Pod Save the World - Dems in Congress push for a more progressive foreign policy

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

A leadership fight in Congress that could help make the Democratic Party’s foreign policy more progressive. A far-right nationalist wins reelection in Poland. How other countries are reopening schools during COVID. Egypt cracks down on press freedom. China, the NBA and why ESPN suspended a reporter. Turkey tries to silence critics abroad. China sanctions Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and may sign a strategic deal with Iran. And the US keeps its border closed.

Welcome back to POTS of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, it's great to see you, but I do want listeners to know that I have attached an opposition research file about you in the show notes, much like Anthony Fauci. So get ready for it to be taken down. I'm more focused on our team, Tommy. I'm going to divide them against each other by circulating different APO research to each of them about the other. Can you imagine being at the White House in circulating APO research to like Chuck Todd about some technocratic, nerd over USAID? It's so mind-bogglingly stupid. Well, so here's the thing. Like, this is actually worth, you know, I picture the meeting, right? So Trump calls a bunch of people in and yells at them about something he saw Fauci say and tells them to deal with it. And so imagine, like, you and I were in hundreds of meetings, right, in, like, the press secretary's office, right? But imagine the motley crew of, like, Stephen Miller and Dan Skivino getting into Kali's office and hatching this plot to send APO research to, you know, to Axios or something.

Like it's just so, so juvenile. Yeah, it's like all truncated quotes that they're therefore. But anyway, we got a great show today. We're going guest list because I was a bit stretched for time this morning. But we are going to talk about the fight to lead the House Foreign Affairs Committee in how that leadership role could impact U.S. foreign policy. We're going to talk about the recent presidential election in Poland. Egypt's crackdown on journalists, profanity protests, and the NBA, and a journalist named Wojj, how schools are opening in foreign countries during the pandemic,

why Turkish president Tayyaf Erdwan is so sensitive. And then we're going to talk about China and how they keep sanctioning random people, border closures to the U.S., and a weird burgeoning partnership maybe between China and Iran So lots of great stuff. Two quick things where we get to the news. Last week, the Supreme Court dropped a bunch of major decisions, including a historic ruling for Native people in America. That's about indigenous rights and land use that you will not want to miss. We covered this case in detail last year on our podcast, This Land.

If you missed it, it was hosted by Rebecca Nagel. It was a story about murder, the shameful treatment of indigenous people in this country, and how the Supreme Court can address it. Season 1 of this land is. is available wherever you get your podcasts, and we're going to drop a special episode on Thursday, so make sure you check that out. It is fascinating. Also, America Dissected host Abdul-Sayed landed a major interview with Tony Fauci, Anthony Fauci,

the man the White House is attacking. Maybe it is because he is now on crooked media. So don't miss that in all the great episodes of America dissected that are available right now. Okay, let's turn to the news. Okay, so let's start in Congress because there's an important leadership fight happening over the chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This is happening because a friend of the pod, Jamal Bowman, defeated the current committee chairman, Elliot Engel.

Engel was viewed by many people, including us, as being too conservative. He had voted for the Iraq War. He opposed the Iran nuclear deal. He was generally hawkish. That was a big part of why he lost, I believe, and people wanted Bowman's more progressive foreign policy. And so, you know, now the race is on to see who will succeed him. The Washington Post reported that Congressman Castro of Texas is going to jump into the race for this chairmanship.

That is a race that already includes Greg Meeks, Congressman from New York, and Brad Sherman from California. 60 progressive groups sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi recently asking her to end what they believe is a disconnect between the committee's leadership and then the progressive foreign policy consensus opinion. Specifically, this letter wants the next chairman to do the following. repeal the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs, reign in intelligence collection, emphasize diplomatic and not military solution to problems, oppose regime change, oppose sanctions that are overly onerous on just regular people, push to end the Israeli occupation by using incentives and pressure, more scrutiny for arms sales, focus on workers in these trade deals that happen, reject special interest money, and welcome refugees. It's a good list, great letter. The Washington Post describes the

process to figure out who's the chairman as a mix of seniority, popularity, and backroom dealmaking, which sounds about right to me. So basically, what's happening now is critics are arguing that Brad Sherman is a little too similar to Engle. He's too conservative. Sherman voted for the Iraq war. He opposed the Iran nuclear deal. Greg Meeks would be the first African American to chair of the committee. He opposed the Iraq war and he supported the Iran deal. Castro, the most recent entrant, is the least senior candidate in the running. He's put an emphasis on, you know, including underrepresented voices in the debates, especially Palestinians. Ben, what do you make of this leadership fight? And how big an impact do you think the chairman of a House committee will

actually have on U.S. foreign policy? So I think it's hugely important. I'm really excited we're talking about it because it's not just about this committee. I think it's about the Democratic Party's approach to foreign policy writ large. And, you know, the reality is for far too long, the party treated foreign policy if it wasn't in power, if there wasn't a Democratic president. Congress kind of dealt with it as like constituency issue. You know, like the progressives were generally disengaged from foreign policy. And you had people, you know, like Engel, very tied to specific issues. He was, you know, basically cast himself as a pro-Israel guy. He was basically a reliable APAC vote. And those are the kinds of things the committee did.

They did resolutions on Israel, resolutions on BDS. You know, they were, you know, not supportive of the Iran deal, as you said. And it was kind of like a strange dynamic where the party's voters and even the caucus large didn't see itself reflected in the leadership of not just this committee, by the way, same thing happened in the foreign relations committee, where Bob Menendez was a lead Democrat, also reliable APEC vote, very focused in Israel and Iran. And I think with Jamal Bowman, in front of the pod, you know, it's not just that it's not just that those voters disagreed on

foreign policy. I think it was also just like, why don't we have representatives who reflect the Democratic Party today, you know? And so I'm so excited that progressives are building on the momentum, I think, the last few years and getting into this fight and insisting that they're going to pay as much attention to the Foreign Affairs Committee, you know, as they do to the committees that deal with progressive domestic issues, you know, and the groups that sign that letter are kind of the heart of this emerging infrastructure in progressive foreign policy. On the, on the people involved, Brad Sherman is actually the next in line in terms of seniority. He would be worse than L.A. D. D.A. I mean, I used to, Tommy, I used to brief groups of Democratic members of Congress

for the months leading up to the Iran deal and the time after. And L.A. Dengel, who opposed the deal, kind of at least made a very, I think, earnest good faith effort to try to understand what we were doing at the end of the day, you know, he obviously broke the wrong way, in my view. Brad Sherman was just kind of antagonistic in those briefings. Like, you could tell that this guy was going to oppose the Irania from the beginning. Like, he had basically a prism through which he looked at at these issues, particularly issues related to Israel and Iran, that was fairly inflexible. And so I think the likelihood of Brad Sherman being chair, I think, is low. I mean, if it reflects the views of the caucus. Now, that leads to Meeks and Castro. And I think,

