Latest / Pod Save the World / Trump’s Unrequited Love for Kim Jong Un

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Trump’s Unrequited Love for Kim Jong Un · Pod Save the World

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• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to PATSEO the World.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Vietor.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Ben. Before we came in here, I had just read
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: this piece in The Atlantic's called the Wrong Kind of American.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: It's the headline is by a woman named Julia Curlesh.
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  Speaker 2: The former CIA officer rose to the rank of PDB briefer,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: briefed Vice President Mike Pence for a year, worked for
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: the Trump administration, not because of sharing their politics, but
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: because she's a patriot, and then was driven out because
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: I think Laura Lumer figured out that she was a
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: transfer her Yeah, and got lumored. And it is enraging.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, people should read it.
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  Speaker 2: I really good.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: She has a tremendous reputation.
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  Speaker 3: She served in the Biden administration too, But you know,
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: a political civil servant served in multiple administrations. I will say,
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: in addition to being utterly reprehensible to target someone because
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: of their identity like this, do we think that the
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: woke national security apparatus filled with the likes of Pete
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: hegg Seth is performing better than she would have?
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: No?
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Absolutely seems like maybe diversity is good, ye, because you
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: get smarter people than Yes, fucking Pete hegg Sath.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, real meritocracy over there, Pete Hegsath, who's.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Like a DEI hired doing a bang up job.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Running the Iran War. I mean, things are going so
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: badly and it's all sort of stuck in the same
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: place that we don't even have a big Iran section
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  Speaker 2: for you today, in part because Pete is an idiot.
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  Speaker 2: But no, it's an a It's it's such an enraging piece.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, there's all these great people. There's just one
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: story of a great person driven out of the US
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: government because of politics.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: And I'm sure there's hundreds or thousands of these. It
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: also is reminder that it's easy to, like, you know,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: for some people at least to demonize trans people in
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: the abstract, But whenever the camera settles on a person
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  Speaker 3: like this, who's like a human being, he's very capable,
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  Speaker 3: you reminded how grotesque that.
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  Speaker 2: Is trying to do her job surfer country and be herself.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Highly recommend reading it. We got a great show for
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: you guys today. We are going to talk about out
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: why President Trump randomly lashed out over the weekend, started
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: posting photos of himself with Kim Jong un and then
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  Speaker 2: started screen as one, does I mean you and I
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: should do that? Before this publishes? People will wonder. Then
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: he tried to cancel joint military exercise with the South Koreans.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: We'll explain what the exercises are, why they matter, and
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: why we think he did this now and kind of
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: the global security implications of it all. Then we're going
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: to talk to you about Jared Kushner's trip to the
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Middle East, but he was re upping that venture capital fund,
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: you know, some meetings of the Saudis rather autocrats. We'll
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: talk about what it meant for Gaza, his conversations. We'll
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: talk about this explosion of settler violence in the West Bank.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Then secret plane rides in subterfuge by presidents. It's very
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: hot right now because of Trump and Natalie and Natalie,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: because the Trump, you know, basically hiding out in the
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: catering carton Turkey with Natalie. So we're going to tell
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: you about the links that Russian President Vladimir Putin goes
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: to to avoid being monitored by foreign intelligence services. The
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: media really anyone amazing story in the New York Times.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: We're kind of basing this off of Finally, we're going
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: to just quickly highlight how Trump talks about parts of Africa,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: and then why British Prime Minister Andy Burnham should probably
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: just stop using his own cell phone.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's a good message for any political leader
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: in the world.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably run it through. You're just going to say, yeah,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: we'll explain why. Then you're gonna hear my interview with
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: an independent journalist named Natalie Oliverio. She broke the story
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: about the horrible conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln. That's
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: the aircraft carrier that's been at sea. I think she
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: said like two hundred and sixty five days in an
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: interview like nearly nine months thanks to the war with Iran.
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  Speaker 2: She talks about the toll on the sailors, their families,
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  Speaker 2: the fleet itself. It's unbelievably stark.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a story that the one thing I
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: just want to say about Tommy is it kind of
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  Speaker 3: brings everything together in a strange way because the reason
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  Speaker 3: they're in such horrible conditions is because they were sent
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: there no clear mission or endpoint to their mission. The
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  Speaker 3: mission itself changed incompetent people like Petex hath run the Pentagon,
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  Speaker 3: so they didn't kind of plan for resupply. Our base
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  Speaker 3: in Bahrain got obliterated by the Iranians and they had
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  Speaker 3: no plan being they didn't tell us that, so no
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  Speaker 3: transparency led to no spotlight on this, and then they
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  Speaker 3: called it fake news and showed no empathy. So like
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  Speaker 3: all the incompetence and the cruelty and the stupidity and
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  Speaker 3: the rashness, and like, oddly this is one of the
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  Speaker 3: stories that is even bigger than people being in such
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  Speaker 3: squall conditions. Some people are trying to jump off an
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: aircraft career because it kind of gets at everything about
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  Speaker 3: this war that is just wrong.
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  Speaker 2: The lack of strategy and planning is head spinning. I mean, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: like you said, I think the Iranians on day one
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  Speaker 2: bombed this US base in Bahrain that is absolutely critical
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  Speaker 2: to resupplying any mission in the Gulf, and instead the
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: resupply ships are having to do like ten day round
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  Speaker 2: trip missions to get food like Diego Garcia, yeah, and
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  Speaker 2: smiles away to get provisioned. So that's one piece. Second,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I saw President. We'll play the clip for
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  Speaker 2: you later. President Trump basically belittles these concerns or complaints
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  Speaker 2: from these sailors, saying he talked to some admiral who
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  Speaker 2: was like, when I was their age, I was on
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  Speaker 2: chips for longer, right, Like, we'll explain why that's bullshit.
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  Speaker 2: But also, you know, I saw this prick on Fox
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: News sort of like shouting down these these sailors, some
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  Speaker 2: of these crazy, the younger sailors. They're not allowed on
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  Speaker 2: the deck. They are in steel boxes in this aircraft
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  Speaker 2: carrier going on two hundred and fifty, two hundred and
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  Speaker 2: sixty days, Like could you imagine the nightmare? People are
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: so fucked up by this that they're trying to throw
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: themselves off the deck of the aircraft carrier. One guy did, Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And you know these Fox News people who cheerly these
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  Speaker 3: wars and would never fight them themselves, Like, at some
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  Speaker 3: point there needs to be reckoning with these people.
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  Speaker 1: Will I will just say that.
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  Speaker 3: When you have no because the other piece of this
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  Speaker 3: that came out in some of the reporting from the families,
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  Speaker 3: and I don't know if you getting this in an interview, Tommy,
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  Speaker 3: but like the morale when you don't know why the
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  Speaker 3: fuck you're fighting a war. There's no reason to be
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  Speaker 3: fighting the war. Nobody's articulated why the country's not behind you?
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  Speaker 3: Congresstan vote for it. Like that's if you were like
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: fighting the Nazis, you probably put up with being in
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: the steelbox, you know when you're there to open the
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: effing straight that was open before the war. Like, that's
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  Speaker 3: not exactly the most inspiring mission.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you feel like, you know, maybe in Yahoo
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: is the reason wear at this war? You know maybe? Yeah, right,
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  Speaker 2: we're there. The current mission is to reopen the Straight
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  Speaker 2: or four moves, which was opened before we started the
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: stupid war. Yeah. The whole thing is just a mess,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: and it's just like it's just a piece of the
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: cost of the war that is under discussed, which is
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: the toll on the US service members themselves and their
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: families because a lot of times these guys can't communicate
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: home for operational security reasons. So imagine, you know, your
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: loved one is in this floating prison in the Gulf
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: for two hundred days and you're just sitting there wondering, like, Okay,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: is one of these Iranian missiles going to get through?
