Tommy Vitor
Appearances
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
His emissaries are over in Israel right now meeting with Netanyahu talking about Gaza.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
We can't tell. Yeah. Yeah. I think on the staff level, like they're just shoving money out the door from the CHIPS Act and the IRA and trying to get as much of that spent as they can. So Trump can't peel it back. They're also doing that with Ukraine. And they just pushed out a huge loan to the Ukrainians that's basically paid for by seized Russian assets, like the interest on those assets.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So that's significant. They're pushing through a lot of judges. I think he's about to beat Trump's record from the first term, the most judges confirmed. So those are things he is doing, things he could be doing. I'd love to see him say, cut off all military support for the war in Gaza. Why not?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Trump might turn it back on, but let's stop the carnage for a couple of months and say, fuck you to Bibi Nanyahu. Similarly in Syria, there's a huge opportunity right now to shape whatever comes next. We could decide to take off some sanctions, things that are politically risky because the people in charge now have roots in terrorist organizations, but Joe Biden doesn't have to worry about that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
politics going forward. Like maybe they could move to close Gitmo. I don't know if this is feasible given the laws that were passed by Congress, but there's 30 people left at Gitmo. Costs half a billion a year to keep it open. 16 of them have been cleared for transfer because they have not been charged and they pose no risk. Get those guys out of there.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You have to figure out a country to send them to. You get that process going. But like there's some things you could do that would be really pretty historic.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, I mean, there's just so much space on foreign policy, like so much foreign policy is bound up with stupid politics, especially in Florida. Like Obama tried to take a bunch of steps to normalize relations with Cuba. Trump wound them all back. Biden kind of went halfway to the Obama position. Why not just get rid of that?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
The stupid sanctions on Cuba or normalize relations in some way or allow travel or remittances at the maximum level possible. There's all these things you could do that really would be historic and important. And when you're unencumbered by politics, why not run through the tape?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Well, I think they pardoned all the people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the pandemic under the CARES Act. Right. Which was Trump. Which was this was the remaining like fifteen hundred or so. So they just did a blanket pardon. I guess they didn't.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
individually vet all the people on that list or commutation commutation commutation yeah sorry um and so i don't know i guess like to take the other side of this argument i think stories like this examples like this are why pardons and clemency are really really hard to do politically because by definition you are releasing someone who did something illegal and or untoward
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And the argument is that they have changed. Now, I'm not like defending these people on the merits. The kids for cash people sound awful. As is this woman who stole like, what, $54 million from the city of Dixon, the comptroller. But I think both of them were due to be released between two to four years from now and were on home confinement anyway.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So maybe they figured rather than pluck out exceptions and start that process, you just kind of do the blanket 1500 and get it over with.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I mean, if I were her and I really wanted to stay in public service, I would run for governor. I think you are almost guaranteed to win that primary. It's a huge job.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
you know what's California like the fifth biggest economy in the world if it were a country on its own I mean it's an enormous an enormous task and then we're trying to run for president again like nothing is guaranteed this may sound quaint maybe a little naive
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, I thought that was like the dumb media prism. Yes. I assume she's doing exactly what you're saying, which is figure out. But I think if you were to ask her, what is she most passionate about? It has been domestic issues. It has been law enforcement. It has been criminal justice, things that she can do as governor.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He also truth. Let the public know and now otherwise shoot them down. So these are unmanned. I mean, I think this phenomenon is I think the reality is there's a lot of stuff in our airspace at all times. And if you start looking up, you're going to start seeing things. And people don't know what they're looking at from the ground because none of us are experts.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But then you've had the highest security clearance of all three of us. What?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah, it was aliens. And so people get worried. They start talking about it. Then everyone else starts looking. And then stuff starts going around social media. And the craziest shit gets shared the most. Like I saw a video alleging that it was drones searching for a lost Ukrainian nuclear weapon. I saw that too. And I saw that because Joe Rogan returned. And I believe it. And I believe it.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Shoot them down. Liberal Joe Rogan, whatever. And then that was compounded by wildly irresponsible members of Congress, like New Jersey Rep Chris Smith said, the elusive maneuvering of these drones suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they've been deployed to test our defense capabilities or worse, by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia, China, Iran.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
or North Korea. Richard Blumenthal called for the drones to be shot down. Again, we want to use live missiles over U.S. territory to blow up things in the sky. They're harming no one, not remembering that that metal will then fall on the ground. Wow. Also, I think- Maybe kill people. Wow, that's some fucking beta fag shit. Shoot them down.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He's like a national security spokesperson. Right, there you go. Something like that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And especially in a defamation suit against a public figure, not just a public figure, maybe the highest public figure when it comes to sort of like the political milieu. No, obviously the highest, the president of the United States, the incoming president. You were supposed to have a lot more wiggle room when you're talking about that person.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Andy's tweets were great. He's the newly elected New Jersey senator. He's out there doing... you know, constituent services and communicating well and clearly in this thread. I think it's fair to say that to date, the U.S. government's communication wasn't great. They weren't necessarily answering the mail on people's anxieties.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But in their defense, it's nearly impossible to comment when some like member of Congress calls the White House and is like, hey, Biden, what's floating over Menden, New Jersey right now? You know, that's not like...
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Some of it is like, yeah, right. Even like Larry Hogan was filming stars and, you know, and just was completely wrong about what he was seeing. Oh, those were just stars from Larry Hogan? I think so.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You have to prove there was actual malice in what you said. And George made a mistake. He said that Trump had been found liable for rape when it was actually sexual abuse. Do you offer context?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Could we get the drones involved with little mirrors? For sure, for sure. To make more sun.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
What's the thing called that you build around the sun for permanent unlimited energy?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah. And also with a public figure, this should not be a hard case. It signals it's very chilling. It signals that there's some momentum behind all these cases. It signals that there is this, I don't know, there's this evidence, like we're seeing all these pieces of evidence that CEOs and corporations are preemptively bowing down to Trump.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
It's Mark Zuckerberg cutting a million dollar check to the inauguration of Tim Cook having dinner with Donald Trump.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Yeah. And look, I think, you know, I think this is probably gonna have a lot of news outlets worried. And this would be unthinkable outside of this context that a news outlet would settle for $15 million, given the context we just talked about how what Stephanopoulos said was completely defensible and how Trump is a public figure. It's very worrisome.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
The question is why? And was it because they did their own kind of internal digging and they found something in a discovery process in an email or in a document or somewhere that they thought, okay, we do not want this to go to a deposition and have George sit down and have this come out in a court filing? Is it because...
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
ABC or Disney is thinking, let's just patch this up and fix our relationship with Trump now and not get iced out for the next few years. We don't know.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Want to go for the Pulitzer Organization? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. What are we talking about here?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I would like to sue the New York Times needle. I would like to sue Steve Kornacki's khakis. I'd love one of the Nates.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So the SoftBank thing is funny. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that SoftBank only has $30 billion on hand. So it's not clear how they're going to invest $100 billion. I guess they're going to go to the Saudis hat in hand again and try to raise another round.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That's not going to be easy because the SoftBank Vision Fund, too, included WeWork and a bunch of other companies that basically went bust.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I was shocked. Biden has never been in the Army Navy game as president. That really surprised me because it's very fun. I went to one. It was a blast. We went to one and Joe Biden was there. Yeah, Joe Biden. It also was just down the road in Maryland. As the vice president. Obama, yeah. He won his VP with Obama in 2011, but not as president.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I mean, I think Trump generally is very good at using social events to show off this kind of pageantry and trappings of the presidency. He does it better than I think any president in our lifetime, better than Obama, better than Biden. Sports are sometimes part of it. There was the ultimate fighting thing. He did recently with like Elon and the goon squad of like Speaker Johnson and those guys.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He went to college football games. But like Army, Navy, it's like football wrapped in the military. And it just it's like an obvious winner for him, which is why it's so odd that Biden wouldn't go for his last one when it's just down the road. But I get like you said, they did it in a smart way. They brought Pete Hegseth, which kind of showed the world that he's still behind that nomination.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He brought together congressional leaders like they had Speaker Johnson and John Thune in the same box with Trump, I think.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Well, it's also really funny. Remember 2016 when people were all worked up about the Logan Act and unauthorized diplomacy by American citizens? And now you got Trump. Trump went to Paris. He went to Notre Dame. He met with Zelensky. He's taken calls from foreign leaders. Justin Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago for dinner.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
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Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
It's the coolest thing. Yeah, it's cool. It's so foreign to me as an American. You see them all like up there talking.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
You know, it's funny. The reason... I saw that. I kept thinking those were clips from a debate.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Because I was like, why the fuck are they all together?
