TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. One year and four months after Donald Trump began his first term as president, he withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear agreement with Iran that was negotiated during the Obama administration. Trump had repeatedly called it the worst deal ever. My guest Ben Rhodes was part of the team involved with the Obama administration negotiations. He was an Obama speechwriter and deputy national security adviser. Through that deal, Iran agreed to have all its nuclear-grade uranium removed from the country, but it was allowed to keep uranium enriched just enough to be used for medical purposes. Now Trump has led us into war with Iran and has been trying - so far, unsuccessfully - to negotiate a deal that seems very similar to the one he withdrew from. Trump might be leading us into more military action, this time in Cuba. The Obama administration had negotiated an agreement with Cuba to begin normalizing relations and open the doors to travel and trade between the two countries. Ben Rhodes was the lead negotiator with Cuba. In Trump's first year in office, he said, effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration's completely one-sided deal with Cuba. Now President Trump is increasing the pressure campaign against Cuba.
Ben Rhodes is now an opinion writer for The New York Times, an analyst for MS NOW and co-host of the podcast "Pod Save The World." His new book, "All We Say," is about the battle for American identity, what it means to be American and who gets to define it. The book collects 15 important speeches on the subject from Ben Franklin through Donald Trump. Ben Rhodes, welcome to FRESH AIR.
BEN RHODES: Terry, it's really great to be with you.
GROSS: Great to have you on the show. As we record this Tuesday morning, what's your understanding of what's been agreed to and what might be on the verge of being agreed to in these negotiations with Iran?
RHODES: Well, when we negotiated with Iran, there was a saying that we had, which is nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. And so at this point, it doesn't feel like they've reached any kind of agreement. I do think there are the outlines of what would be the elements of an agreement, which is that Iran would open the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. blockade of Iran would be lifted in conjunction with a process under which Iran would receive some kind of - a significant amount of revenue from sanctions relief or perhaps from continuing to toll the Strait of Hormuz. And then there would also be a negotiation of restrictions on Iran's nuclear program, which are likely to include shipping out their stockpile of highly enriched uranium - that's the input to any potential nuclear weapons program - and then some kind of limitations on their ability to enrich uranium with inspections.
Now, that part of it, the nuclear restrictions, seem like they would have to be negotiated over some additional 60-day period. So I think the sequencing of all of this, Terry, is why you don't have an agreement yet 'cause the Iranians probably want to front-load the revenue they get, and the Trump administration probably wants to front-load the Iranian concessions on the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear program.
GROSS: On Monday, during negotiations to end the war in Iran, the U.S. bombed missile launch sites and boats that were positioning mines in the Strait of Hormuz - Iranian boats. And so CENTCOM said that to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces, we, in retaliation, bombed Iran missile sites and I think the boats as well, the boats that were placing mines. What's your understanding of this? And I wonder, too - the U.S. bombed Iran twice during previous negotiations. Do you consider this similar to those two times?
RHODES: Yes and no. I mean, it's similar in that in the midst of negotiations, they're obviously hitting Iranian territory in addition to Iranian military hardware. What's different is that the previous bombing in the midst of negotiations were much more significant in terms of their scope and scale - the beginning of what Trump calls the 12-day war and the beginning of this latest war.
I think what they have in common, though, Terry, is, in my view, a fundamental misunderstanding of who they're dealing with here because, look, part of this may be that they're worried about potential escalation. They're trying to take out Iranian ballistic missile launchers that could be used against U.S. troops if things escalate. But I also think Trump keeps thinking that he can deliver some warning shot or some military strike that intimidates the Iranians into, you know, making additional concessions. And frankly, that's not how the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps - the IRGC that really controls Iran right now - that's not how they work. Frankly, they're more likely to dig in under that kind of pressure. And they, I think, feel like they have tremendous amount of leverage because they control the Strait of Hormuz.
So if this is about, you know, preventing some threat in some future escalation scenario, that's one thing. If they think that this is going to help them at the negotiating table, I think that, you know, fundamentally misreads the Iranian government, which I think Trump has consistently done over the course of this war.
GROSS: The closing of the Strait of Hormuz has turned the war into an international financial crisis because certain essential products can't get through, including, most importantly, oil. And oil reserves are running low in much of the world that relies on the Strait of Hormuz to get the oil. In the Obama administration war games, was Iran shutting off access to the Strait of Hormuz one of the tactics that was expected? 'Cause the administration was doing war games before the nuclear deal and trying to figure out what would Iran's actions be if we bombed Iran instead of getting a deal. I mean, do I have all that right?
