Netanyahu Gaslights While Gaza Starves

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Welcome back to Potsey of the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Welcome back to America, Ben.

How you feeling?

You know,

Pacific Time?

I'm on Pacific Time.

I fought a heroic battle to return myself to Pacific Time.

It just involves staying up late.

But it's such a welcoming place to come home to, Tommy.

America?

Yeah, yeah.

Everything's good here, right?

Everything's great.

It's just so nice to come to someplace where there are no problems, there's no anxiety.

Yeah, it's just exceptionalism.

People get along with one another.

It's like the late 90s again.

Yeah, it's great.

We're riding high.

Yeah.

Okay, we have a horrifying show for you today, mostly because of Gaza.

We're going to talk about the famine that's happening as we speak in Gaza, how we got to this point, how Donald Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, the world is reacting, the French are reacting, and we're also going to get into how we hope Democrats might respond in this moment.

We'll also talk about a political crisis within Ukraine over a corruption investigation.

Very interesting story.

Whether Trump deserves credit for brokering a tentative ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia.

Why the Trump administration lifted sanctions on a bunch of really creepy kind of human rights violating

junta general adjacent guys in Myanmar.

Not good guys.

Not good.

It's very interesting to hear you talk about that one, Ben.

And then update on the trade talks with China and how

sort of spilling out with some tacoing, some preemptive tacoing to the Chinese happening by the White House.

We'll also talk about why French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte have filed a lawsuit against a far-right.

kind of crazy podcaster in the United States.

And then, Ben, you'll hear my interview with Mistislav Chernov.

He's a Ukrainian director, writer, producer.

He just released the new documentary 2,000 meters to Andrivka.

So we talked about that.

I've interviewed him in the past.

He's an unbelievably brave director.

This film is extraordinary.

I mean, he's literally in foxholes in trenches with Ukrainian troops on the front lines as they are trying to capture this small village back in 2023 during the vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Yeah,

I think that sometimes we, you know, are

understandably focused on Gaza, Trump, all these things.

And we focus on the politics of the war in Ukraine, but we kind of lose sight of what's happening on the front lines, what the Ukrainian people are going through.

So I'm so glad that, you know, not only did you have that conversation, but people should check out the doc, too.

And just the humanity of the people involved in the fighting, because we talked about this in the interview.

It's really weird how every day you log onto Twitter and you see another video of an FPV drone killing either a Ukrainian soldier or a Russian.

And so in a sense, we are more inundated with like first-person views of the horrors of this war, but we are more divorced from the reality and the humanity of it than ever before.

And Misislav literally is like side by side with these guys as they are crawling through mud and in trenches and like

looking for these drones, hoping that they're not going to just, you know, kamikaze them.

But he really like centers these people and just the courage, courage, but also just how normal they were-like farmers, students, just guys, you know, defending their country.

Yeah, so a really incredible film, 2000 Meters to Imdrievka.

It's in theaters now.

Highly recommend seeing it.

Also, for our friends of the pod subscribers, we're going to be answering some questions pulled from the Pod Save the World Discord at the end of the show.

So, those of you who are Friends of the Pod and get that feed, stick around for that.

All right, best, so let's start with the situation in Gaza because images that have been coming out in the last week or so of starving children have led to global global outrage and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, an inflection point where the international community will come together and say, enough.

You know,

get aid in, but also let's just end this war.

And just to put it bluntly, Gaza is starving.

Children are dying.

On Tuesday, a UN body called the IPC said, quote, the worst case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.

Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.

Famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.

The World Food Program says that one-third of the population in Gaza is not eating for days on end, and roughly 470,000 people are living in famine-like conditions.

And I think, Ben, what listeners have to understand about this is that there's not an on-and-off switch for a famine.

You can't just give a starving baby, for example, food and then they'll be okay.

It requires a long, careful refeeding process.

You can overload their systems if you feed them too fast and kill them.

And malnutrition also means you're more likely to get sick or you won't heal from an injury or

you can have stunted growth or cognitive problems.

So

this disaster is going to spill out over years.

And

aid workers are talking about, you know, they're seeing Israeli forces throwing about baby formula when screening volunteer possessions on the way into Gaza.

Even though the Israelis claim that they send in 2,500 tons of infant formula, doctors are also reporting, you know, shortages of IV drips used to treat malnutrition.

There's stories of medical professionals being too weak to treat people because they're starving too.

So it's just, it's horrific.

And just to quickly backtrack on how we got here, I mean, you know, Israel initiated a total blockade of food into Gaza between March and late May.

Then they put in place this new U.S.-Israeli founded and run organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or GHF.

And they put that in charge of food distribution.

Every expert predicted it would be a disaster, and it has been.

The GHF replaced roughly 400 UN aid distribution sites with four total hubs and then forced Palestinians to walk miles through active war zones to get food.

Since the end of May, over 1,060 Gazans have been killed and 7,200 injured near these GHF hubs.

And, you know, there's been a lot of...

reporting about atrocities by the IDF or shooting at civilians, horrible stampedes and crowds, and there's been a lot of denialism of those reports and stories.

Here are two excerpts from interviews with a former member of U.S.

Special Forces turned GHF whistleblower.

His name is Anthony Aguilar.

It's about his experience staffing one of these sites.

The first portion is from a BBC interview.

The second part is from an interview with an Israeli expat group called Unacceptable.

I witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians.

In my entire career, have I never witnessed the level of brutality and

use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.

Without question, I witnessed war crimes.

This little boy from where he came from walked 12 kilometers to get there.

Just to get there.

12 kilometers.

Look at this boy.

And when he got there, he thanked us for the remnants and the small crumbs that he got.

And he sets them down on the ground.

Because I was kneeling at this point and he sets his food down and he places his hands on my face, on the side of my face on my cheeks these frail skeleton emaciated hands dirty and he puts them on my face and he kissed me he kissed me and he said thank you in english thank you and he collected his items and he walked back to the group

and then he was shot at with pepper spray and tear gas and stun grenades and bullets shot at his feet in the air and he runs away scared

and the idf were were shooting at the crowd.

So they're shooting to control the population that's along the Moran corridor.

And as they're doing that, they're shooting into this crowd, shooting into this crowd.

And Palestinians, civilians, human beings are dropping to the ground, getting shot.

And Amir was one of them.

Amir walked 12 kilometers to get food, got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it, and died.

So Netanyahu's response to all this has been, don't believe your lying eyes.

Trump, however, doesn't really seem to be buying it, Ben.

Here's a clip from Netanyahu Sunday and then Trump on Monday.

There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.

We enable humanitarian throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza.

Otherwise, there would be no Gazans.

We can save a lot of people.

I mean, some of those kids are, that's real starvation stuff.

I see it.

And you can't fake that.

So we're going to be

even more involved.

Okay, so Ben, sorry for the long wind up there uh this war has been raging for two years last week honestly it kind of felt like it was endless and maybe would go on forever this week i'm trying to be a little more hopeful i'm wondering if we've reached a tipping point and that what people are just seeing that the that what's happening is evil and just has to be stopped but i don't know is that naive how are you feeling about it

i feel the same way that you do i i do think it's useful and important that you did the accounting you did because you and i both have engaged with people involved in this denialism and we'll have time to discuss that more today, including with the Democrats.

But

even if you just listen to this podcast,

in addition to the details you laid out about the policy of starvation, it is a policy of the Israeli government to deny food into Gaza.

That's a policy of starvation.

There are two other points I want to add to this because it kind of anticipates the debate we're having now.

The first is how much aid experts warned about these things.

We had the head of UNRWA in Gaza, that's the UN agency that did the aid distribution on this podcast.

And he said on this podcast that if you make UNRWA illegal, if you cut UNRWA out of the distribution system, which Israel was doing, they were passing laws to the Knesset, it was a policy choice by Israel to eliminate UNRWA, that no one else is going to be able to fill this space.

And that's exactly what happened.

They dismantled UNRWA's capacity to deliver aid.

They cut off aid getting in, no aid got in, and you got this horrific Potemkin Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that everybody warned about too.

So it's not like nobody saw this coming.

People were telling us in real time that this was going to happen, and now it's happening.

The famine has been unfolding.

The same people now who are doing denialism were the kind of people who used to say, Oh, I keep hearing there's going to be a famine, you know?

And they were denying that people were getting, you know, more and more desperate for food.

And now, lo and behold, people are starving to death.

The other thing is, we are watching war crimes before our eyes.

And guess what?

If when Bibi Nanyao is indicted for war crimes, the the reaction of the U.S.

government, and at the time it was the Biden administration, is to attack the ICC and to defend the person who committed the war crimes, that person is going to think he can act with impunity.

And one of the things that is so frustrating is Bibi Nanyao is literally saying, not only is there no policy of starvation, there is no starvation.

And I've seen the most cynical things I've ever seen in my life about how, like, maybe this child that you see starving to death has some other disorder or he has diabetes.

It's fake news, blah, blah, blah.

And so it's all these habits of disinformation and misinformation and lying that we've seen in politics over the last 15 years that have been normalized that are on display trying to obfuscate around this.

Now, the reason I'm hopeful is it felt like the last week a bit like when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out in Iraq.

Like by that time, most people who paid careful attention knew shit, this was a really bad idea to lead Iraq.

Shocked the conscience.

But yeah, all of a sudden, people, normies who didn't follow this stuff closely were like, what the fuck is going on over there in Iraq?

And not unlike the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

This feels like one of those moments when people that weren't paying attention or only kind of paying attention or people who are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the gaslighters all of a sudden are like, wait a second, there's kids starving to death.

And I do think that that is something that hopefully it changes a dynamic right now.

It has not yet, because airdrops are not an answer to this question.

But I think it will change the dynamic about the situation in Gaza, about the Israeli government, about the morality of supporting the Israeli government going forward.

So it does feel like something has changed with these images.

And some of that is more and more people speaking out.

We can engage the debate you did about whether we should welcome those people out.

Of course we should welcome those people.

Yeah, let's get to that in a little bit.

But no, I mean, just on your point about the getting away from the UN to the GHF, I mean, Israel's justification for setting up the GHF is they accused Hamas of siphoning off aid.

Israel also has like long-standing grievances with UNRWA, the organization at the UN that was distributing aid, including a totally legitimate outrage that there were some UNRWA employees that may have participated in October 7th.

