Rahm Emanuel: Trump's Foreign Policy, China, Europe's Decline, Immigration & DSA vs Democrats

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
All right, everybody, we are super pleased to have Rahm Emanuel join us for the All-In interview today. He was the senior advisor of Bill Clinton, last president, preside over zero national debt, and he was Obama's chief of staff, mayor of Chi-town, ambassador to my favorite country to visit Japan under President Biden. He hasn't made an official announcement about his presidential run in 2028, nor do I think he's going to make an announcement here, but he's been talking a lot about where the country needs to go in a post-Trump world, specifically in 2028
Friedberg and I are going to ask Rahm about the most important topics facing America today, the economy, inflation, employment, surging national debt, never-ending wars, the rise of socialism and sadly anti-Semitism, immigration, skilled and legal, and how his positions have evolved over four decades of service to America. Welcome to the All-In interview, Rahm Emanuel. Welcome, Rahm.

**Rahm Emanuel** (0:58)
Yeah.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:59)
Okay. There you go.

**Rahm Emanuel** (1:00)
I didn't know that was the cue. I was like waiting for... It felt like an obituary. I was waiting for the rabbi to get up.
That introduction is the only one that ever starts with Clinton. Usually, they start my career in Congress. I give you a lot of kudos for remembering that I started as senior advisor to President Clinton.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:30)
Well, let's start with that. What did you learn under Clinton and Obama?
These two, what I would say, are the last two sane presidents we seem to have had who were moderates in my mind. I'm a moderate, slightly left leaning, but these seem to have been two great presidential runs that you were involved in. What did you learn from each of those individuals?

**Rahm Emanuel** (1:52)
They have different skill sets, so let's also, but they had an outlook of the world, they had an outlook of the United States in the world, they had an outlook of a progressive, affirmative view of government. I think they most importantly, which I kind of remind everybody, you can't have progressive policies if people think that the government can't run an organizer one car parade. Not possible. They have to have an affirmative view. And the last time you've had a net positive was under Bill Clinton. And it actually wasn't for the balanced budget obviously helped, but actually it shifts when he signs welfare reform. And you can go back and look at the data. But to their skill set, Bill Clinton was a unique person who, in my view, was able to integrate in three-dimensional chests, both policy, politics, and press.
And understood the presidency as a, in a way that Petty Roosevelt had redefined it, he was redefining it for the 21st century. And he really meant what he said being a bridge there. And nobody was better, not just at giving a speech, but taking a policy, being able to communicate, to carry people from where they were to change, and may not make change threatening, and then achieve the objectives you wanted. That said, President Obama, in my own view, coming at the end, or not the end, but the Iraq War, et cetera, understood that this was a different presidency, both the end of the Iraq War or towards the end, and the financial meltdown, that we were at a pivotal moment and a transitional moment for America. And I do think, look, every president gets judged, what's the world you inherited?
What is the world you leave behind? And sometimes the harshest critics of both Obama and Clinton come from the left, not the right. And I said, is it the peace or the prosperity you don't like most? Because I'll address it, was it the fact that post Reagan, Clinton's economy grew the most, jobs grew the most, and income disparity shrunk the most, and people were calling it the unipower, that no country, both economically, politically, military, had the power the United States had. Now, we can get back to what happened there.
And then I think in the same way, the left criticizes Obama for being kind of tepid. And he hires a country that's near a depression, known as the Great Recession, but it was actually getting close to a depression, saves it from that, transitions from losing 800,000 jobs to creating 200,000 jobs, and gets America out of two wars, continues obviously the war on terror, but repositions America in the world to be a force for good. And I learned how you, it's not like a to-do kit, there's no to-do kit in the drawer of the resolute desk, but the merging of policy, politics, and I want to say public relations, but communications.