Biden's Message to NATO (and Everyone Else)

This episode focuses on President Biden's speech at the 2024 NATO summit, emphasizing the U.S.'s commitment to Ukraine and its stance against Russian aggression.

1. Biden emphasizes the importance of NATO on its 75th anniversary and reaffirms U.S. commitment to defending its allies.
2. A significant announcement of air defense equipment for Ukraine marks a strong stance against Russian aggression.
3. Biden's performance and rhetoric at the summit are seen as critical amid scrutiny of his leadership capabilities.
4. The episode discusses the broader implications of U.S. foreign policy and leadership on the global stage.
5. There is significant concern among European allies about the future U.S. commitment to NATO and its implications for global security.

1: Introduction

Overview of the episode's focus on President Biden's address at the NATO summit and the political stakes involved. Brad Milke: "We start here with anxious observers watching President Biden gives a forceful speech to."

2: The NATO Summit

Biden's speech at the NATO summit, marking the 75th anniversary and his commitment to Ukraine. Karen Travers: "The president was marking the 75th anniversary of NATO by highlighting the critical importance of this military alliance."

3: Reaction and Analysis

Analysis of Biden's speech and its implications for U.S. leadership and international relations. Karen Travers: "This is, again this big show of force for the United States and allies for Ukraine and sending that strong message against Russia."

1. Understand the significance of international alliances like NATO in maintaining global peace.
2. Stay informed about global political dynamics, especially related to security and defense policies.
3. Evaluate the leadership qualities of political figures based on their performance in crucial situations.
4. Advocate for policies that support international cooperation and collective security.
5. Engage in discussions and educational opportunities about international relations to better understand their impact on everyday life.

President Biden delivers a strong speech to NATO, as congressional Democrats appear to resign themselves to a Biden nomination. The Republican National Committee prepares for a public argument on abortion rights. And Hurricane Beryl leaves millions without power.

People

Joe Biden, Karen Travers

Companies

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Books

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Guest Name(s):

Leave blank if no guest.

Content Warnings:

None

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It's Wednesday, July 10, and a debate stage isn't the only place where the president has to prove himself. We start here with anxious observers watching President Biden gives a forceful speech to.

Unknown
Ukraine can and will stop Putin as.

Unknown
Members of Congress meet in person. Was this the day Biden took control of the narrative? Meanwhile, the republican platform is taking shape, and it's the shape of Donald Trump.

Unknown
Ending inflation and making America affordable again. This was like a big one. Prevent World War.

Unknown
Three party insiders hope abortion doesn't reshape the entire convention. And there's nothing like a hurricane to make you feel powerless.

Unknown
Every day that goes by, it certainly gets to be more debilitating.

Unknown
What started as an inconvenient outage is quickly becoming dangerous.

From ABC News, this is start here. I'm Brad Milke.

The end of June well be remembered as the week that President Bidens political liabilities really caught up with him. His verbal missteps, his increasing physical fragility, his tendency to lose his train of thought. Wed seen some of these things before, but all of them really piled on top of each other during a crucial debate. But this is the week, one way or the other, that could be remembered as the week his political fate was decided for several reasons. One, it's because members of Congress have returned to Washington and a week and a half since the debate is just enough time to put lots of private polling into the field. These Democrats are beginning to wrap their minds around how bad a Biden drubbing could be for them. But if Biden could keep his reelection campaign intact throughout just the end of this week, you'd think they would have to suck it up and back him, regardless of what they personally think. The other reason this week is make or break, is that Biden is once again in the spotlight. The annual NATO summit got underway yesterday in Washington, which means you don't just have domestic politicians examining him up close. You got world leaders who are very nervous about whether they will have a capable partner in the White House this time next year. So when Biden stepped up to give an address yesterday, there were political and diplomatic consequences on the line. Let's not forget, even more on the line for the people of Ukraine. So let's go to ABC's White House correspondent Karen Travers, who watched all this play out.

Karen, what did the president say? And I guess, how did he do?

Karen Travers
You know, the president sounded as energetic as we've heard him in recent days. I mean, it sounded like his cold went away. His voice wasn't raspy. And this was a speech that, you know, many people were paying attention to because it was the kickoff for this NATO summit.

Unknown
Welcome. Welcome to the 2024 NATO summit.

Karen Travers
The president was marking the 75th anniversary of NATO by highlighting the critical importance of this military alliance, proof that our.

Unknown
Commitment is broad and deep, that we're ready, that we're willing, we're able to deter aggression.

Karen Travers
He was doing it in a grand fashion by holding this event in the Mellon auditorium, which is where the NATO charter was actually signed back in 1949. So there's a lot of symbolism to doing it in that room here, these.

