Israel Bombs Hamas Leaders in Qatar

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Listen now to The World with Richard Engel and me, Yalda Hakim, wherever you get your podcasts.

welcome back to Pod Save the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

So, we're recording a little early today because I have jury duty potentially this afternoon.

I got to report down to the courthouse.

And man, what a day to squeeze the show in a little faster.

Well, you still have all the obligations of citizenship with none of the protections.

That's how it works in the Trump administration.

It's also a lot happening in the world.

But also, Ben, before we get to that, I was reading this heartwarming story yesterday about this friend group that put together a bunch of handwritten notes to one of their buddies about how much

he meant to them.

And it was nice.

And it made me realize that I don't tell you enough how much you and this show means to me.

And so I made you something.

Should I hold this up or not?

Yeah, I mean, you can read it.

It's really beautiful.

Thank you.

I just wanted you to have that.

Dear Ben, we have certain things in common, like enjoying foreign policy.

Enigmas like the blob never age.

Have you noticed that?

May every day be another wonderful secret.

Epstein didn't kill himself.

No, he didn't.

No, he didn't.

Well, listen.

Can I just say one thing about this?

Please.

Because...

Say two things about this.

As crazy to me as the Trump picture

was the

entire book.

Dude, the rest of the book doesn't get any better.

And And then also

the kind of conspiracy theory that would

require Trump people to believe that somehow

decades ago or however long ago it was,

a Trump letter was forged and inserted into a book is one of the crazy.

I'm sorry, the same people that somehow were able to convince themselves in QAnon is real are now convincing themselves that there was like, what, a plot?

Yeah.

For those not watching on YouTube, I handed Ben a note that was drafted inside a relatively large penis.

You should subscribe to the pods and stuff.

This is the content thing.

You can get this kind of stuff.

Yeah, but you're right.

It's usually subscriber-level content.

The White House spin is that 22 years ago, someone forged a terrible drawing of a double amputation tween girl with Donald Trump's signature on it because I guess they knew one day he would be president and this would be a thing.

So that's the spin.

Yeah,

they're really scraping the bottom barrel of the spin there, but it'll work with most of their people.

Yeah, Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, TPUSA, these are the people who are beating us on YouTube and why we need you to subscribe.

We need you to smash the subscribe button.

Anyway, we got a crazy day of news.

We're going to cover Israel conducting airstrikes against Hamas inside Qatar.

Didn't see that one.

Among like, I think five countries they bombed.

Yeah, I got a list for you later.

Yeah.

It's one of the craziest, most like lawless things we've seen from an out-of-control rogue government.

We're going to cover what it means for the hostages, a potential ceasefire deal in Gaza, what the White House is saying, and much more.

We're also going to cover reports that Israel might have bombed a group of boats that were en route to Gaza, this flotilla that was off Tunisia, at a port in Tunisia.

We're going to cover this horrible terror attack in Jerusalem Monday and how Spain is putting maximum pressure on Israel over Gaza.

So lots in that bucket.

Then we're going to also cover major political shake-ups in the UK and France and what they tell us about the rise of far-right parties in Europe.

Nothing good, spoiler alert.

We're going to talk about NASA protests in Nepal and Indonesia, and then why, Ben, I am increasingly anxious that our super horny for a Nobel Peace Prize president is going to take us to war with Venezuela.

I share that anxiety.

Yeah, so that's fun.

That's fun.

And then you talked to an old friend of ours today.

I talked to Susan Rice, our old boss and friends.

Very fun boss and friend.

Friend, a wonderful person and thinker,

a

partner in many conspiracy theories that people have about us.

But no, we talked about

the use of the military in American cities.

You know, Susan Offs has a unique perspective of having been national security advisor and domestic policy advisor.

And

the more ominous directions that could lead.

Spoiler, Susan does not think it's about crime fighting.

And also, though, how it connects to the kind of transformation of the military that's taking place, the kind of purging of senior leaders in the military, the rebranding of the Department of Defense as a Department of War, the shifting in the use of the military to the things Trump wants, which is suppressing people in this country, rounding up immigrants, and, you know, I guess threatening to take over the Western hemisphere, which we'll talk about.

And then got her reaction to both the calamitous state of the Ukraine peace efforts and the Israeli attack on Qatar.

So we covered a lot of that.

Excellent, excellent, great interview.

One of my favorite people ever to talk to about this stuff because she is smart as hell, but also is a funny and fun human being, and it can make it interesting.

All right, so as we said at the top, on Tuesday, the Israeli Defense Forces, the IDF, bombed a building in Doha Qatar where Hamas's senior political leadership was meeting to talk about the latest ceasefire and hostage release deal proposed by Donald Trump.

Ha'aretz says there were 10 strikes on the target.

It's not really clear yet how many people were killed or if anybody was killed, though we know the lead Hamas negotiator was the main target.

Axios reported that Israel gave the U.S.

a heads up about the strike after the missiles had been fired, but not beforehand.

Israel Prime Minister Bibin and Yahoo.

U.S.

missiles, I'm sure.

Yeah, almost certainly U.S.

missiles.

Yeah, the defense minister, Israel Katz, said they began preparing this operation after the terror attack in Jerusalem and the killing of four IDF soldiers in Gaza on Monday.

I find that timing a little hard to believe since Katz had specifically threatened to kill this Lee Hamas negotiator many times, including on Twitter.

But we'll get to the Jerusalem attack in a minute.

So Qatar condemned the strike as cowardly.

They called it, quote, a blatant violation of all international laws and norms.

That checks out.

Lots of other countries are also condemning the attack.

Americans in Doha were even temporarily advised to shelter in place.

So it's pretty serious stuff.

So, Ben, let's just step back for a second and remember, like, kind of the broader context here, which is that over the past several years, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netyahu has encouraged Qatar to provide funding to Hamas because Netanyahu thought that by strengthening Hamas, he could divide the Palestinian leadership and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

So, recall that.

In fact, yes, since October 7th, Qatar has been a key mediator between the Israelis, the U.S., Egypt, Hamas,

and

like a key facilitator of ceasefire talks.

And Qatar agreed to allow Hamas to have an office in Doha in the first place because the United States asked them to many years ago.

And the idea was to give Hamas a representative to talk with to facilitate any kind of diplomatic process.

And then the reason, again, that these leaders, these Hamas leaders were gathered in Doha on Tuesday was to discuss a peace deal that Trump sent Hamas last week, which would have facilitated the release of all 48 remaining Israeli hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive, and hopefully begin a process to end the war.

A Hamas official told Al Jazeera that the delegation was literally discussing Trump's proposal when the bombs started hitting the building.

So this is a shockingly lawless act, but in some ways, again, it's not surprising because, as I mentioned, the Israelis have threatened to kill anyone involved in planning the October 7th attack.

It's also just worth noting that on Tuesday, the Israeli military ordered everyone in Gaza City to evacuate.

That means hundreds of thousands of people in an area where there is a famine are now being asked to go somewhere.

Most residents have nowhere to go.

There's no way to transport their families or their possessions.

And nowhere in Gaza is safe from airstrikes, including so-called humanitarian zones.

So, Ben, I assume this ceasefire deal is dead on arrival, along with maybe the negotiators.

Qatar has suspended ceasefire talks.

It seems likely that the peace process, such as there was one, is now over.

For those keeping track at home, as Ben mentioned at the top, Israel now regularly bombs Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, maybe a boat off of the coast of Tunisia, which we'll get to, and now Qatar, RIP to the liberal international order.

Yeah,

there's absolutely no legal basis for this, but

the fact that that's an afterthought just shows you how dead the international order is and how central the war in Gaza has been to bearing it, because it's now just normal for Israel to bomb any number of countries.

And look, we should be clear that in addition to what you said about Bibi encouraging this funding for Hamas from Qatar, the U.S.

has urged Qatar to continue to host Hamas.

So I'm anticipating the kind of Barry Weiss Twitter

saying that Qatar had it coming.

They actually were going to leave, remember?

Hamas was going to leave Qatar.

And it was the U.S., it was the Trump administration that following on multiple U.S.

administrations said, no, we need a place where we can have these talks.

The fact that they,

you know, whether they killed them or not, they clearly put an end to the talks, right?

