Latest / Pod Save the World / Can Germany’s Far Right Be Stopped?

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Can Germany’s Far Right Be Stopped? · Pod Save the World

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  Speaker 1: Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Ben, you are wise to escape Los Angeles. We don't
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: have to disclose where you are. Ben's overseas at the moment.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: You can disclose if you want. But it's literally like
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a rainforest here right now. It's going to be 100
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: degrees on Wednesday, and the dew point is basically where
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: it is in a rainforest. That's how miserably humid it
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: is in Los Angeles.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: When I left, it was like pouring like it was
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: a tropical climate too.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was fun.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: You've had pouring rain and scorching heat. There's no climate
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: change or anything. No. No. That's not normal in Los Angeles.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I don't remember El Nino sucking this bad. Is it
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: always a huge nightmare?
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Apparently. Well, this is supposed to be the mega El Nino, right?
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: This is supposed to be worse than all the other ones.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: So buckle up.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: It's not as fun as.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: You move out to LA as a New Yorker and
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: everybody's like, and I'm like, ah, I miss New York.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: And everybody's like, oh, but the weather will be great.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: And now we can't even say that.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Here we are. Well, boo-hoo, LA us. Our first world problems.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: We got some additional- some problems for the other parts
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of the first world that we're going to talk through today,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: starting with some regional elections in Germany that have rocked Europe, frankly,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: rocked a lot more places than Europe. We're also going
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to talk about the Trump emissaries, Steve Woodcuff and Jared Kushner,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: their trip to Russia and Ukraine. We'll talk about the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: scary resurgence of ultra nationalist fervor and, you know, celebration
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: of genocide in Serbia. Some major news updates from Israel,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: including a policy change by the U.K., I'll talk about
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the latest in the war with Iran. And then finally,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: another massive corruption scandal swirling around far right British MP
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Nigel Farage. Lots of UK focused stuff, Ben. Then you
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: just did our interview, Ben. What are we talking about there?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I talked to Lawrence Wright. He's really one
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: of my favorite writers. And he wrote The Looming Tower,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: which is kind of the definitive book that was about
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: the lead into 9-11, the failures of the U.S. government
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: and Al Qaeda and its intentions. So we talked about,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and he's written a new introduction for that book, by
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the way. So if people want to check it out,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: they should. We talk about essentially how to make sense
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: of the failures. There's no other way to put it.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I've lost 25 years. How did the US get it
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: so wrong? Some of his concerns that actually given all
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: the destruction of the US government and the direction of
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: intelligence agencies to focus on weird Trump priorities, that we
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: actually might be complacent. We might be kind of going
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: through the cycle again, where we're letting our guard down.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: You don't think Al Qaeda is plotting in the Fulton County,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Georgia elections office? That's not what we're searching for.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah. Or the, you know, immigration enforcement division.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, really interesting conversations about, you know,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: how do we learn, how do we see the world
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: and understand it better so that we don't make the
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: kinds of mistakes that we made after 9-11? Some of
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: the unanswered questions about the 9-11 attacks, including the potential
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Saudi involvement that has always been something that bugged Lawrence
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Wright as well as other people. And just kind of
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: how 9-11 changed his life and changed the country. So
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: it's a good reflective conversation. I think that as we
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: head up to this anniversary, it's worth checking out.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Looming Tower is truly one of the best books. Also,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of the things that Hugh Hewitt
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: always quizzes you on if you go on his show.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: So make sure you read that before you go on
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: that podcast. All right, Ben. Let's start with the weekend's
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: elections in Germany, which were historic for all the wrong reasons,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: all the worst reasons, really. The Alternative for Germany party
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: or the AFD won 43.8% of Sunday's vote in the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Saxony-Anhalt regional elections. So the AFD now holds 39 of
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that state's 83 regional assembly seats, which is not a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: full majority, but it's damn close. In the past, other
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: German political parties have refused to go into coalition with
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the AFD to keep them out of government, to prevent
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: them from governing. It's a so-called firewall policy that may
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: happen again here. But the AFD is going to try
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to convince three members of the conservative CDU party to defect.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: CDU was Angela Merkel's party, now Friedrich Merz's party. Or
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: they may go into coalition with this kind of fringe
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: leftist party called the BSW, which shares some of the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: AFD's views on immigration, Russia and the war in Ukraine,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: despite having communist origins. It's the classic horseshoe. If the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: AFD forms a coalition, it'll be the first time a
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: right-wing party held power in Germany since World War II,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and we all remember how well that went. A little
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: context before people get too freaked out about all this.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: We are talking about a regional election. Saxony-Anhalt is a
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: small eastern state of about 2 million people. It has
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: been sort of an economic and population decline for a
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: while since German reunification. It's more conservative and kind of
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: AFD-curious than the rest of the country as a whole. Also,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: even if the AFD does take power— These regional governments
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: have limited authority. They'd be able to control education, school curriculum, policing,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: some elements of migration policy, which is bad, but it's
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: not like being the chancellor, the chancellor being AFD. However,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: it's still a really big deal and quite bad. The AFD,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: for those who don't know, it's an extreme right-wing political party.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: They talk openly about the re-migration of immigrants. They want
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to segregate disabled kids and refugees into separate classrooms and
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: They want to downplay Germany's Nazi past. They have close
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: ties with Putin's Russia and want to end support for Ukraine.
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  Speaker 1: Saxony-Enhalt is a regional– they have a regional intelligence service.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of fear now that Russia could
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: use AFD politicians with access to that intelligence to penetrate
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the German spy services and figure out who might be
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: spying for Germany. The list of concerns goes on and
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: on and on. The AFD has been steadily gaining in
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the polls nationally. They did well in this election for
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: a couple of reasons, a bunch of reasons. Germany– German
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: voters are fed up with the sort of establishment centrist parties.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: That's not an unfamiliar story to anyone who's been watching
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: elections over the last decade. They're also pissed about the economy.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: They're very mad about immigration and support for Ukraine. And
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: in the Saxony and Halt region, there is a feeling
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: that the state has been left behind compared to Western Germany.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: And there's some major regional industries like the chemical industry
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: have really struggled recently. The AFD did especially well with
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: male voters, voters aged 35 to 59. And they turned
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: out an estimated 170,000 previous non-voters. Turnout was 78%, which
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: is massive. So, Ben, notable here that the AFD has
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: improved across the board and that Germans have seemingly gone
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: from treating a vote for the AFD as kind of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: solely a protest vote against, you know, the establishment to
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: now wanting them to actually govern. The CDU, Merz's party,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Chancellor Merz's party got routed. He said he was shocked,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: which is, I mean, he shouldn't have been. Everyone saw
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: this coming. And that the next election would have consequences.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: We don't know what those will be, but he said
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: he will not resign. But the next test for the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: AFD will be in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern regional elections on September 20th.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: So we could see another story like this pretty soon. Ben,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: thoughts on these elections and kind of the rise of
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the AFD generally so far?
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not great. You never like to see the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: far right ascendant in Germany. And I think there are
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: a couple of reasons that I'd underscore about why to
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: be concerned. Number one, the AFD is really a far-right party.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: I think sometimes people have grown accustomed to, say, Giorgia Maloney,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: when she got elected to be prime minister of Italy.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: She's been pretty far-right, but not like an extreme figure
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: in any sense, beyond some of her kind of hardline
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: immigration policies. The AFD is to the right of Maloney.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: The AFD is to the right of Marine Le Pen.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: The AFD- It's gotten more radical if they have moderated.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. They've not moderated. If you look underneath the hood,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: these guys, they're not trying to smooth off the rough edges.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: They're still hanging out with the Holocaust deniers and the
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: neo-Nazi elements. That's why they were designated as an extremist
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: organization by German intelligence services. So let's be clear. This
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: is not just kind of like a right-wing party that
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: we call far-right. This is a far-right party. So that's bad.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that everybody who voted for them is
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: a far-right person. And that leads to the second point,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: the firewall that keeps them out of governance. government, right?
