Summary
This week we ask Emma Ashford to reveal the mysteries of Trump's Middle East policy. Then Loren, Radha, and Erin dive into the recent trade dramas before pondering whether the summit with North Korea is best understood as a Rom-Com or Telenovela. Colombian elections, change of command in Afghanistan, and the toxic culture within ICE round out the conversation before we escape to the wonders of pop-culture.
- Emma Ashford and John Glaser, “Unforced Error: The Risks of Confrontation with Iran,” CATO Institute
- Emma Ashford, “Unbalanced Rethinking America’s Commitment to the Middle East,” Strategy Studies Quarterly
- Trevor Thrall and Emma Ashford, “Power Problems,” CATO Institute
- Runrig, Loch Lomond
- “Colombians vote for new president with peace deal, economy at stake,” Reuters
- Camila Zuluaga, “Colombia, trapped between extremes,” Washington Post
- Ana Swanson, “Trump Administration Plans to Revive ZTE, Prompting Backlash,” New York Times
- Shawn Donnan, “Trump car tariffs highlight threat of retaliatory trade war,” Financial Times
- Jonathan Landay and Rupam Jain, “U.S. sanctions on Iran threaten vital Afghanistan trade project,” Reuters
- Jeremy Diamond, “Peter Navarro and Steven Mnuchin feuded at Beijing trade talks,” CNN
- Daniel W. Drezner, “Targeted Sanctions in a World of Global Finance,” Research on Economic Sanctions
- Kanga Kong, “Budding Moon-Kim Bromance Poses Risk to Trump Pressure Campaign,” Bloomberg
- Laura Rosenberger, “Kim Jong Un is better off now than he was before Trump agreed to a summit,” Washington Post
- Ilan Goldenberg, “Trump Has No Idea How Diplomatic Deals Work,” Foreign Policy
- Patrick M. Cronin and Abigail Grace, “Trump Leaves the Door Open for Another North Korea Summit,” CNAS
- Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, and David D. Kirkpatrick, “Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election,” New York Times
- Dara Lind, “Trump’s DHS is using an extremely dubious statistic to justify splitting up families at the border,” Vox
- Dara Lind, Tweet (25 May 2018)
Lizzie Plaugic, “Amazon is adapting William Gibson’s The Peripheral into a TV series,” Verge
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Bombshell. I'm Erin Simpson. I'm Lauren DeYoung-Soulman. And I'm Rada Ayngar. |
| 0:16.4 | And we have an excellent guest with us here today, Emma Ashford. Hi, Emma. Hey there. What are we drinking, ladies? We all maybe had a lot to drink earlier in the weekend. So are we, this is early on a Sunday morning. So we might be in a bit of, I don't want to know, say, recovery mode. Yeah. I am on my second iced espresso latte and it's delightful and it's the only thing keeping me alive right now. |
| 0:42.4 | Perfect. |
| 0:43.3 | I myself am alternating between Maxwell House coffee and Wegman's brand LaCroix. |
| 0:50.3 | So I just feel like... |
| 0:51.7 | Oh man, you're living your best upstate New York life right now, Radha? |
| 0:54.7 | I sure am. |
| 0:55.5 | I sure am. |
| 0:57.3 | Well, Emma brought us actually a delicious bottle of champagne, didn't you? |
| 1:02.1 | Well, I don't know about delicious. |
| 1:03.7 | Oh, okay. |
| 1:04.2 | So, yeah. |
| 1:04.6 | So I brought this bottle of champagne. |
| 1:06.0 | Maybe you guys can crack into it later since I'm not drinking right now and everybody's in a different place. It is Sovietzkaya Champania, which is the, it was the champagne of the proletariat in the 1930s. Stalin |
| 1:18.4 | decided that champagne and caviar should no longer be luxury goods just for just for the elites. |
| 1:24.3 | And so we wanted them to make champagne for the masses and they still make it |
| 1:27.6 | under license. So I'm not sure it's the best champagne of the world, but it's certainly unique |
| 1:32.2 | and I know you like your unique drinks. Well, we very much do. So the next time, Rod is actually |
| 1:36.8 | going to be with us here in D.C. in a few weeks, we think, we hope. Yep. Fingers crossed. So perhaps we can tuck into that a bit the next time we're all all in one spot. That's excellent. So today we have a special sober edition of bombshell, which I guess in some ways it's fitting. Although to get through all of this, we probably all could use a bit of a drink. It's been quite a week. But before we get into all of that, let's do the |
| 2:03.1 | bombshell questions. Lauren, do you want to kick us off? Sure. Emma, what is your entrance music? |
| 2:10.8 | So I'm going to name a song that I don't think any of your listeners will ever have heard off, |
| 2:14.3 | and that is Runrig's Loch Lomond, which if you know anyone in Scotland |
... |
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