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David Furst: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back. I'm David Furst, WNYC's Weekend Edition host filling in for Brian today. Yesterday was the last day of the NATO Summit in Washington, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Alliance. NATO was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the former Soviet Union, now Russia, of course.

The anniversary took place at a moment of a lot of uncertainty in the west. This year we'll have the most elections ever conducted globally, and already many countries have seen a rise in populist far-right leadership. In the European parliamentary elections as one example, Europeans voted in more right-wing politicians in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy among others.

Here in the US, the candidates in the presidential election in November have very different views on what the future of US involvement in NATO should look like. After President Joe Biden's performance in his debate against Donald Trump a little over two weeks ago, which has led some in his party to call for him to drop out of the presidential race, there was a lot of attention given to a press conference that the president gave last night at the end of the summit.

Joining us now to recap the three-day summit, including a breakdown of the press conference last night and what the 2024 US election might mean for the future of the alliance is Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist and the author of many books, including The Bomb: Presidents, Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Fred, welcome back to WNYC.

Fred Kaplan: Sure. Always good to be here.

David Furst: We will open the phones to you right away. Did you watch President Biden's press conference at NATO's closing yesterday? What are your takeaways? If you found yourself questioning the president's leadership capabilities after his performance at the debate against Donald Trump, did yesterday change anything for you, or is there anything you'd like to ask our guest, Fred Kaplan from Slate? Call us now 212-433-WNYC. Again, that number is 212-433-9692. You can also text to that number.

Fred, you write that Democrats last night were probably hoping for one of two things from the president's press conference; either that he would do badly making it easier to persuade him to drop out of the race, or that he would knock it out of the park. How do you think he did?

Fred Kaplan: Well, actually, that's the problem. He did neither. It was fine. If this press conference had happened and the debate of a couple of weeks ago had not happened, nobody would be paying any attention to this press conference. Standard Biden fair, a couple of flops, which ordinarily would mean nothing, a pretty astute discussion of some nuts and bolts of foreign policy, the end. The debate did happen. It was one of these things that once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Then it's bolstered by a lot of reports of intimate saying, "Yes, he's actually acted like this before several times." Then you realize it's not a debate problem, it's a Biden problem, and that many of the concerns looking back in the press files once these were raised now and then turn out to be a lot more legitimate than his closest aides' tried to convince us otherwise.

David Furst: There were some gaffes this week. As you describe in your analysis last night, the three-day NATO Summit came to an end and Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as President Putin. He quickly recovered, corrected himself. During the press conference last night, he referred to Vice President Harris as Vice President Trump. Let's take a quick listen to that.

Joe Biden: I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president because I think she's not qualified to be president.

David Furst: As someone who has been-- You want to just jump in there, sorry.

Fred Kaplan: The thing is, again, without the debate of a couple weeks ago, nobody would've-- How many of us have never gotten somebody's name wrong like that? Biden tends to do it and always has done it more often than others. Now, because of the debate, and I'm not saying this is not fair, every single flub like this is going to be examined. It's as if every cough that somebody-- it seems a sign of lung cancer.

At one point, I was writing this column and the TV was on in the background, and I heard one of the cable news people saying, "We can't keep doing this forever." If you noticed it, since two weeks ago, there has not been a discussion about the election that has not focused on will he drop out? This guy thinks he should drop out. This person thinks he shouldn't drop out. The worrisome thing here, Trump now seems to be advised by shrewd media consultants because he's mainly stayed quiet.

That's what you do when your opponent is digging himself a grave, you stay quiet, and he's mainly done that. This Vice President Trump and President Putin, in one speech, Trump commits more misstatements than that every minute or two.

David Furst: That's small potatoes is what you're saying. A name here and there is not--

Fred Kaplan: Yes. Nobody is paying attention. Nobody is focusing on what he's saying. Nobody is focusing on mistakes of the election. It is true, the longer Biden A, refuses to drop out and B, does nothing to keep it from becoming the issue, then the more that Trump wins by this, the more that he gains.

