Chaos at the Pentagon

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Welcome back to Pod Save the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

How's it going?

Doing good?

You look good.

You're not coming to DC this weekend?

I'm not.

I've been to eight White House correspondence dinners at which there were not at least that many fascists.

So I'm glad you're going on my behalf, Tommy.

The dress code this year is brown shirt.

I know I'm not going to the dinner.

I'm just going to go to DC.

Good for you.

For the priest.

Yeah, I have the same feeling you do of too many fascists, but also I think I just walk into that room and just feel massive anxiety about running into people and forgetting their names.

Well, even by the eighth year, I mean, I was pretty over it.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure, picture like what, a thousand people in like a gigantic windowless room with the least attractive kind of hotel furniture.

You're at like a round table with, half the people you don't know and a bunch of journalists looking for celebrities.

And it's just not

every conversation,

there's never eye contact.

It's someone looking 15 degrees to your right or left for someone more important.

That was kind of my experience in D.C.

Yeah.

The only good one was the one the night before we killed bin Laden where all of us had to go so that they didn't notice that none of the national security people were there.

Yeah, that's totally why I went to.

I was right into that.

I just decided to go anyway.

I remember walking around, and every now and then I'd see one of the people who knew what was coming tomorrow, and we kind of make eye contact, and it was like a little head nod.

Yeah, I could have used a steer because I got fucking wasted until 5 a.m.

that night.

Sorry about that.

And was just a mess when I got to the office the next day.

I almost wore a Celtics jersey into the office when you called me.

Did not compromise the operation, though.

No, you did not.

Not like Pete Hexf.

Unlike Pete Hexf.

Top story today.

Great segue.

Thank you.

So we're going to talk about the latest scandal engulfing Pete Hexf, the Secretary of Defense, and just the general chaos of the Pentagon.

It's pretty shocking, actually.

We'll get into Marco Rubio's plan, in air quotes, to reorganize the State Department, Pope Francis' life and legacy, and what comes next, the latest on our idiotic, self-defeating trade war, how things are going against the Houthis in Yemen.

President Trump challenged us to check in with them, so we're going to do that.

And a new scandal engulfing Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, the latest from Gaza.

And then our interview today was a late scratch, as they say in the sports world.

We're not going to name names.

Yeah.

But you're listening and you know who you are.

You know you did.

It's not good.

It's like Lucy with the football.

It's hurtful.

Yeah.

I was excited to talk to this individual, but maybe, just maybe, they'll come back on in the future.

Should we start with Pistol Pete?

Let's start with Pistol Pete, yeah.

Okay.

So the Pentagon is in complete and total chaos right now, and I feel like it's just not really getting the attention it deserves.

So we just want to kind of hammer this home for folks.

This latest mess comes via the New York Times, which reported that Pete Hegzeth, the Secretary of Defense, was part of a second signal group chat where he shared what was clearly classified operational details about an upcoming military strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Pentagon still says that it wasn't classified.

They're just clearly lying about this, Ben.

Listeners probably remember SignalGate 1.0 when Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, created this Signal Group chat group to discuss bombing the Houthis.

In this new Signal Gate 2.0, Hegset shared basically the same information about the operation against the Houthis on the same day as Signalgate 1.0.

Like he shared information like what time the F-15s or the F-18s are going to bomb their targets, like very specific details about the military plan.

But this time, Hexeth shared that information with a new group that included his brother, his wife, and his personal lawyer for some reason.

The lawyer part really confuses me.

So Signalgate 1.0.

Well, maybe a good thing that that guy was read in on the front end because he made some work to you.

He'll be doing some pro bono work on the back end.

So SignalGate 1.0, remember, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantica, looped in on that one.

But in that case, Hegseth clearly screwed up by sharing classified information on a commercially available app called Signal, which you're not allowed to share classified information on.

But it was on a chain that was created by Mike Waltz with individuals who have a need to know about that kind of information, right?

They were actually debating whether or not to take this strike.

Kind of.

They're sort of debating it.

But with SignalGate 2.0, Hegset created this group himself.

He did it on his personal phone and was sharing classified information with people who have absolutely no need to know about it.

Like his wife doesn't need to know what time we're bombing the, you know, whatever Hodea port in Yemen.

So, this is a huge security breach since Hegseth's personal phone is not at all secure.

It is likely the target of all kinds of espionage efforts by foreign actors.

It's also a completely improper dissemination of classified information.

We learned from NBC News Ben that the information Hegseth was sending around was basically copied and pasted from messages sent to him on a secure system by the head of CENTCOM.

So, this wasn't like there's just no debate over whether this is classified.

So, we'll get into this staffing chaos in a second, but this, I read this, Ben, and I thought this definitely supports Ben's theory that this guy was just showing off.

Yeah, yes.

So, first of all, let's start there: the temperament, what this tells us about the nature of the person who's Secretary of Defense.

It's one thing to show off to JD Vance and Mike Waltz and people that

would would need to know about the

PDB.

But there's no reason to share this information with your wife and your buddy and your lawyer other than to show off.

Like, hey, look, here's when the F-18s are taking off.

And that is a window into

a person that has some serious problems, essentially.

You know, like, you do not want the person who is in charge of the strongest military in the history of the world to like to show off to his buddies or his wife when bombs are going to drop on people in another country.

Just imagine what that could be like in a real crisis or, you know, God forbid, some war that Trump starts.

You know, so we're getting a window into Pete Hegseth's kind of personal demeanor.

We know he's erotic.

We know from reporting that he's had drinking problems.

You know, yeah.

Good, glug, glut, glug, good.

All this paints the picture of someone who's just fundamentally not fit for that job in a kind of dangerous and scary way.

Then there's the question of just the security of this.

And I just kind of want to reiterate for people, I mean, I had in my house,

my wife used to call it the command center.

I had a secure communication set in my house.

There was this kind of giant cabinet with these phones and encryption wires and it made all these weird noises.

But I had to get on that phone just to talk to anybody about anything that was classified.

These are available to Pete Hexeth.

Pete Hexman has a plane that can fly after a nuclear strike on the United States.

So that's my point.

My own is better equipped in the world to communicate in a secure fashion.

That's exactly my point, is that this guy clearly has secure comms in his home.

He has secure comms in his car.

So this is just a guy wants the capability to just jump on his personal phone, which is almost certainly been targeted and quite possibly been compromised.

given what we know about the Chinese accessing to J.D.

Vance's phone and Trump's phone during the transition.

I mean, you can buy off-the-shelf Israeli spyware like Pegasus and get it to people's phones.

Of course the Chinese are doing this.

So that's alarming.

And look, as things ratchet up with the Chinese, you know, maybe if they did have access to that, maybe they would pass something to the Houthis.

It'd be a huge escalation.

We'll get to that.

We'll get to that.

Then the last thing I want to say is, Tommy, it reminded me of the McChrystal

event.

And so for younger worldos,

Stan McChrystal was the lead commander of U.S.

forces, of international forces in Afghanistan.

While we were in office, there was a Rolling Stone article that came out in which he was, you know, hanging out with a reporter, drinking with his team, and kind of just trashing everybody in the administration,

particularly like Joe Biden and Richard Holbrook, who was at the State Department.

And Obama ended up firing McChrystal over this.

Now, the reason why he fired him, I'll never forget, remember our buddy Doug Loot?

