In this episode, author and journalist Lee Smith joins the show to discuss his new book, The China Matrix, and how American corruption has become deeply entangled with Chinese influence. Smith shares his personal journey as a writer, reflecting on how 9/11 shaped his worldview and the evolution of his career. The conversation explores Donald Trump’s trade policies, the future of social media and digital communication, and the enduring power of literature and poetry to bring meaning and connection in an increasingly superficial culture. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Day, and welcome back to the Carol Marcus Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Lee Smith. Lee is an author
and journalist at Tablet who has a new book out
called The China Matrix, The epics story of how Donald
Trump shattered a deadly pact.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Lee, so nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi, Carol, thank you so much for the invitation. It's
a real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
So I don't think we've ever met in person, and
I'm very excited to talk to you because you make
a lot of appearances. In my various group chats, people
are frequently sharing Lee Smith's work and talking about Lee Smith.
So tell me how did you become a writer? What
was the path you took?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, my father was a journalist and my grandfather was
a journalist too. My great grandfather wasn't exactly a journalist,
but he was a typesetter at the New York Daily News. Wow,
And so it's a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I didn't have a choice.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
That was I had a voice, and you know, I
had my father been responsible, he would have said, you know,
there's there's other ways to make a living. But he's
happy that I pursued the same trade that he did.
So yeah, I mean, you know, and then just when
I was a I mean, I think the biggest thing
(01:21):
that what makes people want to want to write is reading.
You know what you read? Right? Oh? Wow, that's really
I wish I could. I wish I could. I hope
I can make people feel at some point how I
feel about reading this. You know. Do you know the
poet Delmore Schwartz. No, Delmore Schwartz was a famous, you know,
(01:42):
New York poet in the mid twenties, and very tragic story,
very moving story. Saul Bellow wrote a novel called Humboldt Gift,
which is basically Delmore Schwartz. But Schwartz had something which
I always keep in minds. I love him as a writer.
He's not a great writer, but he's very moving. And
he said, you know, he said, the kind of the
the kind of book that you want to write, write,
and the kind of thing you want to read is
(02:04):
something that you realize you have to do. There has
to be something out there that makes you happy that
it's a booked just for you. And so you have
to go out and write those books because no one
else will and write that story or that article or
that poem or whatever. It is because no one else
will do it. So yeah, I find that very moving.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Do you have a particular beat that you feel like you.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Cover, Well, I've had a couple of different beats. I mean,
you know, right after nine to eleven, I was writing
a lot about the Middle East. Moved to the Middle
East for a bit. Then I worked at AH so
you know, I still write about the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, it continues to be a topic for some reason.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, yeah, all right. You know. Then I worked at
a publication called The Weekly Standard. I remember it, yes,
and it's more controversial now that it was round. So
you know what, I got to write about a lot
of things for them. I got to write about sports,
got to write about baseball, which I you know, which
I know a lot about. Yeah, got to write a
(03:09):
little bit about literature. And that's actually where I come from.
I used to the publication that no longer exists is
the Village.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Voice, and I loved the Voice.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well when I lived in New York. I grew up
in New York, and I grew up right around the
corner from where the Voice offices were. So later I
was named the literary editor of the Voice, and there
was a publication at the time called The Voice Literary Supplement.
That's really you know, I started off writing about literature
and published novelists and poets and so yeah, and that's
(03:42):
something I still still like to do, though that's not
really again the main part of my beat right now
and now my last few books, I've been writing mostly
about American corruption, the different efforts to top old Donald
Trump during his first term, and in this most recent book,
The China Matrix. I mean, I'm not a China scholar.
What I know a lot about is American corruption. So
(04:04):
this book is really about how American political and corporate
elites joined forces with the Chinese Communist Party to impoverish,
to impoverish Americans, and to damage our peace and prosperity.
So that's really what this book is about. It another
story about American corruption.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So what is the China Matrix is that?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Well, the matrix is really how these two groups of
cohorts of elites, the Chinese Communist Party elites on one
hand and American elites on the other, they basically become
the same thing. I mean, they're fighting for the same thing,
and that is for Americans. Are not most of the
Americans are not directly fighting to make China the great world.
(04:47):
What they're fighting for is their own money, which is
in turn making China an enormous power to replace the
United States. But clearly these Communist party elites, that's what
they want. They want PRC primacy. So that's the corruption.
