Pod Save the World - Canada Accuses India of Assassination

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s accusation that India may have been behind the murder of a Sikh Canadian citizen, the prisoner swap between the U.S. and Iran, the one year anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death, the United Nations General Assembly and lack of world leaders in attendance, and the latest updates on Russia/Ukraine, including rumors of Ramzan Kadyrov’s death. They also discuss Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the US, China’s disappearing public officials, stories about increasing espionage activities between the US and China, a missing F-35, and an Australian man who was fined for taking his pet Python surfing. Then Tommy speaks with Rory Stewart, former British politician and author of the new book, “How Not To Be A Politician”.  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, welcome back. Welcome home. Good to be home. I'm going to bring a little higher energy this time, Tommy. I just kind of half brain dead last time. I apologize. Listen, your brain was working just fine as far as I can tell. The gears are returning, just not that fast.

Have you recovered? You know, I have, but I think I've said this before on this podcast. Like JetLag is one of those things where you feel like you realize you're not 30 anymore. Yeah, it just doesn't go away. It turns out you're always tired. It just lingers, you know. It just lingers, you know. Sometimes I prepare a light anecdote at the top end.

This time, this is a little less so. As I think you know, last week marked the 50th anniversary of the CIA-backed military coup in Chile. Yes. When our friend Hank, Henry Kissinger, backed Pinochet, General Pinochet, toppled the democratically elected president, Salvadori. You two could do that and then have a gala party thrown at the New Republic Library 50 years later for your birthday. Yes. Yes. So, Ben. Kissinger, he's not just a proponent of the coup,

maybe the principal architect of the whole thing, an eagle-eyed Pod Save the World listener who lives in Chile, posted a photo from his local bookstore into the Discord channel, the Pod Save the World Discord channel or subscription chat thing, of Kissinger's book on sale in Chile last week. The fucking stones on that guy. Yeah, yeah. Selling your book on the 50th anniversary of a coup.

A man who was quoted on the Nixon White House tape saying, some things are too important to leave up to Chilean voters. I think that was the exact quote. I mean, there's no justice in the world. No. Yeah, and Lester Henry Kissinger, and then there's a lot of it. There's a lot of cash. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's your former justice. Unbelievable. I just had to bring that up because it's so galling. But we have a lot to cover today. We got the Canadians accusing the Indian government of assassinating at Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. The U.S. and Iran conducted a prisoner swap that coincides with the one-year anniversary of the Masa Amiti protest movement. The UN General Assembly is happening as we speak,

and we ask the question, does anyone care? Bebe Net Yahoo is in the U.S. More Chinese ministers are going missing. There's a Putin stooge, rumored dead. The Pentagon briefly misplaced a fighter jet and so much more. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of weird sort of stories going on out there. And then I just spoke with former British member of parliament and cabinet minister Rory Stewart about his new book, how not to be a politician. The book gets into just how screwed up British government was top to bottom when he got in there, like kind of, you know, selfish, you know, superficial members of parliament. One of them threatened to punch him in the face. We talk about government. We talk about his work delivering assistance or an NGO in his post-political life. We talk about the podcast he

does. The rest is politics. And look, I think the book will make us all feel a little bit better about the mess that is American politics because they've sort of seemed like they had their shit together the last couple of years post Boris or post-Lis Trust, I should say. But the book is a nice look back. Yeah, not entirely have their shit together. Not entirely. That was my read from a couple days in London. From your days in the UK. Real quick, Ben, before we get to the news, there's another Republican debate coming up on September 27th. The last one was terrible. If you don't want to watch it alone or on Elon Musk's awful website, join us in the crooked district. scored, go to crooked.com slash friends to sign up.

Join us. We'll all be talking about it together. Headliner Vivek the fake, huh? Vivak the fake headliner. Trump won't be in town again. Vivek takes. Also, if you like to see me suffer, check up my YouTube show Liberal Tiers. It's a show I do with Brian Tyler Cohen.

We like to rank fun things in political history. When I win, I get to create a punishment for him. When I lose, I get punished. He made me eat one of those pocky chips that are like the hottest chip known to man. And we did this like a day after it was actually discontinued because it was proven to be unsafe. And so the results are sitting there on YouTube. Wow. Yeah, you've got like you've got YouTube star written all over you. One of the worst 48 hours of my life.

That's not good. Yeah. For a variety of reasons. Okay, so Ben, so let's start with this shocking news out of Canada where Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that agents of the government of India. said that agents of the government of India carried out an assassination of a sick leader in Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Hardeeb Singh Nijar was murdered in British Columbia in June. He was born in India but has lived in Canada for more than 25 years.

Nijar's friends believe he was targeted for organizing a non-binding referendum in Canada on whether to create an independent sick state back in India. Here's a clip from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Canada has declared its deep concerns to the top intelligence and security officials of the Indian government. Last week at the G20, I brought them personally and directly to Prime Minister Modi in no uncertain terms. Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty. It is contrary to the fundamental rules by which free, open, and democratic societies conduct themselves.

It's interesting that after the G20, the Indian government put out a statement that reference concern about extremist elements in Canada. So they were kind of getting ready for this to go public. So Canada also ordered the expulsion of an Indian operative intelligence operative and canceled a trade. mission to India. India says the allegations are absurd, but of course they did tip for tat and they kicked out a Canadian diplomat slash intelligence operative working in India. Last year, the Indian government declared that the individual was murder. Mr. Nijar was a terrorist. In 2016, they accused him of being involved in a 2007 bombing in a theater. There is a large sick diaspora in Canada. The 2021 census reported there were 770,000 people who call Sikhism, their religion, Trudence.

said he briefed the U.S. and the UK on all of this. I think, Ben, that'll probably raise questions about all the chummy group photos with Prime Minister Modi at the G20. So, Ben, this is shocking, very troubling. I'm preemptively worried that it will get swept under the rug in the name of everyone needing India to push back on China for some reason. But what do you think happens now? Wow, yeah, this is a big one. And I was just in Montreal, actually, this weekend. I actually saw Prime Mr. Trudeau came by Ristair. we're having and then how's he looking he's looking very good actually uh the haircut looked high and tight and well shaped yeah it was well done i mean as someone without hair you know i i particularly noted it

and then i actually was a moderator panel with melanie jolly the front farm minister fantastic cool going to come on the pod by the way nice how many languages does she speak like nine probably yeah well more than more than us let's just say that better english too um but to get serious here um first of all i like i think we really need to stop here and and and And like, I know we've, you know, we've been favorable to Trudeau on this podcast, but I think it is there's a lot of credit here. Yeah. It's not easy for a country that size. And there are a lot, it's a smaller country.