But that doesn't justify getting rid of, like cutting off the organization, right, in their expertise and their ability to distribute aid in Gaza.

And also over the weekend, the New York Times reported that the Israeli military never actually had proof of Hamas systematically siphoning off aid from

the UN system.

There was,

and this was like sourced to Israeli officials.

There were, of course, examples of Hamas stealing food, reselling it at massive markups.

That's a legitimate problem.

But like moving to this GHF system led to famine, not blowback against Hamas or weakening of Hamas.

Yeah, one important thing about UNRWA too,

because

there was this huge effort to kind of really push this narrative that there were these Hamas operatives in UNRWA or these people that had participated in some way in October 7th who worked for UNRWA.

There are 30,000 people that work for UNRWA because it's everything.

It's not just the aid distribution.

It's the health and education system in Gaza.

So, you know, 30,000 people.

And because there's a handful of people that may have questionable ties,

Israel acts like all 30,000 of those people are Hamas.

All of UNRA is Hamas, which is not true.

The reason that's important is it's both the mechanism, the excuse they they use to shut down the aid distribution.

It's also the same mentality they use to all Palestinians in Gaza.

Because there's some Hamas people here, they're all Hamas.

That kid who walked 12 kilometers and thanked the guy, we're going to treat him like Hamas, right?

And this is outrageous.

And

it's not excusable just because

you point at Hamas for everything.

Hamas, there's no war in Gaza happening right now.

There's no armies of Hamas fighting back against Israel.

No, it's mostly the IDF like detonating

like leftover IDF shells that Hamas used to detonate buildings.

That's why they're leveling so many structures.

It's a lot of that.

Yeah.

So

this aid, and we should say, like you'll see these announcements, okay, we're going to resume airdrops.

Airdrops, we've also covered this in the podcast, an incredibly inefficient way of delivering aid.

Just driving a few trucks into Gaza would be far better than airdropping aid.

It can be dangerous.

Aid can drop on people.

It's not an efficient or humane way to deliver assistance.

So you're seeing these band-aids being put on a problem.

But as you said, famine cascades.

It's not just getting in some aid.

You need to get everything in and set up healthcare infrastructure or else thousands and thousands of people are going to die.

Yeah.

And so we've seen Israel kind of blame Hamas for the famine.

They've also blamed the UN for it.

They've sort of like taken journalists to look at pallets of food and they've accused the UN of negligence and failing to get it distributed.

But again, the routes to distribute, to get aid into Gaza are assigned by the IDF.

They're often impassable for trucks.

You have to go through crowds or unsafe areas.

The military, the IDF has also turned down more than half of the UN's movement requests over the last three months.

And these requests can take like 46 hours, up to 46 hours to be approved.

And then a lot of the trucks that get in get overrun by crowds because there's no security.

So I guess like to all the people that want to blame Hamas or blame the UN, I would just say like, it's been 660 days of this war, right?

Like Israel, they had an obligation to get a handle on how they were going to feed feed this population.

They just could not let them starve to death.

And like, it's just they failed.

It's either negligence or on purpose.

I don't care.

Like, the impact is the same.

Like, people are, kids are starving to death.

Yeah.

I mean, they've been warned repeatedly about this.

Everybody, you know, put aside UNRWA, like the IRC, the International Rescue Committee, the Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, you know, anybody in the UN system who works in aid has been warning that this was going to happen if you maintain these siege-like conditions around Gaza.

And not only did they maintain them, after March, they actually made it worse.

They cut off more things.

They slowed the aid getting in even more.

Well, they stopped it.

The other thing is, because I saw that basically the response of the Israeli government and their allies, like APAC and the United States, was to blame Hamas and to blame the UN.

The UN was a new one for me, that somehow the UN is refusing to deliver aid when, in fact,

they've crippled the ability of the UN to do it through UNRWA.

But put aside how wrong it is, factually, because it is factually wrong,

your reaction to children starving to death is to figure out a narrative of

something else to blame.

When you're spinning a genocide, when you're spinning starving kids to death, like you're,

you're in the wrong space.

You know, like

your reaction should be, maybe you have a different way of getting the aid in.

Maybe there's another, it shouldn't be, hey,

people are really telling on themselves when they're showing pictures of UN trucks and saying, ah, see, ha ha, it's the UN's fault.

Or when they're, again, trying to figure out that, you know, whether some kid who died of starvation had some other condition, right?

That is what I think people who have not been paying attention, who are now paying attention, they're also seeing that spin.

And they're like, whoa, wait a second.

Like, that might have worked like a year ago, but like...

That's not working anymore.

Yeah, why don't you get the truck in?

So we reached out to two voices, one in Gaza, one who had just been in Gaza, to sort of get more testimonials from the ground.

The first was a nutritionist in Gaza named Rana Soba.

She is Med Global's lead nutritionist in Gaza.

And this is what she told us about what she's seeing on the ground.

What we are witnessing today is beyond imagination.

Children are so exhausting that they can no longer cry or express their feelings.

They are simply ignorant.

Mother come to us carrying their children, desperately seeking treatments or any kind of nutrition supplies, but sadly, we have none to offer.

In addition, the medical

staff themselves are now completely exhausting and struggling to continue providing care due to fatigue and overwhelming pressure.

Many children have progressed to severe acute medication with complications.

The symptoms have become more severe and evident,

including extreme fatigue, exhausting,

skin rash, and edema.

We are seeing children whose bodies

simple skeletons are severely wasted with extremely lose weight and muscle mass, unable to move or respond.

Some of them are too weak even to cry.

The situation is beyond descriptions and we are witnessing a truth health disaster.

We also spoke with Sarma Tamimi, a plastic reconstructive surgeon who is in Gaza with medical aid aid for Palestinians from the end of June to the end of July.

He just got back last week.

Here's what he told us he saw.

I have seen quite extensive injuries,

both related to the bombing on the tents as well as

firing on the people seeking aid at GHF.

aid points.

The kind of injuries that I was seeing was

multiple musculoskeletal injuries involving the limbs I was seeing burn patients related to bombing over the tents especially the the children and women who live in the tents it was very common place to see patients with

more than 10-15 up to 40-50 percent of burns in that area i've seen people with severely malnutrition ranging from the staff to the general public.

I was in Gaza six months back and I was seeing the same staff members that I've worked with them before who are half the weight that they used to be.

So that's the situation on the ground.

So what's so enraging about this Ben is you have all this denialism spin, there is no famine in Gaza, and then you have action by the Israeli government, right?

They're now implementing what are called humanitarian pauses, basically like mini ceasefires in three parts of Gaza between 10 a.m.

and 8 p.m.

to facilitate aid.

The idea is also supposed to provide secure routes for convoys.

And so on one level, like, sure, that is good, but it just, again, goes to show that Israel is in control of aid distribution and has been all along.

And the reason Netanyahu took this step or was able to take this step is because the Knesset is out of session for three months.

So the right-wing crazies in his coalition cannot topple his government.

Remember, they only have 50 out of 120 seats in the Knesset currently because of losing some some parties.

And so, and because

Netanyahu made this decision on a Saturday when some right-wing members of the coalition were observing the Sabbath and couldn't block him, right?

So, this gives him this kind of like temporary political reprieve, something he can tell Trump he's doing to deal with the situation.

But again, like it's so short-term, because long-term it's bad politics.

Because unfortunately, like last month, there was a poll that found that two-thirds of Israelis opposed increasing aid into Gaza.

You know, but that was before the acute famine.

But but that kind of gives you a sense of where a lot of the Israeli public is in terms of their sympathy for people in Gaza.

But also, the majority of Israelis would support a negotiated truce with Hamas to get the hostages back.

But what Bibi's putting in place right now enrages everyone politically because it's like essentially a short-term mini ceasefires, but with no progress on the hostages.

Like, I talked to Amir Thibon about this yesterday from Haaretz, and he was like, people are just incensed about how terrible this outcome is.

Well, because his reaction is always just like, what gets him him through the next week?

Exactly.

So he's thinking about, well, I got to do a little bit to placate international opinion, but I got to look over my right shoulder at the far right.

I got to keep, you know, try to keep these images of Gaza away from these really people.

Like, like, he's literally just, he's like Ray Liota at the end of Goodfellas, like, you know, driving around trying to keep nine balls in the air.

And actually, it's the one thing he's good at.

You know, now it shows the fact that they're doing anything.

to, you know, whether it's mini ceasefires or letting some dribble of aid in, shows you if there were more pressure, you know, and you talked about this well in PSA, but if there were cutoffs of military assistance, if there were sanctions on Israeli government officials, if there were UN Security Council resolutions that weren't vetoed by the United States, he would...

we'd have a game change.

Every time that he does get squeezed a little bit, like he opens the door a little bit to aid.

And so it both demonstrates that Israel's in control, and it also demonstrates that there is leverage.

It's just that nobody's used the leverage.

And we're all kind of like bystanders to Israeli politics.

Oh, he's got got his problems with the far right.

I don't give a shit about your far right.

I don't give a shit about your faith.

I don't give a shit about Smotrich, some genocidal maniac going on, you know, and yelling at Bibi for capitulating on Gaza.

And because what Bibi will end up doing is now there's reports he's going to allow for

the beginning of the annexation of the Gaza Strip.

He's going to issue an ultimatum saying, like, Hamas, you let the hostages go, or we're just going to fully annex the Gaza Strip.

Yeah,

we'll let Aiden if you let us annex the territory and ethnically cleanse them.

Like, no, no, this is all wrong.

They keep moving the goalpost to explain away or rationalize that they have to do this horrible thing.

And by the way, like the broader context, like the IDF is taking a lot of casualties.

The casualty count is up to 898.

Also, like two well-known Israeli human rights organizations, Vetslem and Physicians for Human Rights, have now concluded that what's happening in Gaza is a genocide.

Imagine the politics and how hard it is for Israeli human rights organizations, even ones that are on the left, who have been fierce Netanyahu critics.

You know, that's a pretty big step.

So there's just this chorus of opposition.

And also, Ben, there's just a big question of where Trump is on all of this.

As you know, as listeners know, like I've been trying to sort of build relationships with kind of NAGA types.

And

I reached out to a bunch of them today.

In recent days, I've had two people tell me that Trump is fed up with Netanyahu.

