Trump Accuses Obama of Treason

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Welcome back to Pot Save the World.

I'm Tom Evitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Weird week for you, Ben.

Our former colleagues and former President of the United States, Barack Obama.

We'll get into that in a minute.

You know,

I was actually alone in my house.

You know, as you know, as a parent, that's a rare thing on Sunday afternoon.

And

you know what I did?

I took a nap,

which when's the last time we took a nap?

You know, if we can get both kids down at the same time, we'll try, but it's rarely.

That's rare.

So I wake up and I'm kind of in that haze.

And I look at my phone, and one of our former colleagues had texted me this

truth social post, and I pull it up.

And at first, it didn't seem real because it doesn't, for those who haven't seen it, I guess I'm in like an orange jumpsuit or something, but it doesn't look anything like me because it's like an AI image.

It looks like we have to describe it.

It's sort of like a Brady Bunch sort of mock-up of nine former Obama officials, right?

And you're all in orange jumpsuits, but it's the AI uncanny valley version of it.

Just not really looks like you.

I look like kind of a mashup of me and like the evil strategist from House of Cards or something.

And it's actually not flattering.

I look kind of older and weathered.

Samantha Power looks like a cartoon character.

But anyway, I was at first like, what is this?

Because I couldn't tell if this is a real thing, if this is really Trump.

But then as I slowly woke up, I was like, oh, that's kind of uncomfortable.

That's not something, I have to admit, it's not a pleasant feeling to have the president of the country you live in tweeting an AI picture of you in a jumpsuit, you know?

Yeah, no, an angry, litigious president who's out for blood and doing anything he can to distract from the Epstein files.

That's not the best combination.

Yeah.

Guilt, innocence, whatever.

There's a lot of lawfare.

But we are going to dig into all the details of this and what the hell happened,

especially why Donald Trump is accusing Barack Obama of treason.

And again, just doing everything he can to not talk about Jeffrey Epstein.

We'll also dig deeper into Trump's war on Brazil and how it is backfiring pretty spectacularly.

We have two big updates on human rights in El Salvador.

The latest on the utter nightmare that is life in the Gaza Strip.

We'll talk about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netyahu's surprising PR campaign.

I've been enduring a lot of bad content lately, Ben.

This is way up there on the list.

Some updates from Syria, a crazy story about a data breach in the UK that put thousands of lives at risk and could cost the government there billions of dollars.

We'll talk about a big election in Japan, why voters in France are pissed and why you shouldn't book that vacation to North Korea Korea quite yet.

And then, Ben, you did our interview for today.

Would you talk about who they can hear from?

So, I talked to Nurima Waka Ojiwa, who has a Kenyan civil society organization that gets young people involved in politics.

If you haven't been following situation in Kenya, or even if you have, this is an absolute essential primer to understand why there have been massive street protests, how there's been pretty extraordinary violence, including live fire into crowds that's killed dozens of of people, detentions of the young people who've been protesting, where are Kenyan politics going, and actually, frankly, like some real optimism at the end about how young people are getting more involved in Kenya and there could be a generational change there.

So this is a story that we haven't been able to cover as much as we would have liked, given everything that's been going on, but Narima really takes us into this.

And actually, we'll put some resources in the show notes for how people can be supportive of

these protests.

So tough story, but a little bit of hope at the end of it.

That's excellent.

I can't wait to hear that.

Thank you for doing that interview.

Also, I want to say thank you to the audience, Ben, for listening to or watching the mini-episode we did on YouTube on Friday and for subscribing to Pod Save the World on YouTube.

It was really fun.

You know, Ben and I were trying to just do more things

in addition to the weekly Wednesday show because there's a lot happening in the world and because we love doing it.

And YouTube's a great place to reach to people that aren't podcast subscribers.

Also, folks have probably heard me say that the right wing is killing us on YouTube.

I I mean, Ben, I saw it today that this idiot Benny Johnson gained 2.2 million followers on YouTube over the last three months.

This is one of the guys who literally took money from the Russian government.

He's killing us on YouTube.

And that is a real problem.

Not because I care, you know, I compare myself to Benny Johnson.

It's because when people search for political news in YouTube, they find this fucking bullshit and they find the Daily Wire and these garbage outlets and not accurate information.

And so we are, when you subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube, you subscribe to Pod Save America on YouTube, you help us surface good information in that algorithm and help people who are just trying to understand what's going on in the world

get factual information from a progressive perspective.

So thank you for that.

Benny Johnson, though, man, 2.2 million.

What are people doing with their time?

Benny Johnson and Ben Shapiro are not the bens you're looking for, guys.

Not

smash that subscribe button.

Yeah.

Smash that subscribe button.

My preferred bens.

Okay.

Ben Rhodes.

So we got Donald Trump coming off the worst two weeks of his presidency since January 6th, I would argue.

All of it stemming from this bizarre attempt to silence any discussion of the Epstein files.

For those who don't know, Jeffrey Epstein, he's this disgraced financier and pedophile who mysteriously died in prison in 2019.

Trump promised to release all the investigative files in the U.S.

government's hands about Epstein.

People in his administration spent years promising that Trump would release the Epstein files and take down this cabal of corruption and child abusers that run the world.

And now Trump is saying, shut up, stop talking about it.

And it sure seems like he's covering up for himself and all these elites he promised to prosecute.

So that brings us to the White House last week, where they went into their standard mode, which is just attack, attack, attack.

So the White House did what they always do, which is go on offense and just attack, attack, attack.

They released this report on Friday that we'll get into in a second.

And then here's a clip from Donald Trump earlier today, Tuesday.

Whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people.

Obama's been caught directly.

So people say, oh, you know, a group.

It's not a group.

It's Obama.

His orders are on the paper.

It wasn't lots of people all over the place.

It was them, too.

But the leader of the gang was President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama.

Have you heard of him?

This was treason.

This was every word you could think of.

They tried to steal the election.

They tried to obfuscate the election.

They did things that nobody's ever even even imagined, even in other countries.

Okay, so what Trump is talking about there is a quote-unquote report released last week by Tulsi Gabbert, the director of national intelligence, that said the Obama administration, quote, manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup, end quote, against Trump.

Specifically, she's alleging that the U.S.

intelligence community did not find that Russia used cyber attacks on election infrastructure to alter the 2016 election outcome.

And that, I guess, was treasonous somehow.

But, like, what is so hard to even explain about all this, Ben, is like the administration never said Russia changed vote totals.

In fact, the administration said the opposite.

Like, what happened in 2016 was Russia hacked staffers at the DNC.

They hacked the Clinton campaign.

They dumped out their emails.

Then they waged a social media campaign to influence voter opinions ahead of the election.

This was all confirmed by a three-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which for a period was led by now Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

That report also said that the GRU, the Russian military intelligence, probed election infrastructure in all 50 states.

So Trump also seems to think that there was this meeting on December 9th, 2016.

There's a White House meeting with the national security team.

He wants this to be some sort of like smoking gun piece of evidence.

We'll come back to that.

Again, Ben, so like this, this new conspiracy, it's like

it's so nonsensical that it's kind of hard to refute it or even track it.

But like accusing a president of treason is a big deal, in my opinion, since this administration is filled with like aggrieved aggrieved fascists who will do anything Trump says.

So we're going to take it seriously.

Trump went after you personally, went after a bunch of our former staffers.

Ben, you attended this December 9th meeting that Trump is so mad about.

You wrote about it in your book.

What happened at that meeting?

And like, what's your reaction to all this bullshit?

Yeah, I mean, I guess first, just like,

you know, I do want to say, we talked a little bit about the opening.

I appreciate this audience and this podcast so much because it's a place where we can talk about things

without all the bullshit that

is in the political conversation elsewhere.

So I want to level with people.

It kind of sucks

to be the target of this kind of stuff.

And it's a weird experience too, right, Tommy?

Because Trump posts 20 things and you don't know how serious he is about it.

This is probably somebody else's AI generated image.

But what's scary about it is

the coordination coordination of the Tulsi, you know, Potemkin review and her report, and then Trump coming on top of that, and then him amplifying it in the Oval Office, which makes you feel like this is something they're going to stick with.

There's a CIA review where they kind of started this process to go after John Brennan and others, too, right?

So this is like a coordinated intelligence community process leading to a White House.

allegation.

Yes.

And what people, like, this is not a close call.

There's absolutely nothing to this whatsoever because we all lived it.

You were all there.

You all experienced it.

Trump wants you to forget what you saw with your own eyes, what you heard with your own ears.

The Obama intelligence community put out a statement in October before the election saying that Russia was interfering through particularly the hack and release operations on WikiLeaks of people like John Podesta's emails.

Obviously, there was a lot of Russian disinformation.

