How Putin Dominated Trump, and Can Ukraine Survive

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Welcome back to Pod Save America.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

It's not Pod Save America, though.

What show is this?

This is what happens when you go on vacation.

We should leave that in.

Yeah, leave it in.

This is Pod Save the World.

This is the foreign policy show.

This is the good show.

This is a show.

Where we talk about some nerdy stuff.

Yeah, we'll have a lot of fun.

There's a lot of overlap this week because it's been quite a world of week.

I mean, you know, sometimes it's that kind of week.

Sometimes, Ben, so I was off last week, as you mentioned.

I wasn't in D.C.

I flew through D.C., but I was in eastern Maryland visiting Hannah's parents, which is lovely.

It was great, and they're amazing.

It was like a very fun time to see family.

But I can't believe we used to live in like the D.C.

area in August and commute to work in suits in the metro when it was like 90 degrees and 100% humidity.

I cannot, I mean, at the risk of sharing a little too much information, I cannot explain to people the amount of sweat that was involved in

getting from my house, which is now like occupied territory with like checkpoints and like Stephen Miller jackbooted thugs.

14th in W.

Yeah, the checkpoint.

I was like a block away.

But to get to work in a suit and tie in like a hundred degree heat with like 900% humidity was one of the most disgusting things.

It would take me a while just to like

recover, you know, when I got to this.

I'll never forget this one time.

I like worked out in the morning.

I was running late.

I went to my apartment.

I showered fast.

You know when the shower just doesn't take?

Yeah.

Right.

So I like throw on my suit.

I run like four blocks of the train.

I can hear in DC, the longest staircases ever in like any metro.

So I could hear my train coming in.

So I started running, running, running, running down the steps.

And I just barely made the train.

And I stepped onto it.

And I, you could just feel like the sweat coming.

And I turned around and there was this woman named Kim Ruby, who I'd worked with in Iowa and I probably hadn't seen in six years.

And I was like six inches away from her on a packed train.

And I started sweating so much that I stepped stepped off a couple stops early because I was just embarrassed.

I felt like I had just gone swimming.

I was a bus guy.

I used to take the bus.

I took the bus sometimes, too.

It's very like a good practice to take the bus to the White House because, you know, let's not get it.

I could do Ben Friedman.

Well, no, I'm just saying, like, you know, it's an abundance kind of agenda, like, you know, public transportation.

No.

Yeah, no, you're going the Nordic route, grab your bike.

Anyway, enough about us.

Enough about me.

It's great to be back.

We have a lot to cover today.

We're going to talk about a whirlwind of meetings and summits and cluster fucks over the war in Ukraine.

We're going to dig into the actual substance of what was discussed and announced, what Putin means and demands when he talks about the need to address the root causes of the conflict and what satisfying those demands would actually mean in practice.

And we're also going to talk about the optics and kind of the pageantry around these summits and what it says about Trumpism, what he cares about, and how the world has like bent itself to his will.

Then we're going to cover reports that Hamas has accepted a ceasefire deal in Gaza, Israel's plan to escalate the war, why hundreds of thousands of Israelis are in the streets protesting.

We're also going to talk about some really ghoulish reporting in Barry Weiss's The Free Press, and then why right-wing nut Laura Loomer is just one of the worst people in the world.

I think it's the best way to summarize it.

Yeah, not someone I'd want to spend any time with.

Not a fan.

Then we're going to talk about some major developments in the West Bank, elections and the end of a political dynasty in Bolivia, Trump's plan to target cartels in Latin America, and then we'll wave goodbye to a new but dear friend at the State Department.

Stick around for that.

I'm not going to give you guys any more details.

Stick around for that.

And then for our Friends of the Pod subscribers, we're going to answer some questions from our always amazing Discord community.

So, pack show.

And no, then you talked to Rokana just.

I did.

So I talked to Congressman Rokana, you know, who's been at the vanguard of trying to change some of the foreign policy within the Democratic Party.

We, you know, got his reaction to the Putin summit and talked a bit about how Democrats should be thinking about the types of critiques to be made of the diplomacy, I guess we call that, that's been going on.

Then we talked about the letter that he's led to try to get Democrats to sign on for the recognition of a Palestinian state.

We talk about the changes in the party on

support for this Israeli government or the Palestinians.

You know, there's a recent dust-up crooked media produced

by the media.

Pete Buttigig that Roe got involved in.

But we talk about

importantly, not just kind of what that says about where the party is right now in Israel, but how it's a bit of a proxy for the party having a backbone in general.

Will it stand up to APAC?

Will it present a truly different kind of foreign policy?

What should an alternative Democratic foreign policy be from not just Trump, but Biden, too?

So we covered a lot.

It's a good interview.

I really like Roe, and I'm also grateful to him for leading on some tough stuff.

Having some guts, you know, exactly.

But as we talk about,

you know,

we have sports metaphors on this show.

Roe is kind of skating to where the puck is going.

A lot of Democrats kind of observe it and then try to chase after it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're a little behind right now.

All right, Ben, so let's turn to Ukraine because it has been quite a week of diplomacy for Trump, the Russians, the Ukrainians, half of Europe.

Last Friday, just to catch you guys up, Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

On Monday, Trump met with Ukrainian President Vlodymir Zelensky in the Oval Office.

Then he had a second meeting with Zelensky that included like half of Europe.

It was leaders from the EU, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, and the UK.

Trump says the next step in this kind of like ad hoc Ukraine peace process could be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky.

Consider me skeptical that that will ever happen or that Putin himself would take the meeting and not send some like, you know.

third-tier flunky to meet with Zelensky, but we'll see.

And then if that goes well, I think the plan is to have a trilateral meeting that includes Trump, Putin, and Zelensky, which according to Politico would be held in Budapest.

So it's good to get Victor Orban here.

Yeah, not exactly a home game for Zelensky.

Glad we could get another autocrat in on the game.

Why I just had the meeting at CPAC.

So we're going to break this into chunks.

Again, like I said, we're going to do the substance, then we'll do the long-term issues, and then we'll do the optics.

But can you just imagine putting together an Obama-Putin summit in a week?

That's basically what they did with the Alaska one.

Well, they didn't exactly anticipate some of the traps.

So, you know, like that's what happens when you throw it together in a week.

You get rolled by the Russians.

Yeah, you didn't quite nail it.

Okay, so substantively, the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, it was not the worst case scenario for Ukraine, right?

Like a lot of Ukrainians and Europeans were scared that Trump and Putin would basically announce a deal and say, take it or leave it, you know, Zelensky.

That didn't happen.

But what came out of it was still quite bad.

Trump just...

completely abandoned his demand that Putin agree to a ceasefire, and he's now pretending that ceasefires aren't even important.

He's like, well, who do you even cares about?

After pushing for one for seven months.

Yeah, demanding one for months.

In the meeting, Putin demanded that Ukraine hand over not only territory in eastern Ukraine that they are occupying currently, but also territory that Russia hasn't been able to capture.

Specifically, Putin wants Zelensky to hand over all of Donetsk and Luhansk, but Russian troops only control three-quarters of Donetsk province.

And the portion Putin doesn't control but wants includes this 30-mile stretch called the Fortress Belt that is heavily fortified with razor wire.

bunkers, trenches, minefields, tank trouts.

Basically, like every military expert says, if you hand over that part of Donetsk, it will make it exponentially easier for Putin to invade again and then go deeper into Ukraine.

So that was all very bad.

And we'll get into the more maximalist demands in a minute, the so-called root cause of the war.

The one bright spot out of Alaska Bend were reports that both Trump and Putin are open to some sort of security guarantee for Ukraine as part of a deal.

And that kind of brings us to Monday.

Trump again said he's open to a security guarantee that the U.S.

would contribute to it.

But on Tuesday morning, on Fox and Friends, Trump ruled out sending U.S.

troops to Ukraine or the security guarantee being through NATO.

Here's a clip from Fox and Friends.

I hope President Putin is going to be good.

And if he's not, it's going to be a rough situation.

And I hope that Zelensky, President Zelensky, will do what he has to do.

He has to show some flexibility also.

I assume you've all seen the map.

You know, a big chunk of territory is taken.

And that territory has been taken.

Now, they're talking about Donbass, but Donbass, right now, as you know, is 79%

owned and controlled by Russia.

There'll be some form of security.

It can't be NATO because

that's just not something that would ever, ever happen.

They couldn't do that.

From Donbass, the dumbass.

Zelensky said he hopes the details of the security guarantee will be formalized in the next 10 days.

Zelensky also mentioned something about a $90 billion arms deal between the U.S.

and Ukraine.

So, Ben, our producer Saul described this whole thing as a reverse iceberg.

Lots of superficial things happening at the surface.

When you look under the waterline, no real substance holding it up.

I'd love your big picture thoughts on like kind of what actually came out of the discussions.

And then more specifically, let's just dig into what you think a meaningful security guarantee would actually have to look like.

Because I personally am quite skeptical that a few thousand European troops sitting in Ukraine.

is much of a deterrent unless they're authorized to shoot back at the Russians.

And if they're backed by

the full force of the U.S.

military, which I'm skeptical Trump is willing to do.

Yeah, there are two real substantive issues that are completely unresolved.

And while it wasn't the worst case scenario in terms of Trump coming out and announcing that there's an agreement and kind of forcing on Zelensky, he kind of behind closed doors seemed to have accepted that premise from Putin and then behind closed doors presented to Zelensky.

And the real issues are territory and security guarantees, and they're related, right?

So the first point is, in addition to Crimea, which I think everybody would acknowledge, acknowledge, it's impossible to foresee any scenario where Ukraine's getting that back.

There are four other territories of Ukraine that Russia has formally annexed.

And two of them would be in the category that you laid out: Luhansk and Donetsk.

That's the Donbass that Trump talks about.

So, taken together, that's the Donbass, which is a resource-rich part of Ukraine, an industrial part of Ukraine.

What Putin wants is essentially all of that territory, which does two things.

One, it kind of confirms his annexation as legitimate.

