Was Jeffrey Epstein an Israeli Asset?

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Welcome back to Pop Tay the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Ben Rhodes in the flesh.

Good to see you.

Back, yes.

You remember English?

You've been speaking so much French.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Austria, the Czech Republic.

Pan-European language.

Yeah, pan-European.

Well, I mean, the reality is it's interesting to be in Europe with your kids because, on the one hand,

you know, they notice everybody speaks English, but you have to communicate to to them that that's like a real privilege.

Yeah, it really is.

That people from those countries have to learn other languages in ways that we don't.

It's always embarrassing, actually.

I know.

I wish

I never feel dumber than when I'm just running around a country and have no idea what I'm saying to anyone.

Though I do think probably AI will solve this problem for all of us, which is kind of cheating.

Yeah.

It's good for you to learn a language.

Yeah, I guess.

You know, I guess at the end of the day, like, there'll be some, you know, automated...

Well, already, I guess you could Google Translate, but there'll be some chip where you just suddenly speak a different language.

They'll get like a sassy Nazi version from Brock, depending on where you are.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, actually, yeah, we won't know exactly what it's saying.

Maybe that's a dangerous thing.

Yeah, exactly.

Ben, while you were gone, some big things happened, none bigger than the Pentagon pulling all of its speakers from the Aspen Security Forum.

I know.

Because Jake Sullivan is attending, and they're worried he might hurt their feelings.

I saw that, and it was simultaneously like the most.

I mean, I have to assume that part of this is that Pete Hegseth probably didn't get invited to the Aspen Security Forum that was my theory of this see I thought it was a troll it felt like they like they agreed to have like 15 people speak then at the last minute pulled the plug yeah and like look I say this with all due respect to the Aspen Security Forum

mostly because I'd love to get invited and dick around

for a week but like who fucking cares about who's speaking at this thing but like crying about Jake Sullivan attending the same conference as you it's some of the softest shit I've ever heard well that that was

it was funny because their initial statement was like this these people are evil globalists who hate the president of the United States.

Did you see that one?

I was like, oh, that's a little over the top.

And then they came out again.

They're like, and Jake Sullivan's going to be there.

You knew what this organization was when you said yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you not Google it?

Oh, God.

Well, it's, you know, you get to go to Aspen and stuff.

Yeah, that sounds great.

Yeah.

So stupid.

All right.

We got real things to cover today.

We are going to cover a lot of Trump stuff this week.

We're going to talk about this big Ukraine announcement, whether it's just a change in tone or an actual policy change.

I honestly don't really know.

I'm excited to hear what you think.

We're going to cover the the impact of the layoffs at the State Department, why some of Trump's ambassador nominees are having a tough time, why the walls are closing in on two of Pete Hegseth's top aides at the Pentagon, and then we'll get into the Trump administration's incompetence and how it's harming efforts to free political prisoners in Venezuela.

We will cover the lowlights of this recent forum Trump did with African leaders at the White House.

Try to make sense of the latest tariff news.

And then we're going to dig into the claim that Jeffrey Epstein was an agent or asset of Israeli intelligence because it's like the biggest story in the right-wing world.

And because you need Epstein content in every crooked platform,

which I totally support.

I thought.

Yes.

It's just like amazing to watch this story just balloon and grow and get worse and weirder.

Yeah, it's like one of those balls that get shot out and it's just ricocheting around, you know, like there's so many different angles.

Like I opened Twitter like right before to see if anything happened.

And because I guess I had looked at some Epstein content, the first thing was like a Kevin Spacey tweet and like released the Epstein files.

I was like,

we need to hear from that guy.

Like, I don't think that's the voice we needed on this.

Kevin Spacey.

Everybody's got an opinion about Epstein.

That's the thing.

Yes.

And they're all like just firmly held.

So we're also going to take

an opportunity to look at the latest news from Israel.

And then I'm going to try to trigger Ben by asking him a very basic question about Cuba policy.

Hope you're ready for that.

Our guest this week is our friend Matt Duss.

You guys have heard Matt on the show before.

He worked for Bernie Sanders for a long time.

He is one of the smartest, most unabashedly progressive foreign policy thinkers in Washington.

And we talk about what the Democratic Party's foreign policy should be for the remainder of the Trump era and then also going forward.

So good big picture conversation with Matt.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that one.

All right, Ben.

So let's turn to Ukraine because it's been a head-spinning couple of weeks for people in Ukraine and then anyone trying to understand the Trump administration's policy.

Last week we covered this, I think it was last week, this like weird freezing and then unfreezing of weapons shipments to Ukraine.

Okay, so then a Monday, Trump welcomes NATO Secretary General Mark Rutta to the Oval Office and they bill it, like in the preview stories, is like a major Ukraine policy announcement.

Here's a clip of Trump and Rutta talking with the press either before or after the meeting.

We're going to be doing secondary tariffs and we don't have a deal in 50 days.

It's very simple.

And they'll be at 100%.

And that's the way it is.

That can be more simple.

This whole deal is also about missiles, about ammunition.

so to broaden that patriotism.

I go home, I tell the first lady, and I spoke to Vladimir today.

We had a wonderful conversation.

She said, oh, really?

Another city was just hit.

Boy fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden.

He did it for me.

Yes, sir.

You're the only one who clocked this guy, this Putin guy.

So bad.

I initially thought this was a huge policy change.

The more I dug into it, the less I was sure.

Okay.

So clearly Trump's tone has changed, right?

I mean, I talked about this a little with Fabs on Pod Save America.

In 2022, Trump called the full-scale invasion genius.

He called it savvy, and he refused to say it was illegal.

So that sort of sounded pretty Putin-friendly.

We all watched the infamous Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office in February when Trump and J.D.

Vance humiliated him.

But these days, it does seem like Trump is increasingly angry at being lied to and humiliated by Putin, who apparently makes Trump believe he's about to get a peace deal done and he launches like 500 drones and missiles at Kiev.

It's interesting that Melania apparently is in Trump's ear on this one.

Like, good on her, I guess.

But in practice, like, what does this mean?

I mean, starting with the weapon shipments piece, I think what Trump is saying is that if European countries send Ukraine weapons, we will then sell those countries replacement systems.

But he wants to do it via NATO and he wants to make Europe pay for it.

I think that's significant when you're talking about like big ticket systems like the Patriot missile batteries, right?

Because like only the U.S.

can make those and you're not going to give it away if you can't replace it.

However, it's going to take years to fill those orders.

And then like, it's just not clear what this change means for offensive weapons, like artillery shells.

Is the U.S.

going to facilitate Germany sending their long-range missiles that could strike within Russia?

Like there was just this Financial Times report that said Trump privately encouraged Zelensky to step up deep strikes on Russian territory and even asked if Ukraine could hit Moscow with U.S.

weapons, which would be quite a surprising change because when Biden allowed Ukraine to hit targets in Russia, Trump accused him of trying to start World War III.

And then there's this sanctions piece, which is even thinner in my my opinion.

Like Trump says, Putin now has 50 days to cut a peace deal or he gets sanctioned.

That would include like 100% sanctions on Russia and then secondary sanctions on countries that do business with Russia.

But like the U.S.

and Russia have gone from doing $53 billion in trade in 2021 to $5 billion last year.

So more sanctions from us does nothing.

And I'm skeptical that Trump is going to sanction like India and China on behalf of Ukraine.

But I don't know.

What did you make of this with like a couple of days to digest?

I do think it's worth just pointing out

for the record the absolute absurdity of him thinking that he's declaring himself a genius because he's figured out Vladimir Putin's a liar.

I mean,

every single person in the world knows this.

And frankly, all the criticisms that people like us have heaped on Trump are because he was so closely taking Vladimir Putin at his word.

And let's just clock him.

Completely credulous.

Now, here's the thing.

There's a shift in tone and there's, yes, it would be marginally helpful to Ukraine if the u.s actually delivered some of the weapons that are in the pipeline like some of these uh weapon shipments that they've announced are literally just biden era presidential drawdowns is what they're called so there's weapons sitting there that he's been withholding from sending to them and yes it would be helpful to backfill the europeans in some way if they're providing more of these systems to the ukrainians the patriots are really important to this because given the missile bombardments that have been uh directed at kyiv and other parts of ukraine they desperately need defensive systems like Patriots.

Now, part of the problem, as we talked about, is U.S.

Patriot Reserves are vastly depleted because of how many we've shoveled out the door to Israel or to deal with threats from the Houthis in Yemen.

And so

there's a broader problem across the NATO alliance.

Even if you had a normal president, there's a lack of these systems.

So that's something he's going to have to kind of help regenerate.

And frankly, some of these Europeans, if they're talking about defense spending, this is an area where they need to focus.

Here's my bigger problem.

My bigger problem is, and I alluded to this last week, but Vladimir Putin has a strategy.

It's very clear.

It has been consistent since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

After they got beat back, it was like, I'm going to fight a war of attrition.

I'm going to grind down the Ukrainians.

I'm going to cannibalize more and more land.

I'm going to bust and evade these sanctions given my relationships, given the oil and gas I have to sell in the market.

And I don't really give a shit, you know, what the Americans do because they're episodic.