And now what Tulsi hangs this new information on is that after, and this is in the report that she put out, and they keep pointing to this as some new discovered meeting that took place in early December where Obama got his intelligence community and national security team together and ordered this review.

This is not new.

Tommy, I went back and pulled up my book, The World as It Is, and literally in the chapter where I write about this, it begins with, shortly after the election, Obama convened a National Security Council meeting on Russia.

He opened by saying that he wanted the intelligence community to do a comprehensive review of Russia's meddling in the election that could be presented to him and to Congress before he left office.

Quote, we need to learn the lessons about what they did because they're going to do it again, he said.

Does that sound like I was trying to hide the existence of this meeting?

This review was the most discussed thing that was happening in Washington in December of 2016, and they're trying to act like nobody knew it happened.

This review was submitted to Congress, and there was an unclassified version of it that could be discussed.

So they're creating a conspiracy theory around something that we all experienced at the time.

We talked openly about the time.

At the time, as you pointed out, Tommy, we said...

again and again in part because we were worried that people would have a lack of confidence in the election result that there was no indication that Russia had changed vote totals.

We said that publicly.

The thing, so the two things that she's saying are like these smoking guns, are this new meeting she discovered that we all talked about at the time,

and this finding by the intelligence community that Russia didn't change the vote tabulation when we said that that was in our press guide and stuff.

That's like what spokespeople said all the time on the record.

So there's just nothing at all to this.

And that's part of what, to end where I started, part of what makes this so kind of demoralizing is

the complete absence of any there there to this, you know, and that's unfortunately the America we're going to be living in for the next three and a half years.

Yeah, it just, it sucks to know we live in a world where like you can throw any chum in the water, no matter how ridiculous it is, and people will just sort of like chase what Trump says.

Yeah, Ben, you and I are having an interesting week of getting yelled at by kind of angry demagogues online, but that's a conversation for later.

But like, yeah, but part of this is Trump.

He wants to prosecute another president, right?

Because he's mad it happened happened to him.

Part of it is an effort to change the subject from Jeffrey Epstein.

And then part of this is Trump never getting over feeling like his 2016 election is viewed as illegitimate because of this Russian interference.

And like, by the way, I'm not a person who ascribes to the belief that the Russians are the reason he won.

I think it was like one small factor and a lot of factors that included, you know, Democrats running a very bad campaign.

So I'm never suggesting that.

But the idea that they're like Russian interference is not a disputed point.

Like, again, I made this point on paze america yevgeny progozhin uh the now deceased russian oligarch who ran the wagner group confirmed the russian interference on the record his quote was gentlemen we have interfered we are interfering we will interfere he was indicted by the trump administration in 2018 for the russian interference the the trump's uh uh treasury department ofac sanctioned progozhin in 2018 because of russian interference it's like that they all agreed this happened and like you know, it's like, you know, and people maybe think we're like overstating the Epstein thing.

Like

House Republicans just shut down all business in the House of Representatives for like, I think, five or six weeks and sent lawmakers home early because they're so scared of having a vote on a bipartisan bill.

to release the Epstein files.

Like, I think that shows you the lengths to which Trump will go in this moment to make the conversation about anything else.

Yeah.

And here's what people have to understand is that they, on some level, know there's nothing there, right?

Tulsi Gabbard herself said on Joe Rogan in 2018, I think, that there was Russian interference.

Marco Rubio, as you pointed out, led the Senate Intelligence Committee review that went beyond what was in the Obama administration intelligence review and detailing Russian interference.

But they don't necessarily

all they need, and this is to the Epstein distraction point, and also just how they kind of keep their base fed and the care and feeding that they do, they just need a story that's out there.

They just need a sense that there's investigations happening, the deep state is being taken down, there's a drama, there's things that people can talk about on Fox News, there's things that people can talk about on podcasts.

I'm going to just, one other thing that's out there about me that's totally a classic example of this is like I had all this right-wing incoming because I said after I left the administration that I didn't know about the FBI investigation into Trump during the Obama administration.

And they're conflating that with the intelligence review.

They're saying, but you were in the meeting.

Well, of course I was in the meeting, but an FBI investigation is a separate thing from an intelligence review.

And they don't brief.

Now, this sounds like a, I'm, you know, obviously picking on a small point, but the point is they'll take something like that, where most people don't understand the difference between an FBI investigation and an intelligence review, and they'll spin their people up about it for like weeks, you know.

So people like me get death threats and online hate and they get to go on all their different right-wing shows and YouTube shows, right, and yell about this.

But that's what this is about.

It's about distracting you from Epstein and doing care and feeding for the base.

And yes, like settling all of Trump's scores.

And if you look at kind of what he's focused on since he came back, it's a window in his psyche and his version of authoritarianism.

The first law firm he went after was Perkins Cooey, which is a law firm that had been a part of some of the cases against Trump, right?

Now we're doing the Russia thing.

I'm sure there'll be January 6th committee, you know, vendettas.

You know, he's just going to go after everybody.

Yeah.

It's endless.

And it's also worth noting, Ben, that this kind of like boundless insecurity about the 2016 election victory is now rippling into our foreign policy because last week, Marco Rubio informed State Department diplomats that the U.S.

would no longer assess or comment on the fairness of other countries' elections unless, quote, there is a clear and compelling U.S.

foreign policy interest to do so.

Rubio's memo instructed staff to, quote, avoid opining on the fairness or integrity of an electoral process, its legitimacy, or the democratic values of the country in question, which, you know, I do feel like a big piece of that is Trump's insecurity.

And also now it's just kind of easier for him to dictate to the State Department when and where they criticize his autocrat buddies when they quote unquote win elections, right?

I mean, it's just, it's fucking pathetic.

Yeah, and it shows just the gap between the two parties.

And actually, I think the Democrat, you know, Democrats been over backwards to not, you know, they don't even like necessarily like Joe Biden didn't meet, you know, opposition leaders from center-off parties as any kind of norm when he's president.

Meanwhile, Trump is changing all of U.S.

foreign policy to pursue this Trump doctrine, where essentially we will interfere in the politics of foreign countries to help Trump's autocratic buddies, and we won't comment when there are irregularities or fraud or just outright election theft

if it's done by people Trump likes or if he just doesn't care, you know?

And that is going to create a world.

I mean, you know, the example I'd give is like Kenya.

In the next Kenyan election, normally there'd be like international observers and people.

If the U.S.

kind of withdraws entirely from that space,

I'm not saying we're perfect.

I'm not saying we should be the referee forever in the world.

But it is a scary thought if essentially the message to anybody who can control the voting in countries is, you know what,

we're out of the business of even identifying fraud.

So it's going to have repercussions.

It'll ripple out.

Yeah,

it is a terrible, terrible choice path to go down.

Changing gears a little bit, Ben, we did want to update listeners on this massive fight that Trump seems to have picked with Brazil for seemingly no reason.

So last week we talked about the 50% tariffs Trump is threatening to impose on Brazil because he is mad that the current government is prosecuting former President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting to violently overthrow the government, including killing off Lula Da Silva, the president, killing

the head of the Supreme Court in Brazil.

I mean,

it's a wild scheme.

But this vendetta from Trump has gotten even dumber because on Friday, Brazilian authorities raided Bolsonaro's home.

They seized his cell phone.

They ordered him to wear an ankle monitor.

They're also making him follow a nightly curfew, have no contact with foreign diplomats.

He's also barred from using social media,

doing media interviews, speaking with other subjects of this investigation, including his youngest son, Eduardo, who's currently living in the U.S.

after taking a leave of absence from serving in the Brazilian legislature.

But in response to the raid, a Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, revoked the visas for eight of the 11 Supreme Court justices in Brazil, including Alexander de Marais, who is leading the investigation against Bolsonaro.

The U.S.

trade representative launched an investigation into Brazil's government-backed and beloved instant payment system, PICS, which is used by over 70% of the country because it doesn't charge fees.

So, Ben, it's just that this thing's escalating very quickly.

It is probably a mistake to ascribe a strategy to a lot of Trump's flailing bullshit.

But if there is one here, like it is, it is backfired spectacularly.

Brazilian President Lula de Silva, he got a bounce on the polls.

There are these huge anti-Trump protests happening.

There's even conservative newspapers like putting up big editorials attacking Bolsonaro for putting his own needs priority over the country's needs.

And

I guess I thought Trump might have learned from his intervention in Canadian politics and how he single-handedly resurrected the Liberal Party there.

But I don't know, what do you make of like, what's the end game here?

What is he doing?

I think that Trump doesn't care about the outcomes of these strategies, right?

You know, like this is evidently a terrible idea.

Brazil is a really big and important country.

They have other options.

They can draw closer to China.

They can move away from the United States.

They can try to take markets in the United States, as we've talked about.

And most countries, if you start to meddle in their politics and do it in ways that might harm them, like their payment system or like some tariff that's going to make their life worse, they're not going to be like, oh, this is going to make me support Bolsonaro because Trump is making my life worse to help out his corrupt buddy.

