May 5, 2025 • 19 mins
Donald Trump has made it through his 100 days back in office – and people are not thrilled with his performance.
His approval ratings at the 100 day mark are the lowest in 70 years, with only a 44 percent approval for a man who won the popular vote only 7 months ago.
It comes as his tenure has so far been dominated by tariffs and trade wars, cutting public services, gender, mass deportations, and hitting out at his enemies.
And the Trump bump has even taken on a new meaning – with Canada and Australia’s left-leaning political parties reversing polls from the start of the year to stay in government.
But with roughly 2000 days left in his presidency, what does the future hold for Trump 2.0?
We’re working through that today on The Front Page with University of Otago Professor of International Relations, Robert Patman.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Gilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Donald
Trump has made it through his one hundred days back
in office and people are not thrilled with his performance.
His approval ratings at the one hundred day mark are
(00:26):
the lowest in seventy years, with only a forty four
percent approval for a man who won the popular vote
only seven months ago. It comes as his tenure has
so far been dominated by tariffs and trade wars, cutting
public services, gender mass deportations, and hitting out at his enemies.
And the Trump bump has even taken on a new meaning,
(00:47):
with Canada and Australia's left leaning political parties reversing polls
from the start of the year to stay in government.
But with roughly fourteen hundred days left in his presidency,
what does the future for Trump two point zero? We're
working through that today on the Front Page with University
of Otago professor of International Relations Robert Patman. Robert, how
(01:15):
would you rate Donald Trump's performance as US presidents so far?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, I think even from the point of view supporters,
it's been a rocky ride. It's been chaotic and shambolic,
And that's not really surprising given the fact that mister
Trump has put so much emphasis with his senior appointments
on loyalty rather than competence. So what we've witnessed is
a very ambitious agenda, both domestically in the United States
(01:43):
and internationally. But there is a suspicion that the implementation
of that agenda is in hands which are not particularly steady.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, there have just been so many fit things that
have happened in just one hundred days. Most notably has
been the cuts to the public service and the me
of course, so let's focus on Doge first. This desire
to save billions by cutting services seems to have riled
up the public a lot more than probably anticipated. There's
been multiple reports of constituents confronting leaders at public meetings,
(02:15):
reports of infighting between Trump's cabinet and Elon Musk. Is
it a surprise that this has proved so toxic with
the public.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
There, No, not really, because partly because there's a perception
that some of the people like Elon Musk and his
team of youngish software engineers who are overseeing as sort
of taking a chainsaw to the public service. They're not
particularly competent or experienced in the running of governance. Mister
(02:44):
musk background is not in that area. Also, there is
mounting indignation that mister Musk seems to be cutting everything
except his own government contracts, which are extremely big with
the government. So he is a contractor of the government.
But there is a complict of interest here, and I
think that's causing some concern. But yes, over one hundred
(03:04):
and twenty thousand federal workers have been fired. We've seen
important fassets of American soft power, like us AID, which
is responsible for dispensing America's development aid around that that's
been disestablished. With the loss of ten thousand jobs. That's
going to have a long term effect on how the
world perceives America to some degree. First of all, there
(03:25):
is a sense that the expectation of DOGE it's been
working for three months. They claim they initially claimed they'd
saved two trillion. They then downlaid that claim to one trillion,
and now it's down to one hundred and fifty billion.
So I think they found all the waste and fraud
that they claim. There has been very little evidence produced
(03:48):
to back up claims that they have discovered such waste
and fraud, and it's not very impressive making claims and
not be aund to back them up. So I think
that's contributed to a sense of uneasy. You know, people
are losing their jobs and that is a concern.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
The economy has also been a big issue. Trump was
voted in with a promise to lower the price of groceries.
Instead is actually making everything more expensive while also tanking
the economy. So why did he even choose to do
this in the first place.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, that's a very good question. Mister Trump and his
supporters seem to have got it in their heads that
the American economy was in an appalling state, when in
fact it was the best economy in the world by
every objective or impartial economic measure. So he inherited a
very strong economy, but he now seems to be in
(04:39):
the process of undermining that. And of course some economies
are warning that America could be entering a recession, its
economy could be going to recession. You only have to
look at the stock market to see its cumulative hemorrhaging
to realize the scale of how America's gone in the
wrong direction economically, and that is you know, more than
(05:01):
eleven trillion has been lost from the US stock market
since mister Trump came to power. In general, yes, it's
rallying a bit now, but it's lost the you know,
it's lost a lot of ground, and the overall trend
has been downwards. So it's having good and bad days,
but the bad days tend to out and number the
good ones.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
When does it become the Trump economy?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
It partially is right now, and I really mean this.
