 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're here. We're here with Lou Pulirisi, who is the CEO of EPRINC, an energy policy research organization in Washington, D.C., and he's been very active. That's why he just came back from some conference. Am I right? Yes, we held a workshop all day-to-day on the continuing of our efforts with the Japanese and the South Asian countries on expanding regasification in the LNG markets throughout the Pacific Rim. It's very important to maintain diplomatic-business ties with as many countries as you can. Absolutely. We should have the long deal. Yes, exactly. We had a guest last hour, Lou, who was formerly a professor here at the Hawaii Pacific University. Now he's a professor of international relations in a university in Mexico, and he's trying to make, and successfully so, a kind of mecca for international studies. He's got a lot of American students and European students and Asian students down there. They speak English, and he is teaching international relations down there. I asked him, I said, we've had damage to our international relations in the last few months. How much time does it take to repair that? How much time does it take to put Humpty back together once you've offended national leaders in your allied country? And his answer was, a long time. It doesn't come back right away. It doesn't come back right away. But I think I'm going to try to put some of this in context, if I think it's very important. I'm not going to justify anything Trump's done, but I think it's important if we lose the historical content. And we're not on live yet, so I think we should... Wait, wait. We are live. We're live. Well, we are live. Live, so I want to tell you now. Fair disclosure. So let's talk a little bit about... So one of the things you wanted to talk about tonight was this recently published just within the last few hours, a opinion editorial piece written by a senior White House staff, of whom we do not know the name or her name, anonymously, right? And as we discussed, that article presents a picture of senior political appointees who are trying to manage the various policy apparatus of the U.S. government in a way in which is a sort of a continuous crisis mode because of the erratic and unpredictable and counterproductive, if we could say, behavior of the president. Would that be correct? Yes, it would. So I think Trump is this kind of, you know, Shakespearean, tragic character in many ways. I agree with that. He clearly loses me on style points. Generally, I think a lot of his behavior is very counterproductive. I want to sort of put this in a little bit of historical context as we were talking. First, we have this American history in the past. We have had such a series of social forces. So if you go back to the Gilded Age, between 1870 and 1920, we had enormous change in the United States, industrialization, railroads, mass production of steel, the introduction of all kinds of new technologies, electricity, advanced navigation systems, ultimately in the early 20th century automobiles. So it is huge social format in the United States. Also, it disrupted the way of life, a rural way of life, and it resulted in very high levels of income inequality. And oddly enough, the level of inequality in the U.S. today is roughly equivalent to what it was in 1870 to 1890. How interesting. So you have the emergence of the Carnegie and the J.P. Morgan and the railroad truss and the oil truss, all these things. And at this time, the United States, people don't look at history very carefully, it was a period of extreme anti-immigration because people's lives were being turned over, right? And they were feared of outside forces. It was also a period of time of anti-trade era and concerned over these foreign forces that were impinging on Americans. And you see the emergence of populism. And populism is really not anything more than voters or constituents pulling off the energy of the populist. They're not pulling off of an idea. They're pulling off the energy about all of this. So I think that's one thing to keep in mind. And we got through that period. And we had to do new institutions. We had to have institutions that dealt with anti-trust, the emergence of social safety nets, all kinds of things that allowed us to get through that. And in a way, the high-tech revolution where, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison, a massive amount of wealth plus a coastal elite. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. This is also a period of enormous format, right? And the way Trump is, he played on this in many ways. That's why he's president. I actually believe he understood this at some gut level. I don't think necessarily a massive intellectual anything. So, and I think a lot of the elite, you know, most people who live where you live and coast of California, East Coast, I think they're misreading these forces. I think they're trying to think that this is some crazy person has gotten, become president and has nothing to do with them. They are not responsible for any of these, the social unrest or the, all the people that live in flyover country. They have nothing to do with that. So yesterday, I was watching a lecture by Victor Davis-Hampson. Let me know, Victor Davis-Hampson. He's a well-known conservative philosopher, the expert on the Peloponnesian War. He wrote a book between, you know, the Peloponnesian Wars and the Battle of Midway. Well, he talks about how, you know, it is democratic societies that are the fiercest combatants. They're the most effective in fiercest combatants. And he said that Trump actually is, he's the first person to understand in a while that the elites, you know, they became disconnected. And he told an interesting story about Stanford. So Victor Davis-Hampson has a 40-acre orchard in Fresno, California, where it gets hot as hell in the summer time, 100 degrees, right? He also lives in Stanford two days a week, right? Because he's at the Hoover Institute. And he says he's interested, you know, the elites are pushing various policies for renewable energy and all these things. But you have to remember, everybody at Stanford, if it gets hot, they open the window. And if it gets cold, they close the window. It's 70 degrees. And people in Fresno, that's 100 degrees, they need air conditioning. And