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, if it re escalates, what could happen yeah.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: So it's it's a very important story worth worth sitting
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: on top of, because you know, things aren't going to
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: get better for these sailors anytime soon. I mean, if
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: they get home, it's going to be in a couple
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: of months. It's like by like Halloween. So we're going
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: to start with a different sort of military challenge for
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: President Trump, which is this this dust up with South Korea.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: So on Sunday, President Trump posted the following message on
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: truth Social I'm gonna read the whole thing. It's just
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: so weird. Based on a very good relationship with Kim
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Jong Un of North Korea, I'm not happy with the
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: fact that the United States has long ago agreed to
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: participate in joint military exercises with South Korea. These exercises
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: are not only costly, with much of these costs paid
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: for by the United States of America as usual, but
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: a country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: been president, has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, based on
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: the fact that it's too late to cancel, I've instructed
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce the joint
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: military exercises, while somewhat related p question mark, I don't
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: even understand that. I recently asked the president of South
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Korea if they would like to join US in the
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said no. Thanks,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: thank you for attention to this man. Better, President Donald J. Trump.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: A lot to unpack there. We'll get to that in
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: a second. So, Ben, it's not the first time Trump
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: is whined about these joint military exercises with South Korea.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: It's not really clear either, how much the exercises were
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: scaled down, because he basically fired off this post when
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: the exercises were already underway, like all the assets were prepositioned.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: But it's still a huge deal in South Korea, both
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: politically and for their national security. So for context, these
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: are called the Ulchi Freedom Shield Exercises. They're one of
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: two major annual military joint military exercises conducted by the
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: US and South Korea. They're eleven days long, eighteen thousand
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: South Korean troops are involved, along with thousands of US troops,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: and Trump complains about these things being agreed too long ago,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: like they agreed to in like nineteen fifties, like nineteen
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: fifty three when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed and
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: established the ceasefire that's still in place. I caught up
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: with our buddy Danny Russell earlier today to talk about
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: all of this. Danny was Assistant Secretary of State for
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Asian Affairs work with US on Asia issues in the
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: White House, and he was explaining to me why these
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: exercises are actually so important. First of all, South Korea
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: has a conscription and mandatory military service for men aged
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: you know, of able body man of a certain age
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: of like twenty nine, so you serve for eighteen to
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: twenty one months. So that means like these South Korean
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: troops are constantly rotating out and you actually do need
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: like real training for them or otherwise you're just the
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: first time you're going to be serving. The exercise is
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: they're not like a war game at a think tank
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: where it's like a you know, laptops and a simulation.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: It's like essential basic training and coordination between these two
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: big militaries. And then second he was just talking to
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: me to me about the way the pace of growth
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: in North Korea's military capabilities over the last five years
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: has just grown like exponentially, So they've gotten real battlefield
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: experience in Ukraine, they got a crash course in drone warfare.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Their cyber capability so drastically ramped up, and they got
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: all this new hardware and money from the Russians, right,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: and the US capabilities obviously evolved too, So you really
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: do need to like drill this stuff. And so I
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: think the question is why, kind of like, given those
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: clear security equities, would Trump decide to flip out about
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: this and hang them out to dry. Lucky for us,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: He kind of elaborated on his fit of peak in
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: the Oval Office on Monday.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: Let's watch South Korea has been protected by US for many,
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: many years. What I called recently the President of South Korea,
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: who I like. I think he's very nice actually, but
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: I called him, I said, would you like to give
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: us a little hand? We don't need help with rent,
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: but if you'd like give us a hand with arrent?
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: He said no, thanks, And I said, we have thirty
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: nine thousand soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong un,
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: your next door neighbor, and you're not going to help us.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: On a very easy military operation in Iran. That's strange
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: to go around and protect all of these countries, especially
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: when they're not there to help us.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: So, just for what it's worth, been the US is
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: closer to twenty six thousan five hundred troops in South Korea,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: not thirty nine thousand as he said there. It's also
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: a lie to claim that Soft Korea paid nothing, that
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Trump got them to pay three billion, and then Biden
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: kind of killed the deal. But whatever, I digress. What
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: do you think happened here? What do you think made
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Trump pop off about this? And what do you think
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: about him tying it to a run.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: Divining Trump's you know, decision to true social geopolitics on
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: any given days is always difficult. I mean, I think
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: there's a few things that I might point to as possibilities.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: The first is that he's being utterly humiliated by the Iranians.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: He's losing, He's being emasculated in front of the whole world.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: So like a bully on the schoolyard who's you know,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: just got punched really hard in the stomach, he just
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: you know, looking for someone else to slap around, you know,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Like that's the most likely reason. Second, is he's done
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: this to some European countries too, Like he demands that
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: they help him with the war that he started by
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: himself for no reason, without even telling them that it's
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: hurting their economies more than.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Ours, screwing the creat.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've talked about how dependent they are. You've been
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: very good on this time, Like they get far more
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: of their energy through the straight of horm moves than
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: we do. And then you know, then he's upset that
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: they don't do what to by the way, what are
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: the South the Greens going to do tip the balance
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: in the you know, the Iran war because one more
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: ship you know, like next our ships like that.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: That's makes a lot.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Of sense, and and and and then the other thing
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: though that I think is is actually more worrisome to me,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: is that he's had this like accumulated set of grievances
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: that are like kind of weirdly consistent over the decade
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: that we've unfortunately had to get to know him very well.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: And it's like he's not going to get through this
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: second term, his last term without kind of coming back
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: around all them, you know, in the same way they
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: had to kind of come back around to like James
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Comy and John Brennan, and you know he's he'll come
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: guarant mark my word, will come back around to like
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: Greenland again and the Panama Canal and like he's been
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: banging this drum on the Korean's like, well, we're gonna
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: come back around to this one. And you know, like
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: there's a disturbing sense of like the declining man in
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: the high Castle whose powers? Because the other thing about
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: that that tweet that truth is, you know, when he
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: would do this like shortly after he came into office
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: for the second time, it was crazy, but it was
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: also kind of like thank you for attention.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: This matter was a little scary.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Now it's like, fuck you, dude, Like the South Greens
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: aren't gonna like change and join your warn around. Like
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: there's a pathetic nature to it. There's actually a little
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: alarming because you get this feeling he's just gonna be
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: like lashing out at all these target accumulated targets he's
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: had throughout his whole miserable life, you know, and if
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: the cost is are basically like the permanent destruction of
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: American alliances in our standing in the world. Because I
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: do want to say just one thing, because there's so
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: many things you could say about what he said is wrong,
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: the costs that we pay like this, this this note
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: that he hits it. Obama also hit by the way
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: that we bear too many burdens. It's not the fucking
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: bases in South Korea.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: It's the dumb wars in the Middle East.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: You know, like if if Trump was serious about not
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: having trillions of dollars in debt on wars, that's not
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: the kind of baked in you know, presence of US
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: troops and bases that have been there for decades that
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: we get a ton out of because basically the entire
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: global economy is tilted in our direction because of the
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: South Korea and Japan and Europe and our network of
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: bases and alliances and the dollars of predominant currency like that.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: That's not all this extra post nine to eleven costs
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: of these wars. He's focused on the wrong fucking problem.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just on the why he did this now. It's
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: like the Maggie Haveraman Jonathan Swan book gets at the
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: fact that the Oval Office is just like this kind
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: of like undisciplined, free for all. Someone described it to
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: me as a Greyhound bus station. We're just like Rando's
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: come through. They just pop off about whatever. Maybe someone
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: walked into his office tried to brief him on these exercises.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Someone in there.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Sure you're still.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Getting screwed on this, right, So we like he's in
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a pissy mood about Iran, so he pops off at
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: South Korea and also threatened to bomb Oman. I think
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: that's the weekend.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: And the question that I'm curious for you thing this
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: time because the question that drew the kind of misogynist
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: rant in the Oval office was from a CNN reporter
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: about did Kim jong and ask you to do this?
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And he didn't answer it. I mean I don't think
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: he did. It's see, I think your sinner is more
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: likely that's like buried in his briefing because I've been
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: in the briefings where it's like and by the way
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: they joint exercises.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Sets off the guy out.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean it does make you wonder, like
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: because the Kim jungun piece of this could come back
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: to life too.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: He may want to go back.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: That's why. Yeah, So I think it's a combination about
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: being that about losing the war, this old hobby horse,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: like you said about South Korea spending, and then I
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: bet he's hoping he can get the media to chain
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: the kind of like North Korea diplomacy, kind of like
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: bright object over here, to get them off of the
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Iran stuff, which sucks for.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Him, which is an unmitigated failure.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it was a total failure. And also it is
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: ridiculous to claim that North Korea is not threatening. They
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: were literally firing off ballistic missiles earlier this week, and
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: it's just worth saying that. Like, yeah, Trump said that
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: in that briefing, Like he basically said that Kim. He
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: was asked if Kim had responded to his overtures, and
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: he kind of like let the question hang in the air.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Then he was like yeah, which is probably a lie
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: because Kim has no reason to re engage, Like he
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: has money and new weapons from the Russians, he has
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: his new big partnership with them. He doesn't want to
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: deal with the United States in South Korea browbeating him
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: into reform the Chinese and the Russians denuclearization. Right, He
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: basically has said like that the precondition to talking with
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: us again is you guys stop talking about denuclearization, and
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: I think he said like, end your hostile policy towards
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: North Korea, which basically means like, don't do anything I
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: don't like, and that could be, you know, abandoned South Korea,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: abandon Japan, get your bombers at aguam, end all sanction.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: And meanwhile, this guy sitting on sixty NU because he
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: can make twenty more year. He's got ICBMs that could
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: reach the US, He's developing a nuclear submarine. Like it's
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: an enormous threat to the US and South Korea and
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: the whole region.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what's so crazy about what he said is the
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: threat that people surmised North Korea opposed to the United
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: States through successive administrations was not the personal relationship but
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: between the leader of North Korea and the leader the
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: United States. It was just the fact that they were
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: developing nuclear weapons that could hit our troops in South
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Korea or Japan, or reach the United States or certainly
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: reach Hawaiian Quan.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Like, that's the threat.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: So he did too much media fanfare that Singapore summit
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: that got like, you know, he got his flowers from
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: the media. It was like the Abraham Accords of East Asia.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: You know, like everybody touched his foot in the DMZ
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: and everyone and meanwhile, like everything has gotten worse, Like
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: North Korea has developed its nuclear weapons, it's developed its
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: blissing missiles, They've sent all these troops to the front
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: in Ukraine.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: They gotten this.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Hip the balance for the Russians in a lot of
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: ways with the shells.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: To Feligo, did the time right?
