Why Trump, who promised to keep America out of wars, keeps escalating them

Worldly

Vox Media Podcast Network

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.4 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2018

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jenn, Zack, and special guest Alex Ward discuss President Trump’s decision to escalate America’s military involvement in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and beyond — despite having campaigned on an “America First” agenda that promised to reduce US military intervention overseas. On Elsewhere, they look at a story out of Germany, where a member of a popular far-right, anti-Islam, anti-immigrant political party has converted to Islam and quit the party — after working with Muslim immigrants. Jenn talks about the experience of converting to Islam, Zack gets angry about wars, and Alex tries to translate military speak. Mentioned in the show: Cory Booker’s Op-Ed 2018 National Defense Strategy Report Arthur Wagner of the German AFD party converting to Islam You’re more likely to be killed by furniture than by terrorism An explainer on the “mowing the grass” metaphor mentioned Further reading: This is your brain on terrorism Strikethrough video How Trump’s language on Afghanistan has changed since he came into office Candidate Trump promised to stay out of foreign wars. President Trump is escalating them. How would Trump react to a terror attack like one in Manchester? How a Blonde Tattooed Texas Girl Became an ISIS Twitter Star Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Worldly, Fox's Weekly Guide to the most important stories in the world coming to you from the
0:13.0	Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Jen Williams here as always with my co-host
0:17.2	Zach Beacham. Hey! And we're also lucky to have Alex Ward, Vox's defense and
0:22.1	national security reporter here with us again this week.
0:24.5	Hello.
0:25.5	So today we're going to be talking about President Trump and America's Forever Wars.
0:29.8	Trump campaigned on an America First Agenda, promising to keep the United States out of costly
0:34.6	foreign wars and to use that money to rebuild the US instead.
0:38.5	But since becoming President, Trump has ramped up US military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and beyond.
0:45.9	So why is that?
0:46.9	Well, here's what President Trump himself had to say about this back in August, when he
0:50.7	announced his decision to continue fighting the war in Afghanistan, a war we've now
0:54.8	been fighting for over 16 years and which Trump had previously described on numerous occasions
1:00.0	as a waste of lives and money.
1:02.4	My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts, but all my life I've heard that decisions are much different
1:16.2	when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. So what's going on here?
1:23.0	Why did the America first candidate suddenly change his tune as soon as he got into the White House?
1:28.0	That's what we're going to be talking about today.
1:30.0	And Alex, just to get us started here,
1:32.0	remind us what exactly Trump has done when it comes to U.S. military operations abroad since becoming the president.
1:37.0	Sure, so there's a lot we could talk about. He's done quite a bit more than he argued that he would during the campaign but
1:44.2	let's just kind of focus on the ones he mentioned. So the Afghanistan war
	...

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