Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump Strikes Major Nuclear Deal at the WORST Possible Time

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Tommy & Ben break down Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, which he just announced is contingent on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel. Also covered: Zohran Mamdani’s condemnation of Benjamin Netanyahu and India’s youth-led cockroach movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thanks, Beth 365. Must be 19 or older Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connectsuntario.c.com. President Trump wants to give Saudi Arabia nukes, kind of. Ben, but that is the message I would be hammering if I was Chuck Schumer or any Democrat in Congress right now. Let me give some context and then we'll discuss.

So on Wednesday, President Trump, kind of out of the blue, announced that he had signed a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. These kinds of deals were referred to as one, two, three agreements. It's a reference to this section from the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that kind of governs it. The law requires the U.S. government to create a legally binding framework and a bunch of safeguards before sharing nuclear technology. Seems like a good idea. The State Department takes the lead on talks with a foreign partner. They work with the Energy Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and then the deal goes to Congress for review. And unless Congress specifically passed as a joint resolution disapproving the deal, it goes into effect. So currently, the U.S. has 26, 12, 123 agreements with about 50 governments in the IAEA. the gold standard one two three agreement is one that was reached with the UAE in 2009 because they agreed not to enrich uranium or process plutonium. In other words, it had the strongest nonproliferation safeguards, which brings us to this Trump deal with the Saudis. It does not rule out the Saudis enriching uranium. On top of that, Trump agreed to allow the Saudis to put limits on where international inspectors are allowed to go in Saudi Arabia to check out their nuclear sites.

and ensure that Saudi Arabia isn't trying to divert the program to make weapons. And remember, you know, we are currently at war with Iran because they were enriching uranium. And by the way, the U.S. kickstarted Iran's nuclear program back in the 1950s when the Eisenhower administration gave training and equipment and enriched uranium to the Shah of Iran, then the leader of Iran. In 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said, quote, without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible. So he has expressed an interest in getting a nuclear weapon.

So all of that context is why a lot of people were confused by this deal when it was announced on Wednesday. But then Thursday morning, Ben, Trump threw a wrench in the whole thing by saying the deal is contention on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. And he said that Saudi Arabia would not be able to enrich nuclear material. So all that work that the Energy Department and the State Department just did, I guess this kind of upended. And by the way, if you want to enjoy a show that would never give nuclear materials of any kind

to MBS or anybody else, please subscribe. to Pod Save the World here on YouTube. We are trying to build a progressive counterweight to all the pro-war right-wing crap you find on YouTube. And when you subscribe to Pod Save the World, you help us out a lot. So please do. Ben, what did you make of this agreement? And what do you think happened between Wednesday and Thursday that just kind of changed everything? First of all, there are reasons to be skeptical of Saudi Arabia's need for nuclear energy, the largest, one of the largest energy producers, if not the largest in the world. So people have long thought that this was a bit curious, their interest in the nuclear program.

The Biden administration was very eager to do this deal. We did not support it at the time as part of expending the Abraham Accords, which have been one of the most catastrophic failures of American diplomacy in recent history. I mean, the Abraham Accords are supposed to bring peace to the Middle East. And let's take a little bit of everything feels safer. I don't know what you mean. Ever since the Abraham Accords were put in place, everyone's doing great in the Gulf. Everything's great.

Yeah, it's kumbaya every day. Look, so let's answer the question of why now. And I can think of two possible reasons. One is just who knows what side deals are going on, right? Jared's already taken billions of dollars from the Saudis. Who knows what we're not seeing in terms of how the Saudis might have greased this. But I think more interestingly is Trump has been losing the support of the Gulf allies in his war in Iran.

