Latest / Pod Save the World / Is Trump Planning to Invade Cuba?

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Is Trump Planning to Invade Cuba? · Pod Save the World

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  Speaker 1: for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to pot Day of
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the World. I'm Tommy Vitorre, I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, Please
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: enjoy this great moment in national security history from our President,
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  Speaker 1: mister Donald J. Trump.
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  Speaker 2: Let's watch the entire roof is developed for militariot.
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  Speaker 3: They have a three hundred and six vision Washington DJAS.
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  Speaker 4: They have a massive grown capacity.
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  Speaker 3: Not only is it drone proof and a drone head
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  Speaker 3: it bounces off.
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  Speaker 4: They won't have any gift back, but it's also meant
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  Speaker 4: as a.
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  Speaker 5: Drone for it how it protects all of Washington the
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  Speaker 5: roof of the.
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  Speaker 1: Belty Ben, do you think that that's how he thinks
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that counter drone systems work, That it's just like a
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  Speaker 1: strong roof? Does he think iron dome is a literal thing?
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  Speaker 6: So first of all, it feels like a wonderful space
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  Speaker 6: for a coup for the If you need to launch
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  Speaker 6: a military coup, what better place to launch the pusch
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  Speaker 6: from within.
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  Speaker 7: Your own ballroom.
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  Speaker 6: It's a good point where you can have a bunker
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  Speaker 6: under the ballroom and you can send drones out. So
• 3:08
  Speaker 6: good dual use to use a national security term. I
• 3:11
  Speaker 6: also just love how did you see him at some
• 3:16
  Speaker 6: Trump our X event talk about how how great it
• 3:18
  Speaker 6: is for medical. You can't talk same thing like this
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  Speaker 6: is great for military, like just.
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  Speaker 1: Like skips parts of sentences.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's just you know, it's all.
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  Speaker 1: I also love their innovative ways. They try to hold
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  Speaker 1: press conferences at the locations with the worst audio possible,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: like how do we beat this marine warceet engine?
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  Speaker 8: Oh?
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  Speaker 1: I know, dude with a hammer. Yeah.
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  Speaker 6: It reminds me whenever I have to do like a
• 3:44
  Speaker 6: podcast from home or something, and like the flying overseas
• 3:47
  Speaker 6: and there's some dude with a leaf flower outside.
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  Speaker 7: But Trump likes that.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: He loves it. Apparently he's like, how can we make
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: this as annoying it's humanly possible for everybody. Also, did
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you see the Wall Street Journal story the other day
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: with the headline dad books are a dying breed? The
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal says that nonfiction books shit about politics,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: current affairs, and biographies are falling off, and what's killing
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: them ben are podcasts.
• 4:13
  Speaker 7: Well then I'm fucked.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: So this feels like a direct shot at this show
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: because I feel like, well, first of all, we need
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to create a.
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: Cur for dad books, because we did books are great
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: all dads and we read books.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: You've got one coming out.
• 4:26
  Speaker 7: I do, I do.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I feel like this is important. We have a responsibility
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: as podcasters to promote nonfiction books.
• 4:33
  Speaker 6: The podcast should work in synergy with not in competition
• 4:39
  Speaker 6: with it. So a week from today, as we record,
• 4:43
  Speaker 6: is the release date for my book. All we say
• 4:46
  Speaker 6: say this book is very personal to me because basically,
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: you remember, our last book is about authoritarianism. And one
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: of the things I noticed in writing mat Putin she Trump,
• 4:55
  Speaker 6: is how central history and storytelling is to authoritarians. They're
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: essentially trying to rewrite history as a prequel to their assent.
• 5:03
  Speaker 6: And it got me thinking.
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  Speaker 1: Of familiar to us here in America, very.
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  Speaker 6: Familiar, and so I wanted to understand Trump and all
• 5:10
  Speaker 6: the dysfunction and toxicity in our politics today by going
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: all the way back to the beginning and using my
• 5:16
  Speaker 6: speech writer experience, choosing fifteen speeches through which to understand
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: the argument we've been having about America and our identity.
• 5:24
  Speaker 7: Who is an American? What is an American?
• 5:26
  Speaker 6: Who gets to decide those questions? And so you take
• 5:29
  Speaker 6: a journey all the way from Benjamin Franklin through some
• 5:33
  Speaker 6: extraordinary abolitionists and suffragettes and people like Abraham Lincoln and
• 5:37
  Speaker 6: Frederick Douglass up through Martin Luther King all the way
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  Speaker 6: to ending with Obama and Donald Trump. And I promise
• 5:44
  Speaker 6: you this was incredibly fun to write, so I think
• 5:47
  Speaker 6: it'll be fun to read because when you look at
• 5:49
  Speaker 6: a speech, you're really just looking at history in the
• 5:52
  Speaker 6: present tense, Like, how were movements operating at that time?
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  Speaker 6: Who are these people that emerged out of nowhere to
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  Speaker 6: change the course of history? How do you tell a
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  Speaker 6: story that actually galvanizes and mobilizes people, something that we
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  Speaker 6: seem to have lost the capacity to do today. So
• 6:06
  Speaker 6: the book is out one week today. Please, if you
• 6:08
  Speaker 6: want to pick it up, pre order it. Pre order it,
• 6:10
  Speaker 6: gets it out of it gets been on the New
• 6:11
  Speaker 6: York Times Best allyway.
• 6:12
  Speaker 7: It's on the bestseller, but it also.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Displaces Don Juniors Triggered four or whatever.
• 6:16
  Speaker 6: Take a look at that list and just tall both
• 6:19
  Speaker 6: know how much better you'd feel to see like a
• 6:21
  Speaker 6: book about who we are as Americans.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: We're not losing to those people. Yeah, all we say
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: is going to beat the bulk. Order a little cross
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: next to their name. Don Junior, Eric Trump, fucking bullshit, chopshop,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Fox News, killing Lincoln garbage books.
• 6:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah, no more, kid, We're not killing anybody in this book.
• 6:37
  Speaker 6: We're trying to tell the story of America on our
• 6:40
  Speaker 6: tun and fiftieth birthday in a way that we can
• 6:42
  Speaker 6: feel both honest about. Actually, one of the other things
• 6:46
  Speaker 6: I was really struck by, Tommy, is like people knew
• 6:49
  Speaker 6: exactly what was going on at the time. You know,
• 6:51
  Speaker 6: the Seneca Chief in eighteen oh five. It's not like
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: they didn't know what was being done to Native Americans
• 6:55
  Speaker 6: in this country. It's not like abolitionists didn't know what
• 6:57
  Speaker 6: was going on in eighteen thirties. And just reliving that
• 7:01
  Speaker 6: through uh the story as it was told at the
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: time was extraordinary for me to experience for four years.
• 7:07
  Speaker 6: You can hear a clip of the audio book if
• 7:08
  Speaker 6: you want to go all the way to the end
• 7:09
  Speaker 6: of the podcast today and I'll be out on the
• 7:12
  Speaker 6: road and I'll be sharing all those dates and hope
• 7:13
  Speaker 6: to see the world is in the audience because it's
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: always cool to see every day.
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  Speaker 1: Save the Dad book by picking up a copy of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: All We Say for Father's.
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  Speaker 7: Day, dare I say yes? The Perfect Father's Day.
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  Speaker 1: Gift, Perfect Father's Day Gift, which is coming.
• 7:24
  Speaker 7: Father's love History. They love America. Yeah, it is the
• 7:27
  Speaker 7: better version of America.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: My wife's going to be out of town for Father's Day,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: so I'll be with the kids solo.
• 7:33
  Speaker 7: Just kick back with this.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: That's what she thinks about me. Okay, we got a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: great show for you guys today.
• 7:37
  Speaker 7: We're gonna find out a panelistens this podcast.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Is not There's all these signals, Ben, we're you and
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  Speaker 1: I are texting over the weekend. It just feels like
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  Speaker 1: every life is blinking red. Would be read or green?
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  Speaker 1: I guess green. That the Trump administration is planning some
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: sort of imminent regime change operation in Cuba, which is great.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: We need another one to We're going to talk about well,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about what those you know, what those
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: indications are. We'll talk about the humanitarian situation on the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: ground there. We'll also touch on this growing political crisis
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: in Bolivia, which has exploded on social media over the weekend.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Then we're gonna up you guys on all things around,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the bad, the worse, the dumb. We'll explain what was
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and what was not accomplished during Trump's China trip, why
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: folks in Taiwan are feeling a little more nervous these
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: days than they were before the trip. And then Ben
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: and I are going to gonna get to see some
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: highlights from the annual Eurovision context that I look forward to.
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: This every year every year, Michael's curation of Eurovision.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: For every year. Once a year, Michael tries to force
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: us to care about Eurovision and we say, all right,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I got on a better pitch.
• 8:38
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: And then you're gonna hear my conversation with Nish Kumar
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: from Podsea of the UK. We talk about what the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: hell is happening with Prime Minister Cure Starmer, the Labor Party,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Nigel Faraj, the rise of Reformed UK, the right wing
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: party over there, and then we just laugh a lot
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: because Nish is so funny.
• 8:57
  Speaker 6: Does Nisch have a favored horse in this fight? Is
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: he Andy Burnham?
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: Guys?
• 9:01
  Speaker 7: He an Angel Riner?
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: My guess is he didn't say, But my guess is,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: you know he was from Tech a little further to
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the left.
• 9:09
  Speaker 7: Is probably Green Curious.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yah, yeah, I think we're all a little green.
• 9:13
  Speaker 7: I'm green Curious.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Potsave the UK is a hilarious, fantastic show. You should subscribe.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Also check out Nisch's comedy special. It's on YouTube right now.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: It's called Niche Don't Kill My Vite, which is a
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: great title funny Guy. Also, speaking of YouTube, please subscribe
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• 9:52
  Speaker 1: people coming together to talk about the future of politics,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: trying to make this country a better place. The midterms
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: will just have happened. Hopefully they're good. Trump endorsing Ken
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Paxton in Texas today.
• 10:02
  Speaker 7: Yes, makes me a little genius.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: What the fuck? Yeah?
• 10:05
  Speaker 7: That guy is a creep, a walk in creep.
• 10:08
  Speaker 6: It's hard to design a maga creep more effectively than
• 10:12
  Speaker 6: Ken Paxton.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Have you seen the story about Ken Paxson. He's going
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: through a security gate to get into a like a
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: court room or something, and he stole some guy's like
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars pen.
• 10:20
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, just like a crop.
• 10:22
  Speaker 6: If you ever wanted to test the proposition that maybe
• 10:26
  Speaker 6: right wing politics in this country are not about ernest religiosity,
• 10:30
  Speaker 6: a James Talerico versus Ken Paxton race is definitely going
• 10:33
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• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not a hard one. More info at crookedcan
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• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a discounted price, so another reason to subscribe. All right, Ben,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: should we start with Cuba? Yes, I know you care
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: deeply about this. On Let's go again. Seems like all
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: these warning laser flashing. The most recent data point was
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: this Axios report from over the weekend that said Cuba
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: has obtained three hundred military drones and is considering using
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: them to attack targets at the US military base Guantanamo
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Bay if they are attacked. I feel like if they
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: are attacked, retaliation. Part of this was kind of underemphasized
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: in the reporting, but there were a lot of background
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: quotes kind of hyping the threat from Cuba to the US.
