Trump Barrels Towards War with Venezuela

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Welcome back to Potsey of the World.

I'm Tommy Vitorn.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

And I think the Patriots are good.

I know.

I saw that.

That Bills game was

nice little comeback.

It's been a great couple of weeks for New York Sports.

Tough.

Yeah.

Sorry about the Mets.

I know.

And the Jets and the Giants have one win between them.

But you're Patriots.

Yes, yes.

Chicken out Josh Allen.

Are you wearing a Met shirt?

No, this is the Met.

The Met.

This is the museum.

My membership t-shirt.

I got my

membership t-shirt.

I do not get invited to the Met Gala, but I do get a t-shirt.

I wonder what it takes to get invited to that.

You just have to be on somebody's list, right?

We're definitely not on those lists.

No, no.

Isn't it like some

it's someone famous, right?

Animour?

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, not on our radar stream.

Not on our radar.

Well, welcome back.

Ben was just London town.

I was.

Did you see?

Did you see anybody?

Anybody fun over there?

I mean,

I went to the Albies, which is the George and Amal Clooney's annual dinner honoring various people who did great things.

And

there were there are people there who go to the Met Gala.

Um I was not one of them.

And get sanctioned by the U.S.

government.

Possibly.

Let's uh let's uh for caring about international law.

Let's hope that's not the case.

Yeah, let's hope that's not the way.

Yes, but it was it was it was nice to be over there, although there was like a

like a

scary feeling of kind of 2022 vibes, as we've talked about, like labor's kind of

beating, like running back the old Biden playbook of defeating far-right extremism.

So, hopefully, they figured it out.

As like

Tommy Robinson's rampaging through the street with 120,000 people.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's not great.

Well, welcome back.

Good to see you.

And we have a great show for you guys today.

We're going to talk about these growing signs that the United States is barreling towards a war with Venezuela and why no one really seems to be talking about it.

Just here in Pods of the World.

This is why you got to, you know, smash that subscribe button.

It's crazy.

So you're ready for the war.

We're going to talk about Hamas's response to President Trump's peace deal and then Trump's response to the Hamas response and how it humiliated Israeli Prime Minister Bibidan Yahoo, but then what comes next.

We're also going to talk about Israel's treatment of activists who are arrested trying to enter Gaza on a flotilla.

Trump's surprising executive order announcing a security guarantee for Qatar, backed by the U.S.

military.

We'll explain how a bunch of Trump supporters want to turn the U.S.

into El Salvador, the latest on Russia's drone incursions into Europe, and how the so-called Russian shadow fleet is involved.

There was a blackout in Afghanistan that was really weird and worth noting.

And then a rock concert in Argentina that will likely make us cringe.

Ben, then you're going to hear my interview with our old friend and colleague, Mike Froman.

Yeah.

He is now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He's an expert in international economics, trade, all of the above.

We talk about what the hell is Trump's trade policy, like how many months after Liberation Day,

what he's doing with China, and then Mike, why Mike believes that basically the international trade system as we know it is dead and what should come next.

So good talking to him.

Curious to figure out what Trump's trade policy is.

If he can help us do that, that'd be great.

Yeah, that was basically my question to him.

It's like, I no longer know.

You know, we were going to do, it was going to be like tariff palooza, then 90 deals in 90 days, and now it's just like, I don't know anymore.

It's just kind of impulse control.

It's kind of like, oh, I'm mad at Brazil, the tariff you, I'm mad at India, tariff you.

I, you know, I heard this from somebody at Mar-a-Lago at the, you know, line for the men's restroom, and so someone's getting tariffed.

It's very strange.

Very, very strange.

Okay, well, we are going to start today's show in South America because it does feel like we are barreling towards this regime change war with Venezuela, and it's just not getting enough attention.

So I'll try to quickly sum up the context that has everybody so concerned or us so concerned.

As we've discussed, the United States just keeps blowing up boats that the Trump administration claims are being driven by narco-terrorists off the coast of Venezuela.

Basically, they're calling them drug runners.

We have known of at least four strikes so far that have killed at least 21 people.

To facilitate those extrajudicial murders, the U.S.

has moved a ton of military assets to the Caribbean.

That includes thousands of U.S.

military personnel, eight Navy ships, a nuclear-powered sub, three guided missile destroyers.

They also sent a bunch of F-35s to Puerto Rico.

And then last week, the Trump administration informed Congress that the U.S.

is in, quote, armed conflict with drug cartels that the Trump administration has labeled as terrorist organizations.

The administration calls suspected drug smugglers unlawful combatants and argues that it's okay to kill them.

Basically, they're saying that the drug cartels are waging war on the U.S.

by bringing drugs here, and therefore it's okay for the U.S.

military to kill them.

It is totally unprecedented.

It is an absurd argument.

More on that in a second.

But in an address for the Navy's 250th anniversary at Naval Station Norfolk on Sunday, Trump bragged about the latest strike on one of these boats and then threatened to go even further.

Let's listen.

The Navy has supported our mission to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water.

You see that?

Every one of those boats is responsible for the death of 25,000 American people and the destruction of families.

So when you think of it that way, what we're doing is actually an act of kindness.

But we did another one last night.

Now we just can't find any.

You know, it's the old story.

We're so good at it that there are no boats.

In fact, even fishing boats, nobody wants to go into the water anymore.

Sorry to tell you that.

They're not coming in by sea anymore.

So now we'll have to start looking about the land because they'll be forced to go by land.

And let me tell you right now, that's not going to work out well for them either.

Hear that mission creep?

I do.

So in previous episodes, we've talked about reports that the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio is

an archivist is pushing hard for regime change into Venezuela and to topple President Maduro, who we are the first one one to admit is a tyrant and a bad guy and still the last election, but that doesn't mean regime change.

A lot of bad guys out there.

Yeah.

For a while, it seemed like there was a surprising voice of reason in the administration named Rick Grinnell.

Grinnell is a very caustic individual.

He's kind of a Twitter troll come to life, life who has one of those vague special envoy roles and had been reportedly.

just have a dialogue with Maduro's regime, hopefully create an off-ramp short of war.

But then on Monday, the New York Times reported that Trump ordered Grinnell to stand down and stop his diplomatic outreach to Venezuela.

So there goes that.

So in short, the White House has constructed a secret legal rationale that they believe authorizes airstrikes against cartels and cartel members.

They have asserted that Nicolas Maduro is himself a cartel leader.

So if you follow that logic train, it would seem to justify the U.S.

military killing Nicolas Maduro himself.

Pretty alarming.

But Ben, I didn't see a lot of Democrats sounding the alarm about this until Tuesday when the House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats finally tweeted, quote, Trump and Rubio are pushing for regime change in Venezuela.

The American people don't want another war, and Congress can't let any president start one illegally or unilaterally.

That's not how the Constitution works.

Glad they said that.

But Ben, like, what's your level of concern about all of this growing momentum towards whatever that Trump just outlined there is?

My concern is very high,

and you just feel this steady build.

I mean, first of all, we should say it certainly feels like there could be innocent people who have been blown up on these boats.

We get no information about who these people are, what the basis is for blowing these boats out of the water.

What Trump said there is complete and utter bullshit.

You know, one speedboat is not going to kill 25,000 people.

Their legal rationale is also complete bullshit.

They're describing people on these boats as unlawful combatants.

At worst, they're drug dealers, and that's a really bad thing to be, but that's different than being a combatant.

That's the language of war.

That is saying that they're a legitimate military target.

And if you're defining

Maduro as the head of a cartel, you're defining him as a combatant, potentially.

And look, we should also say that under that logic, anybody selling drugs could just be killed.

You know, it's a similar logic to like a policeman just shooting someone on the corner who's selling whatever, you know.

So that's scary.

But I also think that this accomplishes a lot of different objectives, right?

And we can break down the different personalities.

Rubio desperately wants, as part of his political identity, I think the price of his soul is he wants to overthrow the Venezuelan and Cuban governments.

He's always wanted to do that.

I think he's, as I said on the previous podcast, very credulous of these Venezuelan opposition guys who come to him and say, oh, it's just, you know, it's all set.

We have the plan.

I mean, this happened last time.

So that's Rubio's interest.

I think Stephen Miller, who's been behind this too, likes the idea of how much power Trump could claim if there's a war.

You know, that that leads to more, you know, he's already used the war with Trende Aragua to justify deportations.

Who knows what other authorities he could claim if Trump is a so-called war president?

Trump likes the power that comes from the war.

He also likes the fact that there's a lot of oil in Venezuela, and I think he wants to get his hands on that oil.

Grinnell was trying to do that through a deal, but Trump has clearly been persuaded maybe we can just try to take this oil.

And there's also like some weird Republican Party DNA, Tommy.

I was thinking about this as we're getting ready today.

You know, Ronald Reagan, when he was on the back foot in like 83, remember he invaded Grenada?

So for some of the younger listeners, this was a totally trumped-up invasion.

There was a kind of left-wing government that had taken over Grenada.

And Reagan, with not much legal basis whatsoever, invaded that country.

He said he was coming to the aid of like a few hundred American medical students there.

And it was this big flex and

seemed real nice and easy.

Then George H.W.

Bush invades Panama because he said Manuel Noriega was then the leader of Panama, but also the leader of a cartel.

And they literally arrested him and put him in prison.

Now, difference being, Grenada is a small island Caribbean state.

Panama's like much smaller.

Venezuela is a big military dictatorship.

And giant like geographically.

It's the size of Germany and France combined.

That's right.

So I think these guys are talking themselves into something being easy.

I don't know what the thing is, whether it's just bombing Venezuela, whether it's like some coup, whether it's some kind of opposition scheme that they'll get behind, or whether it's just like a full-scale regime change military operation.

