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Welcome back to Pod Save the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Happy holidays.

Happy New Year.

Man, that was a long break, huh?

It's a long break.

It was nice.

I think it was on like Wednesdays or something.

I haven't gone this long without podcasting in many years.

Yeah, me either.

It was really nice.

We had a great time with family.

By the end, I needed to get out of the house and my wife needed me to get out of of the house.

I think Hannah was like, please leave.

We had like a lot of activities.

We did.

I mean, you have kids in the holidays, there's like ice skating, and there's parties, and there's, you know, just stuff.

Yeah.

So I was pretty...

One of those breaks where I was more exhausted at the end than recharge, but it was good.

Same.

Same.

We also had a couple kind of rolling colds and flu.

It's a little harder to do activities with the eight-month-olds.

But it was very fun to have my daughter learn about Santa for the first time.

We had some Santa issues this year.

Oh, no.

I mean, basically, they're pretending to believe in Santa, I think.

But there are a lot of, because they're pretending, they know how to ask questions that you're going to be uncomfortable answering.

You know, well, why is Santa's, this present's from Santa, why does it say it was made by this toy company in Minnesota or something?

Yeah.

They just start fucking with you.

See, Lizzie's in the exact opposite phase.

She's two.

So we're like.

at the airport.

She sees a Santa doll.

A random bookstore.

She's like, Santa!

I'm like, yes, that is Santa.

Also,

no, you cannot buy the Corona water bottle that's next to her, which I also really wanted.

Don't need that.

But a lot of things happened, Ben.

It was very, very hard to figure out what to put in the show today.

Things we're not going to talk about, the horrific ISIS attack in New Orleans

or the other lunatic who loaded up a cyber truck with a bunch of explosive material and parked it in front of a Trump hotel.

Yeah, as you and I talked about it, we'll probably be circling back to these stories because they have some common threads.

Yeah, we need to circle back to those.

Obviously, the rise of ISIS is scary.

The common thread of these guys being veterans and rise of extremism and these private militia groups that feel sort of ascendant after Trump's re-election.

Yeah.

I mean, my only comment on this would be, the ISIS thing doesn't feel far and directed.

It feels like this guy was inspired.

But if that had happened in the Obama,

Obama gave a address to the, because I know because I had to write it.

He gave an address to the nation in prime time over the San Bernardino attack shooting, if you remember.

Terrifying.

Which did not...

was not as destructive as this one.

It just shows how much terrorism no longer,

you know, I don't know, so many other crazy things have happened that that doesn't seem quite as alarming to people.

I don't know.

Yeah, a lot of other uh risks out there.

Well, we got a great show for you today.

We are going to talk about a major leadership change in Canada, uh, this ongoing saga in South Korea, nuts, where impeachment turned into arrest attempts.

It's one of the most shocking leadership crises I've seen in a long time.

We're also going to do a long Trump section because he was spouting off over the break, talking about Greenland, talking about the Panama Canal.

Uh, we got Elon Musk kind of banging about in a whole bunch of different countries.

Foreign affairs, we're going to get into that.

And we'll also talk about some major steps Biden took on Sudan, some steps he took on Syria and Guantanamo Bay, and then close it out with some fun stuff.

So heavy show.

I'm excited to talk it through with you.

Let's want to start with Canada.

Yeah, our guy, Justin Trudeau.

So not the 51st state yet.

Not the 51st state yet, I do think, is the operative term.

Just kidding, Canadian friends.

On Monday, Justin Trudeau announced he's stepping down as Prime Minister of Canada and the leader of the Liberal Party.

So this ends Trudeau's nine years as Prime Minister and 12 years leading the Liberal Party.

And it throws Canada into this period of uncertainty, right as our new president, Donald Trump, is coming into office, promising to slap 25% tariffs on them.

Here's a clip from Trudeau's speech announcing his decision on Monday.

I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister.

after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process.

Last night I asked the President of the Liberal Party to begin that process.

This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election.

He delivered that speech outdoors.

in Canada in January.

Yes, I was thinking about that a lot, actually, as I watched it.

In French and English.

Which is always impressive when you watch these speeches, but kind of impressively.

It's more impressive when it's like zero degrees.

Yeah, so Trudeau also said in his remarks that he's proroguing parliament, which effectively ends the current session of parliament without dissolving it and forcing new elections.

It's basically a way for the Liberal Party to get its shit together, pick a new leader, it's sort of a leadership and priority reset, and then go back into session on March 24th ahead of, we assume, elections this year.

They're supposed to happen in October, but will probably get moved up.

The new Liberal Party leader will be chosen by members of the Liberal Party.

That person becomes a prime minister.

As we discussed before the break, though, like the writing was on the wall for Trudeau for a while.

His polling was in the gutter.

One poll had his disapproval rating at 74%, and only 16% of voters saying they were going to vote for the Liberal Party.

And then in mid-December, Trudeau's deputy prime minister, Christopher Freeland, one of his closest allies, or for a decade, basically, resigned while also criticizing his economic stewardship of the country.

Then Jugmeet Singh, the head of the the leftist New Democratic Party, announced that he was going to bring a no-confidence vote against Trudeau's government in January.

So Trudeau is getting ahead of that.

The Conservative Party leader, Pierre Polyev, is now best positioned to be the next Prime Minister of Canada, although, you know, we'll see.

But Ben, let's just pause there.

I mean, any thoughts from you, first of all, just on Trudeau's life and legacy here.

And then more specifically, I'm wondering what role you think Trump played in forcing this move now.

Because obviously, like his time in office had to end eventually.

but polyev and freeland pointed to the trump tariffs as a factor in either calling for him to go

or her decision to resign from the cabinet yeah i mean i'll start with a negative but then i want to pour one out for justin trudeau with some positive look i mean he clearly is facing the headwinds that everybody's facing that we'll talk about featuring throughout this podcast.

It's not good for incumbents.

More than that, though, look, clearly he's lost touch, right?

He's been there for almost a decade.

And you get a a sense when a leader has just kind of lost the thread, you know, and he's clearly kind of not been connected with the issues that Canadians are pissed off about.

No surprise, that's cost of living, that's affordable housing.

And his maneuvers to address issues have increasingly

not only missed the mark, they seem to just not be what people are looking for.

Antagonize his coalition.

And antagonize his own coalition.

So it was time for him to step aside.

I will say, you know, we're living in an age where people are just dunking on the libs.

And so Trudeau is going to get dunked on a bunch, you know, join the club.

Let's remember the Liberal Party was dead and buried.

It came in third place in the election before Justin Trudeau.

This guy came not out of nowhere because he's a Trudeau, he's a son of, but he's a young guy who came in, took over the party, got elected.

And look, he did a lot of good things over the course of the decade.

You know, he definitely elevated Canada's profile globally.

He did a lot of good things for climate.

I mean, the carbon tax was one of the things he was unpopular for, but I mean, he's really moved Canada, which is a fossil fuel-producing country, in the direction of being a good actor on climate.

There were some good economic years there.

Obviously, he was welcoming to refugees during the refugee crisis and at a very important time.

Foreign policy, not big defense spenders, but they've been out there on the right issues, right?

And standing up for democracy, we've talked about him willing to do things that the United States wasn't willing to do and calling that Modi for the kinds of things he was doing inside of Canadian affairs strong support of Ukraine so stepping back and I full disclosure not only we had Trudeau on the pod his chief of staff for his entire tenure Katie Telford's a good friend of mine and poor and after Katie she did a great job but you know they can feel good about this full stop now what you know nine years ago nine years it's just it's just a long time I think that Trump had something to do with it in the sense that Trudeau was very vulnerable.

He was going to limp into the next election.

It didn't make any sense to me that he was going to run again.

It seemed like he wanted to host an XG7 in Canada and get through that.

But he was teetering.

And then Trump came in and I think was kind of the final straw because Freeland said in that letter resigning, I just disagree with how you're approaching the Trump threat.

