The Great X Debate, with Matt Continetti: Vance v. Ferguson, Trump Diplomacy, DOGE, and Hackman

>> Reporter: President, do you still think that Mr. Zelensky is a dictator?
>> Donald Trump: Did I say that? I can't believe I said that. Next question.
>> Bill Whalen: It's Thursday, February 27th, 2025. And welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining social, economic, political and geopolitical concerns. I'm Bill Whelan, I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow.

I'll be your moderator today, joined by our full complement of Goodfellows, as we like to call them. That would include the historian Sir Niall Ferguson, the Economist John Cochran, and Former Presidential National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. And joining us today from the swamp or somewhere outside the swamp, I think, I believe he resides in Northern Virginia, our friend Matthew Continetti.

Matt Continetti is the Director of Domestic Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He's a FOX News contributor. If you're a podcast maniac like me, you listen to him every morning on the Always Entertaining Commentary Magazine podcast. Matt, thanks for joining us.
>> Matthew Continetti: Thanks for having me, Bill. And let me just say it's a real pleasure to be with the Goodfellows.

I've been a fan from the beginning. I never miss an episode.
>> Bill Whalen: Well, we will do our best to meet your expectations today, Matt. Donald Trump is not a drinker. He famously does not care for alcohol. It's a very personal thing regarding his brother. But if we were to concoct a Trump cocktail, Matt, I might call it the method and the madness in this regard.

Anytime we talk about something that Trump does, something he says, something he suggests, we always kind of fall back to this fundamental question that does he know what he's doing? Is he thinking about what is he doing? Or is this just all kind of happenstance? In other words, if he's playing cards, Matt, is he playing poker?

Is he playing 52 card pickup? Now, I'd like to start this conversation today, Matt, by focusing on Trump and foreign policy and the events of the past nine days. Let's go back to February 18th, Matt. You have the president, United States at the White House blaming Ukraine's president, Mr. Zelensky, for starting the war in Russia and then also trashing him for not cutting a deal to end the war.

>> Donald Trump: And I think I have the power to end this war. And I think it's going very well. But today I heard, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.

>> Bill Whalen: The next day, our own Sir Niall Ferguson goes on social media and he post on X that, well, the President's history is not correct, but he does think the President is noble in trying to find peace. But he tries to remind the President there's such a thing as peace through strength.

The next day, the Vice President, United States enters the fray. He goes on exit. He responds to Sir Niall by calling our friend, accusing our friend of, quote, moralistic garbage and also saying that Niall is guilty of, quote, historical illiteracy. I think that's probably the first time the international man of history has been accused of being historically illiterate.

We then go to the next day in Munich.
>> H.R. McMaster: Matt, don't forget, don't forget he called him a globalist too.
>> Bill Whalen: We'll let Sir Niall respond to that and more. Back to our timeline. The following day in Munich, the Vice President gives a speech in which he accuses Europe of suppressing free speech.

>> JD Vance: I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.
>> Bill Whalen: We get a couple days off to the weekend map, but we pick it up on Monday where we go to the United nations and there is a resolution condemning Russia for the war in Ukraine.

Voting against the resolution would be Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Hungary and the United States of America. So, Matt, you look at all of these events and even more I didn't mention the presidents of the heads of states of France and England and tomorrow the President Ukraine coming to the White House.

But Matt, you look at all of these events and we back to the question of the Trump cocktail. If you're making this cocktail of method and madness, what blend method and what blend madness.
>> Matthew Continetti: Well, I would begin by positing a few base rules I use to follow Donald Trump.

The first is Trump is a zero sum thinker. President Trump believes that there is a winner and a loser to every transaction and every relationship. And there are very few positive sum relationships. The second base case I have with President Trump is since 1987, since he put that ad in the New York Times ahead of his visit to New Hampshire when he was first toying with running for president.

President Trump has made it clear that he views the post war international order as a liability on the United States. Our allies cheat us. Free trade is eroding our mercantile power. Our allies are too dependent on us. And so these, this combination I think of zero sum thinking and liberal world order is a cost, not a benefit, shapes how he's going into Ukraine.

The third thing in my personal Trump cocktail is Trump is a believer in personalist diplomacy. Everything depends on how he gets along with the person on the other side of the table. Famously, we had very good US-Japan relations during the first term because of his relationship with Abe Shinzo, the Japanese prime minister.

On the other hand, we had very poor US German relations during the first term because of his hatred, I think it's fair to say, of Angela Merkel. So when I see what's happened with Ukraine over the past week or so, I see all three things at work. One is Trump has looked at Europe as not doing enough for its defense.

We're the loser in that relationship because we're providing defense for Europe, which is free riding on us. He looks and he sees this liberal world order, open borders, free trade, American internationalism as something he wants to revise, and now he's in a position to revise it. And lastly, I don't think he's interacted very well with Zelensky, where Zelensky has not behaved as leaders who have been studying Trump whispering for the past four years try to behave, try to get into Trump's good graces, try to kind of put ideas in his head that are favorable to their power, to their own states and their powers.

And that has led to the breakdown, I think, that we saw in US-Ukrainian relations last week. Just final thought. The other thing to keep in mind with Trump is he'll state an end goal, an end state he wants, but he rarely describes the means of how to get there.