But it definitely feels like we're under ramp to something other than just boats.

Yeah.

You know, and that, by the way, that time story you flagged,

if you read between the lines, it was like they were warning us, you know,

big time that

Grinnell's effort at negotiation has been terminated, you know?

And that all that's left now is this stepladder to escalation.

And it's like, what possible reason would you just terminate one

channel of dialogue?

It doesn't make any sense.

There's just no rationale for that.

Yeah, I mean, I was talking to a couple Venezuela policy experts today just to kind of like get a gut check on how worried they are about this.

And first of all, it's just worth noting, like, it sounds like Trump really did want to take out Maduro in his first term and genuinely wants Venezuela's oil.

And he was sort of talked out of it by the Pentagon and by Latin American leaders.

But a lot of the sane voices that would have talked him out of that kind of thing in the first term are now gone.

They outlined for me kind of a range of options or things we might see.

Like the least worrisome way to explain what's happening is that this is really just about like the designations of the cartels and Maduro is really about laying down a legal argument that the U.S.

is being invaded by Venezuela and trying to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

So it's like a continuation of the legal fight that you're seeing from Stephen Miller and others, and it's battling out in the courts.

The kind of next rung up the the escalatory ladder could be naming Venezuela to be a state sponsor of terror and putting them on the SST list, which would lead to a bunch of very strong sanctions and penalties that I think would lead to another mass migration out of Venezuela, potentially.

Then you could see a scenario where, you know, you've got the CIA maybe selling Marco Rubio on some sort of covert action to topple Maduro.

And we know like Rubio, as the head of the intelligence committee in the Senate, would have been briefed on these kinds of operations.

But like, God help us if he wants the sticks, you know, and he wants to kind of run one himself.

And then there's just a whole range of direct military action that we could see that could go from bombing a cartel target in eastern Venezuela to a leftist guerrilla group like the ELN in other parts of Venezuela, or maybe you start going after Venezuelan military targets like radar or air defense systems, et cetera.

And then the final like.

boss of insane ideas is a U.S.

military invasion of Venezuela, which as you just said, like Venezuela is massive.

It's a crazy idea.

The U.S.

military could never occupy Venezuela.

We would never want to.

And as you also pointed out, a lot of this is being driven by well-connected, wealthy opposition groups and individuals.

It's by Trump's desire to get Venezuela's oil.

It's by Rubio's politics and his presidential ambitions.

But like the people that historically have not felt like this was a good idea are the U.S.

intelligence community.

Like they felt like regime change would not end well.

That

maybe you could depose Maduro, but then you're going to get some, the next general up.

It's not going to to be some like benevolent group of pro-democracy generals that transition the country to democracy.

No, there's like a bunch of powerful factions, especially the military.

They will cling to power for dear life because they are corrupt and they know they will get like purged and prosecuted if they're pushed out of there.

So it's just, it's just, I don't want to sound alarmist, but it's hard to see a version of this plan that ends well for anybody.

Yeah, I mean, another group of people that think this is a terrible idea are like all the other countries in Latin America, most of whom don't like Maduro, you know?

I think another thing that's really important to drive home to people, because we live in such a distorted reality, is that Venezuela is not a particularly large source of illegal drugs coming to the United States, right?

So another reason this is fishy is that the pretext is not true, right?

Fentanyl is not coming from Venezuela.

It's mainly coming from precursors from China to Mexico.

Mexico, Colombia are bigger sources of drugs coming to the United States.

Peru and Ecuador have major ports of exit.

By the way, I'm not blaming all those governments either.

It's just cartels are very active in those places.

And sure, like Venezuela is engaged in this a bit, but they're just nowhere near like the main issue when it comes to drugs.

So Trump is spinning a story that is just wildly out of proportion to the underlying challenge, right?

I mean, they're oil-rich.

Like they don't need to become a narco-state, you know?

And this is the other problem: is that there's no,

you mentioned these day after scenarios.

I just can't, for the life of me, think of what the clean scenario is here.

But it may be that Trump doesn't give a shit, you know, if there's just this kind of failed state, you know, with lots of violence.

Because to your point, like the Venezuelan opposition, we should say, includes like some very courageous people.

But the challenge is they have a lot of interest in saying, hey, this will be easy.

And like, we're ready to step in and govern.

But as you said, like, the military is not going to relinquish control of this illicit economy that has got its grip into.

The military is not going to want to face accountability for their own human rights violations.

You've got millions of Venezuelans out of the country who are some of the people that are more kind of aligned with the opposition.

So I see no way in which this escalation is clean.

It's going to exacerbate an already terrible humanitarian circumstance because of their own mismanagement, because of U.S.

sanctions.

And look, it just plays into this.

I also worry about it kind of normalizing

the use of military force in Latin America generally, because we know Trump's talked about the Panama Canal.

We know he's talked about strikes in Mexico.

Obviously, Greenland's up in North America, but I kind of feel like Trump looks at Latin America like Putin looks at the former Soviet Union.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

And we should just kind of be able to go down there.

And this is how things were a lot in the past and knockover governments.

That never ended well.

It usually ended in chaos or a right-wing dictatorship or a swing to a left-wing revolution, death squads.

You know,

this is not a movie we want to repeat, and we seem to be slow walking into it.

And just because it's not, you know, the headline issue of Ukraine or Gaza or shutdown or what have you, this could be one of the things that catches us by surprise as

you know, the beginning of something pretty nefarious in the Trump era.

Yeah, and there's some reporting reporting in The Guardian that Stephen Miller is like running the strikes on the Venezuela boats via his like leadership of the Homeland Security Council.

And I was talking to someone who pointed out that the first boat that these guys targeted, the U.S.

military blew up, was straight-up murder.

Like it's almost certainly, remember that boat was the one that was off the coast of Venezuela.

It spotted the U.S.

plane tracking them.

It turned around

and then they struck it anyway.

And then there were survivors and then they took another pass and they struck the boat again.

And there were so many people on the boat that there might have been drugs on there, but like experts think that there was almost certainly migrants on that boat as well.

Yeah, if you're smuggling drugs, you don't have like a whole bunch of people on the boat

trying to get the fucking drugs on the boat.

You know, not that I have any experience on this, but I actually do have experience.

Weirdly, we struck a deal with the Cubans to like jointly interdict drug shipments because they don't like drugs either there.

You know, I mean, so this is like not hard to interdict these boats.

Trump is making this big point of that it's some kind of deterrent, but that's kind of not how the drugs get here, right?

They mainly come up via land.

I mean, some of them come, first of all, more of the boats come from, we've talked about it, like Ecuador, right?

So not suggesting we should blow up boats there either, but the main route of drugs in the United States

the solution is not addressing the problem.

No, and it's a drop in the bucket, right?

Even if he stopped all boat traffic from Venezuela, like that's just not the fentanyl that's coming across the Mexican border.

That's not the drugs he's saying he wants to stop, which makes you think there's another agenda here, which is Rubio's ideological agenda, Miller's power agenda, Trump's oil agenda, and this lack of pushback, by the way.

particularly from Democrats, because sometimes they're afraid.

Oh, I don't want to be seen to be defending Maduro.

We heard the same stuff about Saddam Hussein, right?

Oh, I don't want to look like I'm standing up for Saddam Hussein by opposing the Iraq war.

Or there's like some hardliners down in Florida, and there's like, what, one congressional seat?

Exactly.

Yeah, I mean, just fucking forget it, man.

Like, crazy.

Be against this war, be against the illegality of it.

Be against the fact that it breaks his promises against forever wars.

Like, be against the fact that this is not even solving the fucking problem of fentanyl that he said he would solve.

This is the wrong thing to be doing.

And there's no legal authorization, no matter how many executive orders they put up.

It's all made up.

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Okay, next big issue.

So, we're recording this on the two-year anniversary of the October 7th attacks.

That day was obviously horrific.

And then, the last two years, I think, for me personally, have been so much worse than I ever could have imagined in the days following October 7th, even though I think we all knew it was going to be really bad.

I mean, the fact that, like, we're two years into the war and it's still as brutal as it is, it's just like ungodly awful.

The good news is, there were some signs of hope last week.

On Friday, Hamas responded to Trump's 20-point peace plan with an extremely qualified yes.

It was essentially they said, yes, we will release the hostages if that release achieves an end to the war and the full IDF withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas said, yes, we will hand over administration of the Gaza Strip to Palestinian technocrats as long as they get support from the requisite Palestinian and Arab groups.

And then Hamas basically just ignored the rest of Trump's 20-point plan, saying, like, we're happy to talk about it.

Let's have a meeting.

And Trump,

interestingly, decided to celebrate that response and run with Hamas's qualified response.

And now the two sides are in Egypt conducting talks.

So we'll see how those go.

With Jared Kushner.

With Jared Kushner.

I think Jared and Witkoff might be on their way.

Second team.

Yeah, so Al Jazeera reported that the first day was positive.

Dumb and dumber of a little bit.

Hopefully that continues for Hamas.

The talks are being led by Khalil Haya, who the Israelis tried to assassinate in Doha last month.

That must be a little awkward in the lunchroom.

As you mentioned, uh, Wickoff, the golf buddy-turned envoy, is heading to Egypt soon.

Jared Kushner is going to join him because why not add a little dash of nepotism and a little dash of conflict of interest there?

Uh, remember, Jared, I think, is sitting on $5.4 billion worth of Saudi Emirati and Qatari money that he's evacuating.

So, in his statement on Friday, it's worth pointing out that Trump demanded that Israel immediately stop bombing Gaza.

That has not happened.

Military operations are ongoing.

I think the IDF frames it as like defensive operations versus offensive, but in practice, it's still killing people.

It doesn't matter.

Ben, let's just pause there.