Yeah, he was offering basically, I think it was a two-month tax holiday to give Canadians some economic relief.

And she was like, no, we need that money to prepare to harden the border and pay for all these things Trump's going to demand.

out of us or else he's going to slap tariffs on Canada.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you could say Trump helped accelerate this and bring bring it about.

I will say for Trudeau, can you imagine how

Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, and then Donald Trump again?

Come on, man.

Just give me one leader to deal with, right?

And so, you know, it'll be interesting who comes next.

You know, Freeland, the leading candidate, Melanie Jolie, the foreign minister.

Mark Carney, the former.

Mark Carney, the former head of the bank, a climate hawk, too.

But look, that may not be the best.

That may be a bit of a poison chalice for them, yeah.

Yeah, because the conservatives are up 25 points.

Pierre Polyev polyev is is is really right-wing and i thought stephen harper who was the guy before trudeau was pretty right wing this guy's a friendly right wing this guy's kind of tea partyish uh mega type guy in canada you know like remember those trucks that were parked in ottawa like this guy was kind of on board with that defender of them so you know i

okay good luck with that canada you can get on the mega train with the rest of us by the way none of these people are going to save you from trump you know um he's going to do the tariffs he's going to talk shit to you anyway so this idea that yeah trudeau may have been handling it wrong but i don't think there's the right answer.

So,

I hope for the sake of the Liberal Party that they pick a good leader and they mount a strong showing because you don't want right-wing dominance of that country.

But I also don't think that there's some magic solution to Trump for them.

No, I don't either.

I mean, I think to the extent Trudeau made a mistake, it's the one that every leader makes.

He probably hung on a little too long.

Yeah.

You know, you wonder if he'd gotten out six months ago, would that have given the Liberal Party a chance to kind of get its feet under it faster and be prepared for this election?

Maybe.

It certainly would have prevented this scenario where there's just kind of a leadership vacuum right as Trump is coming in and they're not going to know how to deal with him.

It's worth noting that Krista Freeland,

deputy prime minister, finance minister, was singled out by Jared Kushner in Kushner's book.

He disliked her for being kind of like a hard-edged negotiator in the USMCA talk.

So credit to her.

But yeah, in a press conference Tuesday, Trump said he was considering using economic force to make Canada Canada the 51st state of the United States.

The good news is he rejected the question of whether he'd use military force to make Canada a U.S.

state.

So I will say to the Jared Kushner thing, one of Trudeau's accomplishments is the USMCA trade agreement, where they basically,

I mean, tricked Trump into thinking he got a big win by basically just rolling over NAFTA and the TPP.

So that was pretty savvy with Christopher Freeland and Trudeau and Katie and them.

they, they, they, you know, this time around, though, I don't think they're going to be able to do that.

And so it's going to be a rough, it's going to be a rough ride, I think.

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The other story that is just truly remarkable, it's got to update everybody on what's happening in South Korea.

So, just a quick back story.

Back in December, we covered South Korean President Yoon Suk-yule's decision to declare martial law.

That was quickly voted down by parliament soon after he was impeached.

Two weeks after Yoon's impeachment, the acting president who took his place was impeached because the acting president refused to name more judges to South Korea's constitutional court.

And that matters because that court will ultimately rule on whether to remove Yoon from office.

They'll also rule on whether to remove the impeached acting president, by the way, but there's time for that.

Yes.

But there's supposed to be nine members on the court.

There's only six now, so the opposition doesn't want to have to be a unanimous vote.

So now South Korea has a new acting president.

I think it's their third in three weeks, but somehow the story gets crazier.

So the investigators from South Korea's Korea's Corruption Investigations Office for High Ranking Officials or CIO office summoned Yoon in for questioning about whether or not he actually tried to stage a coup.

Yoon refused.

So, the CIO got a warrant to detain him for questioning.

But Yoon's lawyers argue that the CIO doesn't have the authority to investigate him or question him in any way.

And so, when the CIO sent a bunch of its members, its agents, investigators, to Yoon's house to try to interview him or bring him in for questioning.

Yoon's security guards physically blocked them.

I think they made one of the human chains.

They made a human chain.

They made human chains.

Those are hands around America things.

They also, I think, they set up a bunch of buses as barricades.

They put barbed wire on Yoon's home.

I mean, it's crazy.

I imagine, though, like an analogy for listeners thinking, like, what are you talking about?

Imagine like Bob Mueller rounded up a bunch of cops during the Mueller probe and trying to go to the White House.

Well, I mean, we could find out when Cash Patel shows up at Crooked.

Yes.

Human chain of crooked staffers.

That'd be nice if they do that for us.

So eventually, the CIO office, the investigators, gave up and they just stopped trying to bring him in for questioning.

By the way, in the background of all of this, Ben, South Korea had this horrific plane crash over the holiday.

I think it was December 29th.

179 people on this Jeju Airlines flight were killed.

Investigators don't know what happened.

They're still trying to figure it out.

So the second acting president is now charged with kind of handling this crisis internally for the country.

So, Ben, just stepping back, you see a lot of people, experts quoted in stories about Yoon's insane behavior the last month or so, saying, actually, it'll be okay.

We have faith in South Korea's democracy and its institutions will hold and they'll work things out.

But it's pretty precarious.

And I do think it shows the way that someone like Yoon, who is shameless, like strident and willing to do and say anything to stay in power, can exploit gaps in their system that is supposed to hold him accountable.

You know, he's basically exploiting this period of time between the

National Assembly voting to impeach and the court deciding whether he's removed to create mass chaos.

And it feels a little familiar to us, I guess.

It's completely insane, this story.

I mean, this will be a theme of this entire podcast, but probably the next four years.

98.

Because

this guy, first of all, to your point about his psychology, I don't think he's left this residence since the coup attempt.

So, talk about the TV show, not to make light of it, but just what is he doing?

He's like, you know, the man in the high castle, like walking around with the presidential detail, just doing human chains to prevent him.

Did you know he moved the residence from the Blue House to the defense ministry?

Yeah, which actually is very unpopular because it's more like in downtown Seoul and pissed everybody off because that traffic is working.

Yeah, well, imagine a guy just in the middle of the biggest city in the country, just hold up.

And look, at some point, I, you know, the die will be cast.

I mean, I don't think this guy has enough support to mount some extra constitutional challenge.

But who knows?

He's holding out in the hopes that this judicial process can get slowed down.

They're impeaching acting presidents now.

These are not the strongest leaders I've noticed.

The opposition is just impeaching everyone they can get their hands on.

So

it is a crisis that has its own momentum of just generating more crisis.

And something is going to have to

kind of be the turning point.

And it's probably going to have to be the resolution of this guy's status.

Like, he's going to get arrested, and we're all going to move on and have an election.

Like, until they do that, they're in this precarious position.

Full stop.

I think the bigger challenge here is that this is, you know, a volatile part of the world.

I mean, if you're Kim Jong-un and you're looking at this, you're thinking,

is now the time I start kind of poking the bear here?

Like,

with some provocative actions, I got Trump coming in.

We're one Trump press conference away from Trump, you know, musing that maybe Kim Jong-un should take over South Korea as he's a strong leader.

You know, I mean, these are things that we have to start entertaining in our head that this could actually, if the chaos continues like this, present some kind of opportunity for at least a provocation from Kim Jong-un.

It's certainly not good for the United States to have one of its anchor allies in Asia admired in this kind of complete chaos.

See, Tony Blinken was just there, and he had to do a press conference, I think, with the foreign minister.

Yeah.

He kept getting asked about this.

I mean, the news out of it was that Tony said a thousand North Korean troops had been killed killed in Ukraine, which is a pretty eye-popping number.

And also that the Russians were giving the North Koreans a bunch of technology, including, I think, you know, military training, equipment, including space and satellite technology, I think as we sort of predicted on the show.

But Tony's kind of like has to account for why the U.S.

made this big bet on Yun

and this rapprochement between South Korea and Japan.

What they thought was like a legacy issue.

