Pod Save the World - All the President’s (Corrupt) Men

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Tommy and Ben break down another chaotic and consequential week in global affairs. Trump blinks and extends the ceasefire with Iran, but the Strait of Hormuz remains closed as US-Iran negotiations stall. Meanwhile, an internal power struggle between Iran's elected leaders and military is complicating talks, and the human cost for ordinary Iranians continues to mount. In Lebanon, Trump stunned Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu by publicly ordering Israel to stop bombing, but the IDF continues to occupy southern Lebanon, and an explosive image of an IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ threatens to erode evangelical support for Israel. The guys also dig into the sprawling conflicts of interest and corruption plaguing Trump's foreign policy team: Jared Kushner's billion-dollar Gulf slush fund, Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s drone grift, and the Trump family’s foray into the crypto and fusion energy business. Finally, they talk about the historic election results in Hungary and Bulgaria, Trump’s slow-rolling regime change efforts in Cuba, and reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is such a sloppy drunk that he’s become a threat to national security. Then Tommy is joined by former USAID official Nicholas Enrich to talk about his new book, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID.Preorder Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches  and subscribe to his Substack here.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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I'm Ben Rhodes. Then another Tuesday, another day spent waiting for Trump to make up his mind about what he wants to do in a run. Yeah, we had that ceasefire YouTube subscribe to our YouTube channel on Friday. And it feels like it wasn't a ceasefire after all. It was just a bunch of truth social posts. Yeah, it's a lot of diplomacy by truth social, by tweets. We're going to walk you through all the latest. There's the on again, off again diplomatic talks in Pakistan.

There's the on again off again closures of the Strait of Hermuz. We're also going to dig into deeper things like what life is like for people in Iran. We'll talk about the latest from Lebanon, including why conservative Christians are not at all thrilled with the Israeli military. I think this is a probably underappreciated story, the degree to which this image of an IDF soldier smashing a statue of Christ circulated on the Internet over the past weekend. Then we're going to talk about corruption and conflicts of interest in the Trump administration and how it's impacting foreign policy. No. Really? Wait until you hear about this Jared Kushner guy. Now we're going to talk about the recent elections in Hungary and Bulgaria. The latest on the administration's like slow rolling regime change-ish efforts in Cuba. Try to figure out what the hell is happening there. Then we are going to update you guys about friend of the show and FBI director Cash Patel. He's having a he's having a good ass time. He's having a real one. He's having a time in the barrel. Just throwing back a few beers.

$250 million lawsuit against the Atlantic. Let's see if that goes to court. The discovery on that could be interesting for him. And then Ben, stick around for my interview with Nick Enrich. He was a top global health official at USAAD when Elon Musk and the Doge guys arrived and decided to destroy the entire agency. So he's a new bookout called Into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded USAID. As mad as you are about what Trump has done to the United. the world and all the death and destruction that Elon must cause, this will make you even more

angry. So I promise you that. Good. Good. It's worth it. No, it's where this is a story that we shouldn't let just go away. Because the consequences of it are not going away. And like it's one of those the consequences are growing by the day. I mean, spoiler, the latest count that we talk about the interview is like 750,000 deaths as a result of USAID being destroyed. But the conversations Nick had with the people in charge of destroying USAID are like absolutely. absolutely more maddening and stupid than you would think. You mean Big Balls wasn't a development expert? Mr. Balls was not a pro on global health or PEPFAR.

All right. So let's start with what we know about Iran. So as of this recording, the Strait of Hormuz is closed. The war in Iran is not resolved. The talks in Pakistan don't seem to be happening. I mean, we literally are waiting all day. It's like will J.D. Vance get on a plane? Those sort of like the conversation all day in Washington.

The president's statements about it all are as incoherent. and full of shit as ever. Here are a few examples from an interview Trump did Tuesday morning with CNBC. Let's listen to that. You need at least a prospects for a signed deal today and tomorrow, or else you would resume bombing Iran. Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a better attitude to go in with, but we're ready to go.

I mean, the military is rarer in to go. You know, they wanted to be over immediately, and I just looked at a little chart. World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years, Iraq, eight years. I'm five months.

Okay, five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly. Look at Venezuela. I took it over in 45 minutes. It was basically a 45 minute. By the way, a very strong military country. We can't let traders like Schumer put pressure on you where they say,

We want out how, think how bad that is. I'm negotiating with these people. And they're telling us, we have to get out now, we have to get out now, we have to get now. I want to make a good deal. I'm not going to be rushed. I have all the time in the world. So we've done a great job. And I don't want to be rushed by people that are really treasonous as far as I'm concerned.

So I try to do a little less like media criticism these days. But I feel like one follow-up would have been warranted on the, hey, I would have won Vietnam in Iraq in a couple of weeks. That seemed like a moment for one. It's so clear that someone made that chart for him, too. You know, it's not like he just came across a chart. No. And I think what he fundamentally doesn't understand is that the consequences, yes, I mean, objectively, the war in Iran has not lasted as long as Vietnam. Congratulations.

You get a gold ribbon, you know. Lesser disaster. It doesn't mean that it's not a disaster. But also, one of the things I think he's missed in this whole enterprise is that, you know, that the geopolitical consequences of attacking Iran specifically are actually much bigger in some ways than some of the other wars, I mean, not World War I, but say the war in Afghanistan. You know, I don't mean to minimize that war in any way, obviously horrifying for the people who live through it, both in Afghanistan and service members. But Afghanistan wasn't a country

of 94 million people that controls the straight-to-form moves and is a significant supplier of global energy. You know, he is set in motion. He's kind of messed with the tectonic plates underneath geopolitics and the global economy with this war. And so he doesn't understand this isn't like something that's measured in like how many months of active conflict there are. It's measured in what are the repercussions of this war going to be, above all for the people that have already been killed or suffered, but also for the entire global economy. Yeah, for the global economy, the kind of thing you think that, you know, CNBC might follow off on. Yeah.

Yeah, who am I to criticize Joe Kernan? So, like I said, Ben, like we were waiting all day to see if J.D. Vance would make this trip. Just before we started recording, President Trump posted the following message on true social. Based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of field marshal, Assim Munir, and Prime Minister for Shabash, or he was of Pakistan. We have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as our leaders of representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all their respects remain ready and able and will therefore extend

the ceasefire until such time as their proposals submitted. And discussions are concluded one way or the other President Donald J. Trump. So I interpreted this as Trump blinking. He doesn't want to go back to war. The Iranians know that. The Wall Street knows that. Oil traders know that. That's why all the prices are down. But he's also unwilling to lift the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Horm moves, which sounds like it was a precondition to get Iran to agree to come back to the table. Does that sound right to you? That sounds right to me. I think there's a couple other things happening here.

The first of all, remember he was saying like a week ago that the regime has changed and there are all these wonderful people in charge now? He's still kind of on that message. Well, like it hasn't. And what's happening on the Iranian side is pretty clear to me from the outside, which is that the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the hardest. core element of the regime, they're calling the actual shots, right? They are the ones who've closed the straight-of-ormuz. They're the ones who are collecting the tolls. They're the ones

who are firing drones at the Gulf. And so some of these kind of civilian leaders, these political leaders of Iran, may not even be able to deliver, you know, what they're negotiating at the table because the IRGC are the ones that ultimately have to sign off. And they're the hardest of the hardliners. And they've got the big guns. And they've got the guns. Literally. And And so, first of all, this is what happens when you kill the leadership of a country, right? So they've killed multiple people, not just the Ayatollah. They've killed other people that could have been decision makers because they had more sway with the RGC. And they've kind of finally settled on this speaker of the Iranian parliament who has some cred with the RGC.

But so on the Iranian side, you've got this split. And the RGC is like, you know what? We can sense that Trump is afraid of this war. And so why would we make a deal that doesn't get us everything. we want. We want sanctions relief. We want the straight-of-horm moves to be a toll road, and maybe we'll ship out the H-EU, the dust, as Trump says, but we probably don't want to make any more concessions on nuclear program. Why should we? This guy's scared of us. He doesn't want the war. Then Trump doesn't really know what he wants. He just wants to be able to say he won.

Clearly, he wants to get like the dust out, which again, as we've talked about, doesn't change the underlying Iranian nuclear program. Just sprinkle on a toilet seat for Bobby Kennedy. He just wants something to say he won, but because he doesn't really know why he went to war, he doesn't even know what he's really pushing at the table. Before the war, they were pushing ballistic missiles, support for proxies.

That's all gone. regime change. Justice for protesters killed. We're back to the JCPO negotiation, you know. And so that's all Trump knows. And then the Pakistanis probably don't even know why they're hosting this thing. There's happy to be there. Other than they, you know, made billions of dollars of investments in Trump and Whitkoff's kids' business, you know, crypto business.

So this is not the best recipe for de-escalation. Yeah, so I saw this BBC reporter tweeted that the Iranian delegation was basically ready to come to the negotiating table, but then everything changed over the weekend when the U.S. military fired on an Iranian-fled cargo ship, according to some Iranian source. and that just blew everything up and they want the blockade basically lifted. We'll get more into the TikTok of how we got there. But Ben, I've been reading, there's a great economist piece about the kind of intra-Iranian power struggle that you are just touching on. It's between elected officials. It's between the military. It's between nationalists and Islamists.

And the way this kind of played out and manifested in practice was Iran sent 80-0 officials to the last round of Pakistan talks. 30 of them were deemed decision makers. And I think on a previous episode, we talked about how the Iranian delegation was stacked with experts and expertise and people had been in negotiations before. And that is definitely like the glass half full version of it. But the glass half empty version was the economist reported that the Pakistani mediators spent as much time kind of refereeing fights between members of the Iranian delegation as facilitating talks with the U.S.