Again, both of them would be much better options than either angle or Brad Sherman. They both bring different perspectives, both in terms of where they come from, obviously in terms of their race and ethnicity. But, you know, Greg Meeks is focused on, I think, a pretty broad set of foreign policy issues that better reflects, frankly, what the committee should be spending its time on, not endless fights over Israel or, you know, scrutiny of Iran from a hawkish perspective, but, you know, the full breadth of it. And Castro, I think, demonstrates that progresses when to get in this space. And he's more more progressive voice than Meeks on certain things. And

and that's a good debate to have, right? You know, a guy like Meeks, who I think is kind of the mainstream of the party on a lot of stuff. And then Castro, who's pushing the party in a more progressive direction. So I'm excited to see how this plays out. And I think, think if it's one of those two guys, it's an improvement. It is really interesting how big a tail the Jamal Bowman wind has. It makes me think about 2014 when a guy named Dave Bratt beat Eric Cantor in a Republican primary. At the time, Cantor was like what, number two, number three in charge in the Republican side. And it was seen as this seismic shift that ultimately meant no one was willing to touch immigration reform as an issue on the Republican side. Now, I do think Republicans

overinterpreted the role that immigration played in that race. But a similar thing is happening right now. Like, Jamal Bowman ran on a lot of foreign policy issues, especially the question of the U.S. foreign policy relationship with Israel, especially when it comes to the occupation, especially when it comes to whether you should use only incentives or incentives and pressure as a way to encourage the Israeli government to take stances that we prefer. it does seem like that race and that victory has had a ripple effect that is, you know, making people like Congressman Castro come out and say he wants to hear more Palestinian voices represented in the debate. It's really, it's breaking in, I think, a very positive and interesting direction.

Yeah, and like I said, I think it's overdue. And, you know, part of what's so interesting is there had been this kind of tolerance, you know, and I put some of this on the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, of essentially having all of these foreign policy and national security committees, you know, largely the leadership were these kind of hawkish people totally out of a step, you know, with Barack Obama, who I think, you know, progressives, find fault with some of Obama's foreign policy. And what the Bowman victory shows me is, look, I think some of these voters, it may not be that foreign policy was their lead concern, but I think there was a generalized sense that Elliot Engel doesn't seem to represent our district and our views. And wait a second, you know, why did he buck Barack Obama's largest foreign policy party in his second term? Why did he vote for the Iraq war? And so what the Democratic Party is doing is saying, and through this Bowman election, I think it demonstrates that there's a cost to people, you know, if you don't take the views of your voters seriously. And, and, you know, and And look, you know, the funny thing about this, the ironic thing, Tommy, is when I was making these arguments about the Iran deal, what you would kind of hear from the D.C. mentality was, well, voting for the Iran deal could put someone at risk, you know, because then APEC could spend money against them.

Politically, yeah. And politically, you know, APEC could spend money against them in their race and how are they going to defend this. The interesting thing is actually the people that's put a risk are the people who opposed the Iran deal. Like, that turned out to be a more risky thing for a Democratic member of Congress to do. then supporting the Iran deal. And that's a very good thing. And the reason that's happening is because progressives are insisting on it. Yeah. Go diplomacy. Go progressive. This is a very good thing. Okay. Let's turn to Poland for a minute because Poland held a presidential election over the weekend. And unfortunately, the current right-wing president won another five-year term. So he's named President Andre Duda. He's a conservative nationalist. He's supported by the law and justice party. He won a relatively narrow victory over Rofal, Trakoski, the mayor of Warsaw. What this means is that Poland will probably continue to have a bad relationship with the European Union,

especially on issues like climate change and refugee policy. There's also pretty widespread concern that Duda has undermined Poland's democracy and judicial system, and so that is self-evidently bad. During the campaign, Duda accuses opponent of supporting pedophilia, said he would be controlled by Jewish interests in demagogued gays and lesbians constantly. so he's a pretty shitty guy. The campaign in the Law and Justice Party generally, there a worrisome combination of right-wing nationalism

and economic populism that is seemingly pretty effective in Poland. This election over the weekend was a runoff that came after Duda failed to secure a majority during the previous vote, which was in late June. Turnout was 68% or higher, which would be amazing anytime, but especially during a pandemic. Ben, you see. sometimes here, Duda, compared to Victor Orban of Hungary because of the way he is attacking the media and international institutions and the rule of law. How big a deal do you think this election was? And are you worried about Poland's trajectory?

Like, do you think the Orban comparisons are fair? Yeah. No, I think they're exactly right. And in fact, actually, Duda met with Orban early in his political tenure there. And, you know, self-evidently wanted to replicate some of these tactics about taking control of the media, taking control of the judiciary, rolling back democracy, and putting forward kind of this right-wing religious-based populism blended with this economic populism. And so very much Poland is kind of next in line after Hungary and drifting away from democracy within Europe. You know, that's in part because of that, we haven't talked about this time. I actually set up a call between our former boss, Barack Obama and Tchaikovsky about a week ago.