One said that Trump knows Bibi's using him to get through a political crisis over the ultra-orthodox and mandatory military service, being exempted from military service, and that Trump resents it.

One, you know, look, they may be telling me what I want to hear, but they're both in position to know.

A third person told me that he had heard through, you know, talking to folks at the White House that Trump is very mad about the idea of shelling of a church, the only church in the Gaza Strip still.

And that I think that's been reported out.

There's this call with Bibi and Trump and also about just the images of starvation.

However, then I was talking to somebody else who who said, you know, this person had heard the same things about Trump being outraged at Netanyahu in March and April.

But then, of course, Trump bombed Iran, which was the number one item on Netanyahu's wish list.

So we don't know.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, and I think that sometimes people misread Netanyahu because he looks thirsty for Trump's approval, right?

So you can think that that's kind of an end that Netanyahu seeks.

He doesn't give a shit about Trump's approval.

He gives a shit about being able to do whatever he wants to do and stay in power in Israel.

Exactly.

And so, so long as he can show that the spigot's still on, the military system is still coming, you know, I can still show up at the White House whenever I want and get a meeting with Trump.

So long as that's the case, who cares if Trump calls him in private and yells at him?

Who cares if Trump doesn't like him?

Trump didn't like him.

Biden didn't like him.

Obama didn't like him.

Clinton didn't like him.

Nobody liked this guy.

Everyone hates us.

But he, you know, he can say, even though they didn't like me, they all kind of kept the money and the military assistance flowing and used their veto at the security committee.

And you overtly says that.

I can care these idiots back and watch.

What he's wink wink in Israel is always like, I'm playing these guys.

It's not like these guys sincerely love me, right?

And that's something that I think people miss.

And I think the question for Trump, too, is that he is so short-term on this thing that he doesn't realize, you know, that

he came in, he got a ceasefire, he thought he'd solve the problem.

When that ceasefire was literally a phase-white ceasefire, like it didn't solve any problem.

Everybody knew that this was going to blow up again.

It blew up again.

Now he wants to get starving kids kids off the front page because, let's face it, he's not out of empathy.

He just doesn't like it, how it looks.

Even if he does that,

then what?

He's the one who's planted the seeds for ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip that Israeli politicians have jumped on.

So I think people need to recalibrate, and this anticipates our conversation with the Democrats, how we think about Netanyahu.

Our approval of him is not what he's been seeking.

What he's been seeking is his ability to stay in power and do what he wants to do.

That's exactly right.

He doesn't give a shit about what we think or say or want.

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At the University of Arizona, we believe that everyone is born with wonder.

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While it drives us to create what could be,

that world can't wait to see what you'll do.

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Okay, let's talk about the Democrats.

So it does, look, Democrats, more Democrats are starting to wake up or at least publicly talk about how horrific the situation is.

There was a 21 Democratic senators wrote a letter to Marco Rubio urging the U.S.

to stop funding the GHF and also some demands about more information about how it's being run.

44 Senate Democrats sent Rubio another letter calling for more aid into Gaza.

I know I roll my eyes at a letter too, but like, you know, it's a show of public concern and opposition.

Angus King, the independent senator from Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, put out a statement on Monday saying, I cannot defend the indefensible.

Israel's actions and the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency.

I am through supporting the actions of the current current Israeli government and will advocate and vote for an end to any U.S.

support whatsoever until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy.

My litmus test will be simple.

No aid of any kind as long as there are starving children in Gaza due to the action or inaction of the Israeli government.

Strong statement there from Angus King.

So look, there's more letters, there's more statements.

We're not going to go through them all because again, words without actions are bullshit.

But Ben, I kind of ran through my wish list on Pot Save America yesterday that I'd like to see Democrats do, just to quickly summarize it, like cut off military assistance to Israel, sanction Israeli government officials who are using genocidal rhetoric or pushing for ethnic cleansing, support a ceasefire resolution at the UN, demand that the international press be allowed into the Gaza Strip.

We'll talk about recognizing the Palestinian state,

the United Nations in a minute.

And then, you know, you and I have been talking about this on the show, but like there just does have to be more of an understanding and recognition in the Democratic Party that there has been a sea change in terms of voter sentiment and the party, the elected officials, need to catch up.

In particular, like rank-and-file people know that B.B.

Netanyahu is a bad actor, he's not a good partner, it's not someone that they want to support or prop up politically with military support or diplomatic support.

Harry Anton, the polling director at CNN, ran through some Gallup polling on CNN the other day and found that in the U.S., Netanyahu's approval rating went from plus 13 points in 2019 to 23 points underwater in July of 2025.

For people under 35, Ben, Netanyahu, who is 53 points underwater.

The net approval of Israel.

Wait, is that before or after the Nelk Boys interview?

Sorry, I'm trying to lighten the example.

Sorry, yeah, no, that was a game-changing Nelk.

By the way, I saw one of the Nelk boys did another video of himself.

He's like driving his car.

He said, not only was the interview set up by the White House, but they gave him a list of questions.

Well, there you go.

That just shows you Trump may be mad at Netanyahu, but there's still booking.

Infrastructure, yeah.

But so net approval of Israel's military action in Gaza has has gone from plus five points in November 2023 to 28 points underwater.

Under the age of 35, it's a negative 73 net approval.

Americans who sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians have gone from plus 48 in October to just plus five today.

So, look, again, the voters have moved, the politicians have not.

What's your full list of like what you see want to see Democrats doing here?

I share your list.

And you and I talked about it before I read through it.

But so then I'll just focus in on it.

And there's a politics piece to this, and then there's a kind of basic morality and decency thing.

Let's start with the politics.

The opening,

you know,

because there are moral reasons, and we've talked about them, and I'll get back to them.

But the opening here is clear.

Number one, your own voters don't like this, and you're out of step with your own voters by supporting Netanyahu.

And you are supporting Netanyahu just because you criticize him.

If you're voting to give him military assistance, you're supporting him.

But also, Democrats are constantly wondering two things, right?

Two questions have dominated the discourse on Democrats since the election.

One is, how do we reach some of the Trump people?

The Trump people are raising their hand, you know, and Trump-adjacent people, like Theo Vaughn-type people,

Joe Rogan-type people,

people that aren't MAGA, but they're kind of like swimming in the pools and they go back and forth.

These people are saying out loud, telling us, this is fucked up.

We don't like this.

If you want to reach new audiences, why don't you talk to them about the thing where Trump was full of shit, which is on this issue where he said he'd end this war?

The other thing is Democrats have a problem being seen as authentic, being seen as people who have authenticity, people who will fight for you.

Well, if I'm a young person and I see a bunch of Democratic politicians talking about how worried they are about famine in Gaza, talking about how terrible Bibi Nanyao is, and then they see those same, some of those same Democratic senders literally posing for a photograph with Bibi Nanyao like a few weeks ago when he was in Washington, you know puffing out their chest like then you're gonna think the whole party's full of shit by the way and so this is one where I can't even isolate it to the to those senators and you can go look for yourself where they were it includes some people that usually have pretty strong language about values and stuff but it's not just their problem it's all of our problem too because they make the entire party look like we're completely full of shit yeah so you could be forgiven if you're theo vaughan or you know let's say you're suddenly getting democrat curious because you're disappointed in trump because of the Epstein files, because of the bombing of Iran, and because of what's happening in Gaza.

And then you look at Democrats and you see they're posing for photos with Bibi or they're somehow criticizing Bibi but voting to shovel the military out the door.

So what I think Democrats have to be for cutting off military assistance to Israel.

They should be for all the things you talked about.

A UN Security Council resolution, sanctions on Israeli public officials who are engaged in war crimes,

including talking about ethnic cleansing.

For, you know, how about for non-Israel-led investigations into the murder of American citizens which happens regularly in the West Bank

for the ICC being able to do its work I thought we're for the rules-based order right

but and let's take this to the point of morality here to to end on a more serious note I think part of what is so destabilizing for for us is first and foremost what is happening to the Palestinians and to the people in Gaza but it's also the sense that what is happening is connected to what is happening everywhere else in the world in the sense that we're living through this age of authoritarianism.

We're living through an age of lies.

We're living through an age of might makes right, okay?

And the incapacity to take this seriously and approach this from a moral perspective undermines your capacity to say, you know, I'm upset about what Trump's doing with ICE or I'm upset about the authoritarian trend in X part of the world.

It is so selective to carve this out and say essentially, you know, because we can, you know, the genocide question is an important one.

You know, I don't know what else to call it at this point.

You've got Israelis calling it that, not just those Israeli human rights organizations, but people writing for the New York Times.

Even if you don't want to use that word,

this is a war criminal.

Like, Bibi Nanyao is a war criminal.

You are posing with a war criminal.

Indicted by the ICC.

And so to that end,

to be specific, I've said this before.

I don't know why you take money from APAC.

I just, I can't fathom

these people at APAC, whoever their social media people are, I made the mistake of engaging the other day.

It's always you always feel a bit diminished.

But Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders tweeted that, you know, criticizing Nanyao said, let the Aiden.

And APAC accused Bernie Sanders, a Jew from Brooklyn, from a family that has people who died in the Holocaust in it.

They accused him of blood libel.

Blood libel.

Blood libel.

And you expect me to think that that's okay, that they're big donors to the the the leadership of the house and senate and the democratic side can i add a little uh a little uh second thing to your list here of grievances with apac earlier today apac tweeted to clarify that they had not uh made a decision not to endorse congressman randy fine uh are you aware of who this individual is this fat ass who talks about starving kids today this is a republican who called for gaza to be nuked uh and told gazans to quote starve away and apac was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We have not ruled out endorsing him.

We're still open to it.

So it's like, when an organization tells you that they are morally bankrupt, listen to them.

It tells you that the Jewish senator from Brooklyn, who knows deeply in his bones the history of Israel and all these things, is committing blood libel.

But Randy Fine,

we'd be open endorsing him.

Don't big tent me on this one because I just would prefer to have people in the tent that are not okay with what's happening in Gaza, you know?

Well, let's talk about the tent because like this is what kind of got the left all mad at me over on Twitter.

It's all like the kind of like fucking chopo wannabe people.

And like I'm talking about in this moment, I want the tent to be as big as possible.

Yes.

And that might involve some really strange Bedfoes.