Doug Loot saying to me, look, we liked General McChrystal.

But he said, look,

in the Army, if a private talked about a captain this way, they'd be disciplined, they'd be fired, and on up the chain.

The point is, what message is this sending about things like operational security?

This actually matters.

Like, the reason the military is so vigilant about having kind of uniform codes for these types of things is that if, you know, the leadership is playing by a different set of rules, it sends a message down the chain of command to all the mini P-THECSS who might be in the military.

Like, well, I'll send signal messages about what I'm doing, you know?

And so this could filter out through, you know, not every in the force, and I'm not going to impugn everybody.

Most people know better, but, you know, this is not the example you want to set.

No, and it's, yeah, exactly.

Hegseth's message is rules for thee, but not for me.

Yeah.

It's kind of the takeaway there.

But it actually gets worse, Ben.

So Hegseth has just been purging his own staff.

Last Friday, three top Pentagon officials were fired.

The official explanation for these firings was that they were associated with a leak investigation that we'll get into in a second.

But the guys fired were Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor to HegSeth, Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary, and Darren Selnick, who was HegSeth's deputy chief of staff.

So the leak investigation that apparently precipitated all of this was started by Hegseth's chief of staff, Joe Casper, who Politico says is also leaving the job in the coming days for some other kind of nebulous Pentagon position.

So the leak investigation itself, according to Politico, involved reports about, quote, military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Elon Musk's controversial visit to the Pentagon, and pausing the collection of intelligence to Ukraine.

The Elon Musk piece of that was when he was apparently going to get briefed on the military plan to

take a minute on the Panama Canal.

I don't really remember that story.

Yeah,

there were no military plans for the Panama Canal when we were there.

So a little worrisome that they're drawing those up.

Yeah,

that's a weird one to have in your playbook.

So after all this came out, Ben, then on Sunday night, Hegseth's former spokesman, like the guy he had tried to hire to be the assistant secretary for public affairs, he wrote this bizarre but also very damning politico op-ed where he talked about being a huge Trump fan, a huge Hegseth fan, but also said that the Pentagon was in chaos and that Trump deserved better leadership.

On Monday, NPR reported that the administration was shopping around for a new Secretary of Defense, but the White House and Trump himself quickly shut that down.

Here's a quick clip of Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, commenting on this.

This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.

Do you think the entire Pentagon appreciated being described as working against President Trump?

I bet that went over really well.

Yeah, there's so much that's crazy about this.

I mean, first is these were his guys, as you pointed out.

They were his guys.

Like these were not deep state guys.

These were people that were brought in by Hexeth.

One of these guys worked for Hexeth for like a decade for AstroTurf organizations.

So this guy is so erratic that even people that have worked with him for years that he hired are like, I'm out after a few weeks.

You know, I mean, well, they were, it sounds like they were pushed out.

They were like frog-marched out.

Yeah.

And, like, when people went to their office and they were escorted out by securities.

But, so it sounds like Pete is so paranoid that he's firing his own buddies of like a death.

I mean, who could have foreseen that someone who

had a drinking problem and is a weekend Fox and Friends host and has jumped on stage at events and chanted kill Muslims, turns out to be not the best personality, you know.

But then also,

for the White House to be standing there and attacking the entire Pentagon as full of people that should be fired, these are people that are currently serving in harm's way.

These are people that have served in uniform for decades.

Like this is an insane fight for them to be picking, you know, their own appointees.

So that's not a great sign either.

And let's be clear, the Pentagon is this massive organization.

And that front office where he's just had a kind of purge is the connective tissue between the Secretary of Defense and the uniformed military, the combatant commands like Central Command in the Middle East to acquisitions and these massive purchases of military systems, managing a trillion dollar budget, managing health care for millions of people.

Like

that front office, if that's in chaos, then the whole building can't function.

Then the whole building is in chaos.

You can't get decisions made.

And so this is this is not good.

Yeah, because like the Pentagon's not full of a bunch of people who will just kind of make their best judgment and make decisions without orders.

They are waiting for orders.

By definition, they are people that follow orders.

If it's not flowing down from the secretary to his chief of staff to everybody else, and you know, so Trump got Pete Hegseth's back.

I mean, of course, we know in Trump world that like you're in until he decides you're out.

Clearly, though, Hegseth feels like he's fighting for his life.

Like he went to battle with the C-SPAN camera next to the Easter bunny and his kids at the Easter egg roll on Monday.

And then Hegseth went on Fox News Tuesday morning to defend himself.

Ben, that interview didn't start out great.

Catch the little slip up here.

Here to set the record straight himself,

former secretary, the current Secretary of State, Pete Hegseth.

Former Secretary, current, so he got wrong, the current or the former party.

You know why?

He may be one of the people on the list.

He might be.

Because I think Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmade.

I mean, if Trump is shopping for a new secretary, he's going to be shopping on Fox and France.

They're pushing him out, yeah.

I mean, they may upgrade from a weekend host to a weekday host.

Honestly, that's a pretty big upgrade.

So a tough start to the interview for Brian Kilmead, but here's the gist of Pete Hegseth's defense of himself.

I look at war plans every single day.

What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination and other things.

That's what I've said from the beginning.

We take the classification of information

very important.

It's very significant to us that we safeguard it.

And so when we had leaks, which we have had here, we did a serious leak investigation.

And through that leak investigation, unfortunately, we found some folks that we believe

were not holding to the protocols that we hold dear here at the Defense Department.

When you dismiss people who you believe are leaking classified information, and again, the investigation is ongoing and that will take time.

And when the evidence produced, it will go to DOJ.

Why would it surprise anybody, Brian, if those very same people keep leaking to the very same reporters whatever information information they think they can have to try to sabotage the agenda of the president or the secretary.

So once a leaker, always a leaker, often a leaker.

So one, it's weird that a former Fox weekend anchor kind of talks like the cat mad.

What are we doing here?

Tech second, he's screwing his friends over there directly.

He's being like, these guys are leakers.

They're still leakers.

They're leaking again.

And to your point about kind of the culture rotting from the head down, every single U.S.

service member who saw that Atlantic report and saw what he put in those signal chats knows that information is classified.

And then they're watching their boss go on TV and lie about it.

And basically say there's a different set of rules for him because under classification protocols, he should be gone too.

He should be court-martialed.

And look,

the fish rots from the head.

I mean, not to sound, you know, not to put on my MSNBC hat here, but, you know, when the president United States takes classified information down to the John at Mar-a-Lago, like it said the message, you know,

I do want to just come back to hearing that interview.

This guy looks like Christian Bale from American Psycho, and he sounds completely unhinged.

Yeah, and I, again, I, every almost every Republican, not everyone, almost every Republican senator voted for this.

So they own this, right?

These people say that they take American security seriously and the military seriously.

I want you to consider that person you just heard in a scenario where, in the middle of the night, our time,

the Chinese have launched a multifaceted invasion of Taiwan,

and he's getting on a call trying to figure out whether to send the Pacific Fleet to try to prevent the blockade and amphibious invasion of Taiwan.

Is that the guy you want in the room making judgment calls about potential?

I mean, how many drinks?

Well,

three or more.

Best case scenario is he he might be passed out and it goes down the chain of command.

That's true.