You know, I think the Saudis were kind of on the fence about this thing. I personally thought they were probably against it. Maybe then they figured, like, let's try to deliver as big a punch as we can. But right now, like what Trump is doing is hurting the Saudis. It's hurting the Emirates. It's hurting all these people. And right now you've got the Houthis beginning to attack Saudi tankers, right? And so it may be that this is just Trump desperately trying to keep the Saudis on side because they can kind of pick up their stuff and start dealing much more with China, right, and drifting in that direction. Or they could come out and say, you know, you can't use our facilities for some things you're doing in Iran. And so it feels to me like the part that we're not. seeing is probably Trump, you know, desperately trying to keep as many people on side with his insane and failing war strategy. And I'm sure you saw earlier, I think last week or earlier this week, the administration also agreed to let the Emirates buy a bunch of high-tech AI chips, like Nvidia chips. And that was framed as a reward for the Emirates, not only supporting the

U.S. in the war against Iran, but also launching air strikes of their own. Yeah. And it's also like, It speaks to the absolute destructive short-termerism of Trump, right? He's just giving things away to get through the next few weeks. But then, meanwhile, we'll look up in the next few years, and Saudi Arabia could have a nuclear program. And look, make no mistake, this makes any potential negotiation with Iran harder. How are you going to tell Iran you can't have enrichment when you're potentially just giving enrichment to the Saudis next door? The Iranians are definitely going to clock that. Now, Trump's pivot today, I don't know, like this, you know, he saw.

criticism. There's not really any constituency for this deal. There's not a lot of people, even Republicans in Congress, I want to go out and defend it. And so this felt to me like Trump trying to come out and say, well, actually, they're going to join the Arabian Records. Now, the Saudis I saw have come out and said, deals ain't. You know, whatever he tweets doesn't really matter. So this could be one of those things where he's spinning without renegotiating, and he's saying, well, they're going to join and they're not going to join. And we'll find that out, whether one way or another. But I certainly would have put it past Trump. to say that, oh, they're going to join the Abram Accords, even though they're not as part of the

actual terms of the deal. They may just say, like, sometime in the future, we might do that. The one thing I want to say there, Tommy, though, is, is it that big a win to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abram courts? Like, this man is so out of touch with the American public opinion. Does he really think that lots of Americans are sitting around not being able to afford a price of gas, not being afford anything, being upset about coffins coming home to Dover? Yeah. They're like, you know what, Saudi Arabia is going to normalize relations with Israel and they're going to be direct flights from Ria to Tel Aviv. So now I feel better about all this.

Yeah, no, it's definitely not a win in terms of like the broader population. I'm sure that like kind of Jared Kushner and the elites are like, sir, this is how you get your Nobel Peace Prize, blah, blah, blah. There was a UGov poll that said. I think that ship has sailed Tommy. Yeah, one would hope. Yeah, one would hope. Yeah, well, now we're considering bombing another country, Mali today. So, yeah, it doesn't seem like he's the peace president.

UGov has a poll out that they asked people, do you approve or disapprove of the U.S. helping Saudi Arabia develop a civilian nuclear power program. 19% approve, 51% disapprove, including it's 14 points underwater with Republicans and 34 points underwater with independence. So, yeah, this is not at all popular. Just as straw man, the pro argument's been, I think the supporters of the deal would say the Saudi is going to run out of oil and gas someday. and the AI industries of the future require massive amounts of energy, so they might want nuclear energy. They would say this will make billions of dollars for American companies. This will ensure that the Saudis are working with the U.S. on nuclear technology and not with the Russians and the Chinese who might have even fewer safeguards. They would say, you know, we could use this as a carrot to incentivize the Saudis to do something we want, although it doesn't seem like that was part of the original negotiation.

And then they probably point out that most one, two, three agreements have been successful. and not led to proliferation, places like Korea, Japan, lots of Europe. I think the con side is this technology is just inherently dual use. We were talking about nuclear enrichment. If you can enrich to 3%, you can enrich to 90%, which is how you get to a weapon. Trump's deal does not have safeguards that you would want to prevent the Saudis from getting a nuke. As I mentioned earlier, MBS has already said that he's going to get a nuke if Iran does, and we clearly can't control whether Iran is getting a nuclear weapon.

So we were just kind of helping the Saudis along their way. And then by the way, MBS has shown himself to be both an irrational actor and one who is willing to butcher journalists or launch wars in Yemen that are catastrophic. And Saudi Arabia is not immune to political change. The same way Iran was not immune to political change during the Shah era. And so we could be handing nuclear technology to a much less friendly regime in Saudi Arabia if there is some sort of upheaval. Yeah, I think to take the pros seriously,

like the main pro is Saudi Arabia has some interest in nuclear capability. Some of it may be legitimate, right? Someday they're going to run out of oil. They want to develop compute power, et cetera. And we don't want them to go to the Chinese and the Russians for that. I think the problem is, what is the context for these decisions? If we were in an age in which you had an ampliferate, regime that was working and in which you had kind of arms control agreements holding.

And this was being done in the context of a rational kind of global approach to nuclear technology. Perhaps you could mount some argument about why this made sense. The problem is that the nonproliferation regime largely because Donald Trump has collapsed. Crumbling, yeah. We pulled out of the JCPOA agreement that we did. We let the New START treaty with Russia expire after pulling out of other arms control agreements. So there's literally no nuclear arms control regime between the United States and Russia for the first time in decades.

We've got nothing going with China that is building nuclear weapons. Like all the trend lines seem to suggest that we could be on the cusp of an era of the nuclear powers building more nuclear weapons and other states rushing to get nuclear weapons. Frankly, Trump's war in Iran has, you know, we talked about this,

sent the lesson that, hey, North Korea didn't get bombed. they got love letters because they have nuclear weapons. But Iran, lo and behold, gets bombed because they don't yet have a nuclear weapon. And so the problem is that this is the worst possible time to be doing something that seems to move in the direction of any kind of proliferation. Yeah, unless you're getting the check for building out the Saudi infrastructure, which brings us back to the corruption point. Just before we move on, it's worth noting that Trump today apparently told Axios about Iran.

I am considering a massive attack bigger than ever before. I'm close to making a decision. We are all set for it. Trump just edging a decision there to Barack reviewed at Axios. They said the Iranians want to negotiate, but they're not ready to make a deal. Quote, they haven't received enough pain yet. He also said that if the Houthi rebels fire at ships, which they apparently now are doing on Tuesday when you and I talked, Trump had said the Houthis had not, you know, targeted

Saudi ships yet in the Red Sea. Now apparently they are. But Trump says that if the Houthi's fire at ships, the U.S. were retaliated. against Iran, not necessarily against the Houthis, which I'm not totally sure about how that works as a deterrent if we're already bombing the Iranians. Like what difference does it make? But I don't know, it's great that we're, you know, threatening war crimes on, you know, social media again and considering a massive attack. He does this periodically, almost always to Brock Harvey, but I mean, he's threatened to destroy their civilization. He's done this, you know, dozens of times now.

It's hard to know it to take it seriously. It's hard to know it to take it seriously. But what is clear that we should not, you know, ignore, is he consistently threatens to commit war crimes as a matter of kind of strategy. And then that's how far we sunk. Yeah, it just is a war crime. Positive America Breaking News is brought to you by Act Blue. With so much at stake, campaigns need the right foundation. For over two decades, Act Blue has been the go-to platform powering Democratic candidates

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so you can stay focused on what matters most, donating, organizing, and helping Democrats win. This November, the elections could come down to just a few hundred votes. The work that wins those races starts this summer, and it starts with you. Get started at ActBlue. com slash crooked. Let's turn to Netanyahu and Zora and Mamdani. Speaking of war crimes. Yeah, speaking of war crimes. Earlier this week, New York mayor, Zoranamadani, released this video

where he reiterated his belief that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is a war criminal who should be indicted by the ICC. But he said that New York City just does not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu, even if he's there for, say, the UN General Assembly. Let's watch a section of that video. Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. The architect. of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people. He is responsible for the killing of more than 73,000 people. There is a reason the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest.

As human beings, we have spent generations building a shared understanding that there are crimes so grave they offend all of humanity. Anyone with their eyes, with their heart, with their conscience, should recognize the devastation he has wrought and understand that he belongs before a court of law. As I've said, I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC. My administration has refuted every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here. It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.

The federal government, however, does. Interesting, they went with kind of the ominous spa music kind of undertones there. So just to back up a bit. So the ICC issued an arrest ward for Netanyahu in November of 2024. Mamdani promised to arrest Netanyahu, I think the next month during an interview with Friend of the Pod, Medi Hassan. You repeated that throughout the 2025 campaign. The issue is coming to ahead now because Netanyahu was expected to come to New York for the UN General Assembly in September. also according to the New York Times, apparently Jessica Tisch, the NYPD police commissioner was preparing to have the NYPD formally announce that it lacked the authority to make an arrest. So Zoran's team got ahead of this with that video. So Ben, I've been really interested by the reaction to the video. It was always obvious to me that Zoran Mammani was not going to be able to deliver on this promise. There are obvious national security implications to a mayor arresting head of state. The Trump administration would never let it happen.

If he actually succeeded, I genuinely think the Israelis would have waged war on the mayor's office and, like, tried to kill Mamdani to prevent this from happening. I'm not even kidding there. But it has been interesting to see the reaction. You could imagine a version of this where the left is like, you fucking sell out, you betrayed us, et cetera. It's actually been the opposite as far as I can tell. It's been a lot of praise of Zoramamani for having this kind of like clear denunciation of Netanyahu, which I don't know. which is interesting politically, and I think probably also just speaks to how much goodwill Mamdani has in this moment. Yeah, I think there are a few things that have stood out to me about

the video and the reaction. The first thing is, it was smart to do this. I worried about a situation in which the drama built until September. Yeah. Because it was also clear to me that he probably didn't have this authority. And then it's what's he going to do? And then Mamdani looks weak because he's not falling through on the promise. Always better when you can't do something you promised to do to get ahead and explain it. And that key line where he says, we've looked at this. I don't doubt that they had a team of lawyers look at it. I believe it too, yeah. Yeah, there's nothing we do. That's the first point. The second one is what was powerful about the video. And the reason I think it did resonate, and I think it's been viewed like more than 100 million times,

is the way in which he dispassionately laid out the facts here. You know, he talked about the number of people killed. He talked about the number of children maimed. He talked about aid being denied to get in. He talked about the famine-like conditions. He made very clear that this was not an opinion he was offering, that there was a clear body of facts that had led the International Criminal Court to issue this warrant for Netanyahu's arrest. And that headline, Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, says it all. And then what's been interesting to me in the detractors who fulminate online about this is they don't really dispute any of those facts. You know, they either call Mamdani names, oh, you're a terrorist, or they talk about, you're an anti-Semite because you want to arrest the prime minister of Israel. Well, I don't know about that. Vladimir Putin's a war criminal. I think, you know, he should be arrested if he comes to New York, just like I think Bibi Nena now should be arrested. It's not anti-Christian to say that Vladimir Putin should be arrested. That's nonsense. And so I think what he's done, as he usually seems to be able to do,

is he's kind of thrown the critics off balance with his presentation by being fact-based. And his critics are the ones who know they're losing the argument. And the other thing I think that's interesting here, it's not just the left in this country. Mbdauny's become this global figure. I mean, the people I know around the world who are kind of an activist or progressive politics, like Mbdani's like perhaps the leading figure to them, that they're following online, that they're watching. And so I think that one of the reasons you see a high decibel response from the right is they know this guy's getting traction. Like he's reaching people globally, younger people that are usually tuned out of politics. This is a part of why Israel's, you'll be a little bit of

losing the argument, he's emerging as one of the strongest voices in the world against Bibi Netanyahu, against Israeli government, against war crimes. And this one thing is a matter of policy, because some people have reached out to me about this. I do think the United States should cooperate with the ICC. Frankly, I think we should be a part of the ICC. I think that's probably not happening because the Democratic Party needs a backbone transplant before anything like that would happen. But there's no reason we shouldn't cooperate with ICC warrants. Again, whether it's Putin-N-Yahu or anybody else. living in choosing the pleasurable over the practical.