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: They can't be in coalitions with other governments in the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: German system, is helping them. Because what keeps happening is
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: all the parties get together, they keep the AFD out,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: and then those parties get blamed for the fact that,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: you know, the prices are high and, you know, the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: government doesn't seem responsive. Frankly, those coalitions are not ideologically coherent. Like,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: you know, Merz is governing with the Social Democrats in
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: the same way that Olaf Scholz had to govern with
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: the Christian Democrats, the center-right. And so you're kind of
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: stuck in this doom spiral where the AFD may be
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: kept out of governance, but then that kind of gives
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: them this outsider status, this anti-establishment status, and everybody else
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: is the establishment. And so that's that combination of their
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: extremism and this kind of strange situation where the firewall,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: which I think is necessary or makes good sense in
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: a place like Germany with their history, is kind of
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: collaborating to normalize extremism. Now, I do think that the
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: message to politicians has to be like pretty fundamental change
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: in how you're governing and how you're communicating. You know,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: you can't just govern by saying the AFD is really bad.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Like we've been through this in the United States. Like
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the Democrats tried to be, you know, Trump is really bad.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Then like, look what we got. And I think it's
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: time to really question, you know, how can you demonstrate Sure,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: maybe you're not going to win over the most extreme
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: anti-immigrant people, but how can you demonstrate that– Merz has
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: really prioritized foreign policy. He's really prioritized kind of like
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: defense spending and countering Russia, which is– again, that's good,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: but like maybe it's time to kind of put that
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: a bit like on the back burner and actually focus
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: on some of these bread and butter issues.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Ben's saying Germany first.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, a little bit.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, like not in the AFD, not the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: AFD version of Germany First. That's the scary version. But
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: I do think that we've seen center left. I mean,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: shameless plug. I have a piece in The New York
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Times today about that might be for the Democratic Party
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: in this regard. We have this trend of center left
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: parties or in Germany's case with Merz center right parties
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: sometimes kind of becoming these defenders of the establishment and
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: the defenders of the norms. And you've got to shake
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: yourself out of that and figure out a way to
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: speak to populism. And if you don't, I just worry
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: that you're going to be in a situation where each
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: election the AFD is making these incremental gains. And at
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: some point, maybe not at the national level, but certainly
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: at the state level, they're going to start winning majorities.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: To your point, I mean, there's a few things. First,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: there's like a communications problem, which is the AFD is
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: starting to run much more kind of a young, dynamic
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: kind of internet business. literate candidates that are doing well
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and able to sort of sand off the scary edges
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: of the AFD and present a more exciting version of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: politics that is enticing people obviously. Merck is your classic
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: German politician. He's kind of like– he's a big hit
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: at security summits but he's kind of old.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: He looks like a technocrat.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. To your point on the economic stuff, it does
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: seem like he is doing things– designed to further piss
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: off working class people. They're pushing, they're talking about raising
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the retirement age. They're talking about raising the minimum age
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: at which you can retire. They're talking about some sort
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: of tax and health insurance reforms. And meanwhile, like Mertz,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: as you said, is rearming the country and really committed
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: to Ukraine. And people don't like that. And they're sick
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of the way the Russian invasion has harmed their economy.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And then Trump goes and invades, you know, starts bombing
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Iran and that piles up. on top of the economic lows.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: So we're making it worse. The flip side of that, though,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: in Texas and the on-haul, 7.9% of the regional population
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: is immigrants. That is compared to 14.9% nationally. So it's
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: a way lower percent of the population is actually a migrant.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: But immigration is still the top concern. And so it's
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: tempting to be one of the parties that comes in
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: like Bernie and is like, well, this is clearly just
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the working class. It's getting screwed. and to talk about
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: big social services that you're going to provide them, et cetera.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: But that is not what voters were mad about when
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: you asked them why they voted for the AFD. They're
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: talking about security and immigration and hating the establishment. There
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: were other leftist parties that were offering them a much
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: bigger social safety net or welfare state, and they rejected
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: that in favor of the AFD. So it's like, I
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: think there will be people that try to approach this
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: from the classic lens of you got to fight populism
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: with populism, but there is this reality that There's just
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of people in Germany that are rip shit
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: pissed about immigration. A lot of it goes back to
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Angela Merkel's decision to allow in lots of Syrian immigrants.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: And what year was that? 2015, I think. And, you know,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: we don't need to relitigate that. But it's just like
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: clearly that has a very long tail that has helped
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the AFD go from this kind of like just Euro
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: skeptic party to something a lot scarier and a lot
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: more xenophobic that is really helping get ideas like remigration,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: which is like, you know, expelling people from the country
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: basically mass deportation a bunch of different ways uh to
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the four.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah look i mean clearly germany like other countries like
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: the united states there's a feeling that you want to
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: make sure that the borders are secure it's a little
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: more complicated than you obviously i do think though that
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: as in the united states i hear you and i
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: like Maybe the answer is not necessarily economic populism, but
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: it is like the manner in which you do politics.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Because I think what happens is the immigration concerns get
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: married to this concern that there's just this clubby establishment
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: that is completely out of touch and is kind of
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: just not focused on what I care about. Yeah. Yeah.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: And if you, there, there have to be ways, and
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: some of it is communications, but some of it is
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: policy and some of it is like how you show up.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Some of it is how you acknowledge like what you
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: did wrong. You know, like sometimes you can deal with, um, some,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: some of the past mistakes, um, by, by speaking more
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: candidly about them. I will say, uh, on this Ukraine thing,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: this is the problem, you know, Trump berating them to
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: spend 5% on defense and now they're rearming and, I'm
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: all for NATO countries spending a little more on defense
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: and obviously for them providing some budgetary and other support
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: to Ukraine. But I think maybe that's moving too fast.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: You're going to undermine NATO. You're going to undermine Ukraine
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: if people are so pissed. that it seems like that's
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: all you're doing. It seems like all you're focused on
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: is that. Because then that kind of ties into this sense.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: It's just like the United States. You don't care about us.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: You care about these immigrants, and you care about Ukraine,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: and you care about NATO, and you're doing five-year defense plans,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: and I'm just not happy with the circumstance. I don't
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: claim to have the exact formula, but man, if you
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: look at both Schultz and Mertz, they did not seem
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: like the kind of politicians that were in touch with
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: what is on the minds of a working class person
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: in Saxony. And so you have to get at least
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: part of the way there to just take some.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Of that support.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: The only other thing I want to throw into this mix, Tommy,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: is that, you know, shit. I mean, we've alluded many
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: times to the kind of weaponization of debates about anti-Semitism,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: about anything anybody says about Israel.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: J.D.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Vance flew to Europe. This is a thing that happened.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: He flew to Munich, the place where Hitler had the
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: beer hall push and gave a speech to Germans saying
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: they had to accept the AFD and then met with
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: the AFD. And then Elon Musk endorsed the AFD. Like
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: if you want to talk about anti-Semitism, let's talk about
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: the fact that like the administration of the United States
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: has been supportive of like far right German political movements,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: you know, like that should be a bigger topic of
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: discussion than, you know, what, the latest thing online is
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: that somebody didn't like that somebody said, you know?
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And also like the AFD is a totally incoherent organization.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: If you look into it, like Alice vital, one of
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: their national leaders, um, is a lesbian in a party
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: that is virulently, uh, anti-LGBT. She is married to a
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Sri Lankan woman. Uh, they have adopted kids again. They're
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: like super opposed to migration. Uh, and they're very opposed to, uh,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: gay couples adopting kids. She also seems to spend most
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: of her time in Switzerland. So it's like this is
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: the person that's beating the entire establishment in Germany. How
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: are you losing so badly to these people?
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: And that's the part of the point is some of
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: this is you just got to do politics better. I mean,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: because in some ways they don't treat the AFD like
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: a genuine political party, which means that they're kind of
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: not like maybe you have to kind of start going
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: after these people, not just by saying they're far right
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: and they're crazy, but by some things you just said,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: like these people are hypocrites. These people are disorganized. These
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: people could never govern. They can capture grievance, not actually
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: solve your problem. So there's a lot of work to
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: be done here.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Alice Vidal also has really close ties with China. I
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: think she spent a bunch of time there. I think
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: she speaks Mandarin. She only talks positively about China. It's
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: just sort of like another kind of weird element to
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: her background. Again, so this is weird, terrible election outcome.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: We got another one coming up that we're watching on
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: September 20th. The next national election wouldn't be until 2029,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the federal election. But, you know, Mertz's political standing is
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: not great right now. So pretty unnerving to see this
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: kind of Lack of stability in Germany, of all places.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: This drift.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this drift rightward at a time when Trump is
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: pushing them to rearm while also undercutting NATO, as you said.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Maybe they'll be rearmed just in time for the AFD
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: to win the election.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, perfect.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: Wonderful.
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• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Trump's two failed peace envoy is Jared Kushner. His son-in-law
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: and then Steve Witkoff, his old golf buddy, hit the road.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: They went to Russia and then also to Ukraine. So
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: in Moscow, the two idiots met with Vladimir Putin. Witkoff
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: said later, Ben, that he has made about eight visits
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: to Moscow to meet with Putin and his team and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: that Jared has made three. I'm wondering, the about qualifier
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: kind of confused me there. I wonder if there's a
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: ninth one we don't know about, a ninth visit. But
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: as we've discussed in the past, a lot of those
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Witkoff meetings were one-on-one with Putin. Often there was like
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: no note taker, no State Department Russia experts were allowed in.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Sometimes he relied on the Russian translator to translate for
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: him too. One time Putin gave Wyckoff like a painting,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: which he said he found really moving and emotional. So
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: like the whole thing is just a weird mess. This
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: was their first visit, Wyckoff and Kushner, to Ukraine, which
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: is strange. Here's a couple of clips of the Wyckoff-Kushner-Zelensky
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: press conference from Keith.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Hello, everybody.
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: I just want to disagree with one thing that President
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: Zelensky said. I didn't like the train. I loved the train,
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: President Zelensky. I had a wonderful time on it. It
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: reminded me of my... days taking the train to see
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: my grandmother down to Florida. And it was great. Me
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: and Jared had a great time.
