Pod Save the World - Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy record comes under attack

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

First, Trump’s trip to India, his new and unqualified Director of National Intelligence, and should Democrats attend AIPAC? Then updates on Sudan and South Sudan, the coronavirus, a fragile peace agreement in Afghanistan, and John Bolton. Finally, Tommy and Ben discuss attacks on Bernie Sanders’ views on Cuba, former leftist leaders in Latin America, and criticism of the CIA, before reflecting on the death of former Egypt President Hosni Mubarak, and the nine years since the Arab Spring began. Then Politico’s Natasha Bertrand joins to explain why new intel chief Richard Grenell has become an issue in Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition case.

Welcome back to POT Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, you're back in another just horrible place where authoritarian and corruption run rampant. Washington, D.C. How's it going? Yeah, there's a little visit to the swamp here. Good, good, although I just saw our former boss for a couple hours. A brief return to sanity. Yeah, the one person I'd actually like to say hi to on this city. But we digress. Today on the show, we got a lot to talk about. We're going to talk about Trump's trip to India, his new and totally unqualified director of national intelligence. APEC, Sudan, the coronavirus, the fragile peace agreement in Afghanistan that we all hope is going to hold.

And then we wanted to spend some time talking about comments that Bernie Sanders made about Cuba and some other leftist leaders in Latin America that are getting a lot of attention right now. Some final reflections on Mubarak, Egypt, and the Arab Spring before my interview with Politico's Natasha Bertrand about why Rick Grinnell. the new DNI has become an issue in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition case, which is just the craziest story I've heard in a long time. So do not miss that. Okay, let's start with this India trip. President Trump just concluded basically a 36-hour visit

to India where he got lots of face time with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but appears to have achieved basically nothing. He was not able to negotiate a trade deal. It doesn't seem like he pushed Modi at all on human rights or his discrimination against Muslims, no surprise there, since Trump also discriminates against Muslims. But, you know, there's this vile citizenship law in India that explicitly states that Muslims are lesser citizens. And when asked about it, Trump said, we did talk about religious freedom. And I will say the prime minister was incredible. In India, they have worked very hard to have a great and open religious freedom, which is just absurd. Trump also didn't push Modi, as far as we know, on India's annexation of Kashmir.

They did announce that the U.S. would sell India some helicopters, but that's, you know, pretty small ball, given how big the relationship is and how important India is. There were lots of photo ops, lots of pomp and circumstance. Modi took Trump to an event with 100,000 people in a stadium in his home district. But out on the streets, there were huge protests, particularly from Muslim citizens about these discriminatory laws that led to a dozen people getting killed, hundreds injured. Trump did a concluding press conference. Modi didn't show up because Modi basically just doesn't do press ever.

So Ben, like, I'm glad a couple of nationalists, you know, demagogues had a good time together, but it's hard to argue that we got anything out of this visit as a country. Yeah, you know, look, what I think is so chilling about this visit is that, you know, Modi, our impression of Modi, and look, Obama, you know, said some very nice things about Modi and had a good relationship with Modi. But the point of that relationship, you know, was in part to get Indian the Paris Agreement, but also in part to have the capacity to restrain some of Modi's more nationalist instincts. And now you have Trump going there at a time when Modi has undertaken this series of actions,

you know, locking down all of Kashmir, essentially turning Muslims into second-class citizens with the citizenship law and a number of other actions. You literally have while Trump is there, you know, anti-Muslim violence taking place in some places. and make no mistake for Modi, he got an extraordinary amount out of this visit. Because what he got is at a time when the global community, in normal circumstances, would be criticizing him. He has a full embrace from the President of the United States essentially validating what he's been doing. And make no mistake, like since Modi was reelected, there has been this series of events moving India in a very nationalist direction, a very Hindu nationalist direction, a very dangerous direction potentially for India's diversity and for Indian Muslims above all.

And, you know, that essentially gets a big stamp of validation from the president of the United States. It's an extraordinary gift to Modi that Trump would visit him at this time and say the things that he said. And it is also just striking to me that, you know, the bar is so low. Nobody expects Trump to raise these things, you know. Yeah. And I know we do this. I try not to do too much, but like if Obama had somehow gone to India in this context, in this circumstance, it would have been a huge story.

We would have been getting beat up the whole way there. We would have getting badgered with questions the whole time there about whether we were pressing them on these things. The fact that there were these anti-Muslim actions taking place in places like Delhi would have been huge a part of the story. But it's really worrisome to me to see our media, but just kind of everybody just assuming. that Trump won't do that. It's like we've moved on from thinking that an American president cares about these things. Look, I think it's important strategically for the U.S. and India to have a close relationship. That's good. I support that instinct. But you also want that to be a relationship between the two largest democracies in the world, not two of the leading

naturalists in the world. And so while the strategic objective is laudable in some ways, the context and the direction that both Trump and Modi are going in is very worrisome. Yeah. I mean, like, it also is just a reminder of like how low the bar has been set in terms of accomplishments and competence because, you know, like any president in past administrations who went to a country where they wanted to get a free trade agreement and then failed to do so would get penalized by the press. Like Obama got hammered when we went to South Korea one time, didn't negotiate a free trade agreement and had to leave empty handed. Trump just kind of was like, ah, whatever, it didn't matter. The other thing that I think is notable is,

you know, like this is no surprise, but it's a playbook for every authoritarian regime that doesn't want to get pressed on human rights or, you know, targeting Muslims, like in China, that all you have to do is you bring Trump over, you make them feel good, you get a big adoring crowd and it's good to go. 100%. Yeah, and the rest of the world sees that. And the rest of the world sees, you know, like if you're in Europe, right, European countries who might normally raise concerns about human rights abuses in India, you know, might normally think about applying some pressure. they see the President of the United States there giving the guy a big bear hug,

you know, they lose any incentive, never mind any additional backbone to do that. So it really does kind of open the door for Modi to be even more aggressive going forward. Yeah. I'm going to jump around a little bit at the top because we got a lot of interesting topics today. And we want to do a whole section at the end about Bernie Sanders and some of his policies. But I wanted to talk earlier about his decision, Bernie's decision, to skip the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or APAC conference. this year because it's a conversation that I think is bigger than just Bernie. I think it's something

that a lot of Democrats are going to start having about APEC. So specifically, Bernie tweeted that he is concerned about the platform APEC provides for leaders who express bigotry and opposed basic Palestinian rights. And that's the end of the quote. If you're wondering who, you know, Bernie is mentioning that quote, I suspect you would start with Israeli Prime Minister Bbn Yahoo, who often speaks at APEC and gets a platform and is, you know, essentially writing the Palestinian at Neand's office as part of the peace process. So then, you know, like I saw Bernie's decision and I kind of cheered it. I'm biased here because, you know, I and you and I both watched APAC provide a platform for Bibi and Yahoo to attack Obama for many years. APEC went all in against the Iran deal. More recently,

APEC ran some pretty racist, nasty ads about Democratic members of Congress. So my instinct politically is, you know, the same as my approach to Fox News, right? It's like, why would you help an organization that's been openly hostile to you on policy grounds and politically by raising the profile of their conference and then therefore the entity itself. But a lot of smart people who I really respect, like Yair Rosenberg, who's been on the show before and many others have argued that Bernie's decision is cutting off his nose despite his face because they say, you know, 70% of the APAC attendees are probably Democrats. They need to feel represented in that room. They want to hear from Bernie. And those who aren't Democrats,

in that room should hear a realistic, progressive message from the Democratic nominee and not feel snubbed. So, you know, I admit, like, those are good points. I'm torn. And I'm curious what you think about this decision and how you might approach it if you were advising the Sanders campaign. I like this decision. Look, let's just stop, like, beating around the Bush here with this. APEC has been a right-wing interest group supporting the Republican Party for the last decade. Review the record on this thing. Like, they not only give, Bibi, a massive platform to whack Obama throughout the Obama presidency,

they literally mobilized tens of millions of dollars in opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement. They aggressively mounted a massive effort to defeat the top foreign policy party of the last Democratic president, right? And they weren't subtle about this, and they weren't measured in their language about this. They have been, again, completely aligned

with the Netanyahu agenda, and with the increasingly rightward drift of the Republican Party on this and other issues. And, you know, they have this, you know, tradition, obviously, of wanting to be bipartisan, and a lot of Democrats speak there. And I'm sure Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Stanley Hoorer will all speak there and say nice things. But the context has changed. This is not 15 years ago when there was like a bipartisan consensus around a negotiated two-state solution. And, you know, APEC was dealing with Israeli prime ministers, you know, like all. who are more centrist.

This has shifted dramatically over the course of the last decade. And it's also just a reality that APEC has fully embraced the Israeli government's move to the far right on these issues, which we know is making any talk that is done from that podium about a two-state solution, nothing but empty platitudes. Because they'll have people speaking, Democrats speaking at that podium saying, you know, we're committed to a two-state solution. at the same time that APAC is supporting positions that the Israeli government is taking, that they should be able to build as many settlements as they want with impunity,

embracing the Trump fake peace plan, essentially teeing up the annexation of the West Bank, that makes those words sound really hollow here. And so I think that it's important that be registered that Democrats recognize that this is not a fair game anymore. The idea that APEC is an impartial observer, a bipartisan platform for supporters of Israel is just not what the case has been in practice. When you have APEC essentially, again, acting fully in line with this Trump-NetNiahu lines, which, by the way, is used to bludgeon Democrats politically, you know. Now I think Bernie, you know, the only other option would have been to go and to be like a, have it be a truth-telling moment, you know, to go and essentially, you know, call this out. But, you know, Bernie doesn't want to do that. I think that's his right. I think that the basic impulse to say that APEC shouldn't just expect that they can treat Democrats like this year after year after year after year and then expect everybody to show up. I think it's right to start to blow the whistle on that. And the reality is, like, the Jewish community in the United States does not like follow Apex lead in all this stuff. We had a much higher share of Jewish Americans who supported the Iran nuclear deal in public opinion. opinion polling than the rest of the general public. Jewish Americans have voted in the 70s,

high 70s for Democratic candidates and the last several elections. And so every cycle we hear the same kind of warnings like, oh my gosh, this is going to be the end of the world. We're going to somehow lose this kind of key bedrock of support in the American Jewish community for Democratic candidates. And that has never happened despite all the warnings from APEC and others. It is super annoying to see everyone freaking out on Bernie about this decision when clearly APEC fucked up its own politics. I mean, you can't be all in for BB Nanyahu and oppose the Iran deal and call yourself nonpartisan. You just can't square that circle. I just think the concern politically long term is how do you find a way to reach those voters? And one piece of the pie could be

through J Street and other new organizations, although let's be honest, J Street might be to the left of where some of the more moderate A-PAC attendees are, so we'll have to find new, smart, creative ways. But yes, I mean, not a hard decision, but I certainly understand why Bernie did it. Yeah, and look, I get the concern. I don't think you should not try to talk to those people. You know, Obama did go to APEC. That was in, you know, in the second term when essentially they came out swinging constantly, we did not. But the other thing that he did Obama in 2008-and-7, when there was a lot of these whispers about Obama, you know, potentially not being trustworthy on these issues, is he went to synagogues, Tommy. I mean, you remember this. In Ohio, in Pennsylvania and Florida, he would go to conservative Jewish communities and take their questions, take hard questions, have hard conversations, but also was able to convince them that his views on Israeli-Palestinian issues were motivated in part by his affinity for Israel. And so I think Bernie absolutely needs to go into these communities and speak to these people. The question is if you say that APAC is the only venue that you can do that,

you're empowering them to be the gatekeeper to this community. When I actually don't think that they're necessarily representative of the broad majority of the American Jewish community anymore. Yeah, fair point. Okay, let's talk about another acronym, the DNI. So, Ben, in news that was, I'm sure, chilling to you, chilling to me, chilling to almost anyone who's ever worked in national security, Donald Trump named a guy named Rick Grinnell to be his acting director of national intelligence. Before working for Trump, Grinnell's only relevant government experience was working as a spokesman at the UN during the Bush administration. And just an FYI for listeners at home who wonder if that job is important, that means that Grinnell would have reported to you and to me.

So not exactly a particularly senior guy. He is currently the U.S. ambassador to Germany, a job he's also not really qualified for, but he has managed to piss off most of the country, so that's, I guess, good. Grinnell is mostly known for being really nasty on Twitter, especially to women to journalists. Obviously, we should care about the qualifications of any nominee. But it's worth pointing out that the statute that created the DNI position specifically says that the person who gets the job must have extensive national security experience and management experience, and he doesn't fit the bill. Because Trump is making Grinnell an acting director, it looks like he might be able to get around that statutory requirement.

And Republicans in the Senate refuse to do anything about it. Maybe they don't have a lot of options here, but they certainly aren't pushing him. Just a reminder of, of what the DNI job does. So you're the head of the 17 components of the intelligence community. So you're the leader of the intelligence community. You're an advisor to the president in the NSC in key national security meetings.

You produce the PDB, the president's daily briefing every morning, which is the most sensitive and important intelligence product on the planet. You have the authority to declassify information. You have access to basically everything, all the most sensitive stuff, covert action programs, like all the things that are really, really sensitive. Grinnell has already hired a former staffer for on the NSC and the guy who worked for Devin Nunes,

who was basically a back channel between the White House and Congress in an effort to discredit the Mueller probe. It might be a short stint at D&I because for Grinnell to stay past March 11th, Trump has to also formally nominate someone so he can officially say that process is started. And so far he hasn't figured out who to nominate yet, but who knows if he'll actually care about that kind of law. So Ben, you know, I talk with Natasha Birchon later about why Trump made this change at D&I, but I think you and I should talk about the choice itself and reports that, you know, Grinnell has a mandate to clean house at the DNI and why, you know, this just total politicization of the intelligence community is so dangerous. It's, you know, this guy was basically a troll, you know, I mean, and he hated me. Like, and so I was like vaguely where this kind of guy would,

be unhinged about me on Twitter when we were in government. But I thought of him as a kind of fringy character, you know. He was. And kind of a communications guy, not, you know, not someone who could ever be imagined to be the DNI. I mean, he's, you know, he's kind of this infringed national security troll guy. And this is terrifying because essentially you're putting a guy in charge of the intelligence community who has no experience whatsoever in intelligence.

We've never had somebody in that role with no background whatsoever in dealing with actual intelligence. A job that was set up to prevent the future 9-11 attacks so you could coordinate across the intelligence community. An office that has tremendous power, essentially to control the budgets of the intelligence community, the flow of information from the intelligence community to Congress and to the White House and to other agencies. So if this guy's coming in with his set of expertise, which is essentially, communications, in this case, trying to advance Trump's agendas, his conspiracy theories, his ability to suppress information that is not useful to Trump and to try to look for cherry pick out of context information that can be distorted and utilized, either to go after Trump's opponents

or to somehow validate things that Trump is doing. That power is very real in the office of the DNI. And you see not just a new DNI, you see, as you said, kind of the whole office being cleaned out, you know, the people underneath the DNI and more hacks being moved in. This is essentially a hostile takeover, an extrajudicial takeover of the intelligence community, because, as you said, this is not being submitted for Senate confirmation, because I think Trump knows Rick Rennell could never be confirmed even in a Republican-controlled Senate, right? And so the blinking red lights of the politicization of intelligence are there. And again, the two intelligence failures, that led to this creation of this office.

You know, 9-11, which suggested we need a real intelligence professional to oversee this, and the Iraq-W-M-D intelligence, which suggested that we need someone who wouldn't politicize intelligence, this is literally the opposite of what people expected in trying to remedy those two failures. And it's a preview, I think, of what a second Trump term would be, which is that all is going to be left is people like Rick Grinnell running all these agencies, including the most important national security ones. Yeah. Experience, expertise, technocrats, they are all getting cut out, pushed out, and it is just all political hacks. I mean, I think the other area where you're starting to see this become a real

problem is with the coronavirus. So just a quick coronavirus update. So as of this recording on Tuesday, the virus is infected 80,000 people and killed 2,700 that we know about. Most of the infections are still in China, but 95 cases have been identified in Iran. And 322 cases have been identified in Italy. So it seems like this will soon be a global pandemic. A senior official at the Center for Disease Control said it's not a question of if but when and how many people in the U.S. will get the virus. And they started calling on hospitals and schools to prepare.

The stock market finally woke up to the economic impact and the down Jones and the S&P are off like 6%. Last time I looked as of Monday and Tuesday, which, you know, that erases all the gains in 2020. Trump is reportedly most concerned about the potential impact on his reelection and that economic impact. So his response was to tweet, you know, all as well, everything is under control and that you should buy the stock market dip. And that language was repeated by Larry Kudlow, his economic advisor. So who, again, is not an economist. He's just some hack from TV who got put on the council of economic advisors.

So again, like, I'm not a doctor, but I would be awfully worried about this disease jumping from Iran to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. and like all these other places without maybe the health infrastructure to deal with it. There's speculation that the Olympics in Japan could get canceled. So again, it's like you have messaging coming out of the U.S. government at the highest possible level that is basically nothing to see here. Don't worry about it. And no one's, you know, speaking the truth to American people. You got Rush Limbaugh saying this is some made up conspiracy theory by Democrats, which is,

you know, coming on the heels of his Medal of Freedom is pretty disgusting. But, you know, again, we're at the beginning of this. thing, not the end, and we don't seem prepared. Yeah, and, you know, we're already way behind where we should be. I mean, this has been evident for weeks. I mean, everybody knew this is, you know, this didn't creep up on us. We've been looking at this for weeks. And in a normal administration, what the U.S. would be doing is running, leading an effective,

coordinated, multilateral response. Instead, you know, Trump, as we know, got rid of literally the office that was created to run that response out of the White House eliminated, right? Probably because there's an Obama thing, slashed funding for preparedness at the CDC and other places, and shows no interest in presidential leadership. And I think it's important for people understand the reason you need White House coordination, the reason you need the president engaged, is you need a bunch of different agencies in the U.S. government that don't normally work together to be coordinated. So the CDC and the agencies responsible for health need to be working with like the State Department

and the intelligence community, DOD, maybe if you have to move resources. So it really takes the president leading this thing. And what we know is not only as Trump gutted our ability to run that response, but he himself doesn't seem to care about anything other than the market impacts. And we've seen for weeks now when he does pop up the tweet about this, it's always language that seems designed to calm markets. So the bizarre series of tweets a number of days ago where he was praising Xi Jinping for his strong leadership and saying this was getting under control when Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party

are the ones who compounded this crisis by not being transparent about what was happening with the spread of the coronavirus. Then we see these tweets yesterday where he's literally saying, no need to worry about this, you know, and the next day his own CDC director is contradicting that and saying, no, there is a reason to worry about this. So it's clear that the American people cannot trust what this man is saying about a pandemic disease. God forbid. that it starts to spread here, and citizens are looking to the government for information. Normally, you would think that the President of the United States could be relied upon to relay the facts about what they need to know.

Normally there would be a daily White House press briefing, which there hasn't been in like a year, where the press secretary could stand up there with officials and provide this information. We are heading into this blind. We just can't count on the information that is given to us by our government because all they care about is trying to prevent the stock market from dipping before the election. And the reality is that by doing it, by doing it's not. doing that, Trump has made it more likely that the stock market is going to crash before his election because he's losing time, you know, trying to calm markets instead of trying to solve the problem,

which is ultimately the thing that will prevent the markets from crashing. Yeah, we shall see how much of this is priced in right now, but it would make me a little worried. All right, let's do some good news before we do this Bernie section. So, a whole good news section, Ben. So Sudan is first. So after nearly seven years of civil war, the president of South Sudan and his chief rival agreed to form a unity government. And this is just an incredible relief because the civil war has been horrific. Their estimates of 400,000 South Sudanese being killed, nearly two million displaced. You and I, Ben, back in the day, we're in hundreds of hours of meetings leading up to the formation of South Sudan in 2011. But, you know, all that work, the entire international community's focus, couldn't prevent war from ultimately breaking out between, you know, the two biggest ethnic groups in the country.

South Sudan still faces huge challenges. There's massive corruption. local militia groups still terrorized civilians. Some of those militias are funded by an oil consortium in South Sudan that's owned by China in part. I mean, so it's a mess. But my hope is that this decision, along with some of the news out of Sudan, that the former Sudanese President Omar Bashir might face prosecution at the Hague for war crimes might help these countries find, you know, peace, security, a diplomatic resolution to their problems and not continued fighting.

Yeah, I mean, you know, when South Sudan became independent, you know, there was a lot of of hope, but there was also a lot of trepidation because you had these ethnic divisions in the country. You also had leaders who had no experience really running a government. They'd essentially been fighting against the Sudanese government. So these were people who were good at, you know, fighting literally, you know, in the Bush, and they would be the ones to say it themselves. And being put in charge of a country that also had no real institutions or infrastructure to speak of. I mean, an incredibly limited number of roads, basic things you need for an economy. economy. And instead of digging into that, they devolved into this kind of ethnic crisis in civil

war that killed people, that displaced a lot of people. I think you put your finger on it, Tommy, the hope here, look, this is not going to solve all their problems. It's not going to make these leaders any less flawed than they had been in the past. It's not going to make up for the infrastructure they don't have. But if you take the hopefulness of this peace agreement, a unity government and at least the capacity to start to deal with those issues, you combine that with the potential justice for Bashir around Darfur and the potential for Sudan moving in a different direction because of the protests that led to the toppling of Bashir in the first place. You have for the first time, you know, in a long time, the people of Sudan and South Sudan

might be able to look the future with some hope. There are going to be huge challenges, but we should all welcome this as hopefully an end to the nightmare that the people of South Sudan have been living up. Yeah, agreed with all of that. Very quick, John Bolton update. So we talked for a while about how that coward wouldn't testify at the impeachment hearings because he wants to get paid for his recollections and sell books about his time unraveling our democracy at the White House. So the White House staff has been undertaking what is supposed to be a technical review to cut any classified information from his book. Apparently, Trump has waited on this process by declaring that Bolton is, quote, a traitor and said that everything he ever told Bolton was classified. So the book, is not ever going to come out, or at least not until after his election. So I don't think that's good news, big picture for the country, for process, for transparency, but it is kind of fun to see that jerk John Bolton gets stymied here. Well, look, I'm torn here, right? Because on the one end, you want to know the information on the other end, you don't want to see John Bolton's account

get padded anymore than it has by all the lucrative speeches he's been giving. Right. I will say the broader point here is, you know, Trump's a guy who's, like, tweeted, images from his PDB, shared intelligence with the Russian ambassador that was hugely sensitive. Like routinely, he and other officials try to allude to intelligence when they think it's useful to them. So we are kind of setting up this system where if it's information that Trump thinks is favorable to him, there's no such thing as classification. And if there's anything that he is worried about, it's somehow criminal to reveal it. So he's kind of criminalizing inconvenient truths that could become public while giving impunity to people who want to actually

reveal classified information if he thinks it's useful to him. So, you know, that's part of where we're headed here, but at least John Bolton's not getting rich off it. Yeah, my short-term desire to punish Sean Bolton does not outweigh the broader implications, but I'm just going to take a win where I can find one, Ben. The other good news is out of Afghanistan. So a lot of people are really hoping for a peace deal in Afghanistan. And there's some soundings that we might be close to one. So here's how this thing would work. So the U.S. and a Taliban announced a partial truce that started on February 21st. I say partial truce because the instructions both sides have seem to be neither military, the U.S. or the coalition forces or the Taliban goes on offensive operations,

but maybe they still defend themselves and conduct limited operations. It's not a full ceasefire, which I think was a major sticking point for the Taliban, because I think they're basically worried that if they have a full ceasefire, their fighters might realize that they really like ceasefires and never resume fighting. But if this partial ceasefire holds for a week, the U.S. and the Taliban will then meet the sign an agreement where they lay out a timetable for a full U.S. troop patrol. And then, as we talked about before, the hard work really starts right then. And the Taliban and the Afghan government start negotiating for the long-term future of Afghanistan. So this is very fragile. The Afghan government is a complete mess. I have no idea what changed between now

and last September when Trump was on the verge of announcing some sort of peace agreement at Camp David, of all places, because this sounds like a fairly similar deal. Tragically, a lot of U.S. service members and Afghan civilians have been killed between September and today. But I think we all just have to hope that this actually works. Yeah, no, we absolutely do have to hope that it works and that it can help bring an end, or at least a significant reduction in the violence in Afghanistan. I guess the note of caution I'd add to what I was saying last week is I heard from a couple Afghan friends of mine,

and I think it's worth representing their worry. And their worry is not just that the U.S. is leaving. It's that the U.S. has kind of left Afghanistan before. In the 80s, we obviously supported the Mujahideen, including elements of what became the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And then when we kind of, when we kind of washed our hands of Afghanistan in the 90s, we in one shape or another did kind of hand the place over to this kind of combination of warlords, strong men in different regions. And then ultimately the Taliban came into power. I think the concern is that by dealing with the Taliban in this manner, we're starting to notice some of those kind of warlords have reemerged and playing prominent roles in Afghanistan.

politics. I think the concern I heard from my Afghan friends that I think has to be front and center in the process going forward is we cannot sideline the Afghan government here. Is democratically elected government, right, for all of its dysfunction? You know, the temptation might be, let's get out and maybe the place will be more stable if we kind of quietly under the table make some deals with these warlords and with the Taliban and, you know, just be done with it. I think there has to be a really concerted effort to channel this diplomacy into empowering the Afghan government as a representative of the Afghan people to try to bring in not just the people with guns to the negotiations, but people from Afghan civil society, women who've made, you know,

hard-earned gains over the last 20 years. So, you know, I think that has to be priority one going forward is we're getting out, we're drawing down, but this can't just be a U.S. Taliban deal. what can we do to make this a broader piece among Afghans and what can we do with our development assistance and our security assistants to make sure that there's some center that can hold there. It's not going to leave this a perfect country. It's not going to solve every problem, but kind of gives Afghans who are trying to do the right thing a foothold at least to try to make progress with this opportunity. Yeah, I agree. Okay, let's take a quick break and we come back. We're going to talk about some recent criticism of Bernie Sanders' foreign policy.

policy, both his platform and some comments he's made about Cuba and Latin America. Okay, Ben, let's talk about some of this recent criticism and attacks on Bernie Sanders, because I think this is going to be a major issue in the primary as it goes forward. And then if Bernie's the nominee, it's probably going to get even more focus in the general election. And there's a bunch of sort of related issues out there, so we'll try to move through them relatively fast, but I think this stuff is very important. So let's start with Cuba, because on Sunday, 60 minutes aired a segment on.

Bernie Sanders that included some comments about Cuba that angered some Democrats in particular in South Florida. And I want to talk about those comments and then also have a bigger conversation about Bernie's past comments and positions about leftist leaders in Latin America generally. So first, here's what he said on 60 minutes. Back in the 1980s, Sanders had some positive things to say about the former Soviet Union and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And everybody was totally convinced.

is explaining why the Cuban people didn't rise up and help the U.S. overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro. He educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed a society. We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba. But, you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know, when Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?

Even though Fidel Castro did he? A lot of dissidents imprisoned in Cuba. That's right. And we condemn that. unlike Donald Trump, let's be clear. I do not think that Kim Jong-un is a good friend. I don't trade love letters with a murdering dictator. Vladimir Putin, not a great friend of mine. All right, so I like the ending there.

I love that he turned it to Kim Jong-un, and he could use Muhammad bin Salman or any number of leaders, but we should talk more about the specifics here in Cuban, Latin America. Because on Monday, the Biden campaign said that Bernie's comments were, quote, part of a larger pattern throughout Bernie's life. to embrace autocratic leaders and governments. And then they said that Bernie seems to have found more inspiration in the Soviets, Sandinistas, Chavistas, and Castro than in America.

That statement was pretty long, went on for a while longer. But Ben, that last part found more inspiration in Castro than in America. Actually, like, bothered me a lot because I felt like it went beyond a policy or a political fight and really started to paint Bernie as un-American. So let's just start with the basics, because you are a Cuba expert. do you view these comments that Bernie made as problematic, like how oppressive was Cuba under Castro, and what's the appropriate way to talk about that record, do you think? And do you think what Bernie said about Cuba's health care and education system is accurate? So it is absolutely accurate.

And Barack Obama praised the fact that Cuba, you know, has incredibly high literacy rates, has a health care system that is among the best in the Americas, you know, everything from maternal and child health rates to life expectancy. These are the areas where the Cuban government made a lot of progress after they took power. It is also true that when Fidel Castro came to power, he murdered political opponents in firing squads. He used violence and arbitrary detention, and an enormous amount of Cubans had to flee the island. And that made up what became this enormous diaspora that is in the United States and principally in Florida, right? And so substantively, Bernie was right about the fact that education and health care are the areas where

Cuba had made made progress. I think, you know, what causes difficulties for him is Fidel Castro, in particular, evokes very visceral emotions among Cuban Americans. I remember when I went down to his funeral. We've talked about this before, but I was the only U.S. official that attended Fidel's memorial because I had negotiated the opening with the Cuban government. I had never met Fidel Castro. I had met with Raul and his son, in part because Fidel himself opposed the opening between the United States and Cuba. He was a hardliner here, right? And I remember getting a very emotional email from a Cuban-American agenda in Florida about the fact that her father had been been in a jail cell and had heard people that he knew there were friends of him killed outside

in the yard, you know, and that she wanted me to be thinking of that as I was sitting on that dais. And she wasn't telling me not to go. She understood that there was a benefit to the Cuban people and frankly, a possibility of reconciliation between Cuban Americans and Cubans on the island with the diplomacy we were doing. But she wanted me to know that and to feel that, you know. And so I think Bernie was substantively right in the points that he made. And therefore, I think some of the criticism has been, you know, just politics and hyperbolic. At the same time, I think he needs to speak to that emotion, you know, that, that, that, yes, you condemn it, but you also understand why this is so important to some people in this country, because

they trace their journey to this country back to that moment. Right. Frankly, I also think the Biden statement, though, or the statement from the Biden campaign, I shared your view of this, Tommy. Like, I don't think Bernie Sanders is, is more. informed in his worldview by, you know, Fidel Castro than America. That's just not, Bernie's an American figure. He's very much out of the American experience. Like, shoot, my grandfather, like, lived down the street from where Bernie Sanders was in Brooklyn playing stickball, you know? That's in a, you know, like, so let's not be like Republicans, you know, in the way in which we talk about each other. It's totally fair to have this debate, but I, taking it to this place, you know,

you can attack Bernie without going to this place. And frankly, though, I also don't think, if you listen to what he said, I don't think that it merits the kind of response that it's gotten. Because like you said, he didn't say anything inaccurate. And frankly, the reason Obama used to praise Cuba's achievements in health care and education is that it gave him more credibility to then criticize their political system. Right. So he looked like someone who wasn't just playing politics in the U.S.

He's saying, look, you guys have made enormous gains in health care and education, and we respect that. But you also treat your people in ways that are totally contrary to human rights in a number of areas. Your economy, in part because of the U.S. embargo, but in part because of Cuba's own policies, has left people behind. So it can make you more credible as a critic if you also acknowledge some of the positives or some of the advances that have been made. And so I think there is a reason to do that as Bernie did. Yeah. So to me, you know, you can be both substantively right. You can recognize that this is going to tap into a lot of emotion, but it doesn't need

to get as hot as it's getting in terms of the debate. Tone matters on both sides. And I'm probably oversensitive to statements that I feel like kind of try to paint a candidate as an other because it happened to Obama so often. But I do think there's a savvier way to make this attack. But let's talk about the politics in a nutshell. minute and then but talk about the greater sort of central and Latin America record because I think that gets folded into it. So Bernie's also been criticized for supporting other leftist leaders in Latin

America. So critics point to a visit he made to Nicaragua in 1985 on the sixth anniversary of the San Dena Revolution and his attendance at a speech by Daniel Ortega, who was then the president in Nicaragua. The New York Times did this great piece last year on Bernie's foreign policy record as mayor of Burlington, which maybe sounds weird, but he really did try to develop an activist international portfolio. And a lot of that was animated by opposition to what Reagan was doing in the world. So he spoke out against Reagan's support of a military dictatorship in El Salvador. Bernie opposed the Pinochet government in Chile. So, you know, I'm firing through a lot of sort of complicated, relatively, relatively recent, but complicated history in different

countries. But maybe the easiest way to summarize it is Ronald Reagan, like, actively opposed a lot of leftist regimes in Marxist leaders in Latin America as part of this bigger anti-Soviet Cold War policy. And Bernie correctly, I would argue, felt that a lot of Reagan's policies allied the U.S. with leaders who are carrying out human rights violations and doing things that are pretty awful. Bernie also created a sister city program between Burlington and a city in the Soviet Union where he try to create relationships that way and that history gets swept into this discussion. So Ben, you know, I want to talk about these politics in a minute, but, you know, is there anything you want to highlight or correct when it comes to the policy positions that Bernie had,

especially in the 80s in Latin America? I think a lot of them are very understandable, Tommy. Look, you had U.S. back death squads in places like Guatemala and in parts of Central America, you know, that killed people, that killed priests. right? It wasn't uncommon for people on the left to be opposed to the Reagan administration's backing of kind of right-wing governments or militias across the region. It doesn't mean that Daniel Ortega was a great guy, but the fact of the matter is, Tommy, if you're Mayor Burlington, like, you're not responsible for formulating every aspect of American farm policy. Like, you can choose to be a critic of certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy. So I think that it's kind of

absurd to think that because Bernie was a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America in the 70s and 80s, and, you know, he may have praised some leaders that are problematic, and frankly, that, you know, in hindsight, like, turned out to not live up to certainly the ideals that they were claiming to represent. But to claim that that means that Bernie once to impose, like, Soviet communism on the world or something is preposterous. And the other thing I'd say about this that really bothers me about, our politics and media. We're talking about Fidel Castro. He's dead. Okay? We're talking about Daniel Ortega. Daniel Ortega was president of the country. You know, Obama dealt with him. He was the

president. He kind of came back, slightly rehabilitated. It's still kind of creepy, but not quite as bad as he used to be in the past. But these are people from the past. Donald Trump is literally in India, like throwing his arms around a guy, as we talked about, who's currently in, you know, supporting policies that are transforming that country. He has talked about the love letters that he exchanges with Kim Jong-un. He's praised Vladimir Putin and refused to condemn the killings of journalists that have taken place in Russia. He ran interference from a Muhammad bin Salman after Muhammad bin Salman ordered the brutal

murder of a U.S.-based journalist. I could go on. He called Sisi of Egypt his favorite dictator. This is happening now. Unlike Fidel Castro, these people are alive. and we're having more conversation in our politics about some greatest hits album of the 70s involving Bernie Sanders than about what is happening right now in the world. And I will tell you that Bernie Sanders has been very outspoken about authoritarianism in the world.

And yes, I would like to make sure Bernie applies that across the board. I think he does. So I do think that even if you can find fault in some of the things he said in the past, it's kind of crazy that we're dealing with the current authoritarian crisis by talking about the 70s and 80s. Yeah, that's right. And look, here's why I think we're having this conversation is because what's front and center here are the politics and not necessarily the policy. So, you know, you and I have talked before about how Trump has made a concerted effort to use foreign policy initiatives to appeal to voters in places like Florida. So he's taken a hard line on Cuba and rolled back a lot of what you and Obama did in Cuba and attempt to appeal to hardline Cubans in Miami. He, Trump essentially backed a coup effort in Venezuela to appeal to Venezuela in America. He has gone all in for BB Netanyahu in an effort to peel off more conservative Jewish voters, especially in Florida. And I do sincerely worry about what that could mean for Democrats running in Florida, but especially for Bernie's chances of doing well in Florida.

And, you know, if Biden had made that kind of political argument, I think I would have, you know, had a much more measured response and listened to it. Now, in Bernie's defense on the politics, the politics get worse when Democrats freak out. and start putting out statements attacking Bernie and denouncing it. But how concerned do you think we should be about how Trump's efforts and how Bernie's past views might impact Florida politics and whether that might not just hurt the top of the ticket, but some of these members of Congress below him? No, I think it's a concern. I think it's a real concern.

I think that the Trump people have spent a lot of time and probably a lot of money, you know, trying to capitalize on their hardline policies on Cuba and Venezuela in certain parts of Florida, right? I think that Bernie's comments, including the Democratic reactions to Bernie's comments, plays into a narrative that already existed that the Trump people are pushing. Yes, and that's going to create some challenges for burning that community. I think what Bernie should do, and he can't do it right now because he's in South Carolina, but if he's a nominee, he should go down there and talk to those people, you know? Yeah. Like have a dialogue with them. You do get somewhere I went down there after the cube opening.

I remember I went to Miami, and I had a police escort pick me up at the gate where my plane dropped me off because the police were worried about whether I'd be attacked by anti-Castro people in Miami. I went to a town hall. I got yelled at in English. I got yelled at in Spanish. But you know what? I explained what we were doing. I didn't change everybody's minds, but they respected that I showed up.

I'm not saying this to praise myself. I'm saying, frankly, I got a lot of advice from people saying, just go down there, hear these people out. It'll make you understand their point of view better, even if you don't agree with them. And that was the case. And some people, you know, agreed with us. Some people didn't. So I think one of the things Bernie needs to do is go down into those communities. And he's done good outreach and other parts of the Latinx community in this country. He should do some work down there in Florida if he's a nominee to address these concerns. And you're right. Like this is the case. You know, Biden framing this as an electability case is different than saying,

you know, you are. You love the Soviet Union and that informed your worldview more than being American, which, to be fair, it wasn't in Biden's name. It was a spokesperson. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I agree with all that. So final thing on Bernie here. So I've noticed some outlets are resurfacing some quotes from Bernie, one from 1974, where he basically called for getting rid of the CIA. Specifically, he called it a dangerous institution and criticized the agency for toppling democratically elected leaders and being unaccountable except to, you know, right-wingers. So, Ben, like you and I have. both worked in government. We've been in the NSC. We knew John Brennan well. We've seen how beneficial intelligence from the CIA and the intel community can be to policymakers. But I also, like, I was surprised to see people kicking this one up because I can also understand how Bernie, or really anyone in America would be pretty down on the CIA back in 1974 when the world was learning that the CIA had to try to assassinate foreign leaders and had spied on Americans who

protested the war in Vietnam. Now, you know, the truth. church committee was formed as congressional committee was formed and they disclosed a lot of these activities and that led to major reforms like an executive order that says, hey, you can't do political assassinations, which held until Donald Trump killed Qasem Soleimani. And then over time, I think Bernie tempered his criticism of the agency. But more recently, you know, he's voted to cut the intelligence community budget. He voted against the Patriot Act. Good call, by the way. He voted against John Brennan's confirmation for CIA director in 2013. So I guess the question is whether voters care about this stuff, whether they care about statements from the 70s.

Maybe they'll agree with the statements from the 70s. And then bigger picture, like, if elected, how Bernie might reform the CIA or the Entel community. Like, for example, we don't know if you would limit government-wide use of drones or covert action activities or things that are, you know, hard to lay out in a policy white paper because they're often shrouded in layers of classification. But it was just interesting to see a lot of these foreign policy issues and knocks against Bernie pop up this week. Yeah, and look, do I think it's practical to go to the CIA? No, but do I think the fact that Bernie Sanders said that in 1974 is somehow relevant? No, it's not. And like you said, that was the low point of the CIA. That church committee

process also produced the Senate House Intelligence Committee. It didn't used to exist. There used to be no oversight of the CIA. So it was a different ballgame after that. You at least had oversight an accountability. The CIA was viewed as this kind of totally unaccountable operation before that that had made a lot of mistakes, including the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, a lot of efforts to try to kill Fidel Castro and others. So that's how you have to look at those comments. It's kind of absurd to take them as relevant to today. But what you know and I know, Tommy, is that this isn't really about that one issue. All these things added together are about trying to make Bernie Sanders seemed dangerous and seem like he's less than America. I mean, because we lived through it

in the 2008 campaign. There was a similar effort wage against Barack Obama. And it's about combining all these comments he's made to paint a picture of him. And I think that's something he can address by laying out who he is, where he wants to go, what he sees as the role of these agencies today, what he sees is our foreign policy in Latin America today. If asked these questions, I think Bernie can take a lot of them forward. So even on this Cuba stuff, you know, instead of getting an argument about literacy programs in Cuba under Fidel, I can say, well, look, what I do know is that the U.S. policy of having an embargo on Cuba has failed and has hurt the Cuban people. And what we should be trying to do is repair our relations with them, because not only

are they suffering, but the Communist Party is even more entrenched there because of what Trump has done, and Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit Cuba because he sees an opportunity to come into our back, you know, literally our backyard and mess with us, right? And so, there's a way for him to both introduce himself to the American people if he is the nominee in a manner that addresses these concerns and lays out what he wants to do. And instead of getting caught in debates about what he said in the 70s, talk about what he wants to do going forward. And on Cuba and Venezuela, he's got a good case to make that what Trump has done has failed, has only strengthened people like Maduro and Venezuela and the Cuban government in Havana.

and frankly has opened up a big door to Russia and China to be much more influential in our hemisphere. Yeah. I mean, what I really want the Democratic Party generally is to offer a confident alternative to the Trump administration policies slash like the John Bolton traditional neocon policies. And I have a lot of confidence that Bernie would do just that. Yeah. And I have to say, like this fixation on Cuba, it's not like it's not a national security threat to. the United States, you know. It's an island where people have suffered not just because of the Castro government, but because of our own policies. Yeah. And you can think both of those

things at the same time. Like the U.S. embargo has served the Cuban people as well as policies of the Cuban government. And so I think, you know, there's ways for Bernie to hold on to his worldview. I mean, he's a man who privileges his authenticity and consistency. There are ways for him to not have to, in any way, change those views while framing them about what he would do as president. Yeah, I agree. Okay, one last issue before the interview I did with Natasha Bertrand. So hosting Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, died today at 91.

Mubarak ruled Egypt with an iron fist until he was ousted during the Arab Spring back in 2011. You know, Ben, I think it's fair to say Mubarak wasn't a great guy. But his story, the entire story of Egypt over the last nine years, really, is pretty damn depressing. I mean, things are arguably worse now under President L.C. than they were during the Mubarak days. All the heady aspirations of democracy and human rights coming to Egypt have been crushed. The economy is in shambles. I mean, I will never forget that intense 18 days of protests in Egypt and in Tahrir Square that led to his ouster. You and I were in daily, sometimes multiple times a day, situation room meetings.

You know, you were probably in the Oval office for this, but I remember when Obama called Mubarak and basically said, it's time for you to step down. And I was standing just outside the Oval. And I could hear them shouting at each other on speakerphone through the door because it was so intense. And, you know, Mubarak would often speak through a translator. But when he got pissed, he started yelling in English. You know, and like, I think back to that time and how little we knew about what was going to unfold, right? I mean, this was before Benghazi. This was before Libya. This was before Syria started. And anyone really knew what this, you know, moment would lead to. So, you know, sort of sad news on a lot of levels, but, you know, something worth reflecting on. Yeah. And I remember that time well. And I was in the

group of people that were, you know, urging President Obama to break from Mubarak to advise him to step down. I remember I was in that, in the Oval Office for that conversation. It was super intense, as you described because Mubarak used to wait for the interpretation and you just started kind of yelling in English. And what Obama was saying is like, look, these people in the square aren't going to go home. You know, they're going to, you've lost control here. You need initiate a process by stepping down. And Mubarak just kept yelling. You don't understand they're going to go home. And that's what he had said every conversation. Oh, this will all be over tomorrow. This is all be taken care of. And I remember, you know, Obama saying to Mubarak,

you know, just because things have always been one way in the past doesn't mean that's how they're going to be in the future, which felt like a profound statement at the time. In a way, Obama was right because Mubarak was forced from office, did have to step down, did have to respond to the people in the streets. In a way, Mubarak was right that actually things returned to how they were. But to me, it's not a story that is settled here because I don't know that C.C. he's not going to end up with a bunch of people in the street insisting that he go. And I've had people ask me, Tommy, over the years, like, oh, do you regret, you know, that Obama did that, or you advised Obama to do that? I'm not saying he did it because I advised him, but do you have any regrets about this? No, I don't. Sometimes you have to be for the right thing, and this

guy was a dictator, and this guy was corrupt, and this guy tortured people, and people were fed up, and they wanted him to go. I think I regret a lot of things about how the transition process was managed after that, including things that the U.S. did. But the basic point that the U.S. should not stand by autocrats like Mubarak when they need to use violence to hold on to power, I stand by. My hope is that the Egyptian people ultimately are able to achieve what they were reaching for in 2011 when they were in the streets. And it's only been a decade, which seems like a long time, but in the sweep of history, particularly Egyptian history is not that long.

Hopefully we can return to those days. I guess the positive thing you can say is Mubarak abided by the Camp David Accords that were negotiated by his predecessor, Sadat. But, you know, I don't think that that justified a blank check from the United States for the rest of his life to be in power. Yeah, I agree with you. All right, man. Well, this has been ranging, hetty, interesting.

And when we come back, we'll have my conversation with Politico's National Security Correspondent, Natasha Bertrand. I am thrilled to be joined now by Politico's National Security correspondent, Natasha Bertrand. Natasha, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So you've been really busy. You've been breaking scoops left and right, so I'm incredibly grateful you could do it today. Let's start with the Director of National Intelligence, small role. We learned recently that Donald Trump wants to make basically a grown-up Twitter

troll with no relevant experience, his new acting director of national intelligence. This guy's named Rick Grinnell. He's the current U.S. ambassador to Germany. Before that, his main experience was berating people on Twitter, especially women and journalists and working as a spokesman at the U.N. So you have a piece out today that I thought was really interesting that explains how Grinnell was not just mean to journalists and liberals on Twitter, but he was actually a major Trump critic back in 2016.

How did you find this out? Yeah. So I found out that Grinnell had actually deleted thousands of tweets. And I wasn't quite sure what they were about. It was flagged for me that he had kind of purged his Twitter account at one point. So I was curious, naturally, and I reached out to a cybersecurity firm that I have a prior relationship with, and I said, hey, is there any chance that you guys can recover these? And, you know, it took them about two days, but they managed to.

develop a tool that would essentially, you know, go to the Wayback Machine, which, of course, archives all of the stuff and find every tweet that he ever deleted. Now, of course, that was, you know, a pretty big project. It, you know, it took them a while. But we got tweets that he deleted criticizing Trump in 2016 saying that he was unsurious, you know, being a vocal supporter of John Kasich, you know, saying that Trump was actually dangerous because of his views on NATO. And obviously, this was surprising because now Grinnell is known to be one of the biggest Trump loyalists and most vocal supporters out there. So we still don't quite know why he changed his tune, but the deleted tweet suggests that he was just severely anti-Hillary Clinton and that he decided to

just back whoever this European nominee was. Yeah. I think my favorite one, one was, if you think Trump knows foreign policy issues, then absolutely yes, you are stupid. Right. And of course, he was then, you know, selected to be Trump's ambassador to Germany. Yeah, a job. He's really excelled that. If excel, you mean, you know, make everyone in Germany mad. But let's backtrack a bit. So there's some reporting that Trump fired the previous acting director of the DNI because he was angry about an intelligence briefing to Congress about Russian interference in the 2020 election. The White House has denied a lot of those reports. I think Trump did at his press event in India today.

But what do we know at this point about that specific briefing to Congress and why the former acting DNI, Joe McGuire, was let go? Yeah. So there are conflicting reports about this. And we actually, at Politico, we don't have the reporting. But from my understanding, it is that the Shelby Pearson, who is the election security expert, at the Office of Director of National Intelligence, went to Congress and told them what the intelligence said, which is that Russia is currently interfering in the election and that they have a preference

for Donald Trump, which is not a surprise, right? I mean, they had a preference for him in 2016. It is unlikely that that would go away because the president really hasn't done anything personally to antagonize the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. So that shouldn't have been, you know, an antagonistic thing for her to say, but the Republicans on the committee apparently were very upset, and they did not believe that, you know, the intelligence suggested what she said that it did. So it got back to the president, and he was very angry that this briefing had occurred without his prior knowledge because he's very suspicious of House Intel Committee chairman, Adam Schiff, who, of course was present for that briefing. He then took it out on McGuire, is what we understand, and decided that, hey, you know, his time is coming up anyway, just going to kind of make an example out of him and fire him and install a loyalist who is already Senate confirmed and who would be kind of easy to fill this vacancy until we can find someone to be the more permanent nominee.

The conflict arises, though, because there have been other reports that suggest that Shelby Pearson, the election security expert, oversaw. dated the intelligence. And having been in conferences with her and having, you know, experienced her style of speaking firsthand, it is true that she's blunt. She is aggressive and she does not mince words and she's actually more transparent with reporters than others have been in the past, which of course is refreshing for us, but for people in the intelligence community, may rub them the wrong way. So there are certain people who are pushing back within the IC on the interpretation of the intelligence that she presented. And that is why now that's given the White House kind of an opening to say, you know, fake news.

What a mess. You know, this DNI position is so interesting because obviously, like, it's important on its face. But the law that created the position requires by statute that the nominee have extensive national security experience and management experience. It seems pretty clear to me that Grinnell has neither. Susan Collins, one of the authors of the law, said as much. But since this is an acting role, does it just seem like there's almost nothing Congress can do to stop Trump from naming someone even if he or she doesn't have the required experience? I think that's right. And I think that's why we've seen a pattern of installing acting in every agency across government.

That is what the president has essentially expressed in private that he does not want to go through these bruising confirmation fights for loyalists that he believes won't be confirmed because they are. qualified. So it's unclear who is actually going to be nominated for director of national intelligence, but John Ratcliffe's name is apparently being floated again. And he, of course, is a very big Trump loyalist who currently is in Congress and has defense of him on issues relating to the Russia investigation. So it is unclear whether or not he would be confirmed, but apparently the president is willing to try. Others who have been floated for the job are folks like Pete Hoekstra and Fred Flights, who of course is the former Chief of Staff to John Bolton. So unlikely that he'll get nominated given the president's animus towards Bolton at this point.

But it definitely seems like the president is still looking for someone at the head of the intel community leading all 17 intel agencies that will essentially allow him to retain control over the intel agencies and manipulate the flow of information. Yeah. And just so listeners now, I mean, I think Wired had a pretty good piece. on this where they summed it up by saying almost all of the roles created after 9-11, literally to prevent the next 9-11 attack, will be either vacant or lack a permanent appointee. So we're talking about the National Counterterrorism Center, the D&I, the Deputy DNI, the Homeland Security Secretary, that person's deputy, Customs Board Patrol, DEA, ATF. Like, I know that is acronym suit, but what

what these gigantic organizations need above all else, in my opinion, is just good, consistent management, and you have to assume they're lacking that. Are you hearing any rumblings from Congress about concern about this overuse of the acting role? Oh, absolutely, because Congress obviously feels that it is a way to bypass their authority, right, and their ability to, and their constitutional prerogative to vet the nominees that the president puts forward. So even Republicans have expressed concerns about the overuse of the acting. role because they know that it is a way for this president to install loyalists and kind of by time so that he can enact policies that are beneficial to him personally or the White

House or the administration. So there are grumblings. It doesn't mean that the president is going to be convinced to do away with it anytime soon, but there does seem to be bipartisan pushback on this issue. Yeah. So you had a just fascinating story this week for Politico about Julian Assange, who everybody knows and loves as the founder of WikiLeaks. If you're listening to this, WikiLeaks, we love you.

You're cool. Don't go away. They plan to introduce evidence, according to your reporting, involving Rick Grnell, the person we've been talking about who will become the acting DNI that suggest his allies, maybe recorded conversations or were somehow involved with the Sanja's extradition. What the hell is going on here? What have you learned? Yeah, it's a crazy story, and it has a lot of different threads.

But essentially what we learned is that Julian Assange's defense team are going to argue as soon as tomorrow during his extradition hearing that the process to try to arrest and extradite Assange to the United States was abused from very early on, not in small part because of the role that Rick Grinnell played in Julianna Sanj's eventual arrest. And Grinnell was involved in convincing Ecuador to allow the U.S. and British officials to enter the embassy and arrest Assange. So he promised, for example, that the death penalty would be off the table if Ecuador allowed this to move forward. And what they're arguing is that Gernel's role was actually more extensive than that, that he actually was acting directly on orders from the president to essentially bribe. the Ecuadorians into allowing this kind of operation to happen by promising them, you know, money for projects, by saying that, you know, they would not violate their opposition to the death penalty. And that Grinnell's role in this, because he was the ambassador to Germany, because he was kind of an unofficial back channel, because he was not in the UK, he wasn't

really involved in these discussions, inevitably politicized the process. And how they're going to argue that is they're going to be using evidence, some of which I obtained that includes recordings between a Grinnell ally and a confidant last year describing Grinnell's role in all of this, including audio recording and screenshots that suggest that Grinnell's role and Asandra's arrest were being told to people outside of the U.S. government prior to any of it actually occurring. So basically, the team is going to argue, look, this was all completely irregular. the process was toxic and abused from the beginning. And the only reason it happened, frankly, is because President Trump is in office and because

President Trump has a political interest in seeing Julian Assange come to the United States and essentially, you know, tell the public, you know, his belief that Russia was not the source for the hacked WikiLeaks, the hack DNC documents. So, again, a lot of threads to pull on here. but what we go back to is the introduction of evidence last week suggesting that Dan Arorbaacher, the former California congressman, went to Assange and said, look, Trump will give you a pardon if you come over here and you tell us the real source of the hacked DNC documents. Grinnell is not commenting.

His office declined to comment and his ally, whose recordings we obtained has not disputed their authenticity. So there's a lot more to come on them. Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, just so folks know, I mean, these aren't random people. I mean, there's a suggestion that this ally of Grinnells, this guy, Arthur Schwartz, might have leaked even classified information. And this guy is known to be close buddies with Donald Trump Jr. He's one of the people who has been reported as a top ally of Donald Trump Jr. and coordinates attacks on Trump critics and journalists, et cetera. So it does seem like this is an interesting avenue to pursue, to say the least. Definitely. And he, the suggestion, obviously, that Grinnell was, A, giving information about a sensitive law enforcement operation to Schwartz prior to any of this actually happening in 2019, reflects very badly on Grinnell because he is now leaning the entire U.S. intelligence community. And, of course, it's led to even further doubts about his ability to be objective, apolitical and nonpartisan, which are all traits you need. according to every person who's ever served in the IC in order to delete it effectively. So I think that he's going to be further embroiled in this as the leak moves on.

Yeah. So Natasha, your Twitter feed includes great scoops and also a lot of photos of a very good dog. I just don't know if you want to plug your puppy in any way or your Twitter feed so people know where to find you. He's the best dog. Yes, I'm at Natasha Bertrand. I post a lot of photos of my 10-month-old lab mix named Wally. so I encourage everyone to follow along. He also has an Instagram account at Wally.

The Retriever. Oh, he's only 10 months? Yeah. Oh, that's the best. God, I literally like stare at my dog and just, you know, almost wish you were still a puppy. It's fun when they're, they chill out a little bit too. Then they like to snuggle you more.

That's true. That is very true. Something to look forward to. Natasha, thank you so much for doing the show and for all the great reporting. It's fascinating to read. I cannot wait to follow this Assange story because, holy shit. Thank you, Tommy. Appreciate it.

Ben, I hope you make it out of D.C. Did you also go to Stephen Miller's wedding, or did you not, were you not unable to make it? You know, I've never been to the Trump Hotel. Maybe I'll cruise by there later and see who's hanging out in a lot of this time. Is it crazy? They have to hang out there. Like, do you imagine being forced essentially by political, you know, necessity to go to a place where you had to spend like 18 bucks on a drink every time you wanted to go out?

Yeah, and get table bombed by like Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas. The worst people in the world. And amazing, it's Stephen Miller literally is getting married. married there? I mean, give me a break. Someone told me it an Elvis impersonator at his wedding. That is so fucking lame. Come on, man. Just, and like, who wants to marry Stephen Miller?

Yeah. I mean, you read the New Yorker profile of him, people should check that out. This guy's hobby is going home and figuring out new ways to punish immigrants. Yeah, yeah. Worst person on the planet. All right, buddy. See you next week in L.A. Hi, man. See you.

Bye-bye. Pott Save the World is a product of crooked media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seglan is our sound engineer. Special thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.