And because he rarely describes the means of how to get there, the path we take to any desired end state can often be viewed as madness. Like you say, Bill, it can often be crazy. It can be two steps forward, one step back. It can be some digression into Niall Ferguson's globalist mentality.

But when Trump succeeds, he reaches that end state. And I think in the case of Ukraine, the end state is an end to the war, some type of ceasefire. And the means of achieving that end are very messy. And they include this US-Ukrainian mineral agreement, which is scheduled to be signed on February 28th.

>> Bill Whalen: So, Niall.
>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I tried to make the point, in response to some of the things President Trump said about Ukraine, that in the beginning of a negotiation, it seemed unwise to concede at least two of the things that the Russian government wants. One of them is To ensure that Ukraine does not join NATO.

Another of them is to ensure that President Zelensky is delegitimized and ideally for Russia, replaced. And so my comments were directed at the President's remarks about Ukraine, which seemed to me counterproductive ahead of the negotiation with Russia. Now, I've been a pretty supportive commentator on President Trump by the standards of most academics and historians.

So I was a little surprised when vice president Vance came after me with those somewhat unflattering descriptions. But I think we then had a good debate about the strategy. I agree with much that Matt has said about Donald Trump. But Donald Trump's not king, he's president of the United States.

And there are other people, including people that he's appointed, who are trying to manage the foreign policy of the United States. And they must all be somewhat stretched when they're approaching a negotiation like the one Marco Rubio had with his Russian counterpart, that the president says something that doesn't, at least to my eyes, seem helpful.

So the discussion that we had I thought was constructive and ended on a positive note. Vice President Vance said no concessions were being made to Russia. I said great and good luck because it's an enormously important negotiation, the war needs to end. The longer it goes on, the worse, ultimately for Ukraine, which is of course substantially outmanned and out gunned.

But the question is, how do you get a war like this to end? Now, one thing that is interesting, and Mark Continetti alluded to it there, is the end state that Trump wants. I don't think that Trump is a war president, he's a trade war president. That became obvious in the first Trump term, and I do think it's important to understand him that way.

In fact, he's been very dovish since his re election, not only with respect to Russia, but also with respect to China and even Iran. The odd thing is, and here I'm queuing the one and only HR, there are very many hawkish people in his administration already. And it's odd that the president goes in one direction, which you could characterize as det.

With the authoritarian axis, while other members of the administration seem to be going in a quite different direction. As I see it, Matt, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this too. There are at least three different tendencies within this emergent national security team, one is the president.

But then there are more hawkish figures in the NSC who are ready to take on the axis of authoritarians everywhere, including Eastern Europe, including the Middle East, and including crucially, in Taiwan, in the Far East. Then there are the people like, say, Elbridge Colby, who's been on this show and looks likely to be in the DoD, who really want to focus on the Taiwan issue and are less bothered about Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

And it's not quite clear who's really dominant at this point. One can assume that it's Trump because he is, after all, president. But there are these other elements in the administration who don't seem entirely aligned with what he's doing anyway. HR you're no stranger to the experience of trying to make national security strategy with Donald Trump as president.

Does this all seem familiar to you, and is Mike Waltz experiencing something like what you experienced?
>> H.R. McMaster: I think he is. And I think in both of your essays, Matt's essay and Neil's essay, you draw out, I think, some of the dissonance that Donald Trump carries with him.

He'll say peace through strength, he believes in peace through strength. But also at the same time, he's vulnerable. He's vulnerable to being manipulated by somebody like Vladimir Putin who holds out the prospect of a grand deal like an entente with Putin. Putin also will play as well as others who are, I think, useful idiots for Putin who are in sort of the neo isolationist camp within the administration or the retrenchment camp within the administration.

Who, they'll play to Trump's sense of aggrievement, that the world's taken advantage of us, especially allies, as Matt mentioned, have been free riding on the largesse of American taxpayers. And this sense of aggrievement makes Trump like reflexively contrarian. So if the consensus among those who write and think about foreign policy and national security is that Putin must be stopped, he must be stopped by recognizing that he's losing the war.

That Putin's in a real position of weakness that could allow us to begin negotiations from that position of strength. And therefore we should make no concessions up front, maybe increase pressure on him, make clear our intention with a low interest loan or something to sustain support for Ukraine.

And go into the negotiation from a position of strength, much as what you were arguing, Neil, Trump will, he'll reflexively reject that and say nice things about Putin. I don't think it was a coincidence. And Matt, I'd love to hear what you think about this is, I don't think it was a coincidence that the national security advisor and the Secretary of State were in Munich and then Saudi Arabia when Trump made the statements that Zelensky is a dictator and is somehow responsible for the war.

I don't think there were people around him to say, as the role that I happily provided for 13 months, hey, Mr. President, that's not right. I think that when you counter sort of his predilections, you get chewed up a little bit. But you have to be willing to do that for him, for his own good and the good of the country, obviously.

But I think what we're seeing is Donald Trump's dissonance. I mean, he's very consistent on a lot of things, right? Energy dominance, deregulation, border security. But in the area of foreign policy and national security, he carries these opposed ideas in his head.
>> Bill Whalen: Let's get John in here, too.

And, John, I'm curious, on economics, do you see the same thing in Trump economics? Is there consensus or do you see a difference in the ranks?
>> John H. Cochrane: I was gonna let Matt get a word in edgewise, but then, yes, I do have a.
>> H.R. McMaster: We do tend to go.

