WATCH: A Foreign Policy of the Absurd

CN Editor Joe Lauria assesses the increasingly bizarre foreign policy of the Trump administration with journalist Rachel Blevins.

Rachel Blevins

It is April 3rd, 2025. And when it comes to how Trump will handle U.S. foreign policy on any given day, it seems as though your guess is as good as mine. Right. We look at the way that he’s handled things so far, the kind of temper tantrum that he’s been throwing over Ukraine, over the fact that he’s not getting the Ukraine war wrapped up and solved as quickly as he seemed to think that he was going to.

The fact that Russia is telling him flat out, you’re not paying attention to the root causes of this war, and he doesn’t seem to be understanding what they mean by that was all that’s happening. You also have Trump pursuing increasing tensions in the Middle East. We’ve got reports talking about the U.S. planning to help Israel bomb Iran. We’ve got the U.S. actively bombing Yemen right now and continuing to support an all out genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

So where could things go from here, and where do things stand under the Trump administration? Well, we got into all of the latest with a special guest earlier. So let’s take a listen to that conversation now. Joining me now to discuss is Joe Lauria, an independent journalist and editor in chief of Consortium News. Joe, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.

Joe Lauria

Well, thank you for having me back on Rachel.

Rachel Blevins

Now I want to get into a few things today, but I want to start with the war in Ukraine and kind of the latest there. I know that Trump is, of course, trying to rush a cease fire and peace deal to end this war, he says. But Russia is once again pointing out the fact that while the U.S. has come up with some ideas, they have yet to address the root causes of this war, which puts us right back in this place of the fact that any kind of a cease fire could be used as a Minsk three style deal, freezing the conflict and then leading to more war later on. How do you view the way that Trump is handling this conflict? I mean, yes, he is talking to Russia. There’s dialog there. But at the same time, he still supporting Ukraine and he’s still continuing the war.

Joe Lauria

Yeah. Well, first you’re asking me to apply rationality to irrationality. And that’s not always an easy thing to do. So I’m going to try. Actually, Trump’s interest in Ukraine is very personal, [which helps explain why his Ukraine policy diverges from he rest of the decades-old, bipartisan U.S. foreign policy.]

I see almost all of his politics is personal. You have to remember, he was impeached over what happened in Ukraine. He was trying to find out what shenanigans Joe Biden was up to then, and the deep corruption he and his son were involved in. And he asked Zelensky for the dirt. He should have had maybe the Department of Justice do that.

And then, of course, the Democrats found out about it. That became the basis of an impeachment, a kind of ridiculous impeachment. And, he wanted to get the dirt again on Biden. So this is for him Ukraine. Something, he wants to get in there and stop it. He keeps saying, if I were president, [the war] would not have happened.

So he’s blaming it on Joe Biden. Again, it’s personal politics. This is a man with street smarts. No, no doubt about it. Big deals all over the world in real estate. A negotiator, a wheeler dealer. He’s not well-educated on geopolitics, on history. I don’t know how much he really understands about the origins of this conflict, the context of it.

Certainly if he’s reading the mainstream U.S. press, he’s not going to learn that that’s [the media’s] modus operandi, to deprive the public in the United States and Western Europe as well, from understanding why this conflict happened. Although one day about four weeks ago, Trump said to the press that he understood Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion. That he wouldn’t have liked it either. Something to that effect. So he has an inkling here or there.

He’s listening to some people, and you wonder if somebody like Tulsi Gabbard and even Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Jr, when they were candidates, they made very clear that they did understand the coup that happened in 2014, in Kiev. They understood NATO expansion. They understood the role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine. These are all things that are now denied in the mainstream press, that they don’t exist: There’s no Neo Nazi influence, there wasn’t a coup. And NATO, what is NATO’s expansion? Who cares about that?

So, I don’t know if he listened to them or when he goes to play golf with Lindsey Graham on Sundays, he’s listening to him because Graham is a co-sponsor, just I think in the last day or two, of new sanctions on Russia. He’s one of the Republican co-sponsors of this bipartisan bill. So clearly, there are neocons like Rubio as well, who are going to be getting his ear. So his instinct sometimes is very good.

I think he has a personal reason to want to solve this Ukraine war. But he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And that makes him susceptible to people who do know more, whether from a nefarious or a positive point of view. And also his, well, his vanity here gets in the way as well. So I think that Donald Trump, is not the right negotiator.