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  Speaker 1: It's like all these people quoted just figured out it's
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  Speaker 1: ninety miles away. I always love that. So there's your
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: pretext for why the US has to take a preemptive
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: action in Cuba, right.
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  Speaker 6: Because if they're invaded, they might fight.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Back, so we got to improve retaliation. Got it? Listen? Yeah,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that. There's also been reports that the US
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: is planning to indict ninety four year old Raoul Castro
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: for a crime that occurred in nineteen ninety six. As
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: as is normal, you might be thinking that seems strange.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: He seems like he's about to die. But it's not
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: strange when you consider how central the indictment of Nicholas
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Maduro was to the rationale for the Venezuela operation that
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: deposed him earlier this year. Then there were CIA Director
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: John Ratcliffe's visit to Cuba last week. Sometimes those trips happen,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: they're usually secret, that's why you send the CIA director.
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  Speaker 1: But instead the CIA put out a statement about it.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: They said Ratcliffe was there to personally deliver a message
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  Speaker 1: from Trump that sounded like an ultimatum to me ben
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: And then finally, The Times has been reporting that there's
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: been an increase in US surveillance flights over Cuba in
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: recent weeks, and the broader contexts, as listeners probably know,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: is that the US has had this full blockade on
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Cuba since January. The entire island is just rocked by
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: this humanitarian crisis. There is no fuel, so there's no power.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Hospitals can function, people can't cook food, Families are starving.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It is an absolute nightmare.
• 12:29
  Speaker 7: Children are starving to death.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Children are starving to death. I mean, here's Secretary of
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: State Marco Rubio talking about Cuba last week. I think
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: this is like on the way to China while they
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: were in China. Let's watch.
• 12:39
  Speaker 9: There is no economy in Cuba to the extent there's
• 12:43
  Speaker 9: any wealth in Cuba, it doesn't go it doesn't forget about,
• 12:45
  Speaker 9: it doesn't go to the people.
• 12:46
  Speaker 7: It doesn't even go to the government.
• 12:48
  Speaker 9: The wealth is controlled by a private by a company
• 12:50
  Speaker 9: owned by military generals. They take all the money. They're
• 12:53
  Speaker 9: sitting on billions of dollars. Okay, this is a country
• 12:56
  Speaker 9: where people are literally now eating garbage from the streets,
• 12:59
  Speaker 9: but they have a company that controls all of the
• 13:01
  Speaker 9: money making there that's sitting on fifteen sixteen billion dollars
• 13:05
  Speaker 9: so it's a broken, non functional economy and it's impossible
• 13:09
  Speaker 9: to change it. I wish it were different, but I
• 13:11
  Speaker 9: believe it's my personal opinion, you cannot change the economic
• 13:14
  Speaker 9: trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are
• 13:18
  Speaker 9: in charge of it now are in charge of it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 9: That's what's going to have to change, because these people
• 13:21
  Speaker 9: are proven incapable. I hope I'm wrong. We'll give them
• 13:24
  Speaker 9: a chance, but I don't think it's going to happen.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, So Ben, I'm curious how you're reading all these
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: tea leaves and like, I don't know, if there isn't
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: a regime change operation, are they just going to starve
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: this entire island full of people in perpetuities like a
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: medieval siege happening here.
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: And first of all, Rubio, if you kind of look
• 13:45
  Speaker 6: hard enough in his eyes, it's hard to identify like
• 13:48
  Speaker 6: the soul underneath, especially on this issue, because what he's
• 13:52
  Speaker 6: talking about is it's so farcical. Because is there corruption
• 13:59
  Speaker 6: and RepA Russian in the Cuban government. Yes, But the
• 14:02
  Speaker 6: reason people are reading garbage is because on top of
• 14:05
  Speaker 6: the embargo that has been in place for sixty plus years,
• 14:10
  Speaker 6: there's a full blockade of the island. If they wanted
• 14:13
  Speaker 6: tomorrow to have a market based economy, they couldn't because
• 14:18
  Speaker 6: they are completely cut off from the US financial system.
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: When we were in office and did the engagement of
• 14:24
  Speaker 6: policy with the Cubans, they wanted to open up their
• 14:28
  Speaker 6: economy to foreign investment and they created a private sector.
• 14:33
  Speaker 6: And literally we couldn't get any bank to do any
• 14:36
  Speaker 6: business in Cuba because of US sanctions, even though we
• 14:38
  Speaker 6: were trying to lift those sanctions, and we actually had
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: to kind of give direct permission to one bank just
• 14:44
  Speaker 6: to facilitate some transactions. So these guys like Rubio liked
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: to get up there and make it seem like the
• 14:50
  Speaker 6: entire just travesty of human suffering that is happening there
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: is somehow because of a handful of corrupt Communist Party
• 14:59
  Speaker 6: officials or generals. When far and away, and I'm tired
• 15:03
  Speaker 6: of just this one in on the other end thing
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: far and away. The reason that Cubans are suffering is
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: because of the US blockade. You could have you know,
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: Adam Smith and John Maynard Kaines running the economy, and
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: if you have a total US embargo that cuts the
• 15:19
  Speaker 6: country off from accessing the US dollar, which is needed
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: for transactions, and then a blockade of all oil coming
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: into the country, you'd still have people eating garbage in
• 15:27
  Speaker 6: the street.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Well, you can't refrigerate anyth Yeah, there's no electricity for
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: twenty hours at a time.
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: So shit, And that means that hospitals are shutting down
• 15:33
  Speaker 6: and people are dying who are on things like ventilators
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: because of Marco Ribio. He's killing the people that he
• 15:38
  Speaker 6: claims to be trying to help. And I wish that
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: there was more of a kind of moral outcry against
• 15:43
  Speaker 6: this from the Democrats, from the media, but it is
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: what it is. In terms of what's happening, my sense
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: is that the Cubans have been willing to make lots
• 15:53
  Speaker 6: of concessions. You know, they've been trying to make signals
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: that they're they're releasing certain political prisoners. They're probably willing
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: to open up some real estate for development from you know,
• 16:04
  Speaker 6: Trump's rich Cuban American friends in South Florida, or they're
• 16:08
  Speaker 6: willing to make changes in their economic model. But you
• 16:11
  Speaker 6: just heard Rubio give up the game, which is he
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: thinks that the whole government has to change, and no
• 16:16
  Speaker 6: government whether you like that governor or not, is going
• 16:19
  Speaker 6: to negotiate its own regime change. And so we're in
• 16:22
  Speaker 6: this kind of you know, Mexican standoff where essentially they're saying,
• 16:27
  Speaker 6: you guys all have to leave or else what And
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: the or else now seems to be that they, you know,
• 16:35
  Speaker 6: Diaz Canal, who's the actual president of Cuba, is not
• 16:37
  Speaker 6: a big enough fish, probably for Trump and Rubio. So
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: they're looking at Ralph Castro, who's like literally ninety.
• 16:43
  Speaker 7: Four years old.
• 16:45
  Speaker 6: It's not like he's you know, he may be the
• 16:47
  Speaker 6: final decision maker, but he's not running the country day
• 16:50
  Speaker 6: to day.
• 16:50
  Speaker 7: But he's a name.
• 16:51
  Speaker 6: You know, Fidel's dead, Rau's laughed, We're going to indict
• 16:54
  Speaker 6: him over something.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: It's like literally a scalp for all these hardline humans
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: in Miami who have hated the cast And.
• 16:59
  Speaker 6: By the way, if we're relitigating, you know things that
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: happened thirty years ago. I mean, the CIA has shot
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: down Cuban airliners and killed civilians, like there was something
• 17:08
  Speaker 6: called the Bay of Pigs invasion. I mean, like the
• 17:11
  Speaker 6: point is that the history runs in both directions in
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: this relationship, and the idea that you're going to charge
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: Castro for the shootdown of an airplane in the mid nineties.
• 17:21
  Speaker 7: That's not serious.
• 17:22
  Speaker 6: I mean, why the justice system waited thirty years until
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump wanted to play emperor of Latin America to
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: all of a sudden decide to hold Raul Castro accountable
• 17:32
  Speaker 6: for this. And I think what they'll probably try to
• 17:35
  Speaker 6: do is, you know, regime change on the cheap. A
• 17:38
  Speaker 6: bunch of Delta Force guys are going to go grab
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: a ninety four year old man and then what We'll
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: put a gun to the rest of the Cuban government's
• 17:45
  Speaker 6: head and say, let the Miami Cubans develop the real
• 17:48
  Speaker 6: estate down here.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, right, it's only an oil for us as deal.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not even a clear play. It's just
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: it's like a political project for Rubio in Florida. And
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: by the way, just to hammer home this humanitarian point,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: because I'm with you, like it does feel like there's
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: just a bizarre lack of concern interest concern. We're doing right, Yeah,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the OS is doing. We reached out to a reporter
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: on the ground in Cuba named Ed Augustin to get
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: his sense from his reporting what life is like on
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the ground for the Cuban people. Let's listen to that.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Hunger is growing by the day in Cuba because there's
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: no diesel to get food to market. Tomatoes, milk, meat
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: is rotting in the countryside because it can simply not
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: be transported to the city. In Santiagoo, Cuba, Cuba's main
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: city in the east, I was reporting from eighteen story
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: high rises where the rich are now cooking with carbon
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: with coal, and the poor are cooking either with firewood
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: they have to walk miles to chop with machetes or
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: with cardboard that they find in growing piles of rubbish.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: We're seeing infor mortality rates shoot up, an increase in
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: the lack of drinking water. Over eighty percent of the
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: water pumps in Cuba to get water from reservoirs to
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: people's homes and hospitals, relies on electricity. So these sanctions
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: are killing. They're killing in the civilian population. It's the
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: most vulnerable that are suffering and are having their life
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: expectancy reduced. But there's also fear of a military intervention,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: and that is really significant because until recently in Cuba,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: the notion of a US military attack was seen as
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: a bit of a cliche, right, The government's been warning
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: of it for two thousand of a century. Now the
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: feelings changed. I spoke to a guy whose dream, he said,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: was to leave Cuba and to go to the United States.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: But when I asked him what he'd do in the
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: case of military intervention, he said, well, I'm a trained sniper,
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: and what I'll have to do is I have to
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: go and be on duty. Another family I spoke to
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: got told that they have a contingency plan, state organized
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: contingency plan to go and live in a tunnel. What
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: I'd point to here is Cuban national Many people that
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: I speak to say if Donald Trump's America invades, I fight.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: So, you know, like President Diaz Canal said that any
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: military action by the US would result in a quote
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: blood bath and upend regional stability. I mean, I think
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: it's fair to doubt their capacity as a fighting force,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: but you know, a gorilla army could do some damage
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: and kill some US service members, and again it's like,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: to what end. And then I saw Bob Gates, former
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: CIA director, former Secretary of Defense under multiple administrations on
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I think CBS over the weekend, who was saying that
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: he thinks the biggest risk is we just starved this
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: island to death and lead to a mass migration at
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Cubans to the US again, which
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: puts them at risk, but also is you know, I
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: was told by Maga that was the thing they hated
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the most was mass migration. It's like, yeah, what are
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: we doing here?
• 20:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah, if they go forward with this, there's several ways
• 20:53
  Speaker 6: that could go. And like the bad, messy scenarios are
• 20:56
  Speaker 6: that there's actually some kind of insurgency that drags on,
• 21:02
  Speaker 6: that there's state collapse.