And we've seen a lot of countries kind of look the other way at autocratic behavior, you know, put other interests first, you know, trade interests or not wanting to like, you know, rock the boat too much. And what I like about this, it was like, these are the facts. And, you know, I saw today. the Indian government came out and kind of aggressively denied this and took some shots at the Canadians. Trudeau came out again and said, we rejected that denial. We have this information. We're just following the facts where they lead. And it leads to the conclusion that the Indian government killed this person. By the way, like right outside a Sikh temple too. I mean, this was a brazen, brazen, you know, a bunch of guys and masks and guns just, you know, assassinating somebody. It is part of a very worrying trend in terms of, Countries doing this generally. The most notable one, of course, is Khashoggi in Turkey. The kind of killing of people outside of the borders. I mean, you don't want to see extraditional killing anywhere, but violating kind of the most basic rules of international relations. It's a worrying trend about

Modi and his government. It's worth pointing out that there's two other sick leaders who have mysteriously died around the same time, one in Pakistan and one in the UK. Yeah, and we've talked, by the way, on this podcast about some of their efforts, you know, to roll up a Sikh separatist inside of India. But they shut down internet to an entire province, like the whole state. Yeah. And by the way, like, not as if there's some civil war happening in India, too. I mean, so it speaks to kind of a paranoid, autocratic mindset that we see infusing Indian

politics under Modi. So that's, it's worrying. And it's good that Trudeau did this. And it's good that, by the way, credit also to the Canadian Conservatives. who have, you know, got a bit of a maga flavor to them of late, but they kind of all rallied together. I thought that was, like, important that. That must feel good. Yeah, the opposition leader said, like, if this.

Remember that? Yeah, he was very clear in kind of backing the government on this. That's the first point. The second point is, this is clearly based on Canadian intelligence. Canada is part of the five eyes. So I would be absolutely shocked if it were. not the case that the U.S. and or the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, that this is not intelligence that draws on potentially, you know, I don't know, but like, you'd have to assume that this is

something that might be based on intelligence that we might have. I would hope that the Biden administration doesn't duck this thing because it's geopolitically inconvenient. Because I don't care what your China strategy is. I don't care how much of a foot rub, you know, Modi got with the state visit. This is a very close ally just to the north of us that is a solid friend and partner on everything. And if there are people in their country are getting killed, we should have something to say about that. So I haven't really seen much comment from the U.S. government yet, but I would hope that we don't duck this. And that leads to the point of, like, we've talked to this before. Like, I understand the geopolitical motivation here. India's a

country of over a billion people. Obviously, any China strategy would be stronger if India is part of a collection of countries or, you know, posing certain behavior by the Chinese. I do think we just need to raise the question, though, like, other than these visits and what are we getting out of this, you know, because we're looking the other way at a lot of stuff. And it's not entirely clear to me, you know, Modi's buying Russian oil. He's shown up at the BRIC summit and kind of announcing the parallel world order there. The G20 that he hosted had a very weak statement on Ukraine. So at some point, you know, I think we need to see what the results are of this. And if the result is a leader feeling that he has the impunity to kill people in Canada because he's

a geopolitical hot date, that's not a good look. No, no. And just for what it's worth, There was a, we talked about this before, a sick insurgency in the 80s and 90s that killed thousands of people. There was a sick extremist who was convicted in the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight that went from Canada to India that killed 329 people on board. But that's, you know, ancient history. We've seen no evidence that this individual who was assassinated in June was involved in anything violent. What are these guys going to organize and do from Canada? A non-biting referendum? What's talking about?

He was a separatist. He was in favor of there being a separate Sikh state in Punjab. Not a crime. All true. But yeah, like not a crime and try to resolve that diplomatically. You protest all you want with the Canadians. India and the Indian government has every right to hammer the Canadian government to complain if they don't like things that are happening and to share evidence if they think someone should be detained. But not to go and kill somebody in, you know, in front of a town.

on the other side of the world. So like this is a trend, you know, we should be watching of we've seen Rwanda kill dissidents allegedly in third countries, including the U.S., by the way. So, you know, obviously Putin's killed and poisoned people. Muhammad bin Salman. All over the place, Muhammad Salman. So, you know, I don't really want to live in a world where, you know, like assassinations in third countries becomes normalized. I think that's why I would hope that at least that. the five-eyes countries come out and support Canada in the days ahead.

Yeah, they just draw the hardest possible line on this front. Yeah. Some good news been on the Iran front. So there were five Americans who in some cases had been detained in Iran for many, many years, I think up to eight years, were finally allowed out of the country on Monday. Their first stop was Dubai, then they go on to America after medical checkups. We talked about the outlines of the prisoner swap that got these guys out of prison a few weeks ago. Basically, Iran releases five Americans. The U.S. dismisses charges against five Iranians

in U.S. custody, and the U.S. unfreezes six billion in Iranian assets that have been stuck in South Korea because of U.S. sanctions, basically. That money came from what was at the time lawful Iranian oil sales to South Korea, and then that cash got frozen by U.S. sanctions. The $6 billion gets transferred to a bank account in Qatar, where Iran can use it to pay for food, agricultural products, medicine, things like that. Diplomacy fans like us hope that this swap is some sort of confidence-building mechanism could lead to more talks, more agreements. Republicans say this deal will incentivize more kidnapping. These funds will allow Ron to spend this other cash they have on weapons or other malign activities, sort of the same old arguments you always hear. But very good news,

obviously, for the families of these hostages. I don't know, Ben, maybe we're not in D.C., so we're like not in the thick of the bullshit. But this doesn't seem like it has reached like the fever pitch that the pallets of cash did or the Bergdahl prisoner swap did back in the Obama days. Do you agree with that? And like how hopeful are you that this could lead to more diplomacy? Yeah. I mean, the Republicans are kind of running the same play.

I noticed there's like three different hearings on Iran policy. And yet it just doesn't feel like the temperature is that hot. There's a lot of reasons for that. I think the chief reason is, as we said before, like when this stuff was happening around 2015, it was kind of the main event in our politics for a few months, like the Iran deal and everything. Now you've got, you know, in domestic politics, a government shutdown, you've got an impeachment proceeding that makes no sense. Then internationally, you've got a hot war in Ukraine. You've got a much more intense geopolitical competition with China.

It just feels like this is not the same temperature level, no matter how much Republicans will freak out. And there's something kind of healthy about that. Now, I do think that this was a multi-step process. And so the fact that each of the steps kind of came off as was described at the beginning of the process, they're released from prison, then they're in Iran for a period of time, and then there's a lot to come back, and then this money moves around. It does feel like a confidence-building measure. Can we trust each other to follow through on a deal?

Will the Iranian government, which is under different leadership than when we made those deals in 2015, follow through on something they did? The question is, can this lead to nuclear diplomacy that at least freezes the state of the Iranian program in exchange for probably a larger version of this? Like the Iranians get some of the money that has been frozen, that is their money through creative accounting. And look, if it sounds kind of shady like it has to go to some Qatar bank, well, that's for a couple of reasons. One, because of our sanctions, it has to be kind of circuitous, but also because we're trying to limit where this money goes. And so the fact that it's in this kind of receivership in Qatar is in part a mechanism to ensure that it goes for these humanitarian purposes. So all in all, like diplomacy is always complicated. It always involves compromise.

People are home. Conference has been built. This is a relatively small amount of money compared to what Iran has lost of their own money. in the enforcement sanctions, and hopefully it leads to some breakthrough in the nuclear fall. Yeah, and hopefully Fox continues to get more coverage, like John Federman and the Senate dress code than this story. It is worth noting. I missed that, by the way. I saw that in our text chain, and you're so good. I'm not, like, is plugged into the domestic silliness. But if they want to cover John Federman's hoodies

and not the Iran agreement, that's fine. They're obsessed with it. That's good. We could have used Federman and his hoodies back in 2015. In Tansuit, yeah, in Tansuit days. So it is worth noting that there are some Iranian activists who are not happy about this deal, at least the timing, because it comes right at the one year anniversary of the death of Masa Amini, who is the 22-year-old woman who was murdered by Iran's so-called morality police. That murder led to these huge protests and then a brutal crackdown on the protesters. Human rights groups believe that up to 500 protesters have been killed in the past year. I think at least seven were arrested and then executed. Tens of thousands have been detained because they are.

are the shittiest people in the world. Iranian security forces prevented Masa Amini's family from visiting her grave on the anniversary of her death and they briefly arrested her father. Some Iranian activists say, you know, the timing of this swap or this news is a slap in the face to the people who have been putting their lives on the line to protest. I will say, like, I completely understand that frustration. The timing definitely is unfortunate. Substantively, though, I just, I don't know that the ultra hardline approach is helped. anyone at the moment. And I just, I don't know, it would be hard for me to justify letting these Americans rot in prison any longer because the timing felt bad, but I don't know what you think.