>> Matthew Continetti: Let me just say one thing In answer to Neil's observation about the staff. I do think there are fewer people in this administration who have both the stature and kind of the background to say to President Trump, Mr. President, think twice about saying x, y and z.

And that is a very important change between Trump 1 and Trump 2. I think the way that Trump 2, is evolving is that this is Donald Trump's presidency, is we're going to see what Donald Trump wants to make of this office. He's already changing the office in ways to suit him.

There is the statistic that came out that throughout the four years of Biden's presidency, he answered something like 300 questions or so from the press. And one month into Donald Trump's presidency, he's answered more than 1400 questions from the press. He's again changing that office to. Suit himself as a communicator.

And I also think because of the Cabinet selections, because of the staff selections. These staff are being selected for communication skills and for loyalty and for the presence of mind to say, yes, Mr. President, if that's what you want, we're gonna figure out a way to carry it out.

And just finally, I do think that this administration, unlike Trump, won, has more critics of the liberal international order in important positions. More people in the national security space who are emerging from this MAGA institutional network that has been set up since Donald Trump first took office. And really grew in strength during his four years of exile.

And they're gonna be in a position to say, all right, you want to achieve a ceasefire, Mr President, we'll let you do your thing. We'll start this negotiation. We're gonna try to, if we want to preserve American interests in Ukraine, we're gonna have to formulate something that appeals to your instincts.

And we're seeing it played on Ukraine. We're seeing mixed signals when it comes to China. And my question is, too, how is this gonna look when we turn to the growing threat from Iran in the coming months?
>> John H. Cochrane: Let me just pivot a little bit. It's too much fun to try to diagnose Donald Trump and what's he thinking and how does he work?

I'd like to get back a little to the policy itself. I was really sad when it was announced because my view was Russia was kind of on the edge of collapse. And one more turn of the screw and we could have achieved a Bush one, roll them right back to the border.

And we don't live in a world anymore where you grab what you want. Well, it's not happening. So the rhetoric is interesting, and I think we want to get a little bit past it. Talking hawkish and acting dovish as the past administration is a lot worse than talking dovish and then acting hawkish.

So there's some hope that this comes out with something good. But I am a little worried about the rhetoric in two aspects. One, it's really sad when you're saying things that are blatantly untrue and that you require people around you to say things that are blatantly untrue, which is what the last administration does, too.

Ukraine started it. No, Ukraine didn't start it and that's a test of loyalty is something worrisome. And this is a question which eventually, when I stop Talking HR can get around to, too. JD Vance said in that interview this was an unwinnable war. No, it wasn't. NATO and Europe could have won this war in about three weeks to three days if they had wanted to.

Russia is not too big. Russia's GDP is the size of Italy. Never before has the overwhelming preponderance of force been on our side if we wanted to use it. So there's another one that strikes me as is basing it on things that are just fundamentally Andrew, which is very dangerous rhetorically.

But let's get to action. So I want to be economists. Suppose we get to the way I like to think about things, get to the point that seems like where they want to go. Some sort of messy ceasefire with some sort of promises that no one intends to keep.

Just like the last three times we went through this and we've blown up NATO. Europeans can defend it if they want to. We're not gonna defend it. So that kind of blows up NATO. How do other people react? So if you're European, I'll just do Europe and then you guys can do.

How does Xi Jinping react and how does the Iranians react? If you're European, what do you do in this circumstance? Now, option one, start taking Russian lessons. Option two, you need a European Defense Force, and you need it like yesterday and that European Defense Force includes your own nuclear umbrella.

So UK and France can start providing that and move that on out to Poland and Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia if you want it. The European Defense Force, then as Trump has said,you guys go fight in Ukraine. Maybe Ukraine should be part of the European Defense Force, and we're gonna make this really seriously ready to actually fight.

If you want to defend Ukraine and then Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and so forth, what else do you do if you're the Europeans? Well, if you're European, you don't really give a damn so much about what happens in Taiwan and you're kind of pissed off by these 25% tariffs anyway.

So I would say Europe, you cozy up to China, and Europe still has all sorts of green fantasies. They want to import, let Chinese use their coal to make electric cars and windmills to import them to Europe. Well, great. We'll, China, we don't need ports in Taiwan to do that.

We got rail networks to bring our stuff. So you cozy up to China, you're not gonna sign up for the war to face Taiwan. Middle East Europe has a very different view of the Middle east, they kind of like the Hamas end of this, not the Israel end of this.

So you stop cooperating with the US on that. This sin of sort of how do our friends react? Doesn't seem like a very good way to go. So you guys can fill in. I've talked too long, so you know how it's kind of obvious. How does Xi Jinping react?

How do our allies in Asia react if we're slapping them with tariffs? How does South America react if the choice is cheap stuff from China or more trade war from us? That set of outcomes doesn't look very promising. So I wonder, is this really four dimensional chess or am I wrong on the outcomes that are likely to come?

>> Niall Ferguson: So one of the benefits of a system of free speech where a mere history professor can get into a public debate with the Vice President, is that. The historian is forced to do a little thinking about his own assumptions. And I must say that in the last few days, two things have struck me that follow on from what John has just said.

The first is that for 50 years, American presidents have tried to get the Europeans to pay a larger share of their own defense bill and they've all failed until now. And finally, by the shocking tactics that he adopted last week, President Trump has got the Europeans to start thinking seriously about strategic autonomy instead of just talking about it.