The intention was to take it.

And that was the intention.

Israel was, again, anticipating some of the Twitter reaction from defenders in Nanyao.

Israel did not accept a ceasefire proposal.

That's bullshit.

They tell people they do, and then they bomb the people that were engaged in the ceasefire talks.

This isn't even the first time that's happened.

They've killed previous Hamas leadership that was in ceasefire talks.

What this one does is it literally buries the diplomatic process because what Bibi wants to do is perpetuate the the war.

What he wants to do is ethnically cleanse Gaza.

And I think what's scary about this is this strike suggests we are entering like an even more ominous and potentially catastrophic humanitarian circumstance for the people of Gaza.

Because this is just, this is no pretense of getting the hostages back, no pretense of ending the war.

This is we're going into Gaza and we're just going to keep doing what we're doing until these people are all dead or gone.

You know, I mean, that's what it feels like.

A couple of things I'd like want to highlight there, Tommy.

The first is this is deeply humiliating to the entire Arab world.

Yeah.

To be clear, Qatar is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the GCC.

This is the group of the

energy-rich, fossil fuel-rich Gulf Arab states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE are in there, Bahrain.

We've all condemned all that messages, by the way.

And look, this is a message to Saudi Arabia.

We'll bomb anywhere.

And you guys already have populations that feel like you've done nothing to help the Palestinians.

And we're just showing your populations who runs this region.

And so MBS

has some choices to make here about

whether he's going to continue to be as passive as he's been.

He issued a statement saying he'd provide whatever support necessary for Qatar.

Obviously, they've had their differences with Qatar in the past.

But I do think that Israel, in addition to what they're trying to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, trying to annex the West Bank, whatever territorial designs they may have in southern Lebanon or southern Syria, they're also trying to completely humiliate the Arab leaders.

Well, and the Qatari prime minister had just met with Hamas to pressure them to take this Trump ceasefire deal, and this is completely humiliating for him.

His own country was bummed.

And it should, and frankly, let's you know, like just add to the U.S.

to the humiliated list.

I mean, you know, Trump got a plane from these people, right?

Everybody in the Trump administration seems to have worked for Qatar at one point in the past, you know, from Pan Bondi.

This is the forward headquarters for CENTCOM.

There's 10,000 U.S.

troops living on a base in Qatar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, yes, they just bombed a country with a U.S.,

a very important U.S.

military base, right?

Telling us when the missiles were in the air.

And so clearly, you know, this either punked Trump or Trump just doesn't care.

Again, what's ominous is this is happening the week after Trump had the meeting at the White House about the Gaza Riviera with Jared Kushner.

Don't think those things aren't connected.

Right.

Because whether or not Trump was in on the bombing of Qatar, the point is the Israelis are taking the signal from these ethnic cleansing meetings in the White House that they can do whatever they want in Gaza.

They don't really have to make a deal.

The last thing I want to say to

where this could go next is the other place where Hamas leaders tend to go is Turkey.

And Israel has a lot of tensions with Turkey right now over Syria and other things.

It's actually not inconceivable that Israel might strike in Turkey at some point.

A NATO element.

I'd remind you that Turkey is a member of NATO.

We are at a point here where it's probably more likely that Netanyahu bombs a NATO country before Putin does.

You know, that's where we are.

And that shows you how absurd U.S.

foreign policy is.

Closest ally.

It's also worth pointing out.

I mean, a lot of the families of the hostages are unbelievably upset by this and with what just happened because, look, one of the only ways Hamas has to retaliate, as sick and evil, and indefensible as it is, is by harming the hostages.

So a lot of them think this is a death sentence for their family members, the 20 people who are still being held.

If I were in the Trump administration, I would wonder if

this was the end of the Abraham Accords

because

I just don't think, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of these Gulf Arab countries just cannot be okay with, or their populations will not be okay with Israel just bombing every other state in the region.

And then, Ben, I saw, you know, Hamas was out there saying they think Trump set them up.

Because remember,

they think Trump basically put forward this deal to lure them into one location to be bombed.

And of course, they think that because

right.

Remember, like Trump was on record saying, you know, oh, Iran has two weeks to cut a deal.

And then the Israelis started bombing the Iranians.

And then his people were briefing that, oh, yeah, that's, you know, it was all a ruse.

You know, this was a setup.

So the options here are, again, are like Trump lied again and this was part of his setup.

Or,

you know, the Israelis just punked him.

They punked Qatar.

They punked everyone.

So you can kind of hear the White House not knowing what to do or what to say about it in this clip of White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt at the press briefing earlier today.

Let's listen.

Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America's goals.

However, eliminating Hamas who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza is a worthy goal.

President Trump immediately directed Special Envoy Witkoff to inform the Qataris of the impending attack, which he did.

The President views Qatar as a strong ally and friend of the United States and feels very badly about the location of this attack.

President Trump wants all of the hostages in Gaza and the bodies of the dead released and this war to end now.

President Trump also spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu after the attack.

The Prime Minister told President Trump that he wants to make peace and quickly.

President Trump believes this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for peace.

The president also spoke to the emir and prime minister of Qatar and thanked them for their support and friendship to our country.

He assured them that such a thing will not happen again on their soil.

So just completely incoherent there, trying to play both sides.

Wildly incoherent.

Yeah.

Also like why if you're a spokesperson at this point and you're putting Netanyahu's words in your own mouth saying he wants peace, you are a fucking idiot.

They're also just being clear that there will not Trump, they're saying, oh, Trump is a little bit mad about this, but there will be no consequences.

There'll be no consequences.

That, however, is doing a lot of work as a writer

because essentially she says one thing about how this is terrible, this happened.

And then she says something completely contradictory to it, that it's good that it happened.

And then she says that we feel badly that it happened.

And this is them trying to...

you know, juggle all these different balls, right?

Like Trump needs to keep the emir

happy.

Look, Qatar is a small country.

They rely on the U.S.

base as literal protection for their existence.

And the fact of that U.S.

base didn't stop a supposed U.S.

ally from bombing their territory, right?

After the Iranians fired a bunch of missiles at our base, they.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, this is the second time they've been bombed.

That's a very good point.

So they're trying to juggle these things, but the Abraham Accords was this effort to kind of stitch together the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis into some, you know, regional order.

But that was never Bibi Nanya's Nanya's intent.

It was a completely Israel-dominated region.

And

that seems to involve them being able to bomb every country.

And so, again, if you're Mohammed bin Salman and you're sitting in the most powerful country with serious resources, you're also thinking like, I mean, I was thinking about this, Tommy, like these guys want to spend like a trillion dollars building like data centers and AI infrastructure in the Gulf?

Does anybody not think those are big, juicy targets, either for Israel to take out at some later date if they don't like something, or

for a terrorist organization that is furious about what happened

in Gaza?

I mean,

this is not good for the air world.

There's targets on all of their backs.

There's targets on the U.S.'s back now from like Hamas 2.0 or 3.0.

And also, yeah, I mean, look, the reason you and I always hated people calling the Abraham Accords a peace deal is because it wasn't.

It didn't solve the one underlying problem, which was tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

And there's also reports that Israel bombed this flotilla of ships headed to Gaza.

So this is the Global Samud Flotilla or GSF.

It's comprised like it's about 50 boats.

They're heading to Gaza.

They're trying to break the Gaza blockade.

They claim that people on one of the boats say that a drone struck the main ship while it was docked at this Tunisian port.

And there's video circulating online from the ship that shows one of the guys seeming to watch something drop on it.

You hear this explosion on the boat.

It certainly looks like it.

Yeah, I mean, you can also hear kind of a buzzing sound that sounds like a drone.

Now, what's weird about this, and the the reason I'm kind of hesitating is because I don't know.

And also, the Tunisian government denies there was a drone attack.

They say it was like a cigarette lighter or something exploded.

So I don't know.

That seems less.

believable, frankly.

Yeah, the Tunisians, they want to put a target on their back.

Right.

So there's six people on this boat at the time.

They were able to put the fire out.

Luckily, no one was hurt.

But this is a big deal.

I mean, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, was on one of these flotilla boats.

