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to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, or Georgia. I may not be the nominee, but the nominee will be saying everything I'm saying because between redistribution and growth to win swing states with swing voters, I know what message works. But as you know much better than I do, presidential campaigns are as much about the messenger as the message. Every election is every election is about the messenger of the message. And you are associated with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Yep. Two most successful politicians since Franklin Delano Rosa. Correct. Not where the energy is right now in your party. You're also someone who upset the black community when you were mayor of Chicago by not releasing the video of Blackwin McDonald. Is that the bio of someone who can win the nomination of the Democratic party? We'll see. First of all, we haven't decided whether we're running. But second of all, we'll see. The one thing I do know, cander, authenticity, and strength are going to have a really high value. and you did not walk away from this interview and nobody's going to watch it is going to say, you know what, there goes weak and woke.
What about the relationship with allies? Because you say we you would work with Europe, but you also said and I think you wrote that it was going to take a generation to rebuild trust in the United States. Yeah. Do you think even then possible? Well, I was actually going I would even go further and say, is it possible to re that trust? Well, can that trust be rebuilt? Yeah. I mean, if you're in Europe now, you can't rely on the United States. And if that trust can't be rebuilt, what do you do? If you're president and you face a bunch of allies who don't trust you.
Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm not ready to concede that you can't. I don't think one person can destroy it. I think he has severely damaged it. But I also appreciate the sentiment of what Prime Minister Carney said when he said, "This is a rupture." To all my fellow Democrats, I run around alliances, rule of law. There's no superlue that puts this pottery back together. Two, I've been in the Oval Office eight years of my life. There's no reset button on the Resolute Desk. So running around saying we're going to, oh, once Trump leaves, oh, everybody in Europe is going to look like this. So I said it's
going to take a generation. You have to show up. And just take this when I said we're going to move the troops every we're going to look at Brussels. We're going to look at everything America has and I'm going to challenge Europe. What isn't necessary to security and it's west of the Ryan River. We're moving it to Poland. We're moving it to Lithuania. We're moving it to Estonia. We're moving it to Romania. We're moving it to the Czech Republic because it says to Europe two things. one, it's an active deterrence to Russia, and two, we're going to be actively deterring Russia, and we want you to partner with us. Now, if you decide not to partner with us, that's going to be a telling sign. But
we get the deterrence that Russia is a real threat. When we say in six months, we're going to have new rules on grrey zone attacks. I'm saying the subtext of that is saying to Europe, I hear this and you're not going to be alone in confronting Russia. It will be a NATO exercise to confront Russia. That these gray zone attacks here are the red lines on it. That communicates we have a vested interest in your security. You have to invest in it. Not right on our back, but we're going to be a active partner with you in a modernizing and reforming the institutions that serve the future.
I think one of the things that worries people outside the US is that this is a country that twice elected Donald Trump. And so the question I guess we're asking ourselves is does the US actually want to play this role that you're implicitly saying it wants to play by going back to leading alliances or was this just an aberration? You know for most of US history it didn't play this role. It was very much a post-war order as the international relations people like to call it. Do you think that is somewhere that the US population wants to go? Does the American people want to play that role going forward?
Well, if it's done smartly. Yeah, if it's done stupidly like Iran. No, that's also a go solo. American people didn't sign up for that. They didn't sign up for that and they shouldn't sign up for it. It was a stupid move. I happen to think NATO was the most successful defensive partnership and alliance in human history. Were there good days and bad days? Yeah. Did it work uh overall when you look at the scorecard? Yeah, for both parties. Did it inculcate or engender bad habits where Europe did not invest in its own defense? Yes. Did we also encourage your dependence on us? Yes. Did we tell you not to get dependent on Russian gas?
Yes. Okay. Now we're done with pointing fingers. Let's talk about the future. I can spend a lot of time figure out who we want to blame for the past. I'd rather look to the future. Say jointly, okay, what do we got to do here? What's what did it help? Do I think the United States can do that and the American people will support it? Yes. Do I think they were jaundest about the lack of shared burden? Yes. And in both parties, it nurtured bad habits, not one side. We let you get dependent on us and you let yourselves get dependent on us. So I actually think what leadership and what life is about, you learn from your mistakes. I think the American people will support smart leadership. I think
Iran right now, the war in the Gulf is really stupid leadership. I happen to think the war in Iraq was really stupid leadership. Okay. So, will they support it? I don't actually. When you look at like the American people's support for Ukraine, it stayed there pretty constant. Was there high points? Yeah. But they understood the threat from Putin and they were happy that all our European allies and Asian allies stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us.
