Pod Save the World - 20 years after 9/11

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

Tommy and Ben cover the latest from Afghanistan, right-wing protests in Brazil, a coup in Guinea, bitcoin in El Salvador, Biden’s immigration policy, big elections in Germany, Japan and Canada, and tough times for celebrities in China. Then Ben talks to former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul about the Ukrainian President’s visit to America.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Potsay of the World. I'm trying it with a different tone today, Ben. I am glad to be here with you at Ponce of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I already screwed it up. I'm Ben Rhodes. You look tan, you look rested. I'm ready.

I'm chaven and ready for the rest of the year. You're in my old neck of the woods. Northern California. I was in Mill Valley, California. Beautiful country there. Mountains, hikes, you know, water. It's super nice. I have a buddy from college who lives in, his parents who live in Mill Valley, and I came out to

S.F. from D.C. to visit. and we went and hung out in San Francisco for a weekend and then went out to his parents' place and that's when I was like, okay, I'm moving to California. I think there's a good per capita world population in the Bay Area. I'm just going to go out on the limb and guess that.

Yeah, combined with some people that unsubscribe because we made fun of Bitcoin. Yeah. And then there's some anti-vaxer fringe sort of around the whole thing. There were some Larry Elder signs on the way up there. I mean, the Central Coast is pretty dark. I mean, it's like...

Yeah, it's a little red out there. Yeah. But it's good to see you again. Hannah and I went up to Santa Barbara for a couple days, and it again reminded me that like, it's cool to live in California where you can just drive places. You can drive places, yeah. It's the best.

It's the best. Since we're talking about California, we're doing a little chit-shad, small talk, bringing the listener in. Yeah. There is a recall election happening. Yes, there is. My understanding is Gavin Newsom is being recalled by a bunch of fringe lunatics who don't like him because he doesn't want people to die from COVID.

And so if you don't like dying from COVID, dying from COVID, you might want to consider voting no on the recall. Legal disclosure, what I just said was not authorized by a candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate. Well done. There was a giant truck driving around with a sign that said, make California great again and then a giant picture of Larry Elder on it. That's not helping.

That's not the incentive you need to vote no on this recall. Yeah, there's that. And then I think Ben Shapiro said he would consider moving back to California if Larry Elder once. We definitely don't want that. That's all the motivation. You need. We have a wide-ranging show today, Ben.

We're going to do some Afghanistan at the top, but it won't be the whole show like it has been lately because we're also going to talk about protests in Brazil, a coup in Guinea, Bitcoin in El Salvador. Stick with us, Bay Area buddies. Biden's immigration policies, elections in Germany, Japan, and Canada, and then a rough road for celebrities in China. And then Ben is going to talk to our old friend and colleague Mike McFall about Ukrainian president's visit to the United States. He met with Joe Biden. He went with Stanford. and met with McFall.

Many people are saying that that was actually a bigger deal for Zelensky. We'll find out. I don't know, Ben, you're going to talk to them in a minute. But Mike's like one of the smartest, best guys we worked with. So stick around for that. This is a good world that week. You know, I feel like coming out of the Labor Day weekend, we've got coups, protests, want to be coups, elections, gravel thrown at the Canadian Prime Minister, you know, all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, that was weird. Yeah, there could be a coup happening as we speak. in Brazil. We'll never know. Actually, there couldn't be a coup because he's Bolsonaro is currently in charge and his terrible people are trying to take over other parts of the government. I'm not sure what you'd call that. But we had, you know, crypto-fascist Tucker Carlson go to Hungary to pay his respects. And now we have crypto-fascist Jason Miller going to Brazil to pay his respects. Just a terrible person. Okay. So let's do a little roundup at the top of some of the latest news from Afghanistan because we should not lose focus of this story. The Taliban formed a government

Ben, and it's just as terrible as you'd expect. The prime minister is a man named Mullah Akund. I think I'm saying that right. If I'm not, fuck you, I don't care. You're bad person. He's a hardline, religious conservative, former senior leader of the Taliban government in the 90s. Mullah Berrador, the guy Trump pushed the Pakistani government to release from jail. Mike Pompeo's friend.

I tweeted a photo of them earlier. Check it out on my feed. He's the deputy PM. They round out the terrible with Mola Omar's son and Shrudaddin Hakani, one of the most virulent strains of the Taliban. So the terrorist as interior minister is not a good sign. Top to bottom, shitty people. The shittiest people possible running the place. Despite all that, some incredibly brave women have been protesting in Kabul and demanding

an inclusive government. Unfortunately, the Taliban broke up those protests with violence or literally beating them. Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, is in Doha, Qatar today for meetings. He's not meeting with the Taliban. There are reports from parts of Afghanistan to the Taliban is still preventing people from leaving the country, which is obviously a huge concern. the Office of Management and Budget asked Congress to appropriate $6.4 billion to resettle up to 95,000 refugees from Afghanistan. I am preemptively anxious and terrified by what Fox News will do with that information.

So, Ben, you know, the broader context, I think, is like Afghanistan is facing food shortages. There is potential economic collapse on the horizon because international aid has been frozen by the U.S. and others. That would be awful. This new government is also awful. What do you think the U.S. is like, what's their play here? Are we going to wait and see how these guys govern before making a next move? I saw Lindsey Graham said he'll oppose any efforts by the Biden team to legitimize the Taliban. No surprise there.

But that's the context. I mean, I think so far this is pretty close to the worst case in our in terms of the kind of goons who are running the government. We had talked about whether or not they might make a deal with like Hamid Karzai, the former president and Abdullah Abdullah, who shared this essentially the negotiating team for the previous Afghan government. And that clearly wasn't a real thing. They were like, no. They were like, yeah, what, it's a meetings, and then we'll basically just announce a Taliban government with some pretty hard-line figures to have,

like, Mullah Omar's son as a minister of defense, and Hacconi as the Minister of Interior is not a good external look or not good internally for the Afghan people. I think that means, though, that they're going to have acute challenges in actually governing. It's one thing to be a 20-year insurgency. It's another thing to be the government of a country with tens of millions of people in it.

And what's going to force the issue for the Biden team is that if you cut off all assistance Afghanistan, you're going to start to have acute food shortages, electricity shortages, but the Biden administration is probably not going on a route assistance through the Taliban. And so I think what we can anticipate is an effort to try to determine whether there are ways to provide basic humanitarian assistance like food aid that doesn't go through the Taliban. It goes through some NGOs or it goes to. through some UN process. That is likely to be very difficult. You also saw the Taliban really try to stamp out the last throes of resistance. Something caught my eye, Tommy, is that a lot of people in

Afghanistan, you know, have really pointed to Pakistan support for the Taliban. And even referring to kind of the Taliban as really an occupying force sponsored by Pakistan. Obviously, the Taliban does have some support inside of Afghanistan. But it was noticeable that the leader of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, was in Kabul right around the time that you had this kind of bombardment of the last vestiges of resistance of the Taliban with some reports that there may even have been Pakistani participation in that military effort. It does speak to, you know, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, which we haven't spent probably enough time on, we should, you know, we should not be giving any assistance to this country that is basically the patron of all these

So that's another thing to watch is the U.S. relationship with Pakistan. On the other hand, we'll probably want Pakistan to provide some safe passage for Afghans or trying to leave the country on foot. So this is complicated. Yeah. One thing that's just worth reading, there was a piece in The New Yorker called The Other Afghan Women by Anand Kopal, who was just an amazing report. I mean, he somehow managed to get out into Helmand province, like into the places where

the war was fought, talked to families about what two decades, in some cases, like really, more like four decades of war has been like for them. I think he said on average the people he spoke to had lost 10 family members to fighting. And that's from the Taliban. That's from coalition forces. That's from Afghan forces. So it really, I think, hampered home, like what life has been like for the Afghan people outside of Kabul, which is voices we don't always hear. Yeah.

I mean, this is a point you made last week, which is that there was huge suffering and loss of life in the civil war in these provinces. And for these people, just the guns falling silent, you know, is better than what they were dealing with, even if they, you know, aren't necessarily happy to have another Taliban. I think it, what it speaks to is if you get some calm, you can deal with the massive refugee challenge to probably be millions of people. That $6 billion might just be the starting point for what's going to be needed because the people leaving, you know, have nothing, right? And so moving around families and caring for them when they're in camps or when they're en route to some place where they can be resettled, that's going to carry with an expense. But if you can deal with the refugee challenge, try to mitigate some of the humanitarian circumstances and just, you know, take a breath. Then I think they're going to need to formulate a whole new policy for how to deal with Afghanistan, the Taliban, Pakistan, and hopefully try to move into a new phase here. Yeah, that's a good point.

