Has Trump Ended 7 Wars? (No)

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Welcome back to Pod Safe the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Happy Unga Week, Ben.

That time of the year when the world descends on Manhattan.

New Yorkers complain about traffic.

Very little gets accomplished.

You're in New York as we speak.

How's the honking?

I'm here.

The vibe is about as grim as you'd think it would be.

I also like to just deal with Unga Week traffic by walking everywhere.

So I'm getting a lot of steps to make it better.

It's getting some good steps in here.

But yeah, man, it's not a lot of buzz, not a lot of energy around here.

It's climate week, and let's just say it's not a lot of climate action happening.

Don't even get me started.

I mean, there was a big report out about how basically every major country has completely broken its promises.

Yeah.

You know, the last cops, and they're actually, you know, even the Chinese and others are, you know, putting more,

even the Chinese, I see even Chinese because they were like the leaders in renewable energy, but they're now investing more into coal because they had some blackouts, et cetera.

We're missing all our targets.

Trump's bragging about it.

It's just, it's bleak.

So believe.

Yeah.

A little grim out there.

It's, you know, I miss the days when we would come in the early Obama years and the UN still mattered and was exciting and idealistic.

You know, it was kind of a golden age

relative to now.

Yeah, relative to now.

All right.

So we're going to talk about Trump's UN speech and what other big news there was out of New York so far this week.

We're going to dig into Trump's plan to reinvade or reoccupy Afghanistan, maybe both, specifically Bagram Air Base.

Seems like a great idea.

We'll explain why the United States is providing a bank bailout to Argentina.

That's America first first for you, Ben.

The latest on Russian efforts to mess with NATO.

There's a bunch of immigration news, including changes to a visa program for high school workers, and the Trump administration's totally incoherent argument for why it's okay to send people back to Syria.

There's also the ongoing punishment of students who believe in Palestinian rights.

And then we'll get into why the administration's literal war on drug cartels or alleged drug cartels may be coming to Mexico.

Some big news about North Korea and nuclear weapons.

The latest on President Macron and the First Lady of France's lawsuit against a crazy American podcaster, and then some fun with Cameo.

And then, Ben, you just did our interview.

What are folks going to hear?

Yeah, I talked to Rob Malley, who worked in several administrations, including Bill Clinton's administration, Barack Obama's administration with us, Joe Biden's administration on Middle East issues and Iran issues and Israel-Palestine issues.

Rob has a new book out with Hussein Aga.

Hussein was a negotiator for the Palestinians at Camp David.

Rob was a negotiator for the United States.

And it's really a history of the two-state solution and why it failed.

And it's also a memoir of their experiences,

personal memoir of their experiences of that.

And so we talk about what happened, what went wrong at Camp David, what happened, what went wrong in the Obama years, what Rob thinks of these efforts to recognize the state of Palestine that we've seen in recent days, and what might be some options going forward that are more realistic than just repeating two-state solution over and over again.

So it's both history and present tense and future.

So people should check it out.

Excellent.

Yeah, no, I haven't read the full book yet.

I have it actually next to my bed, but I've read the,

they did an excerpt for the New Yorker that was excellent.

Really smart, really thoughtful.

Beautifully written, by the way.

Beautifully written books.

Yeah.

Tomorrow is yesterday.

People should check it out.

All right, Ben.

So President Trump addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

Per usual, it was like the, you know, tedious laundry list of bragging and lies and grievances, and then just like a dose of bizarre bullshit.

There was a sprinkling of kind of notable newsworthy stuff.

Here's a flavor of what Ben and I were forced to endure so that you don't have to watch the full thing.

Here's a clip.

I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.

All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle, and then a teleprompter that didn't work.

What is the purpose of the United Nations?

For the most part, at least for now, all

they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up.

It's empty words, and empty words don't solve war.

I've also been working relentlessly, stopping the killing in Ukraine.

China and India are the primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil.

But inexcusably, even NATO countries have not cut off much Russian energy and Russian energy products.

Think of it.

They're funding the war against themselves.

Who the hell ever heard of that one?

Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should too often, it's actually creating new problems for us to solve.

The United Nations is funding an assault on Western countries and their their borders.

Immigration and the high cost of so-called green, renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet.

Okay, so just a little summary, and I'll add some more stuff he said.

He blames the U.N.

for not attending peace talks that I would...

bet money they weren't invited to and actually didn't end the conflicts Trump is referencing in the first place.

His position on Gaza and the creation of a Palestinian state is basically where Biden was in like October of 2023.

So that's great, Ben.

Trump says he learned only two weeks ago that Europe is still buying Russian oil and gas, which is kind of crazy if true, because this is not a secret.

In fact, it's been quite controversial.

As you heard there, he's blaming the U.N.

for migration.

not the real answer, which is people are escaping wars or economic deprivation.

He mocked anyone who cares about global warming.

He said the concept of your carbon footprint is a hoax made up by evil people.

So, Ben, I got to say, man, like I found watching this speech unbelievably depressing because it reminded me of all like the big picture, long-term challenges like climate change that is there's not even part of the u.s political debate anymore because we're focused on like the outrage of the day the suppression of free speech the crackdown on anyone who is um in the democratic party but i don't know man what did you make of this monstrosity and any like kind of newsworthy events from today jump out of you no i mean that's and actually that that kind of speaks to the fecklessness of Trump's foreign policy, right?

I mean,

I will say I wrote eight of these,

which I joked to you before, Tommy, that I don't take a ton of pride in that.

I'm probably the only human being who wrote eight American President Anga speeches.

It's kind of like for those of you who watch Bull Durham, I used to say it was like Crash Davis, the Kevin Costner character breaking the Minor League home run record, you know,

record that just nobody else cares about.

But I make the point that because I remember the tremendous care.

you'd put into, you know, not offending people and trying to appeal to different audiences and try to build support for U.S.

leadership.

And you'd always launch like several initiatives, you know, in the UN General Assembly speech.

You'd try to come with real proposals for ending wars.

And none of that was in this speech.

And I do think if you take the long-term

takeaways from this speech, one is that this is utterly embarrassing.

for the United States.

You know, it's not just that it's like a chuckle, chuckle.

He said he ended seven wars.

I don't think he could list what those seven wars are.

Nobody knows what he's talking about.

I'm going to try to explain that in a second, but please keep going.

Okay, well, because he also, the funny thing is, he accuses the UN of only issuing statements and then not solving problems.

Well, he's, you know, says he's trying to end the war in Ukraine.

You know,

the killing's gotten worse.

He's talking about projection.

Like, he's the one who just demands that the war in Ukraine ends and it doesn't, right?

So he appears feckless.

Like you, I found the climate change piece incredibly depressing because we are so focused on these things.

We may look back on this time as one of, you know, hastening ecological disaster.

And I do think the world really, in the first Trump term, it was like, let's try to keep Paris together.

Let's try to keep

alliances together of other countries and U.S.

states can be a part of that.

This is all now breaking down.

And so I think the challenge for the kind of climate community is to figure out different ways of building support inside countries for clean energy transitions, different coalitions, just kind of coming together at Climate Week at the UN or at COP, the annual summits, that's just not nearly enough.

So I think this is kind of hopefully like, hopefully, kind of rock bottom.

And like a lot of other things, people have to figure out a different way to kind of push up from rock bottom from the climate paradigm that has like dominated the globe's approach to this for the last 20 years.

It's something we should kind of continue to come back to on this pod.

And then lastly, I think his complete

insulting of the UN is worth pausing on because, like, first of all, to defend the UN, well, the UN doesn't quote unquote work because the member states don't make it work.

The UN doesn't have an army.

The UN doesn't have,

if the UN Security Council, if the United States, Russia, and China don't agree on anything, well, then you can't pass a Security Council resolution and have a plan to end a conflict, right?

If the U.S.

is like pulling out all of its funding for the UN, is leaving all these bodies and all these other nationalists are kind of turning against multilateralism, well, of course, it's not the fault of like the Secretary General of the United Nations.

It's like blaming the building of Congress for why Congress is dysfunctional.

It's like

the people inside of it.

But I think we have to take seriously the fact that this paradigm also doesn't work.

And there is going to at some point have to be, and it's probably not going to be while Trump's president, or maybe other countries will start to do without us, a reconsideration about how this machinery of the the international community works.

I mean, at this rate, Tommy, like, I don't know if the U.S.

is going to be allowed to host the United Nations by the end of Trump's presidency.

So insulting, you know?

I know.

I've been thinking about that too.

It's like at some point when the systems are just, they aren't working and they haven't worked and they haven't solved a problem in years.

Like at what point do you just start over and try something new?

But Ben,

like you, this claim that he is now making as part of his stump speech that he has ended seven wars has been driving me completely crazy in part because I didn't even know what he was talking about.

So I try to like dig into it and figure out like what he's saying he solved and just fact check it a little bit.

So the first one he's claiming to have solved is Israel and Iran.

And I think we all remember that the Trump administration did nothing to prevent Israel from bombing Iran for 12 days.

Then we started bombing Iran.

And yes, Trump pressured them to cut a ceasefire deal, but I don't think you get a Nobel Peace Prize for hitting pause on a war you were part of, and the conflict's far from over.

The second is Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But on Monday, the president of the DRC said that the Trump-mediated peace deal has not stopped or even calmed the fighting.