And look, maybe this is a completely naive hope, but what I'd love to see is the broadest coalition of people, mostly average citizens, coming together and saying, hey, we don't agree on a lot, but let's agree to end this war.

And that should include members of Congress too.

Like Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted yesterday an attack on Randy Fine, by the way, the guy APAC is defending, that she attacked him for being inhuman and called what was happening in Gaza a genocide.

Imagine if Marjorie Taylor Greene could work with someone like Rokana and Thomas Massey to force a vote on cutting off support for this war, kind of like Massey and Rokana just did with the Epstein files.

Maybe it would fail, but I'd love to see it happen.

And then, you know, just for Democrats generally, like, I think one thing we all need to think about, or activists generally, is just think about

incentive structures, right?

Like, I wish politics was all about people always doing the righteous and noble thing, but it's not.

It's often about incentives.

And

I realize that all these Democrats kind of coming late to the party and saying, like, I strongly condemn this without doing anything about it, that is too little, too late.

It is not enough.

That is meaningless.

But when you think about an organization like APAC, they have figured out the incentive structure process.

They have a carrot, they have a stick, right?

They're quite good at it.

They will help you if you're supportive of their agenda, and they will whack you if you're not, and maybe even primary you or fund a primary challenger.

And we need a version of that on the left, right?

Because if our only approach to people is you're either with us or

if you're with us too late, fuck you anyway, like that's not going to create an incentive structure that brings the people we need alongside.

And part of that is allowing for the tent to be bigger.

Like, you know, you and I have talked about this question of whether what's happening is a genocide.

Early on, right when South Africa filed the case, we talked to an expert about the legalities underneath it, right?

We've talked about how there's been genocidal rhetoric.

We both said that, you know, when you're talking about starving an entire population, I do think genocide is an entirely appropriate word to use.

However, I don't always use the word genocide.

I've referred to it as a war often because I think there are probably a lot of people for whom.

Hearing it called a genocide is a bridge too far for them and maybe makes me think that I'm too extreme to be part of their cause.

And I want them to understand that you can oppose the war in Gaza even if you supported it a month ago or two months ago or are like a right-wing Rand Paul type.

Like we can all come together and say, you know what, let's just make sure no more children starve to death.

That is our goal.

I completely agree with that.

And look, politics is about addition, not subtraction, right?

And any individual should be welcome to evolve their position, to choose to care about what's happening in Gaza, because the goal is to try to save the lives of the people in Gaza.

The goal isn't to try to win some argument you had nine months ago, you know, as much as I would like to be.

That's just not the case.

I think where, so on the big tent, I think we should have the biggest tent individuals should be welcome and not everybody's going to agree.

Yeah, maybe they may not agree on the, you know, certainly a genocide definition.

They may not agree about, you know, the future X policy.

AIPAC is a different category to me, though, because they're an institution.

They're an organization that has shown itself to be hostile.

Look.

Hostile to democracy.

Right, exactly.

Like right now, at the same time that this has reached acute emergency, you've got colleges paying penalty fees for letting kids protest.

You've got ICE

had picked up somebody for writing an op-ed, you know, in support of Palestinian rights.

So, you know, at the same, APAC is supporting that, that kind of insidious anti-democratic kind of mindset around this issue.

And the only other thing I want to say about this, because it's really important, is that I think that some people get uncomfortable with guys like you and me or some of this debate because they they want to the Israel to be the thing that they like love about Israel, right?

Their first time they went there,

you know,

what it represents.

And here's the problem, and they hate Netanyahu.

And even Chuck Shumri, like he made this speech about Netanyahu.

Here's the problem.

Netanyahu could be gone tomorrow.

It's not going to go back.

We talked about this.

Israel has moved to the right.

So unless and until Israel, the government of Israel, can show that it's moving away from its policies in the West Bank and Gaza, you can't just kind of wish this away or blame it on Netanyahu.

This is what is happening, and we need to deal with it.

Yeah, this is Biden's problem.

He's always talking about gold in my ear.

Gold in my ears 50 years ago.

And just to be clear, yeah, short term, I want a big tent, and I want to try to solve an acute crisis, which is ending this war.

Long term, if you want to primary a bunch of people who took bad positions on this war for too long, have at it.

I might support you in that effort.

I'm just talking about right now.

Should 2028 Democratic presidential candidates appear at AIPAC?

Absolutely not.

No.

And they shouldn't get a pass to do it just because it's like hard for them not to do it.

And you and I ran around, what was it, 2019 with chasery trying to get everyone to say that they would condition consistency?

Yeah, if it was used to annex the West Bank.

Imagine, look how far we've come from that.

Yeah, seriously.

Remember, Amy Klobuchar looked at us like we had two heads?

Yeah, Pete, Pete looked like he didn't want to be there.

Yeah, and only Bernie was pumped to talk to me.

Bernie stood up and was fired up, Ben.

He was fucking great.

Well, last sort of piece on this, Ben, is just the international reaction because French President Emanuel Macron announced that France will formally recognize Palestine as a state at the United Nations in September.

France is going to be the first G7 country to take the step, and one of a number of European countries that have done so recently.

You've got Spain, Norway, Ireland's been there for a while.

I think there's 147 countries that recognize Palestine, including Russia and China, I believe, on the Security Council.

On Tuesday, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer announced that the UK will recognize a Palestinian state in September, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire, make clear that there's not going to be annexation of the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution.

It's like a long laundry list there.

So, 255 MPs out of the 650 in the British parliament have signed a letter urging Starmer to take that step.

So, that's over half of labor MPs.

So, Starmer's a little behind Labor there.

Ben, obviously, France is saying there's a Palestinian state, or they'll recognize one.

That doesn't make it so.

It doesn't give the Palestinian people the land to live on.

But how important do you think this step is symbolically, and what did you make of this kind of half measure by Starmer?

Look, I think it's important to just because look, again, whatever your views are of the use of the word genocide.

At a minimum, there's discussion of ethnically cleansing Gaza.

There's discussion of annexing the West Bank.

The Knesset is passing resolutions about annexing the West Bank.

So

there's an erasure happening of the possibility of Palestinian statehood.

And Bibi himself says he'll never let that happen.

So part of the reason to recognize Palestine is just to lay it on a marker, that we're not going to let that erasure happen.

And I think that's a useful thing.

It doesn't solve the problem, doesn't solve the question of borders

or who's going to run the Palestinian state.

But I think it's reasonably important in that regard.

I think the UK step was a little peculiar to me because it shouldn't be seen as like punitive to Israel to recognize a Palestinian state.

It should be seen as like, hey, so you're telling me that if, now, first of all, I don't think Israel will meet those conditions, you know, because they're still not going to commit to some long-term, you know, process leads to a Palestinian state.

So he may be doing it to kind of give them one last chance, and there's an inevitability of recognition.

But I just don't think it should be framed as like,

if you were, you know, if things were slightly better in Gaza, we wouldn't be doing this.

Now, the one other thing I want to take on is that they all say they're rewarding Hamas.

No, again, don't fall into the trap of painting all Palestinians as Hamas.

If you're rewarding someone or you're offering hope to someone, it's the desperate people in Gaza and the West Bank.

You know, it's not the Hamas.

It's the aspirations of people that feel no hope right now and want to see any kind of international support for them ultimately having their own state.

So I think it's the right approach, even if it's a long-term one.

And it's not the answer on Gaza, though.

I mean,

UK would have more impact on Gaza probably cutting off military aid than recognizing Palestinian states.

But it matters.

Yeah, I mean, I think.

By the way, if it didn't matter, then Israel wouldn't get so pissed when it matters.

That's right.

That's exactly right.

Yeah, I mean, I did that sort of long list of possible things that, you know, Starmer wants the Israelis to do, like throwing in start a two-state solution process in there.

It's like, okay, that just seems like an easy way for the Israelis to just make up some fake process and play for time.

I totally understand the feeling that...

This sort of like sea change of movement in favor of a Palestinian state in the wake of October 7th feels like Hamas is being rewarded.

And I hear that, and there's some emotional truth to that, and there's some factual truth to that, and I totally get it.

But I think the context that's kind of missing in that shorthand is that people have been begging Netanyahu from like the very beginning to figure out kind of a day after plan, a governance plan for Gaza,

a sort of peace process.

set of conversations or something, an alternative to Hamas, like something with the Palestinian offering.

Saudi Arabia.

Yes, exactly.

And look, we're not naive here.

Like, we understand that the politics of talking about a two-state solution in Israel right now are impossible.

No Israelis wanted,

not even some of the most progressive ones.

But there still has to be some alternative to Hamas if you want to disempower Hamas.

And I think that's kind of what these moves by people in Macron are reflecting.

Yeah.

And I think that, look, part of the reason why there's been a collapse in Israeli public support for a two-state solution, not just since October 7th, before that, too, is because people like Netanyahu

killed it for so long, you know?

And look, at the end of the day, in the Obama years, like,

I was pretty open to, you know,

before even recognition, just putting out the U.S.

plan for the borders and everything.

And you would always hear from the kind of pro-Israel crowd, Well, you got to hug BB was one thing you heard.

But then the other thing you heard was, you know, this should be negotiated between the parties, not opposing the outside.

At a certain point, the parties are not negotiating this thing.

So if you believe it, then, you know, stand behind your beliefs.

If you believe there should be a two-state solution, then recognize that outcome.

Because if you just hide behind, we're going to wait for the Israeli government, who is the stronger party here.

I mean, so let's

not pretend like this is some equal negotiation.

If you're pretending like they're somehow going to come circle all the way back around to where Yitzhak Rabin was at the beginning of Oslo, like you're fucking crazy.

So either you believe in a two-state solution and you recognize it, or none of your talking points mean anything.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do, Ben, we got some really exciting news to share.

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Of course.

All right.

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That's bad phrasing.

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All right, let's turn to Ukraine.

So you're going to hear a lot more about Ukraine during the interview I do with Mrs.

Lavchernov.

And we should just note, Ben, that Trump has shifted his deadline for Putin to end the war from 50 days, whatever he announced that a couple of weeks back, to 10 or 12 days now to come to some sort of peace agreement or risk getting sanctioned by the U.S.

or maybe tariffs or secondary sanctions.

So nothing like negotiating with yourself to show Vladimir Putin how serious you are.

But there is this growing political crisis within Ukraine that we wanted to dig into today.

