WTH Jonathan Swan on why US allies fear Biden pipeline
Episode #92 | March 03, 2021 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Jonathan Swan
Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.
Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen.
Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast, What the Hell Is Going On? Marc, what the hell is going on this week?
Marc Thiessen: What the hell is going on is we're just over a month into the Biden administration and we are having our first podcast on the Biden foreign policy capitulations.
Danielle Pletka: Oh my God.
Marc Thiessen: It's happening already with lightning speed.
Danielle Pletka: I've been super surprised. Folks, national security is the sweet spot for me and Marc, and we've been pulled away from that over the last couple of years by all of the politics.
Marc Thiessen: And the pandemic.
Danielle Pletka: Oh, yes, I forgot.
Marc Thiessen: And the toilet paper shortage. We have pressing issues to talk about, Dany.
Danielle Pletka: We're coming home this week, and what we are talking about is Nord Stream 2.
Marc Thiessen: What is Nord Stream 2, Dany?
Danielle Pletka: It is a very substantial Russian gas pipeline that will take from Russia, circumventing all of Eastern Europe, gas directly to Germany.
Marc Thiessen: Under the Baltic Sea.
Danielle Pletka: Under the Baltic Sea. Most of it is built. They've been building it for quite a long
2 time. It is a hugely controversial project, and everybody will understand instantaneously why, so stop your eyes from glazing over. The reason is that it circumvents Ukraine, which has been a choke point for the export of Russian gas in recent years. What does that mean? It means that Ukraine loses any leverage it has over Russia. It means that Ukraine is even less important than it was heretofore to our European friends and allies who pretend to be friends of democracy and freedom. And it means that the Russians are going to have something close to a chokehold on the supply of energy to Western Europe.
Marc Thiessen: And not just Ukraine, but all of Eastern Europe is very concerned about this, because if the Russians can bypass Central Europe to get natural gas to the West, that means that if they wanted to, they could cut off energy supplies to Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic countries, and other countries across the region.
Danielle Pletka: Without cutting off Europe.
Marc Thiessen: Without cutting off their supplies to Western Europe. They know that the Western Europeans really don't care all that much about Eastern Europe and they just want their cheap gas. Until now, if they wanted to cut off Eastern Europe, they had to cut off Western Europe, and that caused a big political problem for them. Now they'll be able to circumvent them, and so, this gives Putin a huge geopolitical win.
Marc Thiessen: Who stopped the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Dany?
Danielle Pletka: Donald J. Trump and the Trump administration.
Marc Thiessen: Thank you.
Danielle Pletka: This is one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories. What I mean by fiction, of course, is the mainstream media. Here was an administration that, for all popular reporting, kowtowed to Russia. Now, you and I made the case repeatedly, and some pretty straightforward journalists did as well, that the Trump administration was hugely tough on Russia. But one of the things that we saw during the Trump administration was, as part of this perception that Trump was soft on Russia, there was all this legislation that came through the Congress, that was supported by Republicans and supported by Democrats, that was intended to really put Russia in the crosshairs. Sanctions here, sanctions there, sanctions, sanctions everywhere. Lo and behold, what happens when Joe Biden becomes president, Marc?
Marc Thiessen: One of the upsides of the fact that Trump was not so attached to NATO was the fact that he was willing to pummel Germany over this pipeline and basically threatened that we're not just going to sanction the pipeline; we are going to sanction you. We are going to threaten German trade. We are going to threaten all these things if you build this pipeline, because he knew it was a bad idea. And basically, construction on the pipeline stopped.
Danielle Pletka: In 2019, mind you.
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3 Marc Thiessen: In 2019. And guess when it started? The week that Joe Biden came into office.
Marc Thiessen: What has Joe Biden done about this? Nothing. They have a congressionally mandated report on the sanctions that they're imposing, and the Biden State Department announced that they had sanctioned a ship involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in this report to Congress. Turned out, the ship had been sanctioned by the Trump administration before they came into office. Because the construction restarted, under the law, they were supposed to impose new sanctions, and they haven't done it yet. This pipeline could be done by this summer. This could be a done deal, so they don't have a lot of time to fix this problem, Dany.
