Pod Save the World - Bill Taylor’s got the Ukraine receipts

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

Tommy and Ben talk about the latest on impeachment and about Turkey’s invasion of Syria. Then they run through a whirlwind week of news that included Brexit updates, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s narrow election victory, and Israel’s ongoing government formation process. They also discuss the treatment of US diplomats in China, Facebook’s handling of disinformation campaigns, protest movements in Haiti and Lebanon and some great reporting about the war in Afghanistan. And in this week’s interview, National Security Advisor Susan Rice joins the pod to talk about Trump and Syria, General Mattis, Benghazi and leading Bill Clinton’s Africa policy.

Welcome back to POTS Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Hello, Worldos. Another Tuesday, another series of breaking news alerts that are landing in our inboxes in the hours before we record. We have a long, fascinating interview with Ambassador Susan Rice later in the show. We talked about her book, Tough Love and lots of great stories from her time in government with a particular focus on Africa, since she handled Africa policy on Bill Clinton's NSC and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. So don't miss that because, It's a really interesting window into that period of time and Africa policy generally. We also talked a lot about Syria with Susan, so we'll do a little less of that in the news section of the pod today and try to cover more topics generally. But here's what we got on the rundown. The latest blockbuster impeachment news, some major updates out of Turkey and Syria that have

occurred over the last few hours and days, breaking news on Brexit, a breakdown of Canada's election last night, the latest on Israel's government formation process. an interesting story on the treatment of U.S. diplomats in China, Facebook's handling of disinformation campaigns, protests in Haiti and Lebanon, and then some news out of Afghanistan and some really incredible reporting about 19 years of war there. So, packed show, but we're going to cover a lot of non-Trump grounds, so stick with us. Let's go with us. Real quick before we dig in. I want to make sure you guys all heard that Crooked Media is launching a brand new daily news podcast called What a Day. Starting on Monday, October 28th, you can find a podcast that will break down the biggest

news of the day in 15 minutes or less. Our hosts are Akela Hughes and Gideon Resnick. They are smart and funny and they talk like human beings, not talking points of robots on cable news. So check out the trailer, subscribe to what a day, wherever you get your podcast. All right, let's start with impeachment because this literally just happened. So the acting ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor testified today in the impeachment hearing and President Trump is in deep, deep trouble. So impeachment watchers, know at issue has been the question of whether military assistance to Ukraine had been withheld as part of a quid pro quo for dirt on Joe Biden or some information about, you know, this crazy

allegation that Ukraine somehow, you know, intervened in our election in 2016. It's truly nuts. So Bill Taylor is the official who we all know texted that he thought it was crazy to withhold security assistance for help in a political campaign. Clearly, he was laying down a record of his opposition to these dumb policy ideas. So in his testimony today, Taylor said that he was told by Gordon Sondland, who we've talked about before. He's the Trump Stuge who bought his job as U.S. ambassador to the EU with a $1 million donation to the Trump inauguration. So Sondland told Taylor that he was told by Trump that Trump wanted Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine would investigate Burisma and the allegations that they interfered in the 16 election. In fact,

sonlin told Taylor that initially he thought that the quid pro quo was just about a white house meeting but in fact it was broader than that the whole the assistance that everything was contingent on getting this dirt and you know from the man himself from the president of the United States directing this quid pro quo so again bill taylor's not a trump loyalist he got this job after the previous ambassador was removed by a smear campaign by rudy juliani and others but like i just what more direct evidence do republic Yeah, and this guy is the acting ambassador, right? So this is not just some flunky. I mean, here you have, you know, when you look at this, you know, we cross-passed Bill Terrell. Like this guy's central casting foreign service officer. Can I read some resume bullets?

Yeah. Served his country for 50 years, 5-0, went to West Point, served in the 1001st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Then he served, I believe, at the State Department in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem and was tapped by George Bush to be ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. Yeah. And I mean, then he. Yeah. Exactly. And so this is what happens, right, when you have a career professional dropped into the middle of a sea of corruption, right?

Because Bill Taylor is going there to do the normal job of how do we support this new government in Ukraine that is dealing with the fact that Russia has invaded it. And he's got like this hack, Sondland, who's seeking to enlist him in this weird scheme where they're cutting out. I mean, also in the testimonies that they were cutting out kind of the normal interagency process, which we talked about in the show. Clearly Sondland wanted to limit the number of officials who were aware of what this scheme was. And then it couldn't be clear, right? Like even though Sondland wrote in his text, like, there is no quid pro quo. We have an testimony that Taylor was told. Like, they need to make a public statement about their commitment to investigate Hunter Biden's company in exchange for military assistance.

It's kind of the definition of a quid pro quo. You can't say I didn't commit a crime. I just killed a guy. Yeah. I mean, and in fact, Sondland even walks him through and says, hey, Trump's a businessman. And if he's going to give somebody a check, he needs to get. I mean, it's literally like, we're going to drive the car with the body in the trunk, like, into the alleyway. and unless we get the money first, we're not going to, I mean, this is literally the definition of a crime.

It's black and white. This is not like shades of gray here. Like you have an incredibly credible witness who is apolitical, who's a career guy, who by the way, showing a ton of guts to testify. He's still in the foreign service, right? So credit to this guy, he didn't write an anonymous op-ed for the New York Times. He testified in front of Congress that what we all can see we thought happened. right, that there was a quid pro quo, we withheld military citizens from another country to pressure that country to blackmail that country into investigating Trump's political opponents. This guy is telling us, yes, that's exactly what happened. I have the receipts. I also noticed that the reports are he took detailed notes, and so his testimony is informed by detailed notes. That's very common. Diplomats write everything down, right? And so like Sonlin Trump were kind of counting on there being either Foreign Service officers who would be bullied into going along with their scheme or wouldn't want to stand up against this kind of criminal activity.

It points to the importance of this impeachment inquiry to begin with because we wouldn't know about this if we weren't doing this. But I mean, this is about as open and shut a case as, you know, you get. I mean, if you're Adam Schiff and you're a former prosecutor, like, here's your star witness and that's it, end of the case. Yeah, I mean, Bill Taylor knew some weird shit was going down. He's a pro. He took a bunch of notes. His opening statement is 50. pages singled space. I highly recommend you all read it. But we'll probably talk about this more next week.

But wow, blockbuster stuff. I just don't know how they can't explain this. And, you know, they'll try to attack Bill Taylor, I'm sure, is like a deep state operative or something. But no, this guy's a professional who served in 100 first airborne in Vietnam. Not going to happen. All right. We're going to talk a bit about Syria at the top because we get into more detail with

Susan, but there were a bunch of news stories since Friday when we sat down with her. So a couple updates. First, President Erdogan of Turkey is in Russia right now, meeting with Vladimir Putin. They announced that Russia and Turkish troops will jointly control the area in northeast Syria that until recently was held by the Kurds and the U.S. So we just handed that territory over to Putin, basically. Erdogan, incredibly, is still scheduled to visit Washington in November, so we'll see how that visit goes down. I can't imagine that's going to go forward to me.

I'm with here. I mean, the last time he was there, his goons beat the shit out of a bunch of American protesters. So the second, like, completely depressing thing, Bashar al-Assad traveled to Idlib province in northwest Syria for the first time in years since his goons lost control of it to rebel fighters. He too is reveling in his good luck after this withdrawal. Then there are reports that Trump is considering leaving several hundred troops in Syria after all. So I guess our policy was not to end the war, but to let our allies get routed, hand the territory over to our adversaries and then decide what we're actually going to do. Trump keeps saying that our goal is to control Syrian oil fields, which nicely confirms the world's worst fears about U.S. foreign policy goals over the last couple decades.

At a cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump ranted about Syria for a while. Here's some choice quotes. ISIS was all over the place. It was me who captured them. I'm the one who did the capturing. I'm the one who knows more about it than you people or the fake pundits. That's one quote. Another.

We never gave a commitment to the Kurds. That's another. Another. I'm trying to get out of wars. We may have to get in wars too. that I think sort of encapsulates the incoherence here. So the words, the policy, they're incoherent, Ben. The Pentagon said that the 1,000 U.S. troops leaving Syria would go to Iraq and fight ISIS there.

Today, the Iraqi military said that U.S. forces don't have permission to stay. So another big question up in the air. I mean, it's just, Ben, it's amazing to watch this unravel so fast. It's just a fucking train wreck. And, I mean, I just highlight a couple of things. Susan does get in this. but first, the extent to which this was a part of no plan is very evident here in the sense that the Pentagon's clearly been making this up on the fly.

Like Trump, there was no process. It was like, how do we withdraw troops and stirreys? Trump says he's going to do it. Kurds are going to get massacred. There's going to mean ethnic cleansing potentially carried out by Russia and Turkey. And they're just literally like, it's like these troops are in their convoy. just trying to figure out where to drive. Right, yeah.

And you saw images yesterday of Kurds begging them not to leave, throwing tomatoes, holding up signs. I've never seen that happen to American troops anywhere. Then you get the troops like to pull up to the Iraqi border and the Iraqi government's like, actually, you're not welcome here. This is, this is profoundly fucked up. I mean, that they just, no thought was given into what to do with these U.S. special forces who are there, right? So that's the first thing, just how chaotic this is. The second thing is

what complete and utter BS it is that this is somehow part of an effort to end wars, like Trump just took them from Syria and moved them to Iraq. Like these people are not coming home. No war ended because of what Trump is doing. No risk was mitigated for U.S. forces. At the same time that he's just moving them from Syria to Iraq, yesterday Pompeo threatened that we might go to war with Turkey for doing what Trump told them they could do. regularly threatened to go to war with Iran. Trump did that again yesterday. We've got thousands of more troops in the Middle East because he's moved in the Saudi Arabia

and positioned all these other troops in the region. So that, too, is a total lie and a total false justification. And then you have this jarring New York Times story that says that this is the best thing that's happened to ISIS in four years and that you've got thousands, potentially prisoners who've gone free, there have been attacks already carried out. This is complete and utter chaos. And I would say, like, I would like to see, I mean, look, we can't help with the fact that we're entering a political season here. The Democrats, I'd like to see them making this case a little bit more robustly.

I mean, we've just had in the last week all this evidence of a complete catastrophic foreign policy decision by the President of the United States. We've got headlines that say this is the biggest victory of crisis in yours. You've got Bill McCraven, the guy who actually led the effort to kill bin Laden, writing an op-ed saying, Trump is a threat to the republic. Like, we should be, I have to say, in the political context, prosecuting this case against Trump because this is the kind of thing that even Trump voters, I think, can understand is a horrific mess of his own creation. Yeah, he's weak, he's ineffective, he doesn't know how to do the job, just to put some meat on the bones of two things you mentioned. So that New York Times piece on ISIS benefiting from our pullout, they noted that U.S.

and Curtis troops have been conducting up to a dozen counterterrorism missions per day against ISIS, those are now down to zero. We were also collecting a bunch of intelligence from those Kurdish fighters that's not coming anymore. A recent Pentagon report said that there are up to 18,000 ISIS members in Iraq and Syria, including 3,000 foreign fighters. So it's a real problem. And then just on this Pompeo comment. So Pompeo's doing an interview on CNBC. It's pre-taped. He says that President Trump is prepared to take military action against Turkey if needed. He doesn't say what would trigger military action. But Trump, he's talking about a NATO ally. we have a base with like 5,000 Air Force men and women on it in Turkey with up to 50 nuclear weapons.

What the fuck is he talking about? If you want a window into just how dangerously incoherent and incompetent these people are, Trump went out the other day after this quote unquote ceasefire was reached and said this was a great victory and this is a great thing for the U.S. and Turkey. and then you've got the Secretary of State for Trump threatening to go to war with Turkey to go to war with a country that has U.S. nuclear weapons on its soil. Our weapons. This is dangerous stuff.

A NATO ally. Would that trigger Article 5? Would we have to then attack ourselves if we attacked Turkey? I mean, it's just the height of these people, what is so scary about this is they don't know what they're doing and they're making it up as they go along, right? And so Trump, for reasons that no one will, ever really understand makes this concession to Erdogan sets in motion this crazy chain of events

that just obviously benefits all the worst people in the world, Putin, Assad, ISIS, Iran. And it's like each day they wake up and decide what their new spin on it is. And one day it's that we actually had this historic breakthrough with the Turks. They're not saying that anymore. Now they're threatening war with the Turks. Who knows where we'll be tomorrow. But they're real consequences. Like people right now, as we're taking, this podcast are likely being attacked, killed, ISIS fighters are literally escaping. That's happening now in the real world while these guys just try to figure out like what the hell the spin is based on whatever crazy rant Trump did at a cabinet meeting. Yeah, it is awful. Okay, let's talk about a

different crop of incompetent people making it up as they go along. So in the least surprising news possible, the Brexit deadline has been delayed. Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson managed to negotiate a Brexit deal with the European Union, but that deal was quickly shot down by British Parliament. So Johnson had to do the thing he said he would never do, which was asked the EU for another extension, another delay in that deadline. So he did it as petulantly as possible. I think he attached like several letters complaining that he didn't want a delay

and that Parliament had forced his hand. But I mean, I guess we're just back to hurry up and wait on Brexit. This one's been evolving quickly as well, and it's hard to even know where we are. Yeah, I mean, so Johnson negotiates this deal. It's pretty similar to the one that Theresa May had. This Irish backstop that we've talked about here, which is basically like how do they leave the European Union

without creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That was a key issue. Boris Johnson got some adjustments to that, but there still is this kind of layer of additional checks and this separation between the EU in Ireland and Northern Ireland and where these checks take place and how long they'll last. It's complicated.

We don't need to, for the purposes of the podcast, going in the weeds. I think it proves the point, though, that an incredibly complicated piece of business, like how do you untangle the United Kingdom from the European Union, Boris Johnson wanted them to basically have like three days to like digest this deal and vote on it. That's crazy. You know, like, this is going to determine the nature of British society, economy, their association with their key partner in Europe. And the idea that he could just kind of ran this down Parliament's throats clearly was going to be rejected. Now I think the question becomes, you know, Johnson may want to have a general election to say, okay, I have this deal, let's vote on it,

vote for me if you want Brexit, and make that kind of a proxy for this whole thing. And, you know, and that's probably the most likely scenario. I do think, though, raises this question that every time a deal has been put before Parliament, nobody's really wanted to vote for it because bad things will happen, and nobody wants to vote for things that have bad consequences. And it does just raise this question, again, can they have enough support in the parliament and kind of in the country to leave on a deal that hasn't been put forward to another vote by the British people? And again, like people like front of the pod, David Lammy have been very clear that like, look, when we voted for Brexit, we didn't know what it was.

We just, it was Brexit. There was nobody to know what the terms were. There should be another vote on this. I think that makes a lot of sense. I still think that that might not be a likely scenario. But what we're seeing is how hard it is to take this formal step of leaving when there are all these complexities around what that means. If people don't have time to digest it and truly understand what what is in play here. And I don't think Boris Johnson entirely understands what's important.

Yeah, I don't either. Let's talk about our neighbors in the north and Canada. So Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will serve another term. His political standing is undoubtedly weakened, though. He will now lead a minority government and will need to cut a deal with other parties to get things done. But he still won yesterday's election, Tuesday's election. Ben, I doubt this was the campaign that Trudeau wanted to run. He was dealing with controversies that include several instances of wearing blood.

blackface to parties in the early 2000s and allegations of corruption. And ultimately the race itself was pretty negative. But can you explain what it means to lead a minority government in Canada and how Trudeau pulled this thing out and what you think happens next? Yeah. So, you know, full disclosure, I'd know, like Justin Trudeau and some of his senior people, obviously, like everybody was horrified by those images of him in Blackface. Frankly, I think what they speak to is, and he himself said this, like the extent to which he was indulging in a privileged and kind of tone-deaf life for a long time. Like Trudeau is one of these guys who cleaned up his act fairly late in life, kind of after his father died and went into politics. And he should have to own that and be held accountable for it.

And I'd like to see him talk more about it because it was so jarring to see this guy who's kind of emerged as a progressive standard bear in the world doing that. At the same time, if you're progressive, this is a really good outcome. because, you know, there was a very conservative person the other side of this election who was going to really roll back any effort to deal with climate change, who was not going to be as welcoming to refugees. So if you care about progressive policies, like we need progressives to win elections. So I think it's a good thing that Trudeau prevailed. Tommy, interestingly, he prevailed on a playbook that was very similar to R2012.

Yeah, I felt that way. I mean, and I actually even remember talking to them about this, but like, because they looked at our election. And, you know, he had a good record to run on. But what he did is he kind of grinded it out. I'm the one, this kind of mix of, I'm the one working for the middle class, and these guys are going to cut things that are important to you, coupled with I'm the one who will fight climate change, which appeals to progressive voters. Even his slogan, like Ford was literally the exact same slogan as Obama's in 2012. So I think they saw that election of how do you kind of grind it out in a difficult circumstance.

What's interesting now is he didn't get a clear majority. So it's a parliamentary system. if you have a clear majority, your party runs things, you run the parliament. If you don't, then you have to make coalitions. And you either have to make a formal coalition with another party that gets you in a majority, or you can kind of make coalitions on an ad hoc basis on different votes. Trudeau has a couple of options. There's this Quebec party.

You know, Quebec has long had kind of a bit of a separatist movement or certainly desire for autonomy within Canada. Or there's parties to Trudeau's left that got enough votes. The NDP is a party to his left. that if he partnered with them, they'd have a majority too. So what does that mean? Interestingly, I think it means that you're going to have in more progressive Canadian government

because to get to a majority, the most obvious path for Trudeau is to work with parties to his left. And so it might mean actually more of a focus on things like climate change. Because one of the things Trudeau took crap for from the left is that even though he's fought climate change, he's agreed to a new pipeline over there.

So it bears watching, but I think the net result is one of the, few progressives in power in a major country in the world. One, that's a good thing. And he's been somewhat humbled by his own actions. And the outcome of that, it may actually be that he's dependent on people to the left of the Canadian liberals. So you may actually even see a more progressive government, even if it's somewhat weaker than the mandate he had last time. And just one more thing on this Trudeau victory is, you know, actually very rare Barack Obama endorsed Trudeau on Twitter a few days before the election. That's only a second endorsement he's

made like this in a foreign election since he left office. Emmanuel McCrome was the other, so he's two for two. But I mean, I think it speaks to the fact that Obama both likes Trudeau, thinks he's a good guy, but also just thinks it's really important that in some of these critical countries that we see progressives get over the goal line. So, you know, I think people should note the extraordinary nature of Obama weighing in like this, and it seemed to have a positive impact. All right, let's talk about another election over in Israel.

So Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu officially gave up trying to form a government on Monday. So that means his chief opponent in last month's election, Benny Gantz, will now give it a go. There's probably some people listening who are very confused about how we're still talking about the Israeli elections because they happened a while ago. You are right. In fact, there was another election before the September election in April. Both of those elections ended with Netanyahu and Beni Gantz, essentially tying in the way the Israeli system works is to become prime minister, you have to form a coalition that control 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, their parliament. So Netanyahuahu.

who got first crack at that coalition formation process. He failed. Now, former Israeli army chief, Benny Gantz, has 28 days to try. And if he can't do it, we may see them talk about some sort of power sharing agreement or maybe even a third election, which is crazy. But Netanyahu is facing potential indictments in three different corruption cases. So for him, this is not just about being in charge. It's about preserving his immunity from prosecution.

And so far, BB's legal problems have made a coalition gun. government, a non-starter for his opponent, Benny Gantz. So, Ben, it just feels like, like Brexit, this one is more hurry up and wait, I guess. Yeah. You know, the problem is that nobody has an obvious pathway to a coalition that could form a majority, in part because one of the key players, Avedore Lieberman, is kind of held back as support from anybody. Here's, I guess, what people should know. Gantz has said that he will not go into a unity government. right? Because one of the ways you could solve this is Netanyahu gets two years as prime minister and then Gans gets two years. That sounds weird to us,

but that is something that is done in the Israeli system. But Gantz has said he won't serve under a prime minister who is under indictment, you know, and B.B. is likely, you know, is under indictment. And so that's, B.B.'s desire to have a government that protects him from prosecution has clashed with Gantz rightly saying, well, I'm not going to do that, right? And so there are a couple of different outcomes that could happen. here. One is that Gans somehow can corral a coalition and become the next prime minister. And I think that'd be a very good outcome. Another is that there's a third election, which I don't think anybody really wants to live through. It's pretty clear what the dividing lines are in Israeli society and Israeli politics. And another is there's just some kind of brokered thing where they take turns being prime minister.

And that will get tied up with this question of what happens if BB is, you know, prosecuted while he's prime minister. bottom line though is that like we are either at the end or the beginning of the end of the BB Netanyahu error in Israeli politics. There is no question about that. Like best case scenario for BB is, you know, he eeks out some power sharing, rotating agreement. We are, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We don't quite know how far away it is. But that is a seismic shift, given how long this guy, you know, over a decade is Israeli prime minister. And it does just go to show. show that the the the that the that is going to have a post-netoniao future and you know frankly coming on the heels of what we just talked about trudeau you know we've talked on this podcast before like is

a pendulum beginning to swing here against these guys against these kind of far right leaders and nationalist and i and i think there is something to the fact that you have trudeau he can out win even with the tough circumstances he faced and then nanao having trouble hanging on it does feel like a pendulum of swing. Yeah. And you know, in a recent episode when we talked about this, I sort of, I made the point that Benny Gauntz, when it comes to the Middle East peace process, is not the progressive hero that we all want, right? He's probably not as committed to the Middle East peace process or to a Palestinian state as most progressives in America would want him to be. And then I maybe poo-poo the difference. And I heard from some, uh, some friends who said,

actually that kind of under explains or underappreciates the degree to which Bibi Netanyahu has has permeated and poisoned the public discourse in Israel with fear mongering with like allowing the hard right to dictate the terms of debates with undercutting institutions undercutting a free press so you know it's yeah as everyone listens probably knows I dislike Bibi Dengu enormously but I thought it was an interesting point yeah well and And I think what that points to is that, look, are all the problems in Israel going to be solved if Benny Gans becomes the prime minister? No. Is a Palestinian issue going to be dealt with quickly? No. But in order to get there, they do need to just kind of get beyond Bibi. Like, step one is this guy who's kind of bulldozed politics to the right, demonized the left and the center, made all kinds of alliances with Samodius characters, become. more and more strident and racist in how he talks about Arabs. Like, you need to get past that.

And just so you know, we're not saying, yeah, and the corruption and the media. And just so you know, we're not singing out Israel here. Like, it's kind of what, like, what has happened here, you know, like all our problems won't be solved when Trump leaves. It's certainly not the problems of the Republican Party, but it's definitely a necessary step. Yeah. Quick reminder that we are doing a live POD Save the World taping. Yes. On Saturday, October 26th at J Street's National conference in Washington, D.C. If you want to come see it, visit jstreet.org slash conference. Use the code pod save for discounted tickets.

Those proceeds go to J Street, so you'd be helping out a great organization that's fighting for more progressive policies and peace, and it should be fun. Yeah, just a terrific organization. And for people that don't follow us closely, you know, you've traditionally had APAC as kind of a leading organization, you know, casting itself as pro-Israel. J. Street emerges an alternative that's pro-Israel and pro-peace. It's a progressive organization. It supports diplomacy. It supports Palestinian state. We all, as progressives have an interest, I think, in supporting J Street and making it kind of the home for Democrats who care about these issues, given how APAC has basically worked against Democrats, certainly against President Obama and very supportive of President Trump. Yeah. Let's talk about China for a bit. Last week, the Trump administration announced that they're going to require Chinese officials in the U.S. to notify the State Department before meeting with local or state government.

or American teachers and researchers. I thought there was an interesting announcement. The State Department said these rules were reciprocal for similar rules imposed by the Chinese government on U.S. diplomats in China that are even more onerous. You actually have to get Chinese government sign off to have those meetings when you're serving in China. So the U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad did an interview with the Washington Post, where he, I thought, provided an interesting window into just how difficult it is to be a U.S.

diplomat in a place like China. So Brands had talked about an event at a school that was canceled at the last minute because the administration said the kids were, quote, too shy to meet with U.S. officials. And then there was a time that he, the ambassador, tried to drop by a coffee shop and just sort of informally chat with people. But Chinese officials raced ahead of him and told the patrons not to speak to him and just like shut it all down. So you could probably make a case that even reciprocal restrictions like this are ultimately self-defeating in the long term and we're just going to cut off any kind of meaningful. relationships or exchanges. But I thought it was an interesting window into the surveillance and harassment that our diplomats face in places like China or Russia. And it's an interesting piece of that broader discussion we've been having about China trying to define what freedom of speech

means, even in the U.S. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, when we negotiated the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba, we went through this with them. They wanted to impose all kinds of restrictions on where U.S. diplomats could travel and who they could see. And it was kind of a fascinating window for me into how this works because it's actually not entirely uncommon in some of these kind of one party or communist states. You know, we ended up negotiating that certain U.S. officials could kind of go wherever they want and see wherever they wanted, you know, like the ambassador. But, you know, there just were some restrictions that they put on people and that they did

to other countries, too, when we talked to them. obviously then this got overtaken after we left by this sonic attack thing which we should come back to at some point on this podcast because I'd love to know what happens. No, they've never solved it and there's increasing doubt about whether something happened or what skilled happened. But anyway, I think what this is, this shows you, I mean, I'd say, first of all, this doesn't suggest to me that the Chinese are particularly kind of confident, right? I mean, we keep hearing about, you know, this inexorable rise of China and how they've made figured out this alternative system where everybody signed on to this one-party state.

And there's no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party does enjoy a lot of popular support. But what are they so afraid of? You know, like, what are they afraid the people in the coffee shop are going to say to an ambassador? What are they so afraid? How's your Tuesday? Yeah, I mean, like, to me, it just shows a remarkable vulnerability or lack of confidence. that you just, you don't even think that the U.S. diplomat can show up at a school because something might go horribly wrong. I mean, in terms of how we respond, yeah, I'm not sure that the best way

is reciprocal. This, too, we went through in government. When there was some trouble for U.S. reporters getting visas in China, we looked at proposals to yank the visas of a lot of the Chinese state media and ultimately decided that, well, if we're for open media and free media, we shouldn't do that. that that's not the best way to reciprocate. Yeah, they probably win that one long time. Yeah, and so I think, look, we need to stand for our diplomats, and there are other levers we can pull and other ways we can apply pressure.

I think when we start going tip or tat like this, the history of it has not been that good in resolving the circumstance. If anything, it almost gives the Chinese a justification to kind of keep doing what they're doing and maybe do it worse. So I'm sympathetic that this is a tough problem, but I'm not sure that this is the way to solve it. Yeah, I feel for these diplomats. It's a tough gig.

Talk about Facebook. So on Monday, they announced that they had found and taken down four state-back disinformation campaigns, three of which originated in Iran and one was from Russia. So these posts were on Facebook and Instagram. They targeted people in the U.S., North Africa, and Latin America. The information was disclosed as part of a press call that Facebook did to demonstrate that they're actively working to find and pull down these disinformation campaigns, which are similar to the ones waged by Russia during 2016 elections.

So they're just trying to show that they're on it. The focus of the posts from the Iranians and the Russians seem to be to just so chaos and conflict, which probably makes sense. They're in the early phase where they're trying to, you know, assimilate into groups, drive engagement, get followers. So they're doing a lot of reposting of like garbage right-wing organizations like TPUSA. Interestingly, also Facebook announced that they're going to start labeling state-sponsored media pages like Russia today as state-sponsored.

so that's important and long overdue. So, Ben, we're talking about like 200 accounts, but it's still a step in the right direction. I'm glad to see that they've got a big team and a budget on it. Some people online, some experts pointed out that it's a bit odd to fight this international disinformation campaign but not submit paid political ads to any sort of fact-checking process. Seems like a bigger problem.

But, you know, credit to them. I'm glad they're finding these things. Well, yes. But count me as a skeptic here. Yes, yes. because like one of the things that they've always said is, oh, we can't possibly do this as an open platform. Like, no, you can do it, you know.

And they're, because I've always thought, like, at a minimum, what they could do is label something like this, right? This is state sponsored. I mean, you could pull it down or you could inform people like this is from an unverified source or this is from a state sponsored, you know, account or source. And so, again, it's a positive step. It's a step in the right direction. And unfortunately for them, it kind of indicates that they could be doing even more, you know,

to try to identify the source of a lot of content on their platform. And again, yes, if you're saying that you don't want to allow foreign governments to engage in disinformation, why is it okay for the President of the United States to buy ads on your platform that are outright disinformation, outright lies, and then be able to count on Mark Zuckerberg to give a speech defending you, you know, lauding free expression, right? So, you know, it's a caveated welcome of this step. I think another point that we have to be mindful of, though, is we can't count on the government to regulate this.

We can't count on Facebook to do as much as it necessarily should. We should count on ourselves to be more tuned to the fact that if information you're reading comes from a shady source, look, it's not that hard to go into my Twitter notifications and tell what's a bot, you know. And one of the things that I think you saw in some of the analyses of the Russian disinformation in 16 and this time is that they try to sow divisions in the Democratic Party. So in 2016, they spent a lot of time and effort trying to turn Bernie supporters off Hillary and take advantage of social movements like the Black Lives Matter. And they did that again this round. Yeah.

They're doing that again this round. So you know what? Maybe let's not all fight each other on the Democratic side. You know, like the best antibody that there is to disinformation is people just not consuming it. I'm with you there, but I think that will require taking the computers away from the baby boomers. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm talking about. Not all of you.

Just the bad ones. You're right. There's a much bigger problem here, but I'm glad they're using whatever. I'm glad that they feel pressure. I mean, Facebook doesn't do this out of altruism. They respond to some public pressure. And I think the pressure that Elizabeth Warren and others have put on them is making them take some of these steps. And we should keep this drum beat up.

The right does this. So Steve Bannon pressure the hell out of Facebook in 2016, and Mark Zuckerberg met with all these right-wing pundits to promise them that they'd be treated fairly. Never mind that most of the content on Facebook, the top content is right-wing. We should be doing the same thing. We should be working the rest. I love you, baby boomers. Don't send me mean Facebook messages because I'm under 40 and I don't go on that shit.

Let's talk about Haiti for a minute. So there are some truly dire reports about the ongoing political crisis in Haiti. opposition leaders in Haiti are calling for the removal of President Jovenal Moyes, and they have led to violent demonstrations in a basic total shutdown, essentially, of government services. There is a great New York Times piece on Haiti today that leads with an anecdote from the small hospital that is down to just one day supply of oxygen.

So these caregivers are choosing to give it to either newborns or older patients recovering from strokes. Haiti has dealt with on and off political dysfunction for a long time, and they also had just a devastating earthquake in 2010. But folks on the ground say this is the worst it's ever been. 30 people have died in the past few weeks. Schools have been closed since early September. Hospitals are closing.

They're running out of gas. The government just literally isn't functioning. So I'm not sure what, if any, role the U.S. could or should play in helping stabilize the situation. But, you know, it's just, this is our neighborhood. I think the lawmakers, citizens are naive to think that the U.S. won't be impacted. in some way by this kind of political instability and just on a human level, I think we should care. So I just wanted to raise awareness.

No, well, we'd be impacted, you know, by people trying to migrate here, obviously. But, I mean, we should care. It's our neighborhood. You know, in the past, there's been this kind of just chronic dysfunction in Haiti. Couple was just the worst luck in the world, you know, like that earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people and leveled the infrastructure. sure. What's worked somewhat in the past, obviously not enough, is really the U.S. needs to work with a lot of other countries, countries in the Americas in particular. We've worked with Brazil in the past and others to try to provide assistance, try to provide some infrastructure that

can help people. Tragically, some of that aid effort has been corrupted and siphoned off, but we shouldn't lose sight of this and we shouldn't stop trying because people's lives are at stake, and we should try to do this cooperatively with other countries. And this is something I think Democratic Cairns can talk about, is like, how do we have a more sustainable and effective aid approach to Haiti? The last thing I'd say, Tommy, if people are interested in how history has informed where Haiti got, and basically the extent to which Haiti was completely screwed because it was founded by the only successful slave rebellion in history, there's a great podcast. It's the revolutions podcast, which goes through different revolutions. And they have one long series on

the Haitian revolution that explains both how slaves were successful in throwing off their colonial masters, but also how the U.S. and other countries iced them out because of that and set them back at a great disadvantage. It's by a guy named Mike Duncan. So you can check that out if you want, if you want to go deep. I definitely will. Let's talk about another big protest movement that's happening and not really getting that much attention, which is in Lebanon. So an estimated 1.5 million people have protested over the last five or six days in Lebanon. It started as a protest over a proposed tax hike on WhatsApp phone calls, but it's, you know, it's gotten bigger. It's about corruption. It's about a government that isn't delivering basic services. It's about a corrupt business elite,

which is frankly, you know, sometimes the same as the people in government. Unlike in Hong Kong, the government moved quickly to pass economic reforms to try and satisfy the protesters, but so far, it doesn't seem like they're buying it. It seems like it's emboldened them. Prime Minister Sad Hariri is not the strongest leader to begin with. So, Ben, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen here, but the images are incredibly compelling. It reminds me of the very beginning of the Arab Spring in places like Egypt. I think a lot of Middle East watchers have worried that something like this might happen in Lebanon, that Lebanon might be a Tinder box for a long time. The tone and tenor are positive so far. Let's hope it remains that way,

but it's something we should really watch. Yeah, and I think part of this of what this is a symptom of that's unique to Lebanon is, you know, ordinary people there feel, I think, at times like there are all these machinations happening above them, right? So you have this wealthy kind of Beirut elite that's connected to a lot of money that swashes around the Middle East. You've got Iran backing Hezbollah. You've got the Saudis member who took Hariris. hostage. Yeah, he literally took him hostage. Yeah, you know. And so there's, there's all these kind of power brokers making these moves over their heads. Then they're also an enormous amount of Syrian refugees there. And they're just kind of left out of their own politics.

And I think this is part, an expression of that frustration with, you know, corruption, inequality, and a non-responsive political elite that Hariri is now trying to address. I think the other point which you referenced, though, is that, like, everybody thinks that the story, the Arab Spring is over. Like, there were these, you know, revolutions in 2011, then there was a counter-revolution and the counter-revolution won. But, man, we've sat on this podcast and talked about Algeria, about Sudan, about Lebanon, there were protests in Egypt. I don't think the story is over.

I think that there's a lid on a powder keg right now, and it's going to keep blowing in one place after another if these governments don't get ahead of the frustration that people have, chiefly with corruption, frankly, even more so than like a lack of free expression. and, you know, there's going to be more protest and there's going to be more instability unless governments become more responsive. Yeah. Last topic before we get to Susan Rice is Afghanistan. So first is some news.

So the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan announced on Monday that the U.S. has reduced the number of troops in Afghanistan by 2000. Basically what happened is when we rotated troops out, we didn't replace them. So that means that there are about 12,000 U.S. service members now in Afghanistan. the deal that had been negotiated with the Taliban but got blown up by Trump via tweet because he wanted a Camp David meeting with them madness around 9-11. That would have involved reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan to 8600. So it's interesting and maybe very dumb that we gave up that leverage.

And it's also just interesting to me that the administration somehow secretly cut troop levels without Congress or the press noticing. I just don't get how that works, but whatever, I'm four troops coming home. But I also just want to flag a long piece on Afghanistan in the New Yorker this week because everyone should read it. It's truly incredible reporting. And it is just completely devastating to read because the piece really does a good job of focusing on the Afghan people and how much 19 years of conflict have hurt them. So here's some relevant points from the piece. So Bush announced we're going into Afghanistan in October of 2001.

In 2003, Don Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, announced that the mission had moved. from major combat activity to a period of stability, right? Since that time, since that announcement, 150,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan. 750,000 Americans have served there, and we have spent, the U.S. has spent $800 billion in the country on military operations and assistance and everything else. So, you know, Afghanistan also hasn't been in the news much lately,

in part because what happens with these wars, when the troop numbers come down and when the mission changes to advising and assisting, US casualties drop, and we are all grateful that. We all thank God for that. But it means there's less coverage. But, you know, the war has actually gotten worse for the Afghan people. So between July and October, the UN documented more civilian casualties than it has

during any three-month period since it started keeping count in 2009. And last month, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Afghanistan than at any point since 2010. So the thing I think people have to understand is Trump made this big, song and dance about loosening the rules of engagement. And that has led to way more casualties. Remember when we dropped the mother of all bombs? No one has any idea who was killed by that fucking monstrous bomb. And so meanwhile, the Taliban is growing in size. Some militants in Afghanistan are now pledging support to ISIS in various parts of the country. So that's leading to even, you know, once ISIS is there, it is another horror that the Afghan people have to deal with. But it also could

lead to more justification for relatively indiscriminate attacks on those ISIS fighters by coalition or Afghan forces. So it is really worth reading the whole piece because it's just brilliant reporting, but man, it's a devastating read. Yeah. You know, the Trump piece of this is you and I were texting about this, but there's this kind of discordance where, you know, the people around him are kind of traditional, you know, Republican advisors like Zal Khil al-Zad, the envoy saying, you know, our true presence is leverage on the Taliban. But the Taliban and everybody knows that Trump just kind of wants to get out, you know, or he just kind of wants to bomb people and discriminate with the Air Force and pull troops out. And that kind of undercuts any coherent

diplomacy, which leads to the next point, which is that it's very important. I'm glad you highlighted this article. We don't look at this from the perspective of the Afghan people enough. You know, we just think about our troop levels or we think about, you know, the money that we spend there. The Afghan people have been at war for like 40 years. It's not just since 9-11. Like, remember the Soviets were in there. And if that was a war, then there was a civil war, the Taliban one. And then relatively shortly after that was 9-11.

So I'm 41 years old. Like anyone my age in Afghanistan doesn't really remember, like, they're not being a war. That's a horrifying thing. And what they need is not indiscriminate bombing. I mean, it has eerie echoes of Nixon getting out of Southeast Asia and just carpet bombing, like Vietnam on the way out to send a message to somebody. You know, we're tough or something. What we need is really effective diplomacy that, you know, brings the Pakistanis into this,

like stop what you're doing, messing around here, mucking around here, supporting the Taliban in this fashion, brings the Chinese in because they have all kinds of interest. in Afghanistan, which kind of cuts through their Belt Road Initiative, brings in the Europeans, who've been donors, thinks about what our long-term assistance plan is. I mean, we really owe it to the Afghan people to have a much more concerted, high-level, sustained kind of diplomatic initiative to try to have some impact on the warring parties inside of Afghanistan and some kind of long-term stabilizing impact on the central government in Kabul. And I think we really should be informed in those efforts by, you know, the Afghan people and, and, and, and, and what, what is most

important to them in terms of assistance and who are the key players that they see mucking around their politics. But, um, it is just a window into this, this really, real tragedy of, you know, how did this go so wrong after 9-11? Yeah. And look, I mean, I don't bring, raise this piece to blame Trump because it made, it made me think of, do some soul search for the, like, just, we're going to bomb the place of the country. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But, but this long story is a story of, like, a lot of American mistakes. Yeah. Look, I mean, there's eight years of Obama overseeing the war in Afghanistan, including a huge surge in buildup that I don't think by any measure achieved the goals we hoped it would, right? I mean, we got bin Laden. There was a lot of progress on al-Qaeda, but, you know, it wouldn't

viewed by the Afghan people. But like some of the other tragic parts of this is, you know, they were on the cusp of having negotiated this peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban, and then the U.S. would have withdrawn forces, and the Taliban would have negotiated something maybe with the Afghan government and Trump just pulled the plug on it. And, you know, before that, uh, negotiation had been finalized or announced, there was actually a three day ceasefire. And they talked about how there was just people were rejoicing. Yeah. All across Afghanistan, you know, you had Taliban and government officials and police like hugging each other and villages. And it's like it's just, I mean, I'm not saying that pulling out would make everyone happy and hug each other, but it just speaks to the

way that this war has become a perpetuating machine. And like you said, if you're 17 year old, kid and your dad was killed by the Russian foreign invaders and the people in your village say you now need to go fight these new ones. Like that's all you've ever known. Yeah. And, you know, and look, the history of this is interesting to think about, you know, the initial decision to go in Afghanistan in the first place. I had a lot of support, obviously. I think most analysts say that, you know, Bush's decision to essentially kind of stop in 2002 and turn his attention to Iraq was the critical error. You know, that there might have been a window there where things felt like they were moving the right direction and we kind of got distracted, didn't resource it, focused on Iraq for a bunch of years. Things kind of went from bad to worse in Afghanistan. Obama comes in, surges. You know, I'm sure we had mistakes along the way. Certainly, you know, the thing, though, that began to trouble me was this fundamental question of, is our military presence making it better?

I people can certainly make the argument that our military presence is necessary to train Afghan security forces and to prevent the Taliban taking over the government. But at the same time, it fed a lot of corruption, like the kind of corrupted the entire economy to be this kind of war economy where people are siphoning off aid money in Afghan politics and U.S. contractors have their own levels of corruption. And you do just wonder, how can we figure out a way to somewhat clean the slate a little bit? And I think that is, you know, it should be viewed more as a diplomatic challenge at this point than a military challenge. Because militarily, we seem to be unable to do anything except perpetuate a stalemate. Yeah. A quick update. Since we started recording, the European Council President Donald Tusk said he will recommend that the EU grant Britain's request for a Brexit delay.

So breaking news in the time we've been talking. Anyway, go read this piece in The New Yorker by Luke Mogelson. It's fantastic. And when we come back, we'll have our conversation with. former national security advisor and ambassador Susan Rice. Ben and I are honored to have our guest here today. Ambassador Susan Rice, she's Obama's former U.S. ambassador of the United Nations. She was the national security advisor and she is the author of a fantastic new book called Tough Love.

Everyone who's listening is going to buy it. Susan, great to have you here. And she was my boss. Well, both of our boss. Come on, man. Both of our bosses, yeah. It's great to be with you guys. Before we really get going into the wonky stuff, I just,

I just want to read you something in the book that I found kind of troubling. It was a description of one Ben Rhodes, you said he has dangerous tandem moves on the dance floor. I don't think dangerous was a compliment. What's that all about? What's dangerous about Ben's dance moves? He flips people over his back. Oh, you do? And he's really strong at it, and he's not that tall.

So, you know, people can go flying. Yeah, right. This actually happened in the executive office building of the White House. And again in Lima. And in Lima, Peru. Yeah, this is what qualified as scandal in the Obama as one does. Flipping the smaller people in the NSA. Okay.

As one does in Lima. Okay, let's transition. This is an interesting transition. We should talk about that night in Lima. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. By all means. Well, let's just say that, actually, I began my book with the fact that I had no socks the next day.

Because let's just say, you know, you've bagged call. we have, you know. What year was this? This is the final farm trip, right? So like, we blew it out the last night. And the Pisco Sowers, I think, tons of Pisco Sowers, I think. Tons of Pisco Sowers, rented out of- There's a lot of sugar involved. Let's just say I wasn't feeling that good. But what Susan is going to remember better than me is I did not make it to the summit meetings the next morning. I didn't have to be there. Like, there's usually just a plus one in these multilateral summits. Susan did not have that option. I had to be there. So when she saw me kind of waltzing in unshaven halfway through the day with no socks because I had packed all my socks in the bag

that was sent to Air Force One because I wasn't thinking straight. And she gave me like daggers, you know, for the fact that she'd been sitting in a multilateral summit for several hours while I've been sleeping at all. Right. So we were out dancing really late. And it was the party to end all Obama administration parties. We took over the DJ too. We took over the-took over everything. This is post-Trump winning. Exactly. And so we're just blowing off steam. And I was out at least till 3.3.30 in the morning, but knowing I had to get back up early to join Obama.

So I, you know, drink, party, get out of bed the next morning, and my knees buckled as I got out of the bed. That's the level of day. I almost hit the floor. And I realized it's not, this is not about being hung over. It's about my knees are fucked up. Oh, no. The physical activity. I mean, the dancing was taking place during, like, when the.

The Charlie Fromm seen iPhone takeover happened with Still Dre. Like people were on tables. It was like, you know, it was a lot of scene to bluff, eight years worth. So the opening of the book, we're going to get the serious stuff in a minute, dear listener. But like the opener of the book, no matter how many times I hear from one of you guys or read about the description of those last 12 or 24 hours in the White House as they're literally boxing up Obama stuff or ripping up the rug and the oval. It is like, it's still hard for me to get through. I mean, can't imagine what it was like. We had champagne in the outer Oval Office in the morning of inauguration, right?

Yeah. So, you know, Ben and I were, we must have been really the last two people on the NSC staff who had to be there on that last morning. And I walked in and, you know, saw Ben right away, gave him a big hug. And we walked down to the Oval where we met up with Anita, who was carrying a bottle of, a bottle of champagne. Inferial was overseeing these guys who were, you know, literally ripping up the Oval Office and telling us. down the curtains and putting up Trump gold and all this stuff. And Anita popped the bottle of champagne and we sat outside the Oval drinking champagne as ironic as that was on the morning of inauguration day. My God. And that, you know, we were, as I say in the book, we were drinking

to each other. We were drinking to our friendship and what we had been able to do together. And I think kind of praying that it wouldn't be quite as bad as it appeared it would be. There was a bit of a metaphor looking out at the, you know, because the oval was literally kind of gutted, and they're putting up the Trump gold, the season says. And I remember looking out at the Rose Garden and all the furniture is like out. I mean, it looks like somebody moving, right? The couch is out there and stuff. But the rug that Obama had had been rolled up. And the rug had quotes on it.

And one of the quotes was Martin Luther King, you know, the arc of the moral universe is long would have been towards justice. And you could see that. You know, just picture a rolled up rug. I don't want to picture it. you know, tied up, and then you can see the quote from Martin Luther King as Donald Trump is moving in. I just remember having a bit of a moment there. It's depressing. It was so depressing.

It was depressing. One other transition thing before we get to the actual work you guys did. You write in the book that you spent 12 hours briefing Trump's incoming, very short-lived, national security visor, General Flynn, and it ended with him asking you for a hug, which was not what I expected. It wasn't in the briefing memo. Yeah. So you guys didn't, like, Susan, you didn't just hand it. over the keys to the kingdom to General Flynn. Like, you had to do all these briefings and all this

hard work for one of the harshest surrogates on the Trump campaign. What was that like? It was just bizarre. So these 12 hours occurred over four different meetings. And, you know, Obama really wanted us to affect a very comprehensive and responsible transition because whoever was going to be his successor, because he was so grateful for the very professional transition that President Bush had provided to him and to us. And so we'd written 100 briefing papers. I'd read and edited every one. You know, we were really committed to doing our best,

despite the fact that it was going to be Trump rather than Clinton. And then when we got back from this trip from Lima and on the trip, Flynn had been named National Security Advisor, first thing I did was to try to call him and say, look, I'm here for you, let's get together. I've got all this briefing material for you, let's meet. And he was evasive. He didn't want to come.

in. He's with Sergei Kisliak, like that's centered a voicemail. Exactly. He met Kisleek before Susan. When all these timelines came out, come on. One of the things that came out is that he had been in contact with the Russian ambassador before his predecessor. So he finally, like two weeks later, comes into the office. And, you know, he's the locker up

guy, right? Yeah, yeah. And he was actually kind of subdued and clearly daunted by the job he was going to take. And he didn't want any policy advice from me, but he wanted really to understand how do you do this job. And so rather than being, you know, blustery or obnoxious, he was kind of timid in a way.

Interesting. And not, you know, and civil. But his policy views as I write in the book were just, you know, crazy. But anyway, so we had several more of these meetings, including one which I write about, where his deputy designate came, K.T. McFarland, who was, I think, a coffee fetcher in the Reagan administration, and then a Fox News personality. Yes. And also only there for like a hot minute.

Well, she was there longer than Flynn. Yeah. That's true. That's true. But anyway, she comes waltzing into the West Wing and into the situation room wearing a full length mint coat, which in the Obama White House really stood out. Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

Anyway, and she asked in the early, in her first meeting with Flynn and me and my deputy Avril Haynes, do you think that Flynn and I could manage this by job sharing? Like he can work in the first half of the morning and I'll come in in the afternoon. Come on. I swear to God. And Abriel and I looked at them like, do you understand that these are the hardest jobs in government? We've been working 20 hour days, you know. It was whack.

Anyway, so we go through all this. And at the end of our last meeting, and I extend my hand to shake it, shake his and to wish him well. And he says, can I have a hug? I was like, thinking to myself, what the fuck? I go awkward for you. But I said, you know, I said, all right. So I gave him a hug and wished him well. And that was literally the last I've seen him, except on TV as he's been, you know, doing the

perp walk thing. Oh, my gosh. I mean, the book is worth reading for the transition stuff alone because it is, it's the best part of our democracy, right? The fact we have this peaceful transition, but it's so fucking weird. And you walk us through it, and it's just a blast to read. But, all right, let's talk about some of the issues you worked on as national security advisor.

So I saw recently that you called Trump's decision to abandon the country. Kurds in Northeastern Syria, batch it crazy. And I thought that was very concise and well put. Unfortunately, batch it crazy is like the status quo, right? So I'm curious what you think, like stepping back, what the long-term consequences are of a decision like that.

I think they're really immeasurably large. First of all, the Kurds fought with us, actually fought for us to defeat ISIS. And of course, ISIS has never quite defeated. They were put on the run and into a box. And the reality is that for a very small investment of U.S. personnel, barely more than a thousand still in Syria, now on their way out, we were able to support the Kurds and their Arab partners with advice, with training, with assistance, and equipment.

And that was sufficient with our air power to keep ISIS under control. And that was a theory of how to fight the terrorists that developed. in the Obama administration after the, you know, the very costly, deadly ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so by throwing the Kurds under the bus who lost 11,000 of their fighters, men and women, against ISIS, we did several things simultaneously. One, we sold out these people who had been so important to us, who counted on us to protect them, and we gave the message to every ally that we have or partner around the world, that if Donald Trump wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, they're toast. And so, you know, we're not going to be able to fight terrorism economically again, because who's

going to trust that they should partner with us, you know, whether you're Israel or South Korea or Poland, you've got to be freaked out by this. Great time. So that's one. Two, ISIS now has no pressure on it. And, you know, there are more than 10,000 ISIS prisoners who are already beginning to escape and filter back. Sleeper cells are being reactivated. They've already been a couple of ISIS conducted attacks.

So this very dangerous terrorist threat that we invested so much in trying to contain with, you know, almost 70 other countries is now being able to reconstitute itself. So when you think about, you know, all of the horrible things Donald Trump has done to undermine our national security, I think this has got to be up there. And then finally, it's been Merry Christmas for Vladimir Putin, the Iranians, and Assad, in addition to the Turks. Now they get to control this territory. We're retreating with our tail between our legs. It's now Trump's Saigon. And it couldn't be more dangerous or destructive to perceptions of our leadership, our constancy, our ability to play a major role on the global stage. But he said the ceasefire is the deal of the century.

Please. Everyone's been fighting for it. The ceasefire was handing the Turks on a silver platter, the Kurdish homeland. Yeah. It just doubled down on the sellout and put our Made in America stamp right on it. Well, I wouldn't ask you about this is because, you know, I remember having to sit in a lot of meetings that you chaired. We called them Principals Committee meetings back when there used to be kind of a nationality process. About the specific question where the Turks were getting nervous and objecting to our arming of the Kurds.

And the Turks were putting forward versions of what Trump just agreed to, which essentially let us come in and take over this territory, create our own version of a safe zone. And I remember sitting and looking at maps of northern and eastern Syria, places like Mambidge, where we were separating out. Here's where we don't want the Turks to come because it would threaten the Kurds. I mean, I wonder if you could just talk our listeners a bit through how we handle this diplomacy with the Turks to make clear to them that they had to accept that we were going to work with Kurds and Syrian Arabs, you know, a kind of diverse set of partners, but the Kurds were a part of that and how we had to kind of keep them at bay because, what was kind of jarring and almost chilling to me is seeing Trump announce as a deal what was essentially the Turkish negotiating position in all those conversations for five years no it's outrageous so it's obviously the case that the Turks have long hated this faction of Kurds the YPG they're not the same as the PKK the hardcore Kurdish terrorists inside of Turkey but they

have a relationship and so the Turks have equated them we dealt with the reality that, you know, Turkey was not only incapable of fighting ISIS, which if they could have done, we might have chosen them as a partner, but they were in fact facilitating ISIS's expansion by allowing all these terrorists to pass through Turkish territory unimpeded into Syria. So they were really on the wrong side of this issue. And more interested in the Kurds than ISIS? Absolutely more interested in the Kurds. Not really interested in ISIS at all. So when the reality struck that, you know, the Kurds were going to lose this town Kobani up on the border, President Obama made the decision that we were going to use force to protect the Kurds and save Kobani from ISIS.

The Turks were doing nothing but bitch and moan. And we managed under President Obama for the duration of our tenure and actually, you know, through much of Trump's tenure thus far, to keep the Turks at bay by basically saying, look, we'll listen to your concerns, we'll understand that there are ways we can approach, like how to occupy man bidge after it's liberated from ISIS that may be more attentive to your concerns, but you're not helping us fight ISIS. These people are, and that's our top priority. And it should be your top priority as a NATO partner. So President Obama spent hours and hours and hours in meetings and on the phone with Erdogan, assuring him, massaging him, keeping them on

side. And of course, our military presence on the ground was itself a deterrent. You know, the Turks are obnoxious, but they're not crazy. And they would not have tried to intervene militarily if they thought they were going to kill American servicemen and women. And so we had that, you know, firewall there that was our presence. And what Trump did, and we really got to figure out why. I want to come back to his motivations. But what Trump did was remove that firewall in the form of our military personnel and give Erdogan the green light. Had he held firm, I'm willing to bet a lot of money that the Turks would not have, you know, affected that intervention. Do you agree, Ben? Yeah, 100%. I mean, because, you know, they've had the same objective for years now. The only thing

that changed, literally the only thing that changed was that phone call from Erdogan to Trump. And then Trump signal in that White House statement that we would support a Turkish intervention. And you got to wonder what, in God's name, was Trump thinking he was getting out of this deal? He didn't do anything for free. And there's nothing for U.S. interests. That's a point. The United States gains nothing. No, it's worse.

It harms our interests very substantially. Russia, Iran benefit, ISIS benefits. So what did he get? Yeah. I feel like this feels like it's going to be a part of this future impeachment inquiry because it all seems kind of tight, especially with Rudy Giuliani running around. lobbying to, you know, unsanctioned banks and, you know, get a Turkish cleric named Gulen sent from United States to Turkey. So there's a lot of weird stuff.

By the way. Trump's own financial interests. Yeah. That also goes back to Flynn, too. Yeah. Remember, Flynn had this, he was working for the Turks. We didn't fully appreciate that during the time of the transition, but we, we had hints of it. Yeah. And under Flynn's leadership, the new Trump administration did not want, you know, to start. You know, to start. the offensive against ISIS that we were prepared to launch against, you know, their outposts in northern Syria. And they were worried about offending the Turks. There's something in this that goes back as far as that. Yeah. That we need to understand and unpack. It doesn't add up. No, it doesn't. And it's not about our interests. So the worst case scenario happened, and it happened incredibly

quickly. Congress is now lobbying for sanctions. It feels like it's too little too late. But is there anything we can do to mitigate the damage or that our allies could be doing? You know, the Germans are cutting off weapons sales. A bunch of EU foreign ministers are condemning what's happening. But I wonder what will. At this point, after the, you know, this stupid five-day pause, which I hope saves some lives, but basically, as I said, sells out the Kurds in their homeland and a large swath of northern Syria to a hostile invading force from Turkey. I don't know what we can do. I mean, had we not had Pence go and, you know, bless this with his holy water, what we could have conceivably done, even though it would have been very late and dangerous at this stage, would be to try to reestablish

our deterrence on the ground by making clear we're not going to, you know, we're not going to pull out. We're going to, we're going to maintain positions or retake positions. But we lost that momentum when the Russians and the Syrians came from the South, as well as the Turks from the North. So we've just screwed the pooch here in, you know, ways that I think are really irretrievable. So we know that General Mattis back in 2018, along with Brett McGurk, resigned over the first iteration of this Syria policy, which then got walked back and then President Trump implemented it. General Mattis is pretty steadfastly refused to this day to criticize President Trump or his policies. He has not afforded that.

Courtesy to his other Trump's predecessors. To Obama, but yeah, but that's okay. Yeah, but so the Al Smith dinner that was in New York on Thursday of last week, he finally broke the silence by. joking that Trump also said Merrill Streep is overrated, so that makes him the Merrill Streep of generals. I curious what you both think of the fact that, you know, then he said that he had a Bonespurs joke, I believe. And like, you know, I get it. Al Smith Dinner is a comedy dinner in New York.

It's sort of this long establishment, you know, white tails, black tie, ridiculous event. But wouldn't you think that you would step out and criticize the former president for allowing an ally to get slaughtered before you would. return fire at a joke about being overrated or something? I mean, I'm, I have to say, I'm really disappointed. And I don't understand his logic in Mattis's refusal to just speak the truth. He doesn't have to, you know, attack the president of the United States. But he does need, especially if he's writing a book on leadership, to own his responsibility as a leader. When he made the transition from uniform to a civilian appointee, a political appointee, He made a deliberate choice.

And he's not like any other, you know, four-star flag officer who retired straight out of the military and never played a political role. Cabinet secretary is inherently a political role. Right. particularly as we're peeling back the onion and realizing how so much of what Trump does internationally is about himself. It's not about America first. It's about me first. And Mattis and others like McMaster and Tillerson and many who have left are in a position to shed light on that. And I believe they have an obligation to do so, but they may not. And it gets back to what you were saying about the motivation because it's also the fact that Mattis clearly knows some stuff

that would be really important for the American people to know, right? So we talk about, well, the curiosity of why the Trump administration has kind of had this strange interest in Turkish interests, you know, whether it was the return of Gulen or Rudy Giuliani trying to get, you know, someone who was on the hook for Iran sanctions violations cleared, you know, or what explains this curious impulse that Trump continues to have to allow the Turks to come in and massacre our allies, Mattis must have been in rooms that gave him some indication of why that was happening. He has information from his own experience that is very relevant to these questions of why are American interests being sold out. And what Mattis has done thus far is hide

behind this kind of opaque resignation letter where he said nothing other than like I support allies and wink, wink, this guy doesn't. Well, why don't you tell us what you know about why this person is selling out American interests and selling out American allies? Same thing, Tillerson in this kind of now somewhat famous appearance with Bob Schiefer, made this joke where he's like, yeah, there are a lot of times, and the president asked me to do things or against the law. Well, tell us.

You know, like, these guys are joking about it. Mattis is cashing in on like a corporate speaking tour about leadership and sitting on the knowledge of potential crimes or corrupt activities by the president, like, if you really are putting country first, like, let us know this information. So it's not just that I think they should be criticizing Trump. More importantly, they should be telling Congress or the American people what they know about the potential corruption of our foreign policy. And when does the statute of limitations run out? Because clearly it's run out on Obama, so that must be three years, right? No, ran out pretty quick. I mean, Mattis was giving speeches against the Iran nuclear deal.

You know. It's a bit subjective. Yeah. You think it's a moving target maybe? It's a moving target. Okay. So, Susan, you were in the Clinton administration before working for Obama, and we want to talk in much more detail about some of the policies that happen in Africa, both in your time in your time, both in your chief of the state department. But, I mean, you also had the backdrop of an impeachment proceeding going on for some of that time.

Are there any big lessons you took away from how to manage impeachment besides, like, hey, don't send your chief of staff to the podium to confirm. all the details. Like that seems like a good lesson. But like if there's anything you observed or learned over time or if you're any thoughts on what an impeachment proceeding does to U.S. credibility around the world when you're trying to negotiate with other countries and they're seeing all the shit going on back in Washington.

Well, I think it's really hard to draw analogies, right? Because in the Clinton years, it was purportedly about personal conduct. Yep. And now it's about selling out the national interests of the United States. and that's a very different thing and how it plays internationally I think is a very different thing. In the Clinton administration,

where I served when an impeachment was going on, I was at the State Department rather than the White House, you know, what was striking was how committed everybody was to continuing the business of governing and to not allow what was happening on the impeachment front

to infuse and infect everything else that had to get done. And so there was a very small team of people that from the White House in the legal counsel's office who were dealing with this. The rest of us were doing our jobs. And the President Clinton was still trying to do his job. Because Trump equates himself with the state and sees no difference and he's a narcissist,

everything will grind to a halt in service of his insanity of the day as he continues to spiral downward as a result of this impeachment inquiry. And, you know, there will be no governing done responsibly in service of our national. interests. If it's done at all, it'll be the kind of thing that Bill Barr's doing trying to run around the world, you know, trying to make our allies cough up bogus dirt that doesn't exist to create a narrative that they can use against their political opponents. One more sort of newsy one before we do the longer Africa discussion. So you obviously, both of you spent a million hours in meetings about Iran passing the Iran nuclear deal, whatever it was. A couple weeks ago, all of us were pretty worried about the potential.

of a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Or the U.S. and Iran. Or the U.S. and Iran. And things seem to have cooled off a bit, but the underlying tensions are obviously still there. We now have 1,800 more U.S. service members deployed to Saudi Arabia to work a bunch of equipment that we sold them that they can't figure out

how to fucking turn on, I guess. We got 14,000 more U.S. servicemen and women in the Gulf since May. It's wild. And then we're removing people from the Middle East. It's about ending our Middle East commitment. So how worried are you about tensions escalating between the Saudis and Iran. What do you think Trump can do to calm this down?

Well, I think I'm very worried about that part of the world on tensions escalating. And I don't know that anything is de-escalated. I just think we're just not paying attention. And Trump's not, you know, throwing fuel on the fire every day because he's fueling other fires. But I think there's a real risk that between Yemen, the flow of commerce and everything else through the Persian Gulf, the tit for tat between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Israel stirring the pot, that things could spiral out of control. And I think as Trump finds himself under more pressured domestically, he may try to look for a distraction or manufacture, you know, something that reinforces and rallies his base. And, you know, Iran is a good target for that. Yeah. And, you know, on the nuclear

issue, Tommy, the Iranians recently made some indication that the next phase of their kind of protest of the U.S. pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal by taking their own steps could include kicking inspectors out of certain sites. Yes. Which we, you know, I've said before in this podcast, that's a big deal. You know, like the reacumulation of stockpile is a big deal, but it's, you know, an incremental move meant to signal their displeasure. I've always thought that putting back centrifuges and kicking out inspectors is when this becomes a really big deal. And could trigger a U.S. an Israeli-type response, potentially militarily. But it also just shows the failure of their policy.

So they pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, and they said that their quote-unquote maximum pressure campaign would force the Iranians to capitulate further concessions on the nuclear program and would rein in, check, you know, rollback Iranian influence. It's going perfectly. The opposite has happened. Iran is restarting their nuclear program, potentially kicking out an inspector, we just gave the one part of Syria that wasn't under control of Assad and his Iranian allies

to Assad and his Iranian allies. Iran is just more belligerent towards Saudi Arabia, as you saw in that attack either by the Iranians or their proxies on Saudi oil infrastructure. So it bears attention and doesn't get attention amidst everything else that's going on, just the complete failure of this quote-unquote maximum pressure campaign against Iran. Because they blow up everything Obama does with no plan B. Absolutely no plan B. It's a great way to run a government. Yeah.

All right. But don't worry, Rudy Julian is on. Yeah, Rudy's got it. Send Rudy to Iran. So, okay, Susan, it's July of 1998. You're sitting in a meeting in Nigeria with some State Department colleagues. It's you guys and a top opposition leader named Mashoud Abiola. Yes.

I get it right. So the meeting. Imprisoned opposition leader. Imprised opposition leader. The meeting is going on. I'm sure you're just having a conversation. He starts to sweat. He starts to cough.

Ultimately, he passes out. He has a heart attack. He dies. In our meeting. In your meeting. In effect. You had moments earlier handed him a cup of tea. At which I asked if he wanted because he was coughing so vigorously.

And the men are sitting there, you know, not knowing whether to call a doctor, whether to turn on the air conditioning. They didn't know what to do. It's helpless. So I did offer him some tea, which he thanked me for. He took a couple of sips. And then, you know, to this day, there are people in Nigeria and newspapers that write that I killed Abiola by feeding him poisoned tea. So take us, you write about this extensively in the book, and it's an incredible chapter.

What was it like to be sitting there? And to knowing that conspiracies can whip up quickly. I wasn't thinking about conspiracies. Were you terrified? Well, no. I mean, first of all, it was a weird. thing because he came into the meeting robust. Right.

And, you know, he's joking with Tom Pickering, who had been ambassador to Nigeria, and they were back slapping and talking about, you know, the good old days. He sits down on the couch and he starts telling us about, you know, how he's been poorly treated in prison. And we're in a government guesthouse where I guess he's been removed from solitary confinement and brought to visit us. And I notice that the meeting begins that, because he's wearing sandals and traditional Nigerian costume that his ankles and feet were very swollen. But I didn't make much of that as

he was talking. And then he starts to cough and it gets worse and it gets worse and he starts sweating and it, you know, it was horrible. And what was striking to me was nobody was reacting as if we had a health emergency on our hands. I told his minder to call a doctor. You know, I thought, you know, this was clearly not a mild coughing spell. This was turning into something worse. And so I was worried that he was going to, you know, that something serious was going to happen. I hadn't, you know, as this was unfolding, I didn't expect that he'd actually die in, you know, a few minutes later in the very ugly, rudimentary Nigerian presidential hospital. Right. But he did. And then, you know, that's when it got crazy because the ambassador, the U.S. ambassador in Nigeria, frankly, started freaking out and tried to tell me and Tom Pickering as a visiting delegation we had to leave the country as if we had something to hide.

No. And we're like, hell no. And we had to call back to Washington, explain what had happened, dictate a statement for the White House to release. We had to inform the acting president of Nigeria what had happened. And then we had to go tell Abiola's wives and daughters, plural, what had happened. And so I'm going there with Pickering and the U.S. ambassador. We get in with the wives. How many wives are we talking about? Like three or four, roughly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was overwhelmed by the whaling. I was like kind of lost county, but the whaling was just so piercing. And you were 32, 33 years old? Yeah, I'm 32. We were the youngest assistant secretary of state in history, right? Regional assistant secretary, which is how we got into another problem with Holbrook. We'll come back to them. Anyway, so they're wailing and I turn around and I realized that the men had just left me in there by myself.

They, you know, and so we're just, I'm trying to clean up all these different things that help the wives, tell them, you know, what had happened, advised a Nigerian acting president with Pickering, who was very, you know, responsible and measured to order an international autopsy, just sort of all these things. And then we had to talk to the Nigerian press. I had to write the cable explaining this for history. It's like one of the handful of few cables I actually wrote at that senior level. And then I'm watching, then I'm watching television. vision in the embassy as I'm writing this cable and it's CNN and they're reporting on what had just happened in Nigeria and Jesse Jackson, Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was at that point President Clinton's special representative for the promotion of democracy in Africa. Okay. Is on TV speculating about how it was possible that U.S. officials, you know, were in a meeting when this man died and maybe we did something to kill him.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Fuck. What are you doing, man? I tell my assistant, call his assistant and get him off the stage. Yeah. Get him off the set because he doesn't know what he's talking about. And I have a great relationship with Jesse Jackson.

I think he's a good man. He did a good job in that role. But for that minute when he was, you know, speculating on international television about this was just so not helpful. So it was a crazy day. I can't even imagine. I thought that the Africa section of the book was fascinating to me, this period of time, you know, where there's just huge changes happening. Nelson Mandela is on the scene,

all these African countries at these different transformative moments. One of the things we talked about last week on the podcast was the Prime Minister of Ethiopia winning the Nobel Peace Prize well deserved, in part for his efforts to finally try to end and resolve this... To implement the agreement that we reached in 2000.

Yeah, the... Finally implement it. So with that as kind of backdrop, I thought, can you just describe what this war between Ethiopia and Eritrea was all about, what you tried to do and why it's significant, you know, here we are 20 years later, that this prime minister is finally trying to bring it to an end. Well, in 1998, two neighbors, Ethiopia and Eritrea that had been quite close following the achievement of Eritrean independence earlier in the 90s, and the leaders had been quite close, had a very abrupt and irreparable falling out.

And Eritrean military forces, after what we believe was a border skirmish, moved into occupy territory that had been administered for a long time by Ethiopia. But their border had never been delineated and demarcated. So nobody really knew exactly who it belonged to. But the point was it was being administered and controlled by Ethiopia and Eritrea using force to take it back was a breach of international law. But that really wasn't the point. The point was there was this deep-seated animosity that emerged between the two leaders. And what began as a border skirmish escalated into a massive border war, with cities being bombed and airports being bombed. And it evolved into a World War I-style trench war in which up to 100,000 servicemen on both sides were killed. Wow.

And it was the worst interstate conflict in the world at the time. And the United States early on, because we had productive relationships with both countries and both leaders, stepped in to try to help mediate with an African partner. First, Rwanda and later the African Union through the Algerians. And as a tandem team, the U.S. and the African negotiators worked for the better part of two years to try to bring that conflict to an end. President Clinton was involved. Secretary Albright was involved. but the team that did the bulk of the work on the day-to-day basis was led by former national security advisor Tony Lake, Gail Smith, our friend and colleague. A lot of Gail in this book.

A lot of a girl in this book. She's a hero in this book, literally in some scenes. I mean, including in the plane where someone got sick, but we can come back to that. Yeah, we'll come back to that. And John Prendergast and I were really the team that did the day-to-day negotiation, especially Tony and John. And we finally, after all these. fits and starts in December 2000 agreed, got them to agree to a ceasefire, a peacekeeping operation

to separate them, and a plan to demarcate in the border. But the ceasefire was implemented. The fighting stopped, but for almost 20 years, the peace agreement was never implemented. And, you know, blame belongs on both sides, but arguably more on the Ethiopian side for failing to implement the agreement. And so there was a situation of no war, no peace. And so when the new prime minister Abi came in, one of the first decisions he made, which was quite bold, was to try to reach out to Eritrea and begin a process of normalization in implementing the agreement. And he also released a bunch of political prisoners and took a bunch of reform steps that were overdue in Ethiopia. Meanwhile, Eritrea continues to be led by the same leader who is essentially a dictator.

And, you know, he still has 20 years later young people in army camps that can't leave. And so there are a whole bunch of issues still in both countries that need to be resolved. But what the prime minister of Ethiopia did was jumpstart a process to begin to implement the piece, which was so important. Yeah. So in the book, you write about how, you know, you were working on the, the NSC and the National Security Council handling African Affairs. And then you got offered this job to be the Assistant Secretary of State as the youngest regional assistant secretary ever. You almost

rejected the job in the meeting because you were two months pregnant and hadn't even told your own mother yet, but I had to tell like Tony Lake and Madeline Albright. Sandy Bergen, sorry. I'm pregnant. Yeah, yeah. Exactly who you want to break the news to I'm sure. But it's like, you know, you get confirmed for this job. And a lot of the coolest parts of the book are just the unbelievable trips you took early on. I mean, Ben alluded to one story earlier that's a little less fun where, you know, vomiting on yourself and a flight to Namibia and having Gail Smith have to hose you down at a airport that's less cool.

Literally hose you down in the desert. But like, yeah, but, you know, the presidential level trips are the coolest things in the world, but they're also notoriously brutal. And I, my jaw dropped when I read that you took Bill Clinton on it. I did not take him on it. Yeah, you big you, capital Y. You took Bill Clinton on a six stuff. 12 day, six nation tour, Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana, and Senegal.

Were they fucking crazy? They were fucking crazy. I mean, it was originally five stops, and then I advocated to add Rwanda. So that ad made it six. But can you imagine if we'd done that to Obama? Obama would have killed us. By day, country four, day nine, we would have been dead. You guys also took members of Congress?

We took half of Congress and the entire cabinet and, you know, a huge traveling press corps, because there'd never been ever a big official presidential trip to Africa. Bill Clinton was the first. That's so telling that, you know, it took that long, you know, that, I mean, well, yours was that in 1998. Eight. You know, that's not that long ago. No, and it was, and it was an incredible trip.

I mean, you know, the greeting he received in Ghana, which, as many of your listeners will know, was the first African country to achieve independence, was unlike a greeting I've ever seen anywhere, even bigger than Obama and King. Kenya. Really? It was just... What was the scene? It was just every inch of every mile from the airport to Independence Square, Black Star Square

in Ghana, in Accra, was thick with people, you know, 20, 30 feet deep on either side. With, you know, banners and music, and it was just the most extraordinary welcome. And then in the square, it got so thick that Secret Service really was freaking out because, you know, barriers were crushing down and stuff like this, not because anybody was hostile, but just because there was a crush to welcome the president of the United States. It was amazing. Yeah. How do you, you saw Nelson Mandela. I always wondered when we went on the Obama administration to the Mandela Memorial Service, which is one of the most powerful things, you know, I was ever remember being a part of, you met him as a young woman, young, several times, you know, public,

servant, how do you look at those bookends of like seeing Mandela at kind of his peak, you know, he's just been elected president. He's still very much the man that everybody wants to see. And then being there, you know, 20 years later at his memorial, like when you were on that flight with Obama flying, uh, staying up, writing the speech, were you thinking back on those experiences you had with him in government? And what, what stands out in your experiences with Mandela? Well, Mandela was a fascinating character. On the one hand, you know, he was this huge historical figure who'd sacrificed, you know, 27 years of his life on Robin Island. And I got to visit Robin Island with President Clinton and the delegation as Mandela showed us around his cells and took us out to see the quarry where he had to labor when he was incarcerated and where he lost a portion of his eyesight because of the glare on the,

of the sun on the rocks in the quarry. And, you know, he could be a very gentle, you know, very soft-spoken guy, but he also had a temper. And he had a streak in him that could be quite stubborn, which makes sense if you're going to survive that kind of experience. And so there were issues, even the early days between the United States and South Africa, that were very difficult to resolve from, you know, a lingering case over, called Arms Corps, over, you know, the apartheid government, you know, selling U.S. equipment to places that they

shouldn't that got in the way of our ability to cooperate militarily. Mandela and the new South African government were initially very opposed to the African Growth and Opportunity Act. They thought somehow it was some plot to colonize Africa economically. Wow. And, you know, you had Deputy President Tabo and Becky, who early on was spinning conspiracy theories about HIV AIDS and its origins. And so it was actually, and the other thing was that Mandela was quite close to Gaddafi and, you know, was always trying to get the United States and Gaddafi to reconcile. Yeah. And so he was brilliant. He was passionate. He was principled. But he wasn't always easy.

Yeah. And truthfully. And I mean, a lot of people won't say that out loud. But, you know, this is my experience. Right. So the funeral that we went to together with President Obama was, you know, an opportunity to pay tribute to all that Mandela contributed, not just to South Africa, but to the world. And it was deeply moving, but it was also one of the most bizarre trips we ever took. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, between the complete breakdown of security at the stadium. Yeah. And I write in the book about, you know, how Obama's in a stadium where nobody has been magged,

mean put through, you know, security screening. You know, tens of thousands of people in one of the highest crime countries in the world, and he's there on stage with no flag jacket. Wow. And, you know, Secret Service is tripping. And then there's this crazy interpreter, sign language interpreter, who wasn't actually a sign language interpreter, turns out to be a, turns out to be an imposter standing right here, the president. And then there's the famous selfie.

Yeah, it was the dumbest controversy in history. Right, which the prime minister of Denmark took with the president and her sin was to be attractive. So it was just a crazy thing that all overshadowed what was a phenomenal speech that Obama gave. So that must have pissed you off, Ben. I bet. And then the Castro handshade. Castro handshake. Let's go from one of the most inspiring human beings in recent history to a really shitty topic of Benghazi for a minute.

I want to separate this into pieces, right? Because there's Benghazi, the incident that happened. A terrorist attack. A horrific terrorist attack that tragically killed Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glendorty, and Tyrone Woods, right? And there was, I think, a pretty well-documented series of investigations into what happened that day. Eight investigations by Congress. Yes. But a lack of security, you know, there are a lot of things that I think, you know, were important and real and deserved reckoning, right?

no one here worked on any of those things right you were the united nations at the time we were in the white house we just none of us did security then there's hashtag bengasi which is the right wing fever dream uh the swampy soup of bullshit cooked up by fox news that decided to make you the target of all their attacks all their animosity all their cruelty and reading this book again it was really it was hard it was hard to read those chapters like hard for me having been feeling like One, we were all there in this too, but it was hard for us watching you in the barrel as much as you were in the barrel. We were in the barrel too, right?

All of us trying to deal with this bullshit, but like you were attacked so personally. And also knowing that you felt like you were not sufficiently supported by the White House team, like the only person who was getting your back on a regular basis for a while was Barack Obama. And like, I just think, I don't know. It's, hashtag Benghagazi is. a parable about the madness that we're now seeing all day every day from the Trump administration. And this is why it's simple to read. Because you understand Benghazi to understand Trump.

Right, because Lindy Graham isn't just a piece of shit now. He's been that piece of shit. Lindy Graham was... I said it. I said it. Damn it. Finally. He was a piece of shit. He's lying. Lying, lying, lying, lying and raising money off of the death of four Americans. So anyway, that's my little speech. It was just, it made me so infuriated to read it. And I guess the other, I mean, one way to end to this conversation, too, is, is one of the things that's interesting in your book is, okay, so, you know, I was the guy who called you, right, and said, I mean, I still remember this, like, Jen Paul Murray calls me into the press

directors. I was like, hey, we really need someone out on the Sunday shows, right? I'm like, you got to be kidding me. It's like, why? We're dealing, the world is on fire, you know, like, literally, there's, because of this video, like, I'll say that, you know, there are protests, they're violent, anti-Muslim video, they're violent protests. There's not just Benghazi's happened.

They're all over the Muslim world. And we're all super busy. And they're like, well, but it looks like the world is on fire and we need somebody out there to kind of give a steadying message. And also, Bibi Netanyahu, who's booking himself on Sunday shows, preparing to attack our Iran policy. So we anticipated that we were going to have to deal with that. So I said, okay, I'll reach out to Hillary and, you know, that didn't happen.

But let's, because we've talked about this, we haven't talked about it much yet. So you called me first after you had already reached out to Hillary. Yeah. And you said, we've asked Secretary Clinton if she'll go on the shows. We haven't heard back yet. But in case she won't, would you be willing to do it? That was the first call. This is like 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah. And it's on like Friday. Friday. It's Friday. It's close to the day. It's Friday. And that Friday is the day that everything is burning in the Middle East because Friday prayers are days that people protest. And so literally, Tom and I have a split screen on in our office that shows like there people torture.

a hearties in Lebanon, black flags raised over our embassy in Tunisia where people were killed. The perimeter of our embassy being breached in Khartoum, I mean, it is mass gas. So I say to you why, you know, when you call me back a couple hours later and said, Hillary said, no, you know, would you do it? I said, well, why does she say no? And you said, well, you know, I think they're... She's tired. Yeah, tired of been a rough week. what I should have asked was did you ask Donnellan?

So I did. So. The National Security Advisor. I kind of, but I, knowing, you know, look, Tom is a great guy. Like, he's favorite thing to do wasn't necessarily to be. He hated doing press. In front of the cameras and interviews. So I remember kind of going to his office and beginning to raise.

He doesn't seem so reluctant now. Well, none of them are now. It's very weird seeing John Brennan do an hour of 1 p.m. Cable on MSNBZ. Actually, this, you know what? Thank you for saying. that because I'm going to get a little thing off my chest too, which is like, I always said to go out on the worst stuff, you know, and, you know, it's like, oh, we need someone to talk about Syria.

Like, Ben, can you do these, like, five cable hits, you know? And all these guys are not like Brennan and Donnellin and, you know. I feel like, we're a little down the rabbit hole. But like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're just talking about this, though. So, like, but this is something that is uniquely our conversation. So, Tom says, no, so then you, you said to me, um, okay, I'll do this. if you do my prep is what I remember, right? And so I think what's important for people to get is to us, this is like, because the reason it's important to say this is

to the right, to hashtag Benghazi, we then set about between Friday evening and Sunday morning a scheme. Creating an entire conspiracy theory, you know, like literally if you, to try to understand what Lindsay Graham and Mike Pompeo and all these lunatics, like, think. It said, we invented the video didn't even exist and we invented it and we somehow got the entire U.S. government to agree to be a part of this conspiracy theory and we somehow orchestrated

the CIA writing talking points and when in fact what happened is we asked the CIA, hey, can you give us the latest points on what you think happened? And they were doing that anyway for Congress. So they sent that to you. I took our press guidance, which is what Jay Carney, the white house press sector used, like, on other issues, on other issues, dropped it into a memo, sent it to you. I remember we did one phone call on like a Saturday afternoon where we went through these questions. After my football game at Ohio State. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I remember I was in the parking lot of a liquor store. I was in the airport at Columbus. Yeah. I mean, this is, so this is not. My kids running around wondering what the hell I'm doing on the phones. So we were very focused on the conspiracy. Yeah. This is, and the reason it's worth reading this part of the book, and these are not like,

we were going about our lives dealing with all kinds of stuff, multitasking ten things at a time, and just having to deal with the fact that you have to go on these Sunday shows, you above all. And yet that has become like a creation story of some conspiracy theory. My mother was right. That's the moral of the story. She was.

Because after you called me, and I said, reluctantly, I was taking my kids to Ohio State for this football game. But, you know, if nobody else will do it, and you're asking me to do it as the White House, I'll do it. And my thinking was, you know, we're a team.

We had a really bad week. I've been asked to play a role. I thought I could play it, and I agreed to do it. So I get to my mother's house who just had her fourth or fifth cancer surgery and was just coming off of a stroke. And she asked me, so what are you doing this weekend? I said, well, I'm taking the kids to Ohio State, and then I've agreed to go on all the Sunday shows.

And she's like, what? Why? And I said, you know, explain the whole thing of how you'd ask me. And she said, I smell a rat. Where's Hillary? Why are you doing this? I was like, come on, mom, don't be ridiculous. I've done this before.

Yeah, it'll be fine. And of course, it wasn't. So, yes, always listen to your mother. But she had the intuition that I suspect others had, however tired or bad weeks they'd had, that, you know, whoever's going to be out in the middle of a political campaign, or any other hot crisis and is trying to provide the best current information, which inevitably will change, is going to be targeted.

And not just for the message, but the messenger, him or herself. And that's what happened to me. And my mom perceived a risk that I didn't fully perceive because I wasn't thinking about myself. Right. Yeah. So one of the hardest things to read was after you left the White House, you had a friend who worked for Fox, and you asked that individual. I mean, so much of this Benghazi nonsense was cooked up in Fox News.

In hindsight, it's even more insane to me that people listen to Sean Hannity and let him create a narrative, given that he lives an alternative universe. But this Fox producer told you when you asked, how did I, Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador of the UN, no oversight role over the embassy or the consulate in Benghazi or embassy security generally, how did I become the villain? And he said, individuals make great villains. Right. How did you receive that impression? Well, it was fascinating to have an inside perspective on how Fox operates. So he was even more forthcoming than that. He said, you know, look, Fox has this very deep bond with its viewers.

And it knows how to energize and rile up its viewers. And making them angry is how they get ratings. And a way to make them angry is to create villains that they can target and, you know, and vilify. and you always need fresh villains. And he explained how the original Fox villain was in fact Bill Clinton. And then Barney Frank and some others, and we were sort of new iterations. Yeah, that's a JV villain.

And Hillary, of course, became a major Fox villain. But I had given them all the wherewithal, he explained, to be villainized because I'd given them five different sets of video on these shows. And they could loop them and they could turn me into a new villain. and now on Fox many years later, they just need to say my name and it's like, you know, like people start twitching. It's like an automatic, you know, trigger point. So it was fascinating to learn from that person's point of view how they engage their viewers. And now you can see it playing out.

And Trump is the master of it. He makes people angry every day. How cool is it to see Mike Pompeo and Trey Gowdy, two of the most vicious, aggressive, Benghazi, conspiracy theorists who demanded oversight all day every day, now helping Trump cover up his crimes. It's really rich. Yeah. Pompeo in particular, in state. Yeah, Pompeo in particular. One of the things, so you write about in this book, one of the things I was

you kind of grew up in this Washington that no longer exists where, you know, people were friends across political persuasions and there was this kind of, you know, civility, if you want to call it that. You know, the caricature of you is this, you know, from Fox is you're this kind of hot-headed, hot-headed, you know, partisan person. When actually I've always, you're very warm and generous and you look out for the people around you, including me, even though I asked you to go on the Sunday shows. You're my boy, boy.

And, but you've also, I've noticed you've been able to work with people who you disagree with very strongly. One of the more interesting things in your book in terms of characters in diplomacy is Turk and the Russian ambassador of the United Nations. You know, we didn't clash with Russia in the first term quite as hard as in the second term, obviously, when you had Ukraine. But, you know, they're still on the other side of most issues, or a lot of issues at the UN. How did you set about building a relationship with, you know, someone who's an adversary, but you have to make a partner on some things and you have to be. be able to agree very, you know, very stridently, but still not have that, you know, screw up a

diplomatic relationship. What just talk about that relationship you built with Chirkin, and, and how that was both personal and also allowed you to get things done. Well, by the time I got to the UN as Ambassador, Chirkin had been there five years already, and he was sort of a legend. He understood how the system worked. He knew all the tricks of the trade. He knew all the other ambassadors.

he was very smart and very charming and very combative. You could be a complete asshole or you could be a fun person to hang out with on Saturday night. And I think what began between us when I got there and realized that I was either going to allow somebody like a churkin to bully and intimidate me or I was going to do as my father always taught me, which was not take crap off of anybody. You know, this was a classic case where I had to be assertive from the very beginning and let him know that I could give it back to him as well as he could dish it. And I wasn't going to be intimidated by him. And by the way, I could be as funny as he was too. And, you know, like, there are two kinds of bullies, right?

They're the ones that are really insecure and find people who push back that much more intimidating. I put Holbrook in that category. And then there are the Churkens who actually say, okay, I get this. She and I are on the same page. And, you know, I respect her. And, you know, and then it came to be, and I like her. We liked each other. We had a good personal relationship, even as we fought like cats and dogs.

And even as, you know, I relate a story in there about how he tries to expel my son, Jake, from a security council behind closed door meeting where staff and other, you know, people can participate. and he was just sitting there listening because he just absorbed everything like a sponge at the UN when he ever he could get up there. And so finally, Chirkin tries to break up the meeting and saying, you know, I'm not going to allow this young person to be in here. So we take it out into the hallway. Jake's standing with me and Churkin's yelling at me going, why do you allow your child to watch Security Council debates? I'm like, why not? It's a learning experience.

It's the international community. What's the problem? He goes, do you let your kid watch pornography? I said no and he's like Why the hell do you let him watch these debates? I was like, okay

so that was like we're screaming at each other red-faced and that was the way we fought you know but also then we could just you know he and his wife

and me and my husband Ian go out for dinner and have a wonderful time and laugh and joke so the point is that where you're dealing with people

who are multifaceted as he is or was. Sadly, he's passed. You know, he's smart. He's working for his country. I'm working for my country. We got to get along and work together on some things. We're going to fight like cats and dogs on other things. But, you know, he's a human being. Yeah, yeah. And taking the time to understand him as an individual and what animates him and moves him is how I think you have to deal with people that you're working with, whether you're on the same side or the opposite side.

And taking it back to what you said about my upbringing. You know, I grew up in Washington, D.C., born in the mid-60s, grew up in the 70s and 80s, went to schools with children who were the sons and daughters of the elite, people who were members of Congress and ambassadors and all of that stuff. But it was bipartisan. One of my very closest friends growing up was the daughter of a Republican senator from Tennessee. and, you know, in my cohort were the daughters and the sons of people

who served in the Nixon administration and went to jail for Watergate. And this was a time when members of Congress brought their families to Washington and lived there. People knew each other as human beings. And it's really hard to demonize and hate people when you actually know them as human beings. Yeah, absolutely.

And so that's what we've lost. And it's what I argue we really need to try to get back. Yeah. There's a ton more about your upbringing, your career in tough love, and it's a fantastic book, and everybody should check it out. I have no idea how we've almost been talking for an hour. Yeah, we're like at our time. Someone asked you one last question, and we'll let you go.

But in 2018, you toyed the idea of running for the U.S. Senate against Susan Collins in Maine, who, by the way, was particularly annoying during the period of time, Benghazi to when you decided not to be a candidate for the Secretary of State job. You ended up not running, but I was hoping you could sort of tell us a little bit about why and what your thoughts are about, I don't know, any other future government service. Well, I impulsively tweeted from the Phoenix airport as I was about to get on a cross-country flight that I would, you know, some, Jen Saki tweeted, who's going to run against Susan Collins? And somehow my fingers hit my iPhone and type two letters, M.E. and I really I don't know what it you know what made me do that except that I'd been watching Susan Collins on the television

in the Phoenix airport declare her vote for Brett Kavanaugh which was in a long list I think of betrayals of the people of Maine and the United States of America are her most egregious and I've long had family ties in Maine and I have a home in Maine and I love the state but I thought about it quite seriously because I forced myself to by having that impulsive moment. And I consulted with my family and I consulted with folks who knew me in politics very well. And at the end of the day, I decided that this was not the time for me for very personal reasons.

My daughter is a junior in high school. She's our last child at home. Our son is already in college. And I had spent eight years away from my kids. You know, whether I was living in New York and they were in Washington when I was UN ambassador or when I was national security advisor and living under the same roof, but seeing them very infrequently, I did not want to either uproot my daughter and pull her out of high school at that critical point or leave her again. And so at the end of the day, of all the things, all the factors, that was the most important one. And, you know, causing me and my husband to agree that this was not the right time. So future, I don't know.

We'll see. Future, TBD. I like that. That leave us hanging. Well, this book is amazing season. The book's fantastic. You've always been just such a big personality with such immense experience and kind of caring about the right things with the country and having compassion for the people around you.

And it's all in this book. I mean, the history of your family is like a, for me also was kind of a history of a certain African-American experience in this country. The history of your government service, you'll learn about Africa, you'll learn how the State Department works. You'll learn also what it's like to become a young mother, a woman in a man's field, unfortunately, although that's changing over time. And, of course, our administration. So people should really check it out.

Learn who Susan gave the middle finger. Learn who the furies are. All kinds of cliffhangers here at the end of his interview. It's a great book. That's for Susan Rice. Wonderful to see you. Thank you for being here. Thank you both.

Appreciate you, Tommy and Ben. Thanks to Susan Rice for coming in. It was a lot of fun having her here. Shout at Lindy Graham. We're huge fans. Yeah. If you missed that excerpt of her choice words about Graham and Mangazzi, that went out on Potsie of America on Monday. So check it out.

Thank you, guys. Thanks. Pods of the World is a product of crooked media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nara Malconian, and Milo Kim,

who film and share these interviews on video each week.