So I talked with our buddy Matt Duss about these developments last Friday, like just a couple hours after the Hamas announcement.

Everyone can check that out on the Pod Save the World YouTube.

And please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube because we're doing lots of breaking news stuff.

You were in the UK at the time and fast asleep.

So this is your first chance to weigh in.

I mean, I chose to be hopeful because the alternative is so grim, but I'm also clear-eyed that none of the details have been worked out or really agreed to.

And that that basically like success or failure will be determined by how willing Trump is to focus and actually make Netanyahu do some hard things.

But what was your reaction after a couple days of consuming news about this?

Yeah, I think, look, this is the closest it feels like we've been to a ceasefire and a hostage release,

presumably in exchange for Palestinian prisoners,

and a halt to the fighting that Laos Aiden.

It's the closest we've been to that since the last ceasefire fell apart.

And so that is obviously positive.

If they're able to get that done,

there'd be tremendous relief for the hostages and their families.

There'd be tremendous relief for the people of Gaza if the bombing actually stops and food and other aid gets in.

My optimism, my cautious optimism, ends there completely.

I do not buy the rest of this plan.

I don't think Trump is invested in it enough to put the pressure that will be required on Israel in particular to stick to this plan.

I see a million ways in which, after the hostages are out, the Israelis kind of pocket that and find some pretext to just resume what they were doing.

Hamas has not, you know, the part that they've been ambiguous about is that part that calls for them to disarm.

So, how we're going to get from that initial ceasefire and hostage release to Palestinian technocrats running Gaza with a board that includes like Tony Blair and some Trump buddies.

I just don't buy that second part.

And so I don't want to diminish the achievement of if they get the hostages out and get some aid in, that's great.

And by the way, that's more than like Joe Biden was able to do because frankly, Trump seems to be occasionally putting more pressure on.

But Trump's pressure on Netanyahu is very episodic.

Like he decides he wants to do something probably because like the Nobel Peace Prize deadline is coming up and he wants the big show.

And I think what Netanyahu knows is, hey, look, well, I'll have to appease Trump on this one.

Maybe I can get the hostages out, you know, lower some of the political temperature at home on that.

But I really care about my far right.

And frankly, I agree with my far right that we want to stay in Gaza and probably occupy Gaza and probably kick all the people out of Gaza.

And so I just, I would urge people, not because I'm being pessimistic, but because I think I'm being realistic, that even if we do see this happen,

to be very careful about thinking that now this 20-point plan is going into force.

There's a lot of things that could fucking derail this thing.

That's right.

Because neither side actually agreed to the full 20-point plan.

Netanyahu didn't.

I mean, it's like, I'm torn on it too, because the details matter of these kind of plans.

Again, we listen to people that have been through the Northern Ireland process or in the Balkans.

The details really matter.

Both sides need assurances that the other side will actually go through with whatever the process and sequencing is to get to the next step.

But also, you want some strategic ambiguity in whatever whatever is agreed to that allows both sides to kind of do politics and like tell their supporters they got what they wanted out of it.

It just seems like the strategic ambiguity,

we're a little too heavy on the strategic ambiguity in this thing because it's just like 20 bullets.

There's not a lot of details to this thing.

And I'm with you.

There's no chance that whatever process is happening now is like gets you to step 20, which is like conversations about a Palestinian state.

Yeah.

And look, those are actually interesting parallels because if the example in the Balkans was Serbia-Kosovo, and if Kosovo is kind of the Gaza in this situation, well, Serbia was bombed into submission, accepting the reality that Kosovo is de facto going to be independent.

We're not going to put that kind of pressure on Israel, obviously.

And in Northern Ireland, the Labour government, the UK government, like genuinely really wanted a deal.

that resolved everything.

And Israel doesn't.

Israel does not want that.

And so the only way that you're going to get to 20 points is if you put sustained, meaningful pressure on the Israeli government while making sustained investment in an alternative Palestinian leadership to Hamas.

And I just don't see this crowd having the kind of patience and political will to do either of those things.

So maybe they get the first step.

That's better than not getting the first step.

But I would be very cautious about seeing this as a comprehensive like a sustainable peace deal.

If I'm proven wrong, that's great.

But let's, let's, you know, Trump always,

I saw him say the other day he's ending a 3,000-year war.

First of all, I don't know what he's talking about, but second of all, like, he's not.

You know, he's potentially, in a very good way, getting hostages out and getting aid in.

Yeah.

But let's be cautious.

We've been, we've seen this movie before, by the way, happened nine months ago, and this could be another version of that.

Yeah, the best I'm sort of hoping for is hostages out, aid in, the end of the bombardment and war in Gaza permanently, maybe some sort of IDF withdrawal.

Like that, that would be

more than I think.

Yeah, that would would be a huge win.

The other sort of big thing that's happening then is in previous episodes, we've talked about the Global Samud Flotilla, which is this group of ships headed towards Gaza to try to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid, but really just raise awareness about what's happening there.

That flotilla has had a rough ride.

First, they were attacked by drones off the coast of Tunisia.

The drones dropped some sort of incendiary or explosive device on several of these ships.

CBS News reported last week that the drone attack was ordered by Benjamin Netanyahu himself, the Israeli prime minister, and that the drones were launched from an Israeli submarine.

Seems like a crazy use of a scarce, highly advanced military resource, but I think it sort of tells you a lot about their fear of the PR that could come from these sort of flotilla operations.

But then this weekend, the flotilla was finally intercepted by the Israeli Navy as it was trying to actually get to shore.

About 450 people were taken into custody and thrown in jail.

Many have since been deported, including Greta Thunberg, as well as 21 Americans.

Those Americans include a guy named Californian named David Adler, who Crooked Media's Matt Berg was talking to as the Israelis surrounded his boat.

Adler was deported to Jordan on Tuesday.

Here's how he described his experience in Israel, in Israeli prison, to Zatteo News.

Over the course of five days, we were systematically denied our most basic rights.

I'm talking about food and water and life-saving medicines like insulin.

We wanted to speak to our lawyers, which was like the most basic.

And we're basically told, this isn't a prison.

Like you're, you don't get access to a lawyer because you're not a prisoner.

You're a terrorist.

And we were just living in basically a rule,

a non-rule of law fever dream cooked up by Ben Gadir, who came to, like Israel Katz, both came to this detention facility and had their photo ops there.

There would be the riot gear who would come, any form of disloyalty or speaking out or speaking up, even about basic things like medical treatment, they would come

and basically, you know, throw your head to the ground, shackle your hands behind your back,

and then take you to either like sit in the hot sun or sit in total isolation and shackle your ankles as well and just leave you there basically for the day.

So Adler mentioned far-right minister, national security minister Itmar Ben-Gavir there, who said explicitly that mistreatment of these flotilla activists was by design, and that he was, quote, proud that we are treating the flotilla activists as terror supporters.

Whoever supports terrorism is a terrorist and deserves the conditions of terrorists.

End quote.

At the same time, the Israeli government was saying that the claims of mistreatment were brazen lies.

So they're kind of hard to square those circles there, Ben.

First of all, if that's what they're doing to Americans, like imagine what they're doing to Palestinians.

It should go without saying that the U.S.

government should be outraged by this treatment of peaceful activists, especially American activists.

It doesn't seem like the Trump administration gives a shit.

I'm not sure I've seen Mike Huckabee weigh in on this.

But, Ben, you also spoke with an activist on a different flotilla.

Could you sort of set up that conversation?

Yeah, I talked to Noah Schnell, who's a journalist who's on

the next wave of boats coming in.

She's on a boat called The Conscience, which, among other things, it has aid, but it also has a bunch of journalists because one of the things that's not allowed to get into Gaza is...

international journalists.

Now, obviously, Palestinian journalists are doing great work there.

So I just wanted to get a flavor from her about what the mood is like on that boat, who's on the boat, what's it like?

I was kind of curious, like, what's it like to be on one of these flotillas?

So check out a piece of that conversation here.

So a lot of our listeners and viewers have obviously been following these flotillas, but obviously don't know what it's like to be on one.

I mean, why don't you just begin by describing us?

You mentioned there are 82 people.

Who's on board?

How did those people get there?

Who are they?

And what kind of solidarity are you feeling with your fellow crewmates?

Sure.

Well, the main solidarity is with the people of Gaza and all of Palestine, of course, but we're building solidarity with the people on the ship as well, most of us meeting for the first time.

This boat is designated specifically with medics and journalists, the majority of us, some activists and people with other great skills as well.

There's one fireman, there's social workers, all kinds of really interesting people from all over the world.

So this is our third day at sea.

We just caught up with the Global Somud Flutella.

They left actually before us, but we, because our ship is larger, it's actually a passenger ferry that we're using to reach

international waters and other countries, which is absurd, but we're making it work.

The journalist piece is interesting, right?

Because obviously most of the focus of these flotillas has been bringing aid in, bringing food in, bringing medicine in.

It seems like part of what you're trying to do on this particular boat is break the blockade, not just of aid,

but of journalism.

And

obviously recognizing that there are extraordinary Palestinian journalists who've been covering this in Gaza, but there've been no international journalists.

Is that part of the thinking that it's not just an aid blockade, it's a information blockade?

Well it's always been about that, right?

Because how much aid can a small ship bring in, really, right?

So the aid has been there, but it's been symbolic.

So it's really actually always been about the blockade and it's always been about breaking the siege, bringing attention to the apartheid, the genocide, specifically now,

trying to stop the arms deals, stop any kind of cooperation with Israel, bringing attention to all the international law that's being broken.

Yeah, that's our main focus.

And specifically with the journalists on board, we realize that, you know, the Palestinian journalists who are doing an incredible job in a time of genocide and so little sleep and almost no food because of the engineered famine, they're no less credible or objective or capable of doing their jobs than we are.