It's going to cause a rally around the flag, as it would anywhere, as it did in Canada.

And what it tells me is that even this kind of...

Trump doctrine of interfering is not strategic.

It's just all impulsive.

It's like, I don't like this.

I have power to do something to hurt these people who are messing with my buddy Bolsonaro.

And there's never like any forethought to what the end game is.

It's like that, frankly, the trade wars themselves.

Like nobody knows what the objective of what Trump is doing is.

The objective just seems to be to control the dial, to up the pressure, to vent when he doesn't like something.

And that, if Americans don't think that's going to have huge medium and long-term costs for us, like I don't know what world you're living in.

Like you can't continue to bully countries and not have them band together at some point to stand up to the bully.

Yeah, and apparently, I mean, the Bloomberg News reported that Eduardo Bolsonaro and this other conservative digital influencer who is the grandson of the last president of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 64 to 85, they have spent the last few days in Washington.

They've been in meetings at the State Department.

They've been in meetings at the White House.

And it sounds like Eduardo Bolsonaro is driving this policy.

And, you know, like, note to Jair Bolsonaro, note to Donald Trump, note to Joe Biden, like, maybe don't let your kids drive political strategy.

Because, again, this is like, this has been a political godsend for Lula Da Silva,

who is using it to rally support for himself.

It's also driving Brazil into China's arms.

I mean, there's just a big report in the New York Times about Chinese car makers who are just like salivating over the opportunity to sell EVs into Brazil.

And

it's just an absolute mess.

Like, this is a huge strategic partner, biggest country in Latin America.

And Trump is just letting this idiot fail son Bolsonaro clown

drive our policy into a ditch.

And no one really seems to get why.

Quite literally, the Don Jr.

of Brazil.

We could probably do a whole special episode, Tommy, on like these sons or son-in-laws, because there's Don Jr., this Bolsonaro one.

Netanyahu's got a total nutcase son.

Erdogan's got a son-in-law.

Jared.

Orban's got son-in-law.

We can bring Jared into the conversation.

He can enter the chat.

So let's just bookmark that

there's a, well, Hunter Biden has entered the chat.

But the reality.

By force, by force.

Yes, by force.

But I mean, the reality here is that like this

global movement, one of the things that's interesting about it is that it's kind of global right-wing autocratic movement.

Yes, it's networked.

Yes, there's elements of it that are very smart, but it's also incredibly personality-driven, right?

I mean, the Bolsonaro kid can come to Washington and get like a tariff or something.

And guys like Marco Rubio are the real embarrassment because this is a guy who built his whole political identity on human rights in Latin America.

And now he's basically attacking a democracy on behalf of an autocrat.

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Two important updates from El Salvador, Ben.

So first, a few months back, we had a guy on the show named Noah Bullock.

Noah was my next door neighbor when I was four years old, literally.

Then his family moved.

His dad dad was the Episcopal priest at our church.

But far more importantly, Noah ran Crystal Sol, which is this leading human rights organization in El Salvador doing heroic work.

Unfortunately, Noah and his team were recently forced to flee the country and go into exile to places like Guatemala and Honduras.

This came not long after Bukele's thugs arrested a woman named Ruth Lopez, who is the leader of Crystal Sol's anti-corruption program.

We reached out to Noah just to sort of see how he was doing, see how his his group is doing.

Here's a clip.

We had to decide between exile and prison and we decided that relocation is the way that we can continue in our mission but also to defend our colleagues who are now political prisoners.

You know, and exile is a form of political violence that you have to choose between your freedom and your conscience

and flee the country.

It affects the people who are being persecuted, but sends a message to the whole society.

Some of us, our names, you know, we're on lists and and were being directly threatened, while others made decisions of conscience and conviction that they wanted to continue in the organization.

In order to do that, that meant that they had to leave the country.

You know, when you have to pack your bag and leave, uh it doesn't just affect you, it like affects your whole family.

And you start wondering, like, did you make decisions selfishly?

Um

and you know, even like we have a colleague whose father has been in prison for over a year without trial, and like some of the family blames her.

The truth of it is, though, is like when a government decides that they can violate the rights of one group of people, they've already decided that they can violate the rights of everybody.

So, also, Ben, we learned last week that the Trump administration has brokered a deal between Venezuela and El Salvador that saw 10 American citizens in permanent residence, including Davy Seale, and this guy was a kite surfer, who had been held in Venezuela as political prisoners, exchanged for the 252 Venezuelans who the United States sent to El Salvador, to Naya Bukele's Sukkote mega prison in El Salvador back in March.

Venezuela's attorney general said on Monday that they would open an investigation into Bukele and the Salvadoran government for the alleged mistreatment of these men while at Sukkot.

And so we're slowly going to learn more and more, I think, about the horrors that were inflicted on these men because the fucking United States sent them down there.

So Ben, you know, look, I'm obviously very happy that these Americans were freed.

I'm elated that, you know, these

Venezuelans are out of this nightmare prison torture chamber.

But, you know, it doesn't mean they're safe now that they're in Venezuela.

I think we should have to remember that.

Most of these people sought asylum in the U.S.

because they were fleeing persecution in Venezuela.

And, you know, I just wanted to leave listeners and you with a thought, which is like Venezuela, El Salvador, these are terrible governments, horrible leaders, gross human rights violators, not people that I think we want to be in bed with.

But just step back and think for a second how differently the U.S.

treats these two countries.

We're sanctioning the life out of Venezuela for decades while propping up Bukele and El Salvador, this fascist, Bitcoin-loving autocrat who like openly trolls our system, our values, and is like takes joy in it, seemingly.

None of this makes sense.

Yeah.

And I should say, like the Trump people are, you know, look, it's good that Americans are out of prison in Venezuela, but if like the price of that shouldn't be that a bunch of Venezuelans who came to the United States legally, right, there's temporary protected status, had to be tortured or detained in some horrific conditions and then sent back to Venezuela.

Like, that's not a win.

That's like Trump doing something awful and, you know, doing some transaction at the end of the awful thing that he did.

So let's not like kind of cast this as some stroke of genius.

Further empowers Bukele, too, as this kind of intermediary between us and Latin America.

So we are now engaging with Latin America through this complete autocrat who just throws people in prison, disappears them.

Some of those people don't even know why they're there.

Their families don't know why they're there.

They don't know when they're going to get out.

That's who we're dealing with.

And look, America has a higher bar in Latin America given our history.

This is going to hit all of the worst buttons of American double standards and hypocrisy and imperialism in our hemisphere.

Because, you know, this is what we used to do when we had coups down there or we supported autocrats or death squads down there.

And so it just completely puts the lie to this rhetoric that is only used against Venezuela and Cuba, the leftist governments that are autocratic down there, and that are not at all used when it comes to Bukele, who's embraced.

And then it's made even worse when like the normal democracies like Brazil that are just trying to protect themselves against autocracy or just trying to enforce their laws, then they're messed with because Trump would rather they be a right-wing autocracy.

So the message to the world is, A, we're full of shit.

And B, insofar as we have a preference, the preference is for a right-wing autocrat, not a democratic government.

Yeah.

Speaking of the U.S.

sending a message to the world that we're full of shit, let's turn to Gaza because life in Gaza continues to be hell on earth for the Palestinians who are living there.

So, Ben, the U.N.

estimates that since May, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food.

The majority of those deaths happened near aid hubs set up by this weird kind of Israeli-American organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, which was set up to replace UNRWA, to replace the UN, but has very sketchy origins and is doing a horrendous job of food distribution.

As we're recording on Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry reported that just at the last 24 hours, at least 72 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.

Gaza's health ministry also says that 101 people, including 80 children, have died of starvation in recent days.

15 of those deaths, including four children, happened in the last 24 hours.

The UN World Food Program reports that almost 100,000 women and children in the enclave are suffering from, quote, severe, acute malnutrition.

On Monday, the IDF moved into Deir al-Bala, a town in central Gaza that has somehow avoided Israeli ground operations over the last, what, 20 months, 21 months or so since the war started, but now residents have been ordered to evacuate.

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, quote, the area of Gaza under displacement orders or within Israeli militarized zones has risen to 87.8%, leaving 2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12% of the strip where essential services have collapsed.

In the face of all this, Ben, 28 countries got together to release a joint statement condemning the humanitarian situation in Gaza and calling for a, quote, immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire.

Among the signatories was the UK.

We wanted to play a clip from British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on the BBC talking about the statement and the situation generally.

And you see them shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days.

Of course Britain must call it out.

Of course Britain must lead others in the statement as I did yesterday to call it out.

Of course we must get on the phone and we must urge Israel to think again as I did again yesterday.

