Ben Rhodes

America is not the stable bet.

We are kind of the rogue nation in the world.

And so I think what you're going to see in the long run, it puts at risk the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

The dollar, I think most Americans don't realize what allows us to sustain our standards of living, which I already feel like they're at risk because of rising prices, is the fact that we can take on so much debt because the whole world transacts through the dollar.

Well, and that includes oil trades, importantly.

You're already seeing some nations begin to move away from that.

And if that is the case, then that is truly the end of not just kind of American hegemony, but America's capacity to sustain its fiscal situation.

So there's a lot happening right now.

Well, I think, first of all, what we can do is we can kind of learn from the last two times because there are things that were done right, but there are also things that were done wrong.

If you look at Obama comes in and there's a global financial crisis, remember that one, as well as the catastrophic war in Iraq.

And, you know, while I think Obama did a lot of stuff right, there was also a sense that, hey, we're not going to look back.

We're not going to kind of go after people.

We're here to look forward and to build new things and to try to work together with Republicans.

And that obviously left Obama in a situation where there was both a sense there wasn't accountability for those failures, but there was also a sense that, well, he owned things now because he's saying, well, this is normal.

I'm taking the handoff.

I'm doing what I'm doing.

Biden very similarly came in with COVID and a lot of economic disruption, obviously, a lot of diminished U.S.

standing in the world.

And the idea was we're kind of returning to normal here.

We're getting like the adults back in charge.