David Furst: You're talking about this now. In your analysis in Slate last night, you say, "Had the catastrophic debate two weeks ago not happened, this press conference would not have made a dent. It might not have even been broadcast in prime time." What about that, the amount of coverage that Biden and the race are generating right now, is it also possible that this new focus on the race and if the stakes really become more of that story could also serve to perhaps energize potential voters that weren't paying very much attention until now?

Fred Kaplan: I suppose so, but what are they paying attention to? They're paying attention to whether Biden is-- whether he has Parkinson's, whether he's going to survive another three months, much less three or four years. They're not focusing on the issues of the campaign, on the comparative merits, or even the comparative mental astuteness of Trump versus Biden. It's all one story. It's nothing but negative toward-- It heightens our awareness of every slightest slip of Biden's and distracts attention from the many crazy things or dangerous and concerning things that Trump has been saying.

Yes, it energizes interest, but from a Democrat's point of view, in all the wrong directions.

David Furst: If you would like to join this discussion, you can give us a call. The number is 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's here from Jan in Plainfields, New Jersey. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Jan: Thank you. I think that it's been-- and I say this as a lifelong Democrat with great regard to what Biden has done, but it's been known, maybe not by the general public, but it's been known for the past couple of years that he was what you would expect for a man his age. I think he did surprisingly well last night, but it doesn't matter. We need someone who can beat Trump. The stakes are so high. They're so much higher because of SCOTUS' decision.

There are quite a lot of people who are undecided. A lot of those people now, even who not hardcore Trumpers, they won't vote for Biden now because they see that he's too old. We have lost too many people over this. I'm getting emotional because our country hangs in the balance. He's got to step aside and let someone run who can win.

David Furst: Are you suggesting that the question is, this is someone who can do the job, but perhaps maybe cannot compete for the job?

Jan: I think that much of the time, I think, Biden can do the job. Remember, if he were elected, it's six months until his next term would begin. Yes, so that ends up being four and a half years. Can he do the job, two, three, four years from now? I don't think so. The thing is, even if he can, call it ageist if you want, but he is not electable, and that is really what matters.

David Furst: Fred, one moment that stood out to you from last night was when our NPR colleague Asma Khalid asked Biden if he was still a bridge candidate for a younger, fresher generation of Democrats and asking about why he's still hanging on at his age. Here is what the President said.

Biden: Most presidential historians give me credit for having accomplished more than most any president since Johnson and maybe before that to get major pieces of legislation passed. What I realized was, my long time in the Senate had equipped me to have the wisdom on how to deal with the Congress to get things done. We got more major legislation passed that no one thought would happen and I want to finish it.

David Furst: Fred, why did that moment stand out for you?

Fred Kaplan: If he's saying what he's really thinking, it shows that he's even more deeply committed to staying in the race than we thought. Also, there's something vaguely Trumpian about this. It's like, "Only I can do this. There's nobody else who can do this." Now, Biden may have more solid grounds for saying this, a real record of accomplishment than Trump did when he said at the convention in 2016 that, "Only I can fix the problems." Still, really? Is he the only one?

There's been a lot of stories about how Kamala Harris has been shoved aside in this administration. One might ask why he hasn't involved her more in these kinds of decisions to give her some serious grounding in this, or has he and we just haven't heard about it? I don't know. There's a certain arrogance to this comment that disturbs me anyway.

David Furst: Let's take another call. Kylie calling in from Northern Virginia, welcome.

Kylie: Thank you. Good morning. I have so much base in my voice, I'm trying to keep it down. I saw the press conference. I thought President Biden did really, really well in general. I thought for his age and for his situation, he did really, really well. My problem at this point is the Democratic Party, capital D, because what was their plan for when this happened? There should have been a ticket ready to replace President Biden. What makes my head explode is that if they weren't figuring that out before, then what else were they doing? I'm utterly confused by that.

I just want to add to this, that putting Kamala Harris, who I love, she's my [unintelligible 00:12:59]. She can't win here. I think this scrambling to find-- Not only to deal with Biden and help him step aside and then deal with the ramifications. I understand about the money flow, that that's a big problem. I don't even know the answer to that. What were they doing last year? [chuckles] People are like, "Oh, Biden's old. I think that might be a problem. We should probably do something about that." It's like, "Yes, you probably should. Where have you been?"