You know, know, they surge weapon shipments, but then put the brakes on Ukraine.

And the problem is this shift is not, there's no strategy behind it.

Like, if people wanted to know what would be a case of a strategy, well, if the U.S.

and Europe actually came together and were like, you know, we're going to take all the frozen Russian reserves, the hundreds of billions, most of which are in Europe, by the way, and actually were to make those available to Ukraine, that'd be a pretty big game changer.

Or we're going to have a methodical multi-year effort that we announced to provide them with both defensive systems and other systems.

And we're going to say to Russia, if you don't come to the negotiating table, here's a three-year plan for the defense support to Ukraine.

That will get Putin's attention.

This is not a change in the war.

This has been the same status quo ante.

He's just going back to the Biden policy.

With a fake deadline.

With a Biden policy with a fake deadline and a lack

of a real commitment.

At least with Biden, you kind of knew he was going to stick with it.

And so, I don't know, it's better than where things were, but it's not like

a shift in strategy.

And actually, the thing I want to ask you, Tommy, to bring the Epstein thing into this for a second.

Oh, yeah.

But if you're MAGA, you know, or even like, you know, all-in-pod MAGA, tech bro MAGA or Bannon MAGA, you know, there's also the matter of like, you bombed Iran, you flipped on Ukraine.

They're furious.

Not releasing the Epstein files.

Like, so much for Trump being this kind of new guy with a different vision of global politics.

He's a guy whose vision didn't work on all these things.

And so now he's just reverting back to like, you know, what anyone would do.

Yeah, I mean, the bannon is quite clear.

Like, he told, I think it was Politico, he said, we're about to arm people we have literally no control over.

This is not the global war on terror.

This is old-fashioned grinding war in the bloodlands of Europe, and we're being dragged into it.

So he's real pissed.

And as you said, it comes on the heels of the Iran strikes, the Epstein stuff, like all of it.

You're right, the all-in pod types, like the shadow Secretary of State, David Sachs, like his big thing was that the Russia-Ukraine war was a disaster and it was going to start World War III, and he's not going to be happy about this.

I mean, one of Trump's advisors told Politico on background, the president's view is Russia is going to win.

It's a matter of how long it takes.

Russia has the bigger economy, has the bigger military, has more than enough bodies to throw at the meat grinder, and just doesn't care.

So it's like that's an analysis I think a lot of experts would agree with, but you're also kind of signaling to Putin there that

in the long run, like we know you're going to take this thing, so we just kind of want a ceasefire.

There is this other issue of like the Senate is working on even tougher sanctions.

Trump said at that meeting, like he didn't need them yet, but he kind of sounded like he wanted them as leverage.

Lindy Graham says, stay tuned for a plan about going after Russian assets in Europe.

So maybe that's something they have in the offing, but like, we don't know.

But, Ben, did you notice who's going to be coordinating this effort?

Did you catch that?

I didn't catch that.

You remember Matt Whitaker?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

From Trump 1.0.

Of course, who could forget Matt Matt Whitaker?

Acting Attorney General from 2018 to 2019 once was on the board of a company that sold big dick toilets.

Toilets, masculine toilets for well-endowed men.

Because, frankly, we've all been there, and it's one of the last kind of bastions of legal discrimination.

Well, yeah, I'm sure that prepares him to deal with like patriot systems, right?

Yeah, no, for sure.

But this is a relevant point, though, because look, this is what's so frustrating: is

the short-termism of his approach to everything in a world where people like Putin have very long-term views of things.

It just doesn't allow for strategy.

And also, like, the Ukrainians, everybody's so desperate to get Trump's approval that everybody else is, you know, the Ukrainians are making huge shake-ups to their own government, for instance.

And people should watch that space.

I think more is coming.

They yanked their ambassador out of DC because she was seen as too friendly to Democrats.

You know, Mark Ruta, you know, calls Trump daddy just so he'll do this, right?

Sends these texts.

But there's this kind of desperate desire to get to Trump because, to your Matt Whitaker point, who is running the policy in this administration on Ukraine?

You know, we ought to pause apparently because of this guy, Eldridge Colby at the Pentagon.

But really, Pete Hegseth signed off on it.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe Trump knew about it and is just screwing Hegseth.

I don't know.

And that's the thing.

Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor.

Who are the top people in Ukraine and the government?

Like, it's just people trying to get Trump's attention so that the thing he says at the next pool spray or the next weapons shipping can get out the door, you're not going to have a coherent strategy for how to deal with like Russia's invasion of Ukraine that way.

I mean, the episodic nature, the different personalities kind of parachuting in and out of this thing, like the NATO alliance having to spend, and the Ukrainian government, how much time do you think they spend just figuring out how to kiss Trump's ass to keep the weapon shipments flowing?

That's time they should be spending figuring out what is like a long-term, what's their negotiating position,

what's the long-term security guarantee for Ukraine.

That's what's so damaging about this.

It's just trying to get to the next month in a war in which Vladimir Putin

knows very clearly what he's doing.

Yeah, well, Steve Witkoff tries to negotiate every deal, and your diplomats are sidelined.

Speaking of them, it has been a tough week for folks at the State Department because last week, I think over 1,300 people were laid off.

It was like 1,100 civil servants, 250 foreign service officers.

This is part of Rubio's goal of shedding 15% of the State Department's 18,000 domestic employees.

So, some of the departments that were hardest hit include the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Office, which resettles refugees in the U.S.

So I guess like no surprise they're getting laid off since we only accept white South Africans now.

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, because we don't care about that stuff anymore.

The coordinator for Afghan relocation efforts.

So like just going to leave a quarter million Afghans waiting to resettle here in Limbo, which is inexcusable.

The Office of Global Women's Issues.

The Bureau of Cybersace and Digital Policy that the Washington Post says that Bureau handled U.S.

engagement with partner countries to prevent China from prevailing in AI and 5G wireless technologies and global data policy.

Seems important.

Seems like the kind of stuff Trump would care about.

All this stuff seems important.

Yeah, no, for sure.

But like that one seems like a very Trump-focused thing.

They got rid of some bureaus within the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

One that deals with ASEAN, like multilateral institutions, the other that deals with the Quad, which Fernand Dorks is like Australia, India, Japan, the U.S.

They also fired like the post says they fired two experts in quantum technology, a scientist with a PhD in quantum physics, three experts in AI.

So like again, like all things that seem future-focused.

Ben, I have conflicting views on this.

Like, I feel horrible for the individual is getting fired.

They deserve to be treated better, like, obviously.

It also seems weird to constantly talk about pivoting to Asia and then fire a bunch of bureaus full of experts focused on Asia.

But I also think anyone who's worked at the State Department would agree that the structure is a little unwieldy.

It can be random.

It can be redundant.

Reform might be a good thing.

But I don't know enough about these reforms to kind of like evaluate them.

I was talking to someone today at State who said, you know, the structural changes to to the Bureau of Asian Affairs made sense to this person.

But I don't know, what was your takeaway on sort of seeing what they've done?

It wasn't doge in that it was like two weeks.

It at least was a process.

Well, I mean, first of all, what they're signaling is like a complete retreat from any values-based proposition in American foreign policy.

So they're deliberately getting every bureau they got rid of is basically one that either interacts with the international multilateral system or anyone that works on a values proposition, right?

Like DRL, democracy, human rights, and labor, like that is, those are the people that advocate for dissidents.

Those are the people that pressure countries on human rights.

So if you couple this with the doging of USAID,

this is now a completely valueless foreign policy.

And people might say to me, well, Ben, it's always been that way.

No,

it was hypocritical, but you had people that were out there advocating on certain things within the system, within the U.S.

government.

If people want to know, well, why do you need these people in these own bureaus?

It's because they're equity, they're there to argue for these things.

We need to pay more attention to human rights.

You get rid of that.

Nobody's nobody

prioritizes it.

Yeah, it's nobody's job to raise those issues.

I don't like to see those things go, even if I think you probably could have consolidated some of that, moved some pieces around.

More efficient.

The other thing is, I think there was an talking to people at state.

This is kind of done.

For instance, some of the foreign service officers that work in those bureaus, they rotate, right?

So, you know what I mean?

Like,

they're not in the bureau for life.

So if you happen to be rotate, it's like a musical chair.

Bad luck.

Yeah, you might have been in the East Asia Bureau that everybody says is okay.

But and you might have been at an embassy last year and you were rotated through one of these other bureaus and then you just got

so even though it was ostensibly done with some forethought, it actually wasn't from a personnel basis because in talking to people, you just drew the short straw if you happen to be currently posted somewhere that, you know, that the Trump administration didn't like, you know?

Yeah, that sucks.

Yeah.

That really sucks.

I thought of it in terms of like kind of removing kind of boxes on an org chart.

I didn't think of it in terms of the rotation.

That's just terrible.

And so you don't know, there's no talent evaluation.

It's not like

performance evaluations.

It was literally just like, how can we give this whole agency, State Department, a haircut?

And look, I think the U.S.

is going to suffer from being valueless and losing a lot of those people, even if, yes, you could have done a more coherent reorganization of the State Department.

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Hey, it's Kirsten Gillibrand here at the DSCC with a very important message.

