Weve host good afternoon i am Jonathan Capehart an opinion writer for the Washington Post for this is Washington Post live is also special live recording of my podcast. Former president obamas first term susan rice was the ambassador to the united nations, and in the second term she was Obamas National Security advisor. Today, she is a private citizen. She is the author of tough love, my story of the things worth fighting for. And under serious consideration to be joe bidens of Vice President ial running mate. Welcome back for the third time to the podcast, ambassador susan rice welcome. Susan thank you so much, it is great to be with you. Host one minute before we came on air here that Trump Administration dropped the plan to Deport International Students in online classes and your reaction was to applaud. Explain. Susan do the happy dance. [laughter] it was such a misguided stupid decision that they took in the first place. International students are a critical part of our university structure, our college campuses. They bring talent, they bring diversity, they bring resources. And to lock them out simply because their campus has decided by virtue of the pandemic that they need to conduct Classes Online in the fall was callous and extraordinarily counterproductive. I have not had a chance to read in detail the reporting on it. But it looks like the Trump Administration saw that their effort to defend this policy in court was unlikely to succeed, and they backed down. It seems to be a victory for our colleges and universities, our students across this country and across the world. Because so much of our appeal, our competitiveness, and our soft power depends on people around the world wanting to come here to learn and study and bring their skills and talents. This is a good day. Host ambassador, lets keep talk about Foreign Policy. Originally i was going to start this interview talking about the election in poland and the news of the reelection of polands president. He is an ally of President Trump and a supporter of the right wing law and justice party. He has been condemned by the eu. I am wondering, how if you think, President Trumps behavior in the Foreign Policy space, his support for leaders like this has contributed to the rise of illiberal nationalists and autocratic regimes around the world. Susan it certainly legitimized the rise of elected autocrats. We see that increasingly in different parts of the world. Poland is the most recent example. It is unfortunate because poland as an important part of nato, an important part of the eu. It is moving in a direction where its values and approach are completely out of step with the other members of the alliance. It suggests particularly when it comes to the eu of their could be in jeopardy down the road if there is a further move towards antidemocratic policies and structures. Host ambassador, is it possible for the alliance to even survive if the superpower in the alliance, the United States, is not even to bother to champion the small d democratic ideals that have been the alliance for more than seven decades . Susan the Nato Alliance is under duress. Almost entirely because of President Trumps callous disregard for the purposes and the interest of this alliance. Our alliance with nato is built on common values. It is also built on interest that we stand together as north American Allies and north atlantic allies allies. And europe broadly with those threats to our sovereignty and integrity which come chiefly from russia. And when the United States questions the values of our alliances, turns it into a transactional arrangement, when President Trump decides to unilaterally withdraw a third of our forces from germany without even consulting with the german government, and calls her adversaries from russia to china to north korea, while putting our allies in a very difficult position, it does great damage to the alliance. That is one of the many reasons we need change. I do not think nato and are leadership role in the world can withstand four more years of donald trump. That is why we need change and leadership in the form of joe biden, who comes out of the bipartisan american tradition of supporting our alliances, understanding who our friends are into our adversaries are, and what are leadership and strength is enhanced when we can bring partners and allies with us. Host we will talk more about joe biden in a moment. Lets keep talking about russia. We were talking for a little bit about the news that broke that the u. S. Had received intelligence suggesting russia paid taliban fighters to kill american troops in afghanistan. This is what you wrote for an oped in the new york times. At best hour commanderinchief is derelict in duty with the National Security process that is putting our country and those who where its uniform at great risk. The United States is being run by liars and winds catering to a radical president actively advancing with our are charged a series nefarious interest. Is it incompetence or treason . Susan they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I do not use the word treason. My point is that both are maybe happening at once. We have a president who could care less about how extraordinary intelligence that the Intelligence Community deemed credible enough to put in the president s Daily Briefing, the most important and exclusive product they create that indicates the russians are paying telegram forces, taliban affiliated forces to kill american men and women in afghanistan. The United States president does nothing when that was brought to him. I believe it was brought to him in written form and earlier by one of my successors, john bolton. Even today, two weeks after that information came to public light, President Trump has said and done nothing critical of russia, did not indicate any sense of concern or urgency for the safety of our forces in battle, has not to anybodys knowledge initiated any actions to respond to russia. They said, we do not believe it is true, so we will not bother with it. But the Intelligence Community believes it is true or they would not have put it in the president ial Daily Briefing. Even more so into a product called the wire which has been the most widely disseminated pieces of intelligence that the u. S. Government produces. It goes everywhere including to capitol hill staffers. This had to be a piece of information in which they had a good degree of confidence, if not 100 certainty, which is never the case. President trump has done nothing. He has left our forces vulnerable and bare. Either he is doing that at of some mysterious motivation to serve putins interest or which we have seen Many Disparate pieces of evidence over the course of the last four years, but no overarching explanation. Or he is running a National Security process where the people around him are so scared, so incompetent that they are unwilling or unable to bring to him the information he must have to serve effectively as commanderinchief to protect our forces in the field. Either way you look at it, it is a disaster. Either way you look at it, the message to Vladimir Putin is that he can attack americans anywhere in the world with impunity, and be invited to join the g7. Host you anticipated the question i was going to ask, is it possible at all that the president of the United States was not briefed, did not know about this intelligence . Judging by the answer you gave, it is virtually impossible he did not know. Susan here is what i believe, i believe it was put in his president ial Daily Briefing. I believe he often does not read and that he always does not read his president ial Daily Briefing. Any National Security advisor worth his or her salt would have read the Daily Briefing even if their boss does not. And when they saw that information, they would have done what i would have done, walk directly into the oval office and brief the president of the United States orally if they knew he was not going to see it in writing. And say to the president , we have this deeply concerning information about russia. I am what you work with the Intelligence Community to run it to ground and validate it. In the meantime, i will work with the other agencies and principles to pull together options for you to respond, and i will keep you posted. If the Current National zakaria advisor did not do that, that would be an abdication of his most basic responsibilities. If he did do that, then the president is lying again. I also believe is that john bolton, who has hinted that information similar to this came to light in 2019 while he was still National Security advisor, he would certainly not have been intimidated to bring that information to the attention of the president. I believe one way or another the president knew and has chosen not to act. Host my followup question, given everything you said in its entirety in response to this, is the president of the United States a National Security threat to the United States . Susan i think by virtue of his dereliction of duty, his failure to protect americans whether on the battlefield in afghanistan, or here at home in the face of a grave threat from coronavirus, and his very bizarre penchant of cozying up to our adversaries and doing Vladimir Putins bidding is in fact acting against the interests of the United States. That is about as friendly as i can put it. We have a president who is acting against the interest of the United States. Host we also have a president who likes to spin conspiracy theories and disseminate conspiracy theories. One of them is that president obama and the Obama Administration spied on his 2016 campaign. In an energy a with the Christian Broadcasting Network in june he said, it is treason. When i came out a long time ago, i said they have been spying on my campaign. They have been taping. That is a modern day version of taping. They have been spying on my campaign. Did that happen . Susan you know and i know and most of the sentient American People know, absolutely no, it did not happen, that is false, another lie designed to deflect from the president s own bizarre relationship with russia, to distract from much validated reality that russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit donald trump, and President Trump is in some fever dream about the Obama Administration, when all we tried to do was execute despite the Trump Administration, incoming administrations reluctance, the most responsible transition we possibly could. I presided over a process at the National Security council will be prepared over 100 individual briefing papers for the incoming National Security advisor. I spent 12 hours in four separate sessions briefing my successor on all of the important issues that might arise, or that were on the table, ranging from russia to china to pandemic preparedness. Our effort was, despite the bizarre nature of the election, despite President Trumps strange behavior before, during and after, our approach was to do our utmost in a responsible handoff from wanted administration to the other, just as president bush had done for barack obama. Host one of those papers you mentioned, a paper on pandemic come one was a 69 page paper that when we spoke in april you described as pandemics for dummies. You said when we spoke in april that the idea of a pandemic was keeping me up at night because we have not begun to hit the top of the curve here. As for the president , you said, quote, he brags. If we hadnt done anything maybe 2. 2 million would have died. So of the 240,000 is a good outcome. And what circle of hell is that a good outcome . Thats what you spoke to me in the podcast in april. Is it safe to say in three months later, your assessment has not changed. Susan it has gotten worse. Not only did President Trump do nothing in january and february but brushing this off as seasonal flu. Not only was he slow to recommend the shutdown of various states when they were in the throes of the first part of this crisis in march and april, then he came behind that and all too quickly in the interest of his own reelection, and in the interest of his own personal benefit, not to help the safety and economy of the United States, champion the premature reopening of various states. What we are reading now is the result of that extraordinarily irresponsible rush to reopen. We are seeing it tragically in parts of the west and south which were among the states that were the first to reopen. And to do so rapidly without basic precautions like mandating the use of masks. It has gone from very bad differently worse, and the numbers bear that out. It is frightening to contemplate how high the death toll may go. So long as donald trump is putting his own interest ahead of that of the health and welfare and economic wellbeing of the American People. Now he is championing reopening all schools everywhere with full class sizes and life teaching regardless of the circumstances at the local level. Nothing could be more irresponsible. He is willing to second price the health and safety of our children, their teachers, the staff at the schools in order to convey the false reality, the false message that america is back and ready to reopen. If we had done what people in countries in europe did, which is to wait until the curve was truly bent, until the infection rate had gone down, and the number of new infections was close to zero before beginning the process of reopening. Had we done it gradually and responsibly and mandated things like masks, and had adequate testing and contact tracing, we would be in a much better place in our schools, and much of the country would be able to reopen with minimal risk come the beginning of the school year. Now they face this horrific choice of opening prematurely and putting all those kids and adults and everybody at enhanced risk, or kids will be forced to lose time and quality of learning. It did not have to be this way. Host ambassador rice, given the spikes that have been happening around the country, i take it you do not think schools should reopen, period. Susan you have to look at this the local level. You have to look at what is the disease doing . How fast is it spreading . What is the reinfection rate . What is the Positivity Rate . There will be places where things are relatively better than other places. In the socalled hotspots of the south and west, when schools are set to reopen in august, it is very difficult to see how they can do so safely. And even when they do reopen, the cdc guidance before it was manipulated, if it is going to be manipulated, and the advice of experts has been that it is very important to maintain social distancing in schools of at least six feet between students in a classroom. I was the cochair in washington, d. C. Of our mayors reopen d. C. Advisory group. And we worked through all of these issues. I was particularly involved in the educational aspect of our recommendation. The reality is you cannot reopen safely if you cannot maintain that spacing. In most schools do not have the physical space to reduce class sizes by half or more, which is what you are talking about to enable students to have that degree of space. In many places, even when the risks are moderate to low, you were not going to have every student in the classroom all day every day. You have to have some kind of cohoarding, or certain amount of days on in a certain amount of days off, and in the off days, do virtual learning. And then youll have kids, by virtue of their own healths stances are those of their parents or grandparents do not feel like it safe to return to school. You need to have continued Online Learning even in places where it is possible to begin to have some version of inperson teaching. Host so ambassador rice, do you think we as a nation, as we did earlier in the pandemic, should we locked down again western mark should the states shut down and stay at home again for at least two or three weeks to really truly bend the curve . Susan in some parts of the country i think unfortunately we must. I think we see recognition of that in california were Governor Newsom ordered the bars to close, restaurants closed for indoor dining, gyms and churches in major population centers. Nobody wants to be on lockdown. Everybody wants to get back to work and school, but to do so safely and sustainably requires we get the curve bent and