And the M23, which is the key rebel group in the conflict, was not a party to the agreement.

So this is just total bullshit.

The third is Thailand and Cambodia.

You know, pressure from Trump might have gotten them to come together for a fragile ceasefire, but the underlying causes of that conflict are not resolved.

And there was fighting between the Thai military and Cambodian villagers just last week.

The fourth is India and Pakistan, which we've talked about a bunch in this show.

Remember, the Indian government says Trump played no role in brokering that ceasefire, and the two countries remain mortal enemies.

So again, problem not solved.

The fifth one is really weird, Ben.

He says it's about Egypt and Ethiopia,

but like there was never a military conflict.

Like there is a diplomatic dispute over a hydroelectric dam that is a very big deal, but is still totally unresolved.

So I just don't know what he's talking about there.

Similarly, the sixth one is Kosovo and Serbia.

Apparently, that's a reference to some economic deal that the two countries signed back in 2020, but it's not a peace agreement.

And And finally, the seventh is Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two leaders of those countries visited the White House in August, but they didn't sign a peace deal.

They signed like a commitment to try to reach a peace deal.

And big picture, as we've discussed on the show, this happened because Azerbaijan routed Armenia in the war, and they're still occupying parts of Armenian territory.

So this was, again, not like a conflict that he ended.

It was a war where one side beat the shit out of the other.

So there it is.

Seven wars.

So he ended none.

I mean, you know, that's a very useful summary you have.

I mean, literally, you know, the only war that he ended is one that he started with Iran.

And you don't get credit if you bomb a country and then stop bombing them and saying, I ended the war, right?

Every other one of those conflicts was either not a war, some of them are just still ongoing, and all of them still have, you know, the border dispute is not resolved.

So it's important to fact check this, though, because he repeats it so much.

And you know that all of his people

just believe he ended Seven Wars.

If you're a Fox News viewer, you just believe this.

And often it's so, yeah, it's so ridiculous that Democrats don't take it up, the journalists are exhausted.

But he repeats this so much that

it like, and we should be clear: nobody around the world believes this either.

And if anything,

they have jokes about him saying that he ended the war between Azerbaijan and Albania when he was in the UK.

I mean, this is an absurd degree of vanity and narcissism.

And I think what's scary about it is I think he believes he ended Sev Wars.

I do too.

The list is growing and he's going back in time.

He's like, I'm going to get that 2020 thing we did with Kosovo and I'll add that to my tally.

Which was literally just an economic.

Kosovo and Serbia have not been at war

since the late 90s.

They have kind of a frozen kind of conflict in the sense that obviously Serbia doesn't kind of recognize Kosovo's independence, but even that deal didn't resolve any of the underlying political questions.

It was just some weird trade deal that Richard Grinnell,

probably profited off of, right?

So this is totally bizarre.

Yeah, and we'll get to a war he might restart in a second, but I just wanted to point out one last thing from Ungaben, which is Trump had a meeting Tuesday with Javier Millé, the president of Argentina, where Trump weirdly endorsed Millay's re-election, I guess.

And the endorsement came a day after Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary, offered Argentina a bank bailout.

And the short version of how we got to this point is Millay put in place these incredibly tough austerity measures to get inflation down.

That actually seems to have temporarily worked.

I think inflation went from like 300% to 30%, but it's also been brutally difficult on the people of Argentina, which is why Millay's party got crushed in local elections over the weekend in Buenos Aires.

So, those results, I think, made investors wonder if Millay can stay in office and follow through with this austerity agenda.

And in response, the currency weakened in the stock market collapsed partially.

And so, that led Besant to like make this public statement about giving them a bailout.

So, Ben, I think we should revisit the substance of the Javier Malay, like kind of anarcho-capitalist economic experiment in depth some other time with like an expert who can tell us what's happening down there.

But like, I read this and I was like, come on, Democrats, you can't do something with this.

Like, America first now means giving Argentina a bank bailout?

We can't demagogue this just because this guy is nice to Trump at CPAC.

We're okay with this now?

Yeah,

I think it's really important when you think about how how to kind of, you know, attack Trump's policies and his, you know, approach to the presidency.

One way, and we've tried to do this on this podcast, is instead of just kind of projecting our own definitions of success or priorities onto Trump and saying he's not following them, is actually to map what he promised his own supporters he would do against what he's doing.

We've talked about, and we'll talk more on this podcast, about he's not ending forever wars.

If anything, he's starting new ones.

That's a big line of attack I'd have if I were Democrats.

But another is, this is the opposite of America First.

I did see Elizabeth Warren kind of attack Scott Besson, and then he wrote some like Bill Ackman-lang

tweet in response.

But the reality here is that, like, we are bailing out Argentina, but it's even worse than that.

We're clearly only doing this because Javier Mile is like a buddy of Trump's.

He's another right-wing populist.

He hangs out at Mar-a-Lago.

He showed up at the Trump inauguration.

He has a chainsaw that Elon Musk took to CPAC.

How does it make you feel?

Because we wouldn't be doing this if it was Brazil, some of those countries down there he hates.

So it again shows that his whole foreign policy is based on basically supporting like-minded right-wing nationalist autocrats who kiss his ass.

And how should Americans feel about you bailing out countries based on that?

You know, I mean, we also know he's kind of weaponizing the government for his own corruption purposes, purposes, but all this is a betrayal of his own message to his own voters.

And so, I do think that this is something that Democrats should be hitting hard and anybody, frankly, who is disgusted by this.

Yeah, I was glad to see Senator Warren jumped in on this.

And it was great that I think Besant wrote this op-ed-length response on Twitter: like, let's get as much attention on this issue as humanly possible.

Like, I don't think NAGA voters want us to be bailing out Argentina, and I'd love for them to know about it.

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Speaking of things I'd love for people to know about, Ben, last week we recorded this YouTube exclusive where we, I mean, the idea initially was to explain why the biggest names in the MAGA media world, like Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly, were furious about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netyahu's attempts to co-opt the legacy of Charlie Kirk.

And in that episode, at the very end, we briefly discussed this bizarre comment that we just caught from Trump where he talked about wanting to reoccupy Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

So check out that episode of Pod Save the World on YouTube if you want to go down the rabbit hole in the Charlie Kirk conspiracy stuff because it's still kind of roiling MAGA world.

But also, please just subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube because we're putting out lots of additional content on big breaking news.

But back to this Bagram issue.

So remember, Trump wanted to have it both ways when he came to Afghanistan, right?

He wanted to be for ending the forever wars, but also attack Biden for actually doing it.

So he focused on the decision decision to evacuate Bagram and also to leave military equipment in Afghanistan rather than bringing it home, never mind that his team like negotiated the deal in the first place.

And for context, Bagram is this massive airbase, like 30 miles north of Kabul.

It was originally built by the Soviets in the 50s and the U.S.

took it over after we invaded 9-11.

And the U.S.

left Bagram a few weeks before the full withdrawal from Afghanistan.

And then the Afghan army and the government was quickly toppled and it was disastrous.

We all remember that.

And according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump's interest in Bagram is thanks to this one random article by newly confirmed UN Ambassador Mike Waltz, where he wrote, quote, Bagram airfield remains our sole strategic key terrain in the backyards of three of our four global competitors, China, Russia, and Iran.

We have no other options in the region.

One of the reasons Trump keeps citing for wanting Bagram back is that the base is an hour away from a Chinese nuclear facility.

He's talking about a place called Lop Noor,

a site where China tests nuclear weapons but doesn't make them.

And also, as The Economist noted, it's actually like 1,200 miles away from Bagram.

So it's an hour away if you're like in a fighter jet doing mock whatever, but not much else.

Also, according to the journal, the proximity doesn't have a lot of utility.

Like this Pentagon official said that we basically keep tabs on China's nukes with satellites and electronic intercepts.

Like, didn't understand why you would want this base, but it does sound like some people in Trump's orbit want to re-occupy Bagram to have a drone base to hit ISIS-K targets.

However, the Taliban have been unequivocal about shutting that idea down.

So cut to Saturday when Trump posted this on Truth Social, quote, if Afghanistan doesn't give Bagram air base back to those who built it, the United States of America, bad things are going to happen.

And speaking to a reporter that same day, Trump said, if they don't do it, you're going to find out what I'm going to do.

So, Ben, the only way I can interpret that is him suggesting or threatening that the U.S.

military is going to re-invade Afghanistan, an operation that would require tens of thousands of troops, would cost us billions of dollars.

And like, for the life of me, man, I just, I cannot understand why he is pushing this.

Like, maybe it's a random article he read five years ago, but I like, it's crazy.

Like, what's your theory for this one?

This is absolutely baffling.

And we should just say this is a horrible idea.

Like, everything about this

is crazy.

My own theory,

you know, is I think this through a couple of theories, right?

One is Trump is always obsessed with like trying to kind of, if he thinks his predecessor did something that he can like undo, like, so Joe Biden, you know, most people think that withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster.

So I'm going to take back Bagram.

Like, I don't, I don't know, you know, like in the weird Trump psychology, maybe he thinks that this is a way of like showing up Biden or something.

But look, this would be horrible for the people of Afghanistan to just kind of reintroduce like the U.S.

military presence that ended up being so catastrophic there.

It serves no purpose.

I mean, if we start hitting ISIS-K targets in Afghanistan, that's just like pure forever war shit, right?