This mess stems from Zelensky moving two independent anti-corruption agencies in Ukraine under his own control, or at at least trying to.

Ukraine's parliament passed legislation moving the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, which investigates corruption, and another organization called the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, or SAPO, which prosecutes corruption, under the control of the Prosecutor General, which is a position that's appointed by the President.

Zelensky's stated reasoning for this reshuffle was that corruption investigations were taking too long.

He said that there were Russian moles within the agencies.

There's a lot of weirdness happening around this.

The legislation immediately triggered protests in Kyiv and in other cities across Ukraine.

You had thousands of people turning out in defiance of martial law, by the way.

And just a little history to help explain some of this reaction.

These agencies were established after pro-Russian and incredibly corrupt former president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country in the helicopter on the heels of the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which was a movement that overthrew that government.

And so these organizations had this history of of being powerful actors to go after bad actors, corrupt politicians in the government, including some of Zelensky's allies, like his former deputy prime minister and this billionaire donor through his campaign.

So this move was not popular on the streets of Ukraine, and it was also harshly criticized by the European Union, who called, one official called the independent anti-corruption agencies, essential to Ukraine's EU path.

And so ultimately, Zelensky reversed course, he put forward a proposal to reinstate the independence of the two agencies, but some reputational damage was done.

And the EU, I think, is still withholding a chunk of some of its funding that it provides for sort of anti-corruption steps.

So, Ben, I was wondering what you made of this episode.

And, you know, I had an interesting conversation with Mrs.

Lavchernov about it that I can tell you about and what it says about the state of Ukrainian democracy.

Yeah, I mean,

this is a worrying step, to say the least.

And I mean, look, I think part of what's happening here is Ukraine is trying to do two things.

Zelensky is trying to do two things.

Survive as a state and survive as a democracy.

One of the challenges in extreme wartime environments is more and more power starts to get concentrated in the hands of the president.

They're not really independent checks from

the parliament or the judiciary.

There's a lot of deference to the president who has kind of extreme powers through military command.

But at the same time, Ukraine had made a lot of progress over the last decade in creating some of these alternative centers of power, including on anti-corruption issues.

Ironically, that's what Joe Biden was focused on way back in the Obama years, right?

Remember that?

That was back in season one.

But here, it seems like Zelensky was getting annoyed for some reason.

Maybe they were getting too close to some people, or it just feels like everybody else who's lecturing me, whether it's Trump or Putin, they get to be strong men.

It felt a little bit like, you know what, I'm just going to try to consolidate some things and consolidate some power.

And people noticed it and they took to the streets in Ukraine and Europe.

Now, the difficult thing for Zelensky is he's sitting there and saying, that's all well and good, but you won't let me into the EU.

I got to deal with Trump.

But I still think it was the right thing to backtrack

because you don't want to become what you're fighting against.

It is still part of the high ground that Ukraine has and still part of its future ambition to kind of be a part of the European Union.

If they're going to lose territory, what they're going to gain is a better governmental governmental system, better alliances, better integration with Europe.

And don't put that at risk just because you kind of feel like you've got to out-strongmen the strongmen.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what Zelensky's motivation was either.

The process for how they did this was super rushed and shady.

You know, it's interesting.

You'll hear, I'll let Misislav explain it in his own voice in the interview, but he was telling me how what was amazing about these protests is it was really primarily young people who were there, you know, whose were formative, formative, you know, they were kind of pre-Maidan or weren't alive for it or around for it.

And he told me that he would then sort of check back in with some of the soldiers he'd followed who were well aware of what was happening.

And they were saying things like, this is what we're fighting for.

Yes, yeah, that's great.

And pretty inspiring.

Yeah, that is inspiring.

And it's a reminder that this all started in the Maidan in its own way.

All right, let's turn to Thailand and Cambodia.

We've talked about this,

the conflict between these two countries a few times recently.

So the leaders of Thailand and Cambodia agreed to a ceasefire starting Monday after this simmering border dispute between the two countries had turned into an all-out conflict last week that included rocket fire and airstrikes and had killed at least 38 people.

So both sides, you know, accused the other side of starting the fighting.

And on Tuesday, military commanders from both nations met at the disputed border and kind of gave their support for the ceasefire, at least for now, although there's some reporting that fighting is continuing in some of these disputed territorial regions.

So the dispute is over a bunch of stuff.

There's, you know, there's colonial era maps that are poorly drawn between the two countries.

There's a dispute over which nation controls a couple of ancient temples.

There's good old-fashioned toxic nationalism kind of at play at all of this.

The ceasefire talks themselves were held in Malaysia.

There were representatives from the Malaysian government, China, and the U.S.

in attendance.

Trump is taking credit.

for this ceasefire and really all ceasefires being held right now.

That's crazy, man.

I had an argument with Hannah earlier.

Trump took credit for ending it.

He said he wouldn't cut trade deals with either Thailand or Cambodia until the two sides reach a ceasefire, and then they reach one and they said that's why it got done.

I don't know.

What do you think, Ben?

Like, it is sort of an interesting use of leverage.

Like, I feel like he often knows like two sides are going to get to a deal, so he makes an announcement to get in front of it.

But what did you make of this?

First of all, this rabbit hole, like, you know, props to Michael, our producer, because I've stayed in the rabbit hole.

Add to your list that there was grievances from Thailand about these scams coming from Cambodia, like kind of rip-off scams.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, click on this link.

There's an amazing New Yorker story about that, I think.

No, it's a huge industry in a couple places.

But anyway, put that aside.

There were a lot of reasons why this thing kind of flared up.

I think when it flared up, it also served the political interest on either side a little bit.

Thai military wanted to flex a bit, you know, that like they don't, you know, they got to embarrass the prime minister.

You know, Cambodia has their own autocratic

clique that likes to gin people up on nationalism.

So everybody kind of got ginned up around a border dispute, but it's not like they were going to fight some all-out.

This thing was going to de-escalate, right?

I mean, so for-I mean, the Cambodian military is a third the size of Thailand and they don't have the heavy weaponry.

So they would have been fucked.

They would have been pretty fucked in this thing.

Now, that said, China.

has all the influence.

Cambodia, I mean, when I was in government,

I remember when we went to a summit in Cambodia, you were there, the peace palace where they had the summit built by the Chinese.

We couldn't even have a conversation in any rooms because the presumption was everything was budged, everything was wired.

Like the people that have leverage in Cambodia are the Chinese, first of all.

And increasingly, they've had leverage in Thailand, despite it being a traditional U.S.

alley.

So I think you're right.

I think Trump, you know, this thing is going to end.

It's going to peter out.

They're not going to fight a war over it.

The Chinese are probably leaning on them.

And then Trump comes in and says, like, I'll tariff you if you don't, you know.

No, Trump did not broker some ceasefire here.

And by the way, I worry about,

you know, sure, tariffs, you know, that's one more tool, but like

if we're just going to start threatening tariffs over every single thing that every country does, I think it's not as sustainable.

We're about to talk about China, actually.

It's a good segue into the fact that if you start linking tariffs to every other foreign policy issue, you create potentially some vulnerability for yourself.

You want to do Myanmar first or China first?

Oh, we can do Myanmar first.

I know that's not close to your home.

This is the Ben's heart section.

Okay, so weird developments coming out of the Trump administration when it comes to Myanmar.

So last week, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on a bunch of guys who are allies with

the generals currently running Myanmar.

And of course, these generals are running Myanmar because they staged a coup back in 2021 where they overthrew a democratically elected government.

They're also now fighting a brutal civil war against these rebel groups, and the rebel groups have been winning a lot.

So it's a very tense situation.

The weird backstory in the sanction piece, though, started.

So Trump sends out all those tariff letters.

I forget what day that was or, you know, Liberation Day.

Yeah,

you don't celebrate in your house.

That's right.

A top general in Myanmar responds to the letter by praising Trump, but also calling for the easing of sanctions, which surprisingly then happens.

And the question is why?

One reason could be that Myanmar has a big supply of rare earth metals, which are increasingly important because they're used in cell phones, military equipment, electronics, like literally everything.

The Trump administration has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to gain access to rare earths.

They talked about invading Greenland.

You know, it's like the

DRC, the Congo peace agreement in air quotes was about access to rare earths.

Ukraine, he forced them to sign the minerals deal.

So it's been a big focus.

And the reason, the challenge is that China dominates the rare earths industry and has massive leverage over us.

More about that when we get to the China section.

But again, though, a lot lot of the rare earths, I think all of the rare earths mine in Myanmar flow to China for processing.

So there's still this choke point, which I don't know how we're going to get around.

But anyway, but here's the catchment.

A lot of the areas controlled

with these rare earths there are controlled by rebel groups, not the junta.

So, I mean, I guess the long game, right, if you're Trump is like, you befriend the military junta, you give them weapons, they kill off the rebel groups, and then you take access to these things.

But what the hell do you think was going on here?

I think what's going on is what you said, which is essentially these people are obsessed with rare earths trump couldn't even name what they are um weirdly a lot of them have to do with clean energy transition too which he couldn't be bothered to care about but it's clear in his head and and yes you know on paper and this is an important point on paper myanmar is a resource-rich country that could be like a good alternative for these uh materials and so i think maybe the the the the tatman dawah the the burmese military some of the goons around them you know they're these kind of oligarchs who are connected they get a message back to trump like well we'll sign some deals, you know,

and we want to end the war.

Guess who wants to end the war?

The guys in charge?

Yeah, the military that had a coup, put Aung Sang Suki in prison, is now fighting this multifaceted civil war.

Here's the problem with it.

The problem with it is

they don't control vast swathes of this land because it's multifaceted.

There are ethnic armed groups that have been fighting a civil war against the government for literally 50 years, right?

The Kachin, the Sean, the Karen, like you can go Google this.

Those people aren't going to like, you know, lay down their weapons to make a deal with Trump.

Then there are the democracy forces, the government and exile people that are also fighting too.

And so the only way you're going to solve that problem is through a negotiated end to that civil war.

But these people aren't going to like lay down their weapons for a Trump trade deal with the generals.

Quite the opposite, actually.

And they're willing to fight through that.

The other thing I'd say is that the generals are always going to be more dependent on the Chinese than the U.S.

So whatever deal you cut, I mean, the Chinese are deeply, they've been their lifeline since the coup and before the coup.