Something big is taking shape.

Democrats are gaining in the polls.

We're winning special election after special election, and we are far from through.

But I need your help to keep the work going and flip the Senate seats to finally put a check on Trump.

Will you chip in before midnight to help Democrats win the Senate?

Donate now at dscc.org/slash win.

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Speaking of not prioritizing talent,

Trump is not sending America's best when it comes to a lot of his ambassadorial nominees.

Let's talk about two today.

Let's start with Dr.

Anjani Sinha.

He's a Florida-based orthopedics and sports medicine surgeon.

He's Trump's nominee to be ambassador to Singapore.

His confirmation hearing didn't go great, I would say.

Here's Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois asking Dr.

Sinha some basic questions about the job and his answers.

What year is Singapore next scheduled to be the ASEAN chair?

This year is Malaysia.

I didn't ask you about this year.

When is Singapore going to be the ASEAN chair?

I don't know when, but this year.

2027.

Can you name one thing that will be of critical importance to Singapore as ASEAN chair?

A role.

There are many things.

Can you name one thing?

Defense, economics.

Those are very broad.

Name an issue.

Create.

I don't think.

Please, I'm trying to help you here, but you've not even done your homework, sir.

I just feel that you are not taking this seriously, and you think this is a glamour posting that you're going to live a nice life in Singapore.

What we need is someone who's going to actually do the work.

Pop quiz, bitch, and you feel

the BBC says the cliffs in that hearing have gone viral in Singapore, resulting in comments like, quote, not sure which is a worse insult.

The tariffs are having him as an ambassador to Singapore.

And this guy is more embarrassed than ambassador.

Zingben.

And then we have influencer Nick Adams, who is nominated to be U.S.

Ambassador to Malaysia.

Adams is a former Australian politician who was suspended from his party for verbally abusing a journalist.

He then foisted himself upon America and became a naturalized citizen in 2021, a process he documented in a book called Green Card Warrior, My Quest for Illegal Immigration in an Illegal System.

Now he just seems to spend all of his time on Twitter doing what I think is a bit, but like the line between satire and reality is not always clear.

Here's a sample tweet, quote, I go to Hooters, I eat rare steaks, I lift extremely heavy weights, I read the Bible every night, I am pursued by copious amounts of women, I'm wildly successful, I have the physique of a Greek god, I have an IQ over 180, I'm extremely charismatic, they hate this, can confirm he does not have the physique of a Greek god.

Adam's appointment has ruffled some feathers in Malaysia, predominantly Muslim country to which the U.S.

usually sends seasoned foreign service officers.

Yeah, not people who sort of tweet Islamophobic things.

Ben, did Trump name like a parody Twitter account to be a U.S.

ambassador just to troll the libs, like to a country of 35 million people?

It's pretty clear that the people in charge of personnel in the Trump administration prioritize kind of trolling, owning libs, rewarding like the most dead-end MAGA people.

I just wanted to connect these two.

People should know,

and most worldos obviously do, but ASEAN, these are the 10 Southeast Asian countries.

If there is one region in the world that is most important to this question of the U.S.-China competition, to the future of dealing with issues like climate change, right?

To

who's going to buy Chinese AI or American AI, we can go on down the list.

Will a war start in the South China Sea?

That's the kind of thing that you want Singapore cheering the ASEAN thing to be addressing things like the South China Sea.

It's easy to kind of snicker, I guess, and troll, assign trolls or weird donors to these places.

These are really important countries.

Like, Singapore is our hub for how you engage all of Southeast Asia, right?

And Trump talks about China all the time, but he clearly doesn't give a shit about having any kind of coherent strategy for how to think about China.

This is how he deals with some of the most important countries in Asia, in Singapore and Malaysia.

That's what jumps out to me.

And how can Marco Rubio see we're actually taking seriously this effort to kind of revitalize the State Department and then make the face of the U.S.

State Department and a really important part of the world these fucking clowns?

You don't think the Hooters guy is going to do it?

And look, we could add, Tommy, we've talked about this before, and we'll piss off some people we know, but like one way Democrats could show an alternative that cares more about the Foreign Service is to commit to making it the norm to appoint foreign service officers ambassador to all these places.

Yeah.

No, really, make a list of what the politicals would be and just end it there.

I totally agree.

And it should be an exception.

Yes, there are some.

It doesn't mean that there's nothing.

We know some people who are great ambassadors to certain countries who were, yes, they were donors or they're political people,

but the norm should be foreign service officers.

Yes, for sure.

They're experts for a reason.

Ben, a couple updates on two stories we've covered a bunch.

One is SignalGate and the administration sending Venezuelan men to rot in prison in El Salvador.

So first, the listeners probably remember Signalgate.

I don't need to summarize it.

It was the administration was conducting airstrikes on the Houthi rebels in Yemen via the commercial app, Signal, which is a big no-no, especially when you add a journalist to the chat like Jeffrey Goldberg.

Politico reported that there are now two investigations into Pete Hegseth's Secretary of Defense's staff over at the Pentagon.

Investigation A is being conducted by the Defense Department Inspector General's office and is looking into whether a Hegseth staffer named Ricky Buria set up this separate internet line that was kind of unburdened by the Pentagon security protocols that allowed him to use signal in his office.

Investigation B is run by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

They're also investigating Beria and whether he was leaking information.

And they're also looking at whether Hegseth's personal attorney, Tim Parlatore, attended meetings above his security clearance level.

Politico called them, these are like Pete's two most trusted guys.

So this is a big political problem and crisis for him.

So we'll keep watching this one.

And then on the Venezuelan sent to El Salvador by Stephen Miller and the Trump administration, according to the New York Times, both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and then sentient Twitter troll turned special envoy to Venezuela, Rick Grinnell, were trying to negotiate the release of political prisoners in Venezuela at the same time with the same interlocutor in Venezuela, but they didn't coordinate with each other.

And they ended up offering like different incentives to the Venezuelans.

Rubio offered the release of these dudes in El Salvador.

Rick Grinnell offered a license to allow Chevron to export oil from Venezuela, but Grinnell apparently didn't even have like authorization to make that offer.

Because that's the most corrupt thing possible to be offering, right?

Some oil interests that he probably has, you know.

Great work, everybody.

Yeah.

To connect these two, they're both about the kind of chaos.

Again, like there is a cost to having completely unserious people like Pete Hagseth running the Pentagon.

The culture there is going to reflect his personality.

It really is.

It filters down.

And the people he chooses,

the actions he takes, as long as he's at the Pentagon, you're going to have this kind of air of chaos and incompetence around him.

And we'll see if Trump sticks that out.

But across the board, there's nobody running a process.

Like,

you can laugh at the National Security Council and the jargon

acronyms.

Yeah.

But

you need a meeting where the State Department and the Defense Department and the intelligence community are sitting at a table being like, what is our plan to get the political prisoners out of Venezuela?

Right.

And when Hexet's like, are we all good with me freezing weapons shipping?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

You guys are cool?

Can we just double check that?

Yeah.

And I love how this reflects the kind of personal prerogatives, right?

Grinel has this whiff of corruption.

Like, everything is about some money interest, right?

There's a real estate interest in this country, in the Balkans, and then there's a oil interest in Venezuela.

Rubio loves to kind of horse trade with his friend Bukele.

But

there's no strategy behind any of this, right?

This connects to the UN thing.

It's just, what is this all adding up to?

Yeah, like, did we send these dudes to El Salvador with the goal of eventually trading them for American political prisoners?

Like, why would Venezuelans want these dudes?

Like, they all try to seek asylum in the U.S.

I mean, none of it really makes sense.

Well, and also, again, there's always been hypocrisy part of American foreign policy, but like we advocate for the release of prisoners in Venezuela while adding prisoners in El Salvador.

We're sending people to gulags run by a dictator in El Salvador while demanding that the dictator in Venezuela

abides by quote-unquote human rights.

That we clearly don't give a shit for.

Yeah, actually, Actually, I think your life as a prisoner, you have fewer rights, illegally speaking, after the state of exception was filed in El Salvador than you do in Venezuela.

So things are actually worse there.

Then we also wanted to highlight one of the cringier moments Trump has given us recently.

So last week he hosted the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Senegal at the White House.

They were discussing, as Trump put it, shifting from AID to

TRAD.

Like, I think he's trying to make a USAID to trade, trade to trade.

After Liberian President Joseph Bokai spoke, Trump had this to say.

Well, thank you.

It's such good English.

Such beautiful.

Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?

Where were you educated?

Where?

In Liberia.

Yes, sir.

Well, that's very interesting.

It's beautiful English.

I have people at this table who can't speak nearly as well.

So, for the record, Liberia's official language is English.

The country was built by freed African-American slaves.

Their capital is Monrovia, named after James Monroe.

So this was quite racist and embarrassing.

The meeting also showed how these foreign leaders have gotten the memo that Trump likes flattery and bribes.

The president of Senegal literally said, quote, I know you are a tremendous golf player.

Golf requires concentration and precision, qualities that also make for a great leader.

So perhaps an investment could be made in a golf course in Senegal.

That would be an opportunity for you to show off your skills on the golf course.