And we will continue to pressure, we will continue to act, we will continue to urge this Israeli government to listen to 83% of its public who are urging them now to move to a ceasefire so those hostages can come out.

So Ben, I mean, you kind of live

online like I do and read about this all the time.

And it's just like day after day after day, you're just bombarded with images of people who are massacred.

in food lines.

A kindergarten class in Gaza was bombed by the IDF the other day.

There are images of starving children, children who have starved to death, their bodies, you know, are posted on social media.

I mean, I reached out to Faro Sidwa, who you talked to on the show, just like the ER doctor

who had, you know, volunteered his time in Gaza just to check in and say, hey, and he was like telling me about it some of his colleagues there are passing out while performing surgeries because they're starving.

The AFP, the media organization, put out a statement where they're concerned about their journalists starving to death.

I mean, the situation, it's like so dire and has been for so long that it just, it's so demoralizing.

You feel like nothing would change.

And so

it's nice to hear a statement like that from

David, like just to hear the outrage in his voice.

I guess the question I have for the UK, for the U.S.

government's a lost cause for a couple of years, but the UK and others is like, at what point do we think that tone translates into more actions, like more cutting off of wetman shipments, more cutting off of intelligence support or diplomatic support, or even maybe veering it to sanctions or other pressure?

Because, you know, I think we, a while back, we covered the UK putting some restrictions on certain like kind of dual-use exports to Israel.

But, you know, Oxfam says the UK provides 15% of components used in the F-35 fighter jet that the Israelis use to bomb places in Gaza, for example, or components for drones.

So there's a lot more actions they could take if they wanted to.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think this statement reflects the fact that the rest of the world, probably more so than the United States, is seeing what is happening in Gaza and the depth to which this is sunk.

And, you know, to put this in context, we've heard a lot of times over the last few months, like on the precipice of famine, like this is now the appearance of a famine.

Like people are starving to death right now.

The most vulnerable people are going to be children or the elderly, but it's affecting everybody.

And I think we should also be clear, it's not like because of nature, you know, and it's not because of Hamas.

This is Israeli government policies creating this famine.

There was a quote that stuck out to me.

It was by a guy named Alex DeWal, who runs the World Peace Foundation at Tusk, but he also wrote a book called Mass Starvation, The History and Future of Famine, so he knows about this.

And he said, I've been working on this field of famine, food crisis, and humanitarian action for more than 40 years.

And there is no case over those four decades of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.

They have blocked off any food getting in.

Ask yourself why baby formula has to be blocked off.

What is Hamas going to do with the baby formula?

They have

tried to essentially cripple the ability of UNRWA, the main aid organization, to operate.

They've set up this Potemkin fake aid organization with a bunch of military contractors that when people go to it, they shoot them.

So I just don't know what other information people need to get about this.

Systematic attack on health infrastructure.

Yes.

So while people are starving, they're also destroying the health infrastructure.

So there's nowhere for anybody to go.

You're right.

The statement is good, but if I'm the UK, like there's steps you can take to stop providing any military assistance to Israel.

If I'm the EU, there's steps you can take.

Like you could terminate the EU-Israel trade agreement that is being pursued.

You could sanction officials that you know are participating in this policy.

So I think you could see more out of Europe and other places.

The reason they're probably not doing it is because they're afraid of Trump.

I mean, like I have to say, like the UK probably is worried that if they go there, then Trump will punish them.

So the U.S., I don't expect the U.S.

to do the right thing, but it's even worse than that because I do kind of, I mean, they may be doing it for their own reasons too, but it certainly doesn't help, let's just say, when the U.S.

is not a part of statements like that.

Let's say if you're the EU and you sanctioned someone like Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister who's openly floating this ethnic cleansing campaign for Gaza, right?

I mean, I think you're right.

There probably would be some sort of retaliation from Donald Trump.

I mean, he's sanctioning the life out of Brazil or threatening to

over far less.

So it's incredibly frustrating, Ben.

But, you know, like to counter these statements and these horrors that we're seeing on social media every day,

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is like spinning out there full time and even started kind of an unusual PR campaign.

Recently sat down with the Nelk Boys for their podcast, Full Send.

So for those not familiar, the Nelk Boys are this group of like Canadian-American YouTubers that kind of combine like pranks, frat, culture, and humor in celebrity interviews into a very stupid but very popular product.

Tommy, can I just ask you something?

Am I like super middle-aged?

Because I didn't know who these guys were.

Like, should I know who the Nelk brothers are?

Did you know who they were?

I only knew who they were.

So it's the Nelk Boys.

It's an acronym.

I only knew who they were because of the Trump context.

I watched their interview with Netanyahu and I like.

I'm not trying to be mean, but I was genuinely shocked by how stupid and kind of uncharismatic uncharismatic they were.

Like often, look, often you watch a YouTuber like, you know, the Paul brothers or something, and you kind of like see the charisma.

You understand why people watch them.

Even someone like a Tucker Carlson, right?

Like I disagree with him on everything, but he's an incredibly compelling broadcaster for some reason.

You can kind of get why he built an audience.

These dudes, I'm just

kind of floored.

I don't get it.

But so we watched this Nen Yahoo interview.

It's the first one.

And again, like.

In fairness to them, right?

Like they were out of their depth.

They're interviewing a prime minister.

They don't know anything about the issues.

They know it's going to be be controversial.

Right.

So I'm sure they were like approaching it with some trepidation.

This wasn't like farting on your buddy and running away.

And they did it at the Blair House.

So I assume this was kind of set up with them by the Trump administration.

But Ben, we want to do a little super cut for the audience because no one should have to suffer through this whole thing of some of their most incisive questioning of Netanyahu.

This is a little bit longer than usual, but we thought it was

important for you to hear

Edward R.

Murrows over here.

Here we go.

This is so crazy.

We are so not qualified to do this

that's what's interesting about this we're just not we just should not be doing this we're journalists right we're tech yeah i mean we're technically journalists how can you pass up this opportunity at the end of the day i think there's never been a friend like donald trump in the in the white house for israel he said he'll make america great again he's already done it you know america is widely admired now around the world.

You guys are very tight, right?

Would you call it a bromance?

Well, you might.

And where there's no daylight between an American president and an Israeli prime minister, amazing things can happen.

Did you have any type of relationship with Biden?

Not the same.

I don't agree with everything he did, but Obama's still cool.

Look, first of all, Obama was...

Like he has aura.

You know what that means?

Yeah, I do.

Tel Aviv is one of the, you know, the most open, liberal-minded city on earth.

Israel is a high school.

He visited there, yeah.

That's completely different.

Our assistant was gay, too.

He had a good time.

I'd say there's a lot of American support from the females, from the gays, towards Palestine.

So, how does that make any sense?

You know,

gays for Gaza is like

chickens for KFC.

Iran tried to assassinate President Trump, not once, but twice.

They were behind those assassination attempts.

What's your go-to at McDonald's?

No, I'll tell you: Burger King.

We did the, you know, the double.

Yeah, the double.

I haven't ripped Burger King.

Burger King kind of sucks.

Yeah.

My dream guess is Kim Jong-un.

Kim Jong-un, if you're watching this, this is kind of like to come to North Korea and interview you.

All I could speak about is the interview.

I'm so down to pull up to Moscow and interview Putin, too.

Yeah.

We'll do everybody.

Okay.

So it's worth noting that I think this interview went over very badly with their audience.

They were getting shit on in their own chat.

Hazan Piker like pulled up into their stream was kind of like guys, what are you doing?

They're right about Burger King.

McDonald's is way better.

It's insane to go to Burger King.

Netanyahu keeps trying to say, so saying that the Iranians were behind both assassinations of Donald Trump.

So he's saying that Crooks, the kid who shot the like, you know, intel kind of gamer dude in Pennsylvania that shot Trump in the ear was Iranian back.

There's no evidence of that.

No other law enforcement has suggested that, but he says it over and over again.

He said it on Fox News at Brett Baer.

He says it to the Nelk Boys.

You can tell they think that's what he's implying there, even if what he would, what he would, you know, if you pressed him, he'd be like, oh, no, no, no.

I'm just saying there was plots, right?

That's been widely discussed.

But

I don't know.

I don't know if that was a successful PR effort for Netanyahu.

What was your take?

I mean, my main, I actually watched this too because it was like, I couldn't look away.

And my main take is that if you want like a manifestation of the combination of stupid, tragic, and dangerous that the world has become in 2025, the Nelk Boys talking to Bibi Nanyahu about his Trump romance in Blair House

would be, you know, a pretty good candidate for the time capsule.

I mean, it does, what's interesting to me about it, Tommy, is why did this happen?

So it's pretty clear that Israel and Nanyau and some of their friends in the United States are aware that they have a massive fucking problem with young people

around the world, everywhere, right?

And that shows up in the polling in the U.S.

It shows up in the polling even worse in other parts of the world.