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: And meanwhile, let's also point out the fact that our
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: aging president, who's often described as the most powerful man
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: in the world, I'm beginning to have some questions about
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: that is clearly in some kind of unrequited love affair
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: with a forty one year old dictator of because Kim
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Jungen has never once like evinced any of the same
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: affinity for Trump that he consistently. I mean, this is
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: a guy that, like his long term future and survival
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: is tied to the Chinese government and the Chinese Companist Party,
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: which will be there after Donald Trump, to the Russian
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: government Bob Raputin, who, unless nature intervenes, will be there
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: after Donald Trump. He makes no indication that he gives
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: a shit about how good Donald Trump feels about him.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Think of how pathetic it is. It's not just you know,
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: I know, there's a kind of resistancy thing to say, like,
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: oh my god, he's you know, he's polling up with dictators.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: He's actually not. He's like chasing this.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Dictator of like the Hermit Kingdom, and Kim jongun isn't
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: even really doing anything.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Respect You don't think you're sending the occasional like spicy
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: selfie like kind of like the mirror the bathroom or something.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: He doesn't even That's what's so amazing. He doesn't even
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: have to, like in the first room he did. We
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: don't even I mean, because I guarantee you if you
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: had sent a love letter to Trump, he'd probably truth
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: posts that month.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Right away show it to everybody.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: So it's kind of it's actually pathetic that this guy
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: can't even like get Kim jongun to attention.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: It is quite pathetic and also just like two other
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: big picture pieces of context. The first is that this
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: flare up from Trump about these joint military exercises happened
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: as we're learning that the US S George Washington, which
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: is one of America's eleven total aircraft carriers, is getting
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: taken out of Japan and sent to the Middle East.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: To relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln. We get into all
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: the reasons why in the interview, but that means that
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the United States is going to have exactly zero of
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: its eleven aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific, and so
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: that means we just have like a reduced capacity to
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: respond if the Chinese do something on Taiwan or the
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: North Koreans do something stupid. And it comes after the
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: US pulled it with the THAD missile defense systems out
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: of South Korea. I think that was last year. It
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: might have been this year.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: No, some of it was for the warn Iran, Yeah,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: some of us.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: For warn iron And in second a couple weeks back,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: we talked about that nuclear deal that Trumpet offered to
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: the Saudis. Danny pointed out to me today that that
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: initial deal allowed the Saudis to enrich nuclear material and
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: that South Korea has been trying to get that kind
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: of deal offered to them for about twenty five years.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: So now they're dealing with a stronger richer in bolden
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: North Korea, a weakened distracted United States, and Trump ranting
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: about the US troop presence in South Korea once again,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: and so you got to be sitting there, like if
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: you're some general in South Korea, you got to be
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: sitting there thinking, Okay, by the end of this guy's term,
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: we might have no US troops in the Korean Peninsula
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: or a bunch less what is our security guarantee? We
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: should maybe be talking about getting a nuke ourselves before it's.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Too Let yeah, and.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: To connect some of these threads, because South Korea has choices,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: and they could just decide, you know what, we don't
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: like the Chinese that much, but we were right next
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: to them.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: They're going to be here. The Americans are totally unreliable.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: And we better just start cutting some deals with the Chinese,
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: like right quick, or else it could be could put
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: for us. And look, you may like roll your eyes
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: and say, I don't care. I mean, let's connect some
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: of these dots. He is destroying the relationship with South Korea. Potentially,
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: he's threading to bomb the shit out of Oman at
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: the same time that he's demonstrated to each of these
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: countries that having a US military presence may be more dangerous.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Than not having one. Right he's threatened to invade.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: NATO territory if all of a sudden countries feel like
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: it's more dangerous to be friends at the United States.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: It's not just that the United States can become of
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: annoying or like a crazy person every now and then,
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: it's literally dangerous to have your security tie to the
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: United States. It is going to set like and that's
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: kind of already happening. It's it's part of what's sending
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: the world into this tail spin of instability, and as
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: we've also been pointing out, if it starts to look
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: like because that is why the dollar is a reserve currency,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: like the reason the dollars reserve currency. That's why we
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: get to have trillions of dollars in debt. That's why,
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: even as expensive as shit is, our standards of living
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: are way higher than they should be and they are
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: in other countries because we can spend more than we
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: take in because of the debt that accrues from the
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: dollars reserve currency.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Well, if suddenly that the thing that.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Undergirds at which is the US military and its global
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: presence is unraveling like ship can get very real here
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: for Americans, Like I'm all for like drawing down base
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: presences where it doesn't need to be including parts of
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: the Middle East. I'm all for spending no money on
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: stupid wars. But if you're dismantling things like Japan, South
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Korea and Europe and you're not anywhere in the Middle East,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: like everything changes pretty quick.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: What also, jd Vance is out there saying like, I
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: don't I don't know if it's good for the dollar
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: to be the reserves currencies, Like what are you talking?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Good luck servicing that debt man.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which, by the way, like to keep an eye
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: on the yield on the thirty year treasury right now,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Like bonds are going crazy right now. There's a lot
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: of bad things happening.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Global economy, yes.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, like I know, we raised this a few
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: times because this is like the this is this is the.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Thing underneath the tip of the iceberg.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Because because again you may wonder why we have trillions
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: of dollars in debt that we can seemingly carry around, Well,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: it's because countries have to buy our treasuries because they
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: have to deal with us as a hedgemond with the dollar.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: And this is the kind of stuff that is just
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: chipping away that iceberg.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Yep. And the system works until it doesn't This episode
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• 28:01
  Speaker 2: of us. Jared Kushner is back in the Middle East.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: He's the guy who solved the war in Ukraine, ended
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: that one, negotiated it into the war in Iran, got
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: that one done. So now he's back in the Middle
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: East checking on kaza He's just sort of a global
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: emissary for peace. Jared met with officials from Hamas on
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Sunday in Egypt, which, by the way, I'm glad he's
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: doing that, and I hope that Democrats just remember that
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: going forward and meet with anyone they want. I don't
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: care if they're labeled a terrorist group or whatever. Trump
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: did it, Jared Kushner did it. I don't give a shit.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner can meet with a tax Amas, but if
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a democrat like goes on Hassan Piker.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Asymmetry, yep, there you go. Jared also met was really
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Prime Minister Bibing Nyau for about four hours on Monday
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: in the net Yahoo meeting where Nikola Vladanov, the high
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: representative for Trump's Kaza Board to Peace, and then Tony Blair.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: For some reason, Jared said he met with then Yao
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: to clarify like misconceptions and correct misinformation about Trump's fifteen
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: point Gaza peace plan that remember, Trump announced and then
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: net Yahoo immediately rejected. So Jared says he assured in
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Yahoo that quote, the US doesn't expect Israel to refrain
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: from taking action against imminent threats by Hamas. A Boarder
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Piece official later said that quote, there will be no
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: idea for redeployment from Gaza until Hamas is fully disarmed
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: and all of Gaza is demilitarized, So we don't know
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen here. Hamas seems to have agreed
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: to kind of like a phase disarmament approach, but now
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: the Times of Israel as reporting the Border Piece might
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: nix that approach, So it's just not at all clear
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen going forward regardless. Jared did a
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: rare TV interview while in Israel which gave us a
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: window into his thinking and some of what he talked about.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Here's a bit of what he said on Fox News
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: in this interview on Monday.
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: Let's watch for Israel. We think this is a win
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: win situation because if Hamas actually gives over the weapons
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: and the tunnels, you know, willingly over the next sixty
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: to ninety days, that obviously would be the elimination of
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: a huge security threat for Israel, almost an unthinkable achievement.
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: And if they don't fall through now on their commitment,
• 29:54
  Speaker 5: everyone will see that they're not genuine about peace, and
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: then Israel will have a lot more support from the
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: US and others to go and finish the job in
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: the appropriate way.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: So ben I found those comments incredibly ominous because it's like, Okay, basically,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Israel gets a pass on living up to its end
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: of the original ceasefire bargain. But if Hamas doesn't immediately
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: capitulate and hand over all its weapons, which obviously we
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: want it to do. But I can understand sort of
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: their thinking here, Israel gets to finish the job whatever
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: that means. It sounds like kind of green lighting them
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: restarting the conflict in a major way.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I want to say, like, if you could,
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: if you're gonna be like a Nepo baby Cushener, like,
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: better to just buy the Lakers than try to insert yourself.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: In the Middle East peace.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: What's a sweet gig?