just so he could kind of touch base with him here about what his vision was. He was a relatively liberal mayor of Warsaw, really would have been a positive change for Poland. Duda had actually traveled to the U.S. and to get endorsed by Trump a couple weeks prior, which tells you everything you need to know, I guess, about Duda. I will say the hopeful thing is actually this election was much closer than people thought. You know, the law and justice party has been kind of swallowing up Polish politics. And yet still the margin here was kind of a 51-49 election. So The hopeful note is that Chikosky did better, I think, than was anticipated, particularly given that the law and justice, it wasn't entirely a free and fair election. There was this kind of

cornering of the media that was very much a mouthpiece for the law and justice party, you know, hard for Chikosky to his message out in that context, obviously this kind of intimidation, culture of intimidation that you see in Polish politics. So that's the hopeful note. I think that it's a bad outcome for Poland, frankly, because, look, if Trump loses, well, then they're going to have a big issue with the incoming Biden administration that doesn't like this kind of anti-democratic right-wing stuff. I think it's a bad thing for them in Europe, because as they backslide on democratic norms, their relationship with the EU is going to get more and more strained. So, you know, someone who, like, cares about Poland and the U.S. Polish relationship, like this is not a good outcome,

but the hopeful note is it does feel like the tide is beginning to recede for these right-wing nationals. Like the margins for Orban have gone down in recent elections. This was a race within margin. Like one more push, you know, and you might see these dominoes start to reverse in central and eastern Europe. Because the danger is, you know, from essentially Hungary through Poland to Russia, you have this tide of right-wing nationals. And that's what we have to push back on. Yeah, it's a good point. Look, we don't like moral victories here at positive the world. But yeah, it is notable that both of their raw vote totals were massive. Yeah.

Right. So people are turning out on both sides and when you have the power of incumbency, it is a hell of a lot easier to eke out a pretty thin victory. But yeah, man, depressing. I'd like to see a couple of these elections go the other way. But yeah, yeah, we got to start winning. Winning is important. That'd be nice. Yeah. That'd be nice. Ben, I was reading the Washington Post and then Education Week because they both did interesting pieces on how other countries are dealing with how to or whether to reopen schools in the midst of a pandemic. And look, you know, as we've noticed, sometimes the debate in the U.S. is just divorced from reality, divorce from the rest of the world, you know, these dumb binary choices. So I thought it might be helpful to look at what some of these places are doing, see if there's wisdom there, see if we can steal some good ideas.

So here are some examples. Schools in Wuhan, China, remember Wuhan China where this thing started? They reopened in May, but kids have to get their temperature checked. They wear masks. They enter and exit at specific times to avoid crowds. Sweden never stopped classes. for kids under 16. We've talked about Sweden as sort of a laissez-vair policy here, but it was interesting. Germany, I guess, is going to open schools for the next term with a five-foot minimum distance between the students, and you know, because it's Germany, that will be precise. New South Wales estate in Australia is doing in-person class one day a week for kids and then distance learning the other four. They also have staggered arrivals and departures. And the idea was they wanted to be able to keep an

eye on these kids. They wanted to make sure that they were like seeing them in person and having that in person contact at least once a week. So that was sort of an interesting middle ground. In Denmark, they're limiting classroom sizes and kids are eating lunch in the classroom, not in the big cafeterias. They're getting rid of water fountains, but they have hand sanitizing stations. Taiwan is all about mask usage. Everyone's wearing them. They're doing tons of temperature tests. So that's just a few examples. Ben, I wanted to raise this because I know this is personal for you as a father of two. And like, you and I were texting about this the other day. I mean, do you think the White House has any idea how disruptive this is going to be for people, for the economy?

Does Ivanka just assume that everyone has a nanny that will take care of the kids while they play White House? Like, I just, this seems like it could be catastrophic economically, let alone the burden on families themselves. Yeah. I mean, I think we are headed to a catastrophe. And part of the problem, Tommy, is that the laydown you just gave of looking into other countries, I'm sure nobody in the White House or the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos has even bothered to do that. They don't seem to be thinking about it. They're just insisting on opening schools. I think the common thread in what you laid out, I mean, first of all, a lot of those countries are doing much better than us on COVID, so they have more flexibility to do stuff.

That's a big thing, yeah. But the common threat is like your kid is going to have to wear a mask. That's what any responsible country seems to be doing. And they'll have to be some kind of distance between the kids. and, you know, frankly, the larger kind of contact gathering, sports, auditoriums, cafeterias may need to be restricted. That's kind of what I take away from your lay down, and that's all very good advice for us. In terms of just, you know, speaking as someone who has a five-year-old and a three-year-old, you know, part of what's really alarming about this, right, is that just in terms of, okay, people can't work if they're basically homeschooling their kids or they're very limited. So this, Trump's interest in opening the economy, you know, is going to run into a problem here.

The other issue I've noticed, just speaking honestly, being out here in L.A. is that people with some means, like, you know, are having conversations about, well, if schools are closed, you know, can we get a small group together and have, like, a tutor basically come teach our kids in the backyard? That's great if you've got the money to do that. But most people don't, you know. And so it could set up this very kind of perverse, warped situation where better off families are able to find educational alternatives for their kids if their schools are closed. But, you know, lower and middle class income earners just can. And boy, that would be pretty dark. Because as you say, it affects the economy, not just in productivity of parents, but

think how many people work at schools, you know, and not just teachers, custodial staff. You know, so this is really barreling down us. And I think if you look at these other countries, they seem to be thinking it through, you know, a lot more clearly than Trump and Betsy DeVos. Yeah, that's a good point. The achievement gap between rich and poor kids is already massive and glaring. And clearly the biggest driver of your future success. And boy, if we make, you know, kids who don't have as much money miss six months or a year more of school because their parents can't afford a tutor because they're fucking working or they're teaching someone else's kids, that is a travest. That is an utter failure of government.

Think about that. Absolute travest. Okay, let's talk about Egypt because friend of the pod and Washington Post writer Jason Rezion wrote a troubling piece last week about how the Egyptian government is using COVID-19 to stifle press freedom. So Egypt, like a lot of countries, has not done a great job handling the pandemic. But like us, they're still pushing forward with reopening plans because we are all stuck in this idiotic false choice between keeping people alive and the economy, even though it doesn't

work that way. But, major but, reporting on the government's handling of COVID is now forbidden, along with a couple of other issues, like talking about the construction of a controversial dam in Ethiopia, a conflict in Libya, and stuff happening in the Sinai Peninsula. We'll just push your side of those other three because they're sort of complicated in their own right. But basically, Egyptian journalists can either regurgitate the official government line and narrative on COVID-19 and the handling of it, or they can shut up, or they can be. arrested. So Egypt is also arresting doctors who criticize the coronavirus response. A rep from the committee to protect journalists told Jason that there are at least 35 journalists who are in jail or who

are arrested recently for these issues. In the past, you know, Trump is referred to CC as his favorite dictator. So it seems unlikely he is going to do anything about this. I'm sure he'd love to lock some journalists up. Big, big question for you, Ben. When you think about like the stuff ahead of Joe Biden, on his list of sort of the next things to do. Where do you think, like, U.S. policy towards Egypt ranks on that list? And then that actually gets me to be to another question that I want to ask you about that Politico piece recently about some of Biden's presumed priorities. Well, look, I don't think it's high on his list right now, but it should be on his list. And let me give you one more example, Tommy. I have a friend named Muhammad Sultan,

who was a political prisoner essentially in Egypt. He's an Egyptian American, right? So he's an American citizen. And yet he was thrown in prison in Egypt. after Muhammad Morsi was ousted. He was tortured. He endured a terrible ordeal, again, despite his American status. Ultimately, he was released, in part because Barack Obama made a direct appeal to Sisi. And Muhammad's become a human rights activist. He decided to sue his torturers, essentially.