I'm sure that then when this trip was planned in the summer, it was like a legacy

victory lap.

And yeah, this is a mess.

I mean, there's no other way to put it.

And

South Korea has been pretty resilient.

You know, they resisted the coup attempt, but they don't seem to have like a clear process for handling this phase of things.

Or at least it's like the U.S.

It's like you said,

you assume that...

someone's going to bide by the norms.

So like you assume this guy is going to present himself to the prosecutor's office or be arrested when people show up to arrest him.

And once one guy doesn't abide by the norms, you're in like uncharted territory.

That's exactly right.

And I read that it could take six months for the court to make a decision on whether to remove Yoon.

That creates a lot of space for trouble between now and then.

And South Korean politics are extremely polarized.

And conservatives are rallying around Yoon in this moment because they hate the opposition and they like that he's fighting.

And to your point about, you know, like the kind of institutions not working perfectly, the CIO was established in 2021 following the impeachment of President Park, who was removed in 2017 after a bunch of corruption and abuse of power charges.

And so clearly, they didn't work out all the kinks here.

No, no.

And again, we always talk about South Korea as this economic miracle as compared to North Korea because the armistice happens in 1953, ends the fighting, but not the war.

And fast forward, and North Korea is this backwards place where you can't see it from space.

And South Korea is this unbelievably vibrant.

economy.

But

that story is kind of incomplete.

The truth is that from 1953 to 1987, South Korea went through this series of kind of military coups and dictatorships and authoritarian governments.

And as recently as 1980, there were uprisings put down.

by violent force by the Korean military where hundreds, if not thousands of people were killed, like depending on which account you believe.

And by the way, I think the U.S.

trained those South Korean troops

and approved them being sent in to like put down this protest.

So there's just a very recent history of a martial law declaration ending very, very badly for South Korea.

That's got to be terrifying.

Yeah.

I mean, this is a post-Cold War, you know, end of Cold War kind of democracy story.

And we, you can't, you know, we have to expand our imaginations in this period of history, you know, that these things aren't all settled, right?

Like democracies don't always stay democracies.

Wars aren't always prevented.

This is, you know, what's so interesting to me, Tommy, is that you've got this vibrant economy and this incredibly almost like superpower pop culture, right?

With K-pop and television,

and yet their politics is in absolute dumpster fire right now.

You know, I'm in a glass house here, so I'm not suggesting they're the only ones, but this is going to be.

This is a glass dumpster.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is going to be hard to get out of.

And Japan is not exactly have stable politics either.

So this is not the best time for U.S.

allies right now

in Europe or Asia.

We'll get to Europe next.

Yeah, and look,

I don't fault the Biden administration for trying trying to push this rapprochement between South Korea and Japan, but you do need to wonder the degree to which it might have contributed to the polarization and the anger and just the kind of zero-sum nature of the honestly.

I mean, I wasn't inside those discussions now, obviously.

But one of the reasons we pushed those rapprochement and we got meetings between the Japanese and South Koreans in the U.S.

But one of the things that the South Korean lead, both South Korean presidents that we dealt with in the Obama administration, would tell us is I can only go so far without inviting like a real backlash here.

So that's not the precise cause of this.

I mean, there's all kinds of overreach that this guy had, but it does show that, particularly in democracies, one thing we've all learned is you can't overly personalize these policies around one person, you know, because if that one person isn't bringing everybody else along,

it's not going to be durable.

I mean, that's certainly what's happened to a lot of things I've worked on in government.

For sure.

Yeah.

One day you're singing American Pie at the State Dinner.

The next day you're bearing.

You're singing

around your house.

Well, the good news is, Ben, Donald Trump's going to take charge and everything we fixed.

So

he popped off a bunch over the break.

He did a press conference today that really veered into crazy talk.

So we're going to talk about those proposals seriously and cover them because I actually, I think they're

serious proposals.

I think they're not musings.

So I guess we should.

He's also just assumed the presidency.

before being sworn in.

So that part complicates things.

So let's start with the Greenland piece of this, Ben.

So on December 22nd, Trump announced his pick to be ambassador to Denmark.

It was a truth social post, of course.

And in that post, he said, quote, for purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity, end quote.

Folks probably remember Trump floated this idea back in 2019 as well.

Greenland is currently an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, but it primarily self-governs except on matters of defense and foreign policy.

Greenland's prime minister, Muta Eggul, did not take kindly to Trump's post, responding by saying that the country is, quote, not for sale.

And if anything, Trump seemed to add more fuel to the fire in the political movement for Greenland's full independence.

The prime minister signaled in a New Year's address that 2025 could be a year to remove, quote, the shackles of colonialism.

But, you know, not helping matter.

Don Jr.

visited Greenland today.

He went with Charlie Kirk, the

right-wing fascist TPUSA guy and this other dipshit from the transition team to shoot video for his podcast, of course.

By the way, the guy from the transition team is the head of personnel.

Yeah, the Sergio Gore is.

Yeah, it's kind of random, right?

Why is that guy there?

I don't know.

Why that guy love people?

I think they all just like him.

Like, he was like a normie, I think,

like, Rubio guy, maybe, and he just kind of got his way into

the club.

So, like, on a policy level, Ben, wanting to have ownership of Greenland is not crazy.

I think thanks to climate change, the Arctic sea routes are opening up.

Greenland is also melting, and there's all these valuable natural resources, minerals, metals, etc.

It hosts a U.S.

base.

But talking about it like Trump does is crazy.

Here's a clip from Trump's press conference today, Tuesday the 7th.

Can you assure the world that as you try to

get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion?

No.

And can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is?

Are you going to negotiate a new treaty?

Are you going to ask the Canadians to hold the vote?

What is the strategy?

I can't assure you, you're talking about Panama and Greenland.

No, I can't assure you on either of those two.

But I can say this.

We need them for economic security.

The Panama Canal is vital to our country.

It's being operated by China.

China.

And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama.

We didn't give it to China.

Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes.

I've been told that for a long time, long before I even ran.

I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time.

You have approximately 45,000 people there.

People really don't even know if Denmark has any legal right to it.

But if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security.

That's for the free world.

I'm talking about protecting the free world.

You look at, you don't even need binoculars.

You look outside, you have China.

ships all over the place.

You have Russian ships all over the place.

We're not letting that happen.

Whose binoculars is he talking about?

Where would one be?

Sarah Palin.

Where would one be using the binoculars?

I'm not sure.

From Greenland or from the United States?

Iceland, maybe?

I don't know.

The questioner is.

Does he know about Google Earth?

The questioner there is David Sanger from the New York Times, who we know

very well.

You can tell David asks this question.

He gets the hard no, like the newsiest answer, like, no, I will not rule out invading fucking Greenland and Panama.

And you can tell it just doesn't register.

Because

that never happens.

Like, Like, if people are usually careful.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, I do.

That's just wild.

So, man, we'll get to the Panama portion of this in a minute.

I mean, again, like, if he's probably blustering about a military invasion,

I do not think he's kidding about wanting to control Greenland at all.

I think this is going to be a relentless focus.

And I'd say a couple of broad things that actually are going to apply to Panama, too, but then on Greenland.

First of all, You know, this is a classic case of, you know, Trump won't ever stand up to a guy like Putin, but he'll push around 50,000 people in Greenland or Panama.

You know, I mean, classic bully behavior, right?

Denmark.

Yeah, he's picking fights with Denmark and Panama and Canada.

He would never actually pick a real fight with Russia or China.

But then, secondly,

I actually am really worried about this.

I mean, I literally spent a lot of time thinking about this because he's, what, 78 years old?

I mean,

if you apply the logic of any aging narcissistic autocrat in all of human history, they all believe they need territorial conquest to be remembered a certain way, to be on Mount Rushmore, to be a great leader.

He's looking at Putin.

He saw Putin take Crimea.

Putin got a big boost in the polls.

That kind of thing matters to Trump.

I take this profoundly seriously.

I believe him that he wants to...

get Greenland while he's president.