• 21:04
  Speaker 7: And mass migration.
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: But let's even and also, by the way, the Cubans
• 21:10
  Speaker 6: have networks across Latin America, there's this kind of scenario
• 21:13
  Speaker 6: where they could kind of havoc in different places, you know,
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: almost like a terrorist type tactics. I'm not sure that
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: they do that, but it's possible. However, Like, let's say
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: this goes Venezuela style, right, we some Delta Force guys
• 21:29
  Speaker 6: and some cinematic operation grab Raoul and they maybe they
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: grab Diaz Canal and Mark Rubio gets a press conference
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: and says he's in charge.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And puts out a sweatsuit.
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and puts out a sweatsuit and and then where
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: I guess responsible for the governance of the poorest nation
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: in the hemisphere because of our sanctions. Because I honestly
• 21:53
  Speaker 6: think that one of the reasons why some Democrats aren't
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: more vocal about this is they're like, well, what if
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: it goes well? And we you know, first of all,
• 22:00
  Speaker 6: that's wrong. Imperialism should have gone out a long time ago.
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: And the idea that we just like randomly, you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 6: starve and then invade and regime change a country just
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: because we can is the most dangerous form.
• 22:15
  Speaker 7: Of politics that there is. And also, like really.
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: Importantly you mentioned Maga, like who wants this? Like why
• 22:23
  Speaker 6: is this happening? Rich c This doesn't exactly this is
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: nothing for anybody in America. Like there's not even some
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: weird bank shot like with Venezuela that they could talk
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: about oil. Although the gas prices are up, it doesn't
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: seem like getting the Venezuelan oil in that one. So
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: like a very small number of people will get rich, right,
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: some like you know, Miami Cubans might get some beachfront property,
• 22:47
  Speaker 6: like some corrupt you know, Eric Prince will probably get hired.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: To will run some new offshoot.
• 22:55
  Speaker 6: Builds Trump properties and golf courses, and like we are
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: tax dollars will probably spend billions of dollars on the operation.
• 23:03
  Speaker 7: I mean, we have to start, Like.
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: It can't just be the wars that are catastrophically consequential
• 23:13
  Speaker 6: like Iran that people are against. Like all of this
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: is connected. It's all about imperialism and corruption and power
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: and grift. And you should care as much about Cuba
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: as you care about Iran in the same way that frankly,
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: the decent feedback we've Trump gone on Venezuela probably contributed
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: to the war in Iran, and so this Cuba operation
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: is probably a gateway to Greenland or Panama Canal. Like
• 23:41
  Speaker 6: this is what history tells us happens with autocrats. You know,
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: they keep going. They never stop when they get the
• 23:48
  Speaker 6: territorial expansion regime change book.
• 23:50
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  Speaker 1: is sponsored by Betterhelp. Likes a lot of therapy. Life's
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  Speaker 1: slash Crooked World. That's better h g LP dot com
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: slash Crooked World. We're gonna talk about ron in a second,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: but before we do, we wanted to flag this growing
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: crisis in Bolivia where supporters a former president, Avo Morales,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: have blocked roads for a couple of weeks. They've created
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: all these shortages of fuel and medical supplies and food.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: It's really a growing crisis. And on Monday, some of
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: these protesters clashed with police in La Pause, the Oblivious capital.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: And so the protests are over economic conditions which are
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: very bad and prices going up in inflation and long
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: gas lens, but also the treatment of Morales, who has
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: been holed up in the jungle, surrounded literally by like
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: an army of supporters who say they will fight to
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the death to protect him. The protesters are now calling
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: on the current president, President Pause, to resign. There have
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: been reports that the government has ordered the arrest of
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: leaders of like indigenous rights groups and unions. And there
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: was also a report that I've not seen cooperated anywhere
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: else ben that the US military was preparing some operation
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: with Oblivion police to capture Avo Morales. Yeah, again that
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: was not confirmed, but like post of Venezuela, it feels
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a lot more believable and I can't understand why, like
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: any leftist leader in Latin America would think that the
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Trump administration is angling to take them out and is
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: ready and willing to intervene militarily in their affairs at
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: any time. So I don't just sort of like exploded
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: my feeds over the weekend. We wanted to talk about it.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: What do you make of this time?
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: I think you remember the Don Road doctrine.
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: So there's a lot of smoke around some of these reports, right,
• 28:31
  Speaker 6: So we have this idea that there might be some
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: special operation to grab Avo, Morales and Bolivia. We also
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: have you see this like weird Honduras thing that the
• 28:42
  Speaker 6: Trump administration was working together with like Javier Mile and
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: the right wing leaders to you know, basically target you know,
• 28:52
  Speaker 6: Shane Baum in Mexico and Petro and Columbia like metal
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: in their politics and undermine the Latin American left. We've
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: had these reports of kind of CIA presence in Mexico
• 29:01
  Speaker 6: that we've talked about. I think when you take this
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: all together, there really does seem to be a pretty
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: comprehensive and coordinated playbook to essentially treat all of Latin
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: America like literally imperial possessions of the United States, where
• 29:18
  Speaker 6: we either pick the leaders. We remember Trump intervenes in
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: Argentina with a massive bailout for Mela, or if some
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: leftists get in charge, we you know, undermine them, go
• 29:29
  Speaker 6: after them, maybe even you know, seize them. And Ava
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: Morales just points to how kind of weirdly personal this
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: is because Ava Moreles isn't even powerful anymore.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: You know, he's literally, like you thought a good guy,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: he's not.
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: But he's out to pastures like he's not like like
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: it's not even like some election coming up that he's
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: running in, Like he's like some guy like on a
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: compound somewhere. And it feels like there's this you know,
• 29:55
  Speaker 6: a lot of people are using the Trump administration. I
• 29:57
  Speaker 6: heard you describe it as like smash and grab, and
• 29:59
  Speaker 6: that's exactly right. And it's also like, oh, I can
• 30:02
  Speaker 6: use this moment to settle my scores. You know a
• 30:05
  Speaker 6: lot of people are mad at Abel Morales about things
• 30:08
  Speaker 6: he did ten twenty years ago. And it's like I
• 30:10
  Speaker 6: can talk the Trump administration into like running a special
• 30:13
  Speaker 6: opt to grab.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Like some corporate interest. It really feels like nineteen fifties sixties,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: like the dullest brothers in charge of the CIA just
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: like rampaging through Latin America on behalf of you know,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: a fruit company or whatever.
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: And by the way, these things can feel cost free
• 30:27
  Speaker 6: when you do them, but they tend to have a tail,
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: you know, like meddling in Central America in the eighties
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: led to death squads and left wing revolutionaries and mass
• 30:37
  Speaker 6: migration in the United States.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: So it might feel clean when you decaptain the Cuban
• 30:43
  Speaker 6: government or grab able morales, but like other people don't forget,
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: and then they kill people and then they get massacred.
• 30:49
  Speaker 6: And so this all this stuff can set in motion
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: dominoes that lead to pretty dark places.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed, and something we're watching closely. Okay, so let's
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: turn to a the straighterh hor moves is still closed.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Just doesn't seem like the US and ran or anywhere
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: close to a deal to actually end the conflict. Last week,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Trump said the ceasefire was on life support. Then on
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Sunday he posted quote for Iran, the clock is ticking
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and they better get moving fast or there won't be
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: anything left of them. Time is of the essence. Another
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: another adorable like you know, mass casualty, truth, social posts
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: of you know, extermination, but a day later, Trump announced
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: that he would not attack Iran this week because of
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: a request from leaders in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: He always has to like name check the field Marshal,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Field Marshal some munyar. Did you know that the cops
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: in London have an arrest worn out for him for
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: torture and crimes against the horrible guy? So The New
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: York Times reported that the delay and the resumption of
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: hostilities could also be related to fears within the Pentagon
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: that Iran has been studying you know, US tactics, US
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: flight patterns, baby conjunction with Russian intelligence and can now
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: better target US planes. And maybe that's why that fifteen
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: went down. Regardless, shitting the Gulf keeps blowing up, then
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: drones keep flying from places. So last week a drone
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: hit the uas sole nuclear power plant. Not good. Luckily,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: the damage was limited to a generator on the edge
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: of the facility, but still nuclear power plant. The UAE
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: says the drone was fired by Shia militia groups in
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: a rock. Saudi Arabia also said they intercepted a bunch
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: of drones coming from a rock. Just another example. Of
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: how the war is fantastasized the entire region. Again, like
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: we said at the top, Us and Ron seemed quite
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: far apart when it comes to a possible nuclear deal.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: We can tick through all of that if you want
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: a second. But here's what President Trump had to say
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: about Iran in the last few days. This is sort
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: of a hodgepodge of all the very coherent thoughts he had.
• 32:44
  Speaker 10: They've been holding up the world for many, many years
• 32:47
  Speaker 10: with a strait. You know, they've used this many many times.
• 32:51
  Speaker 10: They said we'll close this straight. They've closed it in
• 32:54
  Speaker 10: the past. They use it as a weapon. They're not
• 32:56
  Speaker 10: using it as a weapon with me.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: We really did the cease fire the requests of other nations.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't have really been a favorite, but we.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: Did it as a favorite to Pakistan or terrific people
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: the field Marshal, the Prime Minister.
• 33:13
  Speaker 10: Well, I mean, I'm saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday,
• 33:16
  Speaker 10: Sunday something, maybe early next week, a limited period of
• 33:19
  Speaker 10: time because we can't let them have a new nuclear level.
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, twenty years, it's not enough for you.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Produn Twenty yearsless enough. But the level of guarantee for
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: them is not enough. Otherwise it's got to be a
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: real twenty year It's not to they do see that.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I full get all the fuel out and no more
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: for Dount. You have to get everything. But we're not
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: even talking about court the nuclear dust pick up with
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: a terrible Sheeps's got on.
• 33:47
  Speaker 10: There's been people that are in generals that I've spoken
• 33:50
  Speaker 10: to that I think you have to get the dust,
• 33:55
  Speaker 10: which is the rich geranium. I don't think it's necessary
• 33:58
  Speaker 10: except from a public relation standpoint. I think it's important
• 34:01
  Speaker 10: for the fake news that we get in.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Don't tell that Yahoo that did you see Trump started
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: ranting at David Sanger from New York, accusing him of
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: treason on the plane? What the fuck? Uh? What do
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: you make of all that? I mean, like, I don't know, man,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: it just feels like they are just absolutely treading water.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have no plan.
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: Here's the there's a baseline that we need to name again.
• 34:30
  Speaker 6: But I found a different way to do it this week,
• 34:32
  Speaker 6: which is, remember the talks that were happening right before
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: the war, when wid Coffin gered were tabling these proposals.
• 34:40
  Speaker 6: At the time, their demands were dismantled the entire nuclear program,
• 34:46
  Speaker 6: dismantled the entire ballistic missile program, or except limits on
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: ballistic missiles to a certain.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Serious limits number of miles, i e. You can hits.
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and then also cut all support for proxies. And
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: knowing Richmond and now in Richmond, so the fact that
• 35:02
  Speaker 6: even on their best case scenario, they've gone from those
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: demands before the war to nothing about support for proxies,
• 35:11
  Speaker 6: nothing about the blissmissile program, and just trying to get the.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Dust to give me your dust or just let me
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: watch your dust.
• 35:17
  Speaker 7: And open you know.