It goes back to nineteen seventy two with Richard Nixon
(05:10):
and Henry Kissinger's Opening to China. That's really the origin
of the corruption. A lot of people say, well, wasn't
that a really a good, interesting, you know, political advice. No,
it was a terrible idea. Nixon and Kissinger profoundly misunderstood
what they were doing. Their idea of balance of power
was really wrong headed. And actually the person who who
(05:31):
keyed in on this was Donald Trump's. I have a
very long, long interview with the President. Interesting throughout this book.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It's interesting because I think we're in a moment where
nobody trusts anything anymore, and they are trying to rethink
all previous ideas. And you don't really hear as much
about China and Donald Trump's second term. You definitely don't
hear the China skeptics that I think existed in the
first term. Do you see that as well or am
I just missing it well?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
As I show in this book that Trump's trade war
with China in the first term started early on. It
started March twenty seventeen, really sort of ended, didn't really
really end. But the high point was January twenty twenty,
January thirty, twenty twenty, when they signed a Phase one
trade deal. So this went on throughout Trump's term. I
(06:22):
mean you'll remember that. You know, all the other stuff
that was taking up all the oxygen, whether it was
Russia Gate or whether it's the impeachments Donald tr This
is one of the astonishing things. While all this stuff
was going on, Trump was still fighting China. There was
a trade war going and so right now that's happening.
We're still in a trade war. There's other stuff that's
(06:44):
rising to the surface, whether it's what's happening, whether it's
Israel's war against Tamas, whether it's whether it's happening in
the Katar whether it's the Ukraine Russia war. What's still
going on at the same time as the China trade war.
And there's a lot of people who were foxed on it,
but yeah, it's not there's so much else going on.
It's not right now the main people are concerned about.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, we used to worry, I would even say about
Chinese influence. It seems like everybody has stopped talking about it.
TikTok right, barely registers as a topic anymore. Again, maybe
I'm just missing it. Maybe I'm pretty involved, pretty involved
in like the Israel you know, Hamas war, reading about that,
Maybe I'm just not seeing it.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, there's a lot stuff pops up. You're right about it,
about the TikTok. You're right about the TikTok thing. And
you'll remember before that, one of the other things that
came up, Donald Trump was talking about letting in six
hundred thousand Chinese students. Yeah, that of course made people crazy. Right,
I can talk about both of these things. First of all,
Donald Trump does not want six hundred thousand students Chinese
(07:49):
students in the United States. I have a long section
in my book. During his first term, he was very
upset to find out there were more than three hundred
thousand Chinese students in the United States, many situated at
very sensitive research institutes, including US nuclear labs like Los Alamo.
So he was not happy. He does not want. He
(08:09):
does not want even three hundred thousand Chinese students here.
He realizes the threat that that poses to our national
security with TikTok. I think it's very important for people
to understand that the baseline for understanding stuff, for understanding
Trump and China, is that Trump does not trust Jijinping.
(08:30):
Trump has not trusted China, he wrote in his two
thousand book The America We Deserve. He's he goes very
hard on China there, so this is not going away, right,
It is very consistent. You'll remember that people were worried
for the President joined Benjamin at Yahoo in Operation Midnight
Hammer to obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities. People were concerned, what
(08:54):
is is Trump falling prey to the isolationist? What's happening here?
You know he's been talking anybody ron, but is he
gonna do anything? And of course he did, right, because
he's very he's very consistent on these things. So to
understand which way Trump is moving, I think it's important
for people to understand the historical record of what he's
talked about. He is a profoundly let's go on with
(09:17):
other things that we should another thing that we should
understand about Trump is people are talking about Trump and Gaza,
Trump and Israel, Trump US, Donald Trump's relationship with Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Att and Iowa, I think is one
of the most important relationships we've seen between world leaders
since certainly since Thatcher and Reagan, maybe since FDR and Churchill.
(09:40):
But it's not just that. Remember that Donald Trump is
basically the world's institutional memory for October seventh, right, all
the time reporters ask him, whether it's a you know,
in the White House or an ad hoc press conference,
what mos what about this? Did you see the video
from October seventh, eight? Yeah, all the time. So it's
(10:01):
not just that Donald Trump is pro Israel and he
worked very well with BB. It's that this was shocking
and moving, as it is to people around the world
of good conscience, right right, not just on the mind
of Israelis and Jews. It's on the mind of people
of good conscience around the world, and Donald Trump is
one of them. So that baseline for understanding Trump's foreign policy,
(10:25):
and that's what I do here in the China Matrix.
I explain, in addition to the history of this terrible
relationship I explain what Trump's baseline is, what he thinks
about China, where he's moving, what he thinks about the
United States, and how important it is to secure American
interest not just in the Indo Pacific, but globally, because
(10:46):
that's how the threat China is.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What would you be
doing if you weren't writing books and if you weren't
a journalist? What would be? What would be?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
That's interesting? That was that was a quick transition. I
think I would I would be in I would be
in baseball. I think, really, I think I'd probably be
a baseball coach after I left when after I played
baseball in college and then I went to Cornell for
graduate school and I was the graduate assistant there. Oh no,
(11:25):
it's great. I mean coaching baseball, it's fantastic. I like coaching.
I like teaching. I haven't talked all the time, you know,
get to be get to be outside. Sure Rob is
outside and teaching young people. You know. I know a
lot of coaches now, baseball and other sports, and it's
very moving what they get to do. They really they're
(11:45):
not just teaching young young people a discipline of skill,
but also teaching them how to be accountable to themselves,
to their teammates, to other people, how to enjoy themselves,
how to how to succeed right, how to succeed in sports,
how to succeed in life. So, yeah, baseball.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I love that answer because when I ask that, sometimes
I mean writers will be like, maybe I'd be an editor.
It's always like something related.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
If you want's a novelist, what would you do. I'd
write short stories.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I do get that. I get like, oh, well, I
would do fiction. You know it's nonfiction. I'd be a DJ.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Personally, really, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I feel like I can get people on the damn floor.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's good of.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
All right? This is this is this is a I
kind of knew this was coming. I think the thing
the best thing that I did was, as I said,
I grew up in New York, and so I left
New York. You know, I left. It was right after
nine to eleven. But I remember one time sitting on
the subway and I was just looking. I was riding
the F train from where I was living in Brooklyn
(12:56):
into work. I said, well, look at all these other
people on the train. I mean, I mean, we're all
stuck here in New York, and I just want to
do something else. I mean I was in my I
guess I was in my twenties at the time. I
said I want to I want to try something else too.
And so then it was after nine eleven I said, well,
now I got to get out of here. Not because
I was you know, I wasn't scared. I was and
(13:20):
I was angry and I was sad. It changed a
lot of things, and I said, this is my hometown.
I have to figure out why these people wanted to
kill my neighbors. Yeah, and why they wanted to attack
my hometown. So that's really how I started writing about
the That's really how I started writing about the Middle East.
It came from a real personal sense of I would
say a loss, but it wasn't just lost. It was anger.
(13:42):
I was furious. And it wasn't until I was living
in Cairo that I realized how and all the fights
I was picking, how angry I was about about what happened.
So it was very important for me to leave New
York at that time. So I'm not sure if it's
what I'm most proud of, but I think it's one
of the one of the best choices I made, you know, professionally,
(14:05):
right personally as well, to understand to get a sense
of something that to get a sense of something that
was brought despare and many.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
People leaving New York's very hard. Publicly left New York
almost four years ago. I talked about it all the
time because I can't get over it.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
That you've written about it, about it it's hard, It's not.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I don't feel like it's like leaving other places. It
seems like the pinnacle, like you've gotten to the top
and you're like, no, I got to get out of here.
Is this is actually not not it at all.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I was there recently. I was there this past weekend,
and you know, we were staying at a hotel. My
wife and son and I were staying at a hotel,
a lovely hotel about two blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge
and about three blocks from ground zero. And I went
down there and it was you know, it's it's always
(15:03):
it's always a hard visit to be, you know, to
be around the World Trade Center. But this also there
was something I realized at a certain point, I said,
you know, I realized my and my son is young,
so he loves trucks and fire engines. We wanted to stop.
Wherever we go around the world, we go to a
fire station, you know. And I remember when when I
(15:26):
left New York nearly a quarter of a century ago,
iiremen later, very after nine to eleven, you know, and
it was just it was just different because I realized that, wait,
all these guys are really young. I mean they would
some of them warned, some of them were seven or
eight years old. And so just to feel to feel
(15:48):
both the shock and also you know, how how how
long it's been and how much much it's how much
that has shaped the city. And I would say in
many bad ways in fact.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Really like, what's an example of that?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
People should not have forgotten nine to eleven as quickly
as they did. Right One of my colleagues at Tablet,
David Samuels, wrote an article about two months ago which
was about a building that they built right at ground zero.
It was amazing to me. I didn't know until I
wrote I read the article. Is a great article. David
is a great writer, great friend. But I didn't know.
(16:26):
What they've done is they've built a building that is
exactly modeled after the Kaba. It was mind blowing to
see it, and it was it was, frankly, i'm sorry, sickening.
You know, it was very shocking. And you know, I
mean the guy, the guy who appears to be the
front runner for the you know, for mayor. Yeah, mayor
of the city is a guy who you know, says globalized,
(16:48):
the Intifada, right, you know, it's that's it's hurt the
city to have forgotten these to have forgotten these different things.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, it's a very different New York than it was then. Yeah,
you know, having hard time picturing a Giuliani as a
mayor ever.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Again, I still well, I mean that's another thing, of course.
I mean the way that people have turned on Giuliani.
I mean, the guy was you know, the guy was
heroic what he did eleven and also you know, he
served the city, you know, as did Michael Bloomberg in
many ways. But now now we're onto something entirely different,
and you'd like to think that if people did have
a little more sense of what of what nine to
(17:26):
eleven meant, that we might we might be in a
we we'd be in a different place right now. Not
that we should be at war with the no, I know,
you mean, yeah, let's respect our own traditions, Let's understand
our own history. Let's understand what happened here, who suffered,
who's still suffering from it. It's amazing just when you
(17:47):
think about the number of people who have died from
nine to eleven related injuries right, respiratory respiratory diseases.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Short, we just have a very short memory as a country.
I think we move on from things so quickly, and.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It's sometimes it's sometimes it's terrible, you know, terrible.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Give us a five year out prediction. It could be
about anything.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I want to give an optimistic prediction as this. I
want to say that I think that people will I
think that even people like you and me, who probably
spend a lot of time on social media, will start
moving away from it, will realize how destructive it is.
But we already do see how destructive it is. But
I think that it will get worse and worse, and people,
(18:33):
for for generous reasons, will move away from and said,
I don't I don't need this in my life because
it's so destructive. And we're seeing all this stuff now,
you know. I'm sure you're you're paying attention to it.
I mean, the anti Semitic stuff coming from the right
as well as coming from the left. And I mean,
it's just it's painful at times to look at this
stuff and the idea that our children are going to
(18:55):
be exposed to it too. So no, I don't, I don't.
I'm not saying that we're going to move move into
an era past technology. I just think that people will
will return to their senses after what's been yeah, straordinarily,
what's turned into a very dangerous fad.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Right, Yeah, there's something about that where I think that
the younger generation is already less interested in social media,
Like they don't really, they don't use social media anymore.
They don't. They don't, you know, post their lunch or
or even take selfies with their friends. Yeah, they watched
like the TikTok style videos, but there's already a move
away from like living your life online. It's entertainment and
(19:35):
it's bad in its own way. But I already see
a change and a shift from that's good. I'm instantly
being online.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
That's good. I didn't know that, so maybe my prediction
is than I imagine. But yeah, that's certainly what I
hope for that people will become you know, yeah, people
will I don't know, well, we'll embrace their families, embrace
their embrace their neighbor spend spend that sort of time,
as you know.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Go live in real life. It's definitely important and so
much better. Well, I love this conversation, Lee, You're really
one of my favorite writers. I can't wait to read
The China Matrix. End here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Okay, good, I'm glad you asked that. Memorize poetry. How's that?
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I love that? Do you have one for us?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
You know, I knew I knew you were going to
ask that, and so I re memorize. This is a
New York story. So there's a great one of my
favorite poets, Hark Crane. He wrote a poem about the
Brooklyn Bridge and it's it's very long. It's two Brooklyn Bridge.
So I'll just if I can, I'll just I'll recite
the first the first stanza. So how many downs from
(20:52):
his rippling rests? The seagulls wings shall dip and pivot
him shedding white rings of tumult building over the Chain
Bay waters liberty. So it's a beautiful poem.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Beautiful.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I recommended it every second out. Yeah, and whether whether
it's you know, some people maybe would prefer to memorize scripture.
But I remember the most important lesson I ever learned
in college was an English professor who said, who made
us memorize a short poem? She told us which one
to memorize, and he said, you have to memorize this
and come back next week and I'm going to give
you a quiz on it. And I'm like, oh, what
(21:27):
a drag. But it was great because to have to
have meaningful utterance in your body. And this is of
course the opposite from social media. To have something meaningful,
something that someone uh, someone spent time thinking, a rhythm,
a rhythm, a pace, and to have that not just
in your head and in your mouth, but to live
with that in your body. And that's that really is
(21:50):
the opposite of social media.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It is nobody's gonna remember tweets.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Right, you might remember some goofy video. To get a
poem in your body, do it maybe just one or
one a month, or maybe one a week at a
certain point. But have a home or part of a
poem in your body.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
So good. He is Lee Smith. His new book is
The China Matrix, the epics story of how Donald Trump
shattered a deadly pact. Thank you so much for coming
on
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Lee, Thank you so much, Carol,
Day, and welcome back to the Carol Marcus Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Lee Smith. Lee is an author
and journalist at Tablet who has a new book out
called The China Matrix, The epics story of how Donald
Trump shattered a deadly pact.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Lee, so nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi, Carol, thank you so much for the invitation. It's
a real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
So I don't think we've ever met in person, and
I'm very excited to talk to you because you make
a lot of appearances. In my various group chats, people
are frequently sharing Lee Smith's work and talking about Lee Smith.
So tell me how did you become a writer? What
was the path you took?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, my father was a journalist and my grandfather was
a journalist too. My great grandfather wasn't exactly a journalist,
but he was a typesetter at the New York Daily News. Wow,
And so it's a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I didn't have a choice.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
That was I had a voice, and you know, I
had my father been responsible, he would have said, you know,
there's there's other ways to make a living. But he's
happy that I pursued the same trade that he did.
So yeah, I mean, you know, and then just when
I was a I mean, I think the biggest thing
(01:21):
that what makes people want to want to write is reading.
You know what you read? Right? Oh? Wow, that's really
I wish I could. I wish I could. I hope
I can make people feel at some point how I
feel about reading this. You know. Do you know the
poet Delmore Schwartz. No, Delmore Schwartz was a famous, you know,
(01:42):
New York poet in the mid twenties, and very tragic story,
very moving story. Saul Bellow wrote a novel called Humboldt Gift,
which is basically Delmore Schwartz. But Schwartz had something which
I always keep in minds. I love him as a writer.
He's not a great writer, but he's very moving. And
he said, you know, he said, the kind of the
the kind of book that you want to write, write,
and the kind of thing you want to read is
(02:04):
something that you realize you have to do. There has
to be something out there that makes you happy that
it's a booked just for you. And so you have
to go out and write those books because no one
else will and write that story or that article or
that poem or whatever. It is because no one else
will do it. So yeah, I find that very moving.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Do you have a particular beat that you feel like you.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Cover, Well, I've had a couple of different beats. I mean,
you know, right after nine to eleven, I was writing
a lot about the Middle East. Moved to the Middle
East for a bit. Then I worked at AH so
you know, I still write about the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, it continues to be a topic for some reason.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah, yeah, all right. You know. Then I worked at
a publication called The Weekly Standard. I remember it, yes,
and it's more controversial now that it was round. So
you know what, I got to write about a lot
of things for them. I got to write about sports,
got to write about baseball, which I you know, which
I know a lot about. Yeah, got to write a
(03:09):
little bit about literature. And that's actually where I come from.
I used to the publication that no longer exists is
the Village.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Voice, and I loved the Voice.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well when I lived in New York. I grew up
in New York, and I grew up right around the
corner from where the Voice offices were. So later I
was named the literary editor of the Voice, and there
was a publication at the time called The Voice Literary Supplement.
That's really you know, I started off writing about literature
and published novelists and poets and so yeah, and that's
(03:42):
something I still still like to do, though that's not
really again the main part of my beat right now
and now my last few books, I've been writing mostly
about American corruption, the different efforts to top old Donald
Trump during his first term, and in this most recent book,
The China Matrix. I mean, I'm not a China scholar.
What I know a lot about is American corruption. So
(04:04):
this book is really about how American political and corporate
elites joined forces with the Chinese Communist Party to impoverish,
to impoverish Americans, and to damage our peace and prosperity.
So that's really what this book is about. It another
story about American corruption.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So what is the China Matrix is that?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Well, the matrix is really how these two groups of
cohorts of elites, the Chinese Communist Party elites on one
hand and American elites on the other, they basically become
the same thing. I mean, they're fighting for the same thing,
and that is for Americans. Are not most of the
Americans are not directly fighting to make China the great world.
(04:47):
What they're fighting for is their own money, which is
in turn making China an enormous power to replace the
United States. But clearly these Communist party elites, that's what
they want. They want PRC primacy. So that's the corruption.
It goes back to nineteen seventy two with Richard Nixon
(05:10):
and Henry Kissinger's Opening to China. That's really the origin
of the corruption. A lot of people say, well, wasn't
that a really a good, interesting, you know, political advice. No,
it was a terrible idea. Nixon and Kissinger profoundly misunderstood
what they were doing. Their idea of balance of power
was really wrong headed. And actually the person who who
(05:31):
keyed in on this was Donald Trump's. I have a
very long, long interview with the President. Interesting throughout this book.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
It's interesting because I think we're in a moment where
nobody trusts anything anymore, and they are trying to rethink
all previous ideas. And you don't really hear as much
about China and Donald Trump's second term. You definitely don't
hear the China skeptics that I think existed in the
first term. Do you see that as well or am
I just missing it well?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
As I show in this book that Trump's trade war
with China in the first term started early on. It
started March twenty seventeen, really sort of ended, didn't really
really end. But the high point was January twenty twenty,
January thirty, twenty twenty, when they signed a Phase one
trade deal. So this went on throughout Trump's term. I
(06:22):
mean you'll remember that. You know, all the other stuff
that was taking up all the oxygen, whether it was
Russia Gate or whether it's the impeachments Donald tr This
is one of the astonishing things. While all this stuff
was going on, Trump was still fighting China. There was
a trade war going and so right now that's happening.
We're still in a trade war. There's other stuff that's
(06:44):
rising to the surface, whether it's what's happening, whether it's
Israel's war against Tamas, whether it's whether it's happening in
the Katar whether it's the Ukraine Russia war. What's still
going on at the same time as the China trade war.
And there's a lot of people who were foxed on it,
but yeah, it's not there's so much else going on.
It's not right now the main people are concerned about.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, we used to worry, I would even say about
Chinese influence. It seems like everybody has stopped talking about it.
TikTok right, barely registers as a topic anymore. Again, maybe
I'm just missing it. Maybe I'm pretty involved, pretty involved
in like the Israel you know, Hamas war, reading about that,
Maybe I'm just not seeing it.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, there's a lot stuff pops up. You're right about it,
about the TikTok. You're right about the TikTok thing. And
you'll remember before that, one of the other things that
came up, Donald Trump was talking about letting in six
hundred thousand Chinese students. Yeah, that of course made people crazy. Right,
I can talk about both of these things. First of all,
Donald Trump does not want six hundred thousand students Chinese
(07:49):
students in the United States. I have a long section
in my book. During his first term, he was very
upset to find out there were more than three hundred
thousand Chinese students in the United States, many situated at
very sensitive research institutes, including US nuclear labs like Los Alamo.
So he was not happy. He does not want. He
(08:09):
does not want even three hundred thousand Chinese students here.
He realizes the threat that that poses to our national
security with TikTok. I think it's very important for people
to understand that the baseline for understanding stuff, for understanding
Trump and China, is that Trump does not trust Jijinping.
(08:30):
Trump has not trusted China, he wrote in his two
thousand book The America We Deserve. He's he goes very
hard on China there, so this is not going away, right,
It is very consistent. You'll remember that people were worried
for the President joined Benjamin at Yahoo in Operation Midnight
Hammer to obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities. People were concerned, what
(08:54):
is is Trump falling prey to the isolationist? What's happening here?
You know he's been talking anybody ron, but is he
gonna do anything? And of course he did, right, because
he's very he's very consistent on these things. So to
understand which way Trump is moving, I think it's important
for people to understand the historical record of what he's
talked about. He is a profoundly let's go on with
(09:17):
other things that we should another thing that we should
understand about Trump is people are talking about Trump and Gaza,
Trump and Israel, Trump US, Donald Trump's relationship with Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Att and Iowa, I think is one
of the most important relationships we've seen between world leaders
since certainly since Thatcher and Reagan, maybe since FDR and Churchill.
(09:40):
But it's not just that. Remember that Donald Trump is
basically the world's institutional memory for October seventh, right, all
the time reporters ask him, whether it's a you know,
in the White House or an ad hoc press conference,
what mos what about this? Did you see the video
from October seventh, eight? Yeah, all the time. So it's
(10:01):
not just that Donald Trump is pro Israel and he
worked very well with BB. It's that this was shocking
and moving, as it is to people around the world
of good conscience, right right, not just on the mind
of Israelis and Jews. It's on the mind of people
of good conscience around the world, and Donald Trump is
one of them. So that baseline for understanding Trump's foreign policy,
(10:25):
and that's what I do here in the China Matrix.
I explain, in addition to the history of this terrible
relationship I explain what Trump's baseline is, what he thinks
about China, where he's moving, what he thinks about the
United States, and how important it is to secure American
interest not just in the Indo Pacific, but globally, because
(10:46):
that's how the threat China is.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What would you be
doing if you weren't writing books and if you weren't
a journalist? What would be? What would be?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
That's interesting? That was that was a quick transition. I
think I would I would be in I would be
in baseball. I think, really, I think I'd probably be
a baseball coach after I left when after I played
baseball in college and then I went to Cornell for
graduate school and I was the graduate assistant there. Oh no,
(11:25):
it's great. I mean coaching baseball, it's fantastic. I like coaching.
I like teaching. I haven't talked all the time, you know,
get to be get to be outside. Sure Rob is
outside and teaching young people. You know. I know a
lot of coaches now, baseball and other sports, and it's
very moving what they get to do. They really they're
(11:45):
not just teaching young young people a discipline of skill,
but also teaching them how to be accountable to themselves,
to their teammates, to other people, how to enjoy themselves,
how to how to succeed right, how to succeed in sports,
how to succeed in life. So, yeah, baseball.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I love that answer because when I ask that, sometimes
I mean writers will be like, maybe I'd be an editor.
It's always like something related.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
If you want's a novelist, what would you do. I'd
write short stories.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I do get that. I get like, oh, well, I
would do fiction. You know it's nonfiction. I'd be a DJ.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Personally, really, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I feel like I can get people on the damn floor.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's good of.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
All right? This is this is this is a I
kind of knew this was coming. I think the thing
the best thing that I did was, as I said,
I grew up in New York, and so I left
New York. You know, I left. It was right after
nine to eleven. But I remember one time sitting on
the subway and I was just looking. I was riding
the F train from where I was living in Brooklyn
(12:56):
into work. I said, well, look at all these other
people on the train. I mean, I mean, we're all
stuck here in New York, and I just want to
do something else. I mean I was in my I
guess I was in my twenties at the time. I
said I want to I want to try something else too.
And so then it was after nine eleven I said, well,
now I got to get out of here. Not because
I was you know, I wasn't scared. I was and
(13:20):
I was angry and I was sad. It changed a
lot of things, and I said, this is my hometown.
I have to figure out why these people wanted to
kill my neighbors. Yeah, and why they wanted to attack
my hometown. So that's really how I started writing about
the That's really how I started writing about the Middle East.
It came from a real personal sense of I would
say a loss, but it wasn't just lost. It was anger.
(13:42):
I was furious. And it wasn't until I was living
in Cairo that I realized how and all the fights
I was picking, how angry I was about about what happened.
So it was very important for me to leave New
York at that time. So I'm not sure if it's
what I'm most proud of, but I think it's one
of the one of the best choices I made, you know, professionally,
(14:05):
right personally as well, to understand to get a sense
of something that to get a sense of something that
was brought despare and many.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
People leaving New York's very hard. Publicly left New York
almost four years ago. I talked about it all the
time because I can't get over it.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
That you've written about it, about it it's hard, It's not.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I don't feel like it's like leaving other places. It
seems like the pinnacle, like you've gotten to the top
and you're like, no, I got to get out of here.
Is this is actually not not it at all.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I was there recently. I was there this past weekend,
and you know, we were staying at a hotel. My
wife and son and I were staying at a hotel,
a lovely hotel about two blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge
and about three blocks from ground zero. And I went
down there and it was you know, it's it's always
(15:03):
it's always a hard visit to be, you know, to
be around the World Trade Center. But this also there
was something I realized at a certain point, I said,
you know, I realized my and my son is young,
so he loves trucks and fire engines. We wanted to stop.
Wherever we go around the world, we go to a
fire station, you know. And I remember when when I
(15:26):
left New York nearly a quarter of a century ago,
iiremen later, very after nine to eleven, you know, and
it was just it was just different because I realized that, wait,
all these guys are really young. I mean they would
some of them warned, some of them were seven or
eight years old. And so just to feel to feel
(15:48):
both the shock and also you know, how how how
long it's been and how much much it's how much
that has shaped the city. And I would say in
many bad ways in fact.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Really like, what's an example of that?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
People should not have forgotten nine to eleven as quickly
as they did. Right One of my colleagues at Tablet,
David Samuels, wrote an article about two months ago which
was about a building that they built right at ground zero.
It was amazing to me. I didn't know until I
wrote I read the article. Is a great article. David
is a great writer, great friend. But I didn't know.
(16:26):
What they've done is they've built a building that is
exactly modeled after the Kaba. It was mind blowing to
see it, and it was it was, frankly, i'm sorry, sickening.