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Seems like his brother had a better way life plan here.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: It's extraordinary to me that the last two weeks we've
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: talked about this utter humiliation where they announced this huge
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: breakthrough in the implementation of the so called ceasefire terms
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: leading to the demilitarization of Hamas very predictably and very publicly.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Netao is Nope, we're not going to do this.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: And Jared, instead of going over there and saying, yes
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: you are, because we've fucking provided you with every weapon
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: that you dropped on Gaza, We're gonna cut you out.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: You dragged us in this dumb war and Iran he
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: goes over there and it's like, thank you, sir, May
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: I have another We're now accepting your frame of this exactly.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: And if Hamas doesn't do everything that you direct them
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: to do at with Israel doing nothing, then what could
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: go back to full scale bombardment of Gaza. And that's
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: kind of what he suggested.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: And listen again, as we've said a million times in
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: the show, not a fan of Hamas think they've done
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: more damage to the Palestinian people than all of a Suddy,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: the other organization, you know, terrorist groups. October seventh is unjustifiable.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Attacks on instance people are unjustifiable. But that should also
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: apply to the Israeli side, because as Jared is giving
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: this interview, the National Security Minister at Tamar Ben Gvie said, quote,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: taking down thirty to forty every night, not just those
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: who pose an immediate threat. There are people who are
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: who are not worthy of life. They shouldn't live. They're
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: not even people. I mean, that's the quote, that's the context.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: They're saying, go finish the job.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: You've got people like who don't like it when you
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: say that Israel's committing genocide, and then you have the
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: national security minister of the current government of Israel making
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: genocide the most genocidal statement imaginable. They're not even people, right,
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: and that's what's happening like before our eyes here and
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: again just on this Hamas point, would I like if
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Hamas just disarmed out of the Blue Shore.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: But that's not how this works.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Like even the United States and all these other parties
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: understood that you were going to have, like any diplomatic agreement,
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: like a phase approach where each side takes steps together.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: So Israel has to withdraw as Hamas verifiably demilitarizes, and
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: then a peacekeeping force goes in to take this fill
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: the security vacuum. That's not what's happening anymore. What's happening
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: anymore is that they tried to do that plan. Israel
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: is the only one vetoed it, and now they said, okay,
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: if Hamas doesn't do something that they're clearly not going
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: to do, which is unilatterally disarm while Israel's occupying more
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: of the Godza strip and not letting assistance in, then
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Israel can just kill as many people as they want.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: Like that is that's not diplomacy. That is just like
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Jared taking dictation from Netan Yahou and repeating it on
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Israeli television.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Nonetheless, Jared just is fully on board with the Israeli side.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: We're not doing an Iron section today because again, like
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I said, nothing's really changed. But Kushner did tell Fox
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: that quote, we are having very positive and active conversations,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: probably more robust than it's ever been with Iran. And
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: then on Tuesday, Trump posted on truth Social quote, there
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: are no talks or conversations with Iran. So I don't
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: know if he was just slapping down Jared, if Jared
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: was lying, or what the hell was happening there, but
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: just notable.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: The one guess I'll make on this and ri Ip
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: the MoU that was supposed to end that weren't Iron
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: that achieved processing nothing. My guess is whatever are still
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: going on are basically Kataris or Omani's or I don't know,
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: maybe even these Pakistanis have been involved talking to the
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: Ranians and then talking to Americans, and Jared is so
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: like the center of his own world. But even if
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: he's just getting read out on those talks by like
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm guessing here, I don't know this to be,
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: but like it feels like if if he's getting a
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: readout from like the golf, he's like, yeah, we're in
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: really active talks. You know, like when meanwhile, Trump is
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: threatening to bomb the shit out Oman. This troubleshooter in
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: the region, right, the Omani's you'll recall, and this is
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Bear saying like they're the ones that helped us get
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: some Americans out of prison. There are three hikers that
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: randomly decided hiking Theron got detained, Oman got them out.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: They're the ones who hosted the initial talks that led
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: to the Round nuclear deal. Like they are notoriously kind
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: of this. I don't wanna say Switzerland because it's even
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: more active. They're this kind of you know, they try
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: to facility, they try to facilitate peace talks, and they
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: try to get along with that, saying we're going to
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: bomb them, and that's good for us that we can do.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: If it wasn't for a mom, we wouldn't have had
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: a venue to have talks. And by the way, Trump
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: has taken advantage of that too. And now we're threatening
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: to bomb them. Do you think that's going to make
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: it more or less likely that they'll go along with
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Iran scheme to toll the straight upform moves while giving
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: them on a cut.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: It's crazy, pretty sure. It's a lot of yeah, and
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: so while Gaza is stuck in this kind of nightmarish limbo,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: things in the West Bank are steadily getting worse. So
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: the UN counted a minimum of thirteen hundred and eighty
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: attacks by extremist settlers in two hundred and fifty Palasadian
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: communities in the first seven months of this year. Also,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: according to the UN, over eleven hundred Palasadians have been
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: killed in the West Bank since October seventh. Most of
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: these incidents get no media coverage. But what's happening in
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: the village of Kusra actually broke through, and it's worth
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: just talking about why for a minute. So if you
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: haven't followed the story, the gist is that earlier this month,
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: these terrorist Israeli settlers decided to hold a bunch of
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Paladians hostage in their own homes. They cut off water
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: and power to several Palestinian owned homes on the edge
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: of Kusra. They set up roblocks, they camped out outside
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: of the home just as menacing as humanly possible. And
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: you know, during this siege, settlers actually blocked an ambulance
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: from getting to the home to rescue a sick two
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: year old. Now they block the ambulances all the time,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: but doing it to it, you know, a sick two
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: year old. It's disgusting. I think another ambulance got in
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: and got the kid out, but do you mean give
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: me a break. They also blocked activists from getting to
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: these houses to provide food and water, even after the
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: residents had run out of food and water, so they're
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: trying to starve and kill kids. IDF soldiers were called
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: in to disperse the settlers, they were instead spotted hanging
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: out with them, praying with them, and they basically only
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: evicted activists who were trying to help the Palestinians. But
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: what was different in this case is that one of
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: the homes is owned by a Palestinian American who lives
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: in Ohio. He had cameras kind of like live streaming
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: and filming everything. That footage got pushed out to international press.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: That got international attention. So after a couple of days,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: the IDF got sent and again they finally dispersed the settlers.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: But as soon as the idea F left, the settlers
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: came back. That led to the idea of starting a
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: larger kind of Nessier operation, which cleared out some of
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: the settlers but not all of them. But it's almost
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: kind of like beside the point, because this is just
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: temporary and these settlers are hell bent on this kind
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: of like messianic mission to ethnically cleanse the West Bank.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: The US Ambassador Israel M. Huckabee actually waded on the
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Kustra siege on Twitter and he referred to the settlers
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: as terrorists, which was surprising from him. But then he
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: also tweeted the following ben settlers are not the problem
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: in Judea Samaria, it's the West Bank. Unsettlers are a
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: very small minority who do great damage to Palestinian families
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: in Israel. Real settlers, like Israel Gons, Governor of Judea.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: So Mario condemned the actions of the few. Let's hook
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: the media gas attention to this and balances their stories.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: So I think it's worth kind of highlighting that tweet
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: as a jumping off point because of how unbelievably wrong
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: it is. This is not an issue of like a
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: few bad apples in the settler community. As Friend of
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: the Pod Jasper Nathaniel wrote, the violent settlers are the
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: tip of the spear of the state backed annexation process.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: So the settlers have backing from senior members of the
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Israeli military, some of whom are settlers themselves, from top
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: political aids or top political officials like National Security Minister
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: to Tamar Bet and Gevie who is the most kind
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: of openly genocidal political leader, as also a settler himself.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Smotris is a settler. Yeah. And then on Friday, then
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announce it quote all responsibility
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: for enforcing civilian matters and maintaining law and order in
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: the West Bank will be transferred to the police, which
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: is actually a huge deal because it would constitute a
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: big step towards Israel annexing the West Bank. I think
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: that might sound counterintuitive to listeners, but under international law,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: the occupying powers and military is responsible for security and
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: an occupied territory because that occupation is supposed to be temporary.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: When you transition to civilian police, that's the facto applying
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Israeli law to occupied territories, and it goes against the
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Oslo Accords, which say that has to be Palestinian security
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: forces or the idea of so ben It just I'll
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: pause there because the question I have is do you
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: think this is exploding in advance of the election this
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: October when everyone is kind of trying to outright wing
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: each other, or is the story worse and is this
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: kind of like the settler movement trying to complete annexation
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: in the next two years while Trump is still president.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's it's actually both. The first
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: thing I want to say is that I saw the
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Huckabee tweet. I also saw a lot of people online
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: who are usually kind of rabid defenders of Israel, like
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: condemning this one instance. I fucking hate that man. Like
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: you're gonna virtue signal, You're gonna act like you're concerned
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: about settler violence by taking the most high profile incident
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: that is most obviously bad and condemning it, but you
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: have nothing to say about involve American.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and involves in America.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: The eleven hundred people have been killed, the systematic repression
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: of Palestinians, the systematic demolition of Palastinian homes, the systematic