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
I purchased it a long time ago. I started it. I just can't get there.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, so just to set it up a little bit, Mertz is an interesting character. He has been in and out of politics for decades. He was in the European Parliament, served in the Bundestag for about 15 years, and left politics in 2009 to go make a shit ton of money in corporate law and business.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He and Merkel, Angela Merkel, the former chancellor, were political rivals, which for a very long time was not a good thing for him because she was like, you know, all consuming political figure. He describes himself as socially conservative, economically liberal.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He's a big supporter of the transatlantic alliance with the U.S., which is what made these election night comments by Merck's so surprising. Here's a clip.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
But yeah, in the first term, Trump's first term, I think Europe took kind of like a wait and see approach. I don't know if that's because they were just, you know, biding their time or because, you know, like the Committee to Save America, the Jim Mattis's of the world were kind of whispering reassurances to them at the sidelines of the conference. Now they are just moving on.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest, you know, challenge, obviously the biggest challenge for Mertz going forward is going to be economic growth. Germany is kind of stagnated over the last several years. People are pissed. Energy costs went up in part because of the Russian invasion.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
They also have to figure out an immigration policy that can defang the AFD in the right wing and make people feel heard without emulating them. Or as you said earlier, alienating parts of the Social Democratic Coalition in a way that fractures the government. And like coalition governments are great insofar as they force you to.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
work together with other parties and they force sort of a more moderate government. But that clearly has allowed these populist movements to thrive and grow on both sides. So we'll see if they can sort of deal with that and mitigate that risk. I'm a little worried with Mertz because he hasn't seemed to be the most deft political operator so far.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Like this move in the Bundestag with the immigration proposal that got the AFD support that was seen as breaking the firewall was Very stupid and seemingly led to the rise of this far left party. Yeah.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, definitely. But, you know, look, we're not seeing a CDU AFD government. So that's nice.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, decent leaders. I do. I just keep seeing in these elections that the youngest people are just saying absolutely not to the established parties, like 18 to 24-year-olds or the share of 18 to 24-year-olds voting from the AFD skyrocketed. The share of 18 to 24-year-olds voting for the far left party skyrocketed. So there's just not a lot of faith in institutions and traditional parties.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And look, I'm not... I kind of get it. Right. I mean, imagine you're 18. You just went through COVID and like this horrible economic crisis and inflation. Things are pretty awful. But we'll see. It's a tough, tough political challenge.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, the young leader in the Delinca left party, she blew up on TikTok. That's how they reached a lot of people.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
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Just to print out hard paper. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash world to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash world. All right, Ben, let's turn to our growing autocracy here in the U.S. So Trump's still building out his national security team.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Oh, that's right. Spoiler. Yeah, I don't really remember. Yeah, well, we're all in a dark place here, as you can tell, listener.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
We've talked about Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to lead the FBI. He was confirmed 51 to 49 by the Senate. Only Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski could find the courage to vote against someone who's just clearly not qualified. Patel, you know, he in addition to just not having the resume you need to run the FBI. He's a January 6th truther, suggests that FBI actually planned and incited January 6th.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He's been accused of lying and gross incompetence in past government jobs. We could go on forever about him. But for that reason, his lack of experience, that is, Patel was expected to choose a career FBI agent to be his deputy. In fact, that role is always filled by a career person, someone who understands how the building works, that brings institutional memory and operational know-how.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
to the job. According to the Wall Street Journal, Kash Patel promised U.S. senators that he would name a career agent to be his deputy. So, of course, that did not happen. Instead, the new deputy FBI director is a guy named Dan Bongino, and he will not have to be Senate confirmed. Dan was a New York City cop turned Secret Service agent who then quit and unsuccessfully ran for office a
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He then pivoted to media, hosting a show on Fox News, and then a very successful podcast that was primarily about how great Donald Trump is.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Like calls people commies and motherfuckers and this and that. And in addition to, you know, sort of these temperamental challenges, I would say, Ben, this is a clip of how he talks about the FBI on his show. This one's from 2022.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
It worked for me. Well, we got a lot to cover today. We're going to talk about the three-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine and Trump's efforts to negotiate an end to the war while extorting as much as possible from the Ukrainian government. We're also going to talk about the results of the German election and what it all means. The newest addition to the team at the FBI.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
So this one is so bad that you almost have to laugh, but it also seems like a genuine inflection point.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Where, I mean, not only relearning, the competence is just not a factor in these selections. It is 100% about political loyalty. And when you play that out, as to what it could mean in a crisis or with just a leader of bad faith like Donald Trump, it's pretty scary.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
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Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He was floated for secret service head. And that I was like, that freaked me out. But I was like, okay, I mean, at least he's done the job.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
We're very excited to tell you more about that one. Then there was Trump's Friday night massacre at the Pentagon. We've got an update on a bunch of immigration news because it's been hard to keep track of. We'll tell you about the bizarre collection of international leaders, in air quotes, at CPAC, everyone's favorite conservative political conference. And then the latest news from Gaza.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Dan Bongino is definitely 100% one of those guys who would attack me, who would call me a van driver and say, therefore, I wasn't qualified.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
We weren't qualified to be like a spokesman or a speechwriter in the administration because, I don't know, we hadn't worked in the government for 30 years. And now this guy is coming out of the podcast studio to be deputy director of the FBI. I'm going to read you a quote, Ben.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Someone with no background as an agent would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the Bureau. That is from Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general at the end of his first term, talking about Kash Patel. Because remember, Trump tried to install Kash Patel as the deputy director of the FBI. And Bill Barr was like over my dead fucking body.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah. They can look the other way, and if they look hard enough at you, they're going to find something that they can prosecute you on. And look, this comes also, as we saw, a purge at the Pentagon last week that gets us into similar territory. So Trump fired C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He also fired the head of the Navy, the number two of the Air Force, and the top lawyers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. So- CQ Brown, the now former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was only the second black chairman in history. He was fired because he is black. Let's just say what happened here.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
and the West Bank. And then you guys will hear my interview with Zeke Fox. He's an investigative reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek. We go all into the crypto corruption stuff, Ben. You're going to enjoy this. Talk about the Trump coin, Javier Millay down in Argentina. There's another crypto billionaire type who seems to be paying off the Trump family. Oh, good. The Washington corruption.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Pete Hexeth made clear in his book that he questioned whether Brown had only been promoted in the first place because of his race. He later did a podcast interview where he accused he said anyone involved in, quote, DEI woke shit has to be fired. In the case of C.Q. Brown, the quote-unquote DEI woke shit was C.Q. Brown talking about being a black man in America after George Floyd was killed.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
That was what happened. The now former chief of Navy operations, Lisa Franchetti, who was fired, she was the first woman to hold the job, so of course she got the ax. And then the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Ben, is going to be Lieutenant General Dan Cain. He is a now-retired Air Force pilot that Trump always talks about meeting in Iraq.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
The apocryphal tale is that Raisin Cain said to him that he could defeat ISIS in a week when all his other advisors said he would take two years to defeat them, and Raisin Cain was right. But Cain doesn't actually meet the statutory requirements for the job because he's a three-star, not a four-star, but Trump can give him a waiver. So Ben, I don't know anything about
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
dan kane and i'm not trying to like denigrate us like maybe he's a brilliant military mind but what you're seeing a dod feels similar to the fbi insofar as you have a secretary of defense who is not remotely qualified for the job right he was a fox news weekend anchor he now owes all of his loyalty for his entire career is owed to trump you have a chairman who was retired in working in venture capital and now has been brought back
