second day of demonstrations in the gym and city of kemet software local was stopped in an instant involving people of various nationalities. ten a total trump's former lawyer tracks on his eightieth claims about the information his client provides to prove trumped russia collusion. un investigators say top military officials and should be prosecuted for genocide and crimes against humanity. as a campaign of violence directed against muslims. well that's a full news bulletin coming up for you next hour cross talk is next on. foreign

policy he said the u.k. and ireland renegades thank critical eye on global finance. and welcome to crossfire we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle on this edition of crossfire we consider one question is donald trump america's first policy in contradiction to the washington consensus idea of american exceptionalism the answer this question will likely define presidency and change the world in the process.

cross talking american exceptionalism i'm joined by my guest michael flanagan in washington he's president of flanagan consulting and a former congressman in charlotte so we have david swanson he is the director of world beyond war dot org and in northwood we cross to introduce paul maher he is a professor of international politics at city university london all right gentlemen crossed the rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciated let me go to david first because he's written a book on the topic titled curing exceptionalism ok we have about a year and a half of this presidency i'm getting a pretty good idea what america first means in the mind of donald trump and i know very well what american exceptionalism is and i'm not a big proponent of it. are is donald trump incompatible with his american first policies with washington's insistence. and digging their heels in very deep that american exceptionalism must be maintained go ahead david in charlottesville.

i guess the short answer is no i don't see it look at what donald trump does in terms of foreign policy in terms of continuing u.s. imperialism and he is dropping more bombs he is building more bases he is getting more military spending out of congress demanding more of military spending out of europe shipping weapons to more places including ukraine continuing to insist on the u.s. right to do what it wants in places like ukraine and nicaragua and around the world he's not switching policies allowing the people of afghanistan or nicaragua or anywhere else to decide their own fate i mean the changes are all rhetorical and and in terms of mannerisms and style people in. people abroad outside the united states who see him as radically different because he blurts out things he doesn't act on like name. no it's obsolete seems to me as

superficial as people within the united states who say the people the vote in crimea to rejoin russia was the big threat to peace and stability in the rule of law of the past centuries. looking at actions rather than at. ment's i don't see it continuing us policy but the good points made there michael none the less we we have the reaction of where you are this the epicenter of the swamp they see trump is being very much a threat to the outlook that has been cultivated and inforced i would point out since the end of the second world war particularly since the end of the cold war so i mean michael is right on all these points here but that's not how the people that we used to run the show see it that way and they're pushing back against them in very very severe very peculiar ways and in particular using the media to push

against him go ahead michael. i think the swamp has a collectivist view definitely denies american exceptionalism writ small and that is america's the best workers in the world and we have an exceptional view of our future and we are we yourselves as as the shining light of the world and then you have experiment exceptionalism writ large which as a matter foreign policy means that we'll run the world. the i think writ small trump is a huge champion of that written large i think your other guest is correct he's he's not he's not a big champion of america around the world in the sense that we will make foreign policy for the world but we will behave any way we need to to protect our security and that that is often irrespective of what nicaragua wants or what what anybody else wants and i think trump is definitely a proponent of that the swamp would rather have us collectively sit with the

european powers basically europe almost exclusively and and discuss what we need to do around the world while we pay the freight and they make the decisions and i think trump is trying to bring an end to that by threatening nato not as an institution like eisenhower did by the way and his presidency but to say that it's not an organization that we're going to support exclusively and move on forward with interchange you know combined of what we just heard from michael and david so america first in american exceptionalism they have to find the worst possible elements of both and they're being can bind that's what i've gotten from this conversation so far go ahead and nor would they want to and i don't think i would violently disagree with. you just. i think american exceptionalism is a difficult kind of. and that nationalism has a touch to it a great sense of the uniqueness and superiority to a large degree it's also vast. but it's behind certain kinds of the news and. where

president trump probably it differs from his previous esas by president obama and george w. bush as well is that in a way he's rejected the rhetoric of values of democracy or human rights and promoting those kind of liberal bias in favor of the kids are so i would say that that's the principal difference between those two there is also a strategic disagreement as well and i think that largely is around. the relationship that the united states or president trump is building with russia and the bigger geopolitical picture i think which he has in his mind possibly by and reconsider the home secretary of state about some kind of a possible russian chinese splits and i think there's a big disagreement about that but that's a strategic question or younger or united states continue to exert its up but i