And in retribution against Muhammad, in the last few weeks, the Egyptian government has started to detain his family members in Egypt. So Muhammad's in the United States, but his cousins are being thrown in prison. He's being threatened. The unsubtle messages drop your lawsuit and shut up and maybe your family will be released. This is the nature of this regime. It's one of the most brutal dictatorships really in the world. And it's still one of the largest recipients of American assistance. And we talk a lot on this podcast about Saudi Arabia, understandably, given Maham bin Salman, given the fact that Saudi has more power, frankly, than Egypt. but we should be looking at both of these relationships.

And the fact is that that assistance, it's rooted in a legacy, obviously, of the Camp David Accords, but the likelihood that Egypt needs to continue getting the subsidy from the U.S. to keep peace with Israel, like, I don't think that's necessarily borne out. I mean, so I think we need to be looking carefully at our assistance relationship with this country. I mean, at a minimum, we have to be raising these issues

that Trump clearly doesn't, about, press freedom about human rights. But also, like, you know, we should be looking at this assistance relationship and see, you know, what kind of action we expect from a country that receives a lot of money from the United States. Yeah, agreed with that. And CC is a huge problem. So I mentioned this for a second. So Axios did a piece that attempted to look at, like, what is Joe Biden going to do if he, if he defeats Donald Trump when it comes to foreign policy? What's on the agenda? Like, what's first on day one? And obviously, you know, the list was not surprising in any way. It was basically like, you know, re-engaged with the world's rebuild alliances, especially the post-World War II

alliances like NATO and others that have been severely strained. Number one is obviously get COVID under control. It sounds like reentering the Paris Climate Accords is very, very high on this list. But they're also looking at, you know, an emerging, you know, credit market debt crunch, security vulnerabilities. So, you know, not a ton of specifics coming out of the Biden camp right now. And look, I don't blame them. I would want to wait and see what was sort of on fire at the moment and then hold my cards close to my vest until I give a major speech about these things. But there was some consternation when they also released Axios did, a list of officials currently working for Biden on foreign policy, most of whom worked in the Obama administration. And the question became, is Joe Biden going to be just a continuation of Barack Obama's foreign policy or are there ways that they're.

different. What do you make of that last question, especially given that you literally worked with most of these people for four, if not eight years, who are now working for Biden? Well, I think, first of all, if the criticism is kind of coming from a progressive standpoint, right, one thing I'd argue is that there was not just one Obama foreign policy for eight years. Having been there for eight years, there was a quite conventional, small C conservative. I mean, I still think with progressive elements approach in the first term, right? When you had Jim Jones as National Security Advisor, Bob Gates at the Pentagon, Hillary Clinton, very hawkish herself at state, then there was a much more progressive foreign policy in the second term.

When you had Susan Rice, you know, you had Susan Rice as National Security Advisor, you had Sam Power at the UN, you had John Kerry, I think much more progressive than Hillary Clinton at the State Department. So to me, you know, sometimes this is too broad or broad. rush because, yeah, I don't think you should just go back to the way things were. But I do think drawing from the direction that Obama was moving in those last few years with the Paris Climate Accords, with the Iran nuclear agreement, with the opening to Cuba, like, there's stuff to take from that and people to take from that. That is incredibly important. And so if you look at both the policies and the teams, you know, that's part of this question, is which aspects of the

Obama foreign policy you're going to pick up. I think the other piece of this is really important is it's not just a question about whether you go back, because the world has changed. So there's no scenario in which you should just go back to what you're doing. But to me, what Biden needs to do in this campaign, but even more important, frankly, as president, is connect the stuff he's talking about doing at home

with what he wants to do in the world. So to give a couple of examples, I think that climate change should be a centerpiece of American foreign policy. But in order to do that, we have to pass really ambitious climate legislation at home, because then that's the leverage we take around the world to say not only we back in Paris, we double down on our commitment,

we can raise our ambition, and now you have to do that to China and India and other countries, right? Similarly on democracy, you know, as we've just talked about on this podcast, like pushing back against this kind of authoritarian nationalist trend around the world is critical. That starts with the democratic reform agenda that, you know, Biden has talked about, you know, voting rights, cracking down on police violence, criminal justice reform, kind of reforming some of the wiring of our democracy so that, you know, districts don't look crazy. I mean, all that stuff should be the starting point for a foreign policy that is focused on revitalizing democracy around the world and pushing back against

authoritarianism. It starts here and we do it there. So to me, it's both, are you selecting personnel that represents, I think, the really positive momentum Obama had on some stuff at the end, but not necessarily just going back to some restoration? And are you connecting your vision for what you're doing here with your vision of what you're doing around the world? The last anti-todem, just real quick, is, look, there are going to be a lot of Obama people. It's Joe Biden. I mean, if you look at the transition team, right, like it's a lot of, you know, Obama people. But that's what happened when the Democratic primary voters chose Barack Obama's vice president.

I think that they assumed that that would be the case. What's important, though, is that they don't rest on that, that they expand the aperture and bring in some of these voices that were really driving the policy debate for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I wouldn't then have a role in a Biden administration as well. Yeah, totally agree with that, especially having gotten to know some of them. And I think the term one versus term two distinction is incredibly important. And I say that as someone who worked for Obama on foreign policy in term one and got to be really fucking jealous of you guys during term two. Yeah, yeah.

It was more fun in term two. Ben, can we talk about something really serious for a minute, the NBA? Yeah, I'm huge fan, so I'm always ready. Okay, this is very important. So ESPN suspended a prominent NBA reporter named Adrian Wojornowski. Everyone calls him Woj. I don't think I've ever said his last name out loud like that, for sending a profane email to Josh Holly, who's a Republican senator from Missouri. So you might be wondering yourself, what the hell does that to do with foreign policy? We will explain. So Josh Holly's office sounded out a press release highlighting a letter he sent to Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner. The letter criticized the NBA for allowing players to put some social justice messages on the back of their jerseys, things like Black Lives Matter or I Can't Breathe, but not message. that Josh Holly wants on the back of their jerseys, like, support our troops or God bless America or something criticizing the Chinese government over Hong Kong. The reason that Holly could have answered

by Googling is because the list of approved messages was negotiated by the NBA Players Union and the league. And so as much as you Ben and I would love to see LeBron out there wearing it like a free Hong Kong jersey, you can also understand why a group of mostly U.S.-based, mostly African-American players are currently focused on the treatment of black people in this country, right? That's what they want to highlight because of the protests have been going on. So the subject of Holly's press release was, quote, Senator Holly blasts NBA for kowtowing to Beijing and refusing to support U.S. military and law enforcement, which is a ridiculous moronic take on what actually happened or whatever.

So Woj, the journalist at ESPN, gets his email. He responds to Holly's office, fuck you. Now, this is a private email from Woj to this sort of anonymous email account that sends out press releases from lame senators. But Holly, you know, who likes to bravely tweet about his fights against cancel culture, decided to screenshot Woj's email and tweet it knowing damn well it would get him in trouble. So Woj quickly apologized. He said he shouldn't have done it. it was inappropriate, but he got suspended by ESPN, he won't be able to report for a while. So, just to unpack this into pieces, do I wish the NBA hadn't cave to the Chinese government

last year when Darry, the Rocket's GM, tweeted something totally uncontroversial about the protests in Hong Kong, yes. But let's be clear that what Josh Hawley was doing with this letter and his little press release was exactly what was done to Colin Kaepernick, right? He wants to change the conversation from being about police brutality. in systemic racism to something about the troops or about China. And it is cynical and it is bullshit. So look, if I were the Josh Hawley Press staffer who got that email from Wojj,

I probably would have been pissed. I think it's perfectly reasonable for a media company like ESPN to tell the reporters, hey, you can't drop F bombs on U.S. senators. But you know what, Ben, the great thing about America is that you can say whatever you want to elected officials because we have freedom of speech. So let's not forget that. And fuck you, Josh Hawley. Yeah. I mean, there's so much that's interesting to unpack in this story. First of all, you know, why does Josh Hawley and some of these other Republicans, why do they go after the NBA?

Hmm, I wonder. They see it as a progressive institution, which of course it is. And given the fact that it's overwhelmingly African American, of course it's preoccupied rightly and understandably with the issues that matter to its players. And so there's something kind of dark about the fact that they think it's fun to go pick fights with black athletes in the NFL and the NBA to gin up some culture war. I think what's also been interesting is watching, you know, as a huge NBA fan, and watching some of these reporters like Woge who cover the NBA, look, I think that these guys are aware that they're white guys covering largely black athletes and they're trying to show solidarity with them.

And that's great. You know, it's been good to see a lot of the NBA reporters. reporters for ESPN and other outlets, you know, embracing and circling the wagons around the concerns of the black community and of NBA players. I mean, it's funny how Woj did it because I think, look, this is why I was dumb for ESPN to suspend him. He didn't, like, call Josh Hawley and say, fuck you. Like, when you send a blast press release out, I mean, you did, Tommy, I've done myself. Right. Like, you know it's going to, like, it's going to thousands of people. Get responses all the time. If you respond to that, you're kind of responding to nothing. You're

responding to somebody who had send in the food chain of the press office, you're not insulting a U.S. sender. So I think a major cave by ESPN to kind of go along with this Josh Holly cancel thing. The last thing I'd say just about Hong Kong, we've been very clear on our views on Hong Kong on the show. Yeah, the NBA was wrong to essentially put Darry in hot water. Adam Silver rightly walked that back at the time. I'd like to see, again, a complete culture of free speech around Hong Kong issues. But as you said, not only is it the case that these NBA players like care more about Black Lives Matter for obvious reasons, but it's also the case that if Josh Holly really wanted to think about how to be supportive of Hong Kong, he and his buddy Tom Cotton wouldn't be

supporting violent crackdowns on peaceful protesters in the United States of America. You know, if you want to support Hong Kong, support Black Lives Matter. You know, nothing will support Hong Kong more than a successful protest, peaceful protest movement in this country. And so instead of like sincerely trying to do what could potentially be helpful to the people of Hong Kong, this is enlisting them in some dumb culture war debate here that has nothing to do with either Hong Kong or Black Lives Matter. It has to do with Josh Holly, you know, wanting to dunk literally on the lives. Yeah. Meanwhile, Josh Holly opposes renaming army bases named after Confederate traitors. So, you know, seems like you're a great guy.

These are the intellectuals, by the way. Like Rubio, Cotton, Holly. These are supposed to be like the intellectuals of the Republican Party, you know? Yeah, yeah. By the way, Wojj, when Darrymori tweeted about Hong Kong back in the day in 2019 when this controversy erupted, Wohge liked it. He supported it. So he has been on the right side of both issues.

So, yeah. Anyway, it is absurd. Let's talk about Turkey, Ben, because it's getting riskier and riskier to offend autocrats. I'll monitor ran a piece about the number of people who have been investigated for insulting the Turkish president, Tyup Erdogan. Ben, do you want to guess the number of people who have been investigated and prosecuted under this law since Erdogan came to the presidency in 2014? Oh, man, I have no idea. A thousand? 100,000 have been investigated. 30,000 in prosecuted. I should have gone high. It is crazy. And the penalty is not small. The penalty is at least four years in prison. But here's where this story caught my attention and gets even scarier. So the latest incident, the latest prosecution attempt is against a Lebanese television host

who is being targeted for comments he made on his own show in Lebanon. Here's the quote that led to a formal complaint by the Turkish embassy to the Lebanese foreign minister and eventually got run up into their court system. Quote, I am at complete liberty to call Erdogan and his regime obnoxious, a million and a half Armenians were killed. This host has Armenian roots. So then, you know, like Turkey engaging in genocide denial about the Armenian genocide and heavy-handed foreign policy where they boss around their neighbors, it is not new.

But I did, I was sort of surprised about them browbeating another country into prosecuting one of its own citizens, in this case, a famous one, in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crisis, right? I mean, Lebanon is having a severe economic crisis as we speak. It also comes, you know, as Erdogan is making these sort of moves to establish himself as a major player in the Arab world. He declared that Hyas Sophia, which is a spectacular cathedral turned mosque, turn museum in Istanbul, is now classified as a mosque again and not a museum, which has upset a lot of people, including the Pope. You know, Erdogan, Ben has had these autocratic tensions for a while, you know, but they're in NATO. Do you think the international community is sufficiently focused on, aware of talking about

this rising nationalism in Turkey, the censorship, the sectarianism, the crushing of dissent? Because I don't know, man, when I sit and think about it, it really worries me. Yeah, well, Trump's not. I mean, you know, if you believe John Bolton's book, right, you know, Erdogan somehow had some direct line into Trump and was calling him multiple times a week. Oh, yeah, right a week. not a good thing. So they're getting no pushback from the U.S. I think that people need to be worried about about it for a couple of reasons. These types of tactics have a way, as we've seen, of migrating

from one nationalist leader to another. You've even seen in the pandemic, you know, Victor Orban pursued some similar attacks on people for posting social media critical the government when he issued a DeCronian decree saying that like they'd police essentially, quote-unquote disinformation, but what he's really talking about is criticism. So there's a, you know, these types of approaches can spread and become contagious. And I think that the U.S. and Europe and, frankly, anybody who cares about kind of freedom of expression really needs to start pushing back. But what I also hope happens is that in Turkey and in the neighborhood, you mentioned Lebanon, people should just get fed up with this stuff. I mean, this is ridiculous.

And at a certain point, these guys have to have pushed too far. And so I think if you start to see more of an international spotlight on this, more criticism, if an incoming Biden administration prioritizes it again, like part of what that can do, hopefully, is give some top cover for people who also want to start pushing back at home in Turkey. And the final thing is we have to look seriously at like Turkey's in NATO, which is supposed to be an alliance of democracies. you know, there are risks of just kicking Turkey out. But, you know, I think, you know, NATO and the EU, which Turkey is not in, need to start becoming more serious about being alliances of democracies

and having some form of sanction or downgraded membership or threat even of expulsion for countries that are moving in completely anti-democratic directions. And look, there's foreign policy tradeoffs, sure, but American foreign policy is suffering because of the rise of this nationalist authoritarianism around the world. And I'd rather take that on than keep a bunch of creepy allies like Victor Urbun and Tai Bredwan in our Democratic alliances. Yeah. This is far, far less important than the future of democracy in Turkey. But man, I hope they still let tourists go into Hyac Sophia. Remember that we took this trip in April of 2009. I was I think Obama's first trip where we went to Strasbourg, the G20 in London, went to Prague, and then. And then, you know,

And Ankara, where Obama gave a speech to the Turkish parliament in Ankara is not cool. But then we went to Istanbul. And I think our plane broke down on the way home or something. So I actually had like three hours. I slipped out with like Mike Hammer and Ben Chang and some State Department officials. And we went to Hyas Sophia in the blue mosque for like literally like sprinted in and out of all of them. But they are some of the most breathtaking places I have ever seen in my life. And I cannot recommend them highly enough to anyone who wants to check it out.

Yeah, Obama used to raise this issue constantly with Erdogan. Frankly, said to Joe Biden. He cared about this issue a lot. It's because it's incredibly important landmark for Christian communities. And it's incredibly provocative. I mean, most listeners probably don't follow this, but it's an incredibly provocative thing to do to essentially take this very important site to one community and just say it's not for you anymore.

It's only for, it's now mosque. you know, it's a, it's wading into the more murky currents of history. And we've seen this increasingly, like in India, you know, we've seen this, you know, a highly contested site where a mosque had been built on the ruins of one of the most important Hindu temples. Then the mosque was destroyed. And then it was kind of contested for a while. And it was so emotional that people didn't want to go there. And Modi now, after being reelected and kind of going full. Hindu nationalist, they're going to build a Hindu temple. You know, this is happening in a lot of places.

People need to be able to share history and not fight over it. And unfortunately, the opposite's happening here. Okay, let's talk about China for one minute. So on Monday, the Chinese government announced that Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are banned from entering the country to which Florida and Texas responded. We didn't know it was that easy. Yeah. I'm just kidding.

Everyone, just kidding. So China said they would sanction Cruz. Rubio, Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, an ambassador of Sam Brownback for criticizing China's treatment of minorities and religious communities. Again, Rubio and Cruz were saying and doing the right thing on this issue. This was in response to the U.S. sanctioning for Chinese officials involved in the brutal suppression of U.S. Muslims in Western China. We've talked about this before, but one or two million Uighurs have been forced into concentration camps

where they're force-fed propaganda and quote-unquote re-educated. It's horrific. The Chinese foreign ministry also announced that they plan to sanction Lockheed Martin in response for the Trump administration's decision to sell Taiwan an upgrade to its Patriot missiles. Patriot missiles are missile defense system that Lockheed makes. Then, I don't know, maybe I just haven't paid as close attention to this stuff in a long time. These sanctions seem a bit random to me. It's like a tit-for-tat response by the Chinese government for things the U.S. did.