RHODES: Yes, in a word. I was in multiple war games, and a war game is essentially where you play out different scenarios of what might happen if you literally go to war. I was never in a war game about a scenario in which the United States bombed Iran, in which, in that war game, the Iranians didn't quickly move to close the Strait of Hormuz. They did that in every single war game that I was in. It's common sense that they would do that. This is a narrow body of water that runs between Iran and Oman. It is not hard for them to close that strait.
And so the fact that the Trump administration seemed to be caught unawares that Iran would do this is - it's actually an astonishing degree of incompetence, really, because it demonstrates the cost of purging experts and not anticipating bad scenarios, but only inhabiting the good scenarios. It was entirely foreseeable that they would do this. And given the fact that 20% of the world's fossil fuel energy flows through that strait, in addition to significant amount of fertilizer and other, you know, essential inputs to the global economy, it makes all the sense in the world that the Iranians would use that as leverage.
GROSS: What was your role during the nuclear agreement with Iran?
RHODES: Well, I was deputy national security adviser at the time. And I would say the Iran nuclear agreement was my main area of focus, actually, together with the Cuban normalization. So I have the strange, unique experience of seeing two countries I worked with in the crosshairs. But I essentially played a couple of roles. I mean, one, I was on the team that was essentially giving guidance from the president to the negotiating team and back and forth. But then after the agreement was reached, I was the person responsible in the White House for essentially making the case for the Iran nuclear agreement to Congress because we needed to make sure that the agreement got through Congress, as well as the public. So I did some of the behind-the-scenes pieces in the lead-up to the negotiation, and then I did the very brutal, frankly, political fight that we needed to engage in in order to survive and keep the agreement going.
GROSS: The agreement that you did reach - you being the Obama administration - it was a joint agreement. There were other countries, our allies, who signed on to this, as well as - did Russia sign on to that?
RHODES: Yes. This is a really important point, Terry. It was the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council - so the United States, Britain and France, but also Russia and China - as well as Germany and the European Union. So the major powers in the world were all at the negotiating table, all party to the agreement itself through the U.N. Security Council, so that gave it the imprimatur of the international system, essentially. And then the inspections regime was set up so that we'd had access to Iranian facilities, Iranian uranium mines and mills that produced the material for a nuclear program. That was done through the International Atomic Energy Agency. So there was a lot of infrastructure behind the deal, and having Russia and China was obviously useful 'cause those are Iran's chief partners in the world.
Contrast that with the kind of pickup team of, you know, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, you know, meeting in Pakistan with a kind of strange collection of countries in kind of ad hoc basis, pulling in, you know, China on occasion. It was a different era, where you actually did diplomacy kind of through the front door of the international system, which gave it, again, a significant amount of both legitimacy and capability. Like, who's going to do these nuclear inspections? Well, we're going to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency. And so I think that's part of what's been missing in the Trump diplomacy, is that international participation.
GROSS: And also, with all those countries signing on, ally and adversary, there's more power - isn't there? - in the treaty than a unilateral one. I use the word treaty. It's an agreement.
RHODES: Well, that's right. But to your point, it also had the backing of a U.N. Security Council resolution. So it had standing under international law, which meant that if the Iranians violated the agreement, then they would face the consequence of sanctions being put in place not just by the United States, but by all of the parties to the agreement, including Russia and China. And that infrastructure was put in place. Iran abided by the terms of the agreement. They did not violate the agreement. Even under the Trump administration - in the first Trump administration - they found that Iran was complying with the agreement, and Trump overruled, essentially, his first-term national security team to pull out of the agreement. And so it was the United States that violated an international agreement, not Iran. And if the United States had not pulled out of that nuclear agreement, we would not be in this war.
GROSS: Yeah, how do you think the world would be different if President Trump hadn't pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran?
RHODES: Well, the headline is that we would not be in this war with all of its costs in terms of loss of life, in terms of economic damage, in terms of what I think is going to be hundreds of billions of dollars for American taxpayers. But just to roll back the tape, the other thing that happened - and this is something that we warned about - pulling out of the agreement confirmed Iran's worst suspicions about the United States. And what that did is that actually ended up empowering the more hard-line elements in the Iranian system. Iran may be an odious regime, but no regime, no government is a monolith. The people that wanted to do a nuclear deal were the more moderate factions inside of the Iranian government. When that door was slammed in their face, the people that benefited inside the Iranian system were the hard-liners, were the more repressive elements, were the IRGC.
And what you saw in Iranian politics following the U.S. pulling out of the deal is that all of the people that we were dealing with essentially got steadily sidelined, and the Iranian leadership became more repressive, became more aggressive. They restarted their nuclear program. They started advancing their nuclear program. They were stockpiling that enriched uranium at a higher level and keeping it inside of Iran. And so, essentially - and this is, honestly, not an opinion, Terry, it's just facts - everything got worse. Iranian politics got more hard-line. The Iranian nuclear program advanced significantly. The United States ended up in this war. And the tragedy of it is it was totally preventable. It has its origin story in that 2018 decision to pull out of the nuclear agreement.
GROSS: Well, we need to take a break here, so let me reintroduce you. My guest is Ben Rhodes. During the Obama administration, he worked in the White House as a speech writer for the president and became Obama's deputy national security adviser after that. He's now a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, an analyst for MS NOW and co-host of "Pod Save The World." His new book, "All We Say," is about the battle over American identity and what it means to be an American as told through 15 speeches from Ben Franklin to Trump. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Ben Rhodes. During the Obama administration, he worked in the White House as a speech writer for the president and became Obama's deputy national security adviser. His new book, "All We Say," is about the battle over American identity and what it means to be American through 15 speeches from Ben Franklin to Donald Trump.
Some critics think that Trump was persuaded to go to war with Iran because Netanyahu - Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel - pressured Trump into doing it. And I'm wondering if the Obama administration was pressured by Netanyahu to bomb Iran.
RHODES: Yes, we were. We probably got a version of the same presentation that, according to The New York Times, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave to President Trump in the Situation Room, which, first of all, is astonishing to me. I worked for eight years in the White House. We didn't have foreign leaders in the Situation Room. But often, Prime Minister Netanyahu would make this case to President Obama that you had to deal with Iran through military force, that, you know, you had to hit the regime, that the regime is weaker than, you know, people think it is. And that was not our assessment.
And actually, because we rejected that advice, you will remember that Bibi Netanyahu came to the United States Congress at the invitation of the Republican Party and gave a speech against the Iran nuclear agreement before we even reached it and essentially said, this is a catastrophe, this agreement would be dangerous, and then made a case for what he believed the terms of any agreement would be, which are Iran having no nuclear program, no ballistic missile program and no support for proxy groups - terrorist groups - across the Middle East. Now, that would be great. That will never be agreed to in any diplomatic agreement. So setting those conditions that would never, ever be agreed to by the Islamic Republic of Iran is essentially saying, we have to go to war.
GROSS: I'm forgetting when the nuclear deal signed under the Obama administration was supposed to end 'cause it was a finite number of years. Was it 10 years?
RHODES: So there was a staggered series of commitments. The Iranian commitment to never build a nuclear weapon was permanent and written into the deal. And so Trump always says Iran has never committed to not build a nuclear weapon. That's not true. Under international law, under that agreement, they made that commitment. It's a permanent agreement. Some of the restrictions on the numbers of centrifuges that they could operate started to go away after 10 years, and there was kind of a phasing between 10 and 15 years of the things that Iran could do with a peaceful nuclear program. Essentially, they would be allowed to begin to enrich more uranium for peaceful purposes, for things like medical isotopes.
I will say, anticipating it, a lot of the critics pointed to these durations as a shortcoming in the deal. I think the answer to that is twofold. The first is most arms control agreements have durations attached to them, and after 10 years, you take stock and you renegotiate. And so what we always said is, well, let's keep these restrictions in place for 10 years. If we need to go back in 10 years and say to the Iranians, like, you know, we want more, do it then. And the irony of what Trump did is using some of those, you know, so-called sunset provisions as, like, a target for what's wrong with this deal. Well, he pulled out of the deal after three years, and Iran started enriching uranium well beyond what they would've even have been able to do after 10 years under our deal. So I lose a little patience with some of the criticisms of these durations because by pulling out, you assured that Iran would get there in three years and not 10.
GROSS: And now we're at war.
RHODES: And now we're at war.
GROSS: What outcome are you hoping for now between the U.S. and Iran?
RHODES: Well, I just want this war to end. I think if this war resumes, it could be much worse. I think the best outcome right now is essentially Trump gives up on this kind of fantasy of total Iranian capitulation, you have Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz, you have the U.S. remove its blockade of Iran - Iran is clearly going to have to get a significant amount of sanctions relief - and they ship out their enriched uranium and accept some inspections and restrictions on the nuclear program. That's the best we're going to do, which is after all this war, after all this killing, after all this posturing, essentially something that looks somewhat like the deal that I was a part of negotiating, which is absurd if you think about it. But honestly, that's the best-case scenario I think we can hope for.
GROSS: And the difference is thousands of lives have been lost in this war. There's been a financial crisis as a result. Gas prices have been really high, which has made economics - like, personal household finance - a real problem for so many people, not just in the United States.
RHODES: And I think intangibly, the damage to the United States and how people look at us in the world has suffered a existential blow from this entire Iran scenario and story. We've shown that we don't keep agreements. We've shown that we bomb countries during negotiations. We've shown that we are a rogue nation. And that's going to cause other nations - Gulf Arab states first and foremost - to start to drift away from us towards China. I think in the long run, that's going to put at risk, you know, things like the dollar as a reserve currency.
I mean, this war is going to have a tail, even if it ends today, for a long time. And again, Trump doesn't care about those things 'cause he doesn't seem to think beyond tomorrow, never mind beyond his term. But Americans should understand just how much this has been a blow to our credibility.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you. My guest is Ben Rhodes. And during the Obama administration, he worked in the White House as a speechwriter for the president and then became Obama's deputy national security adviser, so he was in on the negotiations with Iran on the strategy over the nuclear agreement. His new book, "All We Say," is about the battle over American identity and what it means to be American through 15 speeches from Ben Franklin to President Trump. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET'S "UNSQUARE DANCE")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Ben Rhodes. And during the Obama administration, he worked in the White House as a speechwriter for the president and became Obama's deputy national security adviser. He's now a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, an analyst for MS NOW and co-host of the podcast "Pod Save The World." His new book, "All We Say," is about the battle over American identity and what it means to be American through 15 speeches, from Ben Franklin to Donald Trump. His previous books "After The Fall" and "The World As It Is: A Memoir Of The Obama White House" were best-sellers.
So in addition to being in on the negotiations with Iran over the nuclear agreement, you were part of the administration when the Obama administration opened relations with Cuba. What was your role then? Were you a speechwriter or were you deputy national security adviser?
RHODES: Well, I was both. But I was also the lead negotiator, Terry, so I...
GROSS: Oh.
RHODES: ...Negotiated.
GROSS: Oh, wow.
RHODES: Yeah.
GROSS: OK.
RHODES: I negotiated in secret with Alejandro Castro, who is Raul Castro's son, for a year and a half. And then I went to Cuba - I don't know - probably 10 times through the end of the Obama administration. So Cuba, I was the principal negotiator.
GROSS: So President Trump is already threatening the arrest of the former president of Cuba, and there is the implicit threat of a possible invasion of Cuba. Do you think Cuba is next?
RHODES: I do, unfortunately. Everything that they're doing suggests that, from the indictment of Raul Castro, who I met with several times, and, you know, they're positioning military assets in the Caribbean that don't need to be there for any other reason. They're blockading Cuba so that there's no fuel that can get into Cuba. People are being killed. Children are dying. People in hospitals are dying. If you don't have access to power, that kills children who are on - in the NICU or, you know, people who are on ventilators. So...
GROSS: And also...
RHODES: It's very ugly.
GROSS: A lot of children don't have enough food.
RHODES: They don't have enough food, and I think it is a moral calamity on this nation that we disregard the fact that we have been strangling an island nation 90 miles from Florida with an embargo that now has a fuel blockade on top of it for no discernible reason. Iran, I can at least say, has a - you know, it poses a national security threat to the United States. There's no threat from Cuba. They can't even identify a threat from Cuba. So we are just doing this because we can. And that's a - frankly, a disgusting and morally reprehensible reason to be doing something.
GROSS: What was the reasoning behind opening relations with Cuba?
RHODES: The reasoning is that what we had been doing for 60 years was not working. If your rationale was that these sanctions were going to, you know, pressure the Cuban government into embracing democracy, they've had the opposite effect. We had fossilized Cuba by cutting them off from the global economy and cutting them off from the American people. You - people weren't even allowed to travel to Cuba. We had entrenched that government and power, frankly, because they're the ones that controlled the scarce resources that did exist.
And so the reasoning is, No. 1, you would improve the lives of the Cuban people by facilitating travel and greater commerce with Cuba. No. 2, you would make it more likely that there'd be positive political change in Cuba. If people had access to the internet, which we negotiated with the Cubans, if people had access to Americans traveling there and different ideas, they'd be more likely to be able to make change.
And then, No. 3, this was an albatross around the United States, around the world. A lot of other countries - you know, we Americans somehow - we don't look at what we do in our foreign policy. Well, in Latin America, they do. In Africa, they do. And the question that you would get in Latin America and Africa is, why are you starving Cubans? Because of some fight that goes back to, you know, 1959. It makes America look like a bully, and that's not how Barack Obama believed America should act in the world.
GROSS: What do you think the outcome might be if we do arrest Raul Castro or if we do invade Cuba?
RHODES: Raul Castro is 94 years old and doesn't run Cuba anymore. I just - again, I - what are we doing here, Terry? We just murdered the 86-year-old supreme leader of Iran. Again, not saying he's a good guy, but that's not something that countries do - murder the leaders of other countries. And now we're talking about - what? - sending a Delta Force team to arrest a 94-year-old man. Is that Is that particularly tough? I guess it makes Donald Trump feel tough. But I think they're trying to replicate what they did in Venezuela, where you demonstrate your capacity to show up and arrest a leader as a warning to everybody else, and then you demand that those people do what you want.
I guess the question I have is, what do we want out of Cuba? You know? Like, I don't understand what the interest is that the United States has there because if you want comprehensive regime change, I don't think you're going to get it. You know, there's a communist party, and so you could decapitate it, but it's still there. They're willing to open up their economy. They wanted to do that with us, and they were doing that until Trump slammed the door on that in the first Trump term.
So the risks are that if we precipitate the collapse of that regime through the combination of decapitating it and sanctioning it, you have a failed state 90 miles from Florida. You have potential mass migration flows into the United States, which Trump had said he wanted to prevent. You have a humanitarian catastrophe, which you already do have, but it's compounded in Cuba. And potentially, you have violent conflict to see who takes control of Cuba next. That's the worst-case scenario.
I guess the best-case scenario is that they detain Raul Castro and make some demands for the Cubans. And frankly, I'll be honest, Terry. I think if Venezuela had oil, Cuba has real estate. There's a lot of beachfront property in Cuba. I know this sounds ridiculous, but the Trump organization was scouting out and negotiating hotel and golf course properties as late as 2016, when I was negotiating with the Cubans. I think that some of the Florida Cuban exiles and some people in Trump's orbit see a real estate bonanza down there.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you again. If you're just joining us, my guest is Ben Rhodes. And during the Obama administration, he worked in the White House as a speechwriter for the president and became Obama's deputy national security adviser. He has a new book, and it's called "All We Say." It's about the battle over American identity and what it means to be American as told through 15 speeches, from Ben Franklin to President Donald Trump. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BRITTANY HOWARD SONG, "POWER TO UNDO")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Ben Rhodes. During the Obama administration, he worked in the White House as a speechwriter for the president and became Obama's deputy national security adviser. He has a new book called "All We Say," and it's about the battle over American identity as told through 15 speeches - inspirational speeches and divisive speeches - all the way from the beginning of America through the Trump administration.
So there's a passage I'd like us to listen to from Trump's second inaugural address, and this has to do with the assassination attempt on him from the time he was making a speech in Pennsylvania.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and, indeed, to take my life. Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin's bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.
(APPLAUSE)
GROSS: That was President Trump during his second inaugural address. What do you hear when you hear that?
RHODES: I hear something that is actually totally unique in American history, and I don't say that lightly. I'm someone who guards against kind of presentism - that this is the worst moment or the most dangerous moment - but that passage speaks to something that is truly unique about Trump.
When I went back through American history to write this book, I ended up with 15 speeches. I read hundreds of speeches to curate to those 15, including ones that I profoundly disagree with. You know, Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, defending white supremacy as the cornerstone of the Confederacy, right? Or Ronald Reagan, who I have significant differences with, for instance, talking about, you know, the Soviet Union is the evil empire in a speech to Christian evangelicals, where he also really goes through the wish list of, you know, getting rid of abortion and prayer in school and all those things.
Other leaders, even ones I disagreed with, usually presented themselves as part of some movement of history - you know, as part of a collective, as operating within a set of rules. Even the Confederacy, right? Even Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy. He was giving a speech defending the process by which there was a vote to secede from Georgia, and then there was a Constitution written in Montgomery for the new Confederacy. There was a pretense that there was a legal framework and a democratic framework for what I'm doing.
That - I say that because that clip, that passage from Trump, is only about him. I was saved by God to make America great again. That, I think, distills what is so radical about the Trump presidency, is that in his mind, it exists outside of the agreed-upon boundaries of how politics is conducted in this country - that even the movement he has built, the MAGA movement, is only about him and his power.
It was interesting. In reading that second inaugural speech - you know, I've participated in writing inaugural speeches. You usually ask people to do things. He's essentially saying, it's over. You did what you had to do. You got me back here. It's now me. And so what I hear is someone who is - either because he believes it or because he's trying to create the basis for a kind of absolute power, you know, he's saying, I'm justified in everything I do. I was literally saved by God to save this country.
GROSS: So in your book, you include a speech by President Obama - the speech known as the race speech. Explain what this was a reaction to.
RHODES: So in the spring of 2008, Barack Obama seemed to be on his way to the Democratic nomination. And I write in the book about how it felt as if that had been entirely derailed when, in March, some tapes emerged, some clips emerged, of Jeremiah Wright - the reverend at Obama's church but also the man who had married him and Michelle and baptized his children - clips of him giving very provocative, controversial sermons. He said that this country was founded on racism. He said that on 9/11, America's chickens came home to roost, you know? Frankly, actually, shocking statements at the time, but things that, with the passage of time, feel less shocking.
But at that time, I mean, it unleashed and opened a Pandora's box of race. And we had long discussed in the campaign whether Obama should deliver a speech on race, and he always kind of put it off. No, I'm - I don't want my candidacy to be just about that. But this time, he said, actually, I need to address this head-on. I can't just talk about Reverend Wright. I have to put it in this larger context of race in America.
And what was so interesting, Terry - I talk about the fact that, you know, the speechwriters put together a draft and then you'd be lucky if you got, you know, a few handwritten pages back from Obama with some line edits. He stayed up all night. And Obama had rewritten the entire guts of that speech, and he'd done it in, like, 24 hours. And what I read before he delivered it was the most personal and visceral kind of reckoning I'd ever heard from him, privately or publicly, about this question of race in the United States. He made it much bigger than just about Jeremiah Wright.
GROSS: Well, I'm going to play a passage from that speech that is about Jeremiah Wright and what Wright meant to him, and what he objected to about Wright as well. So let's listen to that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: Given my background, my politics and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask. Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television sets and YouTube, if Trinity United Church of Christ conform to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way. But the truth is that isn't all that I know of the man.
The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another, to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a United States Marine and who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country and who over 30 years has led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on earth by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing daycare services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
GROSS: That was candidate Obama during his first run for president, a speech that became known as the race speech and delivered at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. I want to skip ahead in that speech. And this is a part that actually is very personal but also got him into a lot of trouble, which we can talk about afterwards. It starts again with him talking about Reverend Wright.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
OBAMA: He contains within him the contradictions, the good and the bad, of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the Black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of Black men who passed her by on the street and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love.
GROSS: So the reason why that excerpt of candidate Obama's speech got him into trouble is a lot of people said he threw his grandmother under the bus...
RHODES: Yes. Yes.
GROSS: ...At the end of that paragraph. What's your reaction to that?
RHODES: My reaction is...
GROSS: And tell us, too, what Obama's reaction to that was.
RHODES: Well, my reaction, actually, is quite similar to Obama's, which is that it's such a profound misreading of both the speech and of what we should be in this country because what Obama is doing in this entire speech is he is naming the complexity within each of us individually and within this entire country. His grandmother raised him, loved him and yet was capable of prejudice, capable of saying things that made him cringe about nonwhite people in the same way that Reverend Wright could inspire and motivate and move him and yet say things that could be offensive. And yet not only were those people a part of him, but he loved them. And don't we all love people who have blind spots and flaws?
And, frankly, Terry, it's a conservative idea to say, I'm not going to expect absolute purity and perfection out of someone. But the only way that we can move past what he described in that speech as our racial stalemate is to see each other from within one another's shoes. You know, I actually wasn't going to originally include this speech. I had a speech he gave in Selma in 2015 that's much more triumphant about progressive progress in America. And after Trump won, that speech felt discordant. This speech feels much more relevant to the time because from that point where he talks about his grandmother and Reverend Wright, he talks about the experience of Black inequality in this country, of structural racism of housing and economic and income gaps. But then he talks about how the white working class feels. And he says that they don't feel particularly privileged by their race.
They've had their jobs shipped overseas. They're the ones who've had their kids bused across town or feel like they might be losing out an opportunity because of affirmative action. He inhabits the experience of people that may even dislike him because of his race. And, honestly, what other way is there through this Terry? I think Obama and Trump - I'm glad I ended with them 'cause they distill two different stories of America. Trump's is, you know, certain people in this country can do whatever they want to other people. Nationalism in this country is a white Christian thing. But what Obama's saying is we can't survive as a nation with that kind of mentality. But nor can we insist that if my grandmother said something racist once that she's canceled. He's saying the opposite. He's not throwing her under the bus. He's saying, I love her in total. How can I love this country if I can't love my grandmother, who has occasionally said things that are racist?
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Ben Rhodes. During the Obama administration, he worked as a speech writer for the president and his deputy national security adviser. He has a new book called "All We Say." It's about the battle over American identity and what it means to be American as told through 15 speeches from Ben Franklin to President Trump. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Ben Rhodes. During the Obama administration, he was a presidential speech writer and deputy national security adviser. His new book, "All We Say," is about the battle over American identity. When we left off, we were discussing candidate Obama's speech about race in America. In it, he referred to his white grandmother and how she once said something that struck him as racist, but that remark didn't change how much he loved her. A lot of families are experiencing similar divisions now.
A lot of families and friends are divided over their support for Trump or thinking that Trump is a, you know, disastrous president. And they still love each other, but they totally disagree about politics. And race has something to do with that because of Trump's seeming antagonism toward Black people, toward countries with Black-majority or brown-majority populations.
RHODES: It's in everybody's home. You know, I wrote this book in part to follow the thread of this argument that we've been having for 250 years that is so acute right now. And no matter what time period that you're in...
GROSS: What is the argument?
RHODES: I think the argument is fundamentally between two stories of America. A story that - and frankly, JD Vance summed this up well and I use this in the prologue - there's a kind of exclusive version of a nationalism. America is a particular people from a particular place with a particular way of life. Those are JD Vance's words, not mine. And what he's saying there, essentially, is this is a Western, white, Christian country that other people are welcome to be in, but they have to kind of subordinate themselves to the predominant nationalism in this country.
And then the other story - and I should say, the first story is one of American exceptionalism where we can do what we want, whether that's to the Native Americans at the beginning, or whether that's to slaves, or whether that's to Chinese laborers in the mid-19th century, or whether that's to, you know, Mexican immigrant workers that we ask to come here to work in the farms and then deport, you know? That's one strain. And I'm not saying even that that strain has nothing good in it. But there's an alternative strain that says America is a country that from its founding has tried and failed to live up to the words in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal - and add women to that - and that essentially it's a progressive story of trying to expand the rights and privileges of citizenship to more people - to Black people, to women, to immigrants - to make, as Obama titled that speech, a more perfect union. We're not perfect. We're trying to get better.
And so essentially, is the American story one of inheritance - we have inherited, essentially, Western supremacy and it's ours - or is it a story of improvement - we are constantly seeking to better ourselves? And, again, I think - not that Obama's perfect, but I think Obama and Trump kind of distill those two stories pretty potently.
GROSS: Well, Ben Rhodes, thank you so much for coming on our show.
RHODES: Thanks, Terry. It's great talking to you.
GROSS: Ben Rhodes' new book is titled "All We Say." You can read his opinion pieces in The New York Times, hear him cohosting the podcast "Pod Save The World" and see him analyzing news stories on MS NOW.
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, our guest will be award-winning actor Alfre Woodard. She's one of the stars of the new Netflix series "The Boroughs," from the executive producers of "Stranger Things." It's a supernatural mystery set in a retirement community. Woodard will talk about her nearly 50 years of work, from "Hill Street Blues" to "Clemency." I hope you'll join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "COME, GONE")
GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Therese Madden directed today's show. Our cohost is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "COME, GONE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