No, look, it's interesting. I mean, the Iranians might have had the, they might have done this timing intentionally. I mean, because this deal's kind of been in the works for a while. It was kind of announced a few weeks ago. So that's possible and that's cynical and terrible. And for the Iranians to do that. And I understand the frustration of those people who are complaining about the timing. I would say, though, like to your point, we can either get people home or not. You know, we can either try to stop the Iranians from crossing certain nuclear thresholds or not. And I don't think that the ultra hardline position, you know, was on the precipice of causing the Iranian government to collapse or, you know, to make huge concessions to that protest movement. I think ultimately what's going to

change things inside of Iran or Iranians and the pressure that's building up from within. So, you know, this is, you do diplomacy like this with adversaries. I don't think, put it this way, I just think not doing this agreement, I don't think would lead to any different outcome with that protest movement as tragic as it is. I wish it would. But, you know, I think that you try to accomplish what you can while keeping the spotlight on the movement that has, inspired so many people over the last year. Yeah. If you want to learn more about this prisoner deal, a friend of the pod, Jason Rizayan,

who was himself held in Iran for 544 days, held hostage, did an interview with Brett McGurk in the Washington Post. It's worth reading. Brett was the one who negotiated the deal. And we should say Jason and his wife Yegi are huge supporters of the protest movement. Yes. And I think Jason is also supportive of this step.

So, you know, it shows there's nuance here. Yeah, there's a lot of nuance. So, Ben, the United Nations General Assembly, or Unga, as we call it, in Nerdworld, is happening as we speak. I think it's fair to ask whether it will accomplish anything other than pissing off all of Manhattan because of the traffic. So the leaders of France, Britain, China and India won't be attending. Putin won't be there either, but he's got kind of a decent excuse in the form of an ICC arrest warrant. So Unga will be important for President Zelensky

and the Ukrainians who are trying to have as many meetings as possible to rally support for their cause. President Biden gave a speech on Tuesday. Here's a clip. Russia believes that the world will grow weary and allow it to brutalize Ukraine without consequence. But I ask you this, if we abandon the core principles of the United States to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected? If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure? I'd respectfully suggest the answer is no.

We have to stand up to this naked aggression today and deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow. So you hear Biden, they're trying to make an argument that supporting Ukraine is bigger than just the current fight. So, Ben, let's talk about Unga itself for a minute. Do you think the poor attendance this year is because the world has maybe decided that the UN is not the place where you get a lot done?

Or could this be more mundane? Like there was just the G20. Everyone went to India. Now there's the UN General Assembly. I think the next cop meeting is in a couple weeks. Maybe that's just too much travel for these world leaders in too little time. I don't know. I'm making excuses here.

No, I think the two things are related. I think Unga does not matter nearly as much as it used to. And I'll talk about that in a second. And I think the G20 timing is actually evidence of that. So in other words, the G20, I think, has become what Unger used to be. Right? Unger used to be the place where all the major powers got together to take on whatever the global gender was at that moment. And the reality is there used to be some separation intentionally between the G20 and Unga, most years at least. This year it's like, well, we had the real meeting, which was an India at the G20, and most people showed up for that, except Xi Jinping and Putin.

But now the list of countries not showing up to this thing is really long. It's even like Rishi Sunak, who I think is, you know, he's in his fantasy camp, a big. Prime Minister may not have another turn at it. And even he's not showing up for, for Unga, you know. Biden is the only head of state from the five permanent security council members. Like, hey, Rishi, like, you're, you guys are clinging to that perm rep seat by a thread, pal, like maybe show up for the meeting. And the reality, though, is that the UN is, this is one of the biggest stories in the world that doesn't get a lot of attention. The UN is totally broken. And it's not the fault of like UN personnel, some of whom, most of them are wonderful. It's because it's been

broken by the member states, right? So Biden is absolutely right. The most foundational reason for the UN to exist is to prevent a war just like the war in Ukraine, where one big country kind of swallows up, tries to swallow up a smaller one. The reality is that the Security Council will never deal with that or any other issue because Russia and China won't allow it to. And so the Security Council is no longer a venue to solve any international security problem, even ones it seem like there should be shared interests like a war in Sudan or something. So the security council is Security Council doesn't really matter in the same way that it once did. And then there are these other meetings, the BRICS meeting, the G20 meeting, the COP meeting, which a lot of countries will show up in a few weeks, that feel like, you know, that's where real business is done.

Unga's basically a reason for there to be a bunch of bilateral meetings in New York City right now. It's like you're all in the same place at the same time. You might as well hang out. Yeah. And, you know, there's... That's why I'd go, by the way, if I was Rishi soon. No, that's true. And there's all these side events and there's a lot of development work done.

around the sustainable development goals. And there's stuff to do. I mean, I'm actually going to New York like twice in the next couple weeks for things that are of that nature. But I just don't think it matters anywhere. And it's not the fault of the U.S. government. This is just the U.N. doesn't work the way it was meant to anymore. At some point, there's going to have to be some significant overhaul and reform of the U.N.

system. That's very hard when the biggest countries in the world totally disagree. Right. And the permanent members, right, you got Russia and China gumming up anything that we're we try to do internationally. And then you have the non-permanent members, which right now includes Gabon, which has had a coup. So no one knows how to deal with them. The U.S. hasn't recognized it as a coup yet, nor have we recognized Niger as a coup yet. So, yeah, it's incredibly complicated and the processes are broken and no one has figured out to fix them. I'm nostalgic for

the oldunga. The good old days, you know, big multilateral meetings and like lots of different countries. Like Gaddafi giving a two-hour speech. Yeah, yeah, pitching a tent at Trump's place in Bedminster, that actually happened. And then, like, the bar at the Waldorf Astor. I mean, you knew the bed bugs of the Waldorf story. Things were already going bad when the Chinese bought the Waldorf so we couldn't stay there anymore because he's probably going to be full of listening devices, you know. So it's just, it's just not what it was, you know.

It is not. I mean, you remember in 2009, Obama went, chaired a security council session that passed a resolution on nonproliferation, nuclear nonproliferation. It was a pretty big deal. Like, there was big business being done at Ungah. And we did a bunch of Middle East peace stuff, right? And we did Sudan, like, you know, the whole, like, midwifeing of the South Sudan independence. Like, there's just a lot of stuff that that kind of stuff doesn't happen.