Ben, thoughts on this innovative approach to the continent of Africa?

It's just, I mean, again, the common theme here, right, is this is like the cringe, like it's impossible to overstate how insulting this is

to not just people in Liberia, to

everybody around the world, basically, including, by the way, to the black community in this country that has deep ties to Liberia.

Not that Trump gives a shit about any of this.

Every now and then, you have to be reminded that this guy is clever, but he's a fucking moron.

You know, like, like, there's been this effort to kind of, I don't even say, to kind of smart wash Trump, right?

I mean, Liberia is not a tough one.

Like, people who don't know much about the history of the continent of Africa, if you're American, you kind of know about Liberia.

You probably learned about it in school.

You probably learned about it in school.

The flag looks like our flag.

Like, it's not a hard one.

The briefing memo,

like, what kind of prep is he getting, right?

To not even have someone, you know, prepare him that these people speak English?

Like, so that's one thing.

But the other thing is there is a huge, I think, in MAGA spaces, and I think it bleeds into the mainstream media too.

Because these people kiss his ass, there's, well, maybe he's onto something.

Nothing is changing.

They just flatter him.

right or they just give him like a fairly corrupt concession like a golf course u.s interests are not being advanced here china has has an Africa strategy that they've stuck to for a long time.

They know what language people speak.

They know what kind of investments they want to make.

Like Trump, even if he has a strategy, it's like, we want these critical minerals.

China has been working on that.

Not just China, I don't want to just make this like a Cold War kind of thing, but Europeans do too.

Like the Indians do.

The Emiratis do.

Like people take Africa very seriously because it's a very serious place.

Right.

Growing populations.

Yes.

Like a lot of resources.

But also, I mean, I'm sure Trump walked out of there.

He was like, huh, do I want a golf course in Senegal?

Maybe we'll send Eric.

No, and he walks out there and thinks, like, I'm a genius because they all kiss my ass.

But they're kissing his ass to just get through the fucking meeting and to try to avoid tariffs.

They're not making like meaningful deals with us.

It's, it's, and this is the short-termism of Trump.

It's like, it's, I need to get through the next meeting.

I need to get through the next day.

I need to get through the next week.

But there's no U.S.

strategy informing any of this.

It's just all Trump's own impulses.

Speaking of no strategy informing decision-making, let's talk about tariffs.

There you go.

Like us, the entire world is trying to understand the Trump tariff policy.

One example I think that highlights what you were just talking about, which is like kind of the incoherence of it all, is the administration treatment of Brazil.

So last Wednesday, Trump threatened Brazil with a 50% tariff because he's upset about quote-unquote the witch hunt against Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil.

Bolsonaro is being prosecuted by Brazilian courts for conspiring to violently overthrow Brazil's current democratically elected government.

So obviously Trump sanctioning them over this is nuts.

And you could tell that ABC News's John Carl thought as much.

And he interviewed Trump's economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, on ABC News on Sunday.

And it was a very, very painful listen.

Check it out.

Here's a clip.

Brazil had a $6.8 billion surplus last year.

In fact, the U.S.

hasn't had a trade deficit with Brazil since 2007.

I mean, almost two decades.

So, why, why, why are we putting a punishing 50% tariff on Brazil?

Well, bottom line is the president has been very frustrated with negotiations with Brazil and also with the actions of Brazil.

In the end, though, you know, we're trying to put America first.

But I don't understand how you're saying it's about America, because the president has made it quite clear that what he's upset about is how the Brazilian Supreme Court has handled the criminal case involving former President Bolsonaro.

I'm agreeing with you.

What I'm saying is that what I've been saying with most countries was that it's really about us getting the tariffs in order.

And I think that this tariff for Brazil is a lot higher because of the President's frustration with Bolsonaro.

And the fact that Bolsonaro himself, you know, anyway.

On what authority does the President have

to impose tariffs on a country because he doesn't like what that country's judicial system is handling a specific case?

Well, I mean, how is it?

If he thinks it's a national defense emergency or if he thinks it's a national security threat, that he has the authority under IEPA?

So how is it a national security threat that, you know, how Brazil is handling a criminal case against this former president?

Well, that's not the only thing.

That's not the only thing.

No John Carl lunch for him, huh?

Yeah.

That was a very long clip on purpose just to show how painful it was, and we cut it in half.

Yeah.

It went on for so much longer.

So remember, the initial Liberation Day tariffs were like seemingly all based on the U.S.

trade deficit with these countries.

And as John pointed out there, we've had a trade surplus with Brazil since 2007.

Ben, bigger picture, though, to your point.

Does Trump think that crushing the Brazilian economy is going to somehow benefit Bolsonaro politically?

Doesn't that seem like illogical to you?

This is all illogical.

And the reality is what Trump enjoys is this capacity to just turn the dial up and down on tariffs on each country based on his whims.

Sometimes it may be a personal corruption interest, like I want a golf course.

Sometimes it may be that he just heard about something that they were doing to Bolsonaro and he's like, I'm going to tariff them, right?

Sometimes it may be some trade strategy, but the point is nobody fucking knows.

And that's a hell of a way to be the largest economy in the world.

And Brazil is a hugely, hugely important economy.

What they're going to do is they're going to try to figure out how to U.S.

proof their economy from this kind of insanity, right?

So put aside the fact that this is insane.

insane that we're basically interfering in their politics on behalf of a guy that tried to January literally tried to January 6th, the election result, and wanted there to be a military coup in that country.

So the interest we're claiming under these dubious authorities is that we want to support the anti-democratic right-wing autocrat in his efforts to get off for having tried to perpetrate a coup.

That's what we're interfering in their politics.

National security emergency.

So the rest of the world sees that, and how do you think they're going to take lectures from Marco Rubio anticipating your Cuba question about like democracy anywhere in the Western hemisphere when we're interfering on behalf of the autocrat.

But more profoundly, Brazil is going to plug their economy into China.

They're going to plug their economy into India.

They're going to plug their economy into Europe.

They're going to do everything they can.

This huge, important country, like this biggest country in South America, like huge exporter of commodities, lots of those natural resources Trump says he wants...

They could make deals with China to replace American soybean producers, putting a lot of American farmers out of work, right?

Like all these interests are going to suffer because Trump wants to personally kind of turn this dial up and down based on the last thing he heard from somebody.

And like Bolsonaro, the plot was to like kill Lula, like the current president, to kill the head of the Supreme Court in Brazil.

It's just pretty serious shit.

This guy's also just like a scummy thug.

Yeah, but he's tight with like Don Jr.

Right.

I mean,

this is a global access of crappy right-wing populist autocrats that fucking suck, you know?

And we're like interfering in their politics on their behalf everywhere.

And Lula will probably run on it and, you know, stoke nationalism and probably

as he should.

I'm rooting for Lula.

Like, you're going to go at me, all you MAGA people.

Like, because why is it in America first interest to help this fucking loser in Brazil have a military coup?

I don't think that's in America's interest.

I think that's not America first.

It is not.

It is not America first.

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

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Our listeners have probably been following this MAGA coalition meltdown over Jeffrey Epstein, the now deceased financier who had all these powerful connections that he used to get away with sexually abusing underage women.

If you want more details about the case and kind of like what Trump's base is saying, why they're so mad, check out any of the 400 Pod Save America YouTubes that Favreau and I have done in the middle of the day.

There's a lot of content on the week or so.

Yeah, it was just impossible not to do it.

The gist, though, is that Trump and his team, they promised to release the so-called Epstein files and details about Epstein's kind of co-conspirators.

And now we're saying, actually, there are none.

None will be forthcoming.

But today, we wanted to dig into why this has become an international incident and why, and that is stemming from this belief in conservative circles that Jeffrey Epstein was

either an Israeli intelligence agent or an asset or, you know, financier, some connection with Israeli intelligence.

Here's Tucker Carlson kind of laying out the theory at the Turning Point USA Summit in Florida last week.

And I think the real answer is Jeffrey Epstein was working on behalf of Intel services, probably not American.

How does a guy go from being a math teacher at the Dalton School in the late 70s with no college degree to having multiple airplanes, a private island, and the largest residential house in Manhattan?

Now, no one's allowed to say that that foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed.

Like, what the hell is this?

You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house.

Were you working on behalf of Mossad?

Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of foreign government?

By the way, every single person in Washington, D.C.

thinks that.

I've never met anyone who doesn't think that.

So, obviously, an explosive claim.

And just, you know, with the caveat that some people kind of pushing this line

have a tendency to blame the Jews for everything like all the time.

No kidding.

We want to take the charge seriously, kind of look at the evidence and try to understand if it's even kind of logically possible that the Mossad would use someone like Epstein.

So forgive me for the sort of the length of this, but there's basically like three pieces of evidence that are usually pointed to to support this claim.

The first is that Robert Maxwell, who's the father of Epstein's former partner and accomplice, Ghelain Maxwell's dad,

Ghelaine Maxwell is currently serving time in prison.

She got 20 years in this case.

Well earned 20 years.

Well earned 20 years.

Yeah, Robert Maxwell is rumored to have worked for the Mossad himself.

