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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Trump & Vance Berate Zelenskyy In Shocking Oval Office Meeting; European Leaders Affirm Support For Ukraine; Interview With Host And Author Bill Maher. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired March 02, 2025 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:37]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria, coming to you live.

We'll start today's program with that truly extraordinary meeting between Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. The shouting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), U.S. PRESIDENT: If you didn't have our military equipment, if you didn't have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: The threats.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You're gambling with World War III.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: The dressing down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE (R), U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: What will the impact be in the real world? Will America's support for Ukraine end for good? I have a great panel to discuss.

Then, one of the sharpest and wittiest observers of this American life, Bill Maher. He'll share his thoughts on Trump, Musk, and DOGE, and also the Democrats. Where are they? But first, here's my take. Over this country's long history, Americans have often hesitated to support foreign wars and international machinations. Washington's farewell address warning against entangling alliances casts a long shadow.

But from the nation's beginnings, Americans have usually known whom to root for, those who sought freedom, and whom to condemn, those who tried to crush liberty.

Across the United States, you will find statues honoring people like the 18th century Polish patriot, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and the 19th century Hungarian freedom fighter, Lajos Kossuth, who sought liberation for their people from the Russian and the Habsburg Empires, and who found enthusiastic support in an America that was still then a young and weak nation.

When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, even though it initially stayed out of the war, America organized what was then the largest food aid effort in history to help the victim of aggression.

During the Cold War, though it could not help militarily, Washington refused to recognize the Soviet annexation of the three Baltic republics, who are now proud and independent nations. America as a superpower sometimes acted unwisely in places like Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, but even in those cases, it saw its involvement as the protection of freedom and democracy.

Not anymore, the strangest aspect of the last few weeks of American diplomacy that culminated in the disaster at the White House on Friday is that the President of the United States has seemed utterly unwilling to say plainly that he supports the victim of aggression against the aggressor and that he admires Ukrainian democracy more than Russian dictatorship. Instead, he and Vice President Vance spent Friday's photo-op at the White House publicly scolding Ukraine's President Zelenskyy, telling him to say thank you, which he has said repeatedly, and accusing him of being disrespectful.

Zelenskyy's fault was simply to point out that Ukraine had in fact signed a ceasefire deal with Putin in 2015 in Minsk, but that Putin had continually violated it ever since then.

Trump used the occasion to remind all that he felt a special bond with Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy did not handle himself well. He got emotional, responded too often, and took the bait that Vice President Vance laid for him.

He should have studied how President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer handled Trump, constant flattery and deference. Churchill said of his relationship with his American counterpart, no lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of Franklin Roosevelt. But he's a man leading a nation at war that has lost tens of thousands of people.

He is fighting for his very survival. And he and his nation are fighting for the values of freedom and democracy that America has supported since its founding, against a rapacious dictatorship, in this case, that actively seeks to undermine the United States, its interests, and its allies at every turn. It shouldn't be hard to figure out where your sympathies lie.

[10:05:20]

Friday's turn of events took place after weeks of diplomacy in which the Trump administration has bullied its neighbors, asked Canada to cease to exist as a country, pressured Denmark to sell Greenland, and Panama to hand over the Panama Canal. It has threatened to impose higher tariffs on its allies than its foes. And it has shuttered almost all the food and medicine programs that it promised to the poorest people in the world.

The conservative former British Cabinet Minister, Rory Stewart, asked in sorrow, "Was it for this that the U.S. spent 80 years building power and alliances? Not to be a force for good. But instead to impoverish neighbors, threaten those it protected, rob minerals from war-torn countries, and break its promises to hundreds of millions of the poorest in the world?"

President Trump is not just changing American foreign policy. He is reorienting America's moral compass, a compass that has been firmly set since the country's founding almost 250 years ago.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column.

And let's get started. For more on Friday's dramatic Oval Office clash, I'm joined by two terrific guests. Anne Applebaum is a Staff Writer at "The Atlantic" and a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. And Frans Timmermans is a Dutch politician who served as the Executive Vice President of the European Commission.