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: abuse of Palasinian Really, like you you just get you
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: get to pop up online and see like see I'm
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: even handed, Like I just I have very little patience
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: for that. We have to see that this is a
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: systematic effort. Netigna who's spent years saying what Huckaby said
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: in his tweet, which is that, oh, there's some juvenile delinquents.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: He always uses language like that, there's just a handful
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: of bad apples among all these other virtuous settlers, as
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: if it's not a systemic issue. The reality is the
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: two people they're most extreme in the Israeli government, Smotrich
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: and Bengavier, are the two people most focused on the
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: West Bank. So Smotrich is a literally the leader of
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: the settlers, and he's the Finance minister, and he's very
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: much in charge of making sure that the people in
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: the West Bank, the Israeli settlers, get what they want.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Bengavier is in charge of the police as a National
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Security minister.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: So when this is.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: Shifted, if it's shifted to the police, you're that's not good, right.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: And I think what people have to recking with, including Democrats,
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: is no, it's not like we're going to get through
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: one election just election season. These are people who believe profoundly.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, just calling it, Judae and Samara gives away
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: the game. It's not the West Bank, it's not Palestinian land.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: It is ours and they want it as soon as possible.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: They see a win of opportunity with Trump, they see
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: a win of opportunity with Natanyahu. This West Bank story
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: is not going to go away. There's going to be
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: more violence, and so you cannot cast us as some
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: isolated extreme incident. This is just the one that popped
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: up above the transom because it's an American and it
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: was live streamed and all.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: The rest of it.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're going to return to this again
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: soon in coming weeks. I think it's an unbelievably important story.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: It's one that needs to get more focus because it
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: is urgent. I think there's a ticking clock here. Yeah.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: You know, we've talked about Jasper Nathaniel's coverage over Infinite
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Jazz is Substack. It's really worth reading that if you
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: want to learn more. But we'll definitely should put a
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: button in this and come back to it soon. Last week, Ben,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: we talked about this Trump secret flight home from the
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: NATO summit and Turkey, the decision to secretly use the
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: press in his own staff as human shields and make
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: them unwitting decoys for Iranian missiles. I'd be thrilled to
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: learn that what happened to me. After that story became public,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: The New York Times had this amazing story with the
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: headline for Trump's secret flight was a stunning ruse for
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Putin a regular Tuesday. It dug into all the ways
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: that Putin and his paranoia and the way he uses
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: like lies and deception and subterfuge to avoid threats, you know,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: sort of hide where he's located, and it was just
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: kind of fascinating and interesting and worth kom of digging into.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: So a couple of great anecdotes from this story. Putin
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: just routinely lies about when meetings took place, and so
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: reporters have had to resort to studying plants in the
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: background in his office to see when the leaves have wilted,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: as kind of like rough time stamps for the meetings.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: I think that's fucking brilliant. By the way, they also
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: look at the haircuts of the other officials in the
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: meetings and then compare them to their other public events,
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: like see if their hair has grown. Putin is also
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: believed to have three identical offices at his various residences,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: so that no one knows exactly where he is. Imagine
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: if like you know, Obama had an oval office in
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: like Chicago, identical, I guess he does now. So journalists
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: like they look for little discrepancies like the seams on
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: a wall or like a door handle, to try to
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: like ida the room. In twenty twenty three, a member
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: of Putin's personal security service defected gave testimony to like
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: another you know country security service and talked about what
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: it was like to travel with Putin and set up
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: comms for him. The AP kind of wrote up the
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: transcripts of this, and he said that since the warn Ukraine,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Putin's almost exclusively traveled by train because he doesn't like
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: the airplanes can be tracked. He said that Putin doesn't
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: need internet access when he goes to places. He doesn't
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: ever use a cell phone. He said the quote in
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: all my service, I've never seen him with a mobile
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: phone and quote all the information he receives is only
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: from people close to him. That is, he lives in
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: a kind of information vacuum. I think that kind of
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: tracks with what we've heard about him getting bad information
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: leading to bad information, bad decision making. And then finally
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: just had a great story on Putin's personal train, which
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: according to leak government documents, runs on secret tracks. Their
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: secret stops all over the country at secret stations that
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: can't be found on a map. And the train includes
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: a gym and a spa, which looked pretty sick to
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: be honest. So, Ben, you know, a lot of this
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: like got worse during COVID and the isolation there. I
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: think Putin made people quarantine for two weeks before meeting
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: with him. But I can only imagine how paranoid he
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: must be now with all these Ukrainian like deep strikes
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: into Russian territory, and how much worse it will get.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: I do think there's an opportunity for the next US
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: president though, to bring back the White House train. Yeah,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: that would be sick. I'd love to write on that.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: It's kind of funny, but it's also kind of terrifying
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: because when a leader is this paranoid, I mean, this
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: doesn't give a huge vote of confidence how Putin feels
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: about public opinion towards himself.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Right, he goes a lot less.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: Places, he's never very rarely in public. It's very stage
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: when he is. But I mean when a leader like
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: gets more and more out of touch like this and
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: more and more isolated and is living in this kind
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: of alternate reality that has been wholly constructed.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: They do more rash things, you know.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: I'm the most famous example of this, right is Hitler
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: and the Bunker, you know, when he still believes he's
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: commanding all these armies and he's just sitting there taking
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: drugs and you know, watching everything burn above ground. And
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: the reason I say that is because we already know
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: from like some pretty good reporting, well I'll never really
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: know what was in. Putin said that what contributed to
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: his decision to do the full skill invasion of Ukraine
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two was in part his isolation and
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: people only telling what he wanted to hear him sidelining
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: people told him anything different. We've talked about the concern
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: about escalation, like does Putin try to do something in Europe?
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Does he try to do something in Baltics and Moldova?
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: God forbidden you know, anywhere, but also in like Poland.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: This kind of isolation makes that more, not less likely.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Like if you're this cut off from public opinion, you're
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: this cut off from the consequences of your own decisions,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: there's no accountability loop. There's no real information getting to you, like,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: that's my concern. And also by it points to why
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: we're worried about Trump. I mean, I'm not saying Trump's there,
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: but this is why you don't even want to open
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: the door to like catering carts to like once your
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: leader can just disappear, like it opens the door to
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: weird shit happening. I mean, you made the joke last
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: week about like maybe you stop by to seat Putin.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think he did.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: But the point is is that the more like the
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: present can just go off grid, like the weirder shit happens.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: No, it's not good. It's not like we can't normalize
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: lying to the White House press pool for any reason.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: It's just not acceptable. Also, you know, there's been a
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: lot of coverage recently. We talked last week about these
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Ukrainian deep strikes on wild berries, the kind of Amazon
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: dot Com of Russia. It's clear that like those are
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: really having an impact. They're bringing the war home in
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: a way that even the oil and gas strikes have
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: an done. Because I didn't realize that Putin had managed
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: to kind of re route oil and gas flows to
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: major cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg and kind of
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: prevent like his inner circle or kind of the elites
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: from feeling the pinch of like waiting in four hour
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: lines for gas or something like that. But I don't
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: think he's been able he can do that with the
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: wild berries strikes, and it's like it just this feels
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: very escalatory right now, and then we're about to go
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: into another winter for the Ukrainians, where I remember last year,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the whole conversation was about people basically freezing to death
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: because Putin had blown up all the energy infrastructure and
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: people couldn't heat their homes. So yeah, this is just
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: we're just heading in a very dark place over the
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: next year, even if the kind of Ukrainian side feels
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: like it is got some momentum right now.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just because they can hit stuff deep in rush
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: with drones doesn't mean that it can't get worse.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I mean it means it very well may get worse.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, before we take a break, As you guys probably know,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: in less than eighty days, voters are going to have
• 47:57
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• 48:00
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• 48:05
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• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Speaking of the kind of paranoia. Russia's parliamentary elections coming
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: up from September eighteenth to the twentieth. On Monday, the
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: Supreme Court I have held this ruling barring this political
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: party Yablikov from participating. It's like the oldest liberal party.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: They are openly against war in Ukraine. They have no
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: chance at winning. No one thinks this will be a
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: free and fair election. But putinly apparently got so spooked
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: by an online campaign encouraging people to support them vote
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: for them as a way to like legally voice descent
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: that he must have just engineered. This bullshit legal takedown
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: of this little ass liberal political party doesn't suggest a
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: confident leader.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: When you can tolerate like the most miniscrule discent, it
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: tells you everything about how confident he is in the
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't doubt that there's still some people
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: that like put In Russia, but the people point I
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: mean this has been a hobby goaist of mine for
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: a long time, tim But like when people point to
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: like public opinion polls in Russia, Like if somebody fucking
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: called me on the phone in Russia, I was like,
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: do you approve of Vladimir Putin's job as president?