I truly believe he wants to do that.

And the same thing is true with Panama.

And by the way, it is like if the U.S.

suddenly snapped its fingers and control Greenland tomorrow, there are tons of natural resources and strategic reasons why that would be beneficial.

And I don't know what exactly his play is because it's not really for sale.

It's not like a real estate property that Denmark owns that they can sell to us.

I think

what he might want to do is to dangle a bunch of money in front of those 50,000 people and be like, hey, well, you can be part of the United States and we'll pour some money into you.

He's probably trying to buy.

I I don't know what Don Jr.

is doing over there.

What he might be doing is, you know,

in addition to drugs.

Just kidding.

What he might be doing is, yeah, no, just kidding.

No libel happened here.

Tylenol is what I meant.

Exactly.

We all take drugs like that on vacation.

But, you know, find the person in Greenland who says, yeah, we want to be with the Americans, you know, and then suddenly you have a basis for a dispute.

And you say, well, look, these people would rather be American.

And so

we can all laugh at this because it is kind of funny.

But I also think that we'll be talking about this a lot in the coming weeks.

You know, it likes to sound ridiculous in 2019.

No, I think it's not at all.

And I think Bloomberg tried to take the idea seriously too.

And I think they came to the same conclusion you did about how the process might work.

Like you'd kind of want or need Greenland to gain independence first and then decide to sell itself to the U.S.

Yeah.

They weren't thinking about the invasion option.

I mean, they also tried to estimate the cost of Greenland.

They noted that its GDP in 2021 was roughly $3.2 billion, and and then it gets about $600 million a year from Denmark annually.

So I don't know how you value a country.

But here's the thing.

Every time he talks about it, he says it's a national security issue.

I think that means he wants to put money in the defense budget.

So the defense budget's a trillion dollars.

Yeah, TV.

That is

what X of the GDP of Greenland or the $550 million subsidy they get from Denmark.

So there's a lot of money that he could play with here.

But how do we do this valuation?

Are we doing a PE ratio?

Are we doing a multiple on EBITDA or

square footage?

Greenland should call themselves a tech company.

They do like a 20X multiple.

I mean, the other thing is, like, Trump, we've seen him bust norms and get away with it, right?

You guys had a great episode on January 6th yesterday.

Why wouldn't he do the same thing internationally?

Like, why wouldn't he roll up the U.S.

Navy to wherever it can actually land in Greenland and just say it's ours?

I mean, this is a man who literally sent a mob to the Capitol and then got elected president.

So you think he's worried about the norms against invading Greenland?

I don't think so.

No, I don't either.

I think we should lease it, though, just in case they release a new Arcade.

Well, yeah, it's like the electric cars, you know, like you got to wait for the battery to get better.

So two year lease.

Yeah, the driving.

That's right.

Oh, man, this is bad.

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So, speaking of this, you know, places we might invade, listeners also probably remember Trump being very angry about the Panama Canal back in the day.

He says now the U.S.

is being ripped off by Panama and that Panama is charging U.S.

commercial and naval vessels exorbitant fees

for going through the canal.

Trump said if the rates are not lowered, quote, we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the U.S.

in full, quickly and without question.

So some quick history and background on the Panama Canal.

It was built between 1904 and 1914.

The U.S.

completed the project.

It was started by the French.

It spans 50 miles through like, you know, mountainous terrain.

It required workers working in brutal conditions or rampant mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever and malaria.

Tens of thousands of workers died over the entirety of the French and American construction effort, mostly workers from the Caribbean.

The U.S.

controlled the canal until Jimmy Carter signed two treaties in 1977 that handed over control of the canal to the Panamanians while also guaranteeing U.S.

access to it.

Panama took sole control of the Panama Canal in 1999.

So for context, 14,000 ships go through the Panama Canal per year, including 40% of all U.S.

container traffic.

We make up 75% of the canal's total traffic.

So there is some truth to the idea that rates have gone up.

That is because there was an extreme drought that dried up the lake that allowed, that, you know, has the water that goes into the canal and allows it to function.

Thank you, climate change.

I'm not aware of any evidence that the U.S.

is being charged more money than other countries.

I don't know if you are.

But, Ben, my theory for why Trump is obsessed with the Panama Canal is that he remembers when this was a huge political issue.

It was before the Big Macs that kind of hardened his brain and the Diet Cokes.

Reagan used to attack Jimmy Carter on this all the time.

The mantra was, we built it, we paid for it, and we're going to keep it.

If you read any Rick Perlstein book.

I was going to, you still might take it.

We read the same shit.

That's great.

Okay, no.

So like, anyway, Carter, he called it Carter.

We called it Ricky.

This is great, sir.

Keep going.

It folded into, I think, Cold War hysteria about Russian influence or Soviet influence in Latin America.

But again, I see the strategic value of Greenland.

I don't get being mad about the canal.

I think you're exactly right.

And we did not coordinate these takes beforehand.

People just, we actually totally agree on this one i was thinking about reagan land the rick perlstein book unfortunately i was consuming rick perlsteen's like twitter fights with mark andreessen over the over the holidays so

which is kind of crazy uh what did perlsteen say that andreessen said at a dinner party something about oxycon something about like people from like basically poor white people who read hillbilly

should like he's glad there's oxygen and video games and video games to distract them from being so pathetic yeah that's a shitty thing to say it was a shitty thing to say andreessen deny it we should deny it.

And he denies it.

That's

why there was a Twitter fight.

It's actually kind of entertaining.

But there is a, if people want to get more background, it's actually really worth reading the Penrod Canal section of that Reagan land book because it's kind of the origin of this kind of uber right-wing, fuck the world.

You know, jingoism.

Reagan really did use it.

He was flown around the country in like a private jet making these speeches about how awful this was a betrayal of everything.

And that was clearly a time when Donald Trump was formative, right?

He was soaking soaking in.

And I think basically what probably happened here is, yes, China has more and more influence in Latin America generally, not just Panama, everywhere, right?

Trump gets one briefing about how the Chinese

have some interest somewhere in the case, because they're not running the Panama Canal.

He's lying about that.

But

they have an economic presence in Panama.

And he's like, fuck it, give it back to us.

And this is just red meat for right-wingers.

So I don't think that there's some military play here.

I think I take Greenland more seriously.

I actually think this is a much dumber play for him, too, because the Chinese do have more and more influence in Latin America.

And this is the kind of thing that is a gift to the Chinese.

They go to Panama, they go to all these other countries, say, look at the Americans.

They're reverting back to their imperial Cold War,

assholes selves.

We're just trying to make deals down here.

We're building new ports.

So I think the Trump years are going to be a massive boon to Chinese influence in Latin America because Latin America hates this shit.

The the Panamanians, it's in their land.

It's their canal.

Like, not just because of the treaty,

it's an absurd proposition the United States would somehow be running like a piece of

waterway in Panama in 2020.

Or base in Cuba.

Exactly.

I thought the same thing, right?

So I don't know.

Like, I could see some dumb thing where he

puts...

sanctions or tariffs on Panama, but to what end?

Like what is he asking?

I don't even get what he's asking for.

No, neither.

Do we really want to operate the Panama Canal again with the U.S.

military?

Like, just to, you know, usher some contextualization.

Do we want to collect fees on the Maresk shipping containers?

Like, he's not even saying what he wants there.

So I think this is kind of just weird right-wing red meat.

But I don't know.

He'll do something, I assume.

Right.

And it's also worth noting that Reagan won the election.

He became president.

for eight years.

No, I know.

He didn't take back the canal.

We may just be the libs who just point out that these things are

immoral and unethical unethical while like Trump vacuums up the canal in Greenland and gets his fucking face in Mount Russia.

Yeah, but I think Reagan ultimately decided that, you know, okay, he was a big Cold Warrior.

He was worried about Nicaragua and El Salvador and, you know, Soviet influence in other places.

And he thought, maybe I shouldn't actually rip off the Panamanians and try to make them an ally.