>> John H. Cochrane: He's got them to start actually, we're gonna have to pay for this. But my saying, he who pays picks the bill, chooses the restaurant. We may look back fondly at the days where we were the world's policemen for a mere 3% of GDP if I could.
>> Bill Whalen: But in.

Neil, what does Germany's incoming chancellor mean when he suggests that Europe should achieve independence from the United States?
>> Niall Ferguson: Well, I spoke with Friedrich Merz back in July when he invited me to Berlin to give a lecture arguing for German rearmament. And at that time, there were all kinds of reasons that Christian Democrats would give for not being able to spend more in defense, for example, their constitutional debt break.

But it's amazing how minds have been focused by President Trump's re election and his recent comments. Suddenly the Germans are gonna increase their defense spending even to relax the debt break and there's gonna be European defense funds. And I think things are gonna move much faster than we've been used to seeing in Europe.

Because suddenly, suddenly, suddenly hit home that the commitment in the NATO treaty Article 5 of for mutual defense is a contingent commitment. The United States might choose not to honor that focuses the mind. So I'm gonna take the other side of this from you, John. I think it's probably been a good example of how, going back to Matt's point, how Trump's way of doing things produces shock and then outcomes that are, in fact, desirable.

So point one, I don't think the Europeans have a bunch of alternatives here, they're not about to, as you put it, learn Russian. They might attempt to improve relations with China, but they were already doing that anyway. So I begin to think that this was a going back to the cocktail metaphor, one of these drinks that when I first tasted it was disgusting.

But on the third sip it began to taste quite good. And so I'm gonna be somewhat self critical and say, you know what, you know, Vance is right. It's not 1990, and Ukraine is not Kuwait. It wasn't realistic of me to suggest that that's how we should think about this problem.

>> John H. Cochrane: No, but I wanna just say I agree with you entirely. This has very good outcome that the Europeans are finally gonna take it seriously. But them taking it seriously means they take it in the direction they wanna take it. So be it.
>> Niall Ferguson: But that's great, Matt.

Here's a question for Matt.
>> John H. Cochrane: Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
>> Niall Ferguson: My epiphany of the last few days was, although the world sees President Trump as the big I am, the emperor, or the king. That's how he's characterized in the Financial Times, Der Spiegel, the Economist. I'm beginning to think that what lies behind this facade of braggadocio is a sense of American weakness.

My argument in the Wall Street Journal that there's a debt problem because we're spending more on interest payments than on defense is part of the weakness that Donald Trump is conscious of. And the people advising him are saying we can't afford to be supplying wars in Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle east and be ready to cope if the Chinese take the initiative and push the envelope over Taiwan.

So I've begun to think that what we're really seeing here is realism. That is a realistic assessment of the vulnerability of the American position. And when Vance snaps at me for being a globalist, what he's really trying to convey is if you could know what we know about our state of military readiness globally, you'd be a lot more circumspect about what you said to Putin and Xi Jinping.

So, Matt, I mean, is that how I should think about Trump? That behind the big I am, there's a sense of American weakness?
>> Matthew Continetti: There is always a Wizard of Oz quality to President Trump. And, I thought one telling tweet that occurred over the past week was this from Laura Ingram, who said, we don't have the money, we don't have the troops, we don't have the defense industrial base, we don't have the political will.

So how are we going to continue the Ukraine war now? Again, it's not something that you want to say going into negotiations with Vladimir Putin. Because one thing we all know is that every president since Putin took power has set out in their new administration to reset relationships with him and with his Russia, and they have all failed.

And that will probably be the case with Donald Trump's second term. But there is a sense that America just simply doesn't have the capacity to continue in its world leadership role. And this has been growing over some time on the American right. And it's now been in a position where I think it can exert some influence over the administration.

One what one way to think about this Trump administration is to say this is the moment to restore what power America had before, to restore what leverage we have had over states like Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, the axis of aggressors. And that's why I think it's revealing to see where Trump sees the United States as having leverage.

And that's particularly our economy. You called him a trade war president, he is, he loves it, why? Because the American market is so huge, so vast, so important, then we can lord it over not just our enemies, but also our allies. And so if you think about the Trump presidency as ways to re establish leverage over the world, he's trying to do that, I think first by bringing Zelensky to the table and then moving to trying to bring Putin to the table.

>> John H. Cochrane: But I wanna do the economic end and then I want HR to do the military end on that's just not true. That America does not have the ability to do this just isn't true. So 300 billion for Ukraine is 1% of one year's GDP. It's less than Biden gave away in student loan defaults in one sneeze on a Sunday afternoon.

Defense is cheap, I think I've told Neil he needs to make the new Ferguson's law, which is not about defense versus interest payments on the debt, but defense versus social programs which are defense 3% of GDP. Our social programs more like 30% of GDP, France's social programs like 50% of GDP.

That's where the money's going, and in the US it's going to abominable cost bloat. There is plenty of money, there isn't will. And something I learned last week was the is the polling on foreign adventures. And interestingly, people like three out of the four of us who live through the end of the Cold War, see Ukraine as yeah, roll it back.

Young people younger than that who have only seen Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, one snafu after another, are the ones who say, we're not getting involved with this again, no matter how. So will may be an issue, but economic strength, and you just said it, our greatest asset is the strength of our economy.

