Latest / Pod Save the World / Trump’s Dirty Diesel Deal

Transcript

Trump’s Dirty Diesel Deal · Pod Save the World

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• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: I'm Ben Rose.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Ben, did you treat yourself to the first press briefing
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: by the new White House press secretary, Katie Zachariah, today?
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: I had some crudités. I had some clips that I sampled.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, honestly, that's about all. It was 14
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: minutes long, I think.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: I was at 14 minutes.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: She took three questions.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: I saw the first one from Breitbart.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Breitbart.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: The most substantive of which was from Peter Doocy over
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: at Fox.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: He said, as the U.S.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Stopped intelligence sharing with Ukraine, to which he responded, I'll
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: have to get.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Back to you on that.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm sure Zelensky is wondering the same thing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll get into that in a little bit. Really
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: nailing it on day one there.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: But then later I saw there's a report from Judd
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Legum who writes for Popular Information, a great news site,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: independent media site. So Zachariah says she's a lawyer. Trump
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: has referred to her as a lawyer. but there's no
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: evidence that she's passed the bar in any state. And
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: it's technically to be a lawyer, you have to have
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: passed the bar. You have to be like approved by
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the Bar Association. A reporter asked her where she passed
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the bar. She said, when I moved to China, which
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: makes no sense.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Chinese bar, you know, I'm sure that a Democratic press
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: secretary who was at Chinese Communist Party lawyer. Not raise
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: any eyebrows. By the way, named shortly after Xi Jinping's visit.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So the timeline is she went to law school at
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Pepperdine Law here in California.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Beautiful campus, by the way.
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  Speaker 3: Right wing.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Quite right wing. Gorgeous. But it is beautiful. Malibu. Yeah,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: very nice.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Then she moved to China where she worked at Zhong Lun,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: which is like a blue chip Chinese law firm. They
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: do work for the Chinese Communist Party and ministries. And
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: there's a Within the law firm, there is an official
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party unit. Apparently, that's the thing that all
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: these firms have to have. Does that mean she's like
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a member of the CCP? Of course not.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Probably.
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: She could be.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: But it's like, to your point.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Just ask some questions.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Imagine, imagine if like the next Democratic press secretary had
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: worked at a Chinese law firm in Beijing and lied
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: about being a lawyer.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: I just think they like to rub the, hypocrisy and
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: mediocrity in her face. They could pick anybody to be
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: in this job, not anybody, but anybody from their megaverse.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: And it's this person who nobody had heard of a
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: couple of days ago. I mean, this is not exactly
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: the iconic role of the press secretary that we've come
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: to imagine.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: You know who she worked for here in California? Our guy,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Rick Grinnell.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: Oh, I did see that. I did see that. She
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: was on Team Grinnell.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was a general counsel at his nonprofit, which again,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: it's a misdemeanor to like, practice law without passing the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: bar in the state of California.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, if Grinnell was a tall, blonde woman with
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: long hair, he'd probably be the press secretary. Maybe this
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: is the best they can do. I mean, Trump clearly
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: has a type.
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Caroline Leavitt, Natalie Harp. I'm not suggesting anything there either,
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  Speaker 3: but clearly likes to be surrounded by people who have
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: a certain look.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: He just wants to travel in his catering cart with Natalie.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: And now Zachariah. As long as we're shooting the shit.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: What's the over-under?
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: On how long she lasts. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: why do they even have a press secretary?
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Or maybe she just won't brief. Remember that one press
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: secretary in Trump, one who just never briefed?
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Was it Spicer? Spicer just disappeared.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: No, there was a woman that was in there at
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  Speaker 3: some point.
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  Speaker 6: Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: After Sarah Huckabee, who just never briefed.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Was that the one who came over from the first
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: lady's office and just never briefed? Yeah. And then turned
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: on Trump, I think, right?
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Probably.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah. 14-minute press briefing. They clearly just
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: didn't prep her. It's like.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It's just so unfair to throw someone out to the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: wolves like that, to read a speech and then walk away.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: It's just devastating to read Cherlin.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: All of us who had to breathe proper gifts every
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: day and Josh Earnest. Speaking of the Trump White House,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: have you decided where.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: You're going to be?
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Some Jay Carney erasure there.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Jay Carney erasure.
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  Speaker 4: You're right.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sorry about that.
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  Speaker 1: Where are you going to watch the live streamed execution
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  Speaker 1: of the Fort Hood shooter?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, God.
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  Speaker 2: Hard to think of a dumber, more barbaric thing you
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  Speaker 2: could do.
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  Speaker 3: To help Al Qaeda. Every now and then something– cuts
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: your attention because it is so insane that we're going
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: to live stream a firing squad shooting a man in
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: a wheelchair. Did you know he's in a wheelchair?
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  Speaker 2: 56-year-old man in a wheelchair.
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  Speaker 3: That does not evince a confident, law-abiding, values-based superpower.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, you don't think that's high tea?
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: No, that is not.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe. Maybe it is high tea.
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  Speaker 3: That's what you do when you have a little too
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: much tea.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Too much tea.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: I have to think that's not going to happen.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's actually– I don't think it's going to
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: happen either. I think this was like Hegseth– Just being
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: like– I don't know. I think the term like toxic
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: masculinity is thrown around a bit too much. It's like
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: he's just an idiot and an asshole and like the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: most kind of brutish thug that is in the administration.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: What's scary about it in our like kind of fascist
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  Speaker 3: adjacent politics is they feel like they can't shock you
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: anymore with certain things. So now we have to move
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  Speaker 3: to this. Like what is it going to take to
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  Speaker 3: shock us two years from now?
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  Speaker 2: Public execution live streamed. Yeah.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: Why?
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, we got a great show for you guys today.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: We are going to talk about Trump's diesel deal with
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Putin and how he is absolutely screwing over the Ukrainians
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: right before what could be a very tough winter for them.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Then we're going to talk about the recent Houthi attacks
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: on Saudi Arabia and really their attacks on like MBS's
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: vision for Saudi Arabia's future. We're going to talk about
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: this massive protest movement by the youth-led cockroach movement in India.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: We'll talk just for a minute about private mercenary armies
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and corruption. Then we're going to bid farewell to an icon.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: of the Pod Save the World cinematic universe, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, I know. I know. We're going to miss her.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: I'm sure she'll have another act, right?
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: What do you think? Lichtenstein or something?
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: She seems to always have another life. I mean, this
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: is a woman that was married to Gavin Newsom.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: It's wild.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: It's really, when you think about it, yeah, she's lived
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of lives.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: I was Googling her today.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And there was an old picture of her and Gavin
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: in Sharon Stone in like 2004 or 2007. It was
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: like just another era of politics.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: My favorite was a quote from her in one of
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: these stories when she was married to Gavin saying that
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: they were going to be the Jack and Jackie Kennedy
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: of their era. I guess that didn't happen.
• 7:19
  Speaker 7: Odd.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Then you're going to hear my interview with Leslie Ann Warner.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: She is a foreign affairs analyst and a visiting scholar
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: with the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: We dig deeper into the conflict in Ethiopia and how
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: it could spill out into the horn of Africa in
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: many devastating ways.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: So stick around for that. Ben, should we start with Ukraine?
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Let's do it.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: This feels like a big deal.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: So over the past few days, there's been this flurry
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: of extremely unhelpful activity from President Trump when it comes
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: to Ukraine. So on Friday night, Trump stunned President Zelensky
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  Speaker 1: and like all the leaders in Europe by announcing a
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: deal with Putin that that would allow Russia to, quote,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: immediately supply over 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: American and global marketplace, another 500,000 tons during the month
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: of November, and a million tons immediately after. And then
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: he says something about another 3 million tons of diesel
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  Speaker 1: in what he describes as a short period of time.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: This all came via Truth Social post, as all great
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: diplomacy does, but it's quite hard to follow. Energy expert
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: sold the New York Times that the deal could deliver
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: about $ 4 billion worth of American money to Russia which
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: would almost certainly be used to fund the war effort.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Trump also claimed that he'd brokered a so-called energy ceasefire
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: between Ukraine and Russia, where the two sides would stop
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: targeting energy infrastructure. But that news was news to Russia
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: and Ukraine. And Zelensky said that on Monday alone, Russia
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: broke the ceasefire by hitting six Ukrainian energy facilities. And
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: in a bigger picture, like these strikes on Russian energy
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  Speaker 1: infrastructure have been one of Ukraine's most effective tactics in
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the war effort. So it's really screwing over the Ukrainians.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Trump was asked about all of this on Tuesday. Here
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: is some of what he said. Has somebody told you
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that Russia is not just going to take this diesel
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: money and use it to buy bombs?
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: Nobody told me anything. That's a diesel deal not for us.