I mean, I thought that's what people didn't want anymore, including MAGA people, as I was saying.

Especially MAGA people, yeah.

Yeah, what is the political constituency in this country?

There's not a political constituency in Afghanistan for this.

Like, it's not getting anybody in Afghanistan.

It's like, oh, please let the Americans come back, just have Bagram.

There's not a political constituency in this country for this.

His stated reason of like the Chinese nuclear weapons base is either stupid because what we're not gonna like spy on it from bagram or terrifying because like i i what are we gonna bomb the chinese nuclear site we're gonna start a yeah world war three with china like

it's not necessary as part of some like defense architecture we have plenty of bases in asia like this is just pure insanity now I'm sure the Taliban, it is core to the very being and identity of the Taliban to resist the presence of foreign forces on their soil.

I wonder, you know, they alluded to the fact that they've had talks.

I mean, it may be that he's threatening them to kind of leave them no option but to say yes so that they can say to their own people, like, hey, and this is not just my idea.

I talked to a couple people that followed, and they were just like everybody else guessing, but maybe like all these threats are to kind of give the Taliban a reason to say to their people, like, we got no choice.

This guy's crazy.

But that's the best I can come up with of why he's kind of dialing up the temperature.

In terms of what he might do, too, it's like not just the reoccupation.

I also worry that what if he just bombs Bagram?

You know, like, what if he's like, the Taliban won't give it back?

And so we just go back and we blow up Bagram.

And so then he says, like, they can't have it, right?

Which would be horrible, you know, to do that to a country.

And it's not the Taliban.

There's people that live around there.

Bagram's not in the middle of nowhere.

Like, so I started to worry about that as well.

It's also massive.

It's 30 square miles.

Like, that would be a huge operation.

Yeah.

And

it's near civilian, civilian, a lot of civilians.

So, and by the way, the last thing I say about this is he said, give it back to the people who built it.

It's actually built by Russians, you know, like so, just in a sign of how many people have, like, failed in Afghanistan.

So, just, I hope we move on from this because there's nothing, this is a 0% idea.

There's 0%

good about this idea.

Like, hopefully, we just move on from this because every scenario I can think of here is bad.

Yeah, zero, zero upside to this idea and also like zero percent support for this idea among the American American people.

Nobody, like, who wants to?

Yeah, please do a joint poll of 500 Americans, 500 Afghans.

See who is in support of reinvading Afghanistan.

You're going to get a 0% response.

Before we move on, Ben, I just wanted to mention one quick thing that I saw in Politico, which was apparently the Pentagon announced that reporters who cover the Defense Department will only be allowed to do so, like kind of work out of the building, if they promise to get their reporting, quote, approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.

Failure to abide by these rules may result in suspension or revocation of your building pass and loss of access.

And we just want to mention this because this is the latest in a series of steps designed to make it harder for reporters to cover the Pentagon.

And look, you and I have had our fair share of arguments and fights with the press corps about stories or like, you know, like I've been on the phone begging reporters not to report on some piece of classified information.

But this is a horrible idea.

And big picture, like if you are America first and you want to avoid foreign wars, you want a strong Pentagon press corps.

And if you are America first because you hate corruption or don't want excess spending or wasteful spending by the Pentagon, you want a strong Pentagon press corps.

Like everything about this idea is terrible.

And if you apply these rules to history, you would have had your credentials stripped for reporting on the Pentagon Papers and all the lies about Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the torture at Abu Ghraib.

Like, I just, this is

a massive attack on the First Amendment and would be damaging to literally every citizen of this country.

End of speech.

Yeah.

And what we see is a convergence, I'd say, of three things that are very worrying for me, like quickly on this.

Like, one is free speech, right?

And this is happening at the same time that we see the weaponization of the FCC, the threats over the Jimmy Kimmel stuff, the, you know, potential shutting down of like, you know, left-wing organizations.

Like, this is yet one more, you know, plank of free speech that is potentially being threatened.

is

this is designed, it's also tied to Trump only wanting

information that validates

the success of his efforts, right?

And so, if I was thinking about like what might have contributed to this, it's that leaked DIA report that was like, we did not obliterate the Iranian nuclear program.

Actually, we only set it back a few months.

Well, since then, we've like seen Trump fire the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and now you're not even allowed to, because that's the kind of thing that Pentagon reporters get their hands on, right?

Like they hear that there's a report like that.

Exactly.

So, the only version we're going to get of like the U.S.

policies or U.S.

military actions are just going to be pure propaganda stuff, right?

And that, to your point, that should be terrifying.

And then, the last piece of this is

something that people are going to have to pay more attention to as the Trump administration goes on is the kind of shoveling out the door of contracts to people like Palantir, right?

These defense tech firms that are like the new military industrial complex that might raise questions around like everything from the mass surveillance of the U.S.

population to

the

development of artificial intelligence weapons, right, that could be deployed here or abroad, right?

So we need smart people in that building and clearing them out, like you said, is going to leave us blind to that.

Yeah, horrendous idea.

Please don't do it.

Don't sign these agreements, people.

You don't have to agree to their fucking bullshit.

All right, let's switch gears here.

We'll move a little faster through some of these.

So in news that will surprise no one, there was another instance of Russia violating NATO airspace on Friday when three Russian MiG-31 jets entered Estonian airspace and remained there for about 12 minutes before NATO jets responded.

That continues this pattern we've seen of Russia seeming to test NATO's defenses and their response.

There was the recent Russian drone incursion into Poland, for example, that we covered on the show.

On Monday, the UN Security Council met in New York for an emergency meeting.

At the meeting, Russia called Estonia's claim empty and unfounded.

They denied that the flights violated international law, and they said the whole situation was, quote, a continuation of a completely reckless pattern of escalating tensions and provoking a confrontational atmosphere.

These guys are so good at doing the like, you know, opposite day statement.

Mike Waltz, Signalgate fame, made his first appearance as the U.S.'s new ambassador to the U.N.

at an emergency meeting.

He said that the U.S.

and its allies will, quote, defend every inch of NATO territory.

Trump was asked about this.

He had a slightly different take when he was asked about the Russian airspace violations during a press event with President Zelensky of Ukraine.

Here's what he had to say.

Do you think that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace?

Yes, I do.

Would you back them up?

Would the United States help them out in some way?

Depends on the circumstance, but we're very strong toward NATO.

Sounds like Trump wants NATO to start a war with Russia, but he refuses to say if we will help them win it.

Kind of par for the course.

we all watched him kind of dance around whether the United States would live up to its Article 5 obligations in the first term, and there's just more of that bullshit then.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, this confirms, right?

We talked early on, like, was this a mistake by the Russians when their first drones went into Poland?

Look, there's such a pattern now of Russian violations of NATO aerospace that it's very clear that this is a deliberate strategy by Russia and Vladimir Putin.

You don't have this many coincidental incursions into NATO airspace.

Why is Putin doing it?

One reason may be to humiliate NATO, right?

It's not coincidental in my mind that all of this activity started shortly after that Alaska summit and the kind of collapse of the effort to end the war in Ukraine.

This is Putin kind of rubbing it in everybody's face, you know, look, I can do whatever I want.

I'll even come into NATO, you know?

And I made no concession.

I gave nothing up in any of these conversations that we had.

But it also allows them to test kind of how will NATO respond?

Like, how will NATO respond militarily?

You know, how will NATO respond diplomatically?

They just kind of want to see how that goes.

And then the last thing is, you know, Mike Waltz is what he says is meaningless.

Nobody believes the talking points he says.

The question is Trump himself.

And Trump is so all over the map, you know, from rolling out the red carpet in Alaska to threaten to shoot planes down, like nobody believes anything.

And that's when things get dangerous, because if you don't have kind of predictability in these kind of superpower conflicts and relationships, that's when you get miscalculations.

That's when you get people doing things that they didn't think the other side would respond a certain way.

So this is a dangerous situation that bears a lot of attention going forward.

Yeah, there are also some reports today that Russian drones might have entered the airspace of Denmark and Norway.

Trump was asked about that.

He said he needed more information.

Trump was also asked if he still trusts Putin.

He said, ask me in a month.

So again, he's just like punting this thing forward.

Two weeks.

More exhausting bullshit.

Yeah.

Okay.

So there's been a lot of big immigration news that kind of got lost because of the Charlie Kirk assassination and the Jimmy Kimmel stuff last week.

So we want to tick through some of it.

On Friday, Trump announced that every new H-1B visa, which are visas for workers who bring, quote, a body of highly specialized knowledge that are needed by some U.S.

employer, they will now cost $100,000 each versus the roughly $10,000 that it previously cost.

So these fees are paid by the employers.

But so the initial announcement, it caused a ton of confusion and panic at a bunch of companies in the U.S., especially tech companies, because it wasn't clear whether the new price tag was for all H-1B visa holders or just new applicants.

And the administration had to clarify over the weekend that it was the latter but you had people like you know who had h-1b visas who had left the country who were like ordered to come back immediately because like their companies didn't know the status it was a total mess and the new york times took a look at the reaction to this change in silicon valley and the gist ben is it's likely to be really challenging and potentially damaging for startups and small businesses, tech businesses that can't afford a bunch of new costs, but it'll likely work out just fine for like the metas of the world and other tech giants who can eat a $100,000 fee and not think twice about it or do it a couple thousand times.

Before last week, the H-1B visa program was capped at 85,000 visas per year and was awarded by lottery.

That was not enough H-1B visas to meet the demand, and it was why tech companies wanted to see the process reformed.

It seems like Trump's new plan is going to get rid of the lottery system and instead give preference to people with higher skills and higher incomes.

I think the 85,000 cap is going to stay, but I guess we'll find out.

Ben, I remember during the campaign when Trump told the gang from the All-In podcast, a bunch of tech douches, that anyone who, his plan would be that anyone who graduated from college would get a green card and be able to stay in the country.

I think they believed him at the time.

Slightly different outcome here.

We'll see how they feel about it, I guess.

Yeah, we talked a couple weeks ago about the danger of a massive brain drain from the United States in terms of not getting high-skilled labor here, maybe not getting any labor here when they kicked out those Koreans, and eventually of even some high-skilled Americans leaving here because it's so crazy.

This is such a self-owned and a self-defeating move.

I mean, from people I talk to, it's kind of creating chaos.

And it's just going to lead people to not come here.

You know, the kind of people that you want to be developing new industries, whether it's artificial intelligence or quantum computing or just, you know, certain high-skilled areas that are necessary for advanced manufacturing.

Trump says he wants to bring back advanced manufacturing.

I think what people miss is, you you know, this facilitates often American jobs, right?

Because essentially, if you have this kind of higher skilled workforce, it can kind of create growth and create opportunities and create advanced manufacturing that then can bring in other Americans too.

So I think watching the outflow of high-skilled labor coming to this country, of foreign students who may not want to come to this country, of tourists who don't want to come to this country, all of this is going to put a meaningful dent in economic growth.

It's going to cut the United States off from the world.

It's going to make us fall behind on innovation because it's going to make places like China or the Gulf or Europe or other places be where the cutting edge stuff is happening because that's where there's a kind of convergence of talent.

So

this is like one of those seemingly like, you know, secondary announcements that is kind of part of a bigger trend of the United States really setting back its own capacity over time for economic growth and innovation.

Yeah, and for short-term game, I mean, also, he rolled out a program where if you're really rich, you can pay a million dollars for a quote gold card for U.S.

residency and then $2 million for a corporate gold card where companies can sponsor employees.

But again, that's not about skill.

It's about the money you can pay.

And yeah, just to like rant about this for a second here, like we used to be the place where the strivers came.

Like we wanted you to come here if you were scrappy, if you wanted to start a business, if you wanted to live the American dream.

This is like, hey, oligarch, come here and like, you know, pay us a little money.

Like these are people that are already rich right this isn't this is not the striver the striver is h-1b visa the fucking oligarch who's like yeah it'd be cool to have a visa here's a million dollars for a gold card like is some late stage capitalist dystopia where like we're gonna have all of like the

shitty people in the world who just like kids are the shitty people in the world too yeah yeah and also like i think 71 of h-1b visas in 2024 were uh went to people from india and that's sort of what the historical percentage has been so this is likely to be another irritant in the u.s india relationship that we've talked about.

Also, Ben,

we're recording this.

It's 2:54 p.m.

Pacific.

I just saw an article come through Slack.

I know we moved on from the Russia section, where Trump apparently put out a truth social post after his meeting with Zelensky saying, After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine-Russia military and economic situation, and after seeing the economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.

So, we are now waiting he's out for like a can it can

maximalist position can we just he also says he's going to provide weapons to i will i wish both countries well we will continue to supply weapons to nato for nato to do what they want with them what is happening man i i'm reinvading afghanistan exactly you went exactly where i was gonna go like we're reinvading afghanistan we have like the you know objectives for the Ukraine war that were like the hawkish people in the Atlantic magazine in 2022.

Like,

this is, this is what I mean by like, this kind of, like, I know we're going to have some laundering happen here, Tommy.

That this is the madman theory of diplomacy or something.

Oh, definitely.

Trump's predictability is strength.

No, this is a guy who keeps getting humiliated by Putin.

And so he like veers back and forth like a crazy weather vane from capitulating to the guy in Alaska and saying, look, we'll accept the terms where you get to annex all the territory, to saying against all evidence that somehow Ukraine is going to win back Crimea, right?

I mean, that is like, that is no way to run a strategy.

Nobody can plan against, like, you're in a war here.

You need to plan six months out, one month out, two years out.

You're in a negotiation.

You take positions, you stick to them, and drive them at the negotiating table.

This kind of like wildly veering back and forth, like you're competing with your buddy Jeffrey Epstein for a piece of real estate in Florida, is just not how you approach like a major land war in Europe.

Well, especially when you have to like

to provide material, like massive shipments of weapons that the Ukrainian military is going to need to fight.

Like, this is insane.

This is fucking crazy.

My honest reaction to this is I don't believe him.

I think he's full of shit.

And he thinks, I bet you he thinks or he will suggest that he is doing the kind of madman theory stuff and this is just his way of like getting Putin's attention and getting leverage and getting him back to the negotiating table.

But the Russians have showed over and over again that they just play Trump for time and they, as he said himself, tap him along.

And I'm sure that's what will happen again.

But I guess we'll find out in two weeks or whatever.

Yeah, when it's something totally different.

I mean, how many positions has this guy taken on the Ukraine war in the last seven months?

And the only constant is Russian escalation.

That's the only constant.

That's exactly right.

Okay, back to this immigration stuff, Ben.

So also last week, on Friday, the Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noam, announced she was terminating temporary protected status program for Syrians, giving them 60 days to self-deport.

This decision will impact about 6,000 Syrians in the U.S.

and around 1,000 more who had pending applications.

Ben, my head nearly exploded when I read this statement from the DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin.

She said, quote, conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home, right?

But then in the next sentence, she said, quote, Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country.

So, in one breath, she is trying to argue that Syria is now safe, which is not true, but that Syrians in the U.S.

are all a threat, which is just pure bigotry with no evidence to back it up.

And she's talking about often like women, kids, totally innocent people.

It's just outrageous.

And so far, the Trump administration has taken a bunch of steps to end TPS for people from at least seven other countries, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

There's various legal challenges that we won't get into, but you know, it's clearly a pattern.

I'm just trying to send back anyone who's here legally.

And then also, Ben, I noticed that it was pretty amazing to see that the Syrian president, Ahmed Al-Shara, was at the UN.

He was the first Syrian president to attend the UN in, I think, nearly 60 years, as we've discussed on the show.

Shara was once the leader of a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

But while he was in New York, he did an interview on stage with David Petraeus.

Did you see this?

The former head of the CIA.

I actually watched it because it was so surreal.

I thought it was an LSD or something.

So again, Petraeus was the commander of the forces in Iraq.

who captured and imprisoned Al-Shara for several years.

What did you make of the event itself?

I I saw some quotes from it.

I didn't watch the whole thing.

I thought it was very powerful to see Al-Shara get off the plane and walk as someone who lived and failed as part of U.S.

policy on the Syrian civil war, to see this guy come as the first Syrian president to set foot at UGA in decades.

I thought that was powerful.

I think the fact that Dave Petraeus was the person selected to, because I don't think Al-Shara made that decision.

I mean, if I'm wrong, you know, let me know.

Who sponsored the event?

Do you know?

I think it was like the Concordia.

I just saw some signage that said like Concordia or something.

This is what's wrong with this whole fucking circuit sometimes, right?

And this isn't even really like just, I'm not trying to single out Dave Petraeus in particular, but it is so disrespectful to Syrians to like Petraeus was not only the military commander in Iraq when, you know, Al-Shara was imprisoned, but then he was also the CIA director under Obama when let's just say we had a Syria policy that didn't exactly work, you know, and and so just please like find someone else

not a journalist that can do this because it just kind of reinforces that what's been really sad because Al-Shara is trying to say all the right things, but like everything has to be the only way that Syria can come in the in from the cold is entirely on our terms, right?

So we're trying to dictate some security agreement where he has to basically concede like literal territory to Israel, right?

That's been bombing him.

You know, he's got to like sit there and like, you know, be interviewed by the guy that put him in prison in Iraq and like was kind of on different sides of the Syrian civil war.

You know, he's got to kind of kiss everybody's ass and in the Middle East, like including the leaders of countries that, again, you know, weren't exactly equitting themselves with glory in the Syrian civil war.

And then, lastly, it ties to the asylum piece.

Like, it makes it seem like Trump's decision, which we supported to lift sanctions on Syria, was just so we could pretend like, oh, now it's normal.

And so we can start deporting people back there.

When, in fact, this country is still war ravaged.

It's not anywhere near rebuilt.

Like, if anybody had a legitimate asylum claim, it was Syrians.

And so, what should be like a celebratory moment in the beginning of Syria's rebuilding is also just this kind of gross manifestation of like how power structures work, you know?

Yeah, I mean, it certainly is not safe, right?

There's been all the, first of all, I think Al-Sharo said that Israel has bombed Syria like a thousand times in recent weeks or months.

Yeah, right.

So there's clearly like active warfare in parts of the country.

There's also a pretty disconcerting sectarian violence that's happening.

There is clearly some sort of lingering ISIS contingent in parts of the country.

So the idea that we're going to send a bunch of 6,000 people just back to Syria because Trump doesn't want them around anymore because DHS says it's safe there is complete bullshit.

I imagine Petraeus was chosen because the message of like the symbolism of like two guys who fought each other now on stage together was perceived as powerful.