Marc Thiessen: Everybody was so in this "Donald Trump is a tool of Putin" movement, and a Russian agent, and the Mueller Report and everything else, everyone criticized his soft rhetoric on Russia, but his actions were incredibly tough. I think what we've got now is the reverse, where we've got a president who talks tough on Russia but is actually not willing to put his money where his mouth is and actually impose costs on both Germany and Russia for this pipeline.
Danielle Pletka: I actually think this points to a larger truth.
Marc Thiessen: That Donald Trump was an incredibly effective foreign policy president?
Danielle Pletka: No.
Marc Thiessen: Is that what you're saying, Dany?
Danielle Pletka: No, Marc. Let me just say, January 6th. Thank you.
Marc Thiessen: You know where I stand on January 6th.
Danielle Pletka: Exactly. That is the black cloud that overshadows everything and anything that was good in the Trump administration, of which you and I have agreed that there certainly were some pretty strong elements.
Danielle Pletka: What I'm trying to make is a point about Republicans and Democrats on foreign policy, and I think you touched on it when you said rhetoric. Democratic administrations have always been good on the rhetoric, good on supporting freedom, democracy, good on being tough on Russia, nuclear proliferation, of course, climate change.
Marc Thiessen: Except during the Cold War.
Danielle Pletka: Well, okay, let's just talk about the 21st century for a second. My favorite of this, and I'm going to say it parents, cover your children's ears my favorite of this bullshit rhetoric is the Atrocity Prevention Board. The Obama administration that presided over the wanton massacre of half a million people in Syria and refused to do anything about it, despite the president of the United States declaring it was a red line for him, instead created something called an Atrocity Prevention Board. This is a presidential directive. This is not some garbagy, airy-fairy think
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4 tank thing, she said sitting in her airy-fairy think tank.
Danielle Pletka: What has the Atrocity Prevention Board done? Abso-bloody-lutely nothing. This is what the Obama administration is going to have in common with the third term of the Obama administration, the Biden administration, which is that they're going to talk a good game and do absolutely nothing, talk a good game and allow Russia to get a stranglehold on Europe, talk a good game and allow Iran to get towards nuclear weapons, talk a good game and allow China to dominate the Pacific. We could go on and on here. This is a big problem.
Marc Thiessen: Who, Dany, enforced the Obama red line, not once, but twice?
Danielle Pletka: Well, again, I would say not effectively-
Marc Thiessen: More effectively than Obama and Biden did.
Danielle Pletka: Yes, well, that is the pathetic thing. Yes.
Marc Thiessen: Twice. Twice struck them.
Danielle Pletka: Yes. That is the pathetic thing.
Marc Thiessen: That was his atrocity prevention board. It's a hell of a lot more effective. Look, I agree with you on January 6th. It doesn't erase the foreign policy accomplishments, and the contrast is still striking, just a month into the administration.
Marc Thiessen: Anyway, we've got a great guest to talk about this, and I am particularly excited because many of you listeners don't know this, but Dany Pletka was born in Australia.
Danielle Pletka: They do know this.
Marc Thiessen: She sounds like a plain old American, but whenever she gets on the phone with an Australian, like when she talks to her parents, and I'm in her office and she's talking to her mummy, then all of a sudden, she sounds like Crocodile Dundee. So, we have not only a great reporter on with us, but an Australian, and so going to struggle hard to keep that Australian accent down, but it's going to sneak through a little bit. You're going to get to hear the Australian side of Dany Pletka. Crikey.
Danielle Pletka: Thank you so much and managing to bury the lead. Our guest today is Jonathan Swan.
Marc Thiessen: Say it in Australian.