And since 2010, Israel has had a policy of intercepting or attacking these Gaza flotilla ships, including this deadly incident in 2010 when you and I were in the White House, where Israeli commandos killed 10 activists, they wounded dozens more, and it led to a massive diplomatic rupture between Israel and Turkey for years and years and years.

So, again, this GSF flotilla, it's 50 ships from 44 countries.

Greta Thunberg's on it.

Nelson Mandela's grandson is on it.

Like some French actress that apparently is famous over there is on it.

The UN Special Rapporteur and the Israelis are allegedly just dropping some sort of like small bomb, but a bomb on one of the boats.

It's crazy.

It is

just extreme rogue state behavior, as you said in the introduction here.

And look, we haven't done World War Watch in a while.

And I'm not suggesting that the, you know, even if this was a drone attack, that this is where the World War begins.

But what I am suggesting is we're in a place where

countries like Russia and Israel clearly just feel like a complete sense of impunity for how they use military force, where they use military force.

Drones, obviously, and some of that ground plowed by the United States, including when we were in office,

makes it seem like less costly to use military force.

There's no, the kind of barrier of international law has been broken down.

And this is what I worry about, is this kind of the more these nations start to push the envelope in the use of force, one is you could have like a horrific incident where a bunch of activists are killed.

In the same way, by the the way, that you could have a horrific incident with the National Guard in one of the US city.

You know, we are playing with a lot of fire here and the way in which these situations are being dealt with.

But there's just a normalization of violence and these kind of relentless ubiquity of the technology, too.

Yeah, I mean, like drone.

Drones are not high-end items anymore.

Tunisia to Qatar, you know, and I just don't think that's a recipe for anything other than more violence and more war.

Yeah.

And we should say, like, look,

horrific that, you know, there was this attack in Jerusalem.

Yeah, because on Monday there was this horrible terror attack.

It killed six six people wounded several others and so what happened was the the attackers they sort of just they just drove up to a bus stop right and they started firing machine guns um they were then taken out by a security officer and an armed civilian but this is the deadliest attack in jerusalem since uh there was a similar massacre in 2023 and what's weird ben is like initially did you see hamas didn't take credit for the attack but they praised it but then on tuesday uh the Qassam brigades of the military wing did take responsibility for the attack.

So it's again, it's sort of a lot of ambiguity here.

But the Israeli military, they said they identified the shooters.

They're preparing to like raid their neighborhoods, who else was involved in the attack, destroy their homes.

And so, I mean, like you, I imagine, look, when I saw this, I was like, Jesus Christ, that's awful, right?

It's these old people getting shot at.

There's this cab driver helping this old lady out of the car.

It's like indiscriminate, unjustifiable violence on civilians.

But then I also wonder, like, I fear that like October 7th, the Israeli response is probably going to be overwhelming and brutal and it's going to harm a lot of people in the West Bank or be used to justify annexation of the West Bank.

No, and look, violence begets more violence.

And it doesn't justify violence, but the reality, look, we've said how many times that if you kill tens of thousands of children and turn Gaza into rubble, like there's going to be violence and reprisal for that.

And that's just the reality.

And you see, Nanyao, I saw him say that the attack on Qatar was somehow like a a response.

It was, give me a break.

I mean,

there's one direction that B.B.

Netanyahu has been going in this entire war, and it's like pure escalation.

And it's purely also about an ideological agenda that predates October 7th.

You hear that in Smotrich's comments.

You hear that in Ben-Gabir's comments.

And so we can't put our heads in the ground and pretend like...

you know,

that you can do what Israel is doing in Gaza and that there'll never be anybody who wants to attack you in return,

And this is why a cycle of violence is not the way to solve your problems.

Yeah.

So, finally, Ben in this little bucket, we did want to note some of the things Spain is doing to put pressure on the Israelis to end the war in Gaza.

So, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez just announced a series of, quote, called nine immediate actions to stop the genocide in Gaza.

That includes a permanent ban on armed sales or military equipment to Gaza, a prohibition on ships carrying fuel that could be used by the IDF.

There's a denial of entry into Spanish airspace to any country's aircraft that is carrying weapons to Israel.

And then on Tuesday, Spain barred two far right-wing ministers Smotris and Ben-Guevir from entering the country.

But this, they put in place a broader ban on anyone involved in the Israeli government.

So this would presumably apply to Netanyahu too.

They also, I think, announced a ban on products from settlements in Gaza or the West Bank.

And then in a speech, Sanchez said, quote, this is an unjustifiable attack on the civilian population, 60,000 dead, 2 million displaced, half of them children.

This is not self-defense.

It is the extermination of a defenseless people.

So pretty direct words there.

So, Ben, you know, a remarkable contrast between Spain and the U.S., and then, frankly, Spain and much of Europe, where you're hearing a lot of talk from, you know, people like Emmanuel Macron, but not action like this.

Yeah, I think the reason that it's important to highlight this is because if this is a genocide, which

most genocide experts have already determined it is,

even if this is just a series of other war crimes, which are definitely happening, what's interesting about this is this is what you would do normally.

These are

the, frankly, the minimum steps that governments would usually take in response to those kinds of war crimes.

And so I think it's interesting to look at because nobody expects the U.S.

to do these things.

But frankly, if European governments were in line with their own public opinion, they'd all be doing this.

And so I think it's useful in laying out a template that is kind of holding other leaders accountable to like their strongly worded statements that are not backed by action.

Because there are actions like this that you could take that are a mixture of sanctions and isolation that would be the response if you believe that what is happening in Gaza before your eyes is happening.

Yeah, I mean, look, there's all these charges from the free press and others that there's this U.S.

media or U.S.

political bias against Israel.

I just, I truly think the exact opposite is true.

Yeah, I mean, if we were talking about any other countries doing this.

Let's say we're talking about like Serbia or

the massacre of 60,000 people in Bosnia and the starvation of an entire population and a blockade of food and water.

I think the international community, including the U.S., would be talking about no-fly zones and airstrikes and NATO intervention.

Yeah, that's why the Spanish steps are actually kind of the floor of what you'd be doing.

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All right, so we're going to switch gears here.

So there were two major political changes in Europe, in the UK and France that we wanted to tell you about.

And unfortunately, both suggest that kind of centrist or center-left parties are struggling very badly still, while far-right parties are not only dominating the political narrative, but surging in the polling.

So, let's start in the UK.

So, last week, Prime Minister Kier Starmer announced this major cabinet reshuffle.

This came after his Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner resigned.

The short version of why she resigned is she improperly registered a new home as her primary residence and thus avoided paying about £40,000 in taxes.

The PM's ethics ethics advisor, Sir Laurie Magnus, is his name, great name, said that Rayner had breached the ministerial code by failing to get the right tax advice, so she resigned.

That led to this full reshuffle, which includes moving a friend of the show, David Lanney, from the foreign minister job to the deputy prime minister job and justice minister role.

But the shuffle doesn't end there.

It's this like idiotic full reshuffle.

So the home secretary becomes the foreign secretary.

The justice minister becomes the home minister.

The dude in charge of the environment now handles housing.

Like, I'm going to stop there.

But I just, like,

I just, I wanted to note how this is the dumbest system I've ever heard of in my life.

Like, you spend a year learning your brief.

Like, David Lamy's memorizing the name of every foreign minister in the country and building relationships and like investing all this time into issues.

And now he's in charge of a different thing.

Like, what the fuck?

How does that, what are we doing here?

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

And then, Ben, the Labor Party is also going to have to hold an election to elect a new deputy leader.

So that could be a big deal for Starmer.

We'll just sort of like see which direction the party goes.

It's also worth noting then, like Angela Raynor was one of the more interesting people in the Labor Party.

Like she grew up in poverty.

Her mom had a bipolar disorder.

She couldn't read or write.

Then she had, Angela Raynor had a child at 16.

She worked her way up to be a social worker, a union representative, and then finally an elected official and did all of this while caring for three kids, one of whom has severe disabilities.

So she is one of the most interesting and most compelling people in the Labor Party.

And now she's out because someone named Sir Magnus said she had gotten bad tax advice.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson spent, I don't know, a decade like throwing ragers at number 10 Downing Street during COVID or having private donors redecorate his apartment.

So it just seems, the whole thing just seems so stupid.

I couldn't agree more.

Kier Starmer's been flailing.