But for whatever reason, we get more attention than they do.

Racism.

But we're just trying to hold the mantle or carry the mantle on their part and we're answering their call, the call of our comrades.

And the same goes for the medics on this boat.

And

sometimes the media presents this as like, you know, Israel intercepts, you know, flotilla bound for Gaza and kind of doesn't reference the illegality of it.

What is your understanding of the legality of the seizure of international waters?

So the law of the high seas, high seas being international waters, those are interchangeable, means that anyone, as long as they're not committing any crimes, is allowed to sail through high seas, international waters, which we are right now.

So the fact that our ships get stopped in international waters is completely illegal.

It is a crime.

And the fact that people get abducted on the boats in international waters is a separate crime in itself.

And it is a kidnapping.

Israel would claim that it's their territorial waters, but still those people were taken and now are being treated as potential terrorists.

So

any of those other boats being stopped is completely illegal.

You guys are on the front lines of this in a way that nobody else is.

You're putting your bodies on the line.

Again, other than people of Gaza and the people of the West Bank, to be very clear.

But in terms of international support, nobody else is kind of putting their bodies out there like you guys are.

What can other people do who feel a sense of support but feel kind of powerless?

You know, get loud, get in the streets.

In Italy, people basically stopped the country.

They got in the streets.

I mean, dock workers striked.

Is that the best sense of strike?

I don't know.

Striked.

I don't know.

Struck.

Yeah.

But yeah, basically

stop

everything that's going on in the country.

Why is genocide not enough to make the world stop turning?

Why are some lives less valuable than others?

Why are governments full of lip service saying we can recognize Palestine, but don't do anything to support its people?

Get loud.

You can write your representatives if you want.

I don't know that that actually does so much these days, but if you do it loud enough, maybe strike in the streets, support the flotilla, support families that are asking for money in Gaza, and just get loud about it in every way you know how.

Well, look, we

We wish you the best

in terms of your safety

and

with what you're trying to do.

We will keep people updated on what happens.

You're on the conscious, which is unnamed.

So if people want to follow that, they can follow online.

But thanks so much, Noah, for joining us.

I know it must be a crowded,

mildly seasick environment there.

So thanks.

It's actually a good group.

We're doing well.

Thank you for giving me the time.

So, I mean, you obviously hear, you know, this is someone who is aware that she's going to probably end up in a prison like that.

And I just want to say, like, I know some people, I know, Tommy, you probably have friends who

can be a little snarky about the flotilla.

I don't know.

These are just people trying to bring food into Gaza.

And I will say, like, Israel's response is crazy.

I mean, they're not trying to harm Israel.

They're technically not even trying to come into Israel because, like, Gaza is not a part of Israel, right?

And, and, you know, drop droning them and harassing them and mistreating people.

This is that rogue state behavior that we've been talking about.

This is not normal.

Like it's not normal to like put random people in solitary confinement because they asked for water, you know?

And so, I don't know, you don't have to agree with like Greta Thurnberg about everything to think that that's a fucking crazy overreaction, you know?

Yeah, no,

I've seen the same sort of tone you've seen of scoffing at or mocking activists.

And I think sometimes it comes from like the activists speak and the tone with which sort of people characterize.

Look, I get it, like, whatever.

But these are people who are putting

their lives on the line, their bodies on the line for a cause, for a reason.

I have a lot of respect for that.

And I think in so doing, they are revealing something about the Israeli government, calling them terrorists, using a military submarine to launch a drone that then drops an incendiary device on a boat filled with like peaceful hippies trying to like

free Palestinians.

Like, what are you guys doing?

You're insane.

And you put your finger on it.

It's such an important point point you made, that this kind of direct action, right?

This is what this is, is not intended to succeed in getting aid.

It's intended to reveal something about the people denying it.

The whole civil rights movement, right?

Like the high point of the civil rights movement in many ways was sending kids out into the street of Birmingham knowing that...

you would learn that

brutalize them with dogs and imprison them, right?

And so what activism does, direct action like this, is it holds a mirror up to the brutality of the other party.

And say whatever you want about these flotillas.

Like they are achieving that.

Yeah, they are.

And I don't think they're going to stop.

Yeah.

You know, I think beating the shit out of these people is likely to make more people want to do it.

Yeah.

So hopefully these talks that happen in Egypt right now bear some fruit.

And if they do, we'll talk about it again later this week.

Absolutely.

All right.

So earlier in the show, Ben, we mentioned the Israeli airstrike, airstrikes into Doha last month in Qatar.

They were targeting Hamas leaders.

Those Hamas leaders were there meeting to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal.

That incident outraged leaders in Qatar and really across the Gulf.

And so fast forward to last week, Trump had met Netanyahu in the Oval Office.

He set up this little humiliation ritual where he made Netanyahu call and apologize to the prime minister of Qatar while he sat there and like held the phone for him.

And they released a photo of it.

So they very clearly wanted to stick it to BB.

Trump was showing that he was pissed.

But then the thing we really wanted to focus on was an executive order that later came out from the White House that lays out a security guarantee for Qatar that Fox News even describes as near-NATO status.

So I'm going to read you a quote from the EO: quote, the United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the state of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.

In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures, including diplomatic, economic, and if necessary, military, to defend the interests of the United States and the state of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.

So, yeah, it sounds a lot like Article 5 of NATO, where attack upon one is attack upon all.

For those wondering, wouldn't a treaty like that have to get ratified by the Senate?

Yes, you are right.

Even Trump sort of seems to get that.

He got asked about Congress's role in all of this earlier this week.

Let's listen.

Last week, you signed the security guarantees for Qatar.

Do you see any role for the Senate in that they have to vote on that?

Well, I wouldn't mind if they did.

If they want to, they'd let me know.

Nobody said that,

but, you know, Qatar has been very, very helpful to us in this process.

So, I mean, I guess Trump could abide by the EO for the duration of his presidency, but the next president wouldn't be bound by it if it's not passed by the Senate.

But it's also, it's like, it's pretty headspinning, Ben, for a couple of reasons.

Like, first of all, Trump's best buddy in the global...

you know, sort of the head of state world is Bibi Danyau, who, as we just mentioned, recently bombed Doha and repeatedly accuses Qatar of harboring terrorists.

And then back in 2017, Trump sided against Qatar when the country was blockaded by a bunch of other Gulf countries, including the Saudis.

This is what he had to say at the time.

The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.

So I think it's just worth kind of exploring what changed.

You think giving him a couple hundred million dollar plane helped?

I think there are two things, right?

I mean, one is, yes, Qatar has like invested a lot, we should say, in just being on better terms.

I mean, we should add like Steve Witkoff's done business with Qatar.

Pam Bondi was a lobbyist for Qatar.

You could go on the list, I think.

The Trump organization, there's Trump International being built in Doha.

They're building hotels, all this stuff, right?

Presumably, Bibi won't bomb that.

Yeah.

Well, who knows?

I mean, but I think the second more interesting thing, because we all, we've covered this, and that's everybody can see it for what it is, right?

They didn't gift him a plane out of mutual.

But I think that the deeper point is how much like israel's behavior under netanyahu has actually driven some of these gulf countries closer together right because the other thing that's not happening is qatar is not fighting with the saudis and the emiratis because everybody's a little freaked out by what's happening right now and i think that this security guarantee is worth about the ink that is printed on the paper.

I mean, I don't even know that people believe that Trump is committed to Article 5 of NATO, and that's a treaty obligation.

Fair point.

But I think it is important because I think that that piece of paper has one objective, which is to say to Israel, you can't do that again.

You know, that

the Qataris and the rest of the Gulf Arabs were furious when Israel bombed Qatar, and the Qataris made that known.

And Trump was freaked out by that.

And frankly, it turned him around entirely on Israel.

I mean, it was a huge mistake strategically by the Israelis to do that because, well, at least, you know, in the short term, we'll see how things play out in the medium term.

But in the short term, it pissed Trump off because it created problems for him in the Gulf.

And what's interesting to me is that given the choice between Israel and the Gulf Arabs, like, I kind of think he comes down on the side of the Gulf Arabs.

There's a little bit more in it for him there.

Yeah.

So I think that this security guarantee is meant to send a message to Netanyahu, you're not doing that again, and a message to Qatar and all the Gulf Arabs, hey, I'm not going to let them do that again.

I don't think it really goes beyond that.

Yeah, I mean, look.

I totally agree with you.

Look, the Saudis have, there's a bunch of Trump, you know, towers and golf courses and things going up in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE and in Qatar, in the Quincy Institute, they did a big report on all of Qatar's lobbying.

And it was just worth just sort of seeing it all laid out.

I thought it was interesting.

I mean, currently, Qatar is employing the services of 28 firms registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and since 2016, have spent almost $250 million on 88 fair registered orgs.

You mentioned all the Trump officials who have worked for Qatar in some capacity.

That includes Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, the EPA administrator.

Jared Kushner has gotten all kinds of money.

Oh, God, you know.

The Qataris, Steve Wickoff has too.

And then over the past five years, Qatar has donated over $9 million to think tanks and has given a bunch to U.S.

colleges and universities.

And then the Qatari Royal invested $50 million into Newsmax.

So they're being very...

Look.

Look, what would you do if you were them?

You're a tiny little country, right?

You're highly vulnerable.

You have, you know, the 10,000 U.S.

service members on the base in your country apparently can't protect you from bombardment from Israel, right?

So you're you're spraying a lot of money around.

Um, and remember, they got bombed by the Iranians.

Now, the Iranians call them and were like, hey, heads up.

But I think that was interesting, too, because the Iranians, that was a signal, like, hey, we don't want to do this.

But if this war becomes a regime change war, we're going to burn down the Gulf with us.

And so that's in their heads, too.

But I'm not sure that Trump comes to their defense in that, you know, like I just, I don't trust, would you trust an agreement with Donald Trump?

You know, like, I don't know.

Only if he has has a vested interest.

Only literally.

Yeah, well, that's why they have to

be doing this lobbying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

We're going to take a quick break.

But, Ben, you may have heard that Crooked Con sold out faster than we ever could have expected.

So it's right after I posted my social media.

Social media.

Sorry, guys.

So we're moving the location.

You hear about this?

You hear about this one?

So we can sell more tickets, more panels, more guests, more tchotchkies.

You know where the new venue is?

Where I worked for the first five years I lived in Washington.

The Ronald Reagan Building.

I went to work every day in the Ronald Ronald Reagan building and International Trade Center.

International Trade Center.

I went there.

There's a piece of the Berlin Wall on the front there.

Really?

Yeah.

That's cool.

I went there for

the Haiti earthquake.

I was supposed to go kind of work out of USAID and I couldn't get my email working for nine hours, so I left, never came back.

But we'll be there, your favorite crooked hosts.

We got a bunch of special guests.

There's going to be a Votes of America action hub where you can get some action, as Lovett told us yesterday.

Some hot Votes of America.

TP USA kind of action?

Similar.

There's a place where their partner orgs can hang out.

We can help you just get better at activism and figure out how to deal with the Trump administration.

There's a really good food court in the basement.

So I just flagged that for people.

Flagging that one.

CrookedCon.com.

Go there for tickets, and we'll see you on November 7th in DC.

Also, Ben, as I mentioned before, we're trying to build a progressive media powerhouse here.

One way you guys can help us is by becoming friends of the pod, joining our subscription community.

Go to crooked.com/slash friends.

You'll get stuff like Ad-Free Pod Save America, Ad-Free Pod Save the World.

You'll get exclusive shows like Polar Coaster from Dan Pfeiffer.

You'll get to join the Discord community and pitch Ben and I questions for special bonus Pod Save the World episodes.

Also, it's really fun.

It's a great group of people.

It's for a good cause.

So go to crooked.com/slash friends.

Also, for the month of October, you'll get 20% off when you subscribe for a full year.

So I don't know, I don't know the meaning of that discount.

Maybe it's spooky.

Maybe it's for Halloween, but 20% off.

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All right, so speaking of Trump, he is certainly willing to deploy U.S.

troops to go after us.

He is sending the National Guard to cities he thinks are liberal in blue states like Chicago or Portland.

Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to use the military to actually enforce federal laws or put down protests.

And that could lead to scenarios where you've got, like, you know, soldiers arresting people, establishing curfews, dispersing crowds, like scary authoritarian stuff.

At the same time, then, I've just noticed all this chatter from MAGA types about how we need to be more like El Salvador.

Like, the biggest example was Elon Musk saying,

quote, tweeting something that in saying it was essential to Bukele our judicial system.

That's a reference to Naya Bukele, the president of El Salvador.

And just for the context for people, what Bukele did was fire judges on El Salvador's equivalent of a Supreme Court and their attorney general,

replaced them with loyalists.

Then he forced through like so-called reforms that forced a bunch of judges and prosecutors to retire.

I think he set like an age cap at like 60, so he forced a bunch of them out so we could replace those guys with loyalists too.

All those loyalist judges then decide, actually, it's okay for Bukele to run for re-election for consecutive terms, even though the Constitution in El Salvador plainly prohibits it.

And then Bukele declares a state of exception.

He suspends due process.

Then he can throw anyone he wants in jail without charges.

And so just to sum it all up, like that's what Elon Musk is saying we need to do in America, gut our judicial system.

And like they're not hiding it at all.

Like

Michael on our team flagged a Twitter back and forth between Bukele and Elon Musk back in February about how they need to impeach judges.

And it just made me think how like directly these guys are running the Bukele playbook.

It's like they govern by trolling.

There's crypto corruption everywhere.

They want to send the military into the streets.

They want to gut the judicial system.

It's not subtle, but it's pretty frightening.

They want elections to be pre-cooked, if they happen at all.

It is frightening because they are saying what they want to do, and there's no reason to not believe them.

Right.

I mean, you sketched out what the playbook is.

I think to connect some of the threads we've been talking about today, look, I take what Stephen Miller says very seriously.

Like when he goes out and says the Democratic Party is a terrorist organization, when he basically talks about like conquering blue cities,

when he uses this kind of fascistic rhetoric, but then says you're not allowed to call it that.

I think that's exactly what he wants to do.

And I think we need to take it seriously because, again, to connect things, if you're thinking about like a turn from, we've already taken the turn from democracy to authoritarianism, but you think about the turn from authoritarianism to fascism, the two characteristics that you would look for are the deployment of the military against the citizens at home and some kind of war abroad.

And this is where I kind of see this connection between wanting to invade Portland and potentially wanting to invade Venezuela.

Like, this is the characteristic of an increasingly militarized authoritarian movement in this country.

That again, they're saying this.

They're not pretending.

Like, does anybody think that Elon Musk or Stephen Miller would prefer there to be a democracy in which it's possible that there's an election that they lose?

Of course not.

And so why should we project onto them that they're going to let that happen?

And I think it just, unfortunately, sends a message to all of us that this is going to be hard.

You know, it's not just going to be about winning a midterm election or something.

It's going to, that's going to be harder than you think to just have that midterm election.

Yeah.

And look, Stephen Miller is reportedly the one running this play where he is designating people on random boats off the coast of Venezuela as narco-terrorists and then killing them.

Killing them.

He is also going to TV calling left liberal progressive groups terrorists, domestic terrorists.

What do you do to them?

Probably.

Whatever you want.

Yeah, whatever the fuck you want.

Whatever the fuck you want.

So it's, it's chilling stuff.

And like, I think, I look, I'm with you.

I think we got to look that guy in the eye and like take him literally.

Yeah.

And believe that all your worst fears about him are true.

Yeah.

Because he's given us no reason to believe otherwise.

No reason.

I mean,

you know, what is his wife say that he wakes up every morning and gives a speech about crushing the left?

I mean, I actually think she's telling the truth.

I think that's like one thing that, what's her name?

Katie Miller?

Yeah.

It's one thing she's telling the truth about, you know?

Imagine if you woke up in the morning, you're like, all right, and I'm going to go make a smoothie and then prepare to crush MAGA.

Yeah.

Like, what?

Hannah would be like, get out of my house.

You are a loser.

She would be right.

You'd wake up and like, well, what are you going to make the kids for lunch today?

Yeah.

I do think it's important to remind Stephen Miller that he is, in fact, a fucking loser.

Yeah, as AOC did well, I thought.

That was well handled.

I'm sorry people were mean to you in high school.

It doesn't mean you get to turn us into a fashion.

I mean, a lot of history, a lot of suffering and death and destruction throughout history has been caused by people that were unpopular in school.

Yeah.

Unfortunately.

Yeah.

It's a corollary to the Barack Obama point made recently that a lot of suffering the world is old men clinging to power.

A lot of those old men started as unpopular people in school.

Do you think when Obama said that he was thinking about Trump and then realized like an hour later, like, oh shit, people were going to think I'm talking about Biden?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because

that's

awkward.

Okay.

Speaking of other old men clinging to power, Vladimir Putin.

So over the last few weeks,

thanks.

Shout out to that one.

We have been tracking the story of these Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace.

We mentioned the drones going into Poland.

There was the brief shutdown of Copenhagen's airport due to drone interference.

But there's also been reports of drone activity at other airports leading to flight disruptions.

That includes four smaller airports in Denmark, including two military bases.

There was the Munich airport, the Oslo airport, some critical infrastructure in Germany.

German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz has said publicly that he thinks Russia is behind these drones.

The Danish Prime Minister Met Friedrichsen has not officially pointed the finger at Russia, but said there's only one country willing to threaten us, and it is Russia.

Therefore, we need a very strong answer.

Mertz and Friedrichsen had both said that Russia is conducting a hybrid war against Europe.

The Danish Defense Intelligence Service defines hybrid warfare as political, economic, informational, and military means used by a state to weaken and undermine other states while remaining below that threshold of armed conflict.

That's kind of where the Russians like to live until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Russians, of course, are responding to the response from European leaders with like their typical trolling bullshit.

In a post on Telegram, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, quote, the main thing is that the short-sighted Europeans should feel on their own skin what the danger of war is, so that they fear and tremble like stupid animals in a herd being driven to the slaughter so that they crap themselves with fear.

How much vodka do you think Medvedev put back before he typed that one out?

He's the best.

Some European leaders are floating the idea of a drone wall.

What that means exactly is TBD, but essentially some sort of coordination of tracking technology along the Europe's Eastern Front that could identify and shoot down these drones.

As we know, though, getting anything like that done in Europe requires a lot of time and consensus and money, and who knows if it'll happen.

But Ben, it does get a little weirder.

Like, I'd initially assumed that these drones were just getting fired from Russian territory and traveling a really long way.

But then last week, French special forces boarded a tanker used by Russia, reportedly because they believed the drones that had entered Denmark's airspace were launched from the deck of that ship.

So this might be a little more complicated than a drone wall.

This is a pretty fucking scary thing that's happening because there clearly is intentionality behind it.

A lot of the countries that have suffered these kinds of violations are the ones that have been the most strident supporters of Ukraine in terms of the amount of assistance provided.

I thought Mertz had a good line, which is that we're not at war, but we're not at peace either.

It is this kind of gray zone of testing, cyber attacks, drone incursions,

information war, all the things that are in the definition of asymmetric warfare.

I think

what Europe should do, first of all, is they should be very clear and immediate in calling this stuff out and publicizing it.

There's a kind of weird like

that.

I don't get the hesitation of like, well, it may be them.

And no, no, you know what's going on.

And I think there's some benefit to kind of spotlighting it in part to get your people ready for that there's not some like easy answer here and we're going to have to spend some money.

We're going to have to do some things.

I also think that there should be, there's been this unwillingness to spend the Russian money that's frozen largely in Europe.

I mean, shit, if they start talking about me like that, like, you know, yeah, pay for the drone wall with that or give some of that to the Ukrainians, obviously.

But then I think that in the long run, you're going to have to find some way, I would hope, to,

through a position of greater strength, get into a real negotiation, not like a fake Alaska one, because this is dangerous stuff.

It may not lead to a war next month but where are we going to be in five years because like this is what they started ladders just going up and up yeah they started doing this kind of stuff in ukraine and then all of a sudden you know you know a few years later there's a full-scale invasion right and that's what i worry about they want to weaken nato divide people wear them down make it seem like it's too exhausting to stand up to it and then who knows in five years they've like seized part of like the baltics or something i mean that's what this feels like yeah and it also highlights this broader issue of the the russian shadow fleet which is this network of like the old often kind of busted up ships, but they have disguised ownership.

And they've been used to covertly ship oil from Russia to around the world and bust sanctions.

And we're talking about like hundreds, maybe a thousand of these ships.

They're often flagged in different countries, but they have sustained the Russian economy.

And now apparently they're launching drones and maybe even severing these undersea cables.

So the Russians are just getting pretty creative here.

Would you watch a Netflix show?

It's about kind of like

called Shadow Fleet.

It's a great name.

We have a pitch going on right now.

It's called Shadow Fleet, and there's got to be some guy that has to infiltrate it and sabotage it or something.

I'd watch a show like that.

Yeah, I would, too.

It feels like that's, I mean, it's funny you say that because I was thinking the other day, like, if you wanted to infiltrate the

Shadow Fleet, it wouldn't be that hard to put some random sailor on one of these boats.

Honestly, like, one thing that Europe, I mean, so people, like, so there's new pragmatic ideas other than just like spending more money and like, you know, is actually like the Europeans seem like they need, and some of them have this, but like much better intelligence,

including like that kind of intelligence, right?

Like, because the Russians have all kinds of stuff, right?

Part of what the Europeans need is not just like, you know, churning out small arms to the Ukrainians.

They need people that can like fight these shadow battles, you know, the Russian, you know, fight information wars, like fight cyber wars, like,

you know, fuck with the shadow fleet.

Like, that's, I'm not trying to minimize, like, I don't want, you know, you don't want to like escalate that into like a war.

I'm not suggesting that.

But a lot of this stuff that the Russians do is with like their kind of intelligence services, paramilitary services.

And like one way to counter that without getting in a real war is like having some of your own pushback in those spaces too.

Yeah, both of while you hear about like a small kind of European or Baltic intelligence service that's really good, like Estonians or like, you know, Finland or something.

But you're right.

I mean, there's got to be some sort of way you could, you could deal with some of this or like manage it or deal with some of this in the grave.

I mean, clearly the French had some sort of eyes on this ship that they ended up boarding.

Yeah.

But man, crazy story.

Okay.

Two more quick things.

So, Ben, there was this two-day-long communications blackout in Afghanistan we wanted to highlight.

The Taliban has demonstrated its willingness and ability to shut off connections to certain provinces before because they say it will prevent immoral activities in air quotes.

But in those cases, they cut the fiber optic internet, not mobile services.

But last Monday through Wednesday, they basically blacked out the whole country.

They hit all like Wi-Fi connections, mobile internet, and phone services.

And there's no real warning or reason given.

But the blackout itself obviously just destroyed day-to-day life for anyone in Afghanistan, from banking to business to flights to women and girls who are trying to use the internet to get around the Taliban's ban on female education.

And you kind of just, when you see a story like that, you have to wonder what happened and why.

Well, and it's also terrifying for, you know, so many Afghans are outside the country.

Suddenly you can't call your family, you know, can't be in touch with them.

I have to say, like, I talked to a bunch of people who watched Afghanistan closely, and like one of the interesting theories, because you hear different theories, like maybe there's some kind of weird hardliner who decided that the internet is debaucherous and we need to shut it down.

But I think the one that seemed kind of plausible to me is that there were fears of some kind of coup or something, right?

That there's splits inside the Taliban.

It's not a homogeneous organization.

You've got the Haqqani network into that.

You've got some more religious people.

Then you've got some more pragmatic people.

And we have this Bagram thing, right?

So you know, and I'm, I, this is pure speculation on my part, but you know

whatever guys might actually be entertaining this Bagram proposal from Trump, man,

there's other people in the Taliban that are like, fuck that.

Like, we are not letting the Americans back in.

And so I just wondered whether it was a signal that the internal disputes inside the Taliban are bigger than we think, and that they had to shut down the internet to prevent.

Because if you're worried about a coup, one thing you do is we don't want them to be able to communicate, shut it fucking down.

Yeah, that's Autocrat 101.

That's one thing I just putting a theory out there that might connect back to the Bagram thing.

Weird.

I'd love to know why.

How much would you give to just have like perfect visibility into one of these governments?

I'd love to know what's going on inside the Taliban because I think it's much more interesting than we think.

We see a bunch of clerics in Kandahar or something.

And I think based on my own experience, they're frankly more sophisticated than we give them credit for.

They're smart.

They fucking won that war.

But they're not all the same.

Imagine being like the Taliban minister or goon who was doing the secret talks with the Trump administration about this Bagram thing.

And then all of a sudden Trump randomly announces it in a speech in the Oval Office or whatever.

And you have to explain to all your buddies.

Okay, so I did like three, I did one Zoom.

Yeah, yeah.

It was with Wick Coffee.

This is this guy, Wick Coffee.

He seems like an idiot, but I just.

And then Jared showed up and he wanted some money.

And you're just like in some prison and hell.

Jared wanted to build a pipeline through here.

Yeah, Jared.

Yeah, Jared wanted to build a pipeline from Azerbaijan and sell it to the Syrians at inflated rates or something.

Finally, Ben, as we've discussed on the show, the president of Argentina, Javier Millé, is going through some stuff.

He's got this corruption scandal involving his sister, who's also his closest advisor, who is also this kind of like shadowy force in Argentina.

There is a stalled-out economy that seems to be necessitating a bailout from the Trump administration.

I asked Mike Froman about that to explain what the hell's going on there later in the interview.

And then he lost badly in the Buenos Aires provincial elections, which was expected, but I think he lost way worse than expected.

So he has a very sort of shaky grip on control at the moment.

So what do you do if you're in those, in his shoes?

You rock the fuck out.

He held what was described as a rock show, libertarian economic summit, book premiere, and political rally in the world.

And midlife crisis.

In front of 15,000 people in a stadium in Buenos Aires.

Apparently, he sang mostly 80s rock covers and even Havanagua, a little Jewish folk song.

He said that would stick it to the left.

Like, what these guys guys think is sticking it to the left these days always confuses me.

It's like,

I'll clap on Havana Gilla.

This guy has like, he makes Elon Musk look like a more mature version of a teenager.

I mean, this guy's a weird fucking guy.

He's got this huge dependency on his sister.

Like, he's got massive impulse control.

Like, he's.

Remember, he was like talking to his dead dogs?

He's talking to his dead dogs.

He's got the chainsaw.

Like, and he's trying to be this kind of intellectual anarcho-capitalist, whatever they call it, and basically like an overgrown teenager.

Yeah.

And this is the guy.

I mean, one of the things that sucks about being alive in 2025 is how fucking mediocre all these fascists are.

Like, they're a bunch of losers and weirdos and social outcasts who are somehow in charge of all these countries.

And I mean, this CPAC group is all like, like, there's no guardrails on their personal behavior whatsoever.

And, and I'm going to be clear, it's not that cool.

Like, this guy, like doing weird dances and singing

bad versions of 80 songs, is not what he thinks it is.

Well, maybe it is.

Maybe we're the losers.

Maybe the joke's on us.

The joke probably is on us.

I agree with you that Malay is kind of like Elon Musk on like a good ketamine day, you know, minus engineering skills.

But unfortunately, we have a clip from this event,

which neither Ben nor I have seen, but Michael and our team likes to torture us with

sight unseen.

So away we go.

Oh, that face.

Crowd's not exactly going to wild.

They're not feeling it.

Yeah.

I don't know about that.

Here's the thing.

He's got the chops.

But here's the thing.

That's fun.

It's fun to do like the basement of Musette that Karaoke plays in Adams and

he used to do it, right?

Like, why do you have to this is what's so weird about these guys like they need to do it in a stadium with 50 000 people to like get their midlife crisis out you know he did have like a real aging rocker vibe yeah yeah he really like caught the kind of leather jacket the leather jacket

yeah but then all of a sudden he looks like wolverine and he's just screaming and he's just screaming at you and it's the kind of thing that like maybe it's kind of

fun for like five minutes and then i this went on for like hours i think right like can you imagine having to sit through that and be like, all right, now I'm listening to like the ninth version of some 80s anthem from this guy?

Yeah, remember

the last time, the last time we saw a political leader do karaoke, wasn't it the Korean dude at the White House?

Yeah, who attracted nuclear martial law, yeah, who's singing American Pie

with Joe Biden kind of giving that old man vacant grin at him.

Yeah, you gave him a guitar.

Yeah, it was like a little sweet moment in the moment, I guess.

But yeah, a little low energy falls.

All is not well that ends well.

Uh, okay, so everyone stay away from karaoke.

Everyone stay away from karaoke.

Okay, we're gonna take a quick break.

When we come back, you're gonna hear my interview with Mike Froman.