No. And so, you know, after the UN Security Council meetings, Zelensky is going to go to Washington. He's going to meet with members of Congress. There's a bipartisan meeting on the Senate side where he's probably got enough support to get more funding. I wonder what kind of meetings he'll get with Republicans on that. the House side, there's real concern at the moment about, you know, Congress passing any funding belt, let alone with an extra $20 billion for Ukraine. The New York Times, Ben, had a big piece about how Zeletsky's tone is shifting from kind of

pressuring countries and maybe scolding people a little bit to gratitude. I'm sure that's so grating for him, you know, given what Ukraine is experiencing. But it's also probably smart politics, given how the vibe in Washington right now. I think, first of all, you know, the Zelensky's trip here, the DC piece is much more important than New York piece. I mean, he hit the notes today about the global food crisis, but it kind of feels like enlisting a lot of global South countries to the Ukrainian side is just not happening. That doesn't mean he shouldn't do that work. But I'm curious about the Kevin McCarthy meeting, you know, because Kevin McCarthy is a real tough guy talking about no blank checks for Ukraine and stuff when he's doing like right-wing media. I'm trying to imagine Kevin McCarthy sitting across the table from Zelensky and telling him, you know, I can't provide you with this assistance because Matt Gates might force a vote.

Because he'd mean to me. Yeah, because Matt Gates might be mean to you. I mean, it just, think about that. Like, there's like tens of thousands of Ukrainians dying. And Kevin McCarthy's more afraid of Matt Gates than, you know, he is committed to supporting Ukraine. I think, you know, what he wants to do, Zelensky is really fortify not only the Democrats, but the Republicans who do agree with him. so that they become more invested in pressuring McCarthy and the crazy House Republicans. I think probably what we're looking at here, Tommy, is like, and this gets into domestic

politics, but like there's going to be a government shutdown maybe. There'll be some huge end of the year spending package that I'm sure they'll ram the Ukraine assistance into that. And, you know, the Matt Gates of the world, both throw a tantrum and Kevin McCarthy will yell. I think what Zelensky did that was also interesting and notable is, is after replacing the defense minister, the new defense minister, fired every deputy defense minister as like the first thing that you did, essentially. I think they're really trying to send a message that they're rooting out corruption.

One thing that I think should be considered with assistance is greater kind of inspector general mechanisms to track. Look, the Ukrainians wouldn't have fired all those people if there wasn't a corruption problem. Clearly there is a corruption problem. That's not to say that most of this aid is going. going in the wrong direction. Right. When some of it is reported, too, like overpriced eggs. Yeah, exactly. This is not like people stealing, you know, Abrams tanks or something.

This is people double counting for food and, you know, things like this. But, you know, good to kind of show that you're taking that seriously. I think the issue is that they'll get probably that next package, but that's probably the last bit they're going to get before our election. Oh, definitely. And so the whole next year, I mean, part of why he's shifting gratitude is that, you know, he can go to Europe and try to get smaller, you know, installments. But whatever he gets from us this time is that's kind of it, you know, that and whatever the, you know, a few billion dollars the Pentagon finds buried in the cushions, you know. Let's talk more about Russian Ukraine.

Because you mentioned the six deputy defense ministers that have been sacked, summarily fired. They didn't say why, as you noted, but it does seem likely it's about corruption. You mentioned Abrams tanks. Back in January, the U.S. announced we'd be giving 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Apparently they're like just now showing up. So they might make it to the battlefield in time for the very end of this spring, turn summer, turned now fall offensive, where there certainly hasn't been the kind of progress I think people were hoping to see.

But it does sound like in some areas the Ukrainians are maybe starting to exhaust some Russian forces near Bakhmut. There's another point in the south where I think they've broken through the first line of defenses in some small areas. And maybe now that could lead to a broader breakthrough. see. Also, Ben, there was a report in the New York Times that this awful missile strike that hit a market in eastern Ukraine on September 6th and killed 15 civilians was actually friendly fire. It was a Ukrainian air defense missile that went to the wrong place and landed on Ukrainian soil. Finally, there are rumors swirling that Putin Stuge and Chechen warlord, Ramzan Kadyrov, in a coma, maybe he's sick, maybe he just did too much MMA and he's like really sleepy.

I don't know, maybe he's dead. His Instagram account posted a video of Kadearov walking around saying like, you know, he's fine to go outside, just like loser or something, some sort of like trolley internet speak. But, you know, he's a terrible person. His forces have been accused of committing horrific atrocities. So if Kadyrov were somehow off the battlefield, that might be a good thing. Yeah. If you listen to another rush of the podcast, I do with Jean-Msova, Kadyrov also seemingly

implicated in the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, just a horrible, horrible person. When was that, was that 05 or 06? No, that was in 2015. Oh, so later. Yeah, yeah. Because his father was in charge, right? His father took power in, I think, 2003. I think Romsom took over in 2007.

Yeah. So that would make sense if he was sort of. Yeah, he was constantly. trying to kind of prove, you know, his, the trade-off that he has with Putin, which is he gets to kind of have his own militia and do what the hell he wants down in Chechnya, but he does a bunch of dirty work for Putin. But, I mean, it'd be pretty interesting if Progoshen and Kederov both like kick the bucket here before, you know, two years into this war. I mean, not that there's, with Kudorov, it seems like there's probably not a linkage, but those are two of the kind of

most odious characters that were carrying out Putin's dirty work. Real changing the card. Yeah. Yes, probably not replaced by much better people. But look, your basic update is, I mean, the one thing we should say is that last year, when Ukraine had those big breakthroughs in Keroson in the south and Kharkiv in the north, it was kind of in the fall. But Russia's more dug in this time, more, you know, more trenches. And so if the front line solidifies, I think these questions around negotiation may come up, but Putin has no incentive to negotiate until he knows the result of our election. Right. So I just think we're kind of in a sense.

stalemate, hopefully with some gains for Ukraine until, you know, we know who the next President United States is. The other thing that Koreans are seemingly doing with great effect is hammering targets in Crimea with missile strikes. And they also nearly either took out another major Russian ship and maybe even a submarine that were at port getting repaired. So, you know, they're having some tactical successes. But, Ben, back to the UN General Assembly.

So on Wednesday, President Biden is going to meet with Israeli Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu in New York. It's their first face-to-face since BB came back to power. The meeting was not held at the White House to show Biden's displeasure with Netanyahu's recent attacks on the Israeli judiciary. Netanyahu will be fresh off his meeting with Elon Musk, helping him mop up after some anti-Semitism charges and some attacks on the ADL. So that's a lot of fun. Some things that could be on the agenda for Biden and BB. Hopefully Biden puts a ton of pressure on him to stop with this judicial. coup that he's undertaking midway through it. I would love to hear Biden press, Netanyahu, on stopping the export of Israeli spyware to bad actors. Harz had a big piece about how Israeli

cyber companies have figured out how to use advertising technology, tack our phones. That's fun. The Washington Post reported that one recent victim of an attack from the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware was the editor of Medusa News, one of the last independent news outlets in Russia. All the good guys getting attacked by this Israeli spyware. And then, Ben, there's almost certainly going to be talk about this, frequently floated now Israeli-Saudi, Saudi-Arabia normalization deal. There were reports over the weekend that the Saudis had declared the talks dead, but the New York Times reported today that there's still kind of happening

and that it could include a mutual defense agreement like the ones the U.S. has with South Korea and Japan. So, Ben, I don't know, man. Like, I wish Biden wasn't meeting with BB at all. Tony Blinken assured us, and I believe him, that they wouldn't do a deal that wasn't in the U.S. interests. I just am so skeptical of how a deal with this guy or MBS would ever be in the U.S. interest. But what do you think will come out of this? I mean, I assume that the main topic is the Saudi normalization deal.