And that was part of what, yeah, that was absolutely Reagan's calculus.

That was certainly Carter's calculus.

And again, Cold War thinking, this is dumb because the Chinese are going to get much more influence, not just in Panama, but across that region because of this.

I was reading about the Panama Canal, just to go deep on this.

Apparently, when the French fascinating.

It really is fascinating.

I mean, it's an incredible engineering accomplishment done on the backs of massacring tens of thousands of people through a lot through mosquito-borne diseases, but also just unbelievable working conditions.

These guys are like literally dynamiting mountains.

The dynamite would go off too early.

It would blow them up.

There would be landslides, et cetera.

When the French were working on the Panama Canal, they gave up eventually all these people were getting sick so they set up field hospitals and the patients in the field hospitals were lying in bed and what would happen is like these like army ants or something would crawl up the bedposts and crawl all over them it just drove them insane right so what the french did

truly yeah so what they did though was they put the four corners of the beds in little water cups which prevented the ants from crawling up but created the perfect grounds for mosquitoes to lay their eggs which drastically uh exacerbated the disease issue the yellow fever and and the malaria, etc.

One of the innovations that the U.S.

had was actually, I think, figuring out that these were mosquito-borne diseases, figuring out mitigation efforts, putting up screens in

the lowest paid workers' homes, like putting oil in standing water, et cetera, to try to defeat the diseases.

But yeah, nasty stuff.

Yeah.

Well,

now we want it back, I guess.

Let's get that back.

You know, Woodrow Wilson, I think, as the one who pressed the button in the Oval Office that set off the dynamite that detonated the dike that was holding back the water and like finally flooded the canal.

That's a cool thing to do.

Have you seen the Panama Canal?

No.

It's pretty extraordinary.

Like we went, there was a summit of the Americas down there, and there are these huge locks, right?

These huge things that

open and close and the ships go through.

It's pretty cool.

So maybe Trump just wants to press the button and he just loves big hardware.

Close the locks.

Just let him open the thing.

All right, Ben.

We've talked about a bunch of ways the world kind of feels unsteady at the moment.

One reason why is a guy named Elon Musk.

So Elon, he's taking his global interference project, global.

We talked about this a bit on Pad Save America yesterday, but I think you and I could really geek out and dig in.

But let's focus on Germany, the UK, Canada, anywhere else you want.

In Germany, Elon has been attacking Chancellor Olaf Schultz, the Social Democrat.

He's endorsed the far-right AFD party, both on Twitter and then in an op-ed.

He wrote for this conservative online newspaper owned by Axel Springer, the same company that owns Politico in the U.S.

Remember, though, all of these other political parties in Germany refuse to work with the AFD because they are so extreme.

German intelligence considers parts of the AFD an extremist group, and some of the leaders, they just keep accidentally using banned Nazi-era slogans at political rallies.

Just like you hate when that happens, when a Nazi slogan just kind of slips out as you're

campaigning in Thuringia.

In the UK, Musk has shown support for the right-wing Reform Party.

He met with Reform leader Nigel Farage at Mar-a-Lago.

Farage said Elon floated donating up to $100 million to the Reform Party.

Hilariously, though, Elon then said Farage, quote, doesn't have what it takes to lead reform because Farage isn't a fan of this violent right-wing thug named Tommy Robinson, who we can get into or not, depending on where this goes.

Elon has been attacking Prime Minister Kier Starmer and the Labor Party most recently, dredging up this horrible story from over a decade ago about 1,400 or more kids, young girls, who were sexually abused in what came to be called the grooming gang scandal.

It is a truly awful story.

The local police failed to protect these kids on every level, in part because they were worried about singling out Pakistani men in a way that could be perceived as racist.

But Elon has decided to really pick up and demagogue this, ignoring the fact that the Tory Party was, of course, running the government during this period.

But Trump is saying, like, Elon Starmer is to blame.

He deserves to be in prison, et cetera.

And then finally, in Canada, back in December, Elon tweeted about Pierre Polyev, the Conservative Party leader.

He said, quote, seems great, in response to a tweet from some Canadian professor about Polyev,

that was a clip of him advocating for bombing Iran

or supporting an Israeli military strike on Iran.

I thought MAGA was anti-war now, but I guess not for Elon.

So, Ben, heads of state in France, Germany, Norway, and the UK, they've all responded to Elon Musk in some way

in the press.

Here's a clip of Kier Starmer responding to Elon's attacks at a press conference that was supposed to be about fixing Britain's National Health Service.

On the question of Elon Musk, look,

I think most people are more interested in what's going to happen to the NHS, frankly,

than what's happening on Twitter.

Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible,

they're not interested in victims.

They're interested in themselves.

So, Ben, I think the question here we should try to answer is: why?

Why do you think Elon is doing this?

I honestly think that Elon has gotten,

there's an ego answer and then a practical answer.

And the ego answer, he's gotten this taste of like world power and domination, you know?

And I think he's got a personality type, everything that you see about the guy that is kind of this boundless ego and ambition.

And he feels...

clearly like he bought and won an election here.

I'm sure that in his head, Elon Musk thinks he made the difference for Trump.

And maybe he did, actually, this year.

He certainly bought his place in the administration.

And then he's looking at the world and he's seeing one thing that people have to understand, particularly our American listeners, is that there's not a lot of money in politics in these places.

Like, nobody's ever spent $100 million on a British election, not even close to it, right?

Germany, France.

And if he can find ways, if you have unlimited, $100 million to him is like $100 to you and me, right?

If he can find ways to just plow money into places, he's like, well, I can become the global oligarch, not just the American oligarch, if I can start, you know, picking winners.

Now, what he's picking is consistently the far right.

I mean, the AFD

in Germany, the National Front in France, like whatever nutcase, you know, the Reform Party or even the nutter guy in the UK, the right-wing guy in Canada.

So that's, this is really dangerous.

I mean, I think this, like Greenland, we have to take this seriously because Elon Musk has the money to do this.

Now, what countries need to do is prevent it.

It's illegal in the UK, for instance, for a foreigner to just donate $100 million to a political party.

What's not illegal, though, is

you spend $100 million.

You set up a media outlet.

You set up some NGO and it's all to promote the reform party.

But what these countries need to do, if they're serious about this, is to fortify their own electoral systems so that they're not like us.

So that there's not, we, the Supreme Court decided.

We're just a missionary tale.

Yeah, we're the cause.

Don't become us.

Like the Supreme Court under Citizens United allowed for unlimited money and unlimited dark money.

But what he's showing us is this ambition to fuck around everywhere, this clear far-right preference, right?

This guy clearly has far-right tendencies.

Those are the only parties he's supporting.

If I were to find

a practical reason,

you and I have talked about this offline a bit, Tommy.

Like, he seems to want to be disrupting everything.

And I think he believes that it will serve his economic interests, whether that's his investments that he's going to make into crypto, whether that's the kind of state-like power of Starlink and Tesla and SpaceX, he clearly thinks disruption helps him in some way.

I'm not inside of his businesses or what his ambitions are for crypto.

I mean, if you like crypto and you see that as a place you're going to put more and more money, you kind of want...

governments to fail because then people don't rely on government currencies and they go to places like crypto.

So that could enter into it.

But I take this very, the last thing he's telling me is, man,

Elon Musk is simultaneously what people used to admire about the United States, like an immigrant entrepreneur who comes in as well.

But this has got to make,

people must fucking hate us.

By the end of the Trump term, like I don't know how people are going to feel about the United States in most of these places, because the arrogance of just going and messing around in their politics

and with no regard even to the history.

And in Germany, you're talking about the AFD.

You're talking about people with neo-Nazi roots

just because it kind of entertains you online is really grotesque.

Yeah, I mean,

we've talked a lot about the AFD.

I mean, I think it's worth noting, like, Tommy Robinson, this kind of online

pot-stirring extremist in the UK, like he was too extreme for Nigel Farage.

I think Farage left the UKIP party because they were obsessed with Tommy Robinson.