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Saying no feels like a not something I would do
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: never ever.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: And also like when your entire when you only consume
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: state run media, Yeah, that's highly effective. I think also
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: suggests that maybe his personal popularity is higher than United
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Russia is like his political party, right, he's not on
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: the ballots parliamentary electures. Also, you had highlighted this story
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: about Russian interference and was it.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Belarus or Moldova?
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Did you want to talk about that all?
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I thought that what was interesting about
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: this is that, in addition to like this was a
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: pretty methodically reported story in attracts of things that you know,
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: I've heard sure that they were interfering in the election
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: and you know, online and all these other ways, but
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: they also had like training camps set up in Serbia
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: in Serbia where people were doing like military operations, like
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: sabotage type operations, training with weapons. Like it suggested like
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: an ominous risk of the kind of typical Russian interference
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: tipping into violence and really trying to kind of destabilize countries.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: And it's the playbook that you fear. It's a playbook
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: that they used in Eastern Ukraine before the invasion that
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: people have long thought if they did that in the
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: Baltics or in Moldova, like things could really escalate quickly.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: And so that's what caught my attention is like this
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: wasn't just like another troll farm operation. This is like
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: their guns involved in this operation.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: It also it just gets out of shift in tactics
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: you've seen, which is like, you know, Russian sabotage operations
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily mean sending some grizzled gru veteran to another
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: country to stage a thing. It's like them offering tons
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: and tons of people in a country like Moldova money
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: on telegram if they'll do some sort of thing, which
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: they you know, they disguise what it is, what the
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: goal is, who's behind it, And all of a sudden,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: you know, some seventeen or eight year old kid is
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: like buying a quad copter drone at Walmart and flying
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: it at some target or taking surveillance. Yeah you know
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: it's getting arrested or implicated or does you know, in worse,
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: does something really bad well.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: And they also hit like some of the power generation
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: that goes into Moldavia and Moldova, like causing blackouts, like
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: they're clearly trying to destabilize the government, made the government unpopular,
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: they can't keep the lights on. But that just speaks
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: to this like slippery sloper on where sure, first you
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: were just had troll farms, but now at the point
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: where we're like, you know, you're bombing the electricity generation
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: for a country, and if Russia decided to do that
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: in other parts of Europe, like this gray space we're
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: in between kind of asymmetric and information war and cyber
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: war and real war like starts that spectrum starts to
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: get a little hazy, you know.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, have you seen these stories in
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: photos about how all the rivers in Germany and other
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: parts of Europe are at such low levels that they
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: can't even fill like barges to transport goods. Yeah, I
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: was reading that the Financial Times estimated that it could
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: this drought, this climate change driven drought, could cost like
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty billion euros. It's like staggering. It's hot,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: it's really.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: And people don't want to talk about climate change.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: I get it.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: We keep hearing how people don't talk about it, but
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: it's fucking hot. And when things get really hot, like
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: things like this sound.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: Can cause irreversible damage, like the nuclear power plants not
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: being able to operate. So the other day been two
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: more things. So the other day Trump made some comments
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: about Somalia that were not necessarily surprising coming from him,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: But we're just like shockingly racist from a president of
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: the United States. And I think the worst part was
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: they got almost no attention or media coverage. So we
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: just asked our team here to pull together a few
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: examples like this just to show how vile and frequent
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: this shit is from Trump. Let's watch it come.
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: From Let's say, as an example, Somalia. They're not smart,
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: they have no aptitude, they have nothing going, and they're
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: telling us how to run our country. I don't want
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: them in our country. Their country is no good for
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: a reason. Their country stinks, it's devastated, it's crime rid,
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: it's a message, a disgrace, a backward country, probably the
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: worst country. Somani's a third world maybe a fourth world nation.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: It's not even an a just people walking around killing
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: each other. It's filthy, dirty, disgusting dirty. They come to
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: our country low IQ's and they Roberts Blott nineteen billion
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: dollars in fraud that was stolen by somalion bandits.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: Can you believe that Somalia?
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: They turned out to be higher IQ than we thought?
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: Why is it we only take people from shithole countries.
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: We always take people from Samalia, places that are a disaster, right, filthy, dirty,
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: discuss they were ridden with crime. The only thing they
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: good at is going after ships. They come from hell
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: and they complain and do nothing. But bitch, we don't
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: want them in our country. Let them go back to
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: where they came from and fix it.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: It's just like the evolution. It is just amazing. Remember
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: like the quote about quote Unquie, shithole country was like
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: a report in the Washington Post that the White House denied.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: And now it's just the thing he says. It rallies.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: You know, the racism is so open.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: When people look back on the Trump era, one of
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: the things that is going to be most baffling and
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: repugnant to people from history is the fact that we
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: even had some kind of debate about whether Trump is
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: a racist and whether racism is central central to the
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: MAGA movement.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: You were scolded in twenty seventeen if you called him
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: a racist.
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you didn't understand the grievances of white working class
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: people like this is this man has one kind of
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: language that he uses to describe people that are black
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: and brown that is different from the language that he
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: uses to describe anybody else. And he you know, Somalia
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: is the kind of most acute example of it. But
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: it's how he talks about Haiti, It's how he talks
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: about most of Africa. It's how he talks about neighborhoods
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: in American cities that are predominantly black or brown. It's
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: how he talks about immigrants in this country. It is
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: fundamental to his political identity and and the fact that
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: it is so normalized that we've gone this far backwards
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: over the course of this decade. I mean, this is
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: a man who has banned all refugee ad missions in
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: the United States except white South Africans who are the
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: like legacy apartheid people.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: You get like a white nationalist welcome kid. Yeah, I
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: mean it's like a like a whitewashed literally like history
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: of our founding.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And what does he know about Somalia, Like does
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: he know any Somali Somali people? And what what?
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: It is an odd fixation actually, and bear in mind
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: that we're committing violence there.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Trump is ramped up drone strikes. The nobody talks about that.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: It's just normalized that we just kill people occasionally there
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: and and then Trump, you know, runs down their country.
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: It is just because he has like elan omar, Like
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: it feels like that's the most of it, which is bizarre,
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Like there's a single member of Congress who happens to
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: have origins at least and by the way, the p
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: he's talking about her refugees have been through so much
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: more than he's ever been through in his life, and
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: most of them are just people that want to be
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: safe somewhere.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, look, she's black, she wears a headscarf, she's Muslim,
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: so he views her as like an easy political target.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: You know, he's just like the most aculately.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do just hate how like the backlash to
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: wocism has kind of smoke screened some of this stuff,
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: and I think now we're living with the discomfort of
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: like wait a second, it's like we were saying at
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: the very beginning of the show about the trans woman, like
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: I don't, like, can we talk about this again, Like
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: we don't have to make the culture wars the leading
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: political argument we make, but it's gonna be look a
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: little strange that like this man just says he sings
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: on the regular and it's like we all decided, you know.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: I think it's important and good to like call him
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: out when he's racist, just like call out the lack
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: of human decency in the treatment of individuals. Yeah, and
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: that's why the story we talked about at the top
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: of the Atlantic piece by Julia Curly are so important
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: because like it's a human being. It's like she puts
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: an identity in a human face and a human story
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: on the impact of these bigoted policies.
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a way to do it. I mean,
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: can very quick detour because I know you, like Rob
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: sand Governor Kenneda, and Iowa looks.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Peculiarly like you.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: But I was I went to a few town halls,
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: wrote about a Three York Times, and it was funny.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Somebody raised this in a question.