Anne, let me ask you, the Wall Street Journal editorial page said that the only winner in the Friday dust-up in the White House was Vladimir Putin. Would you agree?

ANNE APPLEBAUM, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: I think it's certainly true that the presence of Putin could be felt in that room. Putin has a very strong vision of Europe and of the world, one that he's nurtured since 1989, when he and his comrades in the KGB were burning documents while the rest of the world was celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. He wants U.S. influence in the world pulled back. He wants Russian power in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe in particular, reinstated. He wants Russia to be a superpower again. He sees in Trump the possibility that finally his dream will be realized.

Trump also, of course, has a dream. He has a vision of a U.S.-Russia relationship, you know, perhaps based on economic deals, perhaps based on other kinds of deals. He imagines a ceremony where he and Putin and maybe even Xi Jinping sign a deal and divide up the world. And that, of course, that coincides with exactly what Putin wants.

President Zelenskyy is in their way. He keeps referring to the realities on the ground. He keeps talking about the fact that Putin has done deals before and has then broken the deal. He keeps saying that a ceasefire without some kind of further guarantee that the war won't begin again is pretty meaningless. And every time he does that, every time he did that in the meeting, either Trump or Vance became very angry. He is standing in the way of their vision, their dream.

ZAKARIA: Frans, tell me what you thought, particularly given that in Trump 1.0, in the first term, you dealt with him when you were the number two person in the European Commission. Does this feel different to you?

FRANS TIMMERMANS, FORMER DUTCH FOREIGN MINISTER: Oh, yes. The guardrails are off. That's the biggest difference. I mean, at the time, in his first mandate, Trump was still more or less guided by experienced people on the right, conservatives, but who still wanted to govern within the rules that had been established for 80 years.

So when we negotiated a trade deal, it was done in a way that helped both sides come out victoriously. But now everything has changed. Now the E.U. -- he never -- Trump never loved the E.U. He actually hated the E.U. from the outset, but he knew he had to deal with the E.U. He called the then president of the European Commission a brutal killer, Jean-Claude Juncker, because he was a good negotiator and he negotiated a good deal. But that's all off the table.

[10:10:02]

Now, it's Project 2025 and you see it in everything they do and everything they say. And they were just repeating Kremlin lines during the meeting with Zelenskyy. It was really painful to see.

ZAKARIA: Anne, when you watch it, you've been to Ukraine many times. What is your sense of what happens in Ukraine now? Can they -- can they survive?

APPLEBAUM: So the Ukrainians face an existential choice. If they don't fight, they lose their country. Probably they, meaning the leadership, the army, the leaders of society, but not even just the leaders, anybody who believes themselves to be Ukrainian, who wants to speak the language, they know that if they -- if they give in -- if they stop fighting, they'll be killed. You know, they will be repressed. They'll lose their land. They'll lose -- they'll lose their culture.

And so it's not -- it's not as if they can just stop and say, OK, you win, we give up, because that's death. So they will keep fighting. They will find a way to fight. I believe that Europe is now awoken to a new world, that I think European leaders understand that this is a new situation. I think we'll see a kind of coalition of the willing developing around Ukraine, maybe to include other non-European countries, as well. And we'll see a further stage of negotiations with the United States.

I don't think it's over. But the idea that Ukrainians would stop fighting because Trump tells them to stop fighting or because Putin tells them to stop fighting, that's wrong. That's not how this war is going to end.

ZAKARIA: I'm going to ask Frans Timmermans, when we get back, exactly this question. Where does Europe go from here? Can it be Ukraine's savior in all of this, when we come back?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:16:30]

ZAKARIA: We are back with the journalist Anne Applebaum and the Dutch politician Frans Timmermans.

Frans, let me ask you what realistically Europe can do that would make a difference. Yeah, they can come up with a peace plan, et cetera. But on the ground, can they do enough to help Ukraine?

