Pod Save the World - Assassin-in-Chief

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

Tommy and Ben discuss the latest on Russian election interference, the case for dismantling DHS, a setback for LGBTQ+ rights and US military accountability in the Philippines, domestic terrorism in Australia, the new interim government in Mali, reports that Trump considered assassinating Bashar al-Assad, and much more. Then, Washington Post Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief Susannah George joins to break down the latest on the Afghan Republic-Taliban peace talks.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I got a new Red Sox hat. It's my new Red Sox hat. I'm not sure why I'm buying Red Sox merch right now instead of Yes, We Cam Patriots gear. But, you know, let's talk a little sports. We don't always have to be foreign policy nerds. I just want to update people real quick. The Mets still suck. The Jets are still even worse. And the Knicks are still owned by James Dolan. So my life of sports fandom has prepared me for 2020. I have to say. I was watching the Patriots Seattle game the other day. And for some reason, the announcers just went on a tirade kicking the shit out of the Jets for like a minute and a half. And it was so funny that somehow the Jets were also losing the Patriots Seahawks game. We will not talk about the ending of that, although Russell Wilson is incredible. So today, we got a lot of good stuff.

There's the latest and greatest information about Russia's election interference efforts. There are some disturbing reports about the U.S. government collecting intelligence on protesters. there's a story about a marine and a murder in the Philippines, a survey about what Americans know about the Holocaust, why Africa has fares so much better with the coronavirus. Ben, the UN General Assembly is this week. Isn't that weird? It's so odd. It's like this big part of our lives, this big gathering, and now it's just, I don't know, like empty speeches to empty room. What is it? It's usually like the 12 days of Christmas for foreign policy nerds, you know? Not to mention the worst traffic week of the year in New York, but it's very,

Very odd to see it kind of disembodied virtually like this. Yeah, we'll duck into that for a bit. There are reports that Trump considered assassinating the president of Syria, some Iran news, updates from Mali, Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon's dumb spending and details about domestic terrorist threats in Australia. So a packed show. And then I talk with Susanna George, the Afghanistan and Pakistan Bureau Chief for the Washington Post about covering the Taliban-Afghan peace talks and the latest on the drawdown of U.S. troops.

Also, as you may have heard, Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day, but it is never too late. Do double check to make sure you're registered. Go to Votesaveamerica.com slash verify. Check it out. This is really, really important if you've moved since the last election, if you change your name, if you haven't voted in a while. So just give it a check. Republicans love to take people off the voting rolls when they don't want. And then go to Votesaveamerica.com slash every last vote to see if you want to volunteer or get involved in the election.

Also, Ben, a great new episode of Missing America out today on xenophobia. Yeah, we really look at xenophobia from the perspective of the refugee crisis. And I really encourage people to check this out because you will hear the actual story of what happened in 2015. You'll hear from some amazing voices internationally who are supporting refugees, but also finding new and creative ways to better integrate refugees into host communities. And here's some really good ideas from leading thinkers about how to, fix a system in which there are 80 million people currently displaced. So this is a problem that, you know, isn't in the headlines right now. But I think if you listen to this, you'll see how we deal with refugees ultimately says a lot about what kind of country we are and what kind of

world we're going to live in. And I'm really excited about the voices we bring you in this episode. Yeah, it's a great episode. Really amazing people you talk to. And frankly, the refugee crisis ties in with so many other things we talk about from Afghanistan to Syria, climate, to the EU, the climate, yeah, everything in between. All right, I think we should start with the Russian interference beat because there's a lot of news there. So a couple different pieces of this. Vox had a good article about how Russia's efforts influenced the 2020 election with propaganda have evolved. The short version is that these like Russian bot farms from 2016 have been replaced with this more sophisticated effort to essentially identify and promote like, I don't know, freelance, I guess is

what you'd call them, American writers to write up. and push the Russian narrative. So you're seeing like actual American writers promoted on Russian propaganda sites. They're getting boosted on social media. And it's, you know, pretty effective. In testimony before Congress, the FBI director Christopher Ray said, quote, we have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020, which of course led Trump to quote tweet him and attack him on Twitter for not mentioning China. Microsoft says Russian hackers have targeted 200 groups tied to the U.S. election. The Washington or post today reported that the CIA believes that Putin and his top aides are probably directing.

Those are the words they use the Russian influence operation to denigrate Joe Biden, including by feeding information to useful idiots like Rudy Giuliani, often through officials in Ukraine. So that's the stuff we know about. God knows what's not public yet. But, you know, the point is like Russia's job in some ways is easier this year because we are so polarized because Trump has undercut the media. He has introduced the concept of alternative facts to our lexicon. Thank you, Kellyanne Conway. It just makes it easier for the Russians to amplify lies pushed by, you know, right-wing

groups like TPUSA. And that strategy is more effective than like paying some Romanian teen to just like make up stuff. So, you know, Ben, like the sad and weird reality is we're in a place where the president in the United States and Russian propaganda outlets are singing from the same hymn book. And it's just kind of like the way it is. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think there's a sense that there's not much that can be done before Election Day, but that's not entirely true because even if the federal government under Trump won't do anything to protect us, officials in that government can raise the alarm as Christopher Ray did. Companies like Microsoft and other tech companies can try to pull content off their platforms or try to call out hacking efforts when they see it. Citizens, all of us, can be more aware of the deliberate nature of these disinformation campaigns.

And so we ultimately are going to need to develop some antibodies as a society to deal with this in any event, but particularly in the event where the president of the United States is essentially acting as not just complicit, but a tool of Russian disinformation. And not just Rudy Giulana, you've got Ron Johnson, the senator, literally building an investigation of the Bidens in the United States Senate based on information fed to him by Russian agents, you know, just Russian disinformation. in the United States Senate here. And I think the two things it points out, and you alluded to this, Tommy, is like, first, the problem is us. I mean, the problem is our country and our discourse is so broken that it's very easy for the Russians to come in and just stir that pot and amplify stuff and turn people even more against each other. And, you know, essentially, there's a symbiotic relationship between the American right wing and the Russians to fuel the kind of division and conspiracy theory that helps it on Trump. But I think more generally, you know, whether it's the Russians

or anybody else, and we focus so much on the Russians, you know, polarization is not a given. Like, there are people who choose to polarize, people who choose to divide, people who choose to spread conspiracy theories. And, you know, we're in this kind of, I mean, Tommy, if you watch some these, these, you know, events in the background and you see these QAnon people and these pedophile charges, like, it is, the rod is deep. And don't think the Russians aren't stirring that pot either. So the other thing I just think people need to recognize is even if Joe Biden, knock on what wins, like none of this is going away. And it's not just about elections. It's about, oh, wow, we can so easily kind of just implode American society. And the Russians,

you know, are doing that because it's not hard for them to do. They're also trolling us. I mean, you sent this around to our, like, WorldO's group chat. RT put out a video where they have like a Donald Trump impersonator flying to Moscow to get offered a job if he loses the election. And they're like, not fake news, but deep fakes. They're like dangling the idea that they might create deep fake. Yeah, it's just like, fuck you. Well, also, like, congratulations Republicans. You know, you went from being the party of Ronald Reagan, the evil empire, to a party led by someone who's such a joke that he's being trolled by the very Russian government that helped get him elected because they have no respect for him more for us, right? And that's, that's the Republican Party's evolution from the 80s to the day.

Never, ever, ever, just like you don't listen to them on Supreme Court matters, listen to these guys like, you know, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham who put themselves up as these like Russian hawks defending democracy. Give me a break. Look what you've done to us. You made us this like, this laughing stock that is trolled by RT. Yeah, thanks again, hardliners. Let's turn to these Portland protests stories for a minute because this is pretty disturbing. So Ken Klibenstein at the reported that during the height of the Portland protests, the U.S. was conducting a bunch of intelligence collection on protesters, including intercepting protesters' phone calls. So this comes on top of what we already knew. The videos we all saw of like DHS goons throwing protesters

into unmarked vans, there were reports about DHS's intelligence division generating intelligence reports on journalists. Brian Murphy, the former DHS undersecretary of intelligence turned whistleblower. He got demoted after a report. reports about collecting intel on journalists broke. But this piece suggests that the public narrative around his demotion was not true and that actually Murphy was removed for something maybe more nefarious. So, Ben, you know, this is serious stuff. The allegations include intercepting calls, using the FBI to potentially break into protesters' phones and other outlets have confirmed that the DEA and the U.S. Marshals were conducting aerial surveillance flights over these protests.

So, you know, we've talked before about, you know, the administration seemingly trying to lay the groundwork for this kind of stuff, like trying to paint Antifa as a terrorist group or tie them to some foreign terrorist organization. I'm trying to understand what possible legal authority you might be able to have to do any of this stuff. Like, I guess you can get a warrant if you have evidence of criminal conduct and then do lawful surveillance on someone. But this seems like it was a broad effort to surveil peaceful protesters. And I saw that Ron Wyden tweeted out the story and said he's trying to. get to the bottom of this, but basically getting stonewalled. Yeah. And I think, I mean, this feels totally extrajudicial. This feels like what you would totally see in authoritarian system, right, using federal militia and federal resources to spy on, intimidate, and gather information on

political opponents. And what we found, right, is that when you don't have a justice department that is going to enforce the rule of law against the executive branch, when you have a Congress that refuses to conduct any oversight. And even if the Democrats tried, Trump doesn't go along with it. And then the courts, you know, ultimately may side with Trump if it goes to the Supreme Court, given the direction of things. Like, we've found a huge blind spot in our system where, you know, essentially if people are willing to just disregard not only norms but laws and then get away with it, they can do that. And to me, that suggests that if and when Democrats, you know, have power in their hands again, they need to make some fundamental reforms here. They need to take apart the Department

of Homeland Security. This should not exist. And I've had friends who worked at DHS who say, well, you can't hold it against the department that there were some bad apples that did this. But if the bad apples could do this, it's not set up right. There's too much, I mean, to have an intelligence function and a law enforcement function and immigration enforcement function and a counterterrorism function and all these things under one umbrella that you could be. put, you know, Chad Frat-Paddle, the acting secretary on top of it, and just turn it into some SA-style militia that terrorizes Americans, that's a problem. And there needs to be more checks and balances built into it. And they need to separate out these different functions. So there's not just

this kind of hyper-securitized agency that can be turned into like the personal, you know, arm of force of the President of the United States. And by the way, if there's four more years, I mean, God only knows what DHS will be doing and democratic majority. cities in a second Trump administration. Yeah. And just for what it's worth, I mean, so listeners, no, I'm talking to journalists who work this beat, they will often hear from employees at DHS who are not liberals, who might be right-wingers themselves, who hate the setup of DHS. You know what I mean? Like, if you're a secret service, why are you lumped in with ice and not under treasury, but now you're, like,

none of it makes any sense. It's a post-9-11 hodgepodge of idiocy. It's a total, there's no transparency. It doesn't make any sense. Like, it's not, it's not radical to suggest that, you know, we could sort of take some of these components of DHS and just put them in different places in the government where they might have more oversight and accountability. It just worked better. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's important to stress.

I'm glad you did that, like, we're not talking about eliminating all these functions. It's just saying, like, why is an immigration enforcement in the Department of Justice, you know, why is FEMA in the same agency as TSA? You know, like, it doesn't, you've long. Lumping together all of these functions is, I think, what kind of creates this, again, securitized approach to everything, right? Because it's homeland security. Everything is about this kind of post-911 mindset.

It's a threat. The immigrants are a threat. Your grandmother getting on the airplane with like a bottle of water is a threat. Like, this has done damage to our national psyche, the fact of this post-9-11 securitized mindset and this department that stands for it. And there's got to be better ways to organize government to guard against these abuses and to kind of desecuritize some of these functions. And immigration enforcement certainly comes to mind as well for that. Yeah.

And this is distinct from the broader discussion about abolishing ICE, which is an important one in its own right. Let's turn to the Philippines for a minute. So this is a story that's gotten some more attention recently. But it starts in 2014. So a 19-year-old Marine named Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton murdered a woman. named Jennifer Lodd that he met at a club in the Philippines after discovering she was transgender. He was found guilty of homicide and sentenced to a reduced sentence of 10 years in a Philippine prison. According to a comprehensive report on this incident, this story in the New York Times Magazine,

Pemberton was only the second U.S. service member to be convicted of a felony, and it's the first time that a conviction wasn't overturned like this in the Philippines. But earlier this month, Pemberton was allowed to fly home to the United States and was granted a full pardon by Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines. And Duterte's intervention here was confusing to me, Ben, because he had previously threatened to terminate the visiting forces agreement with the U.S., which is the set of rules that outlines how cases like this are even handled. So it didn't seem like he would be a big fan of letting someone off who had actually committed

a crime. But the clear message, I think, that the LGBT community took away from Duterte's decision was that their lives don't matter to him. You know, if you're gay or lesbian or transgender in the Philippines, your life just does not matter as much as his relationship with the U.S. So just a few thoughts here, Ben. So when Trump announced his cruel, ridiculous ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military, he cited cost as a reason. The estimated cost for transition-related medical procedures was like 2.4 to 8.4 million per year, which is like this smallest drop at the bucket at DOD. the Marine Corps paid $550,000 in legal fees to defend this case.

And Pemberton has received 160 grand in salary since the killing. So it gives you a sense of, you know, COD is happy to spend half a million defending someone who murders transgender people, but not health care for them. That says a lot about their values. Second, these visiting forces agreements or status of forces agreements are standard in countries where the U.S. military has a presence. But this is a good example about how they can cause just enormous damage to America's reputation in that host country when the citizens feel like U.S. service members are above the law.

So just a tragic story all around and a horrible policy decision to ban transgender service in the U.S. military. Yeah. And I think if you go down the rabbit hole of this case as I did, I mean, it's just horrific and couldn't be more open and shot and couldn't be more clear that this guy. Pemberton basically, you know, didn't care about the, the human life of the person he killed. And, you know, to me, a few things jump out. I mean, I'm glad you mentioned that the transgender ban because, I mean, what message does it send to our other troops to suggest that someone can't, you know, it suggests that they're somehow less than human, you know, that they can't serve in the same way that you can. It reinforced this obviously happened before that. But, I mean,

we should think constantly about the message that we're sending in how we approach state institutions like the military. I think the other thing with Duterte is, like, I don't, when I saw this, I didn't think he was necessarily trying to create favor with the U.S. I mean, I think that, you know, he, it plays to his base and his kind of macho, you know, we've seen this with Trump and Bolsonaro, and Duterte, there's this particularly kind of machismo, you know, approach to being a strong man where you're constantly strong. And Putin started this. or constantly showing how tough you are by, you know, beating up on LGBT people, right? I mean, so that's how I read what he's doing.

But what a guy in terms of, you know, he puts himself forward as standing up for national sovereignty of the Philippines. And meanwhile, he's pardoning this guy, a foreigner who killed a Filipino, and he is throwing Maria Reza, like one of the leading Filipino journalist in prison. This is not a guy, you know, who's really at the end of the day about the Philippines. He's about himself and about his kind of backward-looking, you know, toxic masculinity worldview. And, you know, I think it shows why should we care about trans rights, you know? Let's say you don't even know any trans people.

It's because how societies treat the most vulnerable is ultimately going to shape what kind of societies we are. And if we elect leaders like this who demonstrate how tough they are by going after LGBT people or giving impunity of those to harm them, that's going to end up, you know, coming for the rest of us, ultimately. And that's unfortunately what we're seeing in the Philippines and Russia and here in the U.S. Yeah, this discussion of like how we treat the vulnerable, how we treat, you know, outgroups in countries, I think actually, unfortunately, dovetails with our second topic, which is the Holocaust. This story really disturbed me. There was a survey of 18 to 39-year-olds in the U.S.

And it found that almost two-thirds of respondents didn't know that six million Jews were murdered. in the Holocaust. One in 10 believe that Jews caused the Holocaust. 23% said they believe that the Holocaust was a myth or was exaggerated or they just didn't really know. More than half of respondents had seen Nazi symbols on social media or in like their communities. Half had seen Holocaust denial online. The survey was commissioned by an organization called the Conference on Jewish Claims against Germany. So let's just count the ways this is disturbing. First of all, it seems like just a total failure of basic education about one of the most important and horrific events in modern history. One, second, I think this is connected with the rise of conspiracy theories like QAnon or the

demagoguing of George Soros. I mean, a lot of these conspiracy theories that we're now talking about are really just versions of old ones. Like, there are a lot of anti-Semitic tropes about a cabal of global elites like the Rothschild controlling the world or an updated version of blood libel, which is this, you know, when Anti-Semites claim that Jews kill Christian kids and religious ceremonies, but the difference now, in my mind, is how easy it is to find volumes and volumes of this shit online. And when you see something enough online or someplace, you start to believe, well, parts of it must be true. And social media

platforms claim they're trying to rein it in, but I just, I don't think we've really scratched the surface. And this kind of survey data is really concerning to me. Yeah, it should be. And, you know, a couple of things popped in my head when, when I saw this top. come up on your list and looked into it. I mean, the first is, you know, somebody who I was meeting with in, of all places, Singapore, said something to me a year ago that's just kind of stuck in my head, which is that the period after World War II, the 75 years after World War II, may have been this kind of artificial cycle where World War II was such a catastrophe and the Holocaust was such a catastrophe that kind of unusually, the nations of the world were like,

we really can't do that again. You know, and they set up all these rules and institutions to kind of prevent another world war from happening. There was a lot of awareness brought around the Holocaust. And now that we've moved two or three generations away from that, the memory is fading. And all these forces are coming back. You know, nationalism, kind of blood and soil, ethnic nationalism, conspiracy theory. You know, it can be about Jews.

It can be about other groups. And there is this kind of feeling that like the world, you and I, Tommy grew up and was still shaped, I think, by that post-World War II idea that, like, we can't do that again. And we don't want to fight World War III with the Soviets because everybody would die. And we have to have some guardrails on Uber nationalism. And we all learn about the Holocaust. At some point, you know, I don't know if it's time passing or what. That seems to afraid. Then I also thought, like, the education point you made. Like, because, I mean, it's hard to, there's some uncomfortable realities that we as Americans have to face, which is, like, look at our response to COVID.

Look at how fast these conspiracy theories spread. Look at the basic knowledge of the Holocaust you mentioned. Like, something has happened in the public education in this country in the last 40 years, ever since efforts started to be made to kind of gut funding for public education that is, you know, going to seriously impair this nation's capacity to hold together as a democracy and to deal with challenges. And so I think I'm not an education expert, but I think we need more focused from a public policy perspective, like, how the hell are we going to educate our kids better?

And then the last thing that jumped out to me is, I know I followed in your footstom, too on this Tommy, like I've been digging more and more into this Q&ON stuff. Because I've heard from people I know who are journalists who are like, they get heckled as child molesters because they're just in the media, you know, and I'm like, what is going on? And this is not a small problem. It's not a small problem if millions, if not tens of millions of Americans, believe that somehow the country is being run by a cabal of child molesters, and whether it's the media or the Jews or whomever, this is, and, and, And the Holocaust shows you, like, conspiracy theories can lead all the way to that, you know?

And I'm not saying that that's where Q&N is. I'm just saying that, like, this is, something is broken. And we need to be aware of that and mindful of it as we vote and then as our leaders make policy decisions. Look, I mean, I am comfortable saying that I think the end state of Q&N is violence. Because if you really believe that there's an elite cabal of people like killing children, the pedophile rings, et cetera, what wouldn't you do to stop that? You know? And if people want to sort of dig into the origins of QAnon,

reply all is an amazing podcast. Their latest episode, interviews one of the founders of like 4chan and 8chan about the genesis of these Q-drops that started on those message boards. And they actually think they figured out exactly who did it. And it's just this grifter guy and his son who actually live in the Philippines who run 8chan,

which was shut down as now this other gross site called like 8-Koon or something like that. So it's worth listening to because it's just very interesting. interesting. But yeah, Ben, I mean, to your point about public education, Trump's response is to assail the 1619 project and, like, demand more patriotic education, which is about as nationalist as you can possibly get. Yeah. And, you know, look, we've seen rising instances of anti-Semitism. We saw a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue that killed American Jews by a white nationalist, right? And so, Jews are always particularly vulnerable to this conspiracy theorizing. They always end up being the villains.

And I think we should see, and I mean, unfortunately, everything is seen as a partisan comment, but like these George Soros memes, right? George Soros is pretty fundamental to some of this Q&N stuff. Like, that's barely veiled anti-Semitism, right? The idea that there's a Jewish financier trying to control the world. I mean, it's ripped out of the pages of the protocols of the elders of Zyron and the kind of garbage that led to the Holocaust in the first place. So it's the old conspiracy theories, right? the Rothschilds and the German Jews stabbed the Germany in the back. And it's all being repurposed for new targets.

And Jews are always part of those targets, but they're not the only one. It's a lot of groups. There was a report in The Guardian, which is that far-right violent extremism constitutes 30 to 40 percent of Australia's domestic counterterrorism cases. That increased from 10 to 15 percent before 2016. This information became public when the deputy director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, or ASEO, I guess, testified for parliament. So, look, this is a scary trend that we're seeing that you just mentioned, Ben, because

we're seeing far-right extremists in the U.S., in Germany, in other parts of Europe. So they believe, Azio, this intelligence agency, believes that COVID has led to more people being isolated and just radicalized online. And it's just, it's another reminder of, like, I don't know, the unforeseen consequences of the coronavirus, but also that we have spent. trillions of dollars fighting Islamist extremism. We're freaking out about Iran. And there's this domestic terror threat in our countries growing before our eyes at home. And we're really not doing anything about it. Yeah. I mean, I guess today's today. I'm glad that we're doing this actually just kind of being

alarmist about this because we should be. I mean, first of all, this has been around, right? The KKK was a domestic terrorist threat. Timothy McVeigh killed a lot of people in Oklahoma city. So the idea that the kind of white supremacist terrorists or problem is not new, but it's clearly getting worse. And we've seen in those same reports about DHS, this idea that they're suppressing that information. The people in DHS are like, hey, the biggest threat. And Christopher Ray, the FBI director said the biggest threat is from white supremacist terrorists. And we're not, we're, standing down, right? Like to take the, what the Republicans used to say about Islamist. There's clearly like a directive to not make a deal out of this.

And I worry, like, the warning signs are there. We saw the mass shooting in New Zealand. We've seen shootings here in El Paso, Trial Life Synagogue I mentioned, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Like, this stuff is there. The online footprint is there. And do we have to wake up one day in this country and see, like, a building exploded to take this seriously? Because, like, that's what's going to happen. And I think we also have to, you know, recognize that it's gotten worse under Trump in some ways

because these people feel emboldened and they're connecting with one another. But also, they do see an outlet in the president. If Joe Biden wins, I actually worry about the danger of violence in the coming years from these people as they suddenly feel like now they're fighting the government instead of seeing an ally in the White House. I'd rather have that problem than Donald Trump be reelected, but we should be mindful that this is not going away and it is fundamentally connected to these technology platforms and these social media platforms. Yeah, you're right. I spent a lot more time online because of COVID, like, what on earth are these guys doing on A-chan?

What kind of deep dives into hate or people doing? How are they being radicalized in this period? And what the hell are these technology platforms doing to prevent that from happening? Nothing, which is why the government is going to have to regulate for the sake of public safety or else we're going to be sitting here in a year talking potentially about, you know, a mass casualty event or something that clearly will, you know, we'll have some online footprint that led to it. And, I mean, how many times do we have to see this story before we do.

we take it as a national security threat. I'm glad we're being alarmist, too, because it's a big deal. But here's a good news story, Ben. You ready? First of all, it comes from front of the pod Karen Atia, so you know it's going to be good, no matter what. But she had a piece in the Washington Post today about how predictions about the impact of the coronavirus on sub-Saharan Africa were pretty much wrong.

And like many people, myself included, assumed that COVID would sweep across Africa as quickly and as lethally as it did through Europe and the U.S., but that's just not what happened. The LA Times reported that there have been 34,000 confirmed deaths in Africa out of 1.3 billion people on the continent. Now, even if you assume that confirmed deaths is vastly undercounting the number that's still well shy of the U.S. numbers and proportionally, like exponentially less. So it's not clear why exactly they fared better. Karen suggests that it may be because some West African nations already had pandemic response infrastructure in place because of Ebola. She also notes, though, that like Rwanda and Senegal, which are, you know, different locations geographically responded aggressively and quickly.

And their official death tolls are 26 and 302 respectively. So they also did a great job. The LA Times suggests maybe Africa just has a generally younger population and maybe that was the driver or less fatalities. But I think the takeaway is the U.S. should look to Africa to better understand that success story and see if we can emulate it because, man, like, we need some help over here. Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. Like I, I, the Obama Foundation, you know, which I do some work with, has like a, these young leaders programs. And they have one in Africa that's very big.

It's got had hundreds of people in it. And as part of that, occasionally I, I, uh, FaceTime or Zoom with some of these, uh, young African leaders who are all over the continent, right? And everyone I talk to, like, there's lockdown. Everybody's taken real seriously. Like, I don't get the vibe that there's like anti-mask protests happening in their city. I don't get the vibe that there are people with AR-15s showing up at the Capitol. I have heard, you know, spotty, you know, some governments are on top of it, and some are governed

by kind of, you know, Bolsonaro-type boobs who, like, you know, we heard earlier in the year from the Tanzanian about how the Tanzanian leaders played it down. But across the board, I think, you know, yes, Africa has experience dealing with public health crises. They have a young population that, you know, is increasingly connected, able to get information, and they're doing the right things in a lot of places. And, you know, another piece of this that we shouldn't lose sight of is, like, Africa's like on the move here. Like, it's got some of the fastest growing economies in the world. By 2050, half the world's young people are going to be African. Like, like, we, this caricature that, you know, that Donald Trump has of shit old countries

is not the lived reality and huge swaths of that continent. And, and, and, and, America is like just not, I mean, that, those should be natural partners and friends and allies of ours. And, yeah, we can learn things from them in their public health response going forward as well. So it's a good news story about COVID, but I think it also hints at the good news story of Africa, generally, you know, in an area that should get a lot more attention from America than it does. Yeah. Let's stay in Africa because Mali has a new president or interim president. So the former defense minister, Batendau, has been named the president of the new transition government.

A guy named Asimi Goita, who is the colonel, who led the coup that overthrew the last government, has been named vice president. They're going to get inaugurated on September 25th. They're supposed to lead for, I believe, 18 months, basically a transitional period that will then lead to elections that are supposed to return Mali to civilian rule. Ben, we talked about this coup a few weeks back and how an organization. organization of Western African states called ECHOWAS has been helping mediate. I always say ECOWAS, and then I get in trouble and people say, no, idiot, it's ECOWAS. Sorry. But, you know, hopefully everybody stays engaged because I do think that that last part, that transition to civilian rule is obviously the key, but it is good news that they sorted out this transitional government.

Yeah, I mean, Molly, you know, one of the more challenging parts of Africa. And I mentioned this last time, but ECOWAS has actually been a responsible organization when it comes to democratic norms. And if you look at the language that ECWAS has been using and insisting on a transition to elections, trying to insist upon not having a military officer running the country, it's an imperfect result by any stretch. You know, there's kind of this defense committee, essentially, husbanding this transition. But the statements from ECOWAS are more constructive than anything that we hear from the President of United States. He's floating his own third term, right?

Yeah, he's floating his own third term. And these guys are like, no, no, no, no. If you want to be in the club, you got to move to democracy. And like, what a positive sign, right? That's great. These people, you know, self-organized, right, like a community of West African states, like trying to stand up for democratic norms. Again, I'm not suggesting they're perfect.

And I'm sure that there's corruption in Mali and all the rest of it. But the idea that democracy is not just some U.S. thing. It's just not something that like American presidents give speeches about it. The UN. It's something that you can have a West African flavor. It's something that can have a Southeast Asian flavor. It's not going to have a Latin American flavor. Like that regional organizations can stand up for these norms. Like that's a pot of sign. Molly's got a long way to go so I don't overstate it. But hopefully if there's just kind of a focus on sticking to a process, like this can avoid the worst outcomes of a coup, which is like the nation to.

ascends into violence and civil war or just kind of brutal unabashed military dictatorship. So better to kind of try to keep everybody's eye on the ball here and keep this thing moving in the direction of some civilian transition. Agreed. So, Ben, Trump's former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, wrote a book. He's doing a bunch of press around it. Did an interview with USA Today. I talk about parts of it later in the conversation with Susanna George because he dumps

all over the Afghan Taliban talks. He also says the risk of another 9-11-style attack on America is, quote, very high, and that U.S. in many ways is more at risk today than we were before 9-11. I'm not sure what that says about his leadership. I'd love to hear him flesh out that judgment because it's a little bit alarmist. But, you know, some of the press he's doing is annoying because he hides behind the claim that he doesn't want to get political to avoid really commenting on Trump. But I wanted to ask you, Ben, you actually read and reviewed McMaster's book. How great is it future bestseller, five stars? What's your take? So, yeah,

I actually did have the pleasure is not the right word. The opportunity to review this book. Worldo should check that out. It's going to be in the Washington Post. And so I can't comment too much on it, just because like the agreement of the review was, obviously my thoughts would be in the review. But since some of this has been publicly discussed,

and you just mentioned the 9-11 thing, that mindset permeates this book. Like you would think it was September 12, 2001, to read this thing. And you would not know, know that Donald Trump is actually president of the United States. And it just betrays essentially this kind of inability to see how the danger of the Trump presidency is the number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten challenge for the

United States because none of the other things that either H. M.M. McMaster or any of these other guys, Mattis, want to do, even the things I disagree with, like, are going to have. happen with Donald Trump is president. And but also like this just just cannot get out of the 9-11 mindset. And that, you know, you look around the world today, first of all, I just think it's an absurd notion that we're more at risk than since 9-11. I mean, we're not. You know, there's just not the same risk of a mass casualty event as there wasn't 9-11. It's just not. There are risks of, you know, terrorist shooting people or plowing, cars into crowds, but as we've lived in this country the last few years, like, there's a hell of a lot more

of that from crazy white people than from, you know, terrorist directed operatives from the Middle East. It's just not, this is not the reality. This is not the world we're living in. And that obsession, that mindset has, is allowing all these other problems from climate change to disinformation to China trying to supplant, you know, democracy is the way, the norm for the world. Like, this is all happening. While we're sitting over here, like, hyper, obsessed with terrorism in Iran. I mean, that is such a dangerous trap to fall in. I know. I love just riffing on how we're more risk than we were before 9-11. And then when asked anything about Trump, these guys say like, oh, I just don't want to get political. It's like, well, guy, you know,

you served as the national security advisor. It's a political job. But that's a political statement, by the way. Yeah. It's not, you know, they'll say it's an analytical statement that were more risk since not. No, it's a political statement. I mean, you're using to defend a bunch of policies that you pursued when you were a political appointee, you know, and I'm just so tired of this. Like, the people who are still in military, men and women, in uniform, can rightly say, like, I'm not political and I can't comment on this stuff. Right. Fair. You take off that uniform and you take jobs like Secretary of Defense or National Security Advisor or White House Chief of Staff. You are, the White House Chief of Staff is the most political job.

in the entire United States government. Literally. It's more political than even the president of the United States. Rom had it. And you got Kelly, Kelly, I care. Rahm Emanuel. Like, what general Rahm Emanuel had this job? And John Kelly can't offer us an opinion about the racist lunatic running the country

because he's helping himself up as some citizen warrior general. Yeah. Like, no, you, when you took off the uniform, just, and by the way, what a coincidence. None of these guys did that, you know, for any president other than Trump. Like, there was something. about Donald Trump that Jim Mattis and Kelly and McMaster looked at that and said, sure, I'll be a part of that, you know? And like I am, you know, it doesn't take too much to think about what do these guys have in common, right? And who might they, you know, look down upon in American society? I mean, there's like some elephants in the room here, you know, like the way they talked about Obama is just dripping with the disdain that they would never use for Trump. And the, the same breath that they say they won't comment on Trump, they'll just be withering about Obama. It's just wild to me to criticize Obama when you won't criticize the former president for saying

the dead troops are losers and suckers. It feels like that feels like a saw, you know, anyone can swing at that pitch and not be criticized. But, you know, what do I know? But so again, we mentioned the UN General Assembly's this week. Okay. So Trump delivered his speech by video, I guess, I assume because of COVID concerns. It was fairly boilerplate stuff, lots of shots to China. So Xi Jinping used his speech. to pledge to make China carbon neutral by 2060. Here's a quote from Xi Jinping, quote, humankind can no longer afford to ignore the repeated warnings of nature and go down the

beaten path of extracting resources without investing in conservation, pursuing the development at the expense of protection and exploiting resources without restoration. I never thought I'd see the day where I wish the president of the United States delivered remarks that the president of China had delivered. You know, experts say we need to get the net zero carbon emissions by 2050 to avoid the worst climate change disaster. So you can maybe say China needs to speed it up, but at least they're trying, man. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's, I mean, the extremism of the Republican Party is not fully appreciated that there's not debates in any of these other countries about whether or not climate change exists. That isn't

happening anywhere in the world except here. Even foreign governments that don't want to do anything about I at least acknowledge it's real. And then the other thing is, like, the Chinese, you know, Xi's been doing this very skillfully since Trump got elected, which is while the Americans are over there imploding, you know, and looking like a bunch of the biggest morons on the block, you know, we are going to speak very earnestly about things like climate change and international trade. And, you know, even as we are building like a techno-totelitarian dystopia that we aim to, like, spread, you know, gradually around the world, we'll talk about these things that you guys care

about because we want to be the supertolerant. superpower now. And, you know, this is all happening right now. Like, like, the rest of the world is not, like, waiting to see what happens in our election. They won't be assured if Trump is defeated that America has its act together because, like, we just elected this guy and look how we just handled COVID. So it's a sign of both, like, how out of step we are in climate, but just generally about how, like, these other nations and leaders are just taking massive advantage of the moment that they have, where the U.S. looks totally ridiculous. And Jesus, Jinping is deeply unnerving to a lot of governments and people around the world, but they'll look at him and look at Trump and be like, well, at least this guy gets a climate change exists. And at least he seems to be competent. And at least it seems like they reasonably have their shit together. And so, you know what? As much as we prefer like the untidiness of freedom, we can't throw our lot of them with these Americans. Those guys are nuts, you know? And that's the calculation that's being made in Africa, in Latin America, in Europe, in Asia, right now.

Yeah, everywhere with the Gulf. Shee Jinping, welcome to the sunrise movement. Good to have you here, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know we've been a little Trump heavy today, but I could not leave this one out. A little Jared Kushner moment here. So in his previous book, Fear, Bob Woodward reported that Trump considered assassinating Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. When he was asked about it at the time when the book was released, he lied. He denied the claim. But then, for some reason, Ben, in a recent Fox News interview, Trump said, they asked him again. And he's like, yeah, we talked about assassinating him, but we didn't take a sod out because Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis didn't want to do it.

So because we live in like a hell of constant news, this really didn't get a lot of play, but it's a huge deal. So for listeners, there's an executive order number 11905. It was signed by President Ford in 1976. It specifically prohibits political assassinations for very good reasons because our CIA was literally a crazy deep state that was trying to, and succeeding in many cases, murder foreign leaders back in the 50s. But Trump just admitted in this interview that they were debating something that is illegal,

or I guess maybe they decided to change the EO and we just don't know about it. But so, you know, smug teen like staffer, Jared Kushner was asked about all this during interview with Sinclair Broadcasting, like, you know, sort of Trump TV light. And he said, quote, it's a full contact sport. It's not touch football. And then he refused to rule out political assassination as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. So not a lot of clarity there, Ben. And I guess for, and for those who like, you know, sort of well actually us about drones and other things, like, yes, you have a point that the United States uses lethal methods to target terrorists.

They use it on the battlefield, et cetera. This is about political leaders. Like, we can't kill the president of France, for example, under this EO. It was a remarkable moment, I thought. Well, I mean, like Jared Kushner, you know, this guy, I mean, this guy, like, was running the fucking New York Observer, like, 15. Like, he's just some, like, the smug, rich fuck from New Jersey, like, from some scummy real estate family who, like, married into another scummy real estate family and then got his dad to, like, buy him the pink media newspaper so he could hobnob with, like, media moguls. and he's talking about assassinating, like, the leaders of other countries. Like, what the hell has happened here, you know?

Sure. The other thing I'd say is, like, the Soleimani assassination, right? Which seems like a million years ago, even though it was in 2020. Again, awful guy, awful guy, awful guy. Yeah. But, like, the reason that it mattered that that was illegal. And the reason we talked a lot about the justification, people may, world those may remember. The administration tied itself a knots asserting that there was an imminent,

threat to U.S. forces that had to be stopped by assassinating this guy. Every account that has come out since then demonstrates that that's totally BS, that basically Trump just decided he was given some options of how to get tough on Iran. He's like, well, let's kill this guy, you know? And so then we assassinate and Iranian general. And then post facto say it was imminent and there's nothing to back it up. Like this matters because like there is no international law. It's hard to think of something that is is more flagrantly, you know, would be living in a world of the law of the jungle than a world in which assassinating the leaders of other countries just fair game. And that doesn't mean, like, I have any brief for Assad. It just means that, like, I don't want to live in a world where countries go around

assassinating the leaders of other countries. Like, that's some dark stuff, right? And it's dark enough that, like, you've got Putin trying to assassinate people like Alexei Navalny in Russia, right? People can come at us and say, it's dark enough that you guys had killed. in the Obama administration. Again, we went out of our way to try to argue that these are combatants. These are terrorists at war with the United States. That's the legal basis for what we're doing. It is entirely different than assassinating a political leader. But sure, come at us on that. Because, like, I would rather live in a world with less killing. And certainly a world in which leaders feel like there's some cost that you'll pay if you do it. And right now,

there seems to be no cost. It seems like you can do this stuff with. impunity and don't think that won't blow back on us. Like, we said this about Iran, for instance, after this timeline, their response was not going to be over in six months or one year, or even if Donald Trump doesn't get reelected. They are going to want to get revenge at some point. And so this is a Pandora's box that should just stay shut no matter what noted, you know, general Jared Kushner things. Yeah, modern day, Alan Dulles, during Kushner. Let's talk about Iran for a minute. Back in June, the State Department publicly suspended a contract that that paid this company to act as basically a foreign policy troll account with a Twitter handle at Iran

Disinfo. Ben, I'm sure they trolled you. I'm sure they trolled me. The account spent most of the time just attacking U.S. critics of Trump's Iran policy, which is the totally inappropriate use of State Department funds. This week, the Intercept reported that the State Department actually continued working with a company that ran the Iran Disinfo account. That's the Orwellianly named E-collective for civic education long after June. So the best part, Ben, is that a Apparently their plan was to have this company's trolls promote messages in Farsi from another Twitter troll, Rick Grinnell, who was currently at the time the ambassador to Germany. So it's a play within a play. It's an embedded narrative.

This is Hamlet. Maybe it's just propaganda. You're the master's in fiction guy. Maybe correct me if I'm wrong. But so, Ben, this was routed through state's Global Engagement Center, which is an organization. You have a bit of experience working with this. Is this how you envision the Global Engagement Center operative? just promoting Rick Cronel as he attacks Americans who don't like hardline Iran policy.

Oh my God. It's like, I mean, I'll give them all credit. They successfully have owned the libs. Like I'm pretty owned here. Look, I helped set up the global engagement center. We set this up in the second Obama administration to basically have a coordinating hub to deal with counter ISIS messaging and countering Russian disinformation. And the idea was that this would be kind of an interagency thing, which is a nerdy thing to say, but that it would be at the State Department by the intelligence community and other agencies could have people sitting there kind of looking at this disinformation campaigns or these ISIS campaigns. And then they could coordinate with friends like Europeans to come up with, you know, counter messaging or we're going to

spotlight this Russian disinformation or we're going to counteract this, you know, disinformation narrative. None of it in the U.S., by the way. This is all the State Department. Now we're focusing. And what's amazing to me is it's basically as if like our Twitter trolls on Iran, they got in charge of the U.S. government. And so what are they doing? They're like using taxpayer resources to come after and, you know, troll essentially those of us who supported diplomacy of Iran and to promote their own Twitter accounts. Like, let's be clear.

Like they want to drive up the follower account for Rick Rinell, right? Because he probably measures his life's worth based on his Twitter followers or his likes and stuff, right? I mean, this is what they're doing with your money. This is your money. Like next time you pay taxes, just know that you're paying taxes. to pad Rick Grinnell's Twitter follower number and to troll, like Jason Rezion was one of the people trolled, like a Washington bus journalist in prison and even prison in Iran, including in solitary

confinement, and they attacked him because he wasn't sufficiently with the program. I mean, this is nuts. It's why just speaking of Iran, like a quick update on the policy. Like we've talked previously about how the U.S. was trying to force the United Nations to reimposed UN sanctions that were part of the JCPOA, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. that has failed miserably. All the other signatories of the deal, including like the UK, Boris Johnson's given Trump the Heisman, France, Germany, the EU, Russia, China. They've all said no. On Monday, the U.S. imposed some more sanctions. You're starting to see, Ben, this is the disconcerting part,

anonymous officials backgrounding the press saying Iran could have enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of the year. They're sort of ramping up the urgency here. So it looks like if that's true, and we shouldn't believe them that it's true. But the maximum pressure strategy has totally failed. These guys also sort of seem like they're backing themselves into a corner because I'm not sure what comes next here. Like, do you sanction the EU? Do you take military action? Like, hopefully Biden wins and we never find out. But, you know, just so folks, know, like this propaganda effort was seemingly necessary because the policy has been such a failure. Yeah. And it's like, there's no measure of success for this policy other than the fact of the policy itself that like

the pressure itself is the goal of the policy, because Iran is expanding its nuclear program, our allies are completely fed up with us, and the amount of effort that we're spending as a government, I mean, they've spent more effort trying to figure out some bizarre way to reimpose these sanctions over the objections of everybody else on the UN Security Council, everybody else in the deal. Then they have on like trying to figure out how to deal with like an international COVID response. I mean, like the degree to which like the priorities of the Secretary of State are completely warped by this monomaniacal obsession with Iran. I mean, it's another one.

We talked about terrorism. How is it going to look like in 50 years? How are we going to explain why the strongest superpower in the world, which we were no longer, but we were, was this obsessed with like this kind of pretty medium-sized country in the Middle East that doesn't directly really threaten us? It feels like Cuba in the 60s and 70s. Well, today, I guess. Yeah. It's just, yeah, no, it's just complete. session. I mean, yeah, they threaten our troops and they threaten some, you know, they threaten Israel,

and we are dealing with the number one threat, the nuclear issue. But this, this is nuts compared to like, you've got China, you've got COVID, you've got climate change, and this is what we're doing. And the rest of the world thinks it's totally insane. Yeah, unless you're a Gulf country. Well, yeah, I'll get dunked on by people being like, you know, well, you forgot about the piece he brought to the Middle East. Okay, like Bach Rain, a country of 1.5 million people with an apartheid system. is normalizing relations with Israel, I don't think that's going to magically make the Iranians surrender. Like, if that's your standard, if you really think that this alliance, like, is going to somehow, you know, Iran is going to come out with its hand up and give up its nuclear program,

like, then you're really not paying attention here because they're just expanding the nuclear program. Yeah. Two more quick things. Sorry for going a little long. So we often complain about how, like, all these top Trump officials will tell reporters on background about how they're saving the country. then they refuse to actually speak up on the record. So I have a new nominee for an award I'm calling the feckless reputation burnishing leak of the year. So this one went to CNN's Barber Star. So recently, Trump said that the Pentagon leadership doesn't like him because he's anti-war and they just want to fight wars so defense companies can sell them weapons and make a ton of money. CNN reported that defense secretary Mark Esper and the chairman of the joint chiefs Mark Millie got so angry.

angry about this outrageous smear of their character and their decades of service been that they called Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Sad to complain. Wow. Can you believe it? I mean, the stones it takes to call Meadows. Mark Esper, former Raytheon lobbyist who has helped turn U.S. foreign policy into a fucking arm sale bizarre was so upset. He called the Chief of the Staff.

I was like, I read this article and I was like, was there like a throwdown at a big NSC meeting? was like, what was this? No, calling over to DoD, calling over to the White House. Like, it happens every day. It's time to reissue another edition of profiles and courage on me that they, you know, they called the White House Chief of Staff to strongly voiced complaint and then leaked it to Barbara Star. Like, what audience are they even playing to? I mean, like, who is going to say, you know what? Like, I thought that these guys were really getting rolled by Trump. But then I saw a background report to Barbara Starr, and now I have confidence in the leadership of the United States military, is standing up for this and standing up on behalf of the troops. Yeah, it's something to tell me that

that phone call, strongly worded phone call is not going to affect the behavior of the commandery. Yeah, no, and I like Barbara Starr a lot. I know you did too, but this, that leak was for the E-ring of the Pentagon, which is where a bunch of the senior people started. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Last thing, so speaking to Pentagon spending, the Washington Post had an outrageous report that said that DOD spent most of a $1 billion fund that they were given by Congress to purchase COVID-related medical equipment on the following. Defense contractors, jet engine parts, and dress uniforms. This was money in the CARES Act, right? It was specifically earmarked to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus. Last week, you know, the CDC director said states need $6 billion to

distribute vaccines next year. There's still a severe PPE shortage, in part. because these companies that were trying to convert their facilities to manufacture like N95 masks didn't receive assurances that the government would buy them. So I'm just saying if you're a doctor who can't get an N95 mask, don't be mad because two million of the billion intended to procure those supplies went to the American woolen company in Connecticut to make army dress uniforms. Then, like, stories like this are why I never ever believe Pentagon officials when they say they can't absorb a budget cut. And like, look, if we're being honest, more often than not, that Congress is part of the problem because they enable this bullshit instead of like checking them because it goes some contractor in their district. But like this was unbelievable.

Yeah. And like every now and then it's worth reminding yourself that if in January, February, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act and some of these resources were put to the surging of production of masks. And then the post office was able to mail masks to every American. Like over 100,000 lies probably wouldn't say. right? So there's that element to this. But like to your last point, let's like plan a flag again on this. Like Joe Biden, if he doesn't cut this defense budget, that's a huge mistake. And there's an area where

progressives want to hold an incoming Biden presidency if we have one, hold their feet to the fire. It's this. Because they'll always come at you and tell you that the world is going to end if we don't get, you know, our trillion dollars or $800 billion here. And then when you actually dig into the budget, there's all this crap like this, you know. And yet they'll tell you the country will be unsafe and this and that and the sky will fall. And it's never true. It's never true. And it certainly won't be true in January 2021 if Joe Biden's elected.

So I hope that he takes, you know, it's not enough to just cut, like serious cuts here to an insane budget. Yeah. This is sort of neither here nor there, Ben, but one of the guys interviewed in that Washington Post piece is the CEO of a drone company. And his name is Chad Sweet. So I just thought. I was like really great name. Chad Wolf, Chad Sweet. That is top five drone operator names in the history of drone operator names.

Okay. When we come back, we'll have my conversation with Susanna George, the Afghanistan and Pakistan Bureau Chief of the Washington Post about the Taliban talks, what it's like covering this weird event in the latest on the war in Afghanistan. So stick around for that. I am very excited that Susanna George could join us today. She's the Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan Bureau Chief for the Washington Post and has been covering the Afghan peace talks that have been happening in Doha, Cutter. Susanna, thank you so much for doing the show.

Thank you so much for having me on. So I know you're back in Kabul now, but you were recently covering these talks. Can I just start by asking you to sort of help listeners sort of set the scene and understand what the talks are like? I mean, these are three parties that have been at war for nearly two decades. Actually, I suspect that there's some individuals who may have been fighting for even longer. What's it like in the room? Who is there? And then, you know, as a Western journalist, what are your interactions like with the various parties? Yeah. So these talks are really, these are two party talks. These are just between the negotiating team representing the Taliban and the negotiating team representing the Afghan Republic. So that's a little bit different from the Afghan government, which is sometimes referred to in media. We have officials on that team that are from the Afghan government, but also people from rival. political party, civil society activists. So these two groups of negotiating teams are meeting behind closed doors very far away from where journalists can access in a separate hotel

from the hotel where journalists are allowed to stay. And what we do know, what's very positive is that they're meeting almost every day. The meetings are lasting hours and that they're continuing to meet. That was something that was a big concern leading up to the talks, that they would meet once and the talks would collapse. So the fact that they're continuing to meet regularly is a positive sign. However, they have not yet even begun to discuss the substance of what it would take to bring peace to Afghanistan. They're really kind of bogged down at this point, and it's a little over week in in the logistics of how they would then discuss the substance of the matter. Right. I mean, you reported over the weekend that while they've met a handful of times,

they haven't agreed on the basic format of the negotiations, including the issues that will be discussed and in what order. It is hopeful, indeed, that they are continuing to meet. But do you have any sense of how, you know, we're proceeding on these procedural matters? Yeah. So, I mean, if you look at the entirety of the U.S. effort to talk peace with the Taliban as a model, and this was, you know, by far a much less complex series of negotiations than what we're going to be facing. between the Afghan Republic and the Taliban negotiating teams. It was almost 10 years worth of meetings that started and then fell apart. And it was only the last year and a half when they really kind of gained traction under a special envoy,

Zalme al-Halilzad, that the U.S. really started to gain momentum and make progress. So if you look at that and then you compare that to the really different, issues that are in front of these two negotiating teams, civil liberties, you know, what kind of a government Afghanistan is going to be? Will it be a democracy? Will there be elections? Who will control security? I mean, how are these two sides that have been at war for decades going to, are they going to integrate security forces? You know, who's going to control security where? These are really difficult issues. We could definitely be looking at a process that takes months to years here. Yeah, I mean, look, I have gotten whiplash reading these stories. Like when I was at the White House back in, what, 2010, we were having these painstaking talks about whether to trade five decrepit Taliban guys from Gitmo for Bo Bergdahl, U.S. service members, this series of sort of confidence building steps. Now you're seeing a prisoner swap for 5,000 fighters for 1,000, you know, Afghan security officials. It does seem like that, I guess that's hopeful, right? There's been a lot of.

movement in terms of just getting things done? Well, that prisoner release or the prisoner swap and the lead up to the talks is actually something that a lot of Afghan officials, and even Afghan citizens, civilians will tell you they feel put the Afghan government side on the back foot even before talks could begin. You know, this was a prisoner swap that was agreed to between the U.S. and the Taliban in the deal that the Afghan government wasn't a party to. And so it felt to many Afghan officials that they were making concessions to the Taliban before they even had a chance to sit down at the negotiating table. Yeah. Yeah, look, I guess I'm stretching too hard to find hope in these things. So let's just

step back to the big picture. Because, you know, I think the peace talks are happening, but that doesn't mean that the fighting has stopped. You know, you reported on two Afghan government airstrikes over the weekend that killed 10 civilians and 30 Taliban fighters. There are constant attacks. by Taliban fighters against Afghan security forces. There have been attacks in Kabul against top government officials. Is there any hope or time frame that you've heard about for reduction in violence that might actually protect the Afghan people and civilians? Well, we know from Afghan government officials that one of the first things they want to talk about is a ceasefire once they get down to substance, once they're able to start talking about the substantive issues. The Taliban have been

very clear and very consistent that they will only talk about a ceasefire once a political deal has been settled. So that means at the end of negotiations. So they're very far apart on that issue. But what we've already seen a week into these talks beginning is that as these meetings are happening in Doha, violence has increased on the ground in Afghanistan. And it might seem counterintuitive, you know, that as these historic peace talks have launched, we're in effect seeing an escalation of the war. But in fact, it's exactly the same thing that we saw when talks between the U.S. and the Taliban gained attraction. The war escalated on the battlefield because both sides were looking to try to use battlefield wins to create leverage at the

negotiating table. So it's not irrational to assume that we'll see the same scenario play out now that it's the Taliban and the government talking. Yeah. This week, Trump's former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, very publicly criticized the talks. He said he doesn't think the Taliban will ever break with al-Qaeda, that Afghanistan will become an even larger training ground for terrorists. And he seems to think that any sort of power-sharing agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban is fundamentally unworkable.

Is that a sentiment that you hear among, say, you know, U.S. and Afghan government officials, that you speak to privately? There's definitely a lot of pessimism. I think I hear as much pessimism as I hear optimism about these talks at this point. But what there is a lot of concern about is these public statements of further U.S. troop withdrawals that don't appear to be conditions-based. The U.S. Taliban deal was clear that any drawdown beyond 8,0006,000,000, 600 would be conditions-based.

But now we're hearing U.S. officials say that we'll be at, you know, between 4,000 and 5,000 by November. And Afghans are very conscious that that's a month where there's a U.S. presidential election. So it's hard. U.S. support for the Afghan government is a really important piece of leverage for the Afghan government in these talks with the Taliban. And U.S. officials will disagree with you on this. And they'll say, you know, we've continued to conduct airstrikes against Taliban.

on targets even after the peace deal in support of our allies, the Afghan government. And that shows that we are continuing to support them. But this talk about further troop drawdowns, it's really hard not to interpret that as U.S. just trying to find a way out of the war here. Yeah. I mean, look, to your point, I think in early August, Trump himself said he wanted to have fewer than 5,000 troops in Afghanistan by Election Day, which is an accelerated schedule even from the agreement that we made back. in February, which I think was talking about 14 months. Do you have a sense of how, like, is the average Afghan citizen concerned about a speedy U.S. withdrawal? Do they want us out no matter

what? It's just, you know, it's been two decades in its time. Like, what's your sense of sort of how this is the sentiment among the average civilian? I think it's really hard to kind of boil it down to sentiment on the average civilian. I talked to Afghans who can't wait for U.S. to get out. I talked to Afghans who are very concerned, you know, in the days following the release of the text of the U.S. Taliban peace deal, I talked to Afghans who felt that that was, that even talking about a drawdown to zero was a betrayal of, you know, what they had sacrificed with the promise of continued U.S. support, you know, especially Afghan women who have been empowered by the U.S. by the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, people who've benefited, who, you know,

civil liberties activists, other people who, you know, who've really supported the democratic process in Afghanistan, you know, those people feel are very concerned about a quick U.S. withdrawal. But if you talk to people who live in territory that is under the control of the Taliban, who have suffered and lost loved ones from U.S. airstrikes, for them, they can't wait for the U.S. to withdraw because they haven't seen the benefits of the U.S. presence here. All they've seen is, you know, an escalation of violence. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about, you know, the future of women in Afghanistan.

I mean, today there are senior women in. in the Afghan government, there are judges or members of parliament, the police force. But the Taliban regime from 96 to 2001 was extraordinarily misogynistic. I mean, human rights watch described them as notorious for denying women and girls access to education, jobs, health care, freedom of movement. There were horrifying instances of public executions, corporal punishment. Have women's rights been a focal point of the talks or, you know, or at least a focal point of you know, the Afghan government side of the talks? Well, the Afghan government has said that women's rights will be a focus of the talks.

When you try to pin Taliban leaders down on how they define women's rights, how women's rights will continue to be protected in an Afghanistan where they share power with the current government, they're very cagey. They say, you know, it's up for interpretation. We're going to discuss it in the talks. beyond that, we're not going to give any further details. At this point, we really don't have any clarity on, you know, what the state of women's rights will be in any post-war Afghan government,

just because the two sides right now are so far apart and they haven't even begun to discuss the issue. So we really don't have any idea. But the Afghan government, they have four women on their negotiating team, and they've definitely, in the statements leading up to the talks, have said that it's a priority for them to maintain the gains that women have made over the last round 20 years. And wasn't one of those women injured in a recent suicide attack in Kabul?

It was an assassination attempt, Fasia Puffy. Yes. I spoke to her in Doha. She said that she's healing well. She had to have her wound cleaned and redressed while she was in Doha between meetings with the Taliban. But she said, you know, she said that she's been a long time outspoken supporter of women's rights in Afghanistan.

And she said that she was really happy that she was able to be there and that her voice would be heard by the Taliban leadership on the table across from her. Yeah, just an extraordinarily brave human being. You know, in America, we talk a lot about troops, you know, whether and when they'll come out. We talk a lot about training of Afghan security forces. I feel like I don't hear much about what international effort there may or may not be to aid in reconstruction of Afghanistan to help build institutions. Is that something that's happening on another track?

Well, I think the Trump administration has been pretty clear that they're not in the business of nation building and that their focus in Afghanistan is to, to end the war and withdraw U.S. troops. So that's probably why you're not hearing a lot of talk about building up institutions. But in terms of the international community, you know, that's a big concern because if there is a power-sharing government,

you're going to need some pretty strong institutions if you want to ensure that any international aid that's pumped into Afghanistan is not misused. So that's definitely something that people are concerned about. But with, you know, all of the insecurity that's going on, with the damage to Afghanistan's economy due to the coronavirus pandemic, it's probably, probably pushed to the side for now. Yeah. How is Afghanistan faring these days with the coronavirus?

I remember hearing about it early on, but not as much recently. Well, infection rates have dropped significantly as have – and death rates have remained incredibly low throughout the entire pandemic. That's official death rates, of course. People could be dying and not being brought to hospitals. In Afghanistan, there are no death certificates, so it's very hard to count deaths. However, we do know that these hospitals, these emergency hospitals that were stood up to receive extra coronavirus patients have begun to empty out.

That was in more recent months. We haven't hit the cold weather season yet. That's when the humanitarian community expects to see a spike. But where you really have seen Afghanistan hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic is in the downturn in the country's economy. It's already one of the poorest countries in the world. And because of closed borders, trade has been massively disrupted. Agriculture.

People have lost their jobs in agriculture, which has put more strain on the country's economy and push more people into poverty. And that's really where you see the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on Afghanistan. Yeah. One question about covering these talks. I mean, it was sort of jarring for me to see video of, you know, Taliban representatives doing essentially press avails, right, surrounded by Western journalists with iPhones recording them, asking them questions.

Is that something you've done? And like, how are, how do you source up with the Taliban? I mean, it's not like in Washington when people like go to lunch or. or get a drink. I mean, how does this work? Well, they have a media office. They have spokespeople. And you saw that a lot of the members of their negotiating team were making themselves available to answer questions to journalists. Most of those answers were incredibly vague, but they were making themselves available nonetheless. And you can definitely sit down and have a tea with members of the negotiating team. Not all members are willing to speak to journalists yet. You know, they say that

especially some of the new members who've joined recently, aren't comfortable with the press yet. They haven't been exposed to the media. And so, you know, the new lead negotiator, Hakeem, he wasn't making himself available. But other more seasoned members such as Suhail Shaheen, you know, regularly sits down with journalists. But, you know, that's a very, you know,

the Taliban office in Doha and Qatar is a very different, you know, that's a, it's a, they have a smooth media operation. And it's very different from, you know, the group of Taliban commanders on the ground, Afghanistan. It's two very, right, parts of one organization. Right. And sort of, you know, along that line, I mean, there have been some reports about maybe splits among the Taliban that there are some regions, some commanders who just refuse to go along with the talks in any way, shape, or form. Is that a concern that there's a possibility that negotiators aren't actually speaking for, that, that, the Taliban in its entirety as a group?

Yeah, that's definitely been a concern for a long time. And I've met with Taliban commanders who have said that if the Taliban leadership in Doha makes any kind of a deal with the Afghan government, who they see as just a puppet arm of the United States and infidels by default, this small group of Taliban commanders who I met in Kunar, they said that they'll break away from the Taliban and take up arms against them. And this is the nightmare scenario for people that this would happen in a large scale. You know, that was just one small group of Taliban commanders in one province and not in, you know, the traditional heartland of the Taliban.

So that certainly doesn't speak for the movement overall. But that's definitely a concern and it definitely exists in some parts. Yeah. Last question for you. The Taliban famously almost got to kick back and relax at Camp David for a week. weekend. Do people talk about that weird offer from the White House? Is that something that actually almost happened? Like, would the Taliban have agreed to have flown to Maryland for a meeting with the United States? Do you think? Yeah, I should have asked about that. That was not something

that I asked about when I was in Doha. But it's a very good question. Yeah, it seems so long ago now. But you're right. That was just a few months ago. So I don't have anything more for you on that. unfortunately. That's okay. I think you were asking the right questions and not if they were like, you know, excited to get a beer at the bar at Camp David. Susanna George, thank you so much for taking the time today. Everyone should check out your reporting in the post. It is fantastic. All kinds of important dispatches from the ground all over Afghanistan. So thank you for all the work you're doing. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks again, Susanna George for joining the show today. Ben, how's it going over there. How's the smoke in Venice today? It's decent here. It's better here. Yeah,

it's definitely better here. I mean, it was the worst that's been in 30 years last week, but this air freshener has made a big difference here, too. I got an air freshener. Yeah, we finally got one, too. And, oh, my God. But it's also bad because the air freshener, like, has an app where it just tells you just how bad it is. So then it's sort of, it's both alarmist, but also I think helping. But I feel way better than I did two weeks ago. Yeah, I like the app. I like to know how fucked I am. Like, I like to be aware. All right, cool, cool. All right, well, good to see you.

And we'll talk to you all next week. Cool. Patsy of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Quinn Lewis for production support.

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