think the rhetoric around values i think president trump doesn't have any time he's much more about asserting or are out of the dollar or of the trade of market access and of the american military ok well david i mean it i guess in a way trump is probably more honest than his predecessors because he doesn't talk about democracy promotion as you know but that it's always been a cover and i think only people in the swamp actually believe in that rhetoric anymore forcefully bringing democracy to the world i don't see where it works no one's ever empirically proven it to me but but so really it's the same thing. it's american exceptionalism with the just a different rhetoric i guess you know that makes a lot of sense go ahead david. that's exactly right the rhetoric has changed a lot more than the substance of the disagreement between the make america great again people and the america already has great people is not around the need for

the united states to have double standards and a set of laws only for itself and superiority the rest of the world that is universally agreed upon in washington the disagreements around rhetoric around domestic policies and around russia and the demand from the from the democrats i wouldn't dignify it by calling it strategic it's more trying to explain hillary clinton's loss and hating anything trump does so if he threatens north korea that's crazy if he fails to threaten russia that's crazy you know that the disagreement is is around this this mythical story of evil deeds of russia and that they're gargantuan significance in the in the context of the good us law abiding behavior and their you know you can give trump credit for refusing to bow to the russia gaiters otherwise i give him very little credit for anything far as he continues

disastrous policies that are taking this country and the rest of the world over a cliff you know again. the rhetoric is is certainly different and some of the actions are too i mean i don't think any of us really took seriously that there would be a meeting with kim so soon nothing much came of it and now he wants to meet with the iranian leader a days before in capital letters on twitter threatening it i mean michael how do you explain that or is that just expediency the mid terms it's the here and now and worry about the implications later because i mean from the on the outside looking in this is very confusing and we're supposed to be experts to be able to figure this stuff out go ahead michael. i think one of the hallmarks of trump's foreign policy is that it's trump it's not a collective view of the state department with way and this from d o d and other places and intelligence it's trump. and he's proven to be fairly adept at it so

far however you may or may not like the outcomes he's gotten in with korea he's reworked trade agreements in europe and elsewhere some of it has been to our total benefit some of it has been a conciliatory benefit. we enjoy a relationship with china we haven't had and maybe ever. i don't know that what he's doing is confusing bad evil wrong or fattening but what i do know is that it's in his head and it's been working with us far. talking diplomatic level and so i'm not prepared to throw it over just because i don't understand no no you know i get on with that which i don't understand i can't i get your point maybe i get your point i mean in the way he sees the world here and his base and i think it may go back to northwood here it seems to me. even a year a year and a half in the dawn of time doesn't have a lot of interest in foreign policy he's made a group of promises on the stump and he's committed to realizing each one of them

i've never seen it a president so adamant going through his checklist ok is it really his that he is an idea of american exceptionalism american for us is it really does domestic politics driving it for him. well i think you're right i mean there is a very very great interest in domestic politics and he has made a whole lot of promises and as you say i think the first thing that steve brandon did when he entered the white i was it's a i've wanted to put up a white board with a whole lot of the promises made and and stop taking them all up but i think the foreign policy perspective the president trump is one of increasing american power and extracting as much of value economically commercially financially and so on from our allies associated powers and former enemies and i think all that is down to who's our long term idea that america has been ripped up and i think if you look at domestic politics then the kind of people you defined as or americans. basically

selling and same message but you have been ripped off white american men in particular by women by minorities by immigrants and so on and you lost status of what he's going to do all restore american greatness and again going to just going to many areas all male of whom i we have an american we are have a large brain reserve sort of after an average short break we'll continue our discussion on american exceptionalism stay with. us. join me every thursday on the alex salmond and obviously going to get us of the world of politics or business i'm sure business i'll see of.

that israel's got a lot of oil but there are many refineries and this is pegged to the oil you know they're trying to levers are well positioned through the machinations of a crypto currency you know my suggestion is you know maybe build a few refineries you know sell a higher end product and put that money back into the economy in this way may take ten or fifteen years but you're not going to be taken over by some cia operative. or come across like we're all things we consider on peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing american exceptionalism. ok david you know ever since trump entered the the oval office a lot of it's been trying to understand if there's a rhyme or reason to his foreign policy and i think that even on this program it's