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: They said, can we just get back to being a
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: state where we treat people nicely? And I don't care
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: what color there, I don't care like what where they
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: came from. It was like a very powerful, simple Iowa statement.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: And I thought one of the things that Rob Sande
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: that was so interesting was he, did, you know, validate
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: this woman's concern people are here playing by the rules.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: You know, we should give him a chance.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: But he cited Bob Ray, who was a Republican governor
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: of Iowa who was very you know, conservat on some things,
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: but very pro refugee. And there are these refugee communities
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: in Iowa that have done incredibly well. And he's like,
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: remember Bob Ray. Remember we He didn't have to like
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: use these issues to divide each other. You just had
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: a Republican governor who was like a decent guy. Like
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: you got to find ways to appeal to people like
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: do you do you want this? Like you can have
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: a lot of things that I disagree with and not
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: do this. You know, there's a way to kind of
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: avoid the culture war while still making that fundamental appeal
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: to decency.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: And I thought Rob sandd that pretty.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Well, that's good. Finally, Ben, every New World leader makes
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: a couple of rookie mistakes, you can usually just chalk
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: it up to inexperience. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham had
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: his own little, you know, welcome to the NFL moment
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: after Politico reported that he had been exchanging text messages
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: with someone that he thought was a White House Chief
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: of Staff, Susie Wiles. Spoiler alert, it was not. Burnham
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: says he figured out that something was offertty quickly and
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: that it was a quote minimal exchange of information of
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: zero consequence, and then he like reported it up the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: chain immediately. But it seems like this Tod's spooks number ten.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: And it was also not the first time so one
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: had gotten Susie Wiles's phone book and it had been
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: impersonating her to people. The Guardian then reported that at
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: least three UK Cabinet ministers have had their mobile numbers
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: published online. And it's also just worth noting that this
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: is hardly the first time we've seen a politician kind
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: of tricked like this into having a conversation with someone
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: that said they were someone else. In twenty twenty four,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: then Foreign Secretary David Cameron did a video call with
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: someone pretending to be former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. It
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: was not. In twenty eighteen, Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: Boris Johnson spoke over the phone for eighteen minutes with
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: someone pretending to be the Armenian Prime minister. And then
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two, these two Russian like they call
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: themselves professional prank callers, but they seem to have some
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: ties to the government. They got the British Defense Secretary
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: Ben Wallace on a video call and they tried to
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: bait him into saying some very damaging things. Here's part
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: of a clip that they released.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 6: We would like to continue the nuclear program in order
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 6: to protect our sales from Russia. It's a difficult question,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: but we think to start it.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: Okay, but do you think I mean, I think more
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: than being neutral, Russia would really hate that.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 6: For sure, we were we know this, of course, but
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: it's one of the questions that we're interested clearly.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: Trying to get him, bade him into being like, kay, yeah,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: I get a new no big deal for what it's worth.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: The British government said at the time that the video
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: had been doctored when it was released. I'm sure it
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: was so Ben like at the easy fix here is
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: for Andy Burnham just not to do any more official
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: business on his personal phone. Have that for family, have
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: that for friends only. If that route everything else through
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: the number ten switchboard, even though sometimes they get got at, at
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: least then you can blame someone else. But you can
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: you imagine how much worse this shit is going to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: get with AI making it easy to generate like realistic
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: video and just clone all of our voices like we're screwed.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Andy Burnham getting calls from some scammers saying
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: like you know, we have your friend or something, right.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: I will say, by the way, just first of all,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: Andy Burnham has delivered as a much better political communicator
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: than Keir Starmer. Just kind of watching it like jury's
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: still at We'll see how he does policy wise, but
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: like he's raised the bar. I look, just get rid
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: of the personal cell phone though, I mean we went
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: through this. Obama didn't want to get rid of his BlackBerry.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: Famously he was allowed to keep one, but they went
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: to these extraordinary lengths where he had like a fake
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: name and only a certain list of people were allowed
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: to be in communication with him. Like you can allow
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: a political leader to have some capacity to be in
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: personal communication with both staff and friends without just like
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: keeping your cell phone, you know, and like your WhatsApp
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: number that is easily taken from you.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: I will say. My favorite ex British.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: Prime Minister story of the week, Tommy was the video
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: of Boris Johnson singing Pink Pony club.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this big.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: Beat West Hollywood?
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: He heap beat? What is that from?
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: This is an instagram that was posted by uh Boris
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: Johnson's wife. I will say he's doing cameo now yea
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: as well as someone who was had a lot of
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: Chapel Roone in my house. I've got two girls, you know,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: you know you watch an artist go through that cycle
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: where they're the cool new outsider to like world famous
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: superstar too. Like, it's not good at Boris Johnson singing
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: your song, So Chapel Roone is gonna have to like
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: come up with some new, you know, more countercultural material.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: That's a good one to denounce Chapel Roone. You can
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: you can talk about bors Johnson.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: He doesn't even know the words though, yeah, maybe you
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: got this.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: Doesn't really know the words at all, it doesn't. He
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: just knows Pink.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Poe and West Hollywood. Right here.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: We're right here, yeah, we're here. Shout out to count
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Binface forgiving it.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: The old college try like ten thousand votes.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: I'm a little sad. I dmd count Binface a long
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: time ago to say, like, are you doing in er
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: any intergalactic media outside of the UK, and I never
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: got a response.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: How do you feel about in your you know, forties
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: dming a man who trash.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: Can trash can on, I said surprisingly good about it.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: I would do the same thing, So I'm in the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: exact same boat. It just that's less of come to
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: and you and more a commentary on how politics has changed.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: Because if someone told you, like, hey, like you know
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: where politics in the world are gonna be in twenty
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: twenty six, we're all going to really want to talk
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: to a guy who has a garbage can on his
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: head because he's running against Nigel Farage, who will no
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: longer be a marginal figure. He'll be like a likely
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: future Prime Minister of the UK. That's where we're at.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: Good stuff. Everybody in Boris Johnson singing Ping Pony Club
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: and we got Donald Trump's president.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, the biggest glass outs in the world.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: We know rates.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: All right, we are going to take a quick break,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: but when we come back, you're going to hear my
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: interview about the horrible can on the US's Abraham Lincoln,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: which is this aircraft carrier that's been deployed CS for
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: like ten or sixty five days because of the war
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: with Ran, so stick around.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: For that.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: Podzavi. The world is brought to you by QUO. Missed
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  Speaker 2: first six months when you go to Quote dot com
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: slash world. That's quo dot com slash World. My guest
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: today is an independent journalist, entrepreneur, and Navy veteran who
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: covers the military, defense policy and veterans affairs. Natalie Oliverio,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 7: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: You wrote an article for The Military Times last week
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: where you revealed some very disturbing details about conditions aboard
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is the aircraft carrier that's
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: been stationed in the Middle East for a very long time.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: Can you walk listeners through who maybe didn't read the story,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: like what the conditions were, what these families were concerned.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 7: About, the biggest concern were mental health concerns. We have
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 7: heard reports of several family members telling us about their
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 7: service member struggling to the point beyond their breaking point.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 7: When sailor was reported to have jumped off the flight
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 7: deck with a life vest on and about an hour
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 7: later was recovered and it was designated by the Navy
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 7: as a cry for help, a mental health issue, right,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 7: not a suicide attempt. There are other reporting firsthand from
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 7: service members who won had a spouse attempt to go overboard,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 7: and two had a spouse that was one of the
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 7: people on watch who stopped to pull this individual back
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 7: towards the deck.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: Thank god. I mean, can you survive a fall off
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: an aircraft carrier like that? How tall are these things?
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: You can?
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 7: I would say the flight decks probably like sixty feet
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 7: off the water. If they were climbing to the top
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 7: of the mast, maybe like two hundred. But I mean
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 7: I've only been on a guided missile destroyer personally, and
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 7: I have jumped off on swim call, and yeah, you
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 7: could absolutely survive that jump. It's what happens after it's
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 7: being left in the middle of the ocean, potentially in
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 7: the dark, and all the dangers that exist with that.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. What happens when an aircraft carrier can't get to
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: port for I believe it was two hundred days is
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: the latest stat with the Lincoln. What maintenance is not happening?
