What the Hell Is Going On

Many of President-elect Donald Trump’s announced cabinet nominees are well respected and will likely have an easy path to Senate approval. Others, not so much. So Trump has proposed doing something no president has ever done before: Skirting the Senate approval process altogether via recess appointments. This appointment scheme delegitimizes Trump’s cabinet picks, sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations, and is likely unconstitutional.

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. Yoo was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the general council of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court (Regnery, 2023) with Robert Delahunty.

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President Donald Trump made gains among nearly every single demographic group in his historic victory, particularly with Hispanic and young voters. As the Democratic Party asks itself how it lost to Trump – a man they cast as a dictatorial threat to Democracy itself – it will have to look inward and realize it has moved from being the “party of the kitchen table” to the “party of the faculty lounge.” Working middle-class voters don’t identify with a party that spends more time criticizing anyone who disagrees with them as bigoted than working to make peoples’ lives better. Will Democratic leaders learn from their mistakes and move to the center on cultural issues? Or will the Democrats continue to pander to their progressive base?

Ruy Teixeira is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American electoral politics. Before joining AEI, he was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Teixeira is co-founder of the Liberal Patriot Substack and co-author of the books The Emerging Democratic Majority (Scribner, 2002) and Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes (Henry Holt & Company, 2023).

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For the first time since 1892, a former president has regained the office he lost. President. In a landslide victory, Donald Trump won an extremely diverse coalition worried about the state of America’s economy and southern border. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, lost ignominiously and will have some soul-searching to do in the wake of failed identity politics and attempts to cast Trump and his supporters as a threat to American ideals. Who are the voters that drove Trump to victory? How might Trump’s second term differ from his first? And what can American leaders on both sides do right now to unite the country?

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President Donald Trump has routinely said he supports immigration, as long as it’s legal, including when Marc interviewed the former president for the Washington Post. Then in the pages of National Review, Marc’s AEI colleagues Michael Strain and Ramesh Ponnuru debated the extent to which Trump supported legal immigration during his presidency and now on the campaign trail. So, we are bringing Strain and Ponnuru onto the pod to debate the extent of Trump’s support for legal immigration, and how he might and should address immigration reform in a potential second term.

Ramesh Ponnuru is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies politics and public policy with a particular focus on the future of conservatism. Concurrently, he is the editor of National Review, where he has covered national politics and public policy for 25 years, and a columnist for the Washington Post.

Michael Strain is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the Professor of Practice at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a research fellow with the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. Dr. Strain also writes as a columnist for Project Syndicate.

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Read Marc’s interview with President Trump in the Washington Post here.

Read Michael Strain’s article in the National Review here.

Read Ramesh Ponnuru’s article in the National Review here.

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On this episode of WTH Extra! Dany and Marc speak to Fred Kagan about Israel’s strike against Iran over the weekend, retaliating against Iran’s unprovoked October 1 missile barrage against the Jewish state. Israel’s strike, involving over 100 aircraft, effectively took out Iranian air defense systems and decimated Iran’s missile production capabilities. However, either because of Israel’s strategic calculation or pressure from President Biden, Israel chose not to target Iran’s nuclear or oil production. Did Israel effectively put a halt to the tit-for-tat escalation with Iran? Or did it miss an opportunity to prevent a much more dangerous Iran down the road?

Frederick W. Kagan is the director of AEI’s Critical Threats Project and a former professor of military history at the US Military Academy at West Point. He is the author of the 2007 report Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, which is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq, and the book Lessons for a Long War (AEI Press, 2010). His Critical Threats Project, alongside the Institute for the Study of War, releases regular updates on Iranian activity in the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and transnational terrorism on the African continent.

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On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan launched his political career with his “Time for Choosing” speech, a moment so famous it simply became known as “The Speech.” Ushering in a new era of conservatism, future President Reagan argued that Americans were at a pivotal moment and had a choice to make: Did they want a massive welfare state or lower taxes, government, and greater capitalist innovation? To stand up to the enemies of freedom and American ideals or let Communism spread across the world? To let the government be run by elites or run by the people? On the sixtieth anniversary of this speech, one thing is clear: Reagan’s principles are timeless, and as relevant now as they were sixty years ago.