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he would not have gotten that job if not for some sort of conversation where there was a perceived loyalty to Trump. If you listen to Trump tell the story about meeting Raisin Cane in Iraq, he like put on a MAGA hat afterwards.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And it's just, it's all these people that owe, like they have no independent kind of resume or power structure or reason to be there except for Donald Trump. And that's just not always the case. Like Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in the beginning of Obama's first term was a holdover from Bush.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Like often these are people that get held over through administrations because you want some continuity. Do you want to make the case that the military is apolitical? But that has just been obliterated. And now they're all just loyal to Trump.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, if you're black or you're a woman, you're out.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
It's just going to happen on a Friday night.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He's like, that's not my name. He's like, I don't like that, actually.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
If you're a follow the money kind of guy or gal, crypto.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. Pete Exeth is a clown. He shouldn't have the job. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is supposed to be the principal military advisor to the president. I mean, you would think you would want the most experienced person you could possibly find in that job. Therefore, you would want them to be a four-star, maybe a combatant commander, someone who was a service chief.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Dan Cain is not that. He also has sort of a weird resume. He retired as a three-star, but he did this liaison job to the CIA that was sort of confusing. It was just like an odd resume, really.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Get on the blockchain. Well, let's talk about Ukraine first, because Monday was the three-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the full-scale Russian invasion. According to Ukrainian officials, Russia marked the occasion by firing their largest drone volley at Ukraine ever.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
That's exactly right. You could argue on the merits if the process wasn't so weird. You could argue that a hybrid kind of military CIA background actually is kind of an accurate reflection of the way the U.S. does military operations around the world these days. But it just happens in such a fucked up, strange, hackish way that I don't trust it.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Right. No, C.Q. Brown did. He was an Air Force service chief. He was deputy CENTCOM. And now he's gone.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Because he gave a speech once about being black in America for five minutes.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
It's very good. It's really powerful. We're going to take a quick break. We want to let you know that as Black History Month comes to a close, Vote Save America is continuing its commitment to progress by supporting Black-led organizations and candidates of color through our Anxiety Relief Program.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
One candidate is Kimberly Pope Adams, who's running for a Virginia state House seat this year, a critical opportunity to expand the Democrats' slim one-seat majority. Your recurring donation at any amount helps build progressive power for 2025 and beyond. Join us and make an impact at votesaveamerica.com slash donate. Paid for by Vote Save America at votesaveamerica.com
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Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
But the biggest threat to Ukraine's future sovereignty now seems to be coming from Russia and the United States, which is a welcome addition for everyone. There are a bunch of European leaders who flew to Kiev this week to offer more assistance and moral support. I think the UK offered $5 billion, Spain a billion. The EU is reportedly preparing about a $20 billion aid package.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
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Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
All right, Ben, we also want to check in on there's like flurry of immigration news happening every day and trying to follow it beyond just the day's headlines, I think is important. So last week we saw these reports of 170 Venezuelan migrants flown from Guantanamo to Venezuela.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
The Washington Post had a story documenting the horrific conditions on the ground at this Gitmo camp that we've talked about in the past, where the Trump people say they're going to house up to 30,000 migrants. The conditions we're talking about include solitary confinement, people getting strip searched, people being shackled and caged when they're allowed outside.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And despite the administration's claim that everyone getting sent to Gitmo were the worst of the worst, they're violent criminals, they're gang members, they're murderers. That's just not true. CNN reported that 51 of the 177 had no criminal record at all.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And then separately, the New York Times had this devastating piece and the Daily did a version of it that's worth listening to about a bunch of migrants that had been deported from the US and were sent to Panama. These were people from all around the world.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
there was a guy from china there was a person from iran who had converted to christianity many of them were asylum seekers and they were all just shipped to panama and then they got locked in these hotel rooms they didn't know what was going on they were they couldn't contact anyone there was people killing themselves like absolutely awful and basically what happened was they were offered uh some sort of opportunity to get repatriated to their home country or their country of origin for many that is an impossibility because they would be killed or put in prison
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
But obviously, none of that is going to fill the gap that seems to be about to be left by the US. French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to D.C. to personally lobby Trump. on all things Ukraine and pitch an idea for a postwar international peacekeeping force.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And so when they refused, they were sent to this squalid camp by the edge of the jungle near the Darien gap. And so, you know, Ben, I'm sure what's happening, the optics of it, some of the reporting, I bet it is having a turn effect. There are probably people who are like, oh, my God, this is like inhuman. I don't want to go to the U.S. now.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
But more importantly, I think for us is that it's highlighting how difficult this mass deportation effort is going to be, because if the government knew where all the worst of the worst violent undocumented offenders were, they would already have been sent home, but they don't. Right. So what's happening is they're deporting fewer people than Trump wants.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He's going to start pushing them to do more. They're picking up the wrong people, innocent people often, and they're doing it in like horrible conditions. And I think tracking this is going to be pretty important because it's illegal in some cases, inhumane in every case, and just worth flagging.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Macron said during their joint press conference that a peace deal must, quote, not mean surrender of Ukraine and that it must allow for Ukrainian sovereignty. Macron also pushed back on Trump's claim that all European aid to Ukraine was just a loan and that they were going to get paid back, whereas the U.S. is somehow getting screwed. Here's a clip of that back and forth in The Oval.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Did you see that Eric Prince, the former head of Blackwater, which if you guys don't know, is a private militia force that was accused of all kinds of atrocities in Iraq. He has reportedly pitched the Trump administration on a $25 billion plan to create a vigilante army to deport 12 million people before the midterm. So it could get worse.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Especially if there's a profit motive? Yeah. Not at all.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah. Terrible. OK, we have a few more things to get through before the interview. So the annual conservative political action conference or CPAC conference just wrapped up. This thing used to be like kind of a right wing fringe that we would all make fun of every year. Now it's just now runs a mega base. Over the years, CPAC has evolved to include more international speakers.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
They even hold conferences abroad. Here's a quick supercut of some of the international voices at this year's CPAC.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Shout out to Michael and our team for enduring all those speeches and cutting them down for you.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He loved it. Yeah, he's laughing over there. That was Reform UK's Nigel Farage, former Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss. Gosh, she's such a dud every time I hear her talk. The former Prime Minister of Poland, whose name I'm not going to try. Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. Italy's Giorgio Maloney.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
In Argentina's Javier Millet at the end there entertaining us, not in those clips, but attending where Jair Bolsonaro's son, the former president of Brazil and the leader of the far right Spanish Vox party. Millet not only gave a speech, he hung out with Elon Musk, handed him a chainsaw. I always remember his thing at all these campaign events and then.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
A weird kind of stoned-seeming Elon Musk hung out with a chainsaw and wore glasses and tried to make jokes.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
The whole thing was off. Notably absent from the proceedings was Jordan Bardella, who's the leader of Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally Party. He canceled his appearance after Steve Bannon gave what I think everyone with eyeballs thought looked like a Nazi salute. Bannon denied it, said it was a wave. Clearly, he's trying to do the, oh, I'm just trolling thing.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And he had this to say to a French publication, quote, if he, Bardella, canceled the speech over what the mainstream media said about the speech, he didn't listen to the speech. If that's true, he's unworthy to lead France. He's a boy, not a man. Okay, Steve, some tough talk. I don't know, Ben, what do you make of this collection of goobers who spoke and what it tells us?