Danielle Pletka: Jonathan Swan. He's with Axios Media. The proximate cause was that Marc and I watched his truly excellent interview with Ukrainian President Zelensky that aired last month. He is really an outstanding reporter. He's now with Axios, which is one of Washington's powerhouse reporting shops. He was with The Hill prior to
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5 that. I'm just going to make Marc happy here and say that prior to that, he was with Fairfax Media based out of Canberra. Anyway, it's a pleasure to have him with us.
Marc Thiessen: Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.
Jonathan Swan: Thanks for having me.
Marc Thiessen: First of all, you've done an enormous amount of reporting on the Biden administration and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but just for our listeners who don't follow this so carefully, just tell us what is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and why is it so important?
Jonathan Swan: It's a gas pipeline that is in the process of being built, it's about 90% built, that would run from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea. It's important for several reasons. Number one, it gives Russia direct access to Europe. There is a Nord Stream 1, but it gives them a huge amount of extra direct access to Europe in terms of gas. Number two, it really, really screws America's allies in Eastern Europe and Central Europe, particularly the Ukrainians.
Jonathan Swan: Ukraine, beleaguered, struggling democracy. I was there about a month ago to interview President Zelensky. They benefit from being the middleman taking Russian gas into Europe. They get a substantial amount of revenue from that, and they also get leverage. They need leverage because they really don't have much else. By doing this deal with Germany, Russia is cutting Ukraine away, which is part of their overall plan to isolate Ukraine from Europe. Ukraine has been trying to get closer to the West, join NATO.
Jonathan Swan: So, it's basically a deal between Germany and Russia, which is extremely galling to anyone who listens to the very high and mighty German rhetoric at the United Nations talking about how horrible Russia is for annexing parts of eastern Ukraine and what a terrible affront to Ukrainian sovereignty it is, and meanwhile they're doing this deal with Russia that increases Russian power in the region and screws over America's allies like Ukraine and Poland.
Marc Thiessen: The Trump administration was very tough on Germany about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and imposed sanctions on companies that were involved in building it, and actually brought construction to a halt. What is the Biden administration doing now in its first month in office?
Jonathan Swan: The Trump administration was so vocal about this issue. In 2019, Congress passed sanctions, mandating that the US would sanction pipe layers involved in this project. President Trump was extremely aggressive. He even threatened Angela Merkel. He threatened trade with Germany. Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, was very aggressive, basically saying, "Get out now. And construction halted.
Jonathan Swan: Major construction halted on the pipeline in December 2019, and basically was frozen because they legitimately were worried that the Trump administration would not just sanction Russian vessels, but potentially go all the way and
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6 sanction German utilities, end users of the gas. Trump made very clear that he had no concerns about pissing off Germany.
Jonathan Swan: Anyway, so fast forward, the defense bill, over Trump's veto, gets passed into law in January, and that has an even broader array of sanctions. Congress clarifying the initial bill, making clear that they want anyone, that includes insurance companies, all sorts of people who are peripherally involved in helping this pipeline come to fruition, sanction them all. Trump leaves office, and then Biden comes in and major construction resumes on the pipeline. Biden's public stance is it's a bad deal, we want to stop it, blah, blah, blah. But it's pretty clear that that's not exactly scaring the Russians, or anyone involved in this pipeline. A number of companies pulled out, but that was really under threat from the Trump administration, and major construction resumed in early February.
Jonathan Swan: Now the Biden administration faces a choice, which is how aggressive are they willing to be to try to stop the final 10% of this pipeline being built, and are they willing to upset the Germans, who they are trying to rebuild a warmer relationship with? These are really big questions. It's the first, you might say it's the second, test of whether Biden is going to be tough on Russia rather than just talk tough on Russia. He very quickly approved an extension of the New START deal, which Putin was very happy about. But let's call it the second big test of whether his actions on Russia are going to match his rhetoric. Actually, both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill have been underwhelmed by what they've put out in terms of the State Department report to Congress on this.