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: You know, President Trump comes from the business world, which
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: in the business world, you think about things in the
• 24:33
  Speaker 6: context of win-win. You know, how do you create opportunities
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: for both sides to do what's in their interest? War
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: is negative some. You know, everyone loses from war. Whereas,
• 24:43
  Speaker 6: you know, business and peace is positive some. And hopefully
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: you can find big benefits from that in a big way.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: It's just shockingly stupid commentary all around. Witkoff said he was, quote,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: very encouraged by the meetings. Jared said he, quote, learned
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: a lot from the trip. Glad to hear it. What
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Jared should have learned is that things are getting worse
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: and worse and worse for Ukraine. They are critically low
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: on interceptor missiles, as we discussed many times, which means
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the cities are just getting pounded by Russian ICBMs, not ICBMs,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Russian ballistic missiles. Russia has been just hammering their energy infrastructure.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: going into the winter, which means that once again, there's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a big chance that a bunch of Ukrainians will just
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: have to live in the freezing cold for months on end.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Attacks in the Black Sea could lead to global grain shortages.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: That's something people are very worried about. And then NATO
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: countries are increasingly sounding the alarm about Russian sabotage attacks
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: in Europe, including this recent drone attack in Germany at
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: an airport that was a near miss. The only benefit
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: for Ukraine out of all this, Ben, was that Putin
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: ordered a 72-hour pause in airstrikes on Kyiv while Witkoff
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and Kushner were there. However, the rest of the country
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: got hammered by drones and missiles throughout. So I don't know, Ben,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: like any thoughts? These guys are so stupid that they're
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: easy to make fun of. But like any thoughts on
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the value of this trip and continuing to, I don't know,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: keep these channels open? I guess I'm pro-diplomacy in general.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's become of it.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: It's hard to decouple. I have to, just a word
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: on Jared and Witkoff, because there was a comment that
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Witkoff made before the meeting with Putin. It was in
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: like a pool spray, I think, where he's like, oh,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: you know, you told Putin that he was just talking
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: to the guys outside and saying this, and all these
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: great memories, he's getting this job.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: When we retire, we'll tell these amazing stories and you'll
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: be there.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got this Florida real estate developer guy who
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: knows nothing about diplomacy, who's living fantasy camp, like all
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: these Trump people are living fantasy. I'm so glad he
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: had a nice train ride and reminded him of going
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: to grandma and, you know, the Ukrainians gave him a
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: good meal and he's flattered to be in the same
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: room as Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Jared sounds like a guy
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: who's taping an audition tape for a McKinsey job, an
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: internship or something. This is how we do business. These
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: guys are just so completely out of their depth. They're
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: talking to Vladimir Putin, who's been on the world stage
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: for over a quarter century. You really think those guys
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: can be able to move Putin on issues? And then
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: they're going to Ukraine, a country that is rapidly running
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: out of interceptors, in part because these guys help start
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: a dumb war in Iran. So there's just something so
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: nauseating about seeing them there. But yes, the problem is,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: we really desperately do need some aggressive diplomatic effort to
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: try to bring this war to an end, or at
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: least to get it to some kind of ceasefire. Because otherwise,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: you're going to have a situation where the Russians are
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: going to escalate in the winter. They're going to bombard Kiev.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: They're going to try to break them once again. And
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: this time, they may have more success because of the
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: low amount of interceptors and just the wear and tear
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: on Ukrainian society. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians will probably respond with
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: ever more aggressive attacks into Russia at ever more targets,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: like pushing the envelope there, which then raises the stakes
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: of the potential escalation into Europe. This thing is not
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: moving in the right direction. I think part of what
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: needs to happen is you need other countries more aggressively
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: mediating here. I'm not sure that the United States is
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: up to this. Obviously, the United States has got to
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: be brought in. Maybe we can find some actual diplomats
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: at the State Department to just sit in With the
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Europeans and the Turks and the Qataris and whoever the
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: hell's fuck can get in there. But I think we
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: need to take this. This should not be a Jared
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: and Witkoff bilateral channel to the Russians bringing in the Ukrainians.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: They need to multilateralize this a little bit more than
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: is the case now.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, did you see they called their train?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Apparently they had a sign on it that said the
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Peace Express on the train, Wyckoff and Tarantino.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, riding on the peace train. They're probably listening to
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Cat Stevens on their iPhone.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: It's totally absurd.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: To your point, I mean, the Zelensky meeting was about
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: three hours. There was another set of talks that included
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: national security advisors from the UK, France, and Germany. I
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: think that's good and necessary. But yeah, Trump's policy is
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: basically we're cutting off Ukraine. We're not going to give
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: them more military support. Europe has to do it. So therefore,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I feel like Europe should have a much bigger role
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: in these talks. They should be in the room always.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: The Putin meeting was three hours. Yuri Ushakov, a Putin aide,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: said it was constructive and useful but also that it
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: included a potential joint economic ventures between the US and Russia.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: You know that's the part. that Witkoff and Jared liked
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: because Putin's been dangling the sovereign wealth fund guy from
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Russia in front of their faces forever long and possible
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: future deals. And they know they have a couple of
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: corrupt marks there. And I don't know if you've watched
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: the press conference, Ben. Richard Engel was there from NBC News.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: He was like, why should people have any confidence in
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: your capacity to succeed here? He's like, Gaza's a wasteland.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: The Iran war's still going. The Russia-Ukraine war is getting
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: more intense. And Jared's like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: And he said something about how, like, Gaza was, quote,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: built by NGOs and terrorists and has been a dystopian
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: place for a long time, which is a nice way
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: to talk about a couple million people, most of.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Whom were kids when this war started.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: But I don't know. Like, it was pretty demoralizing, the
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: whole thing, because, like, Ukraine has certainly had some momentum.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Their kind of deep strike drone campaign has been effective
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: at increasing the cost on Russia, but it just doesn't
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: feel like we're any closer to the end of this war.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And again, honestly, I truly believe that if you had
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: a normal American administration, Republican or Democrat, this is inept diplomacy.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: There should be a way to facilitate some kind of
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: multilateral track that is trying to bring ceasefires into play,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: it's trying to put the issues on the table. They've
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: been at this for almost two years, and they're nowhere
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: further along than they were on day one when Trump
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: said he was going to solve the war. So I
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: really do think that maybe the grain shortages, like last
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: time that brought in more multilateral framework because the whole
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: world cares about that. I just don't have any confidence
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: in these guys, but I do believe in the diplomacy
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: of it all. And I think you've got to get
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: other countries in the table. And hopefully... Again, like just
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: keep Jared Woodcroft in the Middle East, not that they're
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: solving that problem. Like just get some other people from
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: the US government that are normies to please do this.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not holding my breath.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I think it's fair to criticize the Biden team for
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: not having more of a diplomatic track to end the war.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: But now we're a couple of years into this failed
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: diplomatic effort. And the only thing the Trump administration has
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: not tried is putting more pressure on the Russians. So yeah,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I'd like to see them internationalize this and try that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Let's turn to Serbia, Ben. We're There has recently been
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: a disturbing celebration of the country's bloody history and genocidal past.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: So last month, Reko Mladic, a war criminal known as
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the butcher of Bosnia, died in prison at the Hague
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: where he'd been serving out a prison sentence for genocide.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: One might think that that would be kind of a solemn,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: if not embarrassing moment for the country of Serbia. But instead,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: it's been the opposite. Mladic's body was returned to Serbia
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: last week. He has basically been treated like a national
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: hero ever since or like a head of state. His
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: coffin was flown on a government jet. It was carried
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: off the plane by soldiers. Thousands of people came out
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: to honor him. His casket featured parts of his uniform
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and medals that he wore when he was conducting the
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: genocide itself. The Guardian reported that the head of the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Serbian Orthodox Church said, quote, we know that his name
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: will remain deeply etched in the memory and prayers of
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: the majority of our Serbian Orthodox people. who feel and
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: nurture a deep sense of gratitude towards him. And then
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: on Sunday night at a soccer match in Belgrade, the
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Red Star Belgrade fans held up a photo of Mladic.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: They observed a moment of silence and they were chanting
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: his name during the match. Let's watch a clip of that.
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Pretty disturbing stuff. So let's talk about why this is shocking,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: but not surprising. It's shocking because Mladic was one of
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: the key architects of the ethnic cleansing policy during the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Bosnian War that killed over 100,000 people. He was found
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: guilty of genocide for the Srebrenica Massacre in 1995, in
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: which 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered. It's
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: considered the worst massacre since World War II in Europe.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: And he was behind the Siege of Sarajevo and all
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: these other horrific war crimes that But it is not
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: surprising because, you know, look, the current Serbian president, Alexander Vucic,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: is a far right nationalist who has himself made genocidal
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: comments in the past, like, quote, for every Serb killed,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: we will kill 100 Muslims. So obviously he thinks this
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: kind of ultra nationalist fervor is good politics for him
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: and his party. So, Ben, let's just pause there. Like
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: the combination of the AFD winning the German elections, Russia
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: escalating the war in Ukraine, these images from Serbia. They're
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: pretty scary if you're worried about kind of nationalism and
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: far-right politics in Europe.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes you worry about Europe. And there are
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: a number of things going on. Like one is that Vucic,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: the leader of Serbia, is one of these far-right guys,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: is an ultra-nationalist. And you look at that picture, it
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: looks like North Korea, uniformity in the stadium. I mean
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: nothing like having a war criminal– like for a moment
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of silence before watching a soccer game.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine? It's like, okay, you get the ear. Okay,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: your son will be holding up his scarf. Like, what
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: are we doing here? It's psycho shit.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: And this is the thing is like, first of all,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: this wasn't a close call with this guy. Like this
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: is the guy literally carrying out the massacres. Nobody denies
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: those happened. They're mass graves. Like we know those things happened, right? Sure,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: like there's clearly resentment inside of Serbia. They feel somehow
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: singled out. But that's why you need like responsible political
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: leadership to kind of keep a lid on this stuff.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Instead of pouring gasoline on the fires, including, by the way,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: even the religious leaders, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: That's going to have consequences. Serbia wants to be on
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: the pathway to the European Union. That's not happening anytime soon.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: The EU is not going to let in. And you
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: saw these statements from EU leaders. That is not exactly...