I think the good parts of the Trump economy and
the bad parts of the Baden economy because he's done
a terrible job. He did a terrible job on everything.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But sir, you acknowledge when you announced your tariffs, for example,
the stock market dropped, it's been volatile. It has since
gone up. Do you take responsibility that?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Do you take responsibility?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Ultimately? I take responsibility for everything. But I've only just
been here for a little more than three months. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, a lot of people who did support Trump seem
to have turned on him over his handling of the economy.
I've seen lots of commentary online from people saying that
they didn't vote for this from Trump. They voted for
him because they wanted to shake up the establishment. They
wanted inflation to come down, they wanted immigration under control.
But has he betrayed voters or is this kind of
(06:19):
what we have come to expect from him.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
No, I think mister Trump, there were some things which
he have you pulled out of a hat, so to speak.
He's threat to annex Canada and also Greenland, as well
as takeover Gaza. As far as I can see, there
was nothing in his campaign that suggested he might do that,
although he made threatening noises immediately after he was elected
(06:43):
with respect to Canada. But on the other matters, Doge
was certainly something that Musk and mister Trump had agreed
even before the election. Musk was a key player for
mister Trump's election victory. He pumped in about two hundred
and seventy seven million dollars into supporting Trump, and of
course was rewarded with a very good job. But this
(07:05):
is very much a government by billionaires. I mean, thirteen
heads of government agencies are now billionaires, and that's prompted
people on the left of the political spectrum, like Bernie
Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez known as AOC. They've been
launching a nationwide anti oligarchy campaign. With respect to the
(07:26):
question you asked, I think mister Trump indicated he was
always going for tariffs, so that was no surprise. He
often said, it's a beautiful thing, tariffs. There's two things
that have troubled mister Trump for a long time. The
first of all the perception that Americans being ripped off.
All I can say, if America's being ripped off, the
people respond deemed to be responsible for that. The rest
(07:47):
of the world have done a remarkably competent job, because America,
by the time mister Trump came to power, remained head
and shoulders the most powerful country in the world. And
the second thing was tariff's He believed that tariffs could
correct the situation, and I think many of his voters
did not seem to realize that tariffs are actually internal
(08:07):
tax on American consumers. And there was a very interesting
development where Amazon attempted to point out to their consumers
the actual price of the tariffs that the American government
has imposed on certain products coming from overseas, and that
met from a very angry response from mister Trump and
his press spokesperson Caroline leave It And as a result
(08:32):
of that pressure, Amazon removed the explanation to their consumers
in detailing the actual costs of the tariffs being imposed.
So it is a sensitive issue. But yeah, I mean,
I think many people took at face value his claimed
that he could reduce costs, while in the next breath
he was saying, I'll be adding some tariffs as well.
(08:53):
They probably didn't make the connection between the imposition of
tariffs and the increase in their cost of doing.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It's funny that you bring up Amazon, actually, because I
was going to as well. I know that there's some
talk about Elon Musk not being particularly happy with how
things are going. And now when I saw Amazon in
the headlines, I thought, oh, Jeff Bezos was in what
the front row of the inauguration as well. Do you
think that he will continue to have the support from
the likes of Musk and Jeff Bezos or will that
(09:21):
linger for the next few years.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
It's difficult to predict. But what we do know in
the first three months, those high tech bros, people like Bezos, Musk,
Suckerberg from Facebook all strong supporters of Trump going for
the White House. They have been all of them have
been quite hit quite hard by the losses on the
(09:44):
stock exchange. It's been high tech companies that have borne
the brunt of that. Give you an example, when mister
Trump introduced his tariffs on the second of April. Within
the next two days, there were six trillion in losses
in the stock exchange for trially of those affected high
tech digital companies. That may be part of the reason
(10:06):
why Musk is unhappy. I suspect also he's unhappy about
what's happening to Tesla, one of the five companies under
his control, which has gone through. I mean it's external sales,
particularly in Europe, have collapsed, and people have been very
angry about what Musk has been saying about many countries,
including Germany. People do have real clout and they can
(10:27):
exercise it by simply stopping buying products, which they have
done in some cases. But yes, it's going to be
interesting to see how this sort of constellation of high
tech leaders in very big businesses whether they are going
to stick with mister Trump through thick and thin. I
suspect some may peel off, but others may believe on balance,
(10:48):
the advantage is to be in a position where they
can influence the White House or at least have a
channel of communication. But yes, there's a lot of unknowns
at this stage, Chelsea. We're only three months in the administration,
or one hundred days or so, and so you know,
a lot could happen in the next three months.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Just after the one hundred day mark, there was the
first administration official shakeup, with Mike Waltz losing his post
as National Secretary Advisor in the wake of that signal
chat leak and other scandals. Are you surprised it took
so long after that scandal broke for a head to
roll over this.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I think the circumstances relating to his remove. Obviously the
signal gate episode did not help, but he is perhaps
one of the more combatant and experienced people working in
the national security field. Mister Trump, as one insiders said,
likes his officials to act as staff rather than principles.
(11:58):
There is a bit of a sus that mister Waltz,
who came to the job with some i say solid
credentials in the national security area, had quite distinct views.
He was a hard liner on Russia, so he disagreed
with the administration's softly, softly approached towards Vladimir Putin, and
also he had views on other foreign policy questions. So
(12:20):
he apparently was the subject of considerable pushback from other
members of the administration, and that was why he was
effectively demoted and given the job of US Ambassador to
the UN, which is a high profile job, but clearly
that was not what he was appointed for. So yes,
he's one of the first casualties. I think the first
(12:43):
of many. I think some people, I mean a lot
of people are speculating how long can the sectory of
defense last? Pete Hegseth. He was also involved in a
second signal chat, which again contravene government regulations about classified communication.
I don't think Waltz will be the end of it.
Mister Trump has always had a bit of an uncomfortable
(13:05):
relationship with his national security advisors. In his first administration,
he got through about three or four, and there is
a you know, mister Trump, I think is uncomfortable with
independent people around him who challenge him. Of course, you
need that for good decision making, and that's why one
is feeling slightly uneasy that if mister Trump continues to
(13:29):
surround himself with cronies or echoes, then we're going to
have some disastrous decisions made.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
And remember this, this is Baiden's word. This was a
war that was never going to happen if our president.
This is a horrible, horrible war. And I get to
see shots of soldiers through you know satellite that are
so just so terrible. Five thousand soldiers a week on
average are dying. They're not American soldiers. But I want
to solve the problem Russian soldiers and the Ukrainian soldiers.
(14:02):
And if I can save five thousand souls, I just
love doing it.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
How long do you give both countries before you're going
to walk away?
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Well, there'll be a time when I will say, Okay,
keep going, keep being stupid.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Well, of course, the other big thing with the US
at the moment is how it is handling international relations. Hey, notably,
there's been a lot of back and forth on Ukraine
and Russia. You know, one minute he's berating Voladimir Zelensky
in the Oval Office, the next is criticizing Putin for
holding up peace talks. I mean, how destabilizing is this
kind of flip flopping and lack of clarity.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It is destabilizing, but it's actually showing the administration to
be very weak, and that is the danger for not
just the United States, but for countries like New Zealand.
The Ukraine conflict, the outcome of that conflict is crucial.
It has big implications for the Indo Pacific. Two of
the biggest backers of Russia's invasion of Ukraine are China
(15:05):
and India. And quite frankly, here we have the most
powerful country in the world led by the Trump. Mister Trump,
who sees himself as a strong leader. And what does
he do. He coses up to the aggressor that has
he legally invaded a liberal democracy and sides with the
aggressor against the victim of aggression. Through Chinese non sentimental eyes.
(15:26):
That looks like weakness. Yes, he has added, belatedly some
criticisms of mister Putin, but the peace settlement deal that
he's pushing is basically solving all of mister Putin's problems,
and it's based almost it could have been written in
the Kremlin. There does seem to be some reconsideration going
on now by mister Trump. He has signed a minerals
(15:47):
deal with Selensky's government, and that has, as you indicated,
quite rightly, been some disgruntlement picked up on true social
mister Trump's media channel of Putin. But I think it's
been a very bad start, and he's also split relations
between Europe and the United States. And really you could
(16:09):
say this about his tariffs as well. But I think
his foreign policy has at times been incoherent. He you know,
the official rationale for coosing up to mister Putin's dictatorship
is that the United States, what's the form a geopolitical
partnership with Putin or something like that. According to mister Rubio,
the sector of state in order to peel Russia off
from China. I think that's unrealistic. But putting that to
(16:32):
one side, China will see mister Trump's behavior as possibly
well almost certainly as weakness, and that will encourage them
to become more assertive in our neck of the woods,
in the Indo Pacific and possibly in the Pacific Island
Nations region. And certainly it could be expected to up
the pressure on countries like Taiwan. So that is worrying
(16:54):
ineffectively what mister Trump is not, you know, you're quite
right use the term destabilizing. He's upended eighty years of
American foreign policy, he's effectively he's dismantling what's called the
rules based international order, which most liberal democracies, including our own,
depend on rules are there for the week, not for
the strong. But mister Trump's vision of international relations is
(17:15):
very different from New Zealand's. He sees the world in
top down terms, a world that's run by great powers,
with America the greatest power of all, sitting at the
top table and negotiating deals with the likes of Putin
and China. As for the middle powers and the small powers, well,
they will have to go and negotiate bilateral deals with
(17:36):
the United States and basically get what they're accept what
they're offered. So this is a radical break from the past.
It's the most biggest change in the American foreign policy
since nineteen forty six forty seven. And I think New
Zealand will have to speak out at some point because
what America is doing in its foreign policy is actually
(17:58):
directly undermining our national interests. New Zealand, like many small
and middle powers, needs rules. It needs institutions because they provide,
if you like, a level playing field for small countries
to operate in. And mister Trump seems to be determined
to dispense with that, and you know, it does have
(18:20):
real consequences for US. We trade with one hundred countries
around the world, and I think there's now pressure on
our government and other governments to bypass the United States
and to protect their interest by upholding the free trade system,
the rules based trade system, which many countries believe in,
(18:41):
including China as well as the EU as well as
many other countries. So, you know, I think we are
witnessing not just destabilization, but perhaps a sort of fork
in the road moment where America is parting company with
many of its traditional allies and we're seeing an international
realignment as a result.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Thanks for joining us, Robert.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzdherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(19:30):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Gilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Donald
Trump has made it through his one hundred days back
in office and people are not thrilled with his performance.
His approval ratings at the one hundred day mark are
(00:26):
the lowest in seventy years, with only a forty four
percent approval for a man who won the popular vote
only seven months ago. It comes as his tenure has
so far been dominated by tariffs and trade wars, cutting
public services, gender mass deportations, and hitting out at his enemies.
And the Trump bump has even taken on a new meaning,
(00:47):
with Canada and Australia's left leaning political parties reversing polls
from the start of the year to stay in government.
But with roughly fourteen hundred days left in his presidency,
what does the future for Trump two point zero? We're
working through that today on the Front Page with University
of Otago professor of International Relations Robert Patman. Robert, how
(01:15):
would you rate Donald Trump's performance as US presidents so far?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, I think even from the point of view supporters,
it's been a rocky ride. It's been chaotic and shambolic,
And that's not really surprising given the fact that mister
Trump has put so much emphasis with his senior appointments
on loyalty rather than competence. So what we've witnessed is
a very ambitious agenda, both domestically in the United States
(01:43):
and internationally. But there is a suspicion that the implementation
of that agenda is in hands which are not particularly steady.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, there have just been so many fit things that
have happened in just one hundred days. Most notably has
been the cuts to the public service and the me
of course, so let's focus on Doge first. This desire
to save billions by cutting services seems to have riled
up the public a lot more than probably anticipated. There's
been multiple reports of constituents confronting leaders at public meetings,
(02:15):
reports of infighting between Trump's cabinet and Elon Musk. Is
it a surprise that this has proved so toxic with
the public.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
There, No, not really, because partly because there's a perception
that some of the people like Elon Musk and his
team of youngish software engineers who are overseeing as sort
of taking a chainsaw to the public service. They're not
particularly competent or experienced in the running of governance. Mister
(02:44):
musk background is not in that area. Also, there is
mounting indignation that mister Musk seems to be cutting everything
except his own government contracts, which are extremely big with
the government. So he is a contractor of the government.
But there is a complict of interest here, and I
think that's causing some concern. But yes, over one hundred
(03:04):
and twenty thousand federal workers have been fired. We've seen
important fassets of American soft power, like us AID, which
is responsible for dispensing America's development aid around that that's
been disestablished. With the loss of ten thousand jobs. That's
going to have a long term effect on how the
world perceives America to some degree. First of all, there
(03:25):
is a sense that the expectation of DOGE it's been
working for three months. They claim they initially claimed they'd
saved two trillion. They then downlaid that claim to one trillion,
and now it's down to one hundred and fifty billion.
So I think they found all the waste and fraud
that they claim. There has been very little evidence produced
(03:48):
to back up claims that they have discovered such waste
and fraud, and it's not very impressive making claims and
not be aund to back them up. So I think
that's contributed to a sense of uneasy. You know, people
are losing their jobs and that is a concern.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
The economy has also been a big issue. Trump was
voted in with a promise to lower the price of groceries.
Instead is actually making everything more expensive while also tanking
the economy. So why did he even choose to do
this in the first place.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, that's a very good question. Mister Trump and his
supporters seem to have got it in their heads that
the American economy was in an appalling state, when in
fact it was the best economy in the world by
every objective or impartial economic measure. So he inherited a
very strong economy, but he now seems to be in
(04:39):
the process of undermining that. And of course some economies
are warning that America could be entering a recession, its
economy could be going to recession. You only have to
look at the stock market to see its cumulative hemorrhaging
to realize the scale of how America's gone in the
wrong direction economically, and that is you know, more than
(05:01):
eleven trillion has been lost from the US stock market
since mister Trump came to power. In general, yes, it's
rallying a bit now, but it's lost the you know,
it's lost a lot of ground, and the overall trend
has been downwards. So it's having good and bad days,
but the bad days tend to out and number the
good ones.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
When does it become the Trump economy?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
It partially is right now, and I really mean this.
I think the good parts of the Trump economy and
the bad parts of the Baden economy because he's done
a terrible job. He did a terrible job on everything.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But sir, you acknowledge when you announced your tariffs, for example,
the stock market dropped, it's been volatile. It has since
gone up. Do you take responsibility that?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Do you take responsibility?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Ultimately? I take responsibility for everything. But I've only just
been here for a little more than three months. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, a lot of people who did support Trump seem
to have turned on him over his handling of the economy.
I've seen lots of commentary online from people saying that
they didn't vote for this from Trump. They voted for
him because they wanted to shake up the establishment. They
wanted inflation to come down, they wanted immigration under control.
But has he betrayed voters or is this kind of
(06:19):
what we have come to expect from him.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
No, I think mister Trump, there were some things which
he have you pulled out of a hat, so to speak.
He's threat to annex Canada and also Greenland, as well
as takeover Gaza. As far as I can see, there
was nothing in his campaign that suggested he might do that,
although he made threatening noises immediately after he was elected
(06:43):
with respect to Canada. But on the other matters, Doge
was certainly something that Musk and mister Trump had agreed
even before the election. Musk was a key player for
mister Trump's election victory. He pumped in about two hundred
and seventy seven million dollars into supporting Trump, and of
course was rewarded with a very good job. But this
(07:05):
is very much a government by billionaires. I mean, thirteen
heads of government agencies are now billionaires, and that's prompted
people on the left of the political spectrum, like Bernie
Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez known as AOC. They've been
launching a nationwide anti oligarchy campaign. With respect to the
(07:26):
question you asked, I think mister Trump indicated he was
always going for tariffs, so that was no surprise. He
often said, it's a beautiful thing, tariffs. There's two things
that have troubled mister Trump for a long time. The
first of all the perception that Americans being ripped off.
All I can say, if America's being ripped off, the
people respond deemed to be responsible for that. The rest
(07:47):
of the world have done a remarkably competent job, because America,
by the time mister Trump came to power, remained head
and shoulders the most powerful country in the world. And
the second thing was tariff's He believed that tariffs could
correct the situation, and I think many of his voters
did not seem to realize that tariffs are actually internal
(08:07):
tax on American consumers. And there was a very interesting
development where Amazon attempted to point out to their consumers
the actual price of the tariffs that the American government
has imposed on certain products coming from overseas, and that
met from a very angry response from mister Trump and
his press spokesperson Caroline leave It And as a result
(08:32):
of that pressure, Amazon removed the explanation to their consumers
in detailing the actual costs of the tariffs being imposed.
So it is a sensitive issue. But yeah, I mean,
I think many people took at face value his claimed
that he could reduce costs, while in the next breath
he was saying, I'll be adding some tariffs as well.
(08:53):
They probably didn't make the connection between the imposition of
tariffs and the increase in their cost of doing.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It's funny that you bring up Amazon, actually, because I
was going to as well. I know that there's some
talk about Elon Musk not being particularly happy with how
things are going. And now when I saw Amazon in
the headlines, I thought, oh, Jeff Bezos was in what
the front row of the inauguration as well. Do you
think that he will continue to have the support from
the likes of Musk and Jeff Bezos or will that
(09:21):
linger for the next few years.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
It's difficult to predict. But what we do know in
the first three months, those high tech bros, people like Bezos, Musk,
Suckerberg from Facebook all strong supporters of Trump going for
the White House. They have been all of them have
been quite hit quite hard by the losses on the
(09:44):
stock exchange. It's been high tech companies that have borne
the brunt of that. Give you an example, when mister
Trump introduced his tariffs on the second of April. Within
the next two days, there were six trillion in losses
in the stock exchange for trially of those affected high
tech digital companies. That may be part of the reason
(10:06):
why Musk is unhappy. I suspect also he's unhappy about
what's happening to Tesla, one of the five companies under
his control, which has gone through. I mean it's external sales,
particularly in Europe, have collapsed, and people have been very
angry about what Musk has been saying about many countries,
including Germany. People do have real clout and they can
(10:27):
exercise it by simply stopping buying products, which they have
done in some cases. But yes, it's going to be
interesting to see how this sort of constellation of high
tech leaders in very big businesses whether they are going
to stick with mister Trump through thick and thin. I
suspect some may peel off, but others may believe on balance,
(10:48):
the advantage is to be in a position where they
can influence the White House or at least have a
channel of communication. But yes, there's a lot of unknowns
at this stage, Chelsea. We're only three months in the administration,
or one hundred days or so, and so you know,
a lot could happen in the next three months.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Just after the one hundred day mark, there was the
first administration official shakeup, with Mike Waltz losing his post
as National Secretary Advisor in the wake of that signal
chat leak and other scandals. Are you surprised it took
so long after that scandal broke for a head to
roll over this.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I think the circumstances relating to his remove. Obviously the
signal gate episode did not help, but he is perhaps
one of the more combatant and experienced people working in
the national security field. Mister Trump, as one insiders said,
likes his officials to act as staff rather than principles.
(11:58):
There is a bit of a sus that mister Waltz,
who came to the job with some i say solid
credentials in the national security area, had quite distinct views.
He was a hard liner on Russia, so he disagreed
with the administration's softly, softly approached towards Vladimir Putin, and
also he had views on other foreign policy questions. So
(12:20):
he apparently was the subject of considerable pushback from other
members of the administration, and that was why he was
effectively demoted and given the job of US Ambassador to
the UN, which is a high profile job, but clearly
that was not what he was appointed for. So yes,
he's one of the first casualties. I think the first
(12:43):
of many. I think some people, I mean a lot
of people are speculating how long can the sectory of
defense last? Pete Hegseth. He was also involved in a
second signal chat, which again contravene government regulations about classified communication.
I don't think Waltz will be the end of it.
Mister Trump has always had a bit of an uncomfortable
(13:05):
relationship with his national security advisors. In his first administration,
he got through about three or four, and there is
a you know, mister Trump, I think is uncomfortable with
independent people around him who challenge him. Of course, you
need that for good decision making, and that's why one
is feeling slightly uneasy that if mister Trump continues to
(13:29):
surround himself with cronies or echoes, then we're going to
have some disastrous decisions made.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
And remember this, this is Baiden's word. This was a
war that was never going to happen if our president.
This is a horrible, horrible war. And I get to
see shots of soldiers through you know satellite that are
so just so terrible. Five thousand soldiers a week on
average are dying. They're not American soldiers. But I want
to solve the problem Russian soldiers and the Ukrainian soldiers.
(14:02):
And if I can save five thousand souls, I just
love doing it.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
How long do you give both countries before you're going
to walk away?
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Well, there'll be a time when I will say, Okay,
keep going, keep being stupid.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Well, of course, the other big thing with the US
at the moment is how it is handling international relations. Hey, notably,
there's been a lot of back and forth on Ukraine
and Russia. You know, one minute he's berating Voladimir Zelensky
in the Oval Office, the next is criticizing Putin for
holding up peace talks. I mean, how destabilizing is this
kind of flip flopping and lack of clarity.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It is destabilizing, but it's actually showing the administration to
be very weak, and that is the danger for not
just the United States, but for countries like New Zealand.
The Ukraine conflict, the outcome of that conflict is crucial.
It has big implications for the Indo Pacific. Two of
the biggest backers of Russia's invasion of Ukraine are China
(15:05):
and India. And quite frankly, here we have the most
powerful country in the world led by the Trump. Mister Trump,
who sees himself as a strong leader. And what does
he do. He coses up to the aggressor that has
he legally invaded a liberal democracy and sides with the
aggressor against the victim of aggression. Through Chinese non sentimental eyes.
(15:26):
That looks like weakness. Yes, he has added, belatedly some
criticisms of mister Putin, but the peace settlement deal that
he's pushing is basically solving all of mister Putin's problems,
and it's based almost it could have been written in
the Kremlin. There does seem to be some reconsideration going
on now by mister Trump. He has signed a minerals
(15:47):
deal with Selensky's government, and that has, as you indicated,
quite rightly, been some disgruntlement picked up on true social
mister Trump's media channel of Putin. But I think it's
been a very bad start, and he's also split relations
between Europe and the United States. And really you could
(16:09):
say this about his tariffs as well. But I think
his foreign policy has at times been incoherent. He you know,
the official rationale for coosing up to mister Putin's dictatorship
is that the United States, what's the form a geopolitical
partnership with Putin or something like that. According to mister Rubio,
the sector of state in order to peel Russia off
from China. I think that's unrealistic. But putting that to
(16:32):
one side, China will see mister Trump's behavior as possibly
well almost certainly as weakness, and that will encourage them
to become more assertive in our neck of the woods,
in the Indo Pacific and possibly in the Pacific Island
Nations region. And certainly it could be expected to up
the pressure on countries like Taiwan. So that is worrying
(16:54):
ineffectively what mister Trump is not, you know, you're quite
right use the term destabilizing. He's upended eighty years of
American foreign policy, he's effectively he's dismantling what's called the
rules based international order, which most liberal democracies, including our own,
depend on rules are there for the week, not for
the strong. But mister Trump's vision of international relations is
(17:15):
very different from New Zealand's. He sees the world in
top down terms, a world that's run by great powers,
with America the greatest power of all, sitting at the
top table and negotiating deals with the likes of Putin
and China. As for the middle powers and the small powers, well,
they will have to go and negotiate bilateral deals with
(17:36):
the United States and basically get what they're accept what
they're offered. So this is a radical break from the past.
It's the most biggest change in the American foreign policy
since nineteen forty six forty seven. And I think New
Zealand will have to speak out at some point because
what America is doing in its foreign policy is actually
(17:58):
directly undermining our national interests. New Zealand, like many small
and middle powers, needs rules. It needs institutions because they provide,
if you like, a level playing field for small countries
to operate in. And mister Trump seems to be determined
to dispense with that, and you know, it does have
(18:20):
real consequences for US. We trade with one hundred countries
around the world, and I think there's now pressure on
our government and other governments to bypass the United States
and to protect their interest by upholding the free trade system,
the rules based trade system, which many countries believe in,
(18:41):
including China as well as the EU as well as
many other countries. So, you know, I think we are
witnessing not just destabilization, but perhaps a sort of fork
in the road moment where America is parting company with
many of its traditional allies and we're seeing an international
realignment as a result.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Thanks for joining us, Robert.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzdherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front
Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
(19:30):
tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
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