underclass in Fresno is so downtrodden now, they have to go to the Walmart to cool off. That the immigration problem in the Central Valley is very tough. He's been personally hit many times with a car accident where someone sort of drives away, and there's no recourse, right? They don't have insurance. And so there's these two worlds. And one of the things Trump sort of played upon was there are the elites who are passing these policies, who are controlling the instruments of power. But they are not subject to the consequences of any of their policies. They live in unique places. They're either very wealthy or they live in areas of a very temperate climate or lots of restaurants nearby. They make so much money, the high taxes don't really disturb them. And this is really something that I think they don't understand. And it's very interesting. This is not an issue of left versus right. I think that's what people make a mistake. You take the conservative publication, the National Review. The National Review has nine full-time writers. Eight of them are never Trumpers. These are old-line conservatives. If you like Bill Buckley conservatives or George Bush conservatives, the only one who's probably sort of the pathetic Trump is Victor David Hansen. So I sort of want to start that out as we sort of delve into what's going on and what it means for the instrument of power and the agency of the United States. Well... You know, it's a strange... You know, what we might have thought, what I might have thought a few months ago about the connection between Trump and the people he's hired to come around him and be his agents and the relationship between Trump and the Republican Congress, what I might have thought, you know, kind of assumed that there was a method about the madness. But that's being blown away now. Because I realize that people, like moths to a flame, people will always gravitate to power. They want to be close to power. And they're loyal to power if power hires them and gives them face and all that. But now it's coming apart. All this is kind of coming apart. Not completely, of course, but little by little we are seeing between the players. We are seeing less than loyal players. We are seeing people who are there for reasons we may not have anticipated and who stay there for reasons that are not anticipated. Well, I do think, for example, I think you sort of... So if you take the... Let's take the main security organs of the federal government, the CIA, the State Department, Defense Department, these are very traditional mainstream people. General Mattis is not some crazy, bomb-thrilling, you know, banana-republic dictator. He is a very... First of all, he's a fantastic scholar. He's a great defense strategist. And yes, they probably get frustrated with the sort of erratic, let's say erratic or less-than-strategic operations of the White House or the president. But they are there, and I think they should be viewed not as kind of opportunism, but as patriotism. These are good people. General Mattis, by all accounts, even Secretary Pompeo, Pompeo's a Harvard grad, brilliant... He was a congressman for many years. He has a certain view of the world, you know, and... But I do think they are managing these agencies that way. You take the... the intelligence agencies. These are all sort of headed by extreme... the experience and also or well-known political figures who have been in the U.S. establishment for many. I don't really... I think you have to be careful of some general statements about these things. Now, in the White House staff, I think it must be a nightmare to work in the White House. I worked in the White House for four years. I sort of know what this like, and I just can't imagine how awful it is. Because they don't seem to have a coherent strategy with a message going forward. But by the way, you know, one of the things that a lot of people don't talk about is... I think you could argue. You could argue during the Obama administration, right? You know, one of the ways you get into the most trouble in terms of potential conflict is when your enemies... when your enemies misjudge your intentions. And so the question is, I think a lot of folks believe that under the Obama administration, we lost this notion of effective deterrence. And to some extent, this has been restored. You know, the bombing in Syria, the attitude towards the North Korea. In other words, one of the things the U.S. government had to do was restore deterrence. Because if... because, you know, the way you get into serious conflict is when an enemy decides to test whether the, you know... you know, the test on the ground, whether the military... you're a military opponent is actually effective enough. And that happens when you lose deterrence. Because there's no conflict actually the U.S. would lose right now. We have overwhelming power against all our enemies. I mean, the last time a combat aircraft was shot down by the United States, I believe is over 25 years. In other words, nobody wants to take on the U.S. military. But if you don't have effective deterrence, if people don't understand your will to resist, that's a problem. So I think Trump has restored some of these things. But I will give you this point. On style points, he is really a disaster. He doesn't seem to understand the process in which you have a consistent message. You have a vision. You explain that vision to the constituents and you carry it out. Well, one of the characters... One of the characters depicted in Bob Woodward's book revealed yesterday called him... somebody with a sophistication of a fifth or sixth grader when it comes to North Korea. Which, I mean, actually, that works. And you know, talk about American power. In that scenario, he said, well, one of the chips on the table is American troops in South Korea. I'm going to remove them. That's before he had talked to the military people. And the remark in the book was, if you remove them, he said, why should I not remove them? And one of the generals said to him, well, to prevent World War III, that would be a good idea. What I'm saying is he's not sophisticated about these things. And you can get in big trouble not being sophisticated about these things. As a result, in the case of North Korea, you know, we had the big meeting in Singapore. And I