I think part of what's interesting about that is it's ostensibly an Israel's Saudi normalization deal, but it's basically U.S.-S.-Saudi negotiation. And so I presume what's happening is that Biden is going back to Bibi, how do you feel about us building a nuclear program in Saudi Arabia? Like, what will you do for the Palestinians? It might make the Saudis feel like at least optically they can do this deal. Like, it's all kind of gross. I mean, you have to do it, I guess, but I'm glad he's not at the White House.

I'm yet to see either he or MBS kind of take steps that indicate that this normalization deal is something that, you know, is good for us. They, you hear a lot about this deal from the U.S. officials and like Tom Friedman, you know, and at a certain point, you know, what are the views of the Saudis and the Israelis on this thing, you know? Yeah, I mean, right. Again, Tony, when we talked to Tony Blankin last week, Secretary, state, he was quite clear that they wouldn't be good with the deal that didn't include some real

meaningful progress towards the Palestinian state. And so I'm just trying to imagine any scenario where Netanyahu's cabinet allows that to happen because they don't want to foreclose annexation of the West Bank. They're kind of dedicated to that, right? It's kind of like core part of their favorite thing. Yeah. And so I mean, I guess like the other question is like in the interim, it's not as if they should be, you know, the kind of impunity for settler violence, the kind of intimidation displacement of Palestinians that we've seen. I hope that's on the agenda, too, and not just kind of like what kind of symbolic announcements might they make, you know, around a Saudi normalization deal. So I don't know. It's, I'm always a little cynical when it comes to BB because BB is the most

cynical. Personal life. One of the most cynical people on Earth. So we'll see what comes out of it. Not hugely optimistic here. Detested by generation. of American officials. Yeah. Okay, Ben, lots of little updates on the U.S. China front.

So first of all, our friend Jake Sullivan, President Biden's National Security Advisor, had another surprise meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. This time they were in Malta.

Yeah, super spy movie-ish, you know. Very spy movie. Yeah. I, you know, I like the venue. You like that? I mean, it seems like a,

I figured, I looked at a map. It's kind of in the middle. It's an island in middle of Mediterranean. You know, yeah. Yeah. Maybe next one can be in like, you know,

Monte Cristo or something. Under a casino. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like you live in Venice. I live in the east side. I guess it is, is it kind of halfway in between? I don't know. Sort of.

I don't even know anymore. Next is it will be on like a Pacific island somewhere. Well, it was also convenient for Wang Yi because then he went directly to Russia, where he has four days of meetings. So Biden's team, they want to ease tensions with China. They want to convince them not to give the Russians any weapons. They want to reopen military to military talks. And they want to prepare for a potential meeting between Biden. and Chinese president Xi Jinping in November.

Putin is supposed to go to Beijing next month. That is not ideal. But Ben, in more China news, a while back, we talked about how the Chinese foreign minister just disappeared for weeks and weeks and weeks and then was summarily replaced. The Wall Street Journal reported that his crime was having a baby out of wedlock while serving as the ambassador to the U.S. And now, things get even weirder as China's defense minister, Li Chang Fu, has now disappeared. He has not been seen in public for two weeks. There are reports that he might have

been arrested for disloyalty or corruption. Hard out there for a Chinese cabinet minister, man. Well, first of all, I'm glad Jake is doing that meeting. It's always better to talk than to not talk. The fact that it is Jake Sullivan meeting with the foreign minister instead of Tony Blinken, it does suggest that maybe it is about some G. Biden communication. Yeah, yeah, it does. Now, these disappearances, I don't know, man. Like, I, first of all, like, the, the kid out of wedlock, you always wonder, like, that feels like half the story. Like, I'm sure that's enough to get you in trouble there, but, like, who, you know.

Maybe if you don't disclose it, you're considered a security threat or something. Yeah, maybe you lied about it, you know, on, you know, like, didn't fill out his SF86 form. But, man, if that was a crime, Boris Johnson would be in jail like six times over, right? Yeah, seriously. But, I mean, this is just a hell of a way to run a superpower, right? Like the defense minister is disappearing, the farm minister is disappearing. At the same time that China is supposed to be building this parallel world order. I mean, like they seem to just kind of treat these senior officials like these disposable ornaments that they don't even have to provide an explanation for their disappearance.

It's wild. Yeah. It's totally wild. Also, did you notice that there was a bunch of reporting at the same time? I'm always I always notice when there's like similar reports at the same time. To me it suggests like a purposeful briefing. There are some stories about the U.S. China sort of like intelligence wars. The Times said a big one. Yes.

Part of them said like the U.S. thinks that the Chinese spy balloon program has been stopped. There's more reporting about how Xi Jinping didn't know about it. It was really mad about it when he learned, blah, blah, blah, felt embarrassed. And then there were some interesting details in the Times about how hard it has been for the CIA to do any recruitment in China because there's cameras everywhere. Facial recognition technology says you can't just like, you know, put it on your like, Mr. Magoo, you know, like fake nose and glasses thing. The good old days trade craft. Yeah, the trade craft is gone. No raincoat and glasses.

Yeah. It even says they can measure the gate of U.S. spies. You get a limp like the usual suspects. And it said every U.S. official that gets a job in like the intelligence world, apparently is just deluged with LinkedIn requests from random Chinese

officials. You just want to get to know you. Yeah. Yeah, hard target there. And you know, we've had some catastrophic incidents of like networks getting rolled up in China. I mean, look, if you run a totally totalitarian society making use of mass surveillance technology, like you become a harder intelligence target, you know? And I'm sure that means that there's a lot of intelligence efforts in like third countries and things like that. And at the same time, as you talked about last week, we've seen China get much more aggressive. They've got people like researchers in the

British Parliament, like they've been in other governments, parliaments. And, and, but yeah, this is, you know, the characteristic of like a, a bit of a Cold War vibe to things, you know, and it is what it is. Speaking of intelligence or lack thereof, the U.S. military was briefly missing an F-35 fighter jet on Sunday. The pilot ejected from his plane, somewhere near Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. radar lost track of the thing somehow. If I were the military, I'd say, I'd speak. in this and say it turns out our stealth technology is just too good. Yeah. So the joint base Charleston Twitter account tweets out the following message, quote,

we're working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to locate an F-35 that was involved in a mishap this afternoon. The pilot ejected safely. If you have any information that may help our recovery teams locate the F-35, please call the base defense operations center blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like it was a missing dog or something. Yeah. That tweet was probably not the best idea, Ben, because by the time I saw it on Twitter, F-35 was

trending along with Havana and cat turd. I think there must have been a right wing thing that just flew to Cuba. So some lovely conspiracy theory bait there. Searchers found the wreckage on Monday north of Charleston. Still not clear why the pilot bailed out. Luckily no one was hurt. But I'm sure a lot of people are going to be demanding answers about why a $135 million plane is now a flaming pile of metal.

I was going to say, have you ever lost anything that cost over $100 million? Not that I can think of. I lost a lot of AirPods. I left my fob at home today. I had to get cleared up, yeah. But it's not $135 million. Yeah, that's, it's not like something you, I mean, I think Tom Cruise should have been enlisted. I mean, it seems like, you know.