That's my problem, is really not with Biden at this point. It's with the lack of creativity, the lack of leadership with the Democratic Party. I think we look utterly ridiculous. We look really stupid.

David Furst: Thanks for that comment. Fred, do you want to respond?

Fred Kaplan: Yes. It's a very good question, but there are a couple of things. First, if the party elders had got together and said, "We've got to come up with an alternative here." There's no way that could have been kept secret. The headline would've been, "Party elders look for an alternative to Biden," which would've weakened him. The second question and this speaks to something fundamental about both parties right now, and that is when you say, "Why didn't the Democrats get together and do this?" Who are you talking about?

Who are the leaders of the Democratic Party? You mean Schumer? Pelosi? Obama? If they got together in a room and came up with something, would the other 4,000 delegates that are coming to this convention just automatically go along with that? I remember somebody telling me eight years ago, "How are the Republicans going to let Donald Trump be nominated?" I said, "What Republicans are you talking about?" There is no longer anything called the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.

They don't fund campaigns that much. Most of the money comes through individual PACs. They don't instigate the debates. The convention platforms don't really mean anything and they don't reflect anything meaningful about the parties. A, it would've been very dangerous to do that, and B, who would've done it? We live in a very anarchic situation. We're in a two-party system, but the parties themselves have very little authority, very little power to really arrange what's going on.

A good friend of mine who's a very good liberal says, "Really, we ought to get rid of presidential primaries. It's a terrible way to pick the nominee for a party. Go back to the back rooms. Go back to strictly party funding, brief campaigns." Now, that kind of system, you wouldn't have had a Barack Obama, or maybe you'd have him now after two or three terms in the Senate, but you wouldn't have had a Donald Trump either. We have to rethink a lot of things, obviously.

David Furst: Okay. 212-433-9692. Let's hear from Molly in Manhattan. Welcome. Do you have a comment?

Molly: Yes. Most people keep talking about Biden's abilities now, and this is totally beside the point. The question is what it will be in 2028. Statistically, most American men born the year that Biden was are dead. I think that also would be true for Trump. I love President Biden. I think he's done a fantastic job, but even if he survives the next four years, I think there's too much danger that he'll have a stroke or Alzheimer's like Reagan did in his second term. I wish you'd have on the show a statistician or a gerontologist who would spell out the risks for both men.

David Furst: Fred, do you want to respond? Yes, sorry.

Fred Kaplan: [chuckles] I'm not a gerontologist, but it's very interesting. When Trump first became president, a very good friend of mine is a gerontologist, and I asked her, "What are the chances that Trump will die? His diet is terrible. He doesn't exercise." She said, "He doesn't smoke and he doesn't drink, and those two things give you a lot of points in the age." Then, she said, "There's a better chance that he'll be impeached than that he'll die in office." I don't think she realized she was quite that much of an oracle.

Now, people do forget that Trump is only three years younger than Biden. They could have gone to high school together if they were in the same high school. The other sad thing, and this also says something about the state of our politics, it would be great if looking at the Democratic Convention coming up, there was a person that you could say, "Yes, this is the person who will step in, get instant accolades, be able to do the job." There's no such person, nor is there any such person in the Republican Party.

I was talking with a Democratic insider and I said, "Let's say you could just have your wish. Biden steps aside, who becomes the candidate? Somebody who has a vague chance of winning, but you want to see there." He had a hard time coming up with someone.

David Furst: We have to move on and get to the NATO summit in just a moment. Fred, if you could maybe just respond briefly to some news right now? The New York Times reports, "Some major democratic donors have told the largest pro-Biden Super PAC Future Forward, that roughly $90 million in pledged donations is now on hold if President Biden remains atop the ticket." This is according to two people who have been briefed on the conversations. What are your thoughts?

