 Hi, my name is Sandy Baird and I'm here with Kurt Mehta and we're going to have a discussion about what's happening in the United States and around the world. And Kurt is a lawyer in Burlington and I am also, and we're also citizens of this great United States. And that's how we're talking as citizens and as very concerned citizens most of the time. We're here today to talk a little bit about what's going on with the Biden presidency. And Kurt has a lot of feelings and opinions and facts about the Biden administration and so do I, but I'll let's start the conversation. So what do you think? What's going on? All right. So we're about 10 months into this administration and I'm going to say something that's probably revolutionary for a lot of people that are on the left and on the right. I'm going to say that the Biden administration has continued a lot of the policies that the Trump administration established during his presidency, much the chagrin of a lot of people that are in Biden's base. And in contrast to a lot of the news reporting on the left and the right, I think the two presidents have more in common in terms of policy than one would believe. Candidate Biden spoke out. Can I interrupt you for a minute? So are you referring mainly to foreign policy or also domestic or both? I'm going to point to both. Yeah, examples of foreign policy where the two administrations, there's actually been continuity between the two administrations is on the issue of Cuba. Policy towards Cuba. President Trump during the course of his administration put through about 243 sanctions and that's a fact, 243 additional sanctions on Cuba. On Cuba. Poor little Cuba. Poor little Cuba. Yeah. And candidate Biden ran on the fact that he was going to go back towards the Obama approach of reconciliation and reproach with Cuba and President Biden has not done so to that list of 243 sanctions. President Biden has actually added another two, making it 245. What are sanctions exactly? I don't know if our audience really understands sanctions and what they do to a country. Well, the sanctions regime is specifically in the case of Cuba has to do with an embargo on that country, which the Cubans call a blockade, an economic. What's the difference? Well, a blockade is basically, what the Cubans claim, an embargo can be looked at as a unilateral action on the part of the United States in this example, that we have certain penalties that we've imposed on Cuba because of the type of government, the form of government and the leadership that it's had. So that's an embargo. It's a regime of different sanctions of penalties. What the Cubans claim is that- For trade or what? For everything. For everything. Okay. For life in general. Okay. It affects trade, which affects its economy, which affects its medical care, tourism, a number of different areas, and of course its defense too. What the Cubans have always claimed is that this was not just an embargo, a sanctions regime or penalties imposed by its biggest neighbor, that it's actually a blockade. Now the difference here is when it's a blockade, no other country can come in and actually do business and work with Cuba, which is largely the case in many areas. Most countries have companies that work and do work in Cuba and other countries. However- Let's look at an example. Don't the Italians, for instance, have a hotel chain there? Sure. Yeah. But the premise under that hotel chain that they have to operate by is that if they are going to work with Cuba- Now this is the extraterritoriality principle that the embargo sanctions regime has actually imposed is that if you work with Cuba, I'm going to use very simple terms, you can't work with the United States. Okay. Right. So a company, let's say you and I had a hotel company in a different country or we sold cars. We would have to make a decision whether or not we want to work with Cuba, a country of about 11 million people, mostly kind of on the poor side, or the United States, 320 million people, one of the richest countries in the world. And we would have to forgo that market for Cuba. It doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense to do that unless you have something in your DNA that makes you want to specifically work with Cuba to the exclusion of the United States. So that's the decision one has to make if they're going to do business with Cuba if they're from another country. And that's certainly something that we actually, as the United States, through its sanctions regime have imposed on Cuba and other countries. So that's why Cuba calls it a blockade. Right. So technically, sure, there are a couple of companies that have chosen to work with Cuba, but normally you have to be nuts to give up a market of 320 million affluent people, many affluent people, not all, and to the, you know, and prefer a small island country of 11 million. Okay, right. So the countries that do do business in Cuba can afford to do so, like China. Certainly. Or Russia. But even China and Russia. Yeah. Yeah. And if they make a company in China, let's use as an example, they would be crazy to, you know, think that they're going to succeed and thrive without the U.S. market 90 miles away. But they do do business in Cuba. They do. There are exceptions, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Not many, though. Yeah. Not many. No, big ones. Big countries can do that. They can. Probably. They can afford to do it. If they can afford to do it. And the United States