Sep 25, 2026 · 1 hr 30 min · 12 segments
The Rational Policy Podcast is back with Episode 53! In this installment of the show, your hosts Mike Coté and Art Vandelay spend the duration talking about the United Nations General Assembly and all…
Mike CoteHostArt VandelayHost
I mean, the first thing I would say is just the overall thing, right? It's a meeting where leaders get up in front of the world and bloviate about whatever nonsense they choose to talk about.
The actual things that go on there in terms of official releases or agreements or whatever at the UN level are almost entirely meaningless.
What does matter are all these side agreements, these bilateral meetings, these trilateral meetings between powers, sometimes between hostile powers.
And we saw some of that with the Iranians here in New York for this General Assembly meeting with people like Witkoff and Kushner, which can't have gone well for us, never does when those guys are involved.
But those kind of things happen on the sidelines of these large-scale get-togethers, basically.
I think maybe one place to start was with Trump's speech recently to this general assembly, which was classic Trump in terms of blustery, kind of a little crazed in some ways.
I was actually really curious that he said something about not caring basically about... what to do after the election.
You know, I'll wait and then I'll just blow the hell out of them, annihilate them, I think is what he's talking about.
I think if you look behind that, you see things that are different, oftentimes, again, just as crazy as they sound, but sometimes not too bad.
again, when you think about the United Nations, that's kind of like what everyone's speech is.
It's either yelling at another country or every other country, usually yelling at one particular country, being Israel.
I mean, the first thing I would say is just the overall thing, right? It's a meeting where leaders get up in front of the world and bloviate about whatever nonsense they choose to talk about.
The actual things that go on there in terms of official releases or agreements or whatever at the UN level are almost entirely meaningless.
What does matter are all these side agreements, these bilateral meetings, these trilateral meetings between powers, sometimes between hostile powers.
And we saw some of that with the Iranians here in New York for this General Assembly meeting with people like Witkoff and Kushner, which can't have gone well for us, never does when those guys are involved.
But those kind of things happen on the sidelines of these large-scale get-togethers, basically.
I think maybe one place to start was with Trump's speech recently to this general assembly, which was classic Trump in terms of blustery, kind of a little crazed in some ways.
I was actually really curious that he said something about not caring basically about... what to do after the election.
You know, I'll wait and then I'll just blow the hell out of them, annihilate them, I think is what he's talking about.
I think if you look behind that, you see things that are different, oftentimes, again, just as crazy as they sound, but sometimes not too bad.
again, when you think about the United Nations, that's kind of like what everyone's speech is.
It's either yelling at another country or every other country, usually yelling at one particular country, being Israel.
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