Fred Kaplan: It's not surprising. Biden's making a big mistake here. When he says he's going after the elites and he's talking about the common people, "They want me." He has to address two separate groups of people. He has to address ordinary voters, but at first he really-- Call this elitist or whatever, but he has to address the people who can put him over the top at the convention as the nominee, and that is the elite. That is the donors. To dismiss them as irrelevant, not a good trick. Also, look, this is the guy who's been in the Senate or the White House for 50 years. It's a little late to start turning to populism.

David Furst: So much more to talk about, and we will continue to cover all of it here on WNYC, but let's talk about the NATO summit. In your analysis, you wrote, Fred, that stories about the NATO summit itself were seen as secondary to the Biden psychodrama, even though the summit was quite successful. Let's talk about it. Did the alliance recommit to spending, and if so, how much?

Fred Kaplan: Well, they did all that. There's been a pledge for quite some time that each country will spend 2% of its gross domestic product on defense. It doesn't really say anything about what they get for that, but it does show commitment. They are much closer to doing that now. They think it'll be fully on board in the next few years. They re-upped their aid to Ukraine. They talked about a roadmap that Ukrainian membership in NATO is an irreversible process, and they laid out a roadmap for this happening.

Now, it was a little misleading because they said, as soon as Ukraine gets approval, which means unanimous approval, which they're not there yet, and meets the qualifications, which among other things means having stable borders, which Ukraine doesn't have, and certain criteria for corruption and things like that, which they also haven't met. It's going to be a few years still, but nonetheless, this was-- Look, all of this was laid out ahead of time. The final document was written before anybody landed in Washington.

Still, everything went fine. Everything went smooth. My guess is that every reporter there was constantly asking ambassadors, other foreign officials, "Have you seen anything strange about President Biden's behavior?" I haven't seen a single story where anybody was saying that they did. Even Biden looked pretty good. It was like, "Okay, just another NATO summit." If Trump gets elected, it might be the last NATO summit.

What are the headlines? The headlines are that Biden referred to President Zelensky as President Putin and referred to Vice President Harris as Vice President Trump. Standard flubs in the longstanding Biden Lexicon, but these are now-- and they're going to continue being. Biden could hold a press conference saying that they found a cure to cancer and a new vaccine that obliterates COVID, and if he referred to Mexico as Egypt, that would be the headline.

David Furst: I want to get some more of your questions at 212-433-9692. I want to touch on something you were just talking about there, Fred. The Washington Post reports that European diplomats are already preparing contingency plans for a future potential Trump administration. Many doubt that he would actually withdraw from NATO, but are concerned about Trump weakening US commitments to the alliance and undermining transatlantic unity. To what extent do you agree that a President Trump, if back in office for another term, would be reluctant to withdraw from NATO?

Fred Kaplan: Well, withdrawal is an awfully big step. I wouldn't put it past him. In effect, look, early on, he said, "When I first became president and they were telling me about NATO, I said, wait a minute. You mean that if Lithuania's invaded, we have to go to war for them? That's crazy." He's also said that he was less than thrilled about helping Taiwan resist an invasion from China because they've taken away so much of our microchip market.

He sees everything as transactional. He's told Orban, the prime minister of Hungary that his plan for ending the war in Ukraine is basically just to cut off all aid to Ukraine and, "Let's get back and doing productive things with Russia. I get along with Putin, we like each other." These are things that he has said. These are not anything that you have to infer or fantasize about.

He has shown himself to be averse to any kind of alliance that requires the United States to do something that's a little bit dangerous. He talked about stepping out of NATO. His former aide said that had he been reelected in 2020, he was going to leave NATO. This isn't anything that I have to analyze or that anybody has to predict. These are things that he said that he's going to do.

If I'm a member of NATO, well, you can do what of three things. One, like Macron, the president of France, you start thinking about building ways of an autonomous defense. Well, if you're also Macron, and think about it a minute, you know that Europe is not going to be able to muster the resources or the organizational know-how to put together an effective defense alliance for at least 10 years.