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  Speaker 4: That's being released into the world. That's not being released
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: to us.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: Russia hit six energy sites on yesterday, according to the Ukrainian.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: What evidence do you have?
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  Speaker 4: Well, Ukraine hit many sites the day before. But, in
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: your view, Russia has not broken the ceasefire. I'll let
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: you know about that later. But they're hitting each other.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: But it'll all come to an end. They both, they
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: both wanted to come to an end. They just don't
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: know how to get there.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: What gives you such confidence that who wants the war
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  Speaker 1: to end more than Zelensky?
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: Only in dealing. That's what I've done my whole life
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: is deals.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: So Zelensky learned about this deal in the press. I
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: think his whole team was like meeting with Jared Kushner
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: and Steve Witkoff down in Miami. And they sprung this
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: on them and then threatened to cut off intelligence sharing
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: by the United States. If Ukraine didn't abide by this
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: energy ceasefire, Zelensky didn't react well. So on Saturday, Trump
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: said Ukraine should, quote, get a new leader who can
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: make a deal.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: So, Ben, everything about this is terrible.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: It's like Trump only cares about this war and ending
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the war in the context of like diesel prices in
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the midterms. But diesel prices are up because of the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: war in Iran, not because of Ukraine.
• 10:15
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And then at current rates, like the US would burn
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that first tranche of like whatever, 300,000 tons of diesel
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: in I think about 14 hours. So it's not even
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: going to have an impact. But giving Russia all this
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: money would have an impact. I mean, Zelensky told ABC
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: News that the deal will allow Putin to, quote, kill us,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: kill our children. He also said, OK, if they want
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: energy ceasefire, we are open for this. Don't attack us.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Don't kill our children. We will stop attacking your diesel.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: And I think it's a fair, fair deal. So he's
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: just saying like, hey, if they do it, we'll.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Abide by it. Then I'll pause there.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Like, What did you make of this announcement, why he
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: did it now, why it's always backed by all this
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: rage at Zelensky only?
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is one of the kind of crazier things
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: that Trump has done of late, and that's a competitive list.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: First of all, as you point out, this is a blip.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: This is not going to lower diesel prices in the
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: United States. The reason diesel prices are up is because
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: of the many months, you know, blip. logjam of getting
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: stuff through the Strait of Hormuz, which is a much
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: more significant share of the world's diesel than comes out
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: of this deal with Russia. So what's weird to me
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: about it, Tommy, is that this is not going to
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: affect the price of things. Like if you're in Iowa
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: and you're a farmer and you're paying more for everything
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: because of diesel, because of trucks, because of fertilizer, Like
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: it's not like suddenly it's going to go down.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the harvest is now.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: So Trump is like hoping that what? Like people will
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: be like, oh, Trump just made a diesel deal with Putin.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: I'll ignore the high prices and vote for the Republican candidate.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Like it's not going to work. So it's just this
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: kind of fictitious effort to look like he's doing something
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: and avoiding taking responsibility for the fact that he's the
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: one that raised diesel prices by launching the war with Iran.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: So doesn't solve the problem that he created and doesn't
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: frankly solve his political problem, I don't think. Then when
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: you look at this energy ceasefire, if you– like I
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: spent a lot of time like trying to unpack it
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: and it seems like the way the Russians are interpreting
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: the energy ceasefire is it only applies to refineries.
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: Because the Ukrainians have been hitting refineries in Russia and
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: that's what's causing huge problems to the Russians like lines
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: for gas, like all kinds of shortages. Yes. Ukraine doesn't
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: have any fucking refineries because Russia blew up the only
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: refinery in Ukraine, right? So the energy ceasefire is not
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: an energy ceasefire. It's a gift to Putin. It's saying
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Ukraine can no longer hit your refineries. You can continue
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: to take out all kinds of energy infrastructure inside of Ukraine.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: So Putin gets lots of billions of dollars worth of money.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: Putin gets the kind of validation of this deal. Putin's
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: diplomats have been invited to the G20. Putin himself may
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: come to the G20 in Miami later this year. Putin's
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: just getting, getting, getting, getting. And Ukraine's just getting screwed.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: And then when Ukraine points out that they're getting screwed,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: Trump demands that they like get rid of Zonsky. I'm
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: not sure how they're supposed to do that anyway. Like
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: we're just going to have a coup inside of Ukraine.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: So this is making ending the war in Ukraine harder
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: because Putin will now feel like, oh, I got to
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: double down here. I got this great opening. It makes
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: it harder for the Ukrainians because they feel like if
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: they hit Russian energy infrastructure– maybe this intel sharing that
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: they depend on for both targeting, but also for, to
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: be clear, some of the intelligence is defensive. It's like,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: watch out for this incoming Russian ballistic missile. So it's
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: counterproductive in any way you look at.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: It, essentially. Well, let's talk about this intel piece real quick.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: We reached out to Alexei Sorokin, who's the deputy chief
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: editor at the Kyiv Independent. And he talked to us
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: a bit about the intelligence cutoff and what it could mean.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Let's listen.
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: Yesterday, The Russian attack on Kyiv with ballistic missiles came
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: without an early warning. The air raid alerts sounded only
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: after the ballistic missiles hit Kyiv. Usually, Ukrainians have the
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: air raid alerts equipped with early warning systems, meaning that
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: Ukrainians understand when the missile is incoming, and the U.S.
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: has been helping Ukrainians to detect those missiles.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: This didn't happen yesterday.
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: So Ukrainian officials right now are calling their American counterparts,
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: asking what happened.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: And if it's confirmed that the U.S.
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: Cut off intelligence sharing, well, I guess we now know
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: that the U.S. is banking on Russia to win this war.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: So like you, I read this over the weekend.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I was kind of like, what is this flailing idiocy?
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I kind of thought it was just like a dumb...
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: kind of PR gambit around the midterms. But then today
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I talked with a guy named Andrew Weiss at the
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Carnegie Institute. He's a former Russia hand at the NSC
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: and the State Department also wrote a book, a graphic
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: novel actually about Putin called Accidental Tsar, The Life and
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Lives of Vladimir Putin. And he just pointed out some
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: context that made it so much more alarming. The first
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: is Ukraine is about to go into a winter with
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: basically no capacity to defend itself, right? They're out of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: interceptor missiles like we're about to be.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: In part because we can't get them any because we've
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: used them all on the Iran.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Defend Israel.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: And also Russia is now firing these jet powered drones
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: that are far more difficult to intercept. They're like developing
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: technology to intercept them, but it's slower than, you know,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: sort of the Russian development, which means in practice that
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Putin is decimating cities. And what he's likely to do
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: is to try to knock out all of the electricity
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and heating infrastructure in these cities, basically make them uninhabitable.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: And so where are people going to go?
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: They're going to, Ukrainians could flood into Europe right on,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: like at the, Far-right elections. Four of the five biggest
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: EU member states by population are about to have elections, right?
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: So like there is a long-term strategic political goal here.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: He also pointed out what you were mentioning then, which
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: is there's this series of Ukraine-focused meetings coming up. There
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: was the one that just happened in Miami with Kushner
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and Witkoff where they're supposed to be setting up this
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: conversation about like the energy ceasefire in the Gulf and
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Then Trump goes to APEC in November where he supposedly–
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: they floated a trilateral meeting with the Russians, the Chinese
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and Trump, which is like Zelensky's nightmare.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Then the G20 is in Miami.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: They fucking invited Putin to come to the G20 at Doral,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: whatever Trump's golf course. And like Trump keeps saying, Putin
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: wants to make a deal but Zelensky won't do it.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: It seems like this could be a play to like
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: weaken Zelensky into that G20 meeting and then to jam
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: something on him.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: When, you know, like he's like has no choice.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's like three kind of step back points here.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: Like the first is there are some people who are like,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: we got to end this war. And, you know, if
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: you listen to kind of the, you know, Tucker Carlson, right,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: like it's ending the war is entirely like Ukrainian responsibility.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: You know that I want to end the war. Everything
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: Trump is doing is extending the war. Like the way
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: to end the war is you have to fortify Ukraine.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: You have to give them the assurance that they're going
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: to be a viable sovereign state and therefore they can
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: make some territorial concessions and send a message to Putin
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: that because we're going to be fortifying these people substantially,
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: you're going to have to accept a certain limit to
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: what you're going to cannibalize from their territory.