I mean, because the reality is that that is even in that interview, he's bragging that he looks at war plans every day, which, by the way, I don't think is true.

Like, I don't think Secretaries of Defense sit around.

He just seems like he's living a fantasy camp, you know, with his pocket squares and his war plans and signaling his buddies when the FBI is.

He's so overdressed.

It's very funny.

And he's just so far over his head that you can't even get your mind around him.

Try getting a reservation to Dorsey now, Paul, with that attitude.

Last thing, Ben.

So, Tucker Carlson had Dan Caldwell on his show.

That was one of Pete's, the senior advisor guy, who was one of Pete's closest friends who'd worked with him.

I love Tucker's like Fox News revenge every now and then.

Uh-huh.

So, so

this, like, Tucker, as always, like the conversation,

whenever Tucker talks to someone in power from the Trump administration, it's always about how they have no agency and they're just like victims of the deep state and being sabotaged by the people around them or whatever.

But Ben, Caldwell had an interesting theory for who is really responsible for the leaks that led to the leak investigation.

I thought this might interest you.

As we sit here today, Tucker, and this could change by the time this is aired, but as we sit here today, Susan Rice, Michelle Flournoy, Eric Edelman are still in good standing with the Department of Defense.

What?

That is correct.

They are still

Susan Rice?

Yes.

Susan Rice is still on the Defense Policy Board.

Right now?

As we speak, sit here today.

By the time this is released, that might change.

But as we sit here today, she is still on the Defense Policy Board.

Now, that doesn't mean she can go in the building and get access to whatever she wants, but it means that she works with DOD employees, she can interact with them, and has the credential and the affiliation with the Department of Defense.

Well, that's shocking.

That is shocking, huh?

Should we call Susan Rice?

I talked to Susan last week.

She didn't say she was making emergency inspection visits to the Pentagon.

Yeah, why didn't she leak us the Panama Canal war plan?

Something is telling me that Susan Rice is unlikely.

I mean, I'm sure they just, the defense policy, no offense to the Defense Policy Board, but this is not like a daily job.

This is daily intel police.

So

my guess is they just haven't gotten to that over at PPO.

I just love that Susan Rice has to become the boogeyman in every one one of their conspiracies.

Always.

And also this guy, like, listen,

I watched this interview with this dude.

I kind of felt bad for him because like...

Wait, wait, you know who else is on this board right now?

Who else?

We got Colin Call.

Nice.

A lot of libs.

Our buddy, former colleague, Dana Smith, remember, Dana?

You're helping them do a purge right now.

I'm sorry, yeah.

Well, but because these people are not going to meetings with Pete Hegset.

No.

So this is all moot point.

No, I watched this interview with this guy, Dan Caldwell.

It does seem like...

Well, this just proves that he's not like a deep stater.

He's a nut.

Well, he's a nut.

Well, you're like i i i came away kind of feeling like he's being targeted for leaks he probably didn't do and that would suck because you get prosecuted i mean it's pretty scary but then he goes and like accuses susan rice of doing it so all my all my sympathy went away i mean there is a question tucker makes the whole thing about whether Caldwell opposes war with Iran and whether he and others are getting screwed by like the traditional hawks.

It does seem like there is that kind of like intra-party battle happening, but I don't know if it's relevant here.

It doesn't feel relevant here.

This feels like a chaos emanating out from the personality of the gags up.

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Cash Patel, the current director of the FBI, there's a big write-up of him in the New York Times.

The headline was, a different kind of FBI chief, jet-setting Patel loves the limelight.

Just a quick overview of the story.

It talks about how Cash Patel keeps just hopping on the FBI private jet to go to MMA events with Trump, which is weird and not normal and not anything an FBI director has done in the past.

It talked about how Cash Patel had been going to NHL games and sat next to Wayne Gretzky at one of them in the box.

Wayne Gretzky is some weird.

Wayne Gretzky just gets worse the more you learn about him.

Well, he's having some like real political issues in Canada because he's a big child.

Because he's a giant magic.

Yeah, and he won't just say like, no, they probably shouldn't annex us.

It feels like pretty simple.

All your childhood heroes, man.

That's tough.

Not that he was mine, but I mean,

the guy could

see where the puck was going, you know.

Cash Matteel is apparently a member of something called the Poodle Room, which is a club at the Fant Bleu in Las Vegas.

It says that Cash Mattelle took three trips on FBI planes to visit his girlfriend in Nashville.

Glad we're paying for that one.

And he talked about how he's releasing photos of himself, like dressed in camo, watching FBI training exercises and how Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, apparently hurt himself like grappling with some FBI jiu-jitsu instructor down at Quantico.

So the whole story is worth reading, but it just does get at how like Cash Matel, the kind of MAGA FBI director, it's just it's the role is very different these days and it should be, I don't know, it makes me very unsettled.

It should.

I mean, one of the things that we have generally focused on the harms being done by the Trump administration, rightly so.

And there are many harms being done.

But then there's also the question is, what is the U.S.

government not going to be doing?

Right.

You know, I mean, Pete Hexeth, Cash Patel, what kind of threats, what kind of...

issues are just going completely undressed because these people are fantasy camping their jobs.

I mean, the common thread between Hexeth and Patel is it's like they're just living some childhood fantasy of

Vegas.

Yeah.

CFPS.

And he likes to fly around and dress in camo and

go to

like, can you imagine?

Well, I'm not even going to go to the like, oh, I mean, can you imagine like Chris Ray at an MMA event or something?

But

the point is,

what is this all about?

I don't get it, man.

It's not good.

Speaking of terrible cabinet selections, Make a Wish Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a plan for a total reorganization of the State Department on Tuesday.

He did it in a post on Substack.

Rubio said, quote, I am initiating a broad reorganization of the department to address the steady growth of bureaucracy, duplication of functions, and capture by special interests that have crippled American foreign policy.

Ben, I suspect that Rubio releases on Substack because he knows he's going to be pivoting from cabinet secretary to newsletter guy soon.

Yeah, he's trying to build subscriptions.

Yeah, he's got to get some subs.

Here are some of the key changes he proposed: a planned 15% reduction of staff base in the U.S.

The department is going to go from 734 offices and bureaus to 602.

They're going to eliminate the position of the Undersecretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.

According to Rubio, this position, quote, provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine human rights and democracy and to pursue their projects at the taxpayer expense, even when they were in direct conflict with the goals of the Secretary, the President, and the American people.

I personally was a little more worried about democracy promotion and human rights being used as code for regime change wars, but you do you, Marco.

They're going to close the Office of Global Criminal Justice, which advises on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Why waste your time on that stuff, right?

They're going to close the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operation, which works on conflict prevention, crisis response, stabilization activities, and more.

And they also took aim at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which he says has become a platform for left-wing activists to go after all of our favorite leaders like Victor Orban.

Never felt like that when we were there.

No.

I'll come back to that.

No.

So Rubio's announcement came after the New York Times reported over the weekend on a draft order that envisioned far more sweeping cuts to the department.

So in a sense, this is a relief.

Like the proposal that was leaked got rid of the Bureau of African Affairs, which seems insane.

But Ben, just a few thoughts I had on reading this.

First, I obviously agree with some of Rubio's criticism.

Like there are lots of offices with kind of unclear mandates and overlapping authorities.

And

I don't have enough of a handle on the State Department's current organization to know if this reorg is a good idea, but certainly a lot of people thought that it could be reformed.

Second, though, it seems very dumb to me that they keep making this about cost savings since the State Department budgets, its annual budget is about 6% of what we spend on the military.

So you're not going to find a lot of savings here.

Third, the whole thing is a huge flip-flop for Marco Rubio personally, since he used to talk about projecting American values around the world.

And finally, it just seems so dumb that they seem completely hell-bent on retreating from Africa as the Chinese are very openly eating our lunch there.

And especially when we know that by the end of the century, 30% of the global population is going to be living on the continent of Africa.

You feel like you maybe want to invest now.

But any big takeaways from

this treatise from Mr.

Rubio?

Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to reiterate that Marco Rubio was the kind of person that built his entire political identity on supporting the promotion of democracy abroad.

That Bureau DRL, Democracy, Rights and Labor, like Cuba money went through there, Cuba democracy money.

So he was either completely full shit his whole career or he's so callous and self-interested that he's abandoning all of his principles.

It just bears repeating.

I think one way to look at this is, yes, the State Department was kind of ripe or form.

This feels like not the most thought-out way of doing it.

It does speak to that they have this belief that I've just not ever experienced that the State Department is full of like these ideologues.

It just fundamentally was not my experience.

You know, these were pretty centrist people, you know.

But also, if you connect it with what they're doing broadly, so just take the democracy piece.

And look, we can all say, and we've said on this podcast, like regime change, bad, you know, democracy in service of regime change.

But we do a lot of other things.

So a lot of what the DRL did is kind of advocate for political prisoners, for dissidents.

If we were traveling to a certain country, here are the cases to raise with those governments, the people who are in prison, who want to get out of of prison.

And part of what they're doing that is going to be very consequential is they're cutting all USAID funding.

They're now got rid of this department.

We will no longer take in, clearly, dissidents, right?

So we've been a safe haven

for people, for refugees and dissidents.

And so what happens to all those people out in the world?

Who is going to be advocating for the release of political prisoners?

Who is going to be taking in dissidents?

You know, who is going?

There's a lot of rumors in the kind of rumor mill, Tommy, that their next target after universities is civil society and

NGOs, including potential funding for global civil society.

And so the American kind of abrupt withdrawal from being in any way supportive of global civil society, even if you think there were some excesses there, that was a fraction of a lot of these people don't even work on political issues.

They work on environmental issues.

They work on labor issues.

They work on the kinds of things that people care about in countries around the world.

And the United States leaving that space is going to be pretty devastating to the kind of people that we would generally be rooting for around the world.

Just on your Rubio point, did you see Tom Malinowski, who once led the Human Rights Bureau, pointed out how Rubio would have lost his mind if the U.S.

government, if the Obama administration had stopped releasing the annual reports about human rights violations in places like Venezuela or China, and now I think they're just getting rid of the entire function.

Or, you know, things that people on the right seem to say they care about, like, you know, trafficking in persons, you You know, there's all this other work.

The conflict piece, stabilization piece, the U.S.

with USAID is no longer funding peacekeeping missions around the world.

We talk about all these places where there's a need for some international peacekeeping force.

With the U.S.

getting rid of this part of the State Department, getting rid of the USAID, that's going to be compromised.

I think an important thing to watch, though, Tommy, is this like a one-two punch, right?

This is like a sub-stack and an org chart that they put out.

We won't really know what they're doing until the budget comes out.

What do they want to fund at the State Department?

I'm worried about exchange programs.

I think international exchange programs are cheap and you get enormous value on them.

Americans have the experience in context of being in other countries.

But importantly, we've educated world leaders, business leaders from around the world in this country through exchange programs.

So there are things like that that I think could still be cut.

We may still have a Bureau of African Affairs, but

it's clearly going to be deprioritized by everything they've done.

So yeah, this is just a Secretary of State gloating about essentially weakening his own department and the United States further pulling up the drawbridge from the rest of the world.

Yeah, and just again, like the U.S.

military has something like 2.8 million total employees.

When you talk active reserve and civilian employees, the State Department is something like 80,000 and 50,000 of those are being local citizens abroad.

So it's like 14,000 trained diplomats.

So again, we're carving down to the bone a pretty relatively lean agency, all things considered.

And people, a lot of people left in the first Trump term.

People are probably going to be fired.

A lot of people are leaving now.

The point is the foreign service is being decimated and that is going to take a long time to rebuild.

And these are specialized people.

These are people that can speak like six languages who understand the politics and the culture and like niche issues like non-proliferation and trade and are just like genuine, brilliant experts in all kinds of things.

And they do it because they care deeply about the country.

They're not making a lot of money.

We know a bunch of these people who could have been making a lot more money

than they were in the State Department.

Yeah, I did forget though that big balls had gone from doge over to the state department so maybe he's leading this show he was a 19 year old i think big balls have landed yeah big balls have landed before we move on ben here's a quick clip of uh make-a-wish rubio talking about the administration's efforts to cut a peace deal between russia and ukraine We need to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about in a matter of days, whether or not this is doable

over the next few weeks.

If it is, we're in.

If it's not, then

we have other priorities to focus on as well.

We're not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made.

So if they're serious about peace, either side or both, they want to help.

If it's not going to happen, then we're just going to move on.

We're going to move on to other topics that are equally, if not more important in some ways to the United States.

Who is that threat for?

The Russians are like, great.

Move on.

And the Ukrainians are like, great, stop attacking us and like upbraiding Zelensky in the Oval Office, and we'll just move on to try to get the support we need from Europe without you guys because you're abandoning us anyway.

And does he sound like scary or intimidating?

And also, let me just say, your whole fucking job is to fly around the world and have meetings.

You know, you whiny words.

We're not going to fly around the world meeting after meeting.

What's the point of being Secretary of State if you don't fly around the world and have some fucking meetings?

You have a plane.

Guess who's having meetings?

Steve Wickoff is.

Rubio and Wickoff are skipping the latest round of talks in London, but Wickoff is going to Moscow again.

Maybe get some extra paintings, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They don't even give Marco the paintings.

Oh, no, he's not getting a single world.

He's not getting a single painting from Putin.

I'm being too mean.

Speaking of big balls, the What A Day newsletter from Crooked Media has recently dug deep into all the Doge lobbying.

Matt Berg and the news team, they looked at how AI is being used to spy on federal workers in collaboration with the garden.

Last week, they wrote about how internal emails from the NSC showed the administration is really trying to achieve with tariffs.

So if you're not subscribed to What A Day, you're missing out on all kinds of great content: big balls, small balls, informative takes, hot takes.

Sign up for the What A Day newsletter at crooked.com/slash daily.

And I have one plug,

which is I try, I always forget to share events I'm doing, but this one will interest you because it's with our buddy Peter Hemby.

Nice.

So I will be on a panel, me, Peter Hemby, and Lynn Baverick, who you know, UCLA, awesome person, political science.

Really smart political science.

We will be doing the Penn America World Voices Festival next Wednesday here in Los Angeles, in Culver City, Angelinos, at the Vendi Museum.

So go online.

You can get tickets at the World Voices Festival website.

Where's the pre-game?

Hamby's House.

Okay.

And actually,

it should probably be a post-game.

It should be a pre-game and a post-game.

Post-game at.

I'm not going to make it.

Yeah, we're not going to name it.

We'll have some fun.

Okay, good.

We'll have some fun.

You should be there.

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Okay, Ben, so as everyone probably knows, Pope Francis has died at the age of 88.

The cause of death was acute J.D.

Vance.

I'm kind of kidding.

He had a stroke and a heart attack, but J.D.

Vance really was one of the last people to meet with Pope Francis, which is kind of mean to Pope Francis.

It also just kind of defines the cavernous gap between the two individuals in question.

Yeah.

So Francis went from Jorge Murillo Brigoglio, the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, to Pope Francis in March of 2013.

That was after a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary and then a comfort vine win in South Carolina.

I'm just kidding.

So the Pope really did make history.

He was the first South American Pope.

He was one who was not afraid to mix it up on foreign policy.

Pope Francis spoke out about climate change.

He called for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

He called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and he would make nightly check-in calls to the Catholic Church in Gaza during the war just because he's a good guy.

And then during the Obama administration, which I hope you will talk about in some detail, he supported the Iran nuclear deal and played a key role in negotiations between the U.S.

and Cuba on normalization.

So the Pope was also clearly not a fan of Donald Trump or his attacks on immigrants and refugees.

And then generally speaking, Francis, I think, tried to model a more decent, humane, humble way of being attributes which are in short supply these days.

So, Ben, the conservative critics of Pope Francis say he broke too far from traditional conservative doctrine and tradition and focused too much on social justice issues.

The more liberal critics say that while Francis had a more moderate, decent tone when talking about, say, LGBT people, he didn't make major changes to the church itself to make it more inclusive.

And then I think both sides are kind of weirded out by this deal.

The church cut with the Chinese government to allow them to have more of a say in the selection of Catholic priests in China.

But big picture, I was a pretty big fan of the guy.

I mean, I'm not a Catholic.

I'm not a fan of the Catholic Church as an institution, but I just have felt for a long time that we got incredibly lucky when he emerged on the world stage after Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict, the one before him,

because

Benedict was not exactly warm and fuzzy.

He was more of a doctrine guy.

And then Francis comes along and he has this, he models his approach where he's like taking the bus and caring for the poor and caring for the planet and preventing wars.

And it was just an incredible breath of fresh air.

But you had actual experience working with this guy.

What would you make of him?

I mean, I would say as a headline, you know, he was a moral leader in a world that lacks moral leadership.

We're living through a time where there's a huge deficit.

I was saying you earlier, Tommy, like when we were growing up, you know, Nelson Mandela was still around.

You had the elders.

You had people like Kofi Annan.

You had people like Jimmy Carter, you know, the kind of people who would kind of come into conflict zones, the kind of people that deliver messages that could reach broad audiences.

Pope Francis,

because of his character and because of his background, he's the first pope from Latin America, Global South, an institution in which the populations increase of Catholics are increasingly in the Global South.

That was so important to those people to feel represented in that institution.

And then specifically, you know, he spoke out on climate change.

He put out an encyclical, which is like the pastoral message the Pope sends, making essentially kind of a spiritual and moral case for fighting climate change.

He constantly spoke out on behalf of refugees, including at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, where he really took on some of the political sentiment in Europe to try to welcome refugees.

And he's sitting there in Italy, too, right?

In Vatican City, and so that mattered there.

The voice for peace in places like Gaza, where my favorite line that he had is they asked him, you call the church every day, what do you say to people there?

And he says, I listen, which is another thing that is in short supply.

My own experience was President Obama, we went to visit Pope Francis in 2014.

He was relatively new.

And I'd been in these secret talks with the Cubans.

And

we knew, like me and Ricardo Zuniga, our friend who was in that negotiating team with me, that, you know, when you have two parties that don't trust each other, you need a third party to kind of, you know, make.

the commitments to and to have kind of a validator to the deal.

And we thought, well, maybe the Vatican could be good.

So when we went to the Vatican, Obama spent like an hour with Pope Francis, and he raised the fact that we were in these secret negotiations with the Cuba.

This is the first world leader that Obama told that we were doing this with.

And he said,

we will be helpful however we can be.

That's cool.

This relationship needs to change.

I will offer the Vatican in any way we can support you.

And what was interesting, Tommy, to just show what kind of figure he was, is obviously he had a lot of respect in the United States.

and we knew that the validation of Pope Francis would help with Catholic populations in the U.S.

The Cubans have a weird history with the Catholic Church, right?

Fidel, not a fan.

But when I raised this in the negotiations with the Cubans, I'll never forget that they kind of looked at each other and said, Papa Francisco?

Papa Francisco?

Oh, yeah.

And it wasn't him as a leader of the Catholic Church.

It was him as a social justice committed person from Latin America.

Right.

Jesuit.

And so it wasn't that the Vatican was playing this role.

It's that Pope Francis, the person, was playing this role.

He could be trusted by both Americans and Cubans.

There are not many people who could do that.

And we went, after we concluded the negotiation, we went to the Vatican.

We met with Cardinal Peroline, who's the kind of number two guy there.

I think he's in the running, but he's, you know, he's coming in forth in the New Hampshire Parols right now.

Yeah, his last debate wasn't.

And we had this incredibly powerful, all, you know, multi-hour meeting where we met with the Vatican officials and the Cubans did, and then we all just sit around a table and read aloud our commitments.

Some of these people on the Vatican side were in tears because they had worked in Cuba and knew the suffering of the Cuban people there.

And the literal blessing of Pope Francis not only built political support in both countries, but it kind of lent a moral weight to what we were doing that nobody else could have supplied, you know?

And where else can you, and I'm not a Catholic at all.

So I'm not saying this is about even the church itself.

I'm saying it was about him, you know?

Right.

And there are not many places you can go today where you can find that kind of moral leadership.

Dolly Parton, Keanu Reeves,

Optimus Prime.

No, I totally agree.

And also, like,

we look at the essence of the man, right?

I mean, it's almost cliche to talk about how he would, you know, wash the feet of the sick or ride the bus in Argentina.

But if you go to the Vatican, if you go into St.

Peter's Basilica, it's not particularly humble.

You know, like the takeaway for me was like power, money, wealth.

Like, you know, that's sort of the feeling I got.

He was was just the, his approach

in his public persona was entirely different.

When I remember when we were walking in to the complex for those meetings, there was this really nice Irish priest walking us in.

And

the previous Pope Benedict Ratzinger had, you know, he had the Prada shoes or whatever.

And he pointed to this very simple apartment.

He's like, yeah, that's where Pope Francis, you know,

moved in.

It was literally like a door, you know?

Yeah.

And so he modeled humility.

And the last thing I'd say, I'm not an expert in Vatican reforms.

That is a tough fucking institution to reform.

So 12 years is not a long time to kind of turn around the ocean liner.

I will say, you know, he appointed a lot of cardinals from the global south, from conflict zones.

And so it'll be interesting to watch, you know.

His election, I mean, as we've learned, you can work for a progressive.

And if the next guy is not progressive, your reform efforts can.

But

if that reconstruction of the cardinals leads to a Francis-like Pope,

we could look back and say, hey, Pope Francis was the guy who turned this thing around.

I don't know if you heard the Daily today on this.

They pointed out that, so there's 135 cardinals eligible to vote.

Francis elevated 108 of them.

Oh, I didn't know that.

80% of the people voting.

Yeah, so they owe their jobs to Francis.

So hopefully, you know, this is like endorsing early in Iowa.

Hopefully he'll get some, you know,

some of it will follow in his shoes.

But it does speak to the voting.

Hopefully Joe Biden's not running.

It does speak to the point you're making, which is like, there's only so much you can achieve during your tenure, but it could be that he set the stage for more dramatic changes by appointing all these people.

For an institution that is like literally seen as the heart of the West,

the

justification of empire

will become a global South institution.

Yeah.

So, you know, the other metric he's judged by, just to be fair, is whether or not he succeeded in growing the church.

It doesn't seem like he was successful there.

I mean, in 2023, about 20% of Americans identified as Roman Catholic.

That's down from 25% in 2008.

I think Catholic membership in Latin America dropped seven or eight points during his tenure.

This is according to, I think, Politico or Axios.

Interestingly, Ben, Francis never visited Argentina during his 12 years as pope, even though he visited like 68 countries and basically all of Argentina's neighbors.

So he never went back to his home country, which rubbed a lot of people there the wrong way.

It's not totally clear why.

It's likely that he didn't want to get pulled into Argentinian politics and be used as a prop by whichever president kind of scored the visit.

Obviously, Javier Millet, as we've talked about, openly attacked him and called him an imbecile during his campaign.

So I'm not going to go see that guy.

But also, Francis was criticized by some for not doing enough to stand up to the military junta in Argentina during the 70s and early 80s.

There's allegations that Francis or maybe others in the Catholic Church in Argentina either turned a blind eye to some of the worst abuses like torture or the stealing of children from people that were executed by the regime, or that they collaborated.

Francis was never formally accused of collaboration.

There's no known evidence, but you know, the 20,000, 30,000 people were like just disappeared during the dirty wars.

So I think there's a lot of understandable like lingering anger and resentment in anyone who didn't stop it.

Yeah, no, I mean,

very complicated history for the Catholic Church

and a lot of those dictatorships.

The one thing I'd say is it is interesting that the Christian demographics, you see this in like a place like Brazil, this kind of growing evangelical movement.

The Catholics have been losing some people in that direction, which those people have become like kind of Bolsonaro supporters.

So that's interesting to trend to watch.

The last thing I'd just say is that the Catholic Church in this country is like to his right.

Right.

Like the most extreme.

So maybe one of the reasons why they're having problems with membership is that they're the ones who seem to be hung up on sex and LGBT issues and abortion and stuff in a way that Francis didn't seem to be.

Like, our country, as usual, is not exactly moving in the right direction in this sense.

No, we are swinging back the wrong way.

So, last thing on this.

So, in terms of next steps, so 15 or 20 days after the death of the pope, the cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel and they're sealed off from the outside world until they pick a new pope.

In college, Ben, we called that a lock-in.

Yeah.

It was more about 30 racks of natty light.

And anyway, so all cardinals under 80 get to vote.

Do you think they do that at the conclave?

Probably,

yes.

I think they're shotgunning beers.

How funny would that be if you walked in and you got a window?

So, if you're under 80, you get to vote.

Again, funny.

There's one vote the first day, then up to four votes every day after.

You need a two-thirds majority to be elected the new pope.

Black smoke comes out of the chimney, that means there's no news.

White smoke means we got a new pope.

Apparently,

they add some chemicals to the paper.

They burn the ballots, but they add some chemicals to get that white color.

Then the pope will speak from St.

Peter's Basilica afterwards.

And if you talk about what happens during the Conclave, you can get excommunicated for it, even if you use Signal.

So just heads up to everybody.

Technically, you can pick anyone, any baptized Roman Catholic male, but it's been all cardinals who have been elected popes since 1378.

So I guess you and I don't have a chance.

But Biden does.

You're right.

Is there an age 80 years old, I thought you said?

Well, you can vote if you're under 80.

Okay, okay.

But I don't know if you can get the gig.

Yeah.

Might be a brief 10 years.

Did you see Conclave?

I've not, but everyone says I have to.

I will.

Because the end is, you know, let's just say the end is questionable whether it's in line with those results.

It's a good twist.

Interesting.

I'll have to watch that.

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This is Marshawn Lynch.

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Okay, let's turn to our own little mess over here, Ben, is the global trade war.

Folks probably are watching the stock market go up and then down and then all over the place.

And it's because it's a stupid, self-inflicted global trade war that has not ended.

So earlier today, the International Monetary Fund or IMF announced that thanks to the Trump tariffs, the global growth rate this year will only be 2.8%, which is down a half point from their projection that they released in January and below historical averages.

So good one there.

And again, because Trump's policy is stupid, the slowdown is going to hit the U.S.

economy harder than most other places.

The IMF says their U.S.

growth estimate is a third lower than it was in January and a full point below last year.

China is going to take a hit too, but a much smaller one proportionally than we do.

So again, none of this makes sense.

Two weeks ago, Trump announced this 90-day pause on what they had described as reciprocal tariffs on basically every country except China.

The White House wants us to believe that they're going to be able to negotiate dozens of new trade agreements before that 90-day deadline is up, so the tariffs will go back into place.

You should not believe them.

The Wall Street Journal reported the Trump strategy is to get commitments from U.S.

trading partners to isolate the Chinese economy in exchange for the U.S.

getting rid of our own tariffs and trade barriers.

But the Chinese are openly warning other countries not to play that game, issuing statements like: once international trade returns to the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, all nations will be victims.

Pretty good quote.

Yeah, they got some good rhetors there.

I

look, I think that the

part of this I want to focus on is the China one.

Because, look, what's so dumb about this Trump thing is they'll get a couple like news cycle things, you know, like somebody agreed to this and they'll act like they won some big win.

They've already lost the trade war to China.

That's my hot take here,

which is that the Chinese have been preparing for this since Trump's first term.

They've been methodically

remaking their own economy.

And actually, some analysts are like, what are the Chinese doing?

Their growth is down, or they're not rescuing their own housing market.

What they were doing is methodically making themselves a hub for certain sectors and for certain trade relationships.

So, for instance, they are a leader in clean energy, right?

And so they produce massive amounts amounts of solar panels,

EVs, but it's not just that.

They dominate all these supply chains for clean energy, whether it's kind of the rare earth materials that we're always talking about or whether it's component parts.

And so if you're Europe, if you're somebody that wants to be plugged in to the clean energy economy, you're going to...

you're going to choose China over the United States.

Absolutely.

Or Tesla?

Yeah, yeah.

I think so.

Like over some fucking lunatic who's truth socialing his trade policy, you're going to go in that direction, right?

And the Chinese know that.

And these are U.S.

allies, Europe, Japan, South Korea,

that get this.

And they're not going to listen to Trump talking about liquid gold of American fossil fuels.

They're going to want to be plugged into the Chinese clean energy ecosystem.

AI, where are you going to want to buy your AI from?

Like, you know, the Chinese who are like...

selling it cheaper for uses in areas like robotics and manufacturing that developing countries want or like the americans who could like throw a tariff on you tomorrow.

We, the Canadians, I mean, and you and I are checking this going in, the Chinese are now buying, they're not buying their energy from us.

They're signing LNG deals,

liquid natural gas from the Canadians.

And so we could actually succeed, what Trump is succeeding in doing is not only is there the low-hanging fruit, the Chinese have invested a lot more in Africa and Southeast Asia than we have.

They're already ahead of us there.

And what Trump's doing is pushing those countries closer to China.

I'm talking about Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, the countries that we would assume would usually be on our team.

Sure, they may announce some new cycle things for Trump, but I think the Chinese have this thing wired so that over time, they're repositioning themselves as a center of key sectors, clean energy, artificial intelligence, obviously, and a lot of manufacturing.

And they're the more predictable partner.

We're not going to, we may do some crappy things.

We may subsidize our industries in ways that give us a competitive advantage.

We may steal your intellectual property, but at least you know the deal with us.

Whereas with Trump, I'll tell you, I talked to some people in other countries, Tommy, and this is not a surprise, but nobody knows what these Trump people are asking for.

And I've talked to people in multiple regions who literally are like, we don't even know what they are asking us for because they don't know.

The Chinese have been planning this for like a decade, and Trump, they're planning it day by day.

Who do you think is going to win that trade war?

And we were just getting it to a point where a lot of countries were getting frustrated with unfair Chinese trading practices, dumping steel, et cetera, et cetera.

But now they're all pissed at us.

And to your point, Ben, I mean, Xi Jinping has been hitting the road.

He visited Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia.

And all those places, he was met by the president or the king or the prime minister, right?

Like they're excited to see him.

And the Chinese are, they're squeezing U.S.

businesses, like you mentioned, not just with tariffs, but with other means.

So China suspended the import of poultry from these specific American farms after suddenly finding a new health concern that they hadn't had for decades.

In March, they've refused to renew the registration required for U.S.

companies to export beef to China.

So all of that's on hold, billions of dollars worth of commerce.

They stopped buying LNG, like you mentioned.

And then China's Minister of Agriculture had a meeting with his counterpart in Brazil to discuss whether Brazil could replace the $12.8 billion worth of soybeans that the U.S.

sells, the Chinese per year.

So like you said, this is like a methodical, targeted strategy.

And meanwhile, I think...

U.S.

consumers are just unaware of how badly this could hurt us and in what weird ways.

And for how long.

Yeah, so Derek Thompson, a great reporter at The Atlantic, he

pointed how rough this could be for parents.

So for example, 99% of child safety seats come from China, 96% of toys for pets, 95% of cooking appliances, 93% of coloring books for kids, 88% of microwave ovens, 70 plus percent of toys intended for children under 12.

It's all coming for China.

So to your point,

it's easy to get bogged down in these specifics, but I do think that the media, Wall Street, political figures, no one is adequately reckoning with or explaining to the American people that Trump may have set in motion a reordering of the global economy that actually may be irreversible at this point.

Irreversibly to the favor of China.

And, you know, again, who would you bet on?

Like,

I'm not a fan of the Chinese Communist Party.

I'm not a communist.

But what those guys do is they plan, right?

And they've been sitting over there with people like, and they've been undergoing this economic transformation for years to plan for this.

Do you think those guys have a plan?

Or do you think Howard Luttnick, who's going on TV and yelling about one interview, we're going to be building iPhones here and the next, we're going to have robots building iPhones, but we're going to build the factories where the robots are and Peter Navarro went to fucking prison over the January 6th.

Like, like, who do you think has a better plan?

Peter Navarro and Howard Luttnick or the planning committee over in China?

The other other thing I just want to say is

the Chinese have also been working for years to sanctions-proof their economy.

They saw what we did to Russia.

They don't want that to happen to them.

We are massively accelerating this decoupling of the US and China.

This is going to make it much easier for them if they want to invade Taiwan.

Because the reason that they couldn't think about doing that 10 years ago is if we dropped the hammer on them economically with sanctions and we brought along some European and Asian countries in in those sanctions.

Well, that could absolutely bring the Chinese economy to its knees.

We are doing them the favor of essentially making it so that we have no economic leverage over them to not invade Taiwan and guaranteeing that other countries are going to be more likely to look the other way if and when they invade Taiwan.

So, another thing to mark back to this moment is if you see that happen in a few years, Trump will have just made it much, much easier for that to happen.

Wonderful.

In which case, the Chinese will control all 80, the 80% plus of the advanced semiconductors that are manufactured in Taiwan.

Yeah, especially after Trump.

Great job, Donald Trump.

You're really sticking it to the Chinese communists.

Yeah, while he shreds the CHIPS Act, which is designed to try to incentivize the production of them here.

Okay, a couple more things from us, Ben.

So we noticed that...

Well,

our guests canceled.

Our guests canceled, so we can go real long today.

So we noticed that during his defense of Pete Hexeth, Trump said, why don't you ask the Houthis?

how Pete is doing.

So we're going to do that.

We're going to check in on things in Yemen.

So on Thursday, the U.S.

targeted a port in the Houthi-controlled province of Hodea.

This port on the Red Sea is a crucial access point for fuel and fuel import taxes for the Houthis.

The Houthi-run health ministry said that at least 80 people were killed in the attack and almost 200 were wounded.

And the UN said that the port infrastructure was severely damaged and oil is now leaking into the Red Sea.

On Sunday, more U.S.

airstrikes hit a neighborhood in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, killing 12 more people and injuring 30.

It's hard to get good information, Ben, about kind of the efficacy of these strikes, but on the most important metric, whether the Houthis have stopped firing shit at ships in the Red Sea, it has failed so far.

And Fox News's Jennifer Griffin reported that six MQ-9 Reaper drones have been shot down by the Houthis since March 3rd, five of them since Trump began his strikes on March 15th.

So these things cost 30 million a pop.

So they're shooting back at us and pretty effectively.

The Houthis are also launching missiles at Israel, including last week, and they're reportedly building closer ties with China and Russia.

So the State Department said that a Chinese company with ties to the People's Liberation Army was, quote, directly supporting Iran-backed Houthi terrorist attacks on U.S.

interests by giving the Houthis intelligence.

The U.S.

had previously sanctioned that same company in 2023 for reportedly giving satellite imagery to the Wagner Group.

So these sound like a bunch of fucking assholes.

But the Wall Street Journal also reported that last summer, Yemen intercepted a shipment of Chinese-made weapons tech that could increase the range of Houthi drones and make them harder to spot.

So that partnership is clearly deepening.

This piece also pointed out that some Houthis have been sanctioned by the U.S.

for doing arms deals with Russians, including buying $10 million worth of weapons from Victor Baut, the known arms dealer.

And then the Russian military has also apparently advised the Houthis and provided targeting data to attack Western ships.

So there's also all this talk about a potential ground operation in Yemen where you might have some Yemeni militias trying to capture this major port city.

So what we're trying to get at here is things are not better.

The problem is not solved.

Things are escalating.

There's talk of a ground operation.

So I don't know that Pete Hegset's report card out of Yemen from the Houthis is actually all that good.

No.

And

there's layers of what's fucked up about this.

I mean, first of all, they can't articulate what they're doing.

You know, I mean,

Make Wish Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said, you know, they're going to restore shipping or something.

Well, guess who doesn't believe that?

The shipping companies, right?

And even if they restored for a time, the Houthis will be back.