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: What is the impact on you know, military readiness and
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: just quality of life for the individuals on that ship.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's actually it's close to two hundred and sixty days. Wow,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 7: it's it's getting further and further.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: And so.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 7: The biggest supply is food, right, So the photos that
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 7: have been all over the Internet and social media of
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 7: the food, like the mystery gray meat, this is not
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 7: new news. This has been reported. The USA Today broke
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 7: it in April and they were showing you know, strange
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 7: mystery need boiled carrots, strange food items that you would
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 7: not expect to see. We saw reports of sailors saying
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 7: that they hadn't had milk in three months. They were
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 7: eating dry cereal for breakfast and to the naked ear,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 7: maybe that doesn't sound like that big of a deal,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 7: but we're not talking about one bad day at sea.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 7: We're talking about extensive strain and over extension and pressure, underload,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 7: over time, day after day after day. And a lot
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 7: of people don't know that junior enlisted sailors cannot even
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 7: go topside on aircraft carrier. So there is a large
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 7: population on that ship who have not even seen the sky.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: They literally have not gone outside in months, months, Jesus.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 7: Months I mean the mental toll on the healthiest, most
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 7: fit for duty, always ready shipmate. It doesn't matter who
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 7: you are on a human level. You need food, you
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 7: need rest, you need your basic needs met in order
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 7: to be fit for duty, no matter who you are.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: And I've heard, you know, people who have served on
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: aircraft carriers talk about hearing loss associated with you know,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: if you're on the if you're on the runway and
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: you know planes are taking off around you all the time,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: it's obviously incredibly loud and can damage your hearing. There's
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: real concern about exhaustion and lack of sleep and what
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: that does to your sort of mental awareness and capacity
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: to react to events. You just talk about the risk
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: and the dangers involved in these jobs on a good
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: day and the way they are magnified with the deployment
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: of this length.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 7: If you can imagine an air traffic controller who hadn't
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 7: slapp more than six to eight hours between drills, between
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 7: your workday, between any watch, is that you're standing any
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 7: other ancillary responsibilities or collateral duties. There are only so
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 7: many hours in the day, so you're stretched and the
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 7: last thing you're going to get is sleep, let alone
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 7: peace will sleep. You don't just knock off to your
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 7: rack and let the water hit against the ship and
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 7: go to sweet dream situations. You're worried about what's happening
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: when you close your eyes. This is a combat zoone,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 7: this is an active deployment, and so that fear of
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 7: uncertainty is already hard enough. Add on mental load, brain fog,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 7: lack of nourishment. I mean, it is hard to put
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 7: yourself in those shoes, and we tend to look away
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 7: from what's difficult, and we don't understand. We don't know
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 7: how to console military families. We don't know how to
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 7: offer them anything right now, and so the pain is
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 7: still there and the suffering is still there. Regardless of
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 7: how resilient our sailors and our military are, there is
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 7: real suffering on the other side.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: The Baby's ability to resupply the Lincoln and other ships
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: in the region has been greatly impacted by Iranian attacks
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: on the US base in Manama, Bahrain. Could you talk
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: to listeners about what it means when you lose a
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: logistics hub like the Navy lost in Bahrain and just
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: sort of the impact on the ability to conduct the mission.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 7: Absolutely losing that supply hub in Bahrain was essentially losing
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 7: the most important resource for that strike group. So now
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 7: they have to travel five days each way out of
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 7: their way to get some of the same supplies. That's
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 7: a ten day round trip effort now because our headquarters
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 7: of fifth Fleet is not that supply hub anymore.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: Secretary Hegsaths and the Secretary of the Navy, they denied
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: your reporting, and then President Trump had this to say,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: let's watch a clip.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: The Lincoln has been out there for a period of time,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: good period of time, but over the years, we've had
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: him out there much longer. I was at a group
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: meeting and an admiral came up to see me over
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: the weekend, and it was at a big group and
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: he happened to be an admiral retired. He said, I've
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: been on ships there out there much longer than that, sir,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: and I know people on the Lincoln. They say it's
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of. And other people
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: went out and they found out to be true. It
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: was fake news reporting from CNN.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: So I'm just wondering what your response is to those comments,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: just on a factual basis, and whether you've heard from
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: any military families about how they feel about hearing your
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: reports denied or President Trump suggests like, actually everything's great.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's unfortunate and really sad. For a lot of
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 7: these military families, they're sad when they hear this, because
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 7: this is not just the president Donald Trump. This is
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 7: our commander in chief, the man in charge of these
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 7: beloved service members. And when you're a family member, you
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 7: don't get a handblock on how to deal with this.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 7: You don't get a class, a master class on how
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 7: to survive deployment at home and how to mitigate all
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 7: the things you feel when you hear things in the
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 7: media and you see things you know are true from
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 7: your service member, someone you know, or your trusted resource,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 7: it is scary. One military spouse told me that it
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 7: is infuriating to hear the commander in chief speak this
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 7: way when her husband is literally suffering on a floating
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 7: metal prison. That is how one spouse feels. So for
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 7: that spouse to hear they're fine, they've been out much longer.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 7: It's a beautiful ship, and it is a beautiful ship.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 7: Here's the thing. If he's talking about ships that have
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 7: been out there much longer, pretty sure he can only
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 7: be referring to the USSH Gerald R Ford, which just
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 7: completed an actual historic deployment, breaking a record that was
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 7: Vietnam era. Between Vietnam and May twenty twenty six, the
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 7: longest carrier deployment record was broken by three hundred and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 7: twenty six days on the uss Gerald R.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: Ford.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 7: So I'm confused by that statement. I know our families
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 7: are too and to have that kind of brush off
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 7: that will I talk to so and so who knows
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 7: more than these families know, and to be said that
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 7: these families to be told that they're not really suffering,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 7: they're not concerned. It's really it's really hurtful to them.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 7: And we already ask a great deal of our military
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 7: families here at home, and it's sad to see leadership
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 7: not supporting them.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and in the ford, I believe famously had some
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: real issues, including the toilet's not working and some nasty
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: stuff going on. And also, if Trump is talking to,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: you know, a retired admiral, I'm guessing that individual is
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: more likely to have contacts in the upper echelon and
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: the higher ranks of the Navy and not talking to
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: the grunts who as you mentioned earlier, are trapped below
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: deck for months and months at a time and sort
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: of nightmarage conditions with moldy toilets and showers and disgusting
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: food and you know, all the worst things that you've
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: been reporting out. You referenced earlier, these reports that the
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: Navy is sending a carrier from Japan to the Middle East.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: This is the US S George Washington with the you know,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: sort of stipulation that maybe that could be wrong. That
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: carrier is normally positioned in Asia in case something bad happens.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: Let's say China makes a move on Taiwan or the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: North Koreans do something stupid. What's the impact on military
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: capacity and readiness when you move that carrier from Japan
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: to the Middle East.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 7: So number one, the South China Sea is unattended to.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 7: Right now, our Western Pacific Command has literally set off
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 7: for the Middle East. With that command, there is a
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 7: whole battle group in tow. One of those ships is
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 7: the USS Benfold, which at the end of July, just
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 7: couple of weeks ago, was left powerless for four days
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 7: in the water, and they are directly supported by the
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 7: George Washington carrier. So without the carrier there, they have
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 7: lost their biggest resource, right if case that happens again.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 7: They were towed into Suvid Bay and the Philippines, and
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 7: they also went to Yakuska, Japan, and now they're back out.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 7: So the problem has been remedied. But we're talking about
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 7: four days just a drift, a drift in the water, right,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 7: So just that alone, I mean, imagine we're talking about
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 7: a guided missile destroyer, maybe three hundred and thirty to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 7: three hundred and fifty people. You've got like two female birthings,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 7: maybe three or four male birthings, and that's below decks
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 7: because the ward rooms are on the higher on the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 7: higher parts of the ship. So I really can't imagine
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 7: just those conditions alone. And that's not even mission oriented
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 7: to the consequences that we could potentially be faced by
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 7: making this kind of rerouteh.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: That is terrible. The United States is eleven aircraft carriers total,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: but they require serious maintenance. It can put some out
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: of commission for a very long time, especially if you
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: know the fuel rods have to be replaced. We're talking
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: about you know, nuclear energy. What is the status of
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: the fleet right now, and what are these long kind
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: of grueling missions due to the Navy's capacity to deploy
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: these aircraft carriers in places where we need them.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 7: That's a really good question, and it goes along with
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 7: the part of what we were talking about earlier. So
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 7: the Navy's own Optimized Fleet Response Plan lays out a
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 7: life cycle of thirty six months that includes maintenance workups, training,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 7: and it allots for eight month slot of time for deployment.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 7: That's one deployment every thirty six months. Wo okay. So
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 7: you can already see immediately where the gaps are in
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 7: that plan. So I've not seen anything pointing to some
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 7: kind of an update or newer guidance. I'm seeing our
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 7: own processes not followed.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: Trump reportedly ordered the Navy to go back to steam
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: catapults to launch these aircraft instead of the magnet based
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: systems That will cost billions of dollars to change. He's
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: also reportedly wants to change the design of the aircraft carriers,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: so the command centers moved to the center of the ship.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: I think that's purely for esthetic reasons. He wants it
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: to look like older models. What is the impact of
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: this kind of mettling? And I'm old enough to remember
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: when Barack Obama was criticized for kind of micromanaging the Pentagon.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: This feels like micromanaging on a scale that would not
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: go over very well within the Navy. But correct me
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: if I'm wrong.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 7: I don't think you're wrong at all. I question is
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 7: this the best use of our funds? Because we're having
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 7: trouble paying for our current veterans, are our current service
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 7: members who are about to become veterans and the future
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 7: service members who will be our future veterans. We're not
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 7: balancing that checkbook, right, So that's kind of a cost.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 7: I'm not sure what the end goal is. I haven't
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 7: done enough research or seen enough reporting on the value
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 7: of steam versus our current fleet plan. So it's interesting,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 7: but I don't think that from what I know in
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 7: the Navy, I don't think that they're very supportive of
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 7: that idea.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing you've done more research into the actual value
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: of steam over magnets than the President has in this instence. Natalie,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: where can folks find your work? Follow you get more
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: of your reporting?
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 7: Absolutely, I am a Pentagon correspondent at Military Times, so
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 7: they can find my work there. I'm also independent journalists
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 7: for The Warhorse News, and so we stand by the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 7: stories that we tell, the reporting that we do. It
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 7: means a lot to the readers and the viewers, and
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 7: we take that very seriously.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much for telling these stories. I
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: know it's probably very hard and scary for these family
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: members to come forward and talk about what their loved
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: ones are experiencing. I mean, I worry that they could
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: be afraid of their retaliation or punishment in some sense.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: But it takes a lot of courage and I think
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: it does really suggest how dire the situation is that
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: they would even do this to begin with.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 7: So thank you for your work, absolutely, thanks for having me.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Natalie Oliverio for joining the show, and thanks
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: you all for listening. And you know, if you're still listening, subscribe,
• 1:22:35
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• 1:22:40
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• 1:22:42
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• 1:22:46
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