• 35:18
  Speaker 6: So, first of all, by their own negotiating positions, they
• 35:21
  Speaker 6: are in a much weaker position than they were before
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: the war. And Iran is in a much stronger position
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: than they were before the war because they controlled the
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: straight of horm moves, which they didn't before the war.
• 35:31
  Speaker 6: Trump is nuts when he's talking that they did not
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: close this straight.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Way, like literally the opposite of what he was inking.
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: That's just the opposite of the truth. He usually lies,
• 35:40
  Speaker 6: but that's just a you know, upside down lie.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: And by the way, Iran's just did their offer, according
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: to Irani and Saint News, was like asserting their right
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: to enrich uranium and peaceful nuclear development, Lift US and
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: UN Security Council sanctions, withdraw US troops from areas around
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: the Iran end to the war in Lebanon into the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: US blockade of the Straight h Mus, release and assets,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and compensation for damage caused during the war. So an
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: expansive list.
• 36:05
  Speaker 6: Because that tells you everything you need to know about
• 36:07
  Speaker 6: who actually has the leverage here. The Iranians are sitting there.
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: They can absorb economic pain. They're controlling the Straight they
• 36:14
  Speaker 6: have a revenue source from that if there's no deal,
• 36:18
  Speaker 6: and if there's a deal, they get all the sanctions. Really,
• 36:19
  Speaker 6: so either way they're going to come out with a
• 36:21
  Speaker 6: lot of revenue coming in. And Trump is completely cornered
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: and he doesn't want to restart the war, but he
• 36:28
  Speaker 6: feels against a threaten to restart the war, but the
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: Iranians don't blink when he threatens it. The Gulf countries
• 36:33
  Speaker 6: are pissed. They too would like to see Iran weakened,
• 36:39
  Speaker 6: but they're afraid that if the full scale were ramps
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: up again that they're going to get hit harder again.
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: And so here we are and everybody can see like
• 36:48
  Speaker 6: it's only people in this country that you know, feel
• 36:50
  Speaker 6: the need to believe that we accomplish something or they
• 36:53
  Speaker 6: watch Fox News. Everybody else around the world is like shit,
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: the Iranians haven't pretty checkmated. Yeah, and I love that
• 36:59
  Speaker 6: he's like the dust caught on. We say dust to
• 37:02
  Speaker 6: make fun of you.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, right, Like the reason did not catch on.
• 37:05
  Speaker 6: So it is it is highly enriched uranium nuclear fuel
• 37:09
  Speaker 6: in your stuff. And we know that you say dust
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: because you have to cling to the lie that only
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: sixty five and over white people who watch Fox News
• 37:18
  Speaker 6: believe that you obliterated the nuclear program in the so
• 37:21
  Speaker 6: called Twelve Day War that still hasn't ended. So yeah,
• 37:25
  Speaker 6: it's this is just a guy who has no idea
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: what he's doing, no way out of the mess he's created,
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: and the only way out is to basically accept defeat
• 37:34
  Speaker 6: and hopefully the Runians let to get the dust out
• 37:36
  Speaker 6: in exchange for a bunch of revenue.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's just a question of if and when
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: he'll move on some of his positions because again, like
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: the conflict is metastasizing, it's spreading to other countries, like
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: we are learning about the UAE and Saudi Arabia taking
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: direct strikes on not only Iran but also targets within
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: a rack Shia militia groups within a rock and I
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: saw today the Wall Street Journal said that over half
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: of the one thousand drone attacks in Saudi Arabia came
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: from within Iraq, So like clearly like they've been feeding
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: drone to the Shia militia groups. So again it's just
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: like a regional war now. And then last week ben
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Israel and Lebanon announced a forty five day extension to
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: the ceasefire there, but is really strike killed seven people
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: in Lebanon on Monday alone, so it's like hardly a seasfire,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: like people are still getting killed. A couple of months ago,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: remember when the Trump administration announced that they would like
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: had this plan to provide insurance to ships that wanted
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: to go through this trader homus. You why people took
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: them up on this offer?
• 38:32
  Speaker 6: Zero zero zero worked about as well as Operation Freedom, Yeah,
• 38:36
  Speaker 6: Operation Freedom.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Brief Freedom the ft is now reported that seventy six
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: countries have had to take emergency measures to deal with
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the economic fallout from fuel shortages. So that ranges from Australia,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: France and India to like poor and developing countries, and
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: then energy traders are warning that, like prices are are
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: high now, but we are going to eventually reach a
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: tipping point where there's like a freezing up of the
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: mark kits that you could see oil prices jump to
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: like one ada barrel uh, and a bunch of countries
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: have already released their emergency supplies and those are going
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: to run out by July. So it's like this is
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: fucking bad man.
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: Wait, doesn't a five siren emoji axios report change those
• 39:17
  Speaker 6: shortages that the war's ending, because that that that's worked
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: seemingly with the markets before.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: That does work with the market.
• 39:23
  Speaker 6: I think what you're yeah, Like, the point is that
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: there's what what is so interesting about watching this war
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: playout is Trump is still operating in spin world, but
• 39:34
  Speaker 6: there's a physical reality here, Like there's just not oil
• 39:39
  Speaker 6: and L and G getting out of the straight of
• 39:41
  Speaker 6: war moves. They're just our shortages, they're just our higher
• 39:44
  Speaker 6: prices and and you can't like talk your way through that,
• 39:48
  Speaker 6: and he Trump seems to think he can just kind
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: of talk his way through that. And the irony of
• 39:53
  Speaker 6: it all is that, you know, the straight is closed
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: because he launched the war, and he really needs to
• 39:58
  Speaker 6: straight open, Like he can't just accept the permanent reality
• 40:01
  Speaker 6: in which.
• 40:02
  Speaker 7: The straightform moves is closed now.
• 40:03
  Speaker 6: So at some point he really does have to make
• 40:06
  Speaker 6: concessions to Iran here or else. The whole global economy
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: is going to collapse this year because they we just
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: can't endure this level shortage for several more months.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: No, it's crazy, it's crazy. I just feel like the
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: stock market and the oil markets are all just kind
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: of like whistling past the graveyard and that'll work until
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: it doesn't. You know, Like the interest rates are shooting
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: up over five percent, like something is going to break
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: and it's going to be sudden and it's going to
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: be devastating. People are gonna lose a lot of money,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: except for the Trump people who will front run the train. Yeah. Tons.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Before we move on from Iran, ben I just did
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: want to give a shout out to some really great reporting.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: There's a piece by Sky News' Dominic Waghorn. I hope
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: by saying his name right. He got into Iran, traveled
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: to Minob, took like a four day drive to Monob
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: to speak with people there who are impacted by the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: US air strike on the school that killed one hundred
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and fifty people. I think one hundred and twenty of
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: them were children, mostly schoolgirls. He interviewed some men who
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: are first responders on the scene who had to like
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: try to dig through that fucking grizzly setting. He talked,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: you know, to a mom by her son's graveside who
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: is grieving him, and you know it, it's like gut
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: wrenching stuff, and it just it's worth watching. It's really
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: important in a reminder that Trump and all the lackeys
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: of the Pentagon, including like combat commanders like the head
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: of Seccoms on the hill yesterday, they still will not
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: take responsibility for this mistake. And it is it is shameful.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: It is truly shameful.
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: I have a problem with, first of all, that this
• 41:40
  Speaker 6: is not like a bigger story. We killed like one
• 41:42
  Speaker 6: hundred and twenty girls. I mean, I have two daughters
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: like this, this should.
• 41:48
  Speaker 7: Be like the biggest story in many ways about this war.
• 41:52
  Speaker 6: But I also like, I'm just gonna grab onto the
• 41:54
  Speaker 6: third rail of time and hold on to it because
• 41:57
  Speaker 6: the uniform military has basically gone along with a whole
• 42:03
  Speaker 6: bunch of bullshit from Donald Trump, not not down to
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: the pilots and the service members. I'm talking about Dan Kane,
• 42:10
  Speaker 6: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Sentcom.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Adamer Brad Cooper was up on the hill today and
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Adam Smith, Congress Adam Smith was trying to push him on, like, hey,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: what's up with the investigation. This should not be hard, right,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Like remember there's a map that like the whatever. Dan
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: King's had a map up in one of his Hexeth
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: briefing that showed all the places the US was bombing
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and minob was on that list, and the Israelis were
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: bombing in the north like it only could have been us.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: They know it was.
• 42:33
  Speaker 6: Using everybody's done exhaustive investigations. And so what you've seen
• 42:37
  Speaker 6: is a complete failure to take responsibility for this horrific incident,
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: a complete obfuscation of the damage caused. I mean we
• 42:46
  Speaker 6: saw Dan Kane kind of standing next speed Hegseth when
• 42:49
  Speaker 6: he was saying that we like decimated their blos signific capability.
• 42:52
  Speaker 6: And then we had to learn in the New York
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: Times that seventy five percent of their LILISTI missilaun there some.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Out there's a seventy seventy.
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah, then we don't know the damage done to the
• 43:04
  Speaker 6: bases across the region that we taxpayers paid for. The
• 43:07
  Speaker 6: Congressional Research Service CRS had to issue a report about
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: all the aircraft that we lost because they won't be
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: transparent about that. Just because you're wearing a uniform doesn't
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: mean you're infallible. And I don't think those guys are
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: lying like Trump is, but they're standing right there and
• 43:22
  Speaker 6: not telling us the full truth either, including on this incident.
• 43:25
  Speaker 6: And they know that they're they know what the idea
• 43:29
  Speaker 6: that the Sencom commander has no idea what happened in Minab.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Is they see the next fucking day if that was
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: a US Tomawk missile or not.
• 43:37
  Speaker 7: And they're they're they're, they're there.
• 43:38
  Speaker 6: I guess afraid that Trump will be mad at them
• 43:41
  Speaker 6: if they acknowledge it.
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: In that.
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: Is it worth it? I mean, it's it's kind of
• 43:46
  Speaker 7: like the Republicans, Is this really?
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 43:49
  Speaker 7: Is your job that cool that you go along with this?
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: You know someday he's just going to endorse Ken Paxton,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, might as well keep your honor positive.
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  Speaker 1: com slash World. All right, Ben, let's quickly recap Trump's
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: China visits, since there was just like a huge build
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: up to it and then ultimately it was quite a
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: dud unless you live in Taiwan. We'll get to that.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: So Trump got nothing from China with respect to Iran
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: or reopening the street, or he moves like literally nothing.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Trump claims nothing. Trump claims that Chi Jinping promised not
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: to sell weapons to the Iranians. But there's all these reports, right,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: The US officials told The New York Times the Chinese
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: firms have been plotting secret arms sales to Iran throughout
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: the countries. So I don't know. It seems like there's
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: probably some loopholes in there, guys. Trump did not secure
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: a trade deal. Nothing close deal in set announced. Some
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: like pretty small potatoes economic deliverables, economic deliverbals, like a
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: purchases of ag like seventeen billion dollars with the bag
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: purchases I think, which will never come to be and
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: then a commitment from the Chinese to buy a bunch
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: of Boeing planes, which was so underwhelming that Boeing stock
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: price went down. It's a great work there. He also
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: apparently agreed to a vehicle for Chinese investment in the US,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: including Chinese investment in US farmland, which is just weird
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: because that's a big maga thing that they're really mad about.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: They don't want the Chinese.