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
There's a lot of this usual suspects at this point.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
I agree. Let's end this by talking about some news out of Gaza and the West Bank. So in terms of Gaza, Ben, last week we talked about this horrible, tragic news about the Bibas family, Yarden Bibas, the patriarch of the family. was returned in one of the recent hostage release deals. He was one of the men who looked like a Holocaust survivor because he was so emaciated.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
But we officially learned around the same time that his wife and two small children had died while in Hamas captivity. Last week, Hamas was supposed to release the bodies of Sharibi Bas, Yarden's wife, and their two children, four-year-old Ariel and nine-month-old Kafir. But the Israeli authorities later determined That the body Hamas said was Sheree Bibas was someone else.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Hamas said there was a mix up of some sort. They later returned the correct body. But it is hard to imagine anything more cruel and evil and just its totality than the treatment of the Bibas family from kidnapping them in the first place to kidnapping children to starving Yarden Bibas to the point where, you know, he looks so emaciated.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
To parading the coffins these children were in through the streets of Gaza and then returning the wrong birth. Like the words don't do justice for how fucking evil this was. An Israeli military spokesman later said that the Bebos boys were killed with bare hands, quote unquote. Hamas had claimed that the Bebos family was killed in an airstrike yesterday.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
I don't know that we can prove either of those things. I just want to say like, it's really awkward to talk about this because my view on this is I don't need to know how the Beboss children died to know that it was evil and wrong to kidnap children in the first place. Like obviously if they were strangled to death by a Hamas person, that is like a next level thing.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
But like the fact that they were taken is just beyond cruel. But I just, I want to reflect in our conversation that there is, debate and dispute over sort of what the forensic pathologists could know at this point. But all of that tension brings us to Saturday when Hamas handed over the last living hostages that were part of this phase one of the ceasefire deal.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Israel is supposed to release 620 Palestinian prisoners, but they put their release on hold in protest of the treatment of the Bubas family and these hostages. Hamas also released this awful propaganda video of two hostages who were not set for release until phase two, but they were brought to the ceremony and forced to watch others go free, and then they were begging for their freedom.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
So again, just unfathomable cruelty. Hamas accused Israel of a blatant violation of the agreement for not releasing the 620 prisoners and said there'd be no more ceasefire talks until they were let go. A Hamas official accused Netanyahu of intentionally sabotaging the ceasefire efforts. So phase one of the ceasefire ends on Saturday. The talks for the second phase haven't even started.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
When asked about the ceasefire failing and the worst beginning again, Trump told Fox's Brian Kilmeade that he was basically okay with it going either way. So Ben, I just wonder where you're at on... your hope for this thing extending.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
I've heard reports that Israeli authorities want to extend phase one rather than like negotiate to phase two, which it doesn't give me much confidence that the war is going to stay over. I don't know where you're where you're at.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, I just slapped him around. So, Ben, this meeting with Macron comes as the U.S. and Ukraine are reportedly close to signing an agreement regarding Ukraine's mineral reserves. Initially, Trump had seemingly demanded half of the profits from Ukraine exploiting its natural resources up to maybe $500 billion, which is All the money we've given Ukraine for the war times two, I believe.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Well, just to get a little more deep meat on that, I mean, Israeli tanks have entered the West Bank for the first time in over two decades. This is this huge operation in Jenin that has displaced about 40,000 people.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, so it's the biggest displacement in the West Bank since the 1967 war. And Netanyahu was saying the IDF is going to stay there as long as it's needed. And so further stoking the flames is there was this There was like three buses blew up in Tel Aviv. No one died, thank God. But one of the unexploded bombs had a message on it that talked about revenge for a raid in the West Bank.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And then to your point, I mean, this demand, Netanyahu was demanding the demilitarization of southern Syria. There's a question about whether the new Syrian army is welcome in this territory south of Damascus. So there's a lot, as you mentioned, there's a lot up in the air here.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah. I should mention, since we started recording and now, it seems like everyone's reporting that the minerals deal has been agreed to, and Zelensky's going to come to the White House on Friday to sign it. So we'll see. We'll see what's actually in that deal. Yeah, finally. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear my interview with Zeke Fox about...
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
crypto, crypto scams, crypto corruption, both domestic and international. So stick around for that. Pots of the World is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Every 26 seconds, a burglary takes place in the U.S., according to FBI data. That means by the time this podcast ends, dozens of homes will be targeted. Protect your home before it's too late with SimpliSafe's proactive security system.
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But John Lovett sewed it up himself. I did. Great censors.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Now it sounds like it's some sort of joint development fund where the U.S. will also have access to this cash that will later be used for reconstruction. It's not clear exactly. It's still all of it is lacking, you know, what the Ukrainians really want, which is a U.S. security guarantee. They're framing this as, well, more economic cooperation between the U.S.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And so whenever we go to the Favreau's house, Luca literally sprints as fast as she can into their home directly for the dog bowl because she wants to steal Leo's sundae. So that's how you know it's good. Unlike other fresh dog food, sundaes does not require refrigeration or preparation because they're air drying processed. You just pour and serve.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
He's an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of Number Go Up, Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. Zeke, great to meet you.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
A big fan of your work and I wish I better understood your entire area of coverage. So excited to talk with you today. I wanted to start with Argentinian President Javier Millet. We talked last week about how he promoted this meme coin called Libra.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
It skyrocketed to billions of dollars in value after he tweeted about it and then crashed because a bunch of insiders dumped their shares in what is in the crypto world called a rug pull. In the old school penny stock world, would we just call that a pump and dump?
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Right, right, right, right. Okay, good. This is very helpful because you're actually anticipating one of the questions I have for you later. So back to this Libra coin, 86% of traders who bought Libra lost money. Total losses were something like $251 million. Just for our listeners who aren't familiar with crypto, when we're talking about a meme coin, what does that mean?
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
and Ukraine is a de facto security guarantee because the Russians won't invade if we have skin in the game or something. It doesn't make any sense. Trump basically views this as payback for USAID. Payback seems to include a 100% interest rate charge. In an interview with Russian State TV, Putin also suggested that Russia was ready to work with the U.S. on extracting rare earth minerals.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, well, we all keep going to the casino, too, right? I mean, I get it on some level. So thank you for that very helpful explanation. So after this happens, the rug gets pulled. Javier Malay pumps this cryptocurrency. All these people lose money and they get hurt. A bunch of his political opponents were calling for impeachment. There was a judge who threatened to investigate him for fraud.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
One of the guys behind this Libra coin said that he was paying off Millay's sister to get him to do things. He is also associated with the Melania Trump meme coin launch, I believe. Could you tell us just a little bit about Hayden Davis? And like, what does it mean to be like Hayden? the guy who launched some shit coin or meme coin.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And also, I mean, is it a coincidence that the same person is connected with Trump or Malay? Or does that suggest some sort of connectivity between kind of right wing figures in this crypto world?
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And he suggested that the focus of his conversation with Trump and the talks in Saudi Arabia weren't really on ending the war. And then that he was open to this weird idea that Trump floated the other day about a joint 50% reduction in defense spending. I don't know, man. It's just baffling. Everything is confusing these days. Black is white, up is down.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
I guess just to dig in a little deeper, if you're looking to IPO your company and you go to an investment bank, they do a lot of things for you. They take you on a roadshow. They do a bunch of marketing, maybe some financing. There's a whole bunch of services provided that are real. Does someone like Hayden Davis provide real services besides he's done it before? Yeah.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
What did you make of Macron's visit and kind of where they're at on this mineral deal and these floats by Putin about like cooperation on mineral reserve exploitation? Like what are we talking about at this point?
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, why go to pump.fun when you can find someone who will absolutely rat fuck you at the end of the day? But I mean, along with something you said earlier, there was this assumption early on that Bitcoin was gonna be this thing that allowed criminals to move money around in ways that could not be traced. But in reality,
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
the nature of the blockchain made it so that there's all these on-chain kind of detectives out there just on the internet who are able to track crypto transactions in great detail by just looking at the public ledger and record.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Can you just give us kind of like a bit of the 101 on that process and whether that kind of sleuthing could be applied by someone like me who wants to know who was buying the Trump coin, for example?
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Interesting, man. You mentioned this news that broke last week of this North Korean hack and theft of $1.5 billion worth of crypto from this Dubai-based crypto exchange. In addition to this being just a massive theft of digital assets, they also somehow managed to steal from crypto wallets that are supposed to be the most secure, right? Can you just explain what was so shocking about this theft?
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
the original big bitcoin exchange mount gox yes yeah um it's just uh it's just such a temptation that you've got this pile of you know billions of dollars yeah sitting around oh by the way i regret to inform you that uh razzle khan has been sentenced to 18 months uh for her theft of 119 000 bitcoins wow that's a lot of money in today's terms holy
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Well, another person I want to ask you about that is huge in the crypto world is a guy named Justin Sun. Can you just explain who he is and his connections to the Trump orbit?
