Pod Save America - “Wild Wild GOP.”

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

Ben Rhodes joins Jon and Tommy to talk about the aftermath of the North Korea summit, Trump’s family separation policy at the border, and why senior Republicans are calling their own party a cult.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. And on the pod today, we have the author of the new memoir, The World As It Is, crooked contributor, best friend of the pod, Ben Rhodes is here in studio. In the flesh. Thank God. Not just text chain. He's co-hosting with us today. So this is your third co-host for today. It's exciting, yeah. Ben went into a cave to write for a year. Yeah, and they just finally let me out and turned me loose into the wild.

So good to see you. And here I am. We are going to talk about North Korea, immigration, the Republican Party's nomination of a Confederate for Senate. But first, a few housekeeping items. We're going to be on tour at the end of

next week. There are still tickets for Nashville, so go to crooked.com. I'd love to go to Nashville. Me too. I've never been. We're going to be in Atlanta and Durham as well. So, to crooked.com slash events. I have to go to Nashville. Me too. I've never been. We're going to be in Atlanta and Durham as well. So very exciting. Also, very exciting news. Today, you can subscribe to the brand new Crooked Media podcast, Hysteria, the new podcast from Aaron Ryan. Guys, this is so exciting.

We've been waiting for Hysteria for a long time. I've actually heard a couple episodes. Sam. And it is so funny. They're so exciting. We've been waiting for Hysteria for a long time. I've actually heard a couple episodes. Sam. And it is so funny. They're so smart. So Erin has with her on this podcast a bi-coastal squad of women, including our friend Alyssa Mastromonaco, Ziwe Fumito, Blair Armani, Grace Parra, Kieran Deal, and Megan Gailey. It's a murderous row of hilarious, hilarious women.

It's smart. They're great. Go subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts, and it'll be out in a few weeks, first episode. It's going to be a hit. We're excited. It already is. Before we get into the news, Ben, tell us about the book. Tell us about The World As It Is.

I mean, we read it, but tell the audience about it. Why'd you write it? What was the main message you're trying to get across there? Well, you know, I thought about what kind of book I wanted to do. And I realized that I hated most political memoirs, like White House memoirs. And they're usually like a list of like, I was in these meetings. And here's why I was right in every one of the meetings that I was in. Here are five people who I hate, who I'm going to like just set on fire in this book. With like a self-aggrandizing title, like the duty to serve. Like I won't name names here, but some of the memoirs that emerged, worthy fights, duty, you know, I was correct.

Maybe you were a defense secretary for multiple presidents. Perhaps. I don't know. But so that was kind of the genre. But I realized what I had that was different from some people is when I went to work for Obama and met you guys, I was 29 and kind of a normal guy, not Hillary Clinton or Bob Gates or Leon Panetta. And I realized I could tell a story if I was much more kind of personal about what that experience was like. And spent a little less time in the Situation Room and a little more time about like, what was it like to, you know, be with Obama in between meetings? And what was it like with my personal relationships to go through the ringer of that job? You know, I could kind of take the reader into the experience of the 10 years that I spent with Obama.

So that was, you know, how I tried to distinguish it. I also realized that, you know, I wasn't smart like you guys. I didn't get out at a time that was good for my mental or physical health. But what that gave me is I was there the first day and the last day, you know, literally walked in the first day. The last day of the administration, I flew with the Obamas out to California to drop them off for their beginning of the rest of their lives. And so I had this ability to tell the whole story and to follow threads all the way through the administration and could really show our boss, Barack Obama, in a way that, you know, I think he doesn't always come across. Like, what's he actually like as a human being? What's a three-dimensional portrait of him? What does he sound like when he's talking, you know, again, not just chairing a meeting, but, you know, when he's making jokes in the car,

when he's expressing frustration on a foreign trip, when he's talking about foreign leaders or Trump after the election. So I wanted to let him just talk and give his voice a lot in those kind of private moments. Yeah, to me, my two favorite parts of the book, one sort of the coming of age tale that you tell about yourself. And that's just selfishly because I was there with you and it was a coming-of-age tale for all of us. But so that was really cool. And the other thing was I do think that you, and this shouldn't be surprising, but you capture how Barack Obama thinks

and sort of what he was thinking during all these moments of the presidency better than anyone else I've seen. I don't think any reporter, some came close, I don't think any reporter really captured who close, I don't think any reporter really captured who our old boss really is over the course of the presidency. And I think this book tells you that in a way that is very honest. You were saying this, Tommy, on your podcast with Ben the other day, that it's not like a hagiography, you know? He doesn't always look perfect because

he was not always perfect. Yeah. Right. And, you – I wanted to show how was he dealing personally with the transformations in the Arab Spring, for instance. How did he wrestle with that? But also like how did he deal with the toxic nature of our politics? And we were talking about – like I wanted to tell people like like for instance, like here's how he talks about race. Right. And the point I make there is that we didn't have to talk about it a lot because it was kind of taken for granted. But it would come out in interesting ways. Like we'd be prepping for a press conference and say, like, you're going to get asked about how much of the Republican opposition to you is about race, is it?

And he'd be like, yes, of course, next question. And like we'd laugh, right? race is it and he'd be like yes of course next question and like we'd laugh right but underneath that was you know the fact that he felt like he needed to uh put on a certain you know face publicly but i wanted to show how that stuff kind of backed up on him privately a bit too well you did a fantastic job everyone should um go buy the book and read it it is um it is very very excellent memoir um all right let's talk about the news. I want to get into North Korea, but first we should, of course, wish a happy birthday to our president, Donald Trump. This song has 138 million views on YouTube.

What is it? It's happy birthday, John. It's in the public domain. I can play it if I want. Happy birthday to Donald Trump, who along with his three darling children is being sued today by the New York Attorney General for, quote, extensive and persistent violations of state and federal law. The Trump Foundation raised money for charity and then used it to influence Donald Trump's presidential campaign. They also used the funds to pay back lawsuits that they settled that have to do with Mar-a-Lago.

The reason we know all of these things is because the evidence is out there. They put their crimes in emails. Yeah. Again, they're the worst grifters. Also, Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric are all named in the lawsuit because they're board members of the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to scrutinize their spending for signs that their leader, in this case, Papa Bear Trump, was misusing the funds. The board has not actually met since 1999, so a bit of a dereliction of duty here. Can I just say that, like, I remember we used to get nervous because all the emails you send in government are like public record. And so 25

years from now, someone could find out that, you know, Tommy didn't like some reporter. We weren't like, hey, when you commit the crime, can you make sure to get a receipt for that crime and send it back? So that ultimately, like we can be the target of lawsuits a couple of years from now.

Looping dad on the crime. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Corey Lewandowski, he's got one of the emails just saying like, when can we get the disbursement of money? Hopefully, it would be great if we could get it Saturday when we're in Iowa. Unbelievable. Not to put too fine a point on it.

So they're doing great. But let's talk about North Korea. It's a good day to have my two smartest foreign policy pals here because we had ourselves quite a summit with our new dictator friend from North Korea on Tuesday. ourselves quite a summit with our new dictator friend from North Korea on Tuesday. Upon returning home conquering hero Donald Trump tweeted, there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea, sleep well tonight. So obviously this man is out of his goddamn mind and of course North Korea has made no moves whatsoever to denuclearize just yet. But before we get into all the crazy details, what did you guys think overall of the summit? Is the world safer, less safe, or exactly as safe as it was on Monday? What do you think, Ben? I think exactly as safe. And I want to make a point to all our progressive friends out there.

It is okay to think that it's a very good thing that we're pursuing diplomacy with North Korea instead of going to war with them, and still think that this was a catastrophe. I mean, this was a disaster of a summit. Let's be very clear here, right? North Korea wants a bunch of things, right? They want international legitimacy. Well, Trump just gave that to them in a way they've never had in their entire history of their country. They're there with the US president in front of all these flags. North Korea wants our military presence in South Korea drawn down. Trump just seemed to want to go out and decide to announce that we're not going to do military exercises with South Korea anymore without even necessarily telling the South Koreans beforehand, something that China and North Korea

have wanted for many years. He just gave it to them. And North Korea wants sanctions relief. And I have to think that even if we're not giving that to them ourselves, the optics of this summit, if you're China, you're thinking like, I'm not exactly gonna be cracking down on the enforcement, you know, now that, you know, Trump is buddies with Kim Jong Un. So North Korea got like a lot of what they wanted for nothing. Okay. Like, I want to be very clear about this, like reaffirming, I mean, you know, Tommy and I have written a lot of these statements. reaffirming, I mean, you know, Tommy and I have written a lot of these statements. If the word reaffirm is in the statement, you are doing nothing. You are, it's like, I reaffirmed, you know, that I will make my bed tomorrow. Like, they reaffirmed a commitment to denuclearization. Which they've done when in the past?

Under Bush, under Clinton, both times they broke that promise. They did not do it. So they reaffirmed that they were going to do something that they have lied about doing in the past. So really, there's no new anything out of North Korea, no timeline to denuclearize, no inspections to verify that they're going to denuclearize. So basically, Trump gave this huge spectacle and really leaves there with nothing except the fact that there'll be more meetings. North Korea leaves there with a lot of the things that they wanted. Yeah. I mean, the Iran deal was like 159 pages, I believe. The North Korea agreement that they signed was 400 words.

So they did half an op-ed's worth of work. And words like verifiable that they talked about over and over and over again in the run-up to this weren't in the document even though we pushed for it and that's important because that means we get to inspect all these sites and when pressed about this i believe yesterday mike pompeo the secretary of state who was traveling in seoul got a little snippy lost his shit on all these reporters he said it was insulting and frankly ludicrous for them to press him on the details well boo fucking who mike like the details matter here. This isn't Congress where you introduce a bill and walk away.

And Mike Pompeo gave a colonoscopy to the Iran deal details. These guys literally – like the scrutiny that was – I mean I know it can drive you insane if you actually think about it. I know. But the scrutiny on the Iran deal where we shipped 98 percent of their nuclear material out of the country, had inspections on all of their nuclear facilities, had centrifuges taken out and put in storage. The scrutiny applied to that as against – Mike Pompeo feels like he shouldn't be even asked about like how they're going to make this work. I mean the double standards here i was driving completely insane i was gonna get there later to talk to you two about the hypocrisy around this in the iran i knew we'd get there we'll get there ultimately no but no it's it's crazy but what i was going to ask like because we there has been this thing on the left where um some people are like okay why are we upset that you know they're talking and they're doing

they're doing diplomacy as opposed to you opposed to threatening nuclear war with each other on Twitter? It's like, yeah, obviously that's way better. But I'm wondering from you guys, and Ben, obviously you helped lead negotiations with Iran for the Iran deal and opening Cuba. If it was not the Trump administration, what would normal direct diplomacy with the North Koreans, which we would all support, what would that look like? What kind of preparations would you do before that? I mean, the two examples I can draw from Cuba, I had to do the pre-diplomacy, and I had 20 meetings with Alejandro Castro, Raul Castro's son. Usually lasted eight hours, sometimes two days. Did you call him a smart guy who loves his country?

I didn't. No, I didn't. I was going to get to that. There's just too much to get to here. Did you bro hug him? Well, maybe at the end. Salute his generals. But, well, you know, before we put – it was two years before we put Barack Obama in the room with Raul Castro.

And by that point, we teed everything up. We knew what the agenda was. We knew we were going to establish embassies. We knew we were going to – they were going to release – they did release a lot of political prisoners and take other steps and we were going to take steps as well. So we did the prep work. Now, Trump said he didn't need to prepare and that was apparent though. And with the Iran deal, like we had endless discussions about what would constitute a good deal. Like we had endless discussions about what would constitute a good deal.

We had a nuclear physicist, a Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist, Ernie Moniz, literally in those prep meetings and in the negotiations. So – Yeah, but how was he at rebounding in the NBA? Well – Because they had Dennis Rodman. Yeah. I mean so we knew exactly what we wanted to get out of those negotiations. We knew what was success and what wasn't. And you could just see.

It's like anybody who's gone into school without doing the homework for the test and the oral presentation, you can just tell. You could tell that these guys had not done the work. You could tell that they didn't know what they wanted to achieve. They couldn't – all they could articulate before was either a really maximalist demand that North Korea give up all their nuclear weapons. And then coming out of this, they can't even spin it because they don't know what they were shooting at. I just want to make two points. Like reiterate something Ben said, which is these details matter because the North is saying the denuclearization process will be simultaneous. Pompeo and Trump are saying, no, they have to go first.

That discrepancy is going to come to a head, right? Meanwhile, the only thing we all agree happened is a concession from the United States that we're going to pause these joint military exercises in South Korea. And that's something that you could get there and you could ultimately concede and do that. But Trump seems to have just coughed it up in the meeting. And we know that because he didn't tell the South Koreans or US forces in Korea before he did it. And everyone who's out there saying, well, he brought us back from the brink of war, so we should all be in favor. He put us on the brink of war. He was fucking tweeting about his big nuclear button.

So another point you made, Ben, that I just think people need to remember is that by overselling the summit as a success and saying the problems are all solved, he could make it harder to keep sanctions in place. And the maximum pressure effort that he's been working on could get rolled back. So like he could have hurt us here. Can I, we talked about what North Korea got out of the summit, which was a lot. We talked about what the United States got out of the summit, which was almost nothing. There's other countries involved here. What did China get out of this? What did Russia get out of this? And what did South Korea get out of this, if anything, except a surprise when they learned that we weren't having joint military exercises anymore? Yeah. I mean, lightning round on that is China got a huge win because what China wants is less U.S. military presence in

their region. So Trump actually made a big concession to China when he said he wasn't going to be doing those military exercises. So the Chinese are sitting feeling pretty good about things. The Russians had a great week. You know, they may... Call Chris Eliza. The Russians had a great week.

The winner of the week, Vladimir Putin. Because I actually thought that the more important summit was the G7. Because literally the unraveling of the post-World War II order happened before our eyes. You know, Trump, essentially picking fights with all of our closest allies. They are all, you know, having sat with these people looking at Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau, they're clearly past their breaking point with Trump, you know, and he's inviting Russia back into the G7. So Russia's accomplishing their objective. You know, people always ask me, what do you think

Russia wanted to, did they want sanctions relief when they meddled in our election? No, they wanted that G7 summit. They wanted to see the split in the transatlantic alliance, a split in the alliance of the world's democracies. And they got that in spades. And so Trump, before he goes and cozies up to North Korean dictators and generals, So before he goes and cozies up to North Korean dictators and generals, he literally blows up the closest alliances that we have in the world. That is much to Russia's benefit. I think the South Koreans, I felt very bad for them in this whole process because they're the reason this diplomacy is happening because they saw this fire and fury locked and loaded and they knew they were the ones that would be in the crosshairs of that. So they're like, we got to do something here, you know. So they took this initiative. They went to the North Koreans, and I think they brought that back to Trump. Trump grabs it from them, says, okay, I'll go meet with that guy, you know, and I actually don't

think they necessarily meant for this to go so fast. I think they just wanted to get some diplomacy underway to avoid a war. So they're sitting there and they're stuck because on the one hand, they desperately don't want there to be a war because they would suffer all the consequences. But on the other hand, they don't want Trump to totally sell them out in the process. And so I think right now there's probably a lot of mixed feelings in South Korea. Better this than the escalation that we were on. But this doesn't look like it's going quite the way we want. you know, the escalation that we were on, but this doesn't look like it's going quite the way we want.

Doesn't selling out the South Koreans seem like something that Trump would totally do at the end of this entire process? I wondered this way back when, that like in Trump's mind, the way that mind works, you could see him thinking like, okay, why do we have all these troops in South Korea anyway? Why do we protect South Korea? What is in that for us? So you could see at the end of this process, him saying, yeah, we'll not only freeze joint exercises, we'll remove troops from South Korea. And then as long as he's not pointing those nuclear weapons at the United States, we don't care what happens on the Korean peninsula. And he said that over the years, he's made comments about like, why do we have troops in Korea? You know, we have troops in Korea to assure the survival of South Korea. Right.

And, you know, he says so many insane things that, you know, you lose track of them. But he said something, you know, when he was kind of boasting about pausing the military exercises, he talked about how expensive they were. Right. That, you know, that may be just a normal thing for Trump to say. But I think people have to realize, how do these things sound abroad? If you're Japan or South Korea, and literally, your existence has depended upon the United States providing these troops, which, by the way, we benefit from too because those are growing economies and those are some of our best trading partners. And suddenly you've got a guy saying, like, I'm tired of footing the bill for these troops.

The South Koreans are hearing that as, well, at the end of this process, yeah, he very well may sell us out, take out these troops and kind of leave us here surrounded by China and North Korea, which is not exactly where we'd want to be. I'd like to add another entity to the list of losers this week, which was oppressed peoples all around the world. Because Trump has signaled that he does not give a shit about human rights. I mean, he's done this before. The whataboutism went pressed on Putin killing adversaries or journalists or whatever. He's like, well, you know, we do it too. We're killers too. But he basically said,

you know, Kim Jong-un has to be a rough guy. He's been a rough person. He's smart. He loves his people. He loves his country. I mean, that's an insane thing to say about a guy with 100,000 political prisoners breaking rocks in a fucking concentration camp. I mean, Nick Kristof pointed this out in his piece yesterday, where he said that, you know, Trump was outfoxed after his piece a couple days before that, where he was like, Democrats,

don't be childish. Like, give him a chance. A 2014 UN report states that North Korean human rights violations, quote, do not have any parallel in the contemporary world. Yes. And that includes mass executions,

torture, forced starvation, abductions, and prison camps. John, you know, there's a source on this, Trump's 2018 State of the Union, where he said no regime has oppressed his own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea. And, you know, I should have like a limit of the number of times I can talk about hypocrisy. But, you know, when we dealt with Cuba and Iran, we would always get this argument. But we would always raise human rights in the meeting. Publicly, we would always speak about it.

When President Obama went to Cuba, he talked about the need for elections. And by the way, the human rights picture in North Korea, as you guys suggest, is so much worse. And not only did he say the things that Tommy quoted, he said that the North Korean people love Kim Jong-un, right? Right. And what you have to realize is he just legitimized his rule. He just said, well, they love him. That's Kim Jong-un's argument for why he does the things that he does in North Korea. And you also have to know North Korea has state media, right?

They're going to be playing that in a clip over and over and over again, right? The U.S. president saying the North Korean people love Kim Jong-un. That's going to be playing. They get Fox over there? Martha McCallum live from the North Korean. Yeah, I mean, like they have, trust me, it's nothing but Fox and Friends over there. And Trump just gave them throughout this whole summit a lot of content. This is an important point because, yeah, it's like, well, all kinds of countries have human rights abuses, and we've dealt with them throughout history.

Yes. We're not saying that the United States cannot deal with countries that have human rights abuses if there are big things at stake like denuclearizing, right? Well, obviously, Iran has plenty of human rights abuses. So does Cuba. We still dealt with them because there were very things at stake. In Iran, it was making sure they don't have a nuclear weapon, right? We still dealt with them because they were very things at stake in Iran. It was making sure they don't have a nuclear weapon.

Right. There is a way that Trump could have gone to North Korea, met with Kim Jong Un and not praised him like he did, not said that people love him like he did. And then and then he comes back and Brett Baier asked him about this. And he reminds Trump that Kim executes people and has done some really bad things. And Trump replies, yeah, but so have other people done some really bad things. He's a tough guy I saw that and I was like I just unbelievable and I never thought I would see I never thought I would hear trash Justin Trudeau I mean part part of what's so stark here around the world is like he he can't find enough good things to say about Kim Jong-un while he's like trashing the you know

the leaders of democracies I mean how is that going down around the world? You know, I think it's changing the way the world looks at us. And certainly it takes us out of the position of leader of the free world. Also, just in that Brett Baier interview, he says he wants Russia back in the G8 so that he can sit down over dinner and turn to Putin and say, hey, can you do me a favor? Can you get out of Syria? Can you get out of Ukraine? That's why they were fucking expelled, you moron. He doesn't understand anything.

He has no idea what he's talking about. And the human rights stuff, it doesn't just, I mean, it worries me, like you said, Ben, about how people around the world see us, but not to be alarmist here, but it also worries me about how Trump will be in this country next um next year down the road a couple years down the road like he clearly sees doing things like kim jong-un does to his people as just necessary breaking a few eggs yeah um as you're trying to run a country and that's fucking scary and and like we're not that far away we're about to talk about immigration and putting children in uh you know detention centers at the border but it's pretty fucking scary um so now let's talk a little bit

about the reaction from republicans and other trump sycophants uh to the summit even for republicans the hypocrisy was enraging um and i wasn't as close to the uran deal as the two of you um let's just talk about what Tom Cotton said. Just to take one example of one of the biggest hypocrites in the Republican Party. Here's what Tom Cotton said to Hugh Hewitt in full. Two of my favorites. Mine too, buddy. Countries like Iran and Cuba and other two-bit rogue regimes don't have nuclear weapons yet, he told Hugh Hewitt.

They can't threaten the United States in that way. Once North Korea had nuclear weapons, once they have missiles that can deliver them to use, I would liken it to past presidents sitting down with Soviet dictators. So Tom Cotton's point is, Obama should not have dealt with Iran because Iran did not have nuclear weapons.

Until they got a nuclear weapon. Once they get a nuclear weapon, then you deal with it. Which is fucking crazy. Don't you want to stop the country from getting the nuclear weapon? So is Tom Cotton for Iran having a nuclear weapon? Let's take the Cotton Doctrine to its logical extension, which is why don't we just give nuclear weapons to Iran and Cuba,

and then we can actually talk to them. It's so funny because he made up this doctrine basically by because he all he could think of was how to justify. He knew he was full of shit. He knew he was full of shit. This is a man who wrote a letter to the supreme leader of Iran while we were trying to negotiate the Iran deal, saying that, you know, essentially don't talk to the president of the United States. You know, Congress speaks for for us trying to blow up a negotiation these people the these fucking guys you know these people who now say that we can't we shouldn't criticize trump and we should be rooting for success like literally tried actively

to derail the iran negotiations to prevent us from reaching a deal to stop iran from getting a nuclear weapon and now they're like well the north North Koreans, they've got their nukes, you know, so it's great that he's sitting down. It's like they're praising Trump for negotiating absolutely nothing away from the dictator of a nuclear rogue state. And yet they were attacking Obama for a negotiation with an aspiring nuclear state that removed, what, 90-something percent of its nuclear production capacity? And let's just pretend for five seconds that these are arguments they're making in good faith. So let's take the substance of them. They didn't like the Iran deal because it included sunset provisions on some of the things we did

to limit Iran's nuclear program over the terms of like 10 years or 15 years. There is literally nothing has been done in North Korea. Nothing has been accomplished. There's no timetable for getting it done, and they seem just fine with them declaring victory. The other part of this is they didn't like the fact that the Iran deal didn't deal with Iranian support of terrorism,

support in Yemen, or all the other things they're doing. These issues weren't even raised with Trump. Not even discussed. It's not that they weren't raised. He Trump in North Korea. Not even discussed. Not even discussed. No, it's not that they just weren't raised. He praised him for the human rights abuses. It's not that he didn't mention them. He went the other way.

Their number one argument against the Iran deal is it didn't stop the other behavior. Ballistic missiles, human rights, and destabilizing actions in the region. North Korea is the worst human rights abuser in the world. Really aggressive ballistic missiles program. They just assassinated a guy in Malaysia a few months ago. In a fucking airport. And none of that is on the table, right? And they have to twist themselves into these knots in order to praise Trump.

And they can't even, I mean, if someone just laid out the Iran deal next to the joint statement that emerged from North Korea, like, there is no justification for what they did. Well, and of course, in the other problem with the Iran deal, all they would talk about is the money, the money that Iran got that's now using to, you know, fund terrorism, blah, blah, blah. Donald Trump was talking with Kim Jong-un about fucking beachside property in Pyongyang. Tell him how rich he's going to get. So what happens next?

Where do we think this ends up? As Tommy pointed out, Pompeo is saying sanctions really no sanctions relief until they denuclearize. The North Koreans are saying the opposite. Where do you guys think this goes from here? Well, I mean, Pompeo is talking about a time frame where they'll do significant denuclearization in Trump's first term. So he's looking to get real successes racked up in the next year or two, two years, I guess. So I guess he's now got the ball and he's going to do all the diplomacy that

should have been done on the front end, on the back end, now that they've given North Korea this huge propaganda win. It seems like the most likely scenario is that this gets bogged down in minutiae. But Trump's only genius is he knows that creating a big, splashy, made-for-TV primetime event is the thing that creating a big splashy made for TV primetime event is the thing that's going to get covered and then everyone is going to forget about it

a month from now, six months from now and the problem is going to be there. He's still going to be sitting on ICBMs, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons. The scariest shit on the planet is in Kim Jong Un's hands. Tune into the next episode of Pyongyang Apprentice.

What I think is going to happen here is the North Koreans know that Trump needs this to look like a win, right? And so they have that. And what they'll do is they'll do what they've done in the past, and I think everybody needs to be prepared for this. Every now and then, they'll invite a bunch of international journalists in, and they'll put them in front of some building, and they'll say them in front of some building and they'll say, this is a place where we

– this is a reactor and they'll blow up that building and see we're giving up our nuclear weapons. But that's – they control that. The question is – because what they'll do is they'll keep all their nuclear weapons someplace else and the question, are there international inspectors who are actually going to have access to all of the North Korean program and a timetable for them to give up all of their nuclear weapons? If that is not what is negotiated, then they are not giving up their nuclear weapons. Well, and now they know that when they put this propaganda out,

it won't just be them putting it out. It will be amplified by the United States government and Donald Trump's propaganda network by the United States government and Donald Trump's propaganda network in the United States. So they now have a huge ally in showing all this bullshit. Hopefully we already have the trailer for the movie, right? What did you make of that fucking

movie, that trailer? You guys didn't make a trailer like that when you were at the NSC? I had to sit in meetings for hours with Ernie Moniz talking about the intricacies of centrifuge technology. Apparently,

I should have been making the fucking trailer for Top Gun 3 showing Kim Jong-un as a superhero. Right? Dude dunked a basketball in the middle of the thing.

He likes basketball. Sylvester Stallone made an appearance in that thing. What was that? Reporters were just somebody spent some time on that thing. Yeah.

Like, that's, like, what they were doing to prepare for this, you know? It's really bad, guys. I want to talk about immigration. Here's the situation as it stands right now. A couple days ago, the Trump administration decided to urge a federal court in Texas to declare that DACA is illegal so that they can finally shut down the program once and for all, which would subject about 700,000 young Americans to deportations. Meanwhile, Trump's new family separation policy has resulted in at least 500 children being ripped away from their parents since May. This included a baby who was taken by ICE while her mother was breastfeeding her. And because they're now taking so many children, the Trump administration is looking at building camps to house them that could fit up to 500, 5000 children.

5,000 children. Right now, many of the children are in a detention center that includes a gigantic mural of Donald Trump next to a quote from Art of the Deal. That is not a joke. That is real. Some journalists were finally invited in yesterday. I have to say, it is like so hard to read this stuff. What do you guys think about this when you read these stories why are they doing this aside from just a pension for abject cruelty because I can't figure it out I think that's it I think Trump has a cabinet meeting

where he goes ballistic on the head of the Department of Homeland Security because illegal immigration hasn't been run down to zero so they go and they implement the cruelest policies they can possibly imagine. I mean, a tent city, putting children in tents outdoors at military posts in Texas to live unaccompanied sounds like Joe Arpaio's policies have been nationalized. It sounds like

the cruelest thing you could do to a kid. And like, you know, there's a story in the New York Times about this meatpacking plant in Tennessee that's just heartbreaking. I mean, these are, you know, undocumented immigrants who are doing the worst jobs in the country. They're killing and dismembering cows. Not one American worker wants to do this work. And these families are working their asses off to do something no one else wants to do. And they're criminalizing that behavior without even touching the employers. to do. And they're criminalizing that behavior without even touching the employers. It's just, it's vicious. It's fucking vicious. And I want to talk about, you know, why this, his particular policy now is so awful and also very different from what we've seen in the past,

because we've had a broken immigration system in this country for a very, very long time. We had it before Obama stepped into the White House. We had it once he left from the White House. Ben, you were there, I think we had just left, you were there in 2013, 2014, when we had this crisis at the border where there was an influx of unaccompanied minors. These are children who were 13, 14, 15, 16, that were sent by their parents on their own to the United States, fleeing violence from places like Guatemala and Honduras. They show up at the border. Suddenly, the Department of Health and Human Services and a whole bunch of other agencies do not have room for these children. And that's why and so they are in these centers as well. We dealt with this in 2013, 2014. How did how did we deal with that crisis versus what is happening right now? Well, in a number of ways.

I mean, first of all, we did something that they've completely essentially abandoned, which is we actually tried to deal with some of the source problems. So we went down to Central America. We provided a lot of – first of all, we provided a lot of information that don't do this. Don't send your kids on these journeys. There's huge danger associated with it. We also tried to provide a lot of assistance to improve the situation in those countries, and not just security assistance but to help with economic development and governance there

so that you get at some of the root causes of this migration. And they have taken a much more security oriented approach to those countries. And then, you know, what we try to do is deal with each of these, you know, cases on the merits, you know, not just have an approach where we're just trying to wholesale ship everybody back. I mean, you need to understand what the circumstances are. Is there a threat? I mean, one of the things that's so just awful to watch here is they're not making allowances for people who are fleeing legitimate of domestic violence, people who have credible claims. You would try normally to adjudicate the case before you and try to understand what is the risk of sending this person back. And so they're abandoning kind of any recognition of – I mean what I see when I look at these stories, which are I think the hardest things to read of the Trump administration, there's no sense of the humanity of any of these people. It's like they're just – they're not just an inconvenience,

they're an opportunity to show that we don't want you here. So they are using these children, young children, children who come with their parents, so these are one-year-olds, four-year-olds, five-year-olds, which is different, which did not happen in our administration, and they're using them as leverage. So this ACLU lawyer who's been dealing with this for 25 years, he talked to Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times. And he said, look, I've been dealing with

this for a while. I dealt with this during the Obama administration, the Bush administration. This is the worst I've ever seen this in my entire life. This is beyond anything. And he said, they've decided that treating kids in this fashion will influence the adults not to seek asylum. And they're trying to hurt the children to influence the parents. So they're basically saying to the parents, we don't want to give you asylum. If you really want asylum, you're going to lose your kit. John Kelly said as much on the record to NPR. He's a deterrent. I mean, what you were saying is important.

It's totally discordant to talk about MS-13 like it's the biggest threat to our country. He's making events about it. But at the same time, his administration doesn't recognize anyone fleeing MS-13 as a legitimate asylum case. Well, and I think we have to understand the politics of this. I mean, first of all, one of the strange things that happened in 2014 is we started to, you know, you detect what the messaging is on the right and in the right-wing media ecosystem. They were going into places and saying, you know, all of these unaccompanied children are going to be resettled in New Hampshire or something. And they weren't, but they were scaring people that essentially there'd be these massive influxes of, you know, of immigrants and particularly, you know,

unaccompanied children in their communities so as to get them to vote a certain way. And that was part of their messaging in 2014 in the midterm elections. And I think what we're going to see here, this MS-13 message, they paint, just like they paint all refugees with the ISIS brush, they're painting all of – anybody who's from south of the border as a potential gang member. And I think we're going to see in their political messaging is they have to dehumanize these people and they have to turn them into a threat. And if you are forced to confront the humanity of all these individuals who are just trying to get here and have a better life, it's harder for them to do that. So, you know, I think the politics of this is that Trump is turning immigration in all forms into a national security issue. And he's going to say, just, you know, just like all refugees or ISIS, you know, MS-13 is,

you know, in all of our communities, we have to keep them out. When as Tommy says, in fact, like, these are the victims of MS-13 in Central America, some of whom are desperately seeking some form of asylum. I think we also have to have a conversation,

hopefully for the next Democratic administration, about what to do with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol, because this is not just Trump and people in the White House. These are these agents, and they're saying things to people like, you're never going to see your kid again, and ripping a baby away while the mother's breastfeeding it.

I mean, these are not like explicit directives coming from Trump. These are like agents doing this kind of stuff. And I remember when Barack Obama got to the White House, and early on they were trying to make sure that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security sort of reprioritizes what kind of deportations they do. And it took a long time to do that. They were too slow. Probably the Obama administration was too slow in pushing it. But a lot of it was ICE basically turning around to Barack Obama when he was telling them to change their priorities for deportation and saying, fuck you, we're going to do what we want.

I mean this is a bit of an out-of-control agency right here. And you hear people on the left saying abolish ICE. And I'll tell you, at first I was like, well, that sounds pretty crazy. But after the last couple of months, I'm like, yeah, maybe. Well, there's huge implications, too, because previous administrations didn't refer these cases for prosecution. And now they're referring all of them. And you're seeing like four times, five times, six times the number of cases going to these courts, which are completely bogging them down.

They can't do anything else but these immigration cases. And people are not getting to process in any way. And meanwhile, just imagine the fear that is spreading through communities throughout the United States. If you're here and you're undocumented, there is no way- Or if you're a green card holder now. There's no way you're seeking urgent medical attention. There is no way you're seeking help for domestic abuse or a crime against you.

You are more scared of the cops and scared of ICE than probably anybody else. So that is really, really dangerous. Yeah. Yeah, and I can't help but think of how this looks from other parts of the world. We are losing – if you consistently ask people what you admire about America, part of it is that we welcome people from around the world. Part of it is that we speak up for democracy and human rights. The things that people look to us as a beacon of hope for are being systematically dismantled under Trump. of hope for are being systematically dismantled under Trump.

And if this was happening in another country, I think we would be appalled by it. And ripping children apart from their families, paying no attention to the dangers to these people. I mean, part of the hardest thing when I see these stories of people, children being separated, sent back, what's going to happen to them? I mean, some of these people are going to be killed. Some of these people are going to be completely destitute. Some have already. There was a kid who was deported who went back to Mexico,

and he was with his cousin, and they were out one night right as soon as he was deported, and he was killed. Yeah, so these are real consequences. So there are, what to do about this? There are marches happening all over the country today, on Thursday. There should be events in the future. We saw John Lewis, you know, at his age, still out there protesting. God love the man yesterday with other members of Congress. That's a website where you can go to find out an event near you where you can participate in March to keep families together. You can also donate. Kristen Bartolone, our good friend whose birthday it is today.

Happy birthday, Kristen. She tweeted this morning instead of a birthday present. She tweeted the website for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. It's races texas.org. R-A-I-C-E-S-T- e s t e x a s.org. You can donate there. They are doing that organization is doing the best job trying to actually help fund legal services that are trying to reunite children from their parents. And then of course, the other the other avenue here is legislation in Congress. Paul Ryan has said votes on a pair of immigration bills for next week to basically stop an end run by moderates in his own party who had been pushing a discharge petition to force votes on proposals to protect dreamers.

The moderates failed because, of course, they failed because they're Republican moderates and they have no power whatsoever. Paul Ryan didn't get the memo that, like, the retiring member can suddenly grow a conscience? He did not. I mean – He did not. He does not care. Yeah, for all the times we were like, well, Paul Ryan doesn't want to do this because if he did, he'd lose his job as speaker. Well, you know what?

You've lost your job and you still don't give a fuck. That's a fucking weasel duck question about Scott Pruitt today. If there's anyone who can kick around at this point, it's Scott Pruitt, the most corrupt administration official in fucking history. But not Paul Ryan. He hasn't had time to read the stories. So one of the bills in Ryan's office that he wants to put up a vote for has been written by hardline nativists. That's awful. The other is a so-called compromise bill, which I do not have a lot of hope for. But reportedly, they're looking at dreamer protections and ending family separation in exchange for

ending the diversity lottery and cuts in legal immigration. I have to say, I have more of a stomach now for a bill that is not one that we would generally like if it does protect dreamers and it does end family separation. Like if there are cuts to legal immigration in the future, I think that's fucking awful and we need to rectify it. But we're facing an emergency right now where people are being deported and children are being in camps. We're facing an emergency right now where people are being deported and children are being in camps. And like if the Republicans are using that as leverage to get what they want on future policies, like I would be fine with doing that right now because this is an emergency. And when we hopefully take back Congress and take back the presidency, then we can fix this. But that's if it goes anywhere, which who knows? It probably won't. So this, this all brings us to our last topic, which is the Trumpification of the Republican party, uh, which is basically now a cult.

Uh, and I did not say cult. Uh, that was Bob Corker. This is the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee the other day who called his own not say cult. That was Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the other day who called his own party a cult. So just in case we need a reminder of how bad this is, the Republican nominee for the Senate in Virginia is a Confederate sympathizer. In 2018, his name is Corey Stewart,

and he likes to brag that he was Trump before Trump. Trump, of course, endorsed this man as soon as he won. This is a man who's posed in front of a Confederate flag. He's done events with Jason Kessler, who organized the Charlottesville rally. He called Paul Nealon, the actual Nazi who ran against Paul Ryan, a hero. Personal hero. Personal hero. Personal hero.

What were your reactions to Corey Stewart winning the nomination in Virginia? He tried to run for governor, and Ed Gillespie narrowly beat him in the nomination, but now he has won for Senate. You know, I mean, he won in some suburban—he won in Fairfax County. Crushed in Fairfax. It was a very low turnout, but that's one of Virginia's wealthiest suburbs. And what's horrifying is he's laundering his white nationalist views through a pledge of undying support for Trump. That's just sort of become a proxy one for the other. And so everyone's willing to support the blatant racism that should have embarrassed them before. But the sad thing is the Republican Party can barely find the courage to denounce him because they know there's almost no difference between him and Trump because these are the same assholes who

supported Roy Moore. And there's no doubt in my mind that if Stewart had any chance of beating Kane, Mitch McConnell would be out raising money for him because they'll take care of his money. Like Corker's right. It is a cult, but anyone who watched wild,

wild country knows that early on in a cult, you got a chance to take out Ma'anan Sheila. But when you let her get all powerful and she's got like 10,000 people there and they're poisoning the city, spoiler alert, you're screwed now. You own this. It's his party. It's, yeah. And I just want to, I mean, here, I'm just going to go to my book real quick because

it was really interesting to write the book and relive the last 10 years because i i realized how much what trump is you know was something that was building while we were in office right so i'm taking you guys back to 08 do you guys remember fight the smears just to take people to the quick evolution here, there used to be a problem back in the Stone Age when we were on the Obama campaign in 08.

What we were dealing with was forwarded emails, right? So basically, everybody's racist uncle was writing an email that Barack Obama was a Muslim or he was born in Kenya or what have you.

But these were getting so forwarded around, you know, he was a Palestinian terrorist, you know, they were getting so forwarded around. He was a Palestinian terrorist. They were getting so forwarded around that we actually had to set up a crack unit under Tommy Vitor to fight the smearers, to give field organizers and other people the answers to these things. Now, what I kind of realized is that that forwarded email is now the president of the

United States. He is the racist. Yeah, but it didn't happen overnight. What happened is the forwarded emails became Sarah Palin, right? And they kind of got mainstreamed through Palin. And she was saying those things on the campaign trail, palling around with terrorists. Then that became the Tea Party, right?

And you had people running for office, you know, who were echoing those messages. Then, lo and behold, there's a birther movement. It didn't come out of nowhere. It was a part ofing those messages. Then lo and behold, there's a birther movement. It didn't come out of nowhere. It was a part of all those things. Sarah Palin, you know, real Americans, all the fight the smear stuff. Then you get Donald Trump as the leader of the birther movement. Nobody smacks that down, right? So suddenly you have a dynamic where even to this day, a majority of Republicans believe Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, right? So the

notion that, I can't believe I keep saying the notion like our former boss, but the notion that this just happened, right? Because, well, oh, I didn't get into Benghazi. So let me, if I may. So then, you know, we have birtherism and then Benghazi. And I described in the book, this bizarre experience where Benghazi would flare up. There'd be some, you know, reason that it's in the news. Then it would seemingly go away, but actually it would grow like some scary organism at the bottom of the ocean because then it would just go on to these platforms like Breitbart or Infowars or Reddit threads. And what I would see is every now and then I had a Twitter account, right? Like I'd get hundreds of people tweeting at me just unhinged conspiracy theory stuff. I'd get hundreds of people tweeting at me just unhinged conspiracy theory stuff.

And I knew somewhere out there in the darkness of the right-wing media ecosystem, someone had just done some segment on me on talk radio or some internet conspiracy theory that I was running guns to the Muslim Brotherhood or something. But basically to understand Trump, you have to understand Benghazi. Conspiracy theory, racist brand of politics, all tribal. But again, the thread to me, you know, you can take it from Fight the Smears to Sarah Palin to Tea Party to birtherism to Benghazi to Donald Trump. And they've been mortgaging their souls to that dynamic, people like Paul Ryan, for 10 years now. So this didn't become the party of Trump because he won. It was the party of Trump before Trump stood on the first debate stage in the primary campaign in 2015. And until the Republicans realize that and realize how deep the problem and the rot is that they have to deal with, like that's going to be the party.

And where this all ends up is what Tommy mentioned in Fairfax County, Virginia. Like let's talk about Fairfax County, Prince William County. All right. For people who are from D.C. or from that area, these are some of the wealthiest suburbs of Washington, D.C. Fucking Corey Stewart wins Fairfax County by more than 4,000 votes. The median income in Fairfax County is $115,000 a year. The economic anxiety is very low. $115,000 a year. This is what people in Fairfax County is $115,000 a year. The economic anxiety is very low.

$115,000 a year. This is what people in Fairfax County make. And these are the people who voted for Confederate sympathizer Corey Stewart. So this whole thing after Trump won, where we go into these factory towns and stuff like that, undoubtedly those people are experiencing economic anxiety. But why Trump won? experiencing economic anxiety. But, but why Trump won? Trump won white people of all income groups, all income groups, all education groups. This was like all our thing. And also the other thing is it's getting worse because last year, Corey Stewart didn't win in Fairfax County against Ed Gillespie. And this year he did. Yeah. And this year he did. And that's Donald Trump.

And to Ben's point that this is not new. I mean, there's a congressman in Southwest Iowa named Steve King, who is a white supremacist. He retweets these literal Nazi sympathizers who are just the worst people on the planet. And then ducks press questions about it. So, you know, reporters have a hard time calling him what he is. He's a white supremacist. He doesn't believe in mixing races. He's as racist as he gets. And he's been in Congress since 2003. And every time there's a presidential campaign in Iowa, they all go and they kiss the ring and they kiss his ass. And so he and him, that little cesspool has been there the whole time. And like, never forget, you mentioned Infowars. Donald Trump went on Infowars. He told Alex Jones how great his reputation was. I mean, this is a guy who

denies Sandy Hook. This is a guy who denies Sandy Hook. This is a guy who recently, like last week, said that Anthony Bourdain was murdered because he was going to come out for Trump. Who sent people, by the way, sent people up to Newtown to badger and harass the parents of people whose children were killed to validate his conspiracy theory. I mean these are – these aren't just people who you have a political disagreement with. These are bad people. They've been allowed in. And Steve King, I mean, it was a couple days ago now, he retweeted this self-avowed Nazi sympathizer. People call him that.