And so they somehow think that the kind of same playbook that worked for Trump a little bit with young people, let's put him on some podcasts, is going to somehow work the magic for Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu.

And

I just don't really think that,

you know,

he presents as a guy that you want to spend time with, which as you taught me a long time ago is what a podcast is all about.

I also just want to say, I love that the, like, you could sense with the Obama question that he, he literally cannot say a single nice thing about Obama.

So he just kind of just acted like it didn't happen, happen, you know?

Yeah,

it was the beginning was like, oh, this like love fast about how great Trump is.

And then the answer with Biden was just like so tepid.

And it was just

anyway, you could tell BB and any guy, I would just love to stomp.

Guess what?

There was no daylight between Biden and BB on policy.

I mean, there was on some rhetoric.

And guess what the reward is for Biden?

He's got like, you know, BB dunking on him to the Nelk boys about how Trump is better, right?

It's a message to Democrats.

Like,

I mean,

you don't have to say this every week, but like, why are you getting in bed with this guy?

He doesn't like you.

He's not your friend.

And he's a bad guy.

He's going to hate you.

This guy I follow on Twitter and know in real life, Jordan Ewell tweeted,

he quote unquote, quote, tweeted a clip from this.

He said, we asked a guy doing a genocide why people say he's starving people.

And like, low-key, he said it's cap.

And

summed up the interview well.

Okay, Ben.

So again, for those who missed it, we did this YouTube exclusive on Friday that came out over the weekend, breaking down a lot of stories, including the Israeli strikes on Syria and what's going on in Syria, all the sort of sectarian conflict there.

So if you want to dig deeper, check that out.

But the sort of short version is that there is sectarian violence in southern Syria that is getting worse and worse and worse.

It's between the Druze community, which also has a significant population in Israel, and these Bedouin tribes.

Syria's president Ahmed al-Shara sent Syrian troops down to the south to try to quell the violence, but the soldiers he sent seem to have done the exact opposite.

They conducted executions of some Druze, including civilians, including one American.

There was burning and looting of homes.

It was pretty horrific.

And then the Israelis,

who have launched airstrikes on Damascus and on military convoys heading south, ostensibly to protect the Druze, but also because they didn't like the idea of more Syrian troops near their border.

That is...

seemingly like poor gas on a really scary situation.

And so this whole situation, including the Israeli intervention, seems to have caught the Trump administration by surprise, or at least off guard is what Carolyn Levitt, the press secretary, says.

Now, Barack Ravid over at Axios had a story where, you know, he talked to some administration officials on background about the Israeli interventions in Syria, and they seemed quite mad.

They're saying things like, quote, Bibi acted like a madman.

He bombs everything all the time.

And the feeling is that every day there is something new.

What the fuck?

There was an interview with the Associated Press.

This guy, Tom Barrick, who's Trump's ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria and longtime supporter, said that Israel's attacks, quote, create another very confusing chapter and came at a very bad time.

He also, you know, Barrick also reaffirmed the administration's support for this new Syrian government.

So for now, a ceasefire agreed to over the weekend seems to be holding, but this story seems like it's far from over.

Ben, I just thought it was interesting on this issue.

Trump is clearly annoyed at Netanyahu and more willing to be critical of him, though per usual, they're not actually doing anything to reign anyone involved in, but it was just, it's always interesting kind of like when they decide to slap BB around.

Yeah, I mean, two things.

I mean, we talked about this a bit, but the one thing I'd add is that like they're always going to be, you know, in this transition period, there's always going to be a danger that you'd have some kind of sectarian violence inside of Syria.

The challenge for the Syrian government and for all the communities there is to channel conflict into politics.

Not everybody has to agree.

People are going to be arguing over resources.

People are going to be arguing over rights and autonomy and things like that.

But you want that to be done on a peaceful political basis.

And that is why bombing Syria is what, which is what Israel is doing, is not constructive because

it introduces violence as a legitimate means of trying to resolve these differences.

So that's yet another reason

this needs to be put into a process.

What I think is going on here, Syria is very important to the other Arab states, including the Gulf Arab states who Trump cares a lot about.

Barak, the guy who's the envoy, Tom Barak, he's super tight with the Gulf Arabs, particularly the Emiratis.

And that's probably why he's in that role.

They're already in trouble.

with some of their own publics for not doing more in Gaza to try to help the Palestinians.

Some of them are in trouble with their publics for the Abram Accords, which is perceived rightly as having sold out the Palestinians.

If this spreads to Syria, well, not only are they going to be dealing with the risk of Syria descending back into a civil war, which they don't want, but it makes them look even further feckless.

So I think what has Trump's backup here is that his Gulf Arab buddies, remember Trump announced the lifting of sanctions on Syria as a gift to Mohammed bin Salman when he was in Saudi Arabia.

And we said that was the right thing to do.

It is the right thing to do.

But like, what's the point of lifting sanctions if the place is getting bombed?

You know, people aren't going to invest in a country that's getting bombed.

So, I think that's part of why you see this

useful activism from the Trump administration on this one.

Yeah, I hope they are pressing hard privately and getting it out to actually take some actions here because this is crazy to just bomb your neighbors constantly.

All right, we're going to take a quick break.

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Oh, wow.

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All right, a couple more stories before you get to Ben's interview.

So we wanted to walk you guys through this shocking story out of the UK about how one very unfortunate error by a defense official in the United Kingdom put thousands of people in Afghanistan at risk and could end up costing the British government billions of pounds.

So I'll try to summarize this as quickly as possible.

It's very, it's a lot of twists and turns here.

So as listeners know, the UK fought side by side with us in Afghanistan, took a lot of casualties,

and they worked with a lot of Afghans on the ground, especially in Halman province, people who served as interpreters, drivers, and more.

And then after the Taliban takeover, they had a process in place to try to get as many of the people that worked with their troops, their spies, their diplomats, out of the country and away from Taliban retribution or possible Taliban retribution.

Now, in the winter of 2022, a defense official in the UK working on that resettlement program sent an email that he thought included like information about 150 applicants to this kind of like asylum or refugee process, but inadvertently included the information of almost 19,000 people who had applied for resettlement in the UK, as well as information, Afghans, that is, 19,000 Afghans, as well as information about like 100 spies, special forces troops, and military officers, presumably testimonials from people who worked with some of these Afghan nationals.

Now, I don't understand, Ben, how this could exist on like an unclassified system, but that's what happened.

So apparently the British government didn't figure this out right away.

It took them about a year and a half until they realized what happened when someone in Afghanistan posted names, 10 names from that database on Facebook and then threatened to leak the rest.

That's when the British kind of woke up to this and they realized they'd essentially handed the Taliban like a massive enemies list that they could go through for retribution if they wanted to.

And then I think some press found out about it.

And so the government, seeing this crisis that they had to solve, went to the court to get an injunction to stop any reporting on this issue.

The judge complied and even upgraded their order to what's called a super injunction, which prevented the press from reporting on the existence of the gag order at all, put them in a very difficult situation.

The UK government then set up this secret program called the Afghan Relocation Route, or ARR.

That has brought over about 4,500 Afghans.

There's 900 applicants, 3,600 family members, and then another 2,400 on the way.

And resettling just that fraction of the total list already has cost over a billion dollars.

So it's a very expensive process.

And then after the election last summer, Keir Starmer, who didn't even know about this challenge because of this super injunction, his labor government takes over.

They inherit this mess.

Labor commissions a new study by the Ministry of Defense.

That study kind of looks deeper into, you know, what has happened since the Taliban takeover and this leak, and they conclude it's highly unlikely that someone affected by the leak would be targeted by the Taliban.

And their report went so far as to call this sort of Afghan relocation route scheme disproportionate.

I think they realized, you know, there's lots of other ways for the Taliban to figure out who had worked with the British government, stuff like bank records, yada, yada.

So this conclusion that the risk was lower than what they thought led to the lifting of the super injunction last week, revealing the news of the breach in the ARR to the public.

It meant it could be briefed to parliament, talked about in parliament, and then obviously all these Afghans knew that their identities had been leaked.

It created this terrible situation, Ben, where like, you know, the super injunction had shut down

like debate or any sense of accountability or any kind of democratic process around a very important issue.

And,

you know, it was just sort of a mess and like untenable.

So folks in Afghanistan are terrified.

The British government has apologized, but obviously not solved the problem yet.

The whole thing got politicized because it's swept into the sort of UK's anti-immigrant debates.

Nigel Farage and his right-wing,

the anti-immigrant reform UK Party has started demagoguing the issue, claiming that the British government has admitted sex offenders, which is disgraceful and just a lie, as far as we can tell.

So this is a huge mess.

It's a political challenge for labor, created under the Tories, but now it's, you know, the labor is to deal with.

So Ben, like, obviously I think in like sort of, I've been learning about this in real time too.

Obviously, it was right for the government to scramble when they learned about this data breach to create a plan to resettle all of these people in case there was horrible reprisal violence.

But in reality, it does seem like the risk has been far lower.

Obviously, you have to kind of listen to the concerns concerns of the public in terms of where they are on the issue of resettlement.

Like,

what do you make of this?

What do you think the right course of action is now?

I mean, the original sin is the U.K.

and the U.S.

and other countries not having a more coherent plan to do mass resettlement.

You know, you had this kind of hurried evacuation, a bunch of people got resettled, and then a whole bunch of other people just got stuck in limbo.

Some in like third countries,

some you know, they were in Pakistan.

They were getting deported back into Afghanistan, et cetera.

So that's.

In part because the Trump administration crippled the SIV process in the U.S., in the State Department, to try to, because Stephen Miller didn't want any of these people, even the heroic Afghans who helped our troops, et cetera.

He didn't want them coming here.

So they like killed it with bureaucracy.

Yeah.

And then, you know.

Then there's a sin of sending this email, which my God, I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to realize you sent that.

Look,

I usually support transparency.

I understood the impulse to try to quash this thing and resettle as many people as you could while trying to minimize risk.

I don't think that's like a permanent solution, though.

That's like a band-aid you put on a problem.

And that ultimately,

even with that kind of gag order, like the Taliban, you know, we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that they're a bunch of unsophisticated rubes, you know?

Yeah, right.

Well, they're such unsophisticated rubes.

Why are they running Afghanistan?

Like they have

ways, I'm sure, of like learning this information.

They're friends with the Russians, whomever, you know, so you have to assume after a given, and I bet the British, I don't know what their intelligence community found, they may have found that the Taliban already knows this, so we might as well lift this injunction.

I don't know if that's true, but that's possible.

So

I don't know.

I think that now the point is that like there still has to be a methodical plan to resettle as many of these people as possible.

The U.S., unfortunately, is probably starting to deport some of these people.

You have some very inspiring stories of like veterans organizing to accompany Afghans in this country who are going to ICE interviews.

I think that's great.

It shouldn't just be on veterans, though.

I think that's the kind of thing other Americans who've cared about this should do.

But

to me, it's just yet another indicator of how poor the kind of planning and execution was on Afghan evacuation and resettlement.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's,

it also sort of explains, you know, remember the Labor Party top officials kept talking about like billion-dollar holes in the budgets that they weren't aware of that, you know, hadn't, and like clearly they were talking about this the whole time and they just had to talk around it because of this super injunction.

Yeah, yeah, which is like a thing that just doesn't exist in our system.

Like I couldn't

imagine.

Every now and then you learn something about the British system and how powerful like the government can be.

Like they don't draw a lot of distinction to between domestic spying and

this Palestine action group being banned as a terrorist organization.

Like there's, yeah, there's a, there's a reason we had a revolution in this country.

Yeah, rein it in over there, guys.

All right, let's turn to Japan then.

On Sunday, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in charge for 65 of the last 70 years, suffered another electoral defeat.

This time it was in the upper house of parliament.

The LDP, they lost their majority in the lower house last October.

So this is like defeat after defeat.

That means Prime Minister Ishiba is the leader of an even smaller minority government, though maybe he won't be leader for long as some members of his party are calling on him to resign.

So Ishiba is, he says he wants to remain prime minister because he wants to continue tariff negotiations with the Trump administration.

Remember, the Trump said he's going to, he might slap a 25% tariff on Japan starting on August 1st.

So this deadline is looming.

The voters in this election were furious about the cost of food, especially rice.

They were mad about tariffs.

They were mad about taxes and the growing cost of caring for Japan's aging population, especially as the birth rate is falling.

But as we've seen in so many parts of the world, Ben, the big trend out of this election wasn't like, you know, a swing from one party to another.

It was the rise of new political parties, especially anti-establishment nationalist parties.

In particular, the Democratic Party for the People, which is a new party, which more than doubled, or newish party, which more than doubled their seats in the upper house.

And then there's the more extreme San Ceto Party, which won 13 seats on Sunday before it just had two in the upper house.

So San Cato gained a following online for anti-vaccine and anti-masking content, which feels very familiar.

And the party's leaders drew inspiration from Trump's quote-unquote bold political style.

They also talk about a Japanese first agenda.

And they warned, some of the leaders have warned against a quote silent invasion of foreigners to the country.

There's about 4 million foreign residents in Japan in 2024, which is a record, but it's still only 3% of the country's overall population.

So, Ben, it's just amazing how consistent a lot of these stories are.

You know, I mean, people are just mad as hell.

Inflation is a problem.

It's anti-establishment.

They're looking to

new parties and mostly to nationalism.

And then also,

I'm just struck by how often you hear about a country with a declining birth rate.

It could be Japan.

It could be

immigrants.

Yeah.

Yes.

Staring down the barrel of like a demographic disaster, while simultaneously you see the rise of these anti-immigrant political parties.

It tells you something kind of like very racist and dark about where these feelings are coming from.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the

lead takeaway, right, is inflation, cost of living continues to be the driving force against incumbents around the world.

Canada and Australia kind of bucked it in part because of the Trump effect there, but like this clearly mattered here.

The fact that we're exporting stupid, you know, with like Japan first and, you know, this Trump stuff is kind of depressing.

You know,

I will say that these people are going to have trouble actually governing and they're still not actually in control of the government.

But but the one of the few times in those 70 years where you had non-LDP government was you'll remember Tommy in the first Obama term yep when I think it was the Democratic Party and we had I think four different prime ministers in like four years

and part of the reason why is the Japanese system is so kind of wired to be governed by the LDP that these people if non-LDP people get in they have a hard time kind of pulling levers and making things work so it would take much longer than one election for Japan to kind of move away from this LTP dominance of politics.

But, you know, this definitely bears watching because if particularly if the U.S.

starts to kind of withdraw from its alliance with Japan, you know, Japan's going to start to look for other political approaches.

And it bears noting, we've said this about Germany.

Never good when the far right gets traction in Japan.

Never.

That is generally not ended well in the past.

So here's hoping that this is only a kind of temporary swing in this direction.

Yeah.

Three more quick things, Ben.

So last week we talked in great detail about like Trump flip-flopping on sending weapons to Ukraine.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Germany is going to send, I think, five Patriot missile batteries, the missile defense systems, to Ukraine.

The U.S.

will then backfill those.

We kind of made the deal all work because I think the U.S.

moved Germany up in terms of its list of prioritization to sell these systems.

So that's a little bit of good news for folks in Ukraine

as they're...

going under like sustained assault from Russian troops.

And then, Ben, a couple of quicker things.

So last week, France's prime minister, François Beiroux, proposed several ways for the country to save about 44 billion euros.

So France is currently facing this huge budget deficit.

It violates the EU's budget rules, so they have to make some changes.

Unfortunately, one of Beirut's proposed solutions was axing to French holidays.

So it's Easter Monday and VE Day from the calendar.

Both of those dates fall in May, which just sounds incredible.

It just means your spring starts off with like long weekend after a long weekend.

So Ben, I can totally understand where the government is coming from on this one and like kind of the tough financial situation they're in and like the EU rules and how that could, it's, it's, it's a real problem.

Um, and they don't just get to print money like we do over here.

But, um, I also could really respect the French people for fighting tooth and nail on this stuff, right?

Because, like, once you agree to fewer days off, or you get rid of like the 35-hour work week, or you agree to a

later retirement age, it's never coming back.

You know what I mean?

Fight while you can.

It's a reminder that Macron is a pretty big figure globally, but I think his approval rating too is like bottoming out below like 20%.

It's like the lowest it's ever been.

So people do not like these reforms and this always happens.

And there's usually street protests.

You know, maybe

leave VE Day alone.

I want to just one thing about Ukraine is that another weird thing that's happening in this new you know, shift in winds is some worrying signs inside of their country.

Yeah.

today we should dig into that we'll do it next week but they basically Zelensi dismantled the anti-corruption unit in Ukraine

and I worry that this might be kind of a Trump effect right like everybody's got to be a strongman now right and and so that bears watching too Yeah,

unsettling stuff.

Finally, Ben, just an update on North Korea.

So listeners might remember about how a few weeks back we talked about this new resort town in North Korea that was opening up, the one we couldn't wait to go to, maybe do a live show, maybe send a friend.

It was called the Wonsan Kama Coastal Tour Zone.

It was designed to attract both domestic and foreign tourism, though, you know, probably only like Chinese and Russian tourists to this waterfront packed with like hotels and this water park.

And there's this weird video of like Kim Jong-un watching people go down a water slide.

Apparently, some Russian travelers visited last week, but the BBC reports that the area is now off-limits to foreign tourists.

We don't know why.

We certainly regret mailing cash to Pyongyang as our down payment for our rooms.

You're not You're not going to do that twice.

And the second story that caught our eye out of North Korea then was the world's most reliable newspaper, the U.S.

Sun, reports: quote, frigerating Kim Jong-un, sparing no expense to get hands on Ozempic.

This is a report about how Kim Jong-un is struggling with his weight.

And South Korean spies have allegedly clocked attempts by the regime to bulk buy the GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Artemonjoro, for the prolific binge-eater, drinker, and smoker.

And I have to say, good for him, right?

Like he guy looks like a walking advertisement for gout.

But the article quotes a North Korean observer who speculates that Kim Jong-un is likely to test the waters first by administering the drugs to like test subjects to gauge its side effects, which seems a little unnecessary because he could just do like that Instagram before and after thing for basically anyone in Hollywood.

But I guess what I would say is good luck with your procurement, sir.

Good luck with your health journey.

We wish you the best.

He did, I noticed in the videos, because I love this

resort propaganda they put out.

And when he's there, like watching the kid go down the guy, go down the water slide and stuff, he always has like a pack of smokes right next to him, you know, which is like I kind of, you know, he's the one world leader.

He's just like burning a heater, you know, loves ripping six while watching like people perform stunts for him or something.

It also, I read more about this.

It was pointed out by one of these travel blogs

that

people don't want to go to North Korea to go to like a resort.

Like they actually, what you want to go, you want to go to like Pyongyang and see like how totally it's like the Potempkin weirdness.

Yeah, if you want to go to a place with like water slides and a beach, like there's plenty of options without having to go to North Korea.

And I guess we're going to be able to do that.

The Nelk Boys are going to go to this resort.

I just realized they're going to do a live pod.

Now that's the content we need.

I need that.

The Nelk Boys.

Send those puds down this water slide.

You got to look at the best part of the Nelk Boys interview is one of them,

like,

he had something weird going on with his collar.

Like, he had a really big tie, maybe, under the collar, and it was just

a little bit of a drink.

Did they wear ties all the time, or was that like them dressing up for a practice?

One of them did.

The other looked like a 12-year-old boy whose dad dressed him up for church in adult-size clothes.

Because one of the things I've learned on this podcast is it's better to just dress how you normally dress.

Dress like yourself.

Yeah, I've been underdressing my whole life.

Okay, we went a little long today because we like talking to you guys.

Thank you for listening.

We're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, you will hear Ben's interview about the latest protests and political developments in Kenya.

So stick around for that.

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Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome Narema Waka-Ojiwa to the podcast.

She's a Kenyan political analyst and the executive director of Siasa Place, which helps young people engage in politics.

Narima, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Okay, so we wanted to have this conversation to really

catch all of our listeners and viewers up to speed on what has been a very challenging time in Kenya.

This is the second summer in a row that we've seen mass protests last year.

These were sparked by proposed tax increases by President Ruto, which would have raised taxes on things like basic food and necessities for ordinary people.

In those protests, at least 63 people were killed.

70 protesters were abducted by plainclothes police officers.

We should say that at least 26 are still missing.

These were dubbed the Gen Z protest and ultimately succeeded in getting Ruto to to withdraw the bill.

That was last year.

Narima, can you tell us what the protests are about this year and how they compare to what happened last year?

This year, a lot of us were very observant in terms of what's the finance bill going to contain.

We noticed that Parliament was super silent.

We didn't know much about what was within the bill.

And they tried their best not to anger the public.

So, this year was a little bit different because there was going to be a memorialization in terms of the young people who were lost last year in the protest on June 25th because the cases are still ongoing.

Rex Masai was the first to be shot on June 20th, and his case is still currently ongoing one year on.

And we still don't know the police officer who shot him, and no one is being held accountable.

So, a few things happened this year.

We had Alfred Ojuang, who is a teacher, and he put up a post on his social media about corruption happening in the police force.

And he was picked up from his home in Homabay, which is the western part of the country, transported by road, about 300 kilometers, to the CBD, which is Nairobi, our capital, and he was put at Central Police Station and basically beaten to death.

And we still don't have answers as to who is responsible for beating this young man, this young father, to death.

So the protests this year, the trigger was actually Alfred, because people went to the streets demanding answers.

Yet again, it's people demanding accountability, talking about corruption, and we are not seeing the government doing anything about it.

And we also witnessed during that protest in terms of Alfred, there was a young man, a vendor, he was selling masks on the streets, and he didn't run anywhere.

And he was shot in the head by a police officer on live TV.

And he died about two weeks later.

Again, police brutality.

So it brought about this tension amongst young people.

And we saw the numbers, you know, grow.

There were so many people who tried to come to the protests, but the police had cordoned off the CBD.

And not only was it happening in Nairobi, so last year it happened in about four different cities, four different counties.

This year it happened in 25.

25.

And so it shows you how the movement is growing and how the public uproar continues to grow.

So it sounds like, you know, if last year the trigger was the finance bill, the tax increases, this year it's more about the kind of totality of state repression, corruption.

What is your sense

of how much of this violence is a strategy of the government versus a strategy of police?

You know, we've seen Ruto

call for protesters to be shot in the legs.

We've seen the Interior Minister talk about the protests being, quote, terrorism disguised as dissent.

Is there a sense that this is kind of state-sponsored violence to suppress protests?

Or is this police brutality on its own?

What is the impression there?

So, on June 18th, that's the time people went to the streets for Alfred.

And I was there and I noticed something different.

They were goons, and these are basically hired, you know, thieves and gangs that are used to intimidate, threaten, especially peaceful protesters.

And they came into town on motorcycles, and some of them carrying really big sticks, batons, and they were beating people.

And the police just stood there and watched.

So, this is also something that we have never seen before, because I remember the front covers of our national papers just basically saying, How are goons being protected by the police?

Now, something that's very important to remember is Sabah Sabah.

So, July 7th is also a very important day for us here in Kenya.

So, that's the day in, you know, in the 90s where we had activists go to the streets basically pushing for multi-partisan because we were under a dictator, our president, Daniel Arab Moy.

And it was in that period after that massive protest where 20 people were killed that he decided to repeal Section 2A in our constitution, which allowed for people to register different parties because then he was the only one who had a party in our country.

This was a day that was also symbolic.

So even though there was violence, you know, June 18th, there was violence, June 25th, people still wanted to come to the streets July 7th and to commemorate July 7th and basically say, we have lost our rights, our democratic rights as young people to freedom, to freedom of expression.

And what was met on that day and still counting, 40 people were killed.

They were shot by the police.

So it's double the number that we witnessed in the 90s.

And I would say that, you know, we've also seen cabinet secretaries, interior minister Murkomen, speaking and saying, you know, telling the police, shoot, you know, kill.

We will protect you.

Nothing will happen to you.

And when you have cases of 12-year-olds, Bridget Joki, she was killed.

at home watching television because in the 90s they would stand on the rooftops and just basically spray bullets to scare the public to go back into their houses so they wouldn't protest.

And these bullets, stray bullets, are the ones that are killing people.

We have so many cases of stray bullets killing kids.

And we've seen so many funerals of children because of stray bullets.

And we are not seeing.

any accountability.

So remember when I talked about karaoke, the mask vendor being shot at the back of the head?

This police officer actually uploaded a TikTok dancing and the Kenyan people were like, how come he's not being arrested?

What's going on?

It's actually young Kenyans on social media that found his identity in 15 minutes using AI,

using different angles that people had from their cell phones and forcing institutions to take accountability and arrest him.

This guy was roaming free that day while karaoke was fighting for his life in a main hospital here in the city.

So the tactics that the state is using at the moment is they are arresting young people very randomly.

And I'm part of a campaign where we are actually crowdsourcing for bail money.

And the kind of bail money we're talking about is $3,000,

you know, for someone to be able to have access to bail.

And we're talking about the average family living on a dollar a day how is someone going to be able to afford a bail of three thousand dollars and some of the charges that they are putting on these young kids because some of them are 17 we had the youngest being 14 in state prison so some of the youngest are being charged with terrorism now This is a particular law that came into effect in 2012 because a situation that we had with Somalia and they were dealing with al-Shabaab.

And so it was not necessarily a law that was supposed to be utilized on the Kenyan people.

There are only 11 people who have been charged under the Terrorism Act.

And bails are so high because the charge is so high.

And we're finding that a lot of the young people in the cells, and I'm talking about over 100, we're finding the number of people who are in cells, they were not even part of protests, some of them.

Some of them were picked up because they looked like they are potential protesters.

We had three sisters picked up because they were walking home together going for dinner.

And so it's just cases of

falsely accused people being accused with terrorism.

And even today, we had seven young men accused of arson during the protests.

And then when they were released on bail, which we supported to pay, they were rearrested and they were taken to Kahawa West, which is the main court that deals with terrorism.