Well, duh, then we can afford 5% of GDP if that's what it takes, we just have to wanna do it. And HR, we've got the military, if we wanted to do it, we have certainly the military strength to prevail in Ukraine in about three days. And Taiwan's gonna be harder, but we have the military strength if we want it, to be the world's leader, policeman, whatever you wanna call it.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I just disagree fundamentally that America's weak, especially if you look at America, relative to what I would call the axis of aggressors. The two revisionist or revanchist powers on the Eurasian landmass of China and Russia and the others that they've pulled into their enterprise and are supporting Iran and North Korea.

And what I'm afraid of is that President Trump is going to actually get them up off the mat in a way that is reminiscent of the way that Barack Obama salvaged the Supreme Leader in Iran in 2014-15 with the Iran Nuclear deal and the massive payoffs and the lifting of sanctions.

Trump is doing that, I mean, Trump was elected to make the American economy great again. He's doing wonders for the Russian economy at the moment in terms of its stock market, the revaluing of the ruble, resurgence of confidence there. And so I really think that he's projecting weakness at this stage when he would be much better served to come in from a position of strength.

I don't think it's in any way virtuous that he put pressure on Zelensky, that he's picking on Zelensky, really. And then, of course, from the will perspective, it shouldn't be surprising that Americans maybe don't have the will to continue to support Ukraine. Because the president of the United States just blamed the victim and has given Russia a free pass after the heinous crimes that have been committed.

With children kidnapped and the mass murder of civilians, the destruction of the country. And then the president, even in the Cabinet meeting, said, we kind of caused this with the expansion of NATO. I mean, really, I just think that, I've been through this with President Trump multiple times.

The people who are in his ear, I think, are. Are just wrong. I believe that they share a degree of self loathing that you typically see only on the far left. They believe that America can't do good in the world, but what I do agree with is that many of them are motivated to retrench because they think, hey, we've got our own problems here.

Why the hell are we dealing with these problems abroad? And, of course, this is the legacy of transitions in the global economy in the 2000s, the financial crisis, I mean, opioid epidemic, but I think all magnified by social media. And a lot of the people who are in this administration are advising them.

They buy into kind of what I would regard as crazy conspiracy theories. So I believe that Donald Trump has a lot of potential because of his disruptive nature. There's a lot that needs to be disrupted but actually, again, this is one of these situations where he's so disruptive that he's disrupting his own agenda.

And I think potentially undermining, rather than advancing US Interests, especially in connection with Ukraine, but also more broadly with the axis of aggressors. John, you laid it out well. I mean, a lot of his behavior and statements and so forth are undermining our ability to work with Europe against the broader axis of aggressors, and especially at a time when they are profoundly weak from an economic perspective, look at Iran's economy, China's economy, and Russia's economy.

So the president has been involved in professional wrestling, instead of getting off the mat, it's time for the elbow drop, I think off the third rope. I mean, that's what I would advise him to do, and I hope some people are giving him that advice.
>> Bill Whalen: Pro wrestling is a great analogy because Trump just loves to be both the hero and the heel at the same time, but I want to shift to the domestic side of things.

But first, let's go around the horn quickly with this exit question. Do you think that Trump is going to get a deal on Ukraine? And getting back to Neil's original premise, is it gonna be a peace deal that you like? So, Neil.
>> Niall Ferguson: It's very hard for me to imagine a quick peace deal, you might get a ceasefire.

But I think the sticking points are really considerable on both sides. The Russians haven't made any concession whatsoever. They want Zelensky out, they basically want to disarm Ukraine. They want to come back for a third bite, that's clear. And the Ukrainians are not gonna settle for anything that doesn't have meaningful security guarantees.

So I can see a ceasefire, I can't see a peace deal. It would be remarkable if the two sides could suddenly be brought together when they're still so far apart.
>> Matthew Continetti: My most optimistic case is that there is a ceasefire along the lines, current lines of control, but I don't see anything more promising than that, and even that, of course, is subject to both the Ukrainian and a Russian veto.

And if neither side wants to settle for what Trump promises, I don't think they will.
>> H.R. McMaster: I agree, I think ceasefire, no enduring peace. Russia will use the ceasefire to recover its economy, to rebuild its power. That'll be much like the Minsk agreement, it's just going to be an interim between a continuation of the war, unless Vladimir Putin is convinced that he's been defeated.

And unless there are adequate security guarantees to prevent the war from restarting.
>> Bill Whalen: And, John, you get the last word.
>> John H. Cochrane: Yeah, ceasefire, and the peace agreement I want starts at the Russian border and ends at the Russian border, that's certainly not happening. And we left at economics, too, when one thing that's coming off is sanctions, which Russia is still selling a lot of oil.

European exports to Kyrgyzstan have suddenly skyrocketed, hm-mm, I wonder how that happened. Getting the Europeans to take the economic aspect of this seriously would, would help a lot to having that Russian collapse. So ceasefire lasts about four weeks, and then the Ukrainians say, well, I still want to fight for my country.

>> Bill Whalen: All right, John, let's stay with you, let's go to the domestic side of things. Tomorrow is day 40 of the Trump presidency. I know of, Matt Continetti, it must feel like 40 weeks or 40 months. Matt, a journalist friend of mine said, it's like you have not worked out for four years, and then suddenly you have to go to the gym and work out all day, and God, does my body hurt, now trying to keep up with this pace.

