Eliot and Eric note this week’s jackassery—tariffing McDonald Island and Heard Island off Australia, almost exclusively inhabited by penguins, and Trump’s plan for a four-mile-long military parade to mark his birthday on June 14 and the anniversary of the United States Army. In a more sinister vein they discuss the absolute craziness of the NSC staff purge apparently orchestrated by conspiracy theorist and MAGA influencer Laura Loomer and the subsequent cashiering of NSA Director and Cybercom Commander Gen. Timothy Haugh (as well as his deputy) and the firing of Adm. Shoshana Chatfield as the U.S. military representative to NATO for various imagined DEI sins.

They also touch on the insane economic self harm of Trump’s trade war and the incompetence of the Trump team as they calculated the tariffs. Eric and Eliot diverge on the issue of how trade policy has migrated from the legislative to the executive branch and how the constitutional system set up by the Founders is out of balance. They also discuss Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the prospect of U.S.-Iranian direct negotiations over the nuclear program, the larger crisis of democracy in Israel and the danger of Israeli overreach in attempting to reset the Middle East.

Then they discuss the recent visit of Russian envoy Kiril Dmitriev and his discussions with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and what they might augur for the prospects of a ceasefire in Ukraine. Finally, in response to comments from viewers about Eric and Eliot’s criticisms of the history behind the New York Times’s 1619 Project, they provide the following commentary by several distinguished historians below:

Sean Wilentz: https://philosophy.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/122/2013/10/oph_oph-202101-0005.pdf

James Oakes: https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/12/what-the-1619-project-got-wrong

Gordon S. Wood: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html?mod=article_inline

Leslie M. Harris: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248

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Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast cosponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.