He thinks he’s a great negotiator, is trying to present himself on Ukraine as being somehow an honest broker, that he’s going to bring these two sides together. He’s pissed off at Putin, because Putin doesn’t like Zelensky. I mean, this is like schoolyard-level thinking, that he’s going to bring the two fighting kids together. The fact is, the United States has been arming Ukraine.

And as we now know, they were deeply involved in this war from the very start.

They started the war. It’s a war against Russia to try to get back to the control [the U.S.] had in the 1990s. And, they had to get Russia to invade in order to unleash these economic and sanctions; the economic war, the information war, the ground war, which U.S. has been running from the beginning, all have failed.

The Europeans cannot deal with that because they’re going to have to leave office. They can stay in power. They’ve invested too much of their own political capital in that. And here’s Trump, who could be doing something really great. And we got an inkling at the beginning that he would. And now we’re only disappointed. So he doesn’t understand the root causes of this conflict.

Rachel Blevins

And the Russians need him in order to get a deal. Joe, exactly as you’re pointing it out there, I mean, I think we saw some of the red flags when Trump was on the campaign trail, and he seemed to think that, oh, all we have to do is just get Putin and Zelensky in a room and get them to talk it out, and then that will solve everything.

And it’s like, oh no, this is a much deeper and more complicated conflict than that. And the U.S. is not the side that is going to bring everyone together and broker a deal. The U.S. is directly involved in creating this conflict. Now, as you have all of that happening, you also have the NATO alliance, which is, according to reports, kind of freaking out over the fact that there are talks happening between the U.S. and Russia amid concerns that Trump could be losing interest in NATO.

Now, I want to get your take on these tensions within NATO, because, I mean, it’s no secret that Trump isn’t too fond of people like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer. I think the feeling is mutual there. But is there a chance of the U.S. pulling out of the NATO alliance of Trump making that decision? Is that something that’s even possible when it comes to the way that things currently stand?

Joe Lauria

We’d like to think that he could and that he would. He said to the press a couple weeks ago that he didn’t think Russia was a threat to Western Europe, that Russia was going to invade Europe. And this is not the only time Europeans have stoked that absolute nonsense. That was nonsense during the first Cold War, when we got all the bomb scares, the bomber gap, the missile gap, all the Russians are coming nonsense.

The Soviet Union was was rebuilding itself after the absolute devastation. I mean, the East Germans were upset because the [Soviets] were taking a lot of resources from East Germany to rebuild Russia. There was no plan to invade Europe. But that was what the Cold War was founded on. This fear. It’s come back again.

It’s come back again because European leaders like Ursula and Macron and Starmer and all these very weak characters who can only exist on fear mongering. And as I said, they invested too much in this war. They thought they were going to win. I mean, you remember Lloyd Austin said the purpose of this war was to weaken Russia?

He said that two weeks after Russia’s intervention in 2022. And in Warsaw, around that same time, Biden said the purpose of the war was to overthrow Putin. He said it. And then they tried to say, Oh, no, he didn’t mean that. But of course he did. That’s what the purpose is. \Macron is a real slippery character because he was going to Moscow a couple times before Russia’s intervention.

He seemed to be the only one who had an open mind. He seemed to think he understood Russia, one of the few to understand Russia’s point of view, which is diplomacy. Right? Put yourself in the other shoes. He did all of that. And then he also, about three years ago, two years ago, he had a dinner at the presidential palace in Paris with Scholz.

Scholz and Macron sat down with Zelensky and they told him, it’s over, you’ve lost. You’ve got to make a deal right now. You’re not going to win this war. And he even said — Macron to Zelensky — that, you know, even enemies like France and Germany – and they were sitting there with him — made up after all the wars, the Franco-Prussian War, the First World War, the Second World War, here is France and Germany together.

You’re going to have to make up with Russia. This was leaked to The Wall Street Journal. It was a big story. It’s forgotten now. And here’s my problem. Saying Starmer’s boots on the ground, planes in the air and we’re going to rebuild the economy that was destroyed in Europe because they went along with the American sanctions against Russia, which destroyed their economy and not Russia’s, that they’re going to rebuild it through militarization of the continent.

I mean, this is so dangerous and stupid, and I just wonder how many people can see through this. And I think there are quite a few, but there are too many who believe the mainstream, jargons here and everything that these people are saying Macron, Starmer, Scholz, [German Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock, unfortunately. We’re going to lose her. I see she’s going to become the president of the General Assembly of the U.N.