Danielle Pletka: Jonathan, we've been talking about American dynamics. We've been talking about Moscow's interests. What I don't get here is Germany. Sure, we can look back and see that German leaders on pretty much every part of the political spectrum have been soft on Russia, one former chancellor going so far as to leave office and go and join Gazprom, the big Russian state-owned gas megalith. But honestly, when weighed against these other interests that you laid out, whether it's Ukraine, the freedom of Central Europe, or even having Western Europe in Russia's gun sights because of this control over energy supplies, why is Germany doing this?
Jonathan Swan: Well, so there's a few things to unpack in there. Number one, the general question is, do these major European powers actually give a shit about Ukraine? When you're in Ukraine talking to the senior people, it's pretty clear that everyone there understands that these people are, at best, fair-weather friends. There's not a huge amount of resolve inside the leadership of Germany for sticking up for Ukraine.
Jonathan Swan: The other issue is, with all this gas going through Ukraine, Russia has a history of shutting it off to punish the Ukrainians. When they get involved in disputes with Ukraine, it's an opportunity for Russia to use their energy as leverage. This takes Ukraine out of the picture and is a direct line to Europe. You can overstate the extent to which Russia has power over them. I think that could be really pretty heavily overstated, but I don't think there's much evidence at all that Germany is willing to really spend political capital defending Ukraine and Poland. I don't see any evidence of that. If they don't believe that the United States is going to impose real costs on them, well, then they go through with it.
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7 Danielle Pletka: Fair enough, right, they're all a bunch of hypocrites. News flash. They don't really care about Ukraine. News flash. Even on the political side, wow, the Trump administration, which was supposedly in bed with Vladimir Putin and, in some stories, working for Vladimir Putin, actually was tougher on the Russians over this than the incoming Democrats are. Okay, those are all things that pretty much any honest person could see. But even if we assess that it's not the majority of gas that the Europeans are getting from Russia, it's still a pretty substantial portion. If you then add in that part of the LNG, liquefied natural gas, that they're getting is from the United States that was engaged in fracking before, then you really are looking at basically a European plan, to use the metaphor you didn't want to use, to basically supply their short hairs to Moscow and say, "Here, you can have a grip on them. Why not?"
Danielle Pletka: I can hear you trying to get over that repulsive metaphor, so I'm sorry.
Marc Thiessen: This is what you get when you get two Australians talking together about politics.
Danielle Pletka: "Europe sucks" pretty much covers it.
Jonathan Swan: Yeah. It's so phony. It's just so phony hearing the hawkish rhetoric about Russia. When you hear the Germans go to the UN and just rail about Russia, it's just so phony. It doesn't comport with what they're actually doing.
Marc Thiessen: But it's also not just Europe sucks. Look at what the Biden administration is doing. These sanctions were supposed to get triggered when the work started again, and they're really not. They announced that they were sanctioning one ship that Trump had already sanctioned and tried to take credit for it. They got called out by an AP reporter on that during the State Department press briefing.
Marc Thiessen: They seem more anxious to stop the Keystone XL pipeline than they do the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. They're standing by while Merkel is expanding dependence on Russian gas at the same time, they're cracking down on our production here at home of the gas that actually our exports are what the alternative is to Russian gas. Isn't the Biden administration really acting in a way that's going to increase European dependence on Russia, and thus, Russia's power over, not just Central Europe and Eastern Europe, but all of Europe?
Jonathan Swan: I reported there was a couple of calls that the Biden administration had with the Hill last week that didn't go particularly well. The second call was on Thursday afternoon. This was with national security advisors from House and Senate offices, Democrats and Republicans.
Jonathan Swan: There was this quite telling moment in the phone call. You've got senior State Department officials briefing them. The questioning was pretty aggressive about, "Why didn't you sanction? We're seeing maritime tracking information that shows all of these ships. It's not just the Fortuna, which was the one that Trump already sanctioned and they repeated targeting for sanctions, but there's all these other ones. We can see it. They've actually sent a list, people on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to the Secretary of State, saying, "Here are these vessels. Why aren't you mentioning them?"
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8 Jonathan Swan: Then there was this moment when one of the Republican national security aides on the call said, "Why haven't you sanctioned Nord Stream 2 AG?" which is the company involved, literally the company in charge of the operation of this pipeline. The response was, "Well, we're not going to talk about specific individual entities." This is on the call. This is playing out. And this aide said, "Well, I'm on their website right now, and they say that they are the company in charge of the operation, planning, and construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipe. I'm just curious what additional information you need to determine that the company that's in charge of the pipeline that you've determined is sanctionable activity is itself sanctionable. I'm just curious." The response, "We're not going to talk about it," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The line that they're using is that it takes time.
Jonathan Swan: There's some irritation that's been expressed to me from some folks who are sympathetic to what they're doing, to say, "It's not fair to be piling on the Biden administration. You've got to give them time to make sure that they cross all the T's and dot all the I's on sanctions," blah, blah, blah. "The Trump administration only started sanctioning two minutes ago." The response to that is, that is true; however, the mere threat of sanctions under the Trump administration stopped construction of the pipeline, so it was halted, and it resumed major construction under the Biden administration. It's not exactly fair to say, "Well, the Trump people were sitting on their hands," because what they had done rhetorically was obviously believed and listened to in Moscow and with some of these companies working on this.
Jonathan Swan: So, there are real questions to ask, and the problem is they don't have time. It's not like they've got this endless window of time.
Marc Thiessen: It's 90% done, isn't it?
Jonathan Swan: 90% done, and from what I understand, again, I'm not an expert on this, but I've talked to plenty of experts on this and people who've studied this. This could be completed by the summer without a major intervention. It's not like they've got this huge window of time to figure it out. Meanwhile, the Germans are trying to get some kind of a deal with the US to allow it to happen, and the Biden people have pushed back pretty strenuously on that and said that they're not negotiating with the Germans and said that they won't; they want to stop this pipeline.
Danielle Pletka: Well, that seems hardly credible. For a lot of people who haven't been in Washington for quite as long as Marc and I have, this may sound like a strange story, but in fact, what this reminds me of most forcibly are the unbelievably lame arguments made in the 1990s by the Clinton administration about sanctioning companies helping Iran's nuclear and missile programs, and it was the exact same relationship with Capitol Hill, which is that Democrats and Republicans stood together against the administration, saying, "I'm sorry, what more evidence do you need?"
Danielle Pletka: Jonathan, they're right in claiming that it requires substantial research. You do have to cross your T's and dot your I's in order to impose sanctions. But in the case of the Nord Stream company itself, that's hardly credible. Now, we know how far Iran has progressed. Russia, given this source of income and this vice-like
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9 grip on Europe, they now control, even after 2020, after COVID, they control almost 40% of the European market. It really does argue to the fact that the Biden administration does not intend to be serious about it.
Jonathan Swan: From their first report that they sent to Congress, it's hard to draw any other conclusion. I think we're going to learn very quickly whether they're actually going to reverse course and put real muscle into this. We'll know that in a matter of weeks.
Marc Thiessen: The other thing that's come into play since the Trump administration announced its campaign against Nord Stream is, of course, what happened to Alexei Navalny, and the fact that he was poisoned and then went back to Russia and was immediately jailed on arrival, and the protests going on there. Isn't it a little bit incongruous, at the time when the Europeans are saying we need to get tough with Russia on Navalny, that the Biden administration is relaxing. Biden has made a big statement about Navalny and his solidarity with Navalny. They seem to not be willing to crack down on this. The French even have said that we need to stop Nord Stream 2 in response to Navalny. When the French are the backbone of Europe, you know that there's a problem.
Jonathan Swan: Well, again, it just comes back to the same theme again and again, action versus rhetoric. We're hearing plenty of really hawkish, aggressive rhetoric, and again, this is a really clear, measurable test of action. Again, what we're seeing so far is just not congruent with the rhetoric at all.