I did notice that Petraeus said he was a fan of El-Shara and talked about the trajectory from like fighter to someone who's moving from combat to discourse, right?

So it's a nice line, but I hear you.

It is a little, it's a little weird.

And it also speaks to kind of like the securitized relationship with the entire region, which is

a four-star general is kind of in charge of the diplomacy with this guy.

Yeah, like, and again, I'm not, you know, it's not that I agree with everything on Petraeus, but this is not meant to single him out.

It's more just like, look, if they were there to have like an oral history of the Iraq war or the Syrian civil war, like fine, but, but, but better, why not have someone who could talk about the economic reconstruction?

To your point, not a general, not securitized, but like a business person or, you know, an entrepreneur or, you know, like, or civil society.

Or ambassador.

Something that is about like rebuilding Syria, not about like, oh, look at this.

This is, you know, I mean, I, I, yeah, there's something about the imagery that's interesting, but but it's also something about it's just like, again, it's like,

you know, it's like a blobby wet dream.

Like, let's just be honest with what it is.

Portray us with the new Syrian guy.

Like, it's what, like, you know, it's what Face the Nation wishes they could have that booking every week for the rest of its time.

You know, it's like very much the kind of

speaking of Syria, on September 12th, an immigration judge in Louisiana ordered that Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil must be deported to either Syria or Algeria.

Folks probably remember Khalil as being one of the first people targeted by the Trump administration at the start of Trump's second term.

His attorneys have already appealed to the New Jersey judge that ordered Khalil's release from ICE custody back in June in an attempt to block this new deportation order.

This story is a little confusing for listeners, for me, because there's two separate legal tracks.

There's the federal court in New Jersey that looks at the constitutional issues.

Then there's another immigration court looking at the issue in Louisiana where there's this immigration judge who is a member of the executive branch, not the judicial branch, and who is clearly just trying to force this guy out of the country.

And they're kind of at loggerheads.

And remember, Mahmoud Khalil is a legal permanent resident.

He is married to an American citizen, and they have a son

who was delivered while he was in ICE custody.

And the Trump administration wouldn't let him out to be present for the birth of his son, who is also an American citizen.

So this is someone with deep ties to the United States, who loves the United States, and his sole crime, in air quotes, is talking about Palestinian rights.

The Trump administration is now trying to manufacture a new pretext to deport him.

Basically, they're saying there's like clerical errors on one of his applications.

It's total bullshit.

Ben, so this is just like all a way of, I think, reminding listeners that.

What happened to Jimmy Kimmel was the latest assault on free speech, but it was hardly the first.

Like this, this whole process started a lot earlier with these ongoing still attacks on people whose crime was believing in Palestinian rights, basically.

Yeah, and they're being relentless about it.

They're not letting it go.

And it's meant to chill speech going forward.

It's meant to just get people out of the country.

You make the important point.

He's a legal permanent resident.

So like the basis for just deporting someone based on speech should terrify people.

And again, it is a reminder that this story didn't begin with Jimmy Kimmel.

To take the oft-use, first they came for so-and-so, like Jimmy Kimmel was like pretty far down the line of the people they came for.

And it's again, this convergence of autocracy as it relates to speech and immigration that is all about power, the ability to choose who gets to be in this country, who gets to be American, who gets access to America, what is constitutes American speech, you know, and that really should mobilize people.

Yeah.

Real quick update, Ben, on

the escalator and teleprompter gate from the UN.

So there was some speculation that UN, some heroic, like almost sandwich throwing level UN staffer might have turned off the elevator when Trump was in it and it got him stuck in there.

But now it says apparently, the UN believes that someone from the president's party who was working, like kind of advancing him, inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism at the elevator.

And this person at the UN also said that the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.

Of course, they were.

So, when he threatened to fire that person, he threatened to fire his own staff.

But it's fun doing the show with you in real time and just updating.

It's like one of those crazy days where there's like too many press avails and events, and you're just kind of like trying to drink from a fire hose, even on West Coast time.

Well, could I say one thing about this?

Because like I wrote the speeches, right?

And

the teleprompter is wholly operated by the United States government, by the White House Communications Office.

And there is no UN piece there.

I will tell you this because one time Barack Obama made edits so late in the morning of the speech that I sent it to the teleprompter as he was walking on stage.

He made the same kind of comment that Trump did, like, my speech isn't on the teleprompter.

I'm watching on television.

Like, literally, my stomach came into my mouth.

And he started reading it.

And then all of a sudden, the teleprompter came up.

So, this, I'm sure Trump will still blame the UN, but it's kind of a metaphor for blaming the UN for your own fuck-ups, right?

Like we were saying before, like, he's blaming the UN for its dysfunction when we're the reason it's dysfunctional.

Now, he's literally blaming the UN for our own teleprompter not working.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do, I want to tell you that the Supreme Court's new term is off to the races.

And surprise, surprise, it is a mess.

In October, the justices will decide if cops can storm your house without a warrant, if states can play games with black voters' districts, and if free speech stops at your therapist's office door.

And Crookett's legal podcast, Strict Scrutiny, is here to cut through all the chaos with legal expertise and plenty of side eye.

New episodes drop every Monday.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts and watch on YouTube.

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Okay, quick update on the Trumps, the war on the boats off of the coast of Venezuela.

So, we've covered this a bunch of times now.

It's this merger of the war on drugs and the war on terror.

The U.S.

military announced they blew up another boat on Friday.

They say it killed three alleged narco-terrorists.

But, like, the reason we just want to mention this quickly is, as we've said many times on the show, like, once you start this kind of,

you know, war on drugs effort, it's hard to stop and it tends to escalate.

Sure enough, last week, the Washington Post reported that earlier this year, the DEA pushed for military strikes on Mexican soil.

That's alarming.

And based on how J.D.

Vance and Donald Trump are now talking about these strikes, you have to wonder, or at least you have to believe, I think, that they think it's good politics and are likely to keep escalating.

Let's listen.

And I was talking to Secretary Hagsmith, and you know what he said?

He said, you know what, Mr.

Vice President?

We don't see any of these drug boats coming into our country.

They've completely stopped.

And I said, I know why.

I would stop too.

Hell, I wouldn't go fishing right now in that area of the world.

There aren't too many boats that are traveling on the seas by Venezuela.

They tend not to want to travel very quickly anymore.

And we virtually stopped drugs coming into our country by sea.

We call them the water drugs.

Now there are no boats.

I wonder why.

Yeah, there's no more drugs in the United States.

And some hilarious jokes there about killing fishermen.

So, Ben, I don't have a lot new to say here.

It's just, you know, it's not great when there's all this kind of dehumanizing language and joking about it.

And then I bet Donald Trump is going to know that the DEA is pushing for airstrikes into Mexico.

He's going to like the feedback he's getting for killing these cartel members.

Like, I just, I think this is going to happen.

And remember, these boats, these little speed boats are like, like over a thousand miles away.

They're not, none of these boats were like driving to the United States, right?

So what he's saying is bullshit.

Like, let's just check in our communities if all the drugs are gone.

You know, I don't think that's happening.

And yeah, everybody's, you know, the next step, I mean, this has been purely escalatory, is either going into Venezuela or going into Mexico.

And either of those would be a massive escalation and violation of state sovereignty, right?

Now, one might start an actual war with Venezuela.

The other would start a massive crisis with a friendly neighbor in Mexico.

Either way, it's bad.

And I really worry about where this is going because they're so gleeful in talking about it that they seem to want to keep doing it.

Yeah, this is Stephen Miller's

fantasy.

All right, a couple important updates for anyone who cares about events on the Korean Peninsula and doesn't like nukes.

South Korea's new president, Lee Jae-meng, told the BBC that he would be open to a deal where North Korea agrees to freeze its production of nuclear weapons in exchange for some sort of limited sanctions relief.

In other words, in the near term at least, South Korea has dropped the hardline demand for full denuclearization.

Specifically, Lee said, quote, so long as we do not give up on the long-term goal of denuclearization, I believe that there are clear benefits to having North Korea stop its nuclear and missile development.

The question is whether we persist with fruitless attempts toward the ultimate goal or we set more realistic goals and achieve some of them, end quote.

That is, I think, an expected but significant softening of South Korea's position on talks with North Korea.

And those comments came right around Kim Jong-un's speech, where he said that he is open to re-engaging with Trump if the U.S., quote, drops the absurd obsession with denuclearizing us and accepts reality.

Kim also added, the world already knows full well what the United States does after it makes a country give up its nuclear weapons and disarms, end quote.

Tough but fair hit there, Ben.

So I'm kind of torn on this one, Ben.

I believe Kim Jong-un when he says North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, at least not while his family is in charge.

I doubt that any amount of additional sanctions will change his mind.

That said, it's kind of hard to quantify the security value of a freeze on nuclear production versus denuclearization, though it's worth noting that Lee said North Korea is producing 15 to 20 additional nuclear weapons per year.

So you have to think at that scale, there's like a proliferation risk factoring into this.

But I don't know, what do you make of this shift?

Well, you know, it should be noted that Lee is from the more dovish party that tends to favor this type of engagement.

And so this reflects that shift and his posture.

I think the things to watch here are, look, it's kind of accepting of the reality that North Korea is not going to give up nuclear weapons.

But the question is, what do you ask for?

And you could try to go deeper in terms of not just like some kind of freeze, but are there other steps that can be taken with either their nuclear or missile programs to at least kind of roll them back a little bit if you're going to be giving up things like sanctions relief?

To me, there's also the question of like the future of the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

Is this a South Korean leader essentially saying, like, I can't really count on the Americans anyway?

I got to start to make deals with the North Koreans.

I got to start to talk to the Chinese.

Like, I have to kind of watch that space.

Because what's happening now is like the U.S.

is kind of absent.

So, therefore, this is going to happen.

You know, crystal ball here, Tommy.

Like, some version of this happens and then Trump adds it as number eight on the

once to wars he's ended and demands a Nobel Peace Prize, even though he will have done nothing, you know?

So,

this is all about like the world, you know, getting a little more dangerous.

Like, you know, we're normalizing the North Korean nuclear weapons program.

We're, you know, probably have South Korea no longer relying on the United States, but it's all going to be wrapped up in some facade of like Trump having a photo op with the North and South Korean leaders.

Yeah, the most likely outcome is for some reason the UF tariffs the shit out of South Korea and then Trump cuts a big splashy deal with Kim Jong-un that gets them all kinds of sanction relief and great headlines seem, well, in Trump's mind, global headlines.

And then you're right, doesn't actually solve the problem of nuclear weapons on the planet.

And may incentivize like a North Korean attack on South Korea three years, five years from now.

You know, who knows?

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Unfortunately, Ben, we must once again talk about Candace Owens on this show.

For those who don't know, Candace Owens is a far-right podcast host and mega media figure who I think is genuinely suffering some sort of psychotic break.

Ever since Charlie Kirk's assassination, she's gone full Oliver Stone.

She has implied that the Israelis killed Charlie Kirk.

She's accused the government of doctoring Tyler Robinson's text messages.

That's the shooter of Charlie Kirk.

She did a thing today, I think, where she talked about like there were underground tunnels in the area where Charlie Kirk was shot and suggested the shooter could have like come out of some hatched door on the ground.

Like it was completely nuts.

And of course, it's worth noting that like all of these conspiracy theories lead to more downloads and more revenue for her.

And I checked the Apple charts today, Ben, and her show is at number five

on the charts Tuesday.

So she's doing pretty good.

But anyway, we are here to talk about Candace's battle with the president and first lady of France.

So remember that Candace did an eight-part podcast series on the claim that Brigitte Macron, the First Lady of France, is a man.

I should say, it's not true.

It's a widely debunked conspiracy theory that was manufactured by some blogger

in France a few years ago.

But Candace wouldn't let it go.

And then in response a few weeks back, the Macron family decided to sue Candace Owens for defamation.

And it sounds like they're planning to win.

During a recent interview, the Macron family lawyer said they are planning to present, quote, expert testimony that will come out that will be scientific in nature, end quote, and that they were prepared to prove, quote, both generically and specifically, end quote, that the allegations are false.

I don't really really know what that means,

but the sentences made me uncomfortable.

As we've discussed before, again, these allegations are nuts.

Candace claims that Brigitte was actually born a man named Jean-Michel Trogneau.

That guy is Brigitte's 80-year-old older brother.

He is still alive.

He lives in northern France.

The family all grew up together.

They were well known in their community because the dad owned like a chocolate business that was pretty famous.

Jean-Michel was with Brigitte at the Emmanuel Macron's presidential inaugurations in 2017 2017 and 2022.

I think there's photographs to prove it.

So it's just like, it's all nuts.

So, Ben, like the idea of a foreign head of state suing an American podcaster makes me uncomfortable on kind of First Amendment grounds, but there sure as hell seems to be some actual malice behind this one.

So this could be a very, very expensive outcome for Candace Owens.

Yeah, we're really through the looking glass on this one.

I mean, the

president of a hugely consequential ally is suing like a right-wing conspiracy theorist podcaster.

Kind of, you know, if you're making the, you know, a Netflix show about being alive in 2025, like this would have to be an episode.

That's all I really have to add to this.

It's fucking crazy.

The only thing is, did you see the Macron got held up by Trump's motorcade for 30 minutes and had to call on the phone?

He called Trump and is like, you're holding me up.

I can't cross the street to get to like, I think the French UN mission.

And then they made him walk like 30 minutes around.

So, you know, we're doing wonderful things for U.S.-French relations these days.

Although, I guess the French don't like Macron either, so maybe it's actually helping U.S.

French relations.

I don't know.

Yeah, I think we miss approval ratings at 15%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Finally, so neither Ben nor I have watched this footage yet, but we're about to play for you a clip from the leader of the fastest growing political party in the United Kingdom.

Let's watch.

Well, hello, Mark.

It's Nigel Farage here.

Got a message for you from Brandon and from me too.

Brandon says, Happy birthday, you giant mistake.

I hope you have a pog birthday.

Remember, Brexit Brexit means Brexit.

This is Nigel Farage wishing you a big chungus.

Congratulations for being the top G skibbity alpha male.

We all promise to hawk tour on your bussy as it claps.

And this message, James, is sponsored by Sam, Matthew, Finn and Mo Lester.

Hello Daniela.

It's come to my attention that you have no Riz and have been acting very skibbetty lately.

Now, it's a bit early in the day, so all I've got actually is coffee, but I hope you enjoy a few pipes with the lads tonight.

Up the ra.

Happy birthday, Hugh Janus.

I've heard you're a massive fan.

Oh my God, that was incredible.

Okay, that was Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK Party.

He's quite possibly the next Prime Minister of the UK.

United Kingdom.

Yeah, assuming the Labour Party doesn't stage an internal coup on Kirst Armour.

So this hilarious story comes to us via the Wall Street Journal.

They did a deep dive into why Farage has been blowing up on TikTok.

And the reason is, Ben, it turns out Nigel Farage is willing to say anything.

As we learned there, if you give him $95 on Cameo, Cameo is an app where you can pay like washed up current and former celebrities to make you videos.

But what makes Farage different is just like his politics, he has no standards.

He is willing to say anything.

You might have caught him saying up the raw in that montage.

That's a shout out to the IRA.

Probably not something he should be saying.

Farage got on Cameo after he was fired from a radio show for comparing Black Lives Matter protesters to the Taliban.

I can see why that got you fired.

And now, according to the Wall Street Journal, he makes over $180,000 off these videos, at least last year he did.

But they also have the added benefit for him of blowing up on social media, blowing up on TikTok, especially with the gamer community who love it when he repeats their unintelligible, gibberish slang like skibbity and huge anus.

Well, that's not even gamer slang.

That's just funny.

Hocto man, I guess this is

going.

I guess

nigel farage

yeah i guess this is prime minister like this is the path i mean be better britain i mean i have to say like like i saw some takes on this that were like this is shows that he has like authenticity and he shows up i'm all for

politicians like having authenticity and showing up in creative spaces and being a little more casual and like you know whatever but there have to be limits like

there needs to be like a dignity line that like you don't go beyond and like nigel farage is is just so far beyond it this is supposed to be the like society of like you know buttoned up people i mean i'm glad the brits let their hair down congratulations by the way to the people that got him to say these things like that's objectively funny that you did that

um but i mean i just say kind of be better britain if you guys can't beat this guy like you know labor or whoever lib dems like

There's got to be someone better in your country to be the next prime minister than this kind of far-right guy who will say any shit on cameo for 90 pounds or whatever it is.

Imagine, yeah, Winston Churchill, like, we shall fight them on the beaches.

We shall fight huge inus.

He has 1,800 reviews.

He got a 4.96 rating overall.

Oh, pretty damn good.

But Michael, our producer, found one negative review from someone named Daniel Taylor who said, didn't carry out the full request, which referred to bestiality, to be fair.

So understandable, perhaps.

Okay, so now we know the line.

There's the line after all.

The line is that bestiality.

All right,

yeah.

Oh, my God.

Thank you, Nigel.

At least you make us laugh.

All right, that's it for the news portion of the show.

But stick around.

You're going to hear a great conversation Ben just had with Rob Malley about the Middle East peace process, the death of the two-state solution, the lies we tell ourselves

about

the possibility of creating a Palestinian state, what failed in past negotiations.

So, a really, really fascinating guy and worth your time listening.

So, stick around for that.

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Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome my friend and former colleague, Rob Malley, to the podcast.

You may remember that he was the special envoy for Iran under Joe Biden.

I worked with him in the Obama administration when he had several roles, including kind of overseeing our Middle East policy in the White House, including the Iran nuclear negotiations.

But his experience goes back even further.

Under Bill Clinton, Rob helped organize the Camp David Summit.

And now he is the co-author, along with Hussein Aga, who was also involved in negotiations on the Palestinian side, of a new book, Tomorrow is Yesterday, Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel-Palestine, which came out last week.

Rob, I just want to start by saying:

you know, I read this book a few weeks ago.

It's really an extraordinary combination of both like

a journey through the history of the two-state solution,

but also like a very personal reflection from both you

and Hussein Aga about how you,

your roles, and

where this is all going.

It's unusually honest for a memoir about this subject.

So I just, you know, thanks for writing the book, and I encourage people to pick it up.

But with that intro, Rob, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

All right.

So I want to just, you know, one of the things that's so useful about this book is you kind of debunk certain things or you clarify certain things about what, why there has been no two-state solution.