The only move he's been able to figure out is

hacking to his right.

so he's like breaking promises he's pissing off his uh the left wing of his party arresting gaza protesters yeah they're arresting gaza protesters he's getting less popular and look just to to build on a couple things you said i hate that the we are literally fighting against fascists right uh donald trump nigel farage in the uk people that follow no rules right

We will spare you the detail of the financial transaction that Angel Raynor was involved in.

There was like a divorce divorce involved in it.

There was all these things.

Trust for her disabled trust.

Like,

this is a woman who's born in council housing, basically, you know, but British public housing was a single mother.

Like,

the fact that

we are holding ourselves to this kind of

perfect ethical standard as center-left parties while trying to fight against people that follow no rulebook is the dumbest fucking thing imaginable to me.

Kier Starmer would have a lot, even if he took a hit in the tabloids,

I think he would ultimately gain more respect if he came out and said, like, Angel Raynor made a mistake, but she is a vital member of my coalition.

She represents key parts of the working class constituency of this country.

She's the most senior woman in my government.

And instead, he just tosses her overboard so he can, what, get some ethics prize, like that nobody cares about at this point?

Just say she made a mistake, but you don't have to like throw like a scalp at like the British tabloids.

So it sends a message that you, if you won't fight for Angela Raynor, you're not going to fight for the people that she represents, right?

And then just to echo your thing, the British government, how many foreign secretaries do you think they've had in the last six years?

I don't know.

How many?

Six.

Six.

I mean, I'm not just saying that this is not just because we're friends with David Lamy.

It's fucking insane.

It's crazy.

It's a hard job.

You can't, like, how can you have a consistent foreign policy post-Brexit when you need consistency if you're just shuffling chairs?

As you point out, we were talking about this before, Tommy.

Guess what?

They now have a new foreign secretary like the day that Qatar, a country that they have deep connections to, gets bombed.

They've got the UN General Assembly coming up in a couple weeks, and this person is going to be introducing themselves like the last six British foreign secretaries had to do at the UN General Assembly.

This is a stupid way to run a country.

It's crazy.

It's completely crazy.

And then the political stakes, as you mentioned, like Nigel Farage, he's now in charge of the far-right reformed UK Party.

They are dominating in the polls, despite only having four ministers in parliament.

But they're able to drive the media narrative, the political narrative in the UK week after week after week.

And there was a YouGov survey that found reform had, I think, 28 to 30 percent of the vote.

Labor had 20 percent.

The Tories had 17 percent.

The Telegraph did some sort of prediction where they thought they predicted that reform would win 331 seats if the election were held today.

Luckily, Starmer doesn't have to call an election until 2029, but it tells you how bad, how badly they are down.

And meanwhile, Ben, Nigel Farage was paid £189,000 last year to be a brand ambassador for a gold bullion company.

We're really in the stupidest and scariest timeline, you know, the convergence of stupid and scariest.

Dude's hawk and gold bullion on podcasts.

And again, well, this will pivot to the French thing, but look, I just think that this, the Democratic Party in this country, the Labor Party in the UK, wherever the fuck Macron on March has become, his party, like,

this kind of relentless tacking,

and this isn't even like a left-right thing.

It's also just like a, do you understand what is happening thing?

These are people running with some old playbook from like the Democratic Leadership Council of the 90s, just to roll back the tape for some of the old Gen X heads who listen,

and thinking that that's going to fight and defeat fascism.

People just don't think that you're serious.

If you're constantly fighting amongst yourselves,

it's unserious, and you're also just demoralizing your own people.

And so you mentioned France.

So on Monday, the French government collapsed again after Prime Minister François Beiroux lost a confidence vote after just nine months in office.

So this was, again, not even a close vote.

364 lawmakers in the National Assembly said, you got to go.

Only 194 voted to keep him.

And the most baffling part of the whole thing is Beirut called this vote himself.

Everyone knew he would lose it.

I guess he was hoping to pull a rabbit out of a hat politically and get the votes he needed to show some sort of political support for these major budget cuts he was putting forward.

But the National Assembly was like, absolutely not.

And, you know, he's not wrong about the problems France is facing.

France is dealing with a serious debt crisis.

Their budget deficit is now almost $198 billion, which is an American.

Sounds like nothing, but it's a big deal to them, which is about 5.8% of GDP in France, which is way over the 3% limit set by the European Union for countries that use the Euro.

But this is a problem that's been building for years.

And the challenge for any lawmaker is, as we've discussed, Ben, French voters don't respond well to any cuts in social services.

And they've recently lost their shit when Beirut tried to eliminate two public polities to save money.

So for those keeping score at home, as you mentioned, the six foreign ministers in the UK, France has had four prime ministers in 20 months, all while President Macron, who in a recent Le Figaro poll had a 15% approval rating, is like, you know, jetting around the world, trying and failing to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

And being photographed, agonizing about it.

And launching lawsuits against podcasts.

So, what will happen next is Macron will probably now just name a fifth prime minister who will once again preside over a horribly divided National Assembly and get nothing done.

Or he could call an early election.

But the problem with that is the far right is likely to do extremely well.

There's a recent poll, a bunch of recent polls show the National Rally Party, Maureen Le Pen's party, would get between 31 to 36% of the vote, even if Le Pen is barred from running for office for five years because of the corruption scandals we've covered in the past.

She's appealing that case.

But

anyway, that won't be done until next year.

So Ben, it's just, it's very,

like you said, it's really disconcerting to see a surge of support for the far right in France, the UK.

There were some recent polls in Germany, and then the kind of center left just like tripping over itself over and over and over again.

First of all, being a prime minister under Emmanuel Macron is like kind of like being like the al-Qaeda number three.

Like I wonder who would want to take that joke at this point, right?

No.

But because he's consistently, one, refused to pick someone from the left.

So he's constantly been like, you know, straight down the middle neoliberal.

The most boring centrist.

And then, well, that's saying, then he'll never pick anyone who can like be a rival of any sorts, not even just a political rival, but a rival for attention.

Macron has to be the kind of center of the show there.

And people don't like Macron in France.

And so they have a real political political paralysis problem.

And some people are even calling for Macron to resign, but that wouldn't solve anything either.

Like they just, they can't get out of this.

And

Macron is essentially increasingly a lame duck, like his term limited out.

He's like 18 months left.

Yeah, he's alone.

He's got like a couple years until the presidential election.

And so this feels like we're just going to muddle through until that election.

And the reality is the center has collapsed in France.

And so you'll have this competition from the left and the right.

And just it, tragically, the right has more support at this point.

So both the UK and France, and we've mentioned the rising AFD in Germany, like the, we need social democrats, socialists, center-left parties

to get their shit together pretty quickly here.

Because there's sand, there's still time, but there's sand running through the hourglass in these major European countries.

And they're getting their asses kicked in France by this like 29-year-old baby fascist named Jordan Bardella, who's just like big on TikTok.

He's like Charlie Kirk of France.

It's so pathetic.

This guy should be at TP USA conferences, not podcasting and getting more YouTube supports.

Yeah, you should be doing nasty stuff in the hotel lobby like they do over at TPUSA.

Apparently, yeah, I heard about that.

All right, we're going to hop around the world now because there are also

huge protests happening as we speak in Nepal.

And here's why.

So the kind of inciting that's in here was an attempt by the government to ban social media.

That includes WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, even LinkedIn.

Who bans LinkedIn?

Just fucking furious about not having premium.

That sent massive numbers of young people into the streets, and the protests escalated very quickly.

On Monday, at least 19 protesters were killed after police opened fire on them, and hundreds were injured.

And then on Tuesday, the government relented.

They lifted the social media ban and the prime minister resigned along with a bunch of top officials, but that did not stop the protesters.

And as we started recording this episode, there's reports that protesters have stormed the parliament and they set it on fire, that they've burned the homes of a number of elected officials, including the former prime minister's house.

Some news outlets are reporting that the former prime minister's wife died in that fire, was burned alive in her own home, which is horrifying.

And this social media ban, it seems to have been an especially big deal for a couple of reasons.

The first is that, according to the New York Times, there's about 2 million Nepalese people living and working abroad.

They send a lot of money back home in the form of remittances.

And apparently, the social media ban made them, citizens, feel isolated from them.

And then, second, there are these deeper structural challenges that every country seems to be facing, like high unemployment, anger about inflation.

And then there's corruption in this wealthy elite class.

And in the weeks before the ban, there was what was called a Nepo Kid campaign that highlighted the lavish lifestyles of the children of these politicians, especially the son and daughter-in-law of the former prime minister, who I guess were just particularly gaudy and terrible.

So, Ben, it's remarkable to see this happening in Nepal, like kind of generally, and also just to see protests like this go from zero to a thousand so quickly.

Yeah, and I think, you know, underlying all of this, like you said, is something that is common everywhere in the world right now.

This was a corrupt government.

This was an increasingly flagrantly corrupt government.

This is government trying to control technology, speech.

This is oligarchy.

This is inequality.

So all the ingredients and the stew that we feel around the world

were the Tinderbox in Nepal, which is not the kind of place that we usually associate with these kinds of protests.

And

what I take from it is this sense of, you know, there's something that's unsustainable, like we were saying about like the wars and the bombing countries outside of international law, there's something unsustainable about the whole project right now.

You know, the degree of corruption and inequality, the, you know, the technology.

I just believe

we're going to see more of this.

That, you know,

there are going to be more and more places, and we're going to mention Indonesia in a second, where people just get fed up.

And

we're entering like just, if you haven't already buckled up, like,

we're entering a period of history where there's war and protest, and there's an increasingly isolated collection of people sitting on top of the power structure everywhere who are just going to start to try to grip tighter and tighter to power.

And then there are going to be.

people like this, and not just in Nepal, I think, who are going to be trying to break that grip.

And I feel like we're going to be going through that for the next decade.

It's just remarkable to me, though, that like these corrupt politicians and their dumb, spoiled brat idiot kids yeah this is a dawn jr in every country they just feel the need to post this stuff on instagram right remember the good old days when you know you had to break into the you know prime minister's house and find the golden toilet

toilet right now they're posting the the golden toilet on on uh instagram and then banning social media when you start to try to spread it around and say hey look at this asshole one article said that the the prime minister was like uh deep into his own comments

trolls

you losers anyways just don't read the comments log off guys um uh if you're an oligarch and you're listening, log off.

So in Indonesia, what set off those protests was news that politicians in the House of Representatives there were receiving not just their salary, but a housing allowance of about $3,000 a month on top of their salaries.

That housing allowance is about 10 times the minimum wage in Jakarta.

That news, I think this went into place about a month ago, and it infuriated Indonesians who are also living with high unemployment and inflation.

And the demonstration started and then intensified when a delivery driver was killed by an armored car that was responding to the protests.

So far, in total, 10 people have died and hundreds have been injured in the response to these protests.

So in response, President Perboa Sobianto fired five cabinet ministers, including this long-serving finance minister who's worked for a bunch of different presidents.

The looters broke into her home during the protests.

So again, another important story

because of the broader trends you talked about.

But also Indonesia is home to more than 280 million people.

It's a big, important country, and there's some major stakes here.

Yeah, and and I think, again, what you see there is what was interesting in watching this protest movement is

it's been pretty remarkable to follow online because it has that feeling of being organic and it's just spreading around the country.

And it doesn't even feel like there's like kind of one leader.

This is just a lot of pent-up frustration with the sense of that there's a corrupt system, with the sense that political elites play by one entirely different set of rules, that people get elected and then don't actually try to solve the problems that they campaign on.

Probo has like demonstrated his own kind of autocratic streaks and has his long ties to some of these kind of corrupt practices from the Indonesian military and kind of elite class.

So

this to me, again, has to be seen in this global context where we're just starting to see these indications of

the whole system

just not being sustainable and not just unique to countries, but the kind of global system.

And this, I'd watch, does this kind of maintain or gather strength in Indonesia?

Or is he able to take steps to kind of like reduce

the decibel level?

But it does show that, you know, Indonesian politics is usually this game played by elites, that there are people that kind of want to have their voice heard, and they hopefully will be able to in the direction of the government.

Yeah, I think probably the last time we talked about this story.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do, Ben, we've been talking about Crooked Con for a few weeks now.

The tickets have been going fast, but we are excited that we get to announce some of the lineup.

Doing a little drum roll.

I don't know if you can hear that.

So this is our chance to bring together some of the smartest organizers and least annoying politicians in America to strategize, debate, and commiserate about where we go.

From here, we're going to be kicking things off on November 6th with the Pods of America live show at the Warner Theater in D.C.

Then join us at the Wharf in Washington, D.C.

on November 7th for a full day of conversations, panels, workshops, and live pods.

I'll be there.

Ben will be there.

We are going to have other folks like Sarah Longwell, Hassan Piker, Fash Shakir, Brian Tyler Cohen, Jessica Tarlove, Senator Ruben Gallego, Andy Bashir, Representative Sarah McBride, Representative Janelle Bynum, Ben Wickler, Aaron, and Alyssa from Hysteria.

The strict scrutiny pod.

We'll do a live show to close out the day and much more.

to deal with popular demand, Ben.

We just added some more tickets.

So act fast.

Go to crookedcon.com.

See the full lineup.

Buy your tickets.

We were joking yesterday that there's a non-zero chance that ICE arrests all of us and turns the wharf into an ICE detention senator.

So, that's sort of an endless QA with some great people.

Yeah, I mean, it's like our version of CPAC and TPUSA, but maybe ending in an ICE raid, but we'll see what happens.

I'd look good in orange and shackle, I think.

I've seen myself in AI.

I've seen myself getting arrested.

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All right, so we're again hopping around today.

Ben, you and Susan talked about Pete Hexeth, the new Department of War branding, all the weird shit happening in the military.

So we're not going to get into that, but we did want to talk more about this potential threat of a U.S.

war with Venezuela.

So last week, I think I'm this last week, we talked about the Navy airstrike on this boat off of Venezuela that killed 11 Trende Aragua, alleged Trende Aragua drug smugglers.

But since then,

and over the last few weeks, there's been this buildup of U.S.

military assets in the Caribbean that is very unsettling.

So last I saw, Ben, it was like eight Navy warships, thousands of sailors, thousands of Marines.

On Friday, there were reports that the U.S.

had deployed 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to conduct operations against cartels.

Now, again, I'm no military expert, never flown an F-35, but I don't think you need a stealth fifth-generation fighter to blow up a speedboat full of cocaine.

That's the kind of thing you would use to fight another military.

There are also reports of a U.S.

submarine headed to the Caribbean.

So when asked on Friday whether he'd like to see a regime change in Venezuela, Trump said, we're not talking about that.

But CNN reported that Trump is debating whether or not to launch counter-cartel narcotic attacks on Venezuelan soil in order to weaken Maduro,

who is also, as we talked about last week, ordered this large-scale military mobilization of his own militia force to defend Venezuela's borders and coast and then just respond to whatever we're doing.

So in case folks think that you and I are exaggerating and this is just about drugs and not about regime change, please listen to this clip of White House advisor and sentient talking penis Stephen Miller from Friday.

So it is a drug cartel that is running Venezuela.

This is a very important point.

It's not a government, it is a drug cartel, a narco-trafficking organization that is running Venezuela.

So again, we're waging war with the drug cartels who happen to be running Venezuela, according to Stephen Miller in the White House.

Ipso facto, sure seems like we're planning to go to war with the government of Venezuela.

Yeah, which again is not a drug cartel.

What they're doing is they're using language to prepare the ground for a regime change type war.

And by calling it a drug cartel.

You know, it's not a government, it's a drug cartel.

We're just going down there to fight drug cartel.

Nicolas Maduro is just head of the drug cartel.

You could insert terrorists

and you get the war on terror, right?

And this is the irony of Trump is Trump campaigns against forever wars.

Now he's got a Department of War and he's literally entertaining the potential for like a full-scale

Vietnam-Iraq type war in Venezuela in this hemisphere, in a big country that's complicated, that gets support from Russia and China, that has has an ideological military that has a citizen militia right now this would not be a simple military operation um and this would be a complete cluster fuck if you want to know why trump's doing it i guess two things i'd say one is I think a war just gives him more power, as we've talked about.