You know, it was very shocking. And you know, I
mean the guy, the guy who appears to be the
front runner for the you know, for mayor. Yeah, mayor
of the city is a guy who you know, says globalized,
(16:48):
the Intifada, right, you know, it's that's it's hurt the
city to have forgotten these to have forgotten these different things.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yeah, it's a very different New York than it was then. Yeah,
you know, having hard time picturing a Giuliani as a
mayor ever.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Again, I still well, I mean that's another thing, of course.
I mean the way that people have turned on Giuliani.
I mean, the guy was you know, the guy was
heroic what he did eleven and also you know, he
served the city, you know, as did Michael Bloomberg in
many ways. But now now we're onto something entirely different,
and you'd like to think that if people did have
a little more sense of what of what nine to
(17:26):
eleven meant, that we might we might be in a
we we'd be in a different place right now. Not
that we should be at war with the no, I know,
you mean, yeah, let's respect our own traditions, Let's understand
our own history. Let's understand what happened here, who suffered,
who's still suffering from it. It's amazing just when you
(17:47):
think about the number of people who have died from
nine to eleven related injuries right, respiratory respiratory diseases.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Short, we just have a very short memory as a country.
I think we move on from things so quickly, and.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It's sometimes it's sometimes it's terrible, you know, terrible.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Give us a five year out prediction. It could be
about anything.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I want to give an optimistic prediction as this. I
want to say that I think that people will I
think that even people like you and me, who probably
spend a lot of time on social media, will start
moving away from it, will realize how destructive it is.
But we already do see how destructive it is. But
I think that it will get worse and worse, and people,
(18:33):
for for generous reasons, will move away from and said,
I don't I don't need this in my life because
it's so destructive. And we're seeing all this stuff now,
you know. I'm sure you're you're paying attention to it.
I mean, the anti Semitic stuff coming from the right
as well as coming from the left. And I mean,
it's just it's painful at times to look at this
stuff and the idea that our children are going to
(18:55):
be exposed to it too. So no, I don't, I don't.
I'm not saying that we're going to move move into
an era past technology. I just think that people will
will return to their senses after what's been yeah, straordinarily,
what's turned into a very dangerous fad.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Right, Yeah, there's something about that where I think that
the younger generation is already less interested in social media,
Like they don't really, they don't use social media anymore.
They don't. They don't, you know, post their lunch or
or even take selfies with their friends. Yeah, they watched
like the TikTok style videos, but there's already a move
away from like living your life online. It's entertainment and
(19:35):
it's bad in its own way. But I already see
a change and a shift from that's good. I'm instantly
being online.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
That's good. I didn't know that, so maybe my prediction
is than I imagine. But yeah, that's certainly what I
hope for that people will become you know, yeah, people
will I don't know, well, we'll embrace their families, embrace
their embrace their neighbor spend spend that sort of time,
as you know.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Go live in real life. It's definitely important and so
much better. Well, I love this conversation, Lee, You're really
one of my favorite writers. I can't wait to read
The China Matrix. End here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Okay, good, I'm glad you asked that. Memorize poetry. How's that?
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I love that? Do you have one for us?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
You know, I knew I knew you were going to
ask that, and so I re memorize. This is a
New York story. So there's a great one of my
favorite poets, Hark Crane. He wrote a poem about the
Brooklyn Bridge and it's it's very long. It's two Brooklyn Bridge.
So I'll just if I can, I'll just I'll recite
the first the first stanza. So how many downs from
(20:52):
his rippling rests? The seagulls wings shall dip and pivot
him shedding white rings of tumult building over the Chain
Bay waters liberty. So it's a beautiful poem.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Beautiful.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I recommended it every second out. Yeah, and whether whether
it's you know, some people maybe would prefer to memorize scripture.
But I remember the most important lesson I ever learned
in college was an English professor who said, who made
us memorize a short poem? She told us which one
to memorize, and he said, you have to memorize this
and come back next week and I'm going to give
you a quiz on it. And I'm like, oh, what
(21:27):
a drag. But it was great because to have to
have meaningful utterance in your body. And this is of
course the opposite from social media. To have something meaningful,
something that someone uh, someone spent time thinking, a rhythm,
a rhythm, a pace, and to have that not just
in your head and in your mouth, but to live
with that in your body. And that's that really is
(21:50):
the opposite of social media.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It is nobody's gonna remember tweets.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Right, you might remember some goofy video. To get a
poem in your body, do it maybe just one or
one a month, or maybe one a week at a
certain point. But have a home or part of a
poem in your body.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
So good. He is Lee Smith. His new book is
The China Matrix, the epics story of how Donald Trump
shattered a deadly pact. Thank you so much for coming
on
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Lee, Thank you so much, Carol,
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