(bright upbeat music) - [Presenter 1] At BECU, we know that it's people who make all the difference.

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(bright music) (gentle music) - [Presenter 2] And now, the "Cascade PBS Ideas Festival" featuring journalists, newsmakers, and innovators from around the country in conversation about the issues making headlines.

Thank you for joining us for "One Thing" with Jeff Flake, moderated by David Rind.

Before we begin, a special thank you to our stage sponsor, BECU.

We'd also like to thank our founding sponsor, the Killinger Foundation.

And thank you to our host sponsor, Amazon.

- Hey, everyone, welcome to the "Cascade PBS Ideas Festival."

I'm David Rind, the host of CNN's "One Thing" podcast.

And on our show, we've been doing our best to make sense of the second Trump administration as the president works to reshape nearly every facet of American life.

I've been talking to so many regular folks who have been directly impacted by all this news to see it through their eyes.

But I thought today it would also be good to hear from someone who has experience in grappling with Trump and the way he has fundamentally reshaped the Republican Party.

That person is Jeff Flake.

He's a former Republican Congressman and Senator from Arizona.

During the Biden administration, he was appointed the US Ambassador to Turkey, and he is currently the Director of the Institute of Politics at Arizona State University.

Ambassador Flake, thanks so much for being here.

(audience applauding) - Thanks for having me, and thank you to "Cascade PBS Ideas Festival" for the invitation, it's wonderful.

- So, it's no secret that you have been a very vocal critic of President Trump going all the way back to his first run for the White House.

And that criticism angered a lot of your Republican colleagues, some in the Republican base.

So much so that in 2017, you announced you would not run for reelection.

You said it became clear you just wouldn't be able to survive a Republican primary in Arizona.

And I wanna go back to something you said on the Senate floor when you announced that retirement.

You were talking about the populism that had taken hold in the party, and this general, you know, instinct to, governed by anger and resentment.

And you said, quote, "This spell will eventually break.

That is my belief.

We will return to ourselves once more.

And I say the sooner, the better."

And then, again, that was 2017, this is 2025.

It's clearly not broken.

So, I guess I'm wondering, how long did you think it would take?

(Jeff and audience laughing) - This has been one heck of a fever, I'll tell you.

(laughing) No, I'd hoped that it would break.

I certainly didn't think that President Trump would be elected for a second term.

He was denied a second term initially, but obviously won it again.

And I still believe that anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy, not an effective one.

It may be a way to win elections, but it's not a governing philosophy.

And I think we're seeing some of the limits of that now.

- But this is kind of, you know, what it is at the current moment.

- Yeah, it is, no doubt.

And then going back to that moment when you made that decision, I guess I'm wondering if there was any part of you that thought, maybe I can tweak my language a little bit to appeal to some of this crowd so that I can stay in office and affect some of the change, push back.

Rather than to just say, you know, I can't do it.

Did you ever think about that?

- Oh, every politician thinks about that.

And obviously, every politician, myself included, you, during a campaign, you say, you know, this is what I'm gonna emphasize now because this is what the voters want.

And I'm not denying that that doesn't occur, but for me at that time, it would've required for me to change everything I had said.

To say, those things I said about the President and his behavior, and his policies, I no longer feel that way, or he's grown on me.

And I could have done that, certainly.

I've seen the polling, we'd done polling in my state in Arizona.

And definitely, I could have done that, could have won reelection.

But at what cost?

You know, I just, I thought, how can I face my kids?

And how can I sleep at night?

And if I had just, you know, just changed everything I believed.

And so, for me, there was maybe a hope that I could, you know, that the voters would come back around.

That maybe deeper into the, you know, by the time reelection would come a year and a half later, that, yeah, the voters would appreciate.

You know, in Arizona, voters have always appreciated having more of a maverick independence, you know, Barry Goldwater, John McCain, I'd won election.

But it was clear by that time that the voters wanted somebody who agreed with the president all the time, and it couldn't be me.

- Was there a specific moment early on when Trump was on office that first time where you realized that like the voters were locked in in that way?

- Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it was not just polling, but I would go there to, (chuckles) everybody has town halls.

And it was pretty clear that they wanted somebody who believed where the president is, and where the president was on immigration issues, for example.

I'd always been, you know, lemme just concede, immigration issues are much different today than there were most of my time in the House and the Senate where I'd always introduced comprehensive immigration reform and worked for it.

But the nature of immigration and what happens at the border is completely different.

But there were some things that the President, you know, the proposed Muslim ban, you know, it was never completely implemented, but elements of it were.

Those kind of things, I could never get on board with.

And going to a town hall or to a district meeting, a precinct committee meeting in my state, I could not defend those policies, and with a straight face.

So, it became clear pretty early.

And then the things that he was saying about my partner in the Senate, John McCain, you know, I could never countenance that.

My first meeting with Donald Trump was at the Senate, NRSC, the campaign arm.

We were off-campus and met with him.

And this was after he had just said that he couldn't respect John McCain because he'd been captured.

- [David] Right.

- And I told him, I said, that's an awful thing.

And you can't say that.

- You told him that to his face frankly?

- Yeah, I did.

I said, you can't say that about John McCain.

And he said, well, yes I can.

I have Joe Arpaio, the popular sheriff in Arizona, well, I have his support, and you're gonna lose your election in November, he told me.

I said, well, I'm not up in November.

But (chuckles) be that as it may, I couldn't take the style of politics, this grievance style of politics, this coarsening of the rhetoric, and calling your opponents across the aisle suckers or losers, it just is not my style of politics.

And so, that was bad enough, but then some of the policies as well, I thought were very troubling.

- So, you wrote in a recent "Washington Post" op-ed, and you were urging Republicans to speak up, especially on the global stage.

But, you know, what incentive is there for Republicans to speak out if they look at someone like you who took this principled stance and is not an office anymore?

- Yeah, there's not much in that article piece (chuckles) was written this week (chuckles) in the "Washington Post."

And I did encourage saying that, you know, some guardrails still exist, on domestic policy, mostly.

The courts will intervene.

You'll have, you know, midterm elections come, which will lead to a course correction on some issues.

But on foreign issues, and in foreign policy in particular, and having just served overseas for three years, some of that is tougher to turn around.

And our allies right now, and other countries are deciding who they're gonna be with and what they do from here.

And so, what I was encouraging my former colleagues to do, particularly Republicans, is to stand up and remind our allies that they're still our allies.

That you can't respond to everything the President says that is reckless or demeaning.

But when he encourages, not encourages, but demands of Canada to become a 51st state or talks about taking Greenland by force, those things, you stand up and remind our allies and our colleagues overseas that that is not us, and that's not our party.

Because if you do, then they'll say, well, hey, we can outlast this.

(chuckles) But if they believe that the party is entirely with the President on this, then it's an easier decision to seek security arrangements otherwise to enter other trade alliances.

And that's dangerous because that lasts a lot longer.

- How do you get around the idea of that maybe in a few weeks, your leader of some country is going to come into the Oval Office and be berated by Trump in these ambush sessions like we've seen, like, how do you work around that?

- There's no way to, you know, get around that, that's gonna happen, but you still ought to stand up.

And like I say, these foreign leaders, they watch the Senate in particular, but the House as well, and they look for clues that the US will be back.

That this is a temporary bout of isolationism.

And that these security alliances, these intelligence-sharing agreements, these trade agreements that we have can last or can be back in vogue.

Most of our allied countries and others don't want to deal with China, they recognize the threat.

And just take Africa, we don't have any many allied countries there, but we have a lot of countries that would love to do trade with us, or other business, or have intelligence-sharing agreements or security arrangements.

But right now, they're thinking, where's the stability with that?

And China is beaten down the door with them.

And so, they'd rather do business with us, they'd rather be with us.

But in the absence of some senators and others standing up and saying, hey, we'll be with you.

So, it's really important for members of the Congress, the House and the Senate, to take these congressional delegations, these CODELs elsewhere.