But, John, 40 days and 40 nights of a Trump presidency, and the Bible has been raining executive orders for 40 days and 40 nights. By my account, he has done about 72 so far, which is triple the 24 he did in 2017. To put this in historical context, Franklin Roosevelt issued 99 executive orders in his first 100 days in office.

But, John, you sent us a note the other day expressing some concern about where the President is going with this use of power, and you alluded to checks and balances. Would you like to explain what is on your mind?
>> John H. Cochrane: Well, it's difficult when you like the outcome, but you don't like the method.

And I think we who call ourselves, among other things, conservatives have long said, well, there's too much presidential power. Now, there's, there's different kinds of executive orders. There's one where he tells executive agencies what to do, it's kind of what the President's supposed to do. There's this big question of can the President fire the heads of supposedly independent agencies and tell them what to do?

I especially don't like rule by national emergency. The next Democrat is sure to come in and declare a national emergency on climate and gender equity and start issuing executive orders on what we all have to do, Dear colleague letters about that. So the method is worrisome because we don't elect a king every four years, the frameworks were very clear about this.

We have checks and balances, a system designed to move slowly, to wait to make big changes until not 51% voted in, and shove it down the other 49% throat for a while, but substantial things. So that system work well now. It's trouble, it's not easy, there's this movement which is very satisfying, the constitutional purity movement.

Look, we have three branches of government and the executive branch is run by the President, and so he should be able to tell everybody what to do. And that feels good in principle, you're kind of reading the original text and that legal thing. But is that really realistic?

Congress shouldn't be writing the requirements for a pilot's license, we have independent agencies for a reason. And we sort of have evolved to a system of letting the agencies move slowly, the heads of agencies who are only removable slowly. It's kind of a checks and balance, and they're not accountable to anyone, which is the real problem.

But on the other hand, just forget about constitutional niceties. Is it desirable that a president comes in and immediately fires everybody, puts in his own guys, cancels all the last executive orders and puts in new ones? So I'm hungering for a way that has administrative agencies, has checks and balances and accountability of those cuz right now they are unto themselves, but not just the President goes and does everything.

So I'm on the fence on this one, and Matt, you've written about this, you probably have clearer ideas than I do. Where are we going?
>> Matthew Continetti: Well, I think we're going for more American clujocracy is the term that has come to be to describe American government mishmash of legislation, bureaucratic rulings, executive orders, and then finally, judicial interpretations.

I do think that this conversation is complementary to our foreign policy conversation, because when I. Look at the right that has come to power with President Trump in his second term. I see a right that is very confident and very much interested in overturning what they see as the progressive revolution by any means.

That has a foreign policy dimension, which we talked about, but also has a domestic policy dimension. And the right, over the past decade or so has come to believe that America, Americans no longer exercise democratic rule over their government. That, instead, America is being run or managed by a series of unelected bureaucrats throughout this vast administrative state.

And then Trump adds the conspiratorial twist of a deep state within that administrative state. And so when I see him come back to power and I see him issue all these executive orders, they're intended to or to empower Doge, right there. It's all intended to rip up this administrative state that has been layered on going back a century, beginning with the Wilson presidency, right.

And then each additional Democratic president, progressive president, builds more and more. So what's going to come of that is eventually very critical supreme Court cases, one focusing more on the President's authority over these independent agencies, like you say, John, and another over the president's authority to impound spending.

That is, how much authority does the president have over what Congress appropriates? Can he choose not to spend all of the money, right? And that again harkens back to an earlier presidency that has a connection to foreign policy as well. We, we were speaking on foreign policy about how many of Trump's moves may, to Neil and me at least, seem motivated by a sense of American weakness.

Well, that was, as Neil Ferguson knows, that was the inspiration behind Kissingerian detente, which is America as a declining power, had to make these moves vis a vis China and the Soviet Union. Well, the other part of Nixon Kissinger administration was Nixon's desire to gain control over the bureaucracy that he inherited from lbj.

And that set up, of course, a series of crises and judicial rulings that eventually helped create the government we now have half a century later. So in some ways, not only is this war against progressivism happening, but we also have a return to kind of Nixon era views of the world and of the federal government and the President's place in it.

>> Niall Ferguson: I completely agree with you, Matt. I've been calling Trump Richard Nixon's revenge and point out to people that very early on there was a meeting of minds between those two gentlemen, Richard Nixon, Donald Trump in New York City. Their correspondence is very interesting. And I think Nixon is often in Trump's mind, as you say, there's the foreign policy dimension to it.

America is overstretch stretch, so we are gonna be realists, and I'm gonna go to Beijing and do a great big beautiful deal. Well, that's straight out of the Nixon playbook. And secondly, restore the imperial presidency, Arthur Schlesinger had the Imperial Presidency as a book at the height of Nixon's power in 72.

And Donald Trump's vision is to get the presidency back to where it was in 1972, before the fall, before Watergate, which allowed, which was really a victory for the administrative state as well as for the Democrats and their allies in the media and the Department of Justice. So there's a lot of kind of payback here for the mid-1970s going on.

And I think that's absolutely the right way to think about this, Richard Nixon's revenge.
>> H.R. McMaster: And I think it carries over, as Matt already alluded to the triangular diplomacy with Beijing and Moscow. The problem is the situation is fundamentally different. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have declared their undying love for each other and the partnership with no limits.

