The narrative tool of Chekhov's Gun states that if a gun is produced in the first act, it will be fired by the last. As we may soon learn, this principle can also apply to real life as Trump mobilizes U.S. military forces around Iran.
Tom Malinowski, former diplomat and foreign affairs expert, sits down with Jen to discuss the likelihood of airstrikes in Iran and the accompanying risks. The two also dive into the recently convened “Board of Peace,” repairing relationships with our allies, and Malinowski’s recent Congressional campaign. Did AIPAC interfere with New Jersey’s 11th district elections? Tune in to find out.
Tom P. Malinowski is a former U.S. Congressman from New Jersey. He served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Obama administration.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. Back with us, our friend and former congressman, former State Department official, and former candidate for Congressman, Tom Maldivesky. Tom, welcome back.
Tom Malinowski
Thank you, Jen, great to see you.
Jen Rubin
something rather untoward happened. What happened in your race?
Tom Malinowski
So, on election night, I had the kind of unfortunate experience of having the whole world, declare me the winner of the race, and so there were two A ton hours of, like, fielding phone calls from all my friends. I think you were one of them.
Jen Rubin
I was, I was.
Tom Malinowski
And, and it’s actually very weird in this day and age with all the data that we have that the networks will call a race and then have to take it back, and they called it based on the fact that I was leading comfortably in all of the early votes that were cast. Mail votes, the early, you know, because in New Jersey, we let people vote basically a few days before Election Day. And in a primary, when you’re winning those comfortably. you’re probably gonna win on election day, too, because the voters aren’t that different. But, unfortunately, something happened in the last two weeks of the race that prevented that outcome, and we talked about it before. Namely, there was a massive amount of money spent on negative TV ads targeting me and only me. by AIPAC, the big pro-Israel group, through one of its dark money super PACs. And… The ads were preposterous, they tried to make me out to be pro-ICE and pro-Trump. But it was enough in the Democratic primary. with a lot of other good Democrats running, that some voters just said, well, Maybe? Doesn’t sound like it’s true, but… we have other options. And so I lost on election day, and ended up, losing by a few hundred votes. Incredibly narrow race.
Jen Rubin
Now, to be clear, these ads, although they were backed by AIPAC, didn’t mention Israel. They took the tact that there was something else wrong with you, because had they actually talked about your record on Israel, you have a very mainstream view on Israel. You criticize them when they’ve done wrong, and you support them in the general interest of the United States. Why do you think they took this tact, and is this going to be the new pattern we see from them?
Tom Malinowski
Yeah, so it is… it is weird. Normally, like, they will go after very progressive Democrats who have accused it, you know. Israel of genocide, and who want to stop all aid to, to the country, and I think I’m pretty much the first so-called mainstream or moderate Democrat that they’ve gone after. And what they… what they told me was, yeah, Tom, we get it, we know you’re pro-Israel, but I have been critical of the Netanyahu government. I have said that on a case-by-case basis, as with any other American ally, be it Taiwan, be it Ukraine. We should use our judgment as a country in service of our interests and our values. And so they said they were concerned that I would be willing, under some circumstances, to say no to Bibi Netanyahu, and they added they worried that I’d be influential in Congress because of my foreign policy record and experience. The Democrats would actually listen to me, unlike some of these kind of far-left squad member-type Democrats, and so… That cost me… This election. It’s not supposed to be about Israel.
Jen Rubin
Now, to be clear, that view that they are propounding does not represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t represent the mainstream of American Jews. So who are they representing?