I worked 25 years at UN headquarters. I’m glad I’m not there anymore. So, anyway, it’s a big mess. NATO should have never existed anymore after the end of the Cold War. Even during the Cold War, its whole purpose of existence was the Russian threat, which I was just saying was a hoax back in the First World Cold War and certainly is now, even if Russia wanted to invade, even if Putin was this Hitler, a Hitler-like figure taking the Sudetenland and then Poland and and all this rubbish we hear, they don’t have the capability.

And everything that Russia has done is to avoid conflict with NATO. I mean, they’re not stupid. They’re not reckless. The stupid and reckless ones are in the capitals of London and Paris and Berlin, unfortunately. And they’re going to keep this going. So NATO shouldn’t have existed at the end of the Cold War. There’s no reason to exist now.

It should go away. To answer your question, no, I don’t think Trump’s got it in him to actually do it. He’s got the right ideas, the right instincts, but he’s got Lindsey Graham on hole number nine telling him, don’t do it. And he’s got Rubio. American politicians’ entire careers and built on this anti-Russian, a good deal of it anyway, foreign policy, China as well, of course.

So I don’t think he’s going to do it.

Rachel Blevins

And it’s interesting to watch as you’re seeing everything that NATO is doing, everything that you laid out there. These are the security concerns that Russia has been talking about for years, right? When Russia has been saying, hey, we need these root causes addressed. We’re not just talking about the issues that have come up in the last three years.

No, we’re talking about decades now of fighting back and forth and ongoing tensions. And, you know, speaking of the mess that there is in NATO, I also want to turn to the mess that is over in the Middle East right now, as you had Donald Trump, of course, he campaigned again, ending the endless wars. He was going to bring peace to the Middle East.

Oh, and then all of a sudden he turns right back around and he has the U.S. openly bombing Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, killing dozens of civilians there as they’re openly targeting heavily populated civilian infrastructure. Yet although these bombings so far have led to no signs from the Houthi, that they are going to stop their blockade on Israel on ships in the Red sea.

You have the white House claiming that the strikes have been, quote, incredibly successful. So what is the message that this sends to the American people when Trump literally goes from, you know, peace in the Middle East one day to let’s have another endless war and really ramp this back up when at least involving Yemen, there was some peace and they were happy to have it as long as there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

Joe Lauria

In trying to understand this inexplicable man, Donald Trump, I have an advantage, having grown up in New York City like he did. He’s a bit older than I am. But, I grew up in a borough, and he grew up in a borough. I grew up in the Bronx, he grew up in Queens. Why am I saying this? Because he talks like he’s still living there. If you listen to when he had the Jordanian king at the White House, they had this discussion.

That’s when he revealed his great plan that he was going to move them all out of Gaza and build new housing. Families are going to have wonderful, beautiful housing. And he mentioned a couple times that right now they can’t live there because of horrible conditions. He said they’re getting knifed. They’re getting knifed and they’re getting mugged.

And I’m thinking, what the hell is he talking about right now? They’re getting bombed with 2,000 pound bombs that the Americans are providing them, and they’re getting hit with tank shells. And they’re getting starved. But there’s nobody getting mugged. If only the people of Gaza were only dealing with muggings, right now. They would be in good shape.

Why is he saying that? Because he’s thinking like a real estate developer in the South Bronx that is full of broken down buildings and ghettos and muggings and and he’s going to clean it all out and build new housing for these people. That’s the way he approaches Gaza. No, you may think I’m crazy.

A lot of people may disagree with me, but that’s my understanding of Donald Trump talking about that. This is the level that he’s looking at it. And of course, when he talked about that, when Netanyahu showed up, you remember when he talked about this plan and Netanyahu’s couldn’t stop smiling? And he’s now openly talking about implementing Trump’s plan. He said that the other day.

Now they’re admitting that they’re going to kick all the people out of there little by little, which the former defense minister of [Moshe] Ya’alon said back in December. He said, we are ethnically cleansing northern Gaza. And then the people went crazy in Israel.

It was a big scandal. How dare he say this? He’s mentally ill. One member of the Knesset said that this former defense minister was mentally ill and he needed help. Now Netanyahu is saying the same thing openly. They were saying it before in coded message, like making references to the Old Testament genocides. But now they’re just saying it openly because they got Trump to do this plan.