Who's the comparison?

It'd be like that, who's that any semite who went to Mar-a-Lago and had like

Nick Fuentes.

Nick Fuentes.

It's like that level of trolly fucking goon, right?

Yes, if Nick Fuentes was mixed with a soccer hooligan who was really violent and gotten lots of fights and had gone to jail a bunch of times, I think there was some domestic abuse.

I think there was a big mortgage fraud thing.

It's like Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, and yeah.

And the irony about Tommy Robinson, I think like ostensibly Elon says he likes him because he's standing up to the grooming gangs and like fighting the woke forces that allowed them to fester.

Tommy Robinson went to one of the trials of these grooming gangs, filmed it in contravention of British rules that are supposed to keep the jury from getting tarnished or learning about things that are happening.

And also rules they have set up to protect the identity of victims and was live streaming it, and they arrested him for that.

And his actions that day almost got the case overturned.

So he almost helped get these guys off for their horrific abuse of children because of his actions.

So like the idea that he is some noble, you know, protector of young kids is like completely backwards.

Yeah, I mean, I think one thing, you know, I was was ruminating on this over the break, too, with a friend and lawyer of the pod, Mike Gottlieb.

You know,

you look at

Elon right now, and I think part of what is probably weighing on people, you know, certainly Pod Say the World listeners, is like they're winning.

Like, they're winning.

Like, they, they're these fucking ketamine-taking, crypto-bro

assholes, right, who, like, live in a world with no values and no guardrails and no behavioral constraints.

Like we have to acknowledge that they're winning.

They run the United States of America as of a couple weeks from now.

And right now you see even the media doesn't know how to process it.

So

it's like,

what is Elon?

There's a kind of a...

Because people kind of worship wealth and celebrity in this country,

it's viewed as interesting and not dangerous that Elon is doing all this.

Nobody's pointing out that, you know, if Barack Obama or Joe Biden or George W.

Bush, by the way, had like the richest person in the world hanging out with them with huge government responsibilities, with huge conflicts of interest, and huge ambitions to meddle in the politics of other countries on behalf of far-right parties, the world would have like imploded.

And now it's like, how interesting is this, right?

I acknowledge that they're winning.

I acknowledge that they just won.

I acknowledge that more people want them to be in charge than one Democrats to be in charge.

That does not make it right.

And that does not mean that they're going going to win in the end, whenever the end is, right?

And we have to remind ourselves of that.

These people want to create a sense of inevitability that they have so much money and so much power that it's just going to be their world.

And I don't think we have to accept that.

And that's why I think it's good, you know, if I was Schultz and not that Schultz is going to be around for that long, and Macron and Starmer and all that,

they better protect themselves while they can.

Yeah,

I want to talk about their response.

I was thinking about the theories of why, too.

It's like, maybe he's just a genuinely unstable guy who does like drugs and spends too much time on Twitter and is easily swayed by a right-wing agiprop.

Maybe he is kind of a fascist and just has like a genuine like for these people.

Maybe he's softening up leaders that Trump doesn't like on Trump's behalf in some way.

Maybe there's a business interest.

I know Tesla has got a manufacturing plant in Germany.

I don't know if that's relevant.

Misinformation on Twitter played this big role in those far-right riots in the UK last summer when Elon was tweeting things like civil war is inevitable.

That led to a government crackdown on misinformation on social media, which I imagine, you know, hits him in his pocket because of the financials of X.

Regardless, I'm with you.

Like these leaders need to figure out a way to respond.

I think Starmer was good in his press conference the other day on the facts of this case.

But the problem for him is Elon doesn't care about the facts and he's going to move on to the next thing and just keep demagoguing them.

Olaf Schultz said something like, you don't feed the trolls.

And I just think that is a strong mentality.

That's, yeah, that's how we go.

It's like resistance 1.0 thinking Olaf.

What you need to do is get, I mean, what I'd be doing is fortifying the barriers to foreign money and politics because that's a practical thing you can do.

But

you're more like in this, you know, whatever verse.

I mean, I think you raise

a really important question, Tommy.

Like, is Elon Musk in like the conductor of this social media like netherworld or has he had his own brain broken by it?

yeah and i don't know that's a scary question that because i don't know the answer to it i i think it's a really important question and judging by the people he constantly interacts with i think it like leans the ladder yeah like he you know like he can tweak the algorithm behind the scenes but he's like responding to just weirdos yeah i mean this is a guy like you know cat turd uh takes like seem to really land with him you know someone pointed out i was reading an article that pointed out that he was fighting with a parody account for the cat that lives outside number 10 about free speech in the uk it's like what is happening here But anyway, I was texting with a friend who's got like high-up connections at Labor.

And

I kind of think what Kier Starbourn needs is some burly drunk guy from Liverpool on the street shouting something like, fuck off billionaire Elon Twat and have that go viral and be the framing around everything to do with his meddling in UK politics.

Like, you gotta fight nationalism with nationalism.

You need some new, yeah, you need some new tactics and new approaches here, like beyond just don't feed the trolls.

I mean, and the reality is this is not going to go away.

It's like the Greenland thing.

Like these guys, these tech bros have a taste for,

you know,

they've always thought they could run things better than the politicians.

Right.

And now

I think a guy like Elon thinks that the opening is there for him to actually try to run the world, you know?

And the Mark Andreessen's of the world and the David Sachs's, like they, they, these guys, like...

They made an investment.

They're VCs.

Yeah, and they think they know better than the rest of us how to run run things and you know they're gonna try to run countries last thing that's kind of fun ben uh on the trump stuff so he they named a fox news host named Tammy Bruce to be the state department spokesman

did you see that she has all these tweets yeah attacking Marco Rubio Marco

Marco seven times she referred to him as quote a kid waving frantically in the back of the room trying to prove relevance uh she called him a tool of the establishment and an inexperienced senator who's never run a thing in his life if you want proof that marco rubio i was talking to somebody who is in one of these places where they kind of like Marco Rubio's foreign policy more than Trump's.

So they're like, well, don't you think Rubio?

I'm like, this guy, from day one, Trump is going to set out.

Not only will Rubio not have any influence, but they're going to humiliate him.

I mean, you know, Trump doesn't forget this stuff.

Like, Trump didn't forget the 2016 election.

So he's basically going to humiliate this guy.

And this selection proves it.

The new spokeswoman for the State Department in 2016 said she, quote, had to mute Marco.

I think tells you all you need to know about how she'll approach the job.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do, it has been four years since the insurrection, and we're still examining the reach and the limits of presidential power.

This week, on strict scrutiny, Leah, Melissa, and Kate are breaking down what presidential power actually looks like, why it matters, and the sometimes very unexpected ways we keep power in check.

Tune into this timely episode now, only on the strict scrutiny feed.

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We talked about the Trump administration.

Let's talk about the Biden administration.

Starting with Sudan, Ben.

Earlier today, Tuesday, Secretary of State Tony Blinken released a statement on the civil war in Sudan, which has been raging since April of 2023.

Blinken said that one of the main paramilitary forces in the conflict, the RSF or Rapid Support Forces, had committed genocide.

So a big determination.

The statement says in part: quote: The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.

Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people, escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing life-saving supplies.

So a very clear-cut statement there.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Sudan in the civil war.

Millions have been displaced in the course of the two years of this conflict.

So Ben, just reading this, a couple thoughts.

I mean, obviously, first, we should talk about it, but this genocide declaration is going to infuriate anyone who wants to see Biden do something to stop the killing in Gaza or put any pressure on the Israelis to stop bombing.

Right.

Second, it was notable.

Look, I'm glad they did this.

It was notable, though, that this statement didn't put any real pressure on the UAE

for funneling arms to the RSF.

I can't remember if we talked about it on the show.

There was that weird letter from the White House from Brett McGurk to Congress saying, quote, despite reports we have received suggesting the contrary has occurred to date, the UAE has informed the administration that it is not now transferring any weapons to the RSF.

It will not do so going forward.