Congress pays for any program, (chuckles) but in particular, for our presence overseas, in our embassies, in our humanitarian programs, and everything.

Fewer of them than there were before, and that's important as well, to push back on some of those issues.

The soft power that we're losing right now.

- Is the way that Trump is kind of trying to negotiate the end to these various conflicts around the world, this direct one-on-one style, you know, where he says it's probably going to have to end up with him and Putin in a room somewhere, can that be effective?

- It can be, but you have to understand who Putin really is.

And I'm not sure that the President has come to grips with who he is.

- Well, it really struck me the other day when he said that Putin had gone crazy.

You know, after a recent bout of rockets as if this hasn't been going on- - Yeah, yeah.

And he said that, I've come to the conclusion that he wants to take all of Ukraine.

Well, I think he made that crystal clear back in February of '22.

(crosstalk) So, yeah, I think it can be effective.

And let me just say, some of the things the president has done overseas lately, I have applauded.

- Like what?

- Going to the Middle East and meeting with the Syrian leader, Jolani, and saying, we're gonna relieve sanctions on this new Syrian Government.

That was the right thing to do.

If they don't hold true on their commitments, then you impose the sanctions again.

But you have to give them a chance.

And that, you know, with President Trump, some of his instincts sometimes are very helpful and useful.

And I always said, as ambassador, I wanted a president who would be able to pick up the phone and call a world leader.

Trump kind of has that instinct to just pick up the phone and call, and that can be useful.

You know, it's usually good to have a note taker (chuckles) and to not make promises that you can't keep or whatever.

That's another thing.

But just that instinct is good.

And so, Trump's instinct to say, hey, I'm gonna go and negotiate this, isn't a bad thing.

I've said, deal with Iran, you have to.

Deal with, you know, go into Syria and relieve the sanctions there, give them a chance to move forward.

Those are good things.

But there needs to be some underlying strategic principle.

And sometimes, that's absent from the moves of the President.

- Do you get the sense that, at least when it relates to these wars, you know, Gaza, Ukraine, that it just wants them to be over and not so much the the moral standing of the particular conflict?

- Yeah.

You get that in particular with Ukraine right now, let's just get it done.

He said 24 hours, obviously that didn't happen.

We're a long way into it, and we're no closer to any negotiated settlement than we were before.

And if we negotiate a settlement that gives Russia control of that territory and explicit, you know, assurance that that is their territory, that would be an awful, terrible thing.

And that's what Mike Pompeo was saying.

There may be a way to negotiate an end to the war, it probably is, and I hope there is, where maybe it's kind of an armistice.

Where people recognize the facts on the ground, but you don't go and say, all right, Russia, you take what you've taken and that's now yours.

If we come to some kind of agreement like that, that would be terrible for Ukraine, it would be terrible for the world.

- Hmm.

I do wanna ask a little bit about your time in Turkey, because you were appointed ambassador by President Biden in display of, you know, bipartisanship.

How did that come about?

- You know, it used to be that presidents of any party would appoint a few people, at least from the opposite party to their cabinet or to important ambassadorships.

That's kind of fallen out of favor.

President Trump, in his first term, didn't name any Democrats.

President Biden named, I think, myself.

And that was, Cindy McCain as well.

The two of us were the only Republicans.

I think that's important that there are some.

- So, you're not a Democrat, but you did support Kamala Harris in the last election.

You were actively out there pushing for folks to vote for her.

You were on CNN's air, in fact.

So, having spent some time kind of in that orbit, I'm curious how you would assess the Democratic Party, and what's not working for them.

Because as unpopular as President Trump is right now, the Democrats are equally, if not less, you know, depending on who you ask.

So, where are they coming up short as you see it in terms of galvanizing people to their side?

- Well, I'm Republican, so I don't wanna prescribe for Democrats what they ought to be doing.

But it strikes me that, you know, there's a huge lane in the middle both for people in my party who would like somebody who is conservative in the traditional sense of the word.

Believes in limited government, economic freedom, free trade, strong American leadership abroad.

You know, there's a huge group in the middle.

And I think a lot of the Democrats believe kind of that same thing as well.

That I do think that Democrats, in the last election, I think, it was very effective for President Trump, in his campaign, to pick out certain examples on some social issues where Democrats are just with 20% of the country, and not 80% of the country.

And- - Like what?

- Well, like on the most aired ad, because it was so effective, I think, was the one Donald Trump is for you, she is for they/them.

- [David] Yeah.

- And on that issue, I think today in California, there's a trans athlete competing.

And those, you know, there may just be one or there, but it's able to be used in a campaign in a very effective way that sidelines, you know, too many Democrats.

And so, I think that Democrats, if they would, you know, gravitate more toward the middle on some of these issues, it would benefit them as well.

- Well, on on the Republican side, you wrote in your book, "Conscience of a Conservative," back in 2017, that it wasn't enough at that point to be a Conservative, you had to be angry about it.

And there are some Republicans out there though, who are not quite as angry as others about certain things.

I'm thinking about former Vice President Mike Pence, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, they might code at least as more common-sense Conservatives.

You know, you could look at their actual policy prescriptions, and maybe quibble with that.

But I guess now that they might be weighing next steps as we get closer to midterms and beyond, do you have any advice for how they should approach grabbing that group of folks from the middle that you talk about?

- Well, I don't know.

I'm not in office, so I may not be the one to be giving advice for somebody who wants to gain office.

But I do think, and I'm out quite a bit meeting with people, and I do know that there is a vast group of people who don't believe in grievance politics.

Who believe that, you know, if you stand for principle, you don't have to be angry about.

That's what Mike Pence, his saying during my entire time, and we were elected at the same time in Congress in 2000, was, "I'm a Conservative, but I'm just not angry about it."

That was his theme.

And Mike Pence is a very conservative person, but now, he has seen, and I'm often called a moderate.

I was never called a moderate when I was in the House or the Senate.

I was a Neanderthal Conservative.

And I still consider myself, traditionally, very conservative.

But to be Conservative is now been equated with being angry and engaging in grievance politics.

And that's just not for me.

- I guess I'm wondering about a post-Trump future, what does it look like to you?

You know, who is kind of leading the charge?

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- Is that being talked about right now?

(Jeff chuckles) - Yeah, quietly.

Not so much upfront.

And you mentioned earlier there, what motivation would there be for somebody to follow my advice and to stand up and remind our allies, you know, we'll be back.

You know, this protectionist period will pass, the Republicans will be free traders again.

There's not much incentive right now, there really isn't.

And I do think Americans, at some point, my party will say, enough with grievance politics, let's get back to governing because we're gonna need people who govern.

Let's just take, right now, we have the big beautiful Bill that is before the Congress now.

- It's the official title, by the way.

- Yeah, it is.

But if you look at that, it increases the deficit over 10 years by a huge amount.

My party, the party of limited government, we can't continue to do that.

And when we just put, you know, completely on the shelf, any discussion of social security, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the long, big, so-called entitlement programs and just look at non-defense discretionary spending and say, we're gonna just doge that and get all the savings, you just can't.

And so, I think voters are gonna need to see some honesty here, we're gonna have to tackle those issues.

Many other countries have.

Many other countries in more difficult situations fiscally have righted their ship.

We're gonna have to follow their lead in certain circumstances.

But people are gonna have to come forward in a sober manner.

Not angry, but saying, here's the math, and here's what we're gonna have to do.

And so, I do think there's going to be room for that.

- When?

(Jeff and audience laughing) - Well, I do think some things that will change in the coming, you know, months, we've passed the 100 days now when any president, particularly, with control over the House and the Senate is at their peak in terms of power.

Now, we're past that.

Now, members of Congress, I can tell you as having been one for 18 years, then you look to the midterms.

And you say, who am I more afraid of, my voters or the President?

Or is it both?

Or whatever.

But they're gonna be concerned about election.

And those incentives that I was just talking about, to deal with our broader fiscal problems, those aren't playing right now.

It's just until we come to some crisis, they won't be.

But I can tell you, the effect of tariffs, tariffs are inflationary, there's no way around it.

And to the extent if the President is successful with tariffs, in imposing higher tariffs, then it's gonna mean higher prices.

And that's gonna be a difficult pill for voters to swallow.

So, there will be different motivations for members of Congress to look at over the next year and a half.

- I wanna ask about some of the moves Trump has made on college campuses and international students, 'cause, you know, you're do doing work now for, you know, at Arizona State.

I guess just broadly, do you think there should be less international students on campuses across the country?

- No, I don't.

I think that that has benefited US universities, certainly, a lot of them.

Like the revenue that comes with somebody paying full freight.

- Right, they usually pay full price, and they'll get financial aid.

- Right.

And a lot of state universities are able to subsidize more of the local students by, you know, having international students come as well.

So, that's, fiscally, that's important to universities, but more importantly for us, by spreading American value and culture abroad.

It's extremely important.

Having just been in Turkey, they send more international, or students, than almost any European country to the United States.

And some of them go back to run for elected office there in their country.

They are no better ambassador for the United States and democracy and our value and culture than students who have come back to their country.

That's extremely important.

So, I'm very disturbed by where we're going with that.

I recognize the need to be sure that, you know, that Chinese national who comes isn't looking for intellectual property theft or whatever else.

Yes, go after those individually.

But to put blanket bans on students coming, is a very bad move in my view.

And with, you know, the moves at Harvard, yes, Harvard needs to deal with antisemitism.

There are other ways to deal with it than cutting cancer research at Harvard or doing blanket bans on federal funding.

- Hmm.

- There are better ways to do it.

(audience applauding) - Yeah, I mean, on the security front end and the reasons that the administration is putting forward for why they're revoking visas or increasing social-media vetting, they've repeatedly said they would use participation in pro-Palestinian protests as a basis to deport or revoke visas of students.

Do you think that's a legitimate reason to revoke a visa?

- If somebody comes here and participates in protests that impacts somebody's ability to get an education, that's one thing.

But simple free speech favoring the Palestinian cause is probably in a different category.

So, yeah, I mean, if it leads to violence, or like I said, negatively impacting another student's ability to get an education, that's wrong, and they shouldn't be here to do that.

But simply expressing their free speech, let's face it, a lot of people, just having lived in Turkey, it is a 97% Muslim country.

And they feel very strongly about what's happening in Gaza.

And we have to recognize that the entire world doesn't see it exactly as we do.

- Before we go, I have to ask you, do you have any plans to run for office again?

(Jeff laughing) - You know, I- - Just, you and me, you don't have to worry about them.

I don't even think they we're recording this.

(Jeff laughing) - It's tough to see a place.

I served 18 years in Congress, that's a good time.

And I'm not saying I'll never serve in any capacity, I'd love to, for either as a member of my own party or appointed by the other side, that we live in a wonderful country and we have wonderful institutions.

The Senate is a great institution.

It has its problems, but still good people on both sides of the aisle doing good things, and the House as well, and good people in federal agencies doing their best.

And that's what's been difficult in the last several months, is to see people kind of degraded.

People at USAID saying, clean out your desk, you've got 15 minutes.

And not appreciating the good work that they've done.

So, there is value in public service.

And those of us who are on college campuses are, you know, begging the younger generation, hey, it is noble to either run for office, to serve on a staff, to work on campaigns, or do advocacy work, do nonprofit work.

Public service is good and noble.

And I fear that many in the younger generation will see the vitriol that's happening out there, and just say, that's not for me.

- Right, why would I wanna get involved in that mess?

- Exactly.

And so, that's important.

I'd love to serve in some way again, I don't know if it'll be an elected office.

- Okay, fair enough.

Ambassador Flake, thanks so much for doing this, I really appreciate it.

- Hey, thank you.

(audience applauding) (energetic music)