Hindsight is 2018

Worldly

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Zack, Jenn, and Alex wrap up 2018 by looking back at three of the most dramatic foreign policy decisions President Trump made in 2018 — and whether, in retrospect, they turned out to be as dramatic as we’d initially thought. For Elsewhere, Zack pushes back on the fundamental premise of the conversation in the first part of the show and argues that, #actually, Trump’s decisions are still bad, regardless. Zack sings some Miley Cyrus, Jenn explains that the Gestapo were, in fact, Nazis, and Alex treats us to his adorably atrocious Southern accent. Links: Trump doesn’t believe his own government’s report that the climate is changing for the worse. Vox has done a lot of coverage on Trump’s policy toward Saudi Arabia after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. It’s worth reading Trump’s statement on his final decision on what to do. Here’s a good explainer on Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. Some analysts, including the New York Times editorial board, called Trump’s move a “failure.” The worry was moving the embassy would imperil US-Palestine relations. But they weren’t that good, even in previous administrations. The Saudi-Iran spat is now more central to Middle East issues than the Israel-Palestine one. Read the agreement between North Korea and the US signed in Singapore. A little explainer of the Jan meme Zack referenced. Despite what Trump says, North Korea is still a threat. As Jenn noted, North Korea at one point threatened to bomb Guam. North Korea greatly accelerated and improved its nuclear and missile programs in 2017. Yes, Trump actually said he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love.” It’s worth reading the full transcript of the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki. Alex mentioned how Trump once invoked the Nazis when describing American intelligence agents. Watch this Vox video to understand how the US became the world’s superpower and stabilizing force. Trump, slowly but surely, has been increasingly tough on Russia. He’s even started a trade war with China to push back on its trading practices. And ISIS has lost the vast majority of its territory since Trump took office. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The end of the year is a really good time to look back on the news and take stock.
0:12.0	When I look back at 2018, there are a lot of foreign policy stories and big ones
0:16.2	involving President Trump in particular that cause people to freak out or make bold predictions about the future.
0:22.2	And look some of that time that freak out was clearly justified.
0:25.0	Trump's climate change policies could lead to a catastrophe,
0:29.0	and his approach to Saudi Arabia has been dubious to put it mildly.
0:35.0	But there are some Trump policy initiatives that looking back may not have
0:39.7	justified all the attention they got. So that's the question that we're going to be debating on this week's worldly,
0:44.7	part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:46.8	The question is which of this year's big headline foreign policy stories were
0:51.3	overhiked?
0:52.3	I'm Zach Beecham, here with Jen Williams and Alex Ward.
0:55.0	Hi.
0:56.0	What's up? We're going to get a little bit more punchy this episode.
1:00.0	We have some real disagreements this time around.
1:02.0	Boy, do we. Just so everyone's... some real disagreements this time around.
1:02.6	Boy, do we, just so everyone's aware,
1:05.6	Zach has a few concerns about the frame of the entire episode,
1:11.8	which is awesome because we're going to get into that for elsewhere.
1:15.2	We're going to debate the debate. So stay tuned.
1:18.7	So meta. The first of these potentially over-hiked policy issues that we're going to talk
1:23.9	about was Trump's decision to move the US embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv
	...

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