Danielle Pletka: Quick last question for me. This is the one where I'm going to ask you a realist question. I'm not much of a realist, at least according to the common definition. But the Biden administration says they want to repair relationships with our allies, which I get. Donald Trump sort of stomped all over... Marc is rolling his eyes right now. I wish you could see him. But he did. Rhetorically, he stomped all over NATO. He did a lot of rhetorical damage. Let's put it that way.
Danielle Pletka: What does the Biden administration want out of this repaired relationship with Germany, do you think? I wonder whether Zelensky, the Ukrainian leadership, had any speculation about what are we hoping that we're going to get out of Germany in order to cut them this slack on Nord Stream 2?
Jonathan Swan: Well, I don't have any reporting on that marriage of this for that in terms of Nord Stream 2. But just taking Nord Stream 2 out of it, they've been pretty clear about what they want out of the allies. Number one is climate change. John Kerry has been appointed as this international envoy on climate change, and you're already seeing folks who are hawkish on China quite worried about the potential of a Kerry-influenced Biden policy that would give China passes on certain things in exchange for another international deal on climate. Now, the Biden folks, there actually are a bunch of people who internally would push back on that, that that's not going to happen. We'll find out and we'll see.
Jonathan Swan: The other thing that they say is they want to build a coalition against China. That strikes me as a little hard to foresee because the Europeans are doing investment deals with China. Again, just look at what they're actually doing as opposed to saying. I don't really see how that's going to work out because I don't see a huge
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10 appetite from the Germans in stepping up and confronting China. Quite the opposite. We're seeing cooperation and investment deals and the rest of it.
Marc Thiessen: Exit question from me, and switching gears just briefly, because you covered the Trump administration up close. You interviewed President Trump a number of times. He spoke at CPAC on Sunday, and I'm just interested in your impressions of Trump's speech. Do you think he will be the Republican nominee in 2024?
Jonathan Swan: I thought a few things from his speech. Obviously, he made very clear he's not going away, which we knew. Obviously, he singled out a list of Republicans who had voted to impeach him, convict him, and put a target on them. It's pretty clear. He's already endorsed one of his former aides to primary one of these folks, and I think he's going to get involved there.
Jonathan Swan: As for the content of his speech, I thought it was notable how heavily he focused on immigration. Obviously, it's been a core theme of Trump going back to his announcement in 2015. I've watched more speeches than I could count from Trump, and this is one of the longest speeches on immigration that I've heard. I know, because I've spoken to some of his aides, they view Biden's early moves on immigration, and particularly the rising number of unaccompanied children coming to the border, as an opportunity to absolutely hammer him early on and damage him early on. I think you saw that in the speech. That was probably what I pulled out of it most. Obviously, he still hasn't given up on saying he won the election and all the rest of it, but we know that. We know that he's never going to stop doing that.
Marc Thiessen: Is he going to be the nominee?
Jonathan Swan: Well, I think if he actually decides to run, it's awfully hard to beat him. A lot can change in four years, but especially if the field is reasonably large, the base still has incredible attachment to him, I wouldn't bet against him. I don't know about you guys, but I think you'd be pretty foolish to put money against Donald Trump in a Republican primary.
Danielle Pletka: On that extraordinarily depressing note, in fact, this was a pretty depressing conversation overall.
Marc Thiessen: We're here to uplift you, folks.
Danielle Pletka: Thanks a ton, Jonathan. We're going to race to have you back as soon as I refill my Prozac bottle.
Jonathan Swan: What do you want me to tell you, Nikki Haley is going to beat Trump in the Republican primary? I'm sorry.
Danielle Pletka: Basically, let's see, Putin is doing really well, our allies are all a bunch of lily- livered lackeys for Putin, and Donald Trump is going to be the nominee in 2024. Fine. I'm done with you. Actually, thank you. You were terrific. Marc and I both very much enjoyed your reporting and your interview. You all are in partnership with HBO to run these.
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11 Marc Thiessen: We'll link to that in the transcript, both to your reporting and to that terrific interview with Zelensky.
Danielle Pletka: Thank you, really, for making the time for us. We're actually grateful, my statements notwithstanding.
Marc Thiessen: I'm just impressed that Dany got through the interview without saying crikey.
Danielle Pletka: Crikey, Marc. There you go. Makes all the difference to him. Thanks.
Marc Thiessen: Okay, so, Dany, first of all, I am deeply disappointed in the lack of Australian dialect that I heard in this interview. I know it was a struggle for you to speak American English, though it's always a struggle for you to speak English.
Danielle Pletka: Thank you so much, Marc. Yeah. No, listen, I could hear even Jonathan is losing his Australian accent, which is a shame for everybody here.
Danielle Pletka: But I think this is one of those issues where people are not going to want to dig in because they're going to hear Nord Stream 2, and what does that mean? Do I really have to learn a lot? The answer is, no. Actually, this is yesterday's news tomorrow. This is the Europeans going back to being what they always have been, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and a Democratic administration that talked tough, not being tough enough on the likes of Angela Merkel, who should, for all of her rhetoric caring about Ukraine, caring about freedom, caring about democracy, be tough on Russia.
Marc Thiessen: Not only are the Europeans cheese-eating surrender monkeys, in the famous words of P.J. O'Rourke, but apparently, we have surrender monkeys in the Biden White House, as well on this issue. Time is of the essence. They've got to stop this. The Democrats became Russia hawks the moment the Cold War ended. They were all for appeasement. Joe Biden, to his credit, we both worked with Senator Jesse Helms, and back in the '70s, when he was a junior senator from Delaware, I think 28 years old or something like that, when the Ford administration wouldn't invite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to Washington, Helms and Biden together invited Solzhenitsyn. So, he's genuine in his concern about Russia. But this is the problem with the Democratic Party, which is that they, as a party, never were concerned about Russia when they were building nuclear weapons, when they were putting people in the gulag. But as soon as Russia leaked Hillary Clinton's emails, all of a sudden that was a line, that they have crossed a line.
Danielle Pletka: That's the straw that broke the camel's back, dammit.
Marc Thiessen: Exactly. Now, all of a sudden, the Trump era and Putin's election interference turned the Democrats, supposedly, into post-Cold War cold warriors. All of a sudden, they were channeling their inner Joe McCarthy when it came to Russia. But now all of a sudden that Trump is gone, It's back to business as usual.
Danielle Pletka: It's back to business as usual.
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12 Marc Thiessen: It's back to appeasement.
Danielle Pletka: Remember Obama's famous line, of course, in debating with Mitt Romney was, "The '80s called, they want their foreign policy back." That was about Russia.
Danielle Pletka: Look, I think this is an opportunity for Congress. You know how much we have missed normal times. We've missed the normal interplay between our branches of government. We've missed parties behaving as they usually do. Okay, so here are the Democrats. They've gone back to behaving as they usually do.
Marc Thiessen: I didn't miss it so much. I don't miss it so much.
Danielle Pletka: One thing I don't miss is the crazy of the last four years. Now is an opportunity, because there are lots and lots of Biden administration people in the national security sphere who have not been confirmed yet. Okay, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you are at a 50-50 split in the Congress. That means you lose one person, now is the time to hold these people's feet to the fire. What is the administration's policy going to be on this? Are you going to allow Nord Stream 2 to be finished? Do you actually care about Ukraine? Do you actually care about what Putin is up to? What about Alexei Navalny? All of those questions.
Marc Thiessen: These are questions for Toria Nuland and Wendy Sherman in their confirmation hearings.
Danielle Pletka: That's exactly right. I know them both very well. I am confident in their ability to answer them, but what you want to see is a connection between those answers and the actual policy of the administration.
Marc Thiessen: I will add to you, though, a theme that we've talked about, especially when we talked about the Abraham Accords, which is that the lack of normalcy of the last four years is a double-edged sword. There were definitely some downsides of it, and you and I have both been clear about that. But the reality is that the lack of normalcy and anti-establishment tenor that the Trump administration brought to foreign policy is why we have the Abraham Accords, because they didn't say, "Oh, well, this is how it's always been done. Peace goes through Ramallah. There's no separate peace with the Arab-Israeli peace. It can't happen. We can't move our embassy to Jerusalem because that'll set the region on fire." Trump threw all that out because he's like, "I don't care about that. I don't believe that." Literally, a Nobel Prize-worthy achievement with the four Arab and Israeli peace accords.
Marc Thiessen: It's the same thing, on a smaller scale, with this Nord Stream pipeline, which is that "Well, Angela Merkel is our ally. Germany, they're in NATO. We can't beat up on our NATO allies. We can't do anything," and Trump didn't care about that. He literally said, " I will not just sanction the pipeline; I'm going to wrestle your economy to the ground if you do this." They were afraid, and they stopped.
Marc Thiessen: There is sometimes an advantage to having a disruptor, for all the downsides of it. I've been clear about where I stand on the downsides. There is an upside to
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13 having an outsider come in who is not tied to the conventional wisdom and is willing to break china in order to get real foreign policy accomplishments done. This was an example where the Biden administration is reversing through inaction what the Trump administration accomplished, which was an important accomplishment.
Danielle Pletka: You give me the perfect segue to my question because of your Trump nostalgia. Four weeks is all it took, folks, four or five weeks. I want to know what you thought about the-
Marc Thiessen: I'm able to hold these two things.
Danielle Pletka: You can chew gum and walk.
Marc Thiessen: I wish more people could do that, Dany.
Danielle Pletka: I know. I know you well enough to know you can't chew gum and walk. But let me ask you the same question you asked Jonathan. What did you think about Trump's CPAC speech?
Marc Thiessen: Here's the interesting thing. I thought, for Donald Trump, he was incredibly disciplined. He didn't mention Liz Cheney until an hour and 15 minutes into the speech. He didn't mention impeachment once. But he gave a very substantive, policy-driven attack on the Biden administration and defense of his record. That signals to me that, at least for the moment, and these things are fleeting with Donald Trump, he recognizes that he did himself some damage and that he needs to take a more substantive approach. Maybe his people talked him out of it, and he was planning to do something entirely different, and listened. I don't know. But here's the thing that I thought that was really interesting about CPAC was 95% of... They did a straw poll. McLaughlin did that.
Danielle Pletka: I saw this.
Marc Thiessen: 95% of Republicans want the Republican Party to continue the policies and issues of the Trump administration. But when they did a straw poll and they asked the question, "If Donald Trump is on the ballot, who will you support?" only 55% said that they would vote for Donald Trump. I think it was 21% said Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, very pro-Trump. Another 11% said Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, also very pro-Trump. The pro-Trump vote is very strong. Those people love Donald Trump.
Danielle Pletka: But the cult of personality isn't as big as the press is telling us it is.
Marc Thiessen: Exactly right. Also, I think they realize that Trump lost a winnable election. I think this is a fact, that the 2020 election was not a repudiation of Trumpism; it was a repudiation of Trump, the person, and his behavior. There were millions of voters who supported Donald Trump's policies but didn't like him and said that their dislike of him was more important than their support of the policies and chose not to vote for him. This is not just the Republican writ large; this is the biggest pro-Trump section of the GOP base. Even they recognize that we need to win
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14 those people back.
Danielle Pletka: Well, from your mouth to God's ears, or at least the god of politics.
Danielle Pletka: Folks, you know what we want from you. Listen, subscribe, share it with your friends.
Marc Thiessen: Complain about Dany.
Danielle Pletka: Complain about Dany. Complain about Marc. Share it with your friends. Share it with your enemies. Comment. Let us know what you like, and let us know if you have ideas. We really do appreciate your emails an awful lot. Take care for this week. Remember, complaints, oh yeah, they're now coming to me, compliments to Marc. He's almost buried under the avalanche.
Marc Thiessen: Crikey, it's a croc with razor-sharp teeth.
Danielle Pletka: And tech complaints to Alexa. Oh my God, you can turn this off now. Bye, everyone.
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org