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah. And so what you described there was you have this failing World Liberty financial offering. This guy comes in. He puts, I think you said, $75 million into the project, rescues the project. But 75% of that money gets skimmed right off the top for the Trump family. So what's that, like $56 million? million or so directly into Trump's coffers.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
The other crypto project we have that we know about for Trump are the Trump coin and the Melania coin. I think the Times the other day, or maybe it was Coinbase, somebody reported that as of a couple of weeks ago, Trump had made over $100 million in fees from the sale of the Trump coin, right? So they might be holding onto their Trump meme coin stash.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And I think they own something like what, 80% or something like that. But every time you buy and sell, they get a fee, right?
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
That's, it's remarkable. I mean, I think, what I think the take home, I think I just wanted folks to get out of this interview as well, a little bit of understanding about the crypto world. but also how much money Trump is making personally off of crypto, what an unbelievable avenue the crypto world is for corruption and for steering money into his pockets at times in ways that can be secret.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
And then there's just the broader fact that he's the president of the United States and he's going to make an enormous number of incredibly consequential decisions in the next four years about how crypto is regulated. So it just seems like this just couldn't be more fucked up just in terms of a setup for corruption and abuse and fraud at the highest level of the US government.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
But I mean, here we are, I guess. Well, Zeke, thank you so much for explaining all this to me. I'm laughing so that I don't cry, in part because I didn't buy cryptocurrency at any point along the last decade. And that was a real mistake by me. But thank you so much for explaining it to all of us. I appreciate it.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
You're right. You're right. I always hope for a better tomorrow. Thanks, Zeke.
Pod Save the World
The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Thanks again to Zeke Fox for joining the show and talk to you guys next week. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers, and other community events.
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Plus, find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. If you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping a review. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah, good work, Emmanuel. Yeah, I mean, just to go back to your point about like, don't forget the big picture. I mean, I was just thinking about the United Nations, which was pretty broken, ineffective, kind of a mess like six months ago. Now that we've just decided to become part of the problem, I mean, I assume what will happen going forward is
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Trump will tell Elise Stefanik if she's confirmed. I don't think they've had a hearing for her yet because they still need her vote in the House to just attack the institution, defend Israel everywhere. They're pulling out of the Human Rights Commission. We talked about last week Trump turning away from NATO, which was set up in 1949 to deter Russian aggression against Europe.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
I suspect the next thing we'll see is the U.S. just fully Pulling away from the UN or rendering it just useless, even at the Security Council level.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Go to sundays4dogs.com slash world or use code world at checkout. That's sundays4dogs.com slash world, code world. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Welcome to 1930s Germany then. That's right. Take our off mic conversation on.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Sorry, I meant at the General Assembly level.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
Yeah. One place that reorientation away from the U.S. is happening in real time is Germany. So Germans went to the polls on Sunday. They had an election that saw the largest turnout in the country's history. I think it was about 82% of the population voted. Just incredible. The results were not great, but far from the worst outcome.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
So in the not great category, the far-right AFD party doubled its support from the last election to about 20%. The AFD, as we've discussed, is seen by many Germans as the heir to the Nazi party. They are anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-EU and pro-Russia. And prominent AFD members have minimized the Holocaust a number of times. There's also very extreme factions within the AFD.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
that are seen as extremist threats by domestic intelligence. The left-leaning Social Democrats, or SPD, Olaf Scholz party, had their worst result since 1887, garnering only 16% of the vote. Democrats feel better. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Voters were not thrilled, to say the least, about the SPD's leadership over the past few years, and they made it known at the voting booth.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
It's hard out there for a neoliberal right now, Ben. So the traditional conservative CDU party got the largest share of the vote with 28.5%, but they fell short of their 30% goal. Big picture, CDU leader Friedrich Merz will almost certainly become the next chancellor. He's going to have to form a government coalition first.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
The good news for him is that he can almost certainly do so just by working with the SPD. That will give them enough support. Uh, votes in the Bundestag to form a government and have a majority. They will not have to include a third political party, which would have made things more complicated. Um, Mertz wants that process done by Easter. Um, so it'll take, you know, several weeks at least.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
The most interesting, though, and surprising result of the night was probably the, uh, the leftist... Yeah. which a month ago seemed like they were not going to get the 5% share of the vote they needed to be represented in the Bundestag, but they ended up with nearly 9% of the vote.
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The US and Europe’s Conscious Uncoupling
They had a huge surge of support at the end after this charismatic young woman leader named Heidi Reckonesh gave a speech denouncing Mertz for putting forward this hardline immigration measure at the Bundestag that passed with a bunch of support from the AFD. Ben, just big picture, what are your thoughts on this result and kind of what it tells us?
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
The only thing that matters is there were three fights in the first nine seconds. Literally.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Well, and also forcing the Ukrainians to cut a deal with Russia that kind of makes them not really a country anymore. And then us demanding all of their mineral wealth. That is like a Yalta-like just dividing up the country in some ways. And to your point about Europe, I mean, they were completely blindsided by this.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
They tried to walk back Hegseth's comments about no NATO membership and not returning all the territory, but he was reading prepared remarks. This wasn't like a flub. This wasn't a gaffe. So Macron tries to pull together this emergency meeting of European leaders to figure out how to respond. It doesn't work. It's a complete flop.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Yeah, there's all the conflict, all the Trump-Trudeau conflict was spilling out onto the ice and these were beating the life out of me.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
I guess the UK and France expressed willingness to include some sort of
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
uh troop presence from both countries in a post-war peacekeeping force in ukraine but germany spain italy balked the idea olaf schultz was furious that it was brought up and discussed publicly in the days before his election he said he was quote a little bit irritated by the talks for olaf schultz that's like lighting i know he called it an incomprehensible debate at the wrong time about the wrong topic but the reason this this
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
It's not at all clear that you could implement a peacekeeping force like this, because what they're talking about is what's called a tripwire force, where the Russians know if they invade Ukraine fully and there's this international force there, then that would immediately put them in direct conflict with the US, major powers in Europe, NATO. et cetera.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
But for that tripwire force to be effective, they need to be backed by the United States. All those countries need to know that if their forces are attacked, the US will come and get their back. And Putin needs to know that, so he doesn't do it.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
And also for this peacekeeping force to keep itself safe, to be logistically feasible, they need US air defenses, intelligence, logistics, none of which you can count on from the United States right now. So I Like this is Europe sort of has no recourse at the moment. Zelensky didn't know what to do.
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He was supposed to fly to Saudi Arabia tomorrow, Wednesday, when this pod comes out, he canceled that trip in protest, but no one cares. None of the people there care.
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Rocky VI is maple syrup-based fighting in trench warfare or something.
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This is a weird, I mean, it's crazy that this show is like a seismic shift in US foreign policy that we're going to talk about.
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Yeah, this is in the Syria one. It's just like, I can't believe this is all happening in the same kind of timeframe. We're going to talk about this shift away from Europe by the United States towards Russia and the complete and total selling out of Ukraine. We're going to get into J.D.
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Commissars are communist party officials, usually responsible for some sort of political education. So it was very nice message from JD. So Ben, despite all that we just talked about, about the war in Ukraine going south, the death, the destruction, the hellscape for Ukrainian people over the last three years, JD decided to lecture Europe about social media censorship.
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I do not recall him or Trump ever raising concerns about censorship with Viktor Orban during his many visits to the United States, for example, but consistency is not their thing. And then on top of that, J.D. Vance specifically criticized German political parties for refusing to work with the AFD, which is the... far-right political party in Germany.
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All of these German political parties refused to work with the AFD or go into coalition with the AFD because they are so extreme and seen by many Germans to be the heir to the Nazi party. And while in Germany, J.D. Vance blew off Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor from the Social Democratic Party, and he met with Alex Vidal, the head of the AFD. And we've discussed on this show that Elon Musk
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repeatedly boosted the afd he uh he did uh twitter spaces chat with vital the afd leader he spoke at an afd rally and the reason this matters so much right now is because germany has a federal election on february 23rd it seems quite obvious that vance's comments were designed to help the afd in that election or to pressure other political parties to work with the afd down the road
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Vance's trip to Germany, to the Munich Security Conference, where Ben just was, and how he was boosting the German far right ahead of their election next week. And we'll update you on the far right in Austria, just for fun, just because you need more neo-Nazis in your life. We'll talk about how a crypto scam...
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Right now, German political analysts think the most likely outcome of this election is the CDU getting the most votes. CDU is Angela Merkel's party, the traditional conservative party in Germany, and that they will go into coalition with the Social Democrats. who will likely get third place, which would make the CDU's leader, Friedrich Merz, the next chancellor.
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But the AFD is polling at 20, 22%, something in there. The firewall against working with the AFD amongst other parties has been weakened by some very stupid political maneuvering by Merz that we can get into if you want, but just know that that has happened recently.
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And, you know, the AFD, it draws votes from people that agree with their political views and sort of like hardline right wing positions against immigrants and Islam, etc. But also just people who are really mad and see voting for the AFD as a protest vote to say, fuck you to the government. I was listening to a German pollster give a talk about that.
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how angry and frustrated Germans are and how the overwhelming majority of Germans do not think that the political system as currently constituted even has the capacity to fix Germany's problem. So it's a pretty dark election right now. Join the club. Yeah, no kidding. So you were just in Munich at the Munich Security Conference.
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I think you were an official member of JD Vance's delegation along with Jack Posobiec. How'd it go? How'd JD's comments go over in the room?
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has created major political problems for Argentinian President Javier Mele, reports that the CIA is flying drones over Mexico, the latest on the impact of cuts to USAID programs abroad, how the Gaza ceasefire deal is still holding, which is good news and what comes next, and then some leaked intelligence reports about Iran's nuclear program.
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They downplay the Holocaust. They use Nazi slogans and claim they don't know what they're doing. Parts of the AFD are under surveillance by German intelligence because they're so extreme. Yeah.
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Look at you with the German pronunciation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How about that?
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We should say, short version is he put forward a hardline anti-immigration vote in the Bundestag knowing that it could only pass if the AFD voted for it. which is seen by almost everybody as, if not like in spirit, a breach of the firewall sort of agreement. Yeah.
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And then Ben, you did our interview a little bit earlier today. What are we going to hear?
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No, I know. Again, I think it's worth repeating that Trump has more in common, just sort of like culturally in terms of values, with the Russians and the Saudis than he does with any of those leaders in Europe. And J.D. Vance is there to sort of parrot them. He prefers that system, the leadership style, Trump prefers spending time with them.
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The only good news I heard, Ben, is I was listening to a editor at Der Spiegel talk about the election and some of Elon Musk's bullshit. And she said that- It could backfire. Yeah, so far it seems like it has in part because moderates don't really like Elon Musk. They think he's a prick because they're smart. They read the paper.
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And AFD voters, some of them are anti-American or anti-capitalist, and it backfired in that sense. So maybe J.D. Vance's nonsense will do the same. I was texting with someone in the Social Democratic Party the other day who said that Vance's it was such brazen election interference that it didn't go over well.
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That said, around the same time, there was another horrific attack by an asylum seeker in Germany. This guy drove a car into a group of people in Munich, killed a bunch of folks, which, you know, I think immigration was already probably a top issue in terms of salience in this upcoming election. But, you know, it almost seems like you're seeing this happen again and again in Germany.
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I think in Austria, there was a knife attack where there's asylum seekers, Syrian or Afghans, who are attacking and murdering people, almost as if their actions are designed in a lab to boost the far right.
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Yeah. So, I mean, this election's on Sunday. We'll obviously cover it next week. I mean, you know, maybe this will be okay. It'll be the Grand Coalition, which is the CDU and the SPD. Maybe combined, though, those two parties don't get to 50%, and they can't form a coalition, and they have to bring in another third party.
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Maybe it's the Green Party, which, you know, kind of sounds fine on paper, but in practice, they just can't agree on anything. So you have an unworkable government, and I think the government kind of failing like that or dissolving again... will often boost the far right.
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So this is a very important election, one to watch, and it really sucks that our own vice president is making it worse for all of Europe. Quick update, Ben, just from neighboring Austria, because we're talking about neo-Nazis so much today.
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Back in September, we talked about Austria's elections where the far right freedom party, or FPO, won a majority with about 29% of the vote ahead of the conservative People's Party by about three points. So despite the fact that the far right party won The more slightly more moderate conservative party was given the mandate to form a government first, but they failed.
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There were a bunch of political maneuverings that then happened. And then the far right party, the FBO and its leader, Herbert Kiko, were given the chance to try to form a government. He tried and tried and tried. They couldn't come to an agreement. And those talks fell apart. And he was forced to sort of like give up the mandate that's given to you by the president to form a government last week.
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And the sticking points were security, immigration, and the far-right party's pro-Russia stance. And what's interesting about this is a lot of political analysts think that Kikol wanted these talks to blow up because one thing that might come from this is Austria being forced to hold another set of elections. And his party has been doing even better in polls since the last round.
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So the far-right is just gaining and gaining and gaining. Long story short, like we don't know who will be the next leader in Austria, but this is just another example of this trend of the growing strength of these far right parties across Europe, including the most extreme versions of them in Germany and in Austria.
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Ben, we're going to take a quick break, but weird President's Day, huh? It's tough timing for us to be celebrating our presidents.
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I just kind of worked through it. But if you want a deal on the Friends of the Pod subscription, we got you covered through Saturday, February 22nd. You can get 25% off new annual subscriptions. If you're a monthly subscriber, upgrading to a yearly subscription is quick and easy. Just visit crooked.com slash friends.
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or subscribe through the friends of the pod apple feed your support is important and so is making president's day feel a little less terrible the next time around also this month vote save america is making donations as part of their anxiety relief program to black-led organizations and candidates of color helping us gain ground at the state and local level
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like Power to the Polls and the Black Male Initiative, which are working to change the way we organize black, brown, and working-class communities to drive voter turnout, or like Kimberly Pope Adams, who is running for a Virginia State House seat this year, a prime opportunity to expand the Democrats' one-seat majority.
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Set up a recurring donation at any amount that feels right to you, and Vote Save America will use it to build progressive power in 2025 and beyond. Go to votesaveamerica.com slash donate to donate now. Paid for by Vote Save America, votesaveamerica.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Haya.
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All right, let's switch hemispheres because Argentina's president, Javier Mille, could be in some deep shit thanks to his promotion of a meme coin crypto scam token called Libra. The Financial Times said this was, quote, the biggest crisis for his administration since he took office in December of 2023. So Ben, some basics for our non-crypto loving listeners here.
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Yeah, the sound of champagne corks popping must be deafening.
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A meme coin, it's basically a crypto token that is often sold as a joke or a reference to some sort of like online community. The first meme coin was Dogecoin, which unfortunately has been appropriated by Elon Musk and his Doge bags. But the Dogecoin was kind of designed to mock the absurd speculation happening in the crypto space.
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And then all of a sudden it got so popular that the market cap of Dogecoin, which to be clear, buying a meme coin gets you nothing.
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But the market cap at one point at its peak of Dogecoin was $85 billion. Yeah. Billion dollars. Worthless thing.
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It's fucking weird. So these things are a joke, but they can also be incredibly lucrative, which of course brings in the scammers.
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Yeah, or Donald Trump, because you might remember Trump. Melania Trump, they released their own meme coins right before the inauguration. So that brings us back to last week. Friday night, Javier Mille tweets about the Libra coin. just after its launch. This has the effect of shooting it up. The market cap hits a peak of $4.56 billion, and then the value of the coin collapsed 94% in 11 hours.
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And in the meme coin biz, this is what looks like what is called a rug pull, where you have some insiders who own a bunch of these coins. They own them early at the cheapest price possible. They pump the thing on social media, a bunch of people come in and buy them, and then they dump all their coins, pocket the money, and everyone who bought in late is holding the bag.
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wild okay well here's the backstory in all this so uh last week president trump called putin to discuss the war in ukraine they then announced via like twitter readouts that the us and russia are going to hold a series of bilateral peace talks about the war trump said this could ultimately include a putin visit to the us and maybe trump going to moscow but the call itself effectively ended you know three years of western isolation of putin and the russians after the full-scale invasion of ukraine in 2022
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You're stuck with this literally worthless thing and you lost all your money. So this rug pull happens. Miele sees it. He tweets a statement saying he didn't know the details of the project. He wasn't connected to it. I think he then deleted his initial tweet. He tried to like scramble away from the thing. But that didn't go over well with the people who lost money.
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And also he's clearly lying because Miele personally met with one of the partners behind the project, a guy who also worked on Melania's meme coin. So this is a mess. Some parts of the opposition are floating impeachment charges, though that probably won't happen.
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But Ben, I mean, it does seem like Mille did a pretty good job of stating why, showing why his worldview of anarcho-capitalism is not really gonna work out at the long run for the little guy, like if there's no rules, no regulations.
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Yeah, eight wallets linked to the Libra team cashed out over $107 million. They started the rug pull process only three hours after the debut. And there's something called tokenomics with all of these coins. And like good tokenomics have an overwhelming amount of the supply, like 80, 90% locked up over the course of several years. So you can't rug pull.
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But in this case, 82% of the supply was unlocked and sellable from the very start. So this thing was designed properly. for this exact scenario to happen, and Millet clearly just didn't care. I mean, he's an economist, but he didn't look into this. But let me read you this response from Millet to his critics, Ben.
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Quote, "'To the filthy rats of the political cast who want to take advantage of this situation and do harm, I want to say that every day they confirm how vile politicians are and they increase our conviction to kick them in the ass.'"
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I know. Now you're in charge, buddy. Now you're responsible.
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And you see all these right-wingers celebrating Millet on the internet and being like, wow, he got rid of their deficit. But they don't also talk about the fact that poverty increased to like 53% in the first half of last year.
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Yeah. All right, Ben, let's turn to Mexico, because we're recording this currently in Hollywood, where we love a good reboot. And so I thought you would be excited to learn that the CIA is rebooting the war on drugs to make it more like the war on terror.
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And neither this call nor the diplomatic process that Trump and Putin agreed to included a role for Ukraine or for the Europeans. Earlier today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, held the first round of these talks in Saudi Arabia.
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We're going to GWAT this thing. We're going to merge them, yeah. So John Ratcliffe, new CIA director, he says he's going to shift CIA resources to a counter-narcotics mission and apply insights from the agency's two decades of combating terrorist networks to fighting drug cartels in Mexico. This is a quote from the Washington Post. Someone talked to them on background about the plan. Quote,
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Lessons learned in the counterterrorism realm are applicable to the counter narcotic missions and the counter cartel mission. The full weight of those has not been brought to bear on this problem. The New York Times reported that the CIA began operating secret drone flights over Mexico during the Biden administration. These drones hunt for chemicals that get emitted by fentanyl production plants.
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And then the CIA passes that information along to the Mexican government to, you know, raid them or whatever. The Times said that the CIA's work with the Mexican military has been more durable and has continued even during periods of big tension, specifically when the U.S. arrested the former Mexican defense minister on drug charges back in 2020. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah.
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They cut off work with the DEA at that time, but the CIA work was secret, so it probably continued. So Ben, I assume the reason that the CIA is flying these drone missions is because it creates deniability for the Mexican government. You can get like a presidential finding maybe and just make it a covert operation, but-
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What is not clear is whether the CIA is just going to collect intelligence or whether they're going to play the same paramilitary function that they played in the global war on terror. What do you think the end game is here? Do you think we're going to hear someday about a hellfire missile strike on a fentanyl plant over the border? I think so.
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What's the saying? Like, when you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? Yeah. Right. You could imagine a scenario where we're collecting all this intel on fentanyl plants in Mexico. Trump's getting updates on, you know, the amount of fentanyl coming across the border.
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It's not decreasing because the reality is mostly it's getting trafficked by American citizens who just stash it in their car because it's easy to do. And they're like, well, what if we use this capability and we strap a fucking hellfire on this predator drone and see what see what that does?
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And Ben, I do want to plant a flag right here now and say that that is too many senior people and big egos for one set of negotiations. I think they are going to knife each other.
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No, and you'll probably cut off cooperation between the DEA and other parts of the Mexican government or any cooperation between the U.S. and the Mexican government. And also, it's a supply and a demand issue.
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All right, well, We also want to keep highlighting the fallout from this USAID freeze because, you know, these cuts are, we were learning about the cuts in Washington and the impact is starting to ripple out all around the world. And we're hearing real stories about the people being harmed. So we wanted to highlight that. So a couple stories, Ben.
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So the New York Times reported on aid programs to help victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam, which affected up to 3 million people there after the war. There's including 150,000 children who were born with developmental disabilities.
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So in addition to the mine clearing programs we talked about that were being stopped because of the aid freeze, there was a contamination removal effort from a former U.S. air base that is now done away with. And they're also the U.S. is now ripping away support from people who are disabled because the U.S. dumped chemicals on them or their families themselves. back in the 70s.
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So that's really great. CNN's Ivan Watson had a report from a refugee camp in Thailand that holds 30,000 people who fled the civil war in Myanmar. There used to be a hospital at this camp, but thanks to the USAID cuts, there now isn't a single doctor left and the camp has been abandoned. The nearest Thai hospital is a 30 minute drive away and they're now dealing with a huge influx of new patients.
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And then Crooked Media's newsletter editor, Greg Walters, spoke with Mackenzie Knowles-Corson, who up until two weeks ago was working for USAID in Kenya. He shared some harrowing details about the impact of Trump and Elon Musk's cuts to USAID.
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That's a really good point. And not there was Keith Kellogg, who was supposed to be in charge of... diplomacy around this war.
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Reading the Times piece on Agent Orange last night in Vietnam, I just felt so ashamed. It's just so cruel and immoral. These are people who are severely disabled because of something the U.S. government did. Right. You can say, oh, you know, we can't save everybody around the world. You know, the U.S. can't, you know, be everywhere, be everyone's policeman.
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But like these are people we actively harmed and we're just ripping the support away. And just on a moral level, it's wrong. And like if you want to be like a Marco Rubio, pretend real politic, like can you think of a better way to push Vietnam into the arms of China? I can't.
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And I don't think voters voted for this. They might not like love foreign aid in a poll, but they also think it's 10% of the US budget, not less than 1%. If you said to them, do you think we should cut off US support to a bipartisan program created by George Bush, supported by Barack Obama and every single member of Congress that has saved 25 million people, including kids with HIV AIDS?
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They would say, of course, we should continue doing that. But we're just, we're killing off these incredible life-saving programs. Some of the most successful things we've done as a country.
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Pay for a tax cut for the richest people in the world down the road.
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Okay, two more things we'll get through before we get to Ben's interview. So last week, we were very worried about the ceasefire in Gaza holding after Hamas had threatened not to go through with the next scheduled hostage release. And then Donald Trump said a bunch of insane shit that seemed designed to blow up the talks. Fortunately, the deal held.
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The hostage releases continued on Saturday with three Israelis coming home and a bunch of Palestinian prisoners being released. This week, Hamas agreed to release six living hostages, which is actually double the original planned number. They'll be released this coming Saturday.
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This is in exchange for the Israelis allowing mobile homes to Gaza and also allowing in heavy machinery that can comb through the rubble for bodies. Also this week, Hamas is set to release the bodies of four hostages, dead hostages, including members of the Bibas family who are still being held.
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Sheree Bibas, her four-year-old son, Ariel, and Kafir, their nine-month-old baby, were all taken on October 7th. They all died during captivity. Um, Hamas says they were killed by an Israeli airstrike. That has not been confirmed. Uh, but I think the fact that Hamas would kidnap two babies has become kind of, like, the defining example of their fucking evil and cruelty.
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Um, Yarden Bibas, their father, was released from captivity earlier this month. Uh, he was one of the men who looked like a Holocaust survivor. Uh, and he gets to go home to a house with no one. So, um, this war is just hell on Earth.
