From Washington: A Wake-Up Call For Democrats
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Sunday, November 17th, 2024. I'm Jared Halpern. Is there a leader of the Democratic Party after this month's election loss? Who's the leader of the party and what does it mean today? I'm not sure. I think the party has to look at itself in the mirror and say, yes, we're a big tent and we're proud to be a big tent. But at the end of the day,

It has to be we have a great narrative about the economy. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. World leaders of ally and adversarial countries always react to a new U.S. president. But what's old is now new again, as the president-elect may be a unique but known quantity to presidents, prime ministers and dictators alike. He'll find the words and find the tone to issue a warning to our adversaries and

And I think they will take that seriously. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington.

President Biden is still President Biden and will be for another 64 days. In that time, he has said he'll continue to finish the job. This past week, the administration announced grant money for states to ensure new infrastructure projects are climate friendly. And a final agreement was reached with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to build three state-of-the-art facilities in Arizona. Those, the president says, will create tens of thousands of jobs.

And just yesterday, President Biden sat down with President Xi of China for the final time before the transition and potential changes to the competitive relationship between the two countries. All of this is designed to help cement not just his one term and the achievements he hopes are lasting, but also cement a legacy for a next generation of Democratic leaders.

But who is that leader? It's a question a lot of Democrats are asking, so far with few answers. And it's a question I posed to Robert Wolf, a former economic advisor to President Obama and the CEO of 32 Advisors. You know, we saw things in 2024 that we have never seen before, right? So we had President Biden, you know, win the primary. And then after a

obviously difficult performance in the debate, and with a lot of anger from the donor community and, you know, Democratic politicians, he made a decision to opt out. And then at that point, the Democratic Party was probably split on should there be an open convention or not. And by that time, since it was like three weeks post the debate,

And the convention was around the corner. President Biden, you know, threw his power behind Vice President Harris, which at that point, everyone got excited around that there was, you know, you could either say they got excited because it wasn't President Biden or they got excited because,

It was VP Harris, and she came out of the box strong and with a lot of excitement and a lot of just the whole party just got together. And it became just an incredible feeling. With all that being said, that feeling ended quickly on election night. And the donor community, the Democratic Party, I think,

feels like it was a real gut punch. Even though you could argue that most of the swing states were within the margin of error, and we always thought it was gonna be a margin of error election one way or the other, it's clear that this country made a decision and their decision was they want former President Trump to be the president. And I'm one that says that the market's efficient

just like the elections efficient, and he has a mandate. He won the popular vote. He won all seven swing states. And so it's clear to me as I think about it, because I'm active with the Democratic Party, and I spoke to the campaign daily. And obviously, whether it's on Fox as a call it a non-surrogate surrogate, or close to

President Biden or former President Obama or Vice President Harris, I was engaged in a lot of conversations. It's clear to me that we missed the bigger picture. And I think that you can't win choice elections. People go in and vote because they're excited about something.

And in 2022, we won because people voted that they were for not staying with the Dobbs decision. They voted for something. It wasn't a choice election. The choice was already made. In 2020, they voted for President Biden because they believed the contrast between him and President Trump was there was a need for a change.

And I think that the Democratic Party made this way too much about a choice election. You're either for or against President Trump. And the last time we really made it a choice election was in 2004, was when you were either for or against Bush, and John Kerry lost.

And I think since then, we always tried to make it an election of contrast. Here's what we're going to do for you. And I don't think we did a good job of telling the American people what we were going to do for them. I also think we ran away from some of what I would say some of the most amazing legislative victories an administration had.

And as you know, Jared, I wrote with Congressman, former Congressman Tim Ryan, an op-ed in Fox that we thought that Vice President Harris had a better platform on the revitalization of industrial America because of where she was in manufacturing, where she wanted to go in infrastructure. But they didn't really talk about that, even though legislatively,

They had the Infrastructure Act one, they did the CHIPS Act. Factories were at an all time high of construction building. And you know, after you build factories, then you get manufacturing. And after you get manufacturing, you get distribution. That is the revitalization of industrial America. So I think we made it too much of a choice election. So who's the leader of the party and what does it mean today?

