The global scene is marked by violence and uncertainty, with wars in Israel and Ukraine. Closer to home, many Americans are dissatisfied with their choices amid a likely showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Congress remains sharply divided, and paralysis prevails on issues like immigration. Many Americans feel jittery about the economy, even with a soaring stock market and low unemployment. Can politicians make a positive difference on the issues that matter most? Is there a path for less suffering in Gaza and a more robust defense of Ukraine? And is 81-year-old Joe Biden the guy to lead America into the future? I’m Ian Donnis and this week I’m going in depth with U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
TRANSCRIPT
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ian Donnis: Welcome back to The Public’s Radio. The New York Times reports that more than 29,000 people, many of them children, have been killed during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Does Israel’s attempt to eliminate Hamas, which did initiate this conflict, justify this loss of life?
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: I don’t think so. I don’t see how it can. I do think that the key to focus on here is a broader peace plan for the Mideast. I just got back from Munich where we met with King Abdullah of Jordan, who’s in the center of that process, and he was quite optimistic about it working. Although I think there’s fairly wide consensus that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not.
Donnis: There’s a lot of international condemnation of Israel’s approach and the level of humanitarian suffering. Is Israel’s approach really contrary to its long term interests?
Sen. Whitehouse: I don’t know. I don’t know. I think that Netanyahu has proven to be a particularly difficult and challenging partner. There are conversations going on elsewhere in the Israeli government. They obviously have a really, really challenging problem with a sworn adversary that will use murder, rape, all sorts of forms of horrific violence every chance they can get, which used the last ceasefire to go and murder a bunch more Israelis and then take credit for it. So, I think they’re in a very difficult situation. I do think that some of the use of force and some of the use of munitions has definitely been excessive, but the path through this is to get to a framework that allows the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the surrounding Arab world some confidence that there is a peaceful future for them all.
Donnis: Russia made its biggest recent gain in the war in Ukraine when it recently won control of the town of Avdiivka. If congressional Republicans do not support more aid for Ukraine, what is the fallback for the White House?
Sen. Whitehouse: Well, one of our messages at the Munich security conference was that the fall of Avdiivka, the diminution in American munitions to the troops, the Ukrainian troops at the front, and the continuing quarrel and the nonsense noise out of Donald Trump all create a morale challenge for Ukraine and that it would be very, very helpful in this period before Congress acts to let them have some surprises that change the Russians smugness and affect their calculations. Including particularly longer range munitions that would let them reach the remaining naval bases in Crimea. Put the Kerch bridge, which is the main access point to Crimea for the Russians, and many of the bases that feel comfortably out of existing artillery range back into danger. And I think that needs to happen soon so that that morale counter message gets out there fast.
Donnis: We saw last year how despite billions in U. S. aid, Ukraine made very meager progress during a counter offensive. Does that show the limits of U. S. aid and that the situation is unlikely to change even with billions more?
Sen. Whitehouse: Yeah, no, I don’t think so. I think first of all, the U. S. aid has always been a little bit late. We were late with the javelins. We were late with the MANPADS, we were late with the tanks, we were late with the HIMARS, we were late with the ATACMS. We’re not even there yet with the F 16s. If all of that had been pushed forward six months, I think things would look different on the battlefield. The other thing is that while the line of contact has been relatively stable, if you look at the damage that the Ukrainians have done to the Russian military machine, this was the point Zelensky made in his meeting with us, it is brutal, the losses they’ve sustained, both in men and in armor. And the morale on the other side is terrible. He was asked about Ukrainian troops’ exhaustion. And he said, you have no idea how much worse the exhaustion is on the Russian side. So, they don’t have the munitions they need right now to put these other naval bases at risk. What they have done is they’ve pretty well controlled the airspace. Russians have never been able to get air dominance. And they have swept, without having a navy, the Ukrainians have swept the Russians out of the Black Sea. So, it’s not quite as static as you see when you just look at a line on a map. When you look at the larger context of the conflict, there are a lot of arenas in which Ukraine is really winning.
Donnis: Business Insider reported in 2022 that you held more than $15,000 in Lockheed Martin stock and more than $50,000 in United Technologies / Raytheon stock. Is there something wrong with you profiting from these holdings at a time when weapons made by these companies are being used in war?
Sen. Whitehouse: That’s pretty much news to me, I will tell you, because I have a rule with the people who manage my stock holdings that they don’t tell me what I have, and I find out about it for the first time when they get reported to the press. So I learn at the same time that you learn. So there’s no conflict there whatsoever. And, I would actually argue that there are American munitions being used in Ukraine in a really important battle for freedom. That it is very important to the rest of the free world that we win and, whose consequences, if Putin should succeed, are very, very dire.
