Pod Save the World - Call of Duty: Dumbass Group Chat

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Tommy and Ben discuss the fallout from Trump's national security team accidentally sending top secret war plans to a journalist, Turkey's backsliding democracy as a result of Erdoğan arresting his top political opponent, and Bibi Netanyahu's continuing efforts to remove internal critics while Israel gears up for potential annexation of Gaza. They also discuss a violent settler attack on the Oscar winning co-director of No Other Land, Russia's maximalist terms for the new maritime ceasefire with Ukraine, the conflicts in Sudan and Congo, and the Trump administration's latest immigration moves, including revoking temporary protected status for over 500,000 people. Then, Tommy is joined by Jeremy Shapiro, Research Director at the European Council of Foreign Relations, for a tour of Europe, including Turkey's political unrest, Romania's fraught election, and the latest with Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán. 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. 

PotsAid the World is brought to you by Sundays. Sundays is fresh dog food made from a short list of human-grade ingredients. Sundays was co-founded by Dr. Tori Waxman, a practicing veterinarian who tests and formulates every version of each recipe. Sunday contains 90% meat, 10% superfoods, and 0% synthetic nutrients or artificial ingredients. Get that out of there. Get that crap out of there. Dog parents report noticeable health improvements in their pups, including softer fur, fresher breath, better poops, and more energy after switching to Sundays. Leo is a huge Sundays fan.

Am I correct? He loves Sundays. We love Sundays because it's right on the shelf. You don't have to, it's not like the dog food that's wet in the refrigerator. Also, whenever Luca comes to your house, she sprints right to Leo's dog bowl. She does to steal his Sundays. Unlike other fresh dog food Sundays does not require refrigeration or preparation because their air drying process. Just pour and serve.

When you start a Sunday subscription, you'll automatically get 20% off and free shipping on every reorder. Cancel or pause your subscription anytime with our 100% satisfaction guarantee. Every order ships right to your door, so you'll never worry about running out of dog food again. Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to Sundays for dogs.com slash world or use code world at checkout. That's Sundays for dogs.com slash world code world. Get informed no matter where you are or what you're doing. Subscribe to Bloomberg News now and get news when you want it on your schedule.

Big tech dominating our headlines. Another win for Donald Trump. A key inflation report. These are short audio reports, five minutes or less, that bring you the latest headlines with context, four hours a day. Stay on top of the latest news from around the world. Get it on your smartphone. Subscribe to Bloomberg News Now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. Welcome back to Pods Day of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Good to see you, my friend.

You look like you're in a nice but new location. I'm in a non-secure, undisclosed location on spring break, getting a little skiing. It's not a skiff. Yeah. Doing a little, oh, nice, nice. Everything's been on signal out here from the mountain. I could launch airstriks against the Houthis from the gondola. Apparently you could. Apparently that's now how they do things over at the White House, but we will, we're going to get into all of this, as Ben is eluding. The first topic today is going to be the national security group chat heard around the world and what it means for the hooty rebels and operational security in the United States and I don't know, just the clown show of people running our government. We will talk about Turkey, President Erdogan's Democratic

backsliding and crack down on the opposition. We're going to cover all the news about the various people. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is trying to fire in Israel. We'll talk about fighting in Gaza, the latest on peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, conflicts in Sudan and Congo, some immigration news and a speed round of updates. And Ben, a lot of this conversation today will be guided by one man, a man named Steve Whitkoff. He did an hour and a half long interview with Tucker. Carlson where he talked about a whole range of stuff. So throughout the interview, we're going to be clipping from that because it was illuminating. It was troubling, but illuminating. Well, you mean Secretary Whitkoff, the boss of deputy assistant secretary of state, Marco Rubio. So let's be

very clear about that. Let's be clear about his status in the world. You're also going to hear my conversation with Jeremy Shapiro, who is the research director at the European Council on foreign relations. And we basically just hopped around all of Europe. Ben, we talked about the opposition in Turkey and what he makes of them. The latest about Romania's elections, we talked about your boy, Victor Orban, Germany's major investment in its defense industry, Europe's efforts to wean itself off of American weapons, and what he makes of Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney.

So very fun conversation. We covered a lot of ground pretty quickly. We could have a Potsave Europe, Tommy. I'm just saying. I think we could. And by the way, if you want more about UK politics, do not miss our conversation with Pod Save the UK host and comedian Nish Kumar. We recorded this last Friday.

We dug into all things British politics, talked about the King's playlist, his comedy tour, and whether jokes are allowed in the Trump era. So it's exclusively on YouTube. And for those wondering, like, hey, why are you dickheads only putting stuff on YouTube? It's because you may have seen that Republicans are killing Democrats

on YouTube in particular. And that is very bad and consequential because most people use YouTube as a search engine. And when they're looking for things, if there's some massive right-wing page and, you know, all the crooked media accounts are small and less likely to get surfaced by the algorithm, that's going to harm everybody. So we're trying to build up our YouTube. So please subscribe. It would really mean a lot to us.

We're going to try to put out interesting, exclusive stuff for you to make it worth your while. But YouTube's free. So, you know, I know. I know. And the more you subscribe on. on YouTube, the more incentivized we will be to do extra content there. That's right. That's right.

It makes it seem exciting and fun if people are actually watching. So check out the niche conversation. That guy is, I like multiple spit takes, some really hard jokes. You don't know any here on this show that are worth your time. Okay. Speaking of fun, Ben, we have to cover a lot of dark shit on this show. So today we're starting with the fun stuff. On Monday, the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, someone we know very well,

And just him being in the mold in this story is so perfect and hilarious. But Jeff dropped this blockbuster story on us. Somehow, Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, looped Jeffrey Goldberg in on a group chat on a signal. For those who don't know, signals an encrypted communications app that is widely used by government people, reporters, activists, you know, anyone who's concerned about security because it's open source and it's largely viewed as being the most secure. The group that Jeff got added to was called Houthi PC Small Group. The Houthis are, even the name is so funny.

The Houthis are referring to the Houthi rebels, an extremist group based in Yemen that the U.S. has been bombing for years because they were firing missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea. PC stands for principals committee, which is a meeting hosted by the National Security Advisor that includes literally the top national security officials in the U.S. government, the head of the FBI, for example, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State. And small group is what you call a White House Situation Room meeting when the subject is sensitive and you want to limit the number of people involved and disinvite some people that you find annoying. So Jeff gets looped onto this group chat. And all of a sudden, he's just seeing messages from Mike Waltz, J.D. Vance, assistant deputy assistant secretary Marco Rubio, actual Secretary of State Steve Whitkoff, Secretary of Defense Pete Heggsath, some undercover CIA officer is on this thread.

And they are literally talking about whether or not the U.S. should bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen. They're making a policy decision. Here's Jeff Goldberg describing for Jen Saki what was discussed on this group chat. This comes after they made the policy decision, and they were talking about execution of this bombing rate. The specific time of a future attack, specific targets, including human targets, meant to be killed in that attack. weapons systems, even weather reports, you know, that the government is, I don't know why Hexup was sharing it with everybody. I mean, the precise detail of, and then a long section on sequencing, this is going to happen, then that is going to happen. After that happens, this happens, then that happens. And then we go and find out if it worked.

I mean, you know, he can say that it wasn't a war plan, but it was a, it was a, It was a minute by minute accounting of what was about to happen. That sounds pretty classified to me, Ben. For what it's worth, and it's not worth much, here's Pete Heggseth denying the allegations and blaming it all on Jeff Goldberg during a brief press of illability in Hawaii. So you're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited,

so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax or suckers and losers hoax. So this is the guy that pedals in garbage. This is what he does. I've heard I've heard I was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans. And that's all I have to say about that.

Thank you. He literally is speaking an alternate right-wing language. So, Ben, Trump's top intelligence officials also parroted. a lot of these lines are played dumb at a congressional hearing today. Several reporters have since pointed out after Jeff's story posted that Steve Whitkoff was in Moscow as he was receiving many of these signal messages. So, Ben, we should just say for the record, PC meetings are always in the White House Situation Room because they're almost always highly classified.

You can join remotely, but only via secure government video technology. There was clearly classified information discussed on this chain. Like any prospective military action is like de facto classified and pretending otherwise is nonsense. And Whitkoff yucking it up from Moscow was like jot-toppingly stupid. The knives are now out for Mike Walts, a person close to the White House told political, quote, everyone in the White House can agree on one thing. Mike Walts is a fucking idiot. Ben, your reaction to this disaster.

I mean, it's such a wide-ranging disaster. It's hard to find one entry point. I was in probably hundreds of PCs and small groups. And just to give people a sense of how tight the security is, when I was traveling, I remember one time, for instance, I was traveling in Oregon. I was on like a family vacation and I had to join a PC. I had to drive an hour and a half to an FBI field office to be escorted in the room with a secure video connection into the situation room.

And I didn't think twice about that. Like the idea that I'd just be on my phone is nuts. Crazy. So the first point is that this is not normal. Like this is not something that anybody else has ever done. This is fucking insane. That's the first point. The second point is, you know, just adding Jeff Goldberg is one of the dumbest fucking things I've ever heard of in my life.

And Mike Waltz should be fired. I mean, if there's not accountability for, I mean, because what if he added, you know, if he's just like searching G's, what if he added, you know, like, I don't know, it could be anybody, right? Like, he doesn't know who he added. This happened to be... That guy wasn't an H name if he added an actual hootie? He had like a hootie in there. I mean, you know? The thing is, like, Jeff is like a very, like, inside the, you know, Beltway guy. Like, he was going to be very cautious about this. And they're attacking him. He didn't do anything other than receive their signal text. Like, so that's the second point. It's like the dumb fuckery of adding Jeff Goldberg to it. Then the fact that, and we can get into

time. We should get into kind of what we learned about the various characters and the role they're playing. I think that's a separate conversation. Especially J.D. Vance. Yeah, exactly. But the fact that Pete Hegseth texted these war plans, and Jeff was very specific. He had, these are what are called, so for people who wanted to come to Potsie's World for Jargon, strike packages, right? This would only be on high-side email, would never be on unclassified email. You had been on a special computer to read it, and it would have things like, what time we're going to hit. hit what, you know, military we're going to use to hit, you know, from this aircraft carrier or these cruise missiles or these planes, what targets we're hitting. It's, it's a war plan. Whatever the fuck

Pete Hexas says. It lays it all out. Why he needed to text that on Signal is insane to me. I mean, just send the thing on Highside email. And by the way, even if you're going to be dumb enough to be on Signal, just say, like, I sent the, I sent the information on Highside. If he actually put any of this information in the signal chat, to me, what that suggests is a degree of reckless incompetence. And that's, I think, boy, we have to keep repeating, this is reckless incompetence. But even worse for Hexeth, I think it was probably him, like, showing off for his buddies. Like, hey, man, look at the strike package. Like, this is the time we're going to hit the Houthis. I also have questions. Was he drunk? I'm actually serious about this. Like, like, what do we

know about, how did this information get on his phone? Did you think about this, Tommy? Like, if it was on a high side email, did he have someone move it to unclassified email so he could cut and paste it? Did he take a picture of it and send it to his buddies? There are all kinds of questions about the Heggseth role in this. Yeah, it's really interesting. As long as we're doing jargon, I wondered if they were talking about a con-op, which is a military term for concept of operations, that it's like a high-level planning document that outlines how a military mission is going to be executed. And again, like you said, like this is something very classified that you would get from the joint staff. It does sound like John Rackack.

Cliff today at the hearing was saying that when he got to the CIA that, you know, for the first day of the job, he had a signal installed on his unclassified computer. And just to folks know, I mean, when Ben and I were in the White House, we had three computers. We had an unclassified computer. And then there was a computer on the military's network, which was basically a secret level. And then there was a top secret computer. Now, I have no idea what the tech and the infrastructure looks like these days. And I know that the CIA, even back Ben had its own kind of internal mail system. So I guess you can imagine a scenario where like top leaders at the Pentagon have some kind of unclass system that has signal on it. But again, to your point, like clearly they were transferring stuff from the classified side to this unclassified system and then sending it on signal, which is a massive no-no. It was very funny, Ben, you notice how Hexath kept saying in the chat itself, things like we are currently clean on OPSAC, meaning operational security as these texts are just rolling into

Jeff Goldberg's laptop and into Steve Whitkoff's phone over in Moscow. It's like, what are you talking about, Pete? Well, that's the thing is the U.S. taxpayer pays a lot of money to make sure that we have encrypted communication systems. So you don't need to use signal. The only reason you use signal is so that you can like go out and be out of the office. It's purely, you know, these are guys it just don't want to actually be at fucking work to do their jobs. To your point about, I mean, moving from the Hegsef of it all, if Steve Whitkoff was on this text thread from Moscow, that's mind-blowing to me because if you if you traveled even back in the relatively peaceful Obama years to a place like Russia or China, you weren't even supposed to bring your phone.

Like we had to leave our phones on Air Force One in China, like because it was just, they could hack anything. We'd leave him on the plane in France. Yeah, they'd give you burner phones. Like, this is, this is, like, so if Steve Wickoff carried this phone around Russia with him and was on this thread, it doesn't matter the signal encryption. They're in his phone anyway. They can see what's on his phone. They have cameras everywhere. Like, the idea that this was not compromised in Moscow is hard for me to believe. And we know that the Russians are allies with Iran. Like, it's far-fetched, but they could have chosen to, like, alert the Houthis to this, right, in ways that could have endangered the operation, endangered our U.S. troops.

I don't, you know, they clearly didn't do that. But, I mean, these are, like, the fact that this didn't run through Steve Wickew's head, maybe I shouldn't be on a sensitive text thread about a military operation while I'm in Moscow. These people are so reckless and incompetent. And by the, like, again, you don't. need DIY encryption. Like even when we were in the in the government, which is like more than a decade ago, the senior military leadership would join secure video conferences with the president of the United States from their airplanes. We have amazing technology. We have secure comms.

You don't have to use your phone in a signal chat. And then it's like the other thing that was interesting was J.D. Vance's view and all this where he both suggested that Trump didn't really understand what he was doing, but also J.D.'s opposition to bombing the Houthis was all framed as being mad at Europe, which was just bizarre to me. But I wonder what you made of that piece of it. Yeah, so we learned a few things. So J.D. Vance, trash talks Europe and says, we're only doing this to help the Europeans, which I don't remember the Europeans, like, asking us to bomb the Houthis. It's the Israelis that actually have, like, been going after the Houthis. So his, you know, he tries to play smart guy. Like, J.D. Vance on this signal thread sounds like he's,

He's auditioning for like a guest role on the all-in podcast or something. You know, he doesn't know what he's talking about, but any opportunity this guy gets to take a whack at Europe he takes, that jumped out to me. Marco Rubio, absent, like we don't really hear from that guy on the text read. Stephen Miller. No big ideas. Stephen Miller is the domestic, he's a domestic policy guy. We never had the domestic policy person in a conversation about military strikes.

He got the last word. He comes in SM and he's like, you know, I heard the president say he wants to X, Y, and Z. Why is the domestic policy advisor in this conversation to begin with? And then another thing that jumped out to me, Tommy, is that where was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or the sent comp commander? Senior military advisors to the president. Where is the actual military officers? They are totally absent from this conversation. So everything about this, the Trump people like, this is reassuring.

This is like, these are smart people wrestling with hard things. I wasn't be assured by that. No, these are morons who, some of them a couple months ago were literal drunk Fox News weekend anchors. Yeah, you know, you and I were laughing about how we, look, we've been in meetings and in conversations like this where you kind of roll your eyes at a bunch of kind of DC suits, giving each other high fives and taking credit for really daring, brave U.S. military operations overseas.

And it's like, hey, congrats guy in the meeting. You wrote a memo about it. These guys were even worse. They were fucking sending emojis to each other. These are grown-ass men sending emojis to each other. It does seem like this is really penetrated unlike most other scandals, Ben. I mean, Trump finally tweeted Michael Waltz has learned a lesson and he's a good man. He kind of got Waltz's back today at this White House event, but really he's focusing his rage on Jeffrey Goldberg and just attacking the media.

It is also just worth reminding folks, Ben, that last week, The New York Times reported that Elon Musk was planning to go over to the Pentagon to get briefed on the Pentagon's plan for war with China. Now, they kind of, I think they walked that back after this report came out. But why do you need to brief the doge guy, the government efficiency guy on the war plan with China? That makes no sense in any context. You're not going to doge your way through like war with Xi Jinping. But it is even crazier when you understand all of Elon Musk's conflicts with China. like he's trying to sell Tesla's to Chinese consumers.

Half of Tesla's produced in the last couple of years were made in China. His factory in China was financed with loans from Chinese banks. Republican members of Congress have even called out Musk's ties with China and demanded briefing. So like everything about that was weird and kind of outside of regular order. And then we learn about this group chat. Well, yeah, to connect the dots here, and I hope people keep pounding on this, they should want to see the full text thread.

They should demand accountability. And part of the reason why is it's not an isolated incident. It's how these people are dealing with the most sensitive responsibilities of government. If they had a group chat about this, I'm sure they have 20 other group chats. I'm sure there's like a Canada invasion plan signal threat or whatever the thing is. And the idea that they would brief Elon Musk on anything related to China, again, it's part of a pattern of them bypassing any protocols. that exist for a reason. These aren't just like Nambi Pami Norm's things. The idea is that, like, there's very sensitive information that if China and Russia get access to that information,

they will use it to like really screw. I've been using a lot of profanity, so I'm trying to find another word, but let's just say to screw the United States. And Elon Musk has these massive conflicts of interest, given his scale of his business interest in China, given the scale of his business interests with the Pentagon, right? And so giving this, you know, pretty much private citizens. No sense. Access to anything at the Pentagon is insane, but it's the same mentality that would lead you to dismantle the U.S. government.

They would lead you to have a signal group thread. The connective tissue here is that these people don't give a shit about Americans or American interests or American security. They're just in it to either have a good time, to enrich themselves, to aggrandize themselves, that's the common thread between all these things. It was rather reckless. I heard the original group chat name was Houthis in the Blown ship. No?

Can get some tomatoes or not me? One other weird administration thing, Ben. So the second lady, Usha Vance, is apparently going to Greenland. She initially announced this trip in one of the more uncomfortable and awkward Instagram videos I've ever seen. And I'm not trying to be mean to her. It was just a tough watch. I guess now J.D. Vance.

Yeah. I guess now J.D. Vance. I guess now J.D. Vance is tagging along. He released his own video where he said there was just so much excitement about her visit that he had to come. It does not quite seem credible. In fact, people in Greenland were not thrilled about her trip because, you know, Trump keeps threatening to invade them. I think Mike Waltz is going to Greenland in the coming days too, so fire up your signal app. Also, just unrelated. Last week, Trump revoked the security clearances from a bunch of former Biden officials and assorted enemies. and includes Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan.

I think actually everyone in the Biden family. So that's, you know, petty and stupid. It is just like worth noting that, you know, these Mike Walts or anyone in the national security team might want to talk to Jake Sullivan or Tony Blinken about something they had worked on over the last four years. And now they can't in a classified setting because they stripped away their security clearance. So it seems like a bit of a cell phone here. Yeah, there's clearly things that they don't know, you know, conversations that went on with Ukrainians or conversations that went on the Middle East. want to maybe call your predecessor and have that conversation. They clearly not interested in that. This visit to Greenland is, there's no reason on earth for Ushah Vance

and I guess J.D. Vance to attend a dog sledding race in Greenland, you know. It's like her first thing. Like this is your inaugural trip. You're running advance on the Greenland invasion. And this is backfiring. Like Greenland, which has had some anti-Denmark attitudes, some independence movements. They seem to be pretty united in the fact that they don't want, you know, Ushavans coming there to advance the takeover of their country via dog sledding tourism, right? And so this is kind of stuff that like people are, again, imagine what this looks like from outside the United States. We look completely out of control. Like completely, it's a combination of amateur hour and scary fascistic behavior. And that's not like a, a, a,

particularly heartening combination. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand, and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all-in-one

place. From consultations to events and experiences, showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. With Squarespace's collection of cutting-edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits with their brand or business. Every dream needs a domain. Squarespace domains make it easy to find the best name for your business

at one fair, all-inclusive price, no hidden fees or add-ons required. Plus, Squarespace provides everything you need to bring more of your dream to life, whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service. Don't wait to claim your name, invest in your dream domain today.

Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash world to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash world. All right, let's turn to our ally in Turkey. So we covered again some of the basics of this on our YouTube exclusive with Nish. We focused a lot of our time on all the ways Elon Musk is trying to screw up British politics and prop up right-wing fringe characters and attack their democracy. So fun story, but we also talked about the fact that last week, Ekram Imammolu, who's the mayor of Istanbul,

who is widely viewed as President Erdogan's most formidable political opponent was arrested. He was accused of a bunch of stuff of leading a criminal organization. He was charged with corruption. He was also accused of supporting terrorism, specifically a group called the PKK, which is a particular Erdogan boogeyman. Istanbul University also annulled Imamulu's college degree from 30 years ago. And that sounds petty and stupid because it is, but it also really matters in Turkey B, as the Constitution says, you have to have a college degree to run for president. And so all of this happened right before Imammolu's political party, the Republican People's Party

or C-HP selected him or was set to select him as their candidates who were running against Erdogan in the next presidential election, which is set for 2028, but it could get moved up. So this, you know, arrest led to, it was actually a bunch of arrests. I think they arrested like 100 people. It led to massive protests, the largest in Turkey in a decade. There are reports as of today of over. 1,100 people getting arrested. Erdogan called the protesters evil.

And I'll get into the protests themselves and the stakes for Europe more in our interview with Jeremy Shapiro, Ben. But I think the key takeaway for listeners is that Erdogan is very rapidly pushing Turkey from a democracy to an autocracy. The government is arresting political opponents. They're trying to ban protests. They're demanding that social media sites block or take down posts from protests. Politico had reported over the weekend that free speech absolute as Elon Musk had suspended some accounts on X.

His team denies it, but I don't know. I don't believe anything. He says these days. Since 2011 or so, we have seen some successful protest movements that lead to governmental change, but we've seen many more. They get crushed by who, you know, I was often referred to as the guys with the guns, like the regime. What are you watching here to see if what's happening in Turkey can lead to more democratization? and what do you think the stakes are for the region, in your opinion? I think the challenge is that Turkey is pretty far down the authoritarian road, right? Like Erdogan's been going in this direction for over a decade now. And he's kind of allowed the semblance of an occasional election while he's kind of taken

over all the other institutions and, you know, intimidated and sometimes detained opponents. What this shows me, though, that's been clear is that I think if there was a free and fair election in Turkey, he would lose, and he probably lose by a lot. And I know he won the last one, but I mean, I don't trust that result. Like, this guy, clearly, if you cannot allow for any public airing of dissent, if you're so

afraid of your political opponent that you're going back and making Istanbul university revoke his degree from 30 years ago, so he's disqualified from running against you, that is not someone who's confident that they'd actually win a free and fair election. And so I do think it is useful that what people are showing us in the streets in Turkey is just that Erdogan wants the perception that he's this

beloved strongman and he's not. And so at a minimum, it's accomplished that. Now, in terms of whether it takes hold, the question is, can they perpetuate this movement? Can it sustain? Can people stay in the streets? Does Erdogan have to make some kind of concession here in releasing the Istanbul mayor? Are there other institutions inside Turkey that kind of start to break in the direction, the opposition. Those things are probably unlikely. But I still think it's important that it's just kind of registered, because this is not the first protest movement we've seen Turkey, that the Turkish people, like, are not on board with where Erdogan's going. And his, and it's a message for us, too, by the way, like, let's not wait until it's too late to have

our own protest movement. Let's get ourselves out in the streets like right now. In terms of the region, what's complicated about it is at this moment, Erdogan holds all these cards. He's a key player in Syria because the group that he backed took over Syria. He's a key player in the Russia-Ukraine talks because he's been this kind of guy who can shuttle back and forth between the Russians and the Ukrainians. The Europeans desperately need Erdogan for a variety of reasons. There are millions of Syrian migrants in Turkey that he could kind of let go into Europe. In this kind of gross way, Turkey's this buffer between more migration into Europe and not.

if there's a European security initiative, the Europeans will want Turkey to be a part of it because they have actually a pretty capable military. So part of what I'm also worried about is that you're not going to see any external president. Trump and Musk, they love Iran. Yeah, there's nothing. Nothing coming from the U.S. And that Europeans are probably scared to antagonize him too. And so he'll probably weather this, but I mean, we're all seeing before our eyes that the emperor has no close here. Yeah. Now, Ben, I do have some good news for you. As I mentioned at the top, Steve Wiccoff did this long interview with Tucker Carlson. It came out three days ago, so Sunday, which means obviously they recorded it, you know, a few days before. Now, in this interview,

though, Wiccoff says that Donald Trump recently called President Erdogan, and it all sounds pretty hopeful. So here's a clip of Whitkoff talking about that call. The president had a great conversation with Erdogan a couple of days ago, really transformational, I would describe it. There's some good coming. there's just a lot of good positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation. So I think you'll see that in the reporting in the coming days. So maybe the good positive news was a brutal crackdown on all protesters? We gave this guy his due on the Gaza ceasefire, which probably... We did. We got some walking back to do money.

Well, no, I mean, you know, probably had more to do with the fact that BB wanted to humiliate Biden and give Trump this win. And now he's resumed his war, right? but this guy is, he literally was on the golf course in, you know, Florida like five months ago. And now he somehow thinks, I mean, the one thing I'd say about Eric, I was in, you know, bylawful means of that guy, very savvy guy. Like, there's a reason he's kind of navigated the last, you know, 30 years of geopolitics. The idea that Steve Whitkoff, some Florida real estate developer who joined the geopolitical fray like three months ago,

has taken the measure of Erdogan and Putin and is moving these people around like chess pieces. It's so embarrassing and laughable. And, you know, just he's got to boast to Tucker Carlson about it. Yeah, it's, I don't even know that he's boasting. I just think he's, well, they're all boasting. They're all just spout in the line for Trump and saying what Trump wants to hear, but is so unbelievably credulous. There are times where he kind of says things that normal foreign policy thinkers aren't allowed to say. I mean, Tucker Carlson loses his mind.

You'll hear some of that. But there's the credulousness is incredible. And, you know, Jake Sullivan got a lot of shit for putting in writing right before October 7th that, you know, the Middle East had never been quieter. Steve Whitkoff saying, you're about to hear some great news out of Turkey because the president's amazing call right before the place explodes in this brutal crackdown is right up there. And I think what happens because, you know, Erdogan used to do this with Obama, too. Like, I'm sure he says, oh, President Trump, you're so. great. This is just transformational leadership. And oh, by the way, President Trump, your envoy, Steve Woodcock, is the greatest envoy of a... And these people just believe it. They're so

narcissistic that if Putin or Erdogan, like, just, you know, drop a little flattery and they're like, this is the greatest call. Everyone could have said, like, this is the greatest phone call in the history of phone calls. And they, like, believe that that's true, you know? It's pretty embarrassing. Okay, let's move over to Israel, because last week we talked about Israeli Prime Mr. Bibi Netanyahu's attempt to fire Ronan Barr, the head of the Shinbet, which is Israel's domestic intelligence service. On Friday, the Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction and blocked him. They ordered a hearing on the situation in the coming weeks. So as we talked about, Bar has led the shin bet since 2021. If he is forced out, he would be the first shin bet leader in Israel's history

to get fired. It has been widely reported that the Shinbet is investigating ties between Netanyahu's AIDS and Qatar, the country. There is, in the coverage, Ben, there's a suggestion that the wrongdoing could range from illegal lobbying or taking payments to possibly even being paid spies for the Katari government. It's kind of hard to suss it out, but like there's a lot of reading between the lines happening in the coverage. Netanyahu's office denies that Ronan Barr's firing is connected to that investigation and to his aides, but everyone should doubt that.

Netanyahu was also now trying to fire Israel's attorney general. She had been trying to slow, if not outright, prevent Ronin Barr from getting fired. Now, the good news here is that Netanyahu's cabinet may have unanimously voted against her in a no-confidence vote. The actual process to remove the attorney general is far more onerous and will take some time. But these moves together have once again led to massive protests across Israel. I've heard reports of up to 100,000 people on the streets, which is enormous skis. in Israel's total population. And there's warnings from the chief justice of Israel's Supreme Court that there would be a

constitutional crisis of sorts if Netanyahu ignores the Supreme Court. They don't have a constitution, but you go what I mean. So Netanyahu's coalition unfortunately got stronger last week when this right-wing lunatic we've talked about many times, Tomar Ben-Gavir and his Jewish power party rejoined the government coalition. He had quit back in January after the ceasefire. And when the ceasefire ended, he got back in. So, Ben, you know, there's obvious parallels when we talk about this stuff between the political

situation in Israel and what we're now experiencing here in the U.S. I do have to say the notable difference so far is Israelis, to their great credit, are back out in the streets and protesting and doing it weekly even. And we are not yet. And that seems like a real problem. It is a real problem. I mean, 100,000 Israelis is comparable to, I don't know, I'm not going to math, but like well over 10 million Americans, you know.

And it's pretty obvious what's happening here. I mean, the notion that they, at a minimum, Netanyahu and his kind of cohort facilitated payments to Hamas as part of this strategy of keeping them in power and keeping the Palestinian leadership divided and having Hamas as a boogeyman, that is so well documented, you know. And these guys will do. And there's some question of whether that policy emerged from these Qataris and was sort of like, given to the Israeli side or whether, you know, it certainly sounds like that policy came from Netanyahu's political aides and not the security establishment. And it's, yes, I can't, I mean, I don't know. And I'll get to this in a second, but, you know, I don't know for sure, but like, I can't imagine like the IDF or Shin Bet being like, hey, we've got a good idea, you know,

and let's, like, fun Hamas. And, but wouldn't you like to know? I mean, that's my key point here is like, wouldn't, if you were Israeli, or by the way, a U.S. taxpayer that just keeps shoveling billions of dollars in bombs at Israel, wouldn't you like to know whether or not this was a scheme thrust upon the Israelis by, you know, somebody else, or whether there were a couple of bad apples or whether the prime minister himself had approved this? Like, this is exactly what you would want to investigate, you know? And it's very clear that Neniau, I mean, it kind of a tell that he doesn't want this person to keep investigating, you know, in a system in which the shin bet, even more so than the FBI in the United States, is supposed to be this kind of sacrosanct independent security

service. And now, you know, what we're seeing is the kind of copycat of Trump, like, you know, B.B. wants his own cash Patel in charge of the shin bet. You know, that's what's happening here. And everybody can see it. And let me just say, like, all the enablers of Netanyahu in this country, in the United States, all the APAC crowd are, there. They're part of this, you know, like call this out. Why are we running interference of this fucking guy? The Israelis are in the streets and huge numbers. And yet, you know, people like watch what they say about this in the United States.

Why is this not a bigger story in the United States? This is a huge deal. I know. And it barely registers. People are afraid to talk about it, you know? Well, at the exact moment when the Trump administration is telling kids at Columbia University what they can and cannot say about the Israeli government or Israeli government policies, you've got Israelis saying far more harsh things about Net Yahoo and this anti-government

crackdown that's happening than anyone here ever will. We're talking about some kid at Columbia chanting a slogan you don't like and it's too friendly to Hamas and so we're going to deport that person. We're talking about Israeli leaders potentially funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. You know, like isn't that more of a... Seems worse. Isn't that more providing support? What's worse in terms of supporting Hamas? Like facilitating all this money getting to them or like chaining a slogan at the Columbia University Quad. Like, what planet are we on? Yeah, it's crazy. So we mentioned that, unfortunately, the war in Gaza has restarted, these really started bombing again. The Gaza Health Ministry now says that more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war started,

700 of them since the end of the ceasefire. A third of those, they say were children. That's just another horrifying statistic. Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, says pretty overtly, they're ramping the war back up. Here's a quote. I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza while evacuating the population and to expand the security zones around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers. The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel. Several news outlets have kind of given the way the game there, you know? Yeah, a bunch of news outlets have reported the IDF is considering a huge ground operation and offensive into Gaza with the goal of fully occupying the Gaza Strip and establishing military rule

there. Ominously, Israel is also setting up an agency to supervise the quote, voluntary departure of Gazans from the Gaza Strip, which is a move that echoes Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. But again, Ben, our buddy Steve Wickoff, had to weigh in two quotes we want to play for you guys. The first is this one of Steve talking about Hamas. What they want is unacceptable. What's acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit, right, be involved politically. But they can't be involved. We can't have a terrorist organization. running,

running, uh, uh, uh, Gaza, because that won't be acceptable to Israel. Then we'll just have the same exact experiences.

Every, every, every five, 10, 15 years, we're going to have an October 27th. Yes. October 7th, pardon me.

So that's what Hamas wants. That's not possible. Uh, so we'll get to the second clip in a couple minutes, but that clip to me was kind of the duality of Wikoff, Ben, because he's, like,

I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that Hamas might play some role in the future governance of Gaza, but you sure as hell better believe that Netanyahu is never going to let that happen. It's probably furious that Wickhov would let that slip. It was just interesting to hear him say it. Yeah, and I don't really get there. What's missing here is a theory of, because you're right, you could listen to me like, okay, that's reasonable. Like, Hamas needs to abandon its kind of military wing, demilitarize, and then be a part of some political structure in Gaza. But there's no, like, vision for how any of that happens.

You know, like, there's not like a horizon for Palestinian reconciliation with the Palestinian Authority or the generation of new Palestinian leadership. There's certainly no discussion of when Gaza will be self-governing again. There's no discussion, obviously, of a Palestinian state. And so there are these kind of demands made in interviews with, you know, Tucker Carlson or wherever. And then all that we see in practice is Israel bombing Gaza again. They're killing journalists and children. and we send more weapons. And we send more weapons.

And then the defense minister is literally talking about annexation of parts of Gaza. And so it's hard for me to take seriously that Wikoff is like trying to solve some problem. It just feels like a different flavor of talking while Israel is creating facts on the ground that look increasingly like a plan for annexation and ethnic cleansing. I mean, and you say that and people get bent out of shape, it's like they're saying that. Like the Israeli Minister of Defense said the word annexation. It's clear as day. Just to add to what you said, I mean, we also wanted to play for you a quote of Steve Wyckoff

talking about Gaza reconstruction that I think gets at the utter absurdity of whatever plan they might have or I guess just a lack of plan. Here's more from Steve Wickoff on Tucker Carlson. We're going to attempt to, you know, to ascertain different development plans for Gaza could involve the word two state, could not involve. of the word too state. What about that? You don't hear that anymore. I mean, for my whole life, the stated aspiration was a Palestinian state. But man, I haven't in the past five or six, 10 years heard anybody in authority even mention it. Because when you use those words,

it's like, it's like a flashpoint, right? So I use the word, I can be attacked for it. To me, it's just a word, right? What two state to me means is how do we have, a better living prescription for Palestinians who are living in Gaza. Let's get to that place. But it's not just about housing. Maybe it's about AI coming there. Maybe it's about hyperscale data centers being ceded into that area because we need to have that. And these people can now take advantage and we can create jobs for them there. Maybe it's about blockchain and robotics coming there. Maybe it's about pharmaceutical manufacturing coming there. So interesting that we're walking away completely from the two-state solution while also suggesting, Ben, that Gaza's power grid, which even pre-October 7th was sometimes only able to supply, you know, two to four hours worth of electricity to residents per day, is primed and ready for AI and blockchain?

Is that that's what we're talking about here? That's our plan. I didn't even know what to say about that. And I'd heard it before. But doesn't he sound like someone having a conversation with Trump on the golf? course, you know, like, first of all, is two state one, like you keep saying it like the word two state. It's like such a Trumpian formulation, like I'm going to say the word, two state, which might be two words or hyphenated at least, but anyway, put that aside. Yeah, hyphenated.

Yeah, I don't, you know, this is like a version of Trump's thing about like we're going to depopulate and create a revere and now we're going to bring all the things that they like that they don't fully understand, you know, AI, blockchain, data centers, pharmaceuticals making a cameo appearance. Like, these things are going to come to Gaza?

It sounded like a bullshit tech company's earnings call. It's like they're going to sprinkle in some buzzwords for a fucking algorithm that makes stock prices go up. It sounds like an Aussie media pitch. You know, like, you know, sorry,

there's a little too inside, but like, you know, we've got a PowerPoint, you know, where like the first deck, the first slide is like Gaza, rubble.

And the second, is like a data center and AI. Like these are human beings. And the other thing that actually is truly notable about this, though, is that he doesn't even mention the West Bank. Because, like, actually, I think that's probably just going to be annexed, you know, gradually by Israel. You know, like the heart of the two-state solution is actually in the West Bank, you know.

So, I don't know, man. I do not leave that with a great deal of confidence that there's going to be a flowering of data centers in the, you know, independent. Palestinian state of Gaza anytime soon. We are going to blockchain our way to peace. Two other quick things on this. It's worth noting that there have been some flare-ups between Israel and Lebanon that the BBC describes as the worst violence between the two countries since the ceasefire in Lebanon

came into effect last November, so that's troubling and something we're watching. And then also there was a horrible incident yesterday in the West Bank that we wanted to highlight, which was Hamdan Balal, who is the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary, no other land. He was attacked by violent Israeli settlers. We were able to connect with a witness, a woman named Jenna, who was there as a volunteer for the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. She and some other volunteers received a call from Balal saying he was being attacked. And here's how she described what happened next. We drove to Hamdan's house already there. There was a ton of police and soldier cars,

army vehicles. So we thought we had seen soldiers on the top of the hill where we're Don't live. So we started, three of us got out of the car and started walking towards the house. In reality, it turns out that it was actually the settlers who were attacking. One of them came towards us. He was masked. He started screaming at us. I was screaming in English at him. You know, don't do this. He shoved me pretty hard. And then he punched my friend in the stomach and in the neck. And so we tried to run back to the car. They were hitting us with sticks. I was basically safe because of an sunscreen aerosol can in my back

took the brunt force. Very, very dunted, but still works. Thank you, banana boat. And as we were getting to the car, the earth throwing stones broke the windows slash attire. the driver was honking the horn to get the army's attention and they eventually showed up and the settlers ran back to continue the attack on Hamdan and the other two Palestinian's houses. We were telling the soldiers, like, they attacked us. They attacked us. They attacked us.

Help us, go get them. And the soldiers stood there and did nothing. We told them that there was families in these houses. They needed to go protect them. They just stood there and did nothing. Shout to Jenna in the center for Jewish nonviolence for literally putting their bodies on the line in the wake of this horrific violence. And she's frankly describing something that happens far too often, which is that the IDF soldiers who are in the West Bank are more there to protect violent settlers than any of the residents there, including any peaceful protesters who often get brutalized. So the good news is that Hamda Bala was released Tuesday after being held overnight

at a military base. The Guardian reported that he had bruises on his face, blood on his clothes, but thank God was alive. And there's an initial, someone initially tweeted that he'd been lynched, and it was not clear if this person was speaking kind of metaphorically or literally is very scary for a minute. But, you know, Ben, we've focused so much on Gaza over the last, you know, year and a half, two years. But this incident is just a reminder that settler violence is a huge and growing problem.

And like you said a minute ago, it feels like the plan for the West Bank is Israeli annexation. Yeah, and it's a constant. So what happens is settlers just attack peep Palestinians. and then the IDF comes and arrests the Palestinians, you know, and the settlers have impunity. And that is what is happening right now in Israel and the West Bank and has been for years. And in this particular case, you know, he wins an Academy Award. That's why they're attacking him, you know? It's because they know that for a variety of reasons, like Americans will not speak up in defense of this person.

and and like our silence is a permission slip for them to do what they did. And the last thing I'd say, Tommy, every now and then, like, something like this will happen. And I'm sure you, you know, you and I've talked about this before on the podcast, but like we have people in our lives, you know, why are you hard on Israel? And we get emails from people. I just, how do you defend this? Like, I want to ask all of those people, how do you defend a group of settled? This guy did nothing.

He made a movie that went an Academy Award. He was in his house. And some people showed up and beat the shit out of him. And then the authorities came and arrested him. How do you defend that? This has nothing to do with Hamas. This isn't Gaza, October 7th. How do you defend that?

Like, I'm at a loss for words to understand. I just don't understand the mentality of people that can see that and think it's okay. Yeah. And it's maybe not state sponsored, but it's state's support. violence. State enabled. You know, these IDFs, yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, these IDF soldiers, they're solely there to protect the settlers. And you've got people like Yomar Ben Gavir, who is now a part of the government again, who is helping arm these violent settlers.

So it's very scary stuff, Ben. POTTA World is brought to you by three-day blinds. We are going to have some three-day blinds installed in our office. I can't wait. Cannot wait. In fact, you guys don't know. The blinds is going to unlock the key. to fixing the entire office setup.

Because currently, I can't face a certain direction because the westward sun is blinding at a certain hour and I cannot look at my friends and coworkers and see them. You guys don't know this. We get terrible blinds. I spend all day, I just look at the back of Tommy's head. Yeah, I just hear John breathing right into the back of my head all day long. We need three-day blinds.

If your space has a similar problem and you need blinds, there's a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters, and drapery. It's called three-day blinds. leading manufacturer of high quality custom window treatments in the U.S. and right now, if you use my URL, which is three day blinds.com slash world, they are running a buy one, get one, 50% off deal. We can shop for almost anything at home. Why not shop for blinds at home too?

Three day blinds has local, professionally trained design consultants who average 10 or more years of experience that provide expert guidance on the blinds that are right for you and the comfort of your own home. You just set up an appointment and you get a free, no obligation quote, the same day. If you're not very handy or just lazy, I might be a combo. DIY projects, they can be fun, but installing blinds sounds like it absolutely sucks. The expert team at three-day blinds handles all the heavy lifting. They'll design, measure, install so you can sit back, relax, and leave it to the pros.

Right now, get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three-day blinds. Head to three-day blinds.com slash world for their buy one, get one, 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, shutters, and drapery. For free, no charge, no obligation consultation, just head to three-dayblind.com slash world. One last time, that's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to the number three, D-A-Y, blinds.com slash world. Okay, we are going to switch gears entirely, though, and talk about Russia because on Tuesday, Russia and Ukraine agreed to stop fighting in the Black Sea and also agreed to continue trying to work out details for a ceasefire between the two sides on energy infrastructure. Remember Trump had announced this, I think, last week. This all happened during these U.S. mediated talks that are going on in Saudi Arabia. Now, it's worth pointing out, Russia is demanding even more concessions before they'll agree to even this very limited ceasefire in the Black Sea.

Specifically, they want to restore their agricultural banks access to the international payment system, and they want to get the West to lift restrictions on, quote, trade finance operations. basically they're demanding that the U.S. walk back even more sanctions, even more penalties that were imposed on Russia after the full-scale invasion in 2022. Now, not surprisingly, the White House okayed this additional giveaway to the Russians in their statement about these talks. And again, a ceasefire deal that is just focused on the Black Sea is already tilted toward the Russians because that's the one place where the Ukrainians, because of these interesting

like boat drones they created, have been able to cause a lot of. of damage and really target the Russian Navy in an impactful way and kind of shut down whole areas of operations to their shipping. But again, we wanted to play like one last clip of our boy Steve Wickoff talking with Tucker Carlson this time about Putin and, you know, U.S. relations with Russia. Here's Steve again. President Putin had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump from the leading Russian artist and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home.

to President Trump, which I brought home and delivered him. It's been reported in the paper, but it was such a gracious moment and told me a story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president, not because he was the president of the United, he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend. I was talking to someone in the administration. They said, well, you got to watch it because he's next KGB guy. So I said, okay, what's, what's the inference? Well, he's an ex-KGB guy. He could be looking to manipulate you. He's a super smart guy, okay? You don't want to give him the credit

for it. That's okay. I give him the credit for it. They must hate you for saying stuff like that. But he is. I know. I'm very aware. I think the largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbos, Crimea. you know, the name's. Lugansk, and there's two others. First of all, I'm used to Tucker Carlson's laugh, but it's still just so jarring. It's like he's being chased around by Jack Nicholson and the Shining. It's like so hysterical.

But I mean, you hear that and it's so credulous and he's clearly being manipulated, then mocks the people warning him about being manipulated. And like, of course, Zelensky is apoplectic about these peace talks and Whitkoff, you know, having this major role. these things. Even like Putin's friends would not be as credulous of Putin as Steve Whitkoff. Like, oh, he had a painting of Trump done. He lit a candle in the church. Like, you believe, how many mics in that painting. You believe that? Like, it's amazing Steve Wickoff is walking around and like, he's probably like, like, wait till, wait till someone sends him one of those, like,

Nigerian prince emails and like he's going to give away his fortune. Like, this is the guy in charge of the ending the war? Like, like, there's nobody on earth as credulous of Putin as that, you know, like, Xi Jinping doesn't trust Putin, like, in that way. And the fact that, and then Tucker, by the way, coming in with, like, the four provinces, those are part of Ukraine, right? And, like, Tucker's jumping in. He knows them. Like, he's got the, I mean, these guys are a little too familiar with the Russian narrative for you to be comfortable. about it. They're not disputed provinces. They're not familiar enough to name the fucking territory that he's trying to negotiate away from the Ukrainians. I love that the envoy doesn't know

it, but the kind of Russia, you know, the super pro-Russian talk show is like, I'll jump in there. It's Lahansky or whatever, you know. And but these are not disputed provinces. These are parts of Ukraine that Russia invaded and is trying to annex. And they're talking about them like, and these guys keep, no, Ben, I'm glad you said that because these guys, these were the, the Maga types keep talking about Tucker in particular, keep talking about how they're, oh, there were referendum in these Russian-speaking eastern provinces. But first of all, a lot of people in these areas speak both Russian and Ukrainian. But to the extent that there were referendums, they were done under occupation, under duress. There is literal visual evidence of ballot boxes where the results were

not to the liking of the Russian side that were lit on fire and burned. This is very well established. And like, I'm fine with, you know, if Tucker's like big point is like, okay, we should hear the Russian perspective, understand their threats, you know, like where you sit is, where you say, that's part of diplomacy. Sure, but you don't have to be fucking credulous. You don't have to believe everything they say. Yeah, they're not even talking about NATO enlargement anymore. Now they're fully inhabiting the Russian narrative about provinces and Putin. You know, I'm going to make a Gen X reference, like the painting. Like if all goes to shit for Trump, it's going to be like Vince Vaughn walking out at wedding crashers. Like, the painting was a gift, Todd. Like, I'm keeping the, like,

Trump's last possession that he was a gift lad. Yeah, yeah. The last possession that he will carry out of the White House is that painting that Vladimir Putin gifted him. I'm sure he will. I mean, like, the Moscow Times reported the Kremlin's purposely slow walking the talks. Thank you for reporting it out, but no shit. Again, Putin's aims are pretty maximalists. Like, he won't even agree to a 30-day ceasefire, which remember is what Trump actually wanted, not these limited ceasefires, but the Russian position is that to get there would require a halt to Western military aid to Ukraine and to their country's mobilization efforts of their own troops, which are just non-starters. But again, there's just no pressure applied to the Russian side.

None, zero. None. All right, Ben, two conflicts. There's two major conflicts in Africa that we've talked about a lot that we wanted to touch on again today. The first is the civil war in Sudan. That war is coming up on its two-year anniversary of the fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and its former ally, this militia group called the RSF. So the results of this war have been utterly catastrophic. Tens of thousands of people have been killed. Twelve million people have been displaced, an estimated 30 million people need food assistance. And of course, all of this is happening as Elon Musk and deputy assistant, assistant deputies of state, Rubio, destroy USAID.

United Nations is trying to kind of fill the gap here. And they are not even able to raise 50% of their assistance goals. So there is a massive need and even less resources to deal with it. But there was a pretty big military and symbolic breakthrough in the war last week when the Sudanese armed forces captured the presidential palace in Khartoum. There's not like a look, good guys, bad guys is a reductive way to talk about this. The Sudanese armed forces were part of a coup that toppled a democratically elected group of peaceful protesters. They're not good guys.

But in this case, I think they're better than the RSF. and hopefully the SAF, the Sudanese armed forces, will be able to drive the RSF troops out of the capital so people can go home and the government can try to resume function to some extent, restore basic services, maybe create some sort of technocratic government that can get people like power, water, food aid, et cetera.

But even if they capture all of Khartoum that doesn't do much for people in the Darfur region, because many of the same Islamist rebel groups that conducted the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s are now part of the RSF, and there once again doing evil shit, killing civilians, using rape as a tool of war, laying siege to entire cities full of like a million plus displaced people.

So again, USAID has been decimated. There's not even nearly enough food and medical support. But Ben, what are you watching in this conflict after this kind of turning point in cartoon? It just does feel like this is decisively shifted. It makes you wonder, what was the point of all this? You know, what was the point of this civil war? why did the governments like the UAE back the RSF for two years, for what purpose?

And so one is to watch whether there's any continued foreign assistance flowing into the RSF from places like the UAE or whether they just kind of go back to being a pariah, and I think that will probably happen. To your point, I assume that the military will consolidate control over a Khartoum. Watch what happens in Darfur, though, because these guys, the RSF, they were the Jonduit before they were the RSF, they could go back there, kind of take it out on the people there. But the main thing to watch is what happens with there's no USAID? Because this would be a place where the USAID would be not only on the ground, but it'd be a

force multiplier bringing in other assistance. And so I think we have to watch how much philanthropy can get basic needs met, how much, you know, the Europeans and other governments can come in. And I worry that that's not going to happen and that you're going to have a lingering humanitarian crisis. Yeah, me too. It is really, really bad and really dark. The USAID piece is horrific. I noticed that Marco Rubio in his, I think, confirmation hearing talked about the need to pressure the UAE to stop funneling arms to the RSF, though I think he just recently went to the UAE. That topic was not part of his public readout. Maybe it came up privately, but he was far more focused on the UAE, you know, pumping money into the U.S. economy or whatever Trump wanted to be talk. about. So yet, I'm not sure we're getting the leadership we need there. And then the second conflict that we've been wanted to talk about was in the Congo. So the quick backstory is in recent

months, the M23 rebel group with explicit support from the Rwandan military has invaded big parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This fighting is believed to have killed at least 7,000 people and displaced more than 7 million people. And then last week, the M23's troops attacked even further west into a city called Wali Kaleh that is both a mining hub and also an important strategic location because it's got a road there that connects four provinces in eastern Congo. Officials in Rwanda and Congo met in Qatar last week. They talked about a possible ceasefire, but an M23 liter poured cold water on it and said basically they would refuse to honor any agreement that's cut without them.

Now, this gets weirder when you learn about this offer from the president of Congo. Felix Chesa-Kady, who is clearly concerned that things are getting at worse, not better. So he offered the Trump administration a deal that would allow the U.S. access to Congo's estimated $24 trillion worth of mineral resources in exchange for some sort of military support to expel the M23. Ben, there's also reports that a soulless private mercenary named Eric Prince, who once ran an organization called Blackwater, this private militia group, has been in talks with the official. in Congo about providing security for their mining operations and to the government, especially the government's tax collectors who are trying to get money from these miners, it's just hard to think of a setup more rife for abuse and human rights violations than Eric Prince in the Congo. But I don't know, what are you watching when it comes to this M23 assault into the DRC?

I think we just learned a few things. One is that Rwanda and the M23 always deny that they're focused on minerals. they always claim some need to create a buffer or secure Tutsis or their ethnic group. But everything they're doing suggests that they're trying to seize minerals in Eastern Congo that are of immense value. That's clear. And so I'd watch whether they just push further, whether in this kind of new world order where everybody's, you know, Trump's going to grab minerals in Greenland, you know, that they just feel like it's legitimized for them to do that. And how much human cost goes along with that. And then I would,

would really, really watch this Eric Prince thing. And if not them, you know, some iteration of the Wagner grouper, because the Congolese army cannot stand up to M.23. There's tons of money down there. If you're Eric Princeton, you can get a stake of the mineral resources for providing security. The Russians have been deep in the DRC themselves. And so I think this could kind of become a playground for the worst kinds of people in the world, these private mercenaries. And I would watch that very closely because this this feels like it could get a lot worse and in kind of all the worst people in the world could descend on this place, which has happened to the Congolese before, you know?

No, I look, I read that Wall Street Journal story about Eric Prince making this pitch to do whatever in the Congo and it sent a shiver down my spine. These private mercenaries trying to extract rare earth minerals. Cobalt and lithium. Jesus Christ. It's like a bad horror movie. There was a great piece in foreign affairs about this conflict and kind of the history there. It's just worth pointing out.

And the Western response so far has been pretty pathetic. Like there was some joint statements between the U.S. and Europe. Obviously, that's not worth anything. The UN Security Council called for a ceasefire and withdrawal of M23 troops, but they're not doing anything about it. The U.S. has put some sanctions in place. The EU is reviewing a joint minerals extraction deal it has with Rwanda, but apparently Luxembourg is blocking any EU sanctions on Rwanda

because they want to develop some sort of financial center in Rwanda. And interestingly, I mean, I think as you were saying, initially this conflict was viewed as having more parochial origins. Like there was some talk that Rwandan president, Paul Kagame was mad about getting cut out of a deal to create some sort of regional road and rail infrastructure. But as M23 has taken more territory, people are taking a harder look at some of his past statements, especially a speech he gave in 2023, where he suggested that Rwanda's pre-colonial borders, include parts of the Congo and also Uganda and Burundi. So there's real concern that this is more of like a Vladimir Putin, let's return, you know, the Rwandan imperial empire approach. Greater Rwanda.

More than something else. Yeah, greater Rwanda, exactly. Feels that way. Yeah, it feels pretty scary. So quick immigration update. Over the weekend, Venezuela agreed to begin accepting deportation flights from the U.S. with Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro saying it was an opportunity to, quote, rescue and free migrants from prisons in the U.S.

That original patriation deal, I think we talked about on the show, had been worked out by a friend of the pod, Rick Cornell, back in January, before falling apart after Trump revoked Chevron's oil license in Venezuela. Also on Monday, Ben, Trump announced that the U.S. is going to place 25% tariffs on any country that buys Venezuela oil or gas. And late last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would revoke temporary protected status for over 500,000 immigrants from Q. Haiti, Nicarago, and Venezuela. So that means now hundreds of thousands of people who are all here

legally can either deport themselves or ICE or even the IRS has been reported some places. We'll try to find them and deport them by this April 24th deadline, which is less than a month from now. So this is just unbelievably grim stuff, Ben, because Haiti, as we've covered, is experiencing gang violence at levels that you would normally only see in an active war zone. And Trump is at the same time actively trying to destroy what's left of Venezuela's economy with more sanctions while telling people who are here legally that their options are go home to a dictator that you have fled or worse end up in a gulag down in El Salvador. It is the most unbelievably cruel thing you can imagine.

To hundreds of thousands of people. You know, this is not a small number of people that like the U.S. you get to be in a gulag, you get to go back to a war zone, or you get to get hunted down by ice. I mean, this is having a horrific human cost to populations that are not, you know, these are here legally. TPS, like, they didn't storm the border. Like, these are people that have a legal status.

The only thing I want to add to this, Tommy, is that Marker Rubio, you know, assistant trash collector at the State Department, is now the Secretary of State. who has presided over, the canceling of all USAID democracy funding for Cuba, the termination of Radio Marti, the mass deportation and prohibition on Cubans entering the United States, some friend of the Cuban people, this guy turned out to be, you know, who's been posing as a champion. I mean, it's comical. It's absolutely comical.

Hello, South Florida hardliners. Here is your hero. here's your god, Marco Rubio, throwing your people out of the country, terminating any lifeline to them. Like, what a joke, you know, can me, like, it boggles, anybody who follows, and I know this is kind of niche, but anybody who's followed the Cuba issue for decades, this is unbelievable that this guy is literally implementing the worst nightmare for himself, like two years ago as Secretary of State.

This guy's a walking Greek tragedy. It is just so fitting that the cost for him to ascend to the heights of government power that he thinks he deserve is to literally overturn everything he's ever believed in and actively harm the things he's worked on over the course of his career. And he could have been invited into the group chat just by being an Atlantic reporter. He didn't need to, you know, sell a soul like this. Yeah. Buddy, you could have gotten CCs no matter what. It's real easy. Two just super quick things. First, Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, called for snap elections. Canada is now going to have elections on April 28th. Clearly, Carney wants the focus to be on who can best fight the Trump administration,

both the tariffs and these not at all funny jokes that are still going about making Canada the 51st state. Canadians get to vote to elect members of the House of Commons in each of Canada's 343 electoral districts. Then they'll work to form a majority government. You'll need 172 seats for a majority government. Of course, two parties can work together for a minority government. the party will then pick its leader in that person becomes prime minister. Another election news been retired ultimate fighting champion fighter Connor McGregor says he's going to run for president of Ireland. So that's interesting.

A lot of blows to the head, a lot of allegations of nonstop drug and alcohol abuse. So maybe he'll probably win. I'll give you that setup. He'll probably win. I may only two quick comments on these are a friend of the pod, Mike O'Diel should run for president of Ireland against Connor McGregor. Agreed. I'd work on that campaign. And then Mark Carney, just message to Canadians. I know you already know this. But when Trump said he was endorsing Mark Carney, that's called trolling. He does not actually want Mark Carney to win. He wants him to lose. That's why he said that. We at Ponce of the World are endorsing Mark Carney sincerely and hope he wins. Yes, we absolutely are. And because Pierre Pallivar is a fucking joke, you know. Pierre Palliav, yeah, he's a what I just pronounce his name wrong and I don't even feel bad about that. Like, you know, yeah.

He's a magalike guy. You know, give me a break. Take that, Pierre. Okay, we are long show from us. God, there's a lot to cover. We could have much more stuff. But we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, you're going to hear my interview with Jeremy Shapiro from the European

Council on Foreign Relations. We take a tour of the region in Europe. We talk about Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Germany, lots of interesting stuff that's worth your time. So stick around for that. Pazade of the World is brought to you by Vaya. it ever. Life moves fast, John. Sometimes you just need to relax, recharge, or stay focused without over-complicating things. That's where Viya comes in. If you haven't tried them yet, and boy,

have I, you seriously are missing out. Whether you need to unwind, refocus, or boost your mood, Vaya is here to enhance your every day and night. Mostly night. Trust it by over half a million happy customers, Vaya is changing the game in natural wellness, blending powerful, high-quality hemp drive ingredients to deliver real effect-driven benefits. Whether you're looking for better sleep, have a better libido, improve focus, recover, or simply relax. Viya's got a tailored solution just for you. It's the rock hard edible. I meant lifting. Wait.

With products ranging from zero to high candiboid levels, Viya let you fully customize your experience to fit your needs. Whether you're looking to support your daily wellness routine, enhance focus and clarity, or unwind with deep relaxation, VIA has you covered. From their award-winning effect forward gummies to premium indoor grown THCA flour and calming dry.

and calming drops every Viya product is thoughtfully crafted, made with organic, lab-tested hemp source from trusted independent American-owned farms. And the best part, Vaya ships legally across the USA, discreet, direct to your door, no medical card required, and backed by a worry-free guarantee. Not sure where to start. Take Vaya's product finder quiz to get personalized recommendations tailored to your needs. It can take you less than 60 seconds to complete. So if you're 21-plus, treat yourself to 15% off and get a free gift with your first order using our exclusive code, which is world. So here's what you do.

You go to via hemp.com, use the promo code world. You'll also get free shipping on orders over $100. That's V-I-I-I-A-H-E-M-P.com. This isn't in the script, John, but the Viah hemp people sent me a big sampler platter. Oh. Fantastic. Here's what I figured out.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, and everyone's like, you've got to try these edible things. It took way too much. Yeah. This was mostly because of your friend in mine, Josh Porter. Yeah, people were like cooking them themselves. 10 milligrams, 20 milligrams. Hey, you have one. Take this. Take that. And then I thought, oh, I didn't know that crippling anxiety came with this product. Turns out it doesn't if you use via hemp. And they're like, here's your little

two milligram sleep gummy night night. Now better sleep, better libido. You'll feel great. You'll look great. Your libido's ripping. Viya hemp is great. I'm a huge fan of Viya. Yeah, focused as hell. I'm a huge fan of Viya. Yeah, focused. You're hard. You're sleeping. where am I if you're 21 plus check out the link at Vaya in our description and ease the code world to receive 15% off free shipping on orders over $100

and if you're new to Vaya get a free gift of your choice after you purchase they ask you where you heard about us make sure you tell them Pod Save the World Pod Save the World Stay tuned for the segue to the next segment You support our show God damn it

Tell them Pod Save the World sent you I'm sure it's a light one Enhance your every day with VIA Jeremy Shapiro is the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Jeremy, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for having me. There is a lot going on in Europe, so I was very excited to talk with you an expert on a whole range of things. Ben and I talked earlier in the show about the scary crackdown and Democratic backsliding in Turkey

after President Erdogan arrested his chief political rival, the mayor of Istanbul. There is this massive protest movement happening as we speak, trying to force Erdogan to backtrack and undo this crackdown. But if he stays the course, I mean, what do you think this says about Turkey's future as a democracy and also as part of Europe? Yeah, not good things. Fundamentally, Turkey has for a while been what political scientists like to call sort of competitive authoritarian state, which means that it's governed in a pretty authoritarian way, but they do have reasonably competitive elections. This arrest sort of demonstrates that the government now is not even really willing to put up with those competitive elections, which means it's sort of

floating toward a Russia-like pure autocracy, which certainly isn't good for the people of Turkey, and it's not, frankly, a good precedent for other countries, other democracies, frankly, including our own. But in terms of its acceptance into Europe, it's a pretty good moment for Turkey to do this because the Europeans really feel like they need Turkey's help in dealing with Russia and Ukraine, given that the United States seems to be a lot less reliable. And of course, the United States under Donald Trump doesn't really seem to care about democratic backsliding in countries like Turkey. Donald Trump is talking about letting Turkey back into the F-35 program, the fighter program.

and Erdogan, the president of Turkey, might visit the White House next month. And I don't think any of this is really affecting that calculation. I did not know he was going to visit. Yeah, I was reading something the other day that I believe said that Turkey has the second largest military in NATO and also has one of the most advanced defense industry sectors of any country. And I mean, I know I've read a lot recently about, is it baked tar? like their drone company. But it just sounds like that a lot of countries have been increasingly reliant on Turkey's defense industry.

Is that right? Yeah. To a degree, I mean, the drones that Turkey produces were very effective and important in the early part of the Ukraine war. And the provision of those to Ukraine was a big deal for the Ukrainians. And the Russians were pretty pissed off about it. And as the war has evolved, it's evolved past those. drones and most of the drones are now made

indigenously in Ukraine and Russia is getting its own source of drones. But yeah, the industry remains very important. The Turkish army is fairly battle tested in Syria and in northern Iraq and is a very, is a large army after the United States. It may be the most effective army in NATO. And so it's quite important from the European

standpoint with the Americans in question to be able to make sure that Turkey doesn't become too close to Russia and that Turkey's support can be counted on at least a balance against Russia in places like Syria and Ukraine. And that would probably be in question if they took on Turkey's domestic democracy questions at the moment. What do you think we should know about Ekram Imamolu and the CHP party? What do they stand for? What's their political worldview? Well, the CHP party is a long-time Turkish party. It ruled for quite some time.

It's probably, you would probably consider it a sort of slightly center left party, like a social democratic party. Imamulu has been a very interesting politician the last several years. He's survived a lot of struggles with Erdogan. He's been threatened with jail many times. And the first time he won the election for mayor of Istanbul, I think it was in 2016. He, the election was invalidated and he had to run again on completely false pretenses.

And he then won by an even greater margin the second time. So he's a real survivor. He's a very impressive politician, a lot of charisma. And he's finally someone you feel like could beat Erdogan in a presidential election. He's been able to reach out to the nationalist, to the Kurds. He's seen as sufficiently pious to appeal to some of the people in Erdogan's base. And, you know, he runs the city of Istanbul, which is a city of 16 million people. And importantly, the base that Erdogan used as mayor of Istanbul back in the 1990s to become prime minister and then president.

So he's very dangerous politician from Erdogan's standpoint. Yeah. Okay. As I promise, I'm going to hop around the continent a bit. here. So Romania has been going through it the last several months. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the presidential election after the first round of voting back in December. There were two candidates. There was a center-right politician, then a far-right independent named Kaleen, Georgescu, who rose from, seemingly from obscurity quite quickly to win the first round.

The court then decided that Russian interference in the election was so egregious that they had to annul the results of the first round and postpone the election. They've re-schedged the election for May, I believe, but it bared Georgescu from running. And I guess the similar question, which is, you know, how do you think Romania is balancing efforts to combat foreign interference in their elections, specifically Russian interference, while remaining a democracy that allows free and fair elections if they're going to just bar candidates? Yeah, not well. I mean, I'm a little bit loathe to agree with J.D. Vance on this or almost anything. But I I think that there's a certain point here that, you know, Romania, for all of its pro-Americanism

and for all of its commitment to the Western camp, you know, isn't a very mature democracy and isn't and has big problems with corruption and with democracy. And what you're seeing here, this idea that Russian interference was the cause of this rather obscure, frankly, quite nutty politician. getting 23% of the vote in the first round of the election. It's a little bit difficult to stomach. Of course, the Russians, they interfere everywhere, but they're not actually that good at it.

And it's not really clear that it makes that much of a difference. The idea here was that somehow their amplification on TikTok made the difference in the election when most of Jojescu's voters were older people who probably couldn't even find TikTok on their phone. Interesting. So I don't exactly believe it. I think that what we're seeing here is a real challenge to democracy is this idea that people are really pissed off about the system, whatever the hell that is.

They feel like there's an elite that is somewhat corrupt and is holding on to power through these elections and is rigging the system against them. And they're not totally wrong, particularly in a place like Romania, but you know, you can see symptoms of this, elements of this, even in the United States. So I think people are pretty pissed off about that. And the Romanian attempt to sort of say, well, this is the Russians, you know, we have to get our candidate in and the courts are going to take care of it for us. Can't be improving people's moods. I mean, I would note that he got 23% in the first round of the election in December. But when he was excluded from the new election, election last week he was polling at over 50 percent, which does give you some sense that maybe

it's his very exclusion. It's the very way in which they're telling people that this guy who really is, you know, a lunatic. I mean, he is not somebody you would ever want to be president. And in my view, might have been a better idea to let him run and expose that than to make him into a sort of political martyr, which is what they've done. I think there are. I think there are a better idea. I think there are some lessons there for everybody else. A lot of countries are struggling with this. And it's very tempting to sort of say, well, this is outside the pale. This is a foreign government interfering. We can't let these people run. We can't let these people in front of the people. If you think about that, that betrays a certain lack of confidence in democracy, which, you know,

might be justified, but it's quite sad. And it's not really clear that it can persist. Yeah, it certainly seems like it had a bit of a political stricand effect and helped boost him in ways that maybe running would not have. I like the idea of the political stricand effect. Yeah, you know, well, Barbara's in politics, you know, over here as well. So maybe she would get in on this. Let's talk about my buddy, our buddy, Victor Orban. We talk often about Hungary on the show and how the American right wing views Orban as a model for how to crush dissent, essentially. in Trump's second term, there is now some interesting reporting about how Orban seems to be cracking down even harder.

You know, he feels like the kind of boot is off his neck from the Americans. In particular, he's going after the LGBT community. He's going after pride events. What are you seeing in Hungary? How do you think it's impacted by Trump's election? Yeah, I think that that's right. You definitely see an uptick in Orban's rhetoric and at an attempt to move sort of first. down the authoritarian ladder.

And it's not just the American boot that's been removed. It's his sense that because he has support in Washington, he will be less constrained by Brussels. And I think a very important and frightening relationship has formed between the Trump administration and Victoroban's regime in which they really can help each other with their respective problems. So, you know, the rumor in Brussels is that is that Orban is that the Trump people called up Orban and are telling him how to vote on, for example, EU sanctions against Russia. And they wanted them in this case to continue. But if they have to vote on that every six months, if six months from now the Americans decide that they don't want EU sanctions to continue, they can just call their buddy Victor. And he can get it done for them regardless of what the other 26 countries think.

Meanwhile, the Americans are quite helpful in protecting Orban from pushback by the European Union or by anybody else. And just the sense in Hungarian or European politics that you have support from the White House means that you can be freer. And so he's now calling his opponents in sex. and he's really up the rhetoric in a way which, you know, Hungarian democracy was already in trouble. I think it's in significantly more trouble now. It's a sort of familiar story across the three. They each have their particularities, but across the three countries we've talked about, we're seeing some backsliding in all of them.

Yeah, I mean, you are hearing some European leaders say, well, we've got to just kick Orban out. We've got to kick Hungary out of the EU. Is there any momentum there? No, I don't think so. There's also no mechanism for that. Right. And it would be a real admission of defeat. One of the things that they're doing right now is they're calling for sort of decisions at 26. They're 27 members of the EU. And it's true that particularly on issues like Ukraine, they do have, Hungary stands out. It's an outlier on, particularly on Ukraine, but on a bunch of European Union issues. And they've kind of come up with a procedure where they issue conclusions at 26 and they sort of ignore the raving lunatic in the corner of the room. And they can do that for more things than you would think because the European Union does operate by some norms. But on the key votes that require unanimity, such as the sanctions vote I mentioned earlier, they can't do that.

And I think that they're in particular because of Trump taking power, they're losing, let's see. over Orban rate rather than gaining it. Yeah. Speaking of the impact of Trump, I mean, the Germans recently made some changes in terms of how they manage their debt. This will allow them to spend domestically to stipulate the economy, but also invest a lot in their own defense capabilities. Can you just give us like the quick and dirty on the, I think it's the so-called debt break

change and how meaningful you think it will be for NATO and European defense capabilities generally to have this reinvigorated German military? Yeah, you know, it has the possibility to be a really big, a really big deal. The Germans are interesting. I mean, they are, they're the country with, that has a tremendous amount of what they call fiscal space in Europe, because they've been very German over the years, very prudent in their spending. they have a debt to GDP ratio of roughly 30, 35%, which is, you know, the American one is 90.

The European Union guideline is 60 and most countries exceed it. And they have, you know, spectacular credit rating. So basically, they can borrow practically unlimited funds at very low interest rates. And they haven't taken advantage of that in recent years because they've become, you know, arguably too German. So I think the fear of American abandonment and the increasing sense of threat from Russia, as well as, frankly, fears of loss of German competitiveness because they haven't really been mobilizing much public investment in the last decade. And I just came back from living in Germany for a little over two years. and it's not dissimilar from the United States,

but you can feel a lot of stuff sort of falling apart. So they have finally decided, they had what was called a debt break, as you mentioned, which was a constitutional provision, which limited their ability to run deficits. They threw a very complicated parliamentary maneuver, got mostly got rid of that debt break, and pushed what appears to be about,

500 billion euros, at least in the initial phase, to both defense spending and investment, and then they had to bribe the Green Party with $100 billion in spending on climate change issues. So this is an enormous amount of money by any standard. If they really spend it, and if they spend it wisely on infrastructure and wisely on good defense investments, It could completely change German power. But that wisely adverb is a difficult one for them to meet. They did a sort of mini one of these right after the Russian invasion where they said they were going to spend 100 billion euros.

I think they, by and large, did spend it, but they didn't spend it very well. And it didn't make much difference. So they, so that the, The issue is not over, but this is an impressive move, and particularly from a leader, hasn't even taken office yet, and we should be watching it very carefully. Yeah, it was quite impressive politics. I mean, I guess there's also the question of where they're going to spend this money. There's been a bunch of reporting on how Europe wants to wean itself off of American weapons

and weapons systems. My understanding is that, you know, I think it's a little easier said than done. because you're often talking about like complicated interoperable systems like, you know, radar and missile defense or systems that need constant maintenance like the F-35 that you mentioned earlier. How realistic do you think it is for Europe to wean itself off of the U.S. you know, military industrial complex? Yeah, well, wean is the right term. I mean, there are lots of alternatives. There's a lot of possibility to build up defense industrial base in Germany and in other European countries.

There are lots of other even buyers to buy from. I think it's very important for them to make that choice. You're right that it won't be something you do overnight. It's the work of 10 years, probably. But it's certainly doable. It's just that the big thing is you have to decide to do it. And right now that Germans are still debating amongst themselves, whether this spending is to replace the Americans

or to entice the Americans to stay. and that because actually in theory both things require money right Trump is saying right Trump is saying we need you to spend more or we're not going to defend you and so the idea there is well let's spend more and then he'll stay and or alternatively he could be leaving and then you'd have to say well we need to spend money because there's nobody there but that both of those things require that this type of spending program but they but they dictate very different ways that you spend it. And that's, I think, the key thing to be looking at. If the Germans make concerted efforts, again, slow, gradual weaning efforts to start to reinvigorate there and the European

defense industrial base and to move away from American weapons, then you'll understand that they are trying to substitute for the Americans. But if they just keep buying F-35s, and, you know, frankly, if you have 500 billion to waste, there's no better. a way to waste it than on the F-35, then we'll know that what they're trying to do basically is bribe America to keep defending them. And I think that would be a very bad idea for both sides. Yeah, somewhere a generation of acquisition folks of the Pentagon is nodding along with you there. Final question for you. Georgia Maloney, the prime minister of Italy, has been an interesting character to watch when she was elected. You know, there was all these ties about kind of being

ties to Mussolini or being a Mussolini fan. She seemed like a traditional far-right populist to a demigrog migration and go along that sort of well-worn path. But she's also been very pro-Ukraine. She's kind of given the finger to the Trump administration or to Elon Musk a couple times. She's just sort of like played an interesting political dance. And I wonder what you make of her and the position she's sort of taken on the world stage. Yeah, look, I agree that she's fascinating. And, you know, to be honest with you, I think she is more or less a traditional populist. Certainly when it comes to her immigration stance and when it comes to her anti-elite message and when it comes to her basic nationalism. But I think what she is above all is a very, very impressive politician.

And I think when you're prime minister of Italy, you have to balance a whole bunch of different considerations. And I think what we're seeing in Georgia Maloney is not that someone who seemed to be a populist wasn't, but that power socializes you. And that actually, and this is maybe a lesson for the Romanians or somebody else, is that, you know, middle-sized European countries can't do anything, everything they want. They have to deal with the European Union. They have to deal with the United States. They have to deal with a population that doesn't, that, you know, once you're in power, isn't just interested in whether you like Russia or not, they're interested in you delivering the goods.

And, you know, liking Russia is not a way of delivering the goods economically. That, for that, if you're an Italian politician, you have to be, you have to have a good relationship with the European Union. You have to have a good relationship with the United States. And so she has, I think, been quite deft in being able to. stay true in a basic way to her populist roots, but also govern the country in a way that can conceivably deliver the goods. And that's moderated her from the standpoint of liberals in Europe and in the United States. I don't think she's exactly any different than she ever was.

But I think she is finding that it's very easy to run as a populist. It's a lot harder to govern as a populist. And we're seeing this everywhere across the world. Populists don't really have governing programs. They have opposition programs. What she has done is demonstrate how you can change from an oppositional populist to a governing populist. And that's a little bit comforting, actually, amongst all the bad news stories we've been talking about. And there are a lot of them, including here domestically. A lot of bad news. Jeremy, thank you so much for just hopping around the continent with me. Sure, it was a nice trip.

Maybe next time we'll go to some nice response. Maybe we can just park in Paris with Macron. Maybe we build an international peacekeeping force in London. I feel like if we'd done this from a cafe in Rome, it would have been better. Listen, I don't know where you're located currently, but tell me when and where and I'll be there.

Excellent. Thanks for doing this. It was fun. Thanks again to Jeremy Shapiro for doing the show. And talk to you guys soon. Ponside World is a crooked media production. Senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes.

Say hi, Ben. Hi. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanner is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hethkoat, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolls, and Molly Lobel. Natalie Harringer is our head of news and programming.

Matt DeGroote is our head of production. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our friends of the pod subscription community. at cricket.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers, and other community events. Plus find Pod Save the World on YouTube

for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. If you're as opinionated as we are, please consider dropping us a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.