So I want to start with a question about history, and that's about the Oslo Accords, the peace effort that began in the early 90s and kind of reached a potential apex at the Camp David Summit in 2000,

where I think the conventional story in the United States

is, you know, that somehow the Palestinians were rejectionists and they wouldn't accept a reasonable proposal.

That's certainly the kind of narrative we hear.

I want to play a clip that was making the rounds last year of Bill Clinton talking about that process while he was campaigning for Kamala Harris in Michigan.

So

let's play that clip.

The only time Yasser Arafat didn't tell me the truth was when he promised me he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out,

which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was.

So they would have the effect of

the same land of all the West Bank.

They would have a capital in East Jerusalem.

They would have

the,

I can hardly talk about this.

And they would have equal access

all day, every day, to the security towers that Israel maintained.

all through the West Bank up to the Golden House.

All this was offered,

including, I will say it again, a capital in East Jerusalem and two of the four quadrants of the old city of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Israeli Prime Minister, Hud Barak,

and

his cabinet.

And they said no.

So, Rob, in the book, you kind of offer a slightly different version of history here.

And this is not to kind of pick an argument with Bill Clinton, but I think it is to kind of contextualize both what the offer was that was made to the Palestinians and also the nature of the concessions that the Palestinians were making.

Because I think the narrative is always about Israel making concessions and the Palestinians not making concessions.

Tell us about your version of those events that you were part of that you write about in the book.

So it's interesting you start with that clip because Hussein and I had a long argument about how much we wanted to go back to Camp David.

And I live in the U.S., he doesn't.

And it was in the middle of this campaign and I remember hearing Bill Clinton and also the former first lady Hillary Clinton speak about this and saying the Palestinians were offered and this was in response remember to the protests by young Americans in particular who were appalled by the Biden administration's conduct or enabling of the of the war

Israel's war in Gaza and a response that I was hearing both from the president and the first lady was

Our fight was offered everything, the Palestinians said no, and sort of the subtext was, they're to blame for the predicament that that the Palestinians are in today, which, first of all, I just thought from a moral point of view, it's a strange response to tell people who were, you know,

enraged by the genocide and hearing somebody say, well, the Palestinians have a share of blame because of what they did in 2000.

So that was part of the impetus to saying, if the two-word response to what's happening is Camp David, we need to revisit it.

But beyond that, you know, I don't want to pick a bone with the former president.

The Palestinians were never offered 100%, which is what he says.

It was never 96% and 4% swapped.

It was always the view that the Palestinians would get less than the entirety of the West Bank.

And never was it told to them that they could choose the parts of Israel.

In fact, it was pretty clear that Israel would choose the parts of Israel that would be swapped.

But the whole framing here, and that's what I find most interesting and what Hussain and I really focus on, the framing, an offer.

The Palestinians rejected a generous offer.

From the Palestinian perspective,

they're not being offered anything.

They're giving back and just expressing it the way they see it.

They're just being given back what was theirs and that was stolen from them, they believe,

you know, back in 1948 and 1967.

But the framing, I think, explains a lot of what went wrong in Camp David.

The position of the Israelis was, we won, right?

We won in 1948 when you rejected our very existence.

We won in 1967, we've won, and now we're being magnanimous and we're offering you a part of what, you know, what we took over.

But with all these restrictions, you won't have control over your borders, you don't have control over your airspace, you won't have the entirety of the territory, you won't have the entirety of East Jerusalem.

And the Palestinian position, you ask, why do they think that they made a concession?

They believe they made their historic concession back in the late 1980s when Yass Arafat accepted the principle of two states, a Palestinian state on the borders of 67 with a capital in East Jerusalem and with the rights of the refugees, undefined what that meant being respected.

So they felt they had made this step and then they come to Camp David where they're told, thank you for that compromise, for that concession, which the Israelis didn't even view as a concession, but just a recognition of reality.

Now you're going to have to make a concession over and above that concession.

And again, Arafat would tell Clinton, we've made our concession.

We accepted the principle of land swaps, but it has to be the entirety, you know, we need 100% of the land and it needs, in his words, land of equal quantity and value.

And again,

we need all of East Jerusalem minus the Jewish settlements or neighborhoods.

neighborhoods, and we need the rights of the refugees, but also real sovereignty.

And the clash at Camp David is really about two framings of what this conflict is about, which is why, at least in hindsight, Hussein and I look at it and say, it was never going to work.

In a way, it was sort of two parties talking past each other and the Americans speaking one language, but not the other.

Yeah, I mean, you get at this issue of kind of competing narratives

that are bigger than a real estate transaction, essentially.

And I now want to ask you,

just to show that,

as our listeners know, we're willing to be a bit self-critical on this podcast to look at the Obama years.

When I look back at those years, and I even felt this at the time, you know that, Rob, you and I talked about it, but essentially, you know, we had two efforts at a quote-unquote peace process.

The first was in the first Obama term, George Mitchell and then some other people got involved.

And we have kind of these talks that Hillary Clinton was participating in that went nowhere.

And then John Kerry, and you were involved in those, the John Kerry efforts to mediate something.

And neither of them really got anywhere near as close as even Camp David did.

When I look back on that, and I even felt this at the time, like it seemed like Netanyahu had no interest in actually making an agreement.

And Mahmoud Abbas

had no capacity to make an agreement.

You know, know, he's not Yaser Arafat.

He didn't command the kind of legitimacy with the Palestinian people to do hard things.

And so, where I'm self-critical is it sometimes felt like by putting the veneer of a peace process on this thing, we were acting like this problem was still on the road to some possibility of being solved.

But actually, that was totally in service of Israel because while that's happening, they're building more settlements and BB's moving the country to the right and they're, you know, launching multiple wars wars in Gaza.

And

what do you make of those Obama years?

Do you think that

there was ever any possibility that those two efforts were to succeed?

Was the problem in

design or lack of leverage being brought to bear?

Or was the problem just the idea that a so-called peace process could yield the two-state solution?

So there's a lot to unpack there.

So first, I think you put your finger on a central theme, the theme of the book, theme of what I've been reflecting upon, which is that the peace process served as an instrument to perpetuate the status quo.

And in many ways, it served everyone's or the main leader's interest.

It serves America's interest under Bill Clinton, under George W.

Bush, and under President Obama, to say, look, we are doing something, we're trying, which was a way to sort of forestall other efforts that were viewed as more inimical, you know, the Palestinian civil disobedience or boycotts or sanctions or going to the international tribunals, the Americans could say,

we have this, we're trying, so

don't upset the apple cart and tell our public opinion or Arab leaders, look, we're trying, so be on our side.

I think it suited the Israelis as well.

And there's many quotes from Israeli leaders saying this is a way to sort of

keep this issue on low boil.

And they continued doing, as you said, constructing settlements at a very rapid pace, even as they were talking in abstract about a possible solution.

and the Palestinian leadership and I here I speak of the Palestinian Authority it served its interest because it got money to keep the feckless and non-representative Palestinian Authority afloat and they could say as well to their people you know we're moving because there's this peace process but so the status quo had its appeal for all three parties not the peoples involved but for the the leadership Now thinking about President Obama, and you know him far better than I do, but my sense was he knew all this, right?

I mean, I think he knew, and that's why he looked upon what John Kerry was doing, you know, with some admiration.

How could you not admire somebody who was as committed, as passionate as anyone I've ever met, but also with a little bit of disillusionment or at least of cynicism.

Didn't think it was going to go anywhere.

I think he rapidly concluded that, as you said, neither Netanyahu nor Abbas had either the will or the capacity, depending on who you're talking about, to get there.

But, you know, yeah, sure, if John Kerry wants to keep doing it, why not?

But then I remember, and I mentioned this in the book, that he at some point said, said, two things that he said.

One was, you know, this is never going to be solved if the parties, and I think he really meant Israel, doesn't have to pay the price of the status quo.

And why would Israel change anything when it had diplomatic protection, military protection, economic protection from the United States?

Why change it and keep going with impunity when they didn't have the incentive?

And I think that led the president to think that sometimes the best thing the U.S.

could do is take a step back and let the parties, again, mainly Israel, live with the consequences of their decisions.

Of course, the problem is we didn't really step back.

And I think the president knew that we weren't going to really step back.

It was during his administration that we signed a 10-year, $3.8 billion

military assistance package for Israel.

And we vetoed Security Council resolutions other than the last one where we abstained.

So I think it was one step in, one step out.

And I think the president didn't, I think he knew the consequences of what he was doing, but he also didn't feel that here you'd be better placed.

He didn't feel he had the political ability to take

his own reasoning to its logical conclusion, which would be to make Israel face the consequences of a status quo and have to pay the consequences of the occupation.

It's an extraordinary occupation in which the Palestinians are the ones who are in charge of security, and the international community is in charge of financing, and Israel gets the benefit of controlling the territory.

That's pretty unique in history.

And again, I think President Obama saw all of it, but just didn't feel like he could do what it would take to really create the incentives, the disincentives and the incentives

to get the parties to move and to get Israel to understand that there'd be consequences if it continued down the road it was undertaking.

Yeah, no, I think that's right.

And if I were to add anything to that, in a strange way, we had such a big fight with Netanyahu over the Iran deal that we spent all the political capital on that, you know, and it made it harder in a strange way.

I mean, Netanyahu made that so costly at home that it made it, it was almost a shield against bringing more leverage to this one.

But even before that, and again, I wasn't there, it was during the first term, but the whole fight over settlements, which the president seemed to embark in with a lot of energy.

And then after a while, he saw his own members of Congress on the Democratic side who were turning against him.

He saw that Netanyahu was not...

not going to respond to the kind of pressures that he was under.

And so that fight was lost.

I think that set the tone for a lot that came after.

I think you're right.

Well,

you have this kind of history of the two-state solution and obviously kind of identify why it's been a kind of almost a flawed construct for how to look at this conflict.

But I do want to ask you about right now, we're talking, France recognized a Palestinian state yesterday.

The UK, Australia, and Canada recognized a Palestinian state a couple of days ago.

Their Democratic Party resolutions in both the House and Senate.

What do you make of this?

I mean, is this a value?

I mean, it obviously doesn't, even the people doing it acknowledge it doesn't create a Palestinian state.

Do you think this is a distraction?

Do you think it's useful?

How do you look at it as someone who spent decades of your life, what do you make of this?

So it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable saying what I'm going to say because I...

respect certainly members of Congress and Democrats who are pushing for this.

I think a lot of countries in Europe, Spain in particular, are doing it with exactly the right intent, which is they want to break out of the current catastrophe that is Gaza.

I have much less patience or sympathy for some of the motivations I see in others, which seems to be, you know, we're being lambasted at home and in the region because we haven't done anything to stop this genocide.

And as one way of atoning for our guilt, we're going to do something that's less costly than putting real pressure on Israel.

So we're going to recognize a Palestinian state.

We're going to celebrate that as a major step towards peace.

But I would ask them, and by the way, it's not the first time that people turn to two-states or to supporting a two-state solution for reasons that have little to do with the objective itself.

President Bush in the years, 2000s, when he did it in order to, again, atone for his problems having to do with the Iraq war in the region, he said, okay, now we're going to move

towards a two-state solution or to mobilize support for his so-called war on terror.

President Biden, when he turned to it at the last minute of his presidency, because it was his way to maybe get a Saudi-Israeli normalization, or at a minimum to show angry young Americans and people in the region, no, no, no, we do care about the Palestinians because we're on this, we're going to push for this irreversible pathway to the Palestinian state.

So it's not the first time that's used as a tool for other reasons.

But I would ask those who are doing it, okay, what are you going to do the day after, when day after recognition, the genocide continues, land grabs and settled violence continues in the West Bank, nothing changes, right?

And the Israelis say, not just Netanyahu, but the entire political class, except for the Arab parties, are against a Palestinian state and oppose it with all their might.

Public opinion does.

So what is it going to change?

And my fear, again, going back to the theme of the book, is that it's going to be used as a way to say, for some European countries, to say, we've done our part.

We've now recognized a Palestinian state.

Now it's up to the Palestinians to show that they're worthy of it, which has always been the equation.

You know, you got to reform the PA, you got to have,

you got to make sure the education system is different.

You have to dissolve Hamas, you have to make sure it never governs again.

Now you pay because we've rewarded you with this recognition.

And does it lead them to say now that we've done that, we don't have to take some of the other steps, which would be more costly in terms of pressuring and sanctioning Israel.

So my fear is that it's another case where people are going to be disillusioned, frustrated, because nothing's going to change, and people don't have the and then what answer.

Now, my last comment is if the French and others have a plan to get from here to that two-state solution, which was not achieved under exponentially more auspicious circumstances, under Clinton, under Bush, under President Obama, much better circumstances, and they failed and failed again.

What's their plan now?

Show it.

I'm all ears because you know, if they have a way to get over Israeli objections, to get over the facts on the ground, to deal with the 700,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and

Jerusalem, to deal with the question of millions of Palestinian refugees, to deal with all the questions that bedeviled the quest for Tuesday solution, what they've done by recognizing a state is not resolve the issue.

They've restated it, said, yeah, we need a Palestinian state.

We haven't been able to get it in the past.

How are they going to get it now?

Well, yeah, and so, I mean, the last thing I want to ask you, and you're quite, you know, you have humility about you're not coming with the plan in this book.

I mean, you're meant to, this is a memoir.

This is also a history of the two-state solution.

But you do have some ideas at the end.

But I guess the way I'd frame the question is,

like you

and like the preponderance of people who know more about genocide and war crimes than us,

I believe that what we're witnessing in Gaza amounts to genocide.

It's not over yet.

It feels like we're going to be in a situation where there's probably at least going to be at least a partial annexation of the West Bank.

There may be a full ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.

And it's going to be this strange situation where Israel will have the maximum amount of kind of raw power that it's ever had in terms of its dominion over this territory.

And yet, it's also going to have the lowest amount of

moral standing that it's ever had.

And in many ways, it's becoming a pariah state in large, huge parts of the world, which is a new dynamic for this conflict.

And, you know, in terms of where this goes, I mean, you float ideas that are old ideas that I had actually not thought of in a long time, right?

Like confederation between Palestine and Jordan, or even somehow instead of just maybe not like one state with equal rights, but almost separate states that occupy similar territory, all the way to just kind of trying to negotiate coexistence, right?

How do you try to open up the optionality here for how this can

improve after the absolute horror that we're witnessing now?

Yeah, so it's a good question.

And first, I'd say for people who are listening to us and who might read the book, this is not, we hope it's not going to be read as a sort of a give up, pessimistic, despairing book.

In fact, what we say is some of the optimism or the pretend optimism of people who still clamor two-state solution, that's a kind of optimism that's lethal because it's a kind of optimism that we've lived with for decades and has led exactly to where we are today.

So what we're saying is, let's learn from history.

We need to open up, as you say, open the aperture, go back to basics and try, and it's not us necessarily, it's really Israelis and Palestinians, but hopefully with help from others, to rethink how are they going to resolve this conflict.

And some of the ideas that have been sort of banished, like only the straitjacket has been the straitjacket or the two-state solution.

They're ideas that are rooted in the history of the two people, the people who was talking about a binational state back at the beginning of the

20th century, Jews and Palestinians who were talking about forms of living together through some kind of confederation.

Of course, there's also

much less repulsive ideas like ethnic cleansing and

forced displacement.

So all those ideas and annexation are there too.

In the past, there were other people who had different ideas.

As you say, I'm not a prophet.

I don't know what they will be.

I'm not even going to come up with a blueprint.

But let's not pretend that the only solution is this two-state solution, which has not been a solution and which has perpetuated the status quo, which led to October 7th and to everything that happened since.

So if it's not a solution, there has to be something else.

And the parties that, you know, in the past, Israelis and Palestinians got together, thought of creative ideas.

I'm not talking about leaders.

I'm talking about courageous thinkers on both sides, civil society.

Maybe that will happen again.

But to simply repeat, there's no solution other than the two-state solution, if it's not a solution at all, then it leaves us with nothing.

And there has to be, there have to be, I mean, I would hope that Israelis and Palestinians will find some way to coexist.

In fact, I believe

they will at some point.

I may not be around to see it, because the pathway they're on today is one of absolute, it's a nightmare, certainly a nightmare for Palestinians.

I'm not sure, as you say, that an Israel that is isolated,

that is going to be the victim of acts of violence because if Palestinians have nothing to lose, they're going to try to take it out on Israel.

That's inevitable.

So the hope that, and we've tried to leave people in the book, is A, there are other ideas and it's time to resurface them.

But also, and maybe it's a good way to segue to this, or at least to conclude on this part,

there's a new generation of Americans.

And My job now is to teach.

And one thing I always ask my students is, you know, what has marked you?

Where do you think you have your foreign policy conceptions from?

You've written about the blob.

I think a lot of the people who we've served with, their experience comes from a certain way of looking at the world that they've inherited and they've replicated.

But for me, I could say what marked me was the Vietnam War, which I lived through my parents and they opposed it, and the Iraq War, which I opposed back in

President Bush's Iraq War.

And I took from that a skepticism about the use of American power, about the problem about always invoking U.S.

credibility as the reason why you have to continue down a path.

And I wonder what this generation of Americans that's grown up with Gaza as sort of their, what they see every day and the horrors of Gaza every day, what are they going to take out of it in terms of their vision of the role of the US in the world, the hypocrisy, the double standards, the vacuous moralism that is combined with either an ineffectiveness or complicity in a genocide.

And so who, what will they be 10, 15, 20 years from now?

The new secretaries of state, national security advisor.

And I take some solace, some hope from the fact that they will have lived a period that is going to go down, I think, as a real dark period in our foreign policy.

And they may try something different and something better.

Well, yeah, look,

that's a good note to end on because like you said,

After periods of destruction, you know, the aperture opens up again in terms of how you deal with things.

And we can only hope, what we do know is that history doesn't end

at any point, particularly in the Middle East, right?

I mean,

you can come back on one day to talk about watching the Syrian president al-Shara land in New York for UNGA.

I don't think we would have predicted that five or 10 years ago.

No, and we can also talk about, if it happens, the

funeral of the Iran nuclear deal, which is what we've talked about.

So, yeah, some things that are better than expected, other things far worse.

Other things that are worse.

But I hope people check out the book again.

It's reflects your thoughtfulness and depth of experience.

Tomorrow is yesterday.

Thanks so much, Rob, for joining us.

Thank you, Ben.

It was really good talking to you.

Thanks again to Rob Malley for doing the show, and we will talk to you next week.

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