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00:00 Let's get some more analysis of the situation because the unexplained absence, as it seemed,
00:05 of the defence secretary was causing a little bit of panic behind the scenes, especially
00:10 among certain people looking to criticise the Biden administration.
00:13 Let's bring in Ian Reifowitz, Professor of History at the State University of New York.
00:16 Ian, thanks for being with us as always.
00:19 Give us your sense of the situation because clearly we've learnt now why Lloyd Austin
00:23 was absent.
00:25 But was there a situation where perhaps people who should have known about certain things
00:30 didn't in Washington?
00:33 Well look, I think what you've got here is a situation where some people dropped the
00:37 ball.
00:38 I've read that apparently Secretary Austin likes to keep certain things private.
00:43 He doesn't like to bother people.
00:45 This sounds like a bad excuse, frankly, for not doing what he was supposed to do.
00:51 What I don't see is a sense that there was anything really sort of nefarious going on,
00:56 that they were trying to cover up some kind of wrongdoing.
01:01 It sounds like a number of people just did a bad job with something.
01:04 The question is, with how things are in Washington DC, what will be the impact on a larger political
01:10 situation?
01:11 And I think we can certainly discuss that.
01:12 Was anything exposed, to coin a phrase, was anything at risk?
01:17 I don't think so.
01:19 I really don't think so here.
01:22 This strikes me as an honest but stupid mistake.
01:27 It's the kind of thing where, if you read between the lines, the Secretary maybe just
01:33 didn't want this kind of personal information to be revealed and foolishly thought that
01:39 he could just sort of temporarily be relieved of his duties and that in a few days he'd
01:44 be back or even a few hours he'd be back in charge and people wouldn't have to know what
01:50 was going on in his private life.
01:51 But that's just not the reality.
01:53 When you're a Cabinet Secretary, you don't have a private life.
01:56 You have a responsibility to the country that comes before your private life.
01:59 And you just don't have a choice in a matter like this.
02:02 So, look, Occam's Razor says that the simplest solution, the most obvious solution, is usually
02:08 the most obvious answer is usually the correct one.
02:11 I think that's what's going on here.
02:12 I can't imagine what Secretary Austin would have been trying to get away with here.
02:18 There's nothing, there's no benefit to be gained from keeping this secret.
02:21 So it just sounds like something that they need to learn from and never let happen again.
02:25 So good news that his prognosis is a good one.
02:28 Good news that the Councillor has been caught.
02:31 An example perhaps that men shouldn't be dying of embarrassment and they should actually
02:37 go and get things checked out.
02:38 That's obviously good news.
02:40 But coming back to the political angle about this, because that's what really concerns
02:43 us.
02:44 Do you think there was any point where the chain of power, the chain of command was broken?
02:49 Do you think there was an issue there that something might have been at risk?
02:53 Well I think, you know, in an emergency, that's why we have these protocols.
02:58 Because when you're the Secretary of Defence, there can be an emergency at any time.
03:02 It doesn't seem like an emergency came up where something needed to be decided on at
03:08 a very high level and Austin wasn't available.
03:11 We don't know that a thousand percent, but it doesn't seem that there was the case.
03:15 And maybe that's why there needs to be some kind of outside investigation to make sure
03:22 that that didn't happen.
03:24 But that's why these protocols are in place.
03:26 You can't have the President not know what's going on with his Secretary of Defence.
03:31 Now would this necessarily cost Lloyd Austin his job?
03:36 I don't think so.
03:37 But that doesn't mean that Republicans in Congress don't want to take advantage of this
03:40 because look, we're in an election season.
03:44 And we've seen already, for example, Matt Rosendale is a representative Republican from
03:48 Montana who just so happens to be competing for the Republican nomination for the United
03:52 States Senate, has filed articles of impeachment within the last day to impeach Secretary Austin
03:58 over this affair.
03:59 Why?
04:00 Well, of course, when you're in a Republican primary for office, what you've got to do
04:04 is out-MAGA everybody else, especially in a red state.
04:08 And so that's where you're seeing Matt Rosendale trying to use this as an example, as an opportunity
04:15 to file impeachment against somebody in the Biden administration.
04:19 The Republicans then cashing in on the situation, Ian, that's what you're saying?
04:23 Exactly.
04:24 Exactly right.
04:25 Exactly right, Mark.
04:26 Cashing in on the man's illness.
04:27 There we go.
04:28 Ian, we'll leave it there.
04:29 Thank you very much indeed, Ian Rafferty of the State University of New York.
04:34 And I'll point out, author of Tribalization of Politics, how Rush Limbaugh's race-baiting
04:39 rhetoric on the Obama presidency paved the way for Trump and also author of Obama's America,
04:43 a transformative vision of our national identity.
04:46 Ian Azeba, thank you very much for joining us here on France 24.
04:49 We always appreciate your analysis.