He also was rumored to have worked for the MI6 and the Soviets and others, but Mossad was sort of like the thing he was often attached to in the press.

Maxwell, he escaped the Nazis.

He fought for the British during World War II.

Afterwards, he built this powerful publishing and media conglomerate that, at its peak, had like 16,000 staff.

He served in parliament in the 60s and 70s.

And then he, so he was a powerful guy, but he died under what many people consider suspicious circumstances in 1991 after he fell off his yacht, the Lady Ghulane, which is off the Canary Islands.

Some people believe that the Mossad killed him.

That theory was featured in a book called Robert Maxwell, Israel's Super Spy.

After his death, it came out that he had stolen around $500 million from his company's employee pension fund to prop up his business empire.

So obviously that could be a reason for that.

Other people might want to kill off yourself, yeah, or be killed.

But when he was alive, you know, Maxwell strongly denied working for the Mossad, and he threatened legal action against those who said he did.

Though,

you know, after he passed away, his funeral was attended by Israeli heads of state.

He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

So it's like, there's a lot of kind of fodder people point at and say, ah, look at connections.

The second piece of evidence is that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak frequently met with Jeffrey Epstein, visited his properties, flew on his jet, received investment money from his foundations.

The Wall Street Journal reported a lot of these details in 2023, but some of it was known back in 2019 around Epstein's arrest.

And then the third piece of evidence, which Megan Kelly in particular has kind of like touted, is that while being vetted to serve as Trump's first term Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta allegedly explained away the unconscionably lenient plea deal he gave to Epstein back in 2007, 2008, when he was U.S.

Attorney in Miami by saying that he had been told to back off of Epstein because Epstein, quote, belonged to intelligence.

Now, I believe that, quote, was reported in one place.

It was the Daily Beast.

It was hearsay even then.

The journalist who reported it at the time has since said she doesn't think that Epstein was tied to the Mossad.

But Acosta didn't exactly help himself when he was asked about this, and he gave this bizarre answer to a reporter at a press conference.

Terry, were you ever made aware at any point in your handling of this case if Mr.

Epstein was an intelligence asset of some sort?

So there has been reporting to that effect.

And let me say, there's been reporting to a lot of effects in this case, not just now, but over the years.

And again,

I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact.

I can't address it directly because of

our guidelines.

But I can tell you that a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes.

A few more questions.

That clears it up.

So

Taylor made to perpetuate a conspiracy theory.

Exactly, exactly.

And I get he probably

made all kinds of agreements where he couldn't talk about evidence of the case, but still that was disastrous.

On Monday, the former Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett, tweeted his long Twitter denial of the accusation that Epsy had worked for or ran a blackmail ring on behalf of the Mossad.

He called it categorically and totally false.

He signaled out Tucker Carlson for spreading it.

I'm not even going to get into the claims that people were making on Twitter about FBI Director Cash Patel's girlfriend.

They're saying that she's part of the Mossad because they're like, just it's so because a conspiracy theory has to keep growing.

Yeah, it has to keep growing.

It's just clearly baseless, though it is very funny that the argument essentially is, why would this hot girl date this ugly guy if it wasn't a honeypot?

Like, that is like the gist of what they're saying.

Sorry for the long wind-up.

Ben, what do you think?

What's your take on these theories?

Like, is he Masad?

Is he MI6, CIA, triple agent?

Like, and do we think that,

like,

would this, would a person like this actually be valuable to an intelligence agency?

It's it's just because he had money, because he had connections.

I don't know.

How do you think about it?

Look,

I don't know.

And I don't want to

hazard a guess.

What I'd say is this.

Based on what we know about Epstein, just from what's been in the public record, if this man is operating a,

you know,

massive child sex trafficking operation with, you know, seems like not only is he having sex with young women, underage women, but he's making them available to rich and powerful people.

He's got an island, all these things.

And there are people,

very powerful people, politicians, you know, global figures.

I mean, just to take the people whose names are always out in the open.

Bill Clinton.

Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates,

Ehud Barack, you know, intelligence agencies, any really good intelligence agency would know that, right?

Because they'd be monitoring these people, right?

And yes, part of what intelligence agencies do is they try to gather incriminating personal information about people so that they might be able to blackmail them, so that they might be able to go to a powerful person and say, hey, We know that you're doing X at Jeffrey Epstein's Island.

If you don't want that in the press, like, I don't, again, I'm not, I'm answering your question of like, hypothetically, what might be the interesting thing.

Right, of course.

And that would be the interest.

Clearly, none of us know.

So we're just.

But that would be the interest.

And

that's an obvious interest.

Of course, intelligence agent.

That's what they often do.

They try to get.

information on people to turn them or try to get them to do things, right?

Or to just try to have a way to make people, you know, you want them to back off something.

You know, we're investigating something about you.

Hey, if you guys keep poking around here, we could put this stuff out about you.

That's the game of intelligence here.

And this is actually why, to kind of join the weird chorus of voices here, like there needs to be more transparency.

Like the whole world does know that there were a lot of powerful people who were connected to something very odious here.

And it doesn't, these pieces.

seem to add up to something more than what we've been told.

And so I actually think there really is a great interest here in transparency, right?

And it may or may not validate your preferred conspiracy theory, but there's something that the more you seem to back off this thing, the more you're just going to feed and fuel these conspiracy theories.

Yeah, I think there's a great interest in getting more information.

Historically speaking, we know that kind of like honey pot or like sort of sexual-based kind of blackmail or operations has been something that a number of intelligence services have done.

And I'm sure, by the way, and I'll just say it, I'm sure the Mossad has done it.

Yeah.

And I'm sure others have done it too.

Russian intelligence has certainly done it.

Oh, sure.

For sure.

But I think your bigger picture point is the important important one.

Like, there has to be more transparency just because people that are kind of steeped in this stuff, like, just have a lot of reasons not to trust the U.S.

government.

Like, I don't know the truth here either.

But

like, literally this week, the Washington Post reported on new documents unearthed by the House of Representatives about the JFK assassination.

And these documents prove that the CIA has been lying about its connection with Lee Harvey Oswald for 60 years.

And a lot of this was suspected and reported on, but these documents prove that a CIA officer based in Miami in 1963 was helping finance and oversee a group of students opposed to Fidel Castro.

And the CIA lied about the existence of this guy to the Warren Commission in 1964, to Congress in 1978, and to a special commission on assassinations in 1998.

And even shadier, Ben, in 78, this same guy who was running these

students in Miami was named the CIA liaison to the Congressional Committee trying to dig into the Kennedy assassination and get documents from the CIA.

And then he stonewalled them and was obstructing them.

And then he was given an award by the CIA, like a lifetime achievement award by the agency in 1981.

So like,

clearly, like, it's not just that, like, these aren't like ancient

sins by the CIA.

This, like, yes, this shit happened in the 60s, but the lying about it has been until present day.

Yeah.

And

this connects to the Epstein thing in this way, which is that there's kind of two different reasons why you stonewall information being released.

Sometimes it's because there really is a conspiracy.

There's something really nefarious that you're trying to cover up.

Sometimes it's because you're just embarrassed, you know?

Exactly.

And so with the Oswald stuff, some of this is it's pretty embarrassing that this fucking guy like was able to shoot the president of the United States like right after he'd, you know, walked into the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico.

Like, why wasn't anybody kind of picking this thing up?

But that's not a good reason to cover shit up either.

And it perpetuates this.

I imagine, if I had to guess, that part of the stuff in the Epstein files is it's fucking embarrassing for everybody involved.

Maybe the Mossad, maybe Donald Trump, maybe Bill Clinton, maybe, you know, list your person.

I don't know because I haven't seen the documents.

But not having transparency because something is embarrassing is what makes people cynical.

It makes people think that powerful interested institutions don't give a shit about them.

One other thing I want to say that was interesting, that Tucker clip, just build on what we said last week, the inability to have the conversations about this stuff, the crowd kind of went nuts when he said Israel, right?

No.

Like,

if you don't allow space to talk about like the real stuff, you're going to have more and more conspiracy,

whatever the issue is, whether it's Israel or whether it was the fucking Kennedy assassination.

Like, you know, covering stuff up because it's embarrassing or because it's politically awkward to talk about, like, it drives people.

to extremes.

Yep, absolutely.

All right, let's actually talk about some news happening in Israel itself.

First of all, all, it's just worth noting Ben that, you know, despite all the spin about B.B.B.

Netanyahu's visit to Washington last week and how Trump was going to get tough on the prime minister and get a ceasefire deal done, we've still got nothing.

Netanyahu is still demanding Hamas do things he knows they won't do, and he's just making Trump look weak and denying him the ceasefire agreement he wants.

So it's just, I think it's worth putting a pin in that because we did it.

We made that point about Biden a lot.

Second, we also just wanted to recommend that everyone read this really long New York Times piece from Friday called How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power.

If you're a longtime listener to the show, you will have heard a lot of this information discussed, but it's really worth your time to just see in black and white how cynical Netanyahu is, how he prioritized his own power over the lives of both Palestinians in Gaza, but also Israeli hostages.

Now, there is a notable kind of threat to his power happening as of today.