He wouldn't have bailed out of that thing. He wouldn't have bailed out of that thing. He would have figured out of where to land it. He would have rode it to the ground. No offense to the pilot. Yeah, no, it's not great. And it's an expensive piece of hardware. I mean, when people talk about cost overruns and,

the Pentagon. The F-35 program is on that list. It's like a one-point-something trillion-dollar program over the left. You could feed a lot of people with that one plane. Yeah. Now, Ben, I don't want to be mean, but I did see someone tweet that between this and Aaron Rogers, it's been a tough week for overpriced Jets. Oh, God. Yeah, not a great, not a great feeling to be Jets fan, Tommy. I was finally fully on board with our ayahuasca taking. Joe Rogan podcasting. He charmed everybody on hard knocks, you know. Four plays in.

Now he's got, well, I'm sure that the international world those don't care about the Zach Wilson era. Hey, hey, if they're getting Chilean coups at the front, they're getting Zach Wilson in the back. It's not good. It's not good. Mack Jones isn't that much better. No, you know. Patriots suck.

Mac played okay. Okay, Ben, file this under only in Australia. a real. Oh, good. It's been a while since you're better. This is your favorite, John. This is a BBC news headline. Australian man fined for taking pet snake surfing.

This guy, I think he's from Higor Fusa. I don't know. He took his carpet python Shiva surfing. Then he filmed it and he put it on Instagram. So I find it disappointing, and I just learned of this, that there's a regulation on the books. And I would think that in Australia you could, if there's anywhere in the world where I would think that you'd be allowed to take your pet python surfing. I would think that that would be Australia. Yeah.

Now, do I want to be in the water and see that coming towards me? Not particularly. No. But I kind of feel like that's the Aussie vibe. I mean. Yeah. Well, so his mistake was putting on Instagram because it made him a local celebrity, but it got the Queensland Department of Environment and Science on his radar.

They find him $1,500 for endangering the snake mostly. It's a cold-blooded animal, right? So you put him in the water. But, um. That's the right approach to the problem, though. I like that the approach was more about the snake than the people. Yeah. Well, they're worried about spreading disease, but here's a clip of the dude who took the snake serving.

Yeah, she goes for a swim a little bit and it comes back to the bull and she's just cruising, waiting for the way, for the perfect wave. So he also said like she loves it. Usually when she doesn't like something, she starts hissing, but she doesn't hiss in the water. She's always chill. Every time we have one of these Australia segments, the interview clip is perfect. It's exactly how I'd want him to be. So you'll love this.

Apparently, this same beach is home to an equally famous body surfing duck named duck. Some family owned a duck. They took it out in the ocean with them. And it just like, it caught one wave and was like, fuck, yeah, this is what I do now. We do need to do some live content in Australia. We have to figure out how to do it. But if we go, people will have to collect for us like a whole range of these stories. And we may need to interview some of these people.

All of them. Yeah. But to your point about the fine, I mean, you got to figure, like, the Queensland Department of Environment and Science, like, they've seen some shit. They've seen some shit, man. Like, they've seen some animals that you and I can't even imagine what they look like. Like, eight-foot gator and a toilet. Yeah, there's some 100-foot worm or some shit, you know, like, there's, you know, kangaroos doing up to no good, you know. I mean, yeah.

There was a story the other day. I think it was an Australian woman who, like, was having some, like, fainting and stuff or, like, lightheaded and memory issues. and they found like a worm in her brain. Don't Google that one. That's like my nightmare. It's worse. It's like the old wives tale that everyone like eats eight spiders a year or whatever.

Like makes me want to fucking die. Okay, on that note, now that everyone's turned off the podcast, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, you'll hear my interview with Rory Stewart about serving in British Parliament, being a minister,

and how horrible it was top the bottom. So stick around for that. My guest today, wears a lot of hats. He was a cabinet minister, a member of parliament. He served as a diplomat in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the head of a charity called Give Directly, an excellent charity, by the way, which combats extreme poverty through cash transfers. More recently, he is the co-host of the Restis Politics Podcast and the author of a new book, which is either called Politics on the Edge or how not to be a politician. Rory, you have to clarify this for me. But Rory Stewart, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you. Firstly, the book is... is called in the US how not to be a politician. And the book, which has just been published, is an attempt to try to describe what it's like to find a populist, in our case, Boris Johnson, taking over a right-wing party and dragging politics to the extremes and what it might feel like for the progressive center

to fail to fight against that and then what it might take to try to fight back. And I hope it's a book that has relevance for American readers, European readers, as well as British. Oh, it feels very relevant. Also, I want to say, welcome to the podcasting game. You've had enormous success, but you're a new entry.

So just pro tip for you. If you ever want to end a conversation, clear a room, tell people you're in the podcasting business. It'll shut it down. They'll walk away. They'll just walk away. That's the answer, is it? You don't need to tell them that you're a forensic accountant or anything. You just say you're a podcaster.

Just say podcasting. So this is a challenging interview for me. There's so much I would like to talk with you about. But let's start with the book. You have a piece in the Atlantic this week that is adapted from the book about Boris Johnson basically throwing you out of the Tory party because you wouldn't go along with his Brexit plan. There's an audio excerpt on the Restis Politics podcast feed that folks should check out. It's very fun. My question for you, for a long time, progressives in the U.S., in the U.S., in the U.K., we could kind of cry on each other's shoulders.

We could at least feel like we are not alone in terms of having the most buffoonish disarmes. honest leaders running our countries. But now it seems like there's a 50-50 chance that Trump will be the next president while voters in the UK seem to have moved on from Johnson. What's your secret? How did you guys do it? How can we follow suit? Well, I think the first thing is that we shouldn't get too optimistic too soon. The truth of the matter is, yes, it's great that Boris Johnson, who was a clown, he was a terrible human being, he was a terrible prime minister. It's great that we've got rid of him. But the underlying causes that drove his success, the underlying causes that created populism in the US or the UK, Europe haven't gone away. And that's basically

because the economic system, which you and I and many others believed in didn't really deliver for people properly. The 2008 financial crisis was a terrible exposure of many of the problems that we had in our countries. Many of our promises about democracy and international relations failed. And I think the populists were right in a lot of their criticisms. Where they're wrong is in their solutions. And I think that the danger in Britain is that, yes, at the moment, we've got these two pretty boring middle of the road, apparently politicians in the form of Rishi Zunek and Kirstama. One of them are banker, the other one, a lawyer, they're not famous for their sense of humor. They don't seem to have any ideological divisions. But the populist move is still

very much there. And the chances are that if Rishi Sunak loses the next election, which seems very likely, the Conservative Party will again take a big lurch to the right and again be very dominated by an anti-immigrant nationalist, culture war, populist fringe. Do you think, is that in the form of someone like Suella Breverman, or do you think there could be a Boris Johnson comeback? Well, Boris Johnson obviously fantasizes a lot about comeback. I think the way in which he finished himself is not his many horrific things. I mean, like Donald Trump, he challenged our Constitution.

He tried to lock the doors on Parliament. He lied to the Queen. He insulted the Supreme Court. He lied to Parliament. He appointed completely inappropriate people corruptly to office. He was forgiven for a lot of that by his voter base. What they won't forgive him for is that he mocked them by essentially partying during COVID.

He implemented these very stringent COVID lockdowns and then was caught partying in 10 Downing Street in the prime minister's office during that period. So I think he's damaged badly by that. And you need to imagine Donald Trump being caught doing something that would really be seen as betraying his base. Yeah, that's fair.