doesn't cut off China. No, they don't. No. However, if a Chinese company did business in Cuba, it is excluded from doing business with the United States. But does China have any private companies in the first place? All their companies are really state-owned or at least majority state-owned, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Not probably very different from Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac. Right. Right. And Russia's the same or not. Russia has always been friendly toward Cuba. Sure. Sure. But that being said, private Russian companies always have one eye on the American market. Sure, of course. Absolutely. Which makes sense because of the population. Right. Because of the American economy. Okay, so but you're arguing that Biden has continued most than of Trump's foreign policy. A lot of foreign policy. And that's an example. So Cuba was an example. Yeah. Another example is Iran. Candidate Biden in 2020 mentioned that it was a terrible act on Trump's part to unilaterally pull out of the Iran deal, which basically allowed Iran to multiply their enriched uranium by tenfold since we've departed from this deal. Candidate Biden said it was a terrible decision to go that route. His current national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in 2000, I want to say 19, when he was, I think he was in a think tank and he made a comment about the pullout from the Iran deal. Iran deal. Yeah. He called it unilateral, I'm sorry, predatory unilateralism on the part of the Trump administration to do that. However, ten months into the Biden administration, we have a situation where there really isn't any major move towards reentering that deal. And as I mentioned before, in that time frame between Trump pulling out and present, Iran has about ten times the amount of enriched uranium that it had when the deal was being abide by the United States as well as other powers. Okay. I read today, however, I mean, certainly one of our main allies, Israel, doesn't want a reentry into that deal, right? So what's going on there? I mean, are we just going with Israel then? The same way as we've always? Or what's the deal? What have we changed about Iran? Anything? Perhaps. I mean, that's what we are doing. But that was a major departure on the part of the Obama administration to engage in that deal. Right. If folks have a memory of, you know, the beginning stages of that deal, the negotiations, President Netanyahu of Israel at that time went before the General Assembly of the United Nations. Just Obama's wishes. Right. In the General Assembly and held up a picture of a ticking bomb with a fuse that was about to, you know, hit. A bomb that he believed that Iran was going to have. Correct. Right. Yeah. So he opposed the deal, always. He was always opposed to the deal. However, under Secretary of State John Kerry at the time, they worked fairly hard, the Obama administration, to engage in this deal. And they had to get Russia on board, as well as the Germans and the British and the French. And the French, right. Right. And so it was a difficult deal to orchestrate, but it did work out. And there was actual, you know, oversight of the programs that Iran had. The Iran was allowing inspectors to come in to view what they were doing. Now, are these things, you know, without error? Absolutely. Of course they were better than what we have now and what we have before. Well, without saying what was better or what was worse, what your contention is, is that... If the premise is that Iran should not develop a nuclear bomb. But the other premise is that Trump took us out of that deal. Correct? Correct. Okay. And so what you're saying is that Biden has not put us back into the deal. Right. So interestingly, you know, a big part of Trump's rhetoric was, you know, he was the deal maker. Yeah. He wasn't opposed to the deal or dealing with Iran. He said he didn't think the deal was good that Obama had struck. He wanted to negotiate a better deal. And interestingly, one of the excuses that the Biden administration now has used for not jumping back into the deal, assuming that the Iranians are even interested... At this point. ... at this point, is that it is now criticizing the Obama administration's deal by saying we need to strike a better deal. Right. Similar to the rhetoric that President Trump had on Iran. Right. Okay. So what about Afghanistan? Afghanistan, the President Biden continued Trump's attempt to withdraw from that country. That was the... Okay. So that's a continuation. That seems to be... That's a clear continuation of policy. In terms of how it was done, who knows if President Trump would have done a better job in terms of the optics. There wasn't a lot of preparation put into the departure prior to the change in administrations. So who knows what would have happened. But the policy in and of itself is a continuation of the Trump policy, which was to depart from that country. Right. Be... This is my thought on Afghanistan. I think that the United States got defeated and that Biden just had to get out and had to get out damn quick. And I think that Trump... I think it predates this... Yeah, I do, too. I do, too. Eternal admission of defeat predates Trump. There's no admission of defeat. Well, right, right. It's an internal... It's an internal admission of debate. Right. In fact, I think Trump wanted to withdraw to give him some kind of credit because he knew there was going to be a defeat. So let's get out