Pod Save the World - A$AP Trumpy

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Tommy and Ben discuss the new UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Hong Kong protests turn violent, Trump’s bizarre pool spray with the Pakistani PM, updates from Iran, Israel and Russia, Trump plays good cop, bad cop with John Bolton, China’s military moves, a new Defense Secretary and maybe intelligence chief, FaceApp hysteria, storming Area 51 and A$AP Rocky. Then Labour Party MP David Lammy joins to discuss Boris Johnson and Brexit.

Welcome to POTC of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I think I have the longest list of items I've ever sent you for a show today because there's so much going on in the world. So we're going to cruise through a ton of stuff. I guess we'll try to go a little faster. There's a lot of really important issues out there. A quick rundown of what we got. So Boris Johnson is the prime minister of the United Kingdom. We're going to talk about that at the top. And then with our guest, Labor Party MP, David Lambie, friend of the pod. That's a British friend of the pod. hilarious guy. We'll talk about why Trump and the Prime Minister of Pakistan had one of the weirdest

oval office pool sprays I've ever seen. We'll do an Iran update. There's some interesting reports on Trump's bizarre relationship with John Bolton. China's making some moves militarily. Steve Bannon is spooked and he's drumming up a new red scare. Trump has a new secretary of defense and maybe a new director of national intelligence. So there's some personnel news. We got some Russian stooges in the news and maybe making face apps. And then maybe we'll touch on ASAP. hockey in area 51. I don't know. Yeah. It might get weird at the end. So one thing I always forget to do in the show. The download growth of POSDA of the World is growing and growing and growing.

And one way you guys can help us is by rating the show, reviewing it in the iTunes store, tell your friends about it. If you know a kid studying international relations, this is a cheat. So spread the good news. And that's the last time I'm going to shamelessly promote us. Let's do it. At least this week. Yeah, this week. Before we get to the news, two quick housekeeping items. There's some big news about our LA Pots of America show at the Greek Theater on August 17th. You've heard that we're going to be joined by Emmy Award winning journalist Jamel Hill, Amanda Seals, Best Coast, and Jim James. Well, Maggie Rogers announced that she is going to be there, too.

It's going to be an unbelievable night. The proceeds from the show will be donated to organizations at the forefront of the fight to protect the vote across America. It's vote.org, election protection, the National Redistricting Foundation, and Think Social Impact. So get your tickets now at crooked.com slash the Greek. Also, positive the world is joining up with J Street to discuss the future of American leadership in the Middle East. Ben and I are going to kick off J-S3's 2019 national conference in October with a live podcast taping to dig into all the big questions around foreign policy issues like

Israeli-Palestinian conflict and global diplomatic matter. So it should be really cool. Join us on October 26 in D.C. at the J-Street Conference. Check out j-street.org to sign up. See you guys there. Okay, let's talk about the United Kingdom. So former London mayor, Boris Johnson, is now the prime minister of the UK. Take that in.

Theresa May has gone. Jeremy Hunt, his closest opponent, was vanquished. Ben, this isn't a surprise per se and that he was like the likely, it's a likely political outcome, but it's still hard to believe that a guy like Boris Johnson is now running the show. Johnson can be funny and charming and entertaining. Here's a quick example of why from his first speech as Tory party leader. I know some wagg was already pointed out that Deliver, Unite and Defeet was not the perfect acronym

for an election campaign since unfortunately it spells dud but they forgot the final E, my friends. E for energize. And I say to all the doubters, dude. Great editing there. Yeah, so this dude has also been all over the map politically. He's gotten in trouble for fabricating stories as a journalist. been criticized for using racist and homophobic language. Again, we dig in this in more detail

with friend of the pod, David Lammy. But any initial reaction from you about Boris Johnson's ascendance? Well, I mean, you know, as in the U.S., it just kind of shows that there's not a bottom in British politics, right? I mean, this guy, let's be clear, he's just like a professional liar, you know? I mean, he started as a journalist literally just making shit up about the European Union from Brussels. The Brexit campaign, which he led, was founded on lies, that there'd be more money for the health service, that they wouldn't have to pay the EU fee in order to leave, which they will have to do, all these promises that were proved to be wrong, and Theresa May had to be the one holding the bag for that. And yet this is the guy that the Conservative Party turns to when

Theresa May is unable to deliver Brexit precisely because she can't square the promises that Boris Johnson made with the reality of what Brexit would entail. So, you know, as in the U.S., it's funny how U.S. politics and U.K. politics seem to always go in the same way. What kind of rhyming right now? Well, we had Blair and Clinton, right, and, you know, Obama. Cameron was a different party, but they got along. But now we've got essentially these two complete liars who are basically arsonists inside

of the political cultures of their countries. and Boris Johnson is soon going to discover with the fall deadline for Brexit that, you know, he can't make good on the promises he made. And either he's going to have to crash the UK out of the European Union without a deal, which would be catastrophic, or he may have to confront the reality that this is not a good idea. Yeah, it's not good. The only good news for us is there's some other political leadership in another country that people will laugh at for a little while. Yeah, the little less lonely.

Yeah. A little, yeah, the eyes may be off us. Okay, let's talk about Hong Kong. So we've been talking about this protest movement in Hong Kong a few times on the show. So to quickly get you guys up to speed, huge numbers of people have taken to the streets to protest a bill that would allow Hong Kong residents to be extradited to mainland China for trial. Those protests turned violent on Monday when a mob of men in white shirts with sticks and metal bars and bats started attacking anti-government protesters, some journalists. There was even a lawmaker who got the hell beaten out of them. the police who have been using harsh tactics like tear gas and rubber bolts against the protesters

did nothing to stop these thugs who are basically in uniforms, these white shirts. There's speculation that they may have been paid thugs sent out there by someone in retaliation for protesters vandalizing a Chinese government liaison office in the city. It's also worth noting that Chinese state media has really started to pick up and run stories about the damage to that liaison office. So they're clearly trying to push a narrative that the protesters themselves are violent. I don't know exactly what happened.

I don't know who paid these guys, but it does feel like we're in the middle of a classic authoritarian playbook and crack down on a peaceful protest movement. Yeah, I mean, we've seen this playbook before. So, you know, a couple of things are notable here. I mean, one is one of the things that the Chinese government or the Hong Kong government

would want to do is to discredit this protest movement, which has been overwhelming, you know, as we've mentioned, you got up to a quarter of the population of Hong Kong on the streets at times protesting this extradition bill that would make people in Hong Kong susceptible to being sent into mainland China. And the way you discredit a protest movement is by making, you know, a peaceful, nonviolent mass mobilization look like a bunch of violent thugs who need to be dealt with law and order. And so we've seen in other instances cases where the government essentially has thugs go in and pick fights with protesters, try to invite a violent response.

So one scenario, and we don't know the truth here, is that the Chinese government or perhaps people associated with the Chinese government, they may be wanting to discredit this protest movement. They may perhaps want to be provoking them to commit acts of violence and to look like they're not the mass mobilization, peaceful protest movement that seem to enjoy the support of the vast majority of people of Hong Kong. That's one scenario. I think another interesting thing is that the protesters decided to go after the liaison office of the People's Republic of China. They've been directing their ire at the Kerry Lamb, who's the chief executive of Hong Kong.

Obviously, she's backed by Beijing, but she is the Hong Kong authority. For them to go after in a peaceful way, or perhaps even with these acts of vandalism, the Beijing liaison. Aizan office shows you that they're really targeting the fundamental nature of Hong Kong's association with China. And that is going to invite a response from the Chinese government. That's a big swing. It's a big swing. And, you know, they may just, you're emboldened and they may want to push this all the way and register their complaints. And I should say, like, yes, the Chinese strategy is going to be, wait this out. So division among the protesters, maybe provoke them in acts of violence, discredit them through their media organs. But there's some really.

risk for the Chinese too. Already we've seen statistics that there's going to be a pretty dramatic potentially drop-off and tourism to Hong Kong. Because who wants to go someplace where there's miles of people in the street. You've got a lot of international businesses in Hong Kong that may be a little wary of having their employees in a potentially unstable situation. So this bears watching. And again, I continue to just have admiration. People of Hong Kong are under much greater threats from an authoritarian government in Beijing, then, you know, we are here with our quasi-authoritarian government in Washington, and yet they keep turning on the street. Yeah, I mean, the New York Times did a great piece on some of the underlying economic conditions that might be fueling protesters in

Hong Kong. There's just horrible wage stagnation. The living conditions are unbearable. I mean, people are living in subdivided apartments where they have 48 square feet to live in. Some apartments that are full apartments are 160 square feet. So meanwhile, economic inequality is getting terrible, you know, wages aren't going up. So there's that piece of this. There's also the U.S. government response I noted yesterday where Trump was asked about these protesters. He offered no support, no solidarity, no condemnation on the thugs who attacked them. Actually, he credited Xi Jinping by saying he had acted responsibly and I think showed restraint might have been the word he used. So, yeah. Yeah, which is totally misdifference.

democratic values. Yeah, I mean, Xi Jinping is not exactly shown restraint. Look, America should be on the side of people who want to preserve their freedoms and civil liberties, which is what these protests are all about, because if the Chinese can essentially apprehend you and bring you into the mainland China, you know, that is the beginning of the end, if not the end, of political freedoms in Hong Kong, right? And so we should be on the side of the people protesting. And, you know, they, the authoritarian's have their leadership in Xi Jinping. The democratic world needs to look for leadership somewhere, and it's a tragedy that they're not getting it from Donald Trump. Yeah, agreed. Well, maybe it's a tragedy that's not getting from the President of the United States. I don't know if Trump is the guy that they're

looking for anyway. Well put. Well put. All right, let's go to the Oval Office. So on Tuesday, President Trump welcomed Imram Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan to the Oval for a meeting. Khan is an interesting guy. Like Trump, he's a celebrity turned head of state, though. He was a world-class cricket player, not like a shitty reality TV producer. But so let's start with the state visit itself and the U.S. Pakistan relationship. Normally when a head of state like Khan visits Washington, a team of senior U.S. officials is sent to greet him or her at the airport.

Apparently the State Department just forgot because there are all these videos of Khan riding on those like sad people mover things at Dulles Airport with his staff and no escort. So maybe they were trying to send him a message and insult him. Who knows? So previously, Trump has tweeted a bunch of criticism of Pakistan. He suspended the $1.3 billion in annual security aid that they'd gotten for a while. Khan is a nationalist.

He is more than happy to fire back at the West when it suits him politically. And so, you know, there had been some Twitter fighting in 2018. Of course, in the Oval Office, it was all smiles from Trump because he never gives people tough news in person. So I guess my question, Ben, is, you know, Pakistan is an important partner slash frenemy in our fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The meeting on Tuesday was supposed to clear the air and reset the relationship. How do you think it went? And how important is our relationship with Pakistan these days as we're trying to wind down the war in Afghanistan? Well, look, I mean,

it's no secret that Pakistan has maintained relations with the Taliban. Some of the senior leadership of the Taliban has lived in Pakistan. There's been this constant push and pull from the Obama administration, the Bush administration before to try to get them to crack down those safe havens. They usually take half measures. It should be noted that Imran Khan as the prime minister is not really in charge of all that. You know, the Pakistani military operates somewhat independent of the civilian government, right? And so the Pakistani military and intelligence services have something of a free hand. And so you always have kind of a dual relationship with Pakistan. You know, you talk to civilians, but you also have your own lines of communication to the

military and the intelligence services. Now, why is this important at this moment? If the administration is trying to negotiate an end of the Afghan war, as Khalil Zad, our envoy to Afghanistan is doing with the Taliban, you really want the Pakistanis to be constructive in that process, right? If the Pakistanis are supportive of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, if they're using, some of their sway with the Taliban to push them in a certain direction and we're dealing with the Afghan government, that would make a peace settlement in Afghanistan much easier to achieve. So that's what we would want from the Pakistanis at this time. Frankly, we also want to make sure that their relationship with India doesn't go off the rails

because you don't want two nuclear-powered nations to fight a war. And Trump made some weird comments about that. He sure did. But so it seems like, you know, Trump, Pakistan, the U.S. Pakistan relationship is one that is filled with complexity and nuance. Those are not exactly the president's strong sense. No, they are not. Which gets us to this weird 40-minute press availability that Trump did with Khan in the Oval Office. So just a little context.

Like, often when you have a foreign leader in the Oval Office, you'll take a couple questions from the pool in the Oval or you'll set up podium somewhere. and you do what's called a two and two, where you take two questions from each side, and both people get to clear the air, and the reporters ask seven-part questions of each journalist, and it turns into a little mini-news conference. Trump loves to just wing it and take a bunch of questions. So the first thing I notice about this little pool spray

was Trump talked like the whole time. Khan got no questions for 30 minutes, and he looked rip-shit-pissed. Then at one point, Trump bragged that he could win the war in Afghanistan in 10 days, but he won't do it because he doesn't want to kill 10 million people. So that's good that he doesn't want to commit a genocide in a week, but a little disconcerting and not surprisingly, the Afghan's issued a statement asking for a quote clarification of the comments. Yes, I imagine you would want that. Later in the avail, Trump claimed that the Indian prime minister asked him to mediate one of the most sensitive issues in the world, a 70-year-old dispute between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region. India almost immediately shot that claim down. They don't want someone mediating the dispute. They're the much stronger party. They want to just decide it themselves. Later, during an answer about Iran, Trump joked that Pakistan would never release propaganda or lies the way the Iranians do,

which of course is a total lie. The Pakistanis do this all the time. They play stories in their media. Ben, what did you make of this very special pool spray? And would you pick Donald Trump to mediate a dispute as sensitive as Kashmir? Yeah, I don't quite know where to begin. Yeah, there's a lot there. Very quick on the last one. The Pakistanis were among the most aggressive governments at disinformation. Certainly at the beginning of our administration. Oh, yeah. Remember this. Putting out all kinds of crazy shit about the United States funded by their government, but put that aside. Where to begin? Let's see. Suggesting that you could kill 10 million Afghans in a few days,

let's put that at the top of the list right now. First of all, he said, we have plans to do this and he refuses to do it, right? So it's kind of like his imaginary meeting with the general over bombing Iran. I chose not to kill people when I could have. That is a lie. I mean, look, I was in government for eight years in Afghan meetings almost every week. There is no fucking plan to nuke Afghanistan, right? Like what lunatic would dream that up, right? I don't know. Well, it's either a lie or if they've drawn up the plan to nuke Afghanistan in the Trump administration, that's even more worrying and insane. But knowing the U.S. military, which is some semblance of ethics and morals,

they're not doing that. So Trump is making this up. Why? You know it was weird? Remember, like, early on in the Trump administration, they dropped a huge bomb called the Mop, the Mop, the MOWB. The MOWS, sorry.

The mother of all bombs. I was thinking of the massive ordinance penetrator. My fault. A mistake happens all the time. Yeah, there's like a 25,000 pound bomb they dropped on, like, a bunch of tunnels and with no impact. And Trump went out and boasted about it. Yeah, he boasted about it.

And then he boasted again in this pool spray. So maybe that was on his mind. Maybe that was on his mind. But look, this is completely unacceptable. I mean, yes, the Afghans just heard the President of the United States, you know, casually talking about killing 10 million of them and literally saying he could wipe them off the face of the earth. You think that's going to help us in Afghanistan? No. No.

Like their government had to call in our envoy today and read him the riot act. These are not people who are going to be inclined to think that America values them and their lives. lives just because the president of the United States says he's not inclined today to kill 10 million people. What about tomorrow? Yeah, this is disgusting and offensive. Number one. Number two, Kashmir, okay?

This is the world's number one nuclear flashpoint, right? Pakistan, India have fought multiple wars over Kashmir. They both have nuclear weapons. The worst case scenario is this thing spirals out of control and you have a potential nuclear war. Now, India, as the bigger, stronger party, has always resisted any third party mediation of this dispute. They want to negotiate it directly with Pakistan. So the way for the U.S. to be involved, and we try to be involved, is quietly, you know, to try to broker things behind the scenes. By injecting himself out there. And let me just be clear, the Pakistanis would like the U.S.

to mediate because they'd like us to kind of come in and pressure the Indians to do things. So it could be that Imran Khan raised this prospect with Trump. And he's like, oh, sure, I'll do it. I'll say I'm going to be the mediator. Well, what happened after that? The Indian foreign ministry had to put out a statement saying that what Trump said was a lie. It wasn't true that Modi hadn't asked Trump to mediate this dispute. What did he just do? He just set back our capacity to play any role here, right? Because now the Indians are going to give us a stiff arm. Then the Palestinians are not to respond to the Indians. And he just made one of the world's most dangerous situations more dangerous by what he did. So in the course of him just having fun,

hamming it up with the press and the 30-minute spray, like he insulted the entire country of Afghanistan. He insulted the Prime Minister of India. He set back the likelihood that we can play a constructive role on Kashmir. And meanwhile, he's got the Pakistani prime minister that he left dangling on the fucking people mover at Tulsa Airport, like sitting there like a potted plant. Like, what the hell is this? I mean, you know, there's so many things that bother us, like, you know, the racist tweets. But like, where are the Republicans, you know, who love to put forward their commitment to the war in Afghanistan and to American leadership? This guy is a embarrassing you on the world stage and making the world a dangerous place every single time he

opens his mouth, right? And we will not hear word one from noted, you know, national security expert, Lindsey Graham and all these people. They're just sitting here watching this guy turn us into an embarrassment. Yeah. And all the, in all the things that are actually disputed and all the sort of irritants in the relationship, just get glossed over with happy talk. You know, he talks about how great Khan is and how great Pakistan is. He just doesn't deliver any tough messages. Well, yeah, you know, he'll do it after he leaves via tweet because the guy doesn't have the guts to actually do it to anybody's face, right? Or, you know, or his travel bans, right? He's praising Pakistani's, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so, you know, this is a pretty good distillation of everything that is wrong with how he approaches the job of commander-in-chief where you don't threaten nuclear war on the one end and you don't risk it making less likely that you can invert a nuclear war on the other hand. Yeah, just wing it. Wing it in Kashmir. Trump mentioned Iran in that pool spray. So this is a little Iran update. So the Iranians announced that they have arrested 17 Iranian citizens who they claim they'd been trained as part of a CIA spy network. Trump denied this in that same pool spray with Imram Khan. Pompeo did in a statement, I think. You and I don't know the truth, but certainly it would not be the first time that Iran claimed success in some CIA mole hunt that never happened. Last week, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized a British tanker. in the Strait or Hamos. Presumably this was done as some sort of retaliation for the UK detaining one of their tankers a couple weeks earlier.

I also noticed that Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, is on a PR offensive here in the U.S. So if anyone knows Zerif, please let him know that he is always welcome on Ponce of the world. He may be a world though for all we know. You know, let's hope so. Rate and review us, Mr. Zerif. Lastly, it's notable that Europeans still want to stay in the Iran deal and they've rejected a proposal for a U.S.-led force to protect commercial. ships in the region. So there's still a pretty big split between us and the European. So,

Ben, that was more of an update than a question. I'm just kind of curious what you make of this last week events and how your anxiety level is about all things Iran. Well, it's kind of like a permanent high anxiety. I mean, you're right. Like they make all kinds of claims about detaining CIA assets or agents and more like Jason Resign in front of the pod, the journalist who was not one. Or they could just be rolling up Iranians, right? These aren't necessarily Westerners and saying that they're tied to the U.S. somehow. That said, you know, it's part of a series of provocative actions. They're trying to get a reason. They're trying to suggest that they don't like the status quo and they want something. They want concessions or they want potentially to impose their own costs on the West by raising the price of oil or by making it more dangerous for tankers to pass through this area. What's notable to me is you have a British tanker detained. One, the Brits reaffirm their support for the Iran deal. for the JCPOA.

And two, saying, no, instead of working with the U.S., we're going to do our own kind of European maritime support for our tankers. So they're basically telling the United States, in as many words, you created this problem. Let's be very clear. If the Iran deal is still in place, this is not happening. Yeah, of course.

If the Iran deal is still in place, there are not tankers being disrupted. There are not American drones being shut down. There are not crazy claims of 17 spies being arrested. This is happening. because it's their response to us pulling out of the JCPOA. And the Europeans are saying to us, thanks, but no thanks. No, we don't want to be a part of potentially John Bolton's war plan here.

So we don't want some U.S. maritime escort because we don't want to be part of the potential, you know, trigger point for Bolton to finally get the war that he almost got Trump to get us into a few weeks ago. Yeah. So it shows, I think, in stark relief, the division between the United States and Europe on this issue, the kind of isolation of the U.S. And again, the strategic coherence of the Trump administration, because what is their policy? Do they want to fight the war?

Well, no. Trump doesn't want to, but Bolton does. Well, then what are they going to do? They don't have a united front with our allies because our allies want to go back to the Iran deal. So then you've got, you know, Rand Paul doing his own diplomacy in Oman. I mean, this is an insane way.

Golf course diplomacy. Yeah, it's an insane way to manage one of the most sensitive issues in the world. And again, my hope is that somehow the temperatures fall down and the Trump administration does enter into some diplomacy, even though all that could render is something like what used to be the status quo under the Iran. Yeah. Also, I learned today that Bob Ross is apparently huge in Iran. But you remember the painter? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Happy little drone. I'm a happy little centerfuge or whatever. Jason Resign said he used to watch him all the time while in prison. So that's surprising. A lot led to one of our better text exchanges with Jason Roshin because I was a fan of Bob Ross. I mean, you know, happy little trees down here.

But who knew Bob Ross is big in Iran? I mean, it just shows you there's a common cultural language here. You know, maybe we have Zerifan and we, you know, talk a little Bob Ross. That's a good idea. I mean, look, it does show you the power of these cultural campaigns. It does, you know, and it shows you the people are people everywhere. And everybody likes a happy little cloud down next to a mountain lake. God damn right, except for John Bolton.

No, he wants to fucking bomb, the happy little cloud, you know, down by the lake, right? We're all sitting here watching Bob Ross and feeling really good about life, and there's a mountain, and there's a vista. And then Bolton wants to come in and drop the mother of all fucking bombs on poor little Bob Ross. So listen, you listening in home might think that that is a harsh description of Mr. Bolton, but you know who agrees with it is Donald Trump, totally agrees with you. Axios published a big story about Trump's relationship with his warmonger, Walrus National Security Advisor. And the piece makes clear that Trump actually does believe that Bolton wants to invade every country.

But he's cool with it because he thinks Bolton allows him to do like a good cop, bad cop routine and give some psychological advantage in negotiations. So I read this piece and like in all seriousness, can the president have a good cop, bad cop routine when one of the other cops works for him? And also, do you think he understands how much? much authority the National Security Advisor has to just do stuff on his own? I mean, wouldn't that freak you out knowingly hiring someone like John Bolton? Yeah, I mean, there are two problems. Well, there are more than two problems, but two I'd highlight. One is what this ignores is that

the National Security Advisor literally has his or her hands on all the levers of power in the government, right? So they're the one coordinating the different agencies of the government. They're the one giving direction. So John Bolton, while Trump hasn't been paying attention, right? Because Trump is not exactly a details man, right? Has been pulling out of arms control treaties, you know, has been pulling out of all kinds of international agreements, has been engaged in this kind of belligerent escalation of sanctions against everybody he doesn't like. And so, you know, Trump is not at all savvy enough to execute a good cop, bad cop relationship because he has no idea what Bolton's doing.

God knows what, like, covert action programs he is authorized, signed off on, push forward. This is a really important point. Like, we are going to find out years from now all the crazy shit is happening. Wild shit. Because there's a lot of power for the National Security Advisor to authorize covert action

that nobody has to report to the public, obviously. In fact, it's deniable. You can deny it legally. Well, and let's take the case of Iran. We could see for months and talked about it on this spot, wow, Bolden's really laying the conditions for war, you know, like he's doing this with sanctions, he's moving aircraft carriers the region, he's making these threats, he's closing, you know, consulate in Iraq. And Trump didn't figure this out until like months after the rest of the world

did. But until 10 minutes before he's too late. So, so like he does it, so he's not in control of this situation as much as boldness. And so you get this kind of complete incoherence. It's not good cop, bad cop to have John Bolton drive the car all the way to the brink of the war of Iran. And then Donald Trump be like, wait a second, we're about to go to war with the wrong. I don't want to do that. That's not smart. That's stupid. Right. And then the second thing is, this is, you know, you know, how I heard you guys on, you know, Pod Save America. I'm a listener. Back crap. Talk about essentially, you know, that Trump fires off racist tweets and then after the fact they try to come up with the strategy.

Yeah. We cobble it together. They've been doing this in foreign policy for three years where they say, no, actually, it's a madman theory of diplomacy, right? So Trump will insult the ally, or he'll lash out or he'll do or say something really stupid. And then after the fact, they're like, no, no, this is actually all a plan. He's the madman negotiator. Well, like, let's look at the results. Like John Bolton's hobby horses and Trump's hobby horses. Maduro's still in power. The North Greens are building new nuclear weapons. The Iranians are accelerating their stockpile of nuclear material and detaining tankers. So if there is some madman theory, it's not working. trying to revisit it.

The funniest thing in this whole story, to the extent that any of it is funny, is that there's one anecdote about Trump sometimes slips the script, and he plays bad cop, and apparently he did it in a meeting with, like, the Dutch prime minister, and he started bad-mouthing NATO,

and he was like, oh, well, I know John loves NATO, don't you, John? It's like Trump can only figure out a way to be a dick to our closest allies. Yeah, he'll be the bad cop with the allies. Exactly. It's ridiculous. Two more personnel things.

So last week, we talked about Trump was considering replacing Dan Coates, his director of national intelligence, would they like right-wing conspiracy theorist named Fred Flights. So that is still the horror scenario. That is still the worst-case scenario. But apparently Trump met with infamous moron Devin Nunes to discuss replacement ideas for Coates, which in turn has fueled speculation that Devin Nunes himself might be in the running.

And so while I actually truly do believe that Nunes is less bad than Fred Flights, who thinks the U.S. government has been infiltrated by a secret. and Muslim army trying to implement Sharia law. It's close call. Close call. Devin is best known for manipulating intelligence for political purposes, which is the worst kind of person possible for this job. Yeah, lying about intelligence.

I mean, it might not take it into the realm of the complete crackpot conspiracy theory stuff that Fred Fletch would. But let's be clear, this would be a massive politicization. And it would undercut, again, the credibility. of the U.S. intelligence community. Would anybody necessarily believe that Devin Nunes is going to reflect dispassionally and analytically

the views of the intelligence community? I'll tell you something from personal experience, right? I was a bit player in one of Devin Nunes' conspiracy theories, right? So remember he kind of came out and said that he discovered the real scandal.

This is before, you know, they found the FBI agents texting and having affairs or whatever. And it was that me and Susan Rice were guilty of quote unquote unmasking Trump officials to create the Russia scandal, right?

And unmasking is a practice where essentially you can request the identity of a U.S. person, an American who might be an intelligence report. And so he's out there fucking blowing his horn about how this was a real scandal and it confirmed that the

Obama people were behind all this knowing, right? Because he's on the intelligence community. You know how many unmasking requests I made related to the Trump people? How many? Zero. So he just made it up. He just made it up. Like, and so I'm sitting here thinking like, well, this sucks because I'm not to go, you know, get my name dragged through the mud with Fox News channel to call our poor friend of the pod, Mike Gottlie, my lawyer. And like, so this guy knows this bullshit, right? And this is the caliber of person that we're dealing with, right?

If you unmask somebody, there's a pretty significant paper trail. They could check. They can check. Like he would know, right? One call. Oh, and then my favorite, Tommy, is I have to go testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee for like a few hours. Fine, I had to do that, sent intelligence committee on Russia. I was happy to serve my country in my own way. But the precipitating factor of this was all the Devonis stuff, right? Guess who's not there? Who?

Devin Nunes. Oh, my God. He wasn't even in the fucking hearing. Remember when he released his memo and he hadn't even read any of the underlying intelligence? This guy is more than happy to go out and go on Fox News and rant and rape with the Obama administration. and it doesn't even show, you know, I had, I had the pleasure of Trey Gowdy's company instead. Brutal. So this guy, so, I mean, to just to have somebody who basically views intelligence as a political weapon as the head of the intelligence community is a very bad idea.

Yeah, agreed. One other quick personnel update. Last week I talked to Senator Tammy Duckworth about Mark Esper's nomination to be Secretary of Defense. So on Tuesday, today the Senate confirmed him by a vote of 90 to 8. It's overwhelming bipartisan vote. But it has been 204 days since we had a Senate-confirmed Secretary of Defense, which is just, like, insane given that DOD is by far the biggest budget, biggest workforce, biggest moral responsibility in terms of what your department does. And we almost started a couple of wars in that. Yeah. And you need stability. So I don't have a lot else to say about Esper's. I don't know if you do. But, I mean, it's just, it's notable.

The only thing I'd say is like this guy does not have a background in kind of foreign policy. And can we find someone who's not have a background in like the defense industry? He's a lobbyist, right? He's a lobbyist, right? Rapeon guy or something. So it's of a piece of the rest of the administration. And you get you get the coal lobbyist at the EPA, you know, you get the defense guy at DOD. That is not the kind of, I mean, by all counts he's not like a bad guy.

No, I'm sure he's. But I mean, like, we should have people who have some expertise in whether or not we go to or not just expertise on how you sell weapons to fight wars. Yeah. All right. A quick sort of depressing update out of Jerusalem. On Monday, Israeli workers started knocking down dozens of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. This happened after a court battle where the Israelis had maintained that these homes were built too close to their West Bank separation barrier and thus posed a security threat.

The homeowners said that they had permits to build in that area from the Palestinian Authority and that they were on West Bank soil. but ultimately they lost. So this move has been criticized by UN officials, and it was immediately incorporated into Hamas' messaging about Israel and the occupation. I just thought it was worth mentioning because these demolitions and flame tensions in the region. And it's also a reminder that the status quo is really a de facto erosion of Palestinian territory and rights, which maybe that's Netanyahu's plan, but it's hard. Well, I think it's a reminder that,

they're human beings here. You know, you hear about settlements and settlements. It's a kind of friendly word, you know. They're people who live in these houses, families, who are going to have their houses destroyed, right, because they're Palestinian. And, okay, the Israeli government says it's too close to the separation barrier. There's no sovereignty for these people.

There's no self-determination for these people. So Israel just gets to make a decision. No, we don't like where you live, so we're going to destroy your house, right? No, I don't accept that. and people shouldn't accept that. And it's outrageous. And it foreshadows where this is going. Because ultimately, like, the more and more settlements you build and the more you want to push back

the land that the Palestinians control, you're going to be demolishing homes. They've done it before. They're doing it now. They'll do it again. And I would just take it as an opportunity for everybody to remember that these are people. These are people just like us. Like with children probably live in these homes. And they're going to be bulldozed because the Israelis decide.

that, no, you can't live there because you're Palestinian. That's, I'm sorry, that's outrageous. People should call it out. Agreed. One of the really interesting story that caught my eye was the Wall Street Journal reported that China has signed a secret agreement with Cambodia to gain access to this Cambodian naval base. The Chinese will be able to store weapons, dock their ships, have some personnel station there.

It's part of a concerted effort by the Chinese to project their military forces further and further from China into the South China Sea and other places. They have an outpost in Djibouti and Africa. They've literally created eye. islands for new military installations and runways and ships. I was curious how big a deal you think this is in terms of, one, our relationship with Cambodia. It was not a partner we think of all the time, but it's certainly significant regionally.

And then China's growing naval power. Well, so there are two things. Cambodia, they have this kind of thuggish, increasingly autocratic leader, Hansen. And, you know, he, as he's become more autocratic, has turned more and more to China. Right. And so I think this is a pattern we will see where leaders who move away from democracy kind of tuck themselves under the protective, you know, wing of China. And I think that is a disturbing trend that bears watching. I remember we went to a summit in Cambodia one year.

It was in a building called the Peace Palace or something. Oh, I was there for this. You were there for that, right? That was dark, man. Built entirely by the Chinese. Yeah. So the Chinese built that entire building with Chinese labor, right? So don't think that they weren't picking up your conversations time.

Well, also, I know the world has changed, but we went from Burma, from Ansan Suu Kyi's house and yard, to this Cambonian hotel slash casino with the press corps that was really dark. It was dark. Yeah. And then I had to walk through a casino, like smoke-filled casino to announce that Hillary Clinton was going to Israel for the Gaza Seas fire. Across the street, there was something called the Khmer Rouge Food Mart. Yeah, yeah. Which was a strange naming. So anyway, that's one point.

Then the second is, world those can take out a map here, right? A lot of strategies we've seen is the Chinese are trying to create a ring from essentially their coastline, you know, the South China Sea all the way down through the Indian Ocean and down to East Africa. And so if you look at, you know, Cambodia and then the Chinese are building a. a big port in southern Myanmar in Rakhine State, right, where the Rohingya have been dislodged. We'll talk about that soon. Then they have a lot of interest in Sri Lanka, right? Island country off the coast of India. Then they have this base in Djibouti.

It's not hard to see the kind of dotted line that connects a lot of this infrastructure their building that goes, again, all the way from the coast of Africa, all the way up to the coast of China to protect their interest in allow them to project power, including naval power, through the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, and then down to the coast of Africa. And some of these are outright military facilities like in Djibouti. Some of these begin as infrastructure projects, ports that then become used for military purposes. So we report, okay, maybe then the Chinese military can use that port. And so again, just check out a map and then look at the dotted line that can extend from that Chinese coast around Cambodia, down around the bottom of Myanmar, past Sri Lanka, all the way to Djibouti,

and it's pretty clear what they're doing. Yeah. I also noticed that Steve Bannon is part of a revived movement in Washington to drum up fear about the threat from communism generally. It's called the Committee on the Present Danger. It's basically part of this view that the U.S. and China are just incompatible systems and war is inevitable. So that's fun. I mean, glad that guy was getting the PBB for six months, but then, you know, clearly the Chinese are making some serious moves regionally, and I'm not sure what we're doing about it. Well, yeah, I mean, there is something we should be worried about China, but the flip side of that is like they're a big country.

They're going to throw their weight around. The way to deal with it, I think, is not through kind of alarmist committees on whatever chair by Steve Ben. And you would be solidifying your alliances, you know? Like, I was just in Europe, and the Europeans are worried about China and Chinese tech. The way in which you deal with that is you ban together and the democracies band together. So America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, this is why we have alliances, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. That's how you deal with it.

And you try to strengthen essentially international rules that you hold China to account to. The thing on Steve Bannon, it's interesting, is I won't name the country. But when we were in transition, a foreign country was telling me that they had met with Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn. right and all she ban on was talking about is china and like is the inevitable conflict with the chinese and and they're kind of like well first of well why is stevenan talking about foreign policy at all um this seems to be this kind of hobby horse he has to make china the boogeyman the organizing principle for like american politics and in a way you can see the diabolical way that makes sense for him because it blends his weird mix of nationalism and kind of anti-trade

but also it's the nexus to the socialism stuff at home, right? And so if it's the danger of communism, well, suddenly like AOC being called a communist, it's like she's the enemy within or something. It's like new red scare. And I would watch this. I would watch the convergence potentially of their fear-mongering about China with their fear-mongering about socialism at home.

That's a good point. Let's do a little actual red scare conversation, a little Russia stuff. When this episode post, Bob Mueller will be testifying before Congress about Russian interference in our elections and our favorite president's efforts to stifle his investigation and obstruct justice, yada, yada, yada. Interestingly, the Daily Beast reported this week that Trump's new favorite news outlet, this right-wing garbage dump called One America News Network, or OAN, literally employs a Kremlin paid stooge. That is not a joke.

One of OAN's political reporters is employed by Sputnik, which is one of those Kremlin-owned news-slash-trolling operations that played a huge. huge role in 2016. So that doesn't stop Trump from constantly promoting them, but apparently nothing has changed. No, and it shows you to, you know, first of all, there's always been this symbiosis between Russian media and right-wing media, right? So a lot of the content that the Russians were creating, inventing, firing into the algorithm of American social media feeds, was meant to mirror what was in Breitbart or Free Beacon or, you know, pajama, whatever these fucking guys. And so this is kind of like the formal merger.

But there was an informal merger before that because they were saying they were basically inventing the same stories or ginning up the same theories. This just kind of takes it another level. And it does show you that the Mueller thing is forward looking, not just backward looking, right? Again, if you can get away with inviting the assistance of a foreign power, meeting with that farm power, sharing, polling information with that foreign power, sending your son to go to a meeting whose express purpose was to dig up dirt on your opponents. if you can do all that and get away with it, why would you not do it again? Right? Yeah.

So it's not just like, oh, Dems and Disarray of impeachment. The question is, do we as a country think that there should be any cost to people doing that? Because if there's not a cost, they will do it again. And the fact that he's like essentially endorsing Sputnik is a pretty good indication of whether or not he would do it again.

What a name, Sputnik. All right, let's close with some later things. So first, the face app app. our social media feeds were deluge with pictures of our friends looking old because that's cool apparently. These were photos created by the Face App app, which uses AI to age your photo if you upload it. People started freaking out about the fact that this app was created by this Russian-based company. The DNC actually warned presidential campaign staffer to delete the app or not to use it in the first place. Chuck Schumer, of course, held a press conference about it because no one is better at jumping on the new cycle than he is.

So, I mean, Ben, I guess it's probably wise for all of us to think. long and hard about what information we give up to technology companies, including and especially Russian-based ones. And I guess our photos as facial recognition software and fake images become more of a problem are sensitive as well. But this whole thing seemed to touch overblown to me. I mean, Facebook has exponentially more information about us than this PACE app company ever will. What did you make of this blowback to the popularity of the FACE app?

Well, first of all, this may be an unpopular opinion. I don't know how people feel about this in the room here, but like, I didn't, was it that cool? Like, what, like, I didn't. I think it worked well. It was, like, better than just, like, a filter. I know. I saw all the pictures in my Instagram, and I was kind of like, well, I, I don't know quite, I didn't actually.

I didn't think it was, like, something that, you know, maybe I'm just too vain, you know? Yeah, that's fun. I don't want to be aged in a photo either. I don't, look, I wouldn't be worried that the Russians are, like, hacking you. I think what might be happening, right, is facial recognition technology is one of the next. big waves around data collection, artificial intelligence. The Chinese have a lot of data, right? One of the reasons why the Chinese are so good facial recognition technology is they have over a billion people, right? And so... And the way in which you get better at facial recognition

technology is the accumulation of more and more data. And so, yes, there is a possibility that this company has some ties to the government and the Russian government would like to have lots and lots of data to refine their facial recognition technology. Not to like, how to, you, right? This is a different point. This is the more data you have, the better your technology can get, right? And so this could be the Russians in a fairly ingenious, cheap way, acquiring a lot of facial recognition data that they can use to work on their stuff. You made the key point here, which is whenever any of these controversies come up, including, by the way, like about the NSA and stuff, I'm like, you got anybody who has a Facebook account, like, that is so much more intrusive

into your personal life, your data, like your, you know, your habits. And frankly, we know Facebook has been hacked, right? And so look, if the Russians want to hack you, they probably, you know, hacked us seven times by now, right? So the face app, even if you think it's cool, that's fine. That's your preference. It is, I think, people should be wary that, you know, facial recognition technology is the way things are going and can be done for some fairly creepy things. Yeah, look, let me just say, if you're at all word, about this stuff. Just if you go to Russia, if you go to China, don't bring your personal phone.

Don't bring your personal laptop. Get a burner. Wipe it when you're done. Yeah. That's a precaution I might actually take. I wouldn't sweat taking selfies. Yeah, if you take a selfie, I don't think the Russians are necessarily going to be creating like fake videos of you tomorrow, like saying crazy shit. They're just made, be using your face to have a bigger data set to get better artificial intelligence to suppress their own people. Yeah. Cool. Two more fun things. So in late June, this college student named Maddie Roberts created a Facebook event called Storm Area 51.

They can't stop all of us. The goal here was to get as many people as possible to show up, bum rush area 51 and then just like see what's inside. Hopefully some sweet aliens. The event is on September 20th if you still want to go. So this guy meant it as a joke, but pretty soon like nearly two million people signed up saying they would go. And a couple million more were like pending. Like I'm considering it. A bunch of brands jumped on the store.

Bud Light offered free beer to any alien that makes it out of Area 51. There's copycat events at Loch Ness. It's all pretty funny. But I read this story and I thought to myself, if we were still in the NSC, we would literally have had to attend situation room meetings about this stupid bullshit. There would be security discussions, a communications plan,

a congressional outreach, and it would be so annoying unless it meant we got a deep dive on Intel about aliens, which I never got. They never told us the truth about Area 51, which always kind of pissed me off. And then... Did you ask? I mean, I used to kind of jokingly ask my intel brief for in the morning, like thinking maybe

and they just kind of laugh and look at me. I'm like, you know... But for real, man. Yeah, for real, man. Like, there's got to be like 10 things that you know about Area 51 or something, right? But there'd also be some guy at the NSC that you and I had never seen before who would like be leading those meetings. Yeah.

He's like the guy responsible for like domestic contingency, blah, blah, blah. Or like there was like a classified space guy. Like, what do you do? He thinks about space. I've never seen you in a meeting that I'm allowed to go on. He's running the space force now probably. That's right. But the alien thing, I mean, I would, well, I'll give you an example.

Like there are these budgets, right? Because Harry Reid has funded it to make contact with aliens and stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah. I never, I should, fuck. I wish I had the eight years back, mainly. to dig deeper. Just demand information. Just demand the information on the aliens.

Do some unmasking? You apparently didn't do any unmasking. Yeah. I mean, I really blew it on that one. I mean, you know, the deep state was husbanding all the information. That's bullshit. Last thing. Apparently Trump called the Swedish prime minister to help get a rapper name ASAP Rocky out of jail.

He had been lobbied by Kanye West's, Kim Kardashian. I just wanted to use our one a day. Imagine if Barack Obama did this, what Fox News would say. Do you remember, like, Obama in like year one or two, had like a barbecue with some NBA players? Hip-up barbecue. He did hip-up barbecue. And, like, literally Fox News sent itself into, like, a fucking frenzy,

you know, for days about this hip-hop barbecue, you know, just because there were some black athletes on the South lawn of the White House, it was as if, like, you know, America had gone out of business. and the tea party had to be mobilized in action because they cared so much about deficits. We couldn't have black athletes on the South lawn. Ben, this is a real headline. August 5th, 2011, Fox Nation. Obama's hip-hop barbecue didn't create jobs. Yeah, I mean, like this actually happened. I mean, like you guys think we're crazy. Like Fox Nation is all over it. They were all over it for days, right?

Right. And so if Obama's calling a foreign leader, right, for ASAP and to, to, to, So those, you know, again, not connoisseurs, that is an S as a dollar sign. Yes, correct. It's not an S. It's ASAP. If he's calling a foreign country and demanding that a rapper be released on behalf of Kanye West, yes, what would Fox Nation have said about that? They would have been displaced. Apparently, Trump may have been actually hurt his cause by trying to get politicians interfere in the system over there. and they don't appreciate it.

You're Swedish Prime Minister. You know, you're dealing with this kind of civilized, social democratic, Nordic country. You get the word that in the President of the United States would like to talk to you. You're like, oh, fuck. I got to take Trump's call. Like, what on earth could this be about, right?

I'm Swedish. What is it about? What's he mad about? What is he mad about? NATO? What are we talking about? You know, some nexus to NATO or there's a lot of foreign assistance. And you get on the phone and Donald Trump is talking to you about ASAP,

Rocky? And you're just furiously Googling. Like, yeah, what do you do? Like, what do you, you look at your staff? Like, what are the follow-up meetings that happened in the Swedish government after that phone call? I don't know. Like, again, like, what is going on here? Yeah, I heard the PM's more of an ASAP-F-Ferg guy.

Okay, after the break, our conversation with the right and honorable David Lammy. He's very right and very honorable. On the phone, we have returning guest and friend of the pod. Right and honorable David Lammy. Mr. Lammy is a British politician who's been a member of parliament for the Labor Party in Tottenham since 2000. Sir, welcome to a podcast. Patsay of the world again. It's great to have you. Thanks for having me back. It's great to be joining you. So Boris Johnson, the new prime minister of the United Kingdom. Can you help listeners

here in the U.S. understand who Boris Johnson is, what his priorities are, and what you think this might mean for the U.S.-UK. Special Relationship? Wow, where do you start? I mean, look, some of your listeners may remember the children's story. The emperor has no clothes. That's Boris Johnson. This is someone who everybody can see. He's naked as he stand. But people kind of don't see it.

Don't want to point it out until a young child points it out. And Boris Johnson is a chameleon in British. public life. He was mayor of London. As mayor of London, he ran as a compassionate conservative. He called for an amnesty, for example, on asylum seekers and refugees in our immigration system. But he has moved back to the right where he was previously, as before he became an MP, he was obviously the editor of The Spectator magazine, which is a very right. Wing magazine. And he is in cahoots with many of the advisors of Donald Trump, including Steve Banyan, who has helped him along with his journey to become Prime Minister. I would expect

a special relationship, i.e. the relationship with Donald Trump's White House to be very close. Boris's style is similar. There won't be as many tweets. He uses humor. to obfuscate his political opportunism. And what I would say about the both of them is that they're both narcissists. These are both men with the sentence beginning with them, and then everything else flows from that. He is in cahoots with the ERG who are absolutely determined to have a hard Brexit. I think a very divided Britain is about to get much more divided

with Boris Johnson in number 10. So, David, you know, and also we remember that Boris Johnson started his career as a journalist by literally making up stories about the European Union reporting from Brussels, you know, helping to fuel the anti-use sentiment, then obviously led the Brexit campaign surfing a wave of lies to a victory in that referendum. The question I had for you is, in a way, is it a good thing that, I mean, obviously, you prefer a different prime minister, but is there something that is good in the fact that Boris is now going to be the prime minister who's essentially going to have to reckon with the consequences of his own actions? You know, he's going to be the guy holding the bag this fall.

I doubt he can get a better deal on Brexit than Theresa May did. The EU has no interest in doing that. I mean, is there something clarifying in having the guy responsible for bringing the UK to the brink of this? being the guy in office? Look, Ben, you're right. In a sense, as Shakespeare would have said it, he's about to be hoisted by his own patar. He has, he's going to run around Europe this summer, this August,

speaking to Macron and Merkel and saying that he's about to forge a new deal. He thinks that the European Union will blink and give him some kind of deal. most of us think that there is no new deal that's available or something that's certainly not substantially different. There are some questions about whether he will end up throwing Northern Ireland under a bus in terms of the backstop, which was a fundamental part of the deal that Theresa May brokered. But it's very likely that he will head towards us having no deal. And therefore, that will force a vote of confidence in his leadership, which I suspect he will lose. And we would be into a general election.

But I think that, Ben, I'm not as sanguine as you, because the truth is the consequences of no deal is not just catastrophic in the short term for the United Kingdom. this will mean a huge loss of jobs in the UK, huge economic downturn for many people in our country. It is also bad news for the Anglo-American relationship at a time where we should all be concerned about China, we should all be concerned about Russia. we need Britain looking outward. Britain is naval gazing inward, and I'm afraid the U.S.

because of Donald Trump is in a similar kind of place. So I think that this is a very, very dangerous time for us to be behaving in this way. Yeah, no, you make a great point. And I mean, I guess, obviously, this brings up yet again the end game. On the one hand, you had the House of

Commons vote pretty clearly against a no-deal Brexit when Theresa May was in office. On the other hand, as you say, you have the likelihood of Boris getting anything better, and Boris has suggested that he would be comfortable with a no-deal versus staying in. Is there any way in which this whole thing just kind of unravels? You get a confidence vote, and there's an opening for what you've called for, which is a people's vote, another referendum potentially. on whether or not to leave the EU? Well, it's very hard to predict,

but absolutely, it is certainly the case that you get into number 10, and Boris will walk into number 10 very, very shortly. And my God, no one gives up power quickly. Yeah, yeah. You've been there, Ben, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if we had a general election, whenever you're in an election cycle, you've got to

calculate that you might lose. So some of this will be about the polls over the next few weeks, but it's going to be very, very bumpy. And if Boris Johnson calculate that he might lose, he doesn't want to force no deal, which might bring down a vote of confidence, he doesn't want a general election, then what's left on the table? Well, what's left on the table is for him to go with a second referendum and to ask the people whether they want to remain in the European Union or go with some deal or no deal. And actually, he may calculate that alongside Nigel Farage, let's not forget Nigel Farage in all of this, the great friend of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, who's formed this Brexit party. it's a very, very nationalist, Islamophobic, hates the EU, party.

There will be a kind of informal alliance. It won't be formal, but an informal alliance with Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. These guys get on. And, of course, they may calculate that they can win that second referendum. So don't take a second referendum off the table. I mean, because actually there's a scenario under which they believe. it's in their interest to go with that instead of forcing a general election. Well, one thing we do know is that Theresa May is no longer going to be leading the UK.

She gave her final speech as Prime Minister last week. I believe you described it as hollow. Can you talk about why you felt like her speech rang hollow? And do you think she was a poor leader or was she handed a bad situation that most people wouldn't have been able to manage or maybe some combination of both? Like, how will history remember her? Look, I think clearly she was a poor leader, and that was best demonstrated in the election that she called and then almost lost.

She boxed herself in with these dividing lines in her negotiating with the EU, that she didn't need to do, these red lines. But I think my views about Theresa May are really based on Theresa May. really ramping up the immigration rhetoric in our country, creating what she calls a hostile environment for immigrants, people of color, anyone who's different in Britain. It led to a windrush scandal for these are for Caribbean people who arrived here after the war and a British and them fighting for their rights. And look, very, very sadly, this environment of hostility to immigrants. Let's be clear, Boris Johnson has had said some appalling things about gay men and

women, appalling things about Muslims, about black people. This rhetoric, like we're seeing from Donald Trump, is going to amplify. We're living in times where there are those of us on the progressive side that want to fight for a civic nationalism in which all of us can lay claim and and be patriotic about the countries that we belong to. These guys, and it includes Theresa May, were pushing a kind of ethnic nationalism based on being Anglo-Saxon, if you're English. And you saw the speech that Donald Trump gave last week. Now, Theresa May was not explicit in that way, but I'm afraid she drank the Kool-Aid.

She bought some of what Nigel Farage was pushing. Boris Johnson certainly is alongside him. And that's what makes people like me very worried and very hostile to these guys. We have to win this battle. We have to get back to a place where we defend our liberal values. We defend the human rights, we've won. We recognize that there is a role for everyone. And we're not just playing lip service to issues of discrimination, race, and hostility to people and minority.

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess one last question, David, is, you know, okay, here we are. We've got Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, two terrifically flawed human beings, narcissistic human beings, people who've stoked the fires of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. The emergency is clear, and Brexit is an existential question about the future of the UK. And so we know what we're against. And, you know, we've talked before about obviously the need for progressives to both fight back and put forward an alternative.

as you look ahead, the Labor Party that you're a member of, that Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of, what is the direction of the Labor Party right now? What are you guys putting forward every day in Parliament? What is the argument your prosecuting? Is it just Brexit-focused or essentially what is the alternative that you guys put forward for the country? And how much is that something that? I'm afraid too often the Labor Party, the British Labor Party, has been missing in action. You know, on the big issue of the day, Jeremy Corbyn and the leadership of the Labour Party

have tried to sit on the fence. They've ended up with splinters in places they didn't want. Our poll ratings have fallen through the floor as a consequence of not striking a proper position. And therefore, we've struggled to be heard on the things that we care about, on education, on health, on social welfare, on dealing with inequality. We have to get back to that. We're now going to find, in the shape of Boris Johnson, a much more formidable opponent than Theresa May,

who's backed by big money and very strong right-wing forces, many of them, I might say, in the United States. We have to raise our game. We have to raise our game. We have to be clear on what we are fighting for here. And let me just say, by the way, there's a lot of talk about a U.S.-UK. trade deal. And it's being pushed by Hawks in London and Hawks in Washington. It's really a deregulatory agenda.

It's an agenda that would, where, I'm afraid, you know, American companies will lay claim to the British National Health Service, a deregulatory regime with very poor, labor rights. That's the agenda that they're pushing, and it's an agenda that the British Labour Party should oppose. We're in a period where with the technological revolution, with huge inequalities across our countries, with real pressure on working class and middle class communities, the answer has to be more redistribution. It has to be progressive politics. the charlatans have come along and they say it's about immigrants, it's about Islam, it's about anything else but the truth. And progressives have to be in a place where we are absolutely explaining what these problems,

the source of these problems, how we will deal with it. And sometimes we have to fight fire with fire. And that means being pretty robust with people like Boris Johnson and, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump in the United States of America. That's my view. And I think there needs to be a sharpness of focus in the British Labour Party that we've been lacking in the last few months. That's a good call to arms. David, thank you for helping us understand what in the world is going on over in the UK. And just a PSA to all MPs who might be listening. Be nice to your communication staff. Don't go to the route of Jared Omar, independent MP for Sheffield,

whose press secretary got on the official Twitter account and ripped him a new one as his way of quitting. My favorite ending was he called his old boss a selfish degenerate prick. David is none of those things. You are none of those things. I imagine you also guard closely the password to the Twitter account. I am so pleased that I treat my staff well. My God. It's poor old character, my God.

Thank you again. Have a great week. We'll be watching. Thanks, David. Take care. Bye. Thanks again for tuning to POTSave the World. Again, a little rate, a little review in that store.

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