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: suggesting you're moving in the direction of integration with Europe.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let me read you part of that. The EU
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: statement said, quote, any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values and have
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: And then the EU enlargement commissioner canceled her visit to
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Belgrave this week. So yeah, this should, I mean, this
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: will likely be a serious roadblock to Serbia getting into
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the EU anytime soon.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And look, it is entirely tied to a
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: lot of things happening in the world. It's tied to
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: the rise of the far right around the world and
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: in Europe. It's tied to the rise of nationalism. But also,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: let's just talk about the fact that, again, he died
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: in the Hague. He was convicted of war crimes. The
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: United States is currently sanctioning the ICC at the Hague
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: for trying to prosecute people for war crimes. Israel has
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: acted with complete impunity in its conduct against war crimes
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: in Gaza. Vladimir Putin has acted with complete impunity with
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: his conduct of war crimes in Ukraine. It was kind
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: of something, Tommy, it felt like a throwback hearing about
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: everybody talking about international law and genocide and war crimes
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: and the Hague as if they were things that everybody
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: agreed on because they don't. And if you want to
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: know why it's dangerous to sanction the ICC and to
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: look the other way when Israel commits war crimes with
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: American weapons, it's because you're cracking open the door to
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: things like this. Because the people in Serbia are probably thinking, well,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: this is all double standard. This is all bullshit. They
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: only singled us out. The only way that you really
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: make a norm fortified against war crimes is by applying
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: it to everybody. And the moment you start to say, well,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: it's only for some people, well, then you open the
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: door to this kind of behavior. Because I'm sure what's
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: on the minds of some of those people is, wait
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: a second, like how come us, because we're a small country, Serbia,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: we get singled out, our leaders end up dying in
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: the Hague, but not Netanyahu, not Putin, right? And so again,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: it speaks to the need to strengthen international justice, international
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: law across the board. And this should be a project
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: for hopefully, knock on wood, a next democratic president.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, Vucic has been in power for I think
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: nine years now. He started as an ultra-nationalist, but he's
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: now more of sort of in the populist vein these days,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: but that DNA is still there. His like he can't
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: run again for a third term, but he's trying to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: run for he was nominated to be prime minister. The
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: next election was supposed to be in December 2027. He
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: used this moment to call for a snap election. And
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: this comes after years of like massive protests against corruption.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: So like authoritarian leaders like Vucic are seeing ultra nationalist, genocidal,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: you know, political moments like this. as their way of
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: suppressing the will of the people and clinging to power.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: It is really bleak, scary, scary stuff.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a big story. I mean, because again,
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: it shows you, we talked to Larry Wright about 25
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: years since 9-11, like the, I don't know, 30 whatever
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: years since the 90s in Bosnia. It shows you how
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: far we've kind of fallen in a way, right? Because
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: in a way, the system worked. This was the case
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: of the system working. There was humanitarian interventions. There was
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: a diplomatically brokered agreement to end that war. Then there
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: was international justice against people carried out war crimes. And
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: now here we are in the world of 2026, and
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: we're celebrating the war criminal, right? And that is a
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: bit of a snapshot of how the international system is unraveled. Yeah.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Before we take a break, I just have a quick
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: but big announcement for you. The first episode of our
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: brand new series is coming out this evening, still counting,
• 38:35
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• 38:39
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• 38:41
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• 38:44
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• 38:46
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• 38:49
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• 38:51
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• 38:54
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• 38:57
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• 41:22
  Speaker 1: That's BetterHelp.com slash Crooked World. Two updates that come from Israel.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: So the first actually is out of the UK in
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Andy Burnham's new government where the new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: announced a major shift in the government's policy towards the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: occupied West Bank in a speech Tuesday. Let's listen to
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: some of that.
• 41:46
  Speaker 7: The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists.
• 41:54
  Speaker 7: And all too often, the Israeli government has turned a
• 41:56
  Speaker 7: blind eye to this, and worse, members of it have
• 41:59
  Speaker 7: made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement
• 42:03
  Speaker 7: of Palestinians. Now, Madam Deputy Speaker, I recognize the gravity
• 42:07
  Speaker 7: of saying this. but the truth is, it is the
• 42:13
  Speaker 7: least the people who face such suffering deserve, and it
• 42:17
  Speaker 7: should be the prelude to justice. Now, for a long time,
• 42:21
  Speaker 7: the British government has rightly said settlements are illegal, but
• 42:24
  Speaker 7: we have remained silent on the question of the legality
• 42:27
  Speaker 7: of the occupation as a whole, which in 2024, the
• 42:30
  Speaker 7: International Court of Justice concluded was unlawful. Today, I announce
• 42:35
  Speaker 7: that the official view of the British government is that
• 42:37
  Speaker 7: the occupation is unlawful. The government believes the unlawfulness of
• 42:43
  Speaker 7: the occupation should be reflected in the economic relationships we
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: choose to have with the occupied territories.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: So what this means in practice is basically, there's a quote,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I'm reading quotes from him. They also said they'll refuse
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: all license applications for arms and other exports that materially
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: contribute to the occupation, ban the advertising in the UK
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: of illegal settlements. There's going to be some sanctions on
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: extremist settlers, some sanctions on Hezbollah's finance arm. And then
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Miliband reaffirmed that he opposes BDS and supports trade with Israel.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: This is just about products coming out of the occupied territories.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: The speech, the whole speech was quite interesting. I think
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: it's worth watching. It was framed as an attempt to, quote,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: salvage the two-state solution. And then the UK quickly had
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: some folks following their lead here. So France and Canada
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: said they'd be joining the import ban. About a dozen
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: countries released a letter explaining their intent to sort of
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: pass laws to follow suit. In practice, like this, the
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: ban of these goods from the occupied territories will be
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: very small economically. I think we're talking about like tens
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: of millions of dollars out of over $ 6 billion worth
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: of trade in 2025. But it's a big deal symbolically,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: which you can tell from Israel's reaction, which was quite strong.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: They are closing the UK's consulate in East Jerusalem. They're
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: banning a bunch of British politicians from entering Israel. They
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: are booting the UK from the International Gaza Support Center.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: And then the crazy wing of the Israeli government, the
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: crazier wing of the Israeli government, the finance minister, Basil Smotrich,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: who Miliband mentioned in the speech itself, called for the
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: expulsion of Britain's ambassador. And the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, said, quote,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: It's time for the state of Israel to publicly recognize
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: that the Malvinas Islands are Argentine territory under occupation, which
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the British violently steal from the Argentine people. So he's
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: trying to bring up the Falklands, which is interesting timing here,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: given that Argentina just announced a criminal case against an
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Israeli company that's leading the oil drilling project in the Falklands.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Then there's a blockbuster story about Netanyahu on October 7th
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: that we'll get into. But Ben, let's just focus on
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: this UK policy announcement piece. What did you make of
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Miliband's speech and sort of the totality of what they
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: actually announced.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: I actually think this is a seismic moment. I think
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: this is a huge deal. And not just because of
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: what it means about Israel and Palestine. Because look, this
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: is not going to bring about a two-state solution. But
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: what it does, the United Kingdom, let's be very clear,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: as usually the closest ally of the United States has
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: been like a pretty stalwart supporter of Israel over the years.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: for them to break. And Miliband used language that there's
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: ethnic cleansing, that there's terrorism happening in the West Bank.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: It shows that there's really nobody left backing Israel and
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: its government than the United States and then kind of
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: like a weird eclectic group of kind of Trumpy people, right?
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: And so that matters. Like the West Bank is clearly
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: going to be the main event in the coming years.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: And this is essentially Europe moving collectively into including the
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: major powers, Britain and France and others, to say this
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: is ethnic cleansing, this is against the law, this is illegal.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: And once you start down that road, you usually continue
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: down that road, right? And so I think we could
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: expect to see sanctions further in the future. So that matters.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: It just deepens this kind of isolation that Netanyahu has
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: created for Israel. But here's why I think it's a
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: bigger deal. Because they're breaking with the United States. Like
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: the United Kingdom does not usually say, you know, this
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: is really important to you and we don't give a shit.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: And not only are they breaking with the United States,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: they're breaking with the United States and bringing other allies
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: with them in Europe to also break with the United
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: States and do this. And that tells me a couple
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: of things. One, good for you, Ed Miliband. Good for you,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Andy Burnham. We've been hard on Labor Party. Like this,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: they are not doing the kind of cautious tiptoe around
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: things approach Secure Starmer did where they were trying to
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: kind of flatter Trump and, you know, not really weigh
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: in on Gaza and things like this. This is them
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: saying like declaring independence.
• 47:01
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: And so this is a big move for the Labor
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Party under Annie Burnham. You know, he's been pretty, you know,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: he's been a good communicator, but this is him taking
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: a pretty big, bold step.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: And Ed Miliband clearly got in there, by the way.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: the Jewish son of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, right?
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: So that matters.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: And for those like, look, you're probably not listening to
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: the show anymore if you are kind of bothered by
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: this policy announcement from the UK, but it's worth listening
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: to the full speech if anything about this rubs you
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the wrong way. Because like you said, Ben, he talks about,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: you know, Miliband is Jewish. He talked about his deep
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: connection in history with the Jewish state, you know, like
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: spending time on a kibbutz. He calls out Hamas. They
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: talk about sanctions on Iran. He calls out anti-Semitism in
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: the UK and the need to do more to combat it.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Which is not like– it wasn't just throat clearing. It
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: felt like pretty authentic to him. And then he goes
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: into this, as you said, very intense conversation about settlers.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: He talked about settler terrorism. He said settler terrorism is rampant.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: As you said, he said ethnic cleansing. Like it was
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: a tough speech.
