Afrasianet - Philip O'Brien talks about the global fallout from Trump's war in Iran, and ignoring the "Make America Great Again" movement for Taiwan. In addition: Trump's new secret fund, and what science says about astrology. By David Froome in an episode of The David Froome Show.
David Froome of The Atlantic begins by commenting on President Trump's shocking settlement with the IRS and his new $1.8 billion secret fund for victims of "politicization."
He then joins David Phillips O'Brien, a military historian and professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, to discuss the fallout from the war in Iran, Russia's stalemate with Ukraine, and Trump's recent meeting with President Xi Jinping in China.
Froome and O'Brien discuss President Trump's lack of commitment to Taiwan, and how this has led to a significant decline in America's standing with China. David concludes the episode with a discussion of Carlos Orsi's book "What Science Says About Astrology." The following is the text of the episode:
David Fromm: Welcome to the David Fromm Show. I'm David Fromm, a writer for The Atlantic. My guest this week is Phillips O'Brien, a military historian at the University of St. Andrews, and we'll be looking at the wars between the United States and Iran, and the threat of war over the island of Taiwan.
But before we discuss the book, let's touch on some recent news that President Trump has succeeded in obtaining a fund, reportedly $1.776 billion, to distribute, in his near-absolute personal estimation, to his allies and cronies.
The whole story is so striking and its legality is so dubious that it is difficult to describe. Let's take a step back to better understand the story before delving into its implications.
In a recommended reading under President Trump I, a IRS contractor leaked thousands of tax returns to wealthy people, including President Trump, to show that the wealthy in the United States pay low taxes.
The contractor made available President Trump's tax returns, who was eventually charged, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to five years in prison. The contractor is now appealing this provision.
These leaks were very embarrassing for President Trump, as they revealed that in 2016, the year he ran for president, and in 2017, his first year as president, he paid only $750 in taxes to the U.S. Treasury.
While tens of thousands of dollars have been paid to other governments, the United States has only paid $750. Indeed, he paid no taxes at all in ten of the fifteen years before the 2016 election.
Records show that President Trump deducted money for his haircuts, deducted other amounts as real estate tax on one of his properties, and also showed that he claimed to have incurred huge losses to obtain huge sums of tax refunds for himself.
When President Trump spoke in 2016 about undergoing a tax audit, it was meant to use those losses he claimed to have incurred to get millions of dollars in tax refunds for himself, and the IRS was skeptical of this refund, and it was the audit he was afraid to expose — not how much tax he paid, but how much money he was trying to recover even though he paid little in taxes.
When the case was filed, the judge expressed his doubts.
The Constitution provides for the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary to hear "cases and disputes." How can this be considered a dispute and a case when the same person is representing both parties to the lawsuit?
The Trump administration is taking its orders from President Trump. Whether a settlement is reached or a payment is made, President Trump orders the Treasury Department to put the money in his own pocket.
Whatever the name, how can this be considered a dispute or a case under Article III of the Constitution? We dropped the case. Now, a side fund is being set up under President Trump's oversight.
What exactly this box is, at the moment, I don't know the details. Details remain murky.
Reports suggest that the fund will be worth around $1.7 billion, and perhaps – ironically – $1.776 billion – referring to 1776. According to reports I have seen, the structure of the fund will be as follows: a board of five people appointed and impeached by the attorney general, who in turn is accountable to President Trump, who is also appointed by President Trump and also impeached by President Trump.
These five will direct the funds where they see fit, all without any oversight from Congress, the court, or anyone other than the president and the attorney general, who receives orders from the president. So, this is an amazing story of corruption and self-interest. It is also an example of the way President Trump has radically attacked the Constitution.
One of the fundamental tenets of American constitutional law, and perhaps the simplest of it—inherited by Americans from their English ancestors—is that the executive branch has money to spend only what it receives from the legislature.
These funds are approved by the legislature, and then spent by the executive. No taxes without representation:
This was the basic principle of the 1776 Constitution, which was ridiculed by the announced amount of payments that President Trump is reportedly seeking to allocate to distribute to his friends and allies.
No taxes without representation, no flow of money to the executive branch without the approval of the legislature. But the entire project, the largest of President Trump's second term, was intended to create revenue streams for the executive branch that are completely independent of Congress.
This is what he tried to do with his emergency tariffs. That's what he tried to do with the new tariff system that is still in place after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's first attempt to impose tariffs: creating sources of income that President Trump can impose at his discretion, and providing him with money without any congressional oversight.
This new fund, if it holds, is its most opportunistic attempt to date to create a source of money in its hands without congressional approval. It's your tax money, but your representatives won't have a say.
President Trump orders his government to create this fund from funds earmarked for fair settlements as a result of lawsuits and settlements with the federal government. If there is anything that is considered a violation of the principles of 1776, it is this, and the granting of this fund this monetary value is only an additional insult on top of this farce.
Now, it seems inconceivable to me that any of this would stand up to future lawsuits, and that Congress would ignore it. As I have mentioned, if there is a well-established principle in the government of the United States of America and its English predecessor, it is that the executive branch has no money except those allocated to it by the people's representatives in Congress. The Constitution affirms this principle, as does any right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
The basic mechanism of the Constitution is how the U.S. government is funded through taxes passed by Congress, spending approved by Congress, and the fiscal powers delegated by Congress to the president.
President Trump does not respect any of this, does not believe in him, and he is looking for a way out. If he does, I don't know what will be left of the U.S. constitutional system.
If he finds it, it would have created an executive branch that is completely independent of Congress, its spending and taxes, whether that money is for major purposes, such as the war on Iran that President Trump did not get a vote on in Congress, or bribes to his friends and associates who have been involved in major problems with the law, and perhaps bribes for himself because of his own problems with the law. It's shocking. It's amazing. It doesn't make sense, and yet it is. And now I have a conversation with Phillips O'Brien.
"Fromm: Phillips O'Brien is a military historian who focuses on the role of industry and technology in modern warfare. American-born, studying at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. His books include How We Won the War: Air Power, Navy, and the Allied Victory in World War II, a major contribution to our new understanding of the pivotal role of industry and technology in the outcome of the war; "The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt's Chief of Staff," published in 2019; "The Strategists: [[Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler – How War Made Them and How They Started the War]," published in 2024; and "War and Power: [Who Wins the War – And Why]", published in 2025.
Born and raised in Boston, Phillips O'Brien joins me today on The David Froome Show. Phillips, I'm very happy to talk to you. Your books have had a huge impact on the way I think, and I think they will equally affect the way anyone who reads them think, they are well deserved.
Phillips O'Brien: So kind of you, David, I really appreciate it. From:
Fromm: I want to ask you about the confrontation between the United States and Iran, but let me ask an introductory question, in your opinion, how old is the U.S. military right now? Are Trump's warships, those huge, beautiful, expensive machines, old-fashioned?
O'Brien: No, it's not. American long-range fire is still very effective. They are making progress in some areas. What the U.S. military was not prepared for when it entered Iran was to intercept a large number of cheap drones with other cheap systems. Obviously, they weren't prepared for it.
They went in assuming they would intercept fewer more expensive and sophisticated weapons with costly interceptions. What they were not prepared for was the large number of cheap weapons, which they were only able to shoot down with expensive advanced technologies.
So, they were spending $1 million to shoot down an Iranian drone worth no more than $30,000. This is the problem of the U.S. military, it has systems that are too sophisticated, too complex, too expensive, which makes mass combat very difficult. Some amendments have been made in this regard, and some matters have been discussed.
I think the problem is that the military, under the current leadership, is adopting a semi-backward ideology that focuses on destructive power as if we were Spartans. He doesn't really think about fighting the war intelligently, or even minimizing human casualties, which is a basic way of fighting the war.
Thus, the militaristic spirit of the Trump era is aggressively anti-intellectual, even anti-reason. That means you're trying to solve the problem in a superficial way, and then you end up in a situation like the Iran war, where you can't solve it that way. And that's why they're stuck now, because they don't have a coherent plan to get out of this crisis.
Speaking of the U.S. military and Iran, a decisive confrontation is necessary. The scale of the losses they have incurred is much greater than people imagine. Almost all U.S. military bases in the region have been bombed.
They did not have tight defensive plans. I think we've seen a mediocre military performance on the part of the United States, which is something that Americans don't usually want to face, because they tend to revere the military. But we see an army, I say, showing real signs of corruption, from the leadership to the base.
Fromm: There's a big debate — and that brings us to the Iran issue — a big debate about the extent of the damage that has been done to the United States. The Trump administration downplays the matter and says some of the strikes were successful, referring to the question, "How extensive is the damage?".
Then there's considerable debate about the extent of the damage to the Iranians as well. What is your assessment of the extent of the damage each side has done to the other? How extensive is the damage?
O'Brien: Well, I just rely on image-based reports. Reports based on photographs of U.S. military installations in the area indicate that most of them have been bombed. These facilities have been regularly bombed.
These are readily available satellite imagery — and both the Washington Post and the New York Times have investigated them, concluding that these strikes actually appear to be broader than we think, or the administration has stated. So it seems clear to me that these rules were not sufficiently protected as we think.
We won't know the exact cost. The problem is also that the Trump administration is lying and not disclosing the amount, refusing to disclose the costs.
They just want to say, "Oh, it's not as bad as you think." So it is the Trump administration that is setting the stage for this situation. With regard to what happened in Iran, we are dealing with, in some ways, deep speculation.
Clearly, they managed to strike at the beginning of the war and kill the Supreme Leader and a number of other prominent political figures. Since then, we don't really know what's going on.
There seems to be a new Iranian leadership that is taking a very hardline stance, so they are not acting like they have been crushed. This may just be a misinformation, maybe the Iranians are trying to provoke Trump. But they do not act as if they have been crushed defeated or feel that their control of the country is threatened.
There are very different accounts about the situation of the Iranian military. There have been leaked intelligence reports that between 70 and 75 percent of Iran's missile technology is still there, and that they can extract and reuse it.
I know senior U.S. leaders say, no, it's much worse. In some ways, we will not know the truth until long after this war is over. But what we see from the United States is its inability to force the Iranian regime to give Trump the terms of the peace deal he needs. And because he can't get it, he's stuck.
Some say he may return to bombing now because he doesn't know what to do. If he is forced to go back to bombing, we have to assume, by the way, that the Iranians have not been as hurt as he claims.
Froome: Well, as far as I know, Trump's theory of war seems to be based on what happened in Venezuela, where there was a leader at the top who believed in a certain ideology, and he was the direct heir to the regimes that Hugo Chavez founded. He then handed over power to Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro believed to some extent what he thought Chávez was doing. But under Maduro's leadership, there are only gangs and criminals. If you can get rid of the first man who believes in the old ideology, you are highlighting criminals and crooks, and Trump supporters look at that and say, "We love criminals and crooks." We identify criminals.
These are our men. We can deal with them, and they will carry out our orders in exchange for financial benefit. This seems to be what happened in Venezuela. They seem to have made a similar assumption about Iran, which is that its lower level is also criminals and crooks. So, kill the summit, about 40 people, or whatever number they are, and highlight the criminals and crooks, and you can deal with them.
O'Brien: Yes. The other thing is that Maduro was not an ideologue either, and from what we see in Venezuela, it is simply the Maduro regime without Maduro himself. However, his vice president is now president, and his highly hateful justice minister, some say, is the hidden force behind the throne. Thus the Maduro regime continues; it may even become more rigid than before.
As far as Iran goes, I don't know what they had on their minds. I think you're absolutely right – he thought he could get rid of the current leadership, and a new one would emerge.
She won't be nice, but she'll do what he cares about — he doesn't care if she's a democrat, he doesn't care if she believes in freedom, he doesn't care what she is as long as she does what he wants. He wants leaders who will submit to him and submit to him, and the Venezuelans have done that to some extent.
The Iranian regime is very different, and it is a much more radical regime, in my opinion. Simply put, he didn't understand the nature of what he was dealing with, and they didn't have any real plan to get rid of them.
They assumed it would be much easier than it is. Now, they are facing what most people describe as a more radical regime than the one they killed at the beginning of the bombing. So, they may be the ones who have made the Iranian regime more radical.
They clearly have no candidates to take over the reins on the ground in Iran. We do not hear of a new leadership waiting for the United States to act. It was a serious miscalculation. They assumed it would be easy.
In fact, they thought that a few days of military action would show their strength, the Iranians would collapse, and they would have a new leadership. And we're going to move on. But things didn't turn out that way.
Fromm: Well, the U.S.-Iran war is now turning into a war of economic reciprocal punishment. The violence has decreased dramatically. But Iran is blocking the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. The United States is responding with a counterblockade.
President Trump initially seemed to downplay the blockade because the amount of oil reaching the United States is minimal. I don't think he understood the idea that even if 80 percent of the oil flowed from the Persian Gulf to Asia, there would still be only one price in the world, and if the price went up, it would go up everywhere.
He didn't seem to grasp that, at least initially. But he certainly has absorbed it now. The Iranians are doing great economic damage to the rest of the world, while the United States is doing economic damage to Iran: it cannot sell its oil, which is what it desperately needs.
O'Brien: Actually, there are two deadlines here, and we don't know which one will be done first. I think the U.S. deadline is pretty clear, as the Iranians believe that Trump should settle this in time for the midterm elections. He cannot run in the midterm elections in the fall in light of the continuation of this war, fighting, and bombing of Iran, which is not popular and will not benefit him with any party.
Iranians are calculating, and they must settle the matter in time for the midterm elections. I think what Trump thinks about the Iranians is: At some point, the enormous economic pressure that I'm putting on them by preventing them from trading is going to force them to make a deal that I want.
In fact, his demands at this stage are almost non-existent. I think Trump will accept almost anything if, especially on nuclear weapons, he appears to have made a concession.
This is the only thing that is desperately needed. So he is betting that his economic pressure will force the Iranians to surrender before their political pressure forces him to give up. ... I think the problem he faces is that he is dealing with a stubborn and cruel group, willing to endure the pain, and even willing to hurt its people to hold out for longer.
The Iranians have calculated that they have a much higher tolerance for pain than Trump, and that's why we're hearing more and more — and I don't believe there's any strategic justification behind that — that the U.S. is seriously considering a return to bombing, that is, it's seriously considering it now.
Froome: One of the things that people close to Trump keep saying is that he never deceivers. And I think if you're president for two terms and you've never cheated, you don't need a lot of people to tell you that. It's enough for people to say it when in fact everyone will say: You're cheating all the time.
The Iranians have realized this, the idea that Trump, given his popularity in the polls, and looking at the price of gasoline, if it goes up, the Iranians will be able to hit the other side and all of its energy resources as well, and the price of oil will go up, the price of gasoline will go up, and the Americans who didn't support the war in the first place, didn't understand the war, didn't call for a say in it, and Congress never voted on it — the price of gasoline will go up, and Trump will be in bigger trouble.
O'Brien: I think the problem he has is that he can't wait as long as the Iranians do. If we want to determine who will collapse first in terms of time, the problem he faces is a lack of time: the elections in November. This should be over by summer.
Froome: If the war ends with some kind of truce, where Trump gets a document with the word "nuclear," and Iran actually controls the Strait of Hormuz — which it once had, but now it has proven capable of — with massive damage to Iran's nuclear program and Iran's missile program, and some damage to U.S. forces, who will be the winner in this war?
O'Brien: China. The winner in this war is China.
Fromm: Explain.
O'Brien: Well, because China is going to come out of this war as a more influential power in the region. The United States will emerge very weak, with a declining army, unable to achieve its goals by military force, and capricious, and unable to impose its control over Iran.
The Iranian regime will not emerge from this crisis in a good position. It has been badly damaged, especially militarily.
The Iranian people will certainly be the biggest losers, likely to suffer severe repression after the crisis is over. But the Iranians will hold out, and other regimes in the region will have to make deals with them. China, on the other hand, will remain idle and will be seen as a bulwark of stability.
They will get huge contracts for reconstruction, and their ally in Iran will remain. Many other powers in the region are expected to seek good relations with China in the future.
So, the biggest long-term winner is likely to be China. The biggest near-term winner is Putin, because oil prices are high and will remain so. Thus, Trump has saved the Russian economy in this war, as Russian oil revenues have risen significantly from before the crisis began. So the near-term victory is for Putin. A long-term victory for the Chinese.
The Americans are probably the biggest losers. I think their regional standing will be shaken. The Iranians will not be big winners, but they will survive, and this will give them some leverage in the future.
Froome: The figure that I heard from a politician in the region about Russia is that the war has added a billion dollars a day to its revenues.
O'Brien: It's amazing. Although they cannot export as much, the reality is that everyone is now buying Russian oil. Because of the previous sanctions, people used to buy Russian oil at a discounted price, and that discount has been removed, and everyone buys oil from wherever they can.
So, the Russians are selling anything for more than double the price they were selling before, and they are selling everything they can export. Therefore, the Russians are making significant gains from this situation. Yes, from a point of view of direct benefit, what Trump did would not have done better for Putin.
Fromm: Well, since you mentioned China, let's move on to the last major topic of our talk, which is the summit that President Trump and President Xi Jinping held in China last week, a week before we spoke.
The hall did not yield many results — and that is not to say it did not yield anything — but one of the things that was evident was the marked decline in the U.S. position toward Taiwan. President Trump has always been reluctant to support Taiwan's independence.
During his election campaign, he made statements that questioned the feasibility of this. Now, he has reiterated that he is unsure he is ready to fight for the independence of a country 9,500 miles away from the United States, and may suspend the next U.S. arms sale to Taiwan. It is not clear whether he has received any return for these concessions, if at all.
Keeping in mind that authoritarian regimes always seem stronger than they actually are, how do you assess the balance between the United States and China?
But with China, I think, the goal should always be to make sure that we will not meet with you as a bilateral group, but we will always meet with you with our allies. The United States and China are on a similar level, but the U.S.-led alliance and China's withdrawal from it are not equivalent.
If the U.S. is present surrounded by Japan, India, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Britain, and the European Union, this will not be a competition between equals, if the unity of the U.S.-led coalition system is preserved.
If it were to be demolished first and you had to meet with the Chinese face-to-face, it would be a discussion between almost equal people, and there would be no justification for talking in this way because the previous arms control agenda no longer existed.
O'Brien: The United States has taken a great global alliance system and decided to destroy it in the last few years. I live in Europe, and I think the Greenland crisis in January was one of those moments when I lost confidence in the United States. Europeans no longer view the United States as a reliable ally.
I think the Taiwanese and the Japanese don't see it that way now. Indians, who are increasingly close to the United States, have had a worsening relationship with Trump in recent months since he imposed special tariffs on them, which have been a gift to the Chinese.
So, when the United States, as I mentioned, intervenes with the Chinese, they have no one to support them. They don't have reliable countries that consider the United States their ally.
They destroyed this situation. For this reason, Trump is forced to beg the Chinese to buy soybeans and Boeing planes, and the Chinese are procrastinating on him. But the United States will regret it.
They will regret this development in the future, because even if the United States is under good leadership, it will take a long time to regain confidence in it, and it will probably never go back to the way it was, because the trust of the United States was built on protecting its allies, and now it has not shown its willingness to protect its allies, which is no small feat.
I think that's Trump's main idea, which is: Well, Taiwan is going to disappear anyway, so let's not pretend we can do that, and let's see what we can get in return. Anyway, I'm angry with them for selling us a lot of computer chips at a very low price.
O'Brien: The problem that the Chinese will face is that if Taiwan is adequately armed—and Taiwan must be well prepared—it will be very difficult for the Chinese to get off their shores.
The threat that the Taiwanese pose to China lies not in their ability to confront it head-on, but in their control of the seas and sea lanes out of China through its most important sea routes, forcing China to pass through Taiwan.By the way, I think an invasion of Taiwan is hard to imagine, because the Chinese are not going to do it.
When people talk about "Victory Day" in Taiwan, it's a really terrifying prospect for the Chinese, because the Taiwanese may have a huge arsenal of anti-ship missiles, and the Chinese military hasn't fought a war since 1979 and lost it.
Therefore, an inexperienced army is expected to perform such a complex military maneuver. The best way to protect Taiwan is to turn it into a fierce defensive outpost.
Froome: The 1979 war was their war against Vietnam.
O'Brien: Against Vietnam, and they lost. That was the last time the Chinese military fought a war.
The United States can prepare Taiwan for a very difficult strategic task for the Chinese, and by making the Chinese believe that they will stand with the Taiwanese, that would be a real deterrent. But for now, I think what the Chinese will say to the Taiwanese — and they may actually — is: Look, the United States is not going to fight for you. Come back to us.
What the Chinese don't want to do is invade; that's what I hear. What they want is a Hong Kong-style political relationship, to get the Taiwanese to accept the fact that the Americans are not their friends, and to say, "Well, we're going to leave you a two-system, one-country system." Just join us.
But once the Communist Party tightens its grip on Taiwan, it will do what it did in Hong Kong: gradually take over it. Once the Communist Party tightens its grip on Taiwan, it will do what it did in Hong Kong: it will gradually take over it.
Fromm: I mentioned something a little while ago that I would like to highlight, because, as you mentioned, it is based in large part on your work, which is that one of the things that has worried American strategists in recent years is that China might not invade Taiwan, but encircle it. Taiwan, of course, is dependent on trade, and may be isolated.
It is not clear that only China can encircle Taiwan. Taiwan can also impose a counterblockade on China. A smaller and ostensibly weaker state, if it has a sufficient number of drones, can sever the trade ties of the larger and ostensibly stronger state.
O'Brien: Absolutely. China is heavily dependent on sea freight, and this shipping passes along the Chinese coast. Most of the shipments coming from northern China pass through the Strait of Malacca.
They then head south and circle around Taiwan. Therefore, Taiwan is ideally strategically located. Taiwan is ideally strategically located. Taiwan's strategic location cannot be underestimated, both for the United States and China, because with Taiwan being pro-American, the Chinese have to protect maritime navigation in a way that would be almost impossible if Taiwan were adequately armed. On the other hand, if Taiwan becomes Chinese, the U.S. Navy's mission in the Western Pacific will end.
It's over. If Taiwan becomes Chinese, the U.S. naval base in the Mariana Islands — Guam and Tinyan, where U.S. troops are located — will become indefensible because Chinese missiles will rain down the Mariana Islands from Taiwan. In fact, maritime navigation in most of the western Pacific will come under Chinese control. If the U.S. loses Taiwan, it will go back to Hawaii.
You will return to Pearl Harbor. This is the only place where it can safely deploy its troops. And you say to the Chinese: Yes, the Western Pacific is yours.
Fromm: So those are all the lessons that you tried to convey to the American public. In your work – and you travel the world; you talk to many armies – is there anyone listening to you in the United States, or is it only Europeans who want to hear what you have to say?
O'Brien: There are still some great people. None of them are in official position, but I think those who may have reached an official position, or who have held official positions in the past, understand it.
But for now, to be an employee of the U.S. government and have any influence or seniority, you have to be incompetent.
The first criterion is loyalty to Trump; you have to do whatever the president says. The second criterion is to be incompetent at your job.
We see, David, that the big trick of the last few days is, as you recall, that they said, "The United States can't help Ukraine because it has to confront China, and it has to redirect its strategy toward the Pacific."
But we now see that they will not reorient their strategy towards the Pacific, and they would never have done so. It was just a lie, a lie to justify not helping Ukraine.
They don't want to help Ukraine, they don't want to protect Taiwan. They are simply handing over a large part of the world to Xi and Putin. This is our reality
Fromm: To the extent that there's an idea behind all of this — and it may not exist, it may just be motivations, but it's a point that your historical work focuses on, which is when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was trying to explain to the Americans the significance of the U.S. position in the European War of 1941.
Many Americans had gone through the Great Depression and suffered a lot of hardship. The world was much wider then, much farther away. Europe was connected to the New World mainly by ships. Traveling by plane was new, strange and impractical. Roosevelt explained in his summer radio speeches in 1941 that if the Germans won the war, the United States would become an isolated island in the world, with hostile empires dominating most of the land area.
The United States will be forced to back down, and it will lose its trade. The economy will be forced to become more state-controlled, more planned, and its dreams of relying on enterprise and trade with the rest of the world will be dashed. But what if we start thinking, "This is what we want. We want a continental empire in North America, or North America plus Venezuela, with broad centralized control, a government that runs everything, and strict protectionist policies. We have no desire to trade with anyone." Roosevelt's nightmare then turns into Trump's dream.
O'Brien: Yes. Roosevelt's example is fascinating because what Roosevelt really understood was that he wanted an alliance of democracies. Roosevelt's real shocking moment, which completely changed his outlook, was the fall of France in May and June 1940. Prior to May and June 1940, he would not have participated significantly in the European war, because he believed that the British and French could balance the Germans.
Democracies were still at the height of their power. The fall of France changed everything for Roosevelt, because he thought: Oh my God, you might lose democracies. I think he wanted to get into the European war from the moment France fell. That was, for him, the defining moment — he couldn't do it politically.
But once France fell, he changed his position, waited until his re-election in November 1940, and then came out of his isolation. He said, "Okay, the lending and lease law, the rearmament, we're going to go."
But it all comes down to the fall of France, which means, as I mentioned, that dictatorships will rule Europe, not democracies, and this poses a threat to the United States of America.
Froome: If we want a free society at home, we need free trade with the world, and that means we need a world that is conducive to that trade.
But if you decide that we don't care about a free society at home, that we're content with a non-free economy, or at least an economy run by the state and controlled by the friends of power who make deals with each other, then free trade doesn't matter, and the world doesn't matter.So, Trump's authoritarian and corrupt model is what makes him indifferent to what happens to others
O'Brien: He adores dictators. He does not lean towards democracy, but hates it. He hated the result of the 2020 election that he lost. He is trying to rewrite history as if he had won. So, he doesn't believe in democracy.