It's why we craft our premium vodka in France using pure spring water from Jenzac. And why you hear the celebratory club of our quirk reminding us to make every martini cocktail count. So go on and make every moment count because there's no better time than now. Griegous make time wait. Sit responsibly. Yeah, I agree with that. The reaction, well, we'll talk about the reaction on the right in a minute. There was one really funny one I saw, which was someone quote tweeted the video and said,

why arrest Netanyahu when you can send him a mental health outreach worker instead? Yeah. Which is a funny sort of take on defunding the police. Speaking of crazy people, Ben, let's watch this clip of Tommy Tuberville, the senator from what is the Alabama, Mississippi, I forget, Alabama, I think. Sooner or later, he will do something more stupid than what he's done to where we'll finally say, enough's enough, go putting handcuffs on him, get him the hell out of here. And send him to get him.

So, yeah, that's him on the Benny Johnson show, Turning Point USA's show. If you're, you know, if you're interviewing someone who threatens to arrest an American citizen and throw them into Gitbo for having a political view, and you just sort of nod there and stare at the camera, you should probably rethink what you're doing with your job. But yeah, that does speak to the insanity of the right-wing response. Yeah, and, you know, part of it is they can't defend Netanyahu, right? He doesn't say Netanyu didn't do the things Mamdani said. But part of it is that, as with Obama, Mamdani's not the person they describe. You know, and look, I know that most people who are watching Tommy Tupperville interviews probably don't pay that close attention to Zohran Mamdani. But one of the reasons why it's like hard to stick a punch on Mamdani is he clearly presents as a kind, nice, smiling person. Yeah, he's got that smile. He's like a charming guy. So this kind of, you know, Uber terrorists that they're describing is so contrasted by this guy like, you know, giving inspiring speeches at the Knicks parade. Right.

Or going on and supervising potholes being filled or singing the wheels and the bus to kids. Yeah, it's like this is such a like a don't believe your lying eyes situation where it's like for years we've seen what's happening on the ground in Gaza, including since the ceasefire was put into place. There's just like children getting bombed and killed and like the horrors of the war. And then you also see Mamdani on TikTok because he is a great communicator on social media who can speak for himself. And you see this, like, charming young guy who doesn't seem scary in any way, shape, or form. And he's also garters massive attention. I don't know if you saw Ben. The video he posted on Instagram was liked by Wembe and Kyrie Irving.

So it's hitting in the NBA circles pretty hard. No, that's the thing. He's got cultural reach, which almost no other Democratic politicians have. And I think what we're learning is watch Zerrammdani's. national and global stature. He can't run for president, but he can kind of be this, in a way, because that takes some of the edge off of is he can run for president. He could carve out this interesting role where he has kind of a global voice on different issues. The only thing I want to say is this Gitmo thing. I mean, how many, some people don't even know what that is.

I know. Like, just closest place down. And why Gitmo? Just because he's Muslim. I mean, like so many things about that, 100%. Including Benny Johnson's face. Interesting. Yeah. Gitmo is the greatest waste of money in the federal government. Finally, we want to talk about the cockroach protests in India. So in May of 2026, to back everybody up here, India's chief justice compared young, unemployed Indians to cockroaches. That comment went over about as well as you'd expect. It went super viral on social media.

Then a few days later, a 30-year-old man named Abhijit Dipka, apologies if I'm butchering his name, he tweeted, what if all the cockroaches come together? And then he announced the launch of the cockroach jauntipa. party or CJP. It's not a real political party, but he also drafted an anti-corruption manifesto. And within days, again, it went super viral and the party's social media accounts had tens of millions of followers. CJP had started a satire, but the anger, the movement is channeling is very real. And so the specific issue that started the protests was this big scandal around medical entrance exams. Every year, more than two million Indian students take a national medical

entrance exam and they have to compete for a tiny number of med school slots. I think it's like two point something, two point three million people take the test for around 130,000 spots. You can understand how intense the competition is. And so this year, the exam questions leaked online and then students were told two weeks after they took the test that they'd have to retake it. Indian media reported that at least a dozen students then committed suicide because there was such extreme anxiety and the competition was so fierce over these results. So just like imagine for a second, you literally spent years preparing for this one test. It determined your entire life, your entire future.

And then you take it two weeks later, the results get nullified and canceled. And you're told, oh, yeah, I have to run it back and do it again. And if you fail, you feel like your life is ruined. On top of that, a lot of poor kids took out loans or, you know, burn through their family savings to pay for coaching for the exam. So you just feel like your life is ruined. So the stakes felt existential for all these kids. So the CJP, their initial demands were compensation for the families of the kids who died and for the education minister who oversees this process to resign.

But the movement has grown to be about these broader structural frustrations with unemployment and corruption in India. I read that in India, about 40% of college graduates under 25 are unemployed, just a massive number. So you fast forward to this week, there were protests after protest. in like this sanctioned protest site in Delhi. But then on Monday, thousands of students decided to march on Parliament where they were tear gassed and beaten badly by police. I think opposition politicians were arrested.

I think Raul Gandhi was arrested at the site and thrown to a police car. And now the protesters, not surprisingly, are furious. And they're just don't seem like they're going anywhere, Ben. So thus far, I don't think Prime Minister Modi has acknowledged the protests are happening. you kind of wonder how long that can hold. So Ben, when this movement started, it was often dismissed as kind of like, you know, an online phenomenon that wasn't translating into offline action. Not so much anymore. Yeah, you know, if people want to get a little more background, we had a friend of the pod Rana Ayoobo is on in late June with me to kind of break this down.

And part of what she was describing was the transition from this being about the exam, as you described, to that became the brush fire that started catching all these. other issues of youth unemployment, of corruption, of mismanagement, of a government that's just way of divorced from the people themselves. And I think what's interesting is there's some overlap to the movements we've seen in South Asia and some things that are distinct. So we've talked about movements in places like Bangladesh and Nepal that have literally brought down governments, albeit in obviously smaller countries. The common threat to those movements is that they're Gen Z-led. And so the people that you're seeing in the streets are younger Indians or

Genzi Indians, as we saw in Nepal and Bangladesh, they obviously have a heavy social media component as well. And fundamentally, they end up being about corruption because corruption is a thing that is associated with this lack of employment or this mismanagement of the education system or the entrance exams. What is distinct is obviously India's politics is incredibly unique, given its size, given its scale, and given the fact that this is not yet channeling into some party organization. It's very much like a grassroots, almost leaderless civil society movement, albeit there are some leaders who emerge. I think what this shows is, what I'm interested in watching, Tommy, is Modi's been able to dominate Indian politics and kind of strangle the opposition.

And the Congress Party led by Rojo Gandhi has just not been able to get any traction in the Modi era and has been constantly on its back foot. So now what you're seeing is the energy flowing to kind of a more organic space. And the question is, can that energy be captured? either by the formation of a political party or some movement that can be durable, or can opposition parties capture some of this energy and build some credibility with young people? Modi's trying to ignore this. I think it's pretty clear he can't. It seems like this is going to be around.

But the question is, where does it go? And I hope that, you know, as someone who's very supportive of those young people, I hope that they're able to translate it into political power over time. Yeah, and broaden it beyond just students. to rural parts of the country and sort of other up and down the economic stratosphere. I also think, look, mock new political parties at your peril.

We've seen a lot of new political parties come out of absolutely nowhere recently. I mean, look, even in France, right? The Naccaran's party was invented and now he's been the president for a couple years. Okay, well, that's it for us for today. Thank you for watching this extra episode of POTS of the World on YouTube

and talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffat, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.