kind of coming together it seems to me it's kind of like going back to the nineteenth century great powers competition without all the values that were pushed since the second world war it just it's just really kind of brute power and it vantage and looking for competitive advantage and it's very brusque and it seems to appeal just as interested pointed out to us in the first part of the program it does appeal to his base go ahead david yeah i think you know it appears to be all donald trump but just as you know reagan and gorbachev came out of the meeting and were told by their advisers no no no you can't get rid of nuclear weapons every time trump has a good idea like get rid of now after nato he talks to his advisors and it's off the table i think that you know it was actually an actual break with u.s. exceptionalism is not on the agenda of donald trump or his advisors i mean it would look like joining the international criminal court joining the convention on the

rights of the child joy in the united. states is party to fewer major human rights treaties then almost any other nation on earth it would mean giving up the veto at the united nations it would mean getting out of afghanistan there's a promise i'd like to keep i mean this is a guy who promised no more of these wars and their family killed their families bombed the bleep out of them so it's easy to say he's keeping his promise because he promised a black and white one but the ones i'd like him to keep he's not keeping as well as you know off you like building the wall and locking up hillary that i don't necessarily need him to keep either but this is not this is a guy who thinks he's running the world and it's dangerous to what extent he is but he's not overruling the weapons dealers or the big players in washington d.c. you know yeah michael that seems to be very contradictory because he said in interviews that the united states shouldn't be the policemen of the world but in fact it remains the same ok am particularly you know i mean if you look at the

korean peninsula i mean a peace between the koreas denuclearization maybe the american troops could go home they'd be no reason from the be there and then the entire foreign policy elite has their hair on fire like oh my god please don't let it break out it'll change our world ok i mean it seems to me he's just going really up against the street you know against the the stream there and he keeps coming out with these ideas i mean you know i said earlier i mean you know threatening iran in the most chorus way and then saying i'd like to meet with no condition preconditions i mean the outside looking in finds that very very confusing i mean the rains have already said through their aides is that why will we sit down with someone that broke a country that broke a treaty that we just signed only a few years ago i mean i how does that show that america leading go ahead michael. you know it wasn't a treaty and they didn't sign anything but that's that's

a semantic problem we have been able to know well it's an international has agreed i mean no they were it was a it's multilateral it wasn't just with the americans ok go ahead. but i think the the the the point you're making is good and it's correct but it it stops and i think that's what we have to focus on is that the goals his foreign policy goals are as the professor correctly observed although i think for two reasons different than he observes that and that is that we are interested in better trade we are interested in exercising our trade power and to increase american presence and wealth at home american exceptionalism america first through trade treaties through trade work as opposed to naked aggression and use of foreign power which other presidents have used obama was soundly criticized on the right for wanting to meet with the iranians with no preconditions i find it interesting that my brothers on the right don't have a problem with trump doing the same thing i just i just throw that out as an

observation well i mean i think that you know but michael back to hang but hang on michael i mean in the same week basically threatening hostilities with the rand and then saying you want to meet with preconditions you don't have to worry about your friends on the left or right you have to try to figure out what the president is talking about ok that's not my point and you know this was the same. you know your point is right but this is the same tactic we took with north korea you know little camera man blah blah blah you know terrible person going to face the earth your boss' office or the next thing you know we're meeting in singapore this is the art of the deal this is a part of the tactics of moving forward this is part of the noise involved in making the deal and making the negotiation and doing the work and it's trump he is unique he is rare he is something we haven't seen before the swamp can't make head or tail out of a menorah can anyone else and this goes back to my earlier point which was just buckle up just as you've observed many times peter buckle up and you're just going to have to wait to see how a poil is out and response will do their best to keep

their arm around it i just don't know how it's going to work out ok brace for impact ok intervene we go back to you here then and then ok so what is the justification for the united states being in afghanistan it's not bringing democracy there anymore apparently what what what how is what's the justification for the in the eagle behavior of the united states in syria or is it bringing democracy there anymore it's not apparently so why are they still there so i mean this makes it very patently obvious that just brute force beyond international law this is what trumpet is opening up to go ahead. well i think you know when we look at the big picture of little change we have our whole range of new emerging powers some of which are very. recent military and they're looking around the world resources and they're looking to increase their him in order to protect their lines of india china for example is building the one built one road initiative which is

going to be under right across from china all the way to spain and to the indian ocean you've got non-state actors like isis and other organizations also challenging the. allies and other regimes as well and i think what really president trump is trying to do is effectively grapple with the same problem. which post cold war president so i've kind of tried to outline which is the whole world environment has changed the big difference i think with president from things he doesn't really look at the idea of enjoyment of building an orderly system or an ordered a rules based system or rather he wants to open it up he wants to loosen it up and he wants to make it more transactional but i think what he's trying to do is say look we've got this big international series of regimes america's been ripped off it's paying too much it's has too many large deficits with everybody and what we're going to do is we're going to flex our nationals and try to read negotiate our

position within it and effectively the board and the everybody else. ok. ok again like i said it looks like it's going back to the great powers of the nineteenth century without all of the rhetoric at least it's more transparent david you you mentioned russia is it really worth it for trump to go down this path that we had the helsinki summit i was critical of the president's delivery at the press conference like i was and in singapore is well it's not his forte it's got to work on his game there and then he wanted another summit and then walked blocked it back the russians and invited him to moscow why is this so important to him is it a campaign promise or is it just you know the media hates it when he does it and that he just pushes back to show that i am president i'm going to do what i want to do what is his fascination here go ahead david. well i think there is is all kinds

of pressure on him to meet with and work with russia and to not do so and to treat russia as having attacked the united states and started a war and to engage in war with russia and everywhere in between i think that it's appropriate that the united states and russia as the major nuclear weapons powers meet and get rid of those damn things before they destroy us i think it's critical for the united states and russia as two of the nations doing the most to destroy our natural environment to meet and start reversing all the policies david that's not so much of the agenda. i mean complete agreement with you in going to stay with david here and what why it seems to me that. engagement with russia should come out very clear twitter is fine with me and i need to deal with a lot of mere putin to sign a new arms control agreement it's about to expire in two thousand and twenty one

this is what's most important to all of humanity why can't it it's right that i mean that is very straight forward and you know what david it's transact. actually know what trump is supposed to be all about go ahead david well it would make perfect sense it would fit with some of his agenda of body it is not where he comes from it's not something he knows anything about it's not something he's hired anybody to keep around him who would advise him to do and it's the has got the us media and the democrats and half the public screaming at him not to do anything cooperative with russia even if it kills us all so it's not shocking that he hasn't come out with that position of but he should eat and well there's good in the world and russia should be pushing him in that direction ok all right michael. where does he go from this from his russia gambit now i mean he's put it off until next year

because of the midterms it's because he can't do anything transactional because just like david said perfect crystal clear even trying to save humanity he's the boogie man donald trump is evil incarnate even if he wants to save humanity that's a problem in the united states that's a problem with american exceptionalism forty seconds to you michael my friend last word. real quick and i promise to stay and save my time what the trump never telegraphs what he's going to do will make promises in a campaign context he'll have elude to things in a domestic policy context he's never going to say up front what he's going to do it's one of his huge criticisms of his predecessors and so because he hasn't said it's there doesn't mean it's not going to be there and he's had some surprises foreign policy wise stuff no one expected but it was always part of his design and i think that we just have to buckle up and wait well you know that's why i call you one of my donald trump sharp or is that was a very good answer i like that that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to

my guests in washington charlottesville and in northwood and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember. what the politicians to do something to. put themselves on the line. they didn't accept or reject. so when you want to be president. some want to. let you go i think this is what. people are. interested in the.

you know you're not going to want to. ask but i. get. your for your height oh i lost his boss because i just you know got tenure at that but let me just go he says you know i can't just let anybody among my thumb with those impulses but that's honest i don't mean just any of them. so i guess you know if i was you know i got you know just i mean my most important i'm already whatever sped up part of me just going to be i mean it was time for him thinking which honestly i want. to set up as i must admit that he feels i just don't get off on getting the rest of those lazio's they speeded tucson's those people are going to respect i'm one of this but i want the best and like i said just this for this part of this i'm going to come up with my family fussy kind of on my just but that already has had whiskey and he thought of getting up there calling quincy you seen him in ticket my thought aloud problem you know squat about eating.

an apple. am i had. you know he's in the bin laden or not. i am. going to say i am not. this is. the lead in. the cinema of the. time would have good morning or. no i mean everything to rid.

of all forms. if you want to be. going to do what i would anyone i want. to. do not on challenge no stigma. it is to give up you did and it will do but only if you did it it will be for you not how. would you know it i'm not. going. to go to do it only in a new ground and that includes the former see what i was and i mean i don't bad mouth. push really gets to people to ever put your kids to problems all to. a managerial people get

when if they are broke i'm ready to speak to everyone i'm ready to. tell my students to have people. in my needs right. now faster than. being. forceful both of them. on my own that is to ask. show us what it is that. my father has morta.