And and like this is not going to work they can't it this is for Trump who said he was going to end forever wars he's repeating all the mistakes some which were made by Obama um most of which were made by Bush some which were made by Biden of of launching a military effort with no definable or achievable end state other than just bombing some stuff um and and that that's morally problematic, it's strategically problematic, because it also ignores the reality that they're incentivizing the Chinese.

You know, if you're going to try to launch this existential trade war with the Chinese, like what incentive do they have to not start helping these guys under the table?

These morons in the White House who talk about, literally talk openly about like all-in podcast listeners talking about how we're going to peel the Russians away from the Chinese.

The Russians are wholly dependent on the Chinese for their economy.

That's how they busted our sanctions.

That's where they get their technology.

That's where they get all their shit.

So the Russians have no incentive to cooperate with us against the Houthis.

Putin thinks he's going to be there after Trump.

And so he's going to go the same way.

The opportunity for Putin is not to peel away from China in some all-in podcast, you know, 3D Channel move.

It's to say, this is my chance to beat the West.

This is my chance to beat the Americans.

And this is the kind of shit that we have to watch.

Because you're looking at this and you're the Russians, you're the Chinese, and certainly the Houthis, and you got Pete Hegstad signaling his wife about F-18 attacks and Peter Navarro launching trade wars.

It's like, look at them.

They're on the ropes in the U.S.

Like, this is not the time to capitulate to these guys.

This is the time to hit them.

Pressure advantage.

Two more updates out of Israel before we wrap.

So first, we have talked about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Net Yahoo trying to fire Ronan Barr, the head of the Shin Beth, Israel's domestic intelligence service.

Last night, there was this crazy report where Ronan Barr said in an affidavit that he was pressured by Netanyahu to spy on Israelis to organize protests that were critical of the Israeli government, and that Netanyahu demanded that Ronan Barr be loyal to him over rulings made by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Gee, sounds familiar.

Barr says things went south between he and Netanyahu after Barr started investigating Netanyahu's aides for leaking classified information and for their ties to Qatar.

Also for rejecting a demand that Netanyahu reportedly made that Barr sign some sort of document that would have prevented Netanyahu's corruption trial from going ahead based on some specious security argument that I guess Netanyahu manufactured.

So, Ben, I read this, and my reaction was similar to Yara's, which was like, I really go up and down over who is the worst leader, Israel or us.

You know, on any given day, it could be one or the other.

I don't know.

Pretty tight competition, you know, neck and competition.

It is neck and neck.

I mean,

this just Bibi's, for all the people here who think he's got some grand strategy, this guy is basically just relentlessly about his own political survival.

Just flailing.

And he will take Israeli democracy down with him.

He will obviously take the entire Palestinian people down with him.

He will take regional, he's messing around in Syria, he's messing around in Lebanon.

He wants to bomb Iran.

Like this, it's dang.

Bibi Netanyahu's imperative to stay in power to avoid prison is really dangerous.

I think that's, you know, this, like everything else, reinforces.

Yeah, speaking of which,

after a brief reprieve during the ceasefire for, what, two months, things in Gaza are just beyond awful again.

So the IDF is just back to bombing the shit out of the place.

On Saturday, the Gaza Health Ministry said IDF airstrikes killed 90 people in 48 hours.

We are once again seeing videos on social media of Gazans burning alive after some of these strikes because all of them are now 90% of the population is displaced and they're all living in tents.

And the Israeli military is now occupying and are holding about half of the Gaza Strip and saying they plan to occupy it indefinitely.

And

there are still some like ceasefire ceasefire proposals being discussed.

There's one from Qatar in Egypt that would entail like a five to seven year truce and hostage and prisoner releases and then the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

But there's just no reason to believe that Netanyahu would go for any of that.

Also, Ben, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about this awful incident where 15 Palestinian aid workers in clearly marked emergency vehicles were gunned down by Israeli troops.

Initially, the IDF claimed that they were terrorists and that the vehicles didn't have flashing lights on.

That was then proven to be just complete and total bullshit when investigators found a video on the cell phone of one of the executed medics that documented the entire thing and had his final, you know, his apologies to his family and his final prayers and just horrifying stuff.

So despite this like cut and dry evidence for this being a war crime, the only accountability we've heard of is this like tepid statement of regret by the IDF.

And then I think they fired one commander and reprimanded another.

But like no one's getting prosecuted.

They don't care.

Yeah.

And those guys will pop up again somewhere else.

I mean,

there's just words fail because you essentially have like a stated policy of ethnic cleansing.

You know, they're going to basically depopulate Rafa, the southern Gaza, as we've talked about.

They're not letting food in.

They're not letting aid in.

They're bragging about it.

They're pushing people onto an enclave against the

like against the water.

Like, this is really horrific.

One thing to watch will, you know, Trump has this trip in mid-May to the Middle East, and I'm sure that they want to revise the old Saudi normalization talks, you know, and have some announcement.

And

they can't get Saudi normalization without a ceasefire.

And so to me, the only pathway back to a ceasefire and just the people in Gaza being allowed to stay there and live their lives is some regional play.

But

I don't know.

It just doesn't feel good right now.

And God help these hostages that are still there.

Yeah.

I mean, they're just, the only way they're getting out is through a deal.

Yeah.

Anyone who suggests otherwise is just

willfully.

What is this doing to get the hostages out?

Nothing.

I mean,

this has nothing to do with getting hostages out.

No, this is just indecisive.

And there's not a threat from Hamas.

Hamas could not do October 7th today.

They've been decimated.

Yeah.

Anyway, finally, last story, Ben.

People always come to us for book and TV recommendations.

So here's an off-the-beaten path one for everybody.

The Great Nation of Sweden, they've kind of leveled up their soothing TV game with something called the Great Moose Migration.

If you heard of this, it's a live stream.

This fills up your alley, a live stream of moose making their annual trek north.

So, this program began in spring 2019.

It's grown from an audience of 1 million to 9 million.

The population of Sweden is about 10.6 million, so presumably they're getting outside the walls of the country here, some international viewers.

But hours can pass before a moose appears.

But there will be a push alert to let you know that one is on one of the 34 cameras they set up in the woods for this occasion.

The Moose even have super fans.

There's a 76,000 member Facebook group where they monitor every single river crossing and whatever else Moose do.

The BBC, they interviewed one of these Moose super fans who actually takes time off of work to watch the live stream for the three weeks it's on.

And then they quoted another super fan in the New York Times who spends six hours a day moderating the Moose Facebook group.

So did that person seek help, but everyone else, if you need a break from the world and you want to chill, watch the moose.

I was going to say, I mean, it's actually a pretty rational way of dealing with the world we're in now.

It's just, I saw a moose.

I saw some moose recently.

I was in Wyoming.

I was in Wyoming.

Those are some big guys.

They are big.

I would not want to run into a moose anywhere.

In the world.

Other than on a live stream, you know.

I mean, I walk through an elk preserve, and that's scary enough because it's like, what you're looking at those guys and you're like, what if one of those guys just decides to make a run at me, you know?

Yeah, if they make a goat, you're done.

But

the moose are majestic.

I'll watch a...

They are beautiful.

They're stunning.

And, you know, they get to escape their reality, unlike us.

Yeah.

Stuck in this one.

Okay, that's it for us for this week.

Thanks, everybody, for listening.

Talk to you soon.

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