Like a state of war allows for you to crack down on certain things at home.

He likes these headlines, too.

Yeah, and he likes these headlines.

He likes blowing things up.

Susan, you know, just to preview our conversation a little bit, she brought up this defense strategy that's kind of been reported out that's on Hegseth's desk.

It's supposed to be the new defense strategy for the U.S.

that highlights this kind of shift in mission away from Russia and China, which is what the U.S.

military has been thinking about for most of the 21st century, beyond an endless war on terror, to

being used in the United States and

the homeland, but also the Western hemisphere.

And I do think that Trump has in mind this kind of world in which, yeah, we can go and regime change governments if we don't like them.

We can conquer Greenland.

That's, you know, we think that's in our hemisphere that's ours maybe Canada's next I mean I honestly think that

Panama Canal that he's Mexico maybe we just start taking some shots into Mexico I really do believe that if we're projecting out two three years towards the end of the Trump administration it we could be in a place where there's this kind of

you know the U.S.

military functioning like the Roman legions in the Western hemisphere.

That's certainly what this feels like.

Yeah, I mean, look, he likes to do things that make him look like he's taking action or decisive, right?

That's been the whole story of the, what, in the last nine months of this administration.

And certainly blowing up a speed boat full of, you know, alleged drug smugglers and, I guess, bags of cocaine looks like you're taking decisive action.

Now, it creates headlines because it's controversial.

We could have had the same impact by interdicting that boat and arresting those people and not murdering them extrajudicially, right?

But like, I think he's going to fall in love with these headlines and like kind of seeming like he's doing something extraordinary to fight the cartels.

Meanwhile, though, we're doing absolutely nothing to worry to deal with the demand problem in the United States or Europe or all these other places.

And you're just not going to be able to like blow up the entire supply.

It's just, it does not work that way.

Yeah.

And I also think like this is no more about drug fighting than D.C.

National Guard is about crime.

It's not.

It's about turning the military into an instrument of Trump's power and authority and ability to project power and authority.

And I want to say one thing with Democrats here.

Don't do the thing where you're like, oh, maybe it's popular that he blew up the boat, you know?

Or don't do the thing either where before you say that this is crazy and that this is someone assuming dictatorial power and potentially get us in another forever war, don't do the thing where you throat clear about how Maduro is a terrible guy for like 30 minutes, you know, not because I think Maduro is a good guy, but because like

this is this is crazy.

This is not how you would fight drugs.

This is not a smart foreign policy.

The war might be popular the first day, but how many fucking wars does the United States have to fight for people to learn that like it looks real popular

the first day you blow something up?

Like the shotgun into Baghdad or a rolling thunder into Vietnam.

And then you look up in a couple of years and people are like, why the fuck are we in this place?

And this has all the makings of that beginning to unfold.

Democrats should be against this.

They should be against it without having to like tie themselves in knots that we really want to fight drugs.

We'll just do it a little differently, or we really hate Maduro.

But, like, you know, no, this is wrong, and this is not what we should be doing with our military.

And also, look, I feel like that's a one.

I mean, this is not a Venezuela alone problem.

They're not like growing the cocoa, right?

Like, so are we going to bomb Colombia?

Are we going to bomb Ecuador?

Because the reported.

That's where this would go.

70% of drugs reportedly are going through Ecuador now.

So what are we going to tell

the administration there that your options are either we will unilaterally bomb you or, oh, you can hire Eric Prince Prince is Blackwater buddies, right?

So that's kind of the con there.

Also, this is, by the way, your point about the war and terror, right?

The military will do stuff and Eric Prince and contractors will do stuff.

Yeah.

What's the problem?

Yeah, just pay the ban tens of millions of dollars.

And also, look,

I have no doubt that.

cartels do evil things with money they make off of selling cocaine.

But if you look at the drug problem in the United States that's killing people, it's far more fentanyl used, right?

And again, that's a China issue that we're still not really addressing.

Where we're folding, we're tacoing on the fentanyl issue, right?

Yeah, there's no, and Trump knows that.

I mean, this is about something else.

This is not, again, the same way that crime is the pretext to militarize the homeland, drugs is the pretense to militarize the Western hemisphere.

Yeah.

Remember in the first term when he put Kellyanne Conway in charge of the fentanyl problem?

I told you everything you need to know about it.

Seriously, you're taking it.

Okay.

So for the listeners at home, here are some things we were planning to talk about today, but maybe don't ever really have time to dig into.

Maybe we should do a YouTube bonus later this week, Ben.

In Korea, there is now an international crisis because Trump arrested hundreds of these specialized Korean workers in Georgia who are building this factory, a battery factory.

And remember, the South Korean president was just in D.C.

Now the South Korean media is furious.

There's all these opposition parties who are talking about how this was a big betrayal.

So, you know, huge rupture with one of our closest allies in Asia, where there's 28,500 troops.

Seems bad.

Yep, seems bad.

On Sunday, Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba said he's stepping down.

This came after his party was crushed in recent elections.

So this is not a big surprise.

He said he just kind of wanted to get through these negotiations with the Trump administration over tariffs.

But again, another like kind of major country with a lot of instability.

Yep, and also bad.

And then finally, Ben, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's trial for plotting a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election is supposed to wrap up this week.

There were massive protests over the weekend, some pro-Bolsonaro, some anti-Bolsonaro.

I think the pro-Bolsonaro ones were reportedly bigger.

As we've discussed before, though, the United States is very much involved in this.

The U.S.

is currently basically sanctioning Brazil with a 50% tariff in retaliation for the current president, Lula de Silva, Silva, enforcing Brazilian law and not being thrilled that Bolsonaro tried to stage a coup and also have Lula killed and having a Supreme Court justice killed.

They're plotting to murder them.

So, you know, look, that's another country that's probably looking at this massive troop buildup in the Caribbean Ben and wondering, I don't know what this is for.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean,

look,

we have kind of a regime change policy almost in Brazil.

You know, I'm not militarized in the same way, but we've been directly interfering in their politics on behalf of bolsonaro right and i think what you're going to see is this interconnectivity that that taps into like the ugliest versions of our past in the hemisphere where it's like if you're a right-wing autocrat nationalist if you're melee in argentina or bikele in el salvador or bolsonaro in brazil and you know you can be a part of our you can be kind of like loyal lieutenants of the American Empire down here.

And if you're anybody else, we might invade your country or put you out.

Prince in charge of your security forces.

Or sanction you.

Yeah.

So we should come back because some shit will go down, I'm sure, the next weekend.

Lots, lots happening here.

Okay, we are going to take a quick break, but stick around for Ben's interview with Dr.

Ambassador Susan Rice.

What's her honorific these days?

She is a doctor.

She's an ambassador.

Loyal citizen, national security advisor.

The title of citizen.

American.

American.

The title of American.

Susan Rice.

One of the better people to interview on all this stuff.

So watch that.

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Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome back to Pod Say of the World my friend, my former boss, the only human being to serve as both U.S.

National Security Advisor and U.S.

Domestic Policy Council Chair.

Although Stephen Miller, I think, has his eyes on that, Susan.

Susan Rice, welcome so much.

Thanks so much for being here.

Great to be with you, Ben.

Okay, so as usual, there's a lot going on.

I did want to start in part because of your unique vantage point of having overseen both national security and domestic policy with these military deployments in American cities.

We've seen it out here in Los Angeles.

You've experienced it over the last couple of weeks in Washington, D.C.

It seems like it's coming in Chicago.

You've got ICE staged at a naval base outside of Chicago.

You've got Trump

posting threats.

to basically go to war with Chicago.

I just want you to explain to people who may be consuming this as some kind of crime fighting strategy about what you see as the dangers of this degree of the use of the United States military in U.S.

communities

at the direction of a president like Donald Trump.

Well, Ben, I think really this is about the most important topic we could be discussing today.

And what Trump is doing in

Washington,

what he tried to do in Los Angeles, and actually before that in Newark, if people might recall,

when there was

the mayor arrested along with members of Congress outside of an ICE facility during a protest.

None of this has anything to do, in my opinion, with crime.

If it did,

we would have seen

the military and federal law enforcement utilized primarily in the parts of Washington, D.C., which is my hometown where I was born and raised and live,

in the areas of the city that have actually the most crime, which happens to be predominantly to the east of the Anacostia River.