Donnis: You referred to being in Germany last week for the Munich security conference that coincided with the news about the death of Alexei Navalny and Democrats say it’ll be a real disaster for the world if Donald Trump is elected president. We see how Trump is a historic outlier. He is the first president to ever challenge the peaceful transition of power. He faces all these criminal charges. Nonetheless, he remains the favorite of somewhere around a third to maybe a half of Americans. What does that show about the appeal of Democrats that Trump has not been disqualified in public opinion?
Sen. Whitehouse: Yeah, it’s a little surprising because in my view, Trump does something disqualifying virtually every day. I think that what we have seen pulling back to 30,000 feet is decades in which very powerful special interests have had undue influence in Congress and the American people have brought ideas like gun safety and fair taxes and climate action to Congress and just gotten rebuffed. They’ve seen communities suffer economically as jobs were run overseas by big American corporations. And so, I think there’s a lot of anger and frustration out there that Trump taps into. I think the key here is for Democrats and Republicans to restore a sense of real command of the voters over our democracy, rather than a command of the big special interests, the billionaires behind the super PACs, the whole kind of creepy, secretly funded political operation to which Congress too often dances.
Donnis: Donald Trump is 77 and President Biden is 81. Not a big gap in age, but it seems like President Biden’s age and appearance is a greater concern for more Americans. Is it a mistake for Democrats to pin their hopes on keeping the White House on President Biden?
Sen. Whitehouse: Well I think the fact of the matter is that he is going to be our candidate and the Republicans have done a very persistent job of trying to magnify any slip by the president and take little clips, and create a narrative that he’s incompetent when in fact he’s gotten 10 times as much accomplished as Donald Trump ever did. And the group, the team that he leads is very effective and is pointed in the direction of the American people and the American worker and American jobs and safety from climate and anti-corruption. And I think those are all the proper things to look at. and I’d frankly, I’ll take somebody who’s occasionally forgetful over someone who is vindictive and deranged, any day.
Donnis: If president Biden’s record is as good as you and other Democrats say, why are his approval ratings not better?
Sen. Whitehouse: Well, I think, first of all, a lot of this is takes a while to filter through. You know, you can – factory building, for instance, is exploding in the United States right now, but those factories aren’t producing goods yet and they’re not hiring factory workers yet because the factories are under construction. So there’s a lead time before the full economic benefit falls to the American consumer or the American worker. And we have to just be patient and persistent to make sure that. I think also we’re looking at grocery prices that are very, very high, and the Republicans have done a very good job of trying to blame that on President Biden, when in fact, most of it comes through a pandemic over which nobody had any control, supply chain problems that bedevil the entire world, climate problems that are driving all sorts of prices up from sugar to transit. Those aren’t exactly, you know, Biden problems. Those are things we all have to deal with.
Donnis: Our time is short. So I want to get in one more question. There’s been a Wall Street / Main Street divide on the economy for many years in America with a lot of economic insecurity still being felt by some Americans. Do Democrats have a real answer for that?
Sen. Whitehouse: Well, I think. You know, making the tax code fair, dealing with climate so that you don’t have a bunch of fossil fuel billionaires running our politics and causing enormous costs down to the American public. The International Monetary Fund estimates the costs and harm to the American public at 600 plus billion dollars a year. That’s a very, very high price. Some of it is in the pocketbook, some of it is in just lost resources. So, yeah, I think we’ve got a very robust plan to make sure that the value of the American economy is shared more broadly, and the people who work, enjoy the benefits of the economy as much as people who invest.
Donnis: You are welcoming your second grandchild, so we offer our congratulations, and thank you very much for joining us, U. S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
Sen. Whitehouse: Thank you.
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The last Friday in February used to be the time when more than a thousand Rhode Islanders fled to Swansea, Massachusetts, for a satirical send-up of the year in Ocean State news. The Providence Newspaper Guild Follies was scrapped after 2018 due to changing times and shrinking Guild membership. But as we political reporters say, Rhode Island is the gift that keeps giving, with a ceaseless stream of juicy stories. And we’ve got a winner for my annual contest for best Follies-style song. You can read more about that in my Friday TGIF column posting around 4 this afternoon on what used to be known as Twitter @IanDon and thepublicsradio.org/tgif.
That’s our show for this week. Our producer is James Baumgartner.
I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.