Latest / Pod Save the World / Trump & Carney’s Heated Rivalry

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Trump & Carney’s Heated Rivalry · Pod Save the World

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• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Ben, when your grandkids ask you, Papa, Mima, where were
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you on Economic D-Day? Were you fighting on the, I guess,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: are we actually currently fighting because we're not buying Iranian oil?
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Are we part of it right now?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I was fighting on 12 Vessels Beach, you know.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Just battling some shadow fleet tankers or something?
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Just battling some OFAC licensing.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: You and Scott Besson. I want to ask you something
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: before we get to the show. I was listening to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation the other day between Bill Simmons and
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Sammy Koppelman, who is a friend actually, about the Mark
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Walter scandal, which if folks haven't followed, he's the owner
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: of the Dodgers and the Lakers, who seems to have
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: committed some crimes, is now selling the teams in a
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: fire sale. Sammy was saying that seeing all this private
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: equity and foreign money come into sports has made him
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: actually think that Jim Dolan might be a good owner
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and that Knicks fans are lucky. Thoughts on that? I
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: heard that too. Do you want to apologize to Jim Dolan?
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: No, I don't. Jim Dolan is running a mass surveillance
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: enterprise at Mass Square Garden.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: So is Barack Obama.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I guess– I will say Sammy Koppelman gets a lot
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: of shout-outs for being a true Knicks fan too, by
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: the way. He, like me, suffered through the Isaiah Thomas
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: years through a lot of dark times. But I will
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: say at least Jim Dolan seems to want to actually
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: own the team and run his mass surveillance enterprise rather
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: than leveraging the team.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: As a family business.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Rather than leveraging the team in some insurance scheme.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So that's fair.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I also learned from that. podcast, the detail that I
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: shared with you in Terminal Online, which is that the
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Guggenheim Associates, the name of this investment company that Mark
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Walters runs, is actually not the Guggenheim family. He just
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: found some random Guggenheim in-law or something for two seconds.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Guggenheim partners used to include someone who is a distant
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: relative of the museum Guggenheim family And he brought him
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: in to name it and then immediately pushed him out.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Incredible detail.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I will say this is an organic plug of my
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: sub stack, notes on the stories you tell. I also
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: dipped into– the Nick Singh actually triggered this. Enes Kanter
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: was a Nick. I don't know if you saw him
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: tossed out of the Indiana Fever Chicago Sky game.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he walked to half court and started talking shit
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: to a player.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, wearing a shirt that said woman noun, not subtle
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: entry to the culture wars.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: He's such a loser.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: But to write this substack, I went back and actually
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: read the entire transcript of his appearance on this podcast.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Which is all about like Erdogan, right?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in 2019, which made me simultaneously remember when Enes
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Kanter was like actually fighting authoritarianism rather than joining an
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: authoritarian movement, but also made me feel very old. That
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: was like seven– I was like combing transcripts from seven-year-old
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Patsy of the world.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been doing this for a minute. Well, we
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: got a great show for you guys today. We're still going.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: We got it. We are going to discuss our new
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: trade war with Canada, how it happened– and at least
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, Ben, why the kind of political incentives
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: and the economic incentives make it very hard to see
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a clear path forward to ending this thing anytime soon.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: We are going to evaluate the latest Iran sanctions that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: were called Economic D-Day. We'll tell you if they lived
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: up to the hype. This is on Iran, by the way.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about this grim milestone in Ukraine
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: when it comes to drone technology and speculation about why
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: CIA Director John Ratcliffe took a secret trip to Moscow today.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Very interesting. You see the clips that kind of I
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: think this broke because there were a bunch of people
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: in traffic in Moscow that saw an American motorcade go
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: by and started filming it and posting it online. Everyone's
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: just sort of like, what's that?
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Anyway, cool.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: That's why we have Telegram.
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: That's right. Then we're going to explain why it matters
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: that Pete Hegseth just gutted a military newspaper called Stars
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and Stripes, how the guy who once called himself the
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: world's coolest dictator has become the standard bearer for right-wing
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: politicians in Latin America. And then, Ben, you did our
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: interview last Friday. What are folks going to hear?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I talked to Poe C. Tang and Feroz Sidwa. Poe
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: is the director of the new documentary film, American Doctor,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: which everybody should see, which follows Feroz, who's been on
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: the podcast before, and two other doctors who are Americans
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: that served in Gaza throughout the bombardment of Gaza. You
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: see behind the scenes what it was like to be
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: in Gaza, to be treating patients, to be dealing with
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: horrific incoming wounded. But it's not just about that. It's
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: just about who are these people, what motivated them, how
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: they came back to the United States and took up activism,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: went on the media, started obviously pushing for politicians to
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: change policy in Gaza. I guess I'd say this, Tommy,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: given that there's no international journalist inside of Gaza still
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: to this day, This is actual coverage of what it
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: was like to be there, which we've had from Palestinian journalists.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: But to see this footage inside of hospitals, inside of
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Israeli attacks, that is an act of journalism that we
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: are lacking. These three doctors are extraordinary people. And to
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: see the sacrifices they made, to see the kind of
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: people that decide to kind of raise their hand to
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: do this is truly inspiring. And you start to see
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the kind of shift in public opinion that They're a
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: part of it. They're bearing witness, helped contribute to this
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: continued shift we're seeing in the United States. So it's
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: a great interview. They're both fascinating people to talk to.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: The film is in theaters. People should check it out,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: American Doctor.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Seeing them in the office last week and talking to
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Feroz for a while reminded me, just sort of brought
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: me back to those early days of the war. I
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: was just texting with him when he was going back
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: in and out. It was an unbelievably courageous decision to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: go in and provide care given how many healthcare workers
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: we now know were killed. by the IDF or others
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: or journalists, Palestinian journalists were killed. But Ben, just in
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: terms of like that shift you're talking about, I mean,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: it just, I was reminded the other day how now
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the Israeli government accepts the Hamas-led health ministry's casualty count.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: And before that was something that if you cited, you know,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: on Twitter, for example, you were told, yeah, no, you're
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: told you were like regurgitating propaganda or whatever. It's just
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: like now it's like a lot of the things that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: people said were happening early on are just accepted. But
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I agree with you, unbelievably important story, a really important
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: film and very much worth your time. After Ben's interview,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: by the way, our friends of the pod subscribers are
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: going to hear Ben and I take some questions from
• 8:37
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• 8:45
  Speaker 1: go to crooked.com slash friends, you get ad free episodes,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: bonus content, all sorts of great stuff. And also last week,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Ben and I recorded a YouTube episode about a couple
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of things. We talked about the bizarre role that Secretary
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: of Defense Pete Hegseth's wife plays at the Pentagon. Very
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: weird story from the Times. We talked about the latest
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: news about why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are high
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: tailing it out of California, and then why the US
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: is attacking judges on the International Criminal Court. If you
• 9:13
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  Speaker 1: content we do for YouTube, please subscribe to Pod Save
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the World on YouTube. We're trying to build a progressive
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• 9:28
  Speaker 1: So get your money's worth. All right, let's talk about Canada, then.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: So the US and Canada are now officially in a
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: trade war, which is just what the economy needs. Over
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the weekend, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: was walking away from these trade talks. Here's a bit
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: of what Carney had to say, and then we're going
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to explain to you the backstory.
• 9:48
  Speaker 6: We pursued every opportunity to reach an agreement that protects
• 9:52
  Speaker 6: Canadian workers and their families, that strengthens our economy, and
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: that respects Canadians.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Sovereignty. We've been under no illusions.
• 10:03
  Speaker 6: We recognized from the start that America has changed. In
• 10:09
  Speaker 6: recent days, the United States proposed new terms that were uneconomic, unfair,
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: and undermined the net benefits for Canada and called into
• 10:19
  Speaker 6: question the reliability of any deal. Last spring, I warned
• 10:26
  Speaker 6: that America is trying to break us so they can
• 10:29
  Speaker 6: own us. And I promise that that will never, ever happen.
• 10:34
  Speaker 6: The US introduced at the last hours, in the last hours,
• 10:39
  Speaker 6: efforts to restrict our ability to have other trade deals.
• 10:42
  Speaker 6: Efforts to restrict our protections of our language, our culture,
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: and in effect, our sovereignty.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: You're at war when you get attacked.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: We got attacked. At war with Canada. So the rupture
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: came after months of negotiations. There's been a lot of
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: great reporting, both in the US and in Canada. Shout
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: out to the Front Burner podcast from the CBC. It's
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: sort of unpacked what Carney was saying there. It's a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: good show.
• 11:06
  Speaker 7: Nice.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: It's a good show. So a couple of quick things.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: So Trump apparently reportedly wanted to exempt certain kinds of
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: trucks from the reduction in tariffs that would have come
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: from the deal, which would have made it unprofitable. for
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: car manufacturers to have factories in Canada and basically get
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: them shut down over time. I think it's a GM
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Silverados are made in Canada and the Ford F350 and F450.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: The U.S. wanted Canada to get rid of laws that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: would require streaming services like Netflix to feature Canadian content,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: including French language shows. And protecting the French language is
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: a very, very big deal in Quebec. Remember that Air
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Canada CEO was forced to resign because he put out
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: like a condolence statement only in English. And he got
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Don't mess around with that. The Trump people apparently wanted
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Canada to get rid of certain bi-Canadian programs that Canada
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: put in place to respond to US tariffs without actually
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: getting rid of the tariffs. So that doesn't seem fair.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And the US wanted to force Canada to essentially abide
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: by certain US trade policies when they cut their own
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: bilateral deals with other countries, especially around US steel tariffs.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And for what it's worth, the US side says that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Carney kind of flirted with reviving the Keystone XL pipeline,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: but then wouldn't go through with it when it became
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: kind of deal time. But who knows? So Canada is
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: also pointing the finger at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Apparently,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the Canadians liked Jameson Crear, the trade rep. But then
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Lutnick got involved, and he is famously a massive asshole.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: And things went badly. Lutnick also oversees the tariffs on cars, trucks,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: and metal. But I think the biggest issues of all
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: were just trust and Canadian sovereignty, Ben. We obviously know
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that Trump kind of flies like it's breathing. But in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: this case, the official negotiating position from the US delegation
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: was that even if a deal got done, the US
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: has the right to levy tariffs and change the policy
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: at any time, which makes you wonder what's the point
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: of any of this. So those are the substantive reasons.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And I think that made the politics a lot easier
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: for Mark Carney. There is a poll out today from
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the Angus Reid Institute, which is a Canadian pollster that
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: found that 76% of Canadian voters support Carney's decision to
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: walk away from the talks. So now the US and
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Canada were stuck in this escalatory tit for tat cycle,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: like Trump announced 20 billion worth of tariffs on Canadian goods.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Carney announced they'd respond in kind. Those go into place
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: September 8th. Trump then threatened even more tariffs starting January 1st.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: And on we go. How do you think they put
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: the toothpaste back in the tube here? It feels like
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: this has gotten so politicized when normally you just want
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: trade deals to kind of get hashed out behind the
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: scenes and then voted on or agreed to. So that's
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: not this like massive high profile fight.