They're talking jointly about changes we haven't seen in a century. And Xi Jinping turns and says, Vladimir, you and I are driving those changes. And what they're talking about is rewriting the rules of international discourse in favor of their authoritarian forms of government, and in China's case, it's Mercantil's statist economic model.

And I think what would be much more effective for advancing our interests would be to glue them together, you know, recognize you're not going to separate them. And the most important way to compete with China in the near term is to ensure that Russia is defeated in Ukraine, these are connected.

What's happening is really kind of a myopic view of these competitions in many ways in which they're looked at as discrete competitions that are not intertwined with one another, when in fact this axis is quite intertwined with one another. And it's really only through seeing it holistically that you can really take advantage of some of our competitive advantages.

And when I say our, I mean the United States, Europe, Japan and other minded countries.
>> John H. Cochrane: Back to what you had said. So I'm all for the results, I'm gonna actually think the politicized bureaucracy was way too big. And what we saw in USAID money going straight to political advocacy.

Our government doesn't actually do anything, it just writes checks to various groups who then go on and do stuff that we have no idea what's going on. So, blowing all that up was great and the dozers are amazing. There have been, there's transparency websites, there's inspectors generals, there are congressional investigations, there are committees.

The knowledge this was going on was, was common, but nothing was able to do it. So I'm torn because I love the result, but I'm worried about the method and what you describe the clue across. Well, that's called common law, that's not the end of the world. But what we need, we can't have no administrative agencies unless we go to libertarian nirvana and take the federal government back to 1903, which I wouldn't mind, but that's not where it's going.

To have the courts decide this based on an originalism reading of the Constitution. Well, framers had no idea that we would be spending half a GDP on all these agencies and there would be a National Environmental Quality act and all the rest of it. So, reading their original text to decide how this should be done is probably not going to get what we need is an effective system of accountability and checks and balances for administrative agencies that combine legislative rulemaking and, and executive judge, jury, prosecution, executioner, all in one.

So they combine those functions, but they, they need some set of checks and balances and doing that through the courts doesn't seem the right way around it. And I'm surprised at our right we're advocating this as a wonderful new principle because Democrats will eventually win an election and all of a sudden the imperial presidency conservatives will go back to, it's terrible to have the imperial presidency ruling by decree.

Well, you were up there saying how great a principle this was for four years.
>> Bill Whalen: Well, John, welcome to the moral revolism of Washington and Democrats ending the filibuster for judges and then having a backfire in their face, so forth. Our time is running out for the segment, let me close it out with this quick question to the four of you.

Presidency has four years to play out, it also has 613 days to play out because Matt, that's when the midterm election is. And there's a distinct possibility he will lose the House, which means there'll probably be another run in impeachment in the second last two years. So in the next 613 days, gentlemen, name one policy thing you're looking for out of Trump in terms of what you would say is a metric for his success, is it?

The big beautiful bill or something else? Niall, what are you looking at?
>> Niall Ferguson: Well, he's not King of Mar-a-Lago anymore. He's President of the United States. And legislation is a lot more important in the final analysis than executive orders. And it's going to be very challenging. We can already see that.

To get the really big bill that does everything, including extending the 2017 tax cuts through this Congress. I think that's the key test. If that doesn't work, if they can't do major legislation, then all you're left with is a great pile of executive orders, which, as John says, can be undone just as soon as the Democrats win the White House.

So that's the key. It's what happens in Congress that counts. That's the nature of the American system of governance, even if everybody focuses obsessively on the present.
>> Matthew Continetti: Well, President Trump was re elected on the basis of Americans disappointment with the Biden economy and inflation and the southern border.

I do think the most important policies he has for the next four years is to continue closing the southern border and fighting illegal immigration. The way in which public opinion has shifted on the issue of immigration as a result of Biden's immigration policies is extraordinary. And a lot of Trump's legacy depends on his ability to prove that we can control migration at this point in the 21st century.

>> H.R. McMaster: I'm looking for reforms and investments that strengthen national defense and strengthen it in a broad sense, not only in the capacity and the capabilities, the modernization of our armed forces. But also in our defense industrial base and the supply chains that are so critical to manufacturing and the weapons and munitions we need under the theory that, hey, it's a heck of a lot cheaper to prevent a war through strength and have to fight one.

And I think we do have some significant vulnerabilities. I'm worried about the kind of budget hawks, others who may impede an effort to strengthen defense. And as John said, the problem with our deficit, with our debt overall is not the defense budget, it's all the other spending.
>> Bill Whalen: Okay, John, you get the last word.

>> John H. Cochrane: My God, I'm so happy.
>> Bill Whalen: Christmas comes early.
>> John H. Cochrane: So, as you said, not much is going to get through Congress. So let's just not much is going to get through Congress. The big beautiful bill is gonna be one big beautiful stew of various pork, the way it always is.

Don't look for fundamental reforms there. I think actually the hope is the executive orders. And my hope is blow it up with executive orders, have the economy boom, all sorts of horrible rot exposed, do well in the midterms, and then you have a chance to pivot and cement what you've done with legislation, fundamental institutional reform, so that it can't all be done and done next time.

What he has to avoid is something bad happening, which isn't not just your own things, but there's other people out there. So avoid losing a war. That would be really good if you want to keep building on your successes. Events, my dear boy, as Niall keeps reminding us, is the story of every administration.