So instead of even just accepting maybe as part of some frozen conflict, well, the Russians are there, they're not going to leave, but we don't reject, we reject the legitimacy of this, it's kind of saying, sure, Putin's whole idea of invading this country and then having some Potemkin referenda at the barrel of a gun and annexing it is not only legitimate, it's so legitimate that we're going to force the Ukrainians to abandon their remaining land so he can have it.

So it fully legitimizes his invasion as a successful successful tool of territorial expansion.

But then importantly to the security guarantees, it leaves Ukraine with even less defensible borders, right?

So you not only lose all that fortified front line that the Ukrainians have built, right?

That barbed wire,

all the fortressing, but you're just kind of leaving them with even less defensible borders.

Like imagine if you ceded the entire, you know, eastern coastline of the United States to an adversary that was bigger than you, and they could just build up their military force there to try to reinvade you at a second point.

Yeah, Yeah, imagine if the Russians invaded Massachusetts from the east and they got to Worcester, and then we cut a deal and we were like, you know what?

Take the rest.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's crazy.

You're not only losing much what they are already occupying.

You're saying, we'll give you some more so you can stop invading, right?

I'm really meeting with people where they're at by giving the Worcester reference point because everyone knows where Worcester Mass is.

Continue.

Google it.

I don't care.

The security guarantee.

What the Ukrainians want is if they are going to lose this territory, if they have to basically accept some reality in in which Russia is going to consume part of their land, they want to make sure that Russia cannot reinvade and that the remaining Ukraine, the 70 to 80% of Ukraine that they continue to keep as a sovereign state, will be protected against not just invasion, but will be kind of integrated into, you know, because they can't rebuild.

They can't reconstruct.

They can't have the millions of Ukrainians who've left come back with confidence if everybody's worried that the Russians are going to try to dominate or try to take over the country again.

Now,

the Ukrainian preference for this would be NATO membership, because then you have an Article V commitment to collective defense.

Article 5 commitment means if Russia invades, NATO is going to come to Ukraine's defense.

Short of that, they want some troops on the ground, right?

But this is where it's kind of a backdoor NATO thing, because if you've got...

the UK, Germany, France, and some of these other countries who said they put troops in, well, those are NATO countries, right?

And so if you have that force there, there's some ambiguity that, well, if Russia invades and that force is willing to engage the Russian forces, well, then suddenly there's an argument that an Article 5 commitment might be triggered, even if maybe it's not Ukraine, but it's because there are NATO countries that are now in a war.

And to be very clear, this isn't because anybody wants that to happen.

It's because we don't want it to happen.

Like you want.

Yeah, it's a deterrent, right?

Now, what Trump seems to want is a toothless security guarantee.

You saw some things out of the summit yesterday that will sell Ukraine $90 billion of weapons,

as if giving them weapons is a security guarantee.

We've heard in the past that the critical minerals agreement is kind of a security guarantee because Russia won't invade if we're extracting minerals from Ukraine.

Or maybe you.

By the way, all those minerals are in eastern Ukraine.

Most of which Russia is.

Which we're now coughing over to

exactly.

Crazy to me that we spend so much time yelling about the stupid minerals deal when all the minerals are now going to go to the Russians.

Go to the Russians anyway.

Trying to make sense of this is probably a mistake.

So the question, I think Trump might be open to these Europeans being there, but he kind of wants it to be as feckless as possible.

Hey, the U.S.

has nothing to do with it.

Wink, wink, we won't come to the defense of these people.

We won't be part of the kind of supply lines to these people.

We have nothing to do with it at all.

And so essentially, it's kind of a toothless security guarantee.

That touches the deepest cords of fears for the Ukrainians because in 1994, the Budapest Memorandum, which we've talked about on this podcast, there was a security guarantee for Ukraine that was toothless.

It was agreed between the United States and Russia and other

UK that essentially Ukraine's territorial integrity would be guaranteed if they gave up their nuclear weapons.

And guess what?

They gave up their nuclear weapons and they got invaded.

And so they don't trust, for good reason, security guarantees that are written down on paper without anything tangible.

After the meeting yesterday, the Russians already went out and said they won't accept any foreign forces on Ukrainian soil, so they won't accept any security guarantees whatsoever.

So to rind rind back the tape, despite these two summits, despite all the pageantry, nothing is different today than before in the sense that Putin still wants all the land he's annexed and he wants no credible security guarantee.

And he appears to have Trump pretty much on board with that, although Trump's left this door open a crack on security guarantees.

And the Ukrainians and the Europeans are just scrambling to kind of keep that from being the maximalist position.

Now, I think you're being unfair because I think some progress was made because Putin got Trump to walk away from his demand for a ceasefire and apparently we're just giving up on putting secondary sanctions on other countries if they buy russian oil remember when he was threatening uh modi and the indian government a few weeks ago and saying you got to stop buying russian oil apparently that's gone yeah so okay so putin made a lot of progress the only yeah put the big concession that putin gave trump was flattery and then a political gift by saying oh yeah i would never have invaded if you were president it was joe biden's fault basically that was like all that that happened which is really smart of putin because he realizes cost free like and this is what is so important, and we can, we should talk more about this.

What leaders have realized is Trump doesn't actually care about the substance of the quote-unquote deal.

He just cares how it looks.

Headlines.

Are people kissing his ass?

Can he spin his narrative?

So Putin comes, and what does he bring?

He doesn't bring a concession on territory or security guarantees or ceasefires or anything, really, not even partial ceasefires.

I'm sure he's got that in his back pocket.

He brings mail and balloting is bullshit and costs you the 2020 election.

I didn't interfere in the 2016 election.

Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which we heard from Trump at the press conference.

You are such a great peacemaker.

None of this is substantive.

None of this matters whatsoever.

Let's do the optics.

And one's like, well, let's do the root causes and do the optics because you're right, because they fall together.

But like,

what he did bring that you mentioned earlier is this demand to deal with the root causes of the war.

And so, but when Putin, like, it's important to understand what Putin means by that, because like it's a long list.

It can mean some or all of basically the following, which is freezing the battle lines and forcing Ukraine to give up tons of territory.

Like, you talked about Crimea, but also the eastern Ukraine, the Donbass region.

NATO membership has to be off the table for Ukraine.

Putin has also talked about rolling back NATO expansion to where it was in the late 90s.

So, I'm not sure if the wish list is going to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic suddenly being out of NATO.

Like, it's not.

an insane thing to imagine.

He wants to limit the size of the Ukrainian military.

I'm sure he wants Zelensky gone.

I mean, early on in the war, right, Putin always talked about the need for the denazification of Ukraine, which is a remarkable thing to say about like the Jewish head of state.

But we haven't heard that phrasing in a while, but I'd imagine that Zelensky will be gone.

But I think when you understand what root causes means, it just speaks to how difficult it will be to get to a comprehensive peace deal because it really isn't just about the Ukrainians and the Russians doing something hard.

Like he's trying to dictate NATO's actions and dictate the actions of Europe.

That's right.

And so to kind of break down a couple pieces of this are really important is that there's Ukraine and then there's NATO.

Now in Ukraine, in root causes, Putin doesn't think that Ukraine should exist as a state.

Yes.

He would have liked to have essentially, if not conquered Ukraine, conquered a piece of it, annexed it, and then had a pro-Russian leader back in charge in Kyiv and he can kind of dominate them and not have to worry about them aligning with the West.

He might still get that, right?

Because he's trying to pocket the annexation with Trump.

But he wants them to not only not have security guarantees, he wants them to not really have a military.

And his argument to Trump is, how can I deal with a military that could threaten me?

The Ukrainian military is not going to invade Russia, right?

So the question is, just can they have a credible enough military so that they're not re-invaded again?

We can come back to that.

On the NATO piece, I think what he wants is, look, if you look at the clock, that's when the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, join NATO.

So it's not just, you know, yes, it's Poland and it's the entire, every country that essentially borders Ukraine or Russia, essentially, is, you know, Finland, which has recently joined.

I think he understands, Putin does, maybe that it's unlikely they're going to be kicked out of NATO.

But I think what he wants is no NATO presence in those countries.

So Ukraine is demilitarized, and NATO has no military presence.

There's no boots on the ground.

There's no infrastructure in these kind of eastern flank countries.

You can see why.

That's a scary prospect, because if there's no NATO presence in the Baltics, what's to stop Putin from taking a chunk of the Baltics?

And by the way, if you think that I'm now being hyperbolic, he's got a chunk of Georgia.

He's got a chunk of Moldova.

He's got a chunk of Ukraine.

Every former Soviet state

that's not a Central Asian republic, like he essentially is taking a chunk of Belarus's kind of satellite.

Right.

And the reason why is because Putin called the dissolution of the Soviet Union, quote, the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

This is an imperialist, nationalist project.

This is not just spheres of influence.

This is about reconstituting the Russian Empire for him.

That's right.

And he's doing it like piece by piece.

You know, he's like bite by bite, right?

And that is a scary, scary prospect to reward that kind of behavior in any way, shape, or form.

Now, the one other thing I'd add, Tommy, because we've talked about so many of these pieces over the years on this podcast, is that Putin also knows that the JD Vances of the world and the kind of Silicon Valley, you know, all-in-pods of the world have been intellectual Zambonis for Putin's arguments.

Oh, NATO expansion is what led him to invade Ukraine.

Oh, we overreach.

Zelensky's obstinate, you know,

by Trump taking Putin's side, essentially, and somehow Ukraine's fault that they were invaded.

It's somehow every previous president's fault that this happened.

NATO expansion never should have happened.

Whatever you think about those things, having the president of the United States essentially, because he wants to own the libs at home, essentially launder Putin's arguments into American foreign policy, it makes it so that Putin is just pushing against an open door.

I should say, if you're listening and saying, well, Ben, like, well, how the fuck should this war end?

There is a way in which the war ends, in which, yes, Russia is going to be in a bunch of the territory they're in, but that everything on the other side of that is protected.

You know, that essentially there is a credible security guarantee for Ukraine.

They're in the European Union.

If they're not in NATO, there's such a sufficient NATO commitment to Ukraine that Russia couldn't invade again.

And Ukraine can become a viable, successful state where their people can move back, even if they're going to lose some land.

What Trump is doing is not only potentially sacrificing the land, but he's putting that in doubt, right?

Right.

He's making them sitting ducks.

And you can hear that.

That is...

clearly Zelensky's core concern.

It's a security guarantee going forward so this doesn't happen again.

Because Trump is like, oh, well, I think he wants to cut a deal for me.

And I think he'll sign a piece of paper.

Why would you think?

Why wouldn't I?

Like an enshrine in legislation that he'll never invade again.

And if you believe that, you, sir, are a fucking idiot.

And that's kind of the point.

What's so crazy about this is that Vladimir Putin is a man who has invaded Ukraine multiple times over the objections of the rest of the world, invaded Syria and supported war crimes there over the objections of the rest of the world.

He could give two fucks about what Donald Trump thinks about anything.

What he's getting out of this, people keep asking me, like, well, what is Putin getting?

Is he running Trump as an asset, blah, blah, blah.

What he's getting is that the United States looks like an incompetent, completely clueless superpower.

He's owning the West.

He's owning the West.

The West is divided against itself.

It looks weak.

It looks pathetic.

Our system is being dismantled.

We look like we're taking his arguments because Trump needs to use his arguments.

And sure, he can give Trump the win of looking like the quote-unquote peacemaker who's convening meetings, but he gets everything he wants.

That's what's happening.

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So we wanted to lead with the substance because we're substance guys but like I think the options bros.

Substance bros.

But the optics and visuals of these various meetings, I do think, kind of tell you everything you need to know.

Like the folks watching on YouTube will actually see some images and still photos of what we're talking about here.

And by the way, thank you to everyone who subscribed to Pod Save the World on YouTube.

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But like, so let's just go through these events chronologically, right?

So in Alaska, Trump literally rolls out the red carpet for Putin.

He gives Putin a ride in the presidential limo, something I've never seen before.

There was all this chummy banter and like bullshitting around.

There was a military flyover of a B-2 bomber, which all these MAGA morons thought was some big flex.

But like,

showing off military hardware, first of all, is like Autocrat 101.

Two, did you think that Putin thought we might bomb him?

We might kill him or something.

He's sitting next to Trump.

Like, what do people, I don't know.

Then, okay, so Trump and Putin were supposed to meet one-on-one.

That turns into a three-on-three meeting.

So it's Trump, Steve Witkoff, and Marco Rubio, and then Putin, Sergei Lavrov, and Yuri Ushakov.

So it's Trump, his golf buddy, and like weak little Marco, who's probably sipping waters the whole time, against the former KGB guy and the two most experienced and savvy foreign policy minds in the Russian government, right?

So they're completely outgunned at that meeting.

And then Trump lets Putin talk first at the press conference.

He gets lectured.

He barely speaks.

He doesn't take questions from the press.

So Putin gets the images he wanted.

where he's being welcomed back into the international community before the meetings happen.

Then the meetings happen.

He doesn't give an inch on policy.

In fact, he gets concessions from Trump.

Then they skip this lunch they're supposed to have.

They don't take questions from the press and then they leave.

So it's a full-on domination by Putin and the Russians.

Then on Monday, Zelensky meets with Trump and the various delegations in the Oval Office, the Ukrainian and U.S.

delegations.

That goes way better than the last meeting.

Trump's team told Politico, quote, the vibe between the president and Zelensky was terrific.

Good to see that that was better, but low bar.

And then Trump has a couple meetings with Zelensky and the European leaders.

And one of the meetings was in the Oval Office.

And the image should be on the screen now, Ben, where like you have Trump behind the resolute desk, and then all the Europeans sitting in front of him in like shitty little chairs, and they literally look like school children in a classroom crowded around the teacher, who, by the way, had a map of Ukraine up, as if Zelensky needed to see a map of his own country.

And so,

and a Trump official helpfully told Politico that the goal of convening the Europeans on the same day with Zelensky was, quote, to say, we're in charge, you'll sign on to anything we say.

So they are not trying to hide that they do not give a fuck what the biggest countries in Europe think.

So man, just to spell it all out, right?

Putin gets the pomp and circumstance, and that is all he cares about, right?

Like Putin wants the image.

He's an equal of the U.S.

president.

Yes, equal of the U.S., welcome back into the West.

The Europeans look like children.

And as you were starting to enter, they're all just kissing Trump's ass, thinking that that's their only strategy.

And then Zelensky gets kind of a temporary reprieve.

He has a good meeting, wears a suit.

He like kind of does the dance.

like he's being pressured to give up a fifth of his country, right?

Like that's that's what's on the table here.

So it's just when you, when you kind of spell it all out, like, it's not hard to see where Trump's sympathy lies here.

Yeah, I mean, you said it well.

I'd just add three things to this.

The first is your point about, like, Vladimir Putin has been across the table from everybody for 25 years, right?

Sergei Lavrov has outlived and out-served, I don't know, 10 secretaries of state.

Outsmoked.

Out-drank.

I mean, that guy used to, I remember being at summits and you, you know, talk about drinkers.

Yeah, yeah.

But I, you know, I respect it.

I mean, I don't respect him, but i mean the but but but look to just set the table of how much the russians understood and we're in on the joke here right sergey lavrov arrived in alaska wearing a ccp sweatshirt okay that's usr for those of you who don't know the translation i mean if if that doesn't tell you everything about the summit incredible right i mean it's trolling it's messaging back home i'm sure they were dunking on all the russian versions of fox news he literally arrived in the United States wearing a USSR sweatshirt, right?

Just laughing at us.

We get to red carpet treatment and all this stuff, and then we get to basically dunk on you as we show up.

Putin had this kind of smirk on his face.

He knows he, you know, was an indicted war criminal.

Now he's invited here.

He's in the priest.

He gets to speak first at the press conference.

Truly bizarre.

It's crazy.

The host country should speak first.

Because you get to frame the meeting.

So Putin gets to frame the meeting.

It's business-like.

It was great.

We agree on everything.

And Trump's like, yo, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia.

You know, so that's the first thing.

Putin invites him to come to Moscow next day.

The Russians got this joke completely.

Like, they give up nothing and they get basically completely laundered back into the good graces of the U.S.

president.

And the rest of the world looks at this and says, Putin won.

He won the war in Ukraine.

Like, the Americans folded him, right?

That's one thing.

Second thing is the map point you make.

Because Trump said before the summit, we're going to, it's a real estate deal.

He's constantly talking about maps.

He's got a map up.

I was deeply offended by this because

you will recall how many times the right wing threw quote-unquote Munich at us, right?

So this was like when Chamberlain, Neville Chamberlain, met with Hitler and essentially gave away Czechoslovakia in 1938 and, you know, the appeasement.

Now, that used to be framed as the right-wing commentators saying anything that wasn't what they wanted was Munich, right?

Because if you don't like bomb Iran, it's Munich.

Or if you talk to Cubans, it's Munich.

That's actually wrong.

Like

the real disgrace of Munich was the idea of two bigger countries coming together and carving up smaller countries on maps without them being present.

So yes, this time I think the Munich analogy holds.

Trump doesn't understand how offensive it is to most of the world, including certainly Central and Eastern Europeans, at the idea that an American president can sit down with a Russian president and look at maps of a smaller country as if it's Donald Trump's to give away.

And so that is a lasting damage to any American credibility.

There is no rules-based order anymore.

There's no state sovereignty respect anymore.

But there's also no respect for the dignity of any country other than the United States, Russia, and China.

That's Trump's,

those are his buddies.

That's the company he keeps, maybe the Gulf, the Saudis get in there too, and the Emiratis.

And then the last thing is, I'm so fucking sick and tired of seeing these European leaders feel like they went to the class and learned the lesson that you have to kiss this guy's ass and call him a peacemaker.

And, you know, I mean, look, I get why they're doing it, but guess who doesn't like give up anything?

Putin, right?

Like,

or she.

Like, Trump runs into a brick wall with those guys and

he folds.

Or Neneo.

Like, he folds.

He folds when you push back.

And I will say to the Europeans' credit, and Friedrich Mertz seems like he's got some backbone here.

And Macron seems like

Georgia Maloney is the one.

Georgia Maloney's got some backbone.

So I give them some credit, but at a certain point, this flattery is not going to be the answer.

You, Europe, have a gigantic economy.

Like, if you take the EU, and I know it's much bigger than the Russian economy.

You know, like, you've got a lot going for you here, and you don't need to be so JV about it.

I think it was smart of them to give them some credit to show up all together.

The people they chose were like important.

it was smart.

I wasn't sure about the babysitting strategy at first because I was like, oh man, you throw like a half dozen really annoying European leaders in a room.

Is Macron going to wear well in this meeting?

I couldn't tell, but you're right.

It did work out.

Well, because you know, Maloney, she's like in the Trump trouble.

She was like a Mar-a-Lago in Veti.

The Finnish guy is both on the border of Russia, but he's also kind of a right-winger.

And then you got Mertz, Macron, Starmer.

So it was the right mix, and you got the European.

Mertz, the rich guy.

But the only thing I would change going forward is like, can we just like,

and it's not because I don't like Trump, which I obviously don't.

It's just like

okay, like just talking about what a deal maker he is.

And at a certain point, and we're still talking about like Zelensky's suit, you know, like,

I mean, like, you guys have interests, you know, and

Putin doesn't give an inch, and he gets what he wants.

And that seems to be the real lesson of negotiation with Trump is if you don't give an inch, he won't come back for a foot.

Every time you said maps, I just thought of the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, song.

Great rock band song.

It's a good song.

They don't love you like, I love you.

That's a message to the Europeans.

Yeah, so I guess we'll find out how this maybe a bilateral meeting between Selensky and Putin goes, and then maybe this trilateral happens.

Sheryl be talking about this.

Do you think this is making him look good?

I mean, do you think in this country, like, because it cuts both ways.

It looks like he's at center action.

He's making all these meetings happen.

On the other hand, it's pretty obvious, too, that he's kind of taking Putin's side.

You know, I go back to the red panda analogy of you're like spinning plates.

Like, yeah, I think it looks good to hold a bunch of peace summits and kind of look in charge and you're kind of decisive and you're doing things.

I mean, the Alaska summit was clearly a humiliation.

He didn't get anything he wanted.

But like, I think Trump's base thinks that he is a pure victim in any Russia-related story because they have been convinced that the election interference was a hoax and he was unfairly treated, right?

So that just kind of leaves the like narrow shred of people paying attention who may or may not be independent as sort of movable on this.

I do think kind of the Trump as push for peace guy is not a bad play for him.

Yeah.

No, that's got to deliver, though.

But that's, well, that's the question is how long can he get away without delivering?

And if he delivers something that is a pile of dog shit, I mean, this might be the thing, question, right?

Is if there's a quote-unquote, because I don't think there'll be a real peace, but if there's some kind of frozen conflicts totally on Russia's terms and Trump says, give me the Nobel Prize and Fox is, you know.

Well, this is where the Europeans being lame comes in is a problem because like someone's got a message back when he's full of shit.

Like Trump's out out there being like, I solved, I ended six wars.

When you look at the list, it's like India, Pakistan.

Like, I don't even know that they laid down arms.

Yeah, yeah, Iran, Israel.

Like, well, pretty sure they still hate each other.

I'm pretty sure that the fucking, you know, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there's still like a militia occupation.

M23 has not left the DRC.

Like, none of those wars.

Azerbaijan, Armenia, which we talked about last week at the ALDA, but that ended because Azerbaijan won the war.

So every one of these is bullshit.

And yet, because these leaders kiss his ass and he's got an an information system that just

frustrating.

Okay, well, to be continued, I guess.

All right, Ben.

So, we got a bunch of Israel-Gaza stuff to cover today.

So, there's been a lot of reporting this week that Hamas has finally agreed to a ceasefire proposal from Qatar in Egypt.

This deal is based on Steve Witkoff's old framework from earlier this summer, which basically is a 60-day ceasefire, a phased hostage release.

It's 10 living hostages, 18 dead hostages were released during this truce in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners.

During the 60-day ceasefire period, both sides are supposed to have negotiations on a full end to the war.

However, we should just say, like during past ceasefires, those long-term talks just never happen because neither side has really, well, at least the Israeli side has not really wanted them to.

So we'll just put a pin in that.

The New York Times, though, said that Hamas has basically shifted its position on every major issue since July, which is a good thing.

And then the Qataris said the plan is, quote, almost identical to what the Israeli side had had previously agreed to.

So normally I'd hear that and think, well, that's really hopeful.

But both Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have recently said that they no longer want to pursue a piecemeal approach and instead want all the hostages to come home at once.

And then you also have the same kind of right-wing zealots in Netanyahu's coalition out attacking the plan or the attacking Hamas, whatever they agree to.

People like Smotrich and Ben Gabir are like the really right-wing scaris.

Also complicating this picture are two big factors.

Like the IDF has just approved plans for this massive escalation in Gaza, this incursion.

It's a Gaza city.

This operation will take weeks.

It'll involve the mobilization of tens of thousands of reservists.

I think the plan goes to the defense minister and the security cabinet this week.

But, you know, this is talking about a major military escalation in Gaza City, where there's like 700,000 people, I think.

And there's also all these hundreds of thousands more people sheltering there.

So all these Gazans are going to get once again displaced like for the, what, dozenth time to southern Gaza should this operation proceed so it's a big deal it's very scary it would be horrible and then also over the weekend bend huge numbers of israelis took to the streets to protest for the release of hostages and end to the war so there's estimates in various publications that range from hundreds of thousands so i think ha'arat said millions but a shitload of people were out on the streets saying like they want a hostage release deal even if it ends the war hostage families a bunch of former hostages participated they're obviously understandably worried that further military operations in gaza will will endanger the lives of the remaining hostages and not lead to their rescue.

I mean, I'm pretty sure it's well known that Hamas has orders to kill hostages if they see Israeli troops getting close.

In response to these protests, Netanyahu said, Those who are calling today to end the war without defeating Hamas not only harden Hamas's stance and delay the release of our hostages, they're also ensuring that the horrors of October 7th will repeat themselves again and again.

So that is some cynical stuff.

Ben, I would love to see even a temporary temporary ceasefire in Gaza.

I just, I just, I have no hope that Netanyahu will take this.

Look, I 100% hope I'm wrong.

I just don't believe it will happen.

I mean, Netanyahu has cast his lot with the far right of his coalition because maybe he is one of those people.

He said he's going to take over Gaza.

He said he's going to do this offensive.

We've seen Hamas agree to these types of terms before, and Israel never agrees.

And so I'll believe it when I see it.

Other than that, it's just kind of almost a distraction, right?

Like to act like there's some negotiation that matters.

Nothing matters.

If Israel ended the war, the hostages would come home.

That is very clear, you know, and it's because Netanyahu does not want to end the war.

It doesn't mean Hamas isn't responsible for horrible things.

They obviously are.

But the fact of the matter has been for well over a year that if Israel would end the war, the hostages would come home.

And it's not a reward for Hamas.

Hamas has been totally...

you know, decimated.

Like the reason that there's some replenishment in the ranks is because, you know, of what's happened in Gaza.

so let's just put that aside i i i hope that there's a ceasefire i don't think that that's likely given what's going on what is going on though is that like the the war just keeps getting worse and if you see this offensive go forward you know we've learned it can always get worse in gaza and it just

it looks like what it is which is an attempt to ethnically cleanse the gaza strip to destroy the palestinian people there to have no regard to the number of people who die um That's what's happening.

Until we see otherwise,

that is what it is.

Along the lines of the two points you just made, I mean, on the ethnic cleansing point, there are a bunch of reports today that Israel is in talks with other countries about relocating Gazans to those countries as part of this ethnic cleansing plan.

Like the Times had reported on a bunch of talks between Israel and South Sudan, of all places.

I can't imagine anywhere less safe.

And the Wall Street Journal says there have been talks between Israeli officials and officials in Libya, South Sudan, Somaliland, and Syria.

So again, hard to overstate how unsafe sending a bunch of Gazans to those locations would be and also how potentially destabilizing it would be for those countries.

And then...

Not to mention fucking racist.

I mean, you know, there's nothing.

First of all, the Palestinians don't want to leave Gaza.

So this is all over their heads.

But

they have as much to do with South Sudan as they have to do with Norway.

You know, like it's just saying that like these people's lives value.

What's a place that we can look at the globe and think that life is not important there?

Oh, South Sudan, where there are always civil wars and people, you know, suffering all kinds of ills.

And so we'll just send the Palestinians there.

Yeah, and a government that I think is in a perilous enough position that they're looking at this and thinking, well, the Trump administration will like it if we take it.

Yeah, we'll take it.

We'll get a check.

And God help what happens to those people when they get there.

And then there was this recording leaked of Israel's ex-head of military intelligence where he says, quote, the fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations.

And he also said, quote, for every one person on October 7th, 50 Palestinians must die.

So this is a guy who resigned in April 2024.

But like language like that from someone this senior certainly will be a part of any genocide case at the ICJ.

Because that's illegal.

That's a war crime.

What that man said is a war crime.

And

the number of Israeli officials who have admitted to genocide

on tape, you know, even though they didn't use the G word, but if you say that, or if you say we need to starve these people, or if you say we're going to take Gaza, like you're admitting to the worst war crimes, like that's that's not a part of war, you know, like that's not just something that happens, right?

That's that's a policy that is against international law that was set up after World War II to prevent the horrors that we saw in World War II.

Yeah, and I think it's all being enabled by the dehumanization of Palestinians.

And just two kind of data points we wanted to talk about that I think speak to that dehumanization.

So the first comes from Barry Weiss's publication, The Free Press.

They decided to write an entire article attacking other news publications for running photos of kids in Gaza who are starving to death and look kind of emaciated, like their ribs are poking out.

It's like really horrible images that really shock the world.

And the free press, the argument they make in this article is that the images don't prove there's a famine because the kids featured have other health problems too.

So it's sort of like hard to overstate how ghoulish this is, but one example really drilled it home for me, Ben, which is they have like 12 different examples they use and one is a photo of a 14 year old boy named musab al-debs he was featured in a cnn story he's described by cnn as suffering from malnourishment but the big gotcha from the free press is that the story didn't mention that the kid suffered a traumatic brain injury after he was hit in the head by shrapnel from an idf airstrike So that they think that is making their point.

I was incredibly triggered by this as you were.

And I guess the only two things I'd say about this are, first of all,

if your reaction to looking at children literally starving to death in a place where 20,000 children have already been killed by bombing and shelling and other causes, if your reaction to that is to try to dunk on those kids or publication or the New York Times for putting a picture of one of those kids on the front page by pointing out that there's some other condition that the starving kid is suffering from.

I actually

like that's sociopathic.

Like, worry for your soul.

Well, that's the thing.

I actually feel some pity for you, right?

Like, I mean this, like, there's something wrong with you, deeply, deeply fucked up with you if you look at starving children and then go try to launch investigations to prove that those starving children have other conditions and then to think you're somehow owning the Palestinians or the left or whomever you're trying to own with it.

The other point I want to make is that the free press,

I'm so sick, and let's lump like the Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL under this umbrella too, but I'm so sick of people that

have complete impunity and now have allies in positions of massive power, right?

casting themselves as like truth-telling victims or something, right?

Like

Donald Trump is literally made it illegal to support Palestinians on campuses in this country.

The ultimate cancel culture is around anybody expressing solidarity with Palestinians.

And yet, there's still this mentality from places like the free press that they are somehow the counterculture, that these people are somehow the outsiders holding power to account.

When literally, Donald Trump, who is the most cynical ally you could possibly have, is

basically criminalizing the kind of people that you're trying to own.

Yeah.

I guess like the quick things I'd say to these reporters is like, first of all, who do you think dies first in a famine?

It's people with pre-existing conditions.

It's the weak, it's the sick, it's the young, right?

And that's what's happening here.

Second, not mentioned is the fact that the IDF has blown up all the medical facilities in Gaza.

So these kids can't get treatment they might need to look less emaciated or to be healthier.

Also not mentioned, again, is the Israeli government won't let international journalists into gaza without an idf minder it would be a lot easier to avoid mistakes and to do fact-checking if you could have boots on the ground and this what's especially shitty about this ben is the free press is weaponizing the fact that outlets like the new york times actually care they care about getting it right they have standards they work really hard to tell the story they issued a correction they issued a correction related to a kid that had a pre-existing condition while he happened to be starving to death and look i know i know corrections are frustrating for anyone who's worked in this business because because they come late and they're downplayed compared to the bigger story.

And it's a whole thing.

But these are reporters who are doing their best in a difficult information environment.

And

sometimes you don't have all the context because what are you supposed to do?

Are you supposed to go to the hospital that was blown up and find the records for these kids?

Like the free press story is so condescending.

It's like, you don't need in-depth reporting or to be on the ground.

You just need Google.

It's like that is fuck you.

Fuck you.

And you're obnoxious scolding.

Sanctimonious.

And again, you're looking at people who are objectively starving, and

your reaction had to, quote, cover that story is to try to poke holes in it.

Try to weaponize it.

Yeah.

I mean,

it's grotesque.

But the only positive thing I'd say about this is a year ago, this might have traveled better.

Now, it's clanging more.

And I'm not just talking about because like Medi Hassan dunks on them.

I mean, I just, it doesn't feel, it feels like normies who may not even follow this conflict are beginning to be like,

come on, man.

That's kind of ghoulish, man.

That's kind of gross.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but before we go, Ben, I want to tell you about a brand new show.

It's called Shadow Kingdom.

It's New Year's Eve, 1969.

Jack Yublonsky, a charismatic labor leader, is campaigning against corruption.

His wife and his daughter are murdered in their home.

Ben said.

The case shocks the country, and it sets off one of the most dramatic power struggles in American labor history.

This season on Shadow Kingdom, Cole Survivor.

Get it?

See what we did there?

I got it.

Yeah, it took me a second.

Cole.

Niccolo Mainoni investigates the deadly rise and fall of Tony Boyle, the corrupt, mob-connected head of the United Mine Workers of America and the young son of his murdered rival who risked everything to take him down.

They got exclusive tapes, original reporting, first-in interviews.

This season reveals how a union meant to protect its workers got taken over by a leader willing to do whatever it took, including murder.

to hold on to power.

I didn't realize that Shadow Kingdom was like the serial of cricket media now.

We got it, baby.

Yeah, we're going, we're serialized.

Let's go.

We're going like 20 we're doing um uh south park style 27 seasons let's buckle up listen to the trailer now on the shadow kingdom feed and subscribe to catch the two episode premiere on august 25th friends of the pod subscribers can binge the whole season starting on august 25th by joining at crooked.com slash friends or through the shadow kingdom apple feed

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And finally,

we're going from gross to grosser.

We've talked about Laura Loomer on the show before, unfortunately.

She's this right-wing nut.

She once chained herself to the Twitter office building in New York while wearing a Star of David to protest being kicked off.

That's your ally for Christ, by the way.

That's your real ally.

Yeah, she celebrated the drowning of Muslim refugees, including infants in the Mediterranean.

I think she did the applauding emoji or something.

So that's who this person is.

These days, though, Laura Loomer has got a direct line to the Oval Office.

She has gotten lots of top Trump officials fired for perceived insufficient loyalty, including like the head of the NSA.

But this latest move from her is just like, it's pure evil.

So, Laura Loomer heard about this organization called Heal Palestine and the work they were doing.

This organization, what they're trying to do is like temporarily bring kids from Gaza to the U.S.

for urgent medical treatment.

So, the State Department approved medical visas for 63 or so children plus accompanying adults.

The kids range from six to 15, and most of them, like, they lost a limb or three limbs.

You know what I mean?

These are kids in dire, dire shape.

And the plan was treat them in the U.S.

and then take them to Egypt where they would then reunite with their families.

So this was temporary.

These were not like people moving to the U.S.

to live here.

But Laura Loomer saw like Instagram videos of this organization, Heal Palestine, and the work they were doing, and she deemed it a national security threat.

And she somehow got on the phone with Marco Rubio directly, who then suspended all visitor visas.

And so I just, I want to say a lot of mean things about about the two of them, but I kind of think like their actions here speak for themselves.

Like kids are going to die.

It speaks for themselves.

Like a six-year-old amputees,

I mean, they shouldn't have a national security threat prism on this anyway, but like that's so absurd.

To me, to echo the point about feeling sorry, I don't feel sorry for these people, but it's just a sign of kind of societal collapse.

You know, like that, that Laura Loomber is getting on the phone with the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, National Archivist of the United States, Marco Rubia, and stopping kids who've had amputations from coming to get treatment for a temporary basis.

This is what you want, this is MAGA,

then it's just a sign of a deep moral bankruptcy.

Yeah, have at it.

This is good luck with your soul.

Yeah, yeah, good luck.

You've got a higher power to worry about.

Good luck on the other side.

So, another sort of thing, we talked a lot about settler violence in the West Bank on the show recently, but today we wanted to highlight some broader developments in the West Bank that I think could really just all but kill off any hope of a future Palestinian state, such as there is one at this point.

So Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, approved a plan for thousands of new housing units that would connect East Jerusalem to another settlement in the east.

So Smotrich said on the record about this new group of settlements, quote, this reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.

Now, the Trump administration is also fully supportive of the settler movement, and U.S.

Ambassador Mike Huckabee said of the expansion quote it is not a violation of international law which it absolutely is

it just absolutely is so that is a very big deal and a huge problem and also i just want to highlight some uh very uh excellent and dogged reporting ben from a reporter named jasper nathaniel uh who writes for his sub stack infinite jazz so jasper closely tracks developments in the west bank he recently highlighted the story of uh muhammad zahir ibrahim who's a 16-year-old palestinian american boy who has been in an israeli prison since february so this kid he's 16 he was accused of throwing rocks on an empty street.

That's it.

The kid's been sitting in jail with adults.

In the past, we've talked about his cousin, Saifol Al-Musalet, who was beaten to death by settlers in July.

So, Jasper did an interview with Muhammad's father.

Here's a portion of it.

I know for a fact that the U.S.

Donald Trump and Down wanted to get him out and takes one phone.

And you think they've just not decided to do that?

They have not.

now we know they haven't because he's not out yet but so you know the u.s government they can put pressure and release him you know he's an underage kid he didn't do nothing you know like

the way you see it is like if you took your son to a grocery store in america a 15 year old and he grabbed a candy bar stole a candy bar and went home would you expect the

30 soldiers to raid his house because he stole a candy bar.

That's what we look at.

What do you do?

It just, I think, speaks to both the horrific treatment of Palestinians, and the West Bank, but also the fact that the U.S.

government under Trump has just not given a shit about them.

Two quick updates on it, though, Ben.

Like, first, I sent Jasper's reporting about Muhammad's case to Congressman Greg Landsman.

Listeners might remember, he was on the show a few months back.

We debated like Iran policy and Gaza policy.

He's a representative from the Cincinnati area.

It turns out that Greg, on a recent trip to Israel, had brought up Muhammad's case with both Ambassador Huckabee and with Netanyahu directly.

So it sounds like this might lead to some movement on the case, which is amazing that Greg, like, look, Greg and I have a huge disagreement on policy, but this guy has like a boundless faith in the value of engaging and pressuring the Israeli government.

And if he can make some progress on this, like more power to him.

But also, Ben, you know,

I talked to Jasper on the phone for a while today.

And I do think he makes a very persuasive case that what is happening in the West Bank, it's just a crisis.

And like all every liberal you hear talking about the need for a two-state solution, or Jal just sort of ignoring the fact that it is about to be rendered an an impossibility because of this settlement expansion that is enabled by the settler violence, that is also enabled by the fact that Smotrich was basically put in charge of all these settlements

even before October

7th.

Yeah, and this is all sort of by design.

It's just like this death by bureaucracy that is sort of hard to cover.

And

it can sound like boring and bureaucratic, but it is, you know, it's a crisis.

Yeah, the only thing I'd add to this, because look, these settlements have been going on for decades.

They've been particularly accelerating under Netanyahu, particularly accelerating under this recent government.

If you look at a map, there's no viable contiguous, that means connected Palestinian territory in the West Bank anymore.

There's these little islands where Palestinians live that have been, you know, are these shrinking islands.

The only thing I want to add to this is you're going to see some weird

argumentation from Netanyahu supporters that it's Macron's fault or something.

Because

Emmanuel Macron recognized recognized the Palestinian state like at four.

That is utter bullshit.

They've been doing this last year, two years ago, three years ago.

There's a reason Smotrich is in charge of this, right?

So just

please discount that argument.

They would be doing this whether or not European countries were recognizing a Palestinian state.

And on the

I'm out of words anymore to describe the double standard of what happens to American citizens,

Americans in the West Bank versus anywhere else in the world?

I just say Trump is someone who has constantly prided himself on these efforts to get quote unquote hostages out of difficult places.

You know, he basically made the 2020 Republican Convention, like, had a whole night about this.

Like, why can't he get these people out?

He's totally right.

One phone call, they'd be out.

And I don't know if that's because the kid's not white.

I don't know if that's because the kid's in the West Bank.

It's probably both, but it's shameful.

Yeah, it is shameful.

And good.

And good on members of Congress.

Look, I don't like these eight-pack trips, but if you're going to go, this is the kind of thing

you might have an impact.

In fact, you're probably not going to be able to stop the war in Gaza, but you could do something here.

Absolutely right.

All right, Ben, let's head to South America, where in the first round of the presidential election, Bolivian voters casted a decisive vote against the nation's once-dominant socialist party.

Sunday's winners include centrist senator Rodrigo Paz, who garnered 32% of the vote, and right-wing former president Jorge Tuto Quiroga, who received about 27% of the vote.

And so they will likely face each other in a runoff in October on the 19th.

So Paz, the centrist, was a dark horse candidate who defied most expectations.

And a lot of people said Bolivia's right-wing just wouldn't do well in these elections, and it looks like he did.

The country's current socialist president, Luis Arce, is so unpopular that he decided not to run for re-election.

And the candidate running in his place, I think, eked out about 3% of the vote.

So not a good showing for the socialists, and just an extraordinary collapse for the MAS party, which you know has held power for nearly two decades, thanks to former president Evo Morales.

More on him in a minute.

The main issues in this election will not surprise anyone.

There was inflation that I think hit 24%.

There were shortages of commodities like fuel, long gas lines, like all the things that piss off voters everywhere.

Evo Morales, you know, we should get it to, I'd love to hear you just sort of sound off on who he is.

I mean, he's a force in Bolivian politics.

He was born into poverty, became a leader in the Cocoa Union, served as Bolivia's first Indigenous president from 2006 to 2019.

He was barred from running for a fourth term.

That led to a bunch of protests.

He had temporary exile.

And he had a falling out with the current president, who was sort of a protege.

And then Morales was charged with some really fucked up stuff, human trafficking, the statutory rape of and impregnating of a 15-year-old girl, which is a charge I don't think he even doesn't even deny.

He doesn't deny this.

Yeah.

So he is now holed up in what the Washington Post described it as a tropical fortress in this sort of like cocoa-producing region of the country where he has all these supporters either sleeping out like by this compound or at the ready that he can kind of like summon via a radio call to come defend him.

So it's a very weird situation, but he was sort of urging his supporters to cast a null vote in the vote on Sunday.

So, Ben, two sort of questions for you.

First of all, I'm just see if you wanted to sound off on Evo Morales and like his legacy in Obolivia and Latin American politics generally.

And also, you know, we've been kind of watching these elections in Latin America and looking for like bellwether signs of a rightward shift.

This feels like a bad one and maybe could be worrisome for Chile, who's got an election coming up in November, I think.

Yeah, I guess, look, Evo Morales was a dominant figure in the politics of Bolivia, you know, in the earlier 21st century.

And look, we should say, did some good things, right?

I mean,

a lot of people out of poverty.

You know, lifted a lot of people out of poverty, a lot of redistribution of wealth to communities that have been totally cut out.

Obviously, like a pathbreaker for the indigenous community, and Bolivia has a very large one.

Came out of kind of a labor movement, you know, somewhat like Lula in Brazil.

And so at the beginning of his tenure, you know, you could see him as someone who was addressing social justice issues that were long overdue in a place like Bolivia.

And then, like some of these other leaders we've seen in the region, you know, just didn't want to let go.

And, you know, the longer you stick around, the longer you try to hold on to power, there usually tends to be a whiff of corruption and autocracy that kind of starts to grow up around you.

He didn't go as far as, say, like a Chavez, but you know, he was kind of hanging on.

Now, then I think, you know, we've covered some of this over the years.

You know,

the right

had some genuine support.

And there were some questions, though, also about some of the past elections.

What is clear is right now, it seems like people oblivion are moving on, right?

And the thing I'd say is Evo Morales, whatever you think of him, positive, negative, or mixed, he's the past, you know, like he's not the future of Bolivian politics.

He's not the future of the Bolivian left, you know?

And so

that's, you know, when I step back and I think about the left across Latin America, what's interesting to me, and I've recently been, you know, talking to a bunch of Latin American politicians at some of these

travels I've had, what I've been struck by is that you've got Lula, who's kind of the elder statesman down there.

Then you've got these guys like Morales.

Maduro is like kind of the far end of it.

You know, you had

Rafael Correa in Ecuador, those guys kind of yesterday.

Claudia Schoenbaum is the hero.

Like Claudia, if you're looking for the playbook for a like left-wing leader in Latin America, it's Claudia Schoenbaum.

She's not sacrificed her convictions, but you know,

she's not a cult of personality.

She's fighting back, she's just a very effective leader, you know, who's making good use of social media,

good at getting her message out, picks her spots of when to fight back.

It's not as much as the machismo, right, of some of these other guys, right?

So my advice is, like, I think Claudia Schneebaum, even more than Lula, has got to be seen as a center of gravity and the template for a kind of left-wing politics that can work in the hemisphere.

I think Chile will be interesting because it feels like it's going to be one of these elections where it's going to be like

the communist versus the far right, you know?

And we'll see which way it goes, which makes it not the best bellwether because it, you know, just, yeah, but yes, you're right.

Like, it seems like Bukele has been a bit of a model.

Some of these places that are exhausted, but you can find evidence for your own theories because Shane Baum's popular, Lulu's hanging on, you know, we got Petro taking some stands in Colombia.

He's a left-wing leader.

We'll see.

The trends are kind of mixed down there.

Yeah, and the Shane Baum thing, we'll get to her in a second.

We're going to talk about cartels.

It's interesting because Amlo, her predecessor, President Lopez Oberdor, was such such a force in Mexican politics that a lot of people were like, ah, she's just going to be a puppet.

You know, she was seen as sort of like technocratic and maybe not able to like dominate

the media landscape the way he did.

But no, like she's been wildly impressive.

Yeah, and doesn't necessarily need to do the three-hour press conference every morning like Ambo did, but she does a lot.

She gets out there.

She gets out there.

Well, let's talk about Mexico.

So staying in Latin America, Ben.

So last week, CNN's Natasha Bertrand reported that the U.S.

is sending about 4,000 Marines and sailors to the waters around Latin America and the Caribbean as part of Trump's fight against drug cartels.

The Trump administration has also sanctioned another two cartels, and Mexico sent a bunch of high-ranking cartel figures to the U.S.

for punishment.

So it's been like, there's been a series of like executive orders and designations of these cartels as terrorist groups.

And then earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Trump has secretly authorized and directed the Pentagon to start using military force against cartels.

The Times reported the order, which DOD declined to comment on, quote, provides an official basis for military operations at sea and on foreign soil.

So Trump is merging the totally effective war on terror and that militarism with the totally effective war on trucks.

What could go wrong?

With the totally effective history of U.S.

imperialism and Latin America.

Yeah, yeah, perfect mix.

Everything that we've done wrong for the last hundred years is in this strategy.

So after this Times article came out, the Mexican president Claudia Schoenbaum, she like forcefully rejected the idea of the U.S.

military like taking action on Mexican soil.

She said, quote, the United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military.

We cooperate, we collaborate, but there's not going to be an invasion that is ruled out, absolutely ruled out.

When it's been brought up, we have always said no.

And there's a lot of reasons to believe it has been brought up.

I mean, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in Trump 1.0 wrote in his memoirs that imagine reading that guy's memoir.

I think it's lobbyist to sign up.

Did you do the audiobook time?

Oh, God, no.

He said that in 2020, Trump wanted to, quote, shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.

So this is an idea that we used to think was crazy.

And we were talking about Ben, but then like it became a big talking point in the, in Trump's 2024 campaign.

You heard a bunch of Republicans talking about it.

I remember seeing, I couldn't find the polling, but I remember seeing some polling that was like surprisingly popular, although I think that that popularity goes down.

if the U.S.

takes action without the Mexican government's approval.

Thank God.

But again, like a few years ago, I think I would have said this is crazy and even Trump wouldn't do this.

Now I kind of feel like we're months away from the CIA or the military taking a drone strike in Mexico against some fentanyl app.

Which is totally insane.

I mean, this is our neighbor of 130 million people.

The idea that the United States, I mean, how are we different than Russia?

You know, like if we're just suddenly like using military force without their consent in Mexico, right?

That's the first thing.

And to your point about the war on terror, like, let's hold ourselves accountable here.

Like the normalization of drone strikes, um, well, now, you know,

like it, it seems far away when it's in Pakistan, but and now that those chickens, to quote Jeremiah Wright, you know, start coming on to roost, you know.

Um, but just to add the layer of alarmism, which you kind of got at, is this kind of this is the frog boiling, but like, you know, you start using military force in Mexico, you start like deploying weird military presence in the you know Caribbean, like Eric Prince is, you know, contracting out to do stuff in Ecuador and Haiti too I think Panama Canal looms right like that Trump you know wants to take back I mean

Haiti Canada Cuba and Venezuela are sitting there as adversaries but like there's a weird Trump turn toward just kind of like because these are wars he might think he can win you know like we can

even though you I mean like you said it repeats all the mistakes of the past so I don't know it's it's it's it's a terrible idea on its face and it's illegal in Mexico.

I also just kind of worry about some, we're looking up in four years and like we're having segments on Panama, Mexico, you know, some Caribbean, you know, maybe Cuba, like Bay of Pigs 2.0.

Like, I mean, honestly, like, this, we have to start using our imaginations here because once you break this, this is the key point.

Once you break the seal.

Like you the U.S.

doesn't tend to stop doing things.

If we start bombing Mexico, when do we stop?

Because then the cartels will keep being there and then we'll have to keep bombing them.

And then then we'll be like, oh, the cartels aren't just in Mexico.

They're supply chains running down to Ecuador, you know, or Venezuela's harboring people.

And all of a sudden, you got like a,

you know, use of force in multiple countries.

If you think this is crazy, just look at the war on terror.

Yeah.

And like Trump will just love being seen as taking action against drugs and being decisive.

And he'll love it when the libs freak out.

And yeah, you could totally see it spiraling.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

Finally, Ben, some sad news.

So I think like two weeks ago, we announced our plan to do a weekly check-in with State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce.

Frequent State Department briefing watchers may have noticed that she doesn't seem to know how to talk, which is a problem when you're briefing the press.

But then Donald Trump came along and announced that he was giving Tammy a promotion.

She's going to be deputy UN ambassador.

I didn't see this.

I know.

I learned it from these guys.

Presumably you can see.

Not deputy FBI director, because I saw they layered Bongino.

They layered

the Attorney General of Missouri, I think, is now like the

co-deputy FBI director.

There's such a thing as a co-deputy FBI director.

They just layered Dan Bongino for being too emotional.

By the way, if they're okay with the service of all these other people, but they're like, hey, man, Bongino really needs a win.

Can you imagine what the hell Bonginino's doing every day?

It's bad news.

It's bad news.

So I assume Tammy got this job at the UN because he just doesn't care about the UN.

But we did just want to give an official Pod Save the World goodbye to Tammy, who, you know, like a giant, hyper-giant blue star, blue hypergiant star, I think is the one I googled.

She burned fast and she burned bright.

And to honor her, our great producers put together this tribute video, which Ben and I have not seen yet

because it's too painful.

But without further ado, here's Tammy's supernova at the State Department.

By the end of the week, does that mean by Friday, by Saturday, by Sunday?

I think generally

it could be

the collection of the days at the end of the week.

President Trump has not just the desire to ask for new ideas, he asks for them because he gets them.

He knows new ideas are possible.

His life is a new idea.

Life is a new idea.

Am I on the silo-siding journey to be here and do work that facilitates making things better for people and in the greatest country on earth, next to Israel?

Please discuss the details of the decisions made by the president.

What that will entail, I have no details for you.

That is not something that I can speak to.

As far as your question about the details, I won't go into the details.

I think it's important to not second-guess the president.

I'm not going to speak about the opinion of the government.

I would just suggest calling the White House to get it to make a determination of the Trump policy.

First of all, I'm certainly not going to remotely address that.

How to square the circle?

Well, it is, it's not, one doesn't need to complete the circle or square it.

Wow.

What a tour to force.

What a video.

I felt like the Oscars in Memorial section.

I didn't realize how much depth there was to her, though, right?

Like, his life is a new idea.

Like,

this is someone who seems like there's like a meditate, like, in place of prep, there's like a meditation or something.

It's just so weird.

How do you not know how to talk?

You're a Fox News person.

Anyway, Tammy, best of luck.

Well, she has to get confirmed by the Senate, so maybe she'll be there.

That That seems like a slime dunker.

And Waltz too, Mike Waltz, former

Slime Dunker National Security Advisor.

Okay, that is it for us in the news section today.

I was very happy to be back.

I missed doing this last week, but thank God that Putin Summit was such a success while you're gone.

Such a success, yeah.

And we've cleared up all these issues.

We're going to take a quick break, and then you'll hear Ben's interview with Congressman Ro Khanna.

So stick around for that.

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All right, I'm very pleased to be joined by Congressman Roe Khanna from California.

Welcome back to Pod Say the World.

It's an honor to be back on.

You've been making news.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, every now and then I pop up.

You know, I pick my spots.

You're out there a lot more than I am.

But look, we're going to get to the Palestinian issue, but I want to start just, you know, yesterday we obviously had this meeting with all the European leaders after the summit in Alaska.

And I guess I was thinking about the way to get your reaction to this.

And I wanted to ask you a kind of strange feeling I had in watching this and commenting on it, because there's so much that I don't like about what I'm seeing in terms of Trump's kind of movement to the Putin position and the Europeans kind of needing to try to pull him back with flattery.

And I guess what is your reaction to what you've seen in trying to digest these meetings?

But also, how do you balance the

necessity of being critical of things that just look like, you know, a U.S.

president essentially taking the Russian side in this war with like the sincere desire to see

peace?

Like we would like to see a settlement, but we want it to be just, right?

So

how do you balance that role of being kind of a critic with that role of wanting to see a resolution that is at least somewhat favorable to Ukraine?

You know, I was at a town hall last night in Atlanta, and usually foreign policy is not something that people really care about at a town hall.

But I

talked about the fact that Donald Trump has made American leadership just purely transactional.

It's all a deal.

Almost any American president, when they had the press conference with Putin would have said, Mr.

Putin, give back Ukraine its land, or some sense of, Mr.

Putin,

your invasion was wrong.

Almost any American president, when they welcome Zelensky, would say, and we stand with the just cause of Ukraine.

I think the problem people have is not that Donald Trump is trying to bring an end to the war or get a deal.

It's that he's doing it without any sense of moral principle.

And in this, our foreign policy and our domestic policy are similar.

It's just transactional.

It's just the maximization of Trump's interests, and people sense a loss of morality, a loss of principle, whether that's Ukraine, whether it's Gaza, whether it's domestically.

And people are reacting to that.

That's a really interesting and well-stated point.

And I guess my one follow-up would be, is there anything, because I share your view completely.

Yet at the same time, Trump has got so much control over the gears here of both foreign and domestic policy.

On Ukraine,

what is the role of Congress or what is the role of Democrats in Congress who don't have kind of their hands on the levers of power?

How do you think about your role in being a kind of source or voice of accountability or support for Ukraine?

I think one, it's almost to overcorrect and say we can't abandon Ukraine because I think that the challenge is that Trump is instinctually

very willing to just throw Ukraine overboard and say, well, just give up the territory.

So it's important that the 300, 320 members of Congress who believe that we can't abandon Ukraine speak out.

That said, you know, and I was part, as some people may remember, of a progressive letter in 2022 where some of us said, look, we need to stand with Ukraine, but dialogue is fine and that there should be some dialogue towards a just peace.

Well, I don't think that Democrats should reflexively just say, well, no to any any dialogue or no to any sincere efforts to facilitate a just end to the war out of hyper-partisanship.

The problem here is that Trump has not, I mean, he can't get himself to say that Putin's invasion was wrong.

He can't get himself to say, give back the territory, or even as a matter of first principles, like you should give back all the territory.

Okay, now we're having a negotiation that's not just, but we have to meet the realities.

He's not even, he doesn't even have the first first principles that Ukraine was right and Putin was wrong.

And that's the problem with his negotiation.

Yeah, and I suppose in your, and this kind of leads us into the Palestinian question, but part of what you can do, right, is remind Americans and the world that Trump does not necessarily speak for all of America, right?

You can reflect that solidarity and that kind of values-based position.

And that leads me to this letter that you've spearheaded asking the Trump administration to recognize a Palestinian state.

As our listeners know, this is not an out-of-the-mainstream idea globally.

In addition to most of the world recognizing a Palestinian state, we've seen a number of European countries move in that direction.

First, countries like Spain and Slovenia and Ireland, but then more recently it's moved into countries like France and Australia and the UK moving into the G7 or traditional U.S.

allies.

What was your thinking in terms of the timing and purpose of this letter seeking to generate democratic support for the idea of recognizing a Palestinian state right now?

There are three reasons why now.

First,

Likud's charter has always been the greater Israel from the sea to Jordan, but now they actually have people in the government acting on that.

Ben Gavir, Smotrich, Netanyahu, expanding settlements, not just in the West Bank, talking about having a Gaza free of Palestinians.

So, the need to affirm a Palestinian state is not just aspirational, it is urgent.

It is to say, Gaza, West Bank, this has to be a Palestinian state.

Second, the United States risks becoming totally isolated from the moral consensus of the world.

Now, you have not just nations of the global south or nations that were former colonies speaking out for a Palestinian state.

You have France, you have Britain, you have Canada, you have Australia.

These are our allies shifting position.

Why do we want to isolate ourselves from the world?

How is that in our strategic interests?

What do we gain

by being the sole holdout?

on the recognition of the Palestinian state.

And third, if we want any hope of something better whenever this war ends,

this is the time to lay out a marker for a positive vision of the self-determination of the Palestinian people living side by side with a secure Israel.

And it's a sense that there's got to be something better and hopeful after what we're seeing.

Yeah, and so I want to deal with the substance of this, and then we can get into the politics in the Democratic Party.

But beginning with kind of the immediate substantive question, I share your view completely, right?

That it's important to lay down a marker against the kind of erasure of a potential for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

There's also the question, though, of like, what does this do to end the war?

And it does seem to me that there's some interaction between what you're trying to do in signaling from the Democratic Party this shift towards recognition with what Europe's trying to do, with what we see in Israel, which is hundreds of thousands of people now protesting to end the war.

You've also said and supported the effort that Bernie Sanders had in the Senate to cut off weapons, which would obviously be

not going to be adopted by Trump, but is kind of part of that signaling that if you keep going down this road, Israel is going to be isolated, so therefore stop the war.

I mean, how do you think about

what your efforts do to interact with what Europe's doing, with what those Israelis are doing who are protesting?

How does the recognition, or at least the letter

suggesting that this is where the Democratic Party is going, how does that interact with efforts to end the war now?

Well, one, it's saying very clearly: we're not taking our marching orders from Netanyahu.

I mean, Netanyahu literally said early on that he wasn't going to visit countries which officially recognize Palestine.

What is he going to say?

He's not going to visit the United States.

And I think that anything that says

we're going to call the shots for what is just and not going to be beholden to Netanyahu or the Israeli government is a clear message that they need to end what's going on.

Now, it's not sufficient.

We also need to support Delio Ramirez's bill to say no military weapons that can be used to kill civilians until this war ends.

We need to support Sanders' resolutions on it.

But collectively, I think it shows that a growing number of Americans, both actually on the Democratic Party, certainly the majority of the Democrats, I would say at this point, but also an increasing number of people on the right,

are done with this kind of blank-checked approach to Netanyahu.

And within the party,

moving into kind of where the substance meets the politics, it seems to me in watching this from the outside and talking to different people and different members of Congress, there's kind of three

buckets, buckets, right?

There are people like you who are willing to go out there and say, you know, in some ways, this relationship needs to change given the nature of this Israeli government, and you're comfortable with things like weapons cutoffs and Palestinian recognition.

Then there's kind of far more conventional people that, you know, support Israel, that they're traveling to Israel on AIPAC sponsored trips, that kind of thing.

But then there seems to be a vast middle of people, right, who

they're not comfortable with the Nanyao government, but they're also kind of not comfortable maybe signing onto a letter like yours because it's just so out of step with what they've done in the past.

You and I, let's just name it.

You know, you mentioned making news.

I mean, you may have been referencing, you know, I was quite critical of Pete Buttigig's answer.

Someone, you know, I think you and I both admire for the work he's done, but he kind of gave a word-salad answer to Pod Safe America in which he kind of didn't take a position, kind of named a bunch of things

without saying whether he'd cut off weapons or recognize the Palestinian state.

In your conversations with people in that middle, right?

People who don't like what's going on, but haven't kind of gotten to where you are, what is your sense of where things are moving?

What are the conversations that you're having with your colleagues about trying to get them on your letter?

How can we try to shift the Democratic Party's view on this in the way that I think you're trying to show some leadership on?

I think people are realizing that

the old talking points are no longer working.

And

that's a good thing for people to be able to grow, right?

One of the talking points that even I was told when I first got into Congress, and every member of Congress hears, is: well, friends disagree with each other privately.

They don't disagree publicly.

And this used to basically be the standard APAC talking point that anyone running for Congress, Senate, governor would hear.

And, you know, for the last

seven, eight, 10, 20, 30 years, just saying that was safe.

And suddenly people are saying that and they're being ridiculed.

And these are thoughtful people.

These are people who care about many times about

America's moral leadership.

And so they're saying, okay,

something is changing.

And I think that we as a party have to be open and non-judgmental when people are making a shift.

So, you know, I appreciate actually that Secretary Buttigig in a subsequent subsequent interview clarified and he said, no, I actually would vote for Sanders' amendment and I'd support, it seemed like he said, I'd support Rose's effort.

That's great.

I want to build a consensus towards a new position.

And if people adopt that position, we shouldn't say, well, you were, you know, late to adopt it.

I mean,

let more people get to that position because that gives us the best shot to actually get peace and a change in policy.

And right now, you know, the reality is this.

It's for APAC, and I'm just going to speak bluntly, apparently signing on to my letter

or recognizing a Palestinian state as a red line.

And some people are afraid of crossing that red line.

I personally don't think this is going to be a red line that will be enforced.

I think APAC will quickly recognize, or many of AI people in APAC will recognize this is not the place to have the red line.

J Street has endorsed the letter now formally.

MoveOn has endorsed it.

Indivisible has endorsed it.

J Street actually is going to be making this a day of action on September 16th.

So we have 20 signers already, which is pretty good for the summer recess.

We want to release it before the General Assembly.

And I'm hoping we can get to 50.

That's the internal goal I've said.

So I want to put this in a bigger context for the party on foreign policy and politics.

And look, obviously the most important thing is what is happening to people in Gaza right now and the humanitarian catastrophe there and the imperative to try to stop it.

I also think, though, that this issue is something of a proxy for where the Democratic Party is going.

And just to credit you with something, I mean,

I don't know how many people are soccer fans, right?

Or hockey fans, but

there's the kind of famous saying, right,

you skate to where the puck is going or you run to where the ball is going, right?

Things are changing very fast in this country and around the world.

And on this issue, I see you trying to, instead of being behind the curve, you're trying to get to where public opinion is going, but also where policy is going, you know?

But how much is this issue kind of a proxy for the party not

fighting or not having an identity, right?

In the sense that if you're not willing to stand up to APAC on its threats, how are you going to stand up to Trump, right?

Or if you're not willing to stand up to Netanyahu,

how are you going to stand up to Putin?

How do you see, do you see

this issue as a proxy for a bigger question about the future of the party and whether it has backbone and whether it has

independent views separate from the old talking points?

Yes, I go.

On the most basic level, are you willing to

stand up to powerful interest groups?

I mean, people, AIPAC has put in millions of dollars in

primary campaigns,

and people who are either going to cut off your donors or cut off funding or actually target funding against you.

And are you willing

to stand up clearly against that kind of pressure?

That doesn't mean that you don't have conversation, in my view, I have conversation with everyone and

you've got to bring along a large part of the American American Jewish community, in my view, to be ultimately able to

bring peace.

But are you willing to stand up to that?

On a deeper level, though, it is about, are you willing to fight for an America that stands up for human rights and the dignity of people,

regardless of race, regardless of religion, right?

If we want to, if the central premise of the Democratic Party is to be a cohesive, multiracial democracy.

It also is a cohesive multiracial democracy that recognizes the dignity

of people, white, black, or brown around the world.

And the injustices in the United States of slavery and the Jim Crow

are also part of a global injustice, right?

W.B.

Du Bois said it wasn't not just the problem of the color line, it was the problem of the global color line, where there was colonialism, where there was imperialism.

And a new generation says, well, I want you to stand not just for an America that is a cohesive multiracial democracy.

I want you to stand for an America that is going to lead for justice around the world.

And particularly the young generation of folks.

And so this has become a symbol.

If you're not going to do it here, well, do you really believe in that kind of human rights conviction-centered politics?

Yeah, I mean, and this also gets to policy.

I mean, that's a very well-stated position of values

and political philosophy that I wholly

support.

This happened a few weeks ago, but I do want to play this clip of Senator Gene Shaheen, who's the ranking member on the Farm Relations Committee, in reaction to a point you made about the Democrats needing to be the anti-war party, which is both a political and a substantive point you made, right?

That politically we need to be in that position, but substantively we need to be in that position.

And we've let ourselves become cast by Trump as kind of the party of forever wars, which has got some truth to it.

So I want to play this clip and just have you respond to this question of like, what does it mean for the Democrats to be a party that kind of embraces more of an anti-war identity?

So we'll play that now.

I've interviewed Congressman Rochana recently, who's been advocating for the Democratic Party to be the anti-war party.

He said that the party has become too hawkish, in his opinion.

Is this an opportunity for Democrats to move more in that direction as you're hearing from Americans that they don't want us?

I mean, one of the reasons so much of the president's base is frustrated is because they voted for him because they felt that he was the anti-war president, that he made promises that we would not be entangled in foreign conflicts.

Is this an opportunity for Democrats, might you be missing that opportunity if you don't sort of look at that messaging as a path for the party?

No.

And I think Rokana is wrong.

Okay.

The fact is foreign policy isn't that easy.

You can't just say, I'm against all conflicts because they're all going to be against America's interest or against global interest.

So what would you say to that idea that

you don't get it or it's too complicated or trust us, we know what we're doing on these foreign policy issues?

Well, I was actually, when I saw that clip, clip, I was surprised about the vehemence of the anger with my position.

Usually, politicians are more diplomatic,

and

I reached out to Senator Shaheen Efforts.

I had spoken at the Shaheen McIntyre dinner

and have always respected her.

I was heartened that she actually then voted for both of Senator Sanders' amendments to oppose the

offensive military weapons going to Israel.

But look, this is the standard talking point, right, to dismiss anyone who is arguing for more restraint and less war.

I remember Secretary Clinton making these arguments against Barack Obama.

Oh, he's so naive.

He doesn't get foreign policy.

He's not part of the high priesthood.

And how naive of him to think that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

How convenient.

He wasn't even in the Senate.

He didn't get those classified briefings.

And there's this sense that if you are the anti-war position, if you're the human rights position, then they don't dismiss you by the argument.

They just dismiss you as incompetent, as unable to lead, as not being fit to be in a position to be trusted,

as not being an expert enough.

It's the same way the economists dismiss those who were against some of the free trade agreements or warning about the hollowing out of the country.

Oh, they don't understand basic economics.

And that worked for many many years, but now people are catching on, and it's not going to work because, on a basic level, what Trump was saying, and what some people on the left, including me, agree, is that we spent way too much money overseas on staying in Afghanistan 20 years on Iraq.

We had failures in Libya, we had failures with Yemen, and those were resources that we should have been spending in the United States developing our own economy.

Where I differ with Trump is: I don't think it's just about the waste of resources or

the projection of power in a way that's not in Americans' interest.

It's also a moral issue that ultimately

these wars of choice have not led to more justice, have not led to a better outcome in the world, and that we should have a little bit more humility about

our approach in these regions to really be promoting human dignity around the world consistent with our values.

And I think this is becoming an increasing sentiment now within both the Democratic and Republican Party.

And frankly, it's easier, less courageous for me to take those positions than when Obama had to take those positions and some of them in 2008.

Yeah, so the last question I want to ask you is

to that point, you're out there a lot.

You're doing a lot of town halls.

You're around the country.

We're clearly not going back to the old foreign policy, or at least I think it'd be a mistake, both substantively and politically, to suggest you're going to run the tape back to kind of American hegemony and, you know, all these other things.

First of all, the tools won't be there.

There's no USAID.

The so-called deep state or whatever national security state is kind of being deconstructed.

But if you were to give, and I'm sure you get this question about, you know, essentially, what is the elevator pitch for what a democratic foreign policy should be going into the future?

I know that's a big question, but how would you give a short answer to somebody at Town Hall who's like, this world's confusing.

I don't like what Trump's doing, but I also don't like what Biden did on some of these issues.

What's a democratic alternative for the future on foreign policy?

It is a foreign policy that is human rights-based, that is conviction-based, that says that America is strongest when we recognize

the dignity and human rights and aspirations of other nations around the world, and that an America that now has literally the stories and struggles of people around the world

is poised to be a leader in shaping a more just world.

And so, that does not mean disengagement with the world.

It does not mean isolationism, but it means that we should be

reluctant to just engage in

militaristic wars of choice, partly because that has not helped our own country in developing and it has cost a lot of resources and it has not made a more just world.

And we should really engage in statesmanship and diplomacy based on our values to regain the moral high ground.

I'll close because I was just in Atlanta and I met with Jason Carter,

who was

President Carter's grandson.

And we had both interned together in 1996 at the Carter Center.

And one of the things I remember, I heard President Carter preach in Sunday school, which he did as a former president.

And he said, you know, wouldn't it be great if America as a superpower were known not just for our military power, but if we were known as the peacemakers, if we were known as the statesmen, if when there were problems around the world, people would come to America to seek our guidance to help create a more just world.

And that to me is

my conviction of what world I would like America to be.

And whether it's sellable politically or not, I don't know.

But I think that's the right vision for the nation.

Yeah, well, it's definitely preferable to either forever wars or approaching things like Ukrainian sovereignty as a real estate transaction.

Rokana, thanks so much for joining us, and thanks for all you're doing out there.

Appreciate it.

Thanks again to Rokana for doing the show.

And Tammy.

Thank you for your service.

Let us, you know, Ben, you could probably have some restaurant recommendations in in New York.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Get together.

There are

restaurants, but I wouldn't go into the food

on the plates.

There is a menu.

There is some silver ones.

I won't discuss what was on there.

I won't square that circle for you.

Good luck, Tam.

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