On Tuesday, one of the ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu's government left the coalition over an issue that has long been a huge sticking point in Israeli politics, which is whether ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students should continue to be exempted from military service.

The ultra-Orthodox have gone from a ton, like a couple hundred people at Israel's founding to 14% of the country.

So we're talking about thousands of exemptions at a time when Israel has been at war for two years and it's creating a lot of resentment.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the military could begin drafting the ultra-Orthodox, and Netanyahu has been trying to kind of strike this balance between complying with that ruling and appeasing religious members of his coalition.

But kind of patience on all sides is wearing thin here, and, you know, his kind of like juggling seems to be coming near to an end, hopefully.

So we've got, if the, with the United Torah Judaism Party leaving the coalition, Netanyahu was 61 out of 120 seats in his coalition.

There's another ultra-Orthodox party that holds 11 seats.

It's also considering abandoning the coalition, meaning Netanyahu would then only have a minority government.

The cadeset will soon be going into recess until October.

So he's not like in danger of immediately being forced out of power, but it puts him on very shaky ground.

They won't be able to get anything done, et cetera.

So Ben, Netanyahu is a political survivor, like beyond anything I ever could have expected or believed.

But if anything takes him down, experts all kind of believe it'll be this issue of these ultra-Orthodox exemptions.

So fingers crossed, I guess.

Yeah, except look, yeah, anything that would get rid of Netanyahu would be great.

And

hopefully he can pay for his crimes, whether those are the crimes he committed in Israel or the war crimes he's presided over in Gaza.

I think that the two caveats I'd say to this are, like, one, whenever there's this dysfunction, like his instinct is, as that time story showed, to actually perpetuate the war in Gaza and appease the far right.

Or bomb Iran.

Like that's Orbam Iran, right?

Like

we've been saying this on this fucking podcast, and people are like, oh, how dare you?

Like, this is so transparently partially about just him staying in power by appeasing the far right.

And so what I worry about is the worse his political fortunes get, like, the worse the worse.

And then, the other thing I think is important, it builds on, I made this comment about AIPAC

last week and not the Democrats not taking any money from AIPAC.

Bernie Sanders, like, hopefully, like, you know, pick that up.

One reason why is even Nenya is gone, I think there's this kind of hope among some Democrats that Israel is going to go back to having

normal.

Keep in mind that Nenya, with a brief interview for Naphtali Bennett, has been in charge since 2009.

So normal, I guess, would be all the way back to like Ehud Omer in 2008 or something, who wasn't exactly like a left-wing guy.

But it's not.

Like, Israeli politics has moved so far to the right that

the government that comes after Nanya, it's not going to be like Yitzhak Rabin type people running Israel, right?

And I wish it would be.

That'd be great, you know?

But my concern is that

there needs to be

a profound political change in Israel for there to be a government that could pursue policies that

anybody

who cares about the future of the Palestinian people in their existence could support.

Yeah, I mean, look, Netanyahu is sort of like a uniquely corrupt and odious and selfish and awful leader.

And I think will hopefully go down in history.

And Israel is like one of the worst leaders Israel has ever had, in part because of the way he is driving the Democratic Party away from support for Israel right now through his actions.

But I agree with you.

It's like, it's not like things are going to be great.

You know, and I've talked to multiple people, not just multiple people recently who've been in Israel and describing

how, quote, euphoric everybody is, that they're winning, you know, Iran strikes and Hezbollah and Hamas.

How can you be euphoric when you're

engaged in genocidal violence?

Like there's something wrong.

Like it, when you,

this is, you shouldn't feel good about

these actions.

No, I agree with that.

Another sort of issue we keep covering, it's getting worse, Ben, is we talked a couple of weeks ago about Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank, where the violence has just skyrocketed since the war in Gaza started.

And on Friday, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American man was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Saifullah Musalet, his family calls him Saif for short.

He owned an ice cream parlor with his dad in Tampa where he was born.

He had been in the West Bank visiting family, hanging out with friends.

On Friday, he was like a with a group of Palestinians that drove to this town called Sinjil where his family owned land.

I think it was like it was a kind of a mild act of resistance, just like going to a town that the Palestinians were supposed to have authority over.

But they were met by these settlers who beat them with sticks and clubs and basically beat safe to death.

And then an ambulance was sent to help him.

And the ambulance was refused access to the area for three hours.

And this happens routinely in the West Bank.

Yeah, Yeah, it's just like death.

Routinely.

Murder by bureaucracy.

I mean, murder by clubbing, but then by the bureaucracy.

And then they never prosecute the settlers who murdered them.

Exactly.

And so SAFE did make it to the hospital alive.

This other man, the 23-year-old Palestinian, was shot in the chest by the Israelis.

And as usual, the IDF said, well, they started the conflict by throwing rocks at the settlers, but as if that justifies murder, some shitty ass people on Twitter were making these baseless claims that both men were in Hamas because I think Hamas put out an infographic saying they had been murdered, which is just like, again, just like insane, baseless allegations, but ones that traveled far to influential people

on the internet.

And so SAFE's father gave an interview to Zatteo News.

Here's what he had to say, or some of it.

At this moment, so far, I have not been contacted by anyone from the U.S.

government.

I have not been contacted by anyone from the Florida representatives, from the U.S.

Senate, or

nothing.

You know, the consulate called me, they told me,

you know, they gave me condolences.

They told me they would be contacting me in a few days and coming by.

But from the USA, you know, any Florida representative, anything like that,

I haven't been contacted.

I honestly, deeply

not only think, know that if this was an Israeli American, that they would be on top of their things.

They would be there.

They would be contacting them,

the representatives, the government.

But because he's Palestinian American, I feel that

we don't have the same standards.

It's a double standard, you know.

Right before we started recording, Mike Huckabee released a tweet saying he asked Israel to investigate what happened.

So hopefully that will, you know, tear some fruit.

Although, as you mentioned, like these things never get really investigated or prosecuted.

According to Zatayo, Israeli forces have killed at least six Americans in Gaza in the occupied West Bank in Lebanon since October 7th, 2023.

It's a horrific story.

I mean, I wish I, again, I had any confidence the Israeli government would look into it or that U.S.

lawmakers would put real pressure on Marco Rubio because this guy's from fucking Florida.

Yeah, we're like a good constituent.

We keep saying, you know, the U.S.

government under Biden, too, did the same thing.

Like, we demand investigations and then the investigations never happen and we never say anything.

I mean,

this, unfortunately, we focus on it because it's an American.

This kind of unaccountable settler violence, including blocking ambulances, is a regular occurrence in the the West Bank.

Like the one thing I'd just say about this is, you know, because as Satayo noted, this is not an isolated incident even with Americans.

These are religious extremists, right?

The word settler makes it seem something kind of like peaceful about it down for a while.

Like a bunch of, these are religious extremists, you know, because anybody who like beats somebody to death like over, you know, their claim,

their, well, anything that they believe, if this happened in any other country in the Middle East, if an American was beaten to death by religious extremists, it would be like, you know,

we went to war with ISIS because four Americans were killed.

You know, four Americans, which again, I'm not devaluing that.

That was horrible.

But like,

people need to stop and sit and think about this.

Like, why is it okay for Americans to be beaten to death by religious extremists in one place and not if it happened like 50 miles away somewhere else?

You know, it's like a global story.

You know, it's ridiculous.

It's horrible.

It's horrible.

And just the impunity with which these guys act because they're overseen by people like Itmar Ben-Gavir and Smotris and people who support their project.

That's why they're in those jobs.

The reason that Ben Gavir wants to be the national security minister is you can oversee the police are the ones that are supposed to investigate these kinds of things.

Right, exactly.

Final thing, Ben, before we go to the interview with Matt Duss, what's going on with the Trump administration's Cuba policy?

They are now sanctioning because they care so much about human rights and democracy around the world at the same time that they're gutting that bureau.

they're now personally sanctioning you know the president of cuba members of cuban government they're they're they're just piling new sanctions upon sanctions oh good that'll work right but like i i i i you know two people in mind me that support this kind of policy like you have cuban americans dying in ice uh custody that's literally something that happened you've got the cuban government dug in as much as they have been despite the fact that the cuban people can't afford to eat because of these sanctions.

Like, what are we doing here, people?

It's crazy.

Yeah.

Well, the embargo is going to work one of these days.

Marco Rubio is literally down there.

Like, we're literally intervening in politics on behalf of an autocrat in Brazil while saying that, you know, claiming democracy and human rights to just punish the people of Cuba.

It's fucking outrageous.

Outrageous.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

When you come back, you'll hear my interview with Matt Duss about what a Democratic Party foreign policy should look like going forward, not just in the Trump era, but forever in the future.

So stick around for that.

Some really smart stuff from that.

that.

Appreciate his time.

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I'm very excited to welcome to the show my friend Matt Duss.

He is the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders.

Great to see you.

Great to be here, Tommy.

Thank you.

Matt, I'm excited to talk to you because

you are not just a foreign policy expert.

You are one of the more progressive foreign policy voices.

And I feel like for some reason, the people who get booked on the Sunday shows are the more hawkish, dare I say, Republican voices and not the more progressives.