now. And I do think he would have done it probably better because I think once Biden was elected, he was convinced that we could stay. Right. I bet you by the military. And then all of a sudden, the Taliban said, no, you can't stay and this is it. Get out. Yeah. And I think he did the right thing, frankly, by getting out. But the getting out, as you said, it was a catastrophe. The optics... The optics were terrible. Well, there was no preparation. I don't think... Right. Was there? The optics were terrible. It wasn't done well in advance. And the intelligence was bad that the Biden administration... Right. Why was the intelligence bad? Well, the intelligence is always bad in many situations like this. But... How could it have been bad? Since they assumed that the Taliban, in its attempt to recapture the country and its re-entry into Kabul, the capital city, was going to be a more protracted process. Right. But why did they do that? Did they make that mistake? Was it a mistake? Or were they just trying to stay there? That's a good question, Sandy. I don't know. I don't know if it was intentional. I think they were trying to stay there. Okay. That's what I think, but I don't have any real hard evidence of that. Right. Why would intelligence be so stupid? Why would they have missed the fact that American citizens knew that that was going to happen? Yeah. That they were going to take over? The interesting thing is that people on the left that would normally align themselves with Biden for the first time were critical of the Biden administration. I know. I saw that. Yeah. And that they actually were proposing a longer stay. I know. Why? For the first time. Even if that meant they were going to attack their savior, Biden, President Biden. Why? Why did that happen? I don't know, Sandy. Because they didn't want to give any credence to Trump. I think that most of the left has been guilty of Trump's derangement syndrome. Anything that Trump has ever done is bad, and everything to save the Biden administration is okay. Right. However, that's not how, even though the narrative, you may have a correct narrative, it's not playing out from a policy standpoint right now. No, I know it. I know it. As I'm going through a number of these different foreign policy. No, because I think in general that you're right. I think there are key differences, and maybe we'll get to that, but so in terms of foreign policy, your contention or argument is that it's just a continuation of the Trump administration. It takes Saudi Arabia, for example. Okay, what about it? The candidate at Biden took a very harsh stance against the current crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman. He's alleged, yes, bin Salman is alleged to have orchestrated the killing of that journalist, Khashoggi, Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist who had an American green card lived outside of Washington, D.C. And I won't spare you the details, but he was, you know, horrifically mutilated and killed. Chopped up into little pieces, sawed into little pieces. Right, okay, so you've finished my thought. Yeah, right, I don't know why he wouldn't bring that up. It was in a foreign embassy in Turkey where it happened, in an office. And candidate Biden said that sanctions would be imposed against Saudi Arabia as well as the crown prince himself, where the Trump administration largely tried to ignore the involvement of the Saudi prince because of their personal and business dealings that they have in that country, the Trump family has in that country, as well as with the prince. However, President Biden, when he came in and had the opportunity to impose sanctions, impose sanctions on a limited group of people that the crown prince offered as potential killers. And there were no sanctions against the prince himself, because when it came to it, Biden wasn't able to pull that off. Wasn't able to or didn't want to? Didn't want to. Why not? Not sure. Not sure. Because of the relationship that the country has with the Saudis, the Saudis behind the scenes are actually working with the Israelis. And there is this Middle Eastern attempt to isolate Iran, which the Sunni... Right. They're competitors, aren't they, Iran and Saudi Arabia? Right. And from a religious standpoint, religious philosophy standpoint, the Saudis, UAE, and most of the, a good number of the countries in the Middle East are Sunni Muslims and the Iranians are Shiite Muslims. So that's an internal thing between those countries that why they don't like one another. True. But they're also both interested in hegemony in the Middle East. Absolutely. I mean, they're both in a power struggle, too. It's not just a religious difference, religious differences are not only just that. That's for edification for the public. But yeah, behind the scenes, this is a power struggle, absolutely. But I don't really understand, I don't understand those kinds of power struggles because they get so lethal. Yes. And that's, like, for instance, in Yemen, what the heck is going on there? Yeah. You know, I don't really understand that. You essentially have a proxy war between the Saudis and the Iranians. Right, exactly. That's happening there. And we've been involved, too, with respect to the arming of the Saudis. Right. Right. Arming the Saudis. Right. That's one of our oldest allies in the Middle East, the Saudi Arabia, even though it's an absolutely brutal regime. Brutal regime and its connections with September, the September 