Pod Save the World - Brazil's January 6th?

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Tommy and Ben discuss the riots in Brazil, Biden’s trip to Mexico AND IMMIGRATION POLICY, what a Republican House majority means for defense spending, why you should care about Nigeria’s next election, Iran sentencing protesters to death, MIKE POMPEO’S SAD BOOK and Prince Harry letting it rip on the Royal family. Then Ben is joined by the cast of the documentary “Navalny” to discuss Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, his imprisonment, and Putin’s murderous reign. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to POTSafe the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, you survive in the rain? It's pretty bad. People in L.A. are flipping out about rain. I will say, like, people were flipping out last night in my house, my two daughters put on their bathing suits with their friend, and we're out in the backyard at 7.30.

Like, it was pretty wild. That seems fun. Yeah, we had fun. Kind of like a slip-inside thing. Speaking of freaking out, Ben, it was a tough weekend to be a New England Patriots fan. I'm not trying to say that I was the victim. Look, there was a horrible... We played the Bills, is the backstory that people need to know.

I mean, yeah, but... They were an emotional favorite. It's one of the things that were, like, if you guys had won that game and made the playoffs, your reward would have been to lose to the Bills in the first round of the playoffs. That's exactly right. For those who don't know what the hell we're talking about

and hate us for talking about sports, in the last Buffalo Bills game, there was a horrible incident in a guy named Damar Hamelin, who was their safety, suffered a cardiac arrest. It was literally the worst thing I've ever seen on a sports field. They canceled the game against the Bengals at the time, and the Patriots had them this weekend.

And I'm used to being the most hated franchise in the history of sports franchises, but boy, did it feel lonely cheering for the pad? It's felt kind of wrong. Yeah, nobody's written for you guys. Not that I normally would be, but in this case, I particularly wasn't. Be you know, Ben.

Fandom is about cheering for your team when everyone hates them the most. Yes. Packed show today. We got right-wing fascist trashing government buildings in Brazil. We'll explain what happened and talked about the comparisons.

to our own insurrection on January 6th. We'll cover President Biden's trip to Mexico City, his new immigration proposals, and the potential national security impact of Kevin McCarthy, finally becoming Speaker of the House, some stories out of Ukraine, Nigeria, China, Iran, climate change news, more classified documents in the wrong place. Mike Pompeo's a book blurb fan, I guess, and then there's a royal mess in the wake of Prince Harry's new book. That's one way of putting it, yeah.

Yeah. So, oh, you did an interview this week. What are people going to hear? So I did this interview with the people behind the documentary Navalny. That's great. Which people should watch. It's on HBO Max. It was on CNN a bunch over the last year. They had access to Navalny in the period of time between when he was airlifted for medical treatment after being poisoned and it was in Germany before he went back. Now, a bunch of cool things happened and obviously some very true. tragic things happened. What was cool that happened is with the help of Bellingat, and we have

Christo, who's the lead guy from Bellingat, they found the team that poisoned Navalny and called them. One of the craziest stories. Nivalny on the phone got one of the guys to talk to, he posed as a Russian national security official and got him to talk to him for like 50 minutes and explain what went wrong and why he wasn't killed. Not the best trained spy. Yes. But then, you know, we talk about Navalny, not just about the film. We talk a lot about Navalny himself. He's obviously currently in solitary confinement. One of the people joined us is one of the lead people at the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation. So it's a great interview to hear not just about this film, but about Navalny and obviously the state of the Russian opposition today.

That sounds really, really good. I cannot wait to watch that. Also, if you're looking for great content, Ben, Crooked's podcast series, Mother Country Radicals may have already ended its 10-episode run, but the praise sure hasn't. That's my line for this one. Did you write that? No. Mother Country Radicals. Great show. on a bunch of the 2022 best list, an NPR lot of the show as a remarkable way into a really potent emotional, historical moment.

It's a great show. It's fantastic. Hosted by Zay Dorn and the team, so if you haven't already, listen to all 10 episodes. Check it out wherever you get your podcast. It really is just a great series. Tommy, did you happen to peruse the top 10 podcast list for Medusa, the Russian independent news source? No. Because another Russia did make the top 10 list. Hell yeah. And Medusa has a great, like, real independent news. Is that a Russia? Yeah. Yeah. So they have some street cred. Yeah, they got real street cred. I like that. Just continue the Russian theme here. Take that to the bank, man. Yeah. That's beautiful. Okay. So speaking of radicals, we got these horrible scenes in Brazil on Sunday when thousands of supporters of former president, Jair Bolsonaro, basically just ransacked every building they could find in the capital city, Brasilia. And what they claimed was the protest of the election results. So Bolsonaro has been saying the election was rigged. stolen from him and suggesting for months that violence was the answer. So these idiots, the rioters,

they trashed the presidential palace, the Supreme Court, Brazil's Congress. It took hours and hours for authorities to get the situation under control. And there was some scary violence in the process. Do you see the video of this police officer? He pulled off a horse and beaten. Yeah. I think the people were beating the horse too. Yeah. I mean, the horse didn't do anything wrong here. Clearly, the horse was innocent. So President Lula de Silva declared emergency powers. He took control of the security response. And he said that there had been, quote, incompetence, ill will or bad faith of the people in charge. So he thinks, you know, basically local Bolsonaro supporters and police kind of let this happened. Before we started recording, I saw that the Supreme Court in Brazil ordered the arrest

of Brazil's former top security official. Previously, the court had suspended the governor of the capital district for 90 days so authorities can investigate what happened with the security failings. So far, about 1,500 of these riders were detained. But Ben, once again, since he's morons, all live streamed themselves committing crimes. I think there might be some prosecutions coming down the pike pretty soon. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how they tackle this one. You know, this like January 6th is interesting because in terms of Bolsonaro in his role, he said all the quiet part out loud.

Like he was saying that the election was rigged before the election happened. He was saying that the voting machines were going to be rigged before the election happened. And he called on people to, you know, resist results. So he followed the Trump playbook to a T. Yeah, sure did. We talked before about the fact that he's done this at every stage of his recent political career, like his campaign the first time was kind of modeled on Trump's with social media and conspiracy theory and the kind of demagoguing of elites. He obviously has to camp to Florida, which we can get to in a moment. And I think it was telling, you know, that, and I take back.

I mean, I think we said or I said last week. We both did. At least they didn't have a January 6th. I mean, I guess we spoke too soon. What was weird about this is it wasn't attached to like a theory, you know, like the fake electors that Trump had on January 6th and this idea of overturning the results. It was just kind of an extension of these protests that we've seen in Brazil, which have been kind of roberting. roadblocks, disruptions, dudes like camped outside of military bases, like just hoping that there'll be a coup.

Yeah. What was notable that you alluded to, though, is if you look at this and, you know, having been to Brasilia, there these big government buildings, there was not any real security than anyone could see. No. It did feel like some of the, not all, obviously, but some of these police officers or security people seem to be pretty chummy with, uh, there was reports that they were from helping them through some of the buildings. So yeah, I mean, Lula is like, Lula's furious. And he's immediately

trying to take control of the security situation. Like they, I think they brought together, like the heads of government, the Brazilian military this week. But to your point, Ben, I mean, I wrote, the Washington Post had some of the quotes, uh, from Bolsonaro. He said, uh, there's a new type of thief, the ones who want to steal our liberty. If necessary, we will go to war. Yeah. He also said in September of 2021. I want to tell all those who want to make me unelectable in Brazil. Only God removes me from power. There are three options for me. Jail, death, or victory, and I'm telling the scoundrels, I will never be imprisoned. Yeah. And I think that part of what we have to internalize here, if we haven't already, is that you should pay attention to what these people say. Like,

they're saying it for a reason. And they usually, these kind of strong man autocrats, like, they tell you what their playbook is publicly, right? And so Bolsonaro's been doing this. for the better part of a year now. And look, Brazil has big problems to sort out because it's clearly a deeply polarized society. Lula had previously been prosecuted and imprisoned on corruption charges. Now it seems like Bolsonaro will face some kind of legal process. Certainly a lot of these people that stormed these government buildings will. This kind of back and forth, you know, is pretty destabilizing in South America's biggest democracy.

but you got to hope that there can just be an institutional center that can hold through this. I think the other couple of things to point out, the conspiracy theories in Brazil are as widespread and as crazy as what we have here with Q&O. Oh, yeah. Like if you look at the interviews with these people, they believe kind of crazy things, you know, like Lula is trying to create some kind of one government of all of South America or their Mike Lindell adjacent, you know, my pillow guy. No, literally, Mike Dundell has the. series about the voting machines being hacked and all this stuff. And it kind of plays into kind of the religious divide in Brazil, which we talked about a few weeks ago with Tabitha Amaral, a member of Congress down there, which is that you have this

really growing and fervent evangelical population that seems to have infused this Bolsonaro movement with like a kind of religious zeal, which is never a good thing to bring into politics. So it's going to be a bumpy few years for Brazil as it is. here, frankly, and you just have to hope that that some kind of center and institutional process can hold, that there's some accountability for this, and that there's not like an insurrectionist cabal embedded in Brazil's institutions. Yeah. And look, I mean, Lula didn't seem to be going for sort of a reconciliation message to begin

with. I mean, his inaugural speech was scorched earth. He said Bolsonaro had all but destroyed the Brazilian state. He called Bolsonaro's actions during COVID genocide, so he's not pulling any punches. He also was trying to figure out who paid for 40 buses that took people to Brasilia for this set of protests that turned into this violence. But so people, I think, are understandably comparing what happened Sunday to our insurrection on January 6th. Like the images look identical. So let's dig into that a bit.

So some of the similarities, like we just talked about, the rioters were motivated by these false claims by Bolsonaro that the election was stolen. Those lies were amplified across social media. So the buses I just mentioned to Brasilia were organized on Telegram. There were conspiracy theories about rig ballots were top search results on TikTok. Twitter has been a safe haven for right wing, Bolsonaro, goons, especially after Elon Musk fired the entire Brazilian content moderation team, which was only eight people to begin with. Facebook is now going to take stuff down that supports the attack. So they're starting to move, but it wasn't just social media. The election lies were pushed by Mago World here, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Mike Lindell.

like you just said. Here's some key differences. January 6th was an effort to stop the election from being certified. There was a purpose to it. In Brazil, the election had already been certified. Lula had already been sworn at the power a week before. Brazil's Congress was not in session and like no work was disrupted. So the point is that this violence seems even more pointless and more stupid.

These guys just smashed stuff. They damaged works of art by famous Brazilian artists. They beat up journalists. They threw electronics out of windows for no reason at all. So, I don't know, how are you thinking about the comparison between January 6th and what happened in Brazil this weekend? Because, I don't know, I get maybe like reflexively allergic to making everything about Trump. But certainly there are one-to-one connections between like the Trump family and the Bolsonaro

family and the messages and all that we saw on Sunday. Yeah, I'd say, first of all, Brazil is the country that has been the closest. to the U.S. and its political dissent, you know, it, it does really mirror what's happened here in a lot of ways, not just this latest event, but like the whole last few years. At the core of that, there really is this kind of far-right international that Bolsonaro really raised its hand to be a part of. And Bolsonaro's kid, he's got like a Don Jr. kid who, like, pals around with Steve Bannon,

you had Jason Miller, the Trump operative going down to Brazil. Bolzoro's kid went to that South Dakota like election lie conference in like Lindell through. He went to CPAC as well, right? And so one thing to watch is there actually is like a kind of coordinated mechanism internationally for this kind of brand of global far right politics. It reminded me not just of January 6th. It also kind of reminded me of that that freedom convoy in Canada where this kind of vaguely financed effort of far right truckers and anti-vax people and weird. and Ted Cruz enthusiasts kind of occupied part of Ottawa. This feels like it's going to be with us, you know, these kind of disruptive far-right demonstrations,

and that has echoes of January 6th. The other thing that feels similar politically is, like you said, Lula is not a conciliatory figure. I support Lula. I'm glad he's president of Brazil, but he's an older guy who's not going to be around politically for that much longer. And as is the case here, he's not nearly kind of polarizing. as Joe Biden is, but the generational handoff hasn't happened. So even, you know, here we still have Trump and Biden. There, it's still Bolsonaro and Lula is the dominant figures. To get out of this,

you know, stalemate in Brazil, there's going to have to be some shift to a different kind of politics and different politicians. And I think that's going to be necessary. Yeah, what is different is January 6th was a much more, as you said, evolved plot here. I mean, there was a legal theory to block the election. This is more just like, you know, a, you know, a. Look, an effort, I think that if you can assign intent to Bolsonaro and the people there, I don't think that they believe that they were going to overturn the election, but they clearly want to kind of make Brazil feel ungovernable, intractable to weaken Lula. If there's hard economic times or some political crisis, he'll be very, you know, vulnerable. So I think they're just trying to kind of make this as difficult as possible for Lula while kind of creating a way for some Bolsonaro comeback. So President Biden called Lula.

I think he invited him to Washington. He's going to come in early February, which is smart. Good example of the U.S. government trying to elevate progressive leaders that actually care about democracy. The sticky question is, what do you do about former president, Bolsonaro, who is just hanging out in Florida? He is reportedly here on what's called an A1 diplomatic visa, which is a visa for heads of state. Now that he's no longer in that role, he has 30 days to apply for another visa or to go home. home. Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Advisor was asked if there had been a request from Brazilian authorities to return Bolsonaro for prosecution or something there had not been yet.

Bolsonaro is reportedly back in the hospital dealing with complications once again from the guy got stabbed on the campaign trail in 2018. It's the crazy story. So complicated, but also not a good look for the U.S. if Bolsonaro was helping, you know, foment violent insurrections between trips to Publix and Disneyland. Yeah. I mean, first of all, we talked about this kind of sad life that he seems to have here where he's going to KFC by himself and publics and, you know, the rest of it. He's kind of a Mara Lago enthusiast. But, you know, it speaks to, first of all, this kind of far-right Latin American presence in Florida, right?

It's this kind of weird platform. And I think the Brazilian diaspora there had a lot of, like, diehard Bolsonaro fans too. we've seen this with the Colombians, we've seen this with Cubans, we've seen this with Venezuelans. Florida's this kind of weird safe haven. Now, look, I imagine if, you know, it is kind of weird that this guy is hanging out in Florida. It's really weird.

There's like an insurrection on his bath in Brazil. Like, to cut to the chase, like, I don't think he should be here. I don't think we should allow him to stay here. Like, why would it, we wouldn't do this if like some Brit was trying to overthrow the British government from. Boris Johnson in Florida. Yeah, Boris Johnson was running insurrections from Florida. And it may be that the Brazilians don't want Bolsonaro there because maybe his presence

could be destabilizing. But I just, I don't like this idea of like offering up Florida as this kind of like home base for autocrats. No, I don't either Trump or Bolsonaro. Yeah. Yeah. So I just don't, I do think we should be scrutinizing his presence here. And I don't know why he should be afforded the privilege of a visa.

what's he doing here other than needing what purpose is like other than like his KFC fix and Disney World visits does he have here you know? No not a lot I imagine I imagine this won't actually be that tough a call for Tony Blinken to be like no we're not

going to grant that visa interesting question for Ronda Santos how he positions it you know I mean in the right wing here generally whether they continue to embrace Bolsonaro or not you know they love insurrections yeah okay so speaking of president Biden he is in Mexico City Tuesday for the North

American leader's summit. He's going to spend time with President Lopez Obrador of Mexico, who's more commonly referred to as Amlo, and Canadian Prime Minister and POTSafe the World guest, more importantly, Justin Trudeau. Ben, you often hear the summit refer to in the press as the Three Amigos Summit, which is just rubs me the wrong way. That's weird. It dates back, that, that dates back to, like, the Bush years. I think Bush like coined that. It's a very bushy and, you know, kind of probably, probably, I don't. intentionally like vaguely racist. Yeah, let's...

But like, uh, the knolls, right? Like, we could have a whole segment here on foreign policy speak. The acronym we used in the Obama universe was NALS, North American Leaders Summit. That doesn't work. Nobody knew what that was. So we'd be like, yeah, this is NALs coming up and like, even like the journals who covered it had no idea what we're talking about. Um, just addicted to acronyms.

Yes. But it's, you know, I mean, we should be getting together with our fellow American leaders. Oh, take the meeting. Let's just not call it the Three Amigos. Let's put that in the bucket that we're leaving behind with the warrant terror. I mean, like, we'll leave it with the Steve Martin, Martin Short Chevy Chase movie, which people should have watched. If you're looking for Three Amigos content, I'd be looking not to summits, but to that movie. There you go.

So ahead of Biden's visit, the Mexican authorities arrested a cartel leader named Ovidio Guzman, who's the son of El Chapo, the very famous cartel boss. It was interesting to see this arrest happened because it was clearly timed for Biden's visit. And in the past, Amlo has said that this is exactly the kind of like so-called kingpin operation that he does not like. Remember in the election he said, I think like hugs, not bullets or something like that. He wants to move on understandably from this kind of drug war operation because they tend to be very bloody. I think 30 people were killed in this operation. And they obviously haven't stopped the flow of drugs across the border at all. I don't know if you saw this. The Washington Post had a big series on like fentanyl and the U.S. Mexico counter drug efforts that was, worth reading that got into like kind of the details of some of these operations, but very worth your time. But most of the Biden visit is focused on immigration. Biden went to the border before Mexico City. They rolled out a bunch of new immigration plans. Those include humanitarian parole programs for migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba. Each country gets to bring 30,000 people in per month if they can meet certain conditions like buying a plane ticket, having a U.S. sponsor to stay with.

At the same time, the Biden team is trying to create more penalties for individuals who try to enter the country via Mexico or enter illegally in some way. They're trying to basically discourage people from showing up at the border to make this all more complicated then. Biden has been fighting to get rid of Title 42, which is that Trump era policy to expel everyone in the name of preventing the spread of COVID, but is also using Title 42 as his basis to expel people. They're preserving Trump era policies that would change the way asylum works. So stepping back because this is confusing. I'm struggling with how to think about this policy change. I didn't like Title 42 when Trump did it. I don't like it just because Joe Biden is now in charge. Same with Remain in Mexico and other Trump era policy.

I also have a lot of sympathy for how difficult this is to solve when you're in the White House and Congress won't do anything. Maybe there is some merit and benefit to doing this kind of country-by-country approach to dealing with migration and refugee flows. How are you thinking about kind of like the totality of what you've heard over the last few weeks. I think, first of all, it is really important to note that this is an unsolvable, well, it's probably an unsolvable problem, period, but it's particularly an unsolvable problem without Congress, right? So just to take a couple pieces of this, obviously immigration reform has been languishing,

the idea that you might legalize the status of people who've been here for a long time, dreamers, et cetera. But then also, when this was really upticking in the later, Obama years, the asylum claims at the border, part of what the Republicans did is there was no limit to the amount of funding that they would provide for border security, for ICE, for deportations, but they wouldn't provide similar funding for immigration judges, for people to hear the asylum claims. It takes a huge surge in resources to process the enormous amount of claims that are coming to our border. And so a cohesive way of trying to begin to solve this problem would be,

hey, what legal status can we provide for people who are here and who we want to stay here? How can we create a lot more order and resources around processing asylum claims? How can we reform maybe the legal immigration system to make that work more efficiently? The Republicans have kind of gummed up those works and the absence of immigration reform makes it very hard to solve these problems. And so then you end up kind of playing this game of whack-a-mole. I personally am pretty uncomfortable with walking away. from the principle that people can pursue asylum.

I mean, that's an international legal obligation that the United States has. The international community condemned it when Trump did it. Yeah, they did. And we can't say, as did this show. I said this show. And as it, we did a whole episode of missing America to the stands who remember that about this whole issue, which is that how can we say to Europeans and others like, hey, you got to, you know, do your part for refugees and for political asylum seekers who have a valid claim

when we ourselves are kind of coming up with clever ways of abortions. of avoiding it. So I think it's a principle that has to remain a part of our solution, even as the numbers may make it impractical, particularly given the lack of resources to process these claims. All that said, part of what you have to do is if you go through those countries, I'm also struck Tommy that this is actually not like in the past where you had a lot of economic migrants from Mexico. And the fact that the countries are Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, these are countries where in Haiti, right? These are countries where people are leaving dire circumstances, political violence, repression, humanitarian crises, and there are things that can be done. And I'm

belaborate because we talked about before, but improving the humanitarian circumstance in Venezuela and Cuba through certain types of sanctions relief, having a much more coherent and sustained strategy of trying to address the political crisis in Haiti. Nick Rago is a bit tougher, given the political leadership there. But I do think you can, you know, yes, you can move out some of the asylum processing. You can increase the numbers of people who are coming in through established means. But you can also try to reduce the humanitarian crises in these places to slow the flows to the border. You're not going to solve it, but you can make it a more manageable issue, I think.

Yeah. It's interesting, like, look, it seems clear that President Biden knows that this is going to be the number one thing Republicans want to talk about over the next two years leading into his reelection. So they're like, okay, let's take it head on. Let's go to the border. Let's talk about what's going on. Let's roll out these new programs. We'll see how it works. I don't know yet.

But speaking of the House, Ben, so after 15 humiliating rounds of votes, that's fair to say, our friend and mentor, Kevin McCarthy, is now Speaker of the House, California's own. At least he has the title for a few days or weeks. So we covered the political backstory before, but I wanted to see what you thought of possible national security implications. Some things that jumped out in me, just policy-wise, McCarthy is pledged to balance the budget over 10 years. They want to pretend they're going to do that just by cutting discretionary spending.

It's not possible. It means they will have to cut entitlement programs like Medicaid or Medicare or defense spending. So it does seem like defense cuts are coming down the bike. And when Jim Jordan was asked about this and how it might work, he said, maybe focus on getting rid of all the woke policies in our military, we'd have the money we need to make sure our troops get the pay raise they deserve. We have the weapon systems and the training that needs to be done. So we're ready to deal with our adversaries around the planet. That's what we want to focus on. So very serious thinking there about defense spending by cutting the woke.

Noted defense intellectual Jim Jordan. You know, what the price tag is on these so-called woke policies. I'm not particularly familiar with. It's a bunch of bullshit. I mean, this is a tricky one because I actually think the defense budget is way too high. Even the Biden administration that has raised defense spending has then had Congress plus up by tens of billions of dollars, even what they're asking for, which is already a bloated defense budget. Now, the way, and we dealt with this in the Obama years, they had something called sequester, which was like the hard cap on spending across the board that was imposed, impacted both defense spending and discretionary spending, which is social programs and other things. That's actually not the smart way to cut defense, you know, just the haircut on the whole budget.

right now. So it's kind of I'm a mixed mind of the defense piece because yes, I do think you could have cuts in defense, but I don't think that this is the right way to do that. And certainly Jordan's wrong that like there's not some woke budget in the, you know, the woke department. You know, there's not like a woke missile system that we can cut, you know. I think that this is going to be kind of chaotic and it's a mess. And it's a mess. And they're not going to be able to manage it. then I think, you know, more acutely like Ukraine spending, you know, the capacity of these people to pass a significant Ukraine package, which was already in doubt and we talked about, like, I don't know how they're going to ever pass a Ukraine bill.

No. Particularly if a year from now, Republicans are even more open to kind of nativist admonitions to stop spending money on Ukraine and start spending it at the border. I think it's a real issue. Like how are you going to get that that kind of funding through? And if there are other national security emergencies or contingencies that pop up that require congressional action, this will be really hard. Yeah, it will be tough. And you also have, you know, sort of Republican committee leadership.

There's this new committee where they're going to dig into the law enforcement and intel world. You know, obviously Democrats are still in control the Senate. Biden's in the White House for two more years. So there's a, you've the capacity to block a lot of their idiocy over on the House side. But we'll see. But Ben, I did. I think you and I both rolled our eyes at. The otherwise reasonable people saying that not having a speaker of the House for a few days was somehow a risk to national security.

Yeah. Did you feel more threatened as the votes rolled through? Like we were just going to get nuked in that moment. I mean, the idea, like, I'm glad we could do this because, you know, even we ourselves have said some things are in danger in national security. And I do think, for instance, like Trump having a bunch of documents at Marilago with a bunch of, you know, Intel operas walking around there. It's probably pretty dangerous, right? But the idea that Kim Jong-un is watching the Kevin McCarthy vote and is like, if Kevin McCarthy doesn't get elected on the first ballot, like, what is going to do, develop a nuclear weapon? You know, like she's going to invade Taiwan on the third ballot.

The whole world is waiting to make sure that if anything actually, Kevin McCarthy getting in there a speaker, like, there's more national security danger from a functioning Republican. Because you mentioned those committees, by the way, like, that's going to tie up. document requests and type a bunch of time in these agencies can be paying the ass there's going to be this select committee on china that's going to probably cause all kinds of brinksmanship um but the idea that like what wadmur putin what's he going to do invade ukraine if we don't have a speaker like i don't really get the argument it's just like this is the thing that people say all the time to try to sound serious and you sound like you're just so far up your own ass it's ludicrous so well can i say one other thing about this like very short rant like the damage to american national

security from our own political dysfunction has already happened. So these people talk about this as if, yes, if we were this perfect functioning republic that never had Donald Trump and had like rational people running the government and then all of a sudden we were paralyzed by some insane shit show in the house, yeah, that'd be a problem. I think the world has priced in the fact that we have a bunch of fucking lunatics in the house. We're a bit of a mess, you know? I think that's well said. Also, Ashley on our team helped pull together some of the dumber things people claimed were

risks in national security. Those include Joe Biden's Peloton. Vice President Harris apparently thinks Bluetooth is a security risk and only uses wired headphones. Maybe she knows something we don't. We should look into this. She's not wrong about that. Yeah, Obama's Fitbit was seen as a problem. People were worried that terrorists could hack Dick Cheney's pacemaker. Remember that news cycle? One time President Trump declared that the entire country of Canada was a national security risk when we put some tariffs in place. So I guess all I'm trying to say is like we got real stuff to worry about. Let's just chill out with, you know, trying to make everything sound bigger by saying it's a national security.

I did hear from some people about this Bluetooth issue and that like AirPods can be listening devices. Oh, for sure. I mean, we all carry around like the best spy cams. Yeah, you walk around with like, you know, dangerous to Europe. I don't know if it's national security. It's just, you know, danger to your, you know, Alexa knows my data, you know. I love the Biden's Peloton thing. I know he's riding again.

With Treks, you get the most of everything, the most wood inspired, the most eco-friendly, the most eco-friendly, Finally, the most decking and railing designs, the most trusted. Trex, performance engineered for your life outdoors. Visit Trex.com today. Okay, so we did a lot on Ukraine last week, so we're not going to go long here, but just a couple updates on things we actually just talked about. So specifically, Ben, we were talking about whether the West would increase weapons shipments and send more things like tanks.

The answer is yes. The U.S. is going to provide Ukraine with Bradley fighting vehicles. military actual experts will yell at me for saying this, but they're basically mini tanks. They can move personnel around safely and, you know, fuck stuff up in the process. They're not the Abrams tanks that are huge and have the huge 120 millimeter cannon, but they can do some damage. Germany is going to send infantry fighting vehicles. The French are providing the AMX 10 RC light tanks.

I think Germany is also going to give Ukraine another Patriot missile defense battery, which is a big deal. In addition to that sort of set of weapons transfers, There was a fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal this week about a sanctioned Russian ship docking at a port in South Africa and getting loaded up with stuff despite the U.S. calling them being like, hey, South African government, this sanctioned ship is coming towards you. What are you going to do about it? Just let it happen. Yeah. Speaks to how hard sanctions enforcement is.

And then Reuters had a fascinating piece about so-called anti-war activists in Germany with ties to Russia, like not subtle ties. Like some dude was in the Air Force in Russia. Yeah. Move to Germany. Now as an anti-war activist. There's a similar story about an Intel guy. Anything jumping out on you that you focused on this week when it comes to Ukraine, Ben? I mean, I think of those, look, the tanks speak to where this is going,

which is like a drawn-out battle along a 700-mile front in the east. And we covered that last week. I do think the South Africa thing is interesting because, you know, you saw Ukraine and Zelensky and his kind of New Year's messages and a lot of his messaging to the Ukrainian Diplomatic Corps put an emphasis on the global south. Clearly, as the war goes on, I think these countries were already not enthusiastic participants in the sanctions regime, but it does feel like it's largely a Western sanctions regime. And, you know, Russia is going to look to poke holes and exploit the fatigue or the distaste for sanctions generally in places like Africa and parts of Asia and parts of Latin America. and that's just part of the reality here.

You know, the sanctions are not like a self-executing tool. And I think the battle for diplomatic and public, you know, opinion in particularly the global south is going to be where certainly the ongoing diplomatic front in this war goes. Yeah. Did you know that in 2015, Fred Durst, the lead singer of Limp Biscuit, was banned from going to Ukraine for five years? What do you do? I mean, was it about his music or something you did? Speaking of terrible things to come out of Florida, Limp Biscuit, awful band.

Awful. Awful. Like, truly awful. I guess Frindor said something about wanting to buy a house in Crimea, which I think got swept into Russian propaganda. And he got thrown into like the kind of Girard Deep Ardu bucket of like. Steven Seagal. Famousous.

Yeah, Steven Seagall. So he learned something every day. You know, I'm not a Limbiscuit guy. No. Thank God. Yeah. He won't be in the foreign legion there, I guess. Speaking of Africa, Ben, so Howard French, amazing author, a former guest on this show, and columnist, had a great piece in Foreign Policy Magazine about what he believes is the most important election in 2023. It's a ton of elections this year. The piece is worth reading in full, but he says his answer is the upcoming Nigerian election for the following reason. And it's not a focus on one politician versus another, but he's focused on demographics. So French writes about how the continent of Africa is projected to go from

being home to 1.4 billion people currently to 4 billion people by the end of the century. In Nigeria, which is about 1.4 times the size of Texas, is going to double in size during that same period and become the third most populous country in the world with 560 million people. And so Howard French's piece looks at how China dealt with a similar moment. They harness their population to build this massive labor force and grow the Chinese economy into the powerhouse that it is today. They later obviously made a massive error with the one child policy. But, you know, his piece is interesting and that it looks at how none of the candidates in the Nigerian election are talking about that opportunity. The rest of the world doesn't seem to

be talking about what this demographic explosion that's going to happen, but how the success or failure of Nigeria will impact the entire region. So I don't know, just like a fascinating piece from a great author. No, I think it's a hugely important election for a bunch of reasons. And first of all, you know, because the worst case scenario is that there's some disruption to this election and there have been warnings of Nigeria about the risk of violence around the election itself. Nigeria has had challenges with corruption and political corruption over the years. So you wouldn't want to see that, obviously be a determining factor in the election. But also, like, we've talked a lot on this show about coups in West Africa, you know, for lack

of better way putting it. Nigeria is the giant. of that part of Africa, if not the whole continent. And as goes Nigeria, clearly that's going to have some ripple effects, right? So in the worst case scenarios of violence and instability or a corrupt outcome, it could continue to feed this kind of undemocratic trend that has had some troubling results in West Africa in particular. If, on the other hand, Nigeria can have a successful election can see, you know, in the president, President, President Buhari is a leaving office, so there'll be some change there and can find its way through. And in a democratic outcome, like that, that will be very important to the, the viability of African democracy writ large. So it's kind of a bellwether at an important time. And yeah, the China thing lurks in the backdrop because China's obviously spent a lot of time and effort to gain more influence across that region. And democracy is not part of their calling card. So this is, you know, it's definitely something to watch.

Like, does the election go off on time? Does it go off efficiently and effectively? Is there violence? Is there corruption? Or can we get a democratic outcome that is both beneficial to Nigerians and might set an example for democratic legitimacy in Africa? Yeah. One we will be watching this year.

A couple quicker things, just updates on things we've talked about for. So, Ben, we talked about how, you know, China went from zero COVID policy and lockdowns to basically like a, Time for everyone to get COVID policy. Finally, starting to get some real numbers on how fast the spread is. The BBC reported that nearly 90% of the people in China's third most populous province have now been infected with COVID. So that's about 88 million people. Similarly, there's reports that 70% of the 26 million people living in Shanghai have been infected.

This is localized data from local health officials. It's very different from the data coming out of the central government, which claims that over only 120,000 people have been infected in a country of 1.4 billion since the policy change. So, wow. Yeah, and I just, like, there's the human concern and you hope that obviously the loss of life is not too severe. And the risk there is in part, as we've talked about, their vaccine isn't great. But also just like, it is a problem that their data is just so wildly, laughably full of shit. I mean, you know, how are you, you you know, if you, this is like a country that aspires to be kind of a superpower and already is a superpower in many ways, but like if, how are we going to trust any of their data on their

economy on, you know, if you're going to release centralized data that's completely undercut by your provincial data. Yeah. Get it together. You're, you're an authoritarian state. Come on. It just shows the degree to which they don't, I mean, I think a decade ago, they would have felt more concern for international opinion and the trust that, you know, comes with participation and things like the World Health Organization, they clearly don't care if this is the kind of data there's something. Yeah. Yeah.

Another very dark update from Iran, where the protests are ongoing and the latest reports are that at least 13 people have been sentenced to death by the Iranian government because of their alleged role in the protests. So these, you know, sham trials have been. happening in secret, the defendants are represented by government lawyers. Many of them are tortured into false confessions is almost certainly the case that many of these people who are being sentenced to death did nothing close to resembling the charges being made against them. For example, the state arrested a 53-year-old radiologist named Dr. Himida Garra Hassanlu for allegedly

being involved in the killing of a besieged militia member during a protests. They beat this guy, they tortured him. They sentenced his wife to 25 years in prison. And then a video released by Iranian state media showed that this doctor and his wife were actually trying to stop the assault on this besieged militia member. So completely the opposite of all these allegations. But this guy's trial was thrown back to the original judge in charge and he's still at risk of execution. So truly evil stuff. It's good to see, you know, countries like the UK, the U.S. and others are calling on Iran to stop these these executions, but they're still happening. Yeah, and I think, you know, to the question of why are they happening, I mean, clearly what

this is intended to do is, you know, they're not going to be able to execute everybody protesting because that's millions and millions of people. But they're trying to chill the protests by sending the arbitrary nature. If you look at these charges, like you said, it's almost like they're just like randomly selecting individuals to be facing these trumped up charges. and they clearly want it to be in the back of everybody's head. If I go out and protest, I might end up getting executed, you know, instead of just getting rolled up for a few days.

I think the international spotlight on this, the diaspora spotlight on this, you know, will continue to be important, but this is the phase that we're in here where they're trying different, you know, they try to kind of beat people up. Now they're trying this tool to make the protests go away. Yeah, brutal, just total brutality. So, Ben, some good climate change adjacent news here that I think, shows we can fix the damage that we've done to the planet, Ben. So there's some reports this week about how the ozone hole is healing and could be fully mended by 2066. The ozone layer absorbs and

protects us from ultraviolet radiation. We all inadvertently started destroying it by releasing chemicals into the air, specifically chlorofloracarbons or CFCs. The 1987 Montreal protocols ban CFCs over time the ozone layer has healed. As you were just saying, Ben, while I mangled a sentence that we had to cut, This is like an OG environmental issue, like acid rain. Yes, yes. But it also shows we can solve these things. Well, that's exactly right. I mean, so I remember dealing with this issue in government.

And part of what the science nerds would lift up is that the Montreal Protocol is one of the more successful environmental treaties in the world. And again, you said exactly right. Like, it does demonstrate that if the whole world comes together and behind like international agreements, and then implements that agreement and measures progress, you can solve an environmental problem. So it's worth lifting up because some people point to the kind of futility of trying to deal with climate change. Like, we can't plug climate change the same way we can plug the whole, not that we're plugging it, but, you know, reduce the hole in the ozone. But if we stick to agreements and have transparency mechanisms to measure them, you know, you can get a lot done. Yeah, it's just going to take a little time.

Yeah. Here's an annoying story that's going to stay with us for a little while, Ben. CBS broke the news that classified documents were found in a locked closet in an office vice president used after the presidency after he was vice president at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C. These documents were reportedly found on November 2nd by Biden's personal attorneys. Those lawyers immediately called the National Archives. They turned them over and they've been cooperating ever since. Obviously, it's not a good thing. It's not how you want it to happen. You don't want classified documents out of their proper. place. But it's also an example, I think, of how to handle the, the, the handle the situation the right way. Yeah. Right. Like the right wing media is out in full force saying, why did the FBI kick down Biden's office door? Well, the answer is the Biden team found the documents, called them and immediately turned them over. And I think if Trump had done the same thing, it would have been handled in the same way. But instead, they fought it. And now it's, you know, maximally stupid. So. Yeah, I'm looking

forward to some really good discourse on this, Tommy. Me too. Look, obviously, those. documents should not have been there. We've talked about the need and all the protocols that are put in place to safely handle classified documents. I do want to point out a few quick differences. And I have not to talk to the Biden people about this. But like I think we're going to have to just kind of bear in mind. Number one, there was not any request from the archives to return these documents. It was resisted. They found the documents and they gave them back. Number two, the locked closet at the Penn Biden Center. is not the same as having boxes and boxes of classified documents in a private club. Well, it's not private. I mean, like, you know, any Yehu seems to be able to wander. Some guys coming in and out to grab more pickles or whatever. We've got Nazis coming in.

We've got insurrections from other countries coming in. You've got all men or, I'm sure, of spies coming in. So, like, the security risk and the volume of documents that were Mar-a-Lago much, much more severe and substantial. You didn't have the Biden people, like, you know, trying to resist. I mean, it's kind of apples to oranges and how these were dealt with. That will be lost in the flood of bullshit that emanates from truth social and the House Republicans. But this really was a record-keeping issue and not like a national security issue because nobody was trying to steal and maintain custody of classified documents in an insecure location over the objection of the U.S. government. That's not what happened here.

It's going to be so annoying. Yeah. Speaking of documents that no one wants custody of been, a friend of the show, Mike Pompeo wrote a book. It's called Never Give an Inch, which is a funny title for a guy who negotiated the surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Yes, yes. Seems like he gave a mile. Seems like he's given some inches.

So the best part about this book is that the folks in MediaMounders found a copy of it or some sort of promotional materials. And on the book book, like, the book jacket or something, I think. think it includes a book blurb praising the book, but it's from Mike Pompeo himself praising his own book. Now, I'm not an author. You've written books. Normally when you get blurbs, yeah. Do you blurb yourself or do you get others to blurb to you? How does the blurb situation work normally? There's an, you know, you reach out to some people. It's a, can be a humiliating endeavor. Like, will you please read my book and consider a blurb, which is a, you know, it never occurred to me. Just email yourself. To just ask myself.

to write a blurb. It wasn't just that. Like, the blurb was like... Can I read it? Yeah, read the blurb. My new book reads like a thriller with stories from my heart. I mean, what's worse? What does that mean?

Like, first of all... It's the best you could do? Take a look at Mike Pompeo. Does anything about that person suggest thriller? First of all. Second of all, like, stories from Mike Pompeo's heart. He gave himself 12 words. Yeah, like, what does that mean?

Like, who reads that blurb and is like, you know what? I was on the fence about whether or not I want to pick up this book. But then Mike Pompeo himself told me that he's written a thriller with stories from his heart. So now I'm going to run to the bookstore to get this. Bear in mind the polls came out from Morning Consult this week, Tommy. All of this work and this book and this, you know, this is Prince Harry-esque rollout that he's done. One percent, you know, continues to be. Rim to improve.

Yeah, like, I mean, this is. This vanity campaign that he's on, nobody's asking for it. Mrs. Pompeo couldn't even blurb the book. Like, none of the attendees at the Madison dinners that we detail where he used taxpayer funds to, you know, wine and d.C. elites and Republican donors. Like, none of those people could blurb this book. Like, nobody cares Mike Pompeo. Nobody's waiting for you to run for president.

Nobody wants to read your book. I'm sure you're going to, like, get on some bestsellers because you probably have a bunch of people that will buy your books. Like, this is. just, you know, a vanity campaign that does nothing except create content for this podcast. You and I need to bet on something. I don't know what it is. It could be sports. It could be the outcome of election, whatever. And then the loser gets punished. And the punishment is either to read this book or to read Jared Kushner's book. And I don't know which would be worse yet.

I think Jared's would be worse. I will say that I mean, I also want to point that, like, a preponderance of the Republican base literally wants to hang Mike Pence, and he's like quadrupling up Mike Pompeo's numbers in the presidential rights. That's right. This is like nobody is paying any attention to Mike Pompeo. Like Matt Gates is probably more in the zeitgeist than you are. Matt Gates, having a good week. Yeah.

He's in the news. Okay, you mentioned Prince Harry Ben, so we got to end there. We got to do it. Royal correspondent time. So Harry has a new book out. Holy shit, is it making news? He's also doing lots of interviews around the rollout. He should come on.

on this show to talk about his time in Afghanistan, maybe, or whatever he wants to talk about it. I just would find it interesting. I've not read the book yet. I think I might. Here's some big takeaways. So Harry is candid about his just understandable, but deeply felt hatred for parts of the British press,

the paparazzi, the people who literally took photos of his mom as she lay dying in a car accident. He also singles out Rupert Murdoch. He sort of like singularly destructive for the suite of media he owns. I think he described Rupert Murdoch as like the most destructive guy in like human history or something. Yeah, he's pretty good. Yeah, yeah.

I like that too. Kevin Rudd-esque. Yeah, Kevin Rudd-esque. He, Harry says his own family was responsible for damaging press leaks about Harry, William, Megan Markle. So basically you have this royal family that is dependent on these tabloids, these symbiotic relationships. So like Camilla ends up leaking a negative story about Megan Markle to help rehab. have her image. Pretty dark stuff.

Yeah. Where to start with this one. I mean, I think that the stuff about the press, as much as you can, you know, it feels like it's a lot. Well, I want to make sure you're not taking it personally as a royal correspondent. This was not an attack on you specifically. I don't, I think he excused the podcast form. Okay, okay.

He's a podcaster. That's right. You're right. But he should come on this podcast. Look, he's, this is a fair point. I mean, these people like hounded his mother to her death and they kind of just live like a like a bacteria on this loop of gossip. What's so tragic at watching this is like kind of Harry himself is now in order to call this out like entering into that cycle himself, right? But I do think that we can separate out like he's making some very valid points about the strangeness of British media and how it's both adversarial and cozy with people.

in power. I think that my worry for Harry, right? And I spent more time with him in my rural correspondent hat than any member of the rural family because I had a couple times I was with him for like pretty extended times after government when I was with Obama. But he seems like a nice guy. He seems like he's got a lot of weight on his shoulders. The problem he has is like he's still just telling the old story. Like what is this guy going to do? He's 38 years old. Like, He's got a whole life ahead of him. He's now told this story in Netflix, on this book. That's his right.

But he needs to figure out what the next act is. Totally. You know? Because you can't just keep telling, like, look, I've wrestled with this. I'm nowhere near as prominent as Prince Harry. I'm sure you've thought the same way. Like, your next act was starting this podcasting company. Like he's, or media company, I should say.

He can't just tell the same story, right? And some of the story is like, sensational because it's a rural family, but like a couple brothers got into a fight. Yeah. Like I'm not here to defend William, but like this stuff happens. Let's just tell people what that was. So, Harry says that he and William got into a physical fight. I think they were arguing over the treatment of Megan Markle.

And in that fight, like William grabbed him, threw him to the ground. I think he landed on like a dog dish that smash. Now, I don't buy that Harry couldn't beat the shit out of William. Harry was the guy in Afghanistan. He says he killed 25 Taliban fighters while in Afghanistan. That was a little weird. Yeah. That's a lot of people.

And yeah. I mean, listen, that was his job. That was what he was asked to do. Yes, it was. There was sort of a jarring revelation. It was a jarring revelation.

I do think to what does this actually matter or mean, if anything? Like the world families, like, they're in some trouble here, right? Like, King Charles, you know, is not going to me around forever. And then it's William and Harry. And, you know, so I just think that this does speak to like, I don't know, in a way, it's proving the power of the world is that everybody's paying attention to. to this, but like, I just don't know how long this can be interesting to people.

Yeah, that's a good point. And I'm someone who's inclined to be interested by it. We talk about it, but like, at a certain point, like, he's exhausted the story. Like, people are going to lose interest in these people. He needs to become about something else and the rural family itself needs to become about something else other than its own

family drama. And so that's my main takeaway. This should be like a breakpoint on this era that's kind of like the Diana, you know, who I have a lot of respect for. But, like, what's next for all these people, you know? And if nothing's next, they're all in trouble. Harry's in trouble as a celebrity and Williams in trouble as a future king.

Counterpoint. Harry got a frostbite on his penis during a trip to the North Pole. That doesn't interest you? He had it at his brother's wedding. I mean. Come on, that's a good salacious detail. Did he give an inch like Montpe-a-o? Can I say that?

Yes, you can. You were right, like you're right, to be serious. There is not always easy to predict moment when people just have a good. gut feeling and decide you're overexposed. I don't want to hear about this person anymore. Unfortunately, they're well past that point in the UK. I think there was some UGov polling Thursday and Friday that finds their approval rating, just tanking. 23% of the British public have a positive view of Megan, down from 49, support for Harries at 26% down from 81% in 2017. Now, of course, that is going to happen when you like renounce your title, when you leave the country,

when you like tell a lot of stories. But you're right. I mean, it's like, I respect anybody wants to tell their side of a story. Obviously, he's got a lot of things he's wanted to get off his chest for a very long time. If my father said to my mother that she gave him an heir, beating my older brother and a spare being me, that would, I think, cut me forever. But you're right. I mean, this is, it's got to be just hard on him to kind of, like, live in this past all the time. Yeah, for his own sake, I think he's got to, and he's done, you know, based on all the reports,

It's like he's tried out mushrooms and ayahuasca. Like, you know. Oh, is it Aaron Roger shit? Yeah, yeah, he's searching, right? And I... Okay, Harry, let's just do some mushrooms. I come on the pot, we could do some mushrooms. I mean, like, but the...

I think they all need to hit a reset button. And lives in Venice. Yeah, I'm in Venice. He's up in Mendezino. They've got to evacuate, by the way. I think there's evacuation order up in Santa Barbara in Menasino. But, like, just hit the reset button for all these people, right? Harry and Megan become about something other than your old story.

British monarchy become about something other than, like, leaking shit to the tabloids and cutting ribbons, like, figure out a new purpose of this institution or else it's going to be less relevant. Like, I think we've exhausted the storylines. It's time for a sequel here. Yeah, make Pierce fucking Morgan talk about something else. Well, that guy, yeah. That guy sucks.

Okay. I think we've exhausted our royal news. Yeah. That was good. And when we come back, you will hear Ben's conversation about Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition, and all that's going on. So stick around for that. With Treks, you get the most of everything. The most wood-inspired, the most eco-friendly, the most decking and railing designs, the most trusted.

Trex, performance engineered for your life outdoors. Visit Trex.com today. So today I'm very pleased to welcome to Pod Save the World, the Cast and Crew of the Documentary Navalny, which is currently streaming on HBO Max. You may have seen it on CNN earlier in the year. We're here with director Daniel Rohrer, editor Langdon Page, journalist, activist, and head of the investigative unit of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Maria of Pevchik, and journalist and executive director of Bellingat, Christo Grotchev. Thank you all for being here.

Thanks for having us. So we got a big panel here because I love this movie and even more so believe that the story in the movie is one that everybody needs to keep telling and reliving because Alexe de Valne is currently in prison and Russia. But I'm going to start with you, Daniel, and just ask you, how did you come into this project? How did you end up directing a film about Alexei Navalny? Well, so often making documentaries is the art of being in the right place at the right time. And I think this film really embodies that. Christo and I and our colleagues and one of the films producers of Desire were working on a completely different story. We were actually in Kiev making a film there, but it wasn't going well. And so we were, I think this is right.

Christo very assertively encouraged to leave the country. And we found ourselves in Vienna in November of 2020. And I didn't have a film to make. I didn't have a job. It was the middle of this pandemic. And that's when Christo, whom is always behind his laptop, typing away, I made this extraordinary statement. He says, you know that Navalny guy.

I think I have a lead into who tried to poison him. And that set into motion our reaching out to Alexei and are going to meet with him and my opportunity to essentially pitch him and Maria on the idea of participating in a documentary project. So I'm going to come to Maria in a second here, but, Christo, why don't we just come to you? And for the audience, it may not be totally familiar, although I think a lot of our audience is familiar with Bellingat. Some of them have probably had spyware on their phones. But what is Bellingcat and what is the lead you developed on the Navalny poisoning? Belencat is an investigative platform that was launched by Elliot Higgins from the UK in 2014

and it focuses on trying to crack crime and mysteries through open source data and this means anything from social media postings of people that happen to be at the crime scene or even sometimes culprits the sort of the person guilty for a crime is posting selfies and then Bellincat's team has been very good at geolocation, chronolocation, finding the time, the exact time when a post was put on Facebook based on the sort of the shadow that a plant is destroying. Then you can figure out what day of the year that this might be because of the plant's color and stuff like that. So a lot of magic that is actually learnable. Anybody can learn to do that. And Bellincott is kind of crowdsourced that to a huge volunteer community.

I, on the other hand, am more into the data side of things. I try to look at large data tables and find similarities. I get a lot of data from the Russian leaked markets of telephone data, the passport data, and the combination of open source and such semi-open source, such as data leaks, has allowed us to crack a lot of crime, including things that governments have not been able to figure out, like, who exactly are the people who poisoned the Scrippel guy, Sergei Scrippel, the former Russian spy who was poisoned with Novichok in 2018, who blew up munition depots in the Czech Republic in 2014, in Bulgaria in 2015,

and who shot down a asylum seeker in the German capital in Berlin in 2019, and ultimately who poisoned a series of opposition leaders in Russia, starting with Navalny being the most important one or the most well-known one, that was also our find. So you basically at this point, and people should watch this film as many things, and among them it's the solving of a mystery of who poisoned Alexei Navalny. Through a lot of data you accumulated and a lot of things that I wouldn't know how to do, you kind of narrowed down to the collection of goons that seem to have been following Navalny

for a period of years and seemed to have been in the same place where he was poisoned. It's really remarkable work. But clearly then we have a director. and we have a lead, and it kind of comes to the Navalny operation. So, Maria, I want to come to you. There's a wonderful vibe that you can pick up and watching the film that you're not sure about these guys at first, right? And you're helping to run an institution, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, that has to

be distrustful of outsiders because you're constantly trying to be penetrated by Russian intelligence services, probably private intelligence services and others. What was the process through which you got comfortable with the, these guys just kind of showing up after Alexei has nearly been killed and you guys really opening up your lives to them. How did you come to trust these guys? I love how people just assume that I trust this guys, right? Well, to be honest, Christo did have an outstanding reputation in the market.

So everybody who's into investigations like myself, like our colleagues in Russia and elsewhere, everybody at least heard about Christo. I have followed Balin Katt's work closely since this Creepal poisoning, since they have managed to identify who were the two gentlemen who arrived to the UK, went to Swarthry and poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter. And I'll be honest, when I first read this investigation, I went into a short-term depression because I thought that I would never be able to do anything as cool and as good and as impressive.

So I had a lot of professional jealousy when it comes to Belenkaat. And when Navalny just woke up from coma back in September 2020, we straightaway started to investigate and try to figure out what happened to him and who did this ourselves. But always, in the back of my mind, I had a thought that there is Belengett and I'm pretty sure that those guys are on it, although we haven't even been in touch with Krista at that point. So I think, to be honest, it didn't take as long as it should

to be able to get comfortable and trust these guys. They are pretty charming, I have to say. So I think we started shooting within the first 24 hours since we've met. So they arrived on the day and on the day after in the very morning. Daniel and Alexei and Julia went for a walk and they were already shooting. So the process was pretty smooth. What do the things are so powerful in watching the film is there are kind of two things happening at the same time. One is you're trying to solve this crime, right?

Who did this? Who poisoned Alexa? Who nearly killed him? And led to him being in Germany for medical treatment and then rehabilitation. But then also it's very clear from the beginning, he's going back to Russia as soon as he feels like he's got the strength to do so. And that's kind of lurking in the backdrop. And so there's kind of a sense of the sand is running through the hourglass. You know, you have a limited amount of time.

Is part of the reason why you just started filming right away, Maria, and you guys just decided to get comfortable. And clearly the Navalny family decided to get comfortable. Is it you realized you didn't have a lot of time to tell your story if he was going to go back to Russia? And what was that, how did that feel like? Because this is, for you, it's both obviously the mission, but it's also personal. These are people you're close to. How did it feel to be capturing this kind of almost transitory moment between when Alexei has to return to Russia? I would imagine that it wasn't the most comfortable thing for Namanis family to be surrounded by the cameras.

I'm saying surrounded by the cameras. There was only Daniel for most of it. to be honest, like it wasn't too much of an intrusion. But at the very same time, as uncomfortable that may get, we were fully aware of the magnitude of the moment. We were fully aware that it's very important to film right now because the most interesting things would be happening right now as we are progressing through this investigations.

As we're finding out more and more names, details, places, etc., That's what is the most interesting thing about documentary making, right? About, I don't know, true crime stories and things like that. And we wanted to capture that. And I guess, of course, somewhere, as you have prayed correctly, of course, in the back of our minds, it was always thought that Navalny is going back to Russia very soon. And the chances of this documentary being filmed there are floating. both to none and we kind of have to see the moment and sees the opportunity.

The whole world was watching us at that point. The whole world was watching Navalny at that point. He was on the cover of every magazine. So the idea to film the behind the scenes, because that's what this film is, behind the scenes of the big international event. I think that idea is pretty obvious and I'm very, very, very, happy that Navalny and his family agreed to let this guy there and agreed to be filmed much closer than I see other characters in other documentary.

So I think this is what made this movie so great in the end, the fact that it's a real window into what our life looked like during this couple of months. in Germany. Yeah, no, I mean, people should watch it for a lot of reasons. You get these moments of real intimacy between Navalny and particularly his wife and daughter that are all the more poignant, given the sacrifices he's making, even as you see this kind of organization, you know, running on just a few people with their phones and laptops, you know.

And Langdon, I wanted to ask you a question as an editor. One of the things about the Navalny operation over the years is that they've used film, documentary film to expose corruption. It's kind of its own mini production company. And so I imagine that you, you must have had, in addition to what Daniel was shooting, were you able to work with footage that had been accumulated over the years by Navalny and his operation and the Interagruption Foundation? How did you kind of draw on all those resources to tell this story? Yeah, for sure. I mean, Maria and the Anti-Corruption Foundation, that whole team is, they're masterful with the use of social media, video of all kinds, and had for years been covering all aspects of

Navalny's attempt to take down Putin. And so when we started unpacking the story, obviously one through line was everything that Daniel had shot and the time in Germany with the crew there, but then there, you know, that story doesn't exist in a vacuum. And so in order to be able to gain insight into who the character was and what brought him to this moment of being poisoned, we needed to access things that were happening in Russia before we came aboard. And Maria was actually on location with Alexei and their crew in Siberia before they got on the flight. And they were shooting one of their standard anti-corruption videos, which are very, very tongue and cheek and humorous, and it's what gives them the gravitas and the popularity

that's been so effective to reach the mass audience in Russia that it's reached against all odds. And Alexei is just sort of, you know, doing his thing. And then she was on the plane with Alexei and the poisoning happened. And the cameras kept rolling. It was amazing. Ulya, Alexei's wife showed up, Kira, another member of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, were shooting, and you really gain an insight into how dystopian the world of the Siberian medical nightmare was, thanks to the iPhone footage that Maria and Kira and Alexei's team were shooting

while he was upstairs being hidden from them in a coma. Yeah, no, that's some of the most chilling stuff in the film. I mean, Maria, what is the, because I've seen now many times this footage from the plane where you don't see, Alexei, but you hear, really, you hear moans that are not like anything I've ever heard. It's really chilling. And I think it conveys the, just how brutal this poison is. What is that? Is that just, is that just passengers who took cell phone videos? Is that you guys?

Like, where did that footage come from? It's a random passenger who posted this video seconds after they have had their emergency landing in Omsk. And you're right, I couldn't make myself watch, well, rather listen to this video for hours since it came out. Because that screen is just, it's unbearable. You instantly recognize the voice weirdly that you know straight away that it's Navalny. and the way that he screams is just I couldn't watch it for a very long time but then I had a conversation about this

with Navalny a couple of months later and he claimed that he wasn't in pain at all that it wasn't the scream of pain or suffering or anything like that but in fact he was hallucinating and the fact that he wasn't able to control so many things that were like in his head, in his head, in his mind at the same time he felt so overwhelmed

and this is when this sort of screaming, this sort of sound came out. So to my relief, at least it was to me, it was nice to know that this scream wasn't from extreme pain. But it does sound like it doesn't it? It does. It sounds like almost torture, but the way you describe, I mean, Christo in the film, what's the name of the chemical weapon again? It's Novichok.

So you describe it as it shuts down kind of your nerve agent. So maybe you actually wouldn't feel that. It's just the sense of your body shutting down. Well, I mean, several people that whistleblowers that we've interviewed that have worked on, and some of them have even been poisoned themselves incidentally during the technological process of developing it, they say that one of the feelings is a sense of imminent doom that you're feeling that you're dying. And that abstract feeling could bring about the scream that we're. the scream that we heard.

Well, it's worth noting because it just shows you the nature of the Putin regime. Now, I want to come back to you, Daniel. So you weren't, you know, someone who spent a decade looking at Navalny or Russia. You were coming relatively fresh. I'm sure you knew the backstory. What did you learn about him in making this film just as a person? You have some great, you know, kind of standalone interviews with him. His humor kind of comes out.

But he's, you know, he's just complicated. Anybody who's willing to take the risks that he has is unusual in some ways. I mean, what did you learn about him, the character? Well, when I met him for the first time, Ben, I had about seven days to cram as much Navalny, Russia, into my head to be conversationally fluent and look like I knew what I was talking about or enough anyway. But what I came to understand about Navalny are probably three main headlines. The first is that he is extraordinarily charismatic. There is this magic touch quality that is often prescribed to politicians. As you well know, these once in a generation talents who just have this thing where they can be in a room and make people feel seen.

And I experienced that with Alexei. Within 20 minutes of us meeting for the first time, I was like, oh, this guy could be the president. He's got my boat. That was the first thing. The second thing that was very impressive to me was just his natural curiosity about media and the nature of media and the nature of political messaging, especially how it will be. domestically in Russia, which of course was his sphere. And that was perhaps his great genius, his ability to utilize social media, YouTube, Instagram, to get people to connect with something that is sort of taboo in Russia, which is politics.

And he invented this new genre of political commentary in Russia that didn't really exist before, and he used YouTube to achieve that. And I think that the last thing I learned about him, and I think how this is a very informs my own political identity as someone who's very passionate about politics is the value and virtue of dialogue. Navalny more than anything is, has this idea of like, we need to talk to everybody. You cannot exist in an echo chamber. You need to have conversations with people you don't agree with, however hard they may be. And I think that is a very important aspect of his political identity in Russia. Yeah. No, I think, you capture that really well. I had more limited

experience, but even just on a FaceTime, the other superpowers, there's a sense that this person is completely honest. You know, this person is incapable of saying anything other than exactly what he thinks about something. Okay, well, so there's a kind of high watermark in the film where you guys, you, Christo, and working with Maria, you've identified the team that did the poisoning. And Navalny calls them and ends up pranking. one and getting this person to basically have a long conversation about what went wrong, why I didn't die.

I was wondering, like, as someone who's done these investigations, and you've done them very digitally, as you said, it's data trails and not on the ground investigation. What was that moment like to actually, you must never think you're going to have a moment where the guy you've caught is admitting to the crime to the victim? What is going through your head as you're listening to this? And, Maria, I wouldn't put the same question to you. Well, first of all, the origin of those phone calls was not to get this prankster slash entrapment moment on tape. It was because we needed to combine two things.

Because it was an investigation combining several international media, CNN were involved, the Spiegelian involved, El Police were involved. We needed to go through the journalistic diligence of giving the sort of confrontation, it's called confrontation, giving the right of response. But we wanted to combine that with giving out. Alexei Navalny, the last chance to get some sense of justice, right? Because he will never get justice in Russian courts of confronting his poisoners. So this combination was acceptable to our editors cumulatively. Okay. And then it ended up with him changing gear in this stream and saying,

let me try to prank somebody because the original approach, which was I will call each of them and ask them why they wanted to kill me. It didn't work. I mean, they were just hanging up, breathing heavily into the phone and stuff like that. So he decided to change gear, went into a prankster mode, and he got a full confession that lasted 52 minutes. Okay. Second part of your question, how I felt. Well, by that time, the data enough was sufficient to give us complete conviction that this is the guy, that this is what happened.

We could track their movement on a microsecond level based on digital data, on the phones that they switched off and on whom they called and that all made sense. So abstractly, academically, we knew exactly what happened. But to hear it from somebody who was in it and to hear the lack of emotion in his voice about how he talked about, well, we could have been more successful if this hadn't happened, but the plane turned around too fast and the pilot did the right thing. So we failed. So to hear that, I mean, it makes your blood boil because...

So two things. First, you understand that what you've abstractly solved is the truth in a different way than just on paper based on data. And second thing, you're so angry because you hear a lack of remorse. Yeah, yeah. No, and the listeners

this podcast probably heard us do another Russia or Jean Anemsova and some of these same guys, I think, same units were following Boris Nemtsov. And there's just no remorse. It's very clinical. The guy's like, well, if the plane didn't land,

maybe you would have died. And Navalny has this great bit that he does about Moscow 4. And I'm just going to tell it really quick for people, which is that he's trying to identify that some of these people are quite stupid. And by the way, sometimes people assign to these authoritarian regimes, you know, that they're all knowing. Well, the reason this guy was called Moscow 4 is his password had been hacked and it was

Moscow 1. And after his hacked, it was Moscow 2. This guy worked his all the way with Moscow 4. Maria, I was looking at that scene where he's kind of, in a way, deconstructing the stupidity of the entire regime in a way. I mean, there's this one guy who's just so dumb that he changes his password to Moscow for. This is not one guy. This is the deputy chief of the military intelligence of Russia. He's a general.

A general. Okay. Yeah, that's a very good addition to my point because I was watching that in the aftermath of Ukraine where people were shocked. You know, how did the Russian military that we've heard is so, you know, infallible basically fall in its face? I mean, is there something that we can learn from Moscow for about the incompetence of the, the, the incompetence of the country? kleptocracy that Putin is built, not just its kind of evil nature, but it's kind of fundamental incompetence? Well, yes, there are two things to this. First of all, what else do you expect? It has been, when it comes to the Secret Service.

It has been decades of negative selection, right? The best of the best were thrown into, I don't know, jail and gulags and executed during Stalin era. then their children who were a little bit worse, but still competence were completely, there's something happened to them later on. So we ended up through the years, through the generation of negative selection, the Russian secret services are bad. No one in their clear minds, no one educated, no one smart,

no one who has any sort of, you know, perception of wrong and right, good and bad, no one will ever come close to working for FSB or KGB or anything like that. So that part explains the Moscow. And the second part to it, of course, is the, we've been screaming and shouting about it for over a decade, but corruption is an explanation to everything that has gone wrong with Russia. Corruption is an explanation for this, for the fact that there is a secret state-organized program, state-paid program,

where government officials are spending their days planning how to poison political opponents with chemical weapons. Corruption explains why the war started. Corruption explains why Putin thought that he would take over Ukraine in three days. Corruption explains everything that is wrong about Russia. Yes, sometimes, like in this specific case with Navalny, and like with the war in Ukraine, we are actually benefiting from the fact that Russian government is so corrupt. If they weren't that corrupt, probably they would have been more successful. But the bottom line is here, the bottom line here is that corruption has the monster that Putin has built,

so the corrupt monster that Putin has built is backfiring on him. He liked corruption to build a palace to himself, but the very same corruption is selling data to Christo and Ballingat for 20 bucks. You can get, I don't know, Putin's children's whereabouts. So this is a very good summary of not only what dictatorships are like, but also what corruption can lead to and how quickly actually it happened. Yeah, no, it's a really interesting way of watching the film. Langdon, I want to ask you, so you live with all this footage, and we talked about you have the footage in Siberia after Nambalny's poisoned, and then obviously Daniel's footage from Germany with this remarkable recovery and sting operation. And then there's the flight to Moscow, which is I found actually maybe the most haunting thing because he's basically flying there to be arrested. He doesn't know that for Sturton, but you have to assume it. You must have to spend time with hours and hours and hours of footage. What has stuck with you? As you've seen Navalny then go to prison, be in pretty awful, you know, a hunger strike, then pretty awful conditions in this penal colony. You got to see this guy longer than we did, even on those of us

who watch a documentary. I'm just curious, like, what sticks with you and all that footage you watched and how do you process it, this man who is so vibrant, so charismatic, so alive, as you've now seen him, you know, imprisoned. Yeah. I mean, the flight back was, is definitely something that sticks with me. It's, as you said, it's so haunting. It's this feeling of just, of just diving down into a rabbit hole that you know is not going to end well. And then to watch, to watch him be taken away at passport services is just absolutely heartbreaking.

I think one of the other things that, I mean, it was an interesting, one of the big challenges that we faced putting this picture together was, you know, we had put together sort of the verite, what happened. And it was feeling like a really strong, compelling, exciting, tragic film of a moment in the life of this politician, of this larger-than-life character and his highly charismatic family. But we felt like there was something missing. like we weren't getting inside the head of who is Alexei Navalny. What is it that drives a person with that amount of charisma to sacrifice it all and go back, where he could have very easily stayed in Germany and had his kids in nice schools and been the exiled leader taking pot shots at the regime from afar? And we really wrestled with this.

And also the flip side of that was Alexei Navalny is an inclusive. incredible manipulator in terms of being a politician. He knows how to use media. And so we were always highly aware of how we were potentially being played or used by Alexei. And so how could we turn that double-edged sword of him playing us, us playing him, and get behind and into something deep and real about who this character is that would drive him to sacrifice everything in hopes of eventually becoming president of Russia. And interestingly, what ended up being the key to unlocking that whole level of the film was Daniel's interview with Alexei, which was like three days long. There were like 20 hours of it. Daniel's an excellent interviewer. He circled

back around things when Alexei was trying to dodge the hardball questions. Daniel would circle back around and come at it a different way so that Alexei maybe found himself on the heels a little bit and actually ended up answering. And so in many ways, that was one of the most interesting insights to me was unpacking and unlocking this character with this seemingly unexplainable, larger-than-life heroic complex through just who he was and how he spoke. And then you realize he's just a family man who feels like if I don't stand up, there's no chance for our country. Yeah, and Dana, I'll come to you to wrap us up here. But in my very limited interactions with Alexe, Navalny, they had an outsized impact on me.

I think because, to Langdon's point, you're trying to solve this mystery. Why does this guy keep doing this sacrificing? And he's just not afraid. You know, he just has chosen intellectually to not be afraid. And it was something I found really powerful about that because, you know, in this country, we're afraid, I mean, you know, we don't take a lot of risk, you know, for things we believe in as much as I think we should. But I wanted to ask you, so having done those interviews, having kind of immersed yourself so deeply for relatively short period of time in this world, how did this change you? Like, how did this process of making this film, getting to know the Navalny's getting to kind of live in the aftermath of his arrest, now you're. out, you know, obviously trying to get as big an audience for this film as possible.

But how do you think your interaction with the Luxine Navalny's impacted you personally? Well, that's an excellent question, Ben, and I appreciate you asking it because I don't think anyone's asked that question before. I think the ways that making this film and the experiences that I've had, making this film, the impact that it's all had on my life, I think it's untold. I don't think I've had the time to sit and digest it. it all seems like a fever dream. But what I can speak to is the poignancy and sadness that I sit with.

You know, my life has expanded because of this movie. This has put my career on a rocket chip. It has all of my dreams are coming true. I, through the course of making this film, met my wife. Like, my life just blew up. And I understand that it's predicated on this guy who I care about, being in a small, solitary confinement cell, six and a half hours outside of Moscow, as my life has expanded, his is contracted.

And that's really painful, and that's very difficult. And I want to, you know, something that I really like to remind people and certainly your listeners is that Navalny is in solitary confinement right now, specifically because of his outspoken criticism of this war. He is the number one anti-war advocate in Russia today. And the work that he and his colleagues are doing, that Maria is leading to, the charge on from Vilnius is infuriating the Kremlin. But Navalny has no consideration for his well-being, her own longevity.

His only concern is ending this war and getting rid of this regime and looking forward to the beautiful Russia of the future, as he calls it. And it is my dream that that is achieved, that the beautiful Russia of the future that he imagines comes to be and that I get to go to Moscow one day and rent out the most beautiful cinema in the city and show Alexei the film. Well, that's a good dream to have. And great note, and before you do end, though,

I want to make sure we get a chance to find out where can people follow, where's the best way to follow your work, Christo? And the Bellencat investigations will pop up now and then, but I just want to make sure, give you an opportunity to point us in any direction to any work you guys have been doing. Twitter,

Crystal Grossif at Twitter, one word, or Bellin Cat, one word. We always retweet the or tweet out the best investigations as they came out. Okay, so check that out. Maria, what's the latest? We've had Lena Volkov on here. We want to keep in touch with you guys as well for the reasons that Daniel just said.

But what can people check out that you guys are doing? What's the state of what you guys are doing in Vilnius? We have so many ways, you know, talking about being media savvy. Anything you guys like? Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, obviously, is our main platform. Normally, a combination of words Navalny and anti-corruption tends to deliver people to our home page, where you can find our latest investigations, all of them, without an exception, have English subtitles. Most of them have multi-language subtitles, Spanish, French, German, anything you feel like.

On the very same website, there is information about us, about other things that we do at the Inter-Corruption Foundation, like working on the sanctions list and all the other work that we do. There is a way to donate to us. So everything is out there. Anti-Corruption Foundation, Naval and Google. That's all you need. Good. Well, everybody should check that out.

Look, it's a great documentary. If we have viewers out there who, let's say, have votes in upcoming award seasons, let's just say not only do we give this the full POTS here, World Recommendation, but it would drive Vladimir Putin crazy, I think, to see an Academy Award delivered to a movie called Navalny. So please take note of that Academy listeners. But thank you guys for being here. Best of luck with everything you're doing. People should check this out on HBO Max if you haven't already. Good to see you guys. Thanks, ma'am. Thanks so much for having us, Ben. Great to see you. Bye-bye.

Thanks again to the Devaldi team for joining the show today. Who else we think and hear, Ben? Not Bolsonaro. Not Mike Pompeo. Not Mike Pompeo. I wonder if Lula would do the show. I don't know that any knows what a podcast is. It's a good question. Thank you, Kevin McCarthy. Thank you, Matt Gates. And ozone.

Ozone. It's all I got. DeMar Hanlon, back in Buffalo. That's good me. That's big. That's big. All right, well, it's all I got. Talk to you guys next week.

See you. Pots Save the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley News. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,

Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth to upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.