What It's Like To Have An Empathetic Leader

What A Day

Crooked Media

News, Daily News

4.6 • 12K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does national leadership really look like? Despite all of President Donald Trump's rhetoric, it's not like running a business. It's not even like running a state. It's running a massive apparatus that employs millions of people and also a military, while dealing with every other country that needs to or wants to deal with your country. Frequently, it also requires doing all of that in the the middle of a crisis. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had to contend with a horrifying domestic terror attack and COVID-19, alongside a political environment in which she needed to appeal to rural farmers, indigenous communities and her Labour Party constituency. She joins us to talk about her new memoir, 'A Different Kind of Power,' about her rise in politics and the lessons she learned about leadership. And in headlines: Early intelligence suggests the U.S. strikes on Iran only set the country's nuclear program back by a few months, more than 100 House Democrats joined Republicans to defeat a long-shot bid to impeach Trump over the strikes, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced tough questions from lawmakers over his decision to gut experts from a key vaccine advisory panel.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Wednesday, June 25th.
0:03.7	I'm Jane Koston, and this is What a Day, the show that is pivoting to really emphasizing bear news.
0:09.6	The New York Times had a story out Tuesday about two brown bears who broke out of their enclosure at a sanctuary in Devon, England, and ate a week's supply of honey in about an hour.
0:18.7	That's your bear news for today.
0:25.1	Music live honey in about an hour. That's your bare news for today. On today's show, early intelligence suggests the U.S. strikes on Iran did not leave the
0:29.8	country's nuclear program, quote, totally obliterated, as President Donald Trump claimed,
0:35.0	and a long-shot bid to impeach Trump over the strikes overwhelmingly
0:38.3	failed. But let's start with a big question. What does national leadership really look like?
0:44.8	Because running a country is hard. Despite all of Trump's rhetoric back in 2016, it's not like
0:51.7	running a business. It's not even like running a state. It's running a massive
0:55.8	apparatus that contains millions of people and also a military and also dealing with every other
1:00.3	country that needs to or wants to deal with your country or another country you're friends with
1:04.4	or not friends with for reasons, frequently while also managing a crisis. It's no wonder then that
1:10.0	every president of the United States enters office after winning the election with joy and excitement,
1:15.0	and then eventually starts to sound like this, if even just internally.
1:19.1	You know what, we have basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard
1:24.9	that they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that?
1:28.9	Yes, Trump was talking about Israel and Iran on Tuesday, but honestly, he could be talking about pretty much anything.
1:35.3	Being president or prime minister is actually kind of a terrible job, which could be why it always seems to me that Trump spends a lot of time trying to find someone else to do
1:44.1	the job for periods of time while he focuses on Rose Garden renovations and screaming on the
1:48.9	internet about CNN host Anderson Cooper. A couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to speak to
1:53.6	someone who has a lot of experience as the head of a nation during some of the toughest times
	...

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