Peter Schweizer is an investigative journalist and author of five New York Times bestselling books. Peter is also the founder and president of the Government Accountability Institute, host of The Drill Down podcast, and was previously a consultant to the Office of Presidential Speechwriting in the White House for President George W. Bush. He is the author of Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (Knopf 2003).

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Watch Reagan’s Time for Choosing speech here.

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After a year of fighting between Israel, Iranian proxies, and now Iran itself, it’s still unclear how this war will end. Hezbollah and Hamas are militarily devastated. The Iranian regime has never looked weaker. But the Israel-Hamas war is also nowhere close to being settled, Israel is only now beginning its operations in southern Lebanon, and the world is still awaiting Israeli retaliation for Iran’s October 1 missile attack. In this episode of WTH Live! Elliott Abrams, David Deptula, and Eyal Hulata join Dany at AEI to discuss what the future of Israel’s de facto war with Iran should and will look like.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He previously served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House, and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the administration of Donald Trump.

Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula (Ret.) serves as the Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Gen. Deptula was the principal attack planner for the Operation Desert Storm air campaign, commander of no-fly-zone operations over Iraq in the late 1990s, director of the air campaign over Afghanistan in 2001, and has served on two congressional commissions charged with outlining America’s future defense posture. Gen. Deptula retired from the Air Force in 2010 after more than 34 years of distinguished service.

Eyal Hulata is a senior international fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Eyal previously served as Israel’s national security advisor and head of Israel’s National Security Council (NSC). During his tenure, Eyal coordinated the national effort on Iran, coordinated the maritime border agreement with Lebanon, and co-headed the Strategic Consultation Group with his American counterpart, Jake Sullivan.

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Chinese companies control 80% of the shipping cranes in U.S. ports. And the People’s Republic of China is now the largest foreign investor in U.S. shale gas. And Chinese companies operating in the U.S. are regularly caught stealing American intellectual property, personal data, and even genomic data. Why should we care? Because Chinese companies are legally beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, and have given the CCP the opportunity to cripple critical American infrastructure in the event of any confrontation between the U.S. and China. In this episode of WTH Live! the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party outline the threat certain Chinese companies operating in the U.S. pose to national security, and how to combat it.

Congressman John R. Moolenaar represents Michigan's Second Congressional District and serves as the Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. Rep. Moolenaar also serves as Michigan’s senior member of the House Committee on Appropriations and as the Co-Chair for the School Choice Caucus. Prior to joining the House, Rep. Moolenaar served in the Michigan State Senate and Michigan House of Representatives.

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi represents Illinois’s Eighth Congressional District and serves as the Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, making him the first South Asian American in history to lead a Congressional Committee. He also serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

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One year ago today, Hamas perpetrated the worst massacre of Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. In this episode of WTH Extra! Dany and Marc discuss Dany’s article in the WTH Substack, WTH 10/7: It's not just a war on Israel. In the year that followed October 7, 2023, Jews have been the subjects of antisemitic attacks around the world. Iran and its proxies have opened up a seven front war on the Jewish state. And Western leaders have routinely failed to address the problems exposed after October 7, at home and abroad. The time for action was yesterday. But it is never too late to speak out against hate and reject tribalism at home, and the time is now to stop Iran and support American allies abroad.

Read Dany’s article in the WTH Substack here.

General (Ret.) Frank McKenzie was the Commander of United States Central Command when the U.S. took out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. What can we learn from Gen. McKenzie’s time as CENTCOM Commander? It’s simple: America’s enemies respect our strength. And when we fail to punish bad actors, stand by our allies, or uphold our commitments, our enemies – from Iran to Russia to China – are emboldened. In our conversation with Gen. McKenzie, we discuss his new book, lessons from his service under multiple administrations, and the decision making leading up to America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

General (Ret.) Frank McKenzie the former Commander of United States Central Command. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the University of South Florida’s Global National Security Institute, the Executive Director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, and as a Distinguished Senior Fellow on National Security at the Middle East Institute. He is the author of The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century (Naval Institute Press, 2024).

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