Sure seems to just, that all seems to absolve them.

Yeah, and that's completely fueling this.

That's complete bullshit.

I mean, the New York Times has a tremendous investigation where they used all kinds of sources, including overhead imagery and things.

And actually, even some of the

companies that are sanctioned by the Biden administration have these connections to the way that

the UAE transits things across

Africa.

So to do this while running interference with the Emiratis, I'm sorry.

I mean,

I'm glad they called this out, but

ultimately,

if this is a genocide, then presumably the people that are supporting the genocide should be held accountable.

Now,

I know that Gaza echo is probably not good for the Biden administration either, right?

So

I guess this is useful in spotlighting the horrific nature of the RSF.

We should also point out that they are the kind of legacy of the John Daweed, who were also found to be committing a genocide in Darfur way back when.

These are some of the same characters, you know, and it may put additional pressure on the RSF internationally, and that's good.

But ultimately, you know,

if you don't go after the people, the sources of support for the RSF, it's not going to be as impactful.

Yeah, I was talking to

an expert that we used to work with about Sudan before the break, who was telling me that, like, the key to ending this war, it sounds like both sides know that this has gotten to a really bad place and there's not going to be a clear-cut military victory, but you have to stop the UAE from arming the RSF.

But associated with that, you have to stop this flow of gold from Sudan into the UAE because Sudan is, I believe, the fifth largest producer of gold in the world.

And apparently, nearly all of it flows through the UAE or the Russians.

And now Sudan's doing all of its banking at Emirati Banks.

You have this weird scenario where they're like, there's RSF-controlled gold mines, and they're flowing all that gold into the UAE.

But also.

The government is doing its banking in the UAE.

So they're sort of like funding both sides of this thing.

There's complicating things even more.

The Saudis have an interest in Sudan.

They get most of their meat and wheat from Sudan, so they want a compliant regime.

The Egyptians have these deep military ties with Sudan.

I think the current military leader of Sudan went to military academy with General Sisi.

And also the Egyptians want to make sure that the Nile is not messed with in any way because it flows through Sudan up into Egypt.

So long story short, it's this massive proxy war.

And I think the challenge for the Biden team is Tom Periello is trying his best to conduct some diplomacy, but he needs to be able to elevate this and get these regional actors to move, like the Saudis and the UAE and Egypt.

And I think those actors probably know, those countries probably know that there were higher priorities.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Constantly.

And especially with the UAE, there are other U.S.

foreign policy interests that are higher.

The only thing I'd say here is I just don't understand.

The UAE, they have so much money.

Like

they can weather the hit of a couple of gold mines or whatever the thing is that is their interest here.

So this is the deal that I would like to see.

I'm not hopeful that Donald Trump is going to prioritize it, but I'm with you.

You know, I'd like to see Donald Trump call NBZ and say, let's cut this guy off.

And, you know, like, if you want to get credit for something, let's try to get credit for this.

Make another part of the Abraham Accords or something.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, sir, this could be a historic thing.

You know, you solved this genocide problem that Joe Biden couldn't.

Like, whatever it takes to stop.

Whatever it takes to just stop this killing.

Although this person I was talking to made the point to me that Trump will probably want something for it.

You know what I mean?

He'll demand it.

Gold or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, back to Gaza Ben.

So things in Gaza remain horrible.

Over 100 Palestinians were reportedly killed in airstrikes over the weekend.

The Washington Post had this absolutely absolutely gutting report on how at least seven infants have died in Gaza by freezing to death due to the cold.

Trump keeps threatening that all hell will break loose in the Middle East if there's not a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

He keeps saying that all hell will break loose.

I don't know what that means.

I mean, it kind of already broke loose in October 7th.

Yeah, hell has been loose.

There's the reports that Hamas maybe has agreed to release these 34 hostages as part of a follow-on ceasefire deal.

But then there's other reporting, I think it was in the Times, that said that Israel says they need more information from Hamas about which hostages are alive and how they'd get out.

So it is all just unbelievably depressing and tragic and infuriating.

And depending on what Trump means by all hell we'll break loose, it could get a lot worse.

Yeah, but I don't, first of all, it just seems less and less likely that there is going to be like a big ceasefire for hostages deal.

But there may be something, right?

It may not be all the hostages, and it may not be a permanent ceasefire.

So there may be something that is more incremental.

I don't know what he means, though, because does he mean the U.S.

will get involved directly militarily?

Because Israel can't really unleash any more hell than is life in Gaza right now.

So it does seem like

I think what I take from his message may be more to the other regional players because he, you know, Qatar

and

Egypt.

And like, I want this done by the time I get in, and you guys have to deliver it for me.

So I think he's probably just trying to brush back those countries.

But ultimately, as we've seen, it's really just two voices here.

It's Netanyahu and Hamas.

And we frankly don't even know what Hamas's kind of command structure is for this anymore.

I think it's like Sinwar's brothers.

Yeah, do they know where all the hostages are?

Like, there's some questions there.

We'll see.

But I mean,

I see that threat as more just like at everybody else to get their shit together.

But I think they've been trying.

That just doesn't mean you can get it done.

It's excruciating.

I do think

the Biden team has tried to broker a deal.

It is very hard to read some of these quotes by these sort of exit interviews by various senior officials where there's still this line that only Hamas is the holder of these hostage talks.

The hostage families don't believe that.

The families are the last ones to believe it.

So you're kind of gaslighting the hostage families who are like,

they've been briefed by people.

You had the former Minister of Defense of Israel saying this.

I mean, so I do think if something happens, the people that have incentive to deliver for Trump the most are these regional actors, like Qatar, Egypt.

So if it happens, watch it happen on like...

January 20th, like Carter hostage style.

Right.

Like, because they want to humiliate Biden.

Right.

And by the way, Hamas probably wants to humiliate Biden too, right?

And so I think if a deal gets done, my guess would be it happens literally like right before or maybe even on inauguration day.

But that doesn't fix Gaza.

Like it's still just as big a mess.

The best, that'd be great to get the hostages home and hopefully get some aid in.

But if Trump thinks that this is going to go away as a, you know, quote-unquote problem, it's not.

I think it'll go away insofar as he will ignore it.

activists, he will not listen to activists who talk about the humanitarian situation.

Yeah, and media attention.

Media attention will drift on Greenland.

It will lead to extremism and a massive cost down the road that we will all pay for in some way, shape, or something.

We will all pay for this.

This is not, I mean, we'll come back to this, obviously, but this is not

a victory.

This is going to have consequences or not.

Catastrophic.

Moral and others.

The other big sort of opportunity or crisis, depending how you look at it, that Trump is inheriting is Syria.

I think it's more of an opportunity than a crisis, frankly.

So the administration issued this week what's known as a general license exemption that will allow some transactions with the new government in Syria for six months in order to allow the sale and supply of natural gas, petroleum, electricity, and other energy because they've been obviously suffering from constant blackouts and other massive infrastructure needs.

The Treasury Department said that this general license will also apply to other essential services like water and sanitation.

So it's basically like a partial time-limited sanctions waiver.

It's not a removal of U.S.

sanctions.

It's not a lifting of the designation of HTS as a terrorist organization.

It's just kind of a half measure that is trying to help a little bit in the near term, but mostly punting the decision to Trump.

So that's one big policy update when it comes to sort of U.S.

policy towards Syria.

The other thing that I think is worth noting is this interview you flagged, Ben, which was with this close aide and former

chief for Bashar al-Assad.

He talks through some of the details of those last days.

The best part, if you're just an Assad hater like we are, is that Assad went to Moscow.

Putin made him wait two days before giving him a one-hour meeting and then sent him back.

And then, as Assad's

back in Syria watching city after city fall, Putin wouldn't take his calls and was just unavailable, would not also guarantee to provide support to the Iranian military if they came in to save the regime's ass.

So, with friends like these.

Well, it was really nice to read that thread.

And actually, you can see the whole interview if you speak Arabic.

But and picture Assad sitting there trying to get Putin on the phone.