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Like that's how you end the war. It's not by
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: saying– Let's just like weaken the Ukrainians and that will
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: end the war. That will encourage and incentivize Russia to
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: keep pushing for those reasons, both because they might actually,
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: you know, just continue to encroach on more territory and
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: maybe collapse the government and because they're getting the secondary
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: benefit of the boon to far-right politics. The second thing
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: is it's hard to overstate because you kind of have
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: a sane washing that happens when you read like legacy
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: media portrayals of Trump's foreign policy, the scale of the
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: catastrophe of Trump's foreign policy. He decides to attack Iran
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: and topple its government. He fails to do that. That
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: drives up energy prices. That helps Putin. That screws over
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: people in the United States and in Europe and around
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: the world. And then he has to try to make
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: up for what he did, reward Putin, who's an ally
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: of Iran. And Russia is providing intelligence to Iran to
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: kill American service members to bomb American bases. This is
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: like Russian intelligence, Russian material flowing in. So the country
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: that is helping Iran defeat the United States in a
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: war is being rewarded with billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: It's absolute fucking madness. And then the last step back
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: point is Putin coming to Miami. We just had Bibi
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu indicted ICC war criminal in New York. We're going
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: to have Vladimir Putin indicted ICC warrant for his arrest
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: and for Netanyahu. coming to Miami, and we're sanctioning the
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: criminal court to defend these fucking war criminals. I mean,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: this is, that's why this one thing is actually bigger
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: than even the insanity of Trump doing this. It exemplifies
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: just the complete strategic failure and moral failure of his
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: foreign policy.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: And the Ukraine war is getting worse for the Russians
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: in particular.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, did you see the latest NATO casualties numbers?
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: They estimate that In September, Russia had 50,000 casualties, 5-0. 28,000
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: killed in action, the rest incapacitated. That's up from the
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: usual like 30,000 rate. But even that, like Putin is
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: seen as being able to replenish that. Like he's not
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: going to have to institute a draft. He's not going
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: to topple his government necessarily by doing this. The other
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: thing that's just disgusting and that kind of links it
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: to these other conflicts, Ben, is I think it was
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the New York Times had this report about Jared Kushner
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: and Steve Witkoff cooking up a deal with the Russians
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: where basically Jared and Steve go and get their benefactors
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: in the Gulf and have them buy Luke Oil, which
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: is this massive sanctioned Russian oil and gas firm.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Which would allow them to evade U.S. sanctions basically because
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't get purchased by a U.S. company, send a
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: bunch of money directly back to the Russians and get
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Putin paid and then like take care of Kushner and
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Witkoff's guy.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: It's like– it's stunning corruption.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: It is and you can tell by Jared and Witkoff's
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: approach to this and Trump's that the real prize for Trump, sure,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: he has an affinity for Putin. Sure– The world that
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: he wants is a world where he and Vladimir Putin
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: and Xi Jinping kind of sit on top and reign everything. Yeah, exactly,
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: with these fucking guys. But it's also money, right? There
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: is money to be made in Russia. They've had like
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: their nose on oil deals, energy deals, real estate deals.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: They want into that Russian market. It's bigger to them
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: than Ukraine. There's not money to be made in Ukraine
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: like there is on a scale to be made in Russia.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: That's what they're ultimately in pursuit of. And they've been
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: trying to end the war in order to make those deals.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: And Putin knows that. That's why he sent all these
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: people responsible for business deals to Alaska for that summit
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: with Trump. That's why he sent the sovereign wealth fund
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: guy to negotiate with Jared Woodcuff. But now, failing to
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: do that, they're just starting to make the deals now
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: with the war going on. Like, they're like, fine, you know,
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: the war might keep going, which suits Putin, right? Like, okay, fine,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Jared Mykoff, you got a few billion here, a few
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: billion there. Like, we'll deal with your Gulf, you know,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: patrons to, like, do this kind of weird three-dimensional chess
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: so that everybody can make a little money. And the
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Russian war machine gets replenished. So by their rush to
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: make the deals, they're just going to keep this war going.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: He's not trying to end the war. He's perpetuating the war.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: And since we live in a world devoid of accountability,
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: we should just point out, again, this is a man
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: who said he would end the war on day one.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: And here we are two years into the Trump administration.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't overstate how corrupt this is.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, Luke Oil has all these oil and
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: gas assets that, like, can't be used because of the sanctions.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: The Carlyle Group, which is a big American firm, had, like,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: a bid out to buy it. But now it seems
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: like Trump is more interested in this end run where
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Todd Boley, who owns the LA Dodgers and has like
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: no oil and gas experience that I know of, buys
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: it in conjunction with these like golf autocrats who purchased,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: you know, the Trump World Liberty.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Financial, like the crypto company. Like it's just insane levels
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: of corruption.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: And it's just going to get worse because as these
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: guys start to, you know, reach the end of the
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: clock of the Trump administration, the money grab is just
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. And
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: it like it connects to what we were talking about
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: with like Man City and like everything in the world
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: is going to end up being owned by like a
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: few hundred people. You know, it's crazy. Like oil companies,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: sports teams, like media conglomerates, like that's the world that
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: they're making, you know, and that's the world that's going
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: to be like broken apart on the back end of this.
• 23:09
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  Speaker 1: full body support they deserve. All right, Ben, let's turn
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: to the other disastrous war on Trump's watch, so the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Iran war. Last week, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: repeatedly struck airports in Saudi Arabia, including King Khalid International
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Airport in Riyadh, killing at least 20 people and wounding
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: hundreds more. This comes at a time when the Saudis
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: are hosting or about to host these huge international conferences.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: One is called the World Petroleum Council Energy Congress. And
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: then in a couple of weeks is the Future Investment Initiative.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Or Davos in the Desert.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Davos in the Desert, yeah.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: One of our favorites here on Pod Save the World.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: I have not been invited to that.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Nor have I. Yeah. Nor have I.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: The Financial Times reported that the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Total Energies, Shell,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: and BP were all expected to go to this Energy
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Congress meeting but canceled after the airport was bombed.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Understandable.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Listeners probably remember that last month, the Houthi rebels made
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: the surprise advance in Yemen.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: They took a bunch of territory along the Red Sea.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: That could allow them to control shipping in and out
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: of the Red Sea through the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Yemeni government has since launched this counteroffensive. They have a
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: bunch of Saudi support. The Saudis have support from U.S.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: advisors and intel guys. But so far, despite repeated asks
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: from the Saudi crown prince, Trump has refused to bomb
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the Houthis directly. Trump was asked about this over the weekend.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: He said, quote, we're going to look at doing more
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: to support the Saudis. He also later said on Tuesday
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: that he might ask Turkey to get involved and that
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the Houthis are, quote, behaving very badly. So, Ben, listeners
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: might be wondering why bomb airports? And my answer would
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: be that doing so lets them attack like the heart
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's vision for the future
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: of Saudi Arabia, right? Because he wants to diversify away
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: from oil and gas. He wants to bring in more tourists.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: more international businesses, the artificial intelligence industry.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Et cetera.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: And when you bomb the airport and make it unsafe
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: for these travelers, that's just not going to happen. And
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: to make matters worse, like the Houthis figured out how
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: to get missiles and drones or cruise missiles, whatever it was,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: past the most advanced US missile defense systems on offer, right?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: So the Saudis spent billions of dollars on these US
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: weapons that still can't seem to defend them. So again,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: it's like, I don't have a lot of empathy for
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Mohammed bin Salman, but again, I ask, can you imagine
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: how pissed he must be right now?
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Did you see that Claude might've played a role in the,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: that they might've used Claude to figure out how to
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: redirect missiles?
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: So here we are. Thank God we're building these tools
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: that nobody's asking for. Here's the thing. Is it good
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: that the Houthis are doing this? Absolutely not, right? But
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: if you look at what the Houthis and what the
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Iranians are doing, they are essentially trying to pay back
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: what has been done to them.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: It's reciprocal.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: So if you look at the Iranians, they have been
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: sanctioned and now bombed, particularly their energy infrastructure, for years.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: They can't sell oil or they can't get their oil revenue.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: So they're like, you know what? Fuck you guys. We're
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: going to start bombing you know, the Qatari gas field,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: the Saudi, you know, we're just going to start spreading
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: this pain around too. The Houthis had been bombed for
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: many years. The airport in Sana'a has been bombed by
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: the Saudi-led coalition.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Including in July, which kind of kicked this conflict back up. Yeah.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: And so once they got the opportunity and the capability
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: to do this, particularly in the context of this war
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: going on, this is like, this is the tale of
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: the war, right? Like if you bomb the Houthis for over, like,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know, a decade now, like this is going
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: to come home in the same way that bombing the
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Iranians repeatedly is kind of coming home to everybody. And
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: there's this kind of feeling that there's no consequence to violence.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: There's no consequence to war. Like Mohammed bin Salman seems
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: to have matured somewhat as a leader. We've pointed that out.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: And yet the things that he did early in his tenure,
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: including this kind of insane war that he launched against
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: the Yemenis, this is the blowback to that. And this
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: is why you don't do that. Like, this is why
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: the wars have long-term consequences. And absolutely, you're right. Like,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: they're trying to shatter, and they have temporarily at least,
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: shattered this idea that Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: going to be this haven for tourism and sports and
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: international conferences and trade. and not just kind of like
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: the world's, you know, gas station. And this is a
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: big fucking problem for MBS because they can't make this
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: go away. Ultimately, like, unless they want to invade Yemen
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: and occupy it, they're going to have to make some
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: kind of deal with the Houthis. So, yeah, I'm sure, like,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: in the short term, it might help them if Trump
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: starts bombing the Houthis. But, like, they're going to be there,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: as we've said. And this is why, ultimately, you need diplomacy.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you'd also, you know, used to see the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Houthis kind of, you know, People talk shit about them.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: They call them guys and flip flops.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: So it's like, well, it turns out the guys and
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: flip flops can do a lot of damage with Claude
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and some Iranian missiles.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: You know, people used to say that about the Taliban.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: They're sitting in Kabul.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And also like the Houthis seem to have a more
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: coherent ideological project.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: They're for what it's.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, again, I'm not like supporting that, but their
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: commanders seem better trained or at least more experienced in
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: fighting while the government forces in Yemen that are.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Backed by the Saudis.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: More fractured because of you know things we've talked about
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: previously like this split between the uae and saudi arabia
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and also because um these yemeni commanders lied and said
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: they had like 200 guys you know a 200 force
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: strong you know battalion or whatever and it was like
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: 20 dudes and the rest were just like collecting salaries
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: salaries like ghost soldiers so it's really bad and also
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: like again like all these conflicts are metastasizing i don't
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: know if you saw this but like the pakistanis are
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: getting pressure to come in they signed this joint defense
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: compact with Saudi and Turkey. And, you know, Pakistan's got
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: a big military. They've got like 660,000 soldiers. They've got
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: all these planes. But the war with Iran is very
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: unpopular in Pakistan because they have a large Shia minority
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: who is not going to want to see the government
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: go to war.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: But also the Saudis just gave them, you know.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Like a $ 3 billion emergency loan to help them stay afloat.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: So they're getting cross-pressured.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And so I just, like, there's all these ways this
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: thing is, like, spreading and getting worse the longer it
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: drags on.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to say, like, we haven't done World
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: War Watch in a couple weeks. Like, if you look
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: at the inkblot of where the wars are, right, like,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: in Ukraine, Iran, Yemen, like, imagine that inkblot spreading to,
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: you know, Pakistan, Turkey. I mean, this is not, this
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: is why you don't start wars without plans. This is why...
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Like diplomacy and the UN system matters. Like– because right now,
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: there's kind of no clear landing for this plane anywhere.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: No, there is not.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: And like the key– so going back to like Iran proper,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: like the key economic choke point for the Iranians in
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: this war has been shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Remember like in normal times, 20 to 25 percent of
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the world's seaborne oil and gas goes to the Strait
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: of Hormuz along with about 20 percent.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Of the world's liquefied natural gas.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Since the war started, the Iranians have managed to choke
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: off shipping through the strait kind of in an on-again,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: off-again basis. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we talked
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: about how crude oil shipments were back up close to
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: pre-war levels because of this new process, these ship-to-ship transfers
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: that were protected by the US Navy. However, since Sunday,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: six ships have been attacked in the strait. The Financial
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Times ran the numbers and the number of ships hit
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: in the last two weeks is 24, which is the
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: highest number of the war, nearly double the first two
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: weeks in March when 13 ships were hit. Obviously, Iran
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: is trying to slow or stop these ship-to-ship transfers, which
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: have been this like key new tactic by these Gulf
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: countries to get oil out. Also, the more broadly, Ben,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: like Iran just does not seem like it's preparing to
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: cut a deal.
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal reported, quote, satellite images show Iran
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: is strengthening sensitive locations, including nuclear sites and border areas,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to make them more resilient to attacks. The government is
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: also preparing Iranians for renewed war, sending paramilitary forces to
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: read war stories to kindergartners, advertising training in firing shoulder-mounted
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: anti-aircraft missiles and holding rallies. So just like add that
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: to the list of the reasons I think Trump is
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: likely to escalate things after the midterms.
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, remember– how much talk of a deal there
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: was in the MOU and the 9 million Barak Ravid
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: tweets with sirens about like the deal is going to
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: be announced tomorrow. I mean, these people don't want to
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: make a deal. And it kind of connects to the
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Russian thing that you were saying about the far right
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: in Europe. Um, first of all, whenever the U S
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: does manage to put some bandaid on this and get
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: some ships through, guess what? The Iranians figure out some
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: other way to fuck. Cause they're there because they have
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: a lot of options for how did they live there?
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Um, What they're seeing is, just like the Russians are saying,
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: wait a second, the European support for Ukraine is beginning
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: to really hurt incumbent governments. The far right is running
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: against that. Maybe if we squeeze the pain on energy
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: and on refugees, that'll help the far right. If you're
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: the Iranians and the Houthis, you're like, wait a second,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: we're putting the petrodollar at risk. We're putting the stability
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: potentially of Gulf monarchies at risk, like why wouldn't they
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: want this thing to go on? Like they've suffered a
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: lot over a lot of years. Now they're seeing like
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: the pain level go up for their enemies. That's us,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: the United States, that's the Gulf, that's Europe. And this
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: is the Pandora's box that has been opened. And just
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: thinking that we're going to bomb them until they say,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: all right, we've had enough. These are people that fought
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: like a near decade long war again with Iraq in
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: which they sent waves of, you know, teenagers essentially to
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: charge into gunfire and lost hundreds of thousands of people.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: This is not a regime that's going to like capitulate
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: because Donald Trump did a true social post and Pete
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Hegseth took some testosterone this morning.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: And Brent Crude is up at like 105, 106 when
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: we were coming in here to record. So the markets
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: are no longer shrugging off the war and the cost
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: of energy. All right, but let's turn to India, where
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: once again, massive protests have upended life in New Delhi.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: So just a quick reminder of what the cockroach movement is.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: In May of this year, India's chief justice called unemployed
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: young people in India cockroaches. After that, young, mostly like
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Gen Z protesters, they adopted the name. They started calling
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: themselves the Cockroach Junta Party or CJP. The CJP and
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: then thousands of young people they took to the streets
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: at the time to protest this terrible medical school entrance
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: exam process. Ultimately, those protests were so successful that they
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: pressured India's education minister to resign. So now the CJP,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: they're calling for the resignation of the chief election commissioner,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Here's why. Last year, the Election Commission launched this, quote,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: special intensive revision of the voting rolls that has now
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: struck more than 130 million names from those voter rolls.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Many people believe this process is just simply designed to
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: benefit the BJP, the Prime Minister Modi's ruling party. So
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the CJP, the Kakarach Janta Party, they started holding protests.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: But then on Saturday, the police cracked down hard on
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the protesters. Trains to Delhi were canceled. Protesters were put
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: under house arrest. Opposition leader Raul Gandhi was arrested while protesting,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of CJP leaders were detained en route
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: to Delhi.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Friend of the pod, Indian.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Journalist Rana Ayyub has been reporting from the ground. This
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: is a voice note we got from her about what
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: she's seen.
• 38:06
  Speaker 7: I was beaten by a wooden baton and accidentally, according
• 38:10
  Speaker 7: to the Delhi police. Ironically, just within a few minutes,
• 38:15
  Speaker 7: they recognized who I was. So it's not like they
• 38:17
  Speaker 7: didn't know who they were hitting. I was detained for
• 38:21
  Speaker 7: an hour by the Delhi police because I questioned them
• 38:25
  Speaker 7: giving a free pass to the right-wing goons. According to
• 38:28
  Speaker 7: a report that has just been released by the Company
• 38:31
  Speaker 7: to Protect Journalists about 35 journalists were detained, attacked in
• 38:37
  Speaker 7: various incidents. The Supreme Court of India has.
• 38:42
  Speaker 8: given directives to the Delhi police that movement of the
• 38:46
  Speaker 8: public should be allowed, that peaceful protests should be allowed,
• 38:49
  Speaker 8: but none of them have been followed by the Modi
• 38:52
  Speaker 8: government or the Delhi police.
• 38:54
  Speaker 7: I have not seen something like this. I've been a
• 38:57
  Speaker 7: journalist in India for the last 20 years and I've
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: seen the worst instincts of Narendra Modi over the last
• 39:04
  Speaker 7: 12 years. And even then, What I witnessed in the
• 39:07
  Speaker 7: last three days has been unprecedented, even if one were
• 39:11
  Speaker 7: to go by Mr. Modi's own standards.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: So after this week of crackdowns, thousands of protesters hit
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: the streets again Monday, but then CJP leaders were arrested
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: again on Tuesday.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: So this story is ongoing.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: We'll pause there. I mean, political analysts think this second
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: round of protests is different. because a resignation from a
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: senior minister this time, it's less likely because like for
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: constitutional reasons and also it'd be a tacit admission that
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: this voter purge was wrong as opposed to like a
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: examination process, which is like fucked up and Modi could
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: easily just have a scapegoat there. But like, My question
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: here is whenever you hear politicians, especially in the U.S.,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: talk about India, we refer to it as the world's
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: largest democracy. If the ruling party is striking 130 million
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: people from the voter rolls and then arresting opposition leaders,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: arresting protesters, preventing peaceful protests, is it a democracy anymore?
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Like are we at that tipping point for India?
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Well, they're kind of like us, right? Like democracy is
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: a spectrum and they're like tilting pretty far. heavily in
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: the direction of an authoritarian spectrum. They have been moving
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: in that direction pretty steadily for the last decade at least. Look, Rana,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: first of all, this is a woman that has covered
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: the Gujarat riots in which Muslims were massacred. She's covered Kashmir.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: She's covered all manner of political crackdowns. She herself has
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: faced persecution. For her to say that she's never seen
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: anything like this tells you something. Now, I think, number one,
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: you're right. The difference with the protests about education, that
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: is a pain in the ass to the government. That
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: is an embarrassment to the government. But protesting the purging
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: of the voter rolls is getting at the regime's kind
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: of survival mechanism, right? Which is they're beginning to think
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: they may not be able to keep winning elections. So
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: they have to start controlling who can and who cannot vote.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: And protesting that is kind of protesting the political function
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: of the Hindu nationalist movement and the party led– the
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: BJP party led by Narendra Modi. When you look at
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: what they did too, like it's not just that they
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: cracked down on the protest. They were trying to prevent
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: them from happening at all. So some of these people
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: were going to come to Delhi on like trains. They
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: like shut down the trains. Then they got on planes.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: They arrested the people there. When the planes landed, like
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: the leadership of these– they couldn't even get to the protest, right?
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: So this is why it's not just a heavy-handed response
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: to a protest. This is saying freedom– this gets to
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: your point about is it a democracy. Freedom of assembly,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: which is about as basic as a democratic right as
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: there is, one that we can still do here in
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: the United States, that– they're saying that, well, that doesn't
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: exist here anymore. So it's a combination of saying we
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: can purge all these people from the voter rolls and
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: then nobody can protest that. that's when you're starting to
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: feel like this isn't just like, hey, we're on the
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: authoritarian spectrum. We're tilting over into a place where, sure,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: there may be some semblance of democracy, some local elections.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: You can protest certain things, but you cannot question the
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: dominance of the ruling party here, whether or not the
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: ruling party could win a free and fair election. And
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: that That is scary for the quote-unquote world's largest democracy.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: It's scary for us because we have like a leader
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: who probably would like to do that here too. So yeah,
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: this is a huge story because like if India tips
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: all the way in that direction, well, then it's Trump, Xi, Putin,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: and then Modi wants to get at that table too.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Not great.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Well, shout out to Rana for being out on the
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: streets with these protesters and putting herself at risk to
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: cover it. Before we take a break, I just want
• 42:50
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• 45:43
  Speaker 1: of crime in real time. Two more things just to close.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: The first is just like sometimes I read an article.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: It's hard to discuss the scope of it on the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: show because it's so crazy and comprehensive. But you guys
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: should read about this. It's about Eric Prince. He is
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: everyone's least favorite private mercenary military contractor. Prince founded Blackwater.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: They were infamous for massacring civilians in Iraq. Apparently his
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: new company, which is called Vectis Global, okay, they were
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: hired to work in the Congo to fight the M23,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: the rebel group backed by the Rwandan government that is
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: just known to commit atrocities. Prince's mercenaries, they were conducting
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: drone strikes on M23 targets. And then last month, The
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: story is about how Prince's troops and these Congolese soldiers
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: were ambushed by the M23 and a bunch of Prince's
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: guys were killed or wounded, including someone named Tim Kennedy,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: who I had not heard of, but apparently he was
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: a special forces guy in the U.S. Army who became
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a professional MMA fighter. And then he hosted TV shows
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. Then I
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: guess went back to being a mercenary.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: That's like a weird subculture, like a kind of right-wing
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: History Channel ecosystem.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Like literally a private mercenary. So anyway, just read the story.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: It is worth your time.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: But Ben, it just like made me think about Like,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: can you imagine, like, okay, the corruption that we know
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: about that's happening between like Jared Kushner and the Russians
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: is one thing.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine what the like.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Congo minerals deal side, you know, agreements are with Eric
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Prince and his private mercenaries who apparently, according to this story,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: they're collecting taxes related to the mining sector. A private
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: mercenary force is collecting taxes on behalf of the Congo?
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: I think that what, like people don't understand is the
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: extent to which like the privatization of intelligence and warfare and,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: you know, net security in, in places like the DRC
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: has just been mushrooming for years. And basically what you
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: have down there is you've got like Eric Prince type,
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: you know, or outfits doing this stuff. You've got, you know,
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: you had the Wagner group that's now kind of the
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Russian state, the DRC, like, like, you know, is just
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: crawling with this. And that's, who's providing security at these
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: mines where you have like semi slave labor, like getting
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: us the minerals for our phones. Like this is, this
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: is both dark and not disconnected from our own lives
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: because this is where a lot of like minerals come
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: from and metals come from that we rely on. And
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: that's why there's all this money sloshing around. None of
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: the money reaches the people in these countries or the
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: workers in those mines. It lines the pockets of like
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: corrupt politicians and people like Eric Prince.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I should have mentioned Eric Prince donated $ 250, 000
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: to the Trump campaign the first time around. And his
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: sister is Betsy DeVos, who was the education secretary. And
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the DeVos family, they're big Republican donors who give millions
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and millions for Republican causes.
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: So it's just gross. And this is going to be
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: a– it already has been. But as the world becomes
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: more fractured and unstable and as we've talked about, there's
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: less peacekeeping. In places like this, this is what's going
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: to fill the vacuum. Just kind of totally corrupt– privatized armies, essentially.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think Prince is doing drone activities
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: on the ground in Haiti, for example, with his gangs there.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: And they're doing- And not helping. Yeah, I mean, and
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: it's a fascinating, like, they're doing drone attacks and military stuff.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: I'm sure they're also doing, like, intel gathering, blackmail operations, like,
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: you know, the kind of black cube Israeli stuff that
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: we've seen. Like, this is, there's a dark world out there.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: And this is, every now and then, some journalist goes and, like,
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: shines a flashlight at it and you're like holy shit.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah and like princess jean is like pseudo connected to
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: the to the u.s government there's this anecdote in the
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: new york times story about how he like went to
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the i think it was the belgian embassy to try
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to get like a bunch of drones out of customs
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: there it's like.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah just crazy shit and he's down latin america too
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: i think he's in ecuador yeah just.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Weird shit Okay, finally, Ben, some sad news about our
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: esteemed U.S. ambassador to Greece, Kim Guilfoyle. Like Icarus before her,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Kim flew too close to the sun. I think her
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Amex bill caught fire and then it melted her.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: I think that's how that parable goes. We could kill
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: the music now. We talked about Kim.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: Production value is going way up.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: It's top-notch stuff. That is some good music right there. Actually,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: Michael did the score. He learned how to play violin.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: So we talked about Guilfoyle's travails on last week's show.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: At the time, I think it was just one story, right?
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: It was her and this lobbyist from a Greek business
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: and her like steering money his way and then seemingly
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: dating the guy. After we recorded, the journal had a
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: piece about Guilfoyle begging a Trump donor to urgently pay
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: off her $ 100, 000 Amex bill. Then there were reports about
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: a State Department inspector general investigation that found Guilfoyle demoted
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: her head of security because he didn't answer his phone
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: at 4 a.m. when she called to demand more ice.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: I think she was shit-faced in Mykonos.
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: We've all been there, man.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: We have all been there.
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: We've all been to Mykonos, shit-faced.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: You fire that grandpa who works for you. Then finally,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: there was another Wall Street Journal story where they got
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: their hands on audio of Guilfoyle in Davos trying to
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: beg to get.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: Into a dinner honoring Eric Trump.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: And I think that must have been the final straw
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: because begging to get into an event honoring Eric Trump
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: is too pathetic for even Marco Rubio.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? That's just a bridge too far.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, God.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: And so Trump– On Monday, he said he was looking
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: to fire Guilfoyle, and then on Tuesday, they said they
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: accepted her resignation.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Here's Mr. Trump talking about it, and then we'll discuss.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I like this.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: President, Kimberly Guilfoyle, she was almost a member of your family.
• 51:18
  Speaker 6: How surprised were you to learn about these allegations?
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: No, she wasn't a member of my family. She, I guess,
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: dated my son a long time ago, but she wasn't. No,
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: she wants to agree. She was doing a good job,
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: but we didn't like what we were reading.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: So then, as they say, don't cry because it's over.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: smile because it happened, right?
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: I'm sure what happened, too, is not only were this, like,
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: a spate of stories like this, but I'm sure that, like,
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: these stories come up, somebody just took a peek under
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: the hood.
• 51:49
  Speaker 6: Oh, God, yeah.
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: And there's probably, like, another 25 of these things. Because, like,
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: if you're, like, shaking someone down for your Amex bill,
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: getting hammered at FOIA and demanding ICE and firing people, like,
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: there's more fire underneath all that smoke than And so
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: they're just trying to like dump her overboard before this
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: thing continued to mushroom. Clearly, the Wall Street Journal had
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: like sources inside.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Coming out of the woodwork.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I am wondering what, you know, compromise she has
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: on the Trump family.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping so.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: Because he can say, oh, we didn't really know her.
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: She was like– she spoke at the two Republican national conventions.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: She was engaged to Don Jr.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: She was like– I mean maybe she didn't have the
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: wedding with the Russian oligarch paying for the island.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: True.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: But I don't know. Like this– This does suggest, by
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: the way, the target rich environment for democratic oversight of
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: Trump administration grift. And it's just going to be hard
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: to know where to, like, what to pick, you know,
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: because this is, I'm sure, not the only thing like
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: this that's going on.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be like showing up in Galapagos.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: It's like the first American.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: You turn over a rock, you find some new species.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: My favorite part of the story was that Marco Rubio–
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: He went to Greece. He gave this big speech about
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: rescuing Western civilization. You could tell he wanted it to
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: be this huge moment for him and like maybe a
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: campaign set piece for 2028.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: By the way, I watched the whole speech. It was
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: like vapid.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: Just– oh, God.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: It's like a pop history lesson and some bullshit about whatever.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: The Spartans in fighting.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: But also, like, it was a cool background with the Acropolis,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: but then they had, like, a cut shot boom that
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: just showed, like, the lame little crowd, and it was just, like,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: kind of half-assed. But all of his stories were ruined
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: because he got questioned about Kim Guilfoyle, and it was
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: so funny.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, little Marco, like, trying to become the intellectual
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: of Western civilization that, you know, the corner that J.D.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: Vance has been trying to stand on. And, I mean,
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: it's actually, it's entirely, like, a great, juxtaposition, because somehow,
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: despite the world's historical corruption and incompetence that is on
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: display every day and that features on most of his podcasts,
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: they really do have the self-conception, some of them at least,
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: I don't think Trump really gives a shit, but J.D.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: Vance and Rubio, that they are part of some rebirth
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: of Western civilization and When they're not. If anything, they
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: represent the absolute moral rot of Western civilization. Like Western civilization,
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: whatever that is, has just turned into nothing more than
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: a money grab. And the fact that Kimberly Goifel is
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: like the ambassador while Rubio is giving that speech, like
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: illustrates the point perfectly. You'd like to put yourself up
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: as these like paragons of morality and Christianity and values
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: that go back to, you know, Plato or whatever, when
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: in fact- You're just empowering grift like this. That's all
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: this is.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been reading this book.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: It's called The Nerd Reich. It's Silicon Valley fascism.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: One of the best titles. I saw that.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: Fantastic title.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: I was jealous of the title.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: It's about how all these Silicon Valley guys got kind
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: of radicalized by this dude, Curtis Yarvin. He's kind of
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: like apocalyptic visions of the future that really influenced people
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: like Peter Thiel. And then Peter Thiel basically created J.D.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Vance's political career in a lab. His VC is venture
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: capital career too in Silicon Valley. And it is this
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: very like paranoid, like doomsday cultish view of the future
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: where like because black people are coming to Europe from
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Africa or like Syrian refugees are in Germany, it's going
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: to mean the end of Western civilization.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: What are we talking about?
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: And it leads to this kind of, you know, to
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: nerd out for a second, like pop Nietzsche, like Superman
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: stuff where what we really need to save Western civilization
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: from these black and brown people is Is like the
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: complete empowerment of a strong man with some tech overlords
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: to control our lives.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Great men.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: It's Leo Strauss-y and like great men are going to
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: birth seasteading villages in the fucking Mediterranean where we'll all live.
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're going to create utopian societies on like Epstein
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: Island or like in part of El Salvador, Naibukele, you know.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: Fucking idiots. Yeah.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, fucking Kim Gufoyle's stylist Fancy James is traveling with
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: her to Paris Fashion Week.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: That's all this is about. It's not even about like
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: these– they grab onto ideas to justify like the abhorrent
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: behavior they're engaged in.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: My favorite– so Kim put out a long tweet. I
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: read the tweet.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: I read the tweet.
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: This is my favorite part.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: During my tenure, we have helped secure historic agreements to
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: expand American liquefied natural gas exports to Europe. Advance the
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: vertical corridor to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian energy, strengthen
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: our defense and security partnership with NATO, blah, blah, blah.
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: It's like– You're right.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: That's the best part because it's– like that reads like,
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: number one, something that any like foreign service officer, public
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: affairs person would be like, oh, that's– Right. But also
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: like– Who's the audience for her legacy building? Like who
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: in like five years is going to be like, what
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: was Kim Goyfield's legacy as ambassador to Greece? Oh, she
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: strengthened the corridor. Like nobody fucking believes that.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Trump's cutting a diesel deal with Putin.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: She also said, I will not allow false accusations to
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: define my decades of public service. Like, ma'am, you are
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: a former prosecutor who put in writing, Eric, I really
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: wish you would stop papering all these things about her
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: corruption with the Amex bill guy. And then was caught
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: on tape saying, you know, I can deliver the world
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: to you, which you deserve. I'm going to make you
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of fucking money. You don't have you don't
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: have the fucking, you know, U.S. ambassador to Greece dot com.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: She should be kissing my ass. I see Nikos every
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: fucking day. I'm flying with him to Paris. I'm with
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: him for a fucking week. He loves me.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: Honey, I spent Christmas with him. New Year's, okay. Shtod,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: like everywhere.
• 57:32
  Speaker 8: Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty
• 57:37
  Speaker 8: and the American dream, the best is yet to come.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: That's our RNC speech. Oh, God.
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: Was it the 2001?
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Was that the one they lost? Yeah, that was the
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: COVID convention, right?
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the COVID convention at the White House. She will
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: pop up somewhere. This woman never goes away. She would
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: survive a nuclear holocaust and somehow emerge with a grift
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: on the other end.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: My favorite part was there was a potential deal floated
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: to pay her a million dollars to get this dude,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Eric Dieters, who was the one who was asked to
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: pay off the Amex bill on Tucker Carlson's podcast.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: The Journal called him.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: And he said, a million dollars for a podcast appearance?
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Isn't she the ambassador to Greece?
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: This is completely nuts. Also, like, you know, with all
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: due respect to Tucker, like, have you seen the list
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: of guests on there?
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: Like, some of them are not the kind of people.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: It's not a crazy book.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot. It's not the hardest booking, apparently,
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: to get on that show.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got a big audience. But, you know, there's
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: some good conversations and good guests on the show. And
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: then there's some real clunkers. My favorite about that is—
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: The guy who blames Churchill for World War II.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: Or you're scrolling through because, like, every now and then
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: it's been interesting to hear his opposition to the Iran war.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: And then there'll be, like, you know— Some conversation about
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: global energy markets and the next one is like why
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: demons are taking over society.
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Or like why the media refuses to acknowledge there is
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: a white genocide.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in South Africa. Or like an exorcist explaining how
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: to get rid of the demons or something. I doubt
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: that guy was paid a million bucks to go and
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: talk about it.
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: No, I don't think so.
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: Did you see, by the way, that the– and I
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: don't know how much to trust all these numbers, but
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: that the traffic to a bunch of things, including Tucker's show,
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: went down when those Russian bot farms were hit?
• 59:20
  Speaker 6: Okay, yeah.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: So the Ukrainians bombed the Yandex data centers in Russia,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: which there are a bunch of reports that like aggregate
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: bot activity is down. I've seen other people yelling and
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: saying those reports are, I don't know what to believe.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know what to believe, but it was interesting.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: It wouldn't shock me.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: It is interesting. Cause it like, I actually think, I mean,
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: the interesting point here, and maybe we can have someone
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: on talk about this, but like data centers are gonna
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: become the next military target.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: We've seen the Iranians shoot it in the Emirates. We've
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: seen the Ukrainians take it out. Everything, you know, militaries
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: run on data centers, like disinformation campaigns run on data centers.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: Like AI is obviously trained on data centers. Like, no
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: reason to think there won't be military attacks on data
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: centers or, frankly, as people get more and more angry
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: about AI, like, sabotage of data centers. Like, this is
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: a new, you know, horizon here.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a brave new world.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's it for me and Ben. But stick around
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: for my conversation with Leslie and Warner. We are going
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: to talk about the situation in Ethiopia and all the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: ways it could spiral into the Horn of Africa in
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: very devastating ways.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: So stick around for that. Pod Save the World is
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• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: with the Africa Program at.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: She has over two decades of experience working in foreign policy,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm so glad she joined me today.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: Leslie, great to see you again.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 9: Thanks for having me on, Tommy.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: So a couple weeks back, Ben and I did a
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: long segment on the fighting and these sort of scary
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: statements out of Ethiopia that suggested that the country might
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: be headed back to war. You wrote a great piece
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: about all of it for Just Security that was really,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: really helpful to me. And then we jumped on the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: phone and you talked me through kind of all the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: complicated elements. And it was so helpful that I wanted
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: to actually get you on the pod to have you
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: back and just have you talk directly to our listeners.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: So I'm very grateful for your time.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: I think you also have another piece about Ethiopia coming
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: out on Just Security.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 6: Yes, I am deep in the process of writing, basically
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 6: unpacking how we got here, what the key differences are
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 6: between the 2020 conflict and the current conflict that we're seeing,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 6: how the regional picture is different, how the domestic picture
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 6: is different. So it'll be very interesting, I think, despite
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 6: the circumstances. So I look forward to seeing that in
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 6: Just Security.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I look forward to reading that and then repeating the
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: smart things you say and making them sound like they
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: came from me because that's kind of how this show works.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: But listen, it's a complicated story, but it's a really
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: important one because a lot of people's lives are at
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: risk And there is also huge geopolitical significance. So let's
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: start with kind of the proximate events. And by the way,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: I should mention we're talking on Friday, October 9th. Last month,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: there were these armed groups in Ethiopia. They announced this
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: new coalition and they announced a plan to essentially topple
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the government, to topple Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Can you
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: tell us a bit about these groups and what you
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: made of the announcement and then the degree to which
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: they are trying to deliver on that promise since?
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: So first of all, thank you so much for devoting
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 6: time and attention to this very important issue. I think
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 6: it's important that people more broadly understand the impact that
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: this sort of conflict is likely to have not only
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 6: on Ethiopia, but also on the wider region. And for
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: the United States specific context, most people don't know that
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 6: the Ethiopian diaspora is actually the second largest African diaspora
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 6: in the United States. So it's relevant to the United
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: States specifically. To answer your question more directly on the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: anti-government coalition that was announced just days before the conflict
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 6: broke out, approximately seven groups, which include the Tigray People's
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 6: Liberation Front, announced that they had an anti-government coalition. What
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 6: we've seen so far is that in the initial days
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: of the conflict, which broke out on September 23rd, only
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 6: about three of these groups have actively participated.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 9: In operations with the TDF.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 6: What that means is that this might just be an
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: alliance on paper only or an alliance in name only
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: or essentially a situationship. What I'm watching for moving forward
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 6: is whether these groups actually, whether this alliance is actually
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 6: operationalized and whether they actually start to coordinate more. What
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 6: they represent is a threat potential to the government. But again,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 6: we would have to see whether that's actually operationalized.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: And it does seem like there has been some fighting, right?
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, you keep seeing reports of drone strikes at
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: airports in Ethiopia, and then there's reports of government troops
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: moving north to the Tigray region and possibly Eritrean troops
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: crossing the border into Ethiopia.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 9: That's right.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 6: And I want to pick up on the Eritrean part
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 6: of this. So for one, there is a very complex
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 6: history between Ethiopia and Eritrea, including during the previous conflict
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: between 2020 and 2022. in which Isaias and Abiy essentially
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 6: colluded to attack the TPLF because they shared their view
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 6: that the TPLF was a threat to both of them.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 9: What I'm watching right now is.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 6: The EDF, the Eritrean Defense Forces, never actually left Ethiopian
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 6: territory after the previous conflict. And what we saw, I
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 6: think it was October 7th into October 8th, EDF troops
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 6: were moving south. What I was watching during that incident
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 6: was The further the Eritreans move south, the more likely
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 6: it is that they would come into direct conflict with
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 6: the Ethiopian military, which then raises the stakes of this
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 6: is not just a domestic conflict. This is a possibly
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 6: interstate conflict and possibly harder to de-escalate. And I think
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: that just the last point I would make is I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: think we should talk about.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 9: The role that air power.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: Will play in basically deciding.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 9: How this conflict unfolds.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: I do want to talk about that.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, so listeners might know, just some more basics, though.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: There was this brutal civil war in Ethiopia between 2020
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: and 2022. It pitted the Ethiopian government and the Eritrean government,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: as you just said, against the TPLF, this group that
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: was basically the people who used to be in charge
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: of Ethiopia before Abiy Ahmed's election in, what, 2018, 2019.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: The death toll of that war was astronomical. The estimates
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: are between 300,000 or up to 600,000 people, making it
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century. There
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: was this kind of fragile peace agreement, but now it
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: seems like conflict is resuming.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: And as you mentioned.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Earlier, the Eritrean government seems to have switched sides and
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: is now fighting against the Ethiopian government.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: Why do you think that happened?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: And how concerned are you about a full-scale war between
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: those two countries? I mean, how much worse do you
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: think that could make things than the previous fighting.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 6: One of the things that is very different about the
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 6: current conflict that we didn't see during the 2020 to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 6: 2022 conflict is that instead of the Eritreans fighting on
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 6: the side of the government, they're now fighting on the
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 6: side of the Tigrayans. The significance of that is that
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 6: even though there's still a lot of mistrust between Eritrea
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 6: and the TPLF, It's a situation in which the enemy
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 6: of my enemy is my, I don't know if I
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 6: would call them friends, but I would call them acquaintances maybe.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 6: And so because Isaias was left out of the Pretoria Agreement,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 6: he now sees additional incentive to ally himself with groups
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 6: inside Ethiopia, not exclusively just the Tigrayans, but there's speculation
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 6: that he may also be working with Amhara Fano militias.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 9: To destabilize Abiy.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 6: The bigger picture of this is that Abiy has been
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 6: very bellicose in the last year, year and a half,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 6: about needing sovereign access to the Red Sea. What this means,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 6: and the significance of this, if you look at the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 6: manner in which the 2020 conflict was fought, and you
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 6: look at the initial days of this conflict, it was
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 6: very clear that anti-government forces in Tigray were attempting to
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 6: target the, uh, main artery through which Ethiopia gets 90
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 6: to 95 percent of its overland traffic. That would be
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 6: devastating to the Ethiopian economy. It would also, it just
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 6: creates a huge liability that Abiy has decided that a
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 6: country of of Ethiopia's size and stature cannot be landlocked.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 6: And so even in his, he got inaugurated for another
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 6: term on Monday, and he had a speech in which
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 6: he specifically mentioned the need for sovereign access to the
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 6: Red Sea. Eritrea sees that as extremely alarming, because that
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 6: implies that he would then try to take the port
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 6: of Asaab. Another element of this complex history is that
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 6: for 30 years, Eritrea had been annexed by Ethiopia. So
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 6: there is some understandable paranoia that perhaps under Abiy's leadership,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 6: certain parts of the country, if not the whole country,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 6: could no longer be under Esaias' control.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: I think what is head-spinning for nerds like us is
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: that Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, he was
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. for making peace
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: with Eritrea. And then he turned around and launched this
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: devastating war against his own citizens, and now we're talking
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: about possible renewed conflict between.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: Abiy and a lot of his neighbors.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Is the assumption that the peace deal with the Eritreans
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: was just part of a long con to go after
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: as domestic rivals, or how do people make sense of
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: that moment in hindsight?
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: When I was a Hillstaffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 6: The night before Abiy was elected as head of the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 6: then ruling party of Ethiopia, we were supposed to fly
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 6: into Addis for a staff delegation. We received news that
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 6: he had been elected and he was perceived as a moderate,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 6: a progressive, someone we could work with. And when we
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 6: landed in Addis, it was notable that there were armored
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 6: personnel carriers all over the city. They were really preparing
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 6: for things to go off the edge if the ruling
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 6: party didn't, quote-unquote, pick the right candidate, given what was
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 6: the broader context of what was happening in the country.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 6: During our meetings, during the very nascent days of this
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 6: political transition, it became clear that given the type of
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 6: government that Ethiopia had, in which it was very centralized, semi-authoritarian,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 6: we There was a belief in the United States and
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 6: with quote-unquote like-minded partners that Abiy was someone that we
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 6: could work with.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 9: And we were very, very relieved.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 6: And as a result, we had a massive blind side
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 6: with regard to what he was actually planning. So we knew,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 6: for context, the Tigrayan element of the ruling party. Tigray
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 6: is 5% of the total population of Ethiopia.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 9: But they had ruled.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 6: They had dominated the ruling party basically since 1991. And
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 6: Abiy was not Tigrayan. And it was very clear that
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 6: when he came to power, there was going to be
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 6: a shift and power was going to be moving away
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 6: from Tigray. Obviously, Tigray doesn't like this. And this is
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 6: one of the reasons we saw the conflict come out
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 6: in 2020 and why we've seen it revived for slightly
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 6: different reasons this year.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 9: I think that.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 6: We failed to understand the indicators and warnings that things
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 6: were going off the rails in Ethiopia because we were
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 6: so focused on, here's someone we can work with. He's
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 6: doing the right things. We didn't necessarily understand that he
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 6: was doing the right things in order to play the
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 6: long game of targeting his internal political rivals, which is
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 6: something that he also needed to do.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 9: So that was very rational, but we misread it.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: Interesting.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about all.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: The ways that this conflict feels like it's become a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: proxy war. The United Arab Emirates is all over the
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: Horn of Africa. They helped broker the 2018 peace deal
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But they also, I believe, have
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: military bases in the region. They have helped provide the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Ethiopian government with weapons to defeat the TPLF.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: I think they also run the port in Somaliland.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: And I think the Emiratis maybe were either okay with
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: or maybe pushed to recognize Somaliland.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: Then there's Egypt and the Saudis.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: I saw recently that the leaders of Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: and Eritrea all attended a summit in Egypt. Ethiopia and
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: Egypt have this high-profile dispute over a hydroelectric dam. There's
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: just so many other countries that seem to have equities
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: or are kind of interfering in the region in ways
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: that are unhelpful. Like, How do you make sense of
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: the kind of proxy war element of this?
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 6: Tommy, this is a interlocking web of conflicts that could
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 6: become very destabilizing, not just internally in Ethiopia, but also
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 6: in the Horn of Africa and then across to the Gulf.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 6: So to start with the anti-government coalition that was announced
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 6: shortly before the conflict broke out. Whether or not it's
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 6: actually operational right now, the fact that it exists means
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 6: that there are several entry points through which regional powers
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 6: can strike Abiy, which is a vulnerability. He may not
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 6: feel it right now, but there's potential that he will
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 6: feel it in the future depending on what that coalition
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 6: decides to do and how it decides to operate jointly
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 6: if they decide to. You mentioned the gathering in Alamein
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 6: earlier this month, which that was— That may be more
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: symbolic than real. So one of the questions I had
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 6: when the Eritrean military started heading south a few days ago,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 6: which in my mind didn't really make sense, because if
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 6: you're the Eritreans, are you really going to take on
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 6: the Ethiopian military? Are you really going to give Abiy
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 6: a pretext to come across the border and mess with you?
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 6: I would think no if I was a rational person,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 6: but yeah, who knows? Anyway, I started thinking, does Isaias
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: think that Sisi, Burhan, and Hassan Sheikh, the leaders of Egypt, Somalia,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: and Sudan, are going to militarily.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: Come to his assistance.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 6: I don't think that's the point of the gathering that
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: happened in Alamein. So it's to be determined what this,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 6: you know, the internal coalition plus the regional collection of
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: actors that Abiy has upset. It's unclear what that is
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 6: actually going to result in, but the fact that these
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 6: relationships and these connections are forming is very problematic. And
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 6: then zoom out and you have the UAE-Saudi dynamic. So
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 6: if you look at how the UAE and Saudi have
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 6: had tensions over Yemen, which has then bled over into
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 6: the conflict in Sudan, and it would not be surprising
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 6: if that then bled over into the burgeoning conflict in Ethiopia.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 6: And then zooming out even further, if you think about
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 6: the geopolitical context, one difference between 2020 and now is
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 6: that the world is a lot more distracted and there's
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 6: a lot less attention. Even going back to Sudan, Sudan
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 6: is the world's largest humanitarian and displacement crisis, and yet
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 6: you barely hear people talk about it.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 9: So if you add Ethiopia.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 6: On top of this, the potential for miscalculation and for
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 6: things to escalate and for proxy conflicts to just start
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 6: catalyzing instability is very alarming and honestly keeps me up
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 6: at night.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, you made this point to me
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: when we talked last, and it's honestly what freaked me
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: out about the whole situation, which is, you know, the
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: war in Sudan has been raging since 2023. It started
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: as a civil war between, you know, the Sudanese military
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: and this group called the RSF. They had once been
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: aligned to take out the civilian government of Sudan, but
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: they had a falling out and have been fighting since.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: And it's created, as you said, like the largest humanitarian
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: disaster on planet Earth. And we have the Emiratis funding
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: the RSF. So there's that proxy war element. And it
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: just feels like you mentioned that there's a fear that
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: these conflicts could essentially merge and it could just become
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: more regional than anything else. And It's a terrifying thought.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what to make of it or what
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: the international community could be doing to stop it, in
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: your view.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 6: Some of the instability we're seeing in the region is
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 6: being fomented by friends of the United States. So, for example,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 6: in Sudan, the UAE is widely believed to be supporting
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 6: the rapid support forces who are committing the second Darfur
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 6: genocide recently. of this century, which is just appalling to
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 6: have to say that. And the fact that that's being
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: done by friends of the United States, friends of both
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 6: administrations and both parties in the United States is absolutely appalling.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 6: We see gulf differences of opinion on the types of
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 6: governments that countries should have is really playing out and
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 6: exacerbating the situation. And if you put that lens on
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 6: top of Ethiopia, There's the potential that both regional powers
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 6: and extra-regional powers like from the Gulf decide to pick
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 6: their own favorites so that they can basically perpetuate the
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 6: proxy conflict they're having in the Gulf and in Sudan.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 9: In a new theater in Ethiopia.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're now at the part of the conversation
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: where it's like, okay, this is very heavy and depressing.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: It's just so clear that this is a case of
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: the international order, such as it was collapsing in all
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: the institutions that maybe once were supposed to mediate or
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: prevents conflict like this have just been failing? I mean,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: if let's say like Donald Trump left office today, there
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: was a president in charge who cared a lot. Would
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: the kind of first thing you would advise them to
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: do be to push on that proxy element, like tell
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: the Emiratis, tell the Saudis, tell the Turks to knock
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: it off? Like, is that the kind of lowest hanging
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: fruit in terms of making it better?
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 9: So, Tommy, I think.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 6: During the previous administration, we spoke, not we, not me personally,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 6: but the Emiratis were spoken to very nicely based on
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 6: my understanding that they should please kindly stop supporting genocide
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 6: in Sudan. They said, we don't know what you're talking about.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 6: And from what I understand, the conversation moved on. In
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 6: my opinion, that sort of approach is not necessarily serious
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 6: because if they are believed to be fueling the conflict
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 6: and they are not actually supporting we're not imposing tangible
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 6: consequences for what they are doing on that side and what.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 9: Egypt is doing on the.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 6: South side, then it is not a serious conversation over,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 6: you know, how to deescalate. One of the things I
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 6: often think about, and as I thought about this when
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 6: I left the State Department in 2023, was there's an
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 6: episode of Succession in the final season in which Logan
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 6: Roy talks to his kids and he says, I love you,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 6: but you're not serious people.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: I remember it well.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and that's what I often think about when I
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 6: think about U.S. engagement in these conflicts. If you're not
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 6: actually going to impose tangible consequences on the people that
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: are making it worse, then it's not serious. What is
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 6: even the point here?
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well said.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess hope springs eternal that— The next group
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: of people– first of all, Jared Kushner won't be running
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: foreign policy.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: So you won't have someone who.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 9: Just– We don't know that.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: Well, let's hope.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you won't have someone who just took giant checks
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: from the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Qataris and
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: all these people, billions of dollars worth. But I also–
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: like this is a bipartisan criticism and I think the
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: next democratic administration needs to get much tougher with the
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: Emiratis in particular as you're recommending here because they're acting
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: like arsonists and a lot of people are dying and
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: it is disgraceful.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: Dr. Leslie Ann Warner, thank you so much for doing
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: the show. We appreciate your time.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 9: Thanks for having me on. And thanks again for covering
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 9: this issue.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: Thanks again to Leslie Ann Warner for joining the show.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk to you guys next week. Pod Save
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: the World is a Crooked Media production. Our show is
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee. Our
• 1:21:40
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• 1:21:44
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• 1:21:46
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