Yemen is an Israeli project. Israel has limited military capabilities. They are spread thin now in Syria, bombing Lebanon again and now resuming bombing Gaza. Can they spare planes to go down to stop the Houthis from trying to interfere with the naval traffic, the merchant ships on the Red sea going towards Israel?

No, they need the United States. And not only did they use U.S. planes to do this, but it is the typical Israeli type of hit. This is the guy you want to get in the building, bomb the whole building and kill everyone in there, and you usually find out he wasn’t even there, right? That happens very often.

So Israel planned that whole thing. And the U.S. implemented it. And that’s when they invited this journalist who is an Israeli himself, actually the Israeli- American journalist Jeffery Goldberg, to go in and listen to this call.

And they were all whooping it up like any kind of macho American, like the Bushes, you know, even Obama: “I’m good at killing people.” The same goddamn awful American leadership mentality of killing people so wantonly because we are the best and we are the most powerful.

So Trump’s gonna, unfortunately, try to implement this ethnic cleansing plan, and Netanyahu is doing it. And this is a unmitigated disaster way beyond anything we’ve experienced for decades in terms of the horror of war, maybe since the Cambodian genocide.

Rachel Blevins

I think Gaza’s probably the worst thing since and Trump’s facilitating it because he wants to clean the gutters and give them nice new housing so they don’t get knifed and mugged anymore. Yeah. You know, that is a really good point. And I had not even thought of it like that when it came to his language, because I remember hearing that at the time and kind of going, okay, and interesting way to describe it.

Maybe he’s using that as a metaphor, or maybe he thinks that is happening literally. But yeah, he has no idea. And he’s also not paying attention to the fact that, you know, when Israel decided that they were going to respond to the October 7th attacks, it was all about we are going to, quote unquote, defeat Hamas. Well, over a year later. You’ve you’ve carried out plenty of genocide. You haven’t defeated Hamas. It does not appear that that is anywhere on the table.

And yet, as you were pointing out there, now Israel is adopting the language that we heard from Trump. Right? They’re talking about seizing more land in Gaza, claiming all we need it for the expanded security corridor. And if, any of the countries in this region would [accept Gazans] I would be starting to get concerned right now.

Because while Biden, you know, was a self proclaimed Zionist, he gave Israel the green light in a number of different areas. Trump is doing it in a way that he’s almost boasting about it. Right. He’s openly threatening that he’s going to bomb Iran. He clearly does not care about the Palestinians, even though he’s presenting it as though he’s going to ship them off to some sort of a resort and then, you know, make over their land. But what are your concerns right now for the direction that the Middle East is headed in under Trump’s direction, and how Netanyahu is going to use that to his favor?

Joe Lauria

Yeah. Well, first, I’m going to say I don’t think Israel wants to defeat Hamas right now. Even if they could. And why is that? Because let’s say they defeated Hamas. Now, what do they do with all these people? How are they going to get them out? What excuse will they have to keep killing them to drive them out?

So they I think they need Hamas to be there so they could use the excuse of fighting Hamas in order to make all this absolute extermination possible. Ultimately, if they want to take over Gaza, they’re going to have to defeat Hamas. But that, I think, can come at the end. They’ve got to first get most of the people killed or driven out.

And I think this is so horrific. The difference between Biden and Trump is only in the theatrics of the thing. If you remember Biden, you know, they had an election to win, and they knew that a good part of the Democratic Party was horrified by what Israel was doing. And so he had to accommodate that wing of the party.

So they made these noises. Oh, we’re going to tell them, don’t bomb Rafah, don’t do this. We’re going to withhold one 2,000 pound bomb. It was all B.S. to try to win the election. So he was just as committed to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, in my opinion, overall in Palestine, as Trump is. Trump’s just openly saying it because that’s what Trump is.

He doesn’t understand the nuances here and he thinks his base agrees with that. But I wonder about that. And his base doesn’t like the involvement in the Ukraine war because of the waste of money, whatever the reasons. I don’t know how they feel about Gaza so much. I don’t think they’re all that keen on it, but I haven’t really seen polling or anything to indicate that.

On the overall direction of the Middle East. For Netanyahu, this is step one for him. He’s got Trump and the U.S. military to bomb 200 sorties or whatever attacks on Yemen now. Right. And it’s not, despite what the White House press spokeswoman said, it is not having an effect. The Houthi we’re controlled by Iran at any point, really from the beginning in particular. Yemen was awash with weapons, as the British ambassador used to say at the U.N., they didn’t need weapons from Iran.

And they are a different branch of Shia Islam than Iran is, which is something. But they’ve been driven closer together by the Saudi attacks. There’s no question about that, they are much they’re much closer now. It’s very much like the way the Americans drove Cuba closer to the Soviet Union. The way nationalist Vietnam become closer to communist China or Communist Russia.

So I think if they got the the U.S. to do Yemen, then for Netanyahu and his gang, I think the next step is to try to get what he’s been asking for, for 20 years, which is to attack Iran. And this is what Lindsey is on about. And a good thing his friend McCain isn’t around to be saying bomb bomb bomb Iran, because this is the ultimate prize.

They wanted Saddam taken out. They got him taken out. This is Israel. They wanted, ultimately Assad, Bashar, Bashar al Assad in Syria to be taken out. He’s out and the extremists are in unbelievably, which is what that whole war was about since 2011, not some democratic Syrian revolution. They wanted Gaddafi out. He’s gone. So everybody Israel’s wanted out is pretty much gone right now.

Lebanon. Well, they’ve killed Nasrallah. He’s gone. So the last one is the Iranians, except they’re the strongest power they’re going to face ,when Iran now has a pact with the Russians as well. Everybody speculates. How’s Russia going to react to that? Nobody really knows. Israel needs the final pin to fall. Will it be the Iranian leadership?

Israel can’t do it alone, like they can’t even bomb Yemen, they are stretched. Certainly even when they weren’t stretched, with their capability on their own to attack Iran, they still need the U.S.

This is the million dollar question. Will Donald Trump be stupid enough to do this?

Rachel Blevins

Yeah, it really is the million dollar question.

And, you know, as I’m watching the way that Trump is handling things, I’m going, okay, he has to understand or at least I would hope that someone in his circle would make it clear if you bomb Iran, if you create this regional war, all hell is going to break loose across the Middle East, right? We’ve already have, militias across Iraq that are talking about, hey, guess what? We’ve got all these U.S. bases, they’re all going to become targets.

But beyond that, you have the Persian Gulf, an incredibly important region of the world for shipping. It’s going to send energy prices skyrocketing. The list just goes on and on there. And when it comes to kind of the limits that Trump is willing to push, it really makes me wonder.

I don’t have, you know, I can’t look at him and say, oh, no, he would never do that. Or yes, he would absolutely do that. The last thing I want to ask you, when it comes to the American people and how they’re looking at the Trump administration and its foreign policy, how do you see that right now? Because, I mean, yeah, Trump can say we’re talking to Russia, we’re making progress on Ukraine. But at the same time, he’s also bombing Yemen, threatening war with Iran. He’s not bringing peace to the world. In fact, he’s sending tensions soaring all over the place.

Joe Lauria

I think their heads are spinning like most observers. What is this guy really up to? What’s going on? And don’t forget the tariffs that are part of his trade policy, which is relations with states.

Now he’s just announced 10 percent minimum on every country in the world thinking he can rebuild an industrial base. And that will take a long time. And in the meantime, he’s destroying the economy. So the conventional wisdom is American voters, like voters in many countries, vote with their pocketbooks, the economics will determine this.

So I don’t think they’re going to be happy that he started a war. If they are really anti-war, they’re not going to be happy that. But he got us a new phase of this war against Yemen that Biden also had his go, and the economy, he’s going to really weaken the economy.

People on Wall Street are not happy with him because shares are way down. And the tariffs are at the bottom of that, and his bellicosity, the dangers of a war with Iran, will be the end of the world economy, or at least a severe depression probably would come, as all analysts say, if the oil can’t get out of the Persian Gulf and Iran blocks that.

Plus Iran can strike at these Saudi oil facilities on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, on the Gulf where the Shia live, where the Iranians have some affinity there. So they could easily bomb those oil ports as they did a couple of years ago, if you remember. I mean, that was like, wow, who could believe that?

That really happened. And it shocked everyone. There was no response They just sort of looked at it so they better remember that. I just remembered it. I hope Trump remembers and the Pentagon remembers. That’s what they’re asking for.

The whole economy is going to be absolutely all over, the world will be devastated by a war with Iran. And so that they are even talking about it is ridiculous. But they are. So let’s see.

Yeah, exactly. I know we’re early on, just a couple of months into Trump’s second term, but there is certainly a lot at stake here.

All around. And I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today to break down all of the latest here. Joe Lauria, an independent journalist and editor in chief of Consortium News. Thank you so much for your time and insight, I appreciate it. Thank you.