The moment when Assad realized it was all over, that I would have liked a GoPro in the room.

That would be good to see.

I will say the general license is a classic Washington half measure.

I've been involved in general licenses in the past because the problem with it is you're keeping the sanctions in place.

You're just saying we are going to provide a license for anybody to do these things related to these.

We do this on Cuba because we couldn't get Congress to lift the embargo.

We did these licenses for certain things.

The problem with that is that nobody will invest in Syria

because, yeah, because they still see a sanction.

And they're like, well, why the fuck would we invest here if in six months this could go back to being sanctioned?

They're still technically sanctioned.

You're just saying I can do this stuff.

So what this will allow is you saw some shipments from Qatar and Turkey, which seem to be the closest governments to HTS, allowing for electricity and fuel and stuff like that to get in.

So it'll be good to kind of meet immediate needs around things like energy, but it's not going to allow for investment and reconstruction essentially to go forward.

That requires lifting the sanctions and punting that to Trump.

I mean, I don't know why you wouldn't, again, I know HGS is flawed.

There's some bad characters associated with it.

There's some tensions happening within the opposition.

My whole approach has always been lift the sanctions, try to get the best bet to get people in there to stabilize the situation, start to rebuild.

And if you start to see creepy behavior, you can switch everything can go in place tomorrow.

You can just take the existing sanctions and just reactivate them.

So I would rather lift them, but this is better than nothing.

Yeah, it's better than nothing.

I mean, I think the reason you wouldn't lift them is political risk.

Political risk, and I guess leverage, you know, like

they would probably argue that you need to incentivize good behavior by HGS over time, but I don't know, like, they're never going to be perfect.

Like, no, like, what government, what government in the world doesn't do things we don't like?

I mean, you have to allow for flaws in this government.

It's better than Assad.

I'd like to see better than Assad work out rather than it be another civil war because they can't fucking do anything because they are sanctioned.

And I've seen some people argue that

this outcome, the brittleness of the Syrian military and regime generally, is an indication that sanctions worked.

I'm not really sure that's at all true.

I think it harms the Syrian people while Assad set up a massive drug production Capicon operation in someone's government?

Yeah, someone who's there when the sanctuary was put in place, so I would have an interest in being like, oh, look at what we did worked.

No, it had nothing to do with that.

Like, he was making the rest of the country suffered, and he's making money on some weird amphetamine trades.

Billions of dollars off Capiton.

Finally, Ben, there's one thing I think Biden does deserve a lot of credit for, which is the Pentagon announced, I think this was Monday, Medal of Freedom to Ralph Floroni.

Yeah.

Funny, the Pentagon gave that a word out.

They announced that they moved 11 Yemeni prisoners to Oman this week from Gitmo to Oman, which now brings down the total number of those detained at Gitmo to 15.

I know.

It's the smallest the Gitmo population has ever been.

It's down from 40 detainees at the start of the Biden administration.

This deal itself has been years in the making.

It sounds like, though, per usual, Congress stepped in to block this.

I guess they had a plane on the runway in like 2023, and Congress.

fucked it up and kept these guys in detention.

Look, this is an imperfect solution.

Oman had 28 detainees, took in 28 detainees years ago.

I think they expelled them last year.

People are understandably upset about that.

But I think, like the war in Afghanistan, Gitmo is a mess that Biden inherited.

I'm just going to give him credit for doing everything he can to close it down because it is a stain on our justice system, our military, our intelligence community.

It's a colossal waste of money to stay in on us in the Obama administration for fucking up the politics and not getting this thing closed.

Obviously, Congress is the reason for that.

They passed laws that made it impossible to transfer people to the U.S.

or the military justice system was a disaster, and we weren't allowed to use Article III courts to prosecute prisoners.

There's a whole backstory.

We go back on the NFT.

But good for Biden for starting to move to get these guys out there.

Good for Biden.

The absurdity of there being 15 people in this prison that we spend like hundreds of millions of dollars.

Half a billion.

You know, just to stick it to Barack Obama.

Like, Barack Obama hasn't even been president in eight years.

I can't think of another reason that Lindsey Graham and all these goons, these aging terrorists down there are not so, I mean, it was always absurd that we couldn't move them to a supermax prison in the United States because, what, they're going to bust out, like, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's going to run through the wall, like the thing or something.

This is about politics, and it's about sticking it to Obama.

Obama said he'd close it.

It's so stupid that we're still doing this eight years later.

But it's good that

the lower that number gets, the more absurd this whole proposition is in the first place, that we still are spending half a billion dollars just to keep a prison open in Cuba to make some point, which I've even lost track of like what the point is we're making.

I don't know what the point is either.

I mean, I think the challenge is that you have a handful of actual terrorists who did bad things and our ability to

avoid Chick Mohammed.

Yeah, yeah, KSM there, and we can't prosecute these guys because a lot of them were tortured because the military commission system is a flawed disaster, and we can't use Article III courts.

But then there were a bunch of the guys there.

Why can't we use Article III?

That's what's so stupid.

I don't know.

Well, in parts of the United States, you can't transit them to the US.

Well, but look, this is one of those things where I was thinking about this recently, because it is true.

Like, people always yell at me about how we didn't close the Gimon.

I'm like, Congress basically passed a law in the first year of the Obama administration saying you couldn't transit.

This is one where I like admire Trump.

Maybe that's not, admire is the wrong word.

You love that guy.

No, Obama should have just said, fuck you.

I'm going to put these people on a plane and move.

We were being super normie about it.

By normie, I don't mean normal.

I mean, like, norms lovers, right?

And it's like, you know what?

Like fuck you.

It's stupid that we have a prison down there.

We've got plenty of prisons in the U.S.

or in other U.S.

territories.

And like we're just going to move these people.

Like we it's crazy how much time has been put in by Democratic lawyers and the Obama and Biden administration to negotiate these transfer deals to places like Oman when we should just fucking put these people on a plane to anywhere other than Guantanamo.

I know and a lot of full stop.

I mean four of the current members and this Carol Rosenberg has done amazing

reporters.

S terrific reporter for decades and was like the Gitmo queen of the day.

The Anne Seltzer, oh, I

know, I shouldn't say that anymore.

Ann Seltzer.

Pictures down.

Yeah, yeah, we have that.

But I meant in the same, she's got that thing where she just owns it.

In the way that Ann Seltzer owned Iowa polling, she owns Gitmo.

Like Charlie Savage used to own the legal.

Yep.

But she pointed out that there's now 800 troops and civilian contractors at Gitmo, 53 guards and other staff members for every detainee.

Just, it's so so sad.

It's absurd.

And a lot of these guys who had been held there,

not this current, not who's left now, but a lot of people who'd have been held there, like, didn't do anything, had been cleared for transfer.

There was just couldn't figure out a place to send them.

It is just such a stain on the country.

So good for Joe Biden for moving to get these guys up.

There you go.

Well, we just went for an hour 15.

We had no guests today because we knew we had a lot of shit.

So maybe we just hit it and there.

Yeah, no, it's good.

Good.

God.

See, Maureen LePen's dad died?

He was still alive?

Rest in peace, you nazi piece of shit.

Yeah, talk about a

bad guy.

Bad, bad guy.

He roots in the suppression of Algerians, and it's not good.

Yeah, bad dude.

So anyway, some good news, I guess.

All right.

That's for Elon Musk.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Sorry, Elon.

That's it from us today.

Next week, maybe we'll talk about the drumbeat for war with Iran that's happening in the media.

It's not going to go away.

Dig into the ISIS stuff.

The end of the year is when all the newspapers do their like real big deep dive investigations.

I think try to get Pulitzer's.

Is it like Pulitzer season?

Yeah.

It's like the movies, like Release the Academy Award movies.

Yeah, you click the link and you look at it and it says listening time, like 28 minutes, and you're like, oh, we're going deep on like the Hezbollah Intel here or like all the TikTok on Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera.

So we have to get into some of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right.

Talk to you soon.

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