He certainly didn't betray his base. It's funny. I followed the party gate scandals very closely here, including through your podcast. But at the same time, I think to myself, you know, Donald Trump hosted the Republican National Convention at the White House during COVID. So everything he does is just as venal and terrible and, you know, stupid, but it's just out in public and somehow he's forgiven. So in the book, you know, I've read the excerpt. I purchased it today. I'm very excited to read it. But it seems like a lot of the reviews and the coverage so far is it doesn't seem to paint the

most hopeful view of government or at least your experience of government, a few examples. And correct me if I get anything wrong here. It sounds like you were assigned your first ministerial job with basically no heads up or time to prepare and then immediately driven to the office to meet your staff who also had no time to prepare. It sounds like David Cameron could be at times uninterested in policy and maybe a little bit oblivious to political threats like populism. Parliament sounds like it's a lot like the U.S. Congress full of kind of phony, dishonest people, one of whom threatened to pull. punch you. So, you know, is your theory of the case here that, look, we got to get this all out there, sunlight is the best disinfected, and then we can fix things. But first, I got to tell the truth about how bad it really is. Yes. I believe strongly that you don't fix things by covering

things up. You fix things by being brutally honest about the problems and then challenging people to come with you and fix them. And in the UK context, the problem is there is far too much power held in the center. And these are... basically were being run by a 19th century parliamentary system. And I think it's probably true to some extent of the US too, that these are old-fashioned constitutions created a very long time ago in a world before we had a fully educated, mobilized population. We've now got a very educated population who are immensely capable,

immensely empowered by social media. And the idea that a few women and men stuck in some capital city somehow are going to be able to have the knowledge, the power, the legitimacy to run people's lives in the way that we did in the past is just for the birds. I mean, I'm increasingly a believer in much more radical decentralization. I think governments, certainly in the UK and Europe, have proven that get out of touch so quickly.

I mean, it's almost impossible to avoid the sense that you end up with some very bright people. I'm not saying there aren't very bright people. I mean, you represent one of those people, but I think you probably will recognize that I saw it maybe most dramatically in Iraq and Afghanistan. I saw there some very bright, capable people

doing some very, very foolish things. And I'm afraid there were deeper lessons from the way we screwed up Iraq and Afghanistan, which actually applied to the way we run our own countries. That's right. I noticed that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is not coming to the UN General Assembly this year, nor are a bunch of other leaders. I'm curious what you make of Sunak's skipping of the, of Ungah at a time when there are some questions about, you know, the UK's global influence post-Brexit. Is this too many summits in a row? Is this something deeper? What do you make of it? I think it's very, very sad. I'm speaking to you from New York. I've been doing all the normal round.

have meetings, I've been doing stuff with USAID, I've just been with the president of Malawi. The point about these things is not just demonstrating that you care about the United Nations, the multilateral system. And my goodness, there are reasons to care about it, particularly now, because we're not going to fix climate change or deal with AI regulation adequately without getting the world together and agreeing. But it's also just a much more efficient way of world leaders meeting each other. And one of the great reasons that we all come here is that we can,

in a day meet 14, 15 people who we'd otherwise have to fly to 14, 15 countries to meet. So I'm very disappointed Rishi Sunak isn't here, and I think it represents a real lack of ambition and vision from the British government. One of the things I know you've been doing on the margins of the UN General Assembly is talking to people about the excellent nonprofit you work with, Give Directly. We were emailing last week about some of the work. Give Directly has been doing in Morocco. It seems like the general theory of the case, and correct me,

if I'm wrong, is that people in extreme poverty or those recovering from a disaster, they don't need some guy like me in Los Angeles to send blankets, they need cash to buy whatever they think they need at that moment. But how does give directly find people in rural Morocco or Eastern Libya and connect with them and inform them about this program and this opportunity?

So, well, firstly, thank you, Tommy. And thank you for raising it. And thank you for your actually providing your personal support to people in Morocco who are are, as you said when we were talking last week, in the most desperate situation. I mean, it's unimaginable. I was in Southeast Turkey after the earthquake, and they're trying to come to terms with 42,000 people killed in about two minutes, or talking to friends, yeah, friends in Marrakesh,

and the sense of the aftershocks, the sense that nobody, it's not just the trauma of the loss of seeing your friends and relatives killed, it's the sense that the aftershocks continue to haunt you. So I think that's the first thing. Thank you for raising this issue, because it is so important that we remain engaged with these things. Secondly, I thank you for pointing out that actually often, if you've been through a terrible disaster, the most useful thing you can do is be given cash. It's very difficult for you or me to work out, whether it's actually impossible for you or me to work out, whether somebody whose entire building has been destroyed by an earthquake, what it is they need. The temptation is, you know, you put a bunch of

clothes in a van and you send it off or you send food, but actually what happens is the food arrives. I mean, maybe you send maize from Idaho. It arrives and the recipient sells that in order to get cash to buy what they actually need, which might be a tent over their head or they might need to get their kids back into school or a family member may have a medical emergency or their business maybe collapsing. So the best way that you can respond to these very different individual needs is to get them cash. And how do we target? Well, Give Directly has been working in Morocco for many years. We've got staff on the ground with specialists in delivering cash. And so for better or for worse, we found ourselves in the epicenter of a crisis where we had some very experienced staff

with the communities. And we do it through conducting needs assessments. I mean, in the same way that UN agencies do, and I think we're all getting better at it in learning how to identify the people who are at most need and addressing them first. So you're basically seeking them out, you're going to the high Ellis mountains where there was some of the worst devastation and just finding people and saying, hey, this program exists, we can get you cash? We are doing it in different geographical areas, but the basic approach is to make sure that people are genuinely need that assistance.

And that isn't just people in the high outless mountains. There are people right around the edge of Marrakech. who are in terrible need of assistance. But our driving principle is to make sure that we do proper assessments. And that's both asking people questions about their incomes and their family, but also just looking at the conditions in which they're living and putting those things together to make often quite a quick decision because we've got to get the money out quickly on who seems to be in real need.

Yeah. So there's all these huge global problems that are leading to extreme poverty. There's climate change. There's conflicts. There's COVID. Sometimes the international community steps up to tackle them. More often recently, it feels like big promises on climate change, for example, get forgotten when, you know, Russia invades Ukraine and the price of gas goes up and everyone's worried about sort of the near term political considerations. What role do you think nonprofits and NGOs like yours play at a time when there's this broader political dysfunction, not just in capitals, but also at the UN, which, you know, has.

hasn't been able to get a lot done these days. I think the major thing that we can do is to provide hope. You're absolutely right. People are turning away from extreme poverty. We remember back in the 90s and 2000s, we were going to make poverty history, the sustainable development goal. Number one of the UN was going to be to end extreme poverty by 2030. And the truth of the matter is that we've gone from 170 million people living in extreme poverty

in sub-Saharan Africa in 1980 to 470 million people. living in extreme poverty there today. And there are many things that have gone wrong along the way. Many of the things that actually drove those movements in the 90s and 2000s are less strong. Churches are less strong. Trade union movements are less strong. International solidarity is less strong. It's interesting also.

There's been a change in celebrity culture. It's more and more difficult to get famous people to actually endorse campaigns on poverty because they're worried about being accused of being hypocrites and being marginalized. music culture has changed. But the biggest problem is that people have lost hope. They think there's no solutions out there, that the whole thing's a wasted time. There's no point giving international aid. Nothing's going to get better.

