Pod Save the World - Did Russia bomb Poland?

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Tommy and Ben cover the latest news out of Russia and Ukraine including reports that a Russian missile struck Poland, President Biden’s trip overseas, why this was a terrible week for Cryptocurrency, the UAE’s efforts to influence US politics, news about foreign corruption and influence peddling in Washington, the Iranian regime cracking down on teenage protests, a deadly attack in Turkey, and why an FBI investigation has angered the Israeli government. Then Tommy talks with US special envoy for Climate John Kerry about the COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt. 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 back to Positive the World. I'm Tommy Bitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I feel a hell of a lot better than I did a week ago at this time on Election Day, although it's a little weird that Donald Trump is now about to announce his presidential campaign like this very evening. Yeah, I mean, it's an exciting and historic day. Are you going to endorse? I'm withholding judgment. I'm just going to wait and see. I, you know, I'm, I'm, Not yet decided on Trump, you know, to get to know him a little better. Yeah, you want to know more about all these irregularities in the 2020 election.

Yeah, exactly. Well, we will not be covering Donald Trump today. Lucky you, listener, but we are going to cover lots of big news out of Russian Ukraine, including a Russian missile strike that apparently just hit Poland. This is like kind of breaking news. President Biden is overseas on a long foreign trip. We'll talk about what's happening there, why this has been a terrible week in a very bad year for cryptocurrency.

currency, the UAE legalized bribery and influence peddling of government officials in Washington, Iran protests, and how they're harming children. Terrorist attack in Turkey, some news from Twitter and why an FBI investigation is upsetting the Israeli government. And then Ben, listeners will after that hear my conversation with former U.S. Senator, current special envoy for climate change, John Kerry, who called in all the way from the COP 27 UN Climate Summit in Egypt. Pretty cool of actually. Back-to-back cops with John Kerry because we had him in Glasgow a year ago. That's right. He's like our cop correspondent for Potsie of the World. Yeah. He is a he is tireless at these things. You really got to credit the guy. I really feel

like he's found his calling in this job. Indefatigable, tireless and has somehow more energy than you and I do even though he's a little bit older than this. Yeah and he's not like polyannish about it. I was like, oh, sounds like you guys are doing good work. He's like, well, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. Then if you're looking for a holiday gift, for John Kerry or anybody else. We got you covered because everybody likes coffee. It makes a great gift. So if you go to crooked.com slash coffee,

you'll see our limited edition holiday gift boxes. And as always, a portion goes to Vote Save America's every last vote fund. So I just solved your holiday needs. Well, John Kerry must need to caffeinate at these summits. So we should get it for him. I wonder if he probably drinks. He's got to do caffeine, right?

These people who don't do caffeine freak me out. I don't understand them. makes me alarmed and uneasy. Yeah, it's like Obama would have like a half a cup of tea in the afternoon and like one martini a month. Yeah, what is this life? Yeah, seriously. What is this life you chose, sir?

Okay, lots of news, significant news out of the war in Ukraine this week. So last week, the Russians officially retreated from the city of Carousone in southeast Ukraine. Russian troops were pinned down on the western side of the Dinepro River and they were at risk of getting fully cut off from their own supply lines and just killed or captured. So they moved east back further away from Ukraine. Since then, there have been some really dramatic scenes of Ukrainian troops rolling into Carousone, liberating the city.

Some of them literally found their own relatives and were able to liberate them. Very, very emotional stuff. Unfortunately, those scenes and stories have also been juxtaposed with deep reporting about what life was like under Russian occupation, which was, just horrific. In fact, we have a clip here from CNN who interviewed some folks in CARERSone. Situation is very terrible. No gas, no, sorry, gas we had. Electricity, no. Power, no, connection. Connection, this is very important for people. People are lost. We don't know that. No internet connection. No internet connection. Right. No water. But it's okay. We can wait.

We were terrified by Russian army. We were terrified by soldiers that can come any moment in our house, in our home, just open the door like they're living here and steal, kidnap, torture. We feel free. We are not slaves. We are Ukrainians. We are proud of it. You know, you can tell these people who've just been living,

in hell since late February of last year. President Zelensky visited Kerosone, and then today, he addressed the G20 conference in Bali. He actually referred to it as the G19 to give the finger to Putin. But then as that meeting was happening, the Russians fired an estimated 100 missiles at targets all across Ukraine, including Kiev. Zelensky said once again Russia is targeting their energy infrastructure, basically trying to freeze the country out before winter. So getting to the main report right before we came in, Ben, there were reports that at least one Russian missile flew across the border into Poland and exploded and two people were killed about 15 miles from the Ukrainian border. It's not clear if that strike was on purpose by accident,

whether the missile was knocked off course by like a Ukrainian missile defense system, what it might have been. Either way, this is the kind of nightmare scenario that people have been worried about where a NATO member gets hit and the alliance could get pulled into the war. Poland's national team is reportedly deliberating right now. I don't know what kind of political pressure the polls might feel here to respond. There might be voices calling for a NATO response. Apparently, there's an emergency NATO meeting tomorrow, and Biden talked to the NATO sec gen just before we started recording. So, Ben, any thoughts on sort of what you've seen so far or predictions about how the alliance might respond? Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, these different pieces connect, right?

because what Kersaun does is it begins to eat away at the only thing that Russia has really gained in this war territorially, which is the connection between Crimea up to eastern Ukraine, which we've talked about a lot. But again, once you start to eat away that and take back in Kersone, the only major regional capital that Russia had conquered, you start to put at risk Russia's capacity to hold that territory. And so it's a major strategic victory for Ukraine. In response, what does Russia do? They do this kind of indiscriminate, pulverizing of infrastructure to make civilians in Ukraine pay the price. But as they do that from a position of weakness, the possibility of miscalculation or inadvertently firing into Poland or perhaps

maybe deliberately sending a message by firing into Poland. We don't know exactly what happened here. But the risks of escalation go up as Russia gets kind of weaker and less capable of confronting Ukraine on the traditional battlefield, you know. And so I think from NATO, I wouldn't expect like a NATO response, like Article 5, the collective defense being invoked, and we're at war with Russia over this. You might see NATO want to take some additional steps to show a cost to Russia. So maybe the provision of some additional weapon systems to Ukraine that they hadn't gotten before, just something that opens up the aperture to show Russia, hey, if you do this, if you begin to try to cross into NATO, you know, things that you don't like are going to happen.

I also think we've talked a lot about diplomacy in recent weeks and how diplomacy is not the same always as negotiating the end of the war. The reason it's so important to have diplomatic channels like Bill Burns recently was reported in talking to his counterpart, the head of Russia's intelligence service, Jake Sullivan, his counterpart, is so that you can have dialogue over an incident like this. Yeah, like, hey, asshole, what happened? Yeah, and, and exactly, like, what the fuck? And if you do this again, you know, this may happen.

in response. And so it speaks to the precarious nature of where this war is going, which is, ironically, as Ukraine gets more successful, the risks of escalation might actually go up because Russia is responding in ways that are different than just, you know, an artillery battle in eastern Ukraine. Yeah. A couple other big updates from last week. The U.S. now believes that 100,000 Russian troops are dead or wounded because of the war, just a staggering toll. there was a horrific video going around pro-Russian telegram channels of a Russian man who have been part of the Wagner mercenary group. This guy was beaten to death on this video with a sledgehammer. It's a bit of a convoluted story about what happened.

But basically this guy was Russian. He signed up with the Wagner group. He tried to switch sides to join the Ukrainian side, got recaptured somehow by the Russians and then brutally executed. But I raised this because the leader of the Wagner group, this oligarch named Pragozen, we've talked about a bunch of times, he was asked about the video and he joked about it calling it, quote, excellent directorial work that's watchable in one sitting and he called it a dog's death. So like truly, truly a sociopath. As you mentioned, Ben, we know that the CIA director, Bill Burns met with his Russian counterpart in Turkey.

That's obviously good news. And then you alluded to this too. I think the chairman of the joint chiefs, Mark Millie, has reportedly been pushing for more talk. So pretty bleak news out of Ukraine generally, but it is good to hear that, you know, there are more channels of conversation happening than we knew about a couple weeks ago. Yeah, I mean, again, the positive in that being the liberation of the people in Curzon, who, as the clip shows, by the way, like, you know, part of what you realize is these people who live in Russian occupied territories, like may not even know what's going on.

You know, like they may have no idea. Right. They may be living in some weird Russian information blockout. But yeah, it is bleak news in the sense that, you know, that Progozen video, the further war goes on, the more nihilistic it can get, right? I mean, people, or kind of, Russia feels like a society that is spiraling into kind of some fascistic, nihilistic, dystopia, right? I mean, the fact that Putin would fire all these weapons, like, right around the G20 summit, like, doesn't seem like he gives much of a shit about, you know,

global opinion about what he's doing, or he thinks he can get a pass from some countries. And so I think what we just have to be looking at is the kind of deterioration. of not that Russia was starting from the greater place, but like there's kind of a radicalization taking place that bears watching. And does that lead to kind of fracturing in the Russian elite and establishment as some people get a little, you know, turned off by the direction of events. Some people get more radicalized. You know, this is going to be a difficult winter and it's going to take a lot of discipline to couple support with Ukraine with efforts. to keep this situation from escalating.

Yeah, I mean, look, obviously I think that the Ukrainian side is the good guys here to make it simple. And the Russian government is the aggressor and the bad guy. But, like, we cannot lose our humanity and think of 100,000 Russian casualties as anything less than a tragedy for those people, their families, that society. You know, it's like Vladimir Putin made this horrific choice. And he is, you know, throwing his own troops and people into the meat grinder. and the Ukrainians are suffering probably just as large a casualty count. And it's just, you know, it's just appalling. It is. And what you realize, too, is that, like, this will have long-term effects in both Ukraine and Russia.

Like, these are traumatizing events, you know. And on the Ukraine side, the reconstruction needs are massive. The desire for justice and accountability for Russian war crimes is front and center and Zelensky's messaging the global community. So this, no matter where this goes, this is, like, going to be with us for many years, whether it's the act of war or the fallout from the war. And I think that gets driven home every day, you know. Yeah. So President Biden is overseas. He's searching for that red wave. I tried that joke out on carry. And he was like, okay, five out of ten. So Ukraine was the biggest story of the

G20, but also Biden had a three-hour meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Monday. That was their first in-person meeting since President Biden took office and hopefully the end of a several months long, Chinese diplomatic temper tantrum that started when Speaker Pelosi visited Taiwan in August. President Biden also addressed the COP 27 UN Climate Summit in Charmell-Shake Egypt last week. You'll hear lots more about climate in the interview with John Kerry later in the show. But I did notice that President Biden just announced a $20 billion financing deal to help Indonesia pivot away from coal power. I think that happened at either the G20 or ASEAN. So obviously, great news there. It's worth noting that Vladimir Putin

an Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not attend COP 27. We'll definitely want them at the table if we're actually going to take global climate action. But Ben, anything jump out of you from the foreign trip generally? Yeah, well, I think the Chinese meeting jumped out. And, you know, look, I think it's positive that they were able to sit down and have a three-hour meeting. They had not met yet. But what I was struck by is there was kind of no real effort from either side. to put like a positive face on the relationship, really, you know.

And I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I just as an observation, like, they could have made a decision to say, like, we want to work more constructively to engage on these issues. And they could have announced, like, you know, some future meeting between Biden and Xi. They basically announced that, you know, Tony Blinken would be going to China to follow up. But I do think it kind of signaled, hey, we're in an era where the best they could say is that we want to kind of manage, and Biden said this in his press conference, but like, we're trying

to manage competition so it doesn't become conflict. And that's like, we're at a new baseline here. Like, we're not, you know, there's gone of the days of kind of regular presidential summits in respective countries or- Remember win-win? What happened with that? Or, you know, the strategic and economic dialogue member of these huge delegations from state and treasury and other agencies going back and forth, like, we are now in like a very competitive dynamic with China, where it's going to be imperative to talk. Hopefully, we can find some things to work together on, like, climate change or global pandemics. But really, we're managing, like, a lot of differences. And, you know, Taiwan is the one that cries out because you mentioned Pelosi.

I mean, you know, the only bad outcome of the red trickle is, you know, we probably still are looking at a speaker of Kevin McCarthy, like, he's definitely going to Taiwan. And so they're going to be further irritants in this relationship that necessitate, again, lines of communication and just managing this. I think that did jump out to me from these meetings. I think also, you know, the climate stuff you'll deal with Kerry, the Indonesia piece is really important. And it speaks to like those are the countries, Indonesia, Brazil, those kind of large countries that, you know, not necessarily superpowers, but have huge climate equities. You know, deforestation is an issue in Indonesia, coal's an issue in Indonesia. And actually having these summits there kind of clearly

helped serve it as a catalyst for Indonesia to do something. They're hosting the G20. They clearly wanted to be like a good citizen here. So that's a positive. And I think it's good that the U.S. helps kind of get Indonesia in an ambitious place on climate. God, you just made me think for the first time how bad it is to have someone as stupid as Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House and like kind of going around the world and talking in a way that's seen as authoritative, not ideal. deal. I mean, you've got to hope that the Chinese look at Kevin McCarthy. They looked at Pelosi and thought, well, here's a really smart woman who's in the same party as the president, so we're going to freak out. Hopefully they see Kevin McCarthy going over there as just Kevin McCarthy. Because, like, not that I

don't support anybody going, it's that I don't support him popping off and saying something really dumb while he's there. You know, like Mike Pompeo went there and, you know, said we should recognize Taiwanese independence, which is obviously would be very destabilizing, like, you know, We don't need Kevin McCarthy waiting into geopolitics here. Like best he said that those kinds of discussions out. No, he should just continue this to pull out the pink M&Ms or the, I'm sorry, Starburst for Donald Trump, as he's known to do. Okay, so a hard pivot here, Ben, to cryptocurrency. Because, and this is a long one and kind of convoluted the story, but stick with me because I think it's actually important.

So it has been a bad year for cryptocurrencies, and last week things got a lot a lot worse. So quick context. in November of 2021, Bitcoin prices peaked at around $68,000 per Bitcoin, heady times. Today, the price is down to around $17,000 per coin. So, Ben, do you remember these infamous Matt Damon crypto ads? Yeah, only the future belongs to the bold, Tommy. Yes, the bold. The fortune favors the bold.

If you bought Bitcoin when those ads started running, you are down well over 60% of your investment. So that is not ideal. Do we think Matt Damon was paid in Bitcoin or do you think he was paid cash, you know? I want to know that too. I want to know the same for some of these celebrity endorsers. The other story that happened this past year was in May of 2022, there was a cryptocurrency called Terra Luna, algorithmic stable coin. What that is doesn't really matter because it didn't work.

That collapsed erasing like $45 billion worth of value. We discussed it in detail at the time. So that brings us to last week. there is something called the FTX Exchange and a guy named Sam Bankman-Fried, who everyone calls SBF. So SBF, Sam Bankman-Freed, he's the biggest name in crypto. He's been compared to Warren Buffett. He owns a mini-cry-empto empire, including the cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.

A lot of acronyms here. It's annoying. So what FTX is, is guys like you and me, Ben, we go there, FTX.com, we buy some Bitcoin, buy some Ethereum, whatever it is. But they wanted our business so badly that they bought the naming rights to the Miami. Heat Stadium. They cut marketing deals with Tom Brady, among other celebrities. So, you know, another guy who I wonder if he got his money in Bitcoin. And also, Ben, do you remember, it's been a tough year for Tom in endorsements? Do you remember when he released that Instagram

hype video about Qatar? Yeah, that didn't, yeah, that doesn't look that good either. Yeah. Yeah, that one's, um, that was hard for me. It's emotionally kind of devastating. Okay, anyway, so back to FTX. So things went south last week when a news outlet published a leak document that showed another company owned by Sam Bankman-Fried called Alameda Research, the hedge fund, had a big chunk of its balance sheet invested in something called FTT tokens. FTT tokens. They're a crypto token created by the FTX exchange. I know this is confusing. You're not alone here and being confused.

The activity makes no sense, but stick with me. So after that news report runs, another huge cryptocurrency exchange called Binance announces on Twitter that they're going to sell their FTT tokens, which are what FTT, They're basically saying we don't have faith in the value of these things. That leads to a rush of people trying to withdraw their money from the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and Sam Beckman-Fried soon has to announce that he's going to sell the FTX exchange to his biggest rival over at Binance because they don't have enough money to cover the withdrawal request.

So basically, Binance creates, in essence, a bank run at the FTX.com exchange by announcing they're selling their token, which creates this liquidity crisis that is so bad that SBF has to go and then beg Binance to buy his entire company. The problem is, finance initially agrees, but then looks at FTC's balance sheet and decides, nope, we're not doing this. So that is how. In one day, Sam Bankman-Fried, who was supposedly worth $16 billion, lost 94% of his wealth. Ben, does that parable give you faith in the crypto industry? No, and you look at SBF or SB whatever, and you wonder why anybody ever thought this guy was like Warren Buffett or some genius.

He's like 30 years old. He looks like like, you know, Jonah Hill could have played him in the movie like 10 years ago, you know? And like here's the thing too, like I noticed about SBF. He's like based in the Bahamas. He's doing interviews from like undisclosed locations. here's the basic reality about crypto. The things that people liked about it are also the things that should give people pause about it.

Some people liked that it was this kind of massive unregulated space so that you could kind of escape the long arm of regulators and the rule of law and all the rest of it and kind of create this whatever utopia of exchange. However, like, think about all the other financial instruments that were unregulated in the past or under-regulated, like a subprime mortgage. Like an unregulated get-rich-quick formula is probably one that is not going to be stable. And I think part of what we're learning is as more and more money was flowing to these crypto exchanges, like the vulnerability for people increased, right?

As people are making bets to try to get as rich as they can, as fast as they can, it speaks to the, it is just not sustainable to think that you're going to have very significant monetary, units outside of any regulatory framework. And people can, you know, crypto bros can at me on this. But like we've talked about this with like Buckele, the president of El Salvador, like, you know, maybe don't put your pension fund into something that has no stability attached to it. No, it's not attached to any anything of value beyond what is happening in some Wild West, where people are deliberately trying to hide the money from potential regulators.

So it does just speak to, like, I think the inevitable vulnerabilities of crypto. I think also, like, to draw parallels in different storylines now, Tommy. Like, this is not a great week for, like, like, libertarian, adjacent, like, crypto bros. Like, Elon Musk comes into Twitter with, like, I think, kind of something of a similar mentality. Like, because I'm really rich, I'm really smart, and I know how to do everything, you know? And I think we're being reminded that sometimes having like frameworks and institutions and laws as cumbersome as that can be is helpful, whether you're dealing with the world's, like, one of the world's most impactful social media platforms or whether you're dealing with

like some SBF bro guy down in the Bahamas, like, you know, trading stuff that of dubious value. Yeah, like I do appreciate the sort of sentiment and the desire, post-financial crisis to get away from big banks in a system that people feel was rigged and unfair to them. Yes. And, you know, like they got screwed while the banks got bailed out. But I remember, I'm reminded of the line in the Christopher Nolan Batman movie where he says, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

And that is what's happening with a lot of these crypto companies because news outlets got a hold of FTX's balance sheet. And they found that they were holding only $900 million in liquid assets against not. billion dollars in liabilities. So the liabilities are like money customers gave to FTX that they owe them back. They couldn't pay back anybody. Their FTX's biggest assets were about $10 billion worth of tokens that they basically just invented. They create these things out of thin air, like the FTT token that we mentioned earlier. And there was another one called serum. I mean, it gets it gets complicated quickly, but basically what these crypto companies do is let's say you create a hundred

tokens. You sell one into the markets for $1, and then you hold $99, and you say, aha, I have $99 worth of value. And like, maybe you do. But if you tried to sell your other $99 into a highly illiquid market at times for your made up fake token, you're going to drive the price down. Or maybe no one is going to want it, right? And so it's just like, they're just, it's completely fraudulent. There's reports that there was some sort of back channel where SBF was able to trade money back and forth from FTX, basically the liabilities to his hedge fund and then use it to make these speculative bets. And the irony of all of this is that Sam Bankman-Fried was viewed as one of the good guys in crypto because he would go to Washington and advocate for regulations. And he didn't describe

as a Democratic donor. And that is true. We gave $40 million to Democrats. But a bunch of that money went to primaries to defeat Democrats who were too much like Elizabeth Warren, who would regulate crypto in ways he didn't like. Yeah. And by the way, his business partner gave $24 million to Republicans. So like, look, crypto fans who listen to this show, I'm sure there are very few at this point, they get mad at us when we're like skeptical. But I do think that like if you believe in crypto in the sort of vision that many people

ascribe to it, you should not support people or activities like this. Like this is fraudulent behavior. these people probably go to jail, and a lot of people are getting wiped out in the process here. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, too. Like another angle to this, Tommy is like we haven't talked a lot about this. But, you know, it hasn't been like a banner half decade for the United States kind of reputation in the world going through Trump and a lot of volatility and a lot of dysfunction in our politics. And we talked about diminished U.S. credibility in some ways. However, like the dollar hasn't been this strong in like decades. Yeah, it's true. And even.

Even people like me have warned in the past we've overused sanctions and that may turn people off the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Not trying to nerd out too much here, but it's interesting that for all the dysfunction in our politics and all the chaos and some of our foreign policies veering back and forth to Trump, in turbulent times geopolitically, the dollar is the home base that people go to. And the dollar is very strong for that reason because it's backed by something tangible like the United States government, the United States Federal Reserve. serve. And as crazy as we look, people at least know what that is. The Chinese are cooking the books and they're not transparent about their finances. Crypto is unregulated and opened all kinds

of speculation and abuse. It's just notable that for all the innovation that should take place, and there's clearly a role for cryptocurrencies and financial markets and people who don't trust the government, I get it. But like, you know what? Like having rules around, rules and transparency around things, like, is to the benefit in the long run here, you know? Yeah, you want the FDIC backing up your deposits when something like this happens. Exactly. I barely understand this stuff. This guy, Matt Levine over at Bloomberg, wrote an amazing column about this that I highly recommend super smart financial mind. So check that out. Ben, let's talk about one of your favorite subjects, which isn't you're in D.C. right now, which is the United Arab Emirates. The Washington Post

reported that U.S. intelligence agencies have compiled a secret report detailing extensive efforts by the UAE to influence the American political system. This report documents legal and illegal activities. The legal side starts with spending more than $154 million on lobbyists since 2016 and then hundreds of millions more on donations to universities and think tanks. The illegal stuff includes hiring former U.S. intelligence and military officials to conduct surveillance on dissidents, politicians, journalