Pod Save the World - Brexit, fighting in Gaza, ISIS defeated(?) and eliminating nukes

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

First, Tommy, Ben Rhodes and former Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken discuss Brexit, tensions flaring in Gaza, Israeli PM Netanyahu's visit to DC, ISIS loses its territory, Russians in Venezuela and reporting on Russian's collusion charges. Then, Tommy is joined by Yasmeen Silva and Joe Cirincione to discuss their efforts to prevent nuclear war.

Welcome back to POTS Save the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you all for tuning in, as always. It is a packed show today. I know I say that often, but this one really is. So Ben Rhodes and I did the normal news, but we were lucky enough to be joined by Tony Blinken. He was a deputy secretary of state, deputy national security advisor and the Obama administration. He's just a brilliant guy. We talked through the ongoing disaster that is Brexit. We talked about the very scary rocket firing between Hamas and Israel. Israel and Gaza. We also talked about Bibi Netanyahu's trip to D.C. and President Trump deciding to officially recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and what that all means. Then we talked about the fact that ISIS has apparently lost its final bit of territory in Syria. That is obviously good news. We talked about the long-term implications. And then Secretary Pompeo and his continued saber rattling in Venezuela. And finally, there were some reports that suggested the reporting around the Russia Mueller report

was somehow worse than the reporting about WMD leading into Iraq. So we try to unpack that one and see what the hell that means. Then I am lucky enough to be joined by Joe Surncioni, who was the president of the Plow Sheriff Fund and Yasmin Silva, who was a partnership manager at Beyond the Bomb. They both are part of the organizations that want to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. They want to prevent a nuclear war from happening. So we talked about why they hate nukes. incredibly important conversation does not get enough coverage in the media because I think

it's such a horrible scenario that people want to imagine it's not possible. But it is, but there are things we can do to stop it. And they are two great activists who can help us understand how you personally can get involved. And finally, worldos want to know, we talked about what technology platforms and individuals and governments can do to stop radical content from spreading online. So, without further ado, here's the conversation with Ben and Tony Blinken. Ben Rhodes, Tony Blinken. I was hoping we could start with Brexit because watching British politics right now is the only thing that makes me feel good about our own. So last week, the EU imposed the new deadline of April 12th for the UK to either approve Theresa May's Brexit deal

or ask for a long-term extension or exit the EU without ironing out all the thousands of details that govern commerce or travel between nations. Then on Monday, the British Parliament took control of the government's efforts to manage the Brexit process. What could go wrong? Well, so I was going to ask you, what the hell does that mean? And would you guys like our Congress to have the capacity to do this? That's a close call. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, look, we've talked about this. The car crash has been playing out in extreme slow motion now for a few months, Tommy. And there's an original sin here that can be voided, which is the referendum to Brexit in the first place. And the British Parliament and people did not like Theresa May's deal because it creates all kinds of problems for them. And they don't like a no deal Brexit because that's even worse and potentially catastrophic for the British economy and future relationship between Britain and Europe. But they're kind of casting about when basically any real Brexit is going to have a number of shitty consequences. right? And so you're either going to leave or you're not. If you're going to leave, a lot of these

bad things are going to happen. You're going to have to pay a bunch of money to the EU. You're going to lose a bunch of market access. Your citizens are going to lose the freedom of movement they have and on down the list. And, you know, the parliament can kind of pretend that they're somehow going to generate some deal that miraculously avoids the bad consequences of Brexit and is agreed to by the EU, but that's not going to happen either. So either they're just going to have to swallow hard and Brexit and accept the pain that will go along with that, or they're going to have to figure out a way to stay in or have what's called the soft Brexit where they're still in the customs union and essentially you're not achieving what the Brexit people wanted. And

that's basically it. And like everybody's watching this and they're almost pretending as if there's some magic solution that they can find when it doesn't exist. And especially because the EU has to agree to this, right? If there's a deal, it has to be a deal made with the EU. And the EU has no incentive to give Britain a good deal. Because why would they want to send the message to any other country that, well, you can have your cake and eat it too. You can leave the EU and still have the market access.

They're not going to do that. They're not going to give them a better deal than what Theresa May got. So all they're doing is prolonging the inevitable here. And the inevitable is they either have to have a pretty tough Brexit or they have to figure out what to stay in. So, Tony, over the weekend, there were all these rumors of an insurrection in Theresa May's party that in her cabinet that she might actually get ousted as prime minister. Do you think that would change anything or would this just be punting for more extensions and asking for more time for the EU if there's a major shift? Well, you know, first time, I think Ben's exactly right. This is not just the dog that caught the car.

This is the dog that caught the car and then the car goes into reverse and runs over the dog. And it's a total mess. And the real problem is there doesn't seem to be a majority for any scheme, whether it is the May plan, whether it's a softer Brexit, whether it's a hard Brexit, whether it's a second referendum, whether it's annull the whole thing entirely. That's what Parliament's trying to test right now by trying to seize control of this and get a number of votes on these different schemes to see if anything has a majority. Up until now, nothing has. But for Theresa May, yeah, rumors of her demise have been frequent. They've maybe were reaching the point where they're actually accurate. But here's the thing.

No one wants to be left holding the bag. Yeah. The game for those who have been challenging her, who would want to challenge her, who would want to become prime minister, is that let her hold the bag on Brexit, let that get done, and then push her out and take over. No one wants to be there when it actually happens. But we may be at a point where her, you know, sell-by date is real close. If you were still in the State Department, do you think that you would have been dispatched by Secretary Kerry to go over there to help manage this? Or is this a relationship with that so matured that you have to just watch and see what they do?

Look, I don't know what Ben thinks on this, but it's awful tough to walk that line between, you know, interfering in someone else's politics, but also standing up for your own interests. And our interests, clearly, would have been in keeping, you know, Britain in. Whether we could actually put our nose in this in a way that, A, would have an effect wouldn't be counterproductive. is a pretty tough question. But Ben, I don't know what you think. Well, yeah, I mean, we went over there. Famously, Obama went over there at the request of Cameron. And what was interesting about this is that Cameron was self-aware enough to know that he wasn't a very good advocate for staying in the EU because his own party was for leaving. And then Jeremy Corbyn, as we've talked about, kind of has a secret Brexit impulse himself. You know, he's an unreconstructed socialist who's skeptical of the EU.

So there was no spokesperson really for staying with a lot of stature. And Obama polled at like 80% in the UK. And they said, please come here and make the argument. Now, we went, as Tony said, we went and made the argument based on like our own interests. You know, we want you to stay. Yes, you think that's best for you. And it's also clearly best for us. Clearly that wasn't enough to move the needle for this.

But part of the problem that they have is that there's no one for Brexit or for the EU of a certain political stature in the country to lead them anywhere. It's very interesting to watch a country that essentially is lacking in any political leadership. And, you know, part of what's interesting in watching this, and, you know, Tony, I know what you think. And, you know, Tony, actually, you were in a C Europe at one point, right? So you've been watching this for a long time. Not that long. Yeah. But the national identity of the UK is kind of playing out in before our eyes. What is this country? You know, it was the British Empire for a very long time.

And then it was kind of the Cold War beachhead for, you know, liberal democracy and open markets during, you know, the Cold War years. And then it was this unique bridge between the Americans and the Europeans and the Commonwealth. Don't forget Cool Britannia. Well, I was going to say, you mix in the Beatles and, uh, and, uh, and, you're going to say, you mix in the Beatles and, uh, the British invasion and all that. But really what they're deciding is who are we? Are we a European country or not? You know, are we embracing the legacy of the empire? Are we moving past that? Are we an isolated island onto ourselves or are we connected to the rest of the world? And they're doing that without any political leadership. So it's a strange thing to watch, a country, you know, an ancient

country, trying to define what it is in the 21st century, but without any political leaders to point the direction. And that's what's been, I think, so disheartening to watch. And, you know, Boris Johnson, the leading Brexit voice, you know, he's the guy wants to make Britain great again. You know, the empire was great. And if only we could go back, well, guess what? They're not going back to the empire, you know. Then you have kind of the modern multicultural Britain embodied. by like Siddique Khan, the mayor of London. But, you know, that is something that is not embraced clearly by people in rural England. They just seem to not know who they are.

And to be fair to them, I mean, we're sitting here in the United States. We're having some of the same national identity problems. But this is a pretty profound moment. And the generational aspect of this is really striking, too. I mean, you have so many young Brits who feel like they have been, had the rug pulled out from under them in being pulled out of the European Union and their own futures. ability to travel, their ability to study, their ability to work on the continent has been made much, much more difficult. And they feel like their elders have, you know, done something to them that

they will regret. Yeah. There's so many components of this that are so unbelievably fraught. So, for example, under Brexit, Northern Ireland leaves the EU with the UK, but Ireland stays in the EU, which ignores the fact that they have a totally open border. And the Good Friday Agreement lets Northern Ireland residents basically choose their citizenship. Now, it was not until I recently read this book called Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe I want to have on this show to talk about the troubles, which is the period in Northern Ireland where the IRA was blowing civilians up in an astounding clip. How unbelievably fraught that period was how conditional the peace ultimately was, how the factions all still exist. I mean, just wrenching them out of that agreement is an

unbelievable thing to do. And Tony, you worked on this. Do you think the good fraud, agreement is possible without the EU? It's certainly a heck of a lot tougher. And, I mean, you know, you both referenced something important because the United States actually played a critical role in getting peace in Northern Ireland. And Bill Clinton, folks who worked with him and for him, were actually instrumental.

And this was a perfect case of where a sort of outside honest broker made all the difference in getting these parties. Tommy, as you said, the violence was, you know, extraordinary. And the animosities that had been built up over the generations were so hard to peel away and compromise was seen as a weakness, as a failure. Clinton, through his own diplomacy, George Mitchell, who played an instrumental role in this, they were the ones who really helped bring people together. I think it's a lot harder without the EU.

And, of course, no one wants to go back to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. But for the Brexiters, this is a real problem because they think this is the backdoor way of keeping Britain in the EU. So this is why this has been so – one of the main reasons it's been so difficult. to get to some kind of agreement. Let's go to a much less troubled part of the world, Gaza. It has been a very scary few days in Israel. Hamas has been firing rockets from the Gaza Strip.

They've wounded several people, I believe seven in the last count I read. Israel hit back. They hit targets across Gaza that they said were responsible for the indiscriminate rocket fire that's just hitting civilian homes. The early news reports seem to indicate that both sides are trying to ratchet things down. And Hamas even said that the Egyptians have brokered a ceasefire. But, you know, two questions, I guess. One, Israel and Hamas, there hasn't been a full-fledged war since, I believe, 2014.

How worried are you about the latest conflict? And given the Israeli elections are on April 9th, and Netanyahu was actually in the U.S. when the rocket fire began. Do you think the timing was coincidental or is Hamas sending a message here? Well, look, from my perspective, the only thing worse is people have said than an intended war is an unintended one. And I think neither Hamas nor Israel want an all-out conflict. It would be bad for both sides, not to mention the many innocents who would get killed, injured, or made homeless in the process. But it's very, very easy for these things to spiral out of control, and especially when politics is in the mix on the eve of an election, every single decision is incredibly fraught. So I think there's a real interest on both sides of tamping this down, but it's something you have to watch really closely because we're in such a fraught political period.

Yeah. And one of the things that hasn't gotten a lot of attention, Tommy, is that there have been, reports recently of some Palestinian uprising against Hamas in Gaza, some frustration with Hamas's rule. And, you know, part of this, and we have to obviously look more carefully and pull the threads on these things, but, you know, sometimes a group like Hamas, it doesn't really have much to offer its people other than, you know, its resistance to Israel, when they're feeling some pressure internally, you know, you lash out at the external enemy in Israel, right? And so this kind of, I think, speaks further to the dysfunction in Gaza. Obviously, Hamas is responsible for this indiscriminate rocket fire, which is totally unacceptable. At the same time, the question is how do you

try to dislodge Hamas, right? Israel's fault multiple wars in Gaza since Hamas took control. in 2005. And the reality is this strategy of blockading Gaza, making the people there suffer, I think the goal was to send a message to the people of Gaza that it'll be worse for you because Hamas is in charge. But that's only served to kind of entrench Hamas there. I do think it's worth rethinking whether the all-out blockade that is causing humanitarian crisis is an effective political strategy in weakening.

Hamas because they seem to be perfectly capable of entrenching themselves despite this blockade. The people suffer. Hamas is still there. I think it's worth exploring whether trying to increase connectivity between the people of Gaza and the outside world, increase the humanitarian, improve the humanitarian situation might be both better for the people of Gaza and a different way at trying to get at the need to promote the Palestinian. to be able to choose their leaders. Hamas' leadership is horrific,

and what they're doing to their own people is horrific. At the same time, the living conditions in Gaza, particularly because it's been blockaded, are really unsustainable. One of the most shocking things is that over the last few years since 2014, the suicide rate in Gaza among young men has gone through the roof.

And, of course, it's not a far step from someone committing suicide to someone committing suicide with a suicide belt on. And so something's got to give. And one of the things that is clear is we've seen these indiscriminate rocket attacks, they're designed from Hamas, designed to kill Israeli civilians. One of the things I'm proud of stuff during our administration was the work we did to make sure that Israel had this Iron Dome missile defense system, which was extraordinarily effective.

And there was a point during the 2014 crisis when, very late at night, and this was when Ben and I were working together on the National Security Council, The Israelis came to us. The ambassador came and said, we're running out of these interceptors. We need more. We spoke to President Obama the next day on a Friday in the Oval Office. He said three words, get it done. And by Tuesday, we had more Iron Dome money for Iron Dome interceptors for Israel. But here's the other side of the equation. We're talking in the context of Brexit of the lack of leadership in the UK. Israel's about to engage in an election. We'll see what the result is. But there is tactical leadership, which arguably Prime Minister Nanyahu is very, very good at, but strategic leadership is an entirely different question.

And it's very hard to see where this story ends if Israel continues on the current course. The absence of trying in a meaningful way to find a two-state solution outcome, I think, creates a huge dilemma for Israel, because the bottom line is, if the current trajectory continues in the absence of such a solution, Israel cannot remain Jewish and democratic. it either has to subjugate a population that will be majority Palestinian and Arab if it wants to retain its Jewish character and hence it won't be democratic or if it is democratic it will lose its Jewish character. So a choice has to be made and playing for time is one thing, but avoiding these hard choices is another. And of course, Israelis are right. They haven't exactly had a great partner in the Palestinians.

But the need for vision for how to sustain Israel as a Jewish, democratic, and security, state is what's really lacking, at least in this election. And I think with Beebe, you know, he's good at playing for time through the next election. You know, there's always some gambit at the last minute. You know, last time it was demonizing Israeli Arabs and the Arabs are voting in droves. Bibi said, you know, this time it'll be this mix of, you know, bashing Ilhan Omar at APEC and, you know, flexing the Golan Heights decision. Well, I wanted to ask you guys about that. Because, you know, Bibi was in Netanyahu for the APAC meetings, but he also got a pretty big political win from President Trump, who efficiently recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights while sitting next to him in the Oval Office.

Pompeo, I believe, had already made a trip to Israel to have a ceremony there, so it got maximum press coverage. So the Golan Heights were seized from Syria in 1967 by the Israeli military. In 1981, the Israelis passed a law, but essentially annexed the place. They took legal and administrative control over the terrorist. should note that the UN does not think that that is a valid law, the 1981 law they declared a null and void. But I mean, I guess my questions for someone who's like, what the hell is a goal on height, why is it such a strategically important piece of turf for the Israelis? Why do people find the precedent of allowing annexation worrisome in your mind? And what did

you make of this election day miracle for Prime Minister Nanyahu? Yeah, I mean, you know, the first thing is, consistent with what I was saying about BB always trying to get to the next election, that seems to be the only timeline he worries about and thinks about. And meanwhile, all the underlying challenges get more intractable. And unless he really is just playing for time for settlements to displace Palestinians, it's hard to see what else's strategy is. On this one, the Golan Heights are, you know, strategically significant because, as the description, it's the high ground, literally. And you can ski on them. Yeah. And in the past, before Israel sees them in 1967, obviously if your military opponent has a high ground that is looking down on you, that has some military advantages,

particularly with the development of new rocket technology, Israel feels like it needs to golan Heights as almost like a buffer between them and their Arab neighbors to the north. Now, here are the problems. One, for the U.S. president to nakedly and transparently do some, the Golan Heights have not been in the news. There's no reason to be doing this. There's not some ongoing struggle for the Golan Heights. No one is calling them to handover de facto power to Syria. There's a peacekeeping force there. The Syrians aren't trying to overrun the Golan Heights.

So this did not need to happen. Trump chose to do this, right? So the first problem with this is making a major decision that goes against, but there have been multiple UN resolutions that say that this, under international law, does not belong to Israel. And multiple American administrations. And multiple American administrations have backed that position. So for Trump to change the U.S. position on this territory against multiple U.N. resolutions just on the eve of BB visiting Washington for the APAC conference in front of his election plays into the very worst cynicism around the world that all of our farm policies just rooted in domestic politics. Our domestic politics are Israel's, right? That's the first problem. The second problem is all. all this is going to do, given that this wasn't currently being particularly contested, is once again in flame Arab opinion against Israel and against the United States playing any kind of

broker role in these conflicts. And so if Jared has a peace plan in his pocket, everybody knows that that would be weighted heavily towards trying to get other Arab states to, in some fashion, recognize Israel or play a constructive role. Well, this just made that much, much more difficult. Frankly, it only plays into the hands of the Assad's and Iran's of the world who use conflicts like this to bolster their own legitimacy as the people who are standing up to Israel. So it made the regional dynamic worse while not really doing anything. It's not like Israel got something new. They've already had this kind of de facto control. So the second point is it just made the regional dynamic worse. Third is we have spent four years since Tony was leading

this process and situation room, rejecting the Russian annexation of Crimea on the basis of international law that you can't just kind of come in, win a piece of land and a war and annex it against the wishes of the international community and against international law, against previous UN positions. We just handed Putin a gigantic gift. He can rightly say what the hell is the difference between us annexing Crimea and Israel annexing the Golden Heights. It's exactly the same thing. And so we are now playing the role standing up against in terms of Crimea. And so collectively, this is such a Trump thing to do. It's nakedly political. It's entirely to serve as domestic political interests. It makes

an intractable conflict in the Middle East wars. And it's a gift to Putin. Yeah. I mean, Ben said it exactly right. This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with politics. President Trump's politics, Prime Minister Netanyahu's politics. It's as simple as that. And for all the reasons, Ben said, it just makes life a heck of life that's already very complicated, a lot more complicated. One of the ironies is you want to talk about security and Israel security. One of the things that's actually undermined Israel security was President Trump unilaterally without any process, without apparently thinking about it, pulling our very modest force out of Syria. Very different than the 100,000 troops we had in Iraq or the 100,000 troops we had in Afghanistan,

a very small force, a couple of thousand, leveraging tens of thousands of local forces to help keep what was left of, ISIL at bay, to help keep the other countries in the region a little bit on their heels and not on their toes, and among other things, to keep Iran from acting out too much against Israel. That he just removed without talking to anyone, including the Israelis. So if I were Netanyahu instead of praising President Trump in the Oval Office and at this press conference in the rather robust way that he did, I'd be saying to him private, what did you do?

You just pulled the rug out from under us in Syria. Yeah. And this guy's such a fucking moron. Trump, that if you watch the press conference with Nanyahu, which unfortunately I had to do, he goes on this long rant about Iran and he goes, because of what we've done, you know, with Iran, Iran today, this is a quote from Trump, is a totally different country than it was when I took office. What the fuck is he talking about? It's the exact same country. Like, do you have a map, Tommy?

Can you pull it up? I do. Like the last I checked, the Iran is the same place. This is a good radio. The last I checked, Iran has all the same influence that it's had in Syria and in Iraq. Iran is actually still complying with the nuclear deal that Trump pulled out of. Like, literally nothing has changed, right? So it just shows that this is a farce.

It's just about politics. It's about being able to stand up next to Nanyahu and say, Iran is totally different. Like, what is the backup for that? And who asks him that question? Like, in the press, it's like, he just says these things, excuse me, could you describe how they're a different country? I know. One follow up. Could one?

Please, I've asked this question before, but could someone in the White House press corps, please ask the President of the United States, what is the Iran deal? Could you describe the terms of the Iran deal? He has no idea what's even in this agreement, you know? And so this is all the show, and we're all supposed to treat it like it's on the level. Like, we're supposed to treat it like it's like real, thought out foreign policy. Can you imagine the process that led to the goal on Heitzing? How many meetings do you think there were of like the National Security Council to discuss this? He woke up and he tweeted something because he and Jared and whomever figured out it'd be a good gift for, you know, here for APEC will give you, well, you get to come to APEC and get an extra party favor. It's a great swag bag. You know, yeah. It's a swag bag. It's notably on the heels of Netanyahu aligning with a party that is so far right and so overtly

racist that APEC denounced them, one. Two, you know, it's worth stepping back in remembering that these very overt efforts to interfere in a foreign election often don't work, including. when Bill Clinton went to Israel in 1996 to endorse essentially Shimon Perez in his race against Bibi Netanyahu, and I believe it backfired. So there's a good lesson there. Speaking of Syria, recently the Trump White House announced that ISIS has lost its last bit of territory in Syria. I think we all would agree it's unequivocally a good thing, especially for the people that were living under ISIS rule. It can imagine it was hell on earth. But the reporting feels a little

bit like Groundhog Day. The New York Times is quoting an analyst in a story today that said ISIS is more powerful than it was in 2011. The pattern basically is that when ISIS loses territory like they did in Syria, they return to the same guerrilla tactics that they've been using for years, including back when we all called them Al-Qaeda and Iraq. Tony, how big a deal do you think the territorial defeat is and how far along in the process is that territorial defeat in terms of eradicating the threat from ISIS to the U.S., let's say. Look, from where I said, the territorial defeat is a big deal. It does a number of things. It takes away literally a physical place to bring various folks who would sign up to become foreign fighters in ISIL. There's no place to go. It denies the organization resources in the areas that they controlled, including a lot of oil that they once controlled, banks, you name it. And it actually even more important goes to their entire narrative of actually building a state, a physical state. That's been taken away from them. So it's a big deal. But here, Here's the thing, Tommy. First, it was pretty galling to see President Trump go out in front of the helicopter. He's taking off the other day. And again, this is great radio, too. Pull out a map and say, here's what's happening now. Isle's entirely gone and showed what it looks like now in Syria. And then he showed the map of what ISIL looked like and what Syria looked like with ISIL at the very end of the Obama administration. They're two big sort of red blotches on that map. Well, here's the thing. The one area where President Trump has actually continued Obama's policy was in dealing with ISIL, and thank goodness that he did, because

the coalition that we put together, the strategy we put in place, the local fighters that we trained and equipped, that's what got us to this point, the territorial defeat of ISIL. And back at the end of the Obama administration, yes, there were two red blotches left on that map, Raqa and Mosul, that systematically, comprehensively, we had cut off and isolated. And then time ran out on us, and it fell to our successors to finish the job. But it's a little bit like, and I hate to even put President Truman and President Trump in the same sentence,

but it's a little bit like Harry Truman at the end of the Second World War taking credit for everything that happened under FDR's watch. But to your point, yes, unfortunately, Territoryl defeats a big deal, but it's not the end of the story. And we're seeing them revert

to more traditional tactics, including in a bunch of different places around the world. And also the danger as foreign fighters who've survived, try to go home and maybe reintegrate their countries and do bad deeds there, that's something that demands very intense international cooperation to make sure we're all working together to track them, to trace them, to stop them. The one weird thing about this is, as Tony said, we had this plan in place and was working,

and the territory had begun to be taken back from ISIS. We'd taken back a bunch of population centers in Iraq and Syria. That inkblot of ISIS territory on the map had been shrinking steadily. the Mosul operation had begun, we actually gave them the whole Raqa battle plan. The weird thing that happened is that they delayed that.

They said, oh, no, we have to review this. And we thought this was weird. We're on the way out the door. We're like, hey, this is all ready to go. You know, we've got these Syrian forces, Kurds, and Arabs ready to go. And they delayed it for a pretty brief period of time, and then they basically just restarted it.

The one that was wondering, Tommy, he's like, the person who delayed it, the criminal grifter who delayed it, Mike Flynn. is at that same time, we know, climbed into bed with Taya Bereduan in Turkey, who was the one guy who didn't like the plan, because he didn't like that the Kurds were central to the plan, right? And we were arming them. And we were arming the Kurds, right?

So, you know, among the many scandals that didn't get all the attention that we needed while, you know, we were apparently too focused on Bob Mueller, which we could talk about a moment if you want, but is why the National Security Advisors of the United States literally slowed down the Iraq a battle plan at the same time that he had business interest with the Turkish government that didn't like that plan. Someone should look at that. Well, Ben, you'll remember this. The very last meeting of the National Security Council, chaired by President Obama, the last week in office, had one decision teed up. And that was whether to go ahead or not. And add to the arming we were doing of the Kurdish-led militia in Syria in order for them to be able to take Raqa. And that was what was teed up for

the meeting. And Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor, at the time said, look, I just got off the phone with Mike Flynn, my successor to be, and he asked that we not make this decision. And President Obama said, well, look, I have to respect that. They're coming in. We'll leave it to them. If the decision were mine, we'd go ahead and do it. But, you know, we thought this was on the up and up that they wanted to review the plan. But as Ben said, and we later find out that Mr. Flynn has ties with Turkey. He wants to, like, get paid to render, like, Gulen from Pennsylvania. To kidnap a cleric living in Pennsylvania.

It went to, like, wrap up Enos Cantor in the United States. It's very strange stories. Two more things. By the way, that's not, I just added the Enoscanter thing. You could actually believe anything about these people, so I do need to clarify. I don't think anyone listening knows who Enniscanter is. Okay, good, good, good. We got some next-shund.

What would James Dolan do on that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two more things I want to ask you guys about. So there's been this ongoing struggle in Venezuela, as we've talked about a few times in the show. Pompeo told his Russian counterpart recently that the U.S. will not, quote, stand idly by if Russia sends more military personnel to Venezuela to pop up Madur. who is their guy in Venezuela. This followed report of at least two Russian planes carrying 100 troops and a whole bunch of heavy things and boxes in down to Venezuela over the weekend.

You know, as you guys know, so the Trump administration recognized Juan Guido as president of Venezuela in January. They spent the last few months trying to get the Venezuelan military to defect from Maduro side to Guido side. They've had a little, very little success. Instead, the military has ratcheted up the use of force against protesters and Guido supporters. So it's probably also worth noting that Russia has loaned Venezuela billions of dollars in recent years. That all gets paid back in oil, so they have a vested interest in the most literal sense. I guess my question is when you tell the Russians, if you're Mike Pompeo or the Secretary of State, that we will not stand idly by if the Russians continue to send military officers in support to Venezuela.

How do you back that up? Well, someone we worked closely with former Vice President Biden, used to remind us, big nations can't bluff. Yeah. So if there's something behind that, we'll see. I don't think that there is. But here's the thing. In fairness, I want to give the administration some credit,

standing up for the one democratically elected institution in Venezuela, the National Assembly, led by Mr. Guido, putting more pressure on Maduro. Those were good things to do. Those were the right things to do. And they also helped bring some other countries in the hemisphere together to do that. But here's the problem. One of the things they've done is they put all their chips on the bet that increasing this pressure would cause the military to flip.

And Tommy, as you said to date, that hasn't happened. Maduro has done such a good job in literally buying off the senior brass of the military. Cuba has about 1,000 advisors there who are also making sure that if there are any signs of defection, they get nipped in the butt. And now Russia has deployed some forces there. And all of that makes it really, really hard. So the problem now is we've increased the pressure. We don't have a lot of other cards to play absent an invasion, which would be a catastrophic mistake. And the military is still there.

Now, it's possible that at some point we'll hit the tipping point and they go. But by the way, even if that happens, even if Maduro goes, that's not the end of the story. That's the beginning of the story. This country is so destroyed economically and so divided politically that what follows Maduro will be chaotic, and potentially catastrophic, unless there is a strong and serious and comprehensive international plan to help put the pieces back together. I've seen no evidence of that coming from the United States. Yeah, and they said it was unacceptable when the chief of staff to Guada got arrested. They said they're not standing idly by. I mean, the rhetoric they've employed on Venezuela is only

making them look factless here. And again, like, I've been uncomfortable with this direction for a while, if you really want to solve the problem, you're going to have to get in the room with a bunch of different people, including probably the Venezuelan military and the Cubans. And so if they're not going to do that, there's just going to be this brinksmanship. And this crowd knows how to do that. Maduro knows how to dig in. He's paid off the military, as Tony said. He's got the Russians giving him a lifeline.

He's got the Chinese giving him a lifeline. He's got the Cubans. He plays on the social divisions, the people leaving the country or the people already don't like him. So, you know, we're just kind of continue to drive this car over a cliff without. like giving it any thought and like you know the Russians are more than willing to back odious characters like we we learn that in Syria with Assad so I just I really worry about the direction of this is taking and you know all the chest-thumping rhetoric in the world isn't

going to make Nicholas Maduro step down yeah it's not good it's not good last thing for you guys so since we've gotten the AG's summary of the Mueller report there's been some recrimination coming from the left about whether the media completely screwed this up. The most hyperbolic version of it being a Rolling Stone article that said, Russiagate, is this generation's WMD. It was actually a Rolling Stone reporter. So, again, we haven't seen the report. But I guess I'm just trying to understand how you can make that comparison.

One, given the impact of the Iraq invasion that we're still living with that we just basically spent the last hour talking about. But also, I mean, when you look back at the reporting in the lead up to Iraq, I mean, the New York Times was running stories that said front page headline USS Hussein intensified quest for a bomb parts. The New York Post had a story on September 16, 2002. Saddam aims to give terrorist briefcase bio bombs, right? Like Ahmed Shalabi, who was an exiled Iraqi politician who was a favorite neocon and a huge source in the run-up to the war, was seen as someone who was, giving constant misinformation. And Judy Miller, who was a reporter at the New York Times during that period, said that he provided most of their front page exclusives on WMB to the paper.

So I'm trying to find what, like, where was the media failure to the sense there was one in the Russia reporting? I ask you guys as people that were involved in the Russia hacking intelligence and have been consumers of the information since because this reporter for Rolling Stone compares the steel dossier to Ahmed Chalabi's role in the world. the WME screw up, and that to me seems a touch-off. I think that, first of all, I've never quite understood the kind of collection of people on the left who apologize for Putin, because he's basically the most illiberal leader imaginable.

Anything that, you know, the values that I think people on the left purport to care about, human rights, free media, LGBT rights, the man just, steam rolls on a regular basis. So there's this kind of weird. But putting that aside, I, this could seem like a mildly annoying thing on Twitter. I think it's actually really dangerous because let's separate out two questions. There's what Russia did and there's Trump. Nothing about Barr's, you know, Cliff Notes version of the report does anything to diminish in any way, shape, or form what Russia did, right? So if Russia is the WMD here, Right. In fact, it confirms that they did.

They're very present. Russia, like, make no mistake in an operation led by Vladimir Putin on down through their intelligence agencies, interfered in our election through the mass dissemination of social media aimed at supporting Trump and creating societal divisions in this country that we are dealing with to this day, hacked into some the most significant political institutions in the country, provided that information. to WICLeaks to be released to help Trump, timed the release of that information to help Trump, sought to make relationships with people in Trump's orbit so as to presumably gain information that could help them more effectively intervening in the election. There is nothing, even if you take this kind of stupid, absurd, overcranked exoneration narrative about Trump, there's nothing that suggests in any way, shape, or form that Russia didn't do those things. And that those things should be really worrying to Americans because Russia did them and they're going to do them again and again and again and again.

And their objective is a divided, broken America that will no longer be an impediment to their ambitions. And so even if you are, unlike me, somehow sympathetic to Russia's ambitions or you think that the West has pushed too far into Russia's orbit or what have you, that doesn't diminish the fact that Russia is seeking to continually use asymmetric means to basically break apart our society and diminish our country. So it's offensive to our intelligence and to everything we care about. And by the way, I should say this as people who are on the left. I mean, I think of myself as on the left. This is not a good look for us to be somehow apologist for Putin or somehow diminishing what Putin is doing on our election. Putin is weaponizing social justice movements in this country to cry so division. He's trying to, you know,

you use pit the Black Lives Matter movement against the NRA. Like these are things that we know to be true, right? And again, look at what he has done to LGBT rights in Russia. They've tortured gay people in Russia, okay? They've killed gay people in Russia. You care about gay rights? How can you apologize for Vladimir Putin and look in the mirror after you got it. Look, I agree with that, but like it's a separate point. Like, the question of it is the media. They're saying that this was worse than Iraq WMD. It doesn't seem like there's any evidence

of that. But the media, like, so then to take the media side of it, we, I'm shocked by what I learned in the Mueller report to date, and I even read the fucking thing, okay? I'm not upset. If you had told me when I left the White House, and I thought I was pretty alarmist, that fucking Donald Trump Jr. Would be like, yeah, I can't wait to get that

dirt on Hillary and had meetings in Trump Tower with a bunch of Russians. And the Trump is negotiating to build a Trump tower in Moscow through the fucking election, that would have floored me. And I only know that because of the combination of these investigations and the media, right? And let's read the report. Yes. Because when I used to do book reports based off of Cliff Notes instead of actually reading the book, they usually weren't as good.

So let's see the full thing. But here's the other thing that I think we're missing. And Ben really puts his finger on it. what Putin has been trying to do at the heart of everything is to divide us, to play on our existing divisions, to amplify them, to pour gasoline on them, and to get us going at each other, to delegitimize our institutions, to call into question all of our most fundamental beliefs. And leaving aside the finding of no collusion in the Mueller report, on one level, President Trump is colluding every single day with Vladimir Putin's ambitions.

in that every time the president goes after one of our institutions, every time he denigrates the intelligence community, the law enforcement community, Mueller himself and that whole process, or any group you can think of, he is advancing Mr. Putin's narrative. He's actually doing Putin's job for him. Every time he embraces an autocrat and denigrates a Democrat somewhere around the world, he is doing Putin's bidding for him.

Now, that may or may not be willful, but it has the effect of actually advancing. Russia's objectives to do exactly what Ben described, which was divide us, get us to question our institutions, get us to question who we are. And to be, to take your point about being fair here, like, okay, did some people overpredict what would come out of the Mueller report? I'm sure you could find some media that did that. But collectively, I don't, I don't really think so. I don't think anybody had, there was this kind of mass expectation. Right. That Trump would be arrested by Bob Mueller or even impeached.

Nancy Pelosi went out a few weeks ago and said impeachment was off the table. So the media's role, they've been focused on it because it's a big story and appropriately focused on it. And a big story that yielded many indictments and that revealed a lot about what Russia did and revealed a lot about what Trump did. And even if there's not a criminal conspiracy, if it didn't rise that level, it doesn't mean it's still not a huge story that Russia did this and that the Trump people were at minimum whitting of elements. of this and welcoming of it, that alone merits all of this media attention. So to compare this to W&D, the underlying event is true, the Russian interference. The Trump associates being witting of that and in some ways engaging with that, even if it doesn't rise the level of criminal conspiracy, that actually exceeded Tommy what I ever thought would come out of this investigation.

And so to compare this to WMD is doing a huge disservice. And I do think it's relevant to Putin, because Putin wants to be able to say, oh, it's fake news. So I think you are playing into Putin's hands. I think that a couple things. Like, one, there were some glaringly wrong reports. Like, did Michael Cohen go to Prague or not? Because McClatchy has just let that story hang for the better part of a year. There were some reports that were probably overheated.

Like intelligence officials say they're not briefing Trump on the best stuff because they're worried he'll disclose it. Maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn't. We do know that he disclosed highly sensitive information to, like, the Russian ambassador. in the Oval Office. So, but moreover, I do think that it is true that a lot of cable news panels allowed people to make predictions, to do punditry that was wrong. But that doesn't compare to like...

But can we put this in context for just a second? We have in the current commander in chief, someone who it has been documented has made 8,000 erroneous or misleading statements as president of the United States. On average, more than 10 a day. we have gone from the first president of the United States who could not tell a lie to the current president who cannot tell the truth. And so for anyone on behalf of President Trump to go after the credibility of any other person or institution in this country when the president himself is the leading purveyor of fake news, the leading consumer of fake news, the leading purveyor of conspiracy theories, the leading consumer of conspiracy theories, it doesn't hold up. So let's put this in the right context. I agree. But even like, let's say Trump wasn't present, let's say it was a robot that could only say the truth.

I mean, comparing some pundit on MSNBC predicting Trump was getting locked up or as kids would go to jail to Judy Miller writing a front page story about rocky efforts to get aluminum tubes that could be only used to create nuclear weapons when in fact they were experts sitting in the intelligence agencies said, no, those are probably just traditional rocket components. or to go to one person, Chalaby, over and over again, as your source for WMU-related stories, knowing that he was completely self-interested in this process and wanted to rule Iraq later on. Like, that is a failure that allowed the White House to launder erroneous or half-assed intelligence through the mainstream media

and make a case for war that led to like a decade of a disaster. I guess the reason I've such a visceral reaction to it, though, too, is it, okay, yeah, Michael Cohen meeting, say that never happened. Like you said, the first point here is that what was the consequence of that McClatchew? Yeah, there's no consequence. It's an afterfire. The consequences of McClatchy look stupid and nobody's able to prove it.

And so if your point is, oh, how once again the mainstream media reported some things are wrong because they were too invested in a certain narrative, okay, I can engage with that. But the point is that in the scale of what's happening in our country and in the information space is, Tommy, as as Tony says of our country, that McClatchy report is not the most concerning thing here. God, no. We're dealing in a situation here where the scale of what is at stake between the Trump, Putin, and again, this is why I do kind of have a reaction about why are we doing this on the left. Like Trump, Putin, Bibi, Erdogan, the far right parties in Europe. at Brexit, like we've got enough coming at us here. You know, this is like the existential challenge

of our generation as to whether this wave of authoritarian strongman post-truth, us versus them politics is going to wash over us and wash away everything we care about. And if you can somehow step back and look at that and think that the Iraq scale problem is some fucking cable news panels and some overcranked predictions about the Mueller report, it's just such a misread of what the actual moment is that we're living through and what the scale of the post-truth politics is that is numbing us every single day. If you can somehow look at that and still think that the biggest problem in American politics last two years is some overtorke Mueller coverage, like I just don't, I don't get why that's, what is the point of that?

Especially when you make that assertion without having, you know, read the Mueller report. Yes, which I would like to read. But me too. But that's all we had the time for today. Tony, thank you so much for being here. Great to be. We think you should move to California. It's not a hard sell.

Okay. Deal. Well, there's a new and there's a new Blinken. I wasn't sure if I was a lot of to mention it. John Rowley Blinken, one month old today, born in Encinitas, California. Unbelievable. Congratulations. And thank you all over for agreeing to do this because, you know, I'm sure you got a lot of shit going on.

Literally. All right. How we're going. When we're back, Joe and Yasmin, tell me why they hate nuclear weapons. I am thrilled to have in the studio in Los Angeles two people who hate nuclear weapons more than almost anyone else on the planet. Joe Cirincioni is the president of the Plow Shores Fund. I wanted to say the owner of the fund like it was some investment group.

And Yasmin Silva. I think of it that way myself sometimes. You're investing in not dying. Yasmin Silva is a partnership manager at Beyond the Bomb. Thank you both so much for being here. Our pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having us. So you guys had a great event here.

Oh, what an event. In Los Angeles. Ben Rhodes is awesome. Ben Rhodes was there. Right off the bat. He's awesome. Then you had some glitz, some glamour, some celebrities. Michael Douglas, long-time board member and a big supporter of a hater of nuclear weapons.

Great. Representative Liu of L.A. Great, great. He was fabulous. Yes. Such honesty. I mean, it's so refreshing to see people just, you know, speaking the truth and saying it out and words you can understand. To say the least.

And then we had Kenneth Benedict. They were the former publisher of the Bullterm atomic scientists. another board member and nuclear weapons expert. She was great. And a big believer in democracy, in bringing democracy back to our nuclear weapons discussion. Who makes these decisions? Who decides?

Good question. Lots of questions we're going to get into. We do. So, okay, what are the goals, Yasmin, of Beyond the Bomb? What do you guys working on? It's a great and really broad question. Good. So I think at the end of the day,

we are working to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide, right? But we're a little ways off from that. Sure. So we've got some intermediate steps. So right now we are working on preventing nuclear war and decreasing nuclear tensions. But beyond that, we at Beyond the bomb, really like to focus on the fact that the nuclear system is impacting folks here in the United States day to day. It's not just about this abstract idea of nuclear war.

It's the downwinders. It's the Native Americans whose lands were seized and are still suffering the effects of radiation. It's the Marshall Islanders who don't have an oncologist on the island. Wow. And so we really, while looking to prevent nuclear war and raise the profile of this issue, don't want to forget about the people who have already been impacted. That's really important. So for those listening, who may not follow this as closely as we do, the arms control trajectory in the United States doesn't feel great right now.

Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, awful mustache guy. He hates arms control agreements with a fiery passion. As much as you guys hate nukes, he hates arms control. A serial killer of arms control agreement. Indeed. And he will kill again. And while we just either intend to withdraw or we're about to withdraw from the INF Treaty, depending on when you're hearing this,

there's also work being done to keep us from extending the New START Treaty, which limit the number of U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear warheads. It's a very important pieces of diplomacy that were bipartisan, Reagan, Obama, right? They worked on these. So how do we get back to a place where both parties agree on trying to lessen the number of nuclear weapons? in the world. Well, I think for one thing, something that changed from when these treaties were negotiated to today is, as I mentioned, this issue's kind of fallen off the map a little bit. People my age didn't have ducking cover drills. We didn't really understand the impact. And so

it hasn't been in the public eye the same way that it was with people calling for these treaties. And so something that Beyond the Bomb is working on doing is creating a grassroots presence, creating, educating citizens on the fact that, A, these treaties exist, B, us pulling out of them is kind of scary and dangerous for everyone involved and giving folks ways to plug in. I'd say it's people that matter more than the politicians, more than the think tanks. It's people that matter. That's where the anti-nuclear movement began.

In the 1980s, there were 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, most held by the United States and the Soviet Union, and they scared the bejesus out of people. The biggest demonstration until recently in the United States was a million people in central point. Park in 1982. The reason we have the INF Treaty is because there were millions of people demonstrating in the streets of Europe to stop a nuclear war in Europe. And that mattered. And that set in motion, Ronald Reagan, who was the greatest arms control president in history,

negotiating one agreement after another, is to reduce these. And we had this process where we went from 70,000 down to 14,000 today. Still, enough nuclear weapons to destroy human civilization many times over. But great progress until now. Trump has stopped. the process. So we got to get that public pressure back. There's not going to be a big anti-nuclear movement again, but we don't need that because we have these other mass movements, millions of people in motion on climate change, on human rights, on civil rights, against the Muslim ban. So what we have to do is have them see this nuclear issue as intimately connected to these other issues that they already care about. Which it is, to be honest. Tell me more about that.

Yeah, so the way that I found nuclear weapons and actually became kind of entrenched in this issue is sort of through that. So my top line issue is eliminating gender-based violence. And when I initially started doing research on nuclear weapons, I realized that the history and the way we still talk about nuclear weapons is extremely gendered, extremely violent, extremely patriarchal. And so in that way, when you're looking at eliminating nuclear weapons and taking them off the table as a nuclear war, should never be fought and can never be one, we're really looking at a paradigm shift of how we view violence and posturing, right? That's on one level.

On another level, I was talking before about the mining of nuclear materials that went into the creation of these. Decimated land, displaced people, health. We're talking about health care for all, right? And right now, folks who are suffering the effects of radiation poisoning from the testing that the United States did

still aren't getting the help that they need. And so this issue intimately touches on a bunch of other issues. Right. If you believe in Medicare for all. Nukes are cheap, right? We are committed. The United States, every person in the United States, is now committed to spending $2 trillion over the next 25 years for an entirely new generation of subs and bombers and missiles.

And for what? For what? Barack Obama was responsible for a lot of that investment, right? I mean, I think that was the – Yeah, where's bad? See here? He's got an answer for this. I mean, I believe that was part of the deal we made to get the New Start.

through the Congress required this massive 30-year investment into nuclear infrastructure. But when you step back and think about it, it seems not like the greatest use of money to me. They never thought they were going to have to pay for all this. So yes, you've got to modernize what you got, but it was always going to be coupled with another arms control treaty. It was going to slash the arsenals. Well, guess what? The money's pouring in, the weapons are proceeding.

The arms control has been killed. So that means you don't have the money to pay for things like the Green New Deal. That's exactly what I was going to bring up as the Green New Deal is here to change that paradigm, right? It's to put communities, people in the environment first. And what does it say when we as a country are investing in weapons of mass destruction that will kill millions of people instead of in things that will better the lives of us here at home? Yeah. So you talked about the downstream effects of nuclear weapons. There's obviously the intended effect of a nuclear weapon, which is to annihilate a city and everyone in it.

But then there is the fact that you would think that a nuclear weapon is like the most well-kept secret or well-handled piece of hardware, but that's actually not true. So for those listening, the Pentagon calls a serious nuclear weapon-related problem, a broken arrow. And I believe they copped to having had 33 broken arrows, which means one gets out in a way that is unsafe to the population. So here's a couple examples. In the 60s, I believe, a worker in Arkansas dropped a wrench or something into a missile silo. It blew the thing open so there was a fuel leak, which is below the biggest nuclear warhead in existence. at the time. Seems like a problem. That's, yeah, bad idea.

In 1961, F, B52 broke up in midair over North Carolina, dropping two nuclear bombs onto the ground. They didn't blow up somehow, thank God, by the way. B52s are still the primary plane that delivers a nuclear payload, and I don't believe one has been built since JFK was president, so that seems dumb. The launch centers work on floppy eight-inch discs. Does this all seem like good practices to you? You guys are experts in the field.

Does this worry you at all these broken arrows? Absolutely. People do not appreciate how close we've come to annihilating ourselves, not somebody else attacking us, doing it to ourselves, whether, as Kennedy said, miscalculation, accident, or madness, and including these kinds of accidents where we almost bombed North Carolina. I think you're saying North Korea for a second. No, North Carolina, you heard that right.

So I guess another issue, I mean, I know you guys have talked about this. people probably don't realize how few checks there are on a president who wants to use nuclear weapons. That is true for Trump. That is true for Obama. It's true for all of them. Congressman Ted Liu and Senator Ed Markey have a bill that would prevent the president from launching a nuclear first strike without congressional approval. Do you think that's a good idea? And do you have a sense of how that might work or if you want to talk through the process for how a launch would occur?

You should have heard Ted Liu last night. He was great. He's a former military JAG officer, a lawyer. And he said he and Marquis were looking at the command and control, the order. of how this actually would proceed. And they both said, this is unconstitutional. The Congress and the Congress alone has the authority to declare war.

I would say launching a nuclear missile is an active war. And they want to restore that. So before the president can order a first strike, not if we're under attack. Everybody agrees you've got the right to retaliate, but out of the blue, if Donald Trump is having a bad golf day

and he wants to order a nuclear weapon, maybe the Congress should have a say in this, And that's all their bill does. Yeah. Do you agree? Yeah. So I think president, who could not agree. Golf can be trying.

Come on. That was good. Tweets. Tweets can be jarring. Golf can be trying. Indeed. Your coffee could be a little bitter. Yeah.

But yeah, I think that changing the nuclear status quo is so important. And presidential sole authority is just one of the keys to that. We need to democratize this system more. But there are other bills on the table that would enhance, such as no first use. Right. Saying that it would be the policy. of the United States to not use a nuclear weapon first. And the kind of message that I think that that sends that could bring us, so we're talking about treaties, right, and how we're

having problems negotiating for multiple reasons, but in good faith saying the United States is the only country that has used a nuclear weapon first and offensively to come out with a no-first-use policy, I think that that can really set us back on the track to renegotiating these treaties both in good faith, and with better outcomes for the American people and national security than they did before.

And to minimizing the role of nuclear weapons and our strategy, now the people's strategy. I mean, if the most powerful military country the world has ever known

says, you know, we might have to use a nuclear weapon first. Well, why doesn't everybody? Yeah. You know, why doesn't China feel that way? Or Brazil, a country

the president of the United States wants to make a NATO ally, apparently. Yeah. Why doesn't every country decide, you know, we should have a few nuke? So we, as the most

the most powerful country have a responsibility of minimizing their value of making them as far away from the table as you can possibly get them. So I totally agree and actually got the chance to speak with a Senator Elizabeth Warren about this when she was here sitting in that chair, you guys being. So she, you know, no surprise since she's ahead of everyone on every policy area, came out first with a no first use nuclear policy that essentially doesn't essentially it codifies into law that the U.S. would never initiate a nuclear war. Again, I mentioned this with her, but we considered using nuclear weapons in Korea.

I believe the president was counseled about the potential use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam. So this is not a distant issue. It's something we still think about despite seeing firsthand the horrors in World War II. So, I mean, do you think other candidates will get to where Warren is? Does it make you hopeful that she's out leading on this? Yeah, it does. And I think that they will because conversations that we're having with folks all across the country, no first use overwhelmingly. People think we already have it. Yeah, they think it's our policy already.

Yeah, they already think it's our policy. And so I think it's less of a question of will they, but when they. And it's something beyond the bomb is doing is to educate people to be like, hey, you think this is already on the books? It's actually not. Why don't we get out and talk to your candidates and find out where they stand? You were telling me about this poll of New Hampshire voters? Yeah, a poll just came out of folks in New Hampshire. And I think over 50% of people want a no first use policy. almost 20% don't want us to use nukes ever. And so it's the majority of people who already feel this way. It's really a question of how can they plug in and how can we connect them with candidates to make sure that they know how constituents feel.

This is not going to be one of the top issues in the presidential campaign. There's a lot of other issues, but it's going to be there, particularly because the nature of the president we have. And this is why Elizabeth Warren, I think, is so out front on this. She's on the Senate on the Services Committee. She deals with these issues. saw what Adam Smith did, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He is introduced this no first use bill. He has articulated his priorities, and he's the guy who's going to mark up the Department of Defense spending bill, and he has three principles. No new weapons,

more arms control, not less, and no first use. And guess what? That's what Elizabeth Warren is articulating as well. We think as these candidates, most of whom don't have national security records. As they come out on the campaign trail, I think you'll see them speaking up more and more. And I'm delighted that beyond the bomb is going to be on the rope lines and in the town halls, along with other groups, encouraging them to do so. Well, so that was my final question for you guys. You think that the threat of nuclear annihilation would sort of sell itself as an important issue. But you don't always hear. I worked on a bunch of presidential campaigns. Actually, to their credit, a lot of activists in

Iowa would show up at events and ask about this issue. They tend to be incredibly well-informed. That's just what Ben said in our point. That's right. He, they came to Iowa and they heard it from the meetings that they were having. The voters were demanding that they do this. So, I mean, the fact that Ben still remembers that is a reminder is that you, you just can't underestimate how big the impact is of showing up to an event and asking a candidate face-to-face about these issues. So like, what kind of stuff are you guys planning to do in this, it's primary in election cycle to get people to, the candidates in particular, to focus. Definitely. So we did this in the midterm to get candidates on the record on their congressional

races and we're going to be doing the same thing. I think the first thing, at least with Beyond the bomb, is letting folks know about these events. It's hard for an everyday person to keep track of where the candidates are going to be on any given day. And so beyond the bomb and working with our partners to make sure that folks are aware of when and where the candidates are showing up. But it's not just showing up, right? Not everyone can, especially if it's, if, you're, you you have to care for a kid or after school programs, et cetera. Like, it's also calling the campaign. It's emailing the campaign.

There are so many ways for folks to get involved. And I think you talked about how nuclear annihilation should be a selling point in itself. But sometimes it can be a little stifling. The idea that we're up against this big mushroom cloud, right? And I think for me, what got me involved was taking that first step and taking that first action, which was a call. and being like, well, that wasn't very scary. Right. I can do that.

Or could even be something as simple assigning a petition. Or assigning a petition. So Pauceer's Fund is about to launch a petition to get people to encourage the candidates to adopt a no first use pledge. We're hoping to do it with Crito and a few other groups so we get a million, half a million signatures and then present it to the candidates. So that kind of thing can have a real impact. That's great. Last question for you. I lied earlier.

non-proliferation, salt, start. Like, why do all the nuclear nerds talk in these acronyms and these terms are meaningless? How do we get our scientists friends, our Gary Samores and all these people to adopt the language you guys are using today? It's because progressives are afraid of their own convictions. And increasingly you find that progressive Democrats in particular want to talk to the center right. And they want to orient their conversation that way to impress them. that, no, they're pro-military, they're strong, they're not going to be weak, they can talk to talk baloney. Yeah, you can, we know that. Be confident. Be strong about your own convictions

and talk to the American people, that we want to stop nuclear Armageddon, we want to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, we want to save some money. We want to have a safe, secure future for our children and grandchildren, and you can't do that with the nuclear weapons hanging over your head, especially when one man has the ability to destroy the world in 30 minutes. What I would say is I came to the nuclear movement. No background in it. I just cared, and I knew that as an organizer, I had the ability to educate folks and get folks on board, right? So something that I do and still did and do is I just ask. And when people realize that this jargon they're using, I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't know what that means. And then they have to

stop and be like, oh, and explain it. And I think that not being afraid. So I'm not saying the onus is on folks who don't understand. I think that we need to have a conversation about how we can change those terms. But it's also not being afraid to not know because this whole system is designed in a back room to keep it out of the hands of the American public. And so we need to ask and we need to be curious. Don't you worry your pretty little head. We'll take care of all this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's the kind of rhetoric in the past. And so not being afraid to question. That is such a good point. tell you a little story. In 2009, I got hired in the White House to work on national security issues on the press team.

And one of the first things we did was a big speech at Camp Lejeune down in North Carolina. And I remember kind of getting pulled aside by the Pentagon spokesman at the time. And he brought me to this area. And we ended up sitting down with Secretary Gates and his mill aid. And they were just being nice to me. They were trying to introduce me. And so he said to me, Bob Gates said, how do you like the job? And the smartest thing I could muster out of my little brain.

was a lot of acronyms, sir. And he laughed. And he said, you know, I don't know what those acrony's me either. But I, he was like, I got the goddamn job where I can ask. He can see if they do too. It's like, okay. If Bob Gates doesn't know what half the Pentagon is talking about, it's okay if I don't know and ask. So anyway.

Well, I just want to say thank you to both of you for the work you're doing. Thanks for sitting down with me. This is so important. I hope people will go to events, talk to candidates, tell them not to nuke anybody. because it's kind of crazy that we're still talking about this. Either North Korea or North Carolina. Thank you, yes. Neither. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Tommy. All right, we're back with Worldos Want to Know. The question today is from Kate,

who sends this in from Twitter. How can individuals help hold massive social media platforms to account over the hateful extremist content that has spread to their sites? I'm a New Zealander, and I'm so freaking angry over the way Facebook and Twitter responded to the Christ's church terrorist attack. Kate, this is just an unbelievably important question. I'm very glad you asked it because the architects of the internet from Twitter to further back created a place and a bunch of platforms that I think are very libertarian in nature and that prioritized free speech and freedom of expression over all other needs.

And I understand why they did that because historically the greatest threat to our freedom is from the state clamping down on us, limiting what we can do and what we can say. But I think as we've seen social media platforms grow and evolve over time, they've become places where extremist content can live. Early on, it was a conversation about ISIS and their propaganda that was spreading online and radicalizing people. You've seen all kinds of other really objectionable content from, you know, pornography to other things that can be managed and taken down

and kept off platforms by these companies, but they've done a terrible job dealing with extremist, white nationalist, white supremacist content and a lot of the platforms. And I think we need to hold them to a better standard and say you can't be agnostic, you cannot be okay with content on your site that could radicalize people and lead them to a place,

lull them into thinking that being virulently racist is okay, because the next step might be violence. So I think there's a couple things we can do. One, these companies listen when they get bad headlines or when their bottom line is hurt. So I think we need to raise our objections, loud and clear, constantly let them know, hold demonstrations, whatever it takes to get media attention so they know that we are watching them, whether you're in New Zealand or the United States, and we want them to do a better job proactively managing objectional content because I don't need to tell you that that New Zealand's

shooter's video. He was able to post his press release on 8chan. He was able to post links to where you could live stream his horrific murderous rampage. And then I think Facebook had to take it down 1.5 million times. So, I mean, clearly not enough is done to prevent this stuff from getting online in the first place. Second, there's a great organization called Sleeping Giants that lets advertisers know when they are running ads on right-wing sites. I think. think those sorts of efforts are important because it should not be profitable to post racist, extremist content on YouTube or Facebook or pick your site. That's just not how this should work. I think we need to keep the pressure on social media platforms to ensure that their algorithms

aren't actually pushing people towards more extreme content. That's true on YouTube. It's true on Instagram. These things can often lead you down a very dark rabbit hole from, you know, mildly objectionable posts to really vile stuff that can lead people to take dangerous actions. And then lastly, I mean, I think governments need to play an important role in this. And that's going to take time. But I do think if people reach out to their congressmen, their senators, city representatives in New Zealand and let them know that we need better, smarter regulations. We can push them to act.

There's nothing more incentivizing than the threat of losing an election. But we need members of Congress here in the U.S. that actually know what they're talking about because it's embarrassing when someone like Mark Zuckerberg goes before a committee and it is clear that no one asking him questions really knows anything about the internet. So those are a few ways. It's an incredibly important question. I talked about it last week with Charlie Wartzel, who's a brilliant writer from the New York Times who follows these issues very closely. And also, I think we need to have a more sophisticated conversation about what free speech means because I'm not trying to limit anyone's speech in any way.

I don't think the government should abridge speech, but if your Twitter or YouTube or Facebook, for example, you can make decisions that aren't quite that absolutist. And you can decide if someone like Alex Jones, who runs InfoWars, can post content on your site where he says Sandy Hook was a hoax. And some of the comments in reporting, quote unquote, that he does leads his followers to harass Sandy Hook families. The parents of victims who are murdered are getting harassed by these people who think that they invented the story. I mean, that is totally unacceptable. No one thinks free speech should lead to those outcomes. And we have to be smarter and more sophisticated about it. So in conclusion, you know, make your voice heard.

If you think that these tech platforms aren't doing enough to police extremist hate speech, call the media, hold events, let people know, let the companies themselves know. They respond to headlines. talk to lawmakers and ask them to make better, smarter laws that protect people like you. And check out organizations like Sleeping Giants that are trying to prevent people from making money off hateful extremist content. Because I think ultimately removing profit from the equation here is likely to get these companies to listen. That's it for POTS save the world. Thank you guys for tuning in. I appreciate it.

And I'll talk to you next week.