So yes, it does sound like there's a very real power struggle happening and no clear way that it ends besides, you know, the military probably killing a bunch of people or throwing them in prison. Yeah. I mean, some of this is also probably like you want to go to Pakistan. It's been a little rough in Iran. It's true. It probably sounds nice to be in a hotel with good Wi-Fi and like, you know, all you can eat breakfast buffet, you know.

It's a good point. The other thing I would say is, and this gets to the true social posts, when I was, you know, in charge of, for lack of a better term, like, you know, advocating for the Iraq, on deal. There was a dynamic that would happen where, look, obviously we were trying to emphasize all that we got in the deal. So we would lean into like, you know, they're going to submit to these intrusive inspections and they're going to ship out the stockpile and they're going to, we're going to be able to see all of their program, the uranium mines and mills and the centrifuges, all true. But sometimes John Kerry would get a call from Javad Zarif, the farm minister,

who'd be like, hey, can you guys kind of chill out a bit on the intrusive inspections piece because it's true. But the IRGC, I mean, he didn't necessarily say in these words, but basically it was giving him problems of the hardliners back home, right? The IRGC didn't want the deal or they didn't like aspects of the deal like the intrusive inspections where you could just show up and look at stuff. And so it hurt him in the Iranian system if we were leaning into that. Imagine if you were the Iranian negotiator.

and you know you're probably out in front of the RGC a little bit in Pakistan. And you're like, well, yeah, maybe we could ship the dust out in exchange for this. And you know you have to sell it back home to these killers in the RGC. And then all of a sudden you wake up on a Friday and Trump is true social posting all these concessions that you actually didn't make. Yeah. The straight will be open forever, which is, you know, not something that I'm sure the Iranians agree to you, that they're not going to be. Enrich uranium, Trump was posting on. The IRGC guys, I guarantee you, called up the negotiators and were like, what the fuck?

Hey, maybe come pay a visit to us, you know, and it's like, ah. And so of course they're like backing out because they don't want to get killed by the IRGC. And so Trump is literally endangering the negotiators by what he's doing. I can sense that. It's a good strategy. No, it makes a lot of sense. Okay, so let's do a bit of the tale of the tape about how. how we got to this point. And like you said earlier, we recorded a bonus episode for the

Pod Save the World YouTube on Friday about this like flurry of social media activity. So please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube to make sure you don't miss any of these bonus episodes. And also when you subscribe and you like and you share the stuff we do on YouTube, you help us get people good information when they're just searching for what the hell is happening with the Iran talks and not factual, not like propaganda. Because Ben, I made the mistake of watching a clip of Hugh Hewitt on his show interviewing Eli Lake about the latest. On the seasmire talks, it was like a parallel universe where everything was solved. The war was a triumph.

They'd figured it all out. How did those guys live with the reality that that's not true? They do a lot of dust, you know, a lot of that Iranian dust. If Obama had done this, they'd be yelling about how we let the regime in place, how they left the ballistic missiles. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, last week, we had this flurry of claims from Trump on social media.

You mentioned a few of them, but let me just read them. Iran has agreed to never close this trade-off rumors again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the... the world. Not sure that one held up. The USA will get all nuclear dust created by our great B2 bombers. No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. Then finally, he said, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited all caps from doing so by the USA. That one I liked. So it was all bullshit. Iran had only announced a partial opening of the strait. And then by Saturday, they'd walked back even that partial opening because the Iranians were piss. The Trump said,

well, we're going to continue our blockade of the strait. Then things escalated further after the Iranians attacked two Indian flagships attempting to transit the strait. Trump called those attacks a total violation of our ceasefire agreement. And then he re-uped his threat to destroy Iran's civilization, its civilian infrastructure by saying, you know, if they don't take the deal, the United States is going to knock out every single power plant, every single bridge in Iran. No more Mr. Nice Guy, all caps.

That's how we've ended that one. The U.S. later boarded and seized an Iranian vessel that was en route from. China. The U.S. seized a tanker in the Indian Ocean. So things just kept escalating and escalating. On Monday, Iran's speaker of the parliament and lead negotiator, Muhammad Ghalibov, said Iran will quote, not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats. And quote, we have been preparing to show new cards in the battlefield. So I was excited for like a, the new cards, you know, midseason twist here. So then, obviously, like, my working assumption has been that Trump wants a deal, or he wants the war over.

He wants to punt this as far down the road as he possibly can and just do CNBC hits and convince a bunch of commodities traders. Meathead traders. He is, in fact, going to fold on everything and taco or whatever you want to call it and just not make their lives harder or not increase the oil of energy. But also he refuses to admit that he hasn't accomplished all of his goals. There will be people pushing him from the right to actually get the H-EU. Like, I've zero doubt, I've zero hope that the Israelis will actually

adhere to this demand that they never attack. And they're still in Lebanon. Lebanon again. Yeah, and they're still occupying Lebanon. We'll get it to all the details of that later. So, I don't know, man, like, this is as clear as mud, but like, how do you see this playing out in this moment? I think if you look at the Iranians, they know they don't have to give much, you know, in some ways they could choose to give nothing. And the war just kind of freezes. I think what they want, though, is money. They want either unfrozen assets, like, you know, we heard rumors of $20 billion. They want either, you know, probably more comprehensive sanctions relief so they can just sell oil without it being sanctioned.

They want to tax the Strait of Hormuz in perpetuity. They just want revenue, you know. And what will they trade to get that? They will not trade away their ballistic missile program because they've just demonstrated. how much they need it. They're not going to trade away their support for proxies because it's kind of existential to them that they have these proxies. And they're not going to say that they'll never enrich uranium. They're not going to say we won't have a nuclear program. So I think what they had the trade away is the dust, you know, because the dust is not, frankly, that important.

Which isn't dust, by the way. It's a rich uranium. It's highly enriched uranium. It's so weird. You have to call it dust because he has to say that he obliterated the program. But anyway. Because fundamentally that means nothing to them. They still have centrifuges that they can operate. If they choose to have a covert nuclear program, they just take those centrifuges underground and accumulate more dust, you know? So I could kind of see some deal where they ship out the H.E.U.

And I don't know, maybe they promise not to enrich uranium for some period of time, which, by the way, that promise is worth nothing absent, like rigorous inspections, which I don't think they're going to submit to, right? And so then Trump says he got the deal of the century. It's so much better than Obama's Iran deal. You know, it's going to be probably a lesser version of the Iran deal and that it'll be like the dust for some sanctions relief, you know, in the war's over. For 15 years instead of 10 or something. And if you think about, yeah, but it'll be a phony, they can say 100, you know, like I, who, they've learned that deals are fungible. They've learned that, you know, so to them, any deal they make is a deal for the

duration of the Trump presidency. It's a two and a half year deal, and they'll reassess at that point. Or maybe they'll just cheat and have a covert nuclear program. And so you could see this world in which Trump declares victory because he got the dust out. In the straight of four moves it was open before the war is open. Again, measure that against what he said at the beginning of the war. There's going to be regime change. We're going to obliterate their nuclear program. They're going to end their ballistic missile program. We're going to destroy their Navy. Well, clearly we haven't destroyed their Navy because they've closed the straight-of-horn movies with like a bunch of speedboats, you know. So he's not achieved the things he said he would.

And it was totally unnecessary to launch this war, kill all these people, upend the entire global economy, you know, permanently lose the Gulf states, you know, as people that are reliant on the United States. And on and on, was all that worth it to get like the dust out? Does anybody in America even care about the dust? Which, by the way, had already been dusted as far as we were concerned based on Trump's claims. Well, and the question is, and I've a question for you, Tommy, is like, this is a Hugh Hewitt question. It's like, will the right-wingers accept? Because that's the total capitulation to the Iranians. Yeah, I think that where they're, what they will tell themselves, the story they'll tell themselves is, look, he destroyed all of, you know, Isfahan.

You destroyed all the nuclear facilities. It will take a generation to build them back. they have no revenue. The military capacity is a fraction of what it once was. Therefore, that is some big win. When it's like what everyone has always said about military efforts to shut down Iran's nuclear program, it's like you can set them back, but you cannot permanently take it away or solve the problem. And I think they'll convince themselves that the problem has been, you know,

as solved as much as it could have been. What I think we know in reality, there could be like a garage somewhere. in Iran with some nuclear centrifuges spinning that's enriching, you know, uranium to the grade they needed to be. They're just in this fantasy world where this is a game of risk because I think the most important thing

we've learned from this war is that the demonstrated capacity of the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz is worth 10,000 ballistic missiles. It's worth far more than support for Hizboa. You know, like, and they can't, whatever capabilities around lost, they gained a much bigger one

in showing that, just firing a few drones at some tankers and threatening to the Strait of Farmuz gives them control of the global economy. So congratulations Hugh Hewitt and Eli Lake. You've just empowered the IRGC more than anything that has happened since the 1979 revolution. Another Trump win.

Except for maybe the Iraq War, which empowered them significantly. So it's the second time that the neocons have given the IRGC a gigantic win. This episode of Pottaic of the World is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild grain is the first bake-from-frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas. Unlike many store-bought options, Wild grain uses simple ingredients you can pronounce in a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your belly, enricher in nutrients, and antioxidants.

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Now available in Canada, too. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash world for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash world. One group that didn't get a win here is the Iranian people. Let's talk about what life is like for them right now to the best we can. So the estimate you see in terms of civilian casualties in Iran is about 1,700 people. I think we should assume that that's a massive undercount. But that would only be the day.

direct death toll and that is far from the only impact. So the Center for American Progress put together a report that talks about the kind of the human environmental cost of the war. That includes the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that release these toxic chemicals and pollutants into the air. Remember when the Israelis bombed this big petrochemical facility, it was like, you know, there was raining like acid for days on people, right? God knows what that did to civilians.

That there have been, you know, further erosions of Iran's health care infrastructure, which is already under enormous stress before the war because of anti-government protests and decades of sanctions and mismanagement. And then Iran was experiencing this massive water shortage. Again, before the war, that has gotten worse because at least one of their desalination plants was bombed. And then on top of that, Ben,

so the Iranians have dealt with like an almost total internet blackout since the war started. And I would just ask anyone, like, imagine any modern economy running without an internet for two months. Yeah. It's impossible to imagine. Every business is screwed, right? And so on top of that, you know, you get the U.S. and Israel targeting major industries like petrochemical and steel.

You need those industries to rebuild the country and also to get the revenue to rebuild the country. I saw one analyst told the Wall Street Journal that the disruption to the steel industry put at risk more than 5.5 million jobs within Iran and then another 1.2 million at risk because it impacts on the chemical and pharma industry. And so, like, again, to sum it all up, there were all these protesters who Trump said he was going to rescue, who are now like staring down the barrel of a more hardline regime, right? They traded the older homine for the younger homine, the IRGC is more entrenched. And life is just exponentially worse for them, right? A disastrous economic situation somehow got worse because we bombed the shit out of. Yeah, I think that we live in this world in which, you know,

our news cycle focuses on this place when the bombs are falling. And then, you know, it's same impulse as Trump. Trump kind of reflects the worst aspects of America. It's a common thread with Trump. If I can just get this off the television set, and actually to him, it's a television set for most of us. It's our phones. Then, you know, we'll think about other things. We'll think about, I don't know, the ballroom or the next war against Cuba or whatever.

But I think what you're reminding us is of the people inside of Iran, like this war is going to be with them for a very long time. It's going to show up in, you know, deeper poverty, deeper repression, maybe health effects of some of these things that have been done, that millions of people will, and actually millions of Iranians were also displaced, you know, millions of people's lives are worse because of what Donald Trump did. And that's the kind of moral outrage. It's sometimes missing, you know, when people talk about, like, Democratic opposition to the war that's about, like, he didn't ask Congress the right way. Like, what about the fact that like... So about the briefing. Yeah, he just fucked over like millions of Iranians and... In perpetuity, by the way.

Gulf Arabs and Lebanese and the U.S. service members who died or were wounded, their lives are never going to be the same. And I think we kind of have to remind ourselves of that human cost. I think the other thing that'll be interesting is, you know, there's a world in which protests resume, you know, life is shitty there. But the IRGC is now like more dug in. frankly, think that they just weathered, if we can weather Trump bombing us and the Israelis bombing us, we can deal with these protesters.

And there's less of a threat of the United States bombing again. Like if they're cracking down and killing thousands of protesters at some future date, you know, they probably think, well, Trump doesn't want to get another war. And I think the other thing that's happened, I'd be curious and we won't know until we ask, you know, actual Iranians, which is hard because internet block out, among other things, these diaspora Iranians that were very supportive of the war, like Reza-Paul Avi, who was calling on people to rise up and suggesting he was going to go run a transition, those people have to be pretty discredited because...

Oh, you would think. Well, you and I talked about this. I mean, people who push for wars and the wars go badly are almost never discredited in Washington, so I'm sure he'll have a friend there. Yeah, he'll friend in Washington. But I mean... Within Iran. Again, he told these people that he was going to run some transition.

Trump cast him aside, the same way he did Maria Machia. in Venezuela. So it'll be interesting to see how the diaspora kind of adjusts to this because I think there's a lot of splits. The people that advocated for this now look like they just advocated for something horrible to happen to happen to happen to their country. I'm not suggesting that's what they wanted to happen, but that is what happened. So I think, yeah, by every metric, life is worse for Iranians. And there's just no time frame for building it back. I mean, Iranian state media put the cost of rebuilding Iran at $270 billion. Where is that money going to come from? And even over in the UAE, The Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration is considering basically a bailout for the UAE because their economy has been hit so hard.

So, like, the entire Gulf is feeling this ripple out. And so then, like, maybe the best news we have for you guys today, at least in this kind of bucket, is that the ceasefire is mostly holding in Lebanon. On Friday, Trump posted on truth social, like we mentioned earlier, Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are prohibited from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough. Axios reported that this caught the Israelis by surprise. and that Netanyahu was, quote, personally stunned and alarmed by the message. It's nice.

Take that one. Trump later elaborated to Axios saying, Israel has to stop. They can't continue to blow buildings up. I'm not going to allow it. Again, I'm very skeptical that that will hold. But God, I would have loved to hear Joe Biden say that one fucking time about Gaza over the course of two years. Anyway, the IDF, though, is still occupying a huge chunk of southern Lebanon.

The IDF calls it a forward defense line. We should call it what it is, which is Israel. invading and occupying another country. A bunch of Lebanese people used the ceasefire to return to their villages and just check out their homes. They found them destroyed, in many cases, flattened to the ground by U.S. military provided bulldozers. Last week, 40 Democrats voted to block the sale of military bulldozers to Israel because they're using for this kind of stuff. But unfortunately, that vote failed. Folks on social media over the weekend, Ben, might have seen this pretty shocking image of an IDF soldier literally sledgehammering.

the face of a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross. This happened in a Christian town in southern Lebanon. When I first saw this image, I thought it must have been AI generated, be as it looked designed in a lab to inflame sectarian tensions and erode support for Israel among evangelicals, but nope, turns out it was real. In a statement, notably a statement released in English, Netanyahu said he was stunned and saddened by the soldier's actions,

and he condemned the act in the strongest terms. So the soldier who vandalized the statue and the soldier who took the picture were removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30-day military detentions, but they were six others on the scene who were going to be punished separately. Probably get a slap on the wrist or something, we'll find out. But the damage was done, this incident, outraged conservatives, outraged religious leaders. It's not an isolated incident. Folks probably remember that the only Catholic church in Gaza was shelled a couple different times,

and the priest there was wounded in one of those shellings. So, Ben, we've talked before on the show about how. Israel's biggest supporters in the U.S. are not American Jews. It's evangelical Christians who, like, want the rapture to come. Do you think these stories will kind of dent that support? Because you do see this narrative get lifted up by Tucker Carlson a lot, for example. I think so. I mean, first of all, I'm dubious of the ceasefire.

One statistic I saw Tommy was that, you know, there was a ceasefire with Hezbollah in late 2024 that was reached. and the UN, the UN force in Lebanon, reported 10,000 Israeli violations of that ceasefire. That doesn't seem good. Before this latest war started. And so, and we saw the same thing in Gaza. Israel's violated the ceasefire in Gaza hundreds, if not thousands of times. And so what they do is what Trump wants is, again, Trump doesn't really care about the people in Lebanon or Gaza.

He wants it to be a low enough level of violence that it's just kind of not leading the news, you know. And so if Israel's like occasionally bombing Lebanon in perpetuity, that's fine as long as it's not like the big show where they were, you know, oblitering Beirut. So count me skeptical about the directives to Nanyahu to, you know, prohibit him from doing this in Lebanon. On the Christian stuff, I think that the problem for Trump and Israel is that there's a bunch of converging things happening. is that you have, yes, like in Lebanon, these are some of these villages that are being destroyed are Christian villages. Some of them are Christian, like, you know, they've lineage that goes back to like the Bible, you know, like the New Testament. Like this is a holy land, you know, for Christians. Like this is where this war is happening, where Israel's occupying territory. And some of the people,

the priests have been killed in the bombing. I saw, you know, a child that had met with the Pope was killed in the bombing. There are these different things that are, you know, touching this space. When you add on top of that, Trump posting the picture of himself as Jesus and Trump, you know, putting out this, you know, threat to annihilate, you know, Iran on Easter morning, you know, have Easter. There's a disrespect and disregard for Christianity in both the actions of the Israeli government and in the personal actions of Trump. And so the evangelical Christian, Christians are having a double reckoning because they're both like, huh, Trump, I thought we liked him. He got rid of Roe v. Wade, but it turns out he's mocking Jesus.

Now he seems like the Antichrist. And huh, like, I thought Israel was our friend, but they're blowing up, you know, Christian villages. And now there's this, you know, picture of an Israeli IDF soldier, like, you know, desecrating Jesus. Of all the things to post on social media, you take literally taking a sledgehammer to Jesus' This is his face. What are you thinking? What are your hobbies? What does that guy's feed?

I does show you the impunity. I mean, you see this sometimes on IDF social media. Remember when it used to be the most moral army in the world? Oh, yeah. I guess that talked more. And there was another incident, I think, in a church in southern Lebanon where a bunch of IDF soldiers, like, staged a fake wedding inside an Orthodox church. And probably didn't realize, like, how profoundly offensive that was for a bunch of Christians in that community. And that went super viral on social media.

So, like, people who, again, he was. feeds push them this kind of content have seen example after example after example and are now like this whole most moral army thing has just been tossed out the window and we're not even talking about the disrespect and treatment to Muslims, Palestinians, your average sort of like Lebanese person like that is unfortunately priced in. Well it and you also remember the the Israeli government closed on Palm Sunday. Yes. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Yeah to the highest representative of the Vatican Yeah, literally where Jesus was born.

Yeah. So I think that, look, it is the case that a lot of Americans and American Christians actually probably didn't know until a few months ago that there's a huge Palestinian Christian community that includes and encompasses the most holy sites in the Christian church, you know, Bethlehem. And Tucker Carlson, people like that are now really, you know, hitting on that point. And so I think it does risk lowering the floor of support for both Israel and Trump because, you know, people who actually care about their Christian faith are going to be upset about this. It also is a very dangerous gateway to a certain kind of anti-Semitism that is one of the older kinds of anti-Semitism. Well, the Jews are the ones who killed Jesus.

Exactly. Exactly. It's very dangerous. And again, like, it's Trump and Beebe that, you know, doesn't just justify in any way. It shows why these kinds of wars are so dangerous for anti-Semitism, you know, because they lead people in those directions. Yeah. And again, like, the cost to civilians on the ground in Lebanon has been unbearable, right? I mean, there's the direct casualty number, but then there's the million people who have been displaced and the people who came back to their homes that have just been leveled.

We reached out to Doctors Without Borders to see what they're experiencing on the ground in Lebanon. And we got this note from an emergency physician, Dr. Tianmin Din. Let's listen. I need people to understand what the injuries looked like that we were seeing before the ceasefire. Now beyond the acute injuries, we're looking at a generation left with lifelong disabilities. I visited a young woman a few days ago in ICU, who we treated when she came through the emergency department. She'd been walking along with a friend when both her legs were blown off. She managed to survive her initial injuries, but when I visited her a couple of days ago, she was hooked up to dialysis because the muscle destruction from her injury was so extensive

that it had started destroying her kidneys. I also recently visited a migrant woman who'd been a patient out of clinic for years. She was injured in one of the very first strikes in the South, and she's still in the hospital. She's bled into her brainstem and spine, she's paralyzed. Her home is destroyed and the people who would have cared for her were killed in the same strike. We are also seeing an overwhelming number of people whose health needs were neglected during the war, either because they couldn't reach healthcare or their doctors were displaced, or hospitals had to shut their outpatient clinics to direct resources to trauma and emergency care.

Yesterday, our clinic diagnosed a young pregnant woman with a baby who had died in utero. imagine having a fully form wanted and loved a baby and having its heart stopped because the healthcare system had collapsed. These are complications that if they get caught early, they can be treated, they can be delivered safely by C-section when there's a functioning system. But there isn't one. So, look, you often hear people say, well, you know, the IDF military campaign in Lebanon is the most justified of all their actions because there is this real threat from Hezbollah and for rockets, etc. And it's like, okay. But there is a flip side to that argument about the human cost for people living in Lebanon who have no association with Hezbollah, probably hate them.

And that's some examples right there. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that strikes me in listening to that clip is these people and doctors without borders, they've been in a lot of difficult places. And you could hear her voice like breaking. Yeah. And it's the same thing we experience in Gaza. Like the scale of this destruction is not normal even for a war. because you hear it in her voice, like the things that are happening kind of go beyond there was a civilian casualty event, you know.

Because, again, this gets it, why is this, why is it necessary to go out for the health infrastructure if you're targeting Hezbollah? Like it just, clearly this war went well beyond targeting Hezbollah, either because there was no targeting or because it was indiscriminate or because there was really objective to kind of paralyze the Lebanese society while you take Southern Lebanon. Now, the other thing I want to say, Tommy, and I'm going to say this at the beginning, many thanks to the world though, Lebanese American, who sent me some wonderful Lebanese olive oil. Okay. Because, you know, she was... It's not this word about as expected. Grateful for our coverage of Lebanon. But actually, the reason I make this point beyond just thanking that person is Lebanese, the Lebanese I know, hate that their country is only seen as, like, this war zone.

Right. Like, if it's like this beautiful cosmopolitan city. Yeah, if it's on the news, it's because Hezbollah and, you know, rubble in Beirut. And what the olive oil reminds me of, this is this incredible place. One of the prettiest places on the planet. Yeah, it's this gorgeous country. They produce wonderful things. They, like, have wonderful artists.

I mean, it's worth naming this because there's something dehumanizing about how we kind of, like, you know, the camera only turns on these places to show, like, rubble. and then a commentator talking about Hizbollah. You know, like it's like the vast majority of Lebanese, including Shia Muslims, are not like Hizbullah operatives, you know. Just normal human beings. Beirut is usually like an incredibly cosmopolitan city, not just a bunch of rubble from Israeli bombs, you know. And so the erasure of the humanity of people cannot be a consequence of the war. Yeah.

And it doesn't have to be this way. It's a bunch of political choices made by political leaders. All right, let's turn to just the broader problem within the administration of the failure of diplomacy and the role. I think you and I both believe that corruption has played in all of it. So Trump, when he has a diplomatic problem, he does not send experts, as we've discussed. He sends his idiot son-in-law Jared Kushner and his idiot golf buddy, Steve Whitkoff. And the issue is not just that they're in over their heads, which they are, they very much are. It's that they are corrupt.

They have these huge financial conflicts of interests, and we basically have no visibility into the specifics or how those conflicts of interest might impact their decision making, especially we're talking about the Middle East, right? And Jared Kushner's got all this golf money. So let's just go through the examples because we've talked about this before, but I don't know what we've done like a comprehensive kind of like corruption conversation recently. So Kushner is this floating envoy. He meets with the Board of Peace. He meets with the Russians. He meets with the Iranians. He's in Gaza all the time.

He's talking to the Israelis. And the White House, they talk about Jared, like, in this role, he's making this big sacrifice because he doesn't take, like, the White House salary. And don't, for those who might have been, who might believe this bullshit, Jared is an unpaid volunteer because volunteers don't have to make ethics disclosures and release their, their, you know, personal financial disclosure forms. So we only know, because of previous press reports, that Jared's investment firm, Affinity Partners got $2 billion from the Saudis, and he got hundreds of millions.

more from the Emirates and the Qataris. We also know that at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Jared was ostensibly there as Trump's Middle East envoy, but he was also soliciting funds for his firm. The New York Times said Jared was trying to raise another $5 billion for his fund. I assume most of that would come from the Saudis if he had his dredders. Bloomberg reported that 99% of all affinity partners' assets belong to non-U.S. investors. So that's the little we know about Jared. Eric and Don Jr. recently announced they're going to work for a drone manufacturing company, which later merged with a publicly traded Trump company that owns golf courses. So that makes a lot of sense, Ben, is totally on the up and up. Forbes estimated that

between from 2024 to 2025, Don Jr's net worth went from 50 million to 300 million. Erics went from 40 million to 750 million. And Barron Trump, who is a college sophomore, is estimated by Forbes to be worth $150 million, all of it tied to cryptocurrency stuff. And then finally, Ben, I know you've heard of Truth Social, but did you know that its revenue does not just come from spammy ads for mail order brides and Chinese peptides and things of that nature? We'll do it a little multiple choice game here. What business did Trump media, the owner of Truth Social, get into recently via a $6 billion merger? Was it A, orbital data centers? B, Fusion Energy, C, non-woke AI, D, anti-woke legal services via its acquisition of Liberty Legal,

which is an anti-woke legal services company for patriots who don't want their case law to be totally gay. All right. So in my mind, it's probably orbital data centers or non-woke AI. And I'm going to go with non-woke AI. Sorry, my friend. It's fusion energy. Really? Yes.

The Trump's recently got into the fusion energy business. The conflicts of interest are so massive. The media barely covers them. Do you see the reporting the other day that's like Jared Kushner's conflicts are barely mentioned in the reporting? Yeah. And it's like this is harming our national security and it's kind of just not part of the conversation.

First of all, we should say there is a highly evolved network of corruption between kind of Russia, the Gulf, the U.S. far right kind of Magaverse, Hungary. There's just a lot of money that kind of swashes around this space. And what's interesting is Jared gravitates to all the places that are the most corrupt. Yeah, interesting of that. So, you know, the hotel deals in Serbia, like probably one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and an extension of Russian interests in a lot of ways. Or obviously he's vacuuming up money in the Gulf. Pakistan, as I mentioned, has a partnership with World Liberty Financial, controlled by Trump and Whitkoff Kids, to launch a stable coin, right? And so that's why the – why else are the talks in Pakistan?

Right. So the point is that Jared is negotiating issues that are directly related to the interests of these countries that are paying him in the countries that are paying, if not him, his family members. and is simultaneously raising funds for his business while he's negotiating. And I think what is so grotesque about this is, sure, like in some ways this is kind of how business is done in parts of the world. Like there's a lot of corruption. You know, there's some big commercial deal and there's some money that exchanges hands under the table. But what Jared is leveraging is literally the U.S. military. Like the U.S. military is an instrument of his corruption. Our capacity to sell weapons to the Gulf countries or to protect the Gulf countries or to go to war with the opponents of the Gulf countries is directly related to both his diplomatic portfolio and probably the reason they're writing checks.

And so it's just a higher scale corruption because he's not trading like small. It's not like, hey, like, you know, we're going to do a soybean deal and I'm going to get some money under the table. Or Hunter Biden. I'm going to get a $50,000 month retainer from Burismo. to sit on their board and hopefully get influenced to the big guy, Joe Biden. No, this is like billions of dollars that are being paid because he has the power of the U.S. government behind him. And it is a shame on the U.S. media that they don't name, that that should be in the first paragraph of every story. It should be.

It has to be. And not for like partisan reasons, because like how are you informing your readers? Tell people why. Why is Jared at the table? Why is he at the table? Why are these talks failing? why do we keep reading that like Jared and Steve Wutkoff didn't understand the substance of the nuclear negotiation. Oh, right. They're not nuclear scientists. They're there because of corruption. And like

Steve Wittkoff's son, Zach, is the co-founder of World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm. It sure sounds like a big scam or a Ponzi scheme. Like you know who's mad at World Liberty Financial recently then is Justin Sun. Remember that crypto billionaire that pumped billions into World Liberty Financial? Wow. What a coincidence right at the same. time, the SEC investigation into one of his companies went away, and now he's accusing them of fraud. Yeah, yeah. This guy's attacking World Liberty Financial.

The Qataris gave Trump the plane. There's the real estate deals all across the world. And you got like, you know, remember what was it, the Gaza peace agreement event when some world leader is like, hey, Trump, can I get Don or Eric's phone numbers? Yeah, yeah. The president of Indonesia, one of the biggest countries in the world is like, hey, can I get Eric Trump's phone number? What do you think that's about to get his advice about?

how to deal with development in Aceh in Indonesia? Like, no. I mean, and this is all like just happening on the open. I mean, one thing, I've heard you guys begin to talk on PSA about, you know, the Project 2029, like what happens if Democrats win. Like, the accountability goes so far beyond Donald Trump senior, you know, like the combination of the fraud and crimes that are being committed and also the need to have laws that prevent this kind of corruption is got to be like one of.

of the first spate of executive orders from a Democratic president. Totally great. And Trump also got rid of all the inspector generals at all the agencies that might be providing watchdogs of this. They closed the, I remember they closed the DOJ, kleptocracy task force. They stopped enforcing Farah, which is the foreign agent registration act, which is try to prevent, like, you know, foreign agents from buying influence in Washington. There's been a bunch of reporting recently about this friend of Trump's from like the 80s and 90s named Paolo Zampoli. If you read about this guy, fucking guy. The one who knocked on his ex-wife or something to ice.

This dude was boys with Trump in like the 80s and 90s. He was, I think, a modeling agent. Now Trump made him the special envoy of the president of the United States for a global partnership. Has a very Epstein ring to... He buddies with Epstein. And he told the FC, whatever people see me, they want something. They want access to the president. I tell them, buy Boeing.

If you want to make the president happy, buy Boeing. It's the simplest thing in the world. It's like just talking about access trading. Can we say one other thing about this, which is that... the stock market, it's been extraordinary to watch this, first of all, because there's an irrationality. You see it kind of going up. Part of the problem is Trump looks at that as a useful metric. There's two problems.

One is clearly someone is doing massive insider trading. And there's been the BBC has a great investigation people should look at that they've accounted for all these trades before Trump makes an announcement of people essentially, you know, betting on Trump making that announcement and then making hundreds of millions of dollars. and it's happened repeatedly on both Iran and on tariff. 15 minutes before, truth social posts. And so somebody is collie profiting. But the other thing is the market is just a bullshit indicator for how the economy is going for people. Because it's a bunch of fucking traders sitting in front of computer screens, betting on currencies, betting on the price of oil. So even if, you know, you're going to get fucked and there are going to be oil scarcities and your gas prices are going to go up,

they can still make a ton of money on trades by just betting where the currencies are going to go. And the prices we're all seeing reported daily in the news are like futures prices usually, which often are less than the actual price of a barrel of oil if you were to like pull up to Kuwait and like throw one in the back of your truck. It's just such the whole thing is corrupt. Capitalism has kind of reached its late stage Frankenstein monster, you know, where it's just a vehicle for people like this to grift off of us, you know. No, I think it's great that we're betting on when Maduro is going to be deposed. Some insider can make hundreds of thousands of dollars on Cal She.

Yeah. You couldn't be a Trump insider. You can be like a special force. I'm not trying to punen them. But like, you shouldn't have that. There's a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people know when things are going to happen and they can make money off it. Yeah.

All right. Well, that was nice to get that off our chest. By the way, if you guys want to support a media company that will always report on Jared Kushner's corruption and the Whitkoff families. corruption, please consider becoming a friend of the pod subscriber. Go to crooked.com slash friends. You can subscribe. You get ad-free episodes. You get lots of bonus content. And you also help us build an independent progressive media company that can help hold this administration accountable. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Hymns. At some point, you stop blaming stress,

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Use world to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. All right, let's talk about corruption over in Europe. So last week, there was this historic election in Hungary where after 16 long years, right-wing populist named Victor Orban was finally ousted after losing the parliamentary elections to a party led by his former ally, Peter Maggiar. It was an election that focused on anger about corruption.

And frankly, you know, anger at Orban's total failure to deliver for his country. Many supporters of democracy writ large are hoping that this election might provide a playbook for how to defeat other authoritarian creeps like Orban. And also that it might be a bellwether that might help us just kind of see the future and determine which direction Europe is going to go because there's a lot of far right parties that have been doing well. So that brings us to Bulgaria, Ben. They just had an election over the weekend that seems to have some of the same dynamics at play. Four months ago, there were these major protests against corruption. and the economic state of the country, which forced the former government to resign. The progressive Bulgaria party, aka P.B.

They just won in a landside victory on Sunday with 44.7% of the vote. The leader is Bulgaria's former president, Ruman Radov. Now, that's more of a ceremonial position, but he is a former fighter pilot. He commanded the Bulgarian Air Force. And, you know, he's sort of an interesting character, like Orban. He took a bunch of pro-Russia sounding positions. He opposed Bulgarian military assistance to Ukraine. He's criticized EU sanctions.

But there are questions about whether he's just sort of like posturing for the election or whether he's really committed to these positions or whether he's more of a pragmatist than Orban ever was. I guess we'll find out. But Rodav's win was bigger than what the polling anticipated. This coalition should have a majority in parliament now. The former prime minister and the GERB party, I love the names of these parties overseas. The GERB party came in second with like 13%. The Liberals got like 12% or closer to 13%.

Is that too? Ben, any thoughts on sort of developments you've seen in Hungary since we last talked? And how you might interpret the elections in Bulgaria from over the weekend? I think, first of all, in Hungary, Peter Maggiar has been as aggressive as you could possibly have wanted him to be in signaling that he's going to go after urbanism. And people may have seen these videos of him literally going on state television, which did not allow him to appear the entire campaign. And being like, my first fucking thing to do is going to be shut your ass down. You know, like, I mean, it takes some guts. It'd be like, you know, going on, you know, CBS News, Barry Weiss and being like, yeah, we're shutting you guys down. I'm not like a big fan of, like, censoring the media, but like walking into state TV and saying to your face live on air.

This woman, like, you're full of shit and now it's time to pay the paper. It's kind of funny. And by the way, it's hard to overstate the extent to which Orban turned this. I mean, he literally would not allow Peter Magiard as an opponent of his to appear on, you know, so this goes beyond Fox News. This was literally state media. So I think Maggiar is fully justified in doing what he's doing. He signaled he's going to go after the corruption, including Orban's family members. He signaled that he would arrest BB Nanyahu as a war criminal if he traveled to Hungary.

I mean, everything the guy says sounds like he's going to take a sledgehammer to urbanism and the corruption that it undergirds it. That's good. You know, the potential bad is there's a bit of a strong man persona in Maggiar in doing this. And I don't know what he's going to build in this place. Yeah, he was a Fides party member until pretty recently. So we'll see, but so far is so good. But I think what we're seeing in Bulgaria is a broader problem. There's two issues.

One is just like whether the far right or do they have the momentum or not. And you can find now evidence that they don't or a bond lost. Maloney's backtracking away from Trump. Or you can find, you know, looks like there may be getting a foothold in Bulgaria. Slovenia, which we talked about that election, where the progressive actually got the most votes, it appears that the, you know, creepy far right guy, Jansa, is the one who's going to be able to form a government. And I think the problem for the EU is all Russia needs is one spoiler. I mean, they have that in Slovakia.

This guy, Fico is like that too. You know, one country where people are probably just pissed about prices because people are pissed about prices everywhere. And so they vote out the incumbent Progressive Party and then the kind of pro-Russian party gets in. And then all of a sudden they're like putting sand in the gears. at the EU on sanctions on Russia. It speaks that this is not sustainable. Like, if all Russia has to do to, like, fuck up the whole EU is just find one relatively small central Eastern European country

where there's an anti-incumbent mood and kind of surf it into having obstructions. Now, none of these people can, it's important people to know this. None of these people can take the role that Orban did. Like, Orban was an absolute hub for far-right activity, for corruption. There's rumors that the Russian money was going to the Hungarians and then going to CPAC, you know, like, he was bigger than just like a vote for Russia's interest in the EU.

But I do think that this speaks to a problem where the EU has to get away from, like, unanimity of decision making because they're always going to have some pain in the ass leader in some country. Definitely, definitely. But, yeah, I agree with you that does look like a bit of a mixed bag in those recent elections. But there's also, like, interesting soundings. Like, Nigel Farage was asked about his relationship with Trump last week, and he said, I happen to know him, but that's by the by. He's trying to walk right.

He basically lived in the lobby of that Trump hotel. He was just kissing his ass, nonstop. Lord David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, was more critical. He said Trump was heedless of the moral element of leadership and undeserving of support. He said, a moral line has to be drawn somewhere, and this week Trump went beyond it. That was in an op-ed. In Germany, we've talked about the AFD party, the neo-Nazi party. They're distancing themselves from Trump, especially the Iran War.

And then Marine Le Pen, who's like a long time ally and supporter of Trump, told the French media that Trump's moves in Iran were erratic and the consequences would be, quote, catastrophic. So again, like, it's just this weird place where the far right is willing to be critical of Trump on Iran in ways that inexplicably, Kier Starmor, the labor prime minister in the UK with a 50 point underwater approval rating will not, even though every time he does, it seems to be. benefit in politically. I just can't make sense of it. It tells you, and we said this last week, but that Trump is the best thing going for anti-Farright politics because he's such an albatross on these people that they're running away from him. But to your Kier-Starmour point, if the fucking AFD can figure out that one way to boost your numbers is to stand up to Trump, it's pretty extraordinary that Kier-Starmer can't seem to draw the same lesson. Yeah, look, I guess in fairness, it's easier to be in opposition and when you actually

of government-to-government relations and you're managing this special relationship, like, sure, there's some way Trump could punish you. I just think political malpractice. I think I've tried to be charitable. I don't believe what I'm saying. Yeah. Tell the fucking king not to go on the trip. That would send a message.

Yeah. George and Maloney had no problem saying to Trump. Yeah. Like, why is King Charles? Like, you know, don't come here. You know, like, you're pissed about this war. I mean, Britain gets a significant amount of its energy from Qatar that's now offline. Like, that's going to screw over a bunch of people.

Like, I just, just know, what are you getting? I mean, actually, let's just look at it from the other standpoint. Like, what is Keir Stramer getting from being kind of scared of his shadow? Yeah, yeah. Getting called Neville Chamberlain on the reg. Yeah. Yeah, it's going great. Trump's going to take the king to like a monster truck rally or something.

Oh, my God. What if he'll go to the ultimate fighting event? That'll be fun. Maybe he can be a part of Joe Rogan's like pilot psychedelic program. Take a little Ibogaine? Yeah, take a little, take a little silocybin MDMA journey. That sounds like more fun.

The Ibogaine shit. No, no, I think you, let's, I'll be in the other clinical trials. I'll be in the MDMA one. I will take, you and I can take King Charles. Is Camilla going to come? I'm sure she's going to come. We'll take them to the sphere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll see if like Dead and Co. We'll kind of run it back. It's run it back. Have a good ass time. Yeah. Okay, we solved that one. So let's find two more things. We're going to talk about the latest from Cuba.

I don't, the New York Times. James and Axios reported that a senior delegation from the U.S. had visited Cuba for negotiations. It's like the highest level talks since the Obama administration. Those talks were reportedly about economic reforms, getting them to a market-based economy, releasing some political prisoners, not regime change. The talks have been primarily with President Raul Castro's family, not with the president of Cuba. Castro is 94 years old, so again, he's going to regime change himself pretty soon, but his

kids are included, including his grandkids. His son, Alejandro Castro Espin, who is known as the one-eyed man because of an eye injury from when he was in Angola, Ben, I know you know this guy. He's been part of them. Then there's Raoul Rodriguez Castro is supposedly Raoul's favorite grandson. He was like his bodyguard, his body guy. He's like the keeper of Castro's phone and controls the messages that come to and from him. He's also known as the crab because he was born with a six finger on one hand.

These guys have awesome nicknames. Imagine if like the Obama kids were known as like the crab. I would say I probably spent, I'm not kidding, over a thousand hours with Alhander Castro, because we'd have these marathon multi-day negotiating sessions, or at least hundreds of hours, several. And look, I'll say, like, yeah, he lost an eye in Angola. You kind of notice it. I mean, there's something in there, you know, but there's a fundamental unsuriceness to how they, you know, I never was like, I'm off to meet the one-eyed man.

You know what I mean? Like, these people seem like they're fucking kids in a movie. It's like it's the same way that Cas Patel likes to, you know, work out at Quantico. Like, there's a fantasy camp element to them giving these nicknames of the crab and the one-eyed man. That's the first point. The crab is not a nickname that I would want. No, no. Or the one-eyed man for the matter.

No. The crab's got an instant. Continue. Ininuation. What are these talks? What is happening? What's happening here? So I think what's happening is...

Do you think that Iran is making them pump the brakes on this shit? as I guess by threshold question because they know it's not going well. No one has any bandwidth to do another regime change, at least not militarily. So like what is the path? How do you slow the role? I assume that what they want is some. So it's interesting is they clearly think Venezuela was a huge success. Trump talks about it a lot.

And look, the problem for Trump is, sure, he got Maduro, Delci Rodriguez is in there. she's cracking down on all her opponents and purging all the Maduro loyalists to install her own. She's still a socialist, you know, strong woman. And I guess we get some oil occasionally from them or something. But here's the problem. Like most Americans just don't give a shit.

Like no Americans are like, you know what? My life is demonstrably better because we depose Maduro. Right. A few people in Miami. So then I think they look at Cuba and they're like, Well, we could do that, right? Like, we could, you know, get rid of the leader. But here's a problem.

Like, they don't have oil in Cuba, you know. And so I imagine the potential deal could be, I'm sure the Cubans would be willing to open up their economy. They were before with us. And what you might, what Cuba has is real estate, right? So they have beachfront property, quite literally. Like the whole north coast of Cuba facing Florida, it's beautiful beaches.

or beautiful keys. And you could say in a very corrupt way, hey, the Miami Cubans can come in here and own this land and develop hotels on it. Maybe they're in a Trump tower or two in a golf course. And maybe Miguel Diaz Canal, the president of Cuba, he goes.

He's the Maduro in this scenario. And they try to find some Delci Rodriguez-type person that Rao Castro is okay, kind of taking the place. The problem with this is, first of all, Diaz Canal doesn't run Cuba. I mean, that's evident by the fact that they're... Not even talking to him. He's not even in the way that Maduro ran Venezuela.

Like, he was never... Raoul's been the kind of, you know, emeritus leader of the country. The military's got a deep interest in the economy because it's a sanctions economy and they control a lot of stuff. And Diaz Canal is kind of an apparatchik who's kind of the frontman.

So I think that the Eli Lakes of the Cuban hardliners know. that just getting Diaz Canal out doesn't change that regime at all. Like, it just means a musical chair is in the president's seat for what a real estate deal. And it's kind of like,

why do we go through all this? What we like... Yeah, to what ends. We did a fuel blockade. We killed Cubans literally because there were power shortages at hospitals. Like, we've killed Cubans with our sanctions in the recent months

so that like some Miami Cubans tight with Marco Rubio can like invest in real estate. Because I don't know what else. else Cuba can concede, you know, if they're not becoming a multi-party democracy tomorrow, which they're not going to regime change themselves, there's not much for them to concede. They can release political prisoners and, you know, again, like give property to Americans. But like I just, what is this all about? I don't know.

And once again, like, it seems like through these talks, the administration is further empowering the next generation of castros. The crab. So we're just empowering. Yeah, this six-finger guy and the one-eyed guy and rinse repeat. I don't know, man. I guess hurry up and wait and we'll keep watching. Final story, Ben.

So long-time listeners to the show know that we have issues with some of the people in the administration, but that we're huge fans of FBI director Cash Patel. He is eminently qualified for the job. Very competent. He's a great leader. He's an expert in all facets of law enforcement. And so it was shocking to me personally to learn via a recent report in the Atlantic Magazine that Cash is not nearly as popular within the FBI itself as he is with us on this show.

So according to this report, Cash Mattel, the FBI director, he's routinely drunk on the job. And by the way, this is a 24-7 job. He is, the piece says that on multiple occasions, his security detail had trouble waking cash up because he was so shit-faced. And in one instance, they had to make a request for equipment used by SWAT teams to break down doors. So that is drunk. I don't know that I've been that drunk in a long time.

I guess he didn't have a what's up product you guys? Zbiotics. Yeah, he just didn't have the Zibiotics. It's like 400 Zibiotics next time. You could help him out. We could ship them some. I'm happy to help him out because, again, I'm a big fan. The Atlantic piece reported that meetings with FBI staff have been, have to be scheduled

around his hangovers and that he is, quote, erratic, suspicious of others and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has a necessary evidence. Seems like bad tendencies for the FBI director. He's also incredibly paranoid about getting fired to the point where he flipped out about some random IT issue and thought it meant that the White House had locked him out of his accounts. Now, this paranoia might be justified. The article says that senior White House officials have had conversations about who might replace Cash. We also saw Minecraft head, Dan Bongino, leave his job as deputy to go be a podcaster again.

So, Ben, I mean, this is not the first report that outlines all the ways that Cash Patel is kind of a joke and treats the job like it's fantasy camp. There was his request to go jet skiing at a comment. of our closest intelligence-sharing allies, the Five Eyes. We know that Cash uses the FBI's private jet to fly to Italy for the Olympics, to fly to Pennsylvania to watch his girlfriend sing at some low-rent wrestling contest, to fly to a place called the Boondoggle Ranch. I love that you always include that one. I love the Boondogel Ranch.

I want, can we go? I'd like to go to the Boondogel Ranch. If I can get us a ticket, will you go with me? It sounds like the kind of place where that guy shot Dick Cheney and the face. If you and I go, that'll be us. But like this is the first. first time I've seen the argument that the people in the FBI think Cash Patel is a threat to national security because of his mismanagement of the role. Now, the counter argument you hear is like,

look, every minute Cash Patel is designing his like FBI Punisher logo challenge coin is a minute. He's not like fucking up ongoing FBI operations. I'm not sure I buy that. I see a pretty big opportunity cost here. But what did you make of this article? Oh, I have some thoughts, man. Um, So first of all, I love that he's suing the Atlantic for $250 million. $2.50 million. When Lorien Jobs owns the Atlantic, so I think she can cover the legal fees. Just dig it in the couch for that. Also, what's interesting about this is that we saw the guy like shotgun a fucking beer at the Olympics with the hockey team.

And he looked like Will Ferrell in old school. Like, remember when Will Ferrell shotgun's first beer? And he was like, oh, yeah. Like, that's exactly how Cash was acting. It's just like it was activating all the like... Frank the tank. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it is completely believable that this guy, I mean, we know he was at like Rouse member.

I think maybe when Charlie Kirk got killed or something, he's at like, you know. Tweeting out wrong information. He's always in Las Vegas, it's something called the poodle club. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you don't go there to drink seltzer. No, no. He's not the kind of guy orders a club soda on the plane. He's the kind of guy's getting the two, you know, bottles of wine, you know.