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: It's nothing is impossible, right? Especially in the Trump era
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: where there are these huge swings. I think that at core,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: what's happening here is Mark Carney better than any other
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: leader of certainly an allied country kind of understands the
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: new reality that we're in. And there's, there's different components
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: to that. The first is quite simple. It's that last
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: thing you said. There's this line Carney had where he said,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: we've learned that the deals that the US makes are
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: not signed in pen. They're signed in pencil, which I
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: thought was a pretty good line as a speechwriter. But
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: it's because it's this dizzying game that Trump plays where
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: you cut some mini deal and then he tariffs you more.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: And I think Carney saw this is just going to
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: keep happening. And I might as well just draw the
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: line right here. and say, you know, fuck you, we're
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: in a trade war, right? Now, why did he do that?
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I think because all the economic questions are what they are.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I think at core, it is a sovereignty question. And
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: that's where I think Carney does understand what Trump is
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: doing is essentially really infringing upon core Canadian sovereignty. So
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: first of all, this question about whether they could have
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: their own trade deals. Essentially, Looking into it and kind
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: of making sense of the reports, what the US was
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: insisting on was not that like we'll sit and like
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: literally review the negotiations that Canada is in with other countries.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: But the Canadian trade deals have to take into account
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: American tariffs so that if we have tariffs– because the
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Trump people like to try to control the supply chain
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: through other countries.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't want China or some Latin American company
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: dumping a bunch of steel in Canada that then gets
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: sent to the US at a discount rate, for example.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: But that means that Carney's entire strategy, which is we
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: need to diversify away from the United States and we
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: need to cut trade deals with the countries, literally can't
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: work because essentially you'll have to check over his shoulder
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: with any deal that he makes. The second thing is
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: this French language stuff is– it's not that we're literally
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: going in there and saying you can't speak French. But
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: if– Quebec has come close to seceding in the past, right?
• 15:52
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: This is core to Canadian national identity. That's why it's bilingual.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: That's why they have these specific protections in place for
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: the French language, particularly in Quebec, including the kind of
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: content that's on television, is on streaming services, the kind
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: of labeling on products. That's not just because they have
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: some eccentric interest in the French language. It's because they
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: made those agreements to keep Quebec as a part of Canada.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: And so it's about holding Canada together. And then this
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: speaks to kind of the political backdrop, which is We can,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: you know, look at J.D. Vance and Donald Trump joking
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: about Canada being the 51st state, or we can see
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: some of the outreach that has been done to, like,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Albertan separatists as kind of weird, eccentric things.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: If somebody was doing that to the United States, particularly
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: a much larger power, you know, we would feel pretty
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: bent out of shape about it, you know? And so
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I think all the accumulated grievance of how Canada's been
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: treated and how cavalierly their sovereignty has been discussed, and
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Carney's whole theory of the case about middle powers having
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: to kind of make their own deals, all of that
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: kind of compels him to take this action. And as
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: you say, that kind of politics reinforces it. Again, what
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I think Carney saw, not that he's perfect. We're not
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: here to just act like Mark Carney's come down from
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: on high, but he's a very smart guy. And he's
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: got the politics and the economics and the sovereignty questions
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: all in mind. And they all suggest, hey, better for
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: me to just draw a line here and take a
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: stand against this guy and try to have this fight
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: and frankly hope that he'll blink. I mean I think–
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Carney– Which he kind of did by I think delaying
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the reciprocal tariffs until January.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think Carney wants to be in a
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: trade war for the next two and a half years.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: But I think he does realize that after a few months,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: he has 76 percent support for this. What support does
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Trump have?
• 17:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I think Carney realizes that in two democracies– and we're
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: still a democracy here. In a trade war, if public
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: opinion is ready for it on one side and is
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: not for it on the other, that he can squeeze
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: us until essentially Trump declares some victory and cuts some deal.
• 18:01
  Speaker 7: Yeah, look.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Economically, this sucks for Carney and it sucks for Canada.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: I mean Canada imports about $ 270 billion worth of US
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: goods per year. The Canadian economy is one-twelfth the size
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: of ours. There was Abacus, this Abacus data, it's an
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: analysis company. They did a report that The Economist got
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: and they found that the Canadian economy finally started to
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: grow again by like 0.8% in the second quarter this
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: year after contracting and stagnating in 2025 and unemployment was
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: coming down. So this is really going to punch them
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: hard at the time when the economy was just recovering.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: So it's terrible. But I do think you're right. It's
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: a question of sovereignty. And the politics of this are
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: complicated for Carney. I mean you mentioned Alberta, which is
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the big oil-producing province. They have an independence referendum in October.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: That would be a huge problem for Canada if they
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: decided to leave because they contribute a ton of revenue
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: because of oil money. And also like Carney currently is
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: getting a lot of support from even conservative– leaders, but
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: there's long-term trepidation. Yeah, so let's play a clip. This
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: is Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, and then Danielle Smith,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the Premier of Alberta, talking about Carney's decision.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: You sound a little more subdued than you did this
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: morning on the radio when you said Donald Trump could
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: kiss your ass.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Did the Prime Minister ask you to tone it down
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: a bit?
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: No, he didn't.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: He wasn't against that.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: And I have a lot of real estate on my ass,
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass.
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: Retaliatory tariffs. I know emotionally it feels good to retaliate.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: I get that. But let's remember what happens when we retaliate.
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: When retaliation happens, it means that everybody who is buying
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: products from the United States are now going to face
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: upwards of 50 upwards to 50% tariffs.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: So I think Doug Ford reportedly talked to Carney before
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: he walked away from the deal and kind of got
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the briefing on it and told him, I actually will
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: not order stores to put U.S. booze back on the
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: shelf because I think this is a terrible deal for us.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: So again, Carney's like kind of juggling all these complicated
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: political equities. I do think though that Donald Trump has
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: unleashed a rage from Canada and a sense of Canadian
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: nationalism that is not going anywhere anytime soon. We can
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: cut a deal and get US booze back on the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: shelf in all these places. But I think a lot
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: of Canadians are going to say, fuck you. We're not
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: buying it. They're really mad.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't diminish the economic risks for Canada. They're significant.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: It's going to have a harm to Canadian consumers in
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: terms of prices. It's going to have a harm to
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Canadian growth because of how much they're dependent on exports
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: to the US. All of that said, once again, to
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: get to the politics and kind of national identity piece
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: of this, the Canadians are already having an impact on
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the United States just by taking American products off shelves.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: There's billions of dollars in tourism that's been lost. Yeah,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: travel that's been lost. That shows you that is a
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: people that is pretty united, not totally as we just
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: saw in that clip, around the sense that they need
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: to stand up for their sovereignty. are we united? Does
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: American national identity? I mean, it's quite remarkable to me.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: We've generally my whole life been a more nationalist country.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: There's a stronger sense of shared Canadian identity, I think,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: right now heading into this trade war than there is
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: American national identity. And if Carney can hold that together,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: and that will require like pretty astute politics and, you know,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: good allies. But if he can do that, and they
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: can distribute pain in the United States in strategic ways, right,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: to certain sectors and certain states and try to hit
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Trump's base harder. They're trying to focus the pain on
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: red states, which is kind of interesting. Then I think
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: it's possible that he comes out of this, yes, having
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: probably suffered some short and maybe even medium-term economic pain,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: but if he can accomplish what he's trying to do
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: and show that Canada can stand up to the United States,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: show that they can diversify their trading partners, show that
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: they can kind of maintain a sense of shared national
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: identity through this, he's doing something more ambitious than Trump's doing.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: He's trying to kind of remake a sense of what
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Canada is. It's like a big project that he's involved
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: in while trying to model how can so-called middle powers
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: survive in a tumultuous age in which the US and
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: China and Russia are all fighting with each other. So
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Thus far, I find a lot to
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: admire in how Carney's approaching this. That's not to diminish
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: the risks. And I just... Again, like Mark Carney, we've
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: talked about this before, but the former head of the
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, like he knows
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: this stuff. On our side, we've got Howard Lutnick and
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump and Jameson Greer is like the sharpest tool
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: in the shed. Like I'm not sure that we're sending
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: our best to the trade war.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Well, look, I mean regardless, like Mark Carney was elected
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: for this moment. He was elected to take on this fight.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: And so he decided it's a difficult decision because he
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: knows the economic hit he's going to take, but he
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: decided to take it on. And so far voters are
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: supporting him. He also knows that Trump is weakened because
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: of the war with Iran and he's about to go
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: into a midterm where he's likely to lose a bunch
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: of seats and come out of that further hobbled. So
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the timing is right for him. I think the question
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: with Trump is always like, what does he want? Like,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: do you want, do you really want a new trade deal?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Do you really think- What does he, what do you, like.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Do you think he really wants like, you know, To
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: make sure that softwood lumber– Right.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: More dairy is going to– He's not– No. He just
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: likes– He wants to dominate a smaller country. That's what
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: he wants.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Again, that's what Carney is right about. It's not even
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: about a trade dispute about– I was in trade disputes
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: with the Canadians actually often about softwood lumber. Like that's
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: not what this is about. I mean Tommy, I ask
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: you like how many leaders have we talked about whose
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: political standing and dignity has been undercut because Macron tried
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: to cut these deals with Trump and he signed– you know,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Treaty of Versailles, MOU, like, you know, Keir Starmer cut
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: a trade deal with Trump. The EU, they all looked weak.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Like their political standing and their polls dropped. Like I
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: think Carney is right that like Trump respects strength too.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Like Xi Jinping is the only other guy that really
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: punched Trump in the face in a trade war and
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: he won.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: And the other challenge in terms of like back to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: nerdy stuff is the U.S. and Canada and Mexico are
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: supposed to now go into these– updating the USMCA trade agreement,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: the new NAFTA trade agreement. But– Which Trump negotiated.
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Which Trump negotiated and now hates. But also it's very
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: clear that like Trump doesn't really think those negotiations matter.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: He was trying to dictate the terms of USMCA through
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: this bilateral fight with the Canadians. So like Carney can
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: either fight him now or fight him later. Like it's
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: going to happen on trade.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: And maybe he can– Carney, if he's smart, he'll get
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Claudia Sheinbaum on side and You know, that's what Carney's
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: going to try to do is get other countries to
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: stand up to the United States with him.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he immediately called her to coordinate. This show is
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  Speaker 1: their money-back guarantee. The other big administration announcement this week
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: was about Iran. The administration is calling it Economic D-Day.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: This was supposed to be Treasury Secretary Scott Besant's plan
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: to crush Iran financially and win the war with sanctions.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: The official name was Operation Economic Outcast. A lot of
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: names for this thing.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Whatever happened to– what was the original one?
