March 8, 2024 • 12 mins
Facing growing scrutiny over his age, President Biden came out swinging Thursday night with a forceful State of the Union address that set the tone for the 2024 general election. Will his performance assuage doubts about his fitness, at age 81, to lead the U.S. through an increasingly volatile global order? In this episode, Jacob Heilbrunn speaks with Harry J. Kazianis, executive editor of The National Interest. Kazianis previously served as part of the foreign policy team for Senator Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign and worked for the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I am Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest.
(00:27):
Welcome to a fresh installment of In the National Interest.
Once again, my guest is none other than Harry J. Kazianis, known as @GrecianFormula on X (Twitter).
We will be discussing President Joe Biden's fiery, if not sizzling, State of the Union
address last night that caught many observers by surprise as Biden came out swinging from
(00:52):
the start, particularly on Ukraine, which he depicted as an issue as central to American
foreign policy as confronting Nazi Germany in 1941.
Harry your thoughts.
All right.
Well, let me sum it up in kind of like two or three sentences.
Joe Biden's screaming State of the Union address was, if you're a Republican or I don't care
(01:13):
what type of Republican, conservative, mega populist, I think was a disaster, which I'll
get into.
But I would also refute the idea that Putin is Hitler, Ukraine is the sword that American
foreign policy is going to die on.
I mean, first, when it comes to State of the Union, look, I don't understand who is coaching
Joe Biden, but screaming into the lectern and screaming your talking points and your
(01:35):
monologue is probably not the best of ideas for many different reasons.
The thing that Joe Biden needed to do last night was to convince independents, moderates,
people who might be thinking about voting for RFK or going third party, that he's the
best choice, that he is the person to guide America for the next four years, but also
show Jacob that he's not too old to be president.
(01:56):
That was my sniff test.
I mean, forget ideology, policy, anything like that.
That was the simple thing he needed to do.
Did he do that?
My opinion, he did not do that.
The screaming, you know, excited, smashing your fist against the lectern sort of style.
It felt like a MAGA rally, like a progressive MAGA rally.
That's the only way I could really describe how it looked to me.
(02:18):
The talking points, the ideas about taxing the wealth, Donald Trump is a fascist, Ukraine
is the biggest foreign policy threat on the entire globe.
We can debate all those things, but the one thing Joe Biden needed to do, the one thing
the press was looking for was to see if this man at 81 years old and changed still had
(02:39):
it.
I just didn't.
I'm trying to be objective here.
I've had multiple family members who have had dementia, Alzheimer's.
It's a hell of a thing.
I have to be honest.
And I'm not saying Joe Biden has that, but he definitely has signs of slowing down, of
getting older to be charitable.
And he needed to refute that.
He needed to show that 3 a.m. when he got that call and God forbid World War Three or
(02:59):
something like it looks like it's going to break out, that he can be the man to make
those big decisions.
And I have to tell you, if we're going to grate him on that one speech last night, you
know, screaming Joe isn't going to get it done.
I'm sorry.
I flatly disagree, Harry, because he's been depicted as old, senile and low energy.
And he came out firing from the start.
(03:20):
And I think that he had no choice but to deliver a stemwinder.
And that is exactly what he did.
Of course, he's not trying to appeal to the MAGA base because that would be like Trump
trying to woo the Democratic base.
It's just not going to happen in today's America.
But I do think that while there wasn't a great deal of substance, as David von Drayle
(03:41):
points out in The Washington Post to Biden's speech last night, he did demonstrate vigor.
He controlled the room.
He did not get rattled when he was confronted by Marjorie Taylor Greene or others.
He maintained his composure and he ended, I thought, on a Reagan-esque note of optimism,
contrasting himself with Trump saying that I'm not about retribution.
(04:04):
I'm about the future and a better America.
I'm going to be a friendly, a friendly third-rate Jacob.
I'm just going to say no way.
No, absolutely not.
If you're looking for a president who's trying to be the healer of the nation, remember back
in 2020, Jacob, that was his pitch to America.
I'm a healer.
I'm not a divider.
I want to build bridges.
(04:24):
And he did.
Look, I'll be very honest.
I'm going to give the man credit.
If you go back to the times when we had massive budget showdowns, who did Barack Obama go
to to try and mend fences with Mitch McConnell and get a budget deal so the government did
not default?
It was Joe Biden who did that.
Now, we can argue if sequestration was a great idea.
I'd say probably not, but certainly better than seeing the United States economy implode.
(04:48):
But that was something that Joe Biden was appealing to a lot of people.
And I think that's one of the reasons why he won the election.
I don't think you can make that argument today when you see all these different cases against
Donald Trump.
I mean, you can argue that Joe Biden had nothing to do with that.
And I don't think he's sort of the man who's the puppet master who's controlling all these
(05:08):
cases against Trump.
But he could make the argument and say, look, let the American people decide, let the American
people decide who they want to be their president and not go on this banana republic sort of
style attack.
I mean, as you know, I do a lot of work on Korea and this is what happens in South Korea.
Every time a South Korean president leaves office, they either commit suicide or they
get prosecuted and their life is tormented.
(05:30):
I mean, we can argue the legal challenges and all those things here in the United States
and there, but we have to be honest with ourselves.
I don't think that's the country we want to live in.
I just think when it comes to Biden, he has made a promise that he would not be Donald
Trump, that he would not be divisive, that he would try to tack to the middle in a lot
of ways.
You know, just looking at that speech last night, Jacob, look at the war on the wealthy
(05:51):
once again.
We've got that theme.
We have the theme that Donald Trump is again a quasi-fascist and he's going to destroy
the republic and he's going to destroy democracy.
I think the GOP is ready for these line of attacks now.
I mean, let's face it, they were supposed to have won the 2022 midterms hands down.
They were talking about winning the Senate.
I mean, they were talking about congressional majorities setting up Trump for 2024.
(06:12):
That didn't happen.
But I think the right now understands where these lines of attack are coming from.
It's obviously going to be, you know, democracy is under attack, Roe v. Wade, the GOP understands
where their weaknesses are.
And I think they're already working to shore those up, which we could talk about more,
but that's my line of thinking.
I don't.
(06:33):
I think they were caught napping by a vigorous Biden last night and had no coherent response,
especially from Katie Britt last night was an utter disaster.
And Biden just has a 275,000 jobs report from the last month.
I think he does have some spring in his step.
I think the GOP has no answer on the IVF question or on the abortion question.
(06:56):
This does not mean, obviously, that Joe Biden is a shoe in to win reelection, but it's not
going to be a replay of the 2020 election.
It's not going to be that Biden is going to promise that he can unite the nation because
obviously that at this moment he has failed.
You can lay the failure at his doorstep.
I think it's going to be an election in many ways about fear.
(07:19):
Each side is going to portray the other as a demagogue and a dictator.
I think that's true.
I agree with you there.
We can argue the economic points.
We can argue the policy points.
I think it comes down, really, Jacob, to just some really basic questions.
I mean, who do you trust sitting in the Oval Office, whether that's Donald Trump or Joe
Biden?
(07:39):
Both sides have some arguments that they can make.
I think for me, just trying with all my best to take off my partisan hat, I think the age
question for Joe Biden is a really, really difficult one to solve.
And the reason why is he can't solve it.
I mean, let's all ask ourselves a very basic question.
What do you think a state of the union two years from now with Joe Biden at the helm
is going to look like?
(08:00):
He's going to be slower.
He's going to be less coherent.
I mean, he'd be 83 years old.
Imagine another year after that.
I mean, imagine Joe Biden having to handle a major foreign policy crisis with Russia
or China or North Korea and the man is in his mid 80s.
I mean, God, that's a tough thing to ask anybody to try to do.
(08:20):
I mean, you would rather you would rather have Donald Trump who sends love letters to
Kim Jong Un and who is playing kissy face with Prime Minister Viktor Orban today.
I mean, right now, if I had to make a choice, yeah, I'm pulling the lever for Donald Trump.
I mean, if there are other options on the table, look, I'd look at him.
I mean, I'm doing a lot of my own digging and research on RFK.
(08:42):
I know a lot of people don't like him, but I think something we're going to have to talk
about in this podcast, Jacob, is that the rise of these third party candidates and what
they're going to mean for the election.
I think Americans want an alternative.
I mean, I think that's why they voted for Barack Obama.
It's why they voted for Donald Trump.
That's why if you go back in the 1990s, and I'm really dating myself here, they looked
at Ross Perot.
Really for a long time, I think there's a part of the American electorate that just
(09:06):
feels like that nobody cares about them.
And they're going to continue to keep looking at these alternative candidates, whether it's
a Trump or a Perot or, you know, Green Party candidates.
I don't know.
But I think, again, just going back to our original point, I think the election really,
the big focal point, if Republicans are smart, they make this about Biden's age and competency.
I'm not saying that's going to win it for him.
(09:27):
But look at all the polls right now.
Trump's ahead in every single one.
He's winning every single battleground skip state.
I mean, we can argue that the polls are wrong and have made mistakes before.
But can they be really that wrong?
I don't know.
Well, let's see where the polls are in a couple of months.
But right now, I just want to return as a final question.
How do you feel about Trump being palsy walsy with Viktor Orban today?
(09:48):
How does that compute with your approach to foreign policy?
I mean, it's not shocking.
I mean, you know, Donald Trump obviously knows that his MAGA base loves Viktor Orban.
So the photo op is obviously going to be key.
You know, those conversations I think are important to him.
He's, you know, he's trying to get allies anywhere he possibly can.
(10:09):
I mean, let's be honest, a lot is made about Viktor Orban, but let's be honest, Hungary
is not exactly the most important country on the planet.
Yes, a lot of MAGA conservatives and populists love what Viktor Orban is doing.
But just for me, I'm not big into this whole Viktor Orban, Donald Trump romance type thing.
I think there are much bigger issues the country has to face.
You know, just looking out a little bit deeper, Jacob, talking about what Trump's foreign
(10:32):
policy is going to look like.
It's going to be very interesting to see if he wins what he actually does.
I mean, talking to friends in Trump land, close policy advisors, it seems like Trump
does not want to bring in any of the retread, you know, neocon reborn sort of crowd.
I don't think he's going to be looking at people like Tom Cotton or those who have been
really, really hardcore neocons in the past who have sort of tried to shape shift themselves
(10:55):
into something different.
I think you could see a very different approach to foreign policy.
I mean, look at somebody like Bridge Colby, for example, you know, good friend of the
National Interest written for us many times.
I think that could be somebody that he could tap as as national security adviser.
You could see somebody like Robert O'Brien, who, yes, has been more hawkish in the past,
but it hasn't been wedded to hardcore neoconservative views.
(11:16):
Could be something like a secretary of state.
So we're going to have to see where it all goes.
But I think Trump wants to completely re transform American foreign policy.
And you know, we can argue if that's isolationist or neoisolationist.
But I think the American people understand that the America's days as a superpower, while
I don't think our ending, have to be recalibrated.
I mean, let's face it.
(11:37):
We have a one point six trillion dollar deficit that we're running every single year.
You look at the latest CBO statistics, Jacob, that deficits not going away anytime soon.
So America is going to have to do less.
America is probably going to have to raise taxes, too.
That's a very dirty word in conservative circles.
But let's face it, if you can't pay your bills and you're spending too much money, that's
the only thing you're going to do.
(11:57):
Bottom line, America is going to have to recalibrate its goals.
And that means probably less time and money for Europe, probably more time on the China
threat, which is the biggest national security threat above all.
Harry, the general election starting gun was fired last night.
I look forward to discussing with you as the race continues.
Thank you.
(12:18):
Bye bye, my friend
I am Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest.
(00:27):
Welcome to a fresh installment of In the National Interest.
Once again, my guest is none other than Harry J. Kazianis, known as @GrecianFormula on X (Twitter).
We will be discussing President Joe Biden's fiery, if not sizzling, State of the Union
address last night that caught many observers by surprise as Biden came out swinging from
(00:52):
the start, particularly on Ukraine, which he depicted as an issue as central to American
foreign policy as confronting Nazi Germany in 1941.
Harry your thoughts.
All right.
Well, let me sum it up in kind of like two or three sentences.
Joe Biden's screaming State of the Union address was, if you're a Republican or I don't care
(01:13):
what type of Republican, conservative, mega populist, I think was a disaster, which I'll
get into.
But I would also refute the idea that Putin is Hitler, Ukraine is the sword that American
foreign policy is going to die on.
I mean, first, when it comes to State of the Union, look, I don't understand who is coaching
Joe Biden, but screaming into the lectern and screaming your talking points and your
(01:35):
monologue is probably not the best of ideas for many different reasons.
The thing that Joe Biden needed to do last night was to convince independents, moderates,
people who might be thinking about voting for RFK or going third party, that he's the
best choice, that he is the person to guide America for the next four years, but also
show Jacob that he's not too old to be president.
(01:56):
That was my sniff test.
I mean, forget ideology, policy, anything like that.
That was the simple thing he needed to do.
Did he do that?
My opinion, he did not do that.
The screaming, you know, excited, smashing your fist against the lectern sort of style.
It felt like a MAGA rally, like a progressive MAGA rally.
That's the only way I could really describe how it looked to me.
(02:18):
The talking points, the ideas about taxing the wealth, Donald Trump is a fascist, Ukraine
is the biggest foreign policy threat on the entire globe.
We can debate all those things, but the one thing Joe Biden needed to do, the one thing
the press was looking for was to see if this man at 81 years old and changed still had
(02:39):
it.
I just didn't.
I'm trying to be objective here.
I've had multiple family members who have had dementia, Alzheimer's.
It's a hell of a thing.
I have to be honest.
And I'm not saying Joe Biden has that, but he definitely has signs of slowing down, of
getting older to be charitable.
And he needed to refute that.
He needed to show that 3 a.m. when he got that call and God forbid World War Three or
(02:59):
something like it looks like it's going to break out, that he can be the man to make
those big decisions.
And I have to tell you, if we're going to grate him on that one speech last night, you
know, screaming Joe isn't going to get it done.
I'm sorry.
I flatly disagree, Harry, because he's been depicted as old, senile and low energy.
And he came out firing from the start.
(03:20):
And I think that he had no choice but to deliver a stemwinder.
And that is exactly what he did.
Of course, he's not trying to appeal to the MAGA base because that would be like Trump
trying to woo the Democratic base.
It's just not going to happen in today's America.
But I do think that while there wasn't a great deal of substance, as David von Drayle
(03:41):
points out in The Washington Post to Biden's speech last night, he did demonstrate vigor.
He controlled the room.
He did not get rattled when he was confronted by Marjorie Taylor Greene or others.
He maintained his composure and he ended, I thought, on a Reagan-esque note of optimism,
contrasting himself with Trump saying that I'm not about retribution.
(04:04):
I'm about the future and a better America.
I'm going to be a friendly, a friendly third-rate Jacob.
I'm just going to say no way.
No, absolutely not.
If you're looking for a president who's trying to be the healer of the nation, remember back
in 2020, Jacob, that was his pitch to America.
I'm a healer.
I'm not a divider.
I want to build bridges.
(04:24):
And he did.
Look, I'll be very honest.
I'm going to give the man credit.
If you go back to the times when we had massive budget showdowns, who did Barack Obama go
to to try and mend fences with Mitch McConnell and get a budget deal so the government did
not default?
It was Joe Biden who did that.
Now, we can argue if sequestration was a great idea.
I'd say probably not, but certainly better than seeing the United States economy implode.
(04:48):
But that was something that Joe Biden was appealing to a lot of people.
And I think that's one of the reasons why he won the election.
I don't think you can make that argument today when you see all these different cases against
Donald Trump.
I mean, you can argue that Joe Biden had nothing to do with that.
And I don't think he's sort of the man who's the puppet master who's controlling all these
(05:08):
cases against Trump.
But he could make the argument and say, look, let the American people decide, let the American
people decide who they want to be their president and not go on this banana republic sort of
style attack.
I mean, as you know, I do a lot of work on Korea and this is what happens in South Korea.
Every time a South Korean president leaves office, they either commit suicide or they
get prosecuted and their life is tormented.
(05:30):
I mean, we can argue the legal challenges and all those things here in the United States
and there, but we have to be honest with ourselves.
I don't think that's the country we want to live in.
I just think when it comes to Biden, he has made a promise that he would not be Donald
Trump, that he would not be divisive, that he would try to tack to the middle in a lot
of ways.
You know, just looking at that speech last night, Jacob, look at the war on the wealthy
(05:51):
once again.
We've got that theme.
We have the theme that Donald Trump is again a quasi-fascist and he's going to destroy
the republic and he's going to destroy democracy.
I think the GOP is ready for these line of attacks now.
I mean, let's face it, they were supposed to have won the 2022 midterms hands down.
They were talking about winning the Senate.
I mean, they were talking about congressional majorities setting up Trump for 2024.
(06:12):
That didn't happen.
But I think the right now understands where these lines of attack are coming from.
It's obviously going to be, you know, democracy is under attack, Roe v. Wade, the GOP understands
where their weaknesses are.
And I think they're already working to shore those up, which we could talk about more,
but that's my line of thinking.
I don't.
(06:33):
I think they were caught napping by a vigorous Biden last night and had no coherent response,
especially from Katie Britt last night was an utter disaster.
And Biden just has a 275,000 jobs report from the last month.
I think he does have some spring in his step.
I think the GOP has no answer on the IVF question or on the abortion question.
(06:56):
This does not mean, obviously, that Joe Biden is a shoe in to win reelection, but it's not
going to be a replay of the 2020 election.
It's not going to be that Biden is going to promise that he can unite the nation because
obviously that at this moment he has failed.
You can lay the failure at his doorstep.
I think it's going to be an election in many ways about fear.
(07:19):
Each side is going to portray the other as a demagogue and a dictator.
I think that's true.
I agree with you there.
We can argue the economic points.
We can argue the policy points.
I think it comes down, really, Jacob, to just some really basic questions.
I mean, who do you trust sitting in the Oval Office, whether that's Donald Trump or Joe
Biden?
(07:39):
Both sides have some arguments that they can make.
I think for me, just trying with all my best to take off my partisan hat, I think the age
question for Joe Biden is a really, really difficult one to solve.
And the reason why is he can't solve it.
I mean, let's all ask ourselves a very basic question.
What do you think a state of the union two years from now with Joe Biden at the helm
is going to look like?
(08:00):
He's going to be slower.
He's going to be less coherent.
I mean, he'd be 83 years old.
Imagine another year after that.
I mean, imagine Joe Biden having to handle a major foreign policy crisis with Russia
or China or North Korea and the man is in his mid 80s.
I mean, God, that's a tough thing to ask anybody to try to do.
(08:20):
I mean, you would rather you would rather have Donald Trump who sends love letters to
Kim Jong Un and who is playing kissy face with Prime Minister Viktor Orban today.
I mean, right now, if I had to make a choice, yeah, I'm pulling the lever for Donald Trump.
I mean, if there are other options on the table, look, I'd look at him.
I mean, I'm doing a lot of my own digging and research on RFK.
(08:42):
I know a lot of people don't like him, but I think something we're going to have to talk
about in this podcast, Jacob, is that the rise of these third party candidates and what
they're going to mean for the election.
I think Americans want an alternative.
I mean, I think that's why they voted for Barack Obama.
It's why they voted for Donald Trump.
That's why if you go back in the 1990s, and I'm really dating myself here, they looked
at Ross Perot.
Really for a long time, I think there's a part of the American electorate that just
(09:06):
feels like that nobody cares about them.
And they're going to continue to keep looking at these alternative candidates, whether it's
a Trump or a Perot or, you know, Green Party candidates.
I don't know.
But I think, again, just going back to our original point, I think the election really,
the big focal point, if Republicans are smart, they make this about Biden's age and competency.
I'm not saying that's going to win it for him.
(09:27):
But look at all the polls right now.
Trump's ahead in every single one.
He's winning every single battleground skip state.
I mean, we can argue that the polls are wrong and have made mistakes before.
But can they be really that wrong?
I don't know.
Well, let's see where the polls are in a couple of months.
But right now, I just want to return as a final question.
How do you feel about Trump being palsy walsy with Viktor Orban today?
(09:48):
How does that compute with your approach to foreign policy?
I mean, it's not shocking.
I mean, you know, Donald Trump obviously knows that his MAGA base loves Viktor Orban.
So the photo op is obviously going to be key.
You know, those conversations I think are important to him.
He's, you know, he's trying to get allies anywhere he possibly can.
(10:09):
I mean, let's be honest, a lot is made about Viktor Orban, but let's be honest, Hungary
is not exactly the most important country on the planet.
Yes, a lot of MAGA conservatives and populists love what Viktor Orban is doing.
But just for me, I'm not big into this whole Viktor Orban, Donald Trump romance type thing.
I think there are much bigger issues the country has to face.
You know, just looking out a little bit deeper, Jacob, talking about what Trump's foreign
(10:32):
policy is going to look like.
It's going to be very interesting to see if he wins what he actually does.
I mean, talking to friends in Trump land, close policy advisors, it seems like Trump
does not want to bring in any of the retread, you know, neocon reborn sort of crowd.
I don't think he's going to be looking at people like Tom Cotton or those who have been
really, really hardcore neocons in the past who have sort of tried to shape shift themselves
(10:55):
into something different.
I think you could see a very different approach to foreign policy.
I mean, look at somebody like Bridge Colby, for example, you know, good friend of the
National Interest written for us many times.
I think that could be somebody that he could tap as as national security adviser.
You could see somebody like Robert O'Brien, who, yes, has been more hawkish in the past,
but it hasn't been wedded to hardcore neoconservative views.
(11:16):
Could be something like a secretary of state.
So we're going to have to see where it all goes.
But I think Trump wants to completely re transform American foreign policy.
And you know, we can argue if that's isolationist or neoisolationist.
But I think the American people understand that the America's days as a superpower, while
I don't think our ending, have to be recalibrated.
I mean, let's face it.
(11:37):
We have a one point six trillion dollar deficit that we're running every single year.
You look at the latest CBO statistics, Jacob, that deficits not going away anytime soon.
So America is going to have to do less.
America is probably going to have to raise taxes, too.
That's a very dirty word in conservative circles.
But let's face it, if you can't pay your bills and you're spending too much money, that's
the only thing you're going to do.
(11:57):
Bottom line, America is going to have to recalibrate its goals.
And that means probably less time and money for Europe, probably more time on the China
threat, which is the biggest national security threat above all.
Harry, the general election starting gun was fired last night.
I look forward to discussing with you as the race continues.
Thank you.
(12:18):
Bye bye, my friend
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