Susan Rice: Vote Like Your Life Depends on It

Tim Miller (0:12)

Hello and welcome to The Bulwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a double header for you today in segment two. We're continuing our Young Strategist series with a focus on Hispanic vote. It's an awesome young woman that's working on some races in Texas.

And if you want a review of the press secretary's first briefing, if we want to call it that, this is happening as I speak right now. It looks very clownish. We'll be doing that on The Next Level feed. So go check that out. But first, she served as national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. She was also Biden's chief domestic policy officer for the first two and a half years. It's Susan Rice. Welcome back to the program.

Susan Rice (0:49)

Good to be with you, Tim.

Tim Miller (0:51)

Thanks so much for doing this. Oh, boy. There's so much to cover with the world on fire. Last night, Russian forces launched ballistic missiles at Kyiv. The Ukraine military did not get advanced Intel, which led to some scuttlebutt that maybe we had already cut intelligence sharing. The US has threatened Ukraine to cut intelligence sharing. It's also possible this just kind of snuck through. I want to tie this to the decision to take Russian diesel, and Applebaum wrote that this was basically part of an abrupt Hail Mary attempt to force Ukraine to surrender.

I'm wondering what you think the state of play is in that conflict right now.

Susan Rice (1:32)

Well, I think we're at a very critical moment, obviously, Tim, where we're heading into winter. Ukraine is under enormous threat.

It's short on interceptor missiles, and as a result, civilians are taking the brunt of the Russian onslaught. And yet, on the ground, Ukraine has had some successes and has increasingly demonstrated an ability to strike deep into Russia with advanced drones and other technology. And so, at a time when the United States has pulled back from Ukraine, not providing financial support, not providing the critical munitions that are so badly needed, leaving it all to the Europeans, the Russians are both feeling pressure and success at the same time.

Success in terms of inflicting enormous damage on the Ukrainian people. And then along comes President Trump, who, of course, to remind everybody, said he'd have this war resolved in 24 hours, two years later, and he is cutting a deal with Putin that gives life and support to Putin at a critical moment and doing it under the guise of helping American farmers and ranchers with lower diesel prices. But the reality is this deal, if it actually goes through, will do very, very little for American consumers because it's so small in scale. And yet it will be a direct boon to Putin who will be able to line his coffers and defeat the sanctions regime. And by the way, Tim, it's also probably illegal, runs counter to the US ban on importing any Russian oil products. So it's illegal, it's immoral, it's designed to benefit Putin under the guise of helping Americans, and it won't help Americans.

Tim Miller (3:33)

So that takes us to a question that we revisit time and again with the Trump administration, which is stupid or sinister. You do wonder.

Susan Rice (3:39)

They're not mutually exclusive.

Tim Miller (3:40)

They are mutually exclusive, maybe it could be both. Yeah, binary sometimes. And it's like, does Trump think that importing Russian diesel will help, or has someone told him that, has he convinced himself of that? Or, as you say, do we think this is really more of a farce and a plot to give them an excuse to help Russia put pressure on Ukraine?

Susan Rice (4:01)

But again, they're not mutually exclusive. I mean, I think somebody could have convinced him that saying you've got this big, huge diesel deal, which when you hear the raw numbers, sounds impressive, but when you compare it to the percentage of diesel consumed in the United States and do the math, you recognize that it's barely a drop in the bucket.

So it's a good talking point for Trump to try to employ at a time when he's deep underwater and gas and diesel prices and fertilizer prices are particularly problematic for him. And he will probably fool some people, but at the same time, it enables him to help Putin in a critical way to break out of, you know, US and international oil sanctions. So it's a twofer in a sense.

Tim Miller (4:46)

JVL wrote yesterday's newsletter about this. I mean, just the staggering weakness, I do think it's worth sitting on for a second. So when you consider that as how this ties to the other theater and the war of choice that he started, the Russians have provided Iran with satellite intelligence, ammunition, drone components and explosives have been used to kill American soldiers. So Trump's response now is to beg Putin to accept our money in exchange for a few thousand barrels of diesel. JVL writes, this is the most stunning display of submission and weakness from an American president.