But so it's eminently believable. that he's a drunk. And to be serious about it, like, you remember, Tommy, like, when shit happens, like the FBI director, remember the Boston Marathon bombing? I just left, but yes. Okay, so you just left. So Bob Mueller was, I mean, rest in peace, was in the fucking situation room for like hours, you know, and he's briefing Obama, and he's on the phone with agents in Boston,

and he's managing up and down and around, and he's briefing Congress. like shit happened on the regular where. And there was stuff like that we never learned about, like ongoing investigations that were so sensitive that like the White House people were never briefed that they're managing. Yeah, like that is a, that is a 24-7 job literally. You will get woken up in the middle of the night and asked a question like, who do we have to notify about this? Or can you call your counterpart in this other country because there's a terrorist plot

and we need someone at the FBI director level to call the head of MI5 or something? Like, should like this happen all the time. So if he can't function on the job because he's hammered for hours at a time, like, that's dangerous. I'd also say, like, what is Cash Patel even doing in this job? Because, like, what is his vision of the FBI? Because all that seems to get him geeked is to have, like, ultimate fighting people come and train agents or to change the logo. Like, he has no vision of, like, how to reform the bureau. Oh, like, he's not even, he's so incompetent and people are so innocent that he's not even

persecuting Trump's opponents because he's too incompetent to do that. I mean, and then the last thing is I read the piece and it kind of explains to me, Tommy, I don't know. Remember when he was like posting like through the Charlie Kirk investigation? Like, we got the guy. He's in custody. Like, it felt like drunk tweeting. Totally.

It was. We've all been there. Absolutely. But when I've done it, it's usually been like, I'm at the end of a dinner that's not that interesting. So I started looking at my phone. I've had a few. And I'm like, ah, I'm going to.

tweet about this. I'm not the FBI director. No, usually for me, I'm going, I'm walking back to the main stage at Coachella, the Molly's wearing off, and I just want to weigh out on the Hungarian election. You know? Yeah, you've run out of things to talk to Katie Perry about. So you're just going to weigh in on the Hungarian election. Katie does want to hear your takes on the Hungarian election. So you're going to share it with your meeting.

The honeymoon phase is over. All she wants to talk about is Bieber. All I want to talk about is Orban. It's just like, I got to tweet it out. One group, one organization that seems to have kind of grasps who cash is is whoever made this Lego movie about him. I don't even know if it's the Iranians anymore.

They're all getting credited. Entirely a meme, but whoever made this one had a good-ass time with it. Let's watch. Crazy eyes. Epstein files, cover up lies. Trump name redacted, Congressonewalled. For you drop them, but you crawled.

Total bust. Olympics hockey locker room champ. Am I fire? Maybe AI is good. I mean, we found a good use for it. Yeah. I mean, the amazing thing about that is that there's every single narrative about cash, because we've been covering them all on this podcast,

is somehow in like a one-minute video. Yeah, how'd they do it? I mean, he does have crazy eyes. Him getting hammered at the Olympics. The flavor and podcast guys call him cock-eyed cash. Yeah, him posting the wrong guy was caught and Charlie Kirk. Like, every thing that this guy's done, like they can just grab that. And within like an hour, like churn out like this AI video that's honestly like pretty interesting to watch.

Now, they always have the Israel control thing. They always have. So they always have, you know, Alexis Wilkins is a girlfriend. Massad honeypot honeypot. But yeah, man, it couldn't happen to a better guy than cash, I've just said. I wonder if there'll be a calci market on how long it takes her to dump him after he's fired. I guess we'll find out. You know, if he can't have a SWAT team guard her.

Actually, notes on the IRGC Lego video. They left that out that there's a SWAT team that basically provides security for his girlfriend. Come on, guys. Do better. Do better. IRGC. Whoever made this. Wow, good stuff. Anyway, hopefully Trump fires Cash Patel. He's on a firing spree lately.

It's just self-evident that this guy is not qualified. Maybe the point is that just things just haven't been the same since Bongino left. He's holding the whole place together. He's holding the whole place together. He's holding it all in his shoulders. With his gigantic square Minecraft head. Okay, that's it for the news portion of the show. But please stick around for my conversation with Nick Enrich.

We talk about his book, Into the Woodchipper. It's a whistleblower's account of what it was like when the USAID got doged by Elon Musk, his idiot friends and presumably reportedly, allegedly, allegedly a whole bunch of ketamine. So stick around for that. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the Wise account, you can send, spend, and receive money in over 40

currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond, most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending Reals in Rio, the Wise travel card gives you the mid-market rate on every purchase, no costly markups on your bill. Getting paid in dollars for your side gig, avoid hidden fees, and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24-7 access to live support your international transactions with Wise are quick, transparent, and safe. Plus, Wise runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people trust Wise to manage their money internationally. Be smart, get Wise. I got to tell you, my co-host on the show Ben Rhodes was telling me, he's like, now the best way to spend money abroad is just pallets of cash. Just slip it on a C-17 and

you're good. And I was like, Ben, if that's not for you. No, no, no, no. Wise is so much easier than shipping giant pallets of cash abroad. This is true. You can use it. You always get the best exchange rate, you can use it to buy stuff. It could not be easier. If you're going to multiple countries, try Wise. Especially when the dollar is going to be worthless. It's pretty soon. Download the Wise app today or visit Wise.com. Terms and conditions apply. My guest today is the former Bureau of Global Health Director of Policy Programs in Planning for USAID. His new book is Into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded USAID. It's a very evocative title, and I assume one where you need to

much less ketamine to come up with it than Elon did for his famous tweet. Nick Enrich, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to meet you. So let's start by just, you know, kind of talking about a bit about your time and work you did at USAID pre-Elon. You were there for over 12 years across four administrations. What did you focus on? And what was your proudest accomplishment? Yeah. So I was, as you said, the director of policy programs and planning for the Global Health Bureau, which was essentially the CFO, COO position of that bureau. My job was to make sure that we had the resources we needed for global health and that we were using them as officially as possible to achieve our health goals. And my job was to come up with ways to make things better.

And I think that's where I was the most proud. One of the last things, sadly, that I did in the last administration was come up with a new global health policy for the A.A. We had actually never had one before for our whole global health sector. And we thought that this would be a great way to get a little bit more efficient in the way that we would administer our programs. I also had a list. When I heard Doge was coming in, I had a list of things that I wanted to do to improve the agency that I thought would be the kinds of things that Doge would be excited to hear about, obviously quite naively because I never actually got a chance to share any of those ideas. So far from battling these guys, you were like, oh, I got some ways to make this place more efficient. Here's my literal list of things we could do to, you know, make money go further.

Yeah, they were called the Department of Efficiency. And, you know, in the abstract, it sounded like a good idea. But the reality was it was no such thing. Yeah, so let's talk about that reality. So by now, I imagine everyone listening knows how this story unfortunately ends. It's Elon Musk and a bunch of like young, arrogant kids from the tech world, just rampaging through USAID and destroying it. That decision alone is estimated to have already led to 750,000 deaths just so far.

But I think listeners might not fully grasp just how careless and ignorant the people in charge of this process truly were. Can you recount for listeners a story you tell in the book about what a couple of Doge staffers said to you after most employees at the agency had been placed on administrative leave? Sure. that it wasn't until after most of the employees were placed in administrative leave or fired that I was given the opportunity to explain what we even did in global health. So I just gave a quick overview, talked about the infectious diseases that we worked to stop, our work to help save newborn babies and mothers, and a few other of the just top line highlights. And I was kind of met with a stunned silence from the leadership of USAID at that point.

And the chief of staff of the agency kind of like looked at me and said, wow, I had no idea you did all that. When I think of what USA did in global health, I just assumed it was, you know, abortions. What is your reaction in that moment? How do you even address a comment that ignorant by someone who's supposed to be the chief of staff at the agency? It was very difficult to decide whether to laugh or cry. I knew I didn't want to argue with him because I knew that wasn't going to get me anything, and get me anywhere, but it just betrayed this extraordinary level of ignorance and to think that these were the people that had made the decision to get rid of all of our staff before they had

any idea what the work was that the agency even did was shocking. Yeah, truly shocking. So there was this moment where Elon and the boy has come in to USAID. It's clear they're going to destroy some parts, but it's not clear yet if they're going to like completely upend the entire, you know, agency. I mean, ultimately, they got rid of what, like, 83% of all programming and folded that into the State Department. And so before USAID was fully gutted, you decided to author and then release to the media some memos about the impact to become a whistleblower. Can you tell listeners of what you put in those memos and how you made that decision and whether you think it made any, like, did anybody read your memo? Did anyone rethink what they were doing? Well, so what I put in

the memos, there were three memos. The first was to describe everything we had tried to do to restart our life-saving programs, which was something that Secretary of State Rubio had promised was going to happen as they tore down USAID, but yet they didn't let us restart any of our programs. And in fact, they stopped us at every possible turn. So that was the first memo. The second was about how they decimated our staff and really just traumatized the workforce for the about six-week period in which I was responsible for global health. And then the third memo documented what the impacts were going to be of the cuts to USAID.

including potentially up to 2.6 million lives lost per year and tens of millions of mothers not being able to receive emergency life-saving care and numerous other issues. Did it make a difference? Well, USAID was still destroyed. Some of the contracts that had been terminated that were necessary to do our most life-saving projects were actually restored in the few days after my memoirs were released. But that was about it. I had kind of hoped that this would light a fire under Congress or others to be able to like shed some light on exactly what was happening there. But unfortunately, the end of the story is not a happy one. Yeah. Marco Rubio is a real villain in my view because, you know, he was once a huge supporter of

USAID and its work. In fact, I've heard you say in other interviews that people at the agency were a little bit relieved when he was named Secretary of State because. as his record suggested that he understood USAID, he understood the value, and that he might support it or protect it. Why do you think he completely turtled on this and reversed himself? And what's your take on Rubio now? Yeah, I mean, he certainly did not live up to the estimation that I and other staff at USAID had thought we were going to get, which was a longtime staunch supporter of foreign aid and development.

Instead, we got lies. We got Rubio saying that no one has died as a result. of the cuts to USAID, which was just blatantly not true. And he went further and blamed the USA career officials for being insubordinate for not restarting programs that his own team was preventing us from doing. And look, maybe, you know, he got lost somewhere in the connection between the waiver that he allowed to restart life-saving programs and when that was not allowed to actually be implemented by Doge. but this is the problem when you hollow out an agency of all of its expertise and replace it with

completely, you know, incompetent and unknowledgeable and unqualified buffoons. There was this chaotic period, right, where like Trump takes over, Elon comes in, Doge goes to USAID first. There's like a freeze on programming. Then they say, oh, life-saving stuff will continue. Then it's clear that that's not happening. And now that you have some time and space from that period of time, was the chaos lying? Was it people not really knowing like what the left hand was doing to the right?

Or like, what was happening there? Like, what was all the competing statements and the confusion and the kind of bullshit that was coming out of the Trump administration's leadership in that period? Yeah. I mean, certainly there were lies and there was cruelty to an unbelievable degree. But I think the thing that people maybe underestimate the most. And maybe what has the most relevance for other agencies, perhaps, is the level of sheer incompetence that we saw.

These were people who were not just unknowledgeable of global health or international development. They had really no idea how government even works. And frankly, they were really terrible managers of people in projects. So, you know, they had been tasked with an unreasonable assignment to dismantle, you know, an agency that delivered foreign aid over six decades. And you can imagine things are going to go wrong with a project like that. And when they inevitably did, the people who were in charge just had no idea how to fix those problems and ended up just making things worse.

It was a lot of like table smacking and yelling at each other and not understanding what was happening because they had already gotten rid of most of the experts that would have been able to help them do it. That's a yeah, great way to run a railroad there, get rid of all the people who understand the building and then try to dismantle it. If you had like two minutes in an elevator with Elon Musk and that period to explain to him what he did and the impact it had on the world, what would you tell him? You know, somebody said that the image of the world's richest man killing the world's

poorest children is not a pretty one. And I would like, I would love to convey that because I do feel like the destruction of USAID had nothing to do with improving efficiency or fighting waste or realigning foreign aid with some, you know, the new president's priorities. This was the just destruction of an agency for the sole purpose of satisfying the ego of a billionaire. And it's something that I'm still quite angry about, as you can probably tell. Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, I'm sure like waking up every day to read these insane tweets from this like ketamine-addled monster who seemed to just take glee in. in harming the agency, upsetting employees, being an asshole.

It just must have been horrifying. Yeah. I mean, there was a day where I think he tweeted over 40 times between like three and four o'clock in the morning about USAID. And this was on a Sunday night. And on that Monday morning, there were, some of my colleagues were asking me, is it safe for us to come in the building? I mean, he's calling us criminals.

He's calling us a ball of worms. he's calling us evil. And, you know, I didn't really know what to tell them. I mean, the good bureaucrat I was, I said, well, we haven't gotten guidance to not come into the office, so we should still come. These were kind of my normal tendencies that I had to fight against and what took me so long to decide that there was no way that I was actually fulfilling my oath as a civil servant to be doing what I was being told to do. And that's why I eventually felt like I needed to stand up and say something. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to remember back to those days where he's essentially accusing USA to being like a criminal organization and evil. And I mean, the vindictive nature of the attacks was, you know, shocking and baseless.

So let's just look forward a little bit. A lot of voters genuinely don't want to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars overseas, whether it's on a war or development. They think it's a waste. You've probably heard all the kind of isolationist nationalist arguments. against foreign aid or foreign spending that can frankly be really convincing. But I do think some of those people could be persuaded by national security arguments in favor of foreign aid. So in your opinion, what are some ways that destroying USAID is hurting our national security now and making Americans less safe? Yeah, I mean, there's several ways.

The first is specific to infectious diseases. And that's the one that keeps me up at night because I think the shortest term threat is from, a new disease or an existing disease that we're no longer able to detect coming to our borders. Because we are currently flying blind when it comes to an early warning system that we had previously set up within USA to help countries detect and treat and respond to outbreaks before there was any chance of them spreading. And now those systems have been ripped up and we have no idea. We're basically conducting biosafety and biosefety and biosefew.

security policy by crossing our fingers and hoping. So that's the thing that scares me most. And what we saw when we would issue these warnings to the Doish team and the political appointees as they were tearing it down was just that they couldn't understand. So when I tried to explain, for example, that when they froze aid, they froze clinical trials testing new drugs for drug-resistant tuberculosis, that these were our antibiotics of last resort. And when we interrupt treatment of those, it allows for the potential development of new strains of an airborne infectious disease that we no longer have any antibiotics to treat. And when I would say that, I told that to the leadership at USAID, and they told me, they asked me if I could make

Barney-style slides to explain them in a way that non-health experts could understand. Barney style? Barney, like the Dinosaur, the children's dinosaur. That's, who are those for? For Trump? I guess, I don't know who they were for. I mean, it certainly was for nobody that was going to be making rational decisions about national security. Yeah, that's unnerving. I'm trying to imagine what a Barney-style briefing about drug-resistant tuberculosis looks like. I don't want to watch that show.

I could tell you that much not with my kids. But, okay, continue. That's horrifying. That's an awful image. Yeah. So that's sort of the most immediate threat. that keeps me up on night. The longer term, you know, USAID was the embodiment of American generosity. And I think it really was preserving partnerships in ways that are done so much more efficiently

and effectively than you'll ever see from what can be run out of the State Department or the Department of Defense when we try to lead by coercion and the use of force. I mean, I think it was General Mattis under the last Trump administration said that if you cut foreign aid, you're going to need to buy me more bullets. And I think that's really true. President Obama said that for many people around the world, USA is the U.S. and I think that's right too, because a lot of people, the only engagement that they ever had with the U.S. was through the generous support that we offered them under the banner of from the American people. And I'm afraid of what's going to happen in the world where that no longer exists.

and they don't have that image of the United States. Well, no, luckily everything else is going really great. And we have kicked off this catastrophic regime change war in Iran. We had a president tweeting, you know, praise Allah on Easter and insulting all Muslims and all Christians at the same time. So I don't really know what could go wrong there. Okay. So again, looking forward, like you couldn't put USAID back as it was if you wanted to, right? Because all the infrastructure and partnerships and expertise, it's gone.

and there's just no way of kind of like fixing that. But the next Democrat who wins the presidency is going to want, I imagine, some sort of reformed, updated version of USAID. Do you have a sense of kind of a back of an envelope, kind of sketch of what that might look like? Or also, is there anyone like a group of experts out there somewhere kind of trying to rethink USAID for that next iteration that hopefully we could get through Congress or get done and get back running? Yeah, I mean, I actually maybe am more optimistic than you. I believe that USA could be rebuilt and not that difficult in not that difficult of a way. And frankly, I think it should.

Like, again, let's not think that it was torn down because that was a good idea or that it wasn't working or anything like that. The reality was, as I mentioned, it was torn down by people who had no idea what it actually did. The counter argument is to keep it where it's now being trying to fold into the State Department. And I think that's a problem for several reasons. First, I think it ends up having, you know, for the same reason that we wouldn't just suggest combining the State Department and the Department of Defense, which are two separate pillars of foreign policy, so too is development, which is a third critical policy, a pillar of foreign policy. And we're already seeing with them trying to run foreign aid out of the state of

Department is major problems because of that tangle as they try to kind of shoehorn it into their transactional diplomacy where they exchange the idea of HIV treatment for millions of people in exchange for access to critical minerals, for example, which is just, it really kind of defeats the purpose of everything that we've learned about how development policy works and builds partnerships over years. So that's one piece. The second is, as I mentioned earlier, having an independent agency that is the face overseas of American generosity is symbolically important. And that flag and that logo of the handshake and the four of the American people, I think is important for projecting American goodwill and generosity overseas. And I think that on its own has value.

Personally, I find that folks who say, well, you know, it's over, USAID is done and nothing's coming back, it's kind of like a lack of boldness and a lack of creativity that sort of allowed USA to collapse in the first place. And so I'm hoping that the next administration, even the next Congress is looking forward to boldly taking on the rebuilding of USA. And I think it's something that is not a hard lift. I think it's very popular overall when people understand what it is, right? It's less than 1% of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. And with that amount, we've saved 92 million lives over the last 20 years. So I don't think it's a hard sell.

I think it just does require the political willpower to say, look, this is what we want. And there are ways to make it better. It doesn't have to be exactly the same. Like, there are some valid criticisms of USAID. And there are ways that we can use this opportunity to make it less, less, likely to foster dependency over time, more likely to partner more closely with local organizations, have a little bit more flexibility in the earmarks that Congress has set for us so that we can address overarching problems rather than kind of stay shoehorn. There's tons of ideas that I would

love to talk about for anyone who'll listen. But where I stand is we need to rebuild USAID. All right. Well, let's hope that others in Congress share your optimism. The book is Into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded USAID. Nick Enrich, thanks for doing the show. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again, Nick Endrich for doing the show. And I have a feeling that we're going to be talking to you before next week, guys. Yeah.

Because Wednesday maybe is a deadline still. We don't know. J.D. Vance, peacemaker. Yeah. And maybe J.D. will go to Pakistan. That's a long flight for J.D. Vance. Also, like, the security requirements. Like, it was dangerous for our diplomats to be in Islamabad.

Like, I can't imagine what goes into. I mean, you want to talk about cost of war. like the cost of securing J.D. Vance and Islamabad has got to run into the tens and tens of millions at least. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's about it. And by the way, I love to Trump. Like, I salute you, chief of general staff of Pakistan. Like, it's so cool. Fucking war criminal general. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for your help. State sponsor of terror, like, you know, LT, like, you know, Los Angeles. Wild.

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