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In response to these hostage releases by Hamas, Israel said they are going to free all women prisoners and prisoners under the age of 18 who are arrested since the October 7th attacks. That has, I think, created a pretty unreasonable debate, Ben, about whether you're a prisoner or a hostage if you were just kind of picked up for not doing anything after October 7th in Gaza. Yeah.
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conversation for another day. Bigger picture, the first phase of the ceasefire ends on March 2. I mean, they're about they've sort of sped up the release of the hostages. So the first phase will be complete pretty soon. The talks for the second phase have not officially begun. Reuters says Reuters reported that indirect negotiations for phase two are going to begin this week.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy, seemed confident. He told Fox News that phase two is absolutely going to begin. That's a quote. I saw earlier today there's reports that the Israelis and Hamas are both going to send teams to Qatar to negotiate. So those are all good signs of progress.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
And I hope Steve Witkoff is right and he's not too focused on whatever he's doing in Saudi with the Russians right now. But Ben, I mean, the thing I keep thinking about is like whatever political incentive Hamas had to actually get to phase three of this deal, the reconstruction phase, kind of went out the window when Trump decided that we're going to ethnically cleanse and occupy the thing.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
I mean, like trying to understand how this works now.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
No. So Rubio, Waltz, Wyckoff, they met in Saudi Arabia with Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov to top like foreign policy officials with Putin. Here's a quick clip of Rubio speaking in Riyadh about these talks.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
No, you want Trump to shut up. I'd also love to see certain former Biden officials shut up. shut up and stop writing op-eds?
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
I mean, it was just... Only Hamas was to blame for the war not ending.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Really gross and awful. You know, the other thing I saw a lot, Ben, online was there was a report in the AP on February 6th that said at one point the Biden administration had talked to the Egyptians about maybe moving Gazans out of Gaza for the war temporarily and then moving them back in long term. This was picked up by critics of the Biden administration, of which we are very much in that camp.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Yeah, yeah. but who are trying to say, actually, Trump's ethnic cleansing plan is the same as Biden's policy because Biden, according to this report, had an ethnic cleansing plan. I reached out to a bunch of former Biden officials to try to just like understand what this AP report was about. And what they said had happened was right after October 7th,
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Tony Blinken flew to Israel, Netanyahu pitched them on the idea of moving civilians out of Gaza for the war. In any other part of the world, that's not a crazy idea, but obviously given the history there and the Nakba and everything else that happened, That's a non-starter for the Palestinians, for the Palestinian leadership.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Tony knew that, but Tony was probably thinking, I don't have to deliver this no to Bibi. I'll take the idea to Arab capitals, including to Egypt, and run it by them and get the hard no from these guys, the El-Sisi, and then bring that message back to Israel and relay it to Bibi. I think that diplomatic process got relayed as the U.S.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
pushing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but that's just not at all what happened.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Yeah. And like, I just I've seen people that I think they're smart and respect equating those two. And it's like, guys, we don't need to do that.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Yeah. Final thing, Ben, I just want to highlight some reporting in the last couple of weeks on Iran's nuclear program. So the Wall Street Journal had the headline, Israel sees opening for strikes on Iranian nuclear site, U.S. intelligence finds. The Post seemed to have gotten the same document. It said Israel likely to strike Iran in upcoming months, warns U.S. intelligence.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
This intelligence said Israel is likely to attempt a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the first six months of 2025. Trump had recently kind of, I think, truth or tweeted that. quote, reports that the United States working in conjunction with Israel is going to blow Iran into smithereens are greatly exaggerated. So that suggests he's leaning towards a more diplomatic solution.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
But reading these reports, Ben, it reminded me of the first couple months of the Obama administration when Jeff Goldberg, our buddy from the Atlantic, clearly did a reporting trip to Israel, got fed by... 50,000 Israeli cabinet officials that they were gonna bomb Iran in six months, brought that story back to us. We had to kind of deal with the fallout.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
This is a little different because this reporting in the journal and the post is coming from some sort of leaked US intelligence product, but the net effect is the same thing, which is a pressure campaign on the United States to do something with respect to Iran's nuclear program soon, or else Iran's gonna take action. Now, I'm not sure how that pressure campaign works with Trump,
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Because, like, I just don't know what he thinks about this, but it was weird to see these reports, and I wonder what you made of these leaks.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Yeah, I think like at the end of the day, Netanyahu's preferred outcome would be drawing the U.S. into this to do his dirty work for him, like with everything else and bomb Iran's nuclear program. But I hope Trump will resist that.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
He's been better at resisting BP's bullshit than more recent presidents.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
OK, we went very long. Lots to talk about. We're going to take a quick break and we come back. You're going to hear Ben's interview with Max Seddon about how the Russian side is viewing all the machinations happening in Saudi Arabia today and in Europe last week. So stick around for that. Positive World is brought to you by Manucora.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
He almost says bring the two parties together, but then he realizes, no, they didn't even try to do that. It's just the U.S. and Russia in the room. So this is obviously the beginning of a long process, and Russia I don't think is really incentivized to move quickly because they can just bleed Ukraine dry at this point.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
But according to a report in Fox News, what was discussed today in Riyadh was a three-stage plan that includes a ceasefire, elections in Ukraine, and then a final peace agreement in Ukraine. They're operating under this martial law declaration. Zelensky, I think, understandably says he can't hold an election in the middle of a war. He needs the fighting to end to safely hold an election.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
So this U.S. demand that Ukraine hold new elections is pretty shocking.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
That is wild. I mean, yeah, the fighting's ongoing. Putin's hardly a democratically elected leader. There's a pretty recent history of the Russians intervening in meddling in Ukrainian elections. So yeah, it's all a mess. All of this happens.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
These talks in Riyadh happened a couple days after Pete Hexeth gave a speech in Brussels at NATO, where he said it was unrealistic for Ukraine to ever join NATO. or get back the territory they lost since 2014. Trump kind of, they tried to walk back the Hegseth speech, then they walked back the walk back. So it doesn't matter. Ben, let's pause there.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
So like, we should not be surprised that these talks are happening given what Trump said he was going to do in the election. But it is still, like we started, this is a seismic shift in US foreign policy. There are global repercussions. It comes after JD Vance went to Germany. and effectively told the Europeans to fuck off. We'll get to that in a minute.
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
But what did you make of like the talks in Saudi Arabia that you've seen in the proposals that have leaked out so far?
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
The podcast miniseries does not shy away from examining the many issues around immunization development, both from history and the present day, and uses both to ask us questions about what we want for the future of science, social media, and ourselves. Search and subscribe to Our Big Shot, Wiping Out Disease on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Welcome back to Pod Save the World.
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Probably pretty bad. But hey, Germany, turn out your liberal friends. Yes.
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
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Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Do you want to hear Trump's response when he was asked what he says to Ukrainians who feel disappointed they were not part of these talks? He's also asked in the same clip about whether the U.S. supports this Russian push for new elections in Ukraine. Let's listen.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
So those from a press conference Tuesday at the White House. I mean, every time he talks about this, he blames Ukraine for getting invaded and not ending a war they didn't start. The only passion in his voice is for the golden domes and like the destruction of structure of architecture. It's it's I don't know. It's shocking.
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
They could just decide to fight a guerrilla war for- For forever.
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, did you catch the USA Canada Four Nations Hockey Tournament?
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
Wait, Ben, let me read you a tweet from Marco Rubio in 2022. Many in the West still don't understand that Putin is an expert liar. He doesn't care about humanitarian relief. In fact, if there's a ceasefire, it is because he sees some strategic or tactical benefit. And beware of attacks on refugees Russia blames on Ukraine or NATO. That was from March 9th, 2022. He knows better.
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Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
There's also this Telegraph report that the Trump people passed Zelensky, like, basically a demand letter that said that the US would get 50% of its recurring revenues from natural resources, meaning like minerals, rare earths, and seemingly maybe fossil fuels.
Pod Save the World
Putin’s Wildest Dreams Come True
And it was described as that Trump's demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty.