Washington Week with The Atlantic

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I want everyone to know that I take the Trump-Musk breakup drama seriously in part because Donald Trump gave his former best friend Elon Musk access to enormous amounts of secret government data, and there's no predicting what Musk could do with it.

The world at large is in a state of seemingly permanent tumult, and so it's a good time for a general checkup.

My guest tonight is Thomas Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times.

Tom, thanks for coming in for our seemingly annual checkup.

I want to ask you about this Elon Musk business and maybe we can put it into some serious context.

Before we jump to that, I want to read something that my colleague, Charlie Warzel, writing in The Atlantic this morning had to say.

The sun rises every morning.

Spring turns to summer.

Water is wet.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk relationship has ended with a post about Jeffrey Epstein.

And then, of course, you know, he tweeted, these guys really do escalate quickly.

Trump -- Musk tweeted time to drop the really big bomb real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.

That is the real reason.

They have not been made public.

Have a nice day, DJT.

So, put this into some kind of context that makes sense for ordinary people.

What is going on here?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, Foreign Affairs Columnist, The New York Times: Well, I confess, Jeff, on the way over, I thought you'd asked me about this and the first thing that popped into my mind was the Iran-Iraq war.

What did we say about the Iran-Iraq war?

If only both sides could lose, okay?

So, there's no hero in this story.

What it really is is the latest manifestation to me of the central truth of the Trump 2 administration.

Trump 1 was surrounded by buffers.

Trump 2 is surrounded by amplifiers.

And therefore stuff that used to begin at the Mar-a-Lago bar and then get muffled in the Oval Office now goes from the Mar-a-Lago bar, right to the Oval Office, right to you and me.

And whether it's what he feels about, you know, Musk or his role, he wants him in the government.

But to me, the whole Musk phenomenon is part of a much deeper and more disturbing phenomena from an American citizen point of view, which is nothing here is modeled, nothing here is stress tested.

Everything is a riff.

The country is being run like the Trump organization today, not like the United States of America.

And so as a result of that, Jeff, there's no second order thinking, all right?

What's second order thinking?

I'm going to put on tariffs, okay, 10 percent across the board, including Canada and Mexico, even though I'm violating an agreement I signed with them when I was president last time.

Second order thinking is, oh my God, you mean the Ford F-150, only one third of its parts are made in America?

And the other two thirds now are going to be tariffed?

I will bet any amount of money no one told him that.

And that's true now everything.

And so, you know, for the first trimester of this administration, you think the first three months, all of this was kind of entertaining, but now he's running up against a wall.

It turns out he can't solve the Russia-Ukraine war overnight.

It turns out tariff wars aren't easy to win.

It turns out, you know, Musk is not going to, you know, do the revolution in the government for him.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It turns out courts sometimes don't like what you do.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Exactly.

And so I think the second, you know, three months are going to get very interesting as he runs into this reality.

And I don't know where it's going to go, but it leaves me disquiet.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's interesting.

I was thinking -- as you were saying this, I was thinking about John Kelly, General John Kelly being -- and along with General Mattis and others being those buffers or filters, there's literally no one in the White House or in the whole system who does anything but amplify?

Is that fair to say?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Yes.

I mean, I just don't -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The treasury secretary?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I just don't see it, you know?

I mean, yes, you hear these stories that the treasury secretary had to wait, you know, for one of the other, you know, economic guys that Peter Navarro to be out of the room for him to come in to try to change the tariff.

This is crazy stuff.

Now, I happen to be in China twice in the last six months.

I've watched a lot of this from China actually.

And when you see it from China, I mean, they say a couple things.

One is, you know, we are never going to put our president in a situation like Zelenskyy in the Oval Office where he can be embarrassed, number one.

The second thing they say, Jeff, is that this isn't cute.

We just saw Donald Trump tear up a trade agreement that Donald Trump made with America's two closest neighbors and allies, Canada and Mexico.

What is the value there for of a trade agreement with him now?

And, you know, the Chinese, these are -- like them or hate them, these are serious people, you know?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And they are not spontaneous.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: No, exactly.

So, when Trump put the 147 -- 45 present tariff on them, they said, are you talking to me?

Are you talking to me?

Do you realize that we control 90 percent of the rare earths that make the magnets that go in every car you make?

Do you realize that?

Which he didn't.

Which is why Ford and G.M.

and Stellantis had to announced this week we may actually have to curb some production because we're running out of Chinese magnets.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Stay with this Musk question for a minute and this issue of Musk as a radical isotope in a kind of way.

He's been given access to government secrets across the board in order to cut government agencies through the DOGE operation.

That seems like an operational security nightmare if he goes rogue.

Surprising to you?

I mean, where does this relationship go?

Can they bring it back from the brink?

Is there anybody who's trying to bring it back from the brink, or is this just more chaos?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, you know, I think the best way to understand this is not with the analogy of political science but World Wrestling Federation.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: And those in world Wrestling Federation, there are breakups and comeback and new teams and whatnot.

I put this all in the area of entertainment, you know, not in something serious.

We're dealing with two extremely unstable characters.

But what really is more important is, what's the wider world audience saying?

What's the wider world audience saying?

They're saying, you know, for all of our lifetime, Jeff, sort of post-war America, if I had an extra dollar and I'm a foreigner, I'm going to put it in America.

If I have an extra, you know, brain power and a brainy person, I'm going to study in America.

And if I have a little extra dollar for trust, I'm going to trust America.

Now, you take all three of those things away and you end up with a very different relationship between America and the world.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Okay.

So, I have to ask you.

And, by the way, it's interesting, right?

Miami is Miami because it's a safe place for people's Money.

Harvard is or was Harvard, because people want to come from around the world and so on.

And United Nations is headquartered in New York, you know, I mean, everybody -- for a reason.

We were the -- we wrote the rules of the road for the post-war international order.

So, the question is, you're an ally or an adversary, and you're looking at this clown show, by the way, on the weekend that marks the 81st anniversary of D-Day, noting, just for the record.

You put yourselves in the shoes of an ally and adversary.

Are you thinking that this is a midlife crisis America's having, a nervous breakdown, or is this some kind of weird terminal illness?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: You know, I don't know, which all I know is I'm completely disoriented if I'm an ally.

And I'm completely disoriented if I'm the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, because I've never covered this world.

And, you know, our friend, you know, Fareed Zakaria wrote a book 15 years ago or so called The Post-American World.

And Fareed's book was really about a change in relative power, you know, between that there'll be the rise of Brazil and Indian other countries, so we won't have as much power as we had before.

Well, really, if I were writing a book today, Jeff, would be called the Post-America World, okay?

That's what I'm really worried about, because America stood for some things.

It stood for universal values.

It stood for stability.

It stood for the rule of law.

It was a loyal ally.

We were always against the dictator versus the people seeking freedom.

What really worries me that at the end of my, you know, career basically, I'm dealing with the post-America world, the America I grew up and loved and was devoted to.

And as someone who lived abroad, like you have, know how important that America is to the whole world.

American optimism and stability makes the world go round.

You take us out of the equation, it's not like anybody else comes in.

I'm sorry.

You have a no superpower world, you know?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

But come back to this.

Is this -- do you think that this instability that we're experiencing, emotional, political, all the instabilities that we're experiencing, could it be temporary or is this -- can we not come back reputationally to start?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, the thing I'm worried about most is that, and it may seem like a simple thing, but you know, Donald Trump came in and he told all the Democrats on the board of the Kennedy Center, you're gone.

Now, traditionally, every president sort of left the other party's people there, and then he put in his people.

So, when you enter into a kind of zero sum politics now in America, when you fire the head of the NASA after you appointed him because he made a donation, a tiny donation to a Democrat, you're into a kind of politics that I grew up with in the Middle East.

What was that?

Rule or die.

Okay, you're either in power or you're -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Zero sum.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It's zero sum, okay?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I'm on top or I'm in -- THOMAS FRIEDMAN: And so there's a book about African dictators called, It's Our Turn to Eat, you know?

And we're just going to eat everything.

So then now, if you're a Democrat and guess what we do have -- God willing, if we still have elections, rotations in power, do they come in now treat all the Republicans in these traditional bipartisan forum, you know, the same way?

And if that happens, we're really off to the races, then the whole thing just starts to disappear.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What country does that remind you of that tradition?

THOMAS: FRIEDMAN: You know, I mean so many dictatorship just in general that I've covered over the years.

That's what you come in, you wipe out all the other guy's, people.

Well, that's not how we do things in this country.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, let's talk about a country that's not democratic for a second.

You know, the -- I want you to watch this.

It's the latest analysis by President Trump of the current state of play in Russia's war against Ukraine, and he's talking about Putin here.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: He got hit, he's been doing hitting, so I understand it.

But he got hit hard.

And I don't think he's playing games.

I said, President, maybe you're going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot because both sides are suffering before you pull them apart, before they're able to be pulled apart.

But it's a pretty known analogy.

You have two kids, they fight, fight, fight.

Sometimes you let them fight for a little while.

You see it in hockey, you see it in sports.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Not Henry Kissinger, but he's trying to impose his own real politic understanding.

What is he misunderstanding, from your perspective?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Jeff, do you know how flat out crazy that is?

I mean, it's like saying, well, you know, I mean, Hitler and Poland, they fight, they fight, they come back.

You know what I mean?

Trump came in and said, I can end this war, all right?

There's one way to end this war, you say of Vladimir Putin, if you don't stop the war and we agreed to the ceasefire terms I dictate, we are bringing Ukraine into NATO in 30 days.

Which part of that sentence don't you understand?

Do you want to mess with me?

Test me.

That's how you end this war.

What you just heard of Donald Trump, that sounded like a commentator on Fox T.V.

He's not that commentator.

He's president of the United States.

Well, he hit him and he hit them and he hit -- this guy invaded a country.

He's basically tried to rape a country.

That's what Putin did, okay?

And the Ukrainians, with incredible bravery, stood up and defended basically the western alliance on something that's very important.

Because if Ukraine were able to join the European Union, Jeff, then you have a Europe that's really whole and free.

That's actually a big deal for Europe and for us.

And this guy's talking about it like it's some schoolyard fight and they're morally equal.

It's nuts and it's disgusting.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Is there any issue from a foreign affairs columnist perspective, is there any issue in which Trump is not transactional?

Have you ever seen a sign of what we would think of as, in a bipartisan way, American idealism?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Out of Trump?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: None comes to mind.

What I would say, and where I thought you might be going is you know, some things are also true even if Donald Trump believes them.

And, by the way, his transactionalism sometimes can also be an advantage.

For instance, I'm glad he's sitting down with the Iranians.

Let's see what you got.

I'm glad he told the Syrian president, I'm going to give you a reputation to live up to.

I didn't mind him talking directly to Hamas if I can get the hostages out.

So, there is that transactional side of him that I think could be an advantage, but it's not grounded in any moral, you know, framework of what we stand for as a country and what we've always stood for if it's just, a kind of free floating thing.

It becomes very, very dangerous.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

In his non-sophisticated analysis of the current state of play in Russia and Ukraine, he didn't really talk about the drone attack that Ukraine launched on Russian aerial assets deep in inside Russia.

Does that change this war?

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: You know, Jeff, I say two things, and, again, it's part of the craziness of this moment.

Let's start at 30,000 feet and then come down to the battlefield.

At 30,000 feet, you and I are having this discussion on the eve of the greatest technological revolution in human history.

We are very close to birthing a new species, not a new machine, a new artificially intelligent species.

And it's going to be with us some time while Trump is president.

It is not going to change one thing.

It's going to change everything.

We are not talking about that at all.

So, that's, I would say, number one, under that technological revolution.

And, you know, one of the things they say about A.I., it'll actually be mankind's last invention.

Because once we invent that, it will invent everything else.

That's going to be a big deal.

Under that, though, we're seeing a revolution in military affairs.

Basically, Ukraine spent $20,000 to knock out, you know, $20 million planes.

$20,000, that was probably because they couldn't get Costco online, you know, from Kyiv and they had to buy them from Amazon, you know?

So, the asymmetric warfare world that we're entering now, wow, I mean, if you're the U.S. Navy and you're sitting with 12 aircraft carriers and you just recovered from the fact that the Houthis, you know, you lost an F.A.

Hornet because you had to swerve your aircraft carrier and the plane fell off the back because you were getting out of way of -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Not a sterling moment , in naval history.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Right, which is you're avoiding a Houthi missile, a bunch of guys in flip-flops, basically, in a country that's based -- water starved, the asymmetry we're going to be dealing with right now.

I think these events are really disturbing and they're going to require a huge revolution in how we think about military affairs.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You know, as I'm listening to you about A.I., AGI and drone warfare, I'm just thinking that the preoccupation this weekend in America is the emotionally febrile relationship between this ketamine-taking billionaire and our reality T.V.

star president.

And it's like there's something that's so deeply unserious about our -- THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, yes.

And I think it's been true of our country that basically everything became politics.

And so we don't have just ESPN now.

We have PSPN, you know, sort of politics sports network.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN: And it's a testament to the underlying strength of our country, Jeff, that our economy goes on, we still invent amazing stuff and we think we can afford this.

And you know what, Jeff, we can't afford it until we can't.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.