We are gonna talk about Trump's trade policy, uh, why it doesn't seem like he's focusing on China at all when that was supposed to be the whole thing.

We're gonna talk about how the uh the trade international order as we know it is dead and what Mike thinks should come next.

So, stick around for that.

Uh, I feel like this is my area, is my greatest weakness in all of foreign policy

and everybody.

So, hearing from an actual expert was really interesting.

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My guest today is the president of the Council of Foreign Foreign Relations and served as a U.S.

Trade Representative under President Obama from 2013 to 2017.

His most recent piece for foreign affairs is called After the Trade War, Remaking Rules from the Ruins of the Rules-Based System.

Mike Froman, great to see you.

Welcome to the show.

Great to see you.

Thanks for having me.

It is, I was just telling you off, Mike,

I'm very grateful for the opportunity to just ask basic questions to a very smart person because I barely understand trade or Trump's policies on trade these days.

And hoping you can follow him better than I have because, you know, we had like Liberation Day back in April, right?

It seemed like Trump's plan was just to slap tariffs on the whole world.

They told us they were going to get 90 trade deals in 90 days.

That has somehow evolved to a series of sporadic announcements about maybe trade agreements in principle or new tariffs on countries like Brazil for totally non-economic, non-trade-related reasons.

So I guess, like knowing what we know now, it's October 6th, how would you define Trump's approach to trade at this current moment?

And are there areas where you think he's had some success or particular failure that you think are worth highlighting?

So first of all, I think trade has been one of those areas of core interest for Trump long before he was president.

He's been talking about it for decades.

And he's been in love with tariffs as a tool, as a tool for everything.

I think he's approached this really with three goals in mind, to impose tariffs on other countries.

One, just as a source of leverage it brings them to the table he can talk to them about fentanyl or migration or or how uh bolsonaro is being treated in in in brazil um and secondly to bring in revenue um and thirdly to drive more manufacturing back to the united states the idea being that if you put up a wall of tariffs companies will have to move their production or move their supply chains to the united states if they want access to our market.

When you look back, certainly as a source of leverage, it works.

I mean, they may grumble, but other countries do come to the table and are willing to negotiate with the U.S.

As a source of revenue, he's brought in a couple hundred billion dollars this year in tariffs, which is a significant increase over previous years.

The hardest part is probably that third one, which is, will it actually change the U.S.

economy?

Are we going to start producing more things here because it's become more expensive to import them from abroad?

And that we won't know, I think, really for some number of years.

Yeah.

And I guess what what I've found the most confusing, maybe, about Trump's approach is when I listened to the campaign rhetoric and, frankly, what he said in his first term, all of it led me to believe that China was the primary enemy in his worldview and that focusing on China would be, you know,

what his trade policy was about.

But instead, you have Trump tariffing the hell out of countries that you would think he would want to ally with to push back on China.

Examples include, you know, Vietnam or Brazil that we can get into.

There are some clear data now.

How about Canada?

I mean, Canada, our neighbor to the north, right?

Another great example.

All of Europe.

There seems to be some clear data now that these policies are actually hurting American workers.

For example, American farmers used to sell billions of dollars worth of soybeans to China.

Now the Chinese are buying soybeans from countries in South America instead.

And the administration is considering using tariff money to bail those farmers out, as I believe he did in the first term.

What do you make of Trump's approach to China and the impact so far?

Like, how would you grade his approach?

So, look, I think he's been quite frustrated and rightly so.

The years of engaging with China have not convinced them to change their economic strategy.

And they've pursued a China-first strategy, really at the expense of the rest of the world.

So I'm sympathetic to that.

He's been all over the map, though, to be frank, in his approach to China.

The rhetoric has been hot at times, and at other times, he's talked about wanting to do a big deal with President Xi, with whom he thinks he has a good, close, personal relationship.

And he's had more anger towards countries like Canada than he's had towards China.

I think what we've seen is as tariffs began to get imposed on China, and remember at one point they went up to about 145%,

China was one of the few countries that retaliated.

They've spent the last few years really understanding where their leverage over the United States was, what products that they produce that we can only get from China, and how to turn them on or off in a very strategic way to get the attention of

the American economy.

So turning off certain critical minerals, magnets, suddenly we de-escalated our tariff war.

And I think that's really the question of where do we go from here.

During his first term, he negotiated what he called a phase one deal, which was really just an agreement to buy more soybeans and liquefied natural gas and a few other products.

We still haven't dealt with the fundamental issues in the U.S.-China relationship and how to resolve those.

And so we're sort of dealing with issues at the margin.

There's now talk about a summit meeting between the president and President Xi, and there's high expectation there'll be some discussion of trade, some kind of so-called trade agreement.

But the major issues remain outstanding, which is that China is following its own set of rules.

And now the U.S.

is following its own set of rules, which is one reason why the multilateral rules-based system is under so much stress.

Yeah, and it does seem like the the Chinese identified a real powerful point of leverage by withholding these rare earth minerals, which are used in all of our electronics, our phones, et cetera, but also a lot of really sophisticated military equipment.

And then you mentioned that there might be this

meeting between Trump and President Xi in October, I think.

The Wall Street Journal reported the other day that the Chinese may be coming to that meeting with an ask that basically says the U.S.

should oppose independence for Taiwan in exchange for some sort of economic deal.

Are you hearing anything similar?

Would that surprise you?

That doesn't surprise me.

The language that's used around Taiwan is one of the most highly negotiated pieces of diplomacy for several decades.

So the U.S.

has made clear, many administrations have made clear, that we do not support Taiwanese independence.

Now that China wants us to go one step further and say we oppose it.

And they're worried that at some point the government in Taiwan is just going to to simply declare independence and create a crisis there and put the United States and China in conflict with each other.

So I think there is a lot of discussion about, you know, should there be a new agreement, something more explicit about where the U.S.

stands vis-a-vis Taiwanese independence and whether the U.S.

would come to the defense of Taiwan if China were to take military action against it.

I think there's a lot of worry that President Trump may well sell Taiwan down the river because he's been less concerned about Taiwanese democracy and more concerned about semiconductors.

And he's very transactional and oftentimes that transactionalism starts with a commercial agreement.

And you could see him saying something like, we won't come to the aid of, we're not going to spill American blood for Taiwan.

All we care about is making sure we have access to semiconductors going forward and China agreeing to some sort of arrangement like that.

Yeah,

that's very, very easy to see happening.

The other, I just baffling Trump policy that we keep hearing about recently is a conversation about some sort of bank bailout for Argentina.

The Trump's Treasury Secretary, Scott Beston, said on Twitter that he's, quote, currently in negotiations with Argentine officials for a $20 billion swap line with the central bank.

Could you explain to listeners what the hell a swap line is and how that may or may not differ from what we might call a bailout?

And then, second, I believe Argentina is one of the aforementioned countries undercutting American soybean farmers, right, by selling them to China.

So I'm just wondering like how one could possibly justify that set of policies as America first.

So, first of all, you're right.

China's stopped buying American soybeans.

We used to sell about half of our exports of soybeans to China, and now it's gone down to zero.

And Argentina is one of the countries that has provided a substitute for American soybeans.

And so, you know, it's a global commodity market.

And so, if we don't sell it, then the Argentines will sell it.

And they're selling it for lower prices.

They just took off some of their export taxes, which makes them even cheaper in the market

in China.

So that's a real issue.

President Trump is wanting to be supportive of President Millay and his economic and his political agenda.

And so while President Millay goes through some pretty significant economic steps in Argentina,

the U.S.

is now offering some sort of financial support.

It's a little confusing because swap lines are actually done from the Federal Reserve to other central banks.

And it's to say that if you need access to dollars, it'll be there

in exchange

for other currency in case there's a run on the banks in Argentina.

The problem is, we're talking about the Treasury Secretary using the Exchange Stabilization Fund.

It gets very wonky here, Tommy, but that you can't do a swap line with the Exchange Stabilization Fund.

That's basically a credit line.

It's a loan.

And the question is, are we going to loan or give money to Argentina at the same time that they're undercutting our sales of soybeans to China?

And that's why this has become so controversial in the last few days.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And look, President Millet came into office with a very difficult job.

I think inflation was at like 300%.

I think he's gotten it down to closer to 30%, but he did that by putting in place some brutal austerity measures.

Like on the one hand, I think we probably as a country want Argentina to get on its feet, right, and not to be dealing with runaway inflation in perpetuity.

On the other hand, it's very weird to me that Argentina gets a bank bailout just because like the president goes to CPAC and is friends with Don Jr.

or something.

You know what I mean?

It's like I'm sort of of two minds of it.

Well, traditionally, we haven't done it on political grounds, but we have done it where there are important American interests at stake, like Mexico.

In the Mexico crisis of the 1990s, that was deemed to be so much in the interest of the United States that Mexico be a stable neighbor that we did provide financial support and it worked.

It got Mexico back on its feet.

Now, the Mexican government at the time was undergoing really serious economic reforms.

You mentioned, Tommy, some of the austerity measures that President Millay has adopted, and those are very significant.

What he hasn't done is let the exchange rate move.

And so he's trying to maintain an overly valued peso in order to keep inflation down.

And that's going to require more and more reserves to back it up.

And that's why he's looking to the U.S.

for support.

So at some point, he may well have to adopt a broader set of economic reform measures if he really wants to stabilize the Argentine economy.

Got it.

That makes sense.

One we will be watching.

You mentioned Canada earlier as a country we might want to ally with to manage the threat from China.

You may recall a few months ago Trump was threatening to invade Canada.

Next summer, I believe there's a formal review of the USMCA, which is the trade deal that Trump inked in his first term with Mexico in Canada and then has been talking shit about as if if someone else did it.

Do you think all this invasion talk is going to jeopardize this review period or the future of the agreement generally?

Well, it certainly has pushed the Canadians to become

remarkably anti-American for Canadians.

I mean, there's still Canada nice, so to speak, but tourism is way off

and economic relations are strained.

And they're looking to see where they can how to diversify away from the United States.

They're sort of condemned by geography to be right on our northern border.

So there's only so much they can do to really move away from the U.S.

economy, but they're looking at those options now.

I think the issue around the USMCA is that there are things that have happened over the last few years that could probably be improved.

For example, if we're going to see big influxes of Chinese investment in Mexico or Canada as a way of avoiding tariffs on China,

and we want to take a hard look at what's going on in those factories, whether they're really producing in Mexico and Canada, or whether it's just assembling some final products so they can bring them in under USMCA without tariffs, then that's an issue that should be dealt with.

Those are sort of called transshipment issues, and those kinds of loopholes should be closed.

I think the bigger question right now is: what does it matter?

We have these trade agreements like USMCA.

We have lots of trade agreements with countries around the world.

This administration has demonstrated that it is willing to take unilateral action where it deems it in the U.S.

interest to ignore agreements that it has.

And so if you're Canada or Mexico, it becomes very difficult to make the kinds of hard concessions and a renegotiation if you're not 100% sure that the U.S.

is going to stand by the agreement at the end of the day.

Yeah, it's like the U.S.

Congress like cutting all these budget deals and then Trump uses the rescission process just to claw the money back.

So we're like, what's the point?

So bigger picture.

In your foreign affairs piece, you state unequivocally the global trading system as we have known it is dead.

What did you mean by that?

And how do you you think that impacts the average person listening to this show?

So the U.S.

spent 80 years, really, since the Second World War, building this global trading system with rules, with disciplines, getting other countries to basically adopt a U.S.

model for economic engagement.

And over the years, it has had enormous benefits.

It's also had costs, by the way, including on manufacturing workers in the United States who were subject to more competition from abroad.

And that led to certain dislocation in the United States as well.

But it had enormous benefits in terms of raising hundreds of millions of people, if not a billion or more, out of poverty.

And in the U.S.,

making it possible for particularly low-income families to be able to support their families and buy the things that they need, clothing and footwear and back-to-school items and toys at lower and lower prices.

So they'll be able to save more and spend.

on other things other than those products.

That was a system that existed.

And now, because China has followed its own set of rules for a while and the U.S.

has joined China in now following its own set of rules, that system is beginning to come apart.

President Trump

didn't kill the system.

He may have put the final nail in the coffin.

It's been under stress for some time.

But I think the reality is, is that you've got a set of rules that the two largest economies in the world aren't really following.

And that leaves open, where do we go from here?

You don't want chaos.

You don't want anarchy.

You don't want every country doing its own actions, because to your question, Tommy, that's how Americans get affected.

If every country starts adopting protectionist measures, puts up tariffs, prevents U.S.

products from coming into their country, whether it's soybeans or corn or energy products, or whether it's manufactured products or services.

80% of the American public works in the service sector.

If they start putting up barriers to those exports, then Americans' incomes are going to be affected as well.

American jobs are going to be affected.

And that's what we want to avoid.

And that's what the rules-based system was really intended to prevent.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, I believe services were famously not included in any of the Liberation Day math that decided all the tariff rates.

Am I correct?

Well, that's right, because you don't tend to put tariffs on services, although the president recently announced 100% tariffs on movies that are made abroad.

And folks are trying to figure out

how that actually works.

But the issue is more that if we put tariffs on their products, will they retaliate by, for example, keeping our services out of their economy?

And we're a leading services provider to the world.

We're, by the way, a big manufacturer too.

We export a lot of manufacturing products.

We want access to other markets because that's where 95% of the world's consumers live or outside the United States.

And so we need access to those markets to support good paying jobs here in the United States.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you write in the piece, you know, the goal, the rules-based order, sort of as we knew it is dead, but you're not an anti-trade guy.

In fact, you kind of make fun of the, quote, self-flagellation about the failures of the trading system that has practically become the price of entry to discussions about the global economy's future.

I thought that was a fun line.

So where do you think a sane administration would go?

And where should the global world order go from here to kind of replace what has become either broken or outmoded or

ditched?

So I think coalitions of the willing, coalitions of the ambitious, countries will come together who are like-minded around a set of issues and negotiate their own set of rules.

For some countries, you know, much of the world is continuing to negotiate trade agreements that open markets to each other.

The EU and India are talking about one.

The UK and India just did one.

The EU and South America, Mercosur recently negotiated an agreement.

The UK just joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

And so, you know, other countries are moving ahead and they continue to do so.

If it's not popular in the United States, we may want to work with other countries on how to restrict trade in certain areas.

For example, technology that may be key to national security.

We'd rather make sure we're working with allies and partners and have a common view of which technologies are critical to national security and how to control them, or what kind of investments we want to ensure are done by our own companies rather than by foreign companies, and build rules around that.

So, my guess is we're going to have, instead of one big multilateral rules-based system, a series of smaller, what I call it, open plurilateral systems.

So coalitions of a smaller group of countries defining their own set of rules.

It's less efficient, be more expensive than the old system, but it may be one that's more politically sustainable over time.

Do you think those should be coalitions of democracies?

Is it going to look more like the G7 than the G20?

Or would you broaden out kind of the aperture?

Yeah, I think in some cases it could be the democracies coming together.

Maybe around, for example, rules of how to use technology for surveillance.

They may have a particular view of what the appropriate role of AI is in certain areas, for example.

But in other cases, I think it will go beyond traditional democracies.

And we'll want to have other countries working with us to help set the rules of the road because we'd much rather have us at the table setting the rules of the road than leaving that to China or to somebody else.

And so, whether it's from countries in the Middle East or countries in Asia, which may not be full democracies, may want to work with us as well on those issues.

Yeah, unfortunately, some of the democracies are the worst offenders when it comes to surveillance, like

looking in the mirror here and look at our friends over in Israel.

Okay, so I know you don't like self-flagellation, but we should do a little bit here.

With the benefit of hindsight, were there trade-related things that we screwed up during the Obama years?

And if you could go back in time, is there anything that you would have done differently?

You know, I don't think we explained well enough to the American people just how much they benefited from the global system and from trade.

Nobody walks out of a Walmart saying, thank goodness for the World Trade Organization and for trade agreements, but they're able to spend a smaller and smaller portion of their disposable income on the things that they need for their family.

And that's what's at risk if we go down the road of protectionism and retaliation, is that those costs are going to go up for Americans.

So it's a comms problem?

So I did this.

Always blame the comms people, right?

Yeah.

But there's substance under that as well.

Look, I think neither Republican nor Democratic administrations over the last several decades have focused sufficiently on the costs of dislocation.

Most of the dislocation for workers comes from technology.

Over 80%

of dislocated workers, it's because of automation.

But there is some portion that is because of globalization.

And as a government, we never came up with a decent package of policies to say, here's how you help workers survive and thrive in a a rapidly changing economy, where that change is coming from technology or immigration or trade.

And that continues to be a failure today.

And the reason I worry about it is, you know, the China shock, China coming into the global trading system,

it's estimated to have cost the U.S.

somewhere between 2 and 3 million jobs over 12 years.

The AI shock is expected to cost tens of millions of jobs over a much shorter period of time.

And we still don't have a concerted strategy.

Everyone admires the problem and says, we've got to do something about this, but we don't have real work being done to say, here's what we're going to do to make sure workers can survive and thrive in what's likely to be coming down the pike.

And I think that's going to be absolutely necessary if we're going to have social cohesion

and political cohesion to do what we need to do as a country.

Yeah, no, this conversation reminds me of some of the worst meetings we would all go to in the situation room where the assembled cabinet would tell the president what a difficult decision he had and then have no real take on what to do about it.

You're right, there's a lot of admiring the problem when it comes to AI.

There's not a lot of clear solutions being articulated, but it's worse than that because it seems like major U.S.

government decisions are getting made in an ad hoc basis where maybe the benefit is the Trump family sells a bunch of crypto, right?

I mean, you're seeing these reports where the UAE was given access to some top NVIDIA chips right around the time when an Emirati-linked company, I think, purchased $2 billion worth of stablecoin from the Trump family crypto company.

So it just seems like not only are there not planning for how this might impact our economy, but it's not clear to me that the U.S.

interests are being considered at all, even in the near term.

Well, look, I think we have to focus on what those interests are and how to make sure we're addressing them.

Because if we're worried about the kind of polarization we've seen over the last decade or so due to people feeling like the system has left them behind, that it's not working for them.

You can only imagine what it's going to look like if all that people can look forward to is sitting on their sofa playing video games and collecting

universal basic income.

That's not a great vision for the future.

And so we all, I think, need to spend a lot more time and attention on those fundamental issues.

Yeah, agreed.

Well, Mike, it's great to talk with you.

Everyone should check out this full piece.

It's called After the Trade War, Remaking Rules from the Ruins of the Rules-Based System.

It's in Foreign Affairs as we speak.

Great to see you.

Thanks for

having us in the stuff.

Appreciate it.

Take care.

Thanks again to Mike From for doing the show.

And

I'm just kind of reeling from that.

Rocker.

Rolling Stones wannabe bullshit.

Yeah.

I don't know, man.

It smells like Viagra.

I just want to go back to the days where you could go to...

It smells like Viagra.

I just want to go back to the days where you go to Buenos Aires and have like a steak in some Malbec and hang out.

And some boring political leaders.

Yeah, yeah.

How about that?

Let's go back to that, guys.

You know, this is a little weird.

Give me a Dukakis.

Or go back, you know, like this is like the male Evita Perron or something.

It's

that good.

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