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Epic Fury.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Epic Fury, sorry.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: They got rid of that name and renamed it to
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: try to get around the war powers.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've lost track of the names.
• 28:09
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: It's Infinite Jest.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Midnight Hammer.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: So, Peston said he was targeting Iran's financial lifeline, specifically
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: digital assets and crypto, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. Treasury sanctioned,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I think, 60 individuals or entities. That could be a
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: business or a ship or whatever. But the Trump administration
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: has put over 1,000– sanctions on Iran since he took
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: office the second time. So there's a lot of overlap
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: with what was released Monday. Nothing really all that new.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Far more important was what was not mentioned, which were
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: specifically any big banks in China. China buys between 80%
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: and 90% of Iran's oil. Chinese banks create these systems
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and financial architecture to facilitate the movement of Iranian oil
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: in a way that avoids US sanctions. And many experts
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: sort of pointed at Besant's announcement and asked, couldn't this
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: just give China time to adjust how they do things
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and avoid sanctions in the future as well? We'll see.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Besant was pressed on the plan during his remarks on Monday.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Let's watch a clip of that.
• 29:07
  Speaker 7: In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: of a campaign with our allies to target and drive
• 29:16
  Speaker 7: the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries. Today,
• 29:22
  Speaker 7: in that same spirit, We are launching an economic onslaught
• 29:26
  Speaker 7: against Iran's financial connections around the globe. Around the globe.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: You described this as an economic D-Day, but D-Day wasn't
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: a threat of an invasion, and the U.S. didn't give
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: a timeline to Germany. So why not impose the sanctions today?
• 29:44
  Speaker 7: Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior.
• 29:50
  Speaker 7: Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Great question. It does seem like we kind of emailed,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: it's really like emailing the Nazis, the Operation Overlord plan
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: and events. So Xi Jinping is coming to Washington in
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: late September. Trump clearly doesn't want to piss off Xi
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: before that visit, but there's still a bigger structural problem,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: which is that we got in a trade war with China.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: When was that? Last year, this year? I don't remember.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: We lost that war too.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Remember the Chinese said, hey, we have all these
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: rare earth materials. We will bend you to our will,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, by refusing to give them to you if
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you fuck with us. There's no quick fix to that problem.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: So Ben- None of this is to say that Iran's
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: economy is currently in great shape. I think the U.S.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: blockade has actually cut off a lot of their exports
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: of oil and will really hurt the economy over time,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: will hurt the Iranian people over time. But two things. One,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: making such a big deal out of this, which is
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: odd to me. They always overpromise, underdeliver. But also, it
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: just seems likely that the IRGC won't really care. about
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the economy period and the civilian political leaders like don't
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: really have any say. Yeah.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: That's the core substantive thing is that the Iranians have
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: priced in a lot of economic pain for a period
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: of time here. And so this will have no impact.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I don't, I think this is completely, it's as meaningless as,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: you know, all the other D days that we've discussed.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, have an impact marginally on their economy,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: but the idea that this is going to, what is
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: it going to achieve? Like Iran's going to surrender. Iran's
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: going to, reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I don't think
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: that's going to happen. Look, a couple of thoughts on this.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: The first is D-Day was like tens of thousands of
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: people in the most complex amphibious invasion in history getting
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: into boats and literally storming beaches to fight Nazi fascists
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: on the other side. This is Scott Besant signing some
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: papers and a few lawyers at OPAC finding 60 designations
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: to make on sanctions. It is so laughable. It's just
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: such an insult to D-Day and to any semblance of language.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: That leads me to Scott Besson. Can we put him
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: in the Marco Rubio category of somebody that is often
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: cast as a more competent and reasonable person just because
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: he's able to string like three sentences together without seeming
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: like a complete moron. This guy is completely mediocre. He's
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: completely marginal, mediocre figure. Did he practice the D-Day speech
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: in the mirror?
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: A thousand times.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: The guy, nothing about that suggested like strength and toughness
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: and ah, you know, like really the IRGC is going
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: to be quaking in their boots. So like the guys
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: that are over like shutting down the Strait of Hormuz,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: like give a shit about that press conference. I mean,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: all they're trying to do It's still programming every week
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: on right-wing media. Hugh Hewitt is probably excitedly referring to
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: the D-Day in the same way he excitedly referred to
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: the Epic Fury in the same way that he excitedly
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: referred to the blockade. They just kind of come up
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: with some new thing to throw into the transom of
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: right-wing media. to distract from the fact that they've lost
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: this war.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Or get them to the midterms because did you see
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the Axios the other day floated that they might resume
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: full-scale conflict after the midterms?
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Well, then the Iranians will. And the Iranians, guess what
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: they do? They will actually bomb stuff. They will hit
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: stuff with like real life things, not with like designate.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, Iran, there's nothing left to sanction. Like to
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: your point, the only thing left to sanction is like
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: the Chinese or the Indians, which would bring down the
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: global economy, which got bested himself like So do Americans
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: really believe it is worth tanking the global economy? Because
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: if suddenly like major Chinese banks are taken offline, like
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: the whole thing unravels, right?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: For what?
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: To compel the Iranians to do what? I still don't
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: even know what they want them to do other than
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: open this trade of foreign news.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I think it's just to crush the economy, to inflict
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: so much pain on the population that maybe they.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Take over the government. Because you're so mad that you
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: lost the war?
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: It feels like we're just going through phases of losing
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: this war.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely are. Two other things. The Wall Street
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Journal had a great report out this week about how
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Trump was in fact warned about all the things currently
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: going wrong and how they could go wrong. So They
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: have Tulsi Gabbard, then the DNI, warning him that killing
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the supreme leader would lead to a more hardline regime
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: that was more committed to getting a nuclear weapon. Check.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: The stop clock, right?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and hit US
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: bases in the region. Check. They had DOD warning him
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: about stockpile shortages of critical weapons and munitions and interceptors. Check.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: But it was like Hegseth, Pete Hegseth and Raisin Cain,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Cain, basically telling Trump
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: that the military could kind of handle any contingency and
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: would deal with it. And Trump bought that line. Also, Ben,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: did you see that Iranian-linked hackers are believed to have
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: shut down a small-scale British power plant for four days?
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: The Sunday Telegraph broke the story. The British officials say
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: there was no risk to their energy system. But it
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: does show, once again, Iran's ability to retaliate with cyber
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: operations way outside of their borders. And it follows on
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: those attacks on U.S. water infrastructure we talked about a
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: couple weeks ago.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The Iranians have other– ways of inflicting pain and
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: it's not that they're stronger than us it's that they
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: don't care about the pain that we inflict and because
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: they're used to power outages they're used to you know
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: sanctions they're used to economic hardship and they don't care
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: about their people whereas if if any of that stuff
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: starts to happen in our country or in europe or
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: in the uk like people are like what the fuck
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: is going on like why we why is this happening
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: so it speaks to the asymmetry of There's a double asymmetry.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: There's an asymmetry of power. We have more of it.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: But the asymmetry that works with the Iranians is that
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: there's an asymmetry of how much pain people are willing
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: to take, right? The only thing on the Wall Street
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Journal story I thought that was important because it's kind
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: of not on me here. Like it's easy to blame Trump.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: It's easy to blame Netanyahu. It's certainly easy to blame
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Pete Hegseth who's a moron. I've been wondering about Dan Cain,
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: you know, and I've been wondering about CENTCOM. You know,
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: people don't like to criticize the military. I've done it
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: here a couple of times. Like it does feel like
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: At minimum, there wasn't enough like, hey, just so you know,
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: you can't change this regime with airstrikes. And a little
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: too much like, sure, we can make this work. We
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: have the strongest military in the world. I'm getting a
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: little worried, frankly, about what kind of messages have come
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: out of this war about whether or not we have
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: military leadership that is willing to tell Trump that something's
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: a bad idea or something won't work. Because the reason
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: I'm worried about that is both because we're in a
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: war but because what happens in Greenland? What happens in
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Panama Canal? What happens– yeah. Like a little less yes, man.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Because I can tell you I've been in meetings where
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: military leaders are like, that's a bad idea.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: There's usually like a lot of people will die, sir.
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: It will be very bad. By the way, the casualty
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: number was updated to like something like 770 wounded U.S.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: service members now. I mean it just goes up and
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: up and up.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And we still don't– and that's on the military too.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Like they're not– Exactly being the most transparent bunch over there.
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: No.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: No, they are not. Shifting military theaters here. Unfortunately, the
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: war between Russia and Ukraine has reached another grim milestone.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: The deployment of autonomous killer drones, Ben. Who's not excited
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: I was waiting for that.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: The New York Times wrote this up. It's based on
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: forensic analysis of this drone that landed somewhere in Ukraine
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: by the Ukrainian military. The gist is that human operators
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: in Russia programmed the drone– to fly to a specific
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: point in Ukraine, but then upon arrival, the drone selected
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: its own target with AI and then attacked. Ukraine thinks
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the drone was trained with AI to strike fuel tanks,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: to recognize and strike fuel tanks. The targeting decisions were
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: made by an onboard midi computer produced by NVIDIA, the
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: big graphics company, chip company in the US. So congrats
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: to Jensen Huang for his new business model. Mostly kidding,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: but only mostly.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a trillion dollar company.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: So that's terrible. Also, Ben, earlier today, we learned that
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: CIA director John Ratcliffe made this surprise trip to Moscow.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: This is on Tuesday. We don't yet know why. There's
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of speculation that it could be the issue,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: some kind of warning like, hey, we know via intelligence
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: that you're planning to attack a NATO country or do
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: something terrible. Don't do it. Remember, this happened during the
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Biden administration. It was ineffective. We said don't invade Ukraine.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: But Bill Burns, the CIA director, went over to Russia
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: to tell Putin directly, although I think he had to
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: do it via phone. Putin was in Sochi or whatever.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal reported, quote, the U.S. has collected
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: intelligence showing Russia's early preparations for a possible military mobilization
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: in Ukraine and plans for testing the NATO alliance or
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: NATO's resolve, whatever that means. So it could also just
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: be to scout a location for the newest Trump Tower.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: CIA could do that too.
• 38:42
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Ben, any guesses to what this trip was all about?
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: And I guess, should we all just be happy that
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: it wasn't Steve Witkoff sent over there? It was actual professionals.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: I find this kind of worrying because actually, this will
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: sound strange. I'd feel better for Steve Witkoff in a
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: way because that would just be probably another, you know,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: fruitless effort to resume some talks.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Sell some Trump coin.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: The fact that the CIA director went to me, suggests
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: that there was some concerning intelligence, right? Because why else
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: would you send the CIA director? Like Trump always sends
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Witkoff or Jarrett or some other kind of personal envoy
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: if it's about resolving the war or something like that.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: And so we've talked a lot recently about these concerns
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: that Russia might start trying to either escalate its sabotage
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: operations inside of Europe. It might try to literally hit
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: some targets in Europe. Like they've been kind of making
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: statements that suggest that the places in Europe that are
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: manufacturing the Ukrainian weapons that are hitting into Russia are
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: are fair targets. So there are places in Germany or
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: the UK that make the rockets or drones that the
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Ukrainians are then sending deep into Russia. And it wouldn't
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: shock me if there was intelligence that the Russians are
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: considering like hitting stuff or sabotaging stuff in like Germany.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: London, yeah.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: London, yeah, yeah. And that would be enough to get
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: even the Trump administration, the CIA director on a plane.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: And the other thing that concerns me to your point
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: about Bill Burns is I'm not sure that like what
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: warning John Ratcliffe can carry because I don't know what
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Trump's going to do to ratchet up stuff on Putin.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: So I don't know. Watch the space for escalation from
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: the Russian side. They've taken a lot of hits over
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: the last six to nine months. Whether that's further mobilization
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: or whether that's further attacks into Europe, both of those
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: things would be bad, obviously.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: And along the lines of the retaliation to Ukraine supporters
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: or the retaliation against Ukraine supporters, British Prime Minister Andy
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Burnham– took his first foreign trip to Ukraine. He was
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: there this week. He was announcing that Britain's basically going
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: to help Ukraine build these long-range missiles, the storm shadow missiles,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: what they call it. It's a joint French-UK missile. He
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: also spent some time with Ukrainian troops. We'll talk about
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: that in a second. But the Russians flipped out in response.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Dmitry Peskov said the UK was, quote, hell-bent on pouring
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: oil on a fire and plotting to prevent any kind
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: of peace process. And then last week, Moscow threatened the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: UK over Ukraine using British-made drones. So it's sort of
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: a very live issue that you're talking about. But we
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: enjoyed this clip of Prime Minister Burnham in Ukraine that
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: was going around his social media.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Let's watch.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: So here's my note to Prime Minister. He's playing a
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Smith song, I think. The thing about electric guitars is
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: they're awesome and they're badass, but they sound like tinny
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: shit when you don't plug them in. You sound like
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a total goober when you're just kind of throwing away.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: First of all, Andy Burnham does have good taste in music.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Do you ever see the documentary 24-Hour Party People about
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: the origins of the punk rock scene in Manchester?
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: No, should I watch it?
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he loves it. It's all those, you know, the
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Clash and the Smiths and everybody. The other thing I'm
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: going to say is that I'm looking at the Ukrainian
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: guy and I don't know. They must find different people
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: for the new photo op for each new British prime
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: minister because there have been like five or six since
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: the war began.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: That dude is part of a military and artistic unit
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: that plays on the front lines apparently. That's who Burnham
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: was with.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: So they must just do a profile of each of
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: these British prime ministers and they're like, you know, Andy
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: Burnham likes music. Let's get the music guy here.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Tony Blinken played Rocket in the Free World at a
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: club back in the day.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: It was a little weird.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Keir Starmer, I'm not sure what interest he had. But actually,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: the kind of thing that you do wonder about is
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: that each British prime minister in trying to reaffirm this
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: support for Ukraine, which I get and I support, but
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: it's like they need something new to announce. And the
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: timing should not be dictated by that. So, I mean,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: maybe this thing has been the works that surely must
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: have been for a while with the French to manufacture
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: this on a long-range rocket, but But boy, there's nobody
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: that is de-escalatory right now. There are times in the
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: past when the Europeans were trying to negotiate something. Obviously,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: Trump was. Right now, everybody's ratcheting it up. And I
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: worry about where that's going.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not great. Last thing on Ukraine. A couple
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: of weeks back, we talked about Zelensky's botched firing of
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: his very popular defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov. Last week, Fedorov
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: released a video Calling for new elections. So that kind of,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: I think, confirms what we all suspected, which is that
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Zelensky might view Fedorov as a possible political opponent down
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: the road.
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: And I don't see any elections happening during the war.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: It's unconstitutional while they're under martial law, but something to watch.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break, but Mark Carney
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: is not the only one who has the chance to
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: check Donald Trump in the near future, Ben. We all
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: do in November. We got the midterms coming up. We
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: can stop the Trump agenda in its tracks by winning
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: back a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. Senate
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: here too. If we win, that means no more bills
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: gutting healthcare. It means actual investigations into corruption and subpoena power.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: And it puts us on a path to regaining power
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: in 2028. Vote Save America has identified 12 of the
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: most beatable Republicans up for reelection in the House, aka
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: the crooked dozen. Sign up at votesaveamerica.com to learn more
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and get practical actions you can take between now and
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: election day. We all have to step up if we're
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: going to flip the House and win other races up
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  Speaker 1: and down the ballot. Go to votesaveamerica.com now to get involved.
• 44:43
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• 44:47
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  Speaker 1: slash world. All right, back to the US military, Ben.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: So Last Friday, the Pentagon fired three people from Stars
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: and Stripes, which is a military newspaper that publishes for
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: our armed forces. Stars and Stripes started during the Civil War.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: It was revived during World War I. Today, it has
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: an average of about 1.4 million readers a day. It
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: is partially funded by taxpayer money. The staff are technically
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: Pentagon employees, but traditionally, there's been editorial independence. But last Friday,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the publisher, Max Lederer, and the editor-in-chief, Eric Slavin, and
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Middle East correspondent, Laura Corti, were all told they were
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: fired for insubordination. So there's a There's like a short
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: version and a long version of this story. The short
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: story is that CBS Sunday Morning had done a piece
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: about Stars and Stripes being under pressure from the Pentagon,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: and Slavin and Corti were interviewed for it, and the
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: lines that caused a stir are these. I'm working for
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Stars and Stripes, not for the Pentagon, not for any administration,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: not for any policymaker. I'm here to cover the military community.
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: Editor-in-chief Eric Slavin may have to choose between his allegiance
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: to the First Amendment... and his obligation to obey Pentagon orders.
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: Do you have red lines in your mind?
• 49:09
  Speaker 7: Yes, I do.
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: Give me a red line.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Don't run a perfectly accurate story.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Run this instead.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: Here it is.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Written by the Pentagon. That would be a red line.
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: You have a sign on your desk. Pick your battles.
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: Which foxholes are you willing to die in?
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: We need to be able to provide independent news to
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: service members. If we can't do that, if we were
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: turned into something... Other than that, if we were public relations.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: That's the foxhole. Quite telling that that was considered insubordination.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: You think? Yeah. The tensions with the Pentagon press office
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: and Stars and Stripes have been bubbling up for a while.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Back in January, the Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said that
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the department was going to refocus Stars and Stripes content, quote,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: away from woke distractions. Like the war in Iran. Yeah, exactly.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: They also barred it from publishing comics or associated press
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: articles and said only active duty personnel. would write stories, presumably,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: because you can boss them around pretty good when you're
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: in the military. Then they fired the ombudsman. They installed
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: this deputy editor. And then that person, I think, kind
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: of staged a coup and fired these three. Ben, it's
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: not at all surprising that Pete Hexeth and the gang
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: want to kill off independent journalism or coverage of the Pentagon.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: This is a long, slow-moving process. We've been watching them
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: do for a while. I'm curious how big of a
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: deal you think it is in practice. for the service
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: members who actually rely on Stars and Stripes versus just
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: sort of the obviously terrible precedent it sets and the
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: principles involved.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: I think it's an enormous deal. And it made me think, Tommy,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know why I'm revealing that I'm a little
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: older than you. I'm like that edge of Gen X
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: and the millennial. But did you see Good Morning Vietnam?
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Do you remember? The whole subplot of that movie was
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: he's like a broadcaster for the U.S. military, Robin Williams.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: And then there are these two meatheads who sit there
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: and censor all the news he can read. And he
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: finally goes in there and he rips the actual news
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: off and he reads it aloud and that's what gets
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: him thrown off air.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Great movie.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: And I remember watching that scene and thinking like, ah,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: we fixed that problem. I mean that's where we are.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: If you haven't seen Good Morning Vietnam, actually you should.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: We're back to like the meathead censoring the news that
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: the service members and their families can get. Because this
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: is like Russian state media stuff. Because what they were
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: reporting on, notably they got rid of the editor-in-chief and
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: the publisher and the Middle East correspondent. She'd been reporting
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: on the Iran war. She'd just been reporting the news.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Nothing woke about it. Probably reporting the truth about what's
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: happening in the Iran war. And the military wants to
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: keep that information from reaching service members. And to be clear,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: like this is a huge publication in its reach to
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: service members but also to base communities, right? So– because
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: they cover– I mean you must have dealt with them, Tommy.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Like they cover things that are of issue to military
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: families like lengths of deployments.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: And– And far more depth.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: And like to me, like this is a huge warning
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: sign about the kind of state media that they want
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: to shape military coverage and– Again, Pete Hegseth I get.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Where's Dan Cain? I'm not trying to pick on the
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: guy today, but I think– I'm not to sound like
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: an Atlantic.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: I think that's the value of picking a random three-star
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: out of retirement.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: General Milley would– I think General Milley or Jim Mattis
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: would have gone in there and been like, I've read
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Stars and Stripes for decades. Like back the fuck off.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: You shouldn't do this. Yeah, I think the precedent here
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: is chilling. The message it sends is chilling. For those
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: who are listening and thinking, come on. These guys can
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: just log onto the internet and get news anywhere. I
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: was talking to a former service member today who said, no,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Stars and Stripes was the main source of non-TV news
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: for this person whenever he was deployed. Because when you
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: were somewhere, let's say you're on the front lines in Iraq,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: someone would upload the PDF of the daily Stars and
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Stripes to the SIPRnet, which is the secret level classified network.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: And while this guy said he had very little satellite bandwidth,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: like go on the internet and surf news websites, SIPRnet
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: was always available, thus Stars and Stripes was always available.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: So sometimes it was like the only thing you could read,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: like if you were sitting in a skiff or if
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: you were online.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: On an aircraft carrier or something.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or in a submarine, right?
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: So it is pretty significant. Let's end by talking about
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: the rise of the far-right and far-right politicians in Latin America.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: So in recent years, we've seen conservative politicians win elections
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: in Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Colombia. The New
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Yorker and New York Times ran recent pieces about how
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: these leaders seem to view El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: as their standard bearer and the person they sort of emulate.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Listeners to this show, again, we've been doing this show
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: for a while now, have heard us talk about Bukele
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: for a long time. He is very popular in El
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Salvador because he managed to drastically reduce gang violence. But
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: according to Amnesty International, he did so via, quote, Mass
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: arbitrary detentions, the suspension of guarantees and serious human rights
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: violations that could amount to crimes against humanity. He was
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: also believed to have cut deals with gangs to better
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: hide their violence, not really curb it. Then Bukele became
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: a MAGA darling because I'm sure folks remember he allowed
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Trump to send migrants to Sukkot, their horrific mega prisons
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: in El Salvador. Bukele's political success, though, has led a
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: bunch of right-wing leaders in Latin America to celebrate him,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: to emulate him, both in kind of style and substance.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: One upcoming race, we're going to watch this very closely,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: is the presidential election in Brazil. You've got President Lula
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: da Silva and then the son of Jair Bolsonaro, Flavio Bolsonaro,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: who are facing off in October. Bolsonaro toured Sakot, the
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: mega prisons in El Salvador. He's explicitly campaigned on the
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: Bukele model and promised five new maximum security prisons. Bolsonaro
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: also campaigned with MAGA darling Javier Millet, president of Argentina. So, Ben,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: I wonder what you make of these pieces. the influence
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: of Bukele and like, I guess, sort of how to
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: disaggregate his image from the kind of the Trump brand
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and the reality that like, you know, kind of right
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: wing strong man, strong man or wannabe strong man is
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: not like a new political identity. It's just sort of revived,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there are a couple of things I'd
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: highlight because, you know, the other thing we've talked about
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: him over the years, this is like kind of crypto obsession,
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Bitcoin obsession. He's, you know, buying the dip. And I
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: think the two things are the the Clearly, what Bukele
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: is tapping into is people being fed up with violence
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: and crime in large parts of Latin America, which is
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: a real problem. However, the problem with Bukele's approach, and
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: we've seen this in history in lots of places, including
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Latin America, is the high watermark for how people feel
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: about the kind of mass arrest, suspension of rights approach
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: is at the beginning of it. And it just gets,
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: you know, that over time, because what he's done is Sure,
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: the human rights violations started with the kind of mass
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: arbitrary detentions. But then it became like, oh, and I
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: don't really need a parliament that has any power. And, oh,
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: I have no term limits. And you get on this
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: slippery slope where then people look up in 10 years
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: and nobody likes the guy anymore, but he's just– they're
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: stuck with him. And nobody has any rights. And so
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: there's a real danger that this kind of short-term interest
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: in security– leads countries to kind of repeat the history
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: of allowing right-wing strongmen to kind of capture power and
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: consolidate it. What's different about Bekele, and this kind of
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: came up in some of these stories that we were
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: looking at this week, is, you know, he doesn't present
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: as like, you know, the traditional strongman is like, you know,
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: a military guy.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Right, he's not wearing a uniform.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: He's like a young guy. He like presents as kind
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: of cool, like he's kind of wearing backwards hats and,
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: you know, he looks like a, crypto bro and he's
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: very social media savvy. And so it's kind of like
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: having the like, you know, Zoran Mamdani touch at communications
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: combined with like the absolute strongman approach. It's an alarmingly
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: effective recipe that he's kind of cracked where his presentation
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: isn't like scary. It's kind of, it's tough, but it's
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: also meeting people somewhat where they are. Um, and he's
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: using social media. Um, and, and yeah, I, I, I
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: worry that, you know, it's a test for the center
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: and the left in Latin America. Like, Hey, you're gonna
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: have to take crime pretty seriously here. Like, cause if,
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: if you don't have an alternative solution, people are going
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: to turn to guys like this.
• 57:52
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: Look, uh, Pekele is a dictator. Like Sukkot is a
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: crime against humanity. It's like, it's just an evil institution. Um,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: On top of that, I mean he rewrote the constitution
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: in El Salvador to abolish term limits so he could
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: run again. He sent troops into parliament. This party removed
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: like all their magistrates on the Supreme Court and then
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: forced through this change to make all judges over 60
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: retire so they could pack the courts. He's done like
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of authoritarian things. I think people are willing
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: to look past that. Because I think we probably just
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: don't understand what it's like to live in a country
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: that had that level of gang violence or like war
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: zone-like levels of violence. I also think politically Bukele married
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: up a real skill set, which is like marketing, communication,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: social media savvy with an issue that is extremely visceral
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: and easy to demagogue, right? Like we all know social
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: media– we don't share the best, most fact-based Vox explainer.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: We share like the video that makes us mad or
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: scared or whatever it is. And I think like crime
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: stirs those emotions and Bukele gets that. And he very
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: effectively used social media tools to highlight those issues, what
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: he's doing about them. I mean, I can't remember which
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: story it was. One of them talks about how El
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Salvador opened this amazing new library, which is like beautiful
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: and really like an exciting thing and something to celebrate.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: But Bukele's quote about it was, and now it will
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: be open later because El Salvador is finally safe. Like
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: he makes his message a part of everything he does
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: in a way that's very disciplined.
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: But even like the library– like this is such right-wing
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: strongman stuff where it's like you drive down crime. You
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: throw all these people in prison. You consolidate power. Then
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: you kind of build some stuff that like– Monument to yourself.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: But then like 20 years from now, the corruption has
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: really like rotted the economy. People are still rotting in prison.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: Because even some of the more interesting interviews I saw
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: from some more thoughtful journalists, because I know Salvadoran oppositionists, right?
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: And so they'll say to me, this is horrible. But
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: then you read these interviews where people are like, hey,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: isn't your son in prison in these mass detentions? And
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: it's worth it. He'll get out, but maybe he won't
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: get out. Over time, I think people will start to see, oh,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: wait a second. These emergency powers are permanent. And by
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: the time people figure that out, It's too late because
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: there's full state capture. And I think that's the model
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: that Bukele is setting. Now, Millet hasn't gone that far.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: Others haven't been able to go as far as he
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: has because El Salvador is a smaller country too. But
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: it's a dangerous normalization or renormalization of really right-wing strongman
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: politics in Latin America. And we should say backed by
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: the US entirely. Usually, it's the US that's like, hey,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: maybe we should let some of these people out of prison.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Well, there's some people from the Biden administration quoted in
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: the story saying they wish they had pushed back harder
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: on some of Bukele's more authoritarian instincts, although others question
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: whether he would have cared.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, as someone who's usually pretty hard on
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: the Biden administration about certain things, I'm not sure that
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: they could have made much of a difference.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Finally, for the session with me and Ben, if you're
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: in a group chat with me, by now you've probably
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: gotten like a half dozen clips from the World Humanoid
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Robot Games in Beijing. I will not apologize for that.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I find them equal parts terrifying and hilarious. So I
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: asked Michael and our team to pull together a few
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: examples of some of his favorites that we've spotted on
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: Twitter today and just show them to Ben and I.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: We're going to watch them for the first time potentially.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Probably not because I'm on group chats with you.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: You guys were deep in these things. But we'll tell
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: you what we see and how you can enjoy them too.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: We've got backflips.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: We're doing kind of a gymnastics routine, cheerleader routine. And
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: one of them is now. On the ground. And this one,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: there's running this one into tires for no reason. Oh, kickboxing.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Now we're doing kickboxing and karate. We're just, they look blind. Oh,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: this poor guy's trying to put the bar over.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, no.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Shaking.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, he fell down. That's the best one.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: That's the best one. This one fell into a wall
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: and then snapped in half. This one's flying. Oh my God.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: What?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, this one did a flip by accident. What's really interesting, Ben,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: is apparently... Ooh. There's just tons of these poor robots
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: running into walls, just sprinting as fast as humanly possible
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: into walls and then wiping out.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: Just some dudes with a stretcher.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Random Chinese guys carrying their corpses off of the track.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: That's a great little selection of these clips. Ben, so
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: one of the clips has... The robots that I think
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: beat Usain Bolt's record run really funny. They kind of
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: run like this.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: And apparently... the AI trained itself to run that way
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: because it was trying to run like a person would
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: with arms going up and down, but it kept overheating
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: and like parts would burn up and stuff. So they
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: had to just fucking train itself. So it trained itself
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: to learn how to run really fast and stay stable.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: And that's our robot future. Yeah.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: I'll be dystopian in this regard too, in the same
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: way that remember, I don't know, five years ago, people
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: were like, hey, there are going to be these deep
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: fakes where people are going to look like people or
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: AI is going to look like people and you're not
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: going to tell the difference. We're watching the Robot Olympics
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: where it's these kind of– they look like kind of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: imperial stormtroopers.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're kind of funny.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Like I kind of feel like we're probably only two,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: three years away where they look exactly like people.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Terrifying.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: Like imagine watching those clips including some robot running in
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: a wall and exploding and it like looks exactly like
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: a person. I feel like unfortunately– Because humans feel compelled
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: to build things that nobody's asking for. I feel like
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: that's coming too.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: It is coming. All right. We are going to take
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: a quick break. But when you come back, you're going
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: to hear Ben's interview about what it was like to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: be an ER doctor volunteering in Gaza at the height
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: of the war. So stick around for that. Pod Save
• 1:03:57
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• 1:04:59
  Speaker 9: Vietris Specialty LLC. HIMS is not affiliated with or endorsed
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 9: by All right.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: American Doctor is a new documentary film that provides a
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: really gut-wrenching and important look at the experiences of three
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: American physicians who went to Gaza to work in hospitals
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: during the genocide and then documents their fight to hold
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: American politicians accountable. for the weapons, the violence that our
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: tax dollars are funding. Before we get to our guest,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: we're going to take a look at the trailer for
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: American Doctor.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 10: Three surgeons all working on one little girl for, what,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 10: two and a half hours? And she's probably going to
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 10: lose her right leg, left leg, and her left arm.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: And she's starting to wake up. Let's get her warm.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: As a Jewish physician, I knew nothing about Gaza. Like
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: most Americans, I thought everybody out here were nothing but
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: terrorists because that's what I was told. I'm not Israeli.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not Palestinian. I'm not Christian. I'm not Muslim. I'm
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: not Jewish. I don't really have any connection to it.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 10: But as an American, I just don't want my government
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 10: involved in crimes.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I'm a Palestinian. I'm not a spokesperson. I'm a human being.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: I'm a U.S.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: Doctor who wants to see babies like my babies not
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: be killed anymore.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: What surprised me most was how the carnage was focused
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: on journalists, health care workers, and children.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Where was that? That bomb hit the building.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: There was a 15-year-old kid ready for discharge that was incinerated.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 10: And if I had gone down and been changing that
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 10: kid's dressing, there would have been three bodies and I
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 10: would have been one of them.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: So that gives you a glimpse into a movie that
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: I think everybody needs to watch. It opened in Los
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: Angeles last Friday. It's in theaters in 90 other cities.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: So please look for American Doctor in your community. Joining
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: me today, we have a repeat visitor, Dr. Feroz Sidwa,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: who's one of the people profiled in the film, who
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: was on Patsy of the World last year, as well
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: as the film's director, Posey Tang, who's with us, who was,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: I think, following Feroz with a camera the last time
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: you were here. Thanks so much for being here.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 8: Thank you for having us.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: Well, Paul, let me just start with the question of
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: how did you decide to make this film and And
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: how did you make it in the difficult circumstance of
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: being able to film in Gaza and then, of course,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: back here in the United States?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 8: So I'll say the starting point was a year into
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 8: the genocide. It just felt like nothing was shifting in
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 8: the United States. And as I was a journalist long
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 8: before I became a documentary filmmaker, so I've worked in
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 8: various newsrooms. And it was extremely difficult and painful to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 8: see former colleagues of mine at Al Jazeera. I used
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 8: to be a documentary commissioner at Al Jazeera English. former colleagues,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 8: getting targeted and executed. It did something to me. And
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 8: at that time, I was a studio executive for a studio,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 8: and I thought to myself, like, look, I don't want
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 8: to do this job anymore. But what I did not know,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 8: I just knew that if I'm going to make a film,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 8: I'm going to have to quit my job, and I'm
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 8: going to have to find the story. And so that
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 8: sort of started me off, and then.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 8: I met Dr. Mark Perlmutter. I reached out to him
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 8: because I saw a clip of him saying like very
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 8: un-doctorally things as he does in the film. And then
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 8: he introduced me to Dr. Pharoah Sidwa and Dr. Thayer Ahmad.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 8: And that's when I thought, well, as a filmmaker, you're
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 8: really lucky if you meet one participant who is so
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 8: engaging that you can't stop watching and you want to
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 8: learn from them. When you meet three who couldn't be
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 8: more different, that is a true privilege. And as anybody,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 8: I'm sure, in media, you feel that. You're like, there's
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 8: something here. There's something I can learn here. And I'll
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 8: be honest with you, Ben. I live in New York.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 8: And so I have worked with people. I still work
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 8: with people from different walks of life, different religious backgrounds,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 8: different ethnic backgrounds, different nationalities. And I had lost the
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 8: language to be able to navigate and to talk to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 8: people effectively and also to speak from my heart. And
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 8: so meeting the three doctors, it gave me a way
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 8: to move in the world. And I'm grateful for that
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 8: as to how we did it. Now, I will say
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 8: this as a filmmaker and We are only the sum
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 8: of our parts. And this team, the American Doctor team,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 8: spans eight different countries. And at the heart of our
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 8: entire team are our Gazan colleagues, Ibrahim Al-Otla, our cinematographer,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 8: and Mohamed Sawaf, our co-producer. And we did it with
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 8: them and team members spread out of eight countries.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: You set the tone right away. You kind of dropped
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: into this... conversation that you're having with Dr. Mark about
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: whether to show images of dead children. And he very
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: kind of almost stridently argues like you don't pixelate this,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: don't blur it, people need to see what happened. And
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: so we get a brief glimpse of something that is
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: absolutely horrifying thing imaginable for anybody, but certainly a parent
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: like me, which is an image of dead children. How
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: did you wrestle with the need to bear witness and
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: to bring the experience of these three doctors and the
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: experience of people in Gaza to people with, you know,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: obviously the harrowing subject matter that you are at times
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: interacting with?
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 8: You know, that scene that you're talking about, that's the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 8: second day that I'm filming with Mark in his home.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 8: And he was very, very upset with me because I
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 8: wasn't sure, Ben. You know, as a nonfiction storyteller, as
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 8: a former journalist, it's something that we grapple with. How
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 8: much do we show? You show too much, it's gratuitous.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 8: You know, if people see it in a theater, they're
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 8: going to walk out. If they watch it on a
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 8: streaming platform, they're going to turn it off. Is that effective?
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: You show too little.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 8: It's a huge disrespect to those who have passed and
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 8: those who have survived those who have passed. And it's
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 8: a disservice. So it's such a delicate balance, which until today, like,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 8: I still struggle with. But at the end of the day, like,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 8: what was my purpose doing there? And Mark was upset
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 8: with me because he was thinking, you are just like
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 8: the rest of them. And so as a filmmaker, as
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 8: a director, when you feel this kind of discomfort that
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 8: just doesn't sit well, that's when you have to lean
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 8: into it. And so that set the tone for what
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 8: American Doctor was going to be.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: One of the things that's so powerful about the film,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: which we should say, like it encompasses footage in Gaza,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: but it also encompasses, you know, the three doctors like
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: in their lives back home. And then ultimately, and we'll
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: get to the activism piece of it, you know, when
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: you're back here and you're doing media and you're meeting
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: with politicians. But I wanted to ask you, it's interesting.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: Peculiar thing to be a subject of a documentary and
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: in any circumstance. In this case, you– I mean when
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: you're in Gaza, you are interacting with a tremendous amount
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: of trauma. But you're doing your job as a doctor.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: But I can't imagine that you're even able to process
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: because you're just working. You're just trying to save any
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: life you can. What is it like for you to
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: watch this footage with the slight remove of time? And
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: does it take you back there? Like, what is the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: experience like, not just having been a subject, but now
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: having seen this finished product, but to particularly see those
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: images of when you were in Gaza?
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, when I was in Gaza, I don't
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 10: really remember being filmed. Like, I knew Ibrahim was there
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 10: and I talked to him, obviously, but The camera kind
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 10: of disappeared just because everything was in total chaos. There
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 10: was a lot going on. So when I watch it
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 10: back now, it's funny. I've seen the movie like four
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 10: or five times because we go to screenings and Q
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 10: & As and things. And I didn't– the first several
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 10: times I watched it, I didn't think that it was–
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 10: I didn't understand why people thought it was difficult to
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 10: watch sometimes. Like some people have a harder time watching it.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 10: But then I watched it with a friend of mine
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 10: and she actually grabbed my hand during some of the
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 10: scenes and like, you know, it was just because I–
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 10: some of the stuff– you know, I'm a trauma surgeon
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 10: so I'm used to seeing people that are hurt. I'm
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 10: used to– and I've been in Gaza so I'm used
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 10: to hearing explosions. I'm used to feeling explosions. But most
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 10: people aren't. And I think, you know, it kind of
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 10: goes back to what Mark says at the top of
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 10: the film where– and then like what Poe was saying,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 10: if you– there's a balance between showing too much and
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 10: not making it real, you know? And I think this
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 10: movie does a good balance of that. It makes, I
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 10: think it shows people a little bit of what we
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 10: saw in Gaza, not so much that you can't watch,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 10: but enough that you can understand why we were so
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 10: affected by it and then why we had to try
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 10: and do something about it when we came back.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 8: But, you know, Ben, as far as movies about and
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 8: documentaries about war and conflict and genocides, This one, in
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 8: terms of the graphic imagery, we scaled back.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people should know this is not– you scale way back.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: And you know what?
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 8: I think this is my theory on why it's challenging
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 8: and why people are like, oh, my God, it's the guilt.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: They don't want to see it. I mean, you know,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: I remember for the last time you were here, the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: question that I kind of felt you– because you're an
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: unflappable guy. The question where I could kind of feel
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: you– you know, absorbing it a bit extra was when
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: I was like, how did it feel to be over
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: there and know that your tax dollars are paying for
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: the weapons, which is something you obviously wrestle with in
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: the film. That's the discomfort more than just the, we've,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: we have seen images of war. We've seen documentaries about war. And, and,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: and first I want to ask, ask you like the,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: the interesting, it's very interesting to watch you transition into
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: this kind of more activist role. The film kind of
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: shows the, You're starting new media. You're starting to bring
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: attention on it. You're starting to try to get politicians involved.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: I was struck when I met you about how much
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: you are first and foremost a doctor. Your identity is that.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: But you've clearly been on a journey here where you
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: want people to see this. You want changes made in policy.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: Tell us a bit about the journey we see in
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: the film of you taking on a bit more of
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: a role with the other doctors of being maybe not
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: spokespeople but activists or at least people trying to you know,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: get attention on this.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 8: Yeah, 100%.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 10: So, you know, and yeah, just to be clear, it's
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 10: hardly like I'm not even the person at the forefront
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 10: of those efforts. It really Thayer is.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 10: But the, you know, physicians are, especially somebody who works
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 10: in an emergency setting like I do, like Thayer is
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 10: an emergency room doctor. I'm a trauma surgeon. I regularly
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 10: testify at drunk driving trials, at murder trials, at assault
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 10: trials here in the States because that's part of my job.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 10: You know, it's very common for doctors to witness the
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 10: aftermath of crimes while they're providing medical care to people.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 10: for Thayer as an emergency room doctor, if he sees
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 10: suspected child abuse, suspected spousal abuse, any of those things
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 10: are all reportable events, we call them. And we're mandatory reporters.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 10: In the setting of the United States, like a reasonably
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 10: normal place, it's obvious who you're supposed to report that to,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 10: the police or the social workers or whoever it is.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 10: In the context of Gaza, when I'm the criminal, who
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 10: am I supposed to report it to? It's kind of
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 10: a weird situation to be put.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: In as a physician.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: Who do you report a genocide to?
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 10: And, you know, an obvious place to start seems to
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 10: be the people carrying it out. I'm one of them.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: You're one of them.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 10: Poe's one of them. We're all paying for this, but
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 10: obviously not by choice. So, you know, we do, you know,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 10: all the healthcare workers who've been to Gaza, we all
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 10: communicate with each other a lot. And we've started, we've
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 10: created a group called Peace Med, and we're just trying
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 10: to work on these issues at the level of the
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 10: US government, because that's where, you know, the Israeli military
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 10: can't do any of the things that it's doing without
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 10: the United States. I mean, it would stop on its tracks.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 10: So yeah, everybody knows that it's hardly a secret. So the,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 10: you know, the problem is actually here. And it's something
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 10: that we can do something about. And since there isn't
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 10: a court or an authority that we can go to,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 10: we just have to go to Congress. And like you said,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 10: you know, I think you said it, it's a it's
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 10: a political question. In the end, that's, These are political–
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 10: it is a political decision. Whoever is signing off on
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 10: that arms transfer every single day, that's a political choice.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 10: As soon as he gets– he or she gets the word, hey,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 10: stop signing off on those arms transfers, they will just stop.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 10: That's it and then they will stop– these arms aren't
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 10: rolling downhill. We're choosing to send them over there. It's
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 10: not like the laws of the universe are just mandating it.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 10: That was how we approached it. It was just saying, look,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 10: we don't know who to talk to, so we're going
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 10: to go talk to conquerors.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, Poe, I was struck by, you know,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: maybe it's because of my own, you know, history in
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: both politics and media. But some of the strangely more
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable scenes, obviously the most uncomfortable of what's happening in Gaza,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: but back in the United States are when we see
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: like the media, right? Because the doctors are starting to
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: go on cable news. And we see sometimes the very conventional, well,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: isn't Hamas going to threaten you if you are a
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: doctor there?
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 7: And and.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: And you could kind of feel the the failure of
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: the American media the traditional American media to to literally
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: just tell people what's happening and actually even worse you
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: see the kind of laundering of narratives about everything's Hamas's
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: fault you have a background in media like you've been
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: at ABC News, right, and New York Times and other places.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: How do you think about the role of the American
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: media in either reporting or not reporting or obscuring this genocide?
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: And why did you make this decision to kind of
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: step outside of more conventional media platforms to try to
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: self-finance or raise money for this kind of project?
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 8: You know, because I felt like it's not for lack
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 8: of facts that people are either not engaging or they
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 8: don't know. And, you know, when it came to established media,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 8: I mean, it cut real deep. You know, it cut
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 8: real deep. I've held all these different roles. I was
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 8: a journalist long before I became a documentary filmmaker. And
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 8: to live in New York, to see former colleagues with journalists,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 8: you know, who were not speaking up when it came
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 8: to Gazan journalists, when, you know, they do speak up
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 8: when journalists are taken in Russia, in Ukraine, in different
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 8: parts of the world. What was going on? And so
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 8: a lot of the film is critiquing the media. And
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 8: this is from my years of being in newsrooms. But,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 8: you know, I had to hold myself back when filming.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 8: Because in the early days, I could see Feroz, that,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 8: and Mark just getting pummeled and pummeled. And the film
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 8: is purely verite. So you're just in their world. So
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 8: I'm holding back. I'm just watching.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: You want to jump in and be like, how can
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: you ask them these questions?
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 8: I mean, there was a lot of rage. I had
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 8: a lot of rage. This is terrible. How could you
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 8: do this to doctors who just went to Gaza, telling
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 8: you what they saw, and established media is saying, Oh,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 8: we can't verify that. Obviously, you can't verify that. You're
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 8: not in there. And to pummel these doctors in such
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 8: a way. But I thought to myself, let the tape play.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 8: Let's see where this is going to end up. But
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 8: what was also incredible is over time, as I was
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 8: filming the three doctors, I saw them got better in
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 8: how they were dealing with it. And so, you know,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 8: my hope is always with what you see in the
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 8: world of these doctors, that some lessons can be gleaned here,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 8: you know, for the general public and how They look
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 8: at media, but also for journalists and how they should be.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 8: And I've had conversations with so many journalists across the
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 8: board in all the newsrooms that I've worked with. This
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 8: is incredible.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: You are brave.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 8: And I'm like, you know what? No, I'm not.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: I'm doing the job that we all would do if
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: this was somewhere else, you know.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 8: And I'd say, you know what? I'm just trying. And
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 8: you know who's brave? The Gazan journalists are brave. The
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 8: doctors who went there to work and serve alongside them,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 8: that's brave. We just have to do our best and
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 8: push from within. And with Thayer, what I learned from him,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 8: there's a scene in DC and all the doctors have
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 8: come together to DC and they're about to descend on
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 8: Capitol Hill. And Thayer is like leading. He's telling the
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 8: other doctors and he's telling them, don't overestimate what people know.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 8: Tell them a story, make it real. And that is
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 8: how we wanted to make American Doctor.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say Thayer is such a good activist
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: that he occasionally was like popping up in my inbox, like,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: who can I meet in Congress? You know, like, he's
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: just relentless, you know.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 8: But on that, you know, like, because even I never
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 8: saw him as an activist. I don't, even that term, like,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: I still cringe with it when it's mentioned because it's
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 8: a former journalist because it somehow diminishes.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: No, yeah. It's more just like, I need to go
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: report this. It's your point. Like, I saw a crime.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: I had to report it to the people who were responsible.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 8: What I really learned loved and respected, um, in, in
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 8: the way that there was and is, uh, is that it,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 8: what drew me to him was he's so reluctant. He
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 8: never wanted this role. And he, in fact, many times
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 8: in the, in the film and, you know, um, as, uh,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 8: for those of us, you know, who actually it's already
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 8: out there, but he doesn't get to go into Gaza. He,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 8: he ran away. He didn't, he was so ashamed. He
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 8: didn't want to be part of the film. He just
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 8: felt like, you know, what, what purpose can I serve? And, um,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 8: and I'm glad he let me stick with him.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: Well, some of the most powerful, I told you before,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's so powerful. He's got these two beautiful daughters,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: you know, and to juxtapose that with the kids in Gaza,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: it just reminds you they're all kids. They're all the same.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: And to that, and for us, I want to ask you, like,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: you know, we talked about your experience last time you
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: were here. I'm curious, what is your sense, if you
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: talk to former colleagues or people you know in Gaza,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: what is your sense of the healthcare infrastructure such as
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: it is now, the capacity to provide care to people.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: There's still over a thousand Palestinians have been killed in
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: Gaza since the so-called ceasefire. Do you talk to people?
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: Are you able to follow up with both how things
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: are going and also like do you ever hear about
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: people you treated? Do you get any report on how
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: people are?
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 10: Uh, but when I, right after I left, yeah, that,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 10: you know, the last time I was there was April
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 10: of 2025. I tried to go back in November, but
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 10: I was blocked from entering. Um, but yeah, no, I do.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 10: I keep in touch with a lot of, uh, a
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 10: lot of physicians from, uh, from Gaza. Uh, you know,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 10: one of them, uh, he, I mentioned him in the
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 10: movie too. He's an anesthesiologist named Nazar. You know, he
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 10: just sent me a photo of him. Like he's with
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 10: his family. He's just, they're in this tent encampment and,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 10: you know, it's not, um, These aren't like– these aren't
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 10: manufactured tents. These are some sticks of wood and some
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 10: tarping that somebody pulled off of this or that NGO
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 10: tent that was blown up or they pulled out a
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 10: sheet from someone's blown up home or something. It's just
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 10: a constructed apparatus that.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: They're living in.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 10: They're under the 100-degree Gaussian heat. They have no access
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 10: to drinkable water, no piped water. They have to go
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 10: pick it up and bring it back to themselves. If
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 10: they can keep it at all. They have no access
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 10: to a toilet. They have no access to a shower.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 10: They can't bathe. They can't clean their clothes. Gaza's solid
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 10: and liquid waste facilities have been completely destroyed or off-lined.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 10: So there's no way to dispose of garbage. There's no
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 10: way to dispose of sewage. It's such a laboratory for
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 10: death that the hospital is just overwhelmed now. Children are
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 10: just constantly sick. You know, all of these things like
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 10: a sewage system, clean water, clean food, healthy food, all
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 10: of these things are meant to keep children alive until
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 10: they get to the age of five. That's when they're
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 10: kind of more robust and they can maybe survive a
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 10: little bit of the challenges of the world. That's all
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 10: been taken away in Gaza, you know. And then on
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 10: top of that, the medical system has just been destroyed.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 10: I mean it effectively doesn't function anymore. Doctors go to work.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 10: They do absolutely the best they can. They do way–
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 10: not just doctors. Doctors, nurses, everybody that's there. They do
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 10: way more than you would expect with what they have.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 10: But right– the large majority of Goss' hospital capacity has
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 10: been destroyed, physically destroyed. The little bit that remains is
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 10: mostly at Nosser Medical Complex and Oxo Martyrs Hospital and
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 10: Darrell Ball. Those are the two hospitals right in the middle.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 10: That's about 300 or 350 hospital beds total for 2
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 10: million of the sickest people in the world. It's just
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 10: completely– there's no way this is going to work. But
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 10: our colleagues, they get up and they go to work
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 10: every day. One of the things that they actually tell
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 10: us is that they're kind of– afraid that if they
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 10: don't– if the community– every community lionizes and respects healthcare workers.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 10: It's just universal. These doctors and nurses, they're kind of
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 10: afraid that if they aren't seen going into work every day,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 10: people will lose more hope than they already have. So
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 10: they just keep putting one foot in front of the other,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 10: you know?
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: And people– I mean you said you couldn't get in.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: I mean who is left providing this healthcare? I mean
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: obviously there are Gazan doctors but There's also been doctors
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: on boarders and doctors– like you described your journey there.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 5: I mean.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: How hard is it for someone to get in who
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: wants to help?
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 10: It's entirely arbitrary. So like in my case, it's kind
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 10: of ridiculous. I was supposed to enter Gaza in mid-November
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 10: of last year. Five hours before I'm going to enter,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 10: I'm informed that I will not be allowed to enter.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 10: So I'm already in Amman, Jordan, literally getting ready to
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 10: go down to the hotel lobby to get on the
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 10: bus to go. I kept trying to appeal the decision.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 10: The Israelis were steadfast. They said, no, you're not going.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 10: But I also– I had lectures scheduled in Israel after
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 10: I was scheduled to come out of Gaza. So I said, well,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 10: I don't want to abandon my friends there. Some of
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 10: them are Palestinians who live in Israel. Some are Jewish Israelis.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 10: They're mostly professors at Ben-Gurion and Tel Aviv University. I
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 10: didn't want to abandon them.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: They want you to tell your story.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 10: The plan was to go into Gaza for three weeks,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 10: come out to Jordan, then go into Israel and give
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 10: these talks. And these talks were like 20 people. It's
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 10: not a big deal. They're not a big thing. The
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 10: universities wouldn't even give them a space. We had to
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 10: do it guerrilla style. But I was like, they blocked
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 10: me from entering Gaza. Obviously, they're going to block me
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 10: from entering Israel too. But I was like, let me try.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 10: I want to tell these people that I tried. So
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 10: I flew to Athens, flew to Tel Aviv. And no,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 10: they just said, why are you here? I said, for
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 10: this reason. You've been in Gaza? Yes, I've been in
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 10: Gaza twice. And you just blocked me from entering. Why
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 10: did we block you?
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 10: You'd have to ask the Shin Bet why I was blocked.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 10: They're the ones that did it. and then they just
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 10: gave me my password. It was actually– that was the
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 10: third time I've entered Israel through Ben-Gurion Airport and it
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 10: was the easiest entry I've ever had. So obviously there
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 10: was no security concern with letting me– you know, that–
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 10: blocking of healthcare workers and about half of international healthcare
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 10: workers who try to go to Gaza are blocked from entering.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 10: The blocking, it's completely and totally arbitrary. It has nothing
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 10: to do with security. It's completely ridiculous. And it's just
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 10: a way of separating Gaza from the rest of the world.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 10: Like there in the movie– maybe I shouldn't do spoilers.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: Sorry.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 10: In the movie, it becomes apparent that Thayer being Palestinian
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 10: is what is– it's Israel's excuse for not letting him go.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: And from his family.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: And his family. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 10: That's why he's not allowed to enter Gaza is because
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 10: he's Palestinian. That's like– that should be the other way around.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 10: That's why he's entitled to enter Gaza. And not only
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 10: is his family Palestinian, his family is from the Gaza Strip.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 10: That's where they actually grew up and actually are based.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 10: And– But it's not just stopping Palestinians from helping Palestinians.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 10: It's actually stopping plenty of other people in the world
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 10: from doing it. It's a way of severing Gaza from
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 10: the world.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 8: And for me, that was the heart of why I
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 8: wanted to make the film. Like, who gets to say what?
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 8: Who gets to do what? Who gets to go where?
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 8: You know, there's a privilege in who you are and
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 8: the identities that one carries. And to be able to
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 8: navigate that, you know, with colleagues there couldn't be more different.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 8: And I wanted to learn that for myself as a woman,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 8: as a woman of color, as somebody from a minoritized
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 8: religious community. You know, I am very perceptive to that.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 8: And so I just wanted to be in Thayer's world,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 8: in Marksville, in Feroz's world. And let's see, everybody has different,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 8: they can see different challenges. They can see different opportunities.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 8: They can walk into different spaces. And together they can
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 8: do something really, really, really hard. even though they are
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 8: so different and they're not a monolith. So those were
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 8: the lessons that I wanted to learn as a filmmaker
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 8: and just as somebody living in the United States.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: Well, Poe, I wanted to ask you, the last thing
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you is that as we speak,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: international journalists are still not allowed into Gaza. They had
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: not been allowed in since October 7th. It's pretty extraordinary.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: As you said, some of the same journalists would be
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: raising hell if that was the case somewhere else or
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: notably silent about this. I was struck in watching the
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: film and one reason why I should watch it is
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: I've seen so little, you know, the social media and
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: a very small number now of documentaries are the kind
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: of the only glimpse you get behind the curtain of
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: what's happening there. What do you hope people take away
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: from this? What do you hope that the film achieves
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: in kind of documenting what's happening and potentially galvanizing people?
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: And is this, you know, As someone who's had a
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: career in journalism, do you feel like– one of the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: reasons public opinion has shifted on Gaza is because people
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: are actually turning to other sources of information because they
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: know they're not getting the truth from– or at least
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: the full truth from more traditional media platforms.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 4: I mean.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: Do you think this is going to hopefully crack open
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: the door to more storytelling or how do you think
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: about this film as an object in the world in
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: our current media environment?
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 8: The door is already open and there's no turning back.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 8: You know, the cracks were there long before. And now
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 8: we're seeing, we're seeing, you can't, how are you going
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 8: to stop? There's no way any entity or even the
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 8: government can stop all these images being broadcasted or put
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 8: on social media coming out of Gaza. And yes, foreign journalists,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 8: American journalists, Western journalists can't go in, but the Gazan
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 8: journalists continue to do their job and they continue to
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 8: do it even at the expense of their own demise,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 8: as they have to document it. And so I think
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 8: so much of it in this film, what I really,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 8: really wanted to do, because it's not for lack of
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 8: like the carnage that you see on social media. I
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 8: think it's there. If you're following, it's there. And if
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 8: you want to look for it, it's there. But it
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 8: was more of like, I wanted people to see they're
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 8: no different than we were. And one of the things
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 8: that dawned on me really early on, because in my
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 8: last job, I was an executive for a studio and
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 8: we watch how people watch things. It was not lost
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 8: on me that medical dramas do very well. I'm a
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 8: big fan of The Pit. I was a big fan
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 8: of ER, big fan of Grey's Anatomy, love House MD.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 8: So it was, how can we make The Pit? We
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 8: understand the format of how that storytelling is. How can
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 8: we make The Pit? Differences is set in Gaza and
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 8: it's real. And that's how we're going to bring what's
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 8: happening in Gaza back into the American psyche in the
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 8: format that people understand. You know, so that was always
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 8: like the thought. And in terms of what people will
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 8: get out of it and my hopes, I mean, this
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 8: is what I've seen people have gotten out of it
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 8: and which has been very encouraging. When we premiered at Sundance,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 8: first of all, I didn't think that would happen, but
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 8: it happened.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: It might not have happened a couple of years ago.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 8: It may not have happened a couple of years ago, but,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 8: you know, institutions are made out of people and, you know,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 8: but in this case, they really pushed for us. They
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 8: really pushed for the film. And for that, I'm forever grateful.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 8: But Sundance is a specific kind of audience. It's critics.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 8: It's cinephiles. It's Hollywood, right? The true test. The true
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 8: test was when it went from Sundance to Missouri, to Columbia, Missouri,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 8: to another festival called True Falls. It's still by far
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 8: our largest audience yet. 1,200 people.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 8: And what I didn't realize until I got there, that
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 8: True Falls that year, this year, was sponsored by a
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 8: medical university. So 1,200, full. I don't think people knew
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 8: what they were coming in for. They came to see
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 8: the film because it's called American Doctor. And that was
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 8: always my hope, you know. Let's see whether we can
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 8: Trojan horse this in.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 8: And still, he's laughing. And still today, like, that was
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 8: probably one of the most wild and electric audiences because
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 8: people didn't know. So when the film ended, people, I mean,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 8: they stood, they gave a standing ovation.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 8: But they started shouting, what can we do? We didn't know,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 8: what can we do? And that's when I realized we
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 8: have something. So in our experience now, having had the
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 8: film now, you know, on the road, internationally, domestically, across
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 8: the country, whatever reason people are coming in for, whether
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 8: they're coming in because they're from the Palestinian community, And
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 8: they're coming to see Fa'er and to see the diaspora
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 8: fighting really hard for Palestinians in Gaza. Or they're coming
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 8: in for Feroz, you know, because Feroz is Feroz. Or
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 8: they're coming in for Mark because he's a Jewish American.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, which is an interesting experience to inhabit.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 8: Whatever reason they're coming in, they all leave the same.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 8: They all leave wanting to do something. And that is
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 8: enough for me.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 10: There's this weird thing happened when I was walking out
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 10: of one of the screenings where And there was an
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 10: older woman who was walking with probably a friend of
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 10: hers and they were talking about the movie after seeing it.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 10: And she was chiding herself for this. And I just
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 10: heard it and I couldn't believe it. But she said,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 10: I'm embarrassed, but I've never thought of Palestinians as having families.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 10: And a big part of this movie is Thayer's family.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 10: Like you mentioned, his sweet daughter, his wife. They're such
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 10: a sweet family. They're such a just quintessentially normal family.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 10: What else would they be? Uh, but you know, and she,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 10: like this woman was chiding herself for that. She, but this,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 10: this kind of, you know, you can't, you can't explain
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 10: to someone on CNN that Palestinians have families.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: You, that it's not a thing. Like they have to
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: see it.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 10: And they have to say, Oh my God, I can't
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 10: believe I hadn't conceived of these people as people before.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 10: You know, I think the film does a really, really
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 10: good job. Not just if they are in his family,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 10: but the, the, the, the healthcare workers in Gaza, you know,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 10: you hear their stories. Um, You see that like these
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 10: people have gone through the same loss as everyone else
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 10: in this territory, this besieged open-air prison that's just been
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 10: bombarded to hell. And they still are going to work.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 10: They're still trying to take care of their own families.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 10: I think people, when they leave, have a different impression
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 10: of the world than when they go in.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 8: I remember having these early conversations with Thayer. Like his
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 8: entire community is under siege, right, in many ways. And
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 8: so for him to open up his home and to
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 8: let me film with his children, that's a lot.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 8: As a journalist, former journalist, I knew that. As a filmmaker,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 8: where the film I'm making is purely observational, that means
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 8: we're not doing sit-down interviews. I'm going to have to
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 8: make it real. For him to allow me to film
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 8: his family, that's a huge privilege. And I remember telling
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 8: him in the early days, I promise you, I will
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 8: try my best not to waste this.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 8: And so that's so much of it. You know, it's
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 8: been such a huge privilege, even working with our Gazan colleagues.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 8: I said, I promise we will not waste your efforts.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 8: Then they also made me promise. Then make sure you
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 8: bring this film back to the United States. Bring it
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 8: to the American people. You know, and I asked them, like, film,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 8: you know, I said to Ibrahim and Muhammad, like, the
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 8: American doctors, they're going, they're stepping into this world, your world.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 8: And it's a portal that they're stepping into. And so
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 8: I want, please film the interactions that they have with Dr.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 4: Ahim, Dr.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 8: Abed, Samakude, all the doctors and healthcare workers in the film,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 8: because we don't know if we're going to get to
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 8: see them again. Film Nasser like it is the last time.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 8: But it also was for me trying to tell them like,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 8: this is the record. This is the record that we
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 8: are going to make. And whatever happens, we tried our best. Yeah.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: Well, and to take your point about the audience in Missouri,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, we have to remind ourselves, I mean, you're
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: probably the world audience presumably in following this, but a
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: lot of Americans, like, you know, they, maybe they only
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: hear the version that is sanitized or, you know, maybe
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: just it's another conflict. And I think we cannot underestimate,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: you know, how it's to me, it's actually kind of
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: remarkable public opinion shift as much as it has without,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: you know, the media coverage you'd want, um, of this.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: So hopefully this kind of opens up a new space.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: The last thing I'll give you the last word for Rose.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: I'm just kind of curious, like how, how is this
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: whole process of, of, of both going to Gaza, being
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: a part of this film, doing things you probably didn't
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: anticipate like media. Um, how has this kind of changed
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: your life?
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: In the film?
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 10: I say something like, uh, you know, the, the, The
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 10: reason I do this work is because I want to
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 10: see my own country reach its moral potential and I
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 10: want to reach my moral potential. I don't want to
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 10: continue to be forced to subsidize the mass murder of children.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 10: I don't think you want that either. I don't think
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 10: the vast majority of Americans want that. Nevertheless, we are
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 10: being forced to by two administrations in a row. It's
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 10: pretty shocking. But people are aware that they– when you
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 10: point out to them, number one, what's going on and
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 10: number two, that we're responsible for it and that we
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 10: have the ability to stop it at any time, they're
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 10: just pretty genuinely horrified. I think that kind of thing
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 10: can go a long way towards making the United States
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 10: a place that actually lives up to its ideals, the
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 10: ideals that are just of basic humanity, honestly. They're not
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 10: uniquely American. So if that's– if I get to do that,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 10: that's a privilege and I'm blessed for it.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I want to thank you both, Feroz, for all
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: that you've done, including in Gaza. Poe, I think you
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: kept your promise. It's an incredibly powerful film. Everybody should
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: check out American Doctor. It's across the country in theaters.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: Hopefully it will have a life in theaters. It will
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: then have a life in other places where you can
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: watch it. So thanks so much for making the film
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: and for being here today.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 8: Thank you for having us.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: Thanks again to Feroz and Poe for joining the show,
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: and we will talk to you guys next week. Pod
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our show
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: with the Writers Guild of America East.