Second, you come up with ways to compliment Trump, and this is easy. All you have to do is call him, sir, and you have him in the palm of your hand. It's frighteningly easy. Third, you come up with ways to accommodate Russia and China, and that's certainly what a lot of Asia's going to be doing. They're going to say, "Well, we have to start cutting deals with China or with Russia. Separate deals because the United States is not going to come to our rescue."

Or if you're a country like South Korea or Japan, which is technologically capable of doing this, you start saying, "Well, it might be time that we have to develop our own nuclear weapons because we can't count on the United States to defend us, and our nuclear deterrent is the ultimate in deterrent." Then that will generate a new round of arms race with Russia and China, and anyway you look, it doesn't look good.

David Furst: As we're recapping the NATO summit, let's take time for another call. Edward in Manhattan, do you have a question? Welcome.

Edward: Yes, thank you. I majored in history at Columbia University, and I took a class with-- [crosstalk]

David Furst: We're having a little difficulty hearing you. Maybe make sure you're close to your phone.

Edward: Oh, okay. How's that?

David Furst: That sounds good.

Edward: My question is I think the Warsaw Pact is gone. Soviet Russia is gone. NATO was formed to stop aggression and threats from those two entities. Number two, people like Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Bradley, Rhode Scholar [unintelligible 00:27:20] have both said that the United States foreign policy largely provoked Russia by expanding NATO. Bradley has come out and said that when Russia was attempting to convert to capitalism, the United States essentially kicked it when it was down and greatly contributed to the rise of Putin and aggression. My question is, why should I [unintelligible 00:27:51]

David Furst: We're having a-- The question is, what was the quick question there?

Edward: The Domino theory and the Russian-- [crosstalk]

David Furst: Wait, hold on one second. We're starting to lose you there. What was-- [crosstalk]

Fred Kaplan: [unintelligible 00:28:02] the question? Question is why aren't we doing anything?

David Furst: Yes. Let's try to address that question, Fred.

Fred Kaplan: First of all, the history is nonsense. If you look back, who were the main people begging for NATO expansion as the Soviet Union fell apart? It was the heads of newly democratic Czechoslovakia and Poland, who-- Now, Václav Havel, who was the president of the Czech Republic, when he was a prisoner writing theoretical essays, he was talking about a wide and a great and unified Europe from coast to coast and all the way to Vladivostok. Once he becomes president of the country and sees that there's a Russia across the way, he says, "Well, this Article 5 protection from NATO looks pretty good."

In terms of kicking Russia when it was down, the United States under Clinton and Bush gave Russia hundreds of billions of dollars in aid. A lot of it just went into oligarch's pockets and out the country and in Swiss bank accounts, but we weren't kicking them down. It is true they were pushing for expansion, but as I said, that came largely at the begging of the small countries in Central and Eastern Europe who found themselves suddenly without protection of any larger ally.

The Warsaw Pact is gone, but all you have to do, and Biden said this in his conference last night. Look at what Putin has been saying. At the beginning, Putin said, "I'm doing this because Ukraine is about to join NATO," which A, wasn't true. Then Zelenskyy says, "Well, you know what? I guess we can do without NATO." That wasn't the issue. What Putin is all about now is restoring the old Russian Empire, not the Warsaw Pact. He actually didn't like the Soviet Union because shrunk the size of the old Russian Empire.

I don't usually talk like this, but it's certainly undeniable. If NATO just disappeared, and Russia took over Kyiv, if you're living in Poland or the Baltic states, or any of these other places, do you think that Putin is just going to stop there? He sees himself as aspiring to Peter the Great. He sees himself as his historical destiny is restoring the great Russian Empire.

David Furst: Well, we'll have to leave it-- I'm sorry to cut you off there, Fred.

Fred Kaplan: No, that's okay. That's okay.

David Furst: So much more to talk about here, and unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there for today. Our guest has been Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist, the author of many books, including The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Fred Kaplan: Sure. Anytime.

David Furst: Coming up next, the last full-sun Manhattanhenge of the year is tonight. We get ready for the big moment with Jackie Faherty, astronomer and educator at the American Museum of Natural History. It's The Brian Lehrer Show here on WNYC.

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