The humanitarian needs and the concerns about people like Lindsey Graham about not wanting to route money through the Taliban are going to bump up against migration flows and refugees who just need to get out of the country to survive. And so that's going to be in conflict again. Yeah. It's basically a humanitarian challenge for the foreseeable future mixed in with a counterterrorism challenge as they watch whether or not, you know, we've talked about that plenty, you know, whether or not there's some emergence of ISIS or some group that merits U.S. attention. Yeah. Let's turn to Brazil because this week. in Brazil, there have been major demonstrations by far-right supporters of President Jaira Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is mad that the courts have allowed investigations into his allies for spreading misinformation.

He's also upset that the courts and Congress won't support his demand for paper voting receipts to back up their electronic voting machines in next year's election. So he's calling on people to protest, and they did. There were clashes with police on Monday night. This is still ongoing, I think, as we record, there's concern that it could turn into a January 6 redux. with Bolsonaro supporters threatening to take over the Supreme Court and other government buildings. Also, weirdly, as you alluded to earlier, the melon-headed current former Trump aide. I don't know what he is, Jason Miller, he's a scumbag.

He's briefly detained in Brazil before flying home from what he called CPAC Brazil conference. Apparently, that's the thing. Yeah, a little hang sesh with Bolsonaro, a little hang sesh with the dictator. I glad we're exporting CPAC now. Jason Miller did an interview with Steve Bannon where he said he was there peddling his new, quote-unquote, free speech app. It's like Gitter or something like that. get her done, something like that. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Jason would view a dictator slash whatever you want to call this sort of like soft preemptive coup attempt as a business opportunity.

That's kind of what all these Magga guys do. But I don't know, what do you think that? Like, how worried are you at this point that Bolsonaro was setting up an election where he will just refuse to accept the results if he loses? I'm really worried. And look, Bolsonaro, of all these leaders, he's the one that kind of most fashioned himself on Trump. I mean, he kind of deliberately mimicked some of Trump's, you know, over the top bullshit. He bought hydroxychloroquine. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

He bought a bunch of hydroxychlorid. Yeah. And he, you know, he also in the last campaign kind of mimicked the disinformation and the kind of brutal social media presence. And so there's two things of note here. Like the first is, yeah, there's a real problem here. Nothing about Bolsonaro suggests he's the kind of guy who would want to go quietly. You know, like, he's going to test Brazil's democratic institutions. Hopefully what happens is he's just, like, routed in this election and the military and

the political establishment and the people just have enough guardrails to prevent this guy from mounting some insurrection. But this felt like a test drive for his version of January 6th in a country where he might be betting that Brazil doesn't have, you know, the strongest political institutions and maybe he could get it done. It is worth noting that Jason Miller was like one of the senior most Trump aides at the end of this. And he's basically what he's on, like an insurrectionist roadshow. He's down there. Here's my app that allows you to spread relentless disinformation. Here's how we put together huge crowds that could then march on government buildings. Like I've got a coup in a box for you

that didn't quite work here, but maybe it'll work in Brazil. And people might look at this and think, why would any of these leaders from Orban to Bolsonaro, these people we talk about, continue to put their chips on Trump? Well, because they think there's a pretty decent chance that Trump is going to end up being President United States again. Yeah. And if they can weather their own authoritarian playbook in the next few years and come out on the back end with Trump resurgent and everything looks like it's moving in their direction.

Again, that's a big fucking problem that we have to be aware of. And we should laugh at it and make fun of these people. But like, this is, you know, this is a giant country, Brazil. This is an important country in Hungary. This is the United States of America that seems like it's still unraveling, you know, even on the back end of this election. So let's remember all these fascists seem to get connected to one another. We need to be as connected and as invested in the success of the Brazilian Democratic opposition

as people like Jason Miller are in the brown shirts down. Yeah, the brown shirt down. Yeah, I noticed that Politico today decided to write up the unbelievably credulous spin that Donald Trump is now closer to running because he thinks Biden has been suffering in the polls. Oh, because he wasn't going to run otherwise. He wasn't going to run every minute. Because he had so many other interests to pursue. He's never, he won't concede that he lost. Of course he's going to run.

Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous. Speaking of Coosbeen, there was one in Guinea on Sunday. Guinea's on Western Africa for those who don't know. Special Forces troops mutiny, they took over the presidential palace and then they announced on state TV that they, The government had been dissolved and the Constitution was invalidated. The coup leaders also released a video after several hours of President Alpha Kande in their custody looking like exhausted and disheveled. Condé was first elected in 2010.

It was their first Democratic election in the country's history, but he quickly became unpopular because of concerns about corruption. And then he tried to amend the Constitution to run for a third term. The coup leader is an army colonel named Mamdi Dumuya. He says they're the army of the army of the military. military will create a transitional government, but those promises don't always pan out. I don't know, Ben, not good. Too many coups lately. I don't know how this one will end. You know, there's a chance that, you know, the special forces guys that took over the government won't have support from the broader

military, but I guess we'll see. Yeah, you know, one of the interesting things about this beyond just how insane the pictures were of like a bunch of special forces guys, like taking the president, is that Guinea placed a huge bet in the last decade in some of its natural resources. They have one of the minerals that goes into aluminum. And they dramatically increased their market share. And no doubt the pockets of the president and the circle were lined with this mineral wealth. Wait for it.

Of course, China was deeply involved in this. I think there was something along the lines of like a $20 billion debt situation where the Chinese came in were like, hey, we're just going to. pour money into this country, if you give us all the stake in this mineral wealth, and, you know, we'll build some roads and probably pay you off. And it's like another indication that this shortcut to access to Chinese money, it always comes with strings attached. The Chinese Communist Party likes having strong men in these places. It fuels corruption. And it leads to this kind of political dysfunction where you have a totally natural resource dominated economy, right

for corruption, the people tend to get screwed, their environmental impacts. So to me, it's another warning sign of some of these small countries that are going into these kind of massive debt traps to China. Their politics become more and more dysfunctional. Meanwhile, the machinery of Chinese mining continues no matter who is running the coup government, right? So, you know, unfortunately, I think we're going to see more of this in some of these really natural resource dependent countries that have become more and more. kind of vassal states for Chinese resource interests. That's interesting.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. It was kind of interesting. Speaking of mining on Tuesday, El Salvador officially became the first country. Thank you. Great transitions today. In the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Congrats. The president of El Salvador, Naibu Kali, he's pushing people to download this government-run

e-wallet app. What could go wrong there? But I guess there were a lot of technical problems on the first day. And another indication of maybe why this is a bad idea. idea. The price of Bitcoin dropped 17% on Tuesday. Shortly after the government bought a bunch of Bitcoin, the price recovered a bit, but like, you know, not a thing you want your currency to do. But Cayley said he used the price decreased to buy the dip. So he's getting all the tech nomenclature, all the stock, nomoclature down. We'll see how this goes. I'm sure there are examples of ways

Bitcoin can be useful for people with remittances or whatever. If I were a Bitcoin evangelist, I'm not sure I'd want to put my stock in Buckely running this early experiments, but we shall see, at a minimum, Ben, today is a great day for money launders and organized crime in El Salvador, who now have an easy way to push money around, I guess. Well, I mean, he's running a country, not a hedge fund, you know, like, I mean, like buying the dip. What are you doing? Look, what are you talking about, man? Just open a Vanguard account? Yeah, like, people's pensions, you know, government services is going to be dependent on, like, the twists and turns of Bitcoin. It's just not there yet.

It's just not like not. And you're right. Like if you're an evangelist for the fact that Bitcoin can start to replace traditional currency, like the fact that the person who's jumped on that bandwagon is Buckely, this kind of like 30-something dictator wannabe in El Salvador is not like the best look. This is a guy who recently like mandated that all judges over a certain age retire so he can remake the judiciary. He's turning this country into kind of a like a playground. for his interest.

Yeah. He marched troops into parliament one time when he wasn't getting a vote he wanted. Yeah, it's not a good look. And by the way, it is going to make the whatever Central America strategy, you know, we do need. And I support what the Biden team is trying to do down there much harder. You know, El Salvador is at the core of a lot of the migration here, which may be fine with Buckely, right? Like people just, you know, depopulate and run your Bitcoin hedge fund. It's going to merit a lot of attention to the U.S., a lot of other countries in the hemisphere.

Because this is not feel like it's moving in the right direction. Yeah, it's moving in a really weird direction. Speaking of immigration policy. And look, if he's right, like if they all become Bitcoin millionaires, like, you know, that fine. I mean, sure. I'm not sure I'm betting on that. Yeah, like we could also send like the secretary of the treasury to Vegas and like put it all in red or whatever. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

The best idea. Speaking of immigration policy. So listeners of the show probably remember the Trump remain in Mexico immigration policy, that was the policy that required asylum. at the southern border to remain in Mexico while U.S. courts determine their eligibility rather than allowing them to wait in the U.S. Trump would demagogue that as catch and release is what he called it. So in practice, this policy forced a lot of migrants, usually from, you know, Central America to spend long periods of time and these dangerous, awful camps, basically, on just over the border. Biden ended the program. He ran on ending the program and did so

when he took office. But then Missouri and Texas sued the administration claiming that the process that the Biden team used to end the policy was legal in that getting rid of Remainan in Mexico harmed states by encouraging migration, apparently all the way up to Missouri. The suit got up to the Supreme Court. They ultimately ruled that the government has to reinstate Remain in Mexico. So that gets us today. There was a report in Politico that said the Biden administration is considering an asylum policy that they're kind of calling like Remain in Mexico light, which sounds like it's basically

you'll make some asylum seekers remain in Mexico while their cases are processed but with better living conditions and access to attorneys. I don't know. Like the reality on the border right now is much more complicated because we're still, I think, telling most people they can't come in. The U.S. is still telling most people they can't come in because of COVID restrictions. But Ben, do you think there's a version of remain in Mexico that's like really ethical or legal under international law around asylum?

I'm just wondering how you could do this. I mean, what a month the Biden team has had. Like, I mean, this is not their fault that the Supreme. Supreme Court is basically a bunch of activist, right-wing judges. Quick programming side note, amazing that Mexico Catholic countries legalized abortion today. When Texas across the border were backsliding. They basically made it illegal. There's some contrast for you.

I think that this is clearly not the long-term solution. And they're going to have to untangle these legal issues. It speaks to, you know, it takes you at least a year to kind of get your border policy. in place, all the different pieces of it. I think one thing that has been missing for a while, and, you know, the Biden team takes time to play catch-up on this. But like, for all those years that Republican Congress has just dumped money into border security and enforcement and hiring new ICE agents to try to deport people, one of the things where there have been huge shortfalls is on people to process asylum claims, like judges, lawyers, like the machinery of dealing with asylum

claim so you can, you know, treat them as the legally valid things that they are. And so I think part of this solution for the Biden team is going to be how can you build an infrastructure, including people, you know, people are infrastructure too, who can process these claims. God, I'm glad we stopped doing that on Twitter. For those who weren't Twitter all the time, for a while, everyone was just tweeting blank as infrastructure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so the risk of returning to that. I mean, so what they need is they need, infrastructure on that border and they need people that can process claims. Yeah. Yeah. And if they have to do some of this in Mexico, I think the way in which it can still be differentiated from Trump is Trump wanted

this to be a no man's land from which nobody would ever reach the United States. And he wanted to kind of basically dismantle the idea that you could seek asylum. And so I do think this is different. I mean, like it's not ideal. It's not even what the Biden team wanted. But if they can demonstrate that they can process claims and move people through the system, that's still better than where things were. Where they want to get to, I think, is an orderly process on the border that is both humane and has the legal channels available for people to have asylum claims that don't just languish forever. Yeah.

This is going to be a huge challenge. No one should be surprised if the politics and the polling on this start to look really bad for Biden, both on sort of the Afghan refugee questions when Republicans start demagoguing it because they will demagogue it and we're going to have to fight back hard on that and just all sort of immigration politics. You can tell the area where the Biden administration has been the most sort of like openly struggled maybe with what to do with how to unravel some of the Trump administration policies has been immigration. And I think like the what I take away from the Obama years is, and we've talked about this

in the context of refugees, you can't just try to keep this issue off the radar screen. No, Fox will do it every day. defensive about it, you have to make an argument that you have a better approach to dealing with this. You know, on refugees, it is that, you know, taking in 150,000 Afghan refugees over a period of two or three years is our moral responsibility. These people served and fought and some of their loved ones died with the United States. They will make our country better. I think on the border, the point is it like having some order down there instead of just building a few slabs a wall and trying to push people in Mexico. That wasn't solving the problem.

No. Having a process where you're trying to get it over, over years, root causes of migration in Central America, where you're processing people in an orderly and humane fashion at the border. So you still have an asylum process, but you have some order down there. And, yes, you are, you're letting dreamers stay in this country and you're welcoming legal immigration. Like, they have to make the case for that because it's going to get demagogue no matter what. So you should, you should fight it out on the things that you believe in. Yes, agreed. Okay, three big elections coming up. September 26th, Germany will vote to decide the successor to German Chancellor Angela Merkel when she steps down after more than 15 years, maybe 16 years running the show. That's unbelievable. The outcome is going to be important to Germans, obviously, but then also to the entire European Union given Germany's outsized influence. Merkel's successor in the Christian Democrats Party or CDU is a guy named Armin Lashett. He has struggled in the polls since he was caught joking around during a visit to a region. that had been devastated by floods,

kind of a rule of thumb bend that it's not a good idea. They don't crack jokes at a memorial service. That's FYI. Olaf Schultz from the center-left Social Democrats Party has done a little better on the campaign trail, but they're both, you know, I was reading a bunch of local, like, Der Spiegel coverage and stuff.

Both are basically competing to show that they can be like a very competent, boring successor to Merkel. No surprise that like a bombastic, like, dynamic candidate is not like a great fit for Germany. But one German, newspaper recently ran a headline that said, is this the most boring election ever? I think that was like the green party surged a bit after the floods. That was exciting. I think their polling surretersants

faded or lost a bit of steam, but they do seem to be a lot to be part of the governing coalition. So over the weekend, no surprise, Germany's foreign minister accused Russia of being behind efforts to hack German lawmakers, do some sort of info op in advance of the election. Another little fun twist on their election, Ben, is that Germany is expecting a big increase in mail. balloting this year again because of COVID and the far right AFD party is already making these preemptive Trump-like allegations of fraud so that will be fun any big predictions or like like you know what do you think the stakes are of this election and like can you talk a little bit about how this coalition will come together once they vote well you know you're right angloamerical

used to say to Obama when he would encourage her to be more outspoken and in defending certain values that you don't look for charisma in a German chancellor. That was Merkel's words. She said that. Did she know she's being funny when she said? Oh, she did. Yeah, whenever people say, like, give me an example of this person's sense of humor,

like that is a good example of a Merkel's sense of humor. So let's keep around one thing, right, the Nazis, the AFD party. You don't want that in Germany. They're kind of hovering around 10%, but I don't think there's any real worry that they're going to, you know, be a player here, but you don't want them. in the in the in the boondish dog at all in the parliament all i think that look you've had remarkable stability with merkel there for 16 years she has sky high approval ratings and you know i think

it's natural that that that electorate will want to try maybe a different leader of a coalition um and they'll have to be a coalition which i'll get to in a second and that leaves the social democrats in the greens and the social democrats interestingly are basically running as you know a slightly more left version of merkle you know and merkle was something of a centrist they're going to more on social safety net issues, a little bit better on climate change, but kind of more, running for more of the same with just kind of a different party in front. Last polling I saw it hasn't been like 25%. Yeah. And the greens are the ones running for change. And what they're saying is like, look,

like we need more dramatic change after 16 years of Merkel. That means, in particular, more dramatic action to do with climate and after the floods, there's a receptivity to that message. But also, they're saying, like, we have to think about our relationship with China. We have to think about whether Germany's made too many accommodations for its economic interest versus its values. So there's a lot to like in the Green Message. And they're also doing, you know, a nearly double as well on the polls as they did in 2017. They're 17 percent now up from 8.9. So that's great.

It's exciting. They're a player. And for the first time, like, their candidate is running as a candidate for chancellor, not just to be like a junior coalition partner. And basically that gets to the fact that at least two, probably three parties are going to have to come together to form a coalition. And that could be, you know, the three biggest parties of the Christian Democrats, Merkel's party, the social Democrats and the Greens, you know, the simplest way is whoever gets the most votes out of those ends up kind of running a coalition and divides up ministries of the other ones. There are other parties like the liberal party there, which is more libertarian, has sometimes, you know, snuck in and been a coalition partner. They haven't really been much of a factor here. But I think what I'm watching here, and this is the key thing for the world is to watch is, do you see in Germany a swing to,

the left, the left left, and the greens really overperform. Maybe even you have a green chancellor, but even if not that, like you feel like in that divide between kind of centrism and leftism, it's moving in that direction. Or do the Germans kind of play it straight down the middle and the next government's going to look a good bit like the last one just with a new face for it? Either way, I think it's still not like a right-wing populist turn, and so that's good. And so The center is holding in Germany. The question is just how far to the left is the center? It's still where it's been.

And I should have mentioned this earlier. The Green Party candidate is a 40-year-old woman named Annalina Beyerbach, who's this, like, exciting, dynamic, cool. She's like everything those other guys aren't. She had a head of steam, too, and then she had, like, sounded like American-style scandals, like, you know, questions whether she plagiarized a few pages in her book or, you know. What is this? The 88 Biden campaign? He gets a shit. There's like a Politico in Germany now.

Oh, Neil Kinnick or something. Yeah, yeah. But look, I mean, yeah, like this is what happens on a party that has never really played the highest stakes politics. Right. You know, they get more scrutiny. I'd like to see her like, you know, make a real run at it, though, because I think, you know, having a really vibrant green party is going to be good for climate action. Yeah, I agree. Even if they don't win the election, if they're a key player, the concessions that they will seek, I'm sure to be a part.

of government is Germany upping its ambitions. Totally. We need that pressure. Okay, let's turn to Japan. So less than a year after taking office, Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Shuga announced that he will not seek re-election. Shuga was extremely unpopular due to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It's funny he read a bunch of reports on them.

And all of them are like, also, he's so boring. He's so awkward. The guy is just not cool. So back to the drawing port for Japan, though it does seem like, uh, Japan is likely to pick another person from the liberal Democratic Party where Shuka came from. Don't be fooled here. Liberal Democratic Party means conservative party in Japan just to confuse a hell out of all of us. Yes. So I don't know. Continuity. Is that what we're looking for here? I mean, yes and no in the sense. First of all, this guy, you know, Shuga, he was kind of the guy behind the guy.

Yes. Yes. And then he steps in and they had this disastrous Olympics and COVID. Like this guy was not dealt the best hand. It shows you the dissatisfaction in the Japanese public and politics. What it feels like to me is the liberal Democratic Party, the LDP is still the dominant player there. There's not another party that appears poised to take advantage of this vacuum. There was this crazy time. I don't know if you remember Tommy, like the beginning of Obama years, when there were like five or six Japanese prime ministers, it feels like we're headed to that kind of situation where there's like a bit of a revolving door there because there's not really a strong figure there poised to take off. And that means there's going to be a bit of a malaise in Japanese politics here for a few years where they sort this out.

coming out of COVID. Yeah, I think sugar was just at the White House too. Yeah, yeah. You just did like a whole full bylap with Biden, but, you know, well, for the Biden people, Japan is pretty key to their China strategy, right? And so it is, it's harder, frankly, when you don't have like a strong prime minister and you're kind of waiting for, you know, because when you have these situations, these politicians are always focused primarily on their domestic political standing. So big foreign policy initiatives with the U.S. become less compelling than just shoring up their basis supporter home. Yeah, apparently, uh, Shuga did everything he could to try to sort of manufacture some way to stay in power. And people are like, no, man. No, no, no, no. You just got to go.

We need a different guy. Yeah. Last place is Canada. So Canada is going to have another election in September. Uh, over the weekend, a bunch of anti-vaccine protesters in Ontario, literally through rocks at prime minister, Justin Trudeau, which is horrendous. Trudeau's conservative party rival Aaron O'Toole has criticized him for calling this election in the middle of Canada's fourth coronavirus wave. It's worth noting that about 80% of Canadians are now vaccinated, so they leapfrogged us, actually, after a slow start. But the problem here for Trudeau is that he called this election last month, seemingly thinking that he could win a majority of seats in parliament, but more recent polls show that he may be slipping and lose some seats to the

conservatives. So what do you think? Is this like a bit of a mistake here? I guess, time will tell. Time will tell. I mean, yeah, like they thought they didn't have a majority. They felt they could get it based on the fact that they, you know, overperformed on vaccines relative to us, at least. I think the thing that has been interesting to me in watching this election is the Canadian right feels increasingly kind of Trumpy, you know, like there's pretty virulent media

on the right. They're these anti-vaxxers. It's kind of shocking. I mean, they threw gravel, I guess, in the U.S. Those would just be straight up rocks. You know, it's kind of a metaphor for what, where things are. But the challenge here, right, is that if Trudeau sinks and the conservatives outperform him, remember, he's losing about 20% to his left. Yeah, to Joe Bid Singh.

Yeah, to your buddy, right, who's a great guy, you know, like. What's that all about? You don't like him? I love him. I love him. I like Trudeau, too. They're both friends. I think they're both awesome.

But the point is that, like, you and I would be very comfortable with, you know, either those parties or both those parties together as they are now. like Canadian world it's a version of the Larry Elder thing like if you like just whatever you do like we can't have these people a Canada government by Justin Trudeau is so much better than

whatever is happening on the Canadian right that feels kind of like this hybrid of like what's happened in the UK and the US like let's not like mess with that right now yeah I think our crazy is bleeding north um so Ben we are coming up to the 20th anniversary of the 9-11

tax. I did not get you anything, but my understanding is you did a video for the inaugural episode of our Crooked History series. Tell me about it. I've seen it. It's fantastic. People should check it out. The team did an amazing job on this. Such a good job. I just kind showed up and like, you know, read something. That's bullshit. You wrote a whole long narrative thing that's super thoughtful. Well, you know, with the team like did a great job preparing that. I should just want to give credit where it's due. But like the the thing I want to put a point in here, which was, I think what was so good about this episode is, yes, we tell the history of, like, how the hell that we get to where we are now. But we also focus in on this question of why is there

forever war? And the kind of key cornerstone of the forever war is that 2001 congressional authorization for the use of military force. This is the blank check that it's allowed for presidents to wage war in God knows how many countries, dozens of countries. with pretty intense military action and several of those. And really, like, we've been talking about ending the war in Afghanistan, but, like, if you want to end the forever war, if you want to dismantle the infrastructure of the forever war, there's no way to do that without repealing and replacing this authorization of the use of military force with something much more limited, right? limited in terms of where you're authorizing military action for how long and against two. So people should check it out, but also consider that aspect of this, that we have to remember. It's not like the war and terror is over and now America's not a war anymore.

We are still taking military action in multiple countries, some of which the government could justify, but they should go through the process of having to justify it by trying to get a new authorization for the use of military force. Yeah. And even in Afghanistan, you heard Biden talk about it, like an overthrow. horizon capability to hit targets in Afghanistan. That means bombing shit. What does that mean? Is that authorized? Has Congress as the people's representatives and, you know, let's stipulate that that Congress has got its own flaws. But still, I mean, what we've seen is when you give a president just kind of unlimited power to wage war, you know, that war tends to grow and spread and spread tentacles that become kind of permanent infrastructure of warfighting. And, you know,

Now that we're at 20 years, like if the scrutiny of this moment coming after the Afghan withdrawal and coming on the 20th anniversary leads people to kind of stop and question underlying assumptions, one thing they should question is why we've been waging war in this country for 20 years under a single authorization passed by Congress in the aftermath of 9-11. We've seen all the tentacles that has had in our society and our foreign policy. It's time to change that. It is weird to be 20 years after 9-11 because I think it was the defining moment in the lives of most Americans for a very long time. And now there's a generation for which that is not the case, I think, anymore.

I found myself kind of going back to that place mentally, consuming a lot of stuff. There's a documentary series on Netflix called Turning Point 9-11 that's very good. I've not finished it yet. Carlos Lazada had a piece in The Washington Post where he, try to summarize basically 21 different books about 9-11 in its aftermath that is worth reading. And then I think the most powerful thing I've read so far was Jennifer Sr. had this piece in New York Magazine about how 9-11 just destroyed this family she knew. Like their son was in one of the towers and was killed.

It led the father down this sort of conspiracy theory path. It just sort of like destroyed the mother's relationship with her son's fiance at the time. It's just a brilliant story, piece of journalism, narrative that just, I don't know, it's just weird. We spent the last few weeks talking about ending the war in Afghanistan and like all the flaws and problems. And then it's pretty easy to watch these documentaries and watch that footage from the time and kind of get back in that mindset of just how terrorized people felt. Yeah, I was interesting when I was working on, I basically have a 9-11 chapter and after the fall in my book. And I started with my experience of 9-11 watching, you know, the attacks unfold before me in New York City. And that kind of transformed my life.

That's the moment I decided to get into politics and foreign policy. Didn't know that that would lead to this podcast on me, but it did. All this and more. You got a mug with your name on it right there. And the mug, well, the brand name. It's good merch, by the way, Pots of the World Mugs. I do love that mug. It's a good mug.

That's a good looking mug. And do you know, it's a good size? It's a good amount of coffee. Yeah, it's a good amount of coffee. It's a wide without being too tall. People should check it out. I mean, I assume it's still available. Yeah.

Well, look, I got to work in a merch blog. I'm glad I could help you work in a merch blog in your 9-11 reflection. All right, let me get back to my reflection here. So what was interesting for me, I expected in this chapter to kind of draw the line to kind of the overreach excesses in our foreign policy, right? And in the book, I focus on one incident in Yemen, where a U.S. strike in Yemen didn't kill everybody in the strike and some of the people escaping were referred to as squatters. And I remember just thinking, like, what happens when a superpower spends, like, trillions of dollars finding ways to kill people in other countries? There's like a dehumanization,

a degradation of human life that leads you to think of them. as squatters, right? And, you know, not as as human beings, even if they are terrorists and maybe they weren't, right? Because there's obviously been mistakes in the war and terror. But then I started like pulling the thread, you know, on this. And I'd written about this a bit in the Atlantic for a piece I wrote about the end of the 9-11 era. But, you know, how 9-11, it transformed our farm policy, so much everything we talked about in the show has a nexus to it. You know, the embrace of dictators like MBS and CC, you know, definitely the 9-11 turbocharged mindset fueled that. And if you look at the key quote-unquote partners in the war on terror, they're all more autocratic than they were before

9-11. Like even a Saudi Arabia, an Egypt, a Turkey, frankly Israel and the West Bank in Gaza, you know, this is, it is fueled autocracy in different ways around the world. You've seen it repurposed by the Orban's and Putin's of the world. But then domestically, you know, there's a straight line to the ugliest we see today from like that the jingoistic, xenophobic kind of rah-rah patriotism of the post-9-11 years. It was claimed exclusively by Republicans, right? When you and I were entering in politics, that was the days of like freedom fries, right, in the capital when the French opposed the Iraq war and, and, you know, Fox News becoming more virulent and casting opponents of the war. war on terror as kind of less than American. Well, that, that's evolved into the stigmatization of not just quote-unquote radical Islam, but the same kind of sense of grievance and hate could

just be reed purpose by Fox to like the block president or the immigrants at the seven border. Or, you know, there's a direct line in terms of how 9-11 unleashed this kind of belligerent nationalism that, that for a while was about the terrorists. But once I think the right figured out they weren't going to have these great victories abroad. They just kind of started fighting the war on terror at home, you know? And that speaks to how like ending this error is about ending wars, but it's also about ending a mindset that buttress's autocracy around the world. And it's also about ending or defeating, really, not ending because we can't end it ourselves, defeating the strain of politics it was unleashed, which is a very ugly us versus them brand of politics that frankly we see all around us to them.

Yeah, the racist, xenophobic, you know, just strain of America that was unleashed by 9-11. And, you know, it was interesting to see just this week, the head of the ADL apologized for their statements about the quote-unquote Ground Zero mosque, which was not a mosque, not really at Ground Zero. It was like a YMCA. And it was like this horrific, just demagoguery led by Fox News of this supposed to be a community center, right? Like, we got drawn into this with the Obama. It's just, like, it just, we're, people are just now making amends for these things that happened like 10, 20 years ago. I'm glad.

Yeah, I was glad to see that. I was too. But there's a big butt, which is, like, at the time, that would have been fucking useful. Like, I remember Obama finally spoke out about this at an if, in retrospect, it took a lot of guts. It did take a lot of guts. It did take a lot of gus. He spoke out about how there's freedom of religion in this country. And that has split all religions.

And you talked about how Islam had been a part of America since our founding and Thomas Jefferson. and a Quran. The next morning, I mean, you want to talk about like a bloodbath and your favorite newsletter, playbook, you know, but not just playbook. I mean, just all of D.C. was like, what is Obama doing? He stepped in it. The optics. This is terrible look that he's defending the ground zero mosque. And he wasn't even saying they should build a mosque like in Lower Manhattan. He's just saying anybody can do whatever they want in this country. And it was treated like. He was defending freedom of religion. Freedom of religion. And it was treated like just like some horrible political fumble, you know. It just shows you that was the mindset as recently as like a decade ago.

Yeah. It still was the mindset for a good chunk of the country today. We just need to get back to first principles here because what we've been doing. I mean, the other thing I like to think about Tommy is like, what have we had not done for 20 years? Like, what could have been done to fight climate change if we didn't have this obsession with terrorists? It's hard to think about. Yeah, I mean, 9-11 doesn't happen. The Obama birth certificate.

He went to school in a madrasa stuff. Does not have nearly the potency. I mean, it's a direct line. Although one thing I wanted to ask you about, I know you worked on the 9-11 Commission report. I saw that Biden is planning to release more documents about the Saudi role potentially in 9-11. I mean, like, what's the hang-up here? And do you think anything is going to come from this? So what was, yeah, like, what happened here quickly was that the congressional inquiry in 9-11

redacted a whole bunch of pages about Saudi Arabia's potential role. And it was a little more than that. And their potential role in the 9-11 attacks. Now, look, there was undeniably money that came from Saudi Arabia that was flowing al-Qaeda. And the Saudis hated when you say that, but like everybody knows that, right? This was pretty specific. And the commission I remember looked into it. They were basically Saudi intelligence types who were in contact with the hijackers, I think, in San Diego during their time here.

So, yeah, there were the two of the hijackers stayed at a guest house with a. guy who had some sort of like unofficial ties to the Saudi government. You're sort of like not a spy, but maybe like an informant. So they always wonder about his role, right? Yeah. And I wasn't investigative on the commission. I was helping the co-chair, the Democratic co-chair. But, I mean, my memory of that was essentially it looked into it.

And obviously it's not a great look, you know, that why would someone with ties to society intelligence have any ties to hijackers in any case, by the way? Like, even if he wasn't offering material support. report like it just shows you that there weren't that many dots you know removed from uh i mean look osama aladdin came from one of the most prominent families in satiria he's a rich kid but but there always been these redactions um and the families hated it and and and the appearance was that the redactions were protecting somehow saudi arabia um not some kind of acute national security interest i think i remember when the commission report came out

I got asked by friends at the time, hey, what do you think you learned that was most kind of striking in this process? And what I remember is that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were like all over the place in this report in terms of like who was involved in the financing, where did these people live? And Iraq is the country invaded. It didn't feature at all. And what's interesting is that years, years later, like, again, Egypt, that's where Muhammad Ada came from, Saudi Arabia, that's where the bulk of the hijackers came from, and a lot of the money that went into al-Qaeda came from. Pakistan is where al-Qaeda would end up having a safe haven.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan have been, like, U.S. quote-unquote, partners for 20 years. There's something backwards about that. One interesting thing I learned from that, Carlos Lozada piece in The Washington Post, was there's this famous presidential daily brief from August 6, 2001. entitled bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S. That PDB briefing was delivered by Michael Morrell, our old colleague, apparently Bush's response was, congrats, Michael, you covered your ass. You know what I mean?

It was seen as like a CYA, you know, PDB piece from the intelligence community. But this story said that the commission report noted that that was actually the 36th PDB relating to bin Laden or al-Qaeda that year alone. I just didn't realize there was that volume of churned because, you know, the Bush people the push people somehow get a pass for this happening on their watch. Fucking Ari Fleischer does his tweet TikTok every day on 9-11.

By the way, you know, you have a couple days to unfollow or mute Ari Fleischer, or you can do what I did and get blocked by tweeting at him that it happened on his watch and they failed to take any of the steps necessary to prevent 9-11.

But it is shocking to me that they just get a pass. Well, it's pretty amazing because it speaks to kind of the asymmetry in American politics, but at that time after 9-11, And people really did rally around the flag. And I did too, right?

And people wanted Bush to succeed in dealing with this. Totally. And people didn't want to blame Bush. And there was a pretty big paper trail. Not that they had like some, you know, they ignored some critical piece of intelligence, but that they didn't take terrorism generally seriously. They came in. Oh, kind of seriously.

Yeah, they were dealing with some other stuff. They were doing their first year agenda, right? and the terrorism people were warning, like, this problem's getting worse, this problem of al-Qaeda. And Clinton had fired cruise missiles at Bin Laden and not gotten them. And Richard Clark, right, who was a counterterrorism advisor at the White House, was warning that there could be a big attack in the United States. And what's interesting is that Democrats just kind of chose not to, even after the commission report came out, it was kind of still seen as poor form to raise questions about whether Bush could

or should have done more. it's remarkable to jump ahead to something like a Benghazi or to what we were dealing with now in Afghanistan where the Republican Party, like if anything bad happens while a Democrat happens to be president, like, or, you know, or if something a Democrat does, like Afghanistan withdrawal creates, you know, obviously these complications, like it is like an immediate political scandal. It just shows part of what you realize when you go back to that time is how quaint it was that everybody, but he did rally around the flag. I mean, January 6th, the Republicans couldn't even rally around the flag for a day before covering their ads.

You're going to talk about C.YA. It's like the entire fucking Republican Party since the violent insurrection at the Capitol. Yeah. And you know what? Here's a very contrarian D.C. take. Maybe civility is really bad because maybe we did a little too much rallying around the flag after 9-11. And there should have been a little more finger-pointing and a little less believing of the people that just had this happen. Well, they took advantage of that believing to drive.

a truck through, you know, the Iraq argument. You know, like they, they knew they had a credulous press, let's face it, and a public that wanted to back the commander in chief. And instead of using that to go get al-Qaeda, they use that to invade Iraq. And that's the thing that's just never going to make sense to historians. Yeah. Two more quick things. So Ben, a quick Brexit update for you. So according to an article I read in the independent, the government, the UK government, has given companies temporary approval to dump raw sewage into rivers and the ocean. This is the biggest supply chain disruptions stemming from Brexit, probably some from COVID as well, but mostly Britain's departure from the EU, have made it difficult to get the chemicals you need for water treatment.

So they're just letting it rip instead. They're just letting it flow into the rivers. Last week, there were also apparently concerns about a, quote, blood tube shortage in the hospital system. I don't know what that is, but it sounds gross. And intermittent you want. No. Intermittent shortages at supermarkets. So Brexit going well.

Yeah. Well, and this is what people warn about. There'd be all these second, third, fourth, fifth order consequences. It's not that simple to just leave a common market and a common political union. No. So Boris Johnson undersold all this shit. It was going to happen. And now literally it's happening.

I was reading that he's going to put forward a plan to raise taxes too. I don't know what's going on over there. I don't know he was a conservative. anymore. I don't get it. Well, he promised not to and, you know, read his lips. Mark Landler, help us understand. Last thing, things are getting rough for celebrities in China. So according to the BBC, 22 K-pop fan accounts were suspended by Weibo, which is Twitter in China, basically. They were suspended for, quote, irrational star-chasing behavior, end quote. This came after users use Weibo to crowdfund a plan to customize an airplane for a singer in BTS's 26th birthday.

Maybe the Chinese government has a point on this one. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's rewind. No, we don't pick a fight with these. You're pro-cust. Yeah, you're right. I just don't want you to get the mob on us. Thank you for that.

Lovett actually did this to us once. I want to apologize to all the BTS fans. It's totally appropriate to customize 737 for some dude's birthday. The government also said they would ban Brod's. by quote, vulgar internet celebrities and, quote, feminine-looking men because they don't portray Chinese values, apparently. It does sound like the broader issue here that they might be freaked out about the Chinese government is that these fan-based communities have shown an amazing ability to organize, like,

real-world events. I'm sure we all fondly remember when K-pop fans and TikTokers ruined Trump's Tulsa rally. But it's very interesting. Like, you're seeing this crackdown on something. celebrities, you're seeing a wave of resignations by founders of top Chinese tech companies. There is just like decapitations happening across the non-governmental parts of the sort of like Chinese elite. Look, I think that Xi Jinping is governing more and more as like a one man, one rule, totalitarian

autocrat. I think that's what he doesn't like when anybody else has like a, I mean, you want to talk about celebrity worship. They make kids learn songs about Jijun Ping. This is not a system that is concerned about kids worshipping celebrities. It's just they're only allowed to worship one, right? And so to me, everything from the crackdown on tech to the takeover of Bitcoin to this BTS move, it's about control and consolidating control really in one person's hands. And that should be alarming. Yeah. Yeah. But it also creates vulnerabilities because people, people start to chafe at that.

Like, they, you know, there are people in China that have been willing to put up with not having political space as long as they can, like, you know, get into their BTS. You know, like, I think the story of the last decade plus, and probably much longer, if you're a scholar, but, you know, the times we've been working in government really focused on the stuff, is that, as Mike McFal would say, the guys with the guns tend to win in, in revolutions. Yeah. So, like, I say this because I'm tempted when I see sort of, like, demand.

domestically created resistance movements in Afghanistan, for example, like these incredibly brave women, and some men as well, protesting to think, like, I wonder if actual change can come from, like, truly, like, indigenous movements like that. Or if, like, you said, these crackdowns in China will actually lead to some sort of, like, shaving to the point of real resistance. But then I just worry about, one, the people with the guns and two, like, the just massive surveillance state that has been constructed. and I wonder if that's just tip the balance forever. I mean, I guess, like, I've thought about this a lot.

You can argue that nonviolent movements tend to fail until they overwhelmingly succeed, right? So take the whole Cold War, you know, the Prague Spring, a Hungarian uprising crush, like, you know, a lot of failed movements until 89, 90, when they all just broke through and succeeded at the same time. And so the question is, what is it that brings about, like, the more fundamental sipping point? I think you're right that the big question mark today is, does technology render that impossible? Because, you know, there's a capacity to kind of monitor what everybody thinks and accesses information-wise in a society. So you can't have, like, you know, underground movements that are, you know, people are passing information back and forth, you know, without the government surveillance getting it. So I still believe in that tipping point. And we had to work towards it.

And we had to recognize, though, the technology is probably the bigger obstacle. Back then, you know, the big obstacle was like, you know, Soviet tanks. I mean, now it may be Chinese censors. Yeah. And America falling apart at the seams. But that's a longer. Yeah, we got our own problems over here. So I did want to ask you one question, Tommy, because, like, I feel like I'd drone on about my 9-11 experience.

So, like, what was your 9-11 experience? I was at Kenyon College, which is in the middle of nowhere. in Ohio. So like there's no safer place to be personally. My dad worked at the time at a company called Marsh McLennan, which had I think 250 people at the top of one of the towers. So I was pretty positive. He was not there and that he'd never worked there and was in a different building. But like, you know, 9-11 is the ultimate sliding doors day for a lot of people. Yeah. Missed flights showing up early at work, right? Like life and death choices. And it was pretty fucking. freaky. And, you know, I remember the couple classmates who lost parents. So, like, it hit home,

but I was still so, like, I just can't imagine the New York City experience where you literally could see and smell and taste like the aftermath. Yeah. Yeah, it was, well, the two things that jump out to me among many, but one is when the first tower collapsed, and we saw that from across, I was on the Brooklyn waterfront with this kind of rag-tag group of New Yorkers. And first of all, I thought that like 50,000 people were killed. Yeah, yeah. I just didn't know that a tower could collapse. I thought all of Lower Manhattan was wiped out.

And then also, there were no cell phone service because the cell phones. So for like a weird period of time, like, you know, probably 30 minutes until I found somewhere with the television, I had no idea. I thought there were rumors that because we heard that Pentagon had been attacked. like for all I knew like all of America like because people started to say like I heard the series towers attack so there was this weird period of time when I literally thought it was like much much worse even than 9-11 and I'll never forget that feeling of just what what the hell is going on you know and then the second is in the days after I was at NYU at the time as a graduate student and so that's the lower Manhattan pretty far down you'd walk around and could smell it for like

weeks like this very distinct acrid smell and there really were and some of you've seen like posters of missing people all over new york city um yeah all over new york city just you know the turning point nine 11 doc like it it shows some of the footage of people jumping it plays some of the voicemails people were leaving both from like flight 93 look i i will forever blame the bush administration for invading a rock but i think unless you lived through it and frankly things didn't get less scary for a long time. Like, the fear was so purpose of the anthrax attacks. The anthrax attacks, the DC sniper, the like constant, you know, red, green, all the terror alert. Fucking terror alert system. Like, we all were just on edge for like

several years of our lives. Yeah, no, and it's worth as, I'm not excusing policies. I'm just saying, I'm not excusing policies. It is worth, you know, as people like have become quite critical of, you know, the post-911 wars. Like, there was a reason that. people were scared and there hasn't been another terrorist attack like that and there probably would have been absent like a lot of government action right I mean so but yeah like that day there's nothing yeah there's just nothing I mean it was interesting this year my parents you know obviously is still in New York City and they were saying I was asking them how to COVID compare you know because to their experience of COVID that was interesting.

and terrifying was for that that peak period of a couple weeks all day, all day long and all night you heard sirens. And so it was a different kind of terror, right, of just the sense of people getting sick and dying all around you. More isolated too. And more isolated. And I think there is something about, you know, and I wrote this piece for like Atlantic about that, but like COVID to me was kind of the bookend. Here's something that in its own way is even scarier, right? I mean, it's certainly killed a lot more people. But, yeah, like, there's great, that list of books reminding me of a lot of good books, including Dexter Filkins, The Forever War, which I don't know if that was the first, I mean, well, Dexter was referring to the fact that some of the troops called it the Forever War, but that's about a rock, but that, I remember seeing that, that stood out to me. Yeah, Dexter's all over this, turning point nine 11, doc.

Draper's book, How to Sell a War about the Rock War is incredible. I've been reading the Spencer Ackerman one. I've not finished it yet. I think he does a really good job. It's an indictment. Super critically. Yeah, it's a polemic. I do think one of...

Useful. Yeah, I think one of the challenges of the criticism from the left is sometimes they're able to identify the political landscape and context in like the fact that a black president named Barack Obama has no wiggle room on some of these issues,

especially when he's been accused of being raised. in a madrasa and there was a horrible terror attack at an army base and the Christmas day bomber. Like, but they like, they identify the politics, but then don't recognize the fact that that enormously constrains your ability to operate. Like, there's a part in the book where they talk about how, like, Obama did or said something about closing Guantanamo that, like, lost Lindsey Graham. And I'm like, if you don't know by now that Lindsay Graham has no principles, like, what

we doing right there was no getting lindy graham he's going to do whatever the political wins told him to do yeah yeah no and and um well what it speaks to too because i i you know um the criticism from the left that i because a lot of it i i agree with i like some of it um the one on guantanamo it actually speaks to a bigger issue because the problem with guantanamo obama would have closed gitmo in 2009 if he could of, right? The Democrats join with the Republicans in Congress to vote to prevent him from closing it and never lifted the restrictions. It would have allowed him to close it, essentially the ability to just put in prison people in the United States who are in Kimo. What that speaks to you, that that's not just a statement of defensiveness. It speaks to the fact that if you really want to

change things, just saying like, well, Obama should have ended all this and now saying Biden should end all this. That's not going to cut it. Like, you need Congress. You need the media, right, like that that has been at the forefront of advocating for the most hawkish policies throughout the last 20 years up through today, right? There needs to be a societal shift of priorities. And I think it's happening to me, it hit me when I was teaching this class of UCLA. And I asked them to list what are the biggest issues that concern you after we just read George W. Bush's post-9-11 speech.

And terrorism didn't even make the list. You know, what's going to change things is that Americans are moving on, you know. But I think we have to recognize it vesting all of our hopes and individual presidents to totally keep us safe or to totally dismantle the post-9-11. That's not going to work. You have to build support across society for a different approach. Yeah. And like you can say we screwed up the politics on Gitmo or whatever else. But like there are some issues where people just have a very strong emotional view.

I mean, look at the insanity around the quote unquote Ground Zero mosque. Again, like when you have 9-11 families who lost loved ones saying it's an affront to me to build this here, like that is an emotional message. It's going to be hard to counter with any kind of logic, reason, context, anything. And like that's what these things end up getting spun up by bad actor like Fox. And look, you Obama did the right thing on that. He spoke out and got basically probably lost like a week of his political capital defending that and, you know, and that's fine. But the point I was making really about the ADL and other organizations is if they had had his back, that would have been. easier. I make this point because we're about to go through this on Afghan refugees. And so don't

look up a year from now and say, why the fuck didn't Joe Biden get in more Afghan refugees? If you believe in that, you have to step up and fight because, like, Joe Biden needs to see that there are people that are going to back him up on this thing, calling your members of Congress, welcoming Afghan refugees, making the case in your local media. Like, the right does this, by the way. So this isn't like something that we're asking, you know, like the right wing is very good at doing this. We just need to do it as well. If we really want to turn the page on this error. Yeah, and we can't start in this defensive backfoot place where like the starting point is trying to explain that we're vetting people to ensure they're not terrorists. Like that is a

losing argument. That's not the starting, but the starting point is that these people have a right to be here and that they'll make this country better. And it's like women, children, kids, translators. Like, come on. Okay, I'm very pleased to welcome back to Pazade the World, our good friend Mike McFall, our former ambassador to Russia, the, the, director of the Freeman Spogley Institute for International Studies at Stanford, and the author of from Cold War to Hot Piece, a terrific book on All Things Russia in recent history, if you haven't read it. Mike, thanks so much for joining us. Glad to be here again.

So we wanted to have you on. We've obviously been talking a lot about Afghanistan, but President Zelensky of Ukraine was recently at the White House to meet Joe Biden last week. I know you hosted him at Stanford. You also had a really great op-ed in the Washington Post if people didn't see it setting up that visit and arguing for a fairly robust American investment in President Zelensky's success and in Ukraine itself. I wanted to just start by getting your reaction to the Zelensky visit. What do you think was achieved? What do you think the challenges are coming out of that visit? Well, I'm glad we're talking about Zelensky in Ukraine because you're right. He came to the United States that are pretty difficult time, given all the other news that was happening.

But if you follow events in Ukraine and you follow events in the bilateral relationship, this was a very important meeting. As I wrote in the op-ed, you know, we're at a time, as you know well, Ben, because you've written about it yourself. We're at a pretty dark time in the history of democracy in the world today. Freedom House says we're 15 years into a democratic recession. others say we're 10 years into a democratic recession here in the United States. And, you know, we had some breakthrough countries. So you know them well, Burma, Tunisia, Ukraine, just to name a few over the last 15 years, but we've had some counter-revolutions.

We've had some coups. You know, what's happening in Tunisia right now is very tragic. You know Burma better than I do, but Myanmar is very tragic. Actually, Myanmar came up at the event with President Zelensky here, Ben. And Ukraine remains, in my view, one of the breakthrough countries over the last several years that did have a democratic breakthrough back in 2013, 2014, and is holding on, but they're holding on next to a autocratic dictator, you know, robust autocracy with a lot of military might, Vladimir Putin's Russia, that is occupying part of Ukraine today. And it reminds me of the

Cold War struggle in Germany, where Germany was also divided. And on one side, you had free Germany, on the other side, occupied Germany. And I think Ukraine plays that role in the struggle for democracy and autocracy in the world today. And that's why I think it was so important for the administration, the President, President Biden to meet with President Zelensky, A, and then B, to correct the past. I mean, hopefully most of your listeners are forgotten. But, You know, there was a time when we associated the word Ukraine with corruption, Biden's son, and an impeachment trial. And that was a horrible chapter in U.S.-Ukrainian relations. And so I think it was important for President Zelensky to come and, you know, reboot relations

and to get us into kind of a normal rhythm of bilateral relations. And I think he achieved that. And I think President Biden achieved that as well. I would like it to be more. I think this is not a normal period of history in Ukraine. So to treat Ukraine as a normal country, I think is kind of analytically incorrect, but way better than what happened over the last few years. Yeah, I mean, the last time there was a talk of his Lewinsky visit, it was because, you know, Rudy Giuliani was over there dangling it in exchange for Dern Hunter Biden. And that led to the first impeachment for people who don't remember those greatest hits.

So you saw Zelensky in Stanford. He came out to speak there. You hosted him. And a couple questions out of that. I mean, the first is just to follow up. Did he get kind of what he was seeking in terms of security assistance, in terms of political support? Like what was your sense of his mood? And do you think there's still more that the Ukrainians would seek from the United States in terms of security assistance or greater political support for? what they're dealing with with Russia? Well, I would say generally speaking, I did have a chance to chat with him about his meetings, meetings, right? Because he had many meetings, but the most important was, of course, with President Biden and the Oval Office, the thing that, as you reminded, Trump was trying

to trade to help his reelection campaign. He was pretty optimistic about the meeting. He thought it went well, went twice as long as was as scheduled, and you know how that has been. Everybody loves that and the meeting goes longer. But, you know, President Biden knows more about Ukraine than probably any president we've ever had in American history. I actually traveled to Ukraine with Vice President Biden when you and I worked together at the White House. And that was reassuring to President Zelensky that he was talking to somebody that he felt really did know the challenges that they were facing. They were happy with the new military assistance. The Biden administration put together some more incremental assistance, but on top of what already was there, it's a pretty

substantial package. And there was some new humanitarian assistance that was there as well. So I think on in in terms of the actual deliverables, it was a pretty successful meeting. And Ben, you'll appreciate this because you and I used to write some of these documents together. He told me two or three times, go look at the joint statement. You know, it was a six-page document released by the White House and released by his office that had lots of substantive pieces on energy and, you know, half a dozen other things that was a testimony. And I think correctly, that we were leaning into doing something substantive. So that was the positive piece. The second piece that was important to him that I think he maybe felt a little frustrated. And this is just me reading

the tea leaves, right? But he had a bigger mission for his trip. He wanted to introduce the American people to Ukraine because he rightly thought in his team, you know, I'd been working with his team about his visit here to Stanford, rightly felt that most Americans don't know anything about Ukraine besides the, you know, the horrible history of that Trump era. And so he wanted to, in a explain to the American people who they were and what they are. And, you know, I think that's part of the reason he wanted to come to California. So it wasn't just a Washington stop. And remember, he's a, he's a TV guy, right?

He became famous through this incredibly popular show called Servant of the People in Ukraine, where a math teacher, he played a math teacher on TV who suddenly became president. And that kind of what happened to him in real life. subsequently. But it's a, you know, he wanted to bring a kind of optimistic message of the new Ukraine. That's why he came here to meet with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs from Ukraine. And he, I didn't track what he did in Los Angeles, but that he was heading to down to you to also engage with Hollywood and engage with the new America to kind of create this image that Ukraine is a new Ukraine for the American people.

Do you, I mean, just quick on him. I mean, what's your assessment of him? You know, he came out of nowhere, like you said, political outsider. You know, I've noticed he has done some things like taking on some of the power of these entrenched oligarchs. And obviously, he's taken a pretty firm line with Russia hasn't been pushed around. Where do you see him, you know, over a couple years into his tenure here? You know, I'm cautiously surprised. You know, I didn't know him from before.

I knew a lot of other politicians in Russia. Ukraine, excuse me. In fact, there was a time, I used to go back to Kiev back and forth pretty often, where I thought I knew all the presidential candidates, including even one rock star, by the way, his name Slava Barkerchuk, who spent some time with us here up at Stanford, Ben, in what we thought was his preparations to become a presidential candidate. He was a very popular guy, and then he chose not to run.

and in the vacuum, or maybe Zelensky was the one, there was always going to be this opportunity for an outsider, given how unpopular all the previous leaders were, and Zelensky filled that vacuum, right? He grabbed that electorate, and at the time, it was completely bizarre to me. I want to be honest, I had never heard of him. I'd watched a little bit of his TV show. And initially, he then,

came in, remember, he's from the east. Yeah. He's not from the West. His first tongue was Russian. He's Jewish and, you know, a TV star. And there was a lot, but, but, you know, his TV show is in Russian, if I'm not mistaken, and most certainly was initially in Russian. And so there was a lot of, you know, I would say anxiety from the, the western part of the country that is much more pro-European anti-Russian.

And initially, you know, he thought he was going to make peace with Putin. That should sound familiar. Lots of people think they're going to do that. But I think over the course of two years, I'm impressed with what he's done. He has taken reform seriously. Some things they've done, as he bragged about here at Stanford, you know, in terms of e-governance, they're ahead of us in the United States in terms of their passports are all online. You can do a lot of things on your iPhone in Ukraine that you can.

not do on your iPhone in interacting with the U.S. government. He has taken some measures against oligarchs, including the number one pro-Putin oligarch, this guy Medvedevichuk and his television stations. Nobody would have predicted that from a couple of years ago. He made some mistakes, too, in my view, the way he replaced the head of their main gas companies called Naftagaz. I don't think was done in a very democratic or transparent way. So, you know, it's not without blemishes, but, but on the whole, I'm impressed. And I want to remind your listeners, that guy has a really hard job. I mean, he, you know, don't forget, he's got Putin breathing down his back all the time.

He's got Putin soldiers in Crimea. He's got Putin supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine. And at a time when, you know, we haven't been very supportive. We in the West and the Trump administration. So I admire what he's been trying to do. And I wish him well, not just because of what he's trying to do inside Ukraine, but I really do think Ukraine is one of those frontline states in the battle between Democrats and autocrats in the world today.

So one other question on Ukraine was, you know, your op-ed got me to thinking in this conversation did too, of we often make the mistake, I think, of, you know, issuing absolute objectives that aren't going to be achieved in the near term, right? So, like we'd all like to see every last vestige of corruption eliminated in Ukraine and rush out of Crimea as well as Eastern Ukraine. But, you know, we haven't eliminated corruption in this country. And Putin shows very little sign of leaving Crimea, never mind Eastern Ukraine. What would success look like in the next few years?

Or, like, what is progress? Like, what would you like to see happen so that a few years from now we feel like if Ukraine is kind of on the fault line of illiberalism and democracy, like what is progress? Well, first before I think about the future, I think the analytic point you made is radically important for Americans. And you've written about this, but I want to underscore it. These are not the days when the poor Ukrainians come to us or the World Bank or the IMF and they say, teach us how to be better, you know, oh, great ones, because you have all the knowledge about democracy and fighting corruption. We have to have humility.

And, you know, sometimes been with our government, even the Biden administration, sometimes they're a little toned off to that. You know, we are not the symbol to the free world that we used to be after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's on my mind because we're on the 30th anniversary. of Ukrainian independence, of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And back then it was we had all the answers and the, you know, the Scragly Ukrainians and Russians and Georgians needed to come and get the good news of the Lord, you know, I should not mix metaphors here. But, you know, and I was part of that.

I want to be honest with you. I was part of that crew and, you know, going over with groups like the National Democratic Institute and telling them how we did our budgets and, you know, know, I took a group of people from L.A., in fact, from back literally 30 years ago to the Soviet Union to talk about how we did budgetary processes compared to the way they did it. Those days are gone. And let's have some humility. There are certain things that some of these countries do better than we do. and instead of this kind of client recipient framework, I was trying in my op-ed, and I tried to want to get the chance with our government to get rid of that and to say, no, on security, yeah, we're sending them javelins.

That's great. And we're helping their security. But they're helping our security, too. Who are the soldiers fighting Putin's people, literally dying in combat? with Putin and his surrogates, it's Ukrainians. So when we talk about European security, let's acknowledge what Ukrainians are doing for common European security, not just they're the clients and they're the recipients and we're the giver.

And I feel that way about issues like corruption and democracy generally as well. We've got to change the analytic framework. And no more hectoring. You know, if we're going to hector, they can hector. We're all trying to fight corruption and should, but we're all doing it. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly how we should think about it.

And small D Democrats should stand in solidarity as Americans, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Chinese, in these kind of common ideas, not in this kind of power, you know, state power structure that is 30 years out of date. So thank you for allowing me to say that. Now, having said all that, I have. I think it's pretty simple. Sovereignty and democracy. And I think President Biden and his team should prioritize. If you look out there in the world, what are some wins?

There's not a lot of wins in this domain space right now. There's not going to be a lot of Democratic breakthroughs, in my opinion, in the next four to eight years. And so consolidate places where you've had breakthrough. And therefore, I think it is, you know, no more wars. And remember, non-events are really important in history. Yeah. At least that's what I teach you to my students at Stanford. You know, a non-second annexation will be a tremendous achievement.

So work for that non-event of no bigger war between Ukraine and Russia. And second, you know, I want us to lean in on every dimension of, consolidating democracy, of which corruption is one of them, but it's not the only one. And, and, you know, this is an important thing to remember that in most countries in the world where we want to see democracy consolidate or progress, we don't have many allies in the country. And we most certainly don't have allies in the governments oftentimes, right? Countries I know well, we don't have a lot allies in Russia. Or allies are hungry.

Yeah. Right, right, right. But in Ukraine, we have this unique opportunity and that the president of the country wants to do this. The parliament, many of them want to do it. Civil society. Ukraine's got an incredibly robust civil society. They want to be in partnership with us.

So, you know, if we're up to me, I would just like lean all in in a big bet on Ukraine. and if that breaks through, that will have positive influences on other parts of the region. You know, Ben, you know we have a common friend in Gianna Nemsova. Jana's father was a really good friend of mine. His name was Boris Nemtsov. He was tragically assassinated in Russia in 2015. Boris was a huge defender and backer of first the orange revolution in Ukraine and then the Maidan revolution in 2013, 2014.

And he used to always say to me, this is well before I joined the government. But later when I joined the NSC and he got the opportunity to meet our boss, Barack Obama, and he said it to President Obama. And he used to say it to me when I was a U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Russia when I would meet with him. He would say, Mike, everything is about Ukraine. And why did he say that? He said it because he wanted to break the myth that Slavic people could not embrace liberalism and democracy. And for him, this is a Russian human rights activist, Russian opposition activist. He saw, you know, their victory would have really positive support for what was happening in Russia. And at our event here with Zelensky last week, a woman in a Belarusian t-shirt got up and in a very emotional way said, you know, your victory is important to sustain what we are fighting for in Belarus. So that's why I think the fight in Ukraine is bigger than just the fight inside the country itself.

Well, look, that's a phenomenal note. And we talk a lot about the connections between Putin and various authoritarian and far-right forces. we should all be connected to the people who are the small D Democrats from small D Democrat, Belarus, Hungary, Poland, the U.S. Well, Mike, we'll have you back hopefully to talk about these Russian parliamentary elections, but thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on a really important topic that hasn't got a lot of attention.

Thanks for having me, Ben. Thanks again to Mike McFaul for joining the show by his book. It's very good. It's smart. And if there's anything you guys want us to talk about next week, tweet it us, guess. And, you know, if you wouldn't mind, review, share. Smash that five-star. Five-star review. And don't forget to go to the Crooked Media YouTube page and check out Ben's narration of this awesome, awesome segment on Post-911 history. It's worth your time. Cricket history, great idea,

too. Cricket history. Like smash that. Is your subscribe button they can say. Oh, yeah. Smash away. Smash it. Smash it. Smash it all. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.