And I think when you look at history and the mistakes we've made, maybe we should think about talking to the folks on the left a little more.

What do you think?

What a weird concept, man.

Maybe like, I don't know, talk to the folks who've been more right than wrong.

But, you know, I'm not a booker, so I don't know what the formula is, man.

It's some album.

We'll work on that.

We'll work on that.

So I want to talk just big picture today, which is like, what should the Democratic Party's foreign policy be for the remainder of the Trump administration, but also more durably going forward?

Kind of big picture stuff.

And that is a sprawling question.

We could go in a lot of directions.

We could do a 10-minute opening answer, but I want to start with this and see if we can do just like, what's the elevator pitch for the best version of the democratic foreign policy in your view?

Sure.

I mean, I would put it like this.

I mean, what's foreign policy for?

Any country's foreign policy is for promoting the security and the prosperity of that country's people.

So at the most basic level, that's what American foreign policy is for.

But as a progressive, I include a third word and that's solidarity.

You know, I think we are in a deeply interconnected world.

That's a cliche.

It's a cliche because it's true.

I think, you know, America's relative share of power is declining, but America is still enormously influential,

still very powerful.

We have a network of alliances and partnerships around the world that is really unmatched.

And I would

like to see us using those relationships and that power to kind of really support a genuinely rules-based order.

This is one of those terms that's thrown around all the time, the rules-based order.

But, you know, the sad reality, and I think we've seen this demonstrated really, really starkly over the past few years when you compare like the U.S.

approach to Ukraine versus Gaza, is that the rules-based order and much of the developing world, the global south, whatever term one wants to use, they've been aware of this for a very long time, this double standard, because they've often suffered at the pointy end of it, is that the rules-based order means, you know, the United States and its allies make the rules and there's a different set of rules that get applied to American adversaries.

You know, and I think Americans do have an interest in a world, you know, of rules and of laws and of norms and not just of might makes right.

I think that's not just good for us.

That's good for a genuinely peaceful world or one that we want to be moving toward being more peaceful rather than more destabilized and warlike.

And I think I want to see leaders of all parties, but particularly the Democratic Party, saying that out loud.

America should be in the business of promoting peace and making peace.

Yeah, it does feel like we're moving very much into a might makes right era, along with a little

corruption on the side.

But we'll get into that in a second.

So I want to play a clip for you of Politico's Dasha Burns talking with Senators Gene Shaheen and Chris Coons.

Let's listen.

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

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

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

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

Is this an opportunity for Democrats?

Might you be missing that opportunity if you don't sort of look at that messaging as a path for the party?

No.

And I think RoConna is wrong.

Okay.

The fact is foreign policy isn't that easy.

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

What do you say to the accusation that Democrats have become the party of war?

I think it's shallow and overly simplistic and wrong.

That's not what I'm hearing from my constituents.

All right, Matt.

So when I heard that for the first time, I wanted to throw my phone through the wall, but

let's approach it with some nuance and try to at least define the terms here and understand what anti-war means.

I'm not opposed to U.S.

support for Ukraine to defend against the Russian invasion.

I'm not opposed to all U.S.

military force being used for counterterrorism missions, although we should probably do it as infrequently as possible, but that does include drone strikes.

I think the big mistake is like sending the U.S.

military.

to do nation building or regime change operations or to solve political problems.

But what was your reaction to those comments?

And like, what do you think about the kind of the complicated version of this question about what it means to be anti-war?

Yeah, I mean, well, first off, I'll say like, I will not take it as a personal attack, having written the piece that was literally titled Democrats Have Become the Party of War

for the Guardian.

But, you know, hey, listen, if Senator Coons is reading, then, you know, I appreciate that.

I'd love to chat with him about it more.

I think I laid out a pretty detailed case where why that, you know, even if it's, you can point to counterexamples, a lot of Americans perceive perceive it that way.

And I do think before I get to the senator's answers, I do want to note the question is that, yes, Donald Trump leaned into the anti-war lane.

He promoted himself as a pro-peace candidate.

Even as, of course, we should never take Donald Trump at his word about anything, but he was at least smart enough and J.D.

Vance and the party was smart enough that there's a real constituency for that message.

And they profited by it.

And the last kind of point I'll make here that I think people should keep in mind is like in every election since the end of the Cold War, since the the 1992 election, with the one exception of 2004, the more anti-war candidate has won.

The less militarist candidate, the less interventionist candidate has won.

I'm not going to claim that they won because of that position, but I do think that's a set of data that we have now that people should keep in mind, which says at the very least, there is a strong constituency of American voters who are attracted to that message.

Now, looking at what Senator Coons and particularly Senator Heen in response to

Congressman Khanna's position, I mean, Rokana is not an isolationist, okay?

Rokana is not out there saying we should just oppose military force in all cases.

I think that really kind of just disrespects what I think is a fairly detailed and responsible case and a pragmatic case

that Rokana's out there making.

And let's also know, I mean, when people throw this term isolationism around, it's almost always used as just a slur.

There is really no one in American political life who, in my view, like merits that real, that, you know, that that

label.

Even people who are more anti-war do not believe that we should simply withdraw behind our borders.

I mean, even, you know, anti-war people, and I consider myself to be one.

I'm not saying that we should withdraw.

I want us to be more engaged in global affairs.

The question is, through what tools?

How are we executing that engagement?

What are we doing?

Are we using foreign aid, medical assistance, humanitarian assistance?

Are we really trying to create that system of rules

that prevents wars from happening in the first place before we eventually have to consider whether we want to intervene or be involved in them?

And the last thing I'll say here is just the idea that you respond to kind of an anti-war position by saying, oh, tut, tut, small child,

the world is so much more complicated than that.

I'm sorry.

With all respect,

that's just BS, man.

Especially when you look at who's been right over the past 20 plus years.

It's been the anti-war side.

So I would say have a little bit of self-awareness.

Yes, foreign policy can be complicated.

That does not by itself tend toward a militarist position.

Yes, very well said.

Let's talk about some of these non-military tools we have in our foreign policy toolkit.

So Trump is just burning shit down, right?

I mean, USAID is gone.

They just fired like 15% of the workforce over at the State Department, I think.

Obviously, I dismantling USAID was a catastrophic mistake, but I'm also worried about the next Democrat who gets elected president getting pushed to expend a bunch of political capital to build things back exactly the same and not kind of reflect on or recognize the fact that there was a perception of flaws, if not a reality of some flaws in how these programs were administered.

How do you think Dems should think about that kind of next iteration of diplomacy and development assistance post-Trump?

Yeah, well, I think first off, as I said, we had to think about what foreign policy is for.

What is foreign aid for?

Make the case.

And I think what we really need to do, and I think, again, successive administrations, Democrat and Republican, have done a poor job of this, which is why Trump was, you know, was so easily able to just dismantle USAID is that we have not really made the case to enough Americans why this helps all of us.

And this is why when I included that third word of solidarity in my, what I defined as a progressive approach to foreign policy, it's like, yes, I mean, we should be in solidarity with communities around the world and try not to export insecurity and poverty onto them as we promote our own security and prosperity.

But also understand helping to diminish disease and suffering and deprivation around the world keeps us all safer.

You know, whether you want to look at,

you know, for example, PEPFAR, which is the George W.

Bush administration,

very successful, one of the most successful foreign aid programs probably since the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II

to fight HIV-AIDS in Africa.

That's not just altruism, although I have no problem with altruism.

Diminishing disease

and easing suffering leads to less conflict.

It leads to fewer situations when the United States might have to intervene or be called to send our young women and men to fight.

And I think we can point to similar examples all over the place.

But again, before we get to, okay, what form should foreign aid take, should we recreate USAID or should we continue simply to do this through the State Department?

I've heard good arguments for both.

But I do think, you know, building and strengthening an actual constituency among American voters who understand why this helps us.

Yeah.

And another thing, you know, another sort of tool in the toolkit that

Bernie Sanders, your former boss, talked about a lot was this nexus of oligarchy, authoritarianism, and kleptocracy.

And people tend to think of foreign policy as like military force or not, trade deals, alliances, right?

But how did you

and Senator Sanders think about oligarchy and kleptocracy and that corruption angle?

And how did that fold into a foreign policy vision for the United States or the Democratic Party?

Right.

Yeah, no, thanks for bringing that up.

And I think some of the work that Senator Sanders did, and there was a piece in The Guardian he wrote in I believe it was September of 2018 that really kind of laid this out.

And then a speech he gave based on that in 2019 at Johns Hopkins.

But first, it's understanding that there is a kind of global network of kind of right-wing authoritarian ethno-nationalists, whatever term you want to use, whether it's Trump, whether it's Bolzonaro in Brazil, it's Orban in Hungary, there's, you know, there's Netanyahu in Israel.

There is this growing, you know, kind of trend across democracies, developed democracies, but also developing democracies

that is promoting a very kind of exclusivist conception of citizenship,

whether it's ethno-nationalism or here in the United States,

it's a version of that too, which is to say, this is a white Christian nation.

And

if you're not white or Christian, you can be part of the club.

as long as you accept these certain conditions.