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So that matters with the Brits. And then also, again,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: this– watch in the next couple of years. The Europeans
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: are starting to– they're looking at Mark Carney. You know,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: they're looking at Trump's political standing and they're starting to
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: go in the other direction, right? And so for them
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: to break en masse, not just the Brits, and, you know,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: it seems like the Brits have some leadership here too,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: which is something we haven't seen out of them in
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: a while in that fashion. It's just a sign that
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: the rest of the world is not going to take
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: orders from Trump in the same way that they did
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: the first year. Yeah. And that matters.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: And it's happening not long before a big election in Israel,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: which gets us to the second story. So there was
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: an explosive investigative report out this week from Haaretz that
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: details this stark warning about a potential Hamas attack that
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: was given directly to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu shortly before
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the October 7th massacre. The gist of the story, and
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: it's a long story and we recommend reading all of it,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: is that about a week and a half before October 7th,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: the president of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed, or MBZ,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: warned Netanyahu of a potential major Hamas attack on Israel.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: But Netanyahu just like inexplicably did not relay the message
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: to his top security staff. And the warning, it was
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: not derived from like kind of vague intelligence. It stemmed
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: from comments made directly by Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: the mastermind of October 7th, to a guy referred to
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: in the story as Cole Eyes, who served as this
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: intermediary between the Israelis and Hamas leaders. And sort of
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: this is from the report about some of the specifics
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: of what Sinwar said. Quote, tell the Israelis that if
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: they don't make progress, I'm preparing a huge surprise for them,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Sinwar declared emphatically. Here he dropped a key word for
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the first time, one that should have triggered red flags.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Tell them to expect a zelzal, an earthquake. In a
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: second meeting, Sinwar says, convey a message to them, the Israelis,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: that I'm preparing the mother of all surprises, a terrifying operation,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: something extraordinary. Again, he said the word that means earthquake.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: please convey to the Israelis what I am saying word
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: for word, he demanded. So it's a complicated story of like,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you know, this getting back to the Israeli security chiefs
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: via staffers who are working for MBZ and, you know,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: folks should go read it. But like, basically, Ben, I've
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: lost count of the number of stories that we've read
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: like this about missed warnings by Netanyahu or the sort
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: of Israeli security establishment that could have helped them prevent
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: October 7th. And if you look back, A lot of
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: top defense and military and intelligence officials have resigned. They
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: have taken responsibility for October 7th. Netanyahu is the only
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: one who has not. He says he's always says like, oh,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: now is not the time. First, we win the war.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Then we look back, blah, blah, blah. But this story
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: implicates him directly in the timing of dropping this a
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: month before the election was not subtle. I think the
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: question is, will it have the impact you think it
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: would politically? We don't know yet.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: This has always bothered me. We've talked about this. There's
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: just something that never felt right about why their regard
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: was so down. Again, not having the information to tip
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: into the conspiracy theory that like then you let it
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: happen intentionally. It is the case that it never made
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: any sense that Gaza is one of the most surveilled
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: places in the entire world. And the idea that they
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: were kind of caught that flat footed. and didn't respond
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: for hours while it was happening, it really does demand
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: serious inquiry. Netanyahu is not permitted to happen. He is
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: not permitted. He's used the fact of an ongoing war
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: to allude having any kind of commission, any kind of
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: inquiry here. But there's huge fucking questions about Maybe he
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: didn't think it would be that big of an attack,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: but maybe he thought some attack would be convenient. And
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: if you think that's cynical, we're talking about Bibi fucking Netanyahu,
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: like the most cynical person on earth. Because now we've
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: heard the Egyptians warned him. We've heard security chiefs warned him.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: We've heard of reports from inside of Israeli intelligence. It
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: was quite specific about some of the preparations being made
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: for the major attack. They had the plan, like a hero. Yeah,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: the actual plan. These are not subtle pieces of warning.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: This is not like coming up on the 9-11 anniversary.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: you know, that one PDB article, presidential daily briefing to Bush,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: you know, bin Laden determined to strike in the United States.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: It didn't really have any specificity. This is like a
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: lot of blinking lights and people telling Netanyahu, hey, they're
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: about to attack you and him doing nothing, right? And that,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: at minimum, that was massive incompetence. Like anything else is
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: much more troubling. The only other thing that I thought
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: was interesting, Tommy, the report is about MBZ doing this,
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: Mohammed Zayed, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, who's
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: been their best friend, like.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Their closest ally, closest friend in the region.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: This seemed like it came out, if not from the Emiratis,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: like the Emiratis must've had to confirm it, you know? Um, and,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: and it made me wonder whether the Emiratis are sick
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: of Bibi. I mean, I don't know, I'm just speculating here,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: but it's people who've dealt in the kind of weird
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: machinations of leaks that happened before elections. Not saying we've
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: done that. I'm just saying like that happens out in
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: the world. Um, It suggests to me that maybe the
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: Emiratis were OK with this coming out like right before
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: the election to harm Bibi.
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: We don't know the answer to that either. But like
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: it's it's worth thinking about because they've tended to have
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: his back and maybe they're just sick of him, too.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's going to have any impact
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: on him, though, because he's the guys managed to wiggle
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: out of, you know, anybody who's inclined to believe these
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: things that Bibi probably wasn't voting for him to begin with.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: But we'll see.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole story is worth reading. It's quite confusing.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I mean Netanyahu gets criticized from every direction in this
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: thing because this guy coalized his intermediary, was part of
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: an effort to try to sort of improve relations between
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: the Israeli government and Hamas, maybe get to a prisoner release,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: maybe take some steps on the Israeli side that make
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: life better for the people in Gaza. And what it
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: sounds like, what the reporting suggests is that Netanyahu dragged
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: his feet on cutting a deal with Hamas, a deal
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: with Sinmar, And Sinmar got pissed and issued this warning
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: to maybe, I don't know, threaten Netanyahu, but also you
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: have sort of national security or to try to go
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: Netanyahu into acting. And then you also have national security
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: side staff like, you know, Ronan Barr, the Shin Bet
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: and others telling Netanyahu that they're worried about something happening
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: by Hamas, Hamas doing something. and that they wanted, it says,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Barr recommended an operational method of a fire extinguishing bomb,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: a codename for a powerful and sudden attack designed to
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: quickly neutralize a major threat, or at least implementing strong
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: defensive efforts in Gaza and the West Bank. So on
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: the one hand, you have Netanyahu getting criticized for not
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: getting a deal done with Hamas that could have improved relations.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, you have the national security staff
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: saying that Netanyahu was being too soft on Hamas and
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: not letting them do like decapitation strikes or something to
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: kind of I don't know, try to deter or prevent
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: some sort of attack. So all around, it's just the
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: worst possible story for Netanyahu. But like you, Ben, I
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: have no idea if it will matter at all.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: In this election. Yeah, no, we'll see. We'll see.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: A couple of Iran updates. So the kind of tit
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: for tat airstrikes continue. Iran launched missiles at two U.S.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Navy ships on Friday. They didn't hit them, but the U.S.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: retaliated by bombing three Iranian oil tankers. The CENTCOM commander said,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: let the message to the IRGC be clear. If you
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: shoot at two of our ships, we'll impose an even
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: higher economic cost, taking out three of yours. Trump repeated
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: his threat to maybe bomb Pickaxe Mountain last week, Friday,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: which I'm sure got Hugh Hewitt all excited. Iran said
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: they're going to announce a new restricted zone and punish
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: ships that enter it. There's not a lot of details
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: on that one, but it seems like they're kind of
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: proceeding apace on their effort to just take control of
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: the Strait of Hormuz. Trump administration announced some new sanctions
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: specifically on Iranian airplanes.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Again, I don't think that'll happen much. That'll win the war.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll do it.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: It's economic D-Day right there.
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Over at the Pentagon, the New York Times reported that
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: 50 people on the military's joint staff were subjected to
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: polygraph tests. This is because of leaks about depleted U.S. munitions,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: which like in fairness is a pretty sensitive leak, the
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: kind of thing you might expect to be investigated. But
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: also at the same time, Ben, like think tanks have
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: been tracking this issue way before that war even started.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: They just use kind of open source data to monitor
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: as best they can the stockpile. So it was already
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: out there regardless of who may or may not have
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: been talking at the Pentagon, but notable. Over the weekend, U.S.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Energy Secretary Chris Wright seemed to suggest that they've given
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: up on getting a nuclear deal with Iran. He told ABC,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: there may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: simply destroying their capabilities to do it. The problem may
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: await a next administration. So it sounds like that big success,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: you know, is alluding to them. Yeah, me too. And
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: then most concerning to me, Ben, the fighting between the
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Saudis and the Houthi rebels in Yemen keeps escalating. At
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: least 73 people were injured in Houthi strikes on Saudi
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: oil infrastructure sites over the last couple of days. The
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Houthis say it was in response to previous Saudi strikes.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: But of course, you know, the Saudis are now preparing
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: to retaliate. This could kick up the civil war in
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Yemen that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, literally.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: So very, very disconcerting. But anything in that kind of
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Iran news jump out at you is particularly important.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: The tit for tat stuff, it just feels very forever worse,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: which we've been saying. The polygraph thing. is actually pretty
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: fucking nuts. I've never heard of kind of mass polygraph
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: of joint staff members. These are like senior members. And
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: there's a McCarthyism to this that makes me wonder, like,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: when is the military just going to say, have you
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: no decency, Pete Hegseth, you know? So the kind of weird,
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: the paranoia and intimidation is just getting weirder and weirder,
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: and it's only moving in one direction. And I'm curious
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: whether that brings about the opposite result that they want.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: They're trying to bring them in line. It might have
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: the opposite effect.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: We'll see.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: I do agree with you that the Saudi Houthi thing
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: is the biggest news of all this, because if that
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: becomes anywhere near a hot war, it is going to
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: just further destabilize things. The Saudis are, yes, frustrated, but
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: at the same time, if the Houthis start hitting Saudi
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: oil fields, if the Houthis start trying to mess with
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: traffic in the Red Sea, all these shortages that we've
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: been talking about that are acute because countries have kind
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: of spent down their reserve capacity to make up for
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: lost supply. Certain refineries have been taken offline. If you
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: just start to see Saudi oil infrastructure get hit, if
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: you start to see disruptions in the Red Sea, prices
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: are just going to get worse for everybody. The global
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: economic impacts are going to get worse. So that's something
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: to watch because there's nothing good about the war escalating
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: between the Saudis and the Houthis, including obviously for the
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: people of Yemen.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what I just wonder is whether the Iranians
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: are watching our political calendar closely and decide to do
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: something to try to kind of jack up oil.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: And gas prices.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: They will.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: I bet you they will. That's a very smart point.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: We'll see. Finally, Ben, so corruption allegations have once again
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: engulfed right-wing Reform UK leader and British MP Nigel Farage.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: For those unfamiliar with Farage, imagine if kind of an
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: early shitty version of Grok AI wrote a book about
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, then you soaked it in stale beer, and
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: then it morphed into a creepy old man with strong
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: views about immigrants. That's Nigel Farage. The latest scandal comes
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: via this kind of nonprofit investigative journalism organization called Verbatim
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: that was then fact-checked and aired by Channel 4. In
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: the report, You got two high-up officials in reform. There's
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: a policy guy named James Orr and then Farage's right-hand
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: man named Dan Jukes. They are caught on camera conspiring
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: to break British law on political donations from foreigners, like
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: dead to rights. The reform staffers, they solicited money from
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: a guy they believed was the British-based son of an
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: American businessman. And first, they get the American to pay £ 30, 000
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: for three polls for reform, two of which Channel 4 notes, quote,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: helpfully galvanized support for the party ahead of the local
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: elections in May. And those results were run in the
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Daily Telegraph and other newspapers without noting reforms involved in
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: any way. They also talk about getting a much larger donation,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: maybe 500,000 pounds, and arrange a meeting with the fake
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: father and son with Farage himself. So here is some
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: audio in video, which makes it quite clear that everyone
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: knew that they were doing something pretty shady. Let's watch.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't bring a word of this to anybody, obviously,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: and Nigel Whitebeard doesn't know Whitebeard.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: He's the kind of thing he doesn't want to hear.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: What you're doing right now means that you can contribute.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing sweet spot.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: You're making relatively good value of.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: Money with huge impact, and they don't show up anywhere
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: in public records.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: You're having a part with who's effectively going to be.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: The chief of staff at number 10.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: If that isn't a business interest, I don't know what is.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: No, exactly.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Obviously, the support that we've offered so far had to
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: be necessarily private, discreet. But the mechanism now for this
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: next phase is we've had some discussion with Dan, with James.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: So this comes, obviously, as Farage is mired in a
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of scandals. We've talked about the £ 5 million
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: gift that he can't seem to explain that he got
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: from this Thailand-based crypto billionaire. This new investigation and this
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: blockbuster report may undercut the brilliant Farage plan of dropping
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: out of Congress, or talking about a parliament rather, and
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: then running against an intergalactic trash can named McCount Binface
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: to try and clear his good name. Not sure that
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: one worked as he hoped. Farage sat down with the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: BBC to defend himself. If his goal was to remind
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: people that he does not feel shame and will lie
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: about anything, it was a great success. Let's watch a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: clip from that.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: Look.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: My job wasn't to do compliance. My job wasn't to
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: do background checks. My job was to turn up at
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: a lunch, have a glass of wine and shake someone's hand.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Did you not know that it was illegal for foreign
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: firms to donate to UK political parties?
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: Of course I know that.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 6: But were you just not then paying attention?
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: You weren't asking the question?
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: No, because I was told he was giving it to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: a UK family trust. Oh, sorry, a family office that
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: was based in the UK.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: He said in your presence, I run an American family.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: I am not a compliance officer. I was in the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: middle of canvassing in the Clapton by-election. I turn up.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: I frankly wasn't even listening.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: You weren't listening?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: I just asked, is it all above board? I was
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: just there to come and say hello.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 7: So you weren't listening when you were discussing donations of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 7: thousands and thousands.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: Of pounds to your party? I was told there was
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: a global family office based in London.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: His defense is literally, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't listening. Not quite the buck stops here. So the
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: two aides, Orrin Jukes, They have stepped down pending an investigation.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Farage obviously has not. I don't know, man. How is
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: this not the end of this guy? I mean, it's
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: not just this scandal. It's that Farage and Reform are
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: facing a threat from an even more right-wing anti-immigrant party,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Restore UK. But the corruption is just so brazen.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Everything about this story I love. First of all, great work.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: And more of this.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: More of this stuff.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: This is awesome.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: This is great, intrepid, kind of quasi... quasi, like, you know,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes movie happening here. I mean, for
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: people who couldn't watch this, too, it's, like, the most
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: British thing. Like, everybody's wearing, like, natty clothes. They're drinking, like,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: gin and tonics. People are smoking cigs in the footage.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: They're in, like, red armoire chairs. Like, it just oozes, like,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: this kind of preppiness. Like, everything you hate about reform, actually,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: you know, like, just kind of rich guys sitting around, like,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: making corrupt deals, getting drunk in the middle of the day.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the core
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: point is this guy is just like hopelessly corrupt. I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: mean like scandal after scandal of him just taking money
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: from anybody. It goes back to what we're seeing about
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: BB too. Like his best defense is that he was
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: completely incompetent.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: His best defense is that like– That he wasn't paying attention.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: I didn't listen to what I agreed with the person about,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: which was I was like saying like, thank you for
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: your foreign donation, sir. They just need to keep driving
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: this corruption narrative too, by the way, because just to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: be pure political brass tacks here, like Reform UK is
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: being hopelessly corrupt is probably better than saying Reform UK
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: is extreme. It's just pure politics because nobody likes corrupt people.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Nobody likes people that are double dealing like this and
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: then lying about it. So it's a thing that they
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: should run on. I do think that, you know, Nigel
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: could like make up a lot of this money if
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: he just, you know, did more of those cameos, right?
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess his fees went down. So he
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: needed to go to the Thai crypto guy in the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: sky and the American billionaire or whatever he was supposed
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: to be.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: The only way I feel like this doesn't take this
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: guy down, or at least down a couple of serious pegs,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: is if the rest of the British media doesn't run it.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's one challenge with Farage is he has
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: often gotten a pass He doesn't get nearly the coverage
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: that the Green Party head gets despite being talked about
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: as the heir apparent.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: Come on, Fleet Street. Can you imagine? They savage people
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: for like tiny things over there. Like let's do it.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Freebie gifts and things.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: This is a no-brainer.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 5: OK.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: We are going to take a quick break. But when
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: we come back, you're going to hear Ben's interview with
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Lawrence Wright about the 25th anniversary of 9-11, where the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: risks still exist from an attack like that and much,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: much more. So stick around for that one. This podcast
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform
• 1:05:48
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  Speaker 2: Okay, my guest today is Lawrence Wright, his Pulitzer Prize
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: winning book, The Looming Tower, Al Qaeda and the Road
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: to 9-11, really is, I think, the definitive account of
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: the lead up to the 9-11 attacks. Wonderful, colorful, heart-wrenching,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: revealing story. One of many books from Lawrence Wright, of course.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: The Looming Tower has a new introduction, timed to the
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: 25th anniversary of the attacks, which are obviously coming up
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: in the next few days. So it's a perfect time
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: to catch up with him. And I, again, encourage everybody,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: if you have not read The Looming Tower, please pick
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: it up. There's no better book to understand what happened
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: before 9-11. I say that as someone who worked with
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: the 9-11 Commission. But Lawrence Wright, thanks for joining us.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 8: It's a pleasure to be with you, Ben.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: So I was thinking about this a lot. You know,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: you and I have talked about these events over the years.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: 9-11 obviously played a pretty fundamental role in my life.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: And I read the new introduction a couple of times,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: and it triggered something that has gnawed at me as
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: someone who worked in, obviously, national security, has had interaction
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: with 9-11 even before that time in the White House
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: with the 9-11 Commission. And it And the question is this,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: even though bin Laden didn't achieve his kind of stated objectives, right,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: of overthrowing Arab regimes and driving the United States out
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: of the region, you could mount an argument, couldn't you,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: that 9-11 is one of the most successful terrorist attacks
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: in history viewed from the vantage point of where the
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: United States stands today and our overreaction. I mean, how
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: do you assess that? the impact of 9-11, both against
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: bin Laden's intentions and against the outcome that we're living
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: with today?
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 8: You know, there was a question in my mind, Ben,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 8: did bin Laden win? Of course, he didn't win. I mean,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 8: but he triggered this catastrophic, nearly suicidal reaction in our country. And,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 8: you know, just think about the lives that have been lost,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 8: you know, 3,000 on 9-11, but hundreds of thousands since then. Yes,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 8: there has not been another 9-11, but there have been
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 8: countless smaller attacks. It's not as if the terrorist movement
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 8: is dead. But the loss of faith in America is
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 8: the thing that is really striking to me. The country
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 8: is so divided. We've shed the most important allies that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 8: we've had. We're really quite alone in the world in
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 8: a way that we haven't been in the lifetime of
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 8: anybody still alive in America. The country is drifting and
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 8: now being shunned. And the other thing that troubles me
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 8: about is that we're so complacent now where terrorism is concerned,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 8: as we were before 9-11. Could it be that we
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 8: have gone so far around the circle that we're back
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 8: where we were, unprepared? Our attention is far away from terrorism,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 8: and yet I look especially at the new developments in
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 8: technology and wonder what bin Laden would have done with
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 8: such tools as artificial intelligence and crypto money and easy
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 8: access to cyber warfare. Those kinds of tools are incredibly
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 8: empowering to terrorists and to tyrants. And I can't help
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 8: but feel for all the great things that technology may
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 8: bring to us, we're going to head to a golden
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 8: age of terrorism and tyranny and crime, because these tools
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 8: are going to be very well adapted for those.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, your book obviously traced the story both of al-Qaeda's
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: emergence and its intentions and ambitions and ultimately its success
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: in attacking the United States, and also the failures of
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: the United States government to effectively defend the country, the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: failures of in information sharing from the CIA to the FBI.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, we don't have to detail them here.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: What I wanted to ask you, picking up on that
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: last point you made, is now we're seeing this administration
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: kind of target the intelligence community. You know, the FBI
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: is run by Kash Patel. Their, you know, agents are
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: doing immigration enforcement instead of counterterrorism. The DNI was Tulsi Gabbard.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: And now, you know, we've had musical chairs there The CIA,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: Trump seems to have an almost adversarial relationship with.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: How would you.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: Describe, informed by your experience of seeing a series of
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: policy and bureaucratic failures before 9-11 and the looming tower,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: how would you compare the things that concern you about
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: the state of play today when you look at those
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: same agencies, those same instruments of U.S. government power and
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: intelligence gathering and law enforcement today? as it relates to
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: the different terrorist threat we're facing?
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: You know, it was, I firmly believe till this day,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 8: had the Central Intelligence Agency cooperated with the FBI, that
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 8: 9-11 wouldn't have happened. You know, the agency knew that
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 8: two future hijackers were in America, and they came in
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 8: January of 2000, and the CIA found out about it
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 8: in March of 2000. So a year and a half
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 8: They had, you know, knowledge that al-Qaeda was present in
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 8: America and yet did not tell the FBI. So there's that.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 8: There's also the fractures between these two institutions, the FBI
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 8: and the CIA. Not only were they reluctant to share information.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: They hated each other.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 8: They actually hated each other to the point of subversion.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: And that.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 8: It's hard to account for. For instance, you know, you
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 8: look back at the bombing of the coal, uh, in
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 8: October of 2000. Uh, this was, uh, partly a poor
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 8: planning on the part of the government to park an
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 8: American warship in Aden, Yemen Harbor, you know, where it's
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 8: just sitting there as a, as a big prize. But, um, anyway,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: you had, uh, was it 17 sailors die? And, um,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 8: The CIA had information about the– they had actually surveilled
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 8: a meeting in Malaysia of al-Qaeda leaders. And from there,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 8: several of them went to Yemen with a plan to
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 8: bomb the coal. And so that knowledge was also present
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 8: and hidden. Bear in mind, we already had dead sailors.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 8: You know, this was a mass murder, you know. And
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 8: in my opinion, back starting from then, there should have
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 8: been prosecutions. The intelligence agencies had to be forced somehow
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 8: to work together. And it's a pattern that I see
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 8: in our agencies now that they are so fractious at
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 8: this present time. Not so much that they hate each
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 8: other the way the CIA and the FBI did before 9-11,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 8: but they've been corralled into partisan ventures. And they've turned
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 8: their eyes away from terror and really, in many respects,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 8: away from the main adversaries toward American citizens. And so
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 8: how can we be prepared for foreign threats if we're
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 8: preoccupied with trying to control our own populations?
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: And, and, and, you know, particularly parts of the population
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: that really are not the area where you would see
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: terrorism emerging from generally. I mean, I want to kind
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: of connect this back to where we weren't wrong. Cause
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: I think it's kind of related to how you focus
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: things and get them right now because, uh, on the
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: story of the failure to prevent nine 11 was not
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: one of the United States failing to kind of invade
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: foreign countries and remove their governments. And, um, it was just,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: as you said, it was like potentially as simple as
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: the CIA sharing information with the FBI better, you know, um, or,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: you know, having better aviation security, you know, regulations as
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: related to, you know, box cutters and, and we could
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: go down the list. And yet the response was to
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: invade Afghanistan, topple its government and stay there, invade Iraq,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: topple its government and stay there. Um, Because I think
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: some people might hear you and me talking about the
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: need to focus on terrorism and think, oh, here they
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: go again. How do we separate out the need to
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: actually protect the nation, to guard against terrorist attacks? When
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: did it become and why did it become about your
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: willingness to go fight wars overseas? I remember John Kerry
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: had this almost gaffe, people thought at the time, when
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: he said during the 2004 campaign, we need to get
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: back to this being a law enforcement problem. I guess
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: he could have said intelligence and law enforcement. But how
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: do you think about where we went wrong after 9-11
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: and what the right scope of the government's focus on
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: this is, where we're not spending trillions of dollars in
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: fighting wars, but we are defending the country?
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 8: Well, there are several different areas we can talk about. One, though,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 8: that strikes me is that the invasion of Iraq– was
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 8: perhaps the most colossal diplomatic and intelligence failure in American history.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 8: It's just hard to, it's hard to imagine, you know,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: America has always had a problem dealing with other countries
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 8: because we know so little about the world and the
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: world knows so much about us. It's, it's, You know,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 8: it's a total, I mean, we're essentially blinded when we
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 8: go into a country where we don't speak the language.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 8: Do you remember back when we first were going into
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 8: Iraq and I forgot the reporter's name, he went through
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 8: the Capitol talking to legislators and asked them, can you
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 8: tell me the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: Nobody could. This is the.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 8: Most fundamental division in Islam. And they didn't even know
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 8: how to answer the question. And yet, we're willing to
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 8: go fight a war in a country that was so
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 8: far away from our way of understanding. And so, you know,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 8: we should know more about the world. There's no question
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 8: about it. It's a big issue, but we should know
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 8: more about ourselves. We should know that we're not good
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 8: at this. How many wars is it going to take
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 8: for us to realize that winning wars is not one
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 8: of the things that we do well, but damaging our
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 8: own country is something that we have so much power
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 8: to do. And America has been badly damaged since 9-11,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 8: but not by terrorists.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: Well, part of that, too, is Uh, understanding, you know, the,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: the rest of the world and, uh, also, um, understanding honestly,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: like who we're fighting against, you know, because like, clearly,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: Trump does not understand the Iranian government at all. And that,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: you know, if you did understand the Iranian government, you
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: would know they were not going to collapse, because we
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: bombed them for a few days, right. And I always
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: kind of bugged me that, you know, bin Laden's having
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: a moment and you allude to this in the introduction,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: you know, on his his fatwas have reemerged on tiktok
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: and young people are saying yeah maybe he had a
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: point but i do think that uh i mean as
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: someone who was reporting on this at the time and
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: and wrote this kind of meticulous account understanding and you
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: would travel to these places understood al-qaeda i remember i
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: was assigned by my boss lee hamilton the coach of
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: the 9-11 commission go read all bin laden's fatwas you
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: know because hamilton actually wanted to understand like well what
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: is this about yeah And whatever we think of bin Laden,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: clearly he's an absolutely reprehensible, violent individual. His actions are unjustified.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: He was saying for a long time that what he
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: objected to was our foreign policy. And putting yourself back
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: in that time when George Bush was saying they hate
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: our freedoms, they hate what they see in Congress. What
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: we learn from the need to actually separate out that
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: you can– Try to understand your enemy and put yourself
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: in your enemy's shoes without justifying or celebrating them, as
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: people may be doing on TikTok. Like, why do we
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: struggle so hard? And how much of what we got
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: wrong about the response was about just not even trying
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: to understand why it happened?
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 8: I think there's an arrogance there that suggests that we
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 8: don't need to know all the answers to your questions.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 8: We have the power to do whatever we want. And
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 8: it's true. We have a tremendous amount of power. And
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 8: in a way, it reminds me of the old cartoon character,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 8: Baby Huey. Do you remember? Baby Huey was this 400-pound
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 8: baby who carried a club. That's the way the world
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 8: views us. And in many respects, given how powerful and
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 8: clumsy we are in the world, it's a fair comparison.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 8: But I just want to say about intelligence, understanding the
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 8: world is what intelligence is supposed to be doing. It's
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 8: supposed to be gathering information and providing that to policymakers.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 8: But when I was roaming around the Arab world and
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 8: South Asia after 9-11, there were so few Americans or
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 8: even Westerners in that area then. And I remember in Afghanistan,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 8: I was given a briefing, I suppose, by some CIA guy.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 8: But he said to me, I'd like to do what
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 8: you do. I said, what do you mean? Talk to people,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 8: he said. And I said, there they are.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Go out the door.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 8: You can talk to them. I think that on the
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 8: ground kind of intimacy with another culture is one of
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 8: the main things that we lack. We just didn't... And
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 8: that's true of journalism, too, Ben. You know, there used
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 8: to be, you know, news bureaus all over the world.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 8: You know, like ABC at one point had like 40
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 8: around the world. Now it's a handful of news bureaus
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 8: in the world, American news bureaus.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: And so what happens?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 8: You know, somebody like me parachutes in with no history
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: of a region or something. What's also true is we
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 8: accept the news that the governments of these other countries
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 8: are putting out, like whatever is on Saudi television. We
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 8: don't have anybody there, so we'll broadcast their view of it.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 8: That's not journalism. Essentially, we're allowing other points of view
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 8: to dominate our thinking, and we need to have independent
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 8: intelligence gathering both by reporters and by our own intelligence agencies.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: I always, uh, one of my, you know, when I
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: look at the biggest failures of my time in government, um,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: I look at like a Afghanistan and, um, when I
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: think back, cause I've gotten to know a lot of
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: Afghans over the years and, um, what every single one
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: of them tells me is any one of us, if
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: you just talk to a smart, normal Afghan, they could
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: have told you, you were backing all the wrong people.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: You're making all the mistakes. And then I thought about
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: it and in all those rooms I was in the
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: situation where people were making decisions about Afghanistan, there are
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: never any Afghans there. Um, and it's like, if we
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: just talk to these people, maybe we would have avoided that.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, I do wonder, you know, a big part
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: of your story takes place in Afghanistan. Um, it feels
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: like there's a, an effort to kind of just forget
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: that that happened. You know, um, we're four years after
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: the collapse of Kabul, um, the Taliban is back in control. Um,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering how you feel about that. I don't know
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: if you still have contacts there. How do you put
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: in context of all these different pieces of the 9-11 story,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: like how do you digest the experience in Afghanistan? And
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: what do Americans maybe continue to owe Afghans at a
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: time when Donald Trump is having ICE deport people that
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: worked with our military and we're kind of not really
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: doing anything to help avert humanitarian crises there? You know.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 8: Our longest war. Would you have ever predicted that we
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 8: would have been tied down in a 20-year war in Afghanistan?
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 8: And the Taliban was not our enemy. They harbored al-Qaeda, yes,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 8: but they were not our enemy. They were not waging
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 8: war against America. So from the very beginning, we had
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 8: no business invading Afghanistan. I remember when I was there,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 8: it was a kind of hopeful period. It was a
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 8: brief interlude. You know, there seemed like, you know, they were,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 8: the Taliban had been put to bay. And, you know,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 8: I remember the sound of hammers and saws, you know,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 8: as they began to rebuild. And I was very hopeful
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 8: that that would happen. If there's anything we should get
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 8: from this is that we have not got a solution.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 6: Works.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 8: Our diplomacy doesn't work. Our war making doesn't work. So
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 8: what works? And if you don't have an answer to
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 8: those questions, don't wage war. It's a catastrophe. And I
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 8: think it's been so much on my mind recently, the
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 8: preciousness of all the lives that were lost. Tragedy becomes
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 8: kind of blurred when it becomes so vast, you know,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 8: hundreds of thousands of people dead. That's a great loss
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 8: to humanity. And then, of course, the individual loss to
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 8: families and lovers and so on is just, it's hard
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 8: to imagine the heartbreak that we spread across the world.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 8: Not that other countries have responsibilities, of course, on this,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 8: but I But I look at the, you know, easy
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 8: to think about the $ 8 trillion that we lost in
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 8: Afghanistan and Iraq, but all the Americans, the Afghans, the
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 8: Iraqis who have perished in this experience, it's just a
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 8: catastrophe that I don't think we've really taken in, in
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 8: part because I don't think we want to absorb the
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 8: responsibility that we have.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: Well, and I mean, one way, you know, is to
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: also think about the alternative history. What if we didn't
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: do those things? What could we spend a trillion dollars on?
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: How would America be different today if we didn't make
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: those mistakes?
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 8: I think it's a profound question. It's not one that
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 8: is being asked these days. All the things that even
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 8: the democratic socialists, their entire agenda could be could be
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 8: enacted and there's still be plenty of money for rice
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 8: and beans. It's just not, it's a heartbreaking thought to
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 8: think that we could have spent that money on educating
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 8: our children and scientific advances, curing cancer, whatever. We could
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 8: have been so much better, but we spent all that
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 8: money so fruitlessly and with such devastating consequences.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: You allude in your introduction you know, as someone who
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: knows as much about, you know, the history of the
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: 9-11 attacks as anybody certainly who wasn't in government, and
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: probably more than people in government, you alluded to the
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: fact that we still don't know the full story, right?
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: There's some unanswered questions that people continue to raise about
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: Saudi involvement, most notably. Frankly, we still can't seem to
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: prosecute people for 9-11 because we tortured them and their
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: confessions are inadmissible in court. What do you think, as someone,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: you know, who's You probably finished your book with some
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: questions in your mind. What do you think the unanswered
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: questions are?
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 8: Well, I think there must have been some kind of
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 8: conspiracy between the Saudi government and the operatives of 9-11.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: And to me, the.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 8: Most damning recent evidence is that cardboard box that was
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 8: in the FBI warehouse had come from the investigation that
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 8: went on by the FBI in England. uh there were
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 8: a lot of jihadis living there and they've stored all
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 8: this stuff in a card cardboard box and uh somebody
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 8: in the bureau was going through to see you know
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 8: cleaning out old stuff that's no longer needed and there
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 8: was this box and it full of uh investigative notes
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 8: from 9-11 And so he called one of the FBI
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 8: guys who was still around and said, would you like
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 8: this box?
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: Oh, sure.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: Send it over.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 8: And inside there is, uh, a lot of the material
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 8: from Omar Abayomi, who was, uh, a 40 something year
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 8: old Saudi student who didn't go to class. Um, and
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 8: he was on the Saudi payroll. Uh, he is, uh,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 8: he's the guy who, um, met with the hijackers after
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 8: they arrived in January of 2000. In San Diego, right? Well,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 8: they arrived and he met them in a halal restaurant
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 8: in Los Angeles. And he said he overheard the Gulf
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 8: Arabic being spoken, you know, and just sidled up to
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 8: them and said, let me help you. I'll get you
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 8: a place in San Diego in an apartment in my building.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 8: I'll pay your rent. And then some of the, you know,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 8: there are these videos, and one is of him introducing
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 8: these two hijackers to members of the Islamic community in
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 8: San Diego. Now, on the 9-11 Commission, you might have
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 8: seen an edited version of that video, but the full
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 8: version is much more damning. And it's always struck me
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 8: that the case has never really been made, but the
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 8: They were introduced to the imam of the mosque in
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 8: San Diego, who was Anwar al-Awlaki, who became the head
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 8: of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Yemen. And eventually we killed him.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 8: But these kinds of scraps are on the table. And,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 8: you know, Bayoumi also had, there's one video that looks
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 8: like he's a newscaster standing in front of the Capitol and,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 8: you know, pointing out, you know, And here's the airport
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 8: over here and so on. He's actually giving a stand-up
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 8: report about, it appears, a prospective target. And there's more
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 8: to it. But the FBI took the box, looked into it, said,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 8: oh my, and put it away for years.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: And that, you know, this.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 8: when we start thinking if we'll ever hold anybody accountable
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 8: for the errors that took place both in the FBI
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 8: and the CIA, you know, there's more to the crime
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 8: than we have solved. And, you know, you rightly point
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 8: out that Guantanamo is a problem in terms of getting
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 8: to the bottom of some of this, but there's so
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 8: much that we could know. And But it would require
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 8: holding not just foreign terrorists responsible, but members of our
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 8: own intelligence community.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And a degree of transparency that I noticed when
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: I'm down here releasing all these files today that show
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: that New York City was covering up the air quality.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, transparency is something that people are usually uncomfortable with.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: Last thing I want to ask you is because I
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: think this is on a lot of people's minds, certainly
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: on mine right now. How did how did 9-11 change
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: your life?
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 8: Oh, my God. There's Larry before 9-11, Larry after. I
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 8: guess one thing. Years ago, I made a vow that
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 8: I would only do things that were important or fun.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 8: I didn't want to lose the joy. But at the time,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 8: I was sort of drifting. And I was thinking about
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 8: becoming a movie director or something. I had vague dreams.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 8: dreams of Hollywood. And then suddenly, I had a mission.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 8: And it wasn't just a reporting job. It was from
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 8: the very first day I was on the case. And
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 8: I just knew that this is the most important thing
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 8: I'll do with my life. And that afternoon, David Remnick
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 8: called with It was a small group of New Yorker
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 8: writers that he delegated to go out and try to
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 8: collect stories, and he would put it into what became
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 8: the famous Black Issue. And I had the good fortune
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 8: of finding this young reporter named Kurt Jelson, who wrote
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 8: for an investment magazine. And he was supposed to have
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 8: an appointment that day on the 101st floor of the
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 8: World Trade Center. And he, for the first time in
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 8: his life, slept through his subway stop. And so he
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 8: got off at the next station, ran back to the
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 8: Trade Center. And if you remember, the elevators were up
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 8: a flight of escalator. And so he rushed up the escalator,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 8: got into the elevator, and a woman was coming across
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 8: the lobby, and she was moving too slowly for him.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 8: And She stepped into the elevator, and he noticed that
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 8: on her ankle she had a rose tattoo, and the
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 8: plane struck. And the elevator door was accordioned, and nobody knew.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 8: I mean, it was an earthquake. Nobody could fathom what
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 8: had happened. And Kurt stepped into the lobby, and there
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 8: were objects around it. size of a shoebox or office desk,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 8: you know, various, you know, probably bits of plaster that
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 8: had fallen out of the ceiling. And his eerie, smoky environment,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 8: he saw trees and went to get outside. And of course,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 8: it was up a flight of stairs and it was
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 8: a plaza. And so he walked out into the plaza
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 8: and there were hundreds of shoes. And there were objects
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 8: that he thought were luggage, but they were human torsos.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 8: And his journey to try to get back home to
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 8: Bronx became the bookend of the New Yorker black issue.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 8: And I count that as a moment that I became
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 8: whatever I am now. That's when I made that decision
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 8: that I was all in on this and I had
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 8: to get to the bottom of it.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: Well, we appreciate all the work you've done. It's helped
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: us understand. And in a strange way, it led to
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: some of your other work, which is interrogated power and
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: what's happening in America and what's happening in the Middle East.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: Everything is kind of in some way a branch off
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: the tree of that decision you made. So people should
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: check out The Looming Tower. If they haven't already, check
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: out your other work. And we could have talked. I mean,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: there's so many things to talk about this, but we
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: covered a lot. So thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 8: I enjoyed it quite a lot, Ben. It's good to
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 8: catch up with you.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good to see you always.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 8: All right, take care.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks again to Lawrence Wright for joining the show and
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee. Our team includes
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolles,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: Writers Guild of America East.