TIMMERMANS: Well, this is without any doubt the biggest challenge Europe has faced in the last 80 years. So we need to rise to the occasion. We can. There are things that we can do in the immediate. Send more arms. Stop any hesitation of helping Ukraine fighting the Russians on Russian territory with long-range arms. We have those still.

We need to up the production of arms. We need to help the Ukrainians to quickly speed up the production because they're doing actually quite a good job. But they could use some investment and some help from European firms. We can do that immediately.

The other good news is that the Brits are firmly on board. We will see, I mean, this is an unprecedented situation. We will see completely new security structures emerge on the European scale. Since we're no longer certain that Article 5 would still apply in NATO, that the Americans would come to the rescue of every single European country, we have to organize ourselves in a way that we can take care of that. We have the people for that. We have the size. We have the technology. We even have the armed forces.

The only question is, do we have the political will? Can we organize our societies in such a way that people understand the urgency and are willing to do what is necessary? I think it can be done, but it's going to be very, very hard indeed.

ZAKARIA: I thought, Frans, the most remarkable thing said in the last week or two by a European was by Merz, the punitive incoming chancellor of Germany, who said the key task for Europe is a step-by- step independence away from the United States. And he talked about how he may need guarantees, nuclear guarantees, from France and Britain rather than the United States. This, to me, is seismic. Would you agree?

TIMMERMANS: I agree. I agree. It is. And I think this needs to be discussed and thought through very carefully because, yes, the U.K. has nuclear capacity, but that's a second-strike capacity. The French have first-strike capacity, but also very, very limited tactical nuclear capacity. This was always done by the United States.

So I'm not sure this is something that will be of comfort unless we really change things. And I'm still one of those people who think that if we organize ourselves well and we show that we're capable of taking care of our problems in a better way than today, America might come back, America might reconsider.

I still believe that is a possibility. But we have to prepare for the worst. We have to prepare for the situation that America actually distances itself. You know, the catchphrase has always been to make the world ready for democracy. And now Trump seems to be saying to make the world ready for autocracy. And that's a proposition Europe could never, ever accept.

ZAKARIA: Ann Applebaum, you know Poland very well. You've spent a lot of time. That is the front-line state. How do you think Poland views this? Exactly the point Frans was making, which is, is NATO's Article 5 guaranteed dead? Because at the end of the day, the question, the heart of NATO was, will the American president defend a small European country that gets attacked by Russia? And I don't think one could say clearly the answer is yes anymore.

[10:20:13]

APPLEBAUM: Yeah. So -- so Frans Timmermans is right that the, the power of NATO was as much psychological as military. You know, it's an organization that was a deterrent that the Russians were afraid to attack Europe. They were afraid to attack any country in Europe. Actually, you know, nowadays you can attack countries without them being on your borders. And they were afraid to do so because of the threat of mass response.

I do think it's conceivable that Europe could create that same kind of threat. It's funny, what we lack is not military, it's not men, it's not money. What's lacked is a -- is a way of organizing it.

You know, NATO is structured around a supreme allied commander who's an American. The European Union is structured to do different things. It's not meant to be a military alliance. And so what has to come out of the meeting in London today and the other meetings that are happening, you know, in the next few days and will happen over the next few weeks is some way of creating this coalition of the willing, giving it a commander and a leader or a team of leaders who -- who can -- who can make it work.

I don't think anybody in Europe wants it to replace the United States. And I agree that people want America to come back. I do think that as Americans begin to understand that their nature of their alliances have changed, there will begin to be a pushback in Washington and maybe around the country. You know, it's very who we are. Our definition of who we are as a nation is also very much about who we are in the world. You know, are we -- are we the defender of democracies? Are we the pal of autocrats? I think Americans care about that.

So there is a -- there is a deep hope and an expectation that Americans will have, will -- will come back. But in the meantime, yes, Europeans need to find the structure that makes it possible for them to defend not only Ukraine, but themselves.

ZAKARIA: Anne Applebaum, Frans Timmermans, thank you so much. We'll have you back. Let's see where this goes. Next on GPS. What does one of America's sharpest political commentators make of the Trump presidency so far? Bill Maher. When we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:26:43]

ZAKARIA: Donald Trump's second presidency is less than six weeks old. But in that short time, the news flow out of the White House has been like water from a fire hose. When the comedian Bill Maher asked me to appear on his HBO show Real Time on Friday, I asked him if we could flip the cameras around so I could get his take on Trump 2.0. I should note that HBO and CNN share the same parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Bill Maher.

BILL MAHER, HOST, HBO'S "REAL TIME": Pleasure. Always good to have you on my set on your show.

ZAKARIA: Love turning the tables. So tell me, you're looking at Trump 2.0. What is your reaction? I mean, most people say this is the real Trump. He was -- you know, he was kind of -- he had guardrails of all the generals, all the Republican establishment. This is the real Trump. What do you think?

MAHER: Well, this is Hollywood. If this was a sequel, we'd call it Trump 2. This time, it's personal. I mean, look, you know, I predicted it. I talked about it a million years ago, before he got elected the first time. Politics follows personality. I've always believed that. And his personality hasn't changed, and it's not going to change, you know, the vindictive part. And he has a lot of people behind him who feel wounded and forgotten and all that stuff. And that's what he's playing on.

Look, I said at the beginning, I'm not going to pre-hate anything. Well, now I hate a lot of things, OK. There's a lot of things I hate, like becoming an empire again. I sure didn't have that on my bingo card. I didn't see that one coming, that we're going to own Greenland and Gaza and Canada.

OK. Is it OK to have a breath of fresh air on certain issues? Like, does Gaza have to be a hellhole? Could it be Dubai? You know, yeah. Other people, smart people, have said that. You know, why can't -- couldn't it be more Dubai than it is someplace like that?

ZAKARIA: But do you think that, you know, the empire stuff, the humiliating Zelenskyy, the tariff wars, do you think that it's going to work for him politically?

MAHER: No. Of course not.

ZAKARIA: Because he's not doing well, right? MAHER: Of course not.

ZAKARIA: I mean, Biden's approval rating was much higher at this point in his presidency.

MAHER: Yes. We're still in the honeymoon phase, and she's crying and left the bedroom. OK. No, it's -- how could it? I mean, the tariffs haven't even gone to effect, but just the fear of them. He hasn't brought inflation down. I mean, eggs, eggs, eggs. Everything was always eggs, eggs. I never knew this country ate so many eggs. These poor chickens. God.

But that's what people are concerned about, and they can't -- it -- we do have a bad memory about politics, but not when it was just a few months ago, not when it's the same inflation that was -- the last guy had that he said he was going to fix lickety-split. And, you know, he's a genius at being able to do that. He says so many crazy things so often. That's -- I always said, his superpower, is that he's such a voluminous liar that whatever he says, you take with a grain of salt. Whenever he says a statistic, Zelenskyy's approval rating is 4 percent.

[10:30:04]

Well, it's 57.

ZAKARIA: We've given $350 billion of aid.

MAHER: Right. I mean, and his -- his fans just factor that in. They don't take him literally. They take him seriously, but not literally. And that's a great super power to have as a politician when you don't have to stick to the facts.

But when people actually feel it in their personal lives, in their homes, you know, when the price of things go up which -- I can't find any economist who says they won't because of tariffs. I mean, wasn't the depression really brought on by the 1930 Hawley-Smoot tariffs? Wasn't that the worst thing we could have done at the time? And we seem to be doing it again.

I mean, just -- their idea that you have to -- the only way is to swing the pendulum so far that you just break everything. It's just -- it's -- no, that is not going to work because things were not going that badly. Obama once had a great quote. I use it often. I usually use it on the left, but it pertains here too.

And he said, the American public, you know, they don't want -- they don't think we need to remake the entire system and just crash it all down. They just want to see things make sense. They just don't want to see crazy stuff.

And he was really talking about the far left when he said that. But it applies the other way too. They just don't want to see crazy stuff.

ZAKARIA: But it really has become his base that wants to burn the house down. You know, there's this -- and this is the -- you know, the Elon Musk stuff. Just destroy the federal government.

And I agree with you. I don't think that that's where the vast majority of the American people are.

MAHER: No, I think a lot of people saw all the larceny that went on with COVID. I remember we did a long piece here, so we did a deep dive. And when you look at the numbers, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that were just given away to people who didn't need the money. It just -- it was just like, oh, my gosh. There's a -- there's a thing that kills like 0.7 percent of the population. It turned out something like that. Maybe like --

ZAKARIA: It was like a panic, you know, let's solve this problem.

MAHER: It's such a panic. Yes. And we're just going to throw crazy money at it. And we're not going to really look at where it's going too carefully. That kind of stuff sticks in people's minds. It certainly did stick in my mind.

And of course, over the years we've always heard this every politician in the world has ever run on, at least in this country, waste, fraud and abuse, waste, fraud and abuse. So, there is that. It's like, how do you get it out?

I mean, your column today perfectly put it. I mean -- and reminded me that it has been done before better. You can do it surgically.

ZAKARIA: And you have to know government to be able to figure out where -- you know, because a lot of it is very complicated and people are smart.

MAHER: The government is being run by guys who -- they have a certain connection with that person who feels aggrieved. But both Trump and Elon they are driven by this sense of they've been wronged. Elon thinks they took one of his children who was born a boy and is now a girl.

ZAKARIA: And the they is the California kind of liberals, the government.

MAHER: It's -- woke. The woke mind virus. And there is a woke mind virus. It's not like it doesn't exist. And I've been criticized for criticizing it too. But it does exist. Sorry.

So, he's just out for vengeance. I mean, he was not that conservative. He wasn't conservative at all five years ago.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: No, he was a --

MAHER. He hosted "Saturday Night Live," the inventor of the Tesla, the electric car. I mean, none of these guys were. Rogan wasn't a Trumper. Trump was a Democrat.

You know, so the left has to take some responsibility for, in a way, driving these people there. But, you know, they have to take responsibility for going all the way there. They could have driven me there too. The left has been very bad to me, too. But you're not going to drive me to a place that's even worse.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I asked Bill Maher for his thoughts on a question many Americans have been asking. Where are the Democrats? We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:38:46]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: So, talk about the Democrats. What do you think they should do? You know, we talked about on your show that James Carville -- you asked me what I thought. What do you think of Carville's idea, which is basically stand back, let them destroy themselves, the poll numbers are bad, they're going to get worse?

MAHER: Well, I mean, it's almost a moot point because what else can you do? They don't control the Congress. I mean, it's funny that Trump got into office immediately. Everything was by executive order. And I was thinking, why you have the Congress?

ZAKARIA: Has such a small majority, you know.

MAHER: Yes. And they do -- yes. But they all do whatever he says anyway. You could have done these things congressionally, some of these things. And now they're, you know, using the Congress obviously to get a budget passed. But I don't know what the -- I don't know what recourse you have when you -- again, you said it on the show. The answer is winning elections. Power begets power.

When you have power, it allows you to get more power. And now they have all the power. That's not good. I'm not sure we will ever see another election. The mindset --

ZAKARIA: You really worry about --

(CROSSTALK)

MAHER: I said it about the first Trump term, and he did exactly what I thought. He tried to stay in power by every means possible.

[10:40:01]

Luckily, there were still Republicans -- Republicans and court people who stopped him. But, you know, that's what a lot of my editorials when he was out of office were like, oh, you know what he's doing behind the scenes now is he's replacing those people who stopped him last time with loyalists, which is what he has been doing.

And you have to understand the mindset, I think, of the true MAGA person is that the left is so crazy. And again, the left does give them a lot of ammunition for that, but their belief is that the left is so crazy and they want such a revolution of everything that it is almost our patriotic duty. It is our patriotic, they think, to stay in office no matter what that takes.

It's a little like the old we have to destroy the village to save it.

ZAKARIA: To save it, yes.

MAHER: To save democracy, we have to not have democracy. So, I mean, right now they're chanting Trump 2028 that -- put that on page one of things we never used to see in America before, a guy who would already had -- in his second term, and they're chanting for the third term, nobody even thought to do that.

And now -- you know, it's a joke now. Ha, ha. Get it? We're ending democracy. Yes, except that today's joke becomes a little more realistic. And then they'll --

ZAKARIA: Yes. When you have -- when you have an attorney general --

MAHER: Yes.

ZAKARIA: -- who's a loyalist, a vice president who's a loyalist.

MAHER: Right, right. And then you'll find somebody, you find something in some law book or some this or that and the Constitution. And it didn't really mean that. And not on a Tuesday. And the next thing you know, it's Donald Trump forever.

ZAKARIA: When you look at where the Democratic Party is now, you've been a consistent critic of the of the woke business. You basically been a kind of commonsense Democrat.

MAHER: Yes.

ZAKARIA: I think the party is moving in your direction.

MAHER: It has to. Or else they'll be the Whigs. The problem is that the part that doesn't want to move is not moving, and they're not going to move, and they're just going to dig in. And there's always people like that who, when they get their ass kicked, what they say is --

ZAKARIA: We should have been more. We should have been more extreme.

MAHER: We should have been dumber.

ZAKARIA: Yes.

MAHER: We weren't dumb enough. We dumbed it, but not down enough.

ZAKARIA: Yes.

MAHER: And we got to get -- we got to be dumber. And those people are very hard to defeat because you can't prove it. You can't prove that wrong.

ZAKARIA: Except that when you look at the two successful presidents, Clinton and Obama, they're both, you know, market friendly economic policies --

MAHER: Yes.

ZAKARIA: -- carefully centrist on cultural issues

MAHER: Yes.

ZAKARIA: You know?

MAHER: Yes.

ZAKARIA: I mean, it's -- it's recognizing that there's a big country out there and they don't all talk or think like northeastern liberals.

MAHER: No, I didn't like it. On the "Saturday Night Live" 50th anniversary show, which was awesome. But they did a sketch and Tom Hanks was playing a MAGA guy with the MAGA hat and wouldn't shake hands with a Black person.

And I thought, it's old, you know? I mean, I'm not a MAGA person. I didn't vote for him, but I know lots of MAGA people. They wouldn't not shake hands with -- I mean, of course there are some racists in this country who wouldn't, but I don't think that's helpful or healing or accurate. It's old. It's tired. It's a zombie lie.

And again, I know a lot of these MAGA people. I'm friends with people on all sides. And it's just -- it's just not where they are. And I don't think that helps.

ZAKARIA: So, you're talking -- you know, you're joking about possible third term, possible -- essentially, you know, the -- at least the transformation of American democracy into something else. How worried are you? How do you think about this? I mean, just personally. Like you do you get up and get depressed?

MAHER: No, I did that a little bit the first term and I let myself chase everything down a rabbit hole because it was so new. And I'm not going to do that. And I said that many times, I'm just not doing it a second term.

And people come up to me all the time, Bill, what are we going to do? And I always just say, go back and finish your dinner. Your dinner, which probably cost $200 a plate. Your life is fine. It may change. You could blow up the world tomorrow. And you're certainly hurting a lot of people, and we should do everything we can to stop that and help those people.

But, you know, I'm not going to have this cognitive dissonance about, like, my actual life, which is great. And this world what he's creating, I'm going to do whatever I can. This is my platform, you know? But mostly what you're always doing in this country is preaching to the converted. You know, the number of people who won't watch a show like this is legion because there's a lot I'm not far left enough, and some I'm not far right enough. I'm talking to the people who can hear both sides and understand there is arguments on both sides.

[10:45:00]

Even though they understand I'm obviously not for Trump and -- especially now, he's making it kind of easy to just go all out against him again. But understand also that the reason why Trumpism will always stay alive is, again, because they think that there's something on the left that's even crazier. And as long as you keep feeding him that ammunition, you are going to be vulnerable to Trumpism, even if it's not Trump.

ZAKARIA: Bill Maher --

MAHER: OK.

ZAKARIA: -- pleasure to have you on.

MAHER: Thank you. I appreciate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:07]

ZAKARIA: The Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, is not the first effort to streamline the American government. But there is only one such commission that actually succeeded.

During Bill Clinton's tenure, Vice President Al Gore headed up an effort to reinvent government. The results were that by the end of Clinton's presidency, more than 400,000 federal jobs and thousands of pages of regulations had been eliminated. The total savings were around $140 billion, which was impressive given that Clinton's first federal budget was around $1.4 trillion.

Gore's methods could not have been more different than those of DOGE. His commission worked quietly, partnering with federal agencies, asking them to identify positions that could be cut or reassigned. It worked with Congress to change laws when necessary.

Elaine Kamarck, who worked on the effort, has noted that the Gore mission did not get sued even once during its efforts. By contrast, DOGE has gleefully taken a chainsaw to the federal government, dismantling agencies and firing workers with abandon. Many have had to be rehired within days because it turned out that they were working on sensitive issues like nuclear security or infectious diseases.

And there are now dozens of court challenges to DOGE's actions, with one judge even questioning the constitutionality of DOGE itself. What explains the difference? I think that DOGE is, in part, a well-intentioned effort to get more efficiency from government, which I applaud. But a good part of it is performance art. Playing into the fantasies of the MAGA movement to crush the establishment and its elites in the most humiliating way possible.

In October, ProPublica revealed that the man who now heads the critical office of management and budget Russell Vought said of federal workers in a private speech, when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma.

All this thrills a base that believes that the establishment is a bunch of arrogant urban cosmopolitans who have, over the last few decades, hollowed out America and left them dispossessed. The reality, however, is that over the last three decades, the United States has massively outperformed its rich peers, surging well ahead of Europe and Japan.

As Michael Beckley notes in Foreign Affairs, in 1995, Japanese citizens were on average 50 percent wealthier than Americans, measured in current dollars. Today, Americans are 140 percent richer. If Japan were a U.S. state, it would rank as the poorest in average wages, behind Mississippi, as would France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

From 1990 to 2019, U.S. median household income rose 55 percent after taxes, transfers, and adjusting for inflation, with income in the bottom fifth seeing a 74 percent gain. As the conservative former senator Phil Graham has exhaustively documented, even income inequality has not actually risen when you factor in government transfer payments and taxes.

The MAGA disgust at the establishment is now joined by a new tech bro Maoism, hat tip to James Crabtree, that like the Chinese revolutionary, glorifies disruption and destruction. Epitomized by Elon Musk, this is an attitude that says, in Mark Zuckerberg's words, move fast and break things.

But is that really the best way to build companies? It isn't how Microsoft or Google were built. It's not how NVIDIA operates. Jensen Huang, who has led the company for nearly 32 years, is said to view one of his crowning achievements that his company has just a 2.7 percent attrition rate.

More importantly, what might work in a company does not work in building the enduring programs and institutions of government on which people rely for stability and predictability. And strangest of all, these nihilistic strategies are being suggested by people who have presided over the greatest creation of private sector success, innovation and wealth in human history.

This same America, this same federal government, is where the information revolution exploded, where the world's best tech companies were created and built, where A.I. is being pioneered, and where the fortunes of the tech bro Maoists were made. It is in this country, in fact, in California, the poster child of overregulation and out of touch liberalism, that Elon Musk, who came to North America as a penniless young immigrant from South Africa, started a string of successful companies and became the richest person in the history of humanity.

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It is these same governing elites who trained J.D. Vance in the U.S. armed forces, supposedly part of the deep state and infected by woke ideology, gave him a scholarship to a state university, more deep state. And then another to Yale Law School, arguably the most elite educational institution in America. And the response that Musk and Vance have to that country, that government and those elites is, burn it all down.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week. Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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