to them, but the response doesn't target the administration. It's targeting, like, random senators and shit. What did you make of this? And also, are you still banned from traveling to Russia because of a similar incident? Yeah, I was going to say, I was in the first tranche of American, there were eight of us, I think, who were sanctioned in the first trunch of Russian sanctions. It was like me and John McCain and, like, a few other people, which led to a travel ban on me to going to Russia. And they were freezing all my assets and rubles. Oh, no. Thankfully, I had no assets and rubles, and I've had no occasion to go to Russia, although I'd like to go to Russia. So the travel ban sings a little bit. It's a great country other than its president. But that was actually, the Chinese are taking a page

out of the Russian playbook, which is, it's totally tit for tat. So we would announce sanctions on a certain number of Russian officials, and they'd announce sanctions on a certain number of U.S. officials. And, you know, it just shows you kind of the brazenness and, you know, hubris of China that they're doing, they would never have done this a few years ago. You know, like they, they've, they've kind of become, you know, almost like a troll in dealing with Trump. I do think that it raises larger issues because it raises issues of sanctions. And yes, while I think people like Rubio were saying the right things absolutely about Hong Kong and Uyghurs, I think that, you know, sanctions have been overused as a tool. You know, we don't like

something. We just throw some sanctions on people. And part of what this is representing is, is frustration, not just in China and Russia, but in a lot of places, it's like you guys just, you know, you're at the center of the international financial system and you just throw around these sanctions. And I think the point is not that there's no place for sanctions. It's that we need to think more comprehensively. I mean, if you're thinking about what's going to make a difference on Hong Kong or the U.S., yeah, maybe there's a role for sanctions, but there's also a role for the United

States taking a leadership role in the international community on this, trying to spotlight these abuses, being on the UN Human Rights Council and raising it there, trying to marshal a supportive response and not just kind of sitting back here, taking shot to the Chinese and occasionally sanctioning people. I will say, though, that we shouldn't, you know, be intimidated by this. This is meant to intimidate. It's meant to deter the U.S. from speaking up in the future. We should absolutely start doing it. I just think we should start doing it in a more comprehensive way. I mean, the irony here to all the friends of the Chinese embassy in D.C. who were listening is you just helped create.

Cruz and Rubio politically. They are going to run to every church, faith, community, Republican rally and talk about how they're banned from entering China because they stood up for Christians. But wait, that's a really important point, Tommy, because the Chinese know that. They know that they're helping Cruz and Rubio. They want to. They want Trump to win, and they want these guys to be the face of opposition to China because they know that these guys have no international standing. You know, it's very telling that they're giving them this boost. is what they don't want is a U.S. that lives its values, a U.S. that thinks about things other than sanctions. So there's a reason that they're pumping up these guys. Interesting. One of the China thing, Ben,

that I saw, and honestly, I don't know how worried to be about it or how to understand it. So Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, told the Iranian parliament last week that Iran and China have been negotiating a major 25-year strategic financial security and energy partnership. Some of the details that leaked out as well into a couple of publications. Include $400 billion worth of Chinese investment in Iran's economy, more security cooperation, including possible joint military training and intelligence sharing. And then most importantly for China, a steady supply of oil for the next 25 years. The deal has reportedly been in the works or being negotiated since 2016, so before Trump.

But the timing is interesting, as it would be quite the lifeline for the Iranian. economy, and it would be just a huge middle finger to U.S. sanctions efforts and part of an escalating set of tensions between the U.S. and China, which is partly what we just talked about. It doesn't sound like it's a done deal. It's also not clear if this deal would be supported by hardliners in the Iranian parliament, but two Iranian officials told the New York Times that the Supreme Leader of Iran supports the outlines of this thing. So, Ben, I didn't totally know what to make of this. Like, I don't want to reflexively blame Trump or overreact. to a deal that's not final and maybe could be bad for Ben, right? A lot of these Chinese

Belt and Road initiatives, a lot of these long-term investments end with the Chinese extracting a lot more out of their partner than they actually give. But nothing about a deepening alliance between Iran and China seems like a positive step for the U.S. So what did you make of these reports? Well, I think it, you know, look, there already was a relationship between Iran and China. Iran has been a part of the Belt Road Initiative. But I think this is potentially very very significant. And you're right that the Chinese investments in the Belt Road Initiative countries often don't kind of reach the population. But the Chinese like to deal with or kind of corrupt governments, right, because they can essentially pay off a bunch of officials,

you know, put a bunch of money into certain government ministries that matter to the host government in this case Iran. And then they get, you know, natural resources, like in this case, oil. They get geopolitical influence and the rest of it. And look, I think you, It's impossible to avoid, in my mind, blaming Trump to some extent for this deepening partnership precisely because one of the arguments that the Europeans used to make to us is if there's not some capacity after the Iran deals in place, and we've dealt with the nuclear issue, if there's not some capacity for Europe to have an economic relationship with Iran, then they're just going to fall completely into the arms of China and Russia. And Chinese and Russian influence will just

grow, the Chinese and Russians don't care about things like Iran's support for terrorism or its ballistic missile program. So you want Europe in there as a source of influence. By pulling out of the Iran deal, by sanctioning Europe out of the Iranian market, we've created that reality. And if you look at every one of the countries that Trump wants to isolate, every one of them is getting closer to China and to Russia, for that matter. Cuba, you know, again, once again, could have had U.S. investments, European investments flowing in. Instead, they're getting closer and closer to China and Russia. Venezuela, we throw the book at them on sanctions. Russian and Chinese influence is up. Maduro's in power. This is not hard to figure out. You don't need to be a chess master foreign policy brain to figure

out that if you try to build a wall around a country in its ability to deal with us, that inevitably can ensnare Europe because Europe is worried about our sanctions too, they're going to get closer to the Chinese and Russians, and they're going to be more problematic for U.S. interest. So this is kind of the wreckage of the America first approach to these issues that has literally yielded the opposite outcomes of the ones that Trump has sought. Yeah. Congrats on pushing the people you think are our greatest nuclear rival into the arms of the Chinese.

Well, greatest after the Russians and a few others. Anyway, let's talk about the U.S. border, Ben. So Politico reported that the Trump administration is planning to extend restrictions to non-essential travel across the U.S. Mexico and U.S. Canada border until late August. It's the fourth time these restrictions have been extended since March when the coronavirus hit. Sensibly, it's to stop the spread. As we all know, the U.S. has a raging outbreak. We're all stuck in our houses still. Mexico now has the fourth highest number of deaths in the world and 300,000 confirmed cases, which means the U.S. is doing 11 times worse than them.

So congrats America. Canada had 109,000 cases. I think they seem to have things under control at this point. Ben, I'm just raising this because it's completely absurd that the administration thinks they're punishing either of these countries from stopping not essential travel from the U.S. to Canada or Mexico. And I'm also just sending a little bat signal up to our Canadian friends and asking that they will be willing to forgive and reconsider any travel plans they have in place if Trump steals the election and some people need to flee from places like Los Angeles in shows like this. I know we have some Canadian listeners, some in the Trudeau administration. So this is just, I'm laying some groundwork here.

Yeah, please, guys. Answer the call if you see our area codes pop up if Trump wins. Montreal sounds nice. Yeah, I mean, like, like it's such a prize to have Americans turn up. I mean, this goes much further like Mexico might actually pay for the wall, you know? I mean, the insanity of this, too, is that it does just show you like how much work is going to have to be done as we come out of COVID at some point, because the amount of trade that passes across the U.S. Canadian border and the U.S. Mexico border is absolutely enormous.

And I think most Americans who don't live in those border states don't fully appreciate, you know, how interconnected our economies are. And so it's hard enough, like we've talked about, to figure out how we're going to open schools here, how we're going to open, you know, restaurants and stores and our own local economies. how this massive infrastructure of trading with our neighbors and trading internationally and traveling internationally, like this is a huge piece of business that is going to have to get sorted out at some point. And people are going to have to make determinations. Like, does that not happen until there's a vaccine? Well, that could be a while. If it happens before there's a vaccine,

like what are the conditions that would allow it? And once again, you don't get the sense that there are people in the U.S. government in a thoughtful way considering these issues. There's this kind of deep suspicion I have that essentially, unless Joe Biden wins and this stuff gets stored out in January, we could just be headed for kind of six months of some amount of chaos and incompetence around these questions. Yep. That sounds about right. Yeah, it's a mess. You know, it's just we got to win. We got to win everybody. So start registering voters. We're all stuck at home. Let's do it. Let's end with some good news. So right before we started recording, there was a bulletin that came over. the wire, where Reuters said that the U.S. government will rescind a directive that would have forced foreign students studying in the U.S. to leave the country if their schools went to an online-only curriculum. It was the dumbest rule I've ever heard. I don't know why they would have done it. This was just about punishing foreign kids. But hey, it's happy. It sounds like maybe a judge

forced them to rescind it. I'm not entirely sure what happened. But, man, that's a relief. It's a relief. And again, I think it's a result of a lot of effective activism because you had university suing, you had people mobilizing, I think people calling their representatives and senators. And the reality is not only was this kind of a cruel policy, it was an incredibly stupid one, a lot of these universities depend enormously on the tuition of foreign students, the presence of foreign students. So this would have been like debilitating to these schools to lose this population of people who probably wouldn't come back. You know, if you're kicked out of the country, you know, and treated like that, the likely,

that you're going to return to an American college or university is down. So my hope is, this is a big win. It pushes back against a terrible Stephen Miller-type policy. But my hope is it actually raises the appreciation in this country for the tremendous benefit of having international students here. I'd like to see us expand education exchanges, expand opportunities for foreign students to come here. It's a source of not just a lot of infusion of resources here, but more importantly, it creates connections with the people who are going to go back and help run countries and civil societies and businesses. So a win and a win that we can build on. Yeah. By the way, Ben, terrible Stephen Miller policy is redundant. So shame on you as a writer.

Yeah, yes. Sorry about that. Last thing before we go. You got any wrecks? We've talked about a lot of serious books. Michael and Jordan shamed me for only talking about sort of serious and or depressing things. So something we've all talked about offline that I've enjoyed is home game on Netflix. which is just a series of, you know, 45-minute specials, documentary style about sports in different countries that starts with one in Italy where basically you kind of play soccer, there's kind of wrestling, and then the other people on the field literally beat the shit out of each other. It's like boxing meets wrestling meets soccer. So kind of cool show.

I'd recommend it. Yeah, no, it's definitely cool show. And actually, if people want to spend some time online, too, I'm a huge baseball fan. like Korean and Taiwanese baseball is like pretty awesome. And by the way, it's also pretty enraging because they have full stadiums of people watching baseball games because they've stamped out COVID. Those are some good rabbitels. I've been doing some reading.

There's an amazing, amazing writer, a guy named Ayat Akhtar. He wrote the novel American Dervish, which is a great story about growing up Muslim in America, in a Pakistani American family. he's got a novel coming out that I got my hands on. It's not out yet, but it's called Homeland Elogies. It is completely blowing my mind. And it's basically hard to describe it essentially, but it blends his own family story with fiction.

It's basically about what happened to what it means to be an American after Trump from the vantage point of a family that has these multiple identities, American, Pakistani, Muslim. And so he's a fascinating writer to check out. He's also Pulitzer Prize-winning Playwright. So add I had Actar to your list of writers to check out. I actually just got my hands on Rick Pearlstein's new book about Reagan. His older one, Nixon land, is like literally one of the best books I've ever read.

I'm reading the one between Nixon that gets you to Reagan called American Bridge, which is like sort of the tail end of impeachment through Ford through, you know, Reagan just sort of his whole life and biography. It's honestly fascinating. He writes so much voice. And it's not just this politician did this then. It's all about the culture and the zeitgeist of all these moments to try to put you back there and understand this. And he actually writes with the point of view where he will say, this was a lie.

This was true. I mean, it's just, it's so nice to have someone kind of guide you through history and not just slap vanilla facts on a page. Yeah, no. And I think that Reagan deserves some more scrutiny. Yes. I think we all somehow kind of gave up to the Republican. mythologizing of Reagan and anointing him with some great president, so much of the best we're in is because of Ronald Reagan, like the anti-government attitude, the anti-science attitude,

the culture war, on and on. Like, there's a lot of seeds of the defunding of public housing and education that is being thrown in such sharp relief during COVID and Black Lives Matter. I mean, people should, you know, we need to think about how many of the seeds of where we are today go back to Reagan. And at some point, you know, maybe this book is a problem. You know, maybe this book is part of that, you know, take a new look at that legacy and not kind of give in to this Republican insistence that he was somehow like an FDR type guy. Totally. And also a guy who, a big theme emerging in these books is someone who is willing to tell a story about himself that had a wonderful narrative and a happy ending, but was very often just completely made up or not true. So worth

fact-checking his record. One other seat to where we are like a celebrity president, right? I mean, like, you wonder how Americans got the idea to elect a TV star as president? Well, you know, they did it once before. Yeah, sure did. All right, man, that's all I got. How about you? Anything else? No, no.

Just go back to my life of sitting in my house. Yeah, me too, me too. Well, thank you all for tuning in this week. I look forward to talking you next week and have it going. Pottae the world is a product of crooked media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil.

Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.