understand, actually, Lou, that when he went over there, he had a contingent of 300 hotel rooms. He occupied 300 hotel rooms for a meeting that lasted 20 minutes. And then he went home early. I mean, it cost the taxpayers a fortune to do that. And if you start looking at, you know, sort of a cost-benefit analysis of this, what exactly did we get out of that meeting in Singapore? I grant you, we haven't had a nuclear war with North Korea since then. But then we didn't get anything much out of it either. Right. I'm not signing up to this policy, but let me see what I think is going on. I do not believe that the North Koreans will... I mean, if you think about it, they have an existential threat. If they don't have... they don't have nuclear weapons, I'm sure the leadership, maybe not the North Korean people, but the leadership is not going to last that long. That's their view. So the question is, there's nothing really... I don't know how exactly we pressure the North Koreans to kind of adhere to, you know, sort of a common sense view of, you know, the community of nations in some way. So I think Trump's view on this is, okay. Well, I'm going to start a trade. I'm going to raise the pain level with the Chinese. I'm not saying it's... I personally wouldn't take this strategy. I think a strategy is going to raise the pain level with the Chinese. I'm going to link the trade with the security. And every president before me has tried this stuff with North Korea. And the basic strategy for North Korea is saying, oh, the North Koreans say, look, if you give us cheap, heavy fuel oil, or if you give us food so we're not eating grass, we will become more amenable. And we've gone through four or five cycles of that where we have done all those things. And in this sense, Trump is correct. None of that has worked. None of that has brought the North Koreans to the table with effective, long-term denuclearization process. In fact, they've become more dangerous. I'm not suggesting that Trump's strategy is going to be effective or it's going to work. But there is kind of a point here. This was, we've had a strategy long-term and we should accept that it has failed. Now, what's the alternative is a longer discussion than we can have tonight. But I really do think this is a mission. Yeah. Let's take one minute for a rather loop or a short break. And then I'd like to come back and talk about how this all sets up to help us understand the future. Because there's so many players on the table, so many surprises that have been revealed. We can maybe, just maybe, we can get a beat on how it's going to work in the future. That's Lou Punyurusi. He's the CEO of E-Prank and Energy Policy Research Organization in Washington. And we'll be right back after this short break to look into the crystal ball. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. People of all abilities imagine the possibilities in their lives. Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human-Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Okay, we're back with Lou Punyurusi, the CEO of E-Prank in Washington. He joins us after a workshop there. It must be, let me figure this out, it must be something after 9 p.m. at night, Lou. Thank you for joining us. Talking about, you know, how what's happening in the White House will affect things. And it'd be too hard a question for me to ask, how is what's happening in the White House, you know, with people who now tell us that they're trying to protect us from what a reckless and unpredictable president might do, will affect energy policy? That's too hard. Okay, well, it may not be that hard. So today, at the end of our workshop today, we went to the Japanese Embassy. And at the Japanese Embassy were the ambassadors from Pakistan, India, the sort of the Indo-Asian, the South Asian countries. And the U.S. and the Japanese officials talked extensively about their cooperative program for LNG experts from the United States for expanding re-gasification facilities throughout the Asia region, the growth of new facilities for bunkering with LNG, the importance of LNG and natural gas to reduce local air pollution and even improve the climate. And I don't want to overdo it, but what's interesting to me about this study done, you have this discussion or these press reports of the chaos, let's say, in the White House. How would you want to see it? Yet the wheels of the government, the ministries with their own power bases, their own ties to Congress, their own reason for going forward, they're moving them forward as if nothing is absolutely, not only are they moving as if nothing's wrong, they're moving as if they have a very clear objective of what they want to do and that they have the support of the senior officials in the administration to make it happen. But I think that, you know, we have great institutions in the government. I think you'll forget that. And that, you know, there's a famous story where John Kennedy once was asked, okay, well, could you take care of this problem? And the president, you know, Kennedy said, well, you know, I have to check with the government. I'm not sure. And that, well, you understand, these government entities, the cabinets that we have and the cabinet officers, they have a set of mission and they carry them out and they're not whipsawed by the day-to-day machinations in the White House. This is so interesting. I mean, you've put your finger on a really important thing that's happened. I mean, right now the State Department is decimated. There's nobody there. The White House and all the intelligence community, they're not talking to each other. They're mad already and he's mad at them anyway. And the press is, you know, the press is, you know, under assault. And what's happening is these decisions, you know, traditionally left to agencies that are within government, these decisions are being made by one man who gets up early and writes a tweet and makes all these decisions all by himself without consulting. So what you have is a guy who is sort of migrating toward a one-man rule ignoring the federal government establishment, okay, and the federal government establishment has so much competence, so much expertise, so much of that, you know, agency-to-agency kind of diplomacy, but it's been ignored. It's been overshadowed. And maybe it's saying now, wait a minute, we know how to do this stuff, we're going to step up. Is that what's happening? Yeah, I do think that there's some of that in the sense that that's always been the case. The capacity of the president is staying, even the cabinet minister, the secretary of state or secretary of energy, they can move the meter of the ball, you might lie down the field on a few, few specific items, and they have to dedicate all their time to doing that. The rest of the functions of government are set through law, through regulation, through the historic way they have been doing things, and the bad part of that is it's hard to get massive things. So, you know, I just think it's easy to overreact. I'm not, I believe it, I'm not defending Trump, but I've been in this town since Richard Nicton, and I have seen all kinds of crazy things. And so I have a much more relaxed attitude towards this. I think it's more realistic. I think it's more realistic. But let me ask you the question that I don't want to forget to ask you, and that is, what's going to happen here? You know, we have, call it in volcanic terms, a fissure. We have a fissure in the Oval Office right now, and you know what? The fellow who wrote that op-ed piece said there were others who felt the same way. And you know, you can surmise that others will be coming out too as soon as they do. So, you know, others will be coming out too. Sooner or later, we'll see other op-ed pieces. Who knows what? I mean, it's a fissure. And so the question is, how is this going to affect? How is this going to follow out? I mean, what is going to happen here in the Oval Office with Congress and so forth? So it will, you know, it will continue as it is until it's no longer. All things must come to an end. And it will come to an end. And here's the way it's going to get fixed. It either gets fixed at the pole or it'll get fixed through, you know, the process within the government, which will restrain him if he does something terribly wrong, impeachment, or generally how this stuff gets fixed is how it always gets fixed. And it gets fixed through the pole. So if Trump is unable to build a coalition of support for what he's trying to do, and he has a base level of support, but he may find that that support is eroded even by individuals who say, I mean, you've talked to a lot of people who support Trump. You'll believe in him strongly. You say, well, I wish he wouldn't be so wacky on this stuff. I like what he's doing on deregulation. I like what he's doing on oil and gas development and promoting U.S. exports. You know, I saw Wilbur Ross talk the other day and said, you know, people are upset about the TPP. Hillary Clinton ran on pulling out of the D.C. Hillary Clinton ran on making hydraulic fracturing so expensive we wouldn't produce any oil and gas in the United States. So he went through all these things. Yes, Trump is, you know, Trump has a, I'm totally opposed to what he's doing with the trade. I would not do that. I think it's very destructive and counterproductive. I do think China is a problem, but I would have built a coalition of allies to deal with Trump. I don't think you can, you know, they're upset about the dairy quotas in Canada and the, you know, content of the amount of North American content in Mexican automobiles. And it's unclear to me that all the drama over that is really worth it about what we're getting into our home. Well, whether he's fully responsible or not, we do have a pretty good economy going now. We have more jobs than we have employees. I'm not sure exactly how that happened, but here we are. And the stock market, for the most part, is way up and keeps going up. And then, okay, and this is my last question to you today. This is not an easy one. He said, you know, when, you know, the Mueller thing came up a week or two ago, he said, you better watch out. Don't impeach me, because if you impeach me, the economy is going to go in the tank. So be careful, you know, what you wish for. Is there any truth to that? Well, no, I think what he's saying is I'm the thin red line between pro-growth, you know, positive capitalist society and the hordes on the left who are going to storm the barricade, nationalize all these industries, increase your taxes, reimpose all these counterproductive regulations, and tank the economy. Actually, he could... I'm pretty sure that's what he's really saying. I don't think he's saying I'm going to, like, pull some lever at Treasury and tank the Dow. No, I think, yeah, I agree with you. I think he's saying the natural forces, you know, the... Yeah, they're out there. I'm holding them at bay. But weren't for me, you all would be with, you know, the Dow would be 50% lower now. You all be poor. You should appreciate what I'm doing. This is, you know, what did they say? Was it the Chinese proverb? It's a Chinese proverb. It's an interesting times. We definitely live an interesting time. Yeah, we should continue to follow it with respect to, you know, what's happening in the federal government, what's happening in energy, and what's certainly what's happening in the economy. I guess the one other question I'd like to ask you before we close, Lou, is how are things doing in the energy department? Is it like the State Department where the halls are empty? What's the policy like? Actually, first, they've made a lot of appointments. I know the Energy Bureau and the State Department is quite active now. I saw many of them today. The Department of Energy is... it's continuing to fund the National Laboratory. It's undertaking research in a broad range of technologies, as it always has. It's continuing to dispense research grants to universities. It's not doing at the margin all the things, all the things the environmental community or the utopian renewable fuel people would like them to do. That's actually true. But to say that it's completely ground to halt and doing nothing, I think it's, you know, you never move things more than 5% to 6%. And so that 5% to 6% moved away from one area to another. Very interesting. It's not radical. It's not radical. Very interesting. You're certainly... you're a calming force. That's what you are. You're a calming force. Thank you, Lou Pooley-Racey. Always great to talk to you. Two weeks hence. Thank you so much for participating in supporting ThinkTech. Right, my pleasure.