So now we have have a new case of seven people being charged with terrorism.

So in terms of the opposition to this,

you know, Kenya, for all of its challenges, has always, in my experience, had a pretty dynamic civil society and

a healthy,

independent press

and journalism.

Who is organizing protests?

Is there a sense of leadership or is this kind of more an organic movement of different people and organizations that are just responding to what's happening?

How is the opposition organizing itself in this period?

I would say it's still organic, and we have it's mainly millennials and Gen Zs in their communities, and they're organizing based on issues.

So, every time you see a protest, it's someone who's related to corruption, someone who put up a case against

saying that the state is misusing resources or abductions.

And I would say that it's organizing underground because we're seeing what they do as soon as you pop up.

They charge you with terrorism, they abduct you, they threaten you.

And so it is a mechanism that a lot of young people have to use to continue to remain almost invisible, just so that they continue to remain safe and the state continues continues to appear confused because now when they go and start picking groups of people, they are really trying to find out who's going to help them, who's going to pick them out,

who are people we can track, who are people we can monitor.

But it's really just Kenyan people who are supporting one another.

And when you look at the politics, you know, Ruto has

two more years until there's supposed to be an election in 2027.

You know, in the past,

throughout my time when I was in government and even after,

you had President Kenyara, but then you had Rila Odinga as the lead opposition figure who's now, I don't know, he's in his 80s.

So when you look to politics and you look to the next election or you look to elected representatives, is there a sense that there is a political party or some potential political leadership that could change things?

Or is this just a case of people trying to put pressure on the government to deal with these immediate cases?

What is your hope, if there is one, for the future of Kenyan politics?

So, very interesting things are happening in Kenya, Ben, because you know our politics and how Railau Dinga, he has shook hands with every existing president.

Yes, yes.

I was a part of some of those handshakes, yeah, yeah.

And every time he does,

it seemed to mellow down temperatures, but this time it didn't.

So he seemed to sign an agreement with Ruto.

They seemed to form an alliance broad-based, but still one year on, the protests are actually larger.

They are growing.

And so he's caught between a rock and a hard place where the bullet he always uses is not seeming to work.

So what we're seeing over the weekend, he had, you know, a presser where he basically talked about a conclave and he's calling it an intergenerational conclave.

And he's finding it very hard to sell to the public.

People are just not buying it.

You're seeing people struggling to understand what this means.

They're like, this doesn't make sense to form another commission.

And right now we've seen.

different clusters of groupings coming out and saying we support the conclave.

But I have to tell you that it's a very small group of people.

He doesn't have as much as a buy-in as he had 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.

And this is also something that he's grappling with.

And also, we've seen united opposition announce themselves.

And these are the usuals from, you know, Mati Yangi is being fronted.

Carlonzo, we've seen also Mathakarua is part of that group.

Gashagua, the former deputy president, is part of that group.

But these are all people who worked with Moi.

So again, we're seeing young people being like, no, you're not going to try and rebrand and sell us the same ideologies and expect us to fall for it.

And so what I'm excited about is we're seeing people like former CJ

Maraga.

coming out and saying he's going for president and he also launched his own website and his own you know crowdsourcing campaign which is different uh you know we lose a lot of money in our campaigns.

I think for a presidential campaign, it costs about 4 billion shillings.

We have some of the most expensive campaigns in the world.

And so, you know, a lot of people were discouraging him and saying, you don't have enough money to go for a presidential campaign.

And he said, no, mine will be funded by the people.

And there have been campaigns happening all week supporting Maraga's campaign.

People are paying as little as a dollar a day just just to make sure that they're channeling some resources toward his campaign.

And there's also Okia Mtata, who's the senator for Busia.

So we're seeing, you know, this group with Okia and CJ Maraga, who is completely different politics.

And Okia mainly talks about our debt and the audacious debt that we have as a country and how we need a public audit and change needs to be done.

And CJ Maraga talks about rule of law, how institutions need to be independent and we need to be able to follow the constitution.

And so this is what we're seeing is forming.

And I think it's still early.

I think it's still early.

I think we're going to see fresh faces entering politics.

Siasa, my organization, means politics.

I have hundreds of young people who tell me almost every day that they want to enter politics.

Political parties have been formed.

I've already received news of four in the last two days that have just been registered.

And recall.

So this is also the period where

you can recall a member of parliament who's not performing well.

And you know, our electorals and boundaries commission has already received six recall petitions.

And online, I'm seeing members of parliament people are collecting signatures.

So we're probably going to see even up to the fifties number of recalls.

People are fed up with their representatives and they're showing it now.

They feel like 2027 is just too far away and they're like, if we can get rid of them now and go for a by-election, I would rather use my energy and try than waiting for 2027 for them to finish their term.

So it sounds like it's a mixture of some

opposition politicians trying to try different approaches in fundraising, different platforms, and then also trying to bring young people

into politics to bring generational change.

Tell us a little bit about, so you mentioned a little bit about what you're doing, but what is your work like day to day

in terms of trying to get young people engaged?

And what are those young people that you're working with?

What is motivating them to get into politics?

Is it these protests or is it corruption or is it the cost of living?

What are the issues that young people care about?

It's definitely the cost of living.

You know, the unemployment rate is so high.

Kenya, I believe, is at 60%.

And even when you talk about the average population,

the average age is 19 years old.

And so a lot of people are looking for opportunities which they can't find.

And we constantly see our government saying that, you know, look abroad.

You know, we've signed agreements with Germany, you know, with the US and Saudi Arabia, go and find a job outside Kenya.

Stop looking inside.

But a lot of young people are saying, no, I want to be home, like create the opportunities at home.

And these are very educated people.

But we're also seeing a struggle with a university funding model where right now a lot of young people can't access university learning just because of how expensive it is.

So within that dynamic, we work in about 17 counties, which is like our states here.

And in those 17 counties, we mainly work on education.

educating young people about the constitution, how they can be involved through public participation, understanding county budget process, and also knowing the roles of the different levels of government.

So we work a lot with county-based youth organizations.

We work also with technical, vocational, universities, and we also work with youth groups.

And so it's people from these groups who are like, I don't think my representative is doing a good enough job.

So we have accountability campaigns where they basically look at budgets and what was built after, from something like a stadium to a cow shed to a market.

And just saying, this doesn't look like all the amount of resource was spent to build this.

So you're seeing a very active generation

that's using social media to do this accountability and having very close relationships with people who are in government.

And I'm hopeful because even for them to say

we are watching, there's going to be such a high turnover because even the star, which is one of the papers here over the weekend, said there's only a 10%

chance of elected members of MPs returning.

10% chance.

So they can already see how the ground is being very observant.

And also, people,

they're questioning if you're going to vote for someone who bribes you to vote for them.

Now look at what they've done.

So you better vote for someone who, you know, has lived with you, who understands your issues.

So that mindset has already begun to change.

and and this is a big deal because even um over the weekend in busia which is a county all the way in the west near uganda there's someone who was giving a contribution at a funeral and she said she had come with a contribution from raila and she was booed

she was told to be quiet and an actual member was told not to speak if they're coming to talk about raila so

yeah yeah Odinga.

So you can see how the public perception of politics is changing and people who were very influential are really struggling to have that public buy-in.

And you're seeing these young faces coming to the fore, very brave, very brave.

And the community is like, you know what?

Let's give these guys a chance.

Like these guys have been with us for 20 years.

We've not seen a difference.

Let's give new faces a chance.

Well, look,

that's an optimistic note to end on in terms of a generational change.

Kenya is not the only place that needs that, but it needs it badly.

If people who are listening wanted to support either your organization, Siasa, or some of these crowdsourced efforts,

are their websites, are there places they can go?

Yes.

So siasaplace.com is our website, and we are Siasaplace everywhere.

I would say definitely support the the bail.

There's also a PayPal account, which if you follow me at NeribaW, we are constantly retweeting these posters and we're still collecting resources because as much as we've had 74 young people released, I'm still counting hundreds still in the cells and we don't want these people to be stuck there just because they can't afford to get out because we know these are cases that will continue to drag and the state is just trying to to frustrate them to remain in.

So share the posters, you know, communicate with people who are in Kenya and contribute to the cause.

There's also contributions for Kenyans for Kenyans, those who are injured in the protests.

We are constantly collecting money because of the hospital bills.

That's also another place people can support and share.

Great.

Well,

we'll put some of that information in our show notes so people can find that.

But Narima, thanks so much for joining us and for all the work you're doing.

Thank you.

Thanks again to Narima Wako Ojiwa for joining the show.

And thanks to you, Ben, for potting late.

And everyone for listening.

Talk soon.

Potse of the World is a crooked media production.

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Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith.

Saul Rubin is helping out this summer.

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Jordan Cantor is our audio engineer.

Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.

Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolles, and Ryan Young.

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