Pod Save the World - Biden versus Putin

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Tommy and Ben talk about what they are watching for in the Israeli elections, why Republicans are stalling the confirmation of a key Department of Defense official, the race for global vaccine distribution, Vladimir Putin challenging Joe Biden to a debate, a dramatic US-China summit in Alaska, proposed restrictions on protest in the UK, President Biden's position on drug eradication in Latin America and marijuana use in DC. Then Tommy talks to Canadian Member of Parliament and the leader of the New Democratic Party Jagmeet Singh about progressive politics in Canada and the US-Canada relationship.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to POTSafe the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, happy, uh, middle March madness. I hope, I, I hope your bracket's doing better than, um, uh, one former presidents. Barack Obama, who decided to release his, who is, is just toast. Well, he, he does the same thing. He's done the same thing a lot of years where he picks all the number one seeds to go to the final four, which... All chalk. Yeah. I mean, which sometimes, you know, ends up being the smart play, but not this year. No, this year was crazy. And look, I think everyone's bracket is a disaster because the college basketball season didn't really happen. And so nobody knew how to predict already difficult games to predict.

But, you know, Illinois in the final, that's tough. That's hard to recover from. Anyway, no one listening to the show is here for this conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check out Jason Concepcion, take one. Yeah, the best new podcast on the Internet. That's exactly right. So here's what we're going to cover today.

So Israeli voters are going to the polls again today. I'll talk about that. The stakes of the Biden administration's personnel fight that's happening right now in the Senate. Vaccine inequality, maybe happening debates with Russia and the U.S., more protests in the U.K., hope for a ceasefire in Yemen, Joe Biden and the war on drugs, and then some updates out of Myanmar, a tense meeting between the U.S. and Chinese officials. And then we'll check in on Prince Harry, because we have our royal correspondent here, and I figured I have to ask you. And then World Diswell will hear my interview. with Jugmeet Singh. He's a member of the Canadian Parliament, and he's a leader of Canada's

new Democratic Party. Ben, I know you're, like, actual real-life friends with Justin Trudeau, and that he and Jagmeet, are political rivals. But I have to admit, this was, like, the most fun interview I've done in a while. We talked last Friday. I felt like we could have seamlessly transitioned from a conversation about, like, Canadian politics to sitting on my couch, watching the basketball and, like, sipping on some Moulson. So I think what anybody would say, right, is he's just like an incredibly likable guy who's done an incredible job in making that party relevant, right? And it's good. It's healthy, right? I mean, like, yeah, I'm close, particularly to some people around Trudeau. But it's a good thing that there's a progressive party there that's,

you know, holding their feet to the fire. But I'm excited to hear the interview. Pressure from the left is good. Look at Chuck Schumer. Speaking of the NCAA tournament, you mentioned this earlier, do not miss this week's episode of Take Line. So, Jason and Renee Montgomery, who's a WNBA champion, they break down March Madness, they talk about the NBA. And then the incredible life and career of NBA legend Elgin Baylor, who just passed away to 86, like the guy, Ben, apparently, he was active duty army. And when he could get a pass, he would catch a commercial flight to go meet up with the

Lakers and then play and then would drop like 30, 10 and 10. It's just an unbelievable episode. So check out the take line YouTube. Check out Take Line wherever you're your podcast. There's also all caps, MBA, Jason Concepcion's other show. And then this week's episode of Pod Save the People's fantastic. Dore and the crew are joined by author Cleo Wade. They talk about her new book and explore the question of whether it's okay to sometimes wander down the wrong path in life, something we have all done, something we have all thought about.

So do not miss that. So, Ben, speaking of March Madness, Israelis went to the polls today for the fourth time, fourth time in two years, the fourth parliamentary election. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is the longest serving leader in Israel's history. He's facing multiple corruption charges and staying in office. So what a surprise, helps him avoid prosecution. Sounds familiar. Early polling suggests that Netanyahu's party, the Lakut Party, is the most popular political party in Israel and we'll get the most seats of any party. But it's not yet clear whether Netanyahu will be able to stitch together a coalition of, you know, probably right wing and then ultra-right wing or ultra-Orthodox parties to control a majority of seats in the Knesset,

Israel's parliament, and that would allow him to remain prime minister. Ben, I can't imagine going through four elections in two years. Is there anything you're watching in this race or like any reason you think to have hope that BB Netanyahu might finally exit the stage? Well, the thing is is that the Israeli public has been very constant in its political preferences. And, you know, what people should always remember is the coup will get the most votes of any party, but nowhere near 50%. But the problem is that the Lakud Party, you know, is able to, because Israeli politics has moved to the right, is usually able to cobble together a coalition that gets you just above 60 in order to keep Netanyahu in power. And the reality here is that Netanyahu probably needs

to stay in power to avoid prison, you know, so the incentives are enormous for him to do whatever it takes. I think what's worrisome, he has said publicly in the round of this election that he prefers like a hard right government. Like no, no, you know, centrist party that he has to rely upon. So you could be looking at, you know, in I think the worst case outcome, a uniformly far-right Israeli government. The other two scenarios are maybe there's an upset and Lapid, who's like the leading opposition figure, is able to cobble. together a really bizarre anti-Netanyahu coalition that is probably left center and some right and is able to squeak through or a third scenario where, you know, Netanyahu can't just rely

on right-wing votes, but somehow co-ops some part of the center. I think what's clear is that Israeli politics is paralyzed because of this question of Netanyahu. You either love him or hate him, and they can't, they just can't move forward psychologically. And, you know, I I think it'd be healthy, frankly, to matter what your political perspective is to get beyond this one man. But we'll see today what is staying power is. And if the previous elections are an indication, he's probably the more likely person to be the next prime minister, but is not for the fourth time getting a mandate that clears this up because not enough Israelis feel good about Nanyahu to put him in a comfort zone here. So we'll see. Yeah, we will see.

Well, anyway, you know, look, it'll take a while to have some results for the elections. take even longer for the government formation process to proceed, you know, upwards of maybe, I think, a month or so. So we'll stay on top of this one and keep our fingers crossed that, you know, there might be a post-net Yahoo future for Israel in the same way we're really enjoying this post-Trump reality we're living in right now. Ben, let's talk about Biden's personnel for a minute. So President Biden nominated a guy named Colin Call to be his Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. You know Colin extremely well. job that he's nominated for is the number three job of the Pentagon. It's a very influential position.

Colin is indisputably qualified for this job. In fact, I think he's exceptionally well qualified. He was deputy assistant secretary defense for the Middle East. He was the national security advisor to Joe Biden when Joe Biden was the vice president. He's out of many other jobs. But Colin is facing resistance from Republican senators like Susan Collins, who said she is mad that Colin predicted that moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem could create a backlash. And Colin is also facing resistance from Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from West Virginia, who was once again, you know, policing old tweets by nominees the way he did with near a tandon. Now, Ben, I wouldn't call Colin call some sort of lefty liberal.

But you have a theory about why Colin might be facing resistance from members of the Senate and what you think the bigger implications of this fight are. explain? Yeah, so I don't think the tweets really come into play here. I mean, that's what they say the reason is, and that's what's got Joe Manchin's, you know, whatever, you know, social media police badge out. But if you look at his tweets, like these are, there's not even anywhere near what NER's were. These are like pretty commonly held views that any Democrat would express online. What's really been happening here is, you know, Tom Cotton is whipping the opposition to this. And there's been a huge effort to cast Colin.

and right-wing media as anti-Israel. And what's at the core of it is, Colin was among our most effective public advocates for the Iran nuclear deal in the Obama years. And then during the Trump years, was one of the most effective critics of Trump's disastrous decision to pull out of the Iran deal.

They're trying to get a scalp on the Iran deal here. And no mistake here, this is a really important job. This is kind of the job that drives the policymaking of the Pentagon, right? the Secretary of Defense kind of looks over the field. The deputy often is focused on things like acquisition and personnel. This is the person who sits at the table and the sit room for a lot of discussions. And I think this is particularly gross for a number of reasons, right?

Number one, if you tally up what Colin said online and certainly what he said about the Iran nuclear deal, he didn't say anything that isn't kind of a mainstream Democratic Party view, including, by the way, the views that Joe Biden himself expressed on the campaign, in part because Colin probably helped prepare him to express those views on the campaign. And so they're essentially trying to disqualify someone for just having the views of the administration he used to work for, the Obama administration that did the Iran nuclear deal, and the person he works for who was his boss in the Obama years, right? The second thing, Colin and I were both spied on by Black Cube, the Israeli intelligence outfit. They was hired by somebody. The Guardian suggested a Trump associate, who knows,

but clearly someone who wanted to tear down me and Colin. And it said at the time, because of our work on the Iran deal. And this was particularly gross. A Black Cube operative reached out to Colin's wife and said she wanted to discuss organizing a fundraiser for his kids preschool, right? I mean, this is the lengths that they were going to to kind of somehow dig up dirt or intimidate a former public official, right? And you add this together. I mean, this man has been subjected to years of intimidation and disinformation campaigns online. And if you don't believe me, just consider a former Mossad operative reaching out to his wife and trying to organize a fundraiser for his kids preschool. But also, importantly, he's being torn down because he's such an effective

spokesperson for a policy that's unpopular on the right. And if the Biden team folds, If Joe Mansion folds on this thing, what is the message that's being sent? It's that you literally can't have appointees who are passionate and effective advocates for Democratic Party policies, or that you're essentially retroactively validating the kind of thuggish campaign that was waged against Colin for the last few years. That would be both a travesty for our national security because we lose Colin and frankly send a signal that we can't have anybody in confirmed jobs. who can't pass essentially like a Republican test of whether or not they've been critical of Republicans in their history. And again, you're just validating this, this boorish behavior that Colin's been subjected to. So this is a big deal because, again, like, you know, just imagine the kind of people who will be left pursuing these jobs. If even Colin, Colin, who you point out, he's not like a super

progressive. Like, Colin is a defense guy, you know. So it's not, he's not like this is the, they're taken down the bomb throwing lefty here or even me, right? This is, this is, you know, this is a very mainstream thinker who just happened to be a passionate and effective advocate for the Iran deal. I also like how these Republicans were trying to push that Colin was somehow anti-Israel and that a bunch of like Israeli retired generals and national security officials came out and they're like, what are you talking about? He had our backs all the time. He got us more funding for the Iron Dome Missile Defense Project. He was meeting with us constantly. He is someone who is well within the mainstream of like democratic national security thinking. And you're right. The message that

bouncing him would send is that like Joe Biden can only hire Republicans to work at the Pentagon. What is the argument here? Or people who've said nothing critical of like the Trump policies or something. And look, the Israeli reaction was interesting because like not just U.S. national security people are badging for column. Like as you said, a lot of Israeli military leaders, because they know, you mentioned Iron Dome, Colin was there at the Pentagon in charge of this account when we ramped up this Iron Dome defense system that shoots down rockets coming from Gaza that saved countless Israeli lives. So all these armchair pro-Israel Republicans just weaponizing the old, you know, insufficiently pro-Israel charge,

like they've done nothing. They can't light a candle to what Colin Call has done for it. Israel security. So it makes a mockery of that charge, too. Well, hopefully, fully mention stops with the tone policing and comes to his census here. We can get Colin soon because he is well qualified and we need him in that job. Ben, we've talked a couple times about vaccine equality and inequality. And I wanted to bring it up again because I was reading a piece in the New York Times, and this statistic jumped out at me about global COVID vaccination efforts.

Of the vaccine doses given globally, roughly three quarters have gone to only 10 countries, at least 30 countries have not injected a single person. The continent of Africa, which has 17% of the world's population, has so far administered roughly 2% of the vaccine doses. Kenya is hoping to inoculate 30% of his population by the middle of 2023, not 2021, not 2022, 2023. So obviously, it didn't take the pandemic for us to understand the inequality between life in the U.S. and life in Sudan, right? But like the disparity in vaccination timelines for rich white countries, like the U.S., the U.S., the U.K., Israel versus Kenya, a relative economic powerhouse is shocking and it's pretty outrageous. And to be clear, like, for those listening

thinking, well, I just want to get a vaccine, I want my family get vaccinated, this will hurt the U.S. Right? The virus can mutate. It can come back. It can infect vaccinated people if it keeps changing and spreading. And these vaccination campaigns, if they're delayed, will literally cost the global economy trillions with a T of dollars. Some of the worst case estimates are up to nine trillion. And a lot of that economic activity will hit develop countries because we're the ones, you know, selling and buying stuff. So, you know, Ben, all of us have been like laser focused on, you know, the U.S. distribution effort. The Biden administration is focused up on, on, you know, providing economic relief to, you know, U.S. citizens who are hurting, to get, getting jabs and

arms, but, you know, like knowing how hard it is to get people in America, especially Republicans, to support, quote unquote, foreign aid, when and how do you think the Biden team and the international community should ramp up efforts to help other countries get vaccinated? Because like 2023 for a country like Kenya seems just outrageously far in the future to me and something we can't allow to happen. Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything you say. And look, I think what we've seen in this country is that the distribution of, the vaccine, it's kind of like a math and logistics issue, right?

Yeah. And once you have the vaccine created, when the Biden people came in and you had competent people willing to put resources behind it and just solve logistical problems, suddenly we're like three million doses within a couple months here. And so globally, this is just a math and logistics issue of our nation's going to be willing, richer nations, commit some resources to scale up additional vaccine or to use their surplus vaccine, you know, to help reach places like Kenya? And will they work collaboratively and with, like, the World Health Organization to have the logistics in place to get these vaccines out faster? Because, you know, some parts of, you know, rural Kenya, for instance, are just hard to reach.

But you can do it if the will is there. And the cost is not eye-popping for this kind of thing. You know, you're talking in the low tens of billions of dollars, I think, from some of the estimates I've seen. If you're pooling that among a bunch of rich countries and channeling in the WHO and again, working with the pharmaceutical companies that have expressed some concerns, but kind of pushing them and saying, no, guys, this is a global health issue. This is a humanitarian issue. I think this is eminently doable. And the Biden team should prioritize this. And you mentioned the current pandemic and how you want to stamp it out and prevent strains from going. But clearly, we need a better global response mechanism anyway because we're likely going to be dealing

experts say with more frequent pandemics going forward given climate change and other issues. And so wouldn't you want this kind of distribution network in place? Wouldn't you want the ability to scale up vaccines and disseminate it globally quickly? So there's all manner of moral and, you know, frankly, kind of security and health reasons for us to be doing this. Yes, agreed. Agreed. I really hope we focused on this.

I was glad we talked last week about the proposal to lift intellectual property rights that would allow other countries to freely manufacture some of these vaccines and treatments and testing and diagnostics. It seems like the obvious proposal. I'm glad people like Bernie Sanders, Jan Tzakowski have been pushing it. And Tommy, one thing I just want to add, a friend of the pod, Samantha Power has her confirmation hearing today. Right now.

To run USAID. And she, this is a perfect person. Give Samantha this job because she is dogged and relentless. And she's good at building partnerships of other countries. So one of the things that I hope to see as Samantha Power doing when she's confirmed at AID is this. Yes, her voice will be heard on this issue and many others. Changing gears here, Ben, the debate me coward Twitter trolling has gone global and has reached the head of the state level.

So I'm talking about Russia and the U.S. Because last week during an interview with ABC News, President Biden was asked whether he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was a killer. Biden said, I do. And he went on to say that Putin is going to pay for Russian interference in the 2020 election. this went over about as well as you'd expect in Moscow. Putin's response ranged from suggesting that Biden has dementia by saying, like, I wish you good health, comrade, wink, wink, to pointing the finger back of Biden by saying it takes one to no one.

No word yet if he who smelt it dealt it. So more seriously, Ben, Russia recalled its ambassador to Washington. They warned of irreversible deterioration of relations. It's always funny when, you know, Russian officials who are cool with like annexing Crimea and murdering. and poisoning Alexei Navality, right? They're offended by accurate descriptions of themselves. But whatever. Putin also challenged Biden to a debate, you know, like a little Ben Shapiro move here.

So our producer, Jordan Waller, reached out to our friend Alexei Kovlov at Medusa News in Russia to get a sense of why Putin is leaning so hard into that fight. Let's listen to a clip of their conversation. Putin has a very peculiar hierarchy of people he considers to be equal to him. So he doesn't respect, you know, sycophants and yes man, because that's basically everyone around him. Because he knows better than anyone how cheap they are. And that's really beneath his station to engage in a dialogue as equals. A lot of people have called Putin names over the years.

But I don't think it's ever elicited such a heated reaction. Putin seems to have taken it quite close to heart if he, you know, chose to quite unceremoniously for him, really, to challenge a president of another country to a live debate. On the other hand, I don't think it's going to have, like, really far-fetching consequences for the U.S. Russian relations as bad as they are at the moment. Alexei also noted that Russian state media looks a lot like primetime Fox News these days. They're looping video of Biden tripping when he was walking up the stairs. They're accusing him having dementia.

Again, everyone should check out in Medusa News. They do like really impressive investigative reporting out of Russia, which is not the safest job in the world. So thank you to them. So, Ben, on the one hand, Putin is a killer. That's just a fact we shouldn't pretend otherwise. On the other hand, he's a thin-skinned, whiny little killer. And this war of words might make him more difficult to work with or give him a pretext to worsen relations. Are you worried about this latest controversy?

Should we be more worried about the sanctions that the U.S. just put on Russia? Like, how are you viewing this one? No, look, I think this was performative by Putin. I mean, just consider this, Tommy. Like, this is the first time they've recalled an ambassador since the 1990s when the before Putin, when the U.S. bombed Iraq. Now, consider everything that's happened since. invasion of, you know, Crimea and Ukraine, U.S. sanctions, U.S. pulling out of, you know, all kinds of

arms control treaties, backs and forth across the board. This tells me that I don't think Joe Biden calling Putin a killer is like the most consequential event that's happened in the 21st century, right? So part of this, I think, is Putin just kind of performing, trying to brush back Biden, trying to gin up his kind of nationalist media machine at home, kind of trolling Biden a little bit with some of the same content on their state media, as you said, that's on Fox. I should point out that some of the conspiracy theories actually started first in Russian disinformation campaigns and then made its way to Fox. But I also think that it demonstrates like a real vulnerability of Putin. You know, he seems to be much more thin-skinned about criticism of anything inside of Russia

than what he does outside of Russia. You know, it's like we could say whatever we want about what he's doing in Ukraine or what he did in Syria, and he would never respond like this. But once you start to talk about what he does in Russia, and Biden, I think, was referring to, you know, he's a killer because he's killed opponents, he goes apoplectic in the same way that Navalny drives him apoplectic. And this is a guy, I think, that doesn't feel like he's on as firm political footing as he probably did a decade ago because of what Navalny's done, because of corruption, because the system is atrophied, because it's increasingly clear that he is a killer who's silenced critics around the world. So I think it sets up an interesting dynamic where the Biden people have to judge how often are they hitting this funny bone, if you will, this nerve spot around issuing more direct criticism of his domestic policies and domestic approaches.

Look at the end of the day, the U.S. and Russia like are accustomed to having huge fights about some things and working together in others. Like at the absolute rock bottom of U.S. Russian relations after the invasion of Ukraine and at the height of the Syrian civil war, they did the Iran nuclear deal with us. You know, so it's possible to walk and chew gum here. But I think the space to watch, again, is how much the Biden people focus in on Putin's domestic political vulnerabilities, says corruption and how does Putin respond to this? The debate, the only other thing I noticed on me is, do you see all those Republicans, like kind of taking Putin's side in the debate? They love it. right wing loves to jump on board the Putin train and pretend that he's tough and, you know, criticize Biden for not debating him. It's so pathetic. But also, I know that, like, recalling your

ambassador is a big deal. But didn't it just seem kind of, like, petulant and weak? It just seems kind of pathetic to me. Well, yeah, I mean, I know we're going to talk about China later, too, but like, yeah, some more dynamic there. Yeah, Russia and China, like, you know, if you're so strong, why are you so sensitive about pretty rudinized criticism? You know, like, it's, it's, you know, Actually, not unlike Colin Call's tweets, like, you know, an American thinking that Putin's a killer or criticizing Chinese human rights. Like, there's a sensitivity here that doesn't feel like strength to me. No. And, you know, and I was just going to say about the Republicans, like, part of this is just trolling Democrats.

But part of it's like, Putin is, you know, he's anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGB, kind of white patriarchal embraces the Russian Orthodox Church. like, there's a lot more in common. This isn't just an alliance of convenience. Like, like, Republicans look at Putin and find more to agree with them with Joe Biden. Oh, but Putin would do better in Iowa than Mike Pompeo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that, I mean, that tells you, I mean, we're pretty far away from Ronald Reagan evil empire here. Yeah, we're not, we're not tearing down that wall anymore. You mentioned China. So let's just jump to that. So on Monday, the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the European Union announced sanctions on Chinese officials, believed to be connected to the ongoing genocidal campaign about the Uyghur Muslim minority in Western China.

And for years now, we've talked about this many times. The Chinese government has been building massive concentration camps to imprison an estimated million or more Uyghurs in Western China. The Chinese government says this is about fighting terrorism. These are re-education camps. That's their best case, right? But the reality is truly horrific. Many Uyghurs have been tortured. Women have been raped.

They've been forced to work in factories. It's the worst thing you could imagine. It's a genocidal crime against humanity. The U.S. sanctions target two specific individuals. One leads the Xinjiang province production and construction corps. The other leads the Xinjiang public security program. Shinjiang is the part of China where this is happening. The sanctions announcement comes after a tense meeting between a U.S. delegation led

by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and their Chinese counterparts last week in Alaska. Politico's Nahal Tusi, you know, broke. the story about the sanctions and reported that the EU sanctions on China over the Uighurs were believed to be the first sanctions from Europe against China since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. So that does speak to the significance. You know, Ben, so this kind of like coordinated action by the U.S. and allies has been sort of the approach you've been talking about for a while. We've been talking about it in the show.

The U.S. has also announced sanctions on 24 officials linked to China's effort to destroy democracy in Hong Kong. Do you do you have any thoughts on this sanctions announcement, whether it was a good idea or not, and more broadly on that, like, testy exchange between Tony, Jake and this Chinese delegation and what it might say about the future of U.S.-China relations. So I think this is a really welcome step. And, you know, part of what's happened in the past is that China's very good at bullying individual countries. And so individual countries are kind of afraid to speak out against Chinese human rights abuses

because if one European country does it, they get smacked down by the Chinese and they suffer, a trade reprisal action or something. And part of what we've talked about on this podcast, and I frankly spent the last few years talking a lot to people like Jake and Tony about this, is can the U.S. join hands with other countries, with the EU, with Canada, and hopefully with some Asian allies, Australia, Japan, others. So that suddenly it's 50% of the global economy raising their voice together, not just the U.S. from our own narrow perspective, not just Europe, not just obviously a country like

Canada that's smaller and more vulnerable. And so their capacity to line up, you know, most of the Democratic, small D democratic world to do this, I think is a powerful signal that China's going to get some long-deserved scrutiny on its human rights record. The exchange, similarly in Alaska, part of what was interesting to me is that the Biden people put some of these sanctions on, like leading into that summit. Yeah. And that's what provoked the Chinese, because is normally you try to kind of keep the deck pretty clear. You know, you're not doing Taiwan arms sales and you're not sanctioning Chinese officials, like,

in the run-up to your summit. But the Biden people, I think, are sending a very interesting message of, like, guys, no more constraints here. Like, you know, what you've done on Jingjiang province with the Uyghurs, what you're doing in Hong Kong, the degree to what you're pushing people around, you know, we're just going to push back

and you're just going to have to get accustomed to that. And I think the Chinese outburst was, you know, intended to kind of signal their displeasure at that, maybe brush the Biden people back. And but also, you know, in fairness to the Chinese say, like, we don't care if you push us back. We're just going to keep doing what we're doing. And it sets up a pretty scratchy dynamic for U.S. China relations going forward. But I think necessary. And the one comment we'll be unpacking for the next, you know, year, this question of like,

how do you balance getting, you know, firmer on issues like human rights with, not wanting to get into a Cold War. It's not a binary choice between, like, looking the other way on Jingjiang province and Hong Kong and being in a full-blown Cold War. Like, I support a really aggressive multilateral effort to spotlight Chinese human rights abuses. I support the Biden team, you know, pointing to China and saying, hey, we got to invest in infrastructure. We got to invest in R&D because they're out competing us. I support, you know, even efforts to kind of work multilaterally on issues like the South China Sea to say, hey, we're going to be speaking together with some other countries here. You guys can't just go and claim a whole body of water for yourself. We're going to

try to force this into some international process. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to use China to justify a trillion-dollar defense budget and a saber-rattle and risk of conflict. There's ways of being tougher, quote-unquote, tougher, although I think that word is drained of meeting in national security. But certainly more confident about your values. and more confident trying to lead fellow democracies in advocating for human rights without falling into a Cold War. And while acknowledging, as the Biden people did, like, hey, we know we're in a glasshouse.

The best thing we can do for democracy is fix it at home. We get that, you know, but that doesn't mean we're going to be silent about Hong Kong. Yeah, and like to further this sort of, can you walk and chew gum, can you fight and talk point? I saw that John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, is meeting with his Chinese counterpart at a virtual conference on climate change today, Tuesday.

this conference is in preparation for another still virtual global climate summit on April 22nd, where Biden is expected to roll out new climate goals and targets and then also have a virtual meeting with Xi Jinping, the president of China. So it's interesting that we are having these blowups, but the U.S. is also asking the Chinese to commit to stronger CO2 reductions like the same month. Yeah, I think. I think the dynamic you want is that we are working collaboratively with China on climate. We are trying to work together to deal with this crisis for humanity. We're working, by the way, hopefully collaboratively with China on global health and vaccine dissemination and things like that while having like very vigorous debates, arguments, you know,

fights, not military ones, but diplomatic ones about these other issues, you know, and I think that that's fine. I mean, it was, we should just pause here, Tommy's a wild. I mean, I, I, a world should understand what happened in Anchorage where, you know, basically Tony and Jake gave opening statements for like a couple minutes. And then the Chinese guy went off for like 20 minutes. And then Tony called back in the press so he could make another statement from the press. This may have looked kind of boring like a, you know, a horseshoe-shaped table in a room and some reporters. It's the analogy for sports fans of like during the warmups where they're introducing the teams,

like one guy just going over and punching some guy in the face. In diplomacy, this was like, WrestleMania, you know, 100. No, no, this was malice of the palace. Tony Blinken was met a world peace. He was up in the, he was up in the stand. No, too, like, we used to joke back in the Obama White House that like we would call a meeting a Chinese bilat when it just felt like everyone literally had scripted talking points that they were going to read going in. There were no surprises. There were no conversations. For this to turn into like a verbal boxing match was, it was pretty remarkable. And I'll say this for the Chinese perspective of the Chinese foreign minister who like went off on the U.S. and went off on our racism and fine. You know, like, let's just kind of have the debate, right? Like, to people who are worried about this, I actually found it healthy because usually you meet the Chinese and you don't, you know, you dance around stuff.

And they dance around stuff too. Like, they probably believe every word that the farm minister said. And, you know, a lot of what he said, you know, is true even if he torched it up. We obviously believe a lot of things about Hong Kong and Jingjing province and the Chinese kind of totalitarian model their building. Why not have debates in public? Like, I thought that was, in a way, even if it was diplomatically, you know, off-putting, I think it was useful. And I think that Tony and Jake did the right thing in getting a last word in there.

Yeah, credit to them. It was not going to be a pleasant meeting with unpleasant topics, but the alternative is doing what Trump did, which is tell Xi Jinping that building concentration camps for the Uyghurs is the right thing to do and just literally not caring as the Hong Kong democracy is being. swathered. So good for those guys for having a very uncomfortable meeting in front of a bunch of reporters. Ben, let's turn to the UK for a minute, because last week we talked about protests and vigils against gender-based violence in the UK and the murder by a police officer of a woman named Sarah Everard. Over the weekend, there were even more protests across Britain about a bill in the

British Parliament that would create harsher penalties for certain crimes and would give police more authority to break up and criminalized protests. It could include, this bill would include penalties of up to 10 years in prison for individuals who damaged memorials or statues. And I don't think it was lost on anyone over the summer. A statue of a literal slave trader was ripped down in Bristol and thrown into Bristol Harbor, which was fucking awesome. But this bill seems to be a response to that.

And like it reminds all of us, I think, of Trump's executive order in defense of Confederate monuments that should also get torn down. Friend of the pod, David Lammy, has been forcefully calling bullshit on this bill and the fact that Parliament seems far more interested in willing to criminalize protesters than to protect British citizens, especially women from violence. This bill will now go to a committee, then the House of Commons. If you want to read more, check out David Lammy's Twitter feed. There's been lots of great coverage in the BBC and other places.

Ben, is canceling protests technically defined as part of cancel culture or Or does that only apply to stupid debates around children's books? How should we view this? Well, I think what's interesting to me about this, and I've talked to David, laem me about this, is British politics and American politics tend to be mirror images of each other. And, you know, when the right-wing attacks on defund the police and cancel culture picked up here over the summer, they began to pick up there. But also what usually happens in our right-wing politics kind of slowly goes global to

sometimes not so slowly. And sometimes we're on the receiving end of that and sometimes we're the distributor. I say that to make the point that cancel culture, I apologize to people in other countries. It's going to be a thing like everywhere. You know, every right-wing leader in any Western democracy

is going to be starting to trot out the statute defense, you know. And that's kind of depressing. So I do think of what does that mean? I think it also means that we, people on the progressive end, center left, you know, Labor Party and Democrats and others across the Democratic world, you need to share, you know, ideas about how do you push back on cancel culture BS?

How do you protect basic rights like protests? Like, we have a stake in this debate in Britain, just as they have a stake in us not going totally insane and Trumpy in the last election. Because, you know, I think we're in an era now where this kind of cancel culture thing is the next phase of the global culture war. It is exhausting. It is exhausting. It is constant. And I think we as liberals and we as progressives look at it, think it's stupid, we're right that it's stupid. But unfortunately, there's a bunch of polling data that shows that this cancel culture fight might be the way

Republicans are able to reach younger voters. And so I do think we need to think through ways to talk about it that are just, I don't know, smarter, better able to undercut Republican arguments, which are usually in bad faith. Yeah. But yeah, I hate that this is what we talk about. It sucks. Well, and I think, though, it's a good reminder, as with our politics here, like, I always forget how conservative, like, England is, you know, because most people I know,

maybe everybody I know. And I know a lot of Brits would think that this bill's ridiculous. But they also tend to think Boris Johnson's ridiculous. And again, it's like such a London prism that foreigners have of the UK. You know, you have to remember that, like, Like, it's a, you know, the Tories have run that place for, with the exception of Tony Blair, who wasn't exactly like a huge progressive and briefly Gordon Brown for the better part of the last few decades. And, you know, you have to convince some of those people.

Just as that the Democratic Party has to somehow both keep our base energized and mobilized and appeal to some people disagree with us, the British Labor Party, if they want to come in from the wilderness under Kira Starmer, their relatively new leader, are going to have to figure out how to do both, how to hold together the left. and appeal to some of these people that have, you know, are somewhat susceptible to these cancel culture arguments. Yeah, and do so under the decrepit racist thumb of Rupert Murdoch, which makes it all that much harder. Okay, let's talk about a little bit of rare hopeful news out of Yemen. Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister proposed a peace plan to end the war in Yemen after six long, awful years. This plan recommends a ceasefire that would be overseen by the United

nations. It recommends political negotiations and then the reopening of ports and airports that could hopefully be used to allow humanitarian relief into Yemen. This fighting started back in 2014 when the Houthi rebels seized control of much of Western Yemen. Saudi Arabia then cobbled together to try to take that territory back. The Saudi coalition was initially backed by the U.S. by President Obama. Obama pulled back that support. But then when Trump took office, he doubled down on supporting the Saudis. And, you know, the result was a estimated 20 million people in Yemen on the edge of starvation and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Ben, this isn't the first attempt at a ceasefire in Yemen. It is the first with President Biden's renewed focus on the problem.

And it's the first after his decision to cut off U.S. support for offensive Saudi operations in this fighting. How hopeful are you about this iteration of a peace plan might work? I mean, you know, I'm glad they're doing something. I hope it works out. I do want to see kind of what the follow-through is here. I mean, because here's the basic problem, right? The Saudis are not going to accomplish what their objective was when they went to war, which is kind of wipe out Houthi influence. And the Houthis, by the way, are not going to accomplish their maximal objectives of, you know, conquering the capital city. And so whenever you're trying to enter a diplomatic negotiation where, we're both sides are going to in some way lose. It's very challenging. I think that the overwhelming focus, though, has to be on ceasefire and humanitarian access, just getting help to people as fast as possible

while you're resolving these political issues. And in that context, the U.S. saying, we will provide no support to any military operations. Offensive, frankly, or, I mean, defensive, you know, I'm curious, I'm always curious for how they define that. Missile defense or something? I'm not sure.

Missile defense is fine, right? But like, you know, defensive, you know, the Saudis probably might argue that bombing some target in Yemen is a defensive measure, right? So my point is if we pull the, if we truly pull the plug, they can't really sustain their operations either. So hopefully the combination of getting, if you can get a ceasefire and start to get Aiden on the ground. And the U.S. just saying, we're out. We're totally out.

We've unplugged from anything the Saudis are. going to do in the territory of Yemen, period. Then I think you have some real hope. The political questions may drag on, what the political future of Yem looks like may drag on. But like if you can just get to a place where you're stopping the bombardment and you're saving lives again with the assistance, again, another priority, I'm sure, for submit the power. At least you're in an improved situation. But we'll see.

Yeah. It's worth noting that, you know, the initial Houthi response wasn't all that positive. But we'll keep an eye on this one. And by the Iranians, I mean, we usually, you know, I'm going to be very clear here. Like, the Iranians, too, like should recognize the interest in this process as well. Although I don't think that they control the Houthis as a proxy as much as people think. The Houthis live in Yemen. They've always lived in Yemen.

Right. I agree with that. Okay, let's turn to South America and talk about Joe Biden and drug policy. So I was reading about how Columbia is planning to restart a program of spraying toxic chemicals on cocoa crops in an effort to reduce cocaine production. And they are, Columbia is doing so with the support of the Biden administration. Columbia had stopped this spraying program because of concerns that the chemical being sprayed, which is the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, causes cancer, causes other harmful

health problems, kills off other flora and fauna and just like really harms people who are living there. Critics also argue that these spraying programs disproportionately hurt small farmers who are trying to eke out a living, you know, growing whatever crop they can, rather than targeting, like, the labs where cocaine is processed or going after cartels themselves. The spring is also just generally considered expensive and effective. So Trump had pushed Columbia to resume this spraying program, but now the Biden team seems to support it. Ben, I was reading about how this is also initially part of planned Colombia, which is this multi-decade, multi-billion dollar effort

to fight against cocaine production in Colombia and to come. that the rebel group there called the FARC. But interestingly, part of the, you know, peace agreement with the FARC at 2016 included an agreement to stop spraying these crops. So it seems like, you know, resuming this activity could screw up that peace deal. Spring programs like this have been used in a lot of other places, right, like quite controversially in Afghanistan. You could go back to Agent Orange. I don't know a lot about the details of these programs, but like in the research I did on this, I didn't see a single person say, yeah, this is a great idea. This is a great idea. is a really effective way to, you know, combat drugs. Why do you think President Biden supports

these sort of counterdrug spraying programs? And could it be the case that just drug policy generally is an area where he is a little more conservative than, you know, sort of maybe the consensus democratic view? Yeah. I, look, I just think of the places you've referenced, Colombia, Afghanistan, like, these spraying programs don't work, like among many other things. And, you know, Part of what happened, I got involved Tommy on the negotiation of that peace agreement in Columbia in 2016 because it was negotiated in Havana. The Cubans were involved with the FARC. And part of what happened here is, you know, when you go from kind of fighting a war

and contesting certain areas of the country to peace, you started seeing more cocoa production. And because of the dynamics of the drug trade, some of the intensity shifted back to Colombia. And so why does this happen? I think because, you know, politicians are looking at graphs and seeing, you know, cocaine exports from Columbia going up. And it's like, what's our solution? Oh, we'll do the spraying program. You know, like, it's a lack of other options. You know, it's like, it's that impulse that you remember from working national security, like, let's do something, right? It's why you always end up sanctioning people.

Like, what do we do when there's more drugs? We should spray them. But the problem is the spraying programs are part of a war on drugs mindset that has utterly failed. And, and, you know, it's a, every way, shape, and form. You know, it's punished the wrong populations often, often, in this case, could punish farmers and local communities. It hasn't stopped the sale. People want drugs. They find out ways to get them. So I think Biden may be, you know, falling prey here to the, like, briefing with the graph on it that shows the cocaine production going up, and this is what, you know, is being presented as the only thing to do. I think what we need in the Americas is a real conversation about drug policy and legalization, candidly.

And maybe I don't necessarily think that means legalizing cocaine, but marijuana, like, more and more countries are moving in that direction. What is a multifaceted policy look like that involves, yeah, maybe you're trying to crack down on certain crops, but you're trying to separate out drugs that are being legalized and regulated versus drugs that are still funneling through cartels. By the way, what you hear time and again from people south of our border. border is it's American demand and American guns that fuel this whole thing, right? It's American drug users who drive up the price. And if marijuana is legalized, that at least takes that off the

table, or somewhat off the table because you still have cocaine and heroin and stuff. But then also unregulated guns, what do you think the cartels are killing each other with? So we need a kind of a broad comprehensive conversation in the America is about drug policy. And we need to move beyond just the spray it or, you know, have it funneled through the cartels approach. Yeah, it felt very, felt very dated. Let's keep talking about Biden and drugs for a minute because the Daily Beast reported that dozens of staffers who, I guess, you know, worked on maybe the Biden campaign and wanted to work in the White House, have been prevented from doing so because of their personal recent marijuana use. White House Press Secretary Jen Saki, our very good friend, released a statement

in saying that, you know, only five White House staffers actually lost jobs because of this, you know, sort of no tolerance policy seemingly on marijuana. I don't know the specifics of these individual cases. It could be the case that people were misleading on their forms. It could have been very recent drug use. I don't know. I'm not judging the Biden aspect of this. But more broadly, I don't understand, Ben, why marijuana use is part of the SF86, which is the form that we all had to fill out the government questionnaire and background check process that you have to go through to get a security clearance. So a dozen states, more than dozen states, have legalized marijuana, dozens more have legalized medical marijuana. The suggestion that smoking marijuana or taking

an edible or, you know, something you can do, you can buy in a store here in California, doing that on occasion means you can't be trusted with national security information is fucking ludicrous. It's like, it's like a scene out of reefer madness from another time. time, right? Like, that is no different than having a beer at night or a glass of wine. Like, why do you think the intelligence community waste its time looking into these, like, drug use questions? Is this just inertia? How is this the process that we've decided protects national security information? Something, by the way, the intelligence community has really struggled to do in recent years for very different reasons. I think this is insane and absurd and

offensive and actually important. I'm not just saying that because like, I don't know if I'm adding anybody here, but like the entire crooked media family of former Obama staff, like, you know, probably had this on our forms and got our clearances. Absolutely. I mean, I was the deputy national security advisor with a top secret secure compartmented information clearance. And I smoked marijuana and put down in my form. So I was, look, I love Jen Taki like a sister. I was a little misified by her statement that that they had changed the policies to make them more liberal because I don't remember anybody getting fired in our White House for marijuana use, but put that aside, there's one, the issue

of legality, which is absurd because I can walk out the door and make a left on Abbott-Kinney and walk into medmen and buy drugs and use them perfectly legally on the street in my home. And you're telling me that because I undertook legal behavior, that if I got a job in the White House, I'd get fired because I did that. Like a good chunk of the country, not most yet, but I think a good chunk live in states where this is legal. And so you're essentially saying you're going to disqualify people from White House for national security jobs for engaging in legal behavior where they live. That just is not fair, right? The second thing is your thing about national security, like it used to be that one of the main things you're looking for in that clearance is blackmail, right?

Could you be blackmailed, right? And so it used to be like, like drug use was such a taboo that like you wouldn't want someone to know that you used to use drugs. Well, it's not taboo at all. And Park is legal in a lot of places. And yeah, the idea that like honestly, someone who's done both, drinking feels much more relevant here. You know, like whether someone is out drunk and approached by far an intelligence operatives who take advantage of them being very drunk, that feels like a bigger risk than someone sitting at home, you know, watching whatever on Netflix and having an edible. It just doesn't make any sense.

No, it really doesn't. And they're human beings here. But this gets to why it's important. And it gets to your question. Some of this is like cultural, cultural sorting out. Like, you know, some of the people went into national security and law enforcement didn't like the people who did drugs in college or something. And I'm not assigning that huge motivation.

But I think part of it's bureaucratic inertia, but this connects to the common. call discussion. Just think of the message it's being sent. If we say our national security establishment, the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence community, we don't want anybody who expresses views like call and calls about issues, i.e. views that are like pretty mainstream progressive. We don't want anybody who's ever used marijuana. Like, who's left, right? A very particular kind of person. And I like a lot of those people. But But don't we want quote unquote diversity in national security workforce? And diversity should mean absolutely racial and ethnic diversity and gender diversity.

But it should also mean like different kinds of people, you know? And again, just think who you're sorting out if you say nobody who's used marijuana can work in these jobs. Yeah, to your point, I believe was it Carter Page, which one of the dumb Trump morons got drunk and told the Australians that the Trump campaign had found Hillary's emails, right? Poppidopoulos, right? Yeah, Papadopoulos, thank you. I forgot which moron it was, right? So clearly alcohol was the factor there that made him not trustworthy with national security sensitive information. But to the broader point about the clearance process, it's not clear in any way. There's no clear expectation going in about what the

benchmarks you have to meet are, right? Like, you can't go to the intelligence community website where it says you can't have smoked marijuana for three years, right? That's because it's not uniform among different components of the intelligence community, like the FBI. has like sort of well known for having the strictest rules when it comes to drug use. The CIA, maybe because, you know, CIA operatives, traffic in some, you know, darker places, have a little less strict rules. Members the intelligence community have to take a polygraph. You and I did not have to take a polygraph, a lie detector test, right?

Like these policies are all over the place. And I don't know, certainly they have like served a lot of people well and led to them protecting national security information, but there also have been massive, unbelievable, historically damaging leaks of, you know, the crown jewels of the NSA and, you know, WikiLeaks and all these other, you know, Snowden, all these pieces of information that have clearly nothing to do with whether like Edward Snowden took an edible and played like, you know, World Warcraft for a couple hours. It's ridiculous. I think it, you know, the whole thing should be scrapped. I mean, certainly the marijuana thing, but this whole clearance process needs to be

rethought of what are you guarding against? What are you protecting against? Let me add another, Andy Kim, you know, friend of mine, Congressman from New Jersey, had an amazing threat about he's, you know, of Korea and origin. And when he worked at state, they told him he wasn't allowed to work on issues related to Korea. Really? And he's like, yeah, and he writes a great thread on Twitter people should check it out of how painful that was to him that he's a Korean American and they basically were like, well, you can't work on this issue. Trust me. they don't tell Tom Malinowski, who's a Polish origin, who's a member of Congress also from New Jersey, that he can't work on Polish issues, right? And he was making the point about racial profiling.

So at the end of the day, like, we want people from all backgrounds to be participating because it's right. It's the right thing to do. And I think it's like the right thing to do that you don't punish people for engaging in legal behavior with marijuana. But you also want diverse perspectives on these issues. You know, why do you think there's such group think in American National Security, like the blob, the term that I'm both famous and derided for coining, is about group think. I want people of different life experiences, different ethnic backgrounds. America should have a great asset in being this big, sprawling country with people from

everywhere, with all different kinds of life experiences. And if we kind of force self-censorship of opinion because of the call and call stuff, and we force self-censorship of behavior, The only people capable being in these jobs are people who like set out to be in them from the time they were like 13 years old. And that's crazy. Yeah. Come on. Let's normalize, you know, a couple of visits to a festival or something in your life.

Live a little for fuck's sake. Two more quick things. So let's start in Myanmar. Two updates out of Myanmar. The first is just horrible. A refugee camp in Bangladesh for the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group. that was terrorized and driven out of Myanmar, you know, estimates of up to 700,000 people. This refugee camp where they've all been, you know, living temporarily now for years in Bangladesh,

basically burned to the ground this week. Dozens are dead. Hundreds are missing. The scale of the suffering for the Rohingya is just unfathomable. And so we'll keep an eye out for any kind of, you know, humanitarian relief efforts or places people can donate to because they need the help. Second, Ben, on Friday of last week, the House of Representatives, voted on a piece of legislation condemning the military coup in Myanmar.

Now, obviously, this is a symbolic vote, but symbolism matters in foreign policy. 14 Republicans voted against the bill. 14 Republicans voted against condemning a military coup, the infamous racist lunatic, Paul Gosar, of Arizona voted present. The 14 Republican no votes are the worst of the worst people in the GOP, or I guess, really, the country. Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren. The world.

I'd say the world, the world. Matt Geitz, what the fuck, man? Like, what do you think motivated this? Like, did they view of this as some sort of oblique shot at Trump since he attempted to stage a coup in the Capitol on January 6th? I think it's the only way you can explain that collection of people voting this way. And you saw, like, you know, the military in Myanmar said that there was election fraud. And when the commission that had to make a determination about that didn't side with them,

they launched a coup. And Matt Gates and all these armchair, like, you know, neo-fascist Republicans, like clearly looked at that and saw something to validate or why else would they vote this way? Why else would you be pro-coo? They're shooting young people in the streets, and this is how these people vote. I mean, it's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace.

And the one thing I'd say with the Rohingya, Tommy, and talking to some activists too, is like, now it's the time one other thing the Biden people could do if they're looking for tools is international justice, you know, and the ICC. When you're talking about the military and what was done to the Rohingya, but also what they're doing now in the coup, you know, we've had a complicated relationship with the ICC, but referring this kind of thing for investigation,

sending a message that the U.S. is going to support international justice for these people for what they did the Rohingya and what they're doing now, I think should be something the Biden administration takes a look at, at least. That's a good idea. Last thing before we get to my interview, since I am, you know, have the privilege of sitting with America's premier royal correspondent, I just read today that Prince Harry got a job. He will be the chief impact officer at a startup called Better Up Inc. The Wall Street Journal described the company as a coaching and a mental health firm.

I don't, like with most tech companies, even Harry's description of what he'll be doing didn't totally make sense to me. Maybe he'll figure out as he goes long. mental health is a critical issue. Generally, it's an important issue for him. He's been outspoken and honest about it and like really a credit to him. But Ben, question for you, I did not know that Harry was looking for a job. Did you know this and did we miss a chance to get him to Crooked Media? Could he have been a third co-host or are we too liberal? Royal correspondent. He could have been the rural correspondent. I will say Better Up sounds like

I'd never heard of betterup.com, and it sounds like something they would advertise during a podcast. It does. So maybe he could do like, he could do ad reads. Yeah. Maybe it's how we like, maybe it's a better way to, you know, expense your receipts or maybe it's a legal marijuana. Well, that helps with mental health. I mean, I would say that what it tells me is like the guy is like, I mean, he's all in on his U.S. life post-war. You know, you know what I mean?

Like he's got his Netflix thing. The Netflix thing is like, that's one thing he could do. But clearly he's looking to have a diverse source of income here and it's California base. Like, you know, Harry is definitely out. And he's definitely, you know, better up for him. Yeah. The boats were burned long before the Oprah interview for Harry.

It seems like he is very cool with this choice here. Yeah. I don't know, Harry. Come on the show. We'd love to talk to you. We can talk about literally anything you want. Anything. I don't really give a shit about what your family is up to.

Like, we'll talk about your time in Afghanistan or the charity work you're doing. I don't know. Same pitch for Amal Clooney. I'd love to have Amal Clooney on the show to talk about what it means to be like an international humanitarian human rights attorney. I do not give a shit about your marriage, your husband's movies, Hollywood. It would just be really cool to hear about how like citizen lawyers can help advance foreign policy. That's very interesting to me.

Well, I've told you that my Mal Clooney stories are like, I met with her when she was working for the UN rapporteur on drones at the White House. I bet. That was probably fun for you. It was not fun. Mal Clooney is a good lawyer and grilled my ass for an hour about drone policy. And this is like right before, I guess they started dating. And then I saw that and I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I've talked to her about, she takes up interesting human rights cases, like the Filipino journalist.

Yes. I talked to her about that case. Yeah, we should have her on. Harry, you know, come on, talk about better up, you know, we're game. Cool. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. And then when we come back, you will hear my conversation with Jugmeet Singh about Canadian politics and all kinds of fun stuff. And he's a really cool, fascinating guy. And it was a lot of fun. So stick around for that. We are so excited to welcome on the show today. Jugmeet Singh, he's a member of the Canadian Parliament. He's the leader of Canada's new Democratic Party. meet. It is so great to talk to you. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

So a lot of us have been following your career from afar. I imagine that over the past four years, a lot of listeners have thought more seriously about moving to Canada than they had previously. So this conversation feels timely. Can we just start with like a quick Canadian politics 101? Because in the U.S. it is so binary, right? It's Republicans versus Democrats. And then, you know, occasionally some asshole billionaire pretends he's going to run as an independent, right? But for you guys, it's a little more motley. Can you give us a quick overview of the parties in the system in Canada? And if there's a good point of comparison for your views and your party, the new Democratic Party, here in the U.S.? Yeah, for sure. I think it's so important because the conversation is going to be

a little bit confusing to American listeners who have a different definition of the word liberal. So we have three major political parties that are recognized in parliament right now. And right now the government is a liberal party, which is widely known as a centrist. party openly centrist. And then, but often they campaign a bit more on the left, but then they govern a bit more on the right. So that has been their experience. We've got a conservative party, which is very much the right wing party.

And then New Democrats are really the left wing party. We were founded by a coalition of labor movement, activists and labor unions, as well as progressive farmers at the time. So our history is very much in workers. and we are a People's Party. And so we are the Progressive Party in Canada. There are other parties as well. The other party that is in Parliament, though not large enough to be an official party,

is the Green Party, which is a party that's known around the world. I guess they've got an international kind of affiliation as well. But yeah, we are the Progressive Party in Canada and we're the New Democrats. Excellent. That's very helpful. And they're just like, I want to get to policy, but just a little about you. I mean, I think a lot of listeners might have seen viral clips of you in these really intense moments, right? There's ignorant hecklers are in your face, and you show this just like inhuman grace and

patience with them. You've also written a really candid book about the challenges you face as like your family growing up. Just tell us a little bit about yourself why you wanted to run for office in the first place. Like what animates you? Why do you get up in the morning and do this? Yeah, I love this question. When I speak to people, I always want to know what makes them take, what they care about. For me, I've experienced some of the struggles that people experience. Like I, in a little way, like my family went through financial struggles because my dad's addiction. I've known what it's like to live with someone that you love and care about, but then hurts everyone around them because of his addiction.

So my dad was dealing with alcoholism that really informed my life. We at one point were very financially stable. My dad was a doctor. But then when he lost his ability to practice, we lost our home. My family went bankrupt and we didn't have a place to live for a bit. Things were really financially tough. I took care of my brother, my kid brother, when I was in university. in my 20s trying to have fun and find a career,

but I also cared for my 15-year-old brother who was going through high school, so I had to cook for him and support him, so that was a big part that taught me a lot. I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, that's something that informs me, and I know what that's like, the shame that people live with.

And my mom taught me this belief that is foundational to who I am, is this idea that we're all connected. And I literally grew up believing that someone that is dealing with poverty or someone that is suffering, I am literally that person. And if I care for that person or I help them, I'm not just helping that human,

but I'm also helping myself because they are an extension of me. And so my fundamental beliefs in why we've got to have social programs and universal programs that lift each other up and why we've got to build a world where there's more fairness and equity, is because I truly believe we are all connected. So that motivates me. That is my passion. I also have faced racism and I know what that's like.

And so I really believe in building a world where we find connections, where we look past our differences. In fact, we celebrate our differences, but in doing so, realize we have far more in common. And those are some of the things that make me who I am. That's a very optimistic way to look at the world. I remember President Obama, I started working for him in 2004 on the Senate campaign.

And he would always talk about the deficit of empathy in the United States and in our political discourse, and it reminds me a lot of what you're talking about. Speaking of which, so in the U.S., like, our debates about health care policy revolve around whether the government should, you know, provide some care or no care at all, right? I mean, the Republican Party is basically, like, throw you to the jackals and the insurance companies. In Canada, you guys are debating how generous Canada's universal health care system should be.

That's cool. You think the current system doesn't go far enough. What's missing? What do you want to add to Canada's current system? Yeah, for sure. I would say, I mean, healthcare is a fundamental part of our party. Our first leader, the first leader of the New Democratic Party is who has been attributed with bringing in universal health care. It is fundamentally a part of who we are. So we had the same struggles where private health care insurance companies, private hospitals, doctors didn't want to see universal health care. So we fought tooth and nail for this.

and now it's one of the things that Canadians are most proud of. But when we first envisioned it, like every other country in the world, they looked at universal health care and thought, okay, if you're able to go to a doctor's office, go to a hospital, which we can in Canada, without any cost, and the doctor prescribes you medication to stay healthy, but you can't afford that medication. It really undermines the whole point of the universal health care system.

There's a reason why every other country in the world that's got universal health care also includes medication, So that's what we've been pushing for, that it makes no sense that we don't have medication coverage. And right now, the governing party, True to Form how they talk about being a left party, Justin Trillo talks about being a progressive, campaigned on universal pharmacare, commissioned a report that said universal fair should be public, it should be universal, it should be single tier for everybody, and put in their report, one of the key steps is to establish some legislation to achieve this. goal of medication coverage for all. He has yet to accept his own report and voted against our motion, which was to do exactly what his own committee or his own report said, which is to bring in this legislation to take a step forward towards secreting it.

So Trudeau Forum, the Liberal, the Liberal Party and Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister, voted against bringing in what they promised to do in previous elections. They've been promising this for about 20 years as a party. And so we really want to see this happen. We also want to include dental care. And we've got a plan that really is quite affordable if you think about the cost of health care in Canada and how much people want to see dental care coverage. We believe in, again, universal dental care starting with those who need it most. And we've got a plan to make that happen as well.

Really, our vision is healthcare should cover you from head to toe. And we look at this as an investment, something that helps people. It also helps businesses. When you've got a healthier workforce, they can work more. They can be more productive and happier. So now that I think about it, my last question was probably a little misleading. Democrats in the U.S. spent a lot of time debating health care policy, right? It's like Medicare for all versus the public option.

Republicans have spent the last few weeks literally pissed off about Dr. Seuss, right? Their primary focus is trying to elevate these culture war questions, talk about cancel culture. Do these idiotic culture war debates exist in Canada? Or I guess, like more specifically, is this what animates the conservative party, conservative voters in Canada, or is this like a disease that's, you know, U.S. based? You know, very fair question. And there's a bit of a bit of an idealism that people have when they think about about Canada and they think that we are free from some of these things. We've got some of the same problems. We've got the concerns about hate groups, the Prad Boys, which featured

really prominently in the horrible incidents in Washington, D.C. Their founders from Canada. it operated in Canada until we new Democrats fought to get it banned, and now it's been officially banned. So we've got a lot of the same problems, and our conservatives also are caught up in a lot of culture war stuff that doesn't make any sense. They're right now in the midst of a convention where they've got a large wing of their party

that's trying to bring in a policy to say that they want to take a stance against abortion, something that has been clearly established. Canadians widely are very much in favor of, a woman's right to choose. It is, we've got decent access. We can improve the access, but there's pretty good access to abortion services across the country. But they're still trying to debate stuff that's been well established and well entrenched. So yeah, we've got some of the same problems here for sure. I'm glad you called me out on my, on my stereotype there, because I did come into this interview with a bit of a stereotype in my mind, thinking of Canadians as like polite and generally more

reserved. And then I watched this town hall you did. I think at 2019 on CBC News. And these voters were like in your face cutting you off repeatedly, pressing you for policy details before you'd finish your first sentence. Yeah. I had to say like, I was impressed, man. I was like, we rude Americans to probably adopt a little more of this tone. Is that standard? Like, are Canadian voters just more willing to like call BS and push you guys? I would say, I mean, the politeness is definitely there is something about that.

Canadians are polite. But yeah, we've got voters that are willing to call out things. And I appreciate that. Young people in particular, everywhere in the world have the best BS meters. Like they will call stuff out when it's fake. So I appreciate that. The one problem, though, I think that we are up against is that because for so long, the liberal party as a party in an establishment, they have kind of created a lot of cynicism

because they campaign on a lot of stuff that people want and then don't ever do it. So that has developed a bit of cynicism. So where folks are like, oh, they're just going to talk about it. again, they're never going to do it. And I feel like that that discourages people from voting. It's got a whole bunch of problems. So I particularly am a bit offended at this kind of way of doing politics where you talk about things or you promise things, but you don't deliver it as Justin Trudeau and the

Liberal Party have done a lot. So that I think in some ways turns some voters off and they don't actually get as hopeful and optimistic and willing to ask the questions because of that. But by and large, yeah, Canadians are willing to challenge us and as they should. So it's probably obvious to listeners now that, like, you know, Justin Trudeau is your, is a rival. You've run against him. Where is he fallen short in terms of his agenda? Like, what policy areas do you want to push him on?

Yeah, for sure. So I would say, so a couple of things. We, on health care, you know, they campaign on, on the bringing in of medication coverage for all. They campaign on it. They promised it. We put forward, we actually believe in doing it. So we put forward legislation to make it happen.

They voted against that legislation. They have sided with Big Pharma a number of times. one really simple change, which we've got a committee that sets drug prices, and they requested a change, a legislative change in the countries that we compare our drug prices to to actually lower the prices of medication in Canada. A simple, zero-cost legislative change. The liberals, again, campaigned on said we would do it. They did not do it. The Liberal Party has not yet done a simple legislative change, which would have just changed the countries that we compare to and help lower our drug prices. Why do you think they haven't done that?

I think really clearly they have consistently shown that they're more interested in supporting big pharma as profits. This is a very simple change they've not done. They campaign on pharmacare for all, they have voted against it. So they're a pattern of behavior here building very clearly. Like this is not even, you don't have to dig very deep to get to it. We really believe that in this pandemic when we look at who should pay the cost of this, it shouldn't be workers, it shouldn't be people that have lost their jobs.

It shouldn't be small businesses that have. have been forced to shut their doors and may never open up again. It should be those that have profited, made billions off the pandemic. So we've talked about a wealth tax on families who've got fortunes of over 20 million, a pandemic profiteering tax on companies like Amazon that haven't just made profits in this pandemic, but have made significant record profits. And they voted against that as well. So the liberals voted against this idea of taxing the wealthiest to pay for the pandemic.

And that leaves two options, really, out of a crisis. Either that's going to mean austerity. They're going to cut the services or put the burden on working people. We said there's a third option. Put it on those that can afford to, the wealthiest, the super rich, the ultra rich, have them contribute more. Web giants operate in Canada like other places in the world, Amazon, Netflix, Google, make profits off of Canadians, but pay virtually no taxes here.

So that's another big piece for us. We want to increase the federal minimum wage. Liberals promise to do it, have yet to do it. We want to end interest on student debt at the federal level. So they should have no interest payments. And liberals promised again to do that and have yet to do it. So a lot of examples of where they say one thing and they do another, we really believe in fighting the climate crisis.

And we believed in stopping our pipeline. Justin Trudeau bought a pipeline, nationalized one, made it national, where President Biden came in and said no to a pipeline project saying that's not the future. Justin Shuto talks about fighting the climate crisis on one hand, but then actually goes out and buys the pipeline. So a lot of that, I mean, our agendas are very, very different. We're just focused very much on what is going to help people out, what's going to help workers out, and how we have a health care system that's there for people, a social safety net that's there for people. So, you know, in that same town hall, I watch you talk about sort of this progressive agenda.

In person after person, voter after voter kept pushing you on how you're going to pay for it, including one guy who seemed offended by the wealth tax idea. because rich people might leave the country. It's been interesting in the U.S. Like when I worked for Obama in like 08, 09 in the earlier years of the White House, the deficit, you know, hawks were outright. It was seen as conventional wisdom that you had to keep spending down, that looming long-term deficits were a disaster. The even very big brain thinking on deficits in their harm and the fact that they might cause inflation has totally changed in the U.S. It seems like nobody cares about deficit spending anymore. Is that kind of sea change occur?

in Canada, or are you still having to constantly talk about how you pay for things? I think there is still a concern about it, but I think the concern about how you pay for things really is because people are worried that they're going to end up having to pay for it. So working people are worried that if there are deficits, their real concern is, well, am I going to be the one that has to pay for it? And that's why the wealth tax and making sure the super rich, the super wealthy, large corporations that are very profitable are the ones that pay their fair share is so important. And now we've got lots of public opinion polling that specifically asked not just all Canadians,

but also subdivided that into each party supporter and found that there is an overwhelming support for taxing the wealthy, whether you ask a conservative, a liberal party or a new Democratic party voter, everyone at least a minimum of 80% support for taxing the wealthy. So it is widely popular now, and it's something that we have long called for, and now there's a really strong public appetite for it as well. So we're really focused on that as a way to pay for this. And we really believe that the investments we make coming out of this crisis have to be in making sure our economy that works for all, not just for those at the very top, which is we seen in the past. Sure, the economy may work for the very few, but what does that do for workers? What does that do for people?

And if it doesn't help people, then what's the point? Yeah. So you mentioned the coronavirus. In the U.S., it's like, I really finally feel light at the end of the tunnel. You know people who are getting vaccinated, right? It feels like things are looking up. Canada did a great job of containing the coronavirus early, but the government has struggled to get citizens vaccinated now. What happened? How did that failing occur? So with the supports, I'll be honest, because we were there, the new Democrats were there, we were able to actually get the help that people needed. The liberals were trying to do the minimum. So they brought in, for example, $1,000 support for people. We doubled that to $2,000 so that people could stay at home, so that people that lost their jobs could put food on the table. We were there to get the maximum done to support people.

So we were able to help in that stage. But when it came to the vaccine procurement and vaccination, again, one of the key mistakes that the liberal government made was they didn't secure the capacity to produce a vaccine in Canada. So every other country, every other major country, country that's done well has local capacity, domestic production capacity. And that's something that the liberal government didn't do, a massive failure. On top of that in the states, there's this all-hands-on-deck approach. You've got the federal government. You've got President Biden that's

deploying the military to support, getting federal support of states that are delivering the vaccine wherever and anywhere ever possible. The federal government, Justin Chudeau, is taking an approach of, you know, I'm just going to get this doses and then leave provinces, our version of States to do their own thing. And that to me is a big problem as well. It's not this hands-on approach. So really, we are one of the world's largest economies, a G7 country, and we are performing consistently in the low 30s, even as low as in the 40s compared to other countries in terms of vaccine dosage and vaccination. So we are, because of the liberal government's failure, certainly underperforming. And it's something that I'm sad about because I want us to get through

this and the vaccines are a big part of it. So the Biden administration just, recently announced, we're recording this on Friday, that they're going to send upwards of a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada. Was that announcement received well? I mean, like, how are folks taking that? Yeah, I mean, that's a positive sign. We definitely need more doses, but really we're in this position because of the liberal government's failure. And it really shouldn't have come to this. Like, we're a G7 nation. There's no reason that we need to be asking other countries for supply. We should have had the capacity here, been able to produce it. The UK expert on their procurement and production of vaccine actually was on an interview in Canada and said,

we were in the same position as Canada a year ago. We did not have capacity. We made the decision to make the investments to build that capacity in a year later, as in right now, they have got local capacity and they've far exceeded Canada in terms of vaccination rates. Similarly, Canada should have made that decision and really the liberal government and Justin Trudeau have failed on this point pretty massively. Yeah. So, you know, President Trump was just, you know, a real troll to Prime Minister Trudeau and sort of rude to Canada

generally. Now that he's gone, like, is the sentiment let bygones be bygones or does President Biden and, frankly, like us American citizens, do we have some work to do to do to regain your trust to, you know, restore the friendship there after, you know, four years of just being mean? I appreciate that. No, I think we just turned the corner on that. We're really hopeful. I didn't hide this. This comes as no surprise. I was pretty open about saying that I want to see Trump gone. He was divisive. He promoted hate, promoted racist ideas, emboldened racist, was misogynistic, all sorts of problems with them. There's no question about it. And I think immediately President Biden has shown a big shift, more professional, not divisible. and certainly I think we can look forward to working together. And a lot of the problems that we want to solve are problems that we need to solve together. You know, the COVID-19 pandemic is one that requires us all working together.

It's a global pandemic. And none of us are better until all of us are better. So really, we've got to take that collective approach. The climate crisis that is still looming is not something that we can solve individually. As nations, we all have to work together. So I'm looking forward to a new era of cooperation on these really big problems. problems that we can solve together. Yeah, me too. Last question for you. So you and AOC hung out recently on a Twitch stream. Yes. Very cool. Are you guys trying to like are you, is the NDP trying to build

solidarity among progressive politicians and movements globally? Is that a piece of the puzzle to grow the NDP's power and visibility? Well, I think it's important to have solidarity with with progressives across the world. You know, you asked the question earlier. I should have said, you know, we're more in line with your your Bernie Sanders, AOC type of Democrats, like that's, that's kind of our flavor. That's what we're about. We, I love the idea of working in solidarity with progressors around the world. I recently did a panel with some of the leaders in Australia, the Labor Party, as well as a social democratic party in Germany.

And so we talked about our kind of common goals. In that case, we were talking about taxing the wealthy, the super rich. And so, yeah, I think it's important to be able to show that solidarity internationally that there's progressive movement across the world. And I think that when we kind of highlight each other, we celebrate each other, we can build a stronger movement. And for me, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, whatever the platform is, my goal is to connect as many people as possible to share with them a vision of how we can build a better country and a better world, frankly. Can you rank them? What are you? Are you Twitch, IG, TikTok, like, are you a power user of any of them?

So this is maybe not a commonly known, but like all leaders and politicians have a team behind them. So I've got a big team that supports me. I would say where I am, where I do the work on my own, I would say TikTok is pretty much entirely me. I do it on my own. Those are my ideas. I've got a great team that supports me on Twitter,

that supports me with Facebook, that supports me on Instagram. Instagram, I would say, is also a lot of my stuff. Everything is a team approach. but I would say you see a lot of me in Instagram and then all me, TikTok. That's kind of a platform that I get. And I'm looking forward to getting some more folks on the team that know it better than me. But for now, I'm the one that's kind of. I haven't downloaded yet.

All the security people who scared me away from it. But my wife is like just all in on TikTok. So I got to get it. Yeah, it's pretty. It's cool. I mean, the cool thing about it is like it's a very organic platform. Lots of folks can grow really quickly. It's a lot nicer.

Like if you read the comments, it's the, the vibe I got. Yeah, it's a good vibe. Yeah, Twitter is a place where everyone in the world can reach into your brain and tell you you suck. TikTok just seems kind of fun. Totally, totally. Yeah, yeah.

And I think for folks listening, I don't know if you're into social media, ignore the trolls. Like, you've got good people around you, trust their opinions, and don't let the trolls ever get you down. Yeah, don't let them get you down. This ends the segment that's called 40-year-olds talking about TikTok. Thank you so much for doing the show. It was a blast talking with you. where should people follow you if they want to learn more about you and follow your career?

For sure. On TikTok, it's Jigmeet Singh, Instagram Jigmeet Singh. On Twitter, it's the Jigmeet Singh. And yeah, check me out everywhere. I'm on clubhouse too now. I got to get a lot. Got them all, touch all the bases. All right. Jogmik, thank you again for doing the show.

Really appreciate it. Of course. Take care. Thanks again to Jogh Mee Tink for doing the show. Thanks in advance to Amal Kloony and Prince Harry for their future interview. Thanks to MedMen for their impending sponsorship for all the PR we gave you today. I know what else we need to thank then. No, that's a pretty eclectic list of people.

Yeah, that's our Avengers squad. Life in L.A. in a pandemic is what it is. Yeah, right. It's been a long year, guys. It's been a long year. Talk to you next week. See it. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Michael Martinez. is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglan is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yel-Freid, Nar Malkonian and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.