They're barely seen over there.

They're not going after people who are

committing murders or robberies.

It's mainly for show.

It's mainly to intimidate and to harass those in the the immigrant community.

But Ben, this is part of a larger piece.

And I think it's important for people to put this in context because this is not about LA.

It's not about Washington.

It's not about Chicago or any individual city,

whether there are challenges of crime, which of course there are, even though obviously in Washington, we're at a 30-year low in crime.

and murders are way down.

And I'm old enough to remember back in the 80s and 90s when Washington was actually the murder capital of the world.

We're nowhere near that.

But what this is about, Ben, is what the president said when he was running.

You know, the interesting thing about Trump and those around him is that they say what they're going to do.

They say the quiet part out loud.

During the campaign, Trump said repeatedly that he was prepared and willing to use the military of the United States against what he called, quote, the enemy within.

The enemy within.

That's what he called the American people with whom he may have political differences.

And I think he assumes people who live in big cities, particularly cities that have black mayors in blue states, are by definition,

in his judgment, the enemy within.

He also said, Ben, as you'll recall, during the campaign to his supporters, if you vote for me this one more time, you'll never have to vote again.

Do you remember that?

Yep.

That was

crazy.

So put these things together, you know, and add to it that Stephen Miller, who I hate to invoke, but since you raised him, has repeatedly said that utilizing the Insurrection Act, which is part of Project 2025, declaring martial law, even suspending habeas corpus are all possibilities.

He said that.

And I think, you know, we need to not dismiss what they say as impossible, ridiculous, because it's so unlawful and unthinkable.

I think we have to take them at their word and understand that this could well be part of a deliberate strategy to go into these cities with jacked up law enforcement,

particularly ICE and

CBP and others that are designed to inflame and intimidate immigrant and minority communities, add in the military, and try to provoke

an episode of violence that they can use as a pretext

to take the steps that they have foreshadowed, the Insurrection Act, martial law, potentially suspending habeas corpus, et cetera.

This is about power.

It's about domination.

It's about intimidation.

And it's about turning the United States into a lawless, autocratic state where one man

behaves as king and uses what is increasingly becoming his private law enforcement and military forces against his own people.

That's what we're dealing with here, Ben.

Yeah, yeah, no, and I will note,

you mentioned black mayors.

One thing that Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington all have in common is a black mayor.

And Baltimore and Oakland and

the other places he's talked about.

Well, in New York City, my hometown, seems like it's in the crosshairs the day that Zoran Mamdani wins the mayor election, but we'll see.

Well, I want to ask you about the military because in the first Trump term, I think there was a very clear sense that there was some pushback, some resistance to Trump's more extreme

impulses from first Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, certainly General Milley is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mark Esper.

They wouldn't

secretary of defense.

They wouldn't,

you know, from having a military parade on Trump's birthday to essentially some of Mike Flynn's stranger

plans during the post-2020 election period, the military pulled back from doing some of the more dictatorial things that Trump wanted.

Now, this time around, fast forward, we have Pete Hegseth in charge, Fox and friends Sunday host and occasional partier.

And we've seen a kind of a purge of senior military officers, including the firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I think, basically for being black.

But a number of other senior military leaders have been removed.

We've already had the military parade for the birthday.

We have Hegseth kind of cheerleading these efforts to move the military into U.S.

cities.

And we're only like, you know, seven, eight months into this administration.

How worried are you about this seemingly pretty deliberate effort to remake the United States military into a kind of MAGA extension of Donald Trump's domestic political and kind of dictatorial impulses?

I mean,

how would you compare for people who don't follow this closely how they this time around seem to be trying to transform the military in ways that they didn't even really attempt to do last time?

I'm very concerned.

You know, the basis of democracy in a constitutional society is an apolitical military that is not sworn an oath to a leader, to an individual, to a president, to a party, but to the Constitution.

That is what has made our military so great.

That's what's made it an institution that has attracted and

developed

people from all walks of life in our society.

And that is profoundly at risk now because in addition to all that you said, all those steps, and by the way, they've fired more than a dozen, going on close to 20 senior military officers, many of whom were minorities, women, or people who said or did stuff that the President disagreed with.

For example, the recent firing of the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

because DIA put out an assessment after the bombing of Iran that the bombing likely only set back the military nuclear program by

some months rather than years.

So this purge is very serious.

It is combined with one of the first things he did was to fire the judge adjutant generals, the JAGS,

who are the senior military lawyers in each of the services that make judgments and provide advice and determinations as to whether actions taken or proposed to be taken are lawful.

They are all gone.

And in addition, Ben, there's been some really alarming reporting that

for senior general officers and flag officers to be promoted to three or four star, they have to pass a political litmus test, where in effect they have to say that they agree with the policies of this president.

That has got nothing to do and it should have nothing to do with one's qualifications to be promoted in our apolitical military, which has been the bedrock of what has made us great.

And so now all of that is being corrupted and you no longer have

people who are able or willing to operate apolitically and independently when you have those kinds of litmus tests.

And for anybody who may be a responsible,

long-term, long-serving military officer who knows right from wrong and knows what their responsibilities are, what Trump has essentially done is public executions of their colleagues putting their heads on a stake and intimidating them, ISIS style.

So, this is a very, very dangerous set of developments.

And frankly, undermines military readiness, undermines our ability to attract and retain the best talent, and will ultimately make us weaker.

Yeah, and

it's so disruptive to what is usually, you know, some of these people being purged, for instance, they serve for decades, right?

This is a career in the military.

And so you're shoving all that out the door and probably, you know, in your recruitment, trying to kind of bring in MAGA people.

It'll be a very hard thing, like many other things Trump is doing to kind of unring unring this bell, assuming we get the opportunity.

But I wanted to ask you what you make of the Department of War rebranding.

You know, on its surface, like a lot of things Trump does, you can kind of look at the surface and see it as this kind of ridiculous move by people like Trump and Hegseth who

let's just say are seeking to project their own version of manhood onto the name of the department.

But I think more seriously,

if you look at what Trump is doing with the military,

in his tweet, threatening Chicago essentially, he said, you're about to find out why it's called the Department of War.

We saw them blow up a boat

a thousand miles from the U.S.

with no

effort really to put forward a legal basis.

So you see this kind of comfort with using the military for the things Trump cares about,

whether it's fighting or blowing things up in our hemisphere or attacking American cities.

How do you see this Department of War rebranding?

It's, of course, runs counter to Trump's promise to his own voters to end forever wars.

It kind of sends a message of forever war,

but how seriously do you take it?

And what do you think it signals about the kind of military that Trump and Hexeth want to be building?

Well, I do think it's...

probably primarily symbolic.

I do think it's a betrayal of the promise that Trump made to his base and to the American people that we would not be engaged in new wars, forever wars, that we would

pull back from that kind of activity.

So

I think what we need to understand is

that

on one hand, it's a bunch of chest beating.

It's not a legal change of the name.

It's also probably going to be ridiculously costly to have to,

in an era when we're cutting

aid to

kids without food and Medicaid for

millions and millions of Americans, many of whom voted for Trump, we're going to spend millions of dollars

producing new stationery and

new signage, new signage.

It's ridiculous.

Anyway,

but I think the bigger picture here is what you alluded to, which is what he believes the military ought to be used for.

There have been reports in the last couple of weeks, which I'm sure you've seen, but I'm not sure how many of

our listeners and viewers have seen,

that the new national defense strategy, which is reportedly on Heg Seth's desk, has reprioritized the purpose and the primary focus of the military away from dealing with known and predominant adversaries like like China and Russia, and focused it on the homeland, the border, and the Western hemisphere.

And I think if that actually becomes

the finalized new national defense strategy,

it will undermine not only America's global leadership further

and our

our alliances and our security, but it will basically be a green light and a pass for China and Russia to do whatever they want in what they view as their areas of primary interest for China in the Indo-Pacific, for Russia in Eastern Europe and potentially Western Europe, and leaving the United States

focused on a narrow swath in the Western Hemisphere.

And Ben, this is really reminiscent of the 19th century, which is the era that on a domestic and international basis, I believe Donald Trump is determined to take us back to.