>> Bill Whalen: Matt, would you like to stick around for our final segment?
>> Matthew Continetti: Absolutely.
>> Bill Whalen: All right, and a game that we like to call Big Deal, Little Deal or no Deal at All.
>> Bill Whalen: Okay, we have only about five minutes to lightning round. I have four questions. John, you're not going to like this.

I'm gonna ask a question. Only one fellow gets a crack at it, but each of you will get a tailored topic. So here we go. Question one, HR Trump fires air Force General CQ Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Big deal, little deal, no deal at all.

>> H.R. McMaster: Yeah, I think it's a big deal. I mean, it's not unprecedented. I know it's lighting around. Let me be quick about this. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding that your generals don't make policy. I mean, I think it's important to understand that. And it was the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense that was pushing a lot of these reified philosophies that were inimical to combat effectiveness and the warrior ethos.

I'm more concerned as concerned at least, the firing of all the Judge Advocate Generals. Again, a misunderstanding. Judge Advocate Generals give advice to commanders and leaders who are free to disregard it. And I think that there's a misunderstanding of really what it's going to take in the department to keep the military out of partisan politics and reverse some of the damage that the Biden administration did.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, John, the president wants to pitch a $5 million gold card for permanent US residency like American Express. He wants to upgrade from the green card to the gold card. Big deal, little deal, no deal at all.
>> John H. Cochrane: Nice deal could be a much better deal. So economists have long advocated the right way to handle immigration is charge 10 grand, 20 grand at the border, and speak English.

20 grand at the border and no social services for five years. Come on in. We want people who come to the US work, pay taxes, bail out our Social Security. And rationing it by money is a lot better than rationing it by the years it takes to stand in line.

Now, there's not that many people with 5 million bucks, and that brings in wealthy older people with money. I want younger people who can work and pay taxes. People with 5 million bucks don't pay Social Security taxes, because they're not working. They're living off their investments. So nice thing and a step in.

Trump gets a lot of bad press about immigration, but he has said, staple a green card to every STEM degree in the US. That's another step in this direction. So date but not marry yet. I think it's a good step in the right direction.
>> Bill Whalen: Okay, so a nice deal.

>> John H. Cochrane: Nice, but small.
>> Bill Whalen: Matt Continetti, media vibe shift, the Washington Post parts ways with its editorial page editor, Jeff Bezos, saying he wants his paper to focus on, and I quote, personal liberties and free markets. Big deal, little deal, no deal at all?
>> Matthew Continetti: Big deal. Let freedom ring.

I haven't heard news that's made me so excited in a long while. The idea that the defense of freedom and free markets won't be consigned to the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the New York Post, but we'll have another champion in the national debate is exhilarating to me.

So very big deal.
>> John H. Cochrane: Sign up to be editor, they're looking for an editor.
>> Matthew Continetti: The application is in the mail.
>> Donald Trump: I was about to say Sir Niall Ferguson's media plate is pretty full, but HR McMaster is a board member of the Los Angeles Grumpy Economist. Apply for the job.

>> Bill Whalen: I take that's a no.
>> John H. Cochrane: I'm an economist, I'm not a journalist. And I value people for their expertise.
>> Bill Whalen: Matt, that has hardly stopped a lot of people from posing as journalists.
>> H.R. McMaster: No, I thought economists were experts on everything, John.
>> John H. Cochrane: Let me play play them on TV.

I'm also very slow at writing.
>> Bill Whalen: And our final question goes to Sir Niall Ferguson. He's not gonna like this one, but it goes anyway. This week in Six Nations Rugby action, England 16, Scotland 15.
>> Niall Ferguson: Well, this is the essence of a moral victory. Something that we Scots of something of a specialty in.

Of course, Scotland won the game morally by scoring three tries to England's one. But our kicker, Finn Russell, had an off day. Missed every single conversion. Only one of them would have been enough to win. I was there actually with Thomas and Campbell. Campbell's first ever experience of international rugby.

He took it very personally. He said I came as and they lost. I said it wasn't your fault. We have to let them win occasionally. It's only fair.
>> Bill Whalen: Sports is personal at that age, Niall, my eight year old grand nephew is a Philadelphia Field Eagles zealot and he could not have been more over the moon than the super bowl, if you will.

We do have a couple minutes left, so quick question, gentlemen. Anybody have a favorite hackman role that they'd like to share with us?
>> Niall Ferguson: Gotta be French Connection.
>> Bill Whalen: French Connection?
>> Matthew Continetti: Crimson Tide, more recent with Denzel Washington. Real battle of the Giants in that movie.
>> H.R. McMaster: How about Hoosiers?
>> Bill Whalen: I was gonna say Hoosiers. You took that for me, John.
>> John H. Cochrane: Conversation.
>> Bill Whalen: Conversation, well done. Speaking of conversation, gentlemen, that is it for this conversation. I want to thank our guest, Matt Continetti for joining us today. By all means, check out the excellent commentary magazine podcast that Matt is always a part of.

And we'll be back with the new goodfellows in early March, so keep an eye out for that. On behalf of the goodfellows, Sir, Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane, and HR McMaster, our guest today, Matt Continetti, we hope you enjoyed the show. Till next time, take care. Thanks for watching.
>> Gene Hackman: We didn't ask you to fight for us, but damn it, don't fight against us. Leave us alone. How many more sacrifices? How much more blood?
>> Gene Hackman: How many more lives?