Tom Malinowski
It’s in… so APAC is interesting, and it’s not unique among these big, dark money groups that try to influence our politics right now. Most of their members are Democrats. But their biggest donors are almost exclusively pro-Trump Republican billionaires. And… as with any organization. your funders, have a lot of influence, and I think increasingly what APAC wants is to elect MAGA Republicans. And so, in a way, and we didn’t mention the other weird thing about my race, that the person who won, predictably. is a woman named Analilia Mejia, who I think… I got to know her on the campaign trail, I like her, I think she’s a really wonderful, sincere person, but very much on the left of the Democratic Party, very much anti-Israel. And I think APEC doesn’t really mind, because ultimately their goal is to elect Republicans, and so electing a Democrat who might be easier to beat, maybe that’s what they’re thinking. I’m not… I don’t think she will be beaten, but I think that’s how they view it. Is what they want. And we, we as Democrats, small d and large D… Yes. Cognizant of that.
Jen Rubin
And to be clear. AIPAC now supports people who are election deniers. It supports people who have voted for the same ICE proposals that they apparently criticized you for supporting, which you don’t. So this really is about, getting right-wing folks in there. And there is a connection, because, of course, the Bibi Netunak government is a far-right government as well. And so this is part of this… slippage from democracy here in Israel and other parts of the world. What’s the right response for Democrats, for American voters in general, for our political system?
Tom Malinowski
So, let’s… to answer that, let me broaden it out a little bit, because it’s not for playback. The big three dark money groups right now. that have unlimited money to spend, and will spend it in these midterm elections, are APAC, but also the crypto companies, and collectively the AI, artificial intelligence companies. They’re very similar in that they never advertise, they never campaign on their own issues, because the American people don’t support them on their own issues. So they decide who their enemies in Congress are, and they slime them with personal attacks. And unfortunately, as my race shows, it can be effective. Especially in a House race. Especially in a House primary. And why do I say that? Because we have less money in House races, and House primaries especially. So, imagine you’re running in a very close race. There’s no margin for error. And in the last couple of weeks of your race, one of these groups puts down $5 million. on negative ads, so that every ad on television is saying, Jen Rubin can’t be trusted, Jen Rubin is evil. That’s, like, no candidate can really afford that. And so, individually, candidates are powerless. against this, and in a way, they kind of have to bend, they have to compromise. But the party, collectively. has power. And here’s one reason. All of these groups, whether it’s APAC or the big tech guys, they need to maintain a reputation of bipartisanship. They need to be able to tell their members, their employees, we support Democrats and Republicans who back us on our issues. And so, if the Democratic Party, starting with our leadership, were to say, no. We… if you’re gonna behave this way, we reject your support. We don’t want any of our candidates taking your money. Stay out of our races. That would create, I think, a big identity crisis for a lot of these groups, and collectively, Democrats would have leverage. If we had the guts to do that.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and I think part of this, Tom, I’ll be frank, is generational. There are certain leaders in the Democratic Party who really cannot accept and don’t understand what groups like APAC have become. they remember AIPAC from generations before, where it really was a mainstream, pro-Israel, bipartisan organization. It is not that now, and I think the politicians who don’t understand that put Democrats and Democrats with a small d at risk because they misperceive what they’re dealing with. And that’s a very dangerous situation.
Tom Malinowski
I think we’d be better off politically if we allowed Republicans to own the baggage of these groups. You know what?
Jen Rubin
Absolutely.
Tom Malinowski
So you want to be that way, then you will be the Republican pro-Israel group. You will be the Republican, anti-kids mental health, pro-AI group. let the Republicans be identified with you, and we will take the popular position. on these issues, even if it costs us some money. And you know, in a presidential race, I’m less worried.
Jen Rubin
Yes, yes.
Tom Malinowski
That’s $100 million.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and I think.
Tom Malinowski
We’ll have the money.
Jen Rubin
And I think we also have to go back to Citizens United and our entire finance system that allows dark money to predominate, and if we don’t get a Supreme Court that recognizes that spending money is not the same as standing out on a street corner shouting your ideas, then perhaps we have to look at things like constitutional amendments to straighten out our system. Let me switch gears ever so slightly, because it does involve the Middle East, and that is Iran. What the heck is going on? Donald Trump goes to this, as I describe it, Star Wars bar scene, otherwise known as the Board of Peace. gives a long harangue, which is completely incoherent, and yet, in a couple days from now, he may be bombing Iran? What is going on?
Tom Malinowski
You know the rule in movies that if there’s a gun produced in the first scene, at some point it’s going to be used?
Jen Rubin
Yep.
Tom Malinowski
And… If you send an armada. Of ships and a fleet of planes. to surround and threaten a country like Iran, it’s hard to imagine It not being used. And so there’s a debate about, like, is he serious? Does he actually want to do this? Or is it a negotiating tactic where… it’s creating the most credible possible threat in the minds of the Iranian leadership that they are going to be attacked so that they compromise on whatever it is we’re asking them to do on the nuclear issue. But I think, in a way, it doesn’t matter, because I don’t think this Iranian leadership is going to… Given their psychology, it’s going to… sign the deal that Trump is demanding, and then… Does he pull these forces back? after deploying them, at that point, he may feel like. He now has to fire the gun.
Jen Rubin
Right.
Tom Malinowski
But with no… But what with… to what end, and with what purpose?
Jen Rubin
That’s where I was going next. What is striking Iran going to accomplish? First of all, I suppose we didn’t obliterate their nuclear program, as he claimed last year. So, what is he hoping to accomplish? Are we talking about leveling Iran? Are we talking about a couple token strikes? What is the magnitude, and what is the purpose of this?
Tom Malinowski
So… Let’s… let’s just posit. Iran is governed by an absolutely odious and despicable regime that just, in the last few weeks, murdered hundreds, probably thousands of unarmed protesters who were demonstrating for democracy. I would love to see this regime removed. Anybody with any shred of decency, I think, would love to see this regime gone. But you cannot… at least there’s no… there’s no record that I know of. and I think I would know, of removing a regime solely through airstrikes. There has to be a force on the ground. That can actually go into the palace, and remove the leader, and disarm its security forces, etc, etc. And we’re not doing that. the Army and the Marine Corps are not going into a run. So, I guess… They’re gonna hit a bunch of military sites. I guess they’re gonna try to kill as many of Iran’s leaders as possible. Maybe they’ll kill a few, but they’re certainly not gonna kill them all. And then the regime will still be there.
Jen Rubin
And we will still not have an agreement that has visibility into the Iran nuclear program. Let me ask a separate question. It would be nice, to think that if this regime fell, that all of those idealistic, pro-democracy people out in the street would be the replacement. But do we know that’s the case? Is it… equally likely that there would be a military regime, or the, another, Islamic extremist group that would somehow take power? How do we know what would follow the Ayatollah?
Tom Malinowski
We don’t. I mean, look, there is a… it is a clerical regime In which the leading figures are… Wear clerical garb, and claim religious as well as political legitimacy. But backed up by the muscle… of what’s known as the Revolutionary Guard Force. Which is sort of the elite, best-equipped, best-funded. armed organization in Iran that operates both domestically and in regional countries like Iraq and previously. So, certainly one possible scenario would be that the figure, the kind of clerical leadership of the regime were to somehow be removed. But the IRGC would still have the guns. And who’s gonna take away their guns? We’re not, again, we’re not sending ground troops into Iran, and when unarmed protesters go up against the armed defenders of the regime, we’ve seen what has happened.
Jen Rubin
Exactly.
Tom Malinowski
I… you know, and look, this is one of those where I’d love to, like, I’d love it to be proven wrong, where…
Jen Rubin
Yes, yes.
Tom Malinowski
bombs, and… and somehow the regime melts away, and decent people in Iran, of whom there are millions and millions. take control of the situation, I would be happy. But… I do not believe… I mean, I would be shocked if there were a credible, coherent plan in place in this administration for making that happen.
Jen Rubin
And of course, we’ve just seen Venezuela, where it was also an ill-conceived, ill-thought-out… we don’t have democracy in Venezuela, and we didn’t accomplish much of anything. We haven’t knocked out narco-terrorists, we haven’t done anything other than switch the guy at the top and given Trump some fodder for his Looney Tunes theory of election conspiracy. Let me ask one more question before shifting ever so slightly again to this Board of Peace. We strike Iran. Iran’s pattern has always been that they then strike Israel. To what degree can we prevent that, and to what degree has Israel rebuilt its missile defenses? As we have learned getting a bombardment of ballistic missiles is very different than getting a bunch of little missiles from Gaza. What’s the risk to Israel if we go forward?
Tom Malinowski
So there are two possible targets of Iranian retaliation. One, of course, would be Israel, the second would be American military personnel and installations in Iraq, where Iran has traditionally used its proxy Shia militias.
Jen Rubin
when… Yeah.
Tom Malinowski
Deals it needs to hit us. I don’t… look, I don’t… I don’t know what Iran’s remaining capabilities are after the last exchange. I know that the last time they launched a serious attack at Israel. we placed our armed forces between Iran and Israel, and helped the Israelis shoot down a lot of the stuff that was fired at them. We also had allies, including Jordan, which lies in between, including some of our European allies, which are not involved right now. So it would be only the United States and Israel? And clearly there’s a risk there. But… but I can’t say with confidence. It could well be that, given our capabilities in Israel’s, and how much Iran has been weakened, that we could handle that kind of retaliation.
Jen Rubin
Understood. the Board of Peace is this… confection, this… creation of Donald Trump, where you gotta pony up a billion dollars, and Donald Trump gets to stay in charge even after he leaves the presidency. Query whether people are gonna pay any attention to him, but that’s a different issue. And what are they supposed to do? They’re supposed to replace the UN, they’re supposed to reconstitute Gaza, which has continued to be occupied, almost, 50-50 by Hamas and Israel. What is that all about?
Tom Malinowski
You know, I actually thought that there was a germ of a good idea when it was just about Gaza.
Jen Rubin
Yeah.
Tom Malinowski
We needed a solution for Gaza, and internationalizing it was… a good way forward, and having it not be the UN, given Israel’s poisoned relationship with the UN, was probably a good idea. having Donald Trump as the chairman of the board, or whatever, in that narrow context was probably a good idea, because Bibi Netanyahu would be less likely to mess with it if Trump’s face and picture and name were all over it. But Trump couldn’t help himself. Gaza was too small for his ego, and he decided to turn this into a vehicle for I guess Donald Trump becoming king of the world. And so, one of the… cost of that is that we… actually, it’s less useful for Gaza.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Tom Malinowski
And then we have this new vehicle for corruption, for projecting Trump’s, amoral vision. Of how the world should be organized. By the way, you know. Like, since there’s no moral basis for this, since there are no values at the heart of it. Why would the Ayatollah in Iran… why could he not be a member of the Board of Peace?
Jen Rubin
Exactly. Yeah, if you pay the price, you know?
Tom Malinowski
If you nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, maybe sign some kind of face-saving token nuclear agreement, you’re welcome. Come on board, Ayatollah. We… I envy your power over your people. I wish I had it in America.
Jen Rubin
Exactly, exactly.
Tom Malinowski
That dictator Belarus can be on it.
Jen Rubin
And we sort of… Come back to where we started, which is corruption. Jared Kushner is once again going to be playing a role in this, and we began by talking about, the scam of dark money, and the influence that gets peddled by crypto companies, and by APAC, and by, the Silicon Valley companies. We really do have kind of an international and national broken system right now. Let’s cast ourselves forward a few years, and let’s hope and pray, because it’s the only pro-democracy party that Democrats wind up back in the White House, and maybe they even have the House and the Senate. The new president, comes to you and says, Tom, how do we rebuild our international reputation and relationships? Where do you start?
Tom Malinowski
I think it’s gonna take two presidential elections to really rebuild them.
Jen Rubin
Yeah.
Tom Malinowski
But… Rejoining the fight against kleptocracy. would be one… Place to start, and…
Jen Rubin
Absolutely.
Tom Malinowski
Here, I think, and I think you and I have discussed this before, I think Democrats in Congress can start that effort.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Tom Malinowski
They should be making the list. Of every foreign individual institution, entity, company, That has… become complicit in Trump family corruption. And you know there’s a law called the Magnitsky Act.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Tom Malinowski
the Magnitsky… Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Act, but it’s also, it also relates to corruption. It authorizes the President of the United States, the good ones, who want to use it. to impose very serious sanctions on foreign leaders, officials. Who are engaged in either serious human rights abuses or serious corruption. And there’s a provision in the law.
Jen Rubin
it allows…
Tom Malinowski
Congressional committees to recommend candidates for being sanctioned, and if… and if Congress does that, the president then actually has to consider the recommendation, and either accept it. or explain to Congress why he’s not accepting it. So if I… if I were… well, sadly, if I were…
Jen Rubin
Guess what we’re missing, folks?
Tom Malinowski
I would, you know, with the House majority especially, which hopefully Democrats will have. I would launch investigations into all of these things and start Making that list. Partly to signal in advance.
Jen Rubin
Yes. There’ll be accountability.
Tom Malinowski
to create deterrence. So that some of these guys, like, start having second thoughts about holding a lot of Trump crypto. Second thoughts about signing the next cushy golf course deal, or… Whatever they cook up next with…
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I would offer a friendly amendment, which is, I think we should remind people domestically that although this administration is not enforcing certain bribery laws, foreign corruption laws. statute of limitations on most federal crimes, as I recall, is 5 years. And that doesn’t mean that they can’t be investigated and prosecuted where appropriate down the road. And it doesn’t mean that money can’t be clawed back from ridiculous boondoggle projects, like an arch, like a… monstrous ballroom. So there’s lots of markers that can be, put down. Tom, it is always a pleasure to speak with you, and this makes me sad, because we should all be enjoying your wisdom in Congress, but I have no doubt you’re going to continue to play a role, and perhaps they, even if they won’t have you as a colleague, they can have you as a consultant, because I think you have a lot to offer for foreign policy and otherwise. So, welcome back to the Contrarian, and we hope to see more of you, after you get some rest and recovery. And, congratulations, yes, some rest, and congratulations, by the way, on your new governor. As we were talking before, Mikey Shirell is doing a phenomenal job. And seems to have, looked Trump in the eye and talked him down, after his threatened, hold up. Another vanity project. You could have your tunnel so long as my name is on, I don’t know, various structures.
Tom Malinowski
Do you believe that? I mean, I love that, first of all, she didn’t sort of look him down, she just sued him and won.
Jen Rubin
Yes, that’s true, that’s true. And… That’s true.
Tom Malinowski
You know, he wanted to… I guess he wanted to negotiate over naming rights, and our response, Mikey’s response, was basically my favorite line from The Godfather 2. Where Mike Corleone says, my offer is nothing.
Jen Rubin
Thank you. Exactly, exactly. And by the way, it’s a little peculiar that he wanted to have Penn Station named after him, because although my New York friends, Moynihan Hall is beautiful, Penn Station is a dump. And to have him named after it, maybe we should give it to him after all, you know, could be a.
Tom Malinowski
It would have been okay, like, the most decrepit track.
Jen Rubin
He loves it.
Tom Malinowski
Sure. Where commuters, like, you know, are packed like sardines trying to get back on their trains to Jersey, like, we can name that the Donald. Trump. Waiting area, or something.
Jen Rubin
Yes, exactly. Like, with the grimy little linoleum, which is just peeling up against the walls, yeah, exactly. Now I’m gonna get all these letters from people who go through Penn Station and love her for whatever reason, but that’s all right. Tom, thanks once again, and take care.