The 19th century where we had great powers that had their spheres of influence in which they operated and were predominant and basically, you know, didn't mess with each other.

So, you know, we don't in this scheme care what China does to anybody in the Asia Pacific.

We don't care what Russia does in what it wants to be its sphere of influence.

We've got our little area of focus in the Western Hemisphere, which in the Trump vision includes Canada and Greenland.

And that will go back to high tariffs,

wall off our little sphere from everybody else, and we'll dominate and exploit that sphere,

rape and pillage it for robber barons and elites, just as was done.

uh in the 19th century that that seems to be his vision uh of america in the 21st century.

Yeah, unfortunately, that era ended in two world wars the last time around.

So let's hope that we don't go there.

And that kind of leads to the Nobel Peace Prize watch that we're on here.

I mean, I do,

I want to get to Qatar and Gaza in a second.

But first, I do just want to ask you, because

remarkably, Donald Trump is the only U.S.

president that could host Vladimir Putin at a summit in Alaska,

host

President Zelensky and a series of European leaders in a kind of frantic follow-up meeting, promise all these things about ending the war and having subsequent meetings, and none of it coming to fruition.

And we actually saw Russia then just engage in some of the more most aggressive attacks, certainly using drones that it's done in the whole war.

I mean,

what is the state?

I mean, because when I looked at Ukraine, I made this comment last week on the podcast.

You know, Putin was just in China for this 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

He's there with his allies, right?

And he's got a full embrace from Xi Jinping.

He's meeting with Kim Jong-un, who's got troops there.

Looks like Putin's kind of got his side lined up pretty well in this war.

And the Iranian.

And the Iranian presence there.

Then, meanwhile, you've got Europeans just kind of begging Trump not to totally cut Ukraine off.

You've got Zelensky veering back and forth between having to charm Trump and having to stand up to him.

Our side is the one that's actually fracturing, which is quite remarkable.

I mean, what is your sense of the state of play on Ukraine and where do you see it going?

Well, first of all,

we are systematically undermining our alliances, both in Europe and Asia, which have been the bedrock of our strength and security since World War II.

And it's exactly, as you know, Ben, what the Chinese and Russians most want.

They want to separate us from our allies

because they know that that is our fundamental comparative advantage.

Meanwhile,

as you point out, we had

gathering in China where not only was

Xi and Putin, who were best buddies, and their sidekicks, the Iranians and the North Koreans, but Modi of India was there.

And successive U.S.

administrations, Democratic and Republican, over the last three decades have labored mightily to strengthen the U.S.-India relationship,

to embrace the largest democracy on the planet, and to pull the United States and India closer strategically, economically,

and in terms of values,

in part

to

isolate China.

Now, what Trump has done by imposing tariffs, ridiculous 50% tariffs on India, leaving China

with very low tariffs and no tariffs on Russia, he's driven them all together in opposition to the United States, undoing decades of hard work and diplomacy just overnight.

So that's the backdrop to answer your question about Ukraine, where the situation is

bad and getting worse, largely because Trump continues

to

issue these empty threats about greater sanctions, about potential tariffs on Russia, while largely depriving Ukraine still of the military and financial support that it most needs

and limiting Ukraine's ability to use the weapons that they do have to retaliate.

proportionately inside deep inside of Russia.

He's making Ukraine fight a difficult fight with one one hand tied behind its back while allowing Russia to continue doing what it's doing and giving Putin the imprimatur of a red carpet visit to the United States of America while Putin plays him like

a fiddle,

diddling him and diddling us and undermining our ties to the Europeans while they just pummel the hell out of Ukraine.

Yeah, well, you know,

if that continues to deteriorate, we also have the situation in Gaza, which Trump has also similarly failed to end that war.

Not claiming that's easy, but we saw a pretty dramatic escalation in the last 24 hours, Susan.

I mean, Israel actually bombed multiple countries in the last 24 hours, but I think the one that certainly jumped out is this targeted strike on Hamas leadership in Qatar.

We should say we don't know from the reports yet

whether it killed those Hamas leaders or not.

But this was literally the negotiating team that was based in Qatar at the U.S.

government's request.

Feels like if there was a notification from the Israeli government to Trump, it might have been when the missiles were in the air, but we'll find that out too.

But I mean, this, so people understand this, this is a country, Qatar, that hosts a significant U.S.

military installation that has hosted these talks, that served as a mediator, whatever you think of Qatar at the U.S.

government's request.

It's also a Gulf Cooperative Council GCC country, right?

So this is

the provider of Trump's

gold-plated

aircraft.

Maybe they have some some maybe they'll you know, they have some remorse over the tripped-out airplane they gave.

What do you make of this escalation into Qatar?

What do you make of it in terms of what it signals about where the Israelis are headed with their Gaza campaign and where Trump is headed in terms of

trying to encourage any restraint on Israel.

Well, I mean,

what the attack of into Qatar,

where the negotiations were being hosted,

is not only a brazen violation of international law, but I think Israel's become accustomed, frankly, to thinking that it can bomb any country in the region with impunity

because it has gotten away with it and often with the support of the United States.

But this is particularly concerning because it may well sound the death knell for negotiations that can lead to the release of the remaining hostages while they're still alive.

And

you have to imagine that the families of the hostages are just ripping their hair out because without a negotiated end to this war,

there's no prospect for the hostages to be returned.

And I think this was designed to kind of put a nail in the coffin of negotiations.

The other

horrific losers in this

outcome obviously are the people of Gaza

who

have

suffered enormously, unconscionably,

in

a war that seems to be without purpose at this stage and without end.

The degree of starvation, the continued

pummeling of rubble into more rubble, the horrific loss of life

seems to have nothing to do anymore

with destroying Hamas and avenging the October 7th horrific terrorist attacks.

It seems to be everything to do with collective punishment

demolition,

which

raises all kinds of questions about violations of international law, but beyond that,

is not, in my judgment, in any way, shape, or form in Israel's interests.

I don't know how

Israel and Netanyahu think this ends, and maybe he never wants it to end as a way of perpetuating his own

tenure in power.

But this is no way to secure the near-term or the long-term

future and security of the Israeli people.

It is likely to have absolutely the opposite effect.

Yeah, no, I mean, the combination of this strike and the recent meeting in the White House, you know, with Jared Kushner in attendance about the Gaza Riviera,

I think, suggests a very ominous, not that it hasn't already been horrific, but an even more ominous

near-term future.

Well, look, Susan, we covered a lot.

Thank you so much for joining us.

We'll have to have you back on at some point to talk about both how to fight back against this and then hopefully how to rebuild from it.

But there's too much to cover now in the destruction.

So

we had to get that part done today.

But thanks so much for spending some time here.

Good to be with you again, Ben.

Take good care.

Thanks again to Susan for doing the show.

And

man, I hope I get tossed out of this jury duty today, but we'll see.

I mean, I don't know how many people would want you on the jury telling me.

Hopefully not.

I was thinking yesterday, imagine if you were just strolling into jury duty and it was like OJ Simpson 2.0 and someone was like, what would that, who would that be today?

And the only person I could think of was like, imagine if LeBron James killed a couple people, allegedly.

He never would.

Never would.

We love him.

He's too rich.

We stand by LeBron.

Yeah,

i was on a jury once by the way i used to get tossed uh when i was like 23 and i i helped hang the jury nice it was a fucking crazy case too by the way what happened it was like a buy and bust they used to have these in new york it's like you know you you aggressively try to sell like the cops come up and try to get you to sell them drugs oh weird and this guy had

uh in the police report The only witnesses were the police, really.

Shocker.

And the police report identified the guy on a different street than where he was arrested and as wearing different clothes than he was wearing when he was arrested.

But besides that, and it was hard to hang the jury.

And I was kind of like,

shit, if you could literally file a police report that has like the wrong block and the wrong clothes and only on the police testimony prosecute someone, like maybe there are some problems in the justice system.

So get that lesson pretty early.

Big time.

Maybe I can get like another sandwich man thrower.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, tank man, sandwich man.

It's all the same.

That's that's a kid.

I'm Kidding everyone.

All right.

Well listen, thank you all for listening, for watching, and we'll talk to you next week.

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