He says, I'm a Nazi sympathizer, this guy that he retweeted. He has not deleted that tweet. The tweet is up right now. And no Republican has denounced Steve King for doing this. So if any reporters out there who would love to get Paul Ryan on the record about Steve King or anyone, they have made common cause with the tax-cutting, Paul Ryan-type conservatives because they figure this is our governing coalition and this is how we take power. And I don't think we have the language to talk about this right yet in the sense that sometimes – I think if you're a mainstream journalist sitting in D.C., you think, well, Steve King is kind of a kook, right? But let's just – if you look – I challenge someone to scan kind of the right-wing media world from Fox to Breitbart and look at the vitriol that's been directed at Jeff Flake versus the criticism that's been directed at Steve King and see what you'll find. The point being that Steve King is the mainstream of the Republican Party. You know, Jeff Flake has been much more excoriated, condemned by their media organs than

Steve King ever has been. This is who they are. And it's hard, I think, for people to get their mind around the fact that, you know, no, this isn't just a couple of kooks who every now and then a Republican can condemn on Twitter. No, this is, they're more, they're, they're, they're more, they're, the beast that they've constructed rejects Jeff Flake far more than it rejects Confederate and white supremacists. The craziest thing I saw over the last couple days is this Fox interview with Marco Rubio. And the Fox host looks at Marco Rubio and was like, you tweeted that Kim Jong-un is this kooky bad guy. But the president of the United States, Donald Trump, said he was really smart and his people love him. Do you want to reconsider your tweet, Senator Rubio?

And Rubio is just like looking at her like, what? No, I don't want to reconsider. What world are we living in? And the fucking Fox host is just like, oh, no, it's totally normal. All their silence, all their acquiescence has brought us here they were the only ones that have the credibility and the credentials to push back on donald trump and these voices within their party and they all were cowed and now there's all these smart analysis pieces uh that i think are right by people like jonathan martin that said you know these recent

results mean that uh you know uh what's his name? Sanford. Mark Sanford. Mark Sanford. Him losing means that the real risk in politics right now is getting primaried for Republicans and the way he gets primaried is speaking out against Donald Trump. Obama made an interesting – like I quote him in the book. We were – we had many conversations with the Republican Party over the years and he said to me when we're flying to Paris for the final negotiations on the Paris climate deal, you know, he kind of went out his way to say, you know, say that the moment that a major political party can deny something like climate change is the moment that it's lost its mind. And I said, well, yeah, even the National Front, these kind of far right parties in France and in Europe, you know, they accept climate change. He's like, no, think about it. Like,

if you want to win so badly that you'll deny that fact, you've kind of lost it. And the reason that that's relevant here is that the tax-cutting, deregulating wing of the party, once they became so craven that they would deny the science of climate change, they would also get into bed with anybody they needed to win. Like Donald Trump? Yeah. They'll tolerate Donald Trump. There's a compromise that was made somewhere along the way. Look, the Democrats have all kinds of problems, right? And there's a lot of fault to find.

But there's certain things that you just feel like the Democratic Party wouldn't sell out just to win an election. you just feel like the Democratic Party wouldn't sell out just to win an election. And something has happened in the last 10 or 20 years wherein there is no compromise they won't make if they feel like it keeps them in power. The problem is they've made so many compromises that the people in power are the representation of the ugliest part of what they've done. It's all worth it for tax cuts and owning the libs. Yeah, that's what you get. The NRA is holding its next meeting over in Moscow. And I

got whatever, you know, Second Amendment. I mean, so the only way to fix this is the total and complete defeat of the Republican Party at every level. It's just it's not an exaggeration. I mean, we literally have to vote out as many Republicans as possible. It needs to start over. In Virginia, obviously, that means Tim Kaine, reelecting Tim Kaine. Steve King has an opponent in Iowa. J.D. Shulton just won the primary. He's the Democrat now who's running against Steve King. So if you want to donate to him, that'd be great. And, yeah, and all over the country.

And a place like Texas. I mean, because the Republicans, the incentive structure has to change. They have to start seeing that they're going to lose. I mean, because the Republicans, the incentive structure has to change. You have to start seeing that they're going to lose and that, I mean, so like that's why it's a long shot. But if a guy like Beto O'Rourke can win, it suddenly says like new people are voting. You know, like the electorate is changing because you people are so disgusting. And that's, I think, what ultimately needs to happen. I agree.

And the electorate changing is the way to do it. And that's, look, I mean, we've said this before. Barack Obama doesn't win Iowa with the caucus goers who usually caucus in Iowa. He only wins Iowa if you expand the universe of people who vote, who caucus. And that needs to be the case right now, too. Ben Rhodes, thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, no, thank you. And I'm going on book tour here. So next week I'll be in St. Louis, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia come back here

so if there are any friends of the pod who want to turn up I've got the stops online I will also say just as the electorate changing will help us win elections the book buying public can help make my book a bestseller I'm just behind Newt on the list so if you guys can help me get up there

at least get closer to Newt we'll send a message to all the people who just buy those Red Wing books and put them on their shelves. Are your events all on a website or something? Yeah, I'm tweeting them out. And it's great to see you guys. You can come out, ask questions. I'll be signing books. So I'm happy to talk to people after these events. And it's great when people come out and clearly listen to you guys, actually.

The book's really, really good. Yes. I read it in a weekend. Me too. Not because I had to, because I wanted to. And it's great when people come out and clearly listen to you guys, actually. So the book's really, really good. Yes. I read it in a weekend because I had to, because I wanted to, and I don't read books and I should add, uh, everybody should also,

of course, by Dan's book and, and people need to buy my book before the Pfeiffer juggernaut comes down the tracks. Right. And runs us all over. I've basically only been reading my friend's books and it's been fantastic. Um,

Ben, thank you for joining us. This has been a lot of fun and, uh, we will see you guys next week john lovett's back from vacation on monday and then uh and then dan and i will then and then we'll be on tour for the end of next week so you'll be uh you'll be hearing us live uh the book is the world as it is by ben rhodes fantastic memoir go buy it and uh and we will see you guys next week. Thanks. See you, Podfans.