So from Give Directly's point of view, we are there to say there have been over 350 academic papers studying giving cash. And it demonstrates through comparing very scientifically with university partners, what happens if you give cash compared to other interventions. that cash can have a miraculous transformatory impact on poverty, that there is a solution, that there's a way of putting the tens of billions of dollars of international development aid to much, much better use, and that this is something that we can fix in our lifetimes. I mean, if you're talking about saving the world,

probably from my point of view, one of the biggest single moral outrages of our age is the fact that there are 700 million people living in this world, who are eating once a day, once every two days, who can't put an adequate roof over their head, and whose lives would be transformed by a gift of $6 or $700. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm sure you struggled with this

in your many roles in government. I mean, it seems like Americans think that the international assistance budget is drastically larger than it actually is. I know that there has been some disagreement in the Labor Party currently about how much assistance to give going forward. Do you have any thoughts on how to, I don't know, fight those political fights and win them and help people understand that it's in our interests to help people overseas,

that this is not money that's getting exploited in some way? I think it's difficult. I mean, if there was an easy answer, we'd all be driving up our eight budgets. Tom, you'll know yourself that one thing to do is to remind people that there's a degree of self-interest here, that if Africa, finds itself in unrelenting poverty, it's a big problem for the world. I mean, one in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria by 2050. 40% of the world's population will be in Africa by the end of the century. And if those countries are left in extreme poverty, that is where

security threats will come from. It's obviously where migration is flowing across into Europe, but it's also where pandemics will come from, where global insecurity will come from, and also a huge missed opportunity. I mean, look at it on the bright side. These are also, if you invest properly, could be great markets for American goods. They could be fantastic labor force to ally with American capital. This is the place from which a lot of the raw materials we need to power the energy transition as we go for a green revolution, the cobalt, the lithium for our batteries are going to come out of Africa. So you tell that story, you tell the self-interest story, but you can't lose. And I think this is sometimes, I think politicians are a little cowardly about this.

You cannot lose the ethical argument to. The truth of the matter is you have to be able to say, in the end, it is not just that you and I live in these very comfortable positions and that we can do things to help people who are on this edge of starvation and we're not doing it. I mean, there was actually a, I saw an American politician that I admired being confronted with this and he said, somebody said to him, but aren't people? in America is suffering. And he said, yeah, people in America are suffering.

But people in Malawi, people in Rwanda, are suffering far, far more at a level that we can't begin to imagine. And we've got to do our bit to help them too. Yeah, absolutely great. So I want to talk about the podcast before we wrap. I love the show because you and your co-host, Alster Campbell, who's a top aide to Tony Blair in the Labor Party. It's sort of like a people, our listeners might think of like a David Axelrod

in the UK. You guys talk a lot about foreign policy, and I really appreciate that. You did a two-episode series on the Iraq War that I thought was particularly riveting. You argued, I thought, convincingly, that the war was a disaster. I think that's sort of a fact at this point. I think Alasor's position was more, you know, the intelligence at the time was dire. We don't know how bad Saddam Hussein could have been if left in charge. I hope I'm characterizing it fairly.

It got a little heated. Do you guys ever need to, like, pause the Zoom, walk away? mute things during tapings to cool off, or how does that go? Well, I think we should be sharing podcast therapy. I don't know how this happens with your podcasting partner. No, there's definitely times like that. I mean, you know, I was, I'm here at the UN General Assembly, so I'm running between all these different meetings,

and I did a podcast with Alastair this morning. And I was in real trouble because I suddenly dropped in at two hours notice. I think we really need to discuss the UN. And he was like, we've been planning this podcast for weeks. How can you do this to me? I've got no time to prepare. And he came on it. he was really grumpy.

And I was very worried for the first 10 minutes. This is going to be terrible. I mean, he seemed so angry with me. I don't know how we're going to make it through this. Somehow he kind of perked up. But yeah, it's an issue. Maybe you two, though, are more chilled individuals. Maybe you don't get drawn into that horror.

Oh, no, it happens. I mean, Ben and I just kind of, we do our thing and we're fine. On Potside America, the politics show, you know, we've been doing this. When you're sharing a microphone, an office, and a company for six years, you know, things get heated. you yell it out and come back. But it's a fun show because, look, I think if I were to criticize some of my shows here at Crooked Media, it's that there's too often rampant agreement. And I like the fact that you guys mix it up. I like that I can hear when Alicester's pissed off. It means he's

passionate about something. I think there's value to that. It's riveting listening for a variety of reasons. And, you know, I appreciate it. Oh, well, Tommy, thank you. And I hope you enjoy how not to be a politician because I hope the book, you know, it's a funny thing to do to a US audience because, of course, it's nine and a half years of painful experience of fighting bureaucracy, fighting populism in Britain. But I sometimes think that looking at an issue like populism from another angle, looking at Donald Trump through the spectrum of Boris Johnson, can be helpful because it helps us all think together about what the solutions can be, how we can provide a genuinely inspiring, emotional, logical vision of a better future that doesn't fall into just defending the past?

No, I think that's right. And I think it is important to see similar problems in different systems. Because in the U.S., I think, look, there's a lot of problems with the two-party system. There's a lot of problems of the electoral college. There's a lot of, you know, gerrymandering. There's a lot of structural challenges that we have. But it's important to note that a parliamentary system is dealing with a lot of the same exact kind of buffoonish figures who are, you know, making the same arguments. And then Germany with the AFD, Sweden, Finland. I mean, it's terrifying the spread of right-wing populism across Europe.

I mean, I think, and a lot of that is driven by social media, but I think AI is going to have a very dramatic effect on the next U.S. election, and I think it's just going to give much more power to these forces all over the world. Yeah, for the Russians, I think it feels like a binary choice between Trump, who will cut off assistance to Ukraine and Biden, who will not. So we're very worried about AI and electoral interference going forward. But I know you got a busy schedule up there. Incredibly grateful that you would do the show.

So everyone should check out how not to be a politician is the book. And the rest is politics of the podcast. You will enjoy both. And thanks for doing the show. Thank you very much. And the charity, give directly. Thank you, Thomas so much. Great charity.

Thank you again. Bye-bye. Thanks again to Rory for doing the show. Thanks again to Shiva. the surfing snake. Thanks to Aaron Rogers for four plays. I think he gets like, so much money.

So much money. So much money. Yeah, it's not great. We have a lot of cap space next year. Yeah, no, he's coming back.

He said he's coming back. Like, that's the classic Jets thing, right? Like, we can't even really move on from him because we're on the hook to pay him next year.

So, you know, I don't know, like, roll the dice in Kaepernick or something. Pitchers and The Nets report?

The Nets are not a lot to look forward to the. The NICs are good. Okay? I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it. Yeah. I'll take it. All right, that's it for us this week.

Talk to you guys soon. POTS of the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Chirling. Our producer is Alona Minkowski. An associate producer is Ashley Nizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Audio support by Kyle Seiglin and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support. Conflicts don't just get resolved on their own. Most go through a grueling process of give and take, usually behind closed doors. But the negotiators, a podcast from foreign policy and Doha Debates, is putting listeners in the room.

Each episode of the negotiators features one mediator, one diplomat, or one troubleshooter telling the story of how they got deal. You'll hear about the 1992 peace agreement among rival street gangs in Los Angeles, the U.S. women's national soccer team fight for equal pay, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and much, much more. Season three of the negotiators, hosted by Jen Williams is out now. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts.