The DSR Network

Late at night in the office of Chief of Staff John Kelly. The phone rings. He picks it up and hears heavy breathing. Then a raspy voice…could it be Bannon…could it be Wolff…says “Have you checked the President?” Kelly lurches forward and grabs a secure line. “Trace the call!” Then, the chilling answer comes back. The call is coming from inside the White House!!! You think that’s a horror story? Th...

Contrary to popular belief, according to quoteinvestigator.com, Sam Goldwyn did not utter the immortal line that is the title of this episode. Nor did physicist Niels Bohr to whom it is also attributed. Instead, the first person to offer it up was Danish pol Karl Kristien Steincke in his immortal work, "Farvel Og Tak", published in 1948. Which serves as a useful reminder that if we can't even get...

Is it over yet? Can we come out of our basements now? Is the worst year ever over? Well...yes and no. Yes, dear Deep State Radio nerds, you can come out of your basements. It is 2018. But no, the worst may not be over. This week in two special episodes, we look back at the trends and unfinished business of 2017 in order to help us predict the catastrophes, screw-ups and near misses of 2018. Oh, an...

In David Rothkopf’s absence this week, Rosa Brooks hosts and reminds listeners that the Deep State Radio crew will soon be retreating into the bunker for some holiday eggnog, before resuming in the new year. The Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe argues that Putin is overrated, and the BBC’s Kim Ghattis and Kori Schake argue that the new US National Security Strategy is also overrated (and incoherent). Julia...

With David Rothkopf away circling the globe this week on the Deep State Radio spy plane, Rosa Brooks and Kori Schake are joined by the Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe and the BBC’s Kim Ghattis. Joining in live from Beirut, Kim reveals that not everyone in the Lebanon is obsessed with US foreign policy, because most people are too busy snacking and getting ready for Christmas. Meanwhile, every single UN Sec...

It's easy to blame the pols. For the pols its easy to blame one another. (Or if you are Roy Moore, who used to be a Senate candidate in the U.S., you can blame the sinners. Or Mitch McConnell. Or Sassy, the horse. Take your pick). But when policies don't match the global situation and policy advisors don't have the courage to stand up to their bosses and countries like America end up with the Whit...

Was the Jerusalem deal a complete scam? Has it torpedoed US influence on the peace process? Was it not even the most important Mideast news of the past few days? Was that really Vladimir Putin's Victory Lap around the Middle East? Hisham Melham, David Sanger, Ed Luce, Kori Schake discuss. Join in! Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/deepstateradio. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and op...

In a week marked by a "stunning" announcement about U.S policy toward Jerusalem and more Russia revelations, is the biggest shock of all is that Trump's foreign policy is still so much like that of Barack Obama? Or is that just the policy of the State Department and the Department of Defense while the real difference is the president who is in his own orbit. Tune in to this episode of Deep State R...

As panelist Kori Schake recounts, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers once noted that if you staff an administration exclusively with "C" people you will get a "D" staff. He never contemplated the situation we find ourselves in today. As we in the Third Sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark contemplate the Flynn plea deal, the statements of Trump's lawyers, the foreign policy pronouncements of...

You would think that Deep State Radio would have a special celebration for our 50th podcast. You probably imagined a giant blow out in silo somewhere with confetti and an interpretative reading of the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. Well...that happened. But you were invited. You don't have the clearance. Invitations were extended purely on a need-to-party-basis. But if you need a consolation prize....

In Sochi, Russia, Iran and Turkey got together to divvy up parts of the Middle East. It was eerily similar to a meeting 780 miles and 72 years earlier...in Yalta, where the allied powers met to discuss the face of post-War Europe. But this time: no USA. America was sidelined...as it has been worldwide since the beginning of this administration. On this episode of Deep State Radio, Kori Schake of S...

What are Deep State Radio nerds thankful for this Thanksgiving? We poll our experts and we get just the responses you would expect. One said he is thankful we have not had a nuclear war with North Korea...yet. Of course, many said they were grateful for Robert Mueller. And while others mentioned being grateful for all the faceless bureaucrats of the Deep State themselves...almost all of our expert...

You may think election meddling is as Russian as borscht but it is also as American as apple pie. We have been doing it for years. The question is do new technologies me more of the same or do they suggest entirely new threats, deeper threats that may make democracy harder and harder to protect? And with an eye toward that future we have to ask: what tools do we need to protect ourselves, our inst...

With Trump just back from an Asia trip that ran the gamut of outcomes from negligible to awful, the question turns again to what's going on with U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, we take a look at the gutting of the State Department and the president's pronouncement that "l'etat c'est moi." (Was that him or Louis XIV? I always get them confused. Suffice it to say it was someone whose tastes ran t...

The President is returning from Asia. He says it was the greatest trip there since Marco Polo. His defenders note that he didn't start screwing up too badly until a few days in. But then again, once he started screwing up...he really went to work flip flopping on trade with China, kissing up to Putin, insulting Kim Jong Un, making nice with the murderer who currently runs the Philippines, insultin...

Robert Mueller is approaching the Trump investigation as one would approach the wrong-doing of a crime family. And why not? Money-laundering, lying to the Feds, and dealing with pretty unsavory characters are par for the course. What is more, the architects of all this are another crime family, that of Vladimir Putin. And some of the other regimes the Trumps like the best also seem to have embrace...

In honor of Trump's visit to Asia, the Deep State Radio gang take a look at the problems that are haunting him back home. Susan Hennessey of Lawfare, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown and Ed Luce of the Financial Times join with host David Rothkopf to explore the implications of the latest revelations of wrong-doing in Team Trump and what we have learned about how Robert Mueller is closing in on the presi...

President Trump embarks on a 12 day, five nation trip to Asia at a moment he has never been weaker...and when the stakes are very high. With a perilous situation in North Korea, simmering trade disputes and a newly ascendant and assertive China, the agenda will be full. But will Trump have the ability to act? Will he even be inclined to hold press conferences or will he fear all public questions w...

9 months into his administration, Donald Trump has entered a political crisis unlike any other. With the indictments of his campaign chairman and his deputy and the guilty plea of one of his campaign foreign policy advisors, Trump has not just sustained deep political wounds, he has also begun to see precisely how special counsel Robert Mueller intends to make his case against the president's team...

It seems impossible, but on this episode of Deep State Radio, our indomitable team of Kori Schake of Stanford, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown, Ed Luce of the Financial Times and host, David Rothkopf, of the nearest pizzeria, manage to have an entire conversation without mentioning the president of the Untied States. Well, ok, that's a lie. But he's never really the subject of a conversation that focuse...

The current political dust-up over the President's mishandling of expressing his sympathies (or his interpretation of what sympathies would be like if he were capable of healthy human emotions) is revealing a bigger problem in American life. It is very hard to have an honest, open conversation about our military affairs because any critic of the military is immediately deemed buy their opponents t...

In this episode of Deep State Radio, a discussion about the state of the rudderless, visionless Middle East (and America's rudderless, visionless foreign policy) leads Rosa Brooks to frame that the core idea behind modern US foreign policy should be "strategic muddling through." Our panel of Rosa, Kori Schake, MacKenize Eaglen, and host, David Rothkopf, discuss. While all agree its how most of we...

Is the president leading a nullification of the power of the federal government from within--appointing enemies of departments to head departments and deconstructing the international system America has worked 75 years to build? Is it all part of some philosophical commitment to nihilism? Anarchy? Is it all an accident? Or is it democracy in action, the American electorate getting wanted they want...

In a recent interview with Forbes, President Trump said he didn't feel any obligation to honor deals struck by representatives of the United States during past administrations. His track record shows this is one area in which he is not just talk. He withdrew from TPP and the Paris Accords, is renegotiating NAFTA and may blow it up, has speculated at pulling out of a trade deal with South Korea and...

How did we get here? How did we get to the Secretary of State calling the president a moron and the Republican Head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying he needed adult supervision and had us possibly heading for World War III? Certainly Donald Trump had something to do with it? But what about the rest of us? Despite his whining is the media actually going too easy on him? What about t...