And they are also involved in all this trade and jade and rubies.

And

so this is just a, this is talk about a rabbit hole.

This is one where Trump is not going to be finding the rare earth materials there.

He may not give a shit, and so he's lifting sanctions, but this is not going to be a part of some reverse belt road initiative.

No, no, this is not going to work out.

Okay, well, let's go to China then.

So Trump has been very, he talks about trade a lot.

I don't know that he's been focused on it.

He's been talking about it a lot.

In the last few days, they've announced quote-unquote trade deals with the European Union and Japan.

It turns out the more you dig into these deals, like they are not.

trade agreements.

They're just framework agreements with none of the details ironed out.

And you'll also be shocked to learn, dear listener, that a lot of what Trump's team has been selling to the media is like just completely made up.

We can get into that in a bit.

But it's still like the main event of this trade process is still whatever deal the U.S.

cuts with China, just in terms of the scale and the the impact.

So, remember, Trump first announced a 10% tariff on China.

Then, in April, there was like this series of tit-for-tat announcements and tariff rates where I think it got up to 145%, kind of like depending on how you did the math and like whether they all were stacked on top of each other or not.

So, it's like insane tariffs.

Then the markets freaked out.

So, we paused for 90 days.

They extended the pause again, which gets us to today.

So, on Tuesday, the U.S.

and China had their latest round of trade deal talks in Stockholm.

No breakthroughs were reported, but it does sound like everyone is just very excited to taco again and

punt the tariff implementation for another period of however long.

There has been a lot of speculation, Ben, that Trump is kind of really horny for a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Now, of course, he's denying it.

He's claiming he's not seeking a meeting and that he would only go to China if invited because he could not sound thirstier, more like a, you know, some loser middle school kid trying to get invited to a party.

But what we're also seeing, Ben, are these kind of like drips of reporting on all the ways the administration is going soft on China as they try to get a deal and as they try to get this meeting with Xi Jinping.

So several news outlets reported on how the U.S.

has frozen its restrictions on technology exports to China, especially AI chips, to avoid pissing them off.

And now we're learning that the president of Taiwan, Lai Chin De, had to cancel an August trip to several Latin American countries because the Trump administration wouldn't let him fly through the United States.

So he was going to go to New York, as the Taiwanese presidents always do.

They fly to New York, go to like what?

I think he's going to go to Paraguay, Guatemala, believe it.

There were countries that still recognize Trump.

Yes, and then fly home through Dallas and, you know, go to Taiwan.

But the Chinese object to the visit.

And so it looks like the Trump administration put a kibosh on it.

Now, Trump's people, the Taiwanese foreign ministry, they deny it, but I don't believe that.

No, nobody believes it.

Yeah.

So, Ben, I think you and I have talked a million times on the show that we'd long assumed that Trump would sell out Taiwan or any other kind of human rights consideration for a trade deal.

I was a little surprised that he would allow NVIDIA to export some pretty powerful AI trips to China.

What did you make of this, what we've seen out there?

So this is Trump negotiating with the Chinese is a bit like him negotiating with Putin.

Where, I mean, first of all, we'll come back to the Europe thing because you're right.

I don't trust these terms until I read about them.

But the Europeans did.

It's not that, I don't know how much they folded or not, but they definitely didn't stand up to Trump, right?

The Russians and the Chinese do, because they don't give a fuck, right?

And

so just as Russia pocketed things like Crimea recognition and recognition of these annex territories before they even started thinking about discussing what concessions they might make, and they haven't made any, the Chinese have pocketed like two of the biggest geopolitical questions in the U.S.-China relationship.

One is U.S.

support for Taiwan.

Thus far, the U.S., these may seem like small things, but they kind of canceled some defense dialogue with the Taiwanese, and they didn't allow this transit visa, which is kind of standard operating procedure.

That is huge messaging to the Chinese that, you know, we will trade away our support for Taiwan.

Even if you think that that might be a wise thing to do,

which I don't, I think bringing it into a trade negotiation is terrible.

No, we will deal with this separately.

Like, this is where you shouldn't be mixing and matching.

And we shouldn't be trading like, you know, market access for our soybeans for like China taking over Taiwan potentially.

And one of the risks is if you start making the DPP-led government, that's the more pro-independence party that is in charge in Taiwan,

you might actually have the opposite effect if you want.

They might feel like we have to move towards independence, you know, because we can't, we feel insecure.

So that's not wise.

And then secondly, the NVIDIA chips, like allowing, you know, basically starting to dismantle the export controls on some of the sensitive

technologies going in China in ways that will allow them to potentially, you know, not just win the AI race, whatever you want to call it, but turbocharge your AI industry so they can proliferate.

They can be the AI provider to Southeast Asia, to Latin America, to Africa, right, in the same way that they were with Huawei.

We haven't even gotten to the deal.

The Chinese are like, they're sitting there and they're like, well, it looks like the Americans are backing away from Taiwan.

The Americans are backing away from these controls on these chips.

Again, whether you think that the controls make sense of the Taiwan thing, lumping this all together is playing to the Chinese advantage.

Because they'll make some concessions.

They'll let the rare earth materials be on the market or they'll agree to buy some more of our stuff and Trump will treat it like a big win.

If the Chinese can get, you know,

these tech out from under these tech controls, feel like that they're back in the driver's seat on Taiwan completely and feel like they didn't make any truly meaningful trade concessions, this is a huge win for them.

And you're right, I think Trump is just dying.

Remember the first term, like he was so overwhelmed by the protocol?

Because the Chinese are good at like, you know,

we're going to make you feel like an emperor.

They know how to to play, because they're autocrats, they know how to appeal to the autocrat.

He just wants to go and be feted for days.

He lost his mind over like a tea ceremony.

Long red carpets and beautiful Chinese women bowing to him.

And like, that's all he wants.

You know, question is what's he going to sell out to get there?

Yeah,

he'll sell out everything.

On your point about the EU, it has been interesting seeing kind of like the day after and the day after, the day after reporting on what's actually in this deal.

First of all, like

the Ursula von der Leyen and the folks, folks, you know, sort of trying to lead the charge here from the EU, they just have the worst possible position.

28 different members.

Yeah, you got all these member states, right?

And you've got Victor Orban like attacking her, being like, oh, she caved, Trump destroyed her, which helps him politically in both directions because he likes to kick around the EU and he likes to kiss Trump's ass, right?

So that's sort of like he's helping drive the narrative.

But also, like, the numbers in the deal make no sense.

Yeah.

The EU says they will agree to 750 billion, they'll buy 750 billion in American energy products over the next three years.

Okay.

Total U.S.

energy exports were $318 billion last year.

So the EU would need to triple its purchases, and the U.S.

would basically need to stop selling to any other country because, like, we're kind of maxed out on what we can export.

So, none of it, it's all just bullshit.

It's just a press release.

Two quick things on this, sir, because the Japanese one is even funnier because the Japanese deny they've made it.

They deny it all.

But the two things I'm skeptical of: one are any pledge for an investment number.

Because we've seen this Trump, like trillion dollars and you know, with Sam Altman and what, Larry Ellison or something, you know, uh

two trillion dollars in the Gulf, the Japanese, you know, soft bank, a half a trillion.

Like, this is all anybody can say a number.

I don't, I, there's no, there's no there there.

But then the second thing is in this deal, it's like, oh, and we get to put the 15% tariffs on on Europe.

That's like part of what we quote unquote won.

I don't want the fucking tariffs on.

I don't either.

I do want to pay 15% more for like anything coming up.

Chato Niftopot.

Checko Niftipop, man.

It's already like too expensive enough.

So why is it a win

to be taxing Americans?

Like I'm

Hey, guys.

Yeah, I love the deals that the Japanese trade agreement they announced.

The White House said that the Japanese would create a $550 billion investment fund and then the U.S.

would keep 90% of the profits from it.

And then the Japanese trade minister said, no, actually, one to two percent of the $550 billion would be actual investment.

The rest is coming from loans and loan guarantees.

So they just, they're completely making stuff up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One zillion dollars investment.

Exactly, exactly.

Okay, final story, Ben.

And sorry for all the listeners.

We're going long here.

But you'll be glad you stick around for this.

Yeah.

So we've talked on this show before about a right-wing podcaster named Candace Owens.

She used to work at the Daily Wire.

She got the boot for some rather AT-Semitic rhetoric.

Now Candace is doing a podcast on her own.

She racks up massive download numbers and she is living her best, most detached from reality life.

I assume she's beating us on YouTube subs.

Crushing.

Yes.

Yes.

Please subscribe.

Pod America and Pod Save the World on YouTube because people like Candace Owen are smoking on.

Smoking the algorithm.

When people search for political news, they get her stuff.

We're trying to get them factual information.

So please subscribe here.

But she's also done like a five or six part series.

I've lost count actually, on her belief that the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron, is a man.

And now...

It's gotten to the point where French President Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte have filed a defamation suit in the United States against Candace for spreading, quote, outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions that this Brigitte was born a man.

Now, this is a pretty serious threat, right?

A head of state is suing you in court.

Like, that scared the shit out of me, but let's listen to how Candace responded.

You were born a man, and you will die a man.

That's the point I'm making.

So give us a sample.

I'll send my doctors to take your blood.

Figure it out real quick, however you want to go about this.

Hey, how about just giving us some pictures again of you growing up?

you know, raising your children.

That would be fine.

You're probably hoping, oh, you know, this will go away.

And Elise will say we sued her.

We'll say we went after her.

She'll probably file for this to get dismissed.

I'd like to make it to discovery.

I think that we owe that to the world.

Anyways, you guys, we are revolting against this.

We're revolting against the perverts that run the world.

And I want to be very clear here.

I count you among them.

I think you're sick.

I think you're disgusting.

And I am fully prepared to take on this battle on behalf of the entire world.

Okay.

That's what I'm going to say.

On behalf of the entire world, I will see you in court.

Imagine Candace sends her doctors to your house, like Dr.

Oz, Dr.

Phil,

Dr.

Jordan Peterson.

Not exactly the 18th.

So anyway, so Candace says her proof that Brigitte Macron is a man that comes from an investigation by a French blogger named Natasha Ray, who has also been sued in court by the Macron family, all of which say this is not a new story in France.

What is new is that the Macron family is tired of Candace's bullshit.

Yes.

Quite a story.

Quite a story about it.

Quite a story.

I mean, you know, like

what to add here,

first of all, what's interesting to me is how in our current kind of right-wing world, which includes the French right, I guess,

you know, look, Bridget Macron is much older than Emmanuel Macron.

24 years.

24 years.

It's kind of a weird situation.

Met when she was his teacher.

She was his teacher, right?

So that's that, you know, that raises some, you know, the tension.

Odd.

Then, so then there were like, there was this kind of question is, is it a real marriage, right?

And, and, is, uh, and so then some, the conspiracy theories start where it's like, maybe he's gay, um, and it's that kind of situation, or

whatever.

And somehow we got all the way from that to like, she's a man, you know, like

you mean, like,

this is what is so weird about the internet is that you start with like, you know, an unusual situation.

She's 24 years older and she was his teacher, and somehow that logically ends to like, she must be a man, you know?

Yeah.

Which is fucking nuts.

I mean, a French journalist named Emmanuel Onizon told The Guardian, this is one of the biggest fake news stories worldwide in terms of popularity.

A billion people have seen it.

Like, to your point, like,

it started in 2021.

It was sort of this moment of maximum anger at the government in France.

Like, I think the yellow vest protests were happening.

There was a huge amount of distrust of the government.

And it got pushed by like far-right and anti-vax forces.

But it started as like a random four-hour YouTube interview with this journalist, quote-unquote, Natasha Ray, whose credentials at the time included working for an essential oils business.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and I just, I don't know about the move to sue, though, because in an attention economy, didn't Candace Owens just get like

a lot of attention?

I don't know.

Well, I also, yes, she definitely did.

I mean, man, look,

I get just being fed up, you know, if you're a McCrone.

I got being fed up too.

I mean, I need to dig back deeper into the case, but it's not not like Alex Jones has gone away, right?

You can do your own research on this.

I'm going to do my own research.

But I mean, apparently the theory is that Brigitte Macron was a man named Jean-Michel Trognu.

Jean-Valjean.

But

they're saying that she is her older brother, but her older brother's 80.

He's alive.

He lives in northern France.

He grew up with her and four other families.

They have a family that was like well known for having a chocolate business.

He was present in public with her at Macron's two presidential inaugurations.

Like, this is so thoroughly disproven, but it's like she's fucking cling to this madness.

Yeah, I mean, I guess we should have learned when they spent eight years saying our boss was born in Africa.

That's right.

But

this is a special one.

They hate Macron.

I mean, part of this too is just the loathing of Macron.

They hate Mr.

Cohen.

He triggers people a lot, you know?

It's so wild.

Like, I guess she just found an audience for this and she dug in and it's like the Epstein stuff, right?

Different things intersect, right?

It's anti-trans somehow, I'm sure.

It's anti-Macron, it's anti-globalist.

She kind of threw in a bit of an insinuation about a global cabal

of perverts, right?

I mean, you know, I wonder who might that might be.

Maybe Candace should focus on the real question, which is, you know, why Donald Trump was having young girls like that worked for him go work for Epstein.

Seriously, that is something that happened today, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, the Trump's new

explanation for why he and Jeffrey Epstein had a falling out was Jeffrey Epstein kept poaching people who worked for him, and he was pressed on that.

And he said, yes, one of them were younger women who worked,

I think, like at the spa at Mar-a-Lago.

And it's like, hey, man, did you think to call the cops then?

Yeah.

Because this happened in 2000.

Apparently, this incident where Epstein was poaching staffers.

And then in 2002, Trump told New York Magazine how much he loves Jeffrey Epstein and even said some creepy thing about how he likes women as much as I do, even if they're on the younger side.

Yeah.

Well, but a serious point, point: I wish some of these people, and some of them are doing it, but who spent all this time and attention chasing down the Brigitte Macron as a man thing, and then they get a pretty bombshell piece of information dropped on Epstein, maybe pay attention to that actual shiny object rather than you know, trying to prove that the brother is the sister.

I don't know.

Wild, wild.

Okay, hearty show from us.

From us, we're gonna take a quick break.

When we come back, though, you're gonna hear my interview with Mrs.

Lavchernov.

He's an amazing director, writer, producer of a new documentary, 2000 Meters to Andrevka, that is is an incredible window into what the war in Ukraine is like.

So stick around for that.

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I'd like to welcome to the studio Mistoslav Chernov.

He is a Ukrainian director, writer, the producer of the new documentary 2000 Meters Tundrivka.

He was on the show about two years ago, I believe,

talking about his Oscar-winning film, 20 Days in Mariupol.

Welcome back.

Great to see you.

Great to see you again.

Thank you for inviting me.

So I just want to start just, I watched the film on Friday.

It was so unbelievably powerful.

It affected me physically.

Like I could feel the film in my body.

I've seen a lot of footage of the war in Ukraine on social media because there's so much drone footage.

And so it's, you know, how terrifying it is, but I think the first-person point of view, the trench warfare, the FPV drones swirling around at every moment, it's just

more frightening than I ever could have imagined, frankly, was like my takeaway.

And I just wondered if you could talk about how you filmed the film, constructed the film, and

managed the risk involved to being a part of this.

Physical

presence is something that is always important for me in my films.

And you see that perspective of both 20 Days in Mariupol and 2000 Meters to Andriivka is a personal perspective.

It's not only about body camps that we're using, it's also about me actually walking on the ground with the soldiers.

And just to recap, the entire film is about this little narrow strip of forest that is squeezed between two minefields.

And it's leading to a village of Andriyevka

that the platoon I'm following has to liberate.

So it is a very simple story

on the surface.

They just need to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest to get there and to raise the flag.

But the drama that leads to it,

the the difficulties the the pain the sacrifice that they go through to get to their goal is immense and i do everything in my power to to bring the audience into that experience and we are so lucky that the

tools of modern filmmaking are allowing us to do so.

You know, in order to know what the soldiers are going through in the First World War, Second World War,

all the wars that happening in the 20th century,

we didn't really have tools except stories, you know, literature, yes, films, but we could never be there.

And here we have a possibility to bring the audience right into the trench,

feel

the

the shaking ground,

hear the buzzing of the drones above your head and feel

fear for your life for every second of the film.

It's a very intense experience, but

it's a very unique experience too.

Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinary.

I mean, you're physically in dugouts, foxholes, whatever you want to call them, with these men as you're trying to storm this village.

I mean, so to step back a bit, I mean, the context was, I believe you filmed this in 2023 during this counteroffensive in eastern Ukraine.

You're following Ukraine's 3rd Assault Brigade as they're trying to capture this village, as you just said.

Can you just sort of remind listeners of the context of that moment and kind of like what the push was from the West in terms of the so-called counter-offensive and this, why this particular mission took on maybe outsized importance?

Summer counter-offensive of 2023 is at that point was considered as the biggest military operation in Europe since World War II.

So it has been prepared over many months.

It has been hyped too much, if you ask me,

by media.

But

that's the world we live in.

The war is happening not only on the ground, the war is happening in the media space.

So it was very much hyped.

There were a lot of expectations.

And when it started, considering that Russians have prepared for months and months and months, they dug in.

and they built the defenses, the counteroffensive was going slowly and it was going quite painfully on all the fronts.

The front line is more than is more than a thousand kilometers and the entire front line was on fire.

And it was a time when we were premiering 20 Days in Mariupol.

So I would be here in LA.

I would screen the film along with Oppenheimer and Barbie and other amazing films that were premiering at theaters.

20 Days was also there.

So

on its own, it was already a strange experience.

But then I would fly back to Europe, cross the border to Ukraine,

get a train to

Donbass, get a car, get to the trenches to these guys who over time became our friends.

And that transition between two worlds was also on a personal level so impactful.

I really wanted to

these two worlds were colliding inside me constantly.

And for me, they were so close, so close,

24 hours away, right?

One day away.

And I wanted to

bring the audiences closer.

That's where this desire of realism is coming from.

That's where the distances, this film about distances, right?

And that's where those distances are coming from.

I wanted these distances to be shorter.

And yeah, the counter-offensive was not going well and it was very hard, but I think the story of this platoon, the fight for this small village that seemed

strategically important, but on a bigger scale

seemed pretty insignificant.

And yet it was a symbol of the struggle and a symbol of hope when they finally raised the flag.

I think that that represents the entire struggle across the front line.

And I was looking for something that would represent that

wider experience.

Yeah, I mean, there is this feeling, right, that they are successful.

I mean, I don't want to give away the film, but I don't think it.

The experience of the film is why it's worth watching the film.

It's not the ending.

But, you know, as you said, they get to this village, they raise a flag, but they raise it over rubble, right?

They essentially.

Now you're spoiling the film.

Sorry.

That's okay.

It's one of the dramatic turns for us, too, when we are shooting.

We come to that village and we see there is not even a place to raise the flag.

And then, of course, inevitably, you're asking,

why

was this happening?

And then, when they do raise the flag, when they come back, and then when you next day see in the news the entire country celebrating another village being liberated, you realize that they didn't just liberate a village, they liberated a name, a symbol.

And you realize something very important, that yes, you can destroy a city, you can destroy a village, but you can't destroy a symbol.

And

is that how the men you were following felt?

Because I've known a lot of people who served in the military, and some of them have sentiments like that, and others felt like they were sent to war for missions that were meaningless.

They felt completely demoralized and infuriated by you know the task they were asked to do i'm wondering what they're

that's not how uh ukrainian men are feeling and if you watch the film you'll see each one of these people we meet and some of them unfortunately lose their lives but each one of them made a choice to be there they know why they're there

and there is a scene in a film when

it's a battle for 1000 meters.

There's a scene in a film when one of the soldiers in a close combat while fighting with

a Russian in the trench nearby, he's shooting and he's screaming his lungs out.

He says, why are you here?

Why did you come and destroy my home?

And you feel it.

He knows why he's there.

And in the scene in the end of the film, when we see a scene where Ukrainian soldier is talking to a Russian prisoner of war after that battle was over, He says, I'm 19.

Do you think this was my dream to fight with you guys?

But I know I'm here.

But I know I'm here.

And why are you here?

Why did you come here?

And the Russian soldier says, I don't know.

And that's exactly what it is.

For those who came to Ukraine and just invaded, they

They came there based on lies.

They came there based on their own ideas.

but for Ukrainians, it's just defending home.

Yeah.

Can you just talk a little bit about some of the men you follow?

I mean,

some of them

later die, right?

I mean, it's tragic.

They're all so young.

You know, some live nearby, some lived far away.

Some were in university.

Some never wanted to be a soldier.

Some are older than me and have kids.

You know, it's an amazing range of individuals.

And kind of it, it seemed like one of the consistent, well, you had a very long conversation with one man who was like, do not make me a hero.

That was sort of his sole ask of you.

And maybe your first and only conversation?

Or first conversation with him?

My first conversation with him, and unfortunately, that's the last conversation with him that was ever recorded.

And

at least that remains for his family.

They have a memory of him.

And he is so fondly and so softly with love talks about his family in that conversation.

And when we were editing, we wanted to preserve every second of that.

But that's, yeah, that's exactly what it is, because these men are, yes, they are soldiers, but ultimately they are civilians.

And they are, I think, one of the experiences that the audience is walking away with when they watch this film is that

they're just like you and me.

They're just guys who yesterday were learning, studying in university and they were at home, you know, digging a well for their family.

They were working

at the warehouse and they were just

normal people and then they were

they made a choice and they went to protect the land that I, me personally also, that I call home.

And

That's what we're trying to do in this film.

And it's not actually that's very hard sometimes because we have a with all the great tools of filmmaking, we're still quite limited with time and

with material that we have.

And the danger here is that

exactly because the audience is so used to violence,

the audience so used to see some of these pictures in the social media

that they get detached from it.

So our task in this film was to attach the audience again to humanity of these experiences, to the pain of it and to the thrill of it sometimes.

Yeah.

I mean,

I think that's such an important point.

I mean, your film,

you're in the trenches, but you're so connected to the individuals.

You know their names, you know their stories, you know where they're from, what they did, what happens to them.

But we're also living this time on social media where every time I log into Twitter, I see either a video of a Ukrainian FPV or a Russian drone killing some person that I'll never meet or know their name.

And I understand why both sides do it.

Often it's set to music.

It's about

showing the might of each military.

But I wonder about the dehumanization, not just for the individuals involved, but for all those who sort of take it in through an algorithm as like this spectator.

you know, sports the wrong word, but you know what I'm saying.

No, no, you're right, you're right.

And it's also how many times people who just start watching the film, then that experience changes, of course.

But in the first moment, they feel like they are in a video game.

Then

the heavy realization that this is reality kicks in.

It comes in and then it never lets go.

Once you attach to real people, once you attach to their stories, then it will never let you go.

You will never see these social media posts again in a way that you've been watching them.

And that's another,

I hope that's another thing that we will achieve with this film.

As 20 days after screening 20 days, some of people came to me and said, I will never watch news again in the same way that I did.

And I hope this works for this film too.

They will never watch this social media posts again in the same way.

They will always remember that there is a human and there is a human toll

behind that.

But again, in order to do that ethically right, in order to not just to be outside and observe and try to connect the audience with that experience,

I couldn't stand aside.

This film could very much exist in a form of

buddy cam footage

stitched with drawn footage together with some of the sit-down interviews.

But I know if I adequately and ethically want to tell about the tragedy and sacrifice,

I need to be there and experience it and risk my life

to

be able to speak

for them

and

to be able to

say I did everything to preserve their memory

when they died.

Yeah.

There are so many ways that people across Ukraine are contributing to the war effort.

You know, there's

factories producing as many drones as they possibly can, you know, 24-7.

There's industrial infrastructure backing the entire war effort.

And then you see that you meet some of these men who

maybe had jobs that were safer, like military police, and made a choice to go to the front line.

Why do you think they did that?

And is that a common sentiment?

The most

common answer that I get when I ask them about it, they say, we don't want our children to fight this war.

So it is a sacrifice.

But I feel and I see that this is sacrificed not only on the level of

civil duty to your country, but it's a much more personal level of your sacrifice to your family.

The history of Russia invading Ukraine goes hundreds and hundreds of years back.

It's not something new.

And generations

were fighting with Russia before.

We learned that history, we know that history.

And so Russia attacking and invading Ukraine again was not a surprise.

But what those men feel

and keep talking about is that maybe, just maybe, this will be the last time.

And that is already a very strong motivation for them.

Aaron Powell, the Western support, the Trump administration's support for Ukraine has been completely incoherent.

I mean, one minute he's berating Zelensky and the Oval Office.

Then we're cutting off weapon shipments and the weapon shipments are back on.

Now Putin has a 50-day deadline to get a deal.

Now he has a 12-day, I guess, was what Trump just announced yesterday.

I'm just wondering what,

how Ukrainians are reacting to or taking in this kind of like madness and incoherence from the Trump administration.

I think I would describe it in three beats.

And

all those three beats would be me watching our protagonist in a war zone.

They are after the mission for Andriyevka, those who survived went on fighting in Avdiyevka and then they went on fighting in the Kharkiv region, which is near my hometown.

And

we kept following up, we kept speaking with them.

So

in the beginning, before the elections, there was hope that something will change.

So I saw many Ukrainians, including our protagonists,

being quite hopeful for

a strong position, whatever that position was, but a specific strong position on

support of Ukraine

or absence of support of Ukraine.

But that's

the

uncertainty is

much harder

than actual problem.

So

then after the elections, after what happened in Oval Office, it was devastating for many.

And I again spoke to Fedia.

I said, Fedia, how did you feel about it?

He said, well,

I knew we were all screwed.

But at the same time, I knew that we are not disillusioned anymore.

We know that we are on our own.

We know that we need to rely on ourselves and on the person that is right next to you.

And we'll just have to keep fighting until this is all over.

So that was like a next step.

And recently, because of these back and forth statements, because of, again, uncertainty coming back

whether

Ukraine has support, it doesn't have support, or whether Russia has more support than Ukraine, even all those news that were coming from

international

politics,

brought to Ukrainians, especially soldiers detaching from youth and

just

keeping to their

job, keeping to their narrow

strip of land that, you know, those 2,000 meters that they currently need to defend.

That's what they're focused on.

Because words don't reach the battlefield.

Only actions reach the battlefield.

What kind of restrictions are there on journalists like yourself and your ability to move and report in parts of Ukraine?

I imagine there's areas where everyone can just go at any time, but to get to the front line, do you have to be embedded?

Depending on the situation.

on the security situation, that changes

dramatically.

In some cases, when

security situation is slightly more relaxed, there is more access for journalists.

In the cases that are more and more now, we see it on the front line where very precise,

long-range, sometimes AI-driven

weapons are being used.

by Russians, access to the frontline is impossible.

It would be just impossible to do anything from what we did in 2023 right now.

If I was to try to shoot this film now, I wouldn't survive.

I wouldn't be able to do it.

So in 2000 meters, in a way, in 2000 meters To Andrievka, in a way we see like a last

reflection of

the warfare that the world used to have before emergence of AI and robotic systems

on a battlefield.

Oh, so you're saying, even from just the last two years, the proliferation of drones is so.

Oh, yes.

It changed so much that sometimes

I see that this very same

third assault brigade that we were embedded with at that point,

they now carry some of their assaults completely

by

unmanned robotic systems.

No humans involved at all.

So drones in the air attack drones with the FPV Kamikatsi systems, and land drones with machine guns.

And those battles are successful.

We have examples of

them taking over some of the Russian positions, liberating some of the Ukrainian territory just by robotic systems.

It's like

very terrifying.

It is so scary.

And you can see how the competition is,

the competition for technologies is

happening in real time.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like a World War I trench-style warfare is the scariest thing I could ever imagine until you add in a quadcopter drone with a grenade on it flying into your foxhole or tunnel, which is what these men are dealing with.

And it never misses now.

And you can't jam it anymore.

It's just horrifying.

Just stepping back a little bit,

we talked a bit earlier in the show today about

this political dust-up over Zelensky trying to take control of this anti-corruption unit and then kind of relenting and reversing course.

I'm curious, like

that leaves me a bigger picture question about how people in Ukraine are feeling about Zelensky's leadership these days.

I think all of us were in awe of his courage early on, but obviously governing through a war is incredibly difficult.

And I'm wondering what the mood is.

I think what happened with the Anti-Corruption Agency is a great example of what is happening in a political, in the Ukrainian political system right now.

And you saw that limiting independence of that agency led to big protests on the streets.

And what was interesting for me is who came to those protests.

Young people from 15 to 25 came there and they protested.

And those are the people who haven't even seen a revolution of dignity, something that formed our generation's civil

identity.

So

they came out and they demanded for this agency to gain independence again.

And we see that the government reacted immediately on it and is now reintroducing this law, passing the new law that will even strengthen the independence of this anti-corruption agency, which I feel that is an extraordinary example of direct democracy, the best kind of democracy that could be in the world.

When people are not happy with their governments, they go on the street, they protest peacefully, the government hears them and reacts.

And to see that happening

in a country at war, in a country that has been blamed by even friends sometimes, for various reasons, by even by friends sometimes for becoming an authoritarian regime, which is absolutely not true.

And this is living proof that it is not true.

People can exercise their democratic rights

even in a country that is at war.

In a state of emergency.

And in a state of emergency.

And you see, other countries can use this,

can use crisis as an excuse to limit the civil rights or to

for people who don't go on the streets and don't speak about their opinions

to justify why they don't do it.

Oh, the country is in crisis.

We can't do it.

But you can.

And that's what Ukrainians did.

So until that relationship between the government and the civil active part of the civil society is

continuing to be like that,

we're okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

That is a good, healthy sign, especially the young people.

I didn't realize it was such a young cohort.

Yes, and then hearing the soldiers on the front line watching this and saying, oh, well, oh, that's what I'm fighting for.

Yeah.

That's exactly the generation I'm here for.

So that also motivated the soldiers.

Oh, wow.

That's inspiring.

Well, listen, the film is 2,000 meters to Indrivka.

I could not recommend it enough.

It's an extraordinary look at not just the war in Ukraine, but modern warfare, the horrors of it, and what motivates average people to do unbelievably courageous things.

So thank you for the film.

Thank you for 20 Days in Mario Poles, another extraordinary film too, that folks should check out.

Thank you.

But great to see you.

Thanks for the invitation.

Thanks again to Mrs.

Lav Chernoff for joining the show.

And talk to you guys next week.

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