I'm not sure. I think the party has to look at itself in the mirror and say, yes, we're a big tent and we're proud to be a big tent. But at the end of the day, it has to be we have a great narrative about the economy that no matter what it is,

You know, we have to make sure that when people think about us, they think we're making their life better. So to that point, right, you talk about chips and science, you talk about infrastructure, you talk about the American Rescue Plan, this legislation that you think actually would have been really helpful for the vice president to talk about in the sort of waning weeks here of this presidency.

Is there much that you see Democrats doing that? I don't know if you want to use the phrase sort of Trump proof, but but ensure that those types of gains can't be undone. Well, first of all, things like infrastructure, they're not going to unwind that.

OK, you have senators and governors and Congress representatives, Republicans who voted against it that are touting it like it's the best thing that ever happened. And they're, you know, waving the flag. Look at the new bridge I helped you build. So no one's going to take away the idea because infrastructure is the most, you

you know bipartisan business likes it unions like it americans like it and we've been trying to do it for decades so they're not gonna now president trump may add to it you know or make some iterative changes to it i don't think they change that i don't think they should i think look at the inflation reduction act now i thought it was too big but i think it was an important act

And if you look at it, the energy companies, I know that President-elect Trump talks about, we're going to be energy independent. I mean, one, we are energy independent. We're drilling more oil than we've ever drilled before. And we have permits that are not even being used because energy companies actually are spending their capex more on renewables.

So I think they love the idea that in the Inflation Reduction Act, they're getting credits for renewables. So I think that there'll be some of this legislation that stays. I mean, you look at Obamacare, you know, the ACA, the idea that we're going to unwind that when it's impacting 100 million people.

and 40 million people with, you know, pre-medical conditions. I just don't see those changes happening. From a strategic standpoint, you know, President Biden even last week talked about that a lot of the infrastructure rollout, a lot of the chips and science are out. It's still years ahead, right, because it's forward planning. It takes a long time to get these things sort of built. Do you worry as a Democrat that the new administration gets credit for some of that? Well,

Well, I don't care who gets credit for it. Well, but from an electoral standpoint, from a political standpoint, that would be helpful, right? No, no, but I've been, I actually have testified in front of Congress about the need for a national infrastructure bank.

I've written pieces in the Wall Street Journal, okay, and in Fox about the need for infrastructure. Infrastructure is the fastest multiplier of GDP growth. It's the best wages. Right now, we get like a D rating on our infrastructure. So I don't care who gets credit for it. I hope that we take what President Biden is doing today, which is building factories,

And there's actually been tens of thousands of infrastructure projects that are happening today. And I hope we continue to proliferate that. And if that means that Biden gets credit for starting it and President Trump gets credit for making it more productive, God bless America. I think we're all in a better situation for that. So I don't look at

I don't look at that. Remember, that was a bipartisan legislation. That passed in a bipartisan. So that means that everyone wanted it. Let's recall, Jared, we heard President Trump talk about infrastructure week every week, just didn't get it passed. So I think it seems foolish to try to unwind something. But there's a big difference between where you are in a project. And this is not like

shovel-ready, where we're talking about nothing's shovel-ready. There are things happening. There are really projects in the making. There's also hundreds of billions of private sector money ready to combine for public-private partnerships. So there is a lot more going on than when we were in 2008 and 2009 in the deep recession, and we were talking about shovel-ready differently then. This is a much different place.

To that point, I remember actually in the summer at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, walking downtown near near the convention site. And there was a sign that said this project brought to you by the Joe Biden bipartisan infrastructure bill. I thought it was going on everywhere. So to your point, there are things happening.

I guess the question, I mean, we have chips plants. Listen, we have the chip plant being built in Arizona with TSMC. We have a Microsoft AI plant that's going to happen in Wisconsin. We have the EV battery plant that's happening in Georgia. There are things happening. OK, we need more to happen, though. That's all. Let me ask about the EVs and the renewables, because you talked about that.

um the president-elect has been pretty critical especially of the ev manufacturing of the there seems to be an indication that the government subsidies for ev purchases are going to disappear is there much that you see president biden doing in the next few weeks to again i guess to use that phrase sort of trump proof or next administration proof those types of initiatives the climate

initiatives? Yeah, so let's handle those each individually. I think he loves EV because he loves Elon. So I think he changed his mind a little about EVs, at least about Tesla. Listen, there's no question. I mean, Elon Musk has not been supportive of the tax credits for EV. So it would not surprise me

that those tax credits for EVs would unwind. My guess is for twofold. One, Elon Musk will look at that as part of his efficiency plan. And then number two, it's not something that, you know, President Trump has been supportive of. So you could see that go away. I would say secondly, you know, for me, I've always been a...

all above energy approach. I'm from the Obama part where all above energy. We want renewables. We're not getting rid of fossil fuels. We want nuclear. We need all of the above. So from my perspective, the issue I would say is renewables are growing, but they're growing at a slower pace than what we predicted.

And so it's not like overnight renewable energy is going to be, you know, 20% of all energy. I think what is interesting is the largest state with using renewables today is Texas. They've actually overcome California. So this isn't a red or blue state thing. Everyone's using renewables, all the energy companies moving their CapEx into renewables.

They're not looking to drill baby drill, no disrespect to President Trump. We're already drilling 14 million barrels a day or 13 million barrels a day. So we're already at that. So I think that we should move to an all-in energy approach. And my guess is that would be smart. I don't think we ignore renewables. I think we continue to grow renewables.

With respect to battery, I mean, we can't, listen, I'm not an environmentalist, but I'm not a climate action denier.

Okay, we have an issue with our climate. Look what's going on. It's clear to me that if we can continue to reduce carbon emissions, that is a positive. I'm not one that's going to predict whether it was 2035 or 2050 or whatever the number is.

But the more we reduce carbon emissions, the better we are overall from a climate perspective. And I think that's a good thing. And that's where renewables do come in. Let me finish with this. China, major issue for the Trump administration prior. The Biden administration today will be a major issue for the Trump administration moving forward. Obviously, you have the president meeting with Xi in Peru.

I was a lot of people have sort of not criticized, but noted that the Biden administration hasn't really rolled back those tariffs on China. Tariffs, a big part of President-elect Trump's plan moving forward now, obviously, much, much sort of larger impact, I think, than we currently see. Was that a mistake on the part of Democrats to kind of.

hold steady with the tariff plan? Because now that they criticize tariffs without kind of getting rid of tariffs, right? Well, it's not just they criticize tariffs. If you look at some of, you know, President Trump's advisors like Steve Moore, he'll tell you tariffs is awful, right? It's a tax. I mean, every economist says tariff is a tax and it hits the consumer. So let's just level set this. I'm not for tariffs either, right?

Okay, I don't think anyone for the most part, you're going to find very few people in the business and or economic world that say tariffs is a good thing when it's broad based. The reason I have difficulty with President-elect Trump's approach is it's 20% broad based tariffs or it's 100% for a certain, you know, whether it's China or whatever it may be or whether it's auto vehicles.

So to me, I think the way he's using it is too much like a blunt instrument. I think he has to be more tactical. I'm not against tariffs for a tactical approach. President Obama used tariffs for tires. I don't have an issue that President Trump and now President Biden use it for certain items of China, you know, which was EV. So as long as we use it in a tactical approach,

Yes, then that's smart because it helps you negotiate. My issue with President Trump is he's talking broad-based as if we collect money from tariffs. That's just not accurate. And so I oppose a broad-based approach or an across-the-board approach. I don't oppose something that's very tactical in nature. And so...

I don't think it was a Democrat thing, you know, saying they were against the tariffs. It was no different than a lot. Most Republicans said the same thing. Just look at the Wall Street Journal opinion piece where when he talked about giving deer these tariffs, I think they said,

that Trump's approach to manufacturing is a deer in headlines. And they even said that they thought actually Kamala Harris was a friendly approach to business. So this isn't Robert Wolf saying it, this is the conservative Wall Street Journal. So I think that I'm hopeful the way

President-elect is talking about tariffs as more from a negotiation perspective than an implementation. How do you anticipate President Biden talking about that issue with Xi this weekend? I mean, does he come in with like a warning? Does he come in and I mean, is there much he can do to reverse course? Listen, I think that.

My guess is these meetings between, you know, President Biden and state leaders are going to be cordial.

There'll be adversarial talk where they have their disagreements. There'll be friendly talk where they have their agreements. My guess is there'll be chatter amongst themselves about Taiwan, about the Trump administration, about tariffs, about Ukraine, about the Middle East. There's so much going on geopolitical. My guess is there's a lot to discuss. And there's going to be a complete change between how Biden looked at

you know, geopolitics and how, you know, Trump looks at geopolitics. So so I think there's you know, I think there's just going to be incredible change in the air. It sounds like that will be the case and certainly will be what is talked about at the G20 next week as well. Robert Wolf, appreciate our chats, appreciate your analysis and the context. And we'll keep having these conversations because I think there'll be a lot of economic news to talk about. Yes. So thank you for having me on.

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On the campaign trail, one of the things we often heard from President Trump was that we were closer to World War III than ever. He warned against the use of nuclear weapons and said famously none of the wars and conflicts that had started under President Biden would have begun under him if he'd remained in office. There was no talk of that. Would have never, ever happened with Putin. Would have never happened. Israel, October 7th, would have never happened.

Iran would have never done that. They had very little money at that point. Now they're rich as hell.

But Biden allowed that to happen and Kamala. The president-elect is a known quantity to many world leaders who dealt with him four years ago. But moving forward, Fox News White House correspondent Jackie Heinrich reports the president-elect may want to deal with them differently. The incoming president is already making calls of his own. According to Bloomberg, Trump gave his cell phone number to the Indonesian leader in a call this week and said, call anytime you want.

Trump is still a bit haunted by career government officials leaking transcripts of his calls during his first term. So reportedly he is flouting procedure and calling folks directly. This week, the president-elect met with President Biden at the White House.

welcome thank you very much both said it was a good substantive cordial meeting and while we didn't get much detail the former president said he specifically picked biden's brain over the middle east biden's nsa jake sullivan did say after the meeting iran china and russia's war in ukraine were

was on President Biden's mind. I will only note that President Biden reinforced his view that the United States standing with Ukraine on an ongoing basis is in our national security interest. And it's in our national security interest because a strong Europe, a stable Europe,

standing up to aggressors and dictators and pushing back against their aggression is vital to ensuring that we don't end up getting dragged directly into a war, which has happened obviously twice in the 20th century on the European continent. Sullivan insisted that President Biden strengthened our alliances, especially in the Indo-Pacific, protected our technologies, including through export control measures, while keeping competition with China from veering into confrontation.

We've heard since former President Trump was reelected, a denial from the Kremlin that Russia's president has spoken with Trump. But we know Putin spoke with Germany's Chancellor Friday, a day before President Biden met with China's President Xi Jinping, as all of them wait for round two with President-elect Trump. I think the effects it's having is something we don't see. General Jack Keane is a retired four-star general, the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, and Fox News senior strategic analyst. President Trump won a decisive election.

victory in terms of the American people, the cross-section, the numbers in the popular vote, the electoral vote being an overwhelming victory. And certainly our adversaries pay attention to that. So he obviously has a mandate, and then he has –

the House and the Senate also, which is very unusual for American presidents. Even some of our most notable presidents have split houses like Ronald Reagan. So the reality is our adversaries are paying attention, and they have taken advantage of the United States in the last four years.

Because they believe American leadership is weak and we do not have the political will to confront them. So it's not an isolated event.

that Russia invaded Ukraine. He did so because he believed he's going to get away with it. And it's not an isolated event that Iran operationalized all their proxies to make a serious move to drive the United States out of the region and destroy the state of Israel. By destroying the state of Israel, I mean making it such a volatile region

security situation that people would not want to raise their children there and their grandchildren and a small population of Jews that live in Israel, seven to nine million, would migrate out of it. That is the intent. And they believe, these two countries believe that because they're going to get away with it. The United States is not going to do anything directly against them. The other thing is that President Xi has stepped up

His game in the Indo-Pacific region considerably more intimidation and coercion on our allies in the region, most significantly Taiwan, and they're threatened taking Taiwan by force. So all that has happened since President Trump left office.

