the agenda by the Albanese government,
18:42
S1: as it reveals new laws to rein in the runaway
18:45
S1: black market. And lastly, whether you're a cheese fiend, spice
18:50
S1: Meister or just like yours, vinegary experts at good food,
18:53
S1: taste and rate all the crisps that matter. You can
18:57
S1: read more at the age.com or smh.com.au. Today's episode was
19:05
S1: produced by Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills,
19:09
S1: and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick.
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19:19
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