Pod Save the World - Can Germany’s Far Right Be Stopped?

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

The far right gets a huge win in Germany, Serbia celebrates a war criminal, and Nigel Farage gets caught on camera breaking the law.Tommy and Ben dig into the ultra-right-wing AfD party's historic results in a regional election, what drove it, what it would mean if they actually form a coalition government, and what it says about the state of European politics more broadly. Trump’s dumb and dumber team of negotiators (Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff) return from a busy weekend traveling to Moscow meeting with Vladimir Putin, and their first trip to Ukraine to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky on a train they named the “Peace Express.” In Serbia, convicted genocide architect Ratko Mladić is given a funeral fit for a national hero, which doesn’t bode well for the country’s pathway into the EU. The UK's new Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announces a sweeping shift in British policy toward Israeli settlements, and a bombshell Haaretz investigation reveals that Netanyahu received a direct warning from the UAE about a major Hamas attack ten days before October 7th. There are nothing but bad updates in the fallout from the war with Iran, including tit-for-tat strikes, mass polygraph tests at the Pentagon, and the dangerous escalation of the Saudi-Houthi conflict. And finally, a Channel 4 investigation catches Nigel Farage on camera conspiring to illegally solicit foreign donations. At the end of the show, Ben speaks to Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 about what we have and haven’t learned 25 years after the 9/11 attacks.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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for sponsoring this episode. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, you are wise to escape Los Angeles. We don't have to disclose where you are. Ben's overseas at the moment. You can disclose if you want. But it's like, it's literally like a rainforest here right now. It's going to be 100 degrees on Wednesday. And the dew point

is basically where it is in a rainforest. That's how miserably humid it is. In Los Angeles. When I left, it was like pouring like it was a tropical climate too. Yeah, that was fun with two little kids. You've had pouring rain and scorching heat. There's no climate change or anything, but that's not normal Los Angeles. I don't remember El Nino is sucking this bat.

Is it always a huge nightmare? Apparently. Well, this is supposed to be the mega El Nini, right? This is supposed to be worse than all the other ones. So buckle up. It's not as fun as like that. You move out to L.N.A. is New York or Nicarly. And I'm like, I miss New York.

And everybody's like, oh, but the weather will be great. And now we can't even say that. Here we are. Well, boohoo, L.A.S. Our first world problems. We got some additional, some problems for other parts of the first world that we're going to talk through today. Starting with some regional elections in Germany that have rocked Europe, frankly, rocked a lot more places than Europe. We're also going to talk about the Trump emissary, Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, their trip to Russia and Ukraine.

We'll talk about the scary resurgence of ultra-nationalist fervor and, you know, celebration of genocide in Serbia. Some major news updates from Israel, including a policy change by the U.K. We'll talk about the latest in the war with Iran. And then finally another massive corruption scandal, swirling around far right, British MP, Nigel Farage. Lots of UK-focused stuff, Ben. Then you just did our interview then. What are we talking about there? So, yeah, I talked to Lawrence Wright.

He was really one of my favorite writers. and he wrote the looming tower, which is kind of the definitive book that was about the lead into 9-11, the failures of the U.S. government and Al-Qaeda and its intentions. So we talked about, and he's written a new introduction for that book, by the way, so if people want to check it out, they should. We talk about essentially how to make sense of the failures. There's no other way to put it in the last 25 years. How did the U.S. get it so wrong? Some of his concerns actually given all the destruction of the U.S. government and the

direction of intelligence agencies to focus on weird Trump priorities that we actually might be complacent. We might be kind of going through the cycle again where we're letting our guard down. You don't think Al-Qaeda is plotting in the Fulton County, Georgia elections office? That's not why we're searching here. Exactly. Yeah. Or the, you know, you know, immigration enforcement division. And then, you know, really interesting conversations about, you know, how do we learn, how do we see the world and understand it better so that we don't make the kind of of mistakes that we made after 9-11. Some of the unanswered questions about the 9-11 attacks,

including the potential Saudi involvement that has always been something that bugged Lawrence Wright, as well as other people. And just kind of how 9-11 changed his life and changed the country. So it's a good reflective conversation. I think that as we head up to this anniversary, it's worth checking out. Absolutely. Lumi Tower is truly one of the best books. Also, I think it's one of the things that Hugh Hewitt always quizzes you on if you go on his show. you read that before you go on that podcast. All right, Ben. Let's start with the weekend's elections in Germany, which were historic for all the wrong

reasons, all the worst reasons, really. The alternative for Germany party or the AFD won 43.8% of Sunday's vote in the Saxony-on-hauled regional elections. So the AFD now holds 39 of that state's 83 regional assembly seats, which is not a full majority, but it's damn close. In the past, other German political parties have refused to go into coalition with the AFD to keep them out of government to not prevent them from governing. That's a so-called firewall policy.

That may happen again here, but the AFD is going to try to convince three members of the conservative CDU party to defect. CDU is Angela Merkel's party, now Friedrich Mertz's party. Or they may go into coalition with this kind of fringe leftist party called the BSW, which shares some of the AFD's views on immigration, Russia and the war in Ukraine, despite having communist origins. It's the classic horseshoe. If the AFD forms a coalition, it'll be the first time a right-wing party held power in Germany since World War II, and we all remember how well that went. A little context before people get too freaked out about all this. We are talking

about a regional election. Saxony-Hald is a small eastern state of about two million people. It has been an economic and population decline for a while since German reunification. It's more conservative and kind of AFD curious than the rest of the country as a whole. Also, even if the AFD does take power, these regional governments have limited authority. They'd be able to control education, school curriculum, policing, some elements of migration policy, which is bad, but it's not like sort of, you know, being the chancellor, the chancellor being AFD. However, it's still a really big deal and quite bad. The AFD, for those who don't know, it's an extreme right-wing political party. They talk openly about the remigration of immigrants.

They want to segregate disabled kids and refugees into separate classrooms. They want to downplay Germany's Nazi past. They have close ties with Putin's Russia and want to end support for Ukraine. Saxony-Enholt is a regional, they have a regional intelligence service, and there's a lot of fear now that Russia could use AFD politicians with access to that intelligence to penetrate the German spy services and figure out who might be spying for Germany. The list of concerns goes on and on and on. The AFD has been steadily gaining in the polls nationally. they did well in this election for a couple reasons, a bunch of reasons. Germany, German voters are fed up with this sort of establishment centrist parties.

That's not an unfamiliar story to anyone who's been watching elections over the last decade. They're also pissed about the economy. They're very mad about immigration and support for Ukraine. In the Saxony-Anhalt region, there is a feeling that the state has been left behind compared to Western Germany. And there's sort of major regional industries like the chemical industry have really struggled recently. The AFD did especially well with male voters, voters aged 35 to 59, and they turned out an estimated 170,000 previous nonvoters, turnout was 78%, which is massive. So, Ben, notable here that the AFD has improved across the board and that Germans have seemingly gone from treating a vote for the AFD as kind of solely a protest vote against, you know, the establishment to now wanting them to actually govern. The CDU Merz's party, Chancellor Merz's party got routed.

He said he was shocked, which is, you mean, he shouldn't have been. Everyone saw this coming. And that the next, the election would have consequences. We don't know what those will be, but he said he will not resign. But the next test for the AFD will be in the Mecklenburg-Fro-Pomin regional elections on September 20th. So we could see another story like this pretty soon. Ben, thoughts on these elections and kind of the rise of the AFD generally so far. Well, it's not great.

You never like to see the far-right ascendant in Germany. And I think there are a couple of reasons that I'd underscore about why to be concerned. Number one, the AFD is really a far-right party. I think sometimes people have grown accustomed to, say, Georgia Maloney, which she got elected, you know, to be prime minister of Italy. She's been pretty far right, but not like an extreme figure in any sense beyond some of her kind of hardline immigration policies. The AFD is to the right of Maloney. The AFD is to the right of Marine Le Pen. You know, the AFD has gotten more radical as they have moderated.

Yeah, they're just cleaning it. They've not moderated. If you look underneath the hood, like these guys are, they're not trying to kind of smooth off the rough edges. They're still hanging out, you know, with the Holocaust deniers and the kind of neo-Nazi elements. And that's why they were designated as an extremist organization. by German intelligence services. So let's be clear, like, this is not just kind of like a right-wing party that we call far-right. This is a far-right party.

The other problem, so that's bad. That doesn't mean that everybody who voted for them is a far-right person. And that leads to the second point. The firewall that keeps them out of government, right? They can't be in coalitions with other governments in the German system, is helping them because what keeps happening is all the parties get together, they keep the AFD out, and then those parties get blamed for the fact that, you know, the prices are high and, you know, the government doesn't seem responsive. Frankly, those coalitions are not ideologically

coherent. Like, you know, Mertz is governing with the social Democrats in the same way that O'L. Schultz had to govern with the Christian Democrats, the center right. And so you're kind of stuck in this doom spiral where the AFD may be kept out of governance, but then that kind of gives them this outsider status, this anti-establishment status, and everybody else is the establishment, you know. And so that's that combination of their extremism in this kind of strange situation where the firewall, which I think is, you know, necessary or makes good sense in a place like Germany with their history, is kind of collaborating to normalize extremism. Now, I do think, that the message to politicians has to be like pretty fundamental change in how you're

governing and how you're communicating. You know, you can't just govern by saying the AFD is really bad. Like, like, we've been through this in the United States. Like the Democrats tried to be, you know, Trump is really bad. Then like, look what we got. And I think it's time to really question, you know, how can you demonstrate to voters? Sure, maybe you're not going to win over the most extreme anti-immigrant people. But how can you demonstrate that, like, you know, Mertz has really prioritized foreign policy. He's really prioritized kind of, like, defense spending and countering Russia, which is, again, that's good.

But, like, maybe it's time to kind of put that a bit, like, on the back burner and actually focus on some of these bread and butter issues. Ben saying Germany first? I mean, a little bit. I mean, honestly, like, not in the AFD, not the AFD version of Germany first. That's the scary version. But I do think that we've seen center left, I mean, shameless plug, I have a piece in the New York Times today about the might be for the Democratic Party in this regard. We had this trend of center left parties, or in Germany's case with Merritt's center right parties, sometimes kind of becoming these defenders of the establishment and the defenders of the norms.

And you've got to shake yourself out of that and figure out a way to speak to populism, you know. And if you don't, I just worry that you're going to be in the situation where like each election, the AFD is making these incremental gains. And at some point, like maybe not the national level, but certainly at the state level, they're going to start winning majorities. To your point, I mean, there's a few things. First, there's like a communications problem, which is the AFD is starting to run much more kind of a young, dynamic, kind of internet literate candidates that are doing well and able to sort of sand off the scary edges of the AFD and present a more. more exciting version of politics that is enticing people, obviously. Merck is your classic German politician. He's kind of like he's a big hit at security summits, but he's kind of old.

He looks like a technocrat. Four and he's severe and a technocrat. Yeah. To your point about on the economic stuff, it does seem like he is doing things designed to further piss off working class people. Exactly. They're pushing. They're talking about raising their retirement age.

They're talking about raising the minimum age at which you can retire. They're talking about some sort of tax and health insurance reform. And meanwhile, like Mertz, as you said, is rearming the country and really committed to Ukraine. And people don't like that. And they're sick of the way the Russian invasion has harmed their economy. And then Trump goes and invades, you know, starts bombing Iran and that piles on top of the economic lows. Yeah. So we're making it worse.

The flip side of that, though, in Texanian Halt, 7.9% of the regional population is immigrants. That is compared to 14.9%. nationally. So it's a way lower percentage of the population is actually a migrant. But immigration is still the top concern. And so it's like tempting to be one of the parties that comes in like, you know, Bernie and it's like, well, this is clearly just the working class is getting screwed and to talk about big social services that you're going to provide them, et cetera. But that is not what voters were mad about when you ask them why they voted for the AFD. They're talking about security and immigration and hating the establishment. There were other leftist parties that were

offering them a much bigger social safety net or welfare state, and they rejected that in favor of the AFD. So it's like, I think there will be people that try to approach this from like kind of the, you know, the classic lens of like, you know, you got to fight populism with populism, but there is this reality that there's just a lot of people in Germany that are rip-shit pissed about immigration. A lot of it goes back to Angela Merkel's decision to allow in lots of Syrian immigrants in what year was that 2015, I think. And, you know, we don't need to relitigate that, but it's just like clearly that has a very long tail that has helped the AFD go from this kind of like just Eurosceptic party to something a lot scarier and a lot more xenophobic that is really

helping get ideas like remigration, which is like, you know, expelling people from the country basically. Mass deportation. A bunch of different ways to the four. Yeah, look, I mean, clearly Germany like other countries like the United States, there's a feeling that you want to make sure that the borders are secure. It's a little more complicated than you, obviously. I do think, though, that as in the United States, I hear you. And like, maybe the answer is not necessarily economic populism, but it is like the manner in which you do politics.

Because I think what happens is the immigration concerns get married to this concern that there's just this clubby establishment that is completely out of touch is kind of just not focused on what I care about, you know? Yeah. And if you, there have to be ways, and some of it is communications, but some of it is policy and some of it is like how you show up. Some of it is how you acknowledge, like what you did wrong, you know, like sometimes you can deal with some of the past mistakes by speaking more candidly about them.

I will say on this Ukraine thing, this is the problem, you know, Trump berating them to spend 5% on defense and now they're rearming and like I'm all for like NATO countries spending a little more in defense and and obviously for them providing some budgetary and other support to Ukraine. But like I think maybe like not maybe that's moving too fast, you know, like the people, you're going to undermine NATO. You're going to undermine Ukraine if people are so pissed that it seems like that's all you're doing. It seems like all you're focused on is that. Because in that kind of ties into this sense. It's just like the United States. You don't care about us. You care about these immigrants and you care about Ukraine and you care about NATO and you're doing

five-year defense plans. And I'm just not happy with the circumstance. Right. So there's, you know, I don't claim to have the exact formula. But, but man, if you look at both Schultz and Mertz, they did not seem like the kind of politicians that were like in touch with like what is on the minds of like a working class person in like Saxony, you know. And so you have to get at least part of the way there to just take some of that support. The only other thing I want to throw into this mix, Tommy, is that, you know, shit. I mean, we've alluded many times to the kind of weaponization of debates about anti-Semitism, about anything anybody says about Israel.

J.D. Vance, like, flew to Europe. This is a thing that happened. He flew to Munich, the place where Hitler had the beer hall putch and gave a speech to German saying they had to accept the AFD and then met with. the AFD, and then Elon Musk endorsed the AFD. Like, if you want to talk about any Semitism, let's talk about the fact that, like, the administration of the United States has been supportive of, like, far-right German political movements, you know?

Like, that should be a bigger topic of discussion than, you know, what the latest thing online is that somebody didn't like that somebody said, you know? Yeah, agree. And also, like, the AFD is a totally incoherent organization, if you look into it. Like, Alice Vidal, one of their national leader. is a lesbian in a party that is virently anti-LGBT. She is married to a Sri Lankan woman. They have adopted kids.

Again, they're like super opposed to migration, and they're very opposed to gay couples adopting kids. She also seems to spend most of her time in Switzerland. So it's like, this is the person that's beating the entire establishment in Germany. How are you losing so badly to these people? And that's the part of the point is some of this is you just got to do politics better. I mean, because in some ways, they don't treat the AFD like a genuine political party, which means that they're kind of not like, maybe you have to just kind of start going after these people, not just by saying they're far right and they're crazy, but by some things you just said. Like these people are hypocrites. These people are disorganized. These people could never govern, you know, they can capture grievance, not like actually solve your problem. So there's a lot of work to be done here. Elis Vital also has really close ties with China. I think she spent a bunch of time there.

I think she speaks Mandarin. She only talks positively about China. It's just sort of like another kind of weird element to her backgrounds. Again, so this is weird, terrible election outcome. We got another one coming up that we're watching on September 20th. The next national election wouldn't be until 2029, the federal election. But, you know, Mertz's political state. is not great right now. So pretty unnerving to see this kind of, you know, lack of stability

in Germany of all places. His drift. Yeah, this drift right word at a time when Trump is pushing them to rearm while also undercutting NATO, as you said. It's like nothing. Maybe they'll be rearm just in time for the AFD to win the election. Yeah, perfect. Wonderful. That's what we want. Potty of the World is brought to you by Monarch. Growing up talking about money always felt taboo. So it's no surprise that navigating it as an adult still feels tough. That's where Monarch comes in. The personal finance app built to track your entire financial picture from accounts and

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Go to simplysafe.com slash crooked world. That's Simplysave.com slash crooked world for 50% off. And when you order, please write in Pod Save the World and how did you hear about us survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like SimplySafe. Okay, also over the weekend, Trump's two failed peace on boys, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and then Steve Wittkoff, his old golf buddy, hit the road. They went to Russia and then also to Ukraine. So in Moscow, the two idiots met with Vladimir Putin. Wittkoff said later, Ben, that he has made about eight visits to Moscow to meet with Putin and his team, and that

Jared has made three. I'm wondering, like the about qualifier kind of confuse me there. I wonder if there's a ninth one we don't know about a night's visit. But as we've discussed in the past, you know, a lot of those Whitkoff meetings were one-on-one with Putin. Often there was like no note-taker, no State Department Russia experts were allowed in. Sometimes he relied on the Russian translator to translate for him too. One time Putin gave Wickoff like a painting, which he said he found really moving and emotional. So like the whole thing is just a weird mess. This was their first visit, Wickhoff and Kushner, to Ukraine. which is strange. Here's a couple of clips of the Whitkoff-Kusner-Zolensky press conference from Keith.

Hello, everybody. I just want to disagree with one thing that President Zelensky said. I didn't like the train. I loved the train. President Zelensky. I had a wonderful time on it. It reminded me on my days taking the train to see my grandmother down to Florida. And it was great. Me and Jared had a great time. You know, President Trump comes from the business world, which in the business world, you think about things in the context of win-win, you know, how do you create opportunities for both sides to do what's in their interest? War is negative some. You know, everyone loses from war, whereas, you know, business and peace is positive some, and hopefully you can find big benefits from that in a big way. It's just shockingly stupid commentary all around.

Whitkoff said he was, quote, very encouraged by the meetings. Jared said he, quote, learned a lot from the trip. Glad to hear it. What Jared should have learned is that things are getting worse and worse and worse for Ukraine. They are critically low on interceptor missiles, as we discussed many times, which means the cities are just getting pounded by Russian ICBMs, not ICBMs, Russian ballistic missiles. Russia has been just hammering their energy infrastructure, going into the winter, which means that once again there's a big chance that a bunch of Ukrainians will just have to live in the freezing cold for months on end. Attacks in the Black Sea could lead to global grain shortages. That's something people are very worried about. And then NATO countries are

increasingly sounding the alarm about Russian sabotage attacks in Europe, including this recent drone attack in Germany at an airport that was a near miss. The only benefit for Ukraine out of all this, Ben, was that Putin ordered a 72-hour pause and air strikes on Kiev while Wyckhoff at Kushner were there. However, the rest of the country got hammered by drones and missiles throughout. So, I don't know, Ben, like any thoughts? These guys are so stupid that they're easy to make fun of, but like any thoughts on the value of this trip and continuing to, I don't know, keep these channels open.

I guess I'm pro diplomacy in general. I don't know what's come of it. It's hard to decouple. I have to, just a word on Jared and Whitkoff, because there was a comment that Whitkoff made before the meeting with Putin. It was in like a pool spray, I think, where he's like, oh, you know, you told Putin that he was just talking to the guys outside and saying this, on all these great memories, he's getting this job.

We retire, we'll tell these amazing stories, and you'll be there. So, yeah, we've got this, this Florida real estate developer. guy who knows nothing about diplomacy, who's living fantasy camp, like all these Trump people are living fantasy. I'm so glad he had a nice train ride and remind him of going to grandma and, you know, the Ukrainians gave him a good meal and he's flattered to be in the same room as Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Jared sounds like a guy who's like taping an audition tape for like a McKinsey job, like an internship or something. Like this is how we do business. Like these guys are just like so completely out of their depth. You know, they're talking to.

of Vladimir Putin, who's been on the world stage for over a quarter century, right? Like, you really think those guys can be able to, like, move Putin on issues? And then they're going to Ukraine, a country that is rapidly running out of interceptors, in part because these guys, like, helps start a dumb war in Iran. So there's just something so, like, the nauseating about seeing them there. But, yes, the problem is we really desperately do need some aggressive diplomatic effort to try to bring this war to an end or at least to get it to some kind of ceasefire

because otherwise you're going to have a situation where the Russians are going to escalate in the winter. They're going to bombard Kiev. They're going to try to break them once again. And this time they may have more success because of the low amount of interceptors and just the wear and terror on Ukrainian society. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians will probably respond

with like ever more aggressive attacks into Russia at ever more targets like pushing the envelope there, which then raises the stakes of the potential escalation in Europe. thing is not moving the right direction. I think part of what needs to happen and is you need other countries like more aggressively mediating here. Like I'm not sure that the United States is up to this. Obviously, United States has to be brought in. Maybe we can find some actual diplomats at the State Department to just sit in with the Europeans and the Turks and the cutteries and whoever the else fuck can get in there. But I think we need to take this. This should not be a Jared and

Whitkoff like bilateral channel to the Russians bringing in the Ukrainians. They need to multilateralize a little bit more than is the case now. Yeah. I mean, do you see they called their train? Apparently they're assigned on it. It's the Peace Express on the train, Wiccoff and... Yeah, ride on the Peace Train.

They'll probably listen to Kat Stevens on their iPhone. Yeah. It's totally absurd. To your point, I mean, the Zelensky meeting was about three hours. There was another set of talks that included national security advisors from the UK, France, and Germany. That's good and necessary. But, yeah, Trump's policy is basically, we're cutting off Ukraine. We're not going to give them more military support.

Europe has to do it. So therefore, I feel like Europe should have a much bigger role. They should be in the room. Always. Yeah. And the Putin, the Putin meeting was three hours. Yuri Ushikov, a Putin aide, said it was constructive and useful, but also that it included a potential joint economic ventures between the U.S. and Russia. You know, that's the part that, you know, Wickkoff and Jared liked because, you know, Salivating that. Putin's been dangling, you know, the sovereign wealth fund guy from Russia in front of their faces forever long and, you know, possible future deals. and they know they have a couple corrupt marks there. And I don't know if you watched the press conference, Ben. Richard Engle was there from NBC News.

Yeah. He was like, he goes, why should people have any confidence in your capacity to succeed here? He's like, Gaza's a waste land. The Iran war's still going. The Russia-Ukraine war is getting more intense. And Jared's like, oh, blah, da, blah. And he said something about how like Gaza was, quote, built by NGOs and terrorists and has been a dystopian place for a long time, which is a nice way to talk about a couple million people, most of whom we know.

Which is also not true. I mean, we're started. Yeah. But I don't know. Like it was, it was pretty demoralizing the whole thing because, like, Ukraine has certainly had some momentum. Their kind of deep strike drone campaign has been effective at, you know, increasing the cost on Russia.

But it just, it doesn't feel like we're any closer to the end of this war. And again, honestly, I truly believe that, like, if you had a normal American administration, Republican or Democrat, like, this, this is inept diplomacy. Like, like, there would, there should be a way. to facilitate some kind of multilateral track that is trying to bring ceasefires into play, it's trying to put the issues on the table. Like, they've been at this for almost two years. And they're nowhere further along than they were on day one when Trump said he could solve the war,

you know? So I really do think that, like, maybe the grain shortages, like last time that brought in more multilateral framework because the whole world cares about that. I just don't have any confidence in these guys, but I do believe in the diplomacy of it all. And I think you've got to get other countries in the table. And hopefully, again, like just keep Jared Mirtkoff in the Middle East, not that they're solving that problem. Like, just get some other people from the U.S. government that are normies to please do this. I'm not holding my breath.

I think it's fair to criticize the Biden team for not having more of a diplomatic track to end the war. But now we're a couple years into this failed diplomatic effort. And the only thing that Trump administration has not tried is putting more pressure on the Russians. So, yeah, I'd like to see them internationalize this and try that. Let's turn to Serbia, Ben, where there has recently been a disturbing celebration of the country's bloody history and genocidal past. So last month, Rekko Mladic, a war criminal known as the butcher of Bosnia, died in prison at the Hague where he had been serving out a prison sentence for genocide. One might think that that would be kind of a solemn, if not embarrassing moment for the country of Serbia, but instead it's been the opposite. Blatich's body was returned to Serbia last week.

He has basically been treated like a national hero ever since or like a head of state. His coffin was flown on a government jet. It was carried off the plane by soldiers. Thousands of people came out to honor him. His casket featured parts of his uniform and medals that he wore when he was conducting the genocide itself. The Guardian reported that the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church said, quote, We know that his name will remain deeply etched in the memory and prayers of the majority of our Serbian Orthodox people

who feel and nurture a deep sense of gratitude towards him. And then on Sunday night at a soccer match in Belgrade, the Red Star Belgrade fans held up a photo of Miladich. They observed the moment of silence, and they were chanting his name during the match. Let's watch a clip of that. Pretty disturbing stuff. So let's talk about why this is shocking, but not surprising.

It's shocking because Maladich was one of the key architects of the ethnic cleansing policy during the Bosnia War that killed over. 100,000 people. He was found guilty of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, in which 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered. It's considered the worst massacre since World War II in Europe. And he was behind the siege of Sarajevo and all these other horrific war crimes. But it is not surprising because, you know, look, the current Serbian president, Alexander Vuchich, is a far-right nationalist who has himself made genocidal comments in the past,

like, quote, for every Serb killed, we will kill 100 Muslims. So obviously he thinks this kind of ultra-nationalist fervor is good politics for him and his party. So, Ben, let's just pause there. Like the combination of the AFD winning the German elections, Russia escalating the war in Ukraine, these images from Serbia, they're pretty scary if you're worried about kind of nationalism and far-right politics in Europe. Yeah, it makes you worry about Europe. And there are a number of things going on. Like, you know, one is that Vuchitsch, the leader of Serbia, is one of these far right guys, is an ultra-nationalist.

And, and, you know, like, you look at that picture. It's like North Korea, like the kind of uniformity in the stadium. I mean, nothing like having a war criminal, like, for a moment of silence for watching a soccer game. You imagine. It's like, okay, you get the ear. Okay, your son will be holding up his scarf. Like, what are we doing here? It's the psycho shit.

And this is the thing is like, first of all, this wasn't a close call. with this guy. Like, this is the guy literally carrying out the massacres. Nobody denies this happen. They're mass graves. Like, we know those things happened, right? Sure, like, there's clearly resentment inside of Serbia. They feel some of singled out. But that's why you need, like, responsible political leadership to kind of keep a lid on this stuff instead of pouring gasoline on the fires, including, by the way, even like the religious leaders, right, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church. That's going to have, you know, consequences. Like, Serbia wants to be on the pathway to the European Union. that's not happening anytime soon.

The EU's not going to let in. And you saw these statements from EU leaders. Like that is not exactly suggesting you're moving the direction of integration with Europe. Yeah, let me read you part of that. The EU statement said, quote, any glorification of war criminals, genocide denial, and revisionism contradict the most fundamental European values and have no place in the EU or in EU candidate countries. And then the sort of EU enlargement commissioner canceled her visit to Belgrade this week.

So yeah, this should, I mean, this will likely be a serious. row block to Serbia getting into the EU anytime soon. Yeah. And look, it is entirely tied to a lot of things happening in the world. Like, it's tied to the rise of the far right around the world and in Europe. It's tied to the rise of nationalism. But also, let's just talk about the fact that, again, he died in the Hague. He was convicted of war crimes.

The United States is currently sanctioning the ICC at the Hague for trying to prosecute people for war crimes. Israel has acted with complete impunity in its conduct of war crimes in Gaza. Vladimir Putin has acted with complete impunity with his conduct of war crimes in Ukraine. Like the, it was kind of something, you know, Tommy had felt like a throwback hearing about everybody talking about international law and genocide and war crimes and the Hague, as if they were things that everybody agreed on because they don't. And if you want to know why it's dangerous to sanction the ICC,

and to look the other way when Israel commits war crimes of American weapons, it's because you're cracking open the door to things like this. Because the people in Serbia are probably thinking, well, this is all double standard. This is all bullshit. They only singled us out. The only way that you really make a norm fortified against war crimes is by applying it to everybody.

And the moment you start to say, well, it's only for some people. Well, then you open the door to this kind of behavior. Because I'm sure what's on the minds of some of those people is, wait a second, like how come us, because we're a small country, Serbia, we get singled out. Our leaders end up dying in the Hague, but not Netanyahu, not Putin, right? And so again, it speaks to the need to strengthen international justice and international law across the board. And this should be a project for hopefully not going to board a next Democratic president. Yeah, look, Vuchich has been in power for, I think, nine years now.

He started as an ultra-nationalist, but he's not more of sort of in the populist vein these days, but that DNA is still there. He can't run again for a third term, but he's trying to run for, he was nominated to be prime minister. The next election was supposed to be in December, 27. He used this moment to call for a snap election. And this comes after years of like massive protests against corruption. So like authoritarian leaders like Vuchich are seeing ultra-nationalist, genocidal, you know, political moments like this as their way of, you know, suppressing the will of the people and clinging to pectoral. power. It is really bleak, scary, scary stuff. Yeah, this is a big story. I mean, because again, it shows you, we talked to Larry Wright,

about 20 years since 9-11, like the, I don't know, 30, whatever years since the 90s in Bosnia, it shows you how far we've kind of fallen in a way, right? Because in the way that the system worked. This was the case of the system working. There was a humanitarian intervention. There was a diplomatically brokered agreement to end that war. Then there was international justice This is against people carried out war crimes. And now here we are in the world of 2026, and we're celebrating the war criminal, right? And that is a bit of a snapshot of how the international system is unraveled. Before we take a break, I just have a quick but big announcement for you.

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off at BetterHelp.com slash crooked world. That's BetterHELP.com slash crooked world. Two updates that come from Israel. So the first actually is out of the UK in Andy Burnham's new government where the new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, announced a major shift in the government's policy towards the occupied West Bank in a speech Tuesday. Let's listen to some of that. The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists. And all too often, the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this, and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians. Now, Madam Deputy Speaker, I recognize the gravity of saying this,

but the truth is the least the people who face such such, it is the least the people who face such suffering deserve, and it should be the prelude to justice. Now for a long time, the British government has rightly said settlements are illegal, but we have remained silent on the question of the legality of the occupation as a whole, which in 2024 the International Court of Justice concluded was unlawful. Today I announced that the official view of the British government is that the occupation is unlawful. The government believes the unlawfulness of the occupation should be reflected in the economic relationships we choose to have with the government.

occupied territory. So what this means in practice is basically, you know, there's a quote, import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories, action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion. I'm reading quotes from him. They also said they'll refuse all license applications for arms and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation, ban the advertising in the UK of illegal settlements. There's going to be some sanctions on extremist settlers, some sanctions on Hezbollah's finance arm. And then Milibam reaffirmed that he opposes BDS and supports trade with Israel. This is just about products coming out of the

occupied territories. The speech, the whole speech was quite interesting. I think it's worth watching. It was framed as an attempt to, quote, salvage the two-state solution. And then the UK quickly had some folks following their lead here. So the France and Canada said they'd be joining the import ban. About a dozen countries released a letter. explaining their intent to, you know, sort of passed laws to follow suit. In practice, like this, the ban of these goods from the occupied territories will be very small economically. I think we're talking about like tens of millions of dollars out of over $6 billion worth

of trade in 2025. But it's a big deal symbolically, which you can tell from Israel's reaction, which was quite strong. They're closing the UK's consulate in East Jerusalem. They're banning a bunch of British politicians from entering Israel. They are booting the UK from the international Gaza support. And then the crazy wing of the Israeli government, the crazier wing of the Israeli government, the finance minister of Basil of Smotrich, who Miliband mentioned in the speech itself, called for

the expulsion of Britain's ambassador. And the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, said, quote, It's time for the state of Israel to publicly recognize that the Malvina's islands are Argentine territory under occupation, which the British violently steal from the Argentine people. So he's trying to bring up the Falklands, which is interesting timing here, given that Argentina just announced a criminal case against an Israeli company that's leading the oil drilling project in the Falklands. Then there's a blockbuster story about Netanyahu in October 7 that we'll get into. But Ben, let's just focus on this UK policy announcement piece.

What did you make of Miliband's speech and sort of the totality of what they actually announced? I actually think this is a seismic moment. I think this is a huge deal. And not just because of what it means about Israel and Palestine. because look, this is not going to bring about a two-state solution. But what it does, the United Kingdom, let's be very clear, as usually the closest style of the United States has been like a pretty stalwart supporter of Israel over the years for them to break.

And Miliband used language that there's ethnic cleansing, that there's terrorism mapping to West Bank. It shows that there's really nobody left backing Israel and its government. government than the United States and then kind of like a weird eclectic group of kind of Trumpy people, right? And so that matters. The West Bank is clearly going to be the main event in the coming years. And this is essentially Europe moving collectively, including the major powers, Britain and France and others, to say this is ethnic cleansing. This is against the law. This is illegal. And once you start down that road, you usually continue down that road. And so I think

we could expect to see sanctions further in the future. So that matters. It just deepens this kind of isolation that Nanyahu is created for Israel. But here's why I think it's a bigger deal. Because they're breaking with the United States. Like the United Kingdom does not usually say, you know, this is really important to you

and we don't give a shit. And not only they're breaking with the United States, they're breaking with the United States and bringing other allies with them in Europe to also break with the United States and do this. And that tells me a couple things. One, good for you, Ed Miliband, good for you, Annie Burnham. We've been hard on Labor Party.

Like this, they're not doing the kind of cautious tiptoe around things approach the Kier Starmer did where they were trying to kind of flatter Trump and, you know, not really weigh in on Gaza and things like this. This is them saying, like declaring independence, right? And so this is a big move for the Labor Party under Annie Burnham. He, you know, he's been pretty, you know, he's been a good communicator. But this is him taking a pretty big, bold step, right? And Ed Miliband Clay got him there.

By the way, the Jewish son of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, right? So that matters. And for those like, look, you're probably not listening to the show anymore if you're kind of bothered by this policy announcement from the UK. But it's worth listening to the full speech, if anything about this rubs you the wrong way. Because like you said, Ben, he talks about, you know, Milibin is Jewish. He talked about his deep connection in history with the Jewish state, you know, like spending time on a kibbutz. He calls out Hamas. They talk about sanctions on Iran.

He calls out anti-Semitism in the UK and the need to do more. to combat it, which is not like, it wasn't just throat clearing, but, you know, it felt like pretty authentic to him. And then he goes into this, as you said, very intense, uh, conversation about settlers. He's talked about settler terrorism. He said, settler terrorism is rampant. As you said, he said ethnic cleansing. Like, it was a tough speech. Yeah. Yeah. So that that matters with the Brits. And then also, again, this watch in the next couple of years, the Europeans are starting to, they're looking at Mark Carney, you know, they're looking at Trump's political standing, and they're starting to go in the other direction, right? And so for them to break on mass,

not just the Brits, and, you know, it seems like the Brits did some leadership here, too, which is something we haven't seen out of them in a while in that fashion. It's just a sign that the rest of the world is not going to take orders from Trump in the same way that they did the first year. Yeah. And that matters. And it's happening not long before a big election in Israel, which gets us to the second story. So there was an explosive, investigative report out this week from Ha Arets, the details this stark warning about a potential Hamas attack that was given directly to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu shortly before the October 7th massacre.

The gist of the story, and it's a long story, and we recommend reading all of it, is that about a week and a half before October 7th, the president of the UAE, Muhammad bin Zayat, or MbZ, warned Netanyahu of a potential major Hamas attack on Israel. But Netanyahu just inexplicably did not relay the message to his top security staff. And the warning, it was not derived from like kind of vague intelligence. It stemmed from comments made directly by Yaya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, the mastermind of October 7th, to a guy referred to in the story as coal eyes who served as this intermediary between the Israelis and Hamas. And sort of this is from the report about some of the specifics of, what Sinwar said.

Quote, tell the Israelis that if they don't make progress, I'm preparing a huge surprise for them. Sinwar declared emphatically. Here he dropped a keyword for the first time, one that should have triggered red flags. Tell them to expect a Zalzal an earthquake. In a second meeting, Sinwar says, convey a message to them, the Israelis, that I am preparing the mother of all surprises, a terrifying operation, something extraordinary. Again, he said the word that means earthquake.

Please convey to the Israelis what I am saying, word for word. he demanded. So it's a complicated story of like, you know, this getting back to the Israeli security chiefs via staffers who are working for MBZ and, you know, folks should go read it. But like, basically, Ben, I've lost count of the number of stories that we've read like this about missed warnings by Netanyahu or the sort of Israeli security establishment that could have helped them prevent October 7th. And if you look back, a lot of top defense and military and intelligence officials have resigned. They have taken responsibility for October 7th. seventh. Netanyahu is the only one who is not. He says, he's always says like, oh, now is not the time.

First, we win the war. Then we look back. Blah, blah, blah. But this story implicates him directly. And the timing of dropping this a month before the election was not subtle. I think the question is, will it have, you know, the impact you'd think it would politically? We don't know yet. This is always bothering me. We've talked about this. There's just something that never felt right about why their regard was so down, again, not having the information. to tip into the conspiracy theory that like netting you let it happen intentionally it is the case that it never made any sense that the gaza is one of the most surveilled places in the entire world and the idea that they were kind of caught that flat-footed um and didn't respond for hours

while it was happening like it really does demand like serious inquiry that nettingahu is not permitted to happen he is not permitted he's used the fact of an ongoing war to to to uh to elude having any kind of commission, any kind of inquiry here. But there's huge fucking questions about maybe he didn't think it would be that big of an attack, but maybe he thought some attack would be convenient. And if you think that's cynical, we're talking about BB fucking Netanyahu, like the most cynical person on earth. Because now we've heard, you know, the Egyptians warned him. We've heard security chiefs warned him. We've heard of reports from inside of Israeli intelligence. It was quite specific about some of the preparations being made for

a major attack. They had a year out. Yeah. The actual plan. like these are not subtle pieces of warning this is not like you know coming up in the 9-11 anniversary you know that one PDB article presidential daily briefing to bush you know bin laden determined to strike in the united states it didn't really have any specificity this is like a lot of blinking lights and people telling then yeah hey they're about to attack you and and him doing nothing right and that at minimum that was massive incompetence um like anything else is is must more troubling. The only other thing that I thought was interesting, Tommy, the report is about Mbizzi, Mahm bin Zayah, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, who's been their best friend,

like their closest ally, closest friend in the region. This seems like it came out, if not from the Emirates, like the Emirates must have had to confirm it, you know? And it made me wonder whether the Emirates are sick of Bibi. I mean, I don't know I'm just speculating here, but it's people who've dealt in the kind of weird machinations of leaks that happened before elections. Not saying we've done that. I'm just saying like that happens out in the world. It suggests to me that maybe the Emirates were okay with this coming out, like right before the election to harm BB. I don't know. We don't know the answer to that either, but like it's worth thinking about because they've tended to have his back and maybe they're just sick at them too. I don't know if it's

going to have any impact on him, though, because he's, the guys managed to wiggle out of, you know, anybody who's inclined to believe these things about BB probably wasn't voting from to begin with, but we'll see. Yeah, the whole story is worth reading. It's, it's, It's quite confusing. I mean, Netanyahu gets criticized from every direction in this thing because, you know, this guy coalized, this intermediary was part of an effort to try to, you know, sort of improve relations between the Israeli government and Hamas, maybe get to a prisoner release, maybe take some steps on the Israeli side that make life better for the people in Gaza.

And what it sounds like, what the reporting suggests is that Netanyahu dragged his feet on cutting a deal with Hamas, a deal with Sinmar, and Sinmar got pissed and issued this warning. to maybe, I don't know, threaten Netanyahu, but also you have sort of national security or to try to go Netanyahu into acting. And then you also have national security side staff like, you know, Ronan Barr, the Shindat and others telling Netanyahu that they're worried about something happening by Hamas doing something and that they wanted, it says Barr recommended an operational method of a fire extinguishing bomb.

They codename for a powerful and sudden attack designed to quickly neutralize a major third. threat, or at least implementing strong defensive efforts in Gaza and the West Bank. So, on the one hand, you have Netanyahu getting criticized for not getting a deal done with Hamas that could have improved relations. On the other hand, you have the national security staff saying that Netanyahu was being too soft on Hamas and not letting them do like decapitation strikes or something to kind of, I don't know, try to deter or prevent some sort of attack. So all around, it's just the worst possible story for Netanyahu.

But like you, Ben, I have no idea if it will matter at all in this election. Yeah, no, we'll see. We'll see. A couple of Iran updates. So the kind of tit for tat air strikes continue. Iran launched missiles at two U.S. Navy ships on Friday. They didn't hit them, but the U.S. retaliated by bombing three Iranian oil tankers. The sent comp commander said, let the message to the IRGC be clear.

If you shoot at two of our ships, we'll impose an even higher economic cost, taking out three of yours. Trump repeated his threat to maybe bomb Pickax Mountain last week Friday, which I'm sure, you know, got Hugh Hew at all excited. Iran said they're going to announce a new restricted zone and punish him. that enter it. There's not a lot of details on that one, but there seems like they're kind of proceeding a pace on their effort to just take control of the street of Hormuz. Trump administration announced some new sanctions specifically on Iranian airplanes. Again, I don't think that'll much. No, that'll win the war.

Yeah, they'll do it. It's economic D-Day right there. Over the Pentagon, the New York Times reported that 50 people on the military's joint staff were subjected to polygraph tests. Yeah. This is because of leaks about depleted U.S. munitions, which, like, in fairness is a pretty sensitive leak, the kind of thing you might expect to be investigated, but also at the same time, then, like, think tanks have been tracking this issue way before that war even started.

They just use kind of open source data to monitor as best they can the stockpile. So it was already out there, regardless of who may or may not have been talking at the Pentagon, but notable. Over the weekend, the U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright seemed to suggest that they've given up on getting a nuclear deal with Iran. He told ABC, there may not be a nuclear agreement. it may simply, it may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. The problem may await a next administration.

So it sounds like that big success, you know, is. Have we glittering them? Yeah, me too. And then most concerning to me, Ben, the fighting between the Saudis and the Houthi rebels in Yemen keeps escalating. At least 73 people were injured in Houthi strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure sites over the last couple days. The Houthis say it was in response to previous Saudi strikes.

But, of course, you know, the Saudis are now preparing two. retaliate, this could kick up the civil war in Yemen that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, literally. So very, very disconcerting. But anything in that kind of Iran news jump out of you is particularly important? The tip for tat stuff just, it just feels very forever-warish, which we've been saying. The polygraph thing is actually pretty fucking nuts. I've never heard of kind of mass polygraph of joint staff members.

These are like senior members. There's a McCarthyism to this that makes me wonder, like, you know, you know, when is the military just kind of say have you no decency pete except you know um so that kind of weird the paranoia and intimidation is just getting weird and weirder and it's only moving in one direction and i'm curious whether that brings about the opposite result that they want they're trying to bring them in line it might have the opposite effect we'll see um i do agree with you that the saudi ym and uh huthi sing is the biggest news of all this because if that becomes like anywhere near like a hot war um it is going to just like further destabilize things. The Saudis, you know, are, yes, like, frustrated,

but at the same time, if the Houthi start hitting Saudi oil fields, if the Houthis start trying to mess with traffic in the Red Sea, all these shortages that we've been talking about, that are acute because countries have kind of spent down their reserve capacity to make up for lost supply, certain refineries have been taken offline. If you just start to see Saudi oil, infrastructure get hit. If you start to see disruptions in the Red Sea, prices are just going to get worse. The global economic impacts are going to get worse. So that is, that's something to watch because there's nothing good about the war escalating between the Saudis and the Houthis, including, obviously, for the people of Yemen. Yeah. And what I just wonder is whether the Iranians

are watching our political calendar closely and decide to do something to try to kind of jack up oil and gas prices. I bet you they will. That's a very smart point. We'll see. Finally, Ben, so corruption allegations have once again engulfed right-wing reform. UK leader in British MP, Nigel Farage. For those unfamiliar with Farage, imagine if kind of an early, shitty version of Grock AI, wrote a book about Winston Churchill, then you soaked it in stale beer, and then it morphed into a creepy old man with strong views about immigrants. That's Nigel Farage.

The latest scandal comes via this kind of nonprofit investigative journalism organization called verbatim that was then fact-checked and aired by Channel 4. In the report, you got two high-up officials in reform. There's a policy guy named James Orr, and then Farage's right-hand man named Dan Jukes. They are caught on camera conspiring to break British law on political donations from foreigners, like dead to rights. The reform staffers, they solicited money from a guy they believed was the British-based

son of an American businessman. And first, they get the American to pay 30,000 pounds for three polls for reform, two of which Channel 4 notes, quote, helpfully galvanized support for the party ahead of the local elections in May. And those results were run in the Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, without noting reforms involved in in any way. They also talk about getting a much larger donation, maybe 500,000 pounds,

and arrange a meeting with the fake father and son with Farage himself. So here is some audio in video, which makes it quite clear that everyone knew that they're doing something pretty shady. Let's watch. I wouldn't breathe a word of this to anybody, obviously, and Nigel White Bear doesn't know why about it. And he's kind of thing he doesn't want him.

would rather not they. What you're doing right now means that you can contribute in any, it's an amazing sweet spot, you're relatively good at this money, with a huge impact and they don't show up anywhere in public records. You're having a pilot who's effectively going to be his cheapest staffing number 10? Yeah, exactly. If that doesn't, if that isn't a business interest, I don't know what it is. No, exactly.

Obviously the support that we've offered so far had to be necessarily private, discreet, but we, the mechanism And now for this next phase is we've had some discussion for Dan, with James. So, no, we... Basically. Thank you. So this comes, obviously, as Farage is mired in a whole bunch of scandals. We've talked about the five million pound gift that he can't seem to explain that he got from this Thailand-based crypto billionaire.

This new investigation and this blockbuster report may undercut the brilliant Farage plan of dropping out of Congress, or talking about a parliament, rather, and then running against an intergalactic trash can named McCount Binface to try and clear his good name. I'm not sure that one worked, as he hoped. Farage sat down with the BBC to defend himself. If his goal was to remind people that he does not feel shame and will lie about anything, it was a great success. Let's watch a clip from that.

Look, my job wasn't to do compliance. My job wasn't to do background checks. My job was to turn up on a lunch, have a glass of wine and shake someone's hand. Did you not know that it was illegal for foreign firms to donate to UK political parties? Of course I know that. But were you just not then paying attention? You weren't asking the question. No, because I was told he was giving it to a UK Family Trust.

Oh, sorry, a family office that was based in the UK. He said in your presence, I am not. I am not a compliance officer. I was in the middle of canvassing in the Clacton by-election. I turn up. I frankly wasn't even listening. You weren't listening. I just asked, is it all above board?

I was just there to come and say hello. So you weren't listening when you were discussing donations of thousands and thousands of thousands of parties? I was told. I was told there was a global family office based in London. Defense is literally, blah, la, la, la, la, I wasn't listening. Not quite the buck stops here. So the two aides, orange jukes, they have stepped down pending investigation. Farage obviously has not, I don't know, man.

Like, how is this not the end of this guy? I mean, it's not just this scandal. It's that Farage and Reform are facing a threat from an even more right-wing anti-immigrant party restore UK. But it's just like the corruption is just so brazen. Everything about the story I love. First of all, like, great work. And like more of this. Right.

More of this stuff. This is awesome. This is like great, intrepid, like kind of quasi-journalism quasi-quazzi, like, you know, Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes movie happening here. I mean, for people who couldn't watch this, too, it's like the most British thing. Like, everybody's wearing, like, natty clothes. They're drinking, like, gin and tonics. People are smoking cigs in the footage. They're in, like, red armor chairs.

Like, like, it just oozes, like, this kind of preppiness. Like, everything you hate about reform, actually, you know, like, just kind of rich guys sitting around, like, making corrupt deals, getting drunk in the middle of the day. Not there's anything wrong with that. But, but, like, the core point is that this guy's just, like, hopelessly corrupt. I mean, like, like, scandal after scandal of him just taking money from anybody, it goes back to what we're saying about BB, too. Like, his best defense is that he was completely incompetent. Right. His best defense is it like, I show up at meetings.

I don't pay any attention. I didn't listen to what I agreed with the person about, which was I was like saying, like, thank you for your foreign donations, sir. You know, like, like this, they just need to keep driving this corruption narrative, too, by the way, because, Like, you know, just to be pure political brass tax here, like, reform UK as being hopelessly corrupt is probably better than saying reform UK's extreme, you know? It's just to imagine pure politics because, like, nobody likes corrupt people. Nobody likes people that are double dealing like this and then lying about it. So it's the thing that they should run on.

I do think that, you know, Nigel could like make up a lot of this money if he just, you know, did more of those cameos, right? Yeah. I mean, I guess his fees went down. So he needed to go to the Thai crypto guy and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, guy on the American billionaire or whatever he was supposed to be. The only way I feel like this doesn't take this guy down or at least down a couple of serious pegs is if the rest of the British media doesn't run it.

I mean, that's one challenge with Farage is he has often gotten a pass. He doesn't get nearly the coverage that, you know, the Green Party head gets despite, you know, being talked about as the Arab parent. Yeah, like, come on Fleet Street. You know, like, can you imagine? They savage people for like tiny things over there. Like, like, let's do it here, guys. Freebies and things, yeah.

This is a no-brainer. Okay, we are going to take a quick break, but when we come back, you're going to hear Ben's interview with Lawrence Wright about the 25th anniversary of 9-11 where their risks still exists from an attack like that

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Okay, my guest today is Lawrence Wright, his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Looming Tower, Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9-11. really is, I think, the definitive account of the lead-up to the 9-11 attacks. Wonderful, colorful, heart-wrenching, revealing story. One of many books from Lawrence Wright, of course. The Looming Tower has a new introduction time to the 25th anniversary of the attacks, which are obviously coming up the next few days. So it's a perfect time to catch up with him.

And I, again, encourage everybody. If you have not read The Looming Tower, please pick it up. There's no better book to understand what happened. before 9-11. I say that as someone who worked with the 9-11 Commission. But Lawrence Wright, thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure to be with you, Ben. All right, so I was thinking about this a lot. You know, you and I've talked about these events over the years. 9-11 obviously played a pretty fundamental role in my life. And I read the new introduction a couple of times. And it triggered something that has gnawed at me. As someone

who worked in, obviously, national security, has had interaction with 9-11, even before that, time in the White House with the 9-11 Commission. And the question is this, even though Bin Laden didn't achieve his kind of stated objectives, right, of overthrowing Arab regimes and driving the United States out of the region, you could mount an argument, couldn't you, that 9-11 is one of the most successful terrorist attacks in history viewed from the vantage point of where the United States stands today in our overreaction? I mean, how do you assess the impact of 9-11, both against Bin Laden's intentions

and against the outcome that we're living with today? You know, there was a question in my mind, Ben, did Bin Laden win? Of course, he didn't win. I mean, but he triggered this catastrophic, nearly suicidal reaction in our country. And, you know, just think about the lives that have been lost. You know, 3,000 on 9-11, but hundreds of thousands since then.

Yes, there has not been another 9-11, but there have been countless smaller attacks. It's not as if the terrorist movement is dead. But the loss of faith in America is the thing that is really striking to me. The country is so divided. We've shed the most important allies that we've had. We're really quite alone in the world in a way that we haven't been in the lifetime of anybody still alive in America. The country is drifting and now being shunned. And the other thing that troubles me is that we're so complacent.

now where terrorism is concerned, as we were before 9-11. You know, could it be that we have gone so far around the circle that we're back where we were, unprepared? You know, our attention is far away from terrorism, and yet I look especially at the new developments and technology and wonder what bin Laden would have done with such tools as artificial intelligence and crypto money and easy access to cyber warfare. Those kinds of tools are incredibly empowering to terrorists and to tyrants. And I can't help but feel for all the great things that technology may bring to us, we're going to head to a golden age of terrorism, tyranny, and crime.

because these tools are going to be very well adapted for those. Yeah, your book obviously traced the story both of Al-Qaeda's emergence and its intentions and ambitions and ultimately its success in attacking United States and also the failures of the United States government to effectively defend the country, the failures of information sharing from the CIA to the FBI. I mean, you know, we don't have to detail them here. What I wanted to ask you, picking up on that last point you made, is now we're seeing this administration kind of target the intelligence community, you know, the FBI's run

by Cash Patel, their, you know, agents are doing immigration enforcement instead of counterterrorism. Yeah. The DNI was Tulsi Gabbard, and now, you know, we've had musical chairs there. you know, the CIA, Trump seems to have an almost adversarial relationship with. How would you describe, informed by your experience of seeing a series of policy and bureaucratic failures before 9-11 in the looming tower, how would you compare the things that concern you about the state of play today when you look at those same agencies, those same instruments of U.S. government power and intelligence gathering and law enforcement as it relates to the different

Harris Streat were facing? You know, it was, I firmly believe until this day, had the Central Intelligence Agency cooperated with the FBI that 9-11 wouldn't have happened, you know, the agency knew that nine, the two future hijackers was in America, were in America, and they came in January of 2000, and the CIA found about about it in March of 2000. So a year and a half, they had knowledge that al-Qaeda was present in America and yet did not tell the FBI. So there's that. There's also the fractures between these two institutions, the FBI and the CIA. Not only were they reluctant to share information, they hated each other.

They actually hated each other to the point of subversion. And that it's hard to account for. For instance, you know, you look back at the bombing of the coal in October of 2000. This was partly poor planning on the part of the government to park an American warship in Aiden, Yemen Harbor, you know, where it's just sitting there as a big prize. But anyway, he had, what was it, 17 sailors die? and the CIA had information about the they had actually surveilled a meeting in Malaysia and of al-Qaeda leaders and from there several of them went to Yemen and with a plan to bomb the coal.

And so that knowledge was also present and hidden. Bear in mind we already had dead sailors. You know, this was a mass murder. And in my opinion, back starting from then, there should have been prosecutions. You know, the intelligence agencies had to be forced somehow to work together. And it's a pattern that I see in our agencies now that, you know, they are so fractious, right, at this present time. Not so much that they hate each other the way that CIA and the FBI did before 9-11, but they've been corralled into partisan ventures, and they've turned their eyes

away from terror and really in many respects, away from the main adversaries toward American citizens. And so how can we be prepared for foreign threats if we're, preoccupied with trying to control our own population. Yeah, and, you know, particularly parts of the population that really are not the area where you would see terrorism emerging from generally. I mean, I want to kind of connect this back to where we weren't wrong, because I think it's kind of related to how you focus things and get them right now. Because the story of the failure to prevent 9-11 was not one of the United States failing to

kind of invade foreign countries and remove their governments. And it was as, as you said, it was like potentially as simple as the CIA sharing information with the FBI better, you know, or, you know, having better aviation security, you know, regulations as related to, you know, box cutters. And we could go down the list. And yet the response was to invade Afghanistan, topple its government and stay there, invade Iraq, topple its government and stay there. because I think some people might hear, you know, you and me talking about the need to focus on terrorism, think, oh, here they go again, you know. How do we separate out, you know, the need to actually protect the nation to guard against terrorist attacks and not, like, when did it become and why did it become about your willingness to go fight wars overseas?

Like, you know, I remember John Kerry had this almost gath people thought at the time when he said, during the 2004 campaign, we need to get back to this being a law enforcement problem. I guess you could have said intelligence and law enforcement. But how do you think about where we went wrong after 9-11 and what the right scope of the government's focus on this is where we're not spending trillions of dollars in fighting wars, but we are defending the country? Well, there are several different areas. We can talk about one, though, that strikes me is that the invasion of Iraq was,

perhaps the most colossal diplomatic and intelligence failure in American history. It's just hard to, it's hard to imagine, you know, America has always had a problem dealing with other countries because we know so little about the world and the world knows so much about us. It's, you know, it's a total, I mean, we're essentially blinded. when we go into a country where we don't speak the language. Do you remember back when we first were going into Iraq, and I forgot the reporter's name,

he went through the Capitol talking to legislators and asked them, can you tell me the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite? Yeah, I don't know to remember. Nobody could. This is the most fundamental division in Islam, and they didn't even know how to answer the question, and yet we're willing to go fight a war in a country that was, so far away from our way of understanding. And so, you know, we should know more about the world.

There's no question about it. There's a big issue, but we should know more about ourselves. We should know that we're not good at this. How many wars is it going to take for us to realize that winning wars is not one of the things that we do well, but damaging our own country is something that we have so much power to do. And America has been bad. badly damaged since 9-11, but not by terrorists. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, part of that, too, is understanding, you know, the rest of the world and also

understanding, honestly, like, who we're fighting against, you know, because, like, clearly Trump does not understand the Iranian government at all. And that, you know, if you did understand the Iranian government, you would know they were not going to collapse because we bombed them for a few days, right? And it always kind of bugged me that, you know, Bin Laden's having a moment, and you allude to this in the introduction, you know, his fatwas have remarged on TikTok and young people are saying, yeah, maybe he had a point. But I do think that, I mean, as someone who was reporting on this at the time and wrote this kind of meticulous account, understanding, and you traveled to these places, understood al-Qaeda,

I remember I was assigned by my boss Lee Hamilton in the Cochard of the 9-11 Commission, go read all bin Laden's fatwas, you know, because Hamilton actually wanted to understand, like, what is this about? And whatever we think of bin Laden, clearly he's absolutely reprehensible, violent individual its actions are unjustified. He was saying for a long time that what he objected to was our foreign policy, you know. And putting yourself back in that time when George Bush was saying, they hate our freedoms, you know, they hate what they see in Congress.

And like, what we learn from the need to actually separate out that you can try to understand your enemy and put yourself in your enemy's shoes without justifying or celebrating them as people may be doing on TikTok? Like, why do we struggle so hard? And how much of what we got wrong about the response in all of them was about just not even trying to understand why it happened? I think there's an arrogance there that suggests that we don't need to know all the answers to your questions. We have the power to do whatever we want. And it's true we have a tremendous amount of power. And in a way, it reminds me the old cartoon character, Baby Huey. Do you remember Baby Huey was this 400-pound baby you carry a club?

And that's the way the world views us. And in many respects, you know, given how powerful and clumsy we are in the world, it's a fair comparison. But I just want to say about intelligence, understanding the world is what intelligence is supposed to be doing. You know, it's supposed to be gathering information and providing that to policymakers. But in my, when I was roaming around the Arab world in South Asia after 9-11, there were so few Americans, or even Westerners in that area then. And I remember in Afghanistan, I was given a briefing, I suppose, by some CIA guy, but he said to me, I'd like to do what you do. I said, what do you mean? I talk to people, he said.

And I said, there they are. Go out the door. You can talk to them. I think that, you know, on the ground kind of intimacy with another culture is one of the main things that we lacked. We just didn't. And that's true of journalism, too, Ben. You know, there used to be, you know, news bureaus all over the world. You know, like ABC at one point had like 40 around the world.

Now, there are a handful of news bureaus in the world, American news bureaus. And so what happens? You know, somebody like me parachutes in with no history of a region. Or what's also true is we accept the news that the governments of these other countries are putting out. Like whatever is on Saudi television, we don't have anybody there, so we'll broadcast their view of it. That's not journalism. You know, that's essentially we're allowing other points of view to dominate our thinking.

And we don't have, we need to have independent intelligence gathering both by reporters and by our own intelligence agencies. Yeah, I always, one of my, you know, when I look at the biggest failures of, you know, my time in government, I look at like Afghanistan. And when I think back, because I've gotten to know a lot of Afghans over the years, and what every single one of them tells me is any one of us, if you just talk to a smart, normal Afghan, they could have told you you were backing all the wrong people.

You were making all the mistakes. And then I thought about it. And in all those rooms I was in the situation where people were making decisions about Afghanistan, there are never any Afghans there. And it's like if we just talk to these people, maybe we would have avoided that. I mean, I do wonder, you know, a big part of your story takes place in Afghanistan. It feels like there's an effort to kind of just forget that that happened, you know. We're four years after the collapse of Kabul.

The Taliban is back in control. I'm wondering how you feel about that. I don't know if you still have contacts there. How do you put in context of all these different pieces of the 9-11 story? Like, how do you digest the experience in Afghanistan? And what do Americans maybe continue to owe Afghans at a time when, you know, Donald Trump is having ICE deport people that worked with our military and we're kind of not really doing anything to help avert humanitarian crises there?

You know, our longest war, you know, can you, would you have ever predicted that we would have been tied down in a 20-year war in Afghanistan? It's just, and the Taliban was not our enemy. You know, they harbored al-Qaeda. but they were not, you know, our enemy. They were not waging war against America. So from the very beginning, we had no business invading Afghanistan. I remember when I was there, it was a kind of hopeful period.

It was a brief interlude, you know, that there seemed like, you know, they were, the Taliban had been put to bay. And, you know, it looked, there were, I remember the sound of hammered. and saws, you know, as they began to rebuild. And I was very hopeful that that would happen. If there's anything we should get from this is that we have not got a solution that works. Our diplomacy doesn't work. Our warmaking doesn't work. So what works? And if you don't have an answer those questions, don't wage war. You know, it's a catastrophe. And, I think it's been so much on my mind recently the preciousness of all the lives that were lost. You know, tragedy becomes kind of blurred when it becomes so vast, you know, hundreds, thousands of people dead.

That's a great loss to humanity. And then, of course, the individual loss to families and lovers and so on is just, it's hard to imagine the heartbreak that we spread. across the world. Not that other countries have responsibilities, of course, on this. But I look at the, you know, easy to think about the $8 trillion that we lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. But all the Americans, the Afghans, the Iraqis who have perished in this experience, it's just a catastrophe that I don't think we've really taken in, in part because of the

I don't think we want to absorb the responsibility that we have. Yeah. Well, I mean, one way is to also think about the alternative history. Like, what if we didn't do those things? Like, what could we spend $8 trillion on, right? How would America be different today if we didn't make those mistakes? I think it's a profound question. It's not one that is being asked these days.

And all the things that, you know, even the Democratic socialist, You know, their entire agenda could be enacted, and there still be plenty of money for rice and beans. It's just not, it's a heartbreaking thought to think that we could have spent that money on educating our children and scientific advances, curing cancer, whatever. We could have been so much better. But we spent all that money so fruitlessly and with such devastating consequences. You allude in your introduction, you know, as someone who knows as much about, you know, the history of the 9-11 attacks as anybody certainly who was not, wasn't in government, and probably more than people in government. You allude to the fact that we still don't know the full story, right? There's some uninterested questions that people continue to raise about Saudi involvement, most notably.

Frankly, we still can't seem to prosecute people for 9-11 because we tortured them and their confessions are inadmissible in court. What do you think, as someone who's probably finished your book with some questions in your mind, what do you think the unanswered questions are? Well, I think there must have been some kind of conspiracy between the Saudi government and the operatives of 9-11. And to me, the most damning recent evidence is that cardboard box that was in the FBI warehouse had come from the investigation of, you know, It went on by the FBI in England. There were a lot of jihadis living there, and they stored all this stuff in a cardboard box. And somebody in the bureau was going through to see, you know, cleaning out old stuff that's no longer needed. And there was this box, and it was full of investigative notes from 9-11.

And so he called one of the FBI guys who was still around and said, but you would like this box? Oh, sure, send it over. And inside there is a lot of the material from Omar Abayumi, who was a 40-something-year-old Saudi student who didn't go to class. And he was on the Saudi payroll. He's the guy who met with the hijackers after they arrived in January of 2000. In San Diego, right? Yeah. Well, they arrived, and he met them in a halal restaurant in Los Angeles. And he said he overheard the Gulf Arabic being spoken, you know,

and just sidled up to them and said, let me help you. I'll get you a place in San Diego, in an apartment, in my building. I'll pay your rent. And then some of the, you know, there are these videos. And one is of him introduced. these two hijackers to members of the Islamic community in San Diego. Now, on the 9-11 Commission, you might have seen an edited version of that video, but the full version is much more damning.

And it's always struck me that the case has never really been made, but they were introduced to the Imam of the mosque in San Diego, who was Anwar Al-Lauke, who began. became the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Yemen. And eventually we killed him. But these kinds of scraps are on the table. And by Yumi, he was also had, there's one video that looks like he's a newscaster, standing in front of the Capitol and pointing out, you know,

and here's the airport over here and so on. And he's actually giving a stand-up report about the, it appears, a prospective target. And there's more to it. But the FBI took the box, looked into it, said, oh my, and put it away for years. Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, when we start thinking, if we'll ever hold anybody accountable for the errors that took place, both in the FBI and the CIA, you know, there's more to the crime than we have solved.

And, you know, you rightly point out that Guantanamo is a problem in terms of getting to the bottom of some of this. But there's so much, there's so much that we could know. But it would require holding not just foreign terrorists responsible, but members of our own intelligence community. Yeah, and a degree of transparency that, I mean, I noticed when I'm downy releasing all these files today that show that New York City was covering up the air quality. I mean, transparency is something that people are usually uncomfortable with. Yeah. Last thing I was trying to ask you is that, because I think this is on a lot of people's minds, certainly on mine right now. How did 9-11 change your life?

Oh, my God. There's Larry before 9-11, Larry after, you know, it was. I guess one thing, years ago I made a vow that I would only do things that were important or fun. I didn't want to lose the joy, but at the time I was sort of drifting, and I was thinking about becoming a movie director or something. I had, you know, vague dreams of Hollywood. And then suddenly I had a mission. And it wasn't just a reporting job. You know, it was from the very first day I was on the case.

And I just knew that this is the most important thing I'll do with my life. And, you know, that afternoon, David Remnick called, it was a small group of New Yorker writers that he delegated to go out and try to collect stories, and he would put it into what became the famous black issue. And I had a good fortune of finding this young reporter named Kurt Jelson, who wrote for an investment magazine. And he was supposed to have an appointment that day on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center.

And he, for the first time his life, slept through his subway stop. And so he got off of the next station, ran back to the trade center. And if you remember, the elevators were up a flight of escalator. And so he rushed up the escalator, got into the elevator, and a woman was coming across the lobby, and she was moving too slowly for him. And she stepped into the elevator, and he noticed that on her ankle she had a rose tattoo. And the plane struck. and the elevator doors accordion.

And nobody knew, I mean, it was an earthquake, you know, it was just, nobody could fathom what had happened. And Kurt stepped into the lobby. And there were objects around the size of a shoebox or office desk, you know, various, you know, probably bits of plaster that had fallen out of the ceiling. And it is eerie, smoky, environment, he saw trees and went to get outside. And of course, it was up a flight of stairs and it was a plaza.

And so he walked out into the plaza and there were hundreds of shoes. And there were objects that he thought were luggage, but they were human torsos. And his journey to try to get back home to Bronx became the bookend of the New Yorker Black issue. And I count that as a moment that I became whatever I am now. You know, that's when I made that decision that I was all in on this. I had to get to the bottom of it. Yeah.

Well, we appreciate all the work you've done. It's helped us understand. And in a strange way, it led to some of your other work, which is interrogated power and what's happening in America and what's happening in the Middle East and everything is kind of in some way a branch off the tree of that decision you made. So people should check out the Looming Tower if they haven't already. You should check out your other work. And we could have talked.

I mean, there's so many things to talk about this, but we covered a lot. So thanks so much for joining us. I've enjoyed it quite a lot, Ben. It's good to catch up with you. Yeah, good to see you always. All right. Take care. Thanks again to Lawrence Wright for joining the show and talk to you guys next week.

Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Alona Minkovsky, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Hethkoe, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffat, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.