• 48:11
  Speaker 7: To feign ownership of land.
• 48:12
  Speaker 6: That goes back to like the organic plug. I learned
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: a lot about how the American pipelast movement started in
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: the nineteenth century around one or two issues, one of
• 48:22
  Speaker 6: which was foreign ownership.
• 48:23
  Speaker 7: Of land and the other was terriffsy.
• 48:25
  Speaker 6: There we go, so like Trump, like Trump is you know,
• 48:28
  Speaker 6: fucking over, you know.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: His throwback o g populace. Well, and also he explicitly
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: in his campaign he explicitly promised to ban Chinese ownership
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: of farms. Whatever. It's just like crazy.
• 48:36
  Speaker 7: They said he wouldn't go to war.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So then there's Taiwan. Here are some examples
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: of how Trump has described the US commitment to defend
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Taiwan since his visit.
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: Let's listen started to Taiwan, and you said we're gonna
• 48:50
  Speaker 5: check with the President of Taiwan. But to nineteen eighty
• 48:53
  Speaker 5: two Asus the press break again said you would not
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: so the U States would not be sold with China
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: on armed sales to Taiwan. Why I think nineteen eighties
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: is a long way it was has got a big thought, siss.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: So what am I going to do this that I
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: don't want to talk to.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: You about it because I have an agreement that signed
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty two now with the.
• 49:15
  Speaker 7: US defend until I want if the king say, I don't.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Want to say, I'm not going to say that.
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: There's only one person that knows that you know who
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: it is me.
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: I'm the only person.
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: That question was asked to be today by President she
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: I said, I.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: Don't talk about that.
• 49:31
  Speaker 11: Should the people of Taiwan feel more or less secure
• 49:35
  Speaker 11: after your meetings with President Sheet neutral?
• 49:39
  Speaker 10: Neutral?
• 49:40
  Speaker 11: This has the policy changed at all?
• 49:42
  Speaker 7: No?
• 49:42
  Speaker 10: Nothing, No, nothing changed. I will say this. I'm not
• 49:45
  Speaker 10: looking to have somebody go independent and you know we're
• 49:49
  Speaker 10: supposed to travel nine thousand, five hundred miles to fight
• 49:52
  Speaker 10: a war. I'm not looking for that. I want them
• 49:56
  Speaker 10: to cool down. I want China to cool down.
• 49:58
  Speaker 11: But you're waiting on approving billions of dollars weapons for
• 50:02
  Speaker 11: Taiwan that moving forward.
• 50:04
  Speaker 10: Well, I haven't approved it yet. We're going to see
• 50:06
  Speaker 10: what happens.
• 50:07
  Speaker 7: What do you look. I may do it, I may.
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: Not do it.
• 50:10
  Speaker 11: What's your your hinge?
• 50:11
  Speaker 10: Well, I'm not going to say that, but I may
• 50:13
  Speaker 10: do it, I may not do it. I'm holding that
• 50:15
  Speaker 10: in a bay. And so it depends on China depends.
• 50:17
  Speaker 10: It's a very good negotiating chip for us.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Frankly, back to the point earlier about how he doesn't
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: know English. You don't feel neutral. It's like it doesn't.
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: Well and then in the next breath change the policy.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So like also he's really hunchbacked. It's not
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: looking at there.
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: And also can I just say, like we know Brettbaer
• 50:36
  Speaker 6: watching a guy like that that's been on the like
• 50:38
  Speaker 6: the Taiwan Hawk cocktail circuit in DC, have to like
• 50:44
  Speaker 6: choose his trump master over his own personal politics on Taiwan.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Not just his trump master. Brettair was doing like straight
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: up pro CCP propaganda while he was there. He went
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: into some convenience store and ordered a sausage from a robot.
• 50:56
  Speaker 7: It's like Tucker with the Moscow metro.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Brett, what are you doing? You don't like, you don't
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: have to do this anyway. Then I feel pretty confident
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: that the answer to Brett Bear's question about whether you
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: know the Taiwanese people feel less secure after this visit
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: is uh, yeah, they feel pretty freaked out. But what
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: did you make of you know, all the taiwan elements here.
• 51:17
  Speaker 6: First of all, it just goes to saying like we
• 51:19
  Speaker 6: got nothing out of the summit, I mean no trade deal.
• 51:23
  Speaker 6: Like I was going to watch the Ai stuff and
• 51:26
  Speaker 6: there's giant nothing. We agreed to talk about it, and
• 51:29
  Speaker 6: then Scott Bessen went out and like dunked on the
• 51:31
  Speaker 6: Chinese about how we have better Ai but like it
• 51:34
  Speaker 6: just there's nothing of substance. I mean the idea that
• 51:37
  Speaker 6: you have like a carefully planned multi day summit with
• 51:42
  Speaker 6: the President of China and literally like have nothing to
• 51:45
  Speaker 6: announce except some Boeing planes got sold and you know
• 51:48
  Speaker 6: they pretend they're going to probably you know, did some
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: side deals on some chips. It helps the Chinese.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Well that was the other thing, like the they re
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: upped the offer to provide or sell the Chinese the
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: H two hundred Nvidia chip, which is not the top
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: of the line, but it's like the pretty good And
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: the Chinese said, no, I think because they're probably just
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: getting all the best chips they want through like carve
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: outs in Vietnam and other places, and then developing their
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: own indigenous chips.
• 52:13
  Speaker 6: And they were, yeah, like the whole thing is so
• 52:15
  Speaker 6: upside down that they were like kind of preparing to
• 52:17
  Speaker 6: frame the Chinese buying high end chips is like a
• 52:20
  Speaker 6: Chinese concession, when in fact it's what is going to
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: help the Chinese pass us on ai on tip. So
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: if you go into this as the reason I say
• 52:28
  Speaker 6: that too, is if you go into this summit as
• 52:30
  Speaker 6: an American president, the last thing that you want dominating
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: the conversation's Taiwan. You want that under the radar. You
• 52:36
  Speaker 6: want to not touch that. You want to talk about
• 52:38
  Speaker 6: the things you want to talk about, like she Hinping
• 52:40
  Speaker 6: WANs to talk about Taiwan and how we have to
• 52:42
  Speaker 6: not sell them arms and let them basically do whate
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: the fuck they want. You want to talk about trading
• 52:46
  Speaker 6: all these things. Trump like just kept tripping over himself
• 52:49
  Speaker 6: talking about Taiwan.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: And look what and she was like, this is our
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: top issue. And he was like referencing like the Sustididis trap,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: like suggesting there would be war over Taiwan.
• 53:00
  Speaker 6: The language that the Chinese put out which is always
• 53:02
  Speaker 6: like very carefully calibrated. First of all, there's some hilarious
• 53:04
  Speaker 6: things where like we were reading out like Chi Chiping
• 53:07
  Speaker 6: said he would be helpful on the straight up our
• 53:09
  Speaker 6: moves not crickets in the Chinese readout, right, they're just
• 53:12
  Speaker 6: like making shit up in the readouts and then the
• 53:14
  Speaker 6: Chinese but there's like bloodthirsty statement about Taiwan, like there
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: will be like conflict, you know, like for them, it
• 53:20
  Speaker 6: was blood thirsty. And look, the thing you want is
• 53:24
  Speaker 6: you want there to not be a war or Chinese invasion.
• 53:28
  Speaker 6: And so you're just trying to kick this can. The
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: arm sails are actually part of kicking the can because
• 53:34
  Speaker 6: you're trying to show the Chinese, hey, look this might
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: be a tough operation, you know, like just full on
• 53:38
  Speaker 6: amphibious invasion of this island.
• 53:40
  Speaker 7: It would not be simple, especially if they have arms.
• 53:43
  Speaker 6: And so again this is one of those weird situations
• 53:46
  Speaker 6: where you're trying to deter conflict by not cutting the
• 53:48
  Speaker 6: court on the Taiwanese, because if you cut the court
• 53:51
  Speaker 6: on them, then they are vulnerable, and the Chinese to
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: a blockade and they squeeze and squeeze. And he just
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: kind of kept stepping on rakes, you know, because he
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: would say something that made it seem like he wouldn't
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: care at all about Taiwan. And then you would say, like,
• 54:05
  Speaker 6: nothing has changed in the policy, and yet now I'm
• 54:07
  Speaker 6: gonna say a word salad that is totally different than
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: what the policy.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: But then he'd be like, Hey, but I'm gonna call
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: the president of Taiwan, which is something that would up
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: end fifty years of US government policy because we don't
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: have leader of leader contacts with them.
• 54:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, because in fact, the last guy who did that
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: was Trump after he won in twenty six, like some
• 54:24
  Speaker 6: lobbyists tucked him into calling and signing when the president
• 54:27
  Speaker 6: at the time. So look, if I'm in Taiwan right now,
• 54:30
  Speaker 6: I'm just thinking, like I got to get through the
• 54:33
  Speaker 6: next two and a half years of.
• 54:34
  Speaker 7: That being invaded.
• 54:36
  Speaker 6: And I'm not saying that because I want the next
• 54:39
  Speaker 6: president to go to war or Taiwan. I want the
• 54:41
  Speaker 6: next president to have a more effective strategy over avoiding
• 54:44
  Speaker 6: a war in Taiwan, And so I'd be trying to
• 54:47
  Speaker 6: kind of keep my head down of it here, you know,
• 54:50
  Speaker 6: keep your relations with Congress and both parties and kind
• 54:53
  Speaker 6: of just don't even really try to play the Trump
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: game because he has no interest in Taiwan, and the
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: more he get dragged into it, the more he's going
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: to signal how little he cares, and the more that
• 55:04
  Speaker 6: might make Xi Jinping think, you know, and be a
• 55:06
  Speaker 6: really good time to invade Taiwan, like the last year
• 55:09
  Speaker 6: of the Trump administration.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: Right But and if you're listening and thinking like, look,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: I just don't want any conflict. I don't want the
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: US telling the Chinese what to do. They're like, okay, well,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: if you don't like the economic disruption that's coming from
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: a two month long straight or humor's closure, wait until
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: there's no chips for any of the computers and phones
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: and everything's every amount of Taiwan, right, Like that would
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: be a big problem. And Ben just you know, so
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: Trump there had been a fourteen billion dollar arm sale
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: that had been approved and was pending from the administration
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: that they held off to try to like make she
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: happy in advance of this trip. It's not at all
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: clear that Trump is going to go through with it.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: But on top of that, there is thirty two billion
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: dollars worth of aid to Taiwan that has been promised
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: as part of foreign military sales that is still being
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: held up. Drones, air defenses, like anti shit missiles, like
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: big ticket stuff. And it just like people always point
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: to those Trump administration arms packages to Taiwan and be like,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: see you look the hardliners they're in there. They're committed,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: like Rubio is doing the right thing, but they're not
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: delivering this.
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: They're not delivering anything. Look, this is yet another issue
• 56:13
  Speaker 6: where Trump is the one who kind of led this
• 56:16
  Speaker 6: move towards like getting tougher on China and being against
• 56:18
  Speaker 6: in China. I remember the campaign, By the way, all
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: the Democratic blob types followed that like herd because it's
• 56:24
  Speaker 6: like now we're gonna be super tough. He's now swerving
• 56:26
  Speaker 6: in the other direction. He's talking up leader to leader
• 56:29
  Speaker 6: from you know, he's friends with she and what a
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: great man he's gonna come to the ballroom and and
• 56:34
  Speaker 6: I'm you know, canceling the trade war because the Chinese
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: have more leverage with rare earth materials, just like their
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: runnings have the straight or four moves. He's tacoing left
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: and right and so all these things. He he promised
• 56:47
  Speaker 6: to get tough on the Chinese, he promised no farm
• 56:49
  Speaker 6: warris He probably all these things.
• 56:50
  Speaker 7: He just keeps going back on there.
• 56:51
  Speaker 6: We're like pretty core to MAGA, Like what does Steve
• 56:54
  Speaker 6: Bannon think about this visit where basically had Trump sucking
• 56:57
  Speaker 6: up to shushimping like a supplicant, like it's the Middle
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: Kingdom and we were going to like pay tribute to
• 57:02
  Speaker 6: the Chinese emperor and look on on And I'm not
• 57:06
  Speaker 6: even I'm saying that as someone who wants engagement with
• 57:08
  Speaker 6: the Chinese, but engagement for some purpose, like Trump's goal
• 57:13
  Speaker 6: is just protocol. It's just that he's like received well
• 57:15
  Speaker 6: and has nice dinners with she like I want to
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: negotiate like ai safeguards, you know, like I.
• 57:20
  Speaker 7: Want real things.
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: And again, if you're the Taiwanese, like you also don't
• 57:27
  Speaker 6: want He started describing arm sales to Taiwan as a
• 57:30
  Speaker 6: negotiating shit. Well, that means that you also are entertaining
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: negotiating away Taiwan as if by the way, it's yours
• 57:39
  Speaker 6: to negotiate and again, what you do. I'm not suggesting
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: you want to go to war. I am suggesting you
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: don't want to implicitly green light China going to war.
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: Because to your point, even if you don't care about
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: the Taiwanese people, and I do, ninety percent of the
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: world's advanced semiconductors come out of Taiwan TSMC. That's your car, computer,
• 57:59
  Speaker 6: that's all of it, it's everything, that's the entire economy,
• 58:02
  Speaker 6: you know, and that would be bad.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in these like bloodless ghuls you know, over the
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: all in pod Or people administration are like, well, just
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: give us a couple of years, we'll have the technology
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: we need to make that not a problem. It's like, okay, that's.
• 58:13
  Speaker 7: They've been saying that for a while.
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: I heard that the Chips Act was going to do
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: that when yeah, Joe Biden was the guy that did
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: the Pacific basis and.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Then they unraveled that. Yeah. And by the way, like
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: you know, rip any conversation about religious freedom, human rights
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: expression for the Chinese people.
• 58:29
  Speaker 7: Remember you were were raising whether like he might get Jimmy.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Trump brought up to political prisoners. There's Ezra Jin miningrie
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: A pastor who was detained last October in Jimmy Lai,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: this media tycoon from Hong Kong. Trump said, she said
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: he will strongly consider the pastor. Didn't remember his name,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: but basically sounded like there was no shot in hell
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: he would do anything to support Jimmy Laie and that
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Trump didn't really care and wouldn't you know, do anything
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: about it. And you know, I don't know what Steve
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: Bannon thinks of this trip. But like full time Trump
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: fluffer Hugh Hewitt, who was one of those like pro Taiwan,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: anti CCP right wing guys who always talks about Jimmy Lai,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: he's been suspiciously silent on Trump just absolutely caving on
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Lai.
• 59:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah, all these guys, I mean, it does make you
• 59:16
  Speaker 6: wonder what they actually believe.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I will say one credit to Hugh and
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: that like when he interviews Trump, he'll ask about these issues,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: He'll ask Trump about Jimmy Li. But when Trump completely
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: caves ashi Jimpang, he never follows up. He's still just like, well,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: thank you.
• 59:34
  Speaker 6: And they thought this is why and this is actually
• 59:37
  Speaker 6: an important point that I don't understand. You know, we
• 59:43
  Speaker 6: saw John Cornyn get rug pulled today. All these people
• 59:47
  Speaker 6: seemingly convince themselves that Trump would actually act on the
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: thing they cared about, whether it was the Epstein files,
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: whether it was not getting into Forever Wars, whether it
• 59:56
  Speaker 6: was being tough on the CCP. Like when all, you
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 6: don't need to be like a genius to see that.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 7: Trump only cares about himself.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know, and frankly, if he likes anybody,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 6: it's the Field Marshal and chi jimping because they're fellow autocrats.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he loves those guys, all right, Ben, final topic
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: for us here, So years of doing the show with
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: you has taught me many things. One of them is
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: that there exists a song competition in Europe called Eurovision.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: It's one of the longest running TV programs in the world.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Hundreds of millions of people watch it and go bonkers
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: for it. Deal. There are always scandals, There are always controversies.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Usually they involve Israel. I never really understand why people
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: are boycotting. It's a big thing.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 6: It's also interesting because Israel's not in Europe but.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Right, and then most of all, most importantly for us,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: there are goofy clips of the performances themselves, which Michael
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: curates for us to enjoy.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: WHOA, what the fuck.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: A?
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, shut me back to life.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Oh man, that was That was like she took acid
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: and was on the ship from the Fifth Element, remember.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 6: That movie, and somehow booked an appointment the Dominatrix for
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: a while.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then at the end it's just the British
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: boy band guy with a Teletubbies. So the list there
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: was Moldova, Romania with a song called choke Me okay.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 6: The Romanian Matrix. Uh that I would have guessed Romania, Yeah.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: She was, she was choking, h Ukraine, Serbia, Lithuania, Finland,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: and then the UK.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 7: Who's that guy who's just screaming at So.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know who was that? Okay? That tracks the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: UK song was called Einswides right, I'm assuming that was German. Finally,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: this is the Eurovision twenty twenty six winner. Spoiler alert,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: criminal Bulgaria learned that today. Uh their song was called
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: bang Arenga. Is that really true?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 7: Bang who?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: Bangoranga?
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 7: Bangaranga?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Bangaranga? Should we watch the Bangaranga? Let's let's watch it.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: I'm asa.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 7: That's the winner.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: I can see what that was popular.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's it's catchy, it she's you know, But
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: like I if this is a window undo the state
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 6: of the culture, what is going on in Europe. I mean, here,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 6: we know what's going on sucks here the biggest glass
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 6: house on earth acknowledging that.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing that people not you know, fluent in Bulgarian
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: just muted.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 6: It feels like pop music needs like a like a
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 6: reset button here because we've reached kind of the end.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: My musical critic take on this is like there's like
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 6: the end of death metal there, like the end of
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 6: like kind of gaga pop, you know, the end of
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 6: some weird British acid daft punk kind of thing going on.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: Like we need to like start over with some genre bending.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: I don't know, Yeah, I just think.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: You're in European shit. It's weird.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: Sometimes I will say this, they seem like they're having fun.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 7: That it looked like we're not having fun.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: No, we're having a terrible time.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 6: Their lives are probably objectively better and more fun than ours.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 6: They probably go to clubs and dance that music and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 6: have a really good time.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I get to the club at six in the morning, yeah.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 6: I mean, so you're winning it life, even if I
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 6: couldn't really see myself listening to any of that.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: So that was Eurovision until next year. Ben got on.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: I gotta say it is reel compete.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 6: This year I did, okay compete, Yeah, second place, second,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 6: They always in second place.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: The clips really do deliver in terms of weirdness though
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: every year I'm like, I don't know, is this gonna
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: be funny? Yep, that's some weird shit. So well done
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: in that cut. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: We come back. You're gonna hear my conversation with Nish
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Kumar about the weird world of British politics, so stick
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: around for that. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace
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  Speaker 1: That's squarespace dot com slash World. My guest today is
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: a stand up comedian, television presenter, sex Symbol and the
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: co host of Potz of the UK. Nish Kumark Great
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: to see you. You have a special out Nish don't
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: kill my vibe on YouTube right now.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 12: I have a stand up specially vitable right now and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 12: I think now by giving people an opportunity to watch
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 12: a video of me, they will immediately get to stress
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 12: test the sex symbol claim.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: I'm staring at one right now with my own two eyes,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: so I believe them. Excited to talk with you today,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: your co host on Potse the UK, Coco, was going
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: to join us this morning. She had a last minute
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: scheduling thing, so we don't have her, but we we
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: love her. She is effervescent in all things that she does.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: But we'll miss her today. So I'm excited to talk
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: with you because there's a lot of crazy shit happening
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: over in British politics. Last week Ben and I talked
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: about labors drubbing in these recent local elections in England,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: Scotland and Wales. It seemed for a moment like the
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: writing was on the wall for Cure Starmer and that
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: every agreed he could not be Prime Minister anymore, and
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: then he was not cut out to lead labor in
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: this moment, however, it was not clear who would depose him.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: That kind of weird status quo seems to be holding,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: like where do you think Starmar stands at this moment?
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: And can you give us like kind of your quick
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: and dirty take on how Starmar went from leading Labor
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: to this historic landslide, you know, nearly two years ago,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: less than two years ago, to this mess today.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 12: Okay, well let's yeah, let's talk about the why of
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 12: Starmer's got here. Second, because this because so much shit
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 12: has happened. This is a little anecdote into my personal life.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 12: But I told my mother that I was doing this
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 12: show today and she said, oh, it's bad when they
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 12: ask you to do the show, isn't.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: It It is? It is.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 12: It's usually it's never because something is going it's never
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 12: to come on to talk about how the UK is
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 12: functioning too well.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: So basically NHS is fixed.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, everything's fixed. We're all fine.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 12: So basically, where you guys got to and where we
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 12: got to in our shows last week was that Labor
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 12: had taken a drubbing and then Kirs Starmer had to
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 12: go through this sort of ridiculous process called the King's
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 12: Speech where the monarch announces the government's legislative agenda for
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 12: the year and the King has to give that as
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 12: a speech, but it's a speech that's written for him.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 12: I've spent most of the last week trying to get
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 12: us to incorporate an element of Rup Paul and have
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 12: the Prime Minister record the speech and then the King
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 12: lip sync it live, because I think that'd be sort
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 12: of more entertaining for everybody. But obviously this king speech
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 12: felt particularly strange and pointless because Starmer was announcing his
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 12: government's legislative package whilst at the same time seeming on
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 12: the precipice of losing his job. So we're Streeting. The
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 12: Health Secretary went in for a meeting with Stammer that
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 12: I believe is supposed to supposed to lie, did sixteen minutes.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 12: He then left Downing Street and then announced that he
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 12: was resigning from the government. So there had been a
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 12: kind of spate of resignations in the aftermath of the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 12: local elections, but were Streeting. Obviously, Health Secretary is one
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 12: of what we refer to in the UK as the
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 12: Great Offices of State. That's a huge, high profile position.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 12: Streeting also has been sort of touted as a potential
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 12: replacement for Starmer from Starmer's wing of the party, which
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 12: is sort of has morphed over the course of his
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 12: life as leader of the Labor Party, but now his
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 12: constituency is sort of viewed as the right of the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 12: Labor Party. Streeting had been posited as the guy who
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 12: was going to take over. He needed eighty one other
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 12: MPs to co sign his bid to be the next
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 12: Labor leader, and I think just very quickly realized that
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 12: he did not have the support within the Labor Party,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 12: but he anyway and said that he wanted, you know,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 12: to start a conversation about who the next leader of
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 12: the Labor Party was going to be.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Remark that guy don't other loads quitting anyway, just shot
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: in the bed, right off the bed.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 12: There's a problem that words streating has, which is that
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 12: he was sort of widely portrayed as the closest ally
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 12: Peter Mandelson, who obviously listeners of this podcast will be
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 12: well familiar with. He was the man who Kis Starmer
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 12: appointed as the British Ambassador to America, despite I mean,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 12: I believe the technical term is a dump trucks worth
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 12: of shitload of mentions in the Epstein files, and so
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 12: some of that was revealed when the latest trunch of
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 12: documents was released. But Mandelson's friendship with Epstein was something
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 12: that was known in the British media and had been
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 12: talked about by journalists at the Financial Times and the
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 12: documentary maker on Channel four. So the idea that one
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 12: of the biggest things that Kirstarmer has done wrong in
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 12: the public's eyes being the appointment of Peter Mandelsson. It's
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 12: absolutely unfathomable that the only person who we equally have
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 12: identified as being close to Peter Mandelson was even considering
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 12: a run for prime minister, So I think Streeting's bid
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 12: at that time was dead in the water. So then
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 12: the problem, the reason that Starmer hasn't gone already is
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 12: that there has not been a clear front runner to
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 12: actually challenge him. So Angela Rayner, who was the Deputy
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 12: Prime Minister, had to step down from that position because
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 12: last year there were some revelations about her tax affairs
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 12: that found that she may have underpaid tax whilst buying
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 12: a flat. Now on on Thursday morning, the full investigation
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 12: concluded that she hadn't done anything wrong and her misdemeanor
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 12: was the lowest class of mistake that the UK tax
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 12: authorities deemed to be even a transgression. So there is
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 12: an argue there is it's a possibility that she has
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 12: a clear path to running but she so far not
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 12: shown any inclination that she wants to run. So the
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 12: guy who everybody seems to think is going to run
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 12: is Andy Burnham, who you've talked about on the show.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 12: He's the mayor of Manchester. He's a labor MP from
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 12: the north of England. He got a lot of positive
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 12: headlines in twenty twenty, as a lot of politicians did,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 12: because they were immediately on the news after Boris Johnson
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 12: had said something so like there were a lot of
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 12: politicians in this country that came across as being hyper
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 12: competent because they had just followed a man who really
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 12: was giving a press conference but really thinking about how
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 12: he was who he was going to bang later like
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 12: that that was in a pandemic.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 8: Yeah, this is during the pandemic.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: Party isn't dicking around And.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 12: Even before we knew about the parties, his press conferences
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 12: were often garbled because Johnson is smart in a very specific,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 12: rich white english Man way, which is he sort of
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 12: able to recite poetry, but crucially he doesn't understand any
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 12: of it, and so when he was actually put under
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 12: pressure in twenty twenty, he would often give these press
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 12: conferences that were rambling and borderline in coherent, and then
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 12: it would cut to, you know, a different UK politician,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 12: and specifically in the case of Andy Burnham, the Mayor
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 12: of Manchester, who would by comparisons seem incredibly studious and
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 12: like a leader. And so Burnham really got a lot
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 12: of attention in the pandemic. He was also he was
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 12: already a very high profile figure because you know, being
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 12: the mayor of Manchester is a big, high profile job.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 12: It's a big important city in the UK. Now, the
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 12: problem here is that Andy Burnham is not an MP,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 12: and so that's the That's so there was all this
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 12: polling done that suggested he's the most popular politician. His
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 12: net favorability is sort of somewhere in the mid thirties
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 12: and sort of seeming everyone else in British policy is
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 12: in the low teens or the minus numbers. But the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 12: problem is Andy Burnham is not an MP and as
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 12: such he can't be Prime Minister. So then on Thursday,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 12: a fairly extraordinary thing happened. Josh Simons, who is a
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 12: Labor MP in Makerfield, which a constituency just outside of Manchester,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 12: announced that he was going to step aside and therefore
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 12: force a by election, which is what we call a
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 12: special election, in which Andy Burnham could stand so that
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 12: he could become the MP for Makerfield and therefore run
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 12: for Prime minister. It is I feel like the word
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 12: unprecedented has lost all meaning in the last decade, both
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 12: in my country and in yours.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 8: But this is pretty unprecedented.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 12: So now what comes next, basically for the Labor Party
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 12: is this special election in Makerfield to determine if Andy
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 12: Burnham is going to become an MP, to determine if
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 12: he can challenge kids Done for Prime minister. In the interim,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 12: nobody has shown any appetite to challenge Starma, So Starbar
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 12: is still in post, but he's sort of shrouding as
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 12: Prime Minister, like he sort of is and isn't Prime
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 12: Minister at the same time. It's quite an unbelievable situation
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 12: because everybody knows he is kind of he is on
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 12: the way out. It's I honestly, it's sort of baffling.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 10: You know.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 12: I'm used to the last couple of years of Richie Sunak.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 12: Everybody knew he was going to lose the next election,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 12: so every time he announced anything, everyone be like, yeah,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 12: kol buddy, I've seen in a couple of years. Yeah,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 12: I'll see when McDonald's in a couple of years. Like,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 12: you know, that's not it's not particularly born to any
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 12: of us. So, but this is pretty pretty extraordinary because technically,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 12: from an electoral basis, Starmer just won a huge majority.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 12: He doesn't have to call an election until twenty and
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 12: twenty nine if he wants to. That's how far he
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 12: can push it. But he has seemingly no about to
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 12: run the country in the minute.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or leaders on party.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: The Andy Burnham by election is remarkable because you noted
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: like he's going to run. It's not a sure thing
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: that will win this seat, first of all, given the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: mood music in the country, but also you're in a
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: situation where we have like what thirty forty thousand people
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: vote to maybe make this guy an MP, and if
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: they make him an MP, he's the odds on favorite
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: to be prime minister. So you're kind of voting for
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: this guy be prime minister, but not because that's not
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: the process. The other name that's been thrown out there
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: recently is Ed Miliband of the Miliban family, but the
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: sandwich loving variety. He's the Energy Minister currently. It sounds
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: like he's been doing a lot of plotting behind the scenes.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Is he really a candidate? Do you think for prime minister?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 12: So he I mean he did, he was leader of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 12: the Labor Party. He did run for prime minister. He
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 12: lost the twenty fifteen election and then he was sort
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 12: of slightly cast out into the political wilton. But whilst
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 12: in the wilderness, he sort of, through media appearances and
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 12: through a very successful podcast that he co hosted for
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 12: a while, sort of rehabilitated his public image. Also, he
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 12: continued to be an MP in that time. He didn't
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 12: just immediately quit his job in politics completely and go
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 12: and cash it in the private sector, but he rebuilt
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 12: his kind of political capital in this country which is
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 12: completely fascinating, and he is a sort of nationally popular
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 12: figure now. I think that I don't know what it
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 12: would be like if he attempted to run for prime
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 12: minister again. I don't know how that would look because
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 12: a lot of these sort of accusations that were leveled
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 12: at him in twenty fifteen might come back around again.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 12: I will say the twenty fifteen UK election and this
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 12: is there's no need for us to get too far
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 12: in the weeds of This was a very strange and
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 12: peculiar event because it sort of happens. It's the Sandwich
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 12: filling in between two referendums. So there was the Scottish
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 12: Independence friendum, which the pro independence lobby lost, and then
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 12: there was the Brexit referendum the year after, and those
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 12: two things are the factor around that election, right, because
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 12: the Scottish voters were so incensed by the Labor role
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 12: in helping to deliver a no vote in the Independent
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 12: in the independence referendum, and then which then led to
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 12: the Conservative government essentially sort of disregarding Scotland immediately after
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 12: it decided to remain a part of the United Kingdom
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 12: that they switched en mass to the Scottish National Party
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 12: the SNP, so a lot of progressive voters in Scotland,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 12: which were a huge part of Labour support based switched parties. Also,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 12: David Cameron went into the twenty fifteen election promising a
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 12: referendum on the Britain's membership of the EU, so he
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 12: essentially headed off the threat Nigel for so Labor support
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 12: collapsed on its left flank and the Conservative sort of
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 12: electoral split that had dogged the party for most of
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 12: the twenty first century was essentially found a kind of
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 12: Dayton because Nigel for was and like, well, I guess
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 12: we don't need to run that hard because these guys
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 12: are going to give us a Brexit referendum.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 8: So that you know that, it's sort of so in
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 8: Milliban losing that election.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 12: There's some wider circumstances that obviously aren't at play at
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 12: this point, so you can sort of see why. But
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 12: I still think he's not going to run. All of
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 12: the rumors coming out of the UK press at the
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 12: moment are that he was threatening to run if there
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 12: was no viable candidate from the soft left of the
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 12: Labor Party, and he was essentially threatening to run on
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 12: a platform of Jesus fucking Christ.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 8: Not a whears.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 12: I think from what I could tell that while Streeting
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 12: was like touting his credentials as a candidate, Ed Milivam
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 12: was like, listen, if it has to be, it has
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 12: to be someone other than this fucking guy.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: Got it. Look, I know that feeling. I mentioned Brexit
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: a few times there. From an outsider's perspective, it just
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: seems so obvious that Brexit was a mess, It was
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: a disaster. It was sold to the public on all
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: of these lies about funding for the NHS, stopping the boats,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: et cetera, and that it has harmed the UK. Therefore,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: it has always been confusing to me that Labor isn't
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: more for throaded about reversing Brexit or like, I don't know,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: talking it down running against it.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: Why is that?
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: Like what am I missing here?
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 12: Because of our kind of screwy electoral systems, Like that's
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 12: screwy in a different way to yours. So like obviously
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 12: the electoral college, what the hell is going on? I
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 12: don't understand, None of us will ever understand why that's
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 12: allowed to have. But our first past the post system
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 12: means that the same problem essentially occurs, which is there
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 12: is a disproportionate importance to a small group of voters
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 12: in potentially swing constituencies and a lot of Labor support
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 12: collapsed in what they call the red Wall, so vote
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 12: constituencies in the North of England that had historically voted
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 12: Labor but then voted Brexit in twenty sixteen then deserted
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 12: the party And part of the thinking around that is
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 12: that it's over the Brexit vote. So that's why the
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 12: Labour py Essentially at this point, no one, including Nigel Farage,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 12: the man who absolutely agitated for Brexit, had been championing
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 12: and touting it as a political project for really twenty years.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 12: No one talks about Brexit anymore because everybody is afraid
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 12: to engage with the fact that it has negatively affected
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 12: our economy. It is making us poorer. But there is
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 12: no political will to reverse any of the decisions behind it,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 12: because I think there is, and also, to be honest
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 12: with you, there is a real fit. It was really
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 12: really ugly and you know, a sitting MP in the
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 12: lead up to the referendum was murdered by a man
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 12: who in court gave his name as Freedom for Britain.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 12: And there is also a fatigue about rehashing those arguments.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 12: But I totally understand that from an outsider's perspective, it
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 12: feels completely inexplicable that we don't at least talk about
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 12: mitigating some of the effects of Brexit. And the big
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 12: problem was that nobody agreed what it was until it
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 12: had been voted for. So if you go back and
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 12: look at the campaign, they were making all kinds of
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 12: crazy claims and they were also very in the short
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 12: term clever by not fully defining the exact terms of it,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 12: so it was able to be this kind of diffuse
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 12: thing that was going to deliver more money for the
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 12: public sector. And actually because of that we spent we
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 12: had kind of three years of just no political movement
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 12: whatsoever as people tried to work out what it was
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 12: that they had just asked the country to vote on.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 12: So there is so little political appetite. But I totally
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 12: understand people looking at the UK must be totally confused
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 12: by it.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: No, I would love to have three more years of
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: debilting hard or saft Brexit or Irish tax stuffs or
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: rather bullshit. We all had to learn time on some level.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: I get it. You mentioned nagel FROs there, like, here's
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: the lead of Reform UK, this new far right party.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: They gained a lot of ground in these elections. It
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: is objectively bad to have a like right wings xenophobic
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: political party do that well, especially one run by a
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: clown in a charlatan. I guess I could squint at
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: it another way and say, I don't know, maybe this
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: signals there's a cap on their support sort of in
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: the twenties low thirty percent that we've seen across Europe.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: How worried are you about the rise of reform in
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: the potential for Nigel Farage to be the prime minister.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 12: There's a lot of people making the case that based
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 12: on polling projections from twelve months ago, reform actually underperformed
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 12: in these local elections, and that you know, there are
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 12: various statisticians that are trying to make the case that
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 12: reform support may have peaked. Nigel Farage is also sort
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 12: of embroiled in another scandal at the moment over here
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 12: where just before he became an MP, he got five
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 12: million pounds from a cryptocurrency Christopher Harbin yeeze. He's based
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 12: in Thailand. Yeah, it is is five million pounds and
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 12: he said initially it was because he needed that.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 8: Money for security for the rest of his life.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 12: He then, when he was pressed on it, said that
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 12: he it was a present for doing Brexit.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: A reward like campaigning Forxit.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 12: It was a reward for campaign for Brexit. Regardless of
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 12: the reasoning for why the money came in. He did
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 12: not long after it landed his in his account by
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 12: a house in cash for about for about one point
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 12: four million pounds.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: Didn't Kire Stormberg get killed for taking like clothes from supporters,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: like eyeglasses, Like again, yeahs tens of thousand dollars, Like
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: I understand why I was an issue. Clean that shit up,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: but like it just it feels like the press doesn't
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: cover Farage like a real candidate. They cover him like
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: a pundit or some like I don't know, the performance artist.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 12: On parts of the UK, we had to talk a
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 12: little bit about the fact that the leader of the
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 12: Green Party, zak Planski, who was sort of polling very
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 12: well and taking votes from labor from the political left
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 12: may or may not have paid council tax, which is
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 12: the tax that you pay on wherever you live in
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 12: this like your house tax, essentially on a narrow boat
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 12: that he lived on for a period about ten years ago.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 12: And so we were talking about, you know, we're talking
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 12: about whenever we talk about politicians like Starma and Polanski,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 12: we're talking about scandals that are sometimes in the hundreds
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 12: and the thousands. But Nigel Frans, we are talking about
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 12: five million pounds from from a crypto billionaire. Reforms platform
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 12: has pushed the idea that deregulating cryptocurrency would be something
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 12: that they were pushed for in government. There are a
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 12: lot of signs for that. So this is you know,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 12: if it looks like corruption and smells like corruption, but
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 12: it is We both suffer from this kind of scrutiny
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 12: deficit in with right wing politicians and people like us
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 12: get ourselves sort of twisted and contorted because we're all
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 12: trying to do the right thing. Progressive people want to
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 12: hold progressive politicians to a moral standard that we have
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 12: all agreed upon that transcends our political biases and leanings right,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 12: and that's fine. Unfortunately, in the last ten years, the
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 12: other side of the political spectrum has abandoned that, you know,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 12: shared moral code. So it means that it creates the
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 12: scrutiny deficit where if a left wing politician does something
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 12: that we considered to be a transgression, everyone piles in
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 12: on them. If a right wing politician does it, the
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 12: right wing press and other right wing politicians kind of
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 12: shrug their shoulders. And I do think with Vraj is
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 12: fucking baffling, like he is treated like no other politician
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 12: in my lifetime apart from Boris Johnson and the really
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 12: interesting thing about Boris Johnson is that when things really
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 12: went south for him, when all of those revels came
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 12: out about lockdown parties, it was the conservative press in
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 12: this country that went after him. And I think that's
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 12: a slightly underdiscussed part of the collapse of Johnson. It
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 12: was just the first.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 8: Time in a long long time.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 12: That a kind of right wing populist was fully exposed
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 12: to total scrutiny of their actions and behavior by the
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 12: entirety of the UK press. And Johnson's political career collapsed
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 12: on contact with that scrutiny. And it would be really
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 12: interesting if you know, conservative papers did pick up on
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 12: this for our story, but I suspect it won't.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 8: You know, if you if you sort of speak in defense.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 12: Of deregulated capital, people tend to find a way to
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 12: excuse whatever behaviors you're engaged.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Oh gut, listen, brothers, you're pretty the choir over here.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, Trump just created a one point seven seven
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: six billion dollars slush fund for his political allies. And
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: I was watching Fox News before I walked in here,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: and they were doing a segment about an AOC interview
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: from May thirteenth, So like whatever it takes to keep
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: from talking about dear leader. Is they what they'll do?
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Final question for you, So this summer July sixteenth through eighteenth,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: I think I know where you're going to be Seapack
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: Britain is taking London by a story.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 12: Yes, yes, I'm opening for them. I'm going to do
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 12: twenty minutes of comedy too open for city.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: Let's watch a quick hype video by one of the
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: leading lights of British politics to kind of like get
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: us fired up to talk about this. Here we go.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 13: We are launching a British Seapack which is going to
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 13: take place this summer, bringing together conservatives of all parties,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 13: not just from Britain but from the United States, from
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 13: Europe and from.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 5: Around the world.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: Two questions, will you be purchasing the one hundred pound
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: ticket or the ten thousand pound ticket? And why does
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: she talk at point five x speed? It drives me
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: absolutely insane.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 12: I will be purchasing. I will immediately go straight into
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 12: the ten grand package. Got to have front row to
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 12: seapac UK. The issue that seapac UK has is that
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 12: right now Liz Trust is so politically radioactive that even
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 12: Nigel Farage isn't going to turn up to it. Oh really,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 12: so far he's an Yeah, so far he's not because
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 12: she is so politically toxic that no one wants to
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 12: be photographed stood next to her. And I mean, listen,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 12: I am fascinated to see who turns up. I imagine
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 12: it's going to be a who's who of British conservative
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 12: batshitter read like, it is really going to be woodstock
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 12: for red faced men called Christopher, like it is going
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 12: to be really like it's really and I listen, and
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 12: I imagine we'll get some like leading lights from the
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 12: European far right as well. I believe Victor Alburtn has
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 12: some time on his hands right now.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he'll be there. He'll be punching tickets at
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: the front drinks.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 8: I believe all has got some type.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 12: But like, the problem with these kind of fringe jobs
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 12: is that they are obviously funny to look at, but
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 12: the ideas that they're propagating do have a way into
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 12: the British political mainstream because you know, as much as
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 12: Farage wants to distance himself from them for sort of
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 12: electoral reasons, he's essentially offering the same policy platform. You know,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 12: he he's more competently presenting it, but it's the same shit.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: Seapack went from this thing that would happen we'd all
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: make fun of it, was like, you know, the bar
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: scene from Star Wars to being just like the Maga
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: base and the guy who founded Seapack and still runs it,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: like allegedly runs around bars when he gets drunk and
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: just like grabs guys cocks. That hasn't mattered. For whatever reason,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: it's going to match slap and so yeah, I mean
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: like it is. It's a pernicious thing. It managed to
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: seep into the politics. There's a lot of money behind it.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: I think there's a question about I'd love to know
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: who's funding you know, Seapack UK is. You know, there's
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: some question now whether the Seapack Hungary was getting funded
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: by the Russians. There's a lot more learning now that
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: Orbon is out and the records are open. But we
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: will watch it, we will make fun of it. But
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: also your rights to say it's a it's a problem.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 12: I think it's really important to tread a line between
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 12: saying this is a real problem. It presents some dangerous
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 12: ideas for us, but it is also important to say,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 12: fuck me, these these lads are weird. Like, it's really
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 12: important that we don't lose sight of the basic strangeness
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 12: of a lot of these people because they are so strange.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: So strange. Oh, this is why we need comedy and
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: stand up comedians, because you know, you guys are like
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: fun bullies. You know, we pig down these losers.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 8: What a astonishing dismissal of my whole profession.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: I wish I could do a stand up every time.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: Every time we walk out on stage to do like
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: a live podcast or something, I always think to myself, Man,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: imagine if I was doing something actually cool, like comedy
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: or music. I'm looking at your guitar back behind you.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: See a nice amp in the corner.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 12: Yeah, I've got a lot of listen I got. I
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 12: got started with my midlife crisis about ten years early.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: Oh good.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 12: In fact, actually, to be honest, my whole career as
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 12: a stand up comedian is a midlife crisis.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 8: It just began when I was twenty two. So like
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 8: I'm just I've always been ahead of the curve.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: I'm proud of you. Well, I got into podcasting as
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: a grown adult. Thank you so much for joining the show.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: Everyone should listen to Patsy of the UK and check
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: out your special Nisch Don't Kill My Vibe on YouTube now.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 12: Perfect beautiful, that's why, right right away, now watch right now.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks again to nish Kumar for joining the show. And
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: now you are going to hear exclusive, more exclusive confirmation
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: about Ben's book All We Say, which you should have
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: already bought by now, and if you haven't.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 6: This audiobook I serve is going to put you over
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 6: the top.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm disappointing you if you don't.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 6: We live in a cynical time. We are surrounded by
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 6: forces designed to make us feel like we lack control.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 6: Whether it's an algorithm that shapes what we see, an
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 6: oligarchy that controls wealth and power, a world untethered from
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 6: old notions of order, a climate that is changing, or
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 6: artificial intelligence which mimics human functions and thought. Corruption abounds.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 6: The existence of truth itself is distorted and contested. Yet
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 6: history shows us that the words we speak can matter.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 6: They have started wars and forged peace, sparked movements and
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 6: elected presidents, changed minds, and foretold the future. The greatest
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 6: speeches are the ones that tell hard truths that force
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 6: us to confront the world as it is, while demanding
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 6: that we pursue the world as we want it to be.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 6: We begin this journey with Benjamin Franklin's closing argument at
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 6: the Constitutional Convention in seventeen eighty seven. The Constitution was
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 6: a profoundly imperfect document, filled with the compromises of a
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 6: union and a system of government agreed upon by people
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 6: with different beliefs, backgrounds, and interests. We still do not
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 6: know the end of the story that Franklin and his
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 6: cohort began, but this book rejects an effort by one leader,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 6: backed by one faction of this country, to take custody
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 6: of the American story. American identity is about having obligations
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 6: to a common creed rather than a shared heritage or
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 6: piece of territory. It is not their story, it is ours.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 6: And by learning from these words spoken in the past,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 6: we are reminded that history is a living thing and
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 6: that we have the capacity to change it.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: Podsey of the World is a crook media production. Our
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: show is produced by Alone Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith and Anisia
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: Bonnerchy are teamically. Matt de Grot, then Heathcote Jordan Canter,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: Kenny Moffett, David Toles, and Ryan Young. The staff is
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East