But it's also being run with the support of

wealthy actors, whether they're tech bros with lots of money, Elon Musk being one of them, foreign actors with access to whether it's oil and kind of energy wealth, such as Vladimir Putin

or folks in the Gulf.

And they are using corruption strategically

to influence politics in various ways.

I mean, that's one way.

I mean, there's the more basic level of corruption.

It's just, you know, these people who take control of government and use that for their own personal benefit.

And of course, we're seeing that in our country now, too, as

the Trump family is now magically getting all these investments.

They're getting $2 billion in investment in their crypto venture from the Emiratis.

The Qataris kept it much simpler.

They just gave Trump a plane.

But

we see this

across different governments and different regions.

And I would just mention here the work of Sarah Chase,

who has written a couple of really excellent books.

The first called Thieves of State about Afghanistan.

And then the second one called On Corruption in America, where she really does a deep dive and how you know corruption works and how it shares similarities across different societies and we are seeing that play out like right now in America and so to get to answer your question really quickly like in order to really talk about

America's role in the world in this new era, we need to understand that those are the forces arrayed against democracy, arrayed against equality,

and that have no interest in a world of rules.

They want a world in which they make the rules for themselves and their friends.

Aaron Ross Powell,

one sort of question I think that's becoming so central to the Democratic Party's challenge on foreign policy is the war in Gaza.

I mean, Democrats, especially young Democrats, are furious about the war and they don't understand the kind of unqualified military and diplomatic support for the Israeli government under Bibi Netanyahu.

A lot of people were furious at the Biden administration's policy, right?

This is not a Trump criticism, it's broader.

How central

sometimes I wonder:

is this like the most important issue for Democrats to fix and guess right now?

Is this something that maybe we all focus on and talk about too much because there's muscle memory of like the Middle East peace process being kind of like the brass ring that every politician was going for?

Like, how do you think about how, and I'm not trying to like belittle or diminish the evil that's happening in Gaza right now.

I'm just trying to like be honest with myself because at the same time, Democrats are so focused on U.S.-Israel relations.

We all kind of tacitly agree that the biggest challenge over the next century is going to be China, but we're not talking about that all the time.

So how do you think about the centrality of

right-sizing the U.S.-Israel relationship is to the Democratic Party going forward?

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things here.

And you're right.

There's a lot of things that people could focus on.

There's a lot of crises around the world.

There's other horrific wars going on around the world.

But I think

Israel and Palestine is an issue, and I think this is true for a lot of progressives like myself, but not only, and especially for a lot of young people.

It is an area where the kind of double standard and the double speak and the hypocrisy of the establishment is revealed so starkly.

And it's not just since October 7.

It's going back many decades where, you know, when I talked about the quote-unquote rules-based order, this is a perfect example of what I was saying.

It's United.

And you couldn't ask for a better demonstration of this double standard than comparing our support for Ukraine and then a couple of years later, Gaza.

the very same things that we rightly condemned Russia for doing in Ukraine, we are either pretending not to see or simply denying or protecting, giving political and military support to Israel, as it continues to do even today

in Gaza.

So I think it...

you know, it's an important issue in and of itself.

It's seen as an area where the global north acts upon the global south.

Again, I think that maybe flattens the history of this conflict and of this region a bit, but I do think that's how a lot of people in the United States see it and certainly around the world see it in that way.

But also, you know, getting back to what I said first, it's just, it's one of those things where you hear, you know, you'll hear like a U.S.

official or a U.S.

politician give this whole great rap about, you know, what they want to do.

But then when they talk about Israel and Palestine, it's like a switch flips.

And they are just regurgitating these same BS talking points that are just completely detached from reality.

You know, and I think, you know, I saw you and you and Ben were talking about this on the last episode or a very recent one.

It has become a litmistefs for a good reason.

It is, it does turn out to be a pretty good indicator that you're not actually full of crap on all the other stuff.

You know, if you can run down, again, a whole policy agenda of great stuff, you know, you know, affordable housing, good jobs, you know, free transportation, college, all this stuff.

But if your answer on Israel-Palestine is just Israel has a right to defend itself, that's signing a single that you're probably going to fold on all that other stuff too.

Yeah, I think that's really well said.

Final question for you.

I mean, I don't want the Democratic Party to define its foreign policy based on what Trump thinks or does, but I think understanding his views and sort of what is popular and what's not is important and just sort of helps us, you know, kind of like road test things.

But we're talking Monday, midday Los Angeles time.

Earlier this morning, Trump seemed to just completely reverse his position on support for Ukraine and will now be sending them weapons via NATO.

But I think the Europeans will kind of pick up the bill.

This comes on the heels of, you know, the so-called anti-war president bombing Iran.

It comes, you know, there's the tariffs.

Trump came out in support for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza after this sort of really hopeful beginning where he and Steve Wickoff actually got.

the ceasefire deal over the finish line.

And I guess just like at this point, I don't know what the fuck his foreign policy is anymore.

You know what I mean?

It's like there's, there's more like traditional hawkish Republican DNA than I thought.

Then there's just the brazen corruption, right?

Of like Don Jr.

and Eric Trump going to like Hanoi and greasing some golf resort deal.

And then all of a sudden, you know, they figure out the tariff problem with Vietnam, right?

It's like,

how do you, what do you make of it so far?

How do you summarize it?

The Trump says, yeah, no, you're right.

I mean, it's all over the place.

As is often said, I mean, he kind of agrees for the last person who spoke to him or convinced him, like, this is how you make Trump seem great.

You know, the example of the Israeli strikes on Iran, you know, apparently he watched Fox News all night and it seemed like pretty awesome and Fox News talking heads were praising it and he decided he wanted a piece of that action.

But my quick response would be like, listen, when he does good things, that's good.

And I think we shouldn't be afraid to say so.

I mean, I wrote a piece a few weeks ago, right before he reversed course on Iran, saying, listen, if Trump gets a good deal on Iran, that's great.

If we're able to have a diplomatic agreement with Iran, he could literally write his name on top of the JCPOA.

And I would just be like, great job, Trump.

You know, that's good.

That was a good deal.

If you want to take ownership and say that's the grand, beautiful, super golden Trump deal, I'm fine to go with that because it's a good deal.

Listen, now that he's reversing course on Ukraine and going to continue to help them defend themselves, I think that's good.

You know, the thing is, no one should bank on this,

you know, lasting,

never.

He could change his mind again.

Someone could annoy him.

He, you know,

NATO's flattery could stop pleasing him as much as it does.

Or, you know, dozens of other things could happen.

But I think what we have to do is not...

you know, decide on our foreign policy based on what Trump does.

I think the Democratic Party really needs to have a conversation about what are we trying to do in the world?

What are we offering to the American people

in terms of

foreign policy.

And as I said, I think we should understand that Americans are tired of war.

It's not to say they want to withdraw from the world.

They absolutely do not.

But there is a real strong constituency that wants to see the United States making peace, avoiding war, using it only as a last resort.

I think we do have that evidence.

And, you know,

it shouldn't be seen as unserious

to say so.

I think not only is it the right policy, it's a policy that is a political winner.

Yeah.

How great would it be if one day a pundit got on TV and said, tonight was the night Donald Trump became president because he signed some diplomatic agreement.

Not because we bombed a fucking runway in Syria that they rebuilt the next day.

Right.

Let's dream that dream together.

I will dream that dream with you.

Well, Matt, thank you so much for doing the show.

Where can people follow your work?

What would you like them to point to?

Well, Center for International Policy, you can find us online.

You can find me on X, Twitter, whatever, at Matt Duss,

where where I probably post way too much.

And I also am a regular contributor to a foreign policy magazine and a co-host of the undiplomatic podcast, Need to Management.

I love it.

Yeah, thank you, Tom.

I love it.

Well, I think you're one of the sharpest thinkers out there.

I really appreciate your unabashed fighting for diplomatic solutions to these problems and a more progressive worldview and involving all these sort of economic factors like kleptocracy and oligarchy in this vision.

Because I agree with you fundamentally, the thing I agree with you most on is that we can't just be anti-Trump.

We have to present a vision for the world that is rooted in values that people trust, that people believe we'll execute on, or else we're never going to win again.

So

off my soapbox.

Thanks, buddy.

Great to see you.

Bye-bye.

Thanks again to Matt Dust for doing the show.

Ben, great to see you in person.

I hope the jet lag isn't too bad.

No, I'm feeling good.

I've been energized being in the studio.

You're more energized than I am.

I was up at like 4 a.m.

for no reason.

I know what's wrong.

Probably like reading this Epstein News.

There's a lot of content to consume on this one.

Yeah, I've got a bad dream about alligator Alcatraz.

I'm not even kidding.

Oh, yeah.

I've had some Trump 2.0 anxiety dreams.

I'm not good.

Favreau mentioned to me yesterday that people are doing live shots from it

with giant jackets on and things over their head because the mosquitoes are so thick they can't even breathe.

And I think that kind of like image, I felt it inside my body.

I'm sorry that people made this along from Florida.

I get uncomfortable in Florida.

Bugs and

alligators.

I don't know thanks.

I'm good.

Opting out.

I prefer California.

Yeah, me too.

That's it for us.

Talk to you guys next week.

See ya.

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