And they see the United States as vulnerable and they see this as opportunity. What has happened as a result of the election is that all four countries that are our adversary, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, are right now, we don't see it, but they're doing it. They are reassessing what is happening here. Are they going to continue to be as aggressive as they've been? Because they have experience with this president.

They know that he has the political will to confront them. And he has the American people decisively behind him and two houses of the Congress.

So that reassessment is taking place, and I expect President Trump, when he comes into office at his inauguration speech, to issue some warning. He'll find the words and find the tone to issue a warning to our adversaries, and I think they will take that seriously. And I suspect...

that he's going to tell them, you know, don't take advantage of America's national interest. He'll find the words to describe that. And then I believe what President Trump is going to do is he's going to rebuild our military. The budgets have been flat for the last four years. And he's going to really go after China economically for the fact that they broke the last economic deal with us

and never did purchase all the U.S. imports they were supposed to do. And now there's a trillion dollars in surplus, which means they export a trillion dollars over what we are importing to China.

And he's going to take issue with that and go right after them, I expect. So what we're going to see, the summary of what I just said, is a considerably more aggressive approach dealing with our adversaries, but at the same time offering them the opportunities to make deals if you want to stop the fighting and if you want to stop your economic predatory activity. He will always have that out there in terms of diplomatic efforts.

Let me ask you about one thing we do know is a call the president-elect had with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And we know that as well that Elon Musk was briefly on this call. Is it your belief that

This administration, we know President-elect Trump on the campaign trail said he would end this war even before he took office. I don't know if that's possible. Maybe you can weigh in. Does this end soon? And does it end with Zelensky giving up land? Here's what I believe will happen. President Trump will come to grips with the reality that

Putin that he knew four years ago is not the Putin he's dealing with today. Putin today is a wartime commander who,

who's conducted a major war in Europe, not seen since World War II. He has his entire economy on a war footing, and he has three allies substantially helping him with that war, China, Iran, and North Korea. And Putin is seeking total control of Ukraine. He thought he was going to do it in three weeks. He is determined to finish that.

So when you go into negotiations with Putin, he doesn't even want to negotiate. And the reason is that because he wants total victory. He doesn't want a deal being made where he has the Donbass region or 20 percent of Ukraine and then Ukraine has the rest of it and it's over.

That's not where he is. So that's number one. Putin is a player here, and he's going to find him considerably more obstinate than what he has been before. Now, the second thing, and I will say this as a footnote to what I just said, is Putin...

likes to be on a world stage talking to a president of the United States, and I think he personally probably likes Trump but knows he's an adversary, and in his mind he's an enemy, but he's not going to construct it like that. So that returns him on the world stage with an American president. It gives him a lot of legitimacy at home when his country is at war, and the casualties are extraordinary.

I mean, he's taking 30,000 casualties a month. I mean, it's pretty staggering. And certainly that's having some impact on his domestic audience. That is why he is paying. If you hold on to this, he is every soldier that gets killed in rubles. They are paying them $150,000 to that family, which exceeds anything they would make in a year, even if they had two or three males in the family working full time.

And he's trying to buy their compliance and minimize their outrage, you know, over their youngster being killed. So the reality is these negotiations are not going to be simple. And also with Zelensky, I mean, you mentioned it. He doesn't want to give up territory. He would have to in these negotiations. He may be willing to give up some. But if the deal is really bad –

Zelensky may just vote to continue fighting. I mean, the Ukrainians are tough as nails. I know them pretty well. And in fact, I'm going to see a bunch of Ukrainian military leaders this afternoon and talk to them.

and talk to them about America and talk to them about what's happening to them. And it is amazing. They are willing to sacrifice an awful lot to protect their way of life. And why is that? Well, because they spent generations under the control of a communist state. They know exactly what that is like. And they don't want to go back to that. They're willing to die to prevent that from happening. So don't underestimate Zelensky in this. What I'm trying to say is,

That statement that he made is a campaign statement, and I'm trying to put it in the

in the reality of what is actually taking place with these two leaders. And listen, Trump will be very sensitive to that. He's going to get classified briefings that he hasn't had. And I know that for a fact because I talked to him about it. He hasn't had his classified briefings. He doesn't know what Russia's real intent is today, which is to expand beyond Ukraine. He doesn't understand also the dynamics that Ukraine is dealing with. And a lot of that is classified. So he'll go into that. And I think he will.

attempt to negotiate some kind of a ceasefire and a deal. But Putin is a different player than what he dealt with before is the point I'm trying to make.

Fascinating. Thank you for that. Let me get your – just two more questions. Your thoughts on the Middle East. The former president had made comments on the campaign trail about letting Israel finish the job, right? Then he met with Arab leaders in Dearborn, Michigan, and said he wanted this war to end as well, and Israeli action in the Middle East, in Lebanon and Gaza. We've now since the election seen a New York Times report

that there are some Iranians in this new administration in Iran who are open to some sort of deal with the Trump administration. What is your assessment as we move through seeing some of these new appointments the president-elect would like to make? Elise Stefanik, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz. What does that signal to you about how this administration plans to deal with Iran, but also those proxies and what Israel will be, I guess, told?

about this administration? No, that's a great question. So first of all, President Trump is very pro-Israel. We saw that move the embassy to Jerusalem. He also made certain that the Golan Heights, which was controversial, was a part of Israel. And his administration, led by his son-in-law, Kushner, created the Abraham Accords, which is absolutely a paradigm shift in the Middle East.

with Arab countries normalizing relationships with Israel. But war broke out, and I'm absolutely convinced that if Trump was president, the war we're seeing in the Middle East or we're seeing in Ukraine would not be happening. It's hypothetical, obviously, to make that statement and speculative. But I don't believe those leaders move on Trump because they know he wouldn't stand for it. So anyway, where are we?

Here's what I know. These are my Israeli sources. Trump is talking to Prime Minister Netanyahu about, listen, see if you can end at least the Gaza situation or possibly the Hezbollah situation prior to my coming into office. Let's see if we can get one of those done. Now, in Gaza,

So Hamas is about finished as a military organization. They're fragmented. They still have a few thousand there. They can continue to do guerrilla operations against Israeli forces. There has to be some kind of governance, which is really complicated to run Gaza successfully.

and the Arabs have to participate in that. There could be a ceasefire there, but Hamas would have to cooperate. To date, they haven't, but that is a potential. Right now, dealing in Lebanon, frankly, the Israelis have initiated negotiations for a ceasefire. And, of course, they want the...

Hezbollah to stop firing into northern Israel. And that's where they're clearing out all the Hezbollah military that have been in southern Lebanon and the infrastructure supporting that with ammunition, storage sites and everything to prevent that from happening. They've about succeeded in doing that.

But they don't want Hezbollah moving back in there if the Israelis left. So they want some kind of an agreement going back to the 2006 UN Resolution 1701, which made Hezbollah stay north of the Latami River.

And they had peacekeepers on the ground to enforce it. Of course, they violated that. And the peacekeepers were a mere shadow of what should have been done. That's the negotiation that's taking place right now. And Hezbollah has to agree to that. Right now, they're resisting it. But they may agree. Why? Because Trump is coming. And he's a factor in this.

And that's the reality of it. So it strengthens Netanyahu's hand in the negotiations that's coming. In terms of Iran...

I believe, you know, Trump is going to put maximum sanctions back on. He's going to give Iran some unofficial red lines, not necessarily public, about what they're doing with their proxies and what they're doing with Israel and what they're doing certainly with attacking the United States. By the way, over 300 attacks on U.S. forces inside Iraq and Syria since President Biden became president. Three hundred? Over three hundred.

Wow. 175 before October the 7th, 125 since October the 7th. And the Houthis have been firing ballistic anti-ship missiles at Navy warships. First time warships have been fired on since World War II.

And we have not taken direct action against Iran for any of this. I believe President Trump is going to talk to the Iranians and confront them with this reality and let them know without a doubt that if you continue to do this, that I'm going to deal with you directly, not indirectly by attacking the proxies that are doing the shooting, because obviously that hasn't stopped anything, but by dealing with you. At the same time, because this is

This is part of Trump's DNA. He will probably likely say to them, if you want to make a deal, if you want to sit around the table and let's end all of this stuff and end your nuclear development, I'm willing to talk to you about it. And I'm sure he will say that. And may the meeting that Elon Musk had with the Iranian foreign minister may have been carrying that message, you know, to Iran.

The foreign minister saying, you know, you got two choices. You continue on the path you're on, then Trump is going to come for you. He's not going to sit on his hands like Biden did. I mean, I don't know what the words were, but you get I'm trying to be speculative about the intent. And then the second thing he said, or the other choice is, you know, Trump's willing to talk to you and make a deal.

And the deal would have to be a lot better than the Obama deal in terms of stopping a nuclear program. But you'd also have to stop the proxies from attacking Israel. And so they're going to stop attacking the United States. So those two things are there.

I believe, and they're very operative. And I think it's sound, to be quite frank about it, you know, to carry a big stick, but also have a willingness to talk. You know, it's the military strength and the credible threat that you're using against an adversary that creates deterrence. And Biden, our adversaries never believed that the political will was there for him to confront them. And they were right.

Absolutely right. I'm dying to ask you this question, and I don't know how comfortable you'll be answering it, so feel free to just tell me. But you mentioned that you think the former president, president-elect, will reimplement tough sanctions on Iran. One of the things he said at the New York Economic Club while he was on the campaign trail was –

that he doesn't love the idea of lasting sanctions anymore. He said, I want to put them on, but take them off. He said, I actually want to do more with tariffs. And he said, one of the things about sanctions is that you can run this risk of

Rating the U.S. dollar that countries and we see this with BRICS now that they're going outside of the U.S. dollar. Nigeria is selling, I guess, oil now in its own currency. There are a lot of countries now moving away from the dollar. And the former president said at the time at the Economic Club that if we if we lose the value of the dollar, it will be tantamount to losing a war.

I know that's a little bit more economic policy and maybe Treasury Department sanctioned policy than what you deal with, but I imagine you might have some thoughts about those thoughts. Yeah, well, I mean, sanctions, you know, there's obviously goodness a part of them. They do get an adversary's attention. And what are you trying to do with it? You're trying to modify their behavior.

And if you enforce them, and really it takes very hard work to enforce sanctions. I got appreciation from that talking to Mike Pompeo when he was secretary. I mean, he said, Jack, this is hour by hour, day by day work. He said, because you impose the sanctions and you get your allies, they're all in. But then, you know, 69 days later, the allies are not in as much.

And then a few months down the road, they're not in much at all, you know. And you just got to stay on top of it. You got to stay on top of your own bureaucracy, you know, to make certain that they're there. So that's hard work in itself. Sanctions is a very public thing. It gets huge recognition.

But the enforcement is absolutely crucial to have the effect. You can see very public imposing sanctions on Russia, the United States, Europe, other countries. The result, not that much, you know, in terms of curbing their economic situation. Of course, China financing the war helps a lot. And I think what he's saying, if you do it long term,

And you do it with the main tool in your foreign policy national security kit bag. And that's the element you keep going to all the time. And it's multiple, multiple countries, etc.,

There's a long-term negative aspect of that, which I would agree with. And it clearly forces countries to go to different supply chains, different relationships. It forces those other countries, you know, not the major adversaries, but the other countries that are trading with them, you know, to move away from the United States.

And that's what he's talking about. In other words, you increase the pool of countries that are now outside the relationship with the United States that we used to have by imposing those sanctions long term. And he has the experience now of watching that. His own four years...

of doing it, but also, obviously, he wanted to return to the White House, so the four years he's out of it, he's staying on top of what's happening in the world, what's happening economically, militarily, diplomatically, and he sees all of that happening. So he's right about that. So they are not permanent solutions. I think that is what he's saying. They have it their place, but you have to recognize they also have their limitations.

General Jack Keane, retired four-star general, chairman of the Institute for the Study of War and Fox News senior strategic analyst, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, great talking to you.

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