Monday on the RealClearPolitics radio show — weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website — Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon break down the Israel-Iran ceasefire President Trump announced last night, the NATO summit starting tomorrow, Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski hinting she could change parties, and the alarming decline in birthrates around the world. *** First, surveying the shaky ceasefire between Iran and Israel, how to reach the best outcome for people in Israel, Iran, and the U.S., and President Trump’s strong statement against “regime change” in Iran. “It’s a work in progress. We’ll see if this ceasefire holds and this war really comes to an end,” Bevan said. “At least it doesn’t look like it’s going in the other direction: exploding. All of the worst fears people like Tucker Carlson predicted have not come to pass.” “I don’t think it’s helpful for Trump to play good cop and bad cop at the same time, and to treat these two regimes like there’s an equivalence,” Cannon said about Trump criticizing Israel for violating the “spirit” of the ceasefire. “I think the Iranian people deserve freedom.” Bevan pressed the issue: “OK, but what does that mean? How do we make that happen?” “I don’t know, and we’ve learned in Iraq and Afghanistan these things are very difficult, if not impossible. But we shouldn’t be celebrating,” Cannon offered. “Trump said he’d be happy with the status quo, I’m not happy with the status quo, and I don’t think Iranian women are happy.” *** In the next segment, at timestamp 11:30, President Trump is on his way to meet with NATO leaders in Europe where he will surely celebrate U.S. allies agreeing to increase their defense spending to at least 5% of GDP. Is that enough for Trump to leave behind the ambiguity about adhering to Article V? “Except for the Spanish, who say they’re not doing it,” Bevan added. “This has been one of Trump’s hobby-horses from the very beginning. And he has rightfully moved the needle, partially due to the Ukraine War. The Europeans have not been paying their ‘fair share’ when it comes to European security… And based on his nudging alone, he has brought people not only in the U.S. to that opinion, but also around the globe.” “He’s the only one who got it done — but he’s the only one who threatened NATO countries that if they were in arrears, he wouldn’t lift a finger to defend them from Russia,” Cannon said. “Maybe that’s what it took,” Bevan quipped. *** After that, at minute 19, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski publicly toys with the idea of quitting the GOP to become an independent and caucus with the Democrats. “I will say, she has a book coming out,” Andrew Walworth added. “She said if it ends up being a 50/50 Senate in 2026, she would switch and throw it to the Democrats – a la Jumpin’ Jim Jeffords in 2002. That would be a big deal,” Bevan said. “John Fetterman could name his price; he could get the moon from Republicans to flip things back.” “What I’d like to see is more independents in the Senate, I think it would make it work much better,” Cannon commented. “Friend of the show Greg Orman popularized the idea of a fulcrum strategy, where you’d have four or five independent-minded senators who could be the balance of power. They wouldn’t caucus with anyone.” *** In the next segment, at minute 22, Carl Cannon and Andrew Walworth talk to RCP contributor Bill King about the unprecedented decline in birth rates across the globe, and what, if anything, governments can do about it. King recently wrote: “U.N. Quietly Lowers Population Forecasts” “The author of ‘The Population Bomb,’ Paul Ehrlich, actually got the demographic math correct; the population did continue to explode. What he got wrong was that Norman Borlaug came along and showed us how to grow enough food to feed all these extra people,” King explained. “But something weird started to happen around 1970. Human beings, especially women, started to decide to have fewer children. The average number of children per woman has dropped from about five or six to two in less than 75 years.” “In some places, like China, for example, their birth rate is barely over one. At that rate, they will lose half their population by the end of the century,” he said. “We don’t have any historical precedent for a large country losing that kind of population.” “We’re not going to be putting as much pressure on the planet, but we’re going to have to completely rethink how we take care of older people,” he suggested. “Systems like Social Security will not work in this kind of situation.” “For the U.S., a lot of this depends on what we do with immigration. We have a great luxury that everyone in the world still wants to come here. We actually have a valve we can turn on and off if we ever figure out how to do immigration right.” “I’m not sure we should be trying to do anything about it,” he said. “I’m not so much raising an alarm as calling attention to what’s going on. We don’t need any more people in the world; we’ve got 8 billion. But we do need to understand what’s going on and begin altering our policies.” *** Finally, at minute 35, RCP contributor Charlie Stone talks with actor and author Kirk Cameron about his journey to Christianity and why, as a man of faith, he supports President Trump. *** Don’t miss a single episode of the RealClearPolitics weeknight radio show – subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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