Unknown
Twelve leaders gathered to make a sacred pledge to defend each other against aggression, provide their collective security, and to answer threats as one.

Karen Travers
This is not a bad week to say, I am leading on the world stage. I am hosting 38 world leaders here in Washington and showing that America is at the center of this conversation about the future of a critical military alliance, the future of support for Ukraine.

Unknown
I'm announcing the historic donation of air defense equipment for Ukraine.

Karen Travers
This is, again this big show of force for the United States and allies for Ukraine and sending that strong message against Russia.

Unknown
We know Putin won't stop at Ukraine, but make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin.

Karen Travers
So that's what the president's trying to do, to show he's leading. But, you know, as you mentioned, too, you know, so much of this is nervousness among these european allies about who is going to be in office next year and what that means for the alliance. Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown
What is top of mind for them? Is it like policies and NATO and Ukraine, or is it just like the eyeball test of the american president? How nervous are they?

Karen Travers
I guess, you know, they know where President Biden and his administration stands on Ukraine. They have made that abundantly clear about the full throated support that would continue if President Biden is reelected. And the president has to convince those leaders that, you know, America is behind his vision on NATO and on what happens in Ukraine? Because, of course, Donald Trump sings a very different tune when it comes to support for Ukraine and what he has said about Russia.

Unknown
Now the world is changing. We face serious security challenges, and therefore we need to step up our cooperation.

Karen Travers
They're looking at him, one, because of the policies that are at stake, and they're also, you know, paying attention for clues as to how he seems right now and what this means for election politics in the US. Brad, there have been a lot of reports, reports in the last week where you started to see not just the rumblings on Capitol Hill. There have been a couple reports that have cited people close to world leaders, people close to experts overseas who are saying they are starting to see a different Joe Biden in the last six months than the one that they have worked with over the last three years. And that's really given people pause.

Unknown
So there's the meetings among world leaders. Obviously, they're taking stock of all this. Then there's the meetings among members of Congress. Right. There's a political risk to being like the one or two people stepping forward being like, I don't think our party's leaders should run for reelection. But on the other hand, the more time that goes by, the more likely it is that Biden stays on the ticket. Right. So, I mean, how is this bid by Biden going as he tries to keep everyone on his side of the line?

Karen Travers
Yeah. I mean, he certainly has ramped up the outreach in the past two days. I mean, like, let's go back to Monday morning. He releases a letter that he has sent to Democrats that is essentially saying, I am in this, I am staying in this, and I'm in it to win it. It's like he's almost challenging Democrats to come out against him.

Unknown
We got a lot to do, folks, but we can do it. We're on the cusp of getting so much done.

Karen Travers
It was striking to see the president doing all of this flurry of activity over 24 hours when his own part in the outreach campaign to get everybody to kind of cool their jets had been limited to that point. And I asked Corinne Jean Pierre yesterday, was that him? Did he decide that he had to step in? And she said, yes, it was his decision to do that. And she told me, he's ready.

Jen Tran
He's on fire, he's ready to go, and he wants to get out there.

Karen Travers
That he recognizes he had a bad debate, in her words, and that he needs to show the american people that he can move past that and do the convincing himself.

We saw from what happened yesterday on the meetings on Capitol Hill, Democrats were behind closed doors for many hours. And the bottom line at the end of all of it was that there's no consensus. There was one great line from a lawmaker who was asked, are you all on the same page? And he said, no.

Unknown
What do you mean you're not on the same page?

Unknown
They're not even in the same book.

Karen Travers
And he said, we're not even in the same book. So that kind of shows there are still a lot of significant splits happening behind the scenes. But there's also seems to be, from some of the quotes you're seeing publicly from some top Democrats, a recognition, a realization, you know, that this is kind of where it's heading. The president's not dropping out based on everything he is saying and his team is saying. And as the chair of the House democratic caucus said, he is the nominee. We support the democratic nominee that will beat Donald Trump.

Unknown
That's a rousing rallying cry. Yeah, I guess this is what we do.

Karen Travers
You know, it's like, here's the hand we've been dealt, and we are going to try to see if we can, you know, throw this on the table and see if we can win with it.

Unknown
Well, and that's the thing, though, because the more quotes we've gotten, both on the record and on background from people, the more it sounds like Democrats in Congress are kind of resigned, even if they don't think running Biden is a good idea. Like, yeah, he is going to be the nominee. He's not going anywhere. So we'll see if that stays the case through the end of the week. I know Biden has a big press conference on Thursday, so one more time in the spotlight in the coming days. Karen Travers, thank you.

Karen Travers
Thanks, Brad.

Unknown
Next up on start here, republicans are more than happy to lie low right now, but they may not have that luxury. The latest from the convention site after the break.

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So things have been very noisy around President Biden. But you might have noticed that since the debate, former President Donald Trump has been relatively quiet, which makes a kind of political sense, right? Biden largely tried to make his election a referendum on Trump. Well, it's quickly become a referendum on the current president. And if you're as unpopular as Trump and Biden are, maybe better to just let the other one do most of the talking. But next week, of course, there will be a moment where Trump and the entire Republican Party have to make their voices heard. It's the Republican National Convention. And as part of that, they have to create a party platform, a list of policies they plan to enact over the next four years. That process of articulating that began this week. And that could potentially lead to some pretty loud arguments. While many reporters are gonna fly out to Milwaukee this upcoming weekend, ABC's political reporter Britney shepherd beat them there. She wanted to be there for all the nitty gritty beforehand. So, Britney, what should we know about them about the RNC platform here?

Unknown
I'm always there first. You got it right there, Brad. The platform is almost done, but it hasn't come without its own drama. You know, the RNC does this every four years except for last cycle in 2020, of course, this little thing called Covid, where they couldn't meet and draft a platform, so they adopted the one from 2016. So let's zoom forward to now. Over the weekend, a smaller group of the RNC called the platform committee met Sunday and Monday, and very quickly, Monday morning approved new language that they're going to be bringing to the convention floor next week. That language being the guidepost for all Republicans and the National Party of essentially answering the question, what does it mean to be a Republican right now? And I can't emphasize how quickly this all came together, Brad. By Monday afternoon, this was already done. So it's a much slimmer platform than years prior. And there's also an outline of several commitments, all in caps, all of, and bold in the way we know that Trump likes to, we don't say tweet anymore, send social media messages, and, hey, I'll just read it to you. Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion. Carry out the largest deportation operation in american history. There's large tax cuts for workers, no tax on tips, ending inflation and making America affordable again. This was like a big one. Prevent World War three.

Unknown
Wait, prevent World War three? Like, that's what it says in the document?

Unknown
Yes, it says it. All caps, Brad. Prevent World War three. Which probably is something Democrats and Republicans can both agree on. Yeah, keeping men out of women's sports, securing our elections and so on. No big surprises here. I feel like Trump played all the hits, but there is one admission that's caused lots of Republicans, especially religious Republicans, to be worried.

Unknown
I assume that's abortion. Right? Because that seems like the thing that you were leaving out here in what seems like a lot of social issues, and yet abortion doesn't sound like it's one of them.

Unknown
No. At least not in that original bulleted list. There is, like I mentioned, that 16 page document that accompanies that list. And abortion is mentioned in that full platform, but it's tucked away on one of the final pages.

And as expected, the language there strongly mirrors Trump, which has been deferring to the states.

Unknown
The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land, in this case, the law of the state.

Unknown
And it goes on to say that the group opposes late term abortion while supporting prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF. And if you remember, Brad, the GOP stance on IVF has been a little bit up in the air this year, too.

Unknown
But it's interesting also, we oppose late term abortion. Like that doesn't sound like we oppose all abortion. Right? Like that. That almost seems like sort of walking back from what I've heard in previous years.

Unknown
You're exactly right. This is actually softer language than you or I might expect. This is the first time in decades that the RNC has not explicitly endorsed a national ban on abortion in the platform, though there are some Republicans, those religious Republicans I was talking about, who believe that this does not go far enough.

Unknown
We oppose late term abortion.

Well, what about before that? There's nothing that doesn't even want any place mention the unborn baby at all.

Unknown
I think you begin to see the fracture of where the party is. There's a large group of the Republicans who say, this is just the only winnable path forward. We need to get as many votes as possible, especially in such a toss up election, and other Republicans sticking their heels in and saying, we need to be who we've always been, which is as pro life as possible.

Unknown
Yeah. Does that create an actual. Like, this has to be approved on the floor of the convention. Does that create an actual conflict between Trump and some of these other traditional Republicans.

Unknown
Yeah, I think the tensions are off the charts here. The RNC and Trump, I think, anticipated this difficulty. There's been lots of hand wringing on social media and on some cable shows from these Republicans who are going up and saying and sounding the alarm, worry that this would happen. And in fact, it has. And I think it's near impossible to make all flanks of the party happy here while trying to expand the base. But the discontent is, you know, heard loud and clear. In fact, Trump's former vice president Mike Pence called the new language in a statement on Tuesday a profound disappointment and called for the delegates to restore the language at that platform. Vote, vote on Monday, or at least vote it down to go back to the drawing board. I mean, but Republicans really, really don't want that to happen. They want to show that they have some unity in the face of Democrats who are going through, I think what we can call politely disunity right now, Dem is in disarray. They really want to get that headline on New York Times, a one. And any kind of drama here in Milwaukee distracts from that. And they want all eyeballs on the White House and President Biden right now.

Unknown
Meanwhile, the radical left Democrat Party is divided in chaos and having a full scale breakdown, all because they can't decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president.

Unknown
But at the end of the day, Brad, Donald Trump is leader of the Republican Party. And he's done so much to make sure the RNC and the platform falls in line. He's installed his daughter in law, Lara Trump, as one of the co chairs of the RNC. He's trying to clean house and bring in more people who are more, let's say, Maga aligned. And he knows the challenges Republicans face staring November in the eye. He knows that he needs suburban voters. They helped lose him the White House and he now has to regain those voters. And he's really trying to win states that he never could have won before, like New York, the suburbs, down on Long island, down in north New York, they've been trending more and more and more red since the midterms on maybe northern California and the Sacramento area. The exurbs of Georgia that are purple and coat could go either way. And in Virginia, this is the kind of race brat that will be one in the margins. Thousands of voters in the swing states, I think will be determinative in November. He knows he cannot leave any republican or maybe republican votes on the table. By having any kind of isolationist language on abortion.

Unknown
Yeah. And as we were just talking about with the Biden thing, I mean, you got people in some of these what you'd consider safe districts and safe states being like, I don't know if I'm actually safe anymore. And you can see Republicans trying to pounce on that right now. All right, Brittany Shepard there in Milwaukee. She's staying there for the next couple weeks. We'll see you later.

Unknown
See you soon.

Unknown
Hurricane barrel was already one of the earliest hurricanes we'd ever seen. It flattened islands in the Caribbean. It devastated farmlands in Jamaica, and then it started moving towards Texas.

Unknown
It's a break from the 100 degree weather that we've been having.

Unknown
It actually weakened for a second, becoming tropical storm barrel. But as it arrived on shore, it had upgraded once again to a category one.

But the wind power likely is not what Texans are going to remember here. It'll be barrels effect on electrical power. ABC's Jim Ryan is based in Texas. He's been seeing the aftermath up close. Jim, how hard did it hit?

Unknown
Well, it hit with a force of a category one hurricane that has 80 mph winds, gusts up to 96 in some parts of the area. And by the time it got to Houston, it came ashore at Matagorda Bay and then moved up to the north a little bit toward Houston. It did some damage in Galveston.

Galveston, by and large, had been evacuated. The west part of the island had been the part that's not protected by the seawall that was built after the 1900 hurricane. So those people were safe, essentially, but Houston shelter in place. We're in an emergency. It really wasn't the wind that bothered Houston so much. It was the rain.

In some places, nine and a half inches of rain fell in a very short time. The wind, of course, the damage that it did was to the power infrastructure, knocking over power lines, knocking over big, tall power transmission lines for hundreds of thousands of people, 2 million at one point. Then the storm moved up into East Texas, then northeast Texas, and then finally was downgraded to a post tropical cyclone.

Unknown
Yeah. What is the power situation at this moment? Because like you said, millions of people at one point without power. We're talking about the middle of a Texas summer. How serious does that become?

Unknown
Very, especially Houston. Every day it goes by, it certainly gets to be a more debilitating. I mean, Houston is hot. On any summer day, it's hot, it's very humid. Temperatures approaching 100 degrees feel like 105, 106 degrees in some cases because of that humidity. And so if you don't have air conditioning. It can be downright miserable. You definitely don't want to stay boxed up in this unit without any type of airflow coming in here. The places that did have power going into yesterday and into last evening, those places like libraries, recreation centers, those places, churches, for example, they were opening up their doors so that people would have a place to come and get cool so that the power providers, those crews that were stationed down here, could get out and restore electricity. So it's been kind of slow going, but methodically, little by little, they are getting the power turned back on.

Unknown
Yeah. You've described before how, like, Texas has kind of a unique power situation. How does that affect something like that here?

Unknown
Well, yes. Texas power grid is essentially autonomous from the rest of the country. You have the east grid, the west grid, and the Texas grid. Right. We're kind of on our own down here. So when we have a free situation like we did a couple of februaries ago, it was a matter of relying on Texas. You know, Texas had to. Had to make do on its own. Since then, billions of dollars has been spent to upgrade, to improve, to fix up the power grid, as it were, to make sure that infrastructure didn't go down again.

And that's a good thing so that when another freeze came and when the extreme heat came, we didn't lose power again. But with something like this, this is going to knock out power no matter where it happens. So whether it's an autonomous power grid or tied into the rest of the country, when you have 85 miles an hour, winds blow through a city of 9 million people, it's going to knock out power. Right. It's not surprising that power would be lost in those locations. Now it's just a matter of getting all the lights turned back on.

Unknown
How long have you been waiting for gas?

Unknown
An hour.

Unknown
An hour?

Unknown
An hour.

Unknown
Had you been using this at all just to keep cool while power was out?

Unknown
Yes. Yeah. I mean, the air conditioner's going, and I need the charger for the phone and the whole thing.

Unknown
It's a lifeline.

Unknown
It is, it is.

Unknown
And when you have a city the size of Houston, that's going to take some time. I mean, and to be clear, when you talk about 2 million customers being without electricity, that's not 2 million individuals.

A house could be a customer, an office building can be a customer, an apartment complex. So we're talking about far more than just 2 million people. We're talking, you know, three, four, 5 million people, potentially. And by the end of the day today, we should have another 1 million customers back online. And again, when we're talking about customers, it's not just a house. Could be an apartment complex, but that'll leave still several hundred thousand without electricity. And it is hot in Houston, and.

Unknown
We'Ve seen it because there's not actually a way to, in real time, see where power outages are happening. Like, you don't know if your neighborhood's got power back on yet that easily. We've actually seen people using sort of statewide services, like people have resorted to using. The Whataburger app lists all the Whataburger stores in Texas to see, oh, this one's open, this one's closed. The open one must have power back on. I can move back onto my block. Really high stakes stuff here when you're talking about this level of heat. Jim Ryan, thank you so much.

Unknown
Thanks, Fred.

Unknown
Okay, one more quick break. When we come back, pick up some litter, win a prize. This isn't a middle school directive. This is a country's entire tourism strategy. One last thing is next.

Jen Tran
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Unknown
And one last thing, you might have seen these scenes earlier this week.

These are protesters chanting, tourists, go home. Barcelona residents showing up to restaurants frequented by tourists and squirting visitors with water guns.

On one hand, this is about as playful as a protest can get, right? But make no mistake, there was real anger here, which the tourists very much felt. Barcelona residents been growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of affordable housing while local homes are rented out to foreigners. Restoration and hotels is the group that makes really big money. But all the people are in a very poor situation and they don't have enough money to live. That's a problem.

And of course, this isn't just limited to Barcelona. This year alone, Venice, Italy, has imposed new fees on out of towners crowding the streets. Venice become like to the Disneyland and Salem, Massachusetts. Yeah, the land of ghosts and witch trials has raised the fee you have to pay to bring a tour group into town.

Unknown
I just hope for a continued open dialogue between the tour community, the residents, and the city council, because I think we are all on the same team and there's a lot of good that can come from this conversation.

Unknown
Instead of $10, it now costs tour guides 350. That's a 3000% markup. It might be no surprise that this resentment towards outsiders grew as inflation rose in the wake of COVID restrictions, meaning hordes of people felt the need to travel again, right, as some felt less able than ever to afford anything. But if some communities have embraced the stick approach, others are using carrots.

This week in Copenhagen, danish authorities announced a pilot program, program where visitors will be rewarded for acting like a good tourist. Like if you pick up a piece of trash around a particular museum, they will give you special access to an exhibit. If you take a bicycle or public transit to a popular site, they will hook you up with a free tour. A lot of these incentives revolve around environmentally friendly actions. And whats really interesting about this is the government is not reimbursing the tourist attractions, and yet these sites are ponying up anyway. From rooftop bars offering free drinks to restaurants offering free salads to kayak companies offering free rentals. These places are so desperate for nice, considerate humans that theyre willing to pay for them. Their bet is that by even getting you to spend a few minutes thinking about what really matters to locals, that itself will be worth the price of a drink.

I should say our teams legal eagle, Betsy Shore just returned from a trip to Scandinavia, but she's one of the most polite people I know, so this is probably why they waited to enact this. Like don't take your stuff out on Betsy. She does, though I bet very politely go around reminding everyone it's Copenhagen, actually. Hey, just wanted to say we got some really great feedback from our episode featuring independent voters. Last week on Apple Podcast, we got a review from Boondoggle bliss who said this episode perfectly reflected the conversations I'm having with myself. Scott on Facebook said, please continue this line of discussion. So we definitely will. And this is a reminder, we always want to hear from you. We're on Facebook. We're on x Instagram. Drop us a line at starther ABC. I'm Brad Milke. See you tomorrow.