11th attacks continue to be revealed in declassified memos 20 years ago. So what you're saying is crucial to understand, I think, even the nature of the U.S. federal government is that no matter who's the president, the foreign policy pretty much stays the same. Because it's not controlled by the president, no matter who he is. You can't downplay the role that institutions have. Well, you can't downplay the secret institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency, either. Sure. But even the not-so-secret ones. Yeah, I know. Department of Defense. Yeah. Yeah. A single man or woman is often not enough to recharge or change the acts of an institution that has had a certain policy for a lengthy period of time. I would guess that that's right. Difficult to change the culture as well as the actions and policies of the institution. Right. Well, think of the defense budget, so-called defense budget. Think about the fact that Biden did not favor any cuts in that, did he? No, that's right. No. And that depends on perpetual war, it would appear to me. Right. Which is certainly still going on. The situation in Syria is the same as well, right? Right. There's no changes in Syria. Right. I mean, what was revolutionary, if you want to use the term, drawing a blank, draining the swamp that the prior President Trump mentioned. What was very different about what he was trying to do, not that he did, but it was trying to do, at least in the beginning, is to disengage from a lot of places in the world that have been in this perpetual state of war that we've actively been involved in. And I think, at that time, President Trump's belief and policies that he was proposing was that this was unsustainable. Number one, yes, but, you know, I always was interested in Trump's foreign policy because what I saw from the beginning was crucial that he wanted to make deals with Russia. Right. He did not want Cold War any longer with Russia or Putin. I favored that. Right. And I think that's a lot of reasons why he did get jettisoned by the secret state, by the deep state, whatever you want to call it. The interesting part of that is, and I actually acknowledge that that was an interest on his part, at the very least in terms of working with the Russians on different types of things. However, I don't know who is responsible. You're calling the secret state, I'm not sure. But then bringing people into the fold, like John Bolton, who wound up screwing them later anyway. I know. You got rid of him, though, too. Well, yeah. But to even contemplate having someone with Mr. Bolton's policies in your administration when your role or your attempt is to try to reduce America's footprint in some of these difficult places where, you know, Mr. Bolton never saw a war that he didn't like. He didn't go to Vietnam, the one he was eligible to serve in. No, he didn't go, though, did he? Right. Of course not. Of course not. But so having these people in his administration, it created an odd contrast from the stated policy, which was to disengage. And then you have people, you know, we're talking, I mean, he was a national security advisor, if I'm not mistaken. No, I think so. Pretty big position. Right. But let's, okay, for once, let's put yourself in Trump's head for a bit, okay? Which I honestly tried to do at the time, because he's the President of the United States and I think we needed to figure it out at the time. So he's, I think that the guy put America first. That's a policy that was hotly disputed by everybody, not only the opposition of the Democrats, but also by whatever you want to call the Central Intelligence Agency or the globalists in the economy or much of the Democratic Party, what they, what the economy is tending toward is a globalist economy. Trump didn't like that. Yeah. Okay, he didn't like our relationship with Russia, and he was actually in his own mind putting America first. Now, that, though, brought him into political problems. With people like John Bolton. So I think that Trump was trying to maneuver between two impossible contradictions. Well, you have a situation then where, you know, I mean, I'm sure people on the left aren't going to like my... No, they don't like anything I said for a long time. No, unlike my mention of Trump and Lincoln in the same sentence, but there was a great book that Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote about, you know, Lincoln's cabinet. I read it. I'm drawing a blank as to what the game was. It was that you keep your enemies close, basically. Right, right. So President Lincoln, you know, essentially in that context, if you put him in a modern context, would have brought someone like John Bolton in so he could kind of keep tabs. Not only keep tabs, but prove to the opposition that Trump faced, that he was at least listening or that he was throwing them a bone. Sure. That's what I thought he was doing. And then you remember that, as you said, Bolton left, and he also betrayed Trump in a lot of ways. Sure, sure. I mean, Trump paid for all that. Remember the whole Russia collusion stuff? Right. His friendship or his willingness to consider a decency toward Russia was treated as a Russian hoax. Yeah. I mean, that was, you know, that policy. And look, I mean, you look at, you know, Obama's attempt to reconcile with Cuba. Right. You didn't get any credit about it. No, no. You know, I mean, if the mindset of the foreign policy establishment or institutions that are in place. No, they hated it. The foreign policy toward Cuba. I mean, John F. Kennedy got skewered on foreign policy toward Cuba. It's important to somebody. I mean, it's hard to imagine how that island has stuck in people's anger for so many years. It's amazing. It's amazing. And it's just as poor, but it's socialist. Right. And there is a political game that's being waged in the state of Florida because of a large, you know, exile Cuban population. Right. I wouldn't say just in Florida. It's also pretty big in New Jersey, isn't it? Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah. Okay. But so your contention is that it's basically the same administration, particularly in terms of foreign policy. Largely in terms of foreign policy. Okay. But turning to domestic, the domestic scene, you still think that's the same? On immigration, the issue of immigration. Legal. Legal immigration. Yeah. I'm actually going to say even illegal, where there were supposedly far many more illegal influence in the country during the Trump administration than the Obama administration. Yeah, the Obama. Yes, yes. Obama administration had the reputation. He personally had the reputation of being called the deporter-in-chief. Yeah, I know it. And he did? Right. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So why do you... I mean, my thing is that I watch this every day and it's reported every day now on all the networks. Yeah. Only at first it was reported, only really on Fox, of this border crisis of people flooding into the country. Haitians all living under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Is that the place? I believe so. Yeah, okay. But it appears to me that this is a difference, because Trump wanted to put a wall up. Right. Correct? That's correct. They've already repudiated that. Right. Isn't that a difference? Yeah. Well, Trump wanted to put a physical wall up. Yeah. Yeah. The wall that's still up right now is a red tape wall that exists, and which hasn't really changed. But how are all these people flooding in, though? Aren't they being released with a court date, many of them? Some are. Yeah. But that's always been a system. Yeah. But Trump, I believe, tried to stop that. Tried. Right. Right. And Biden, see, I'm concerned about this, this big difference, because I don't understand it. If you accept the figures of people coming across the border, why is this happening? Is it an attempt to get some kind of a cheap labor market? Why on earth is this happening? Okay. The other thing that I find concerning is that there's so many jobs in this country that are going unfilled. Yeah. There's, I mean, for lack of a better description, people don't want to work. Why not? I mean, they're getting great benefits. Not no, no, no. They were cut off. Up until recently, they were getting great benefits, and many jobs and industries, the benefits that they were getting for staying home exceeded what they were getting when they actually had to shop. And I understand that. I understand people's desire not to go back to some crummy job that they think is crummy and low-grade. Sure. Those benefits have been cut off. Yeah. So what's going on now? So there's something else happening in the labor market, which I think, you know, I don't have any answer for. Nobody seems to. But it seems to be something that they're trying to study and understand. And it's actually disproportionately affecting, if affecting is the right term, men more than women. It seems like a lot of men are not going back into the labor market. Many jobs, you know, really. I mean, I've worked at crummy jobs a lot in my life. Right now. I mean, I am a lawyer, and that's been quite rewarding. But you know, I worked as a nurse's aide. I worked in jobs that were very—I worked on a picking tobacco on a farm in Connecticut when I was a teenager. Why would people want to do that again if they don't have to? Yeah. Besides, which is lousy pay. Right. But all the factors that come into immigration, where you have people from overseas begging to do—to be a nurse's aide or to do pizza or— I know. So that's what I mean. Why then? What is the—why is this happening? Why are people being allowed into the country? I don't—I don't—I like people coming into the country. I like people being here in Burlington, as a matter of fact, because I think it makes Burlington useful and have a lot of young people. But the Biden administration seems to be allowing a lot of illegal—or rather, people coming across the border, and I guess they say they're going to apply for asylum. So they're being released with a court date. Yeah. And Trump tried to stop that. Right. But the approvals, I mean, again, the institutional changes that Trump made within the immigration system with the appointment of judges, however, those have not gone away. So even though Biden may have a certain policy at the border, they're— If he does. Or the policy could be to letting people in. The policy and the courts have not changed. No, I know, but they don't get court dates, as we both know. Well, they— No, they do. They do. It's— Yeah, a year later. I haven't—yeah. They don't get immigration—they don't get work authorization before that. Yeah. I think our time is—we're getting the high sign from the folks here. Okay, great. But anyway, the domestic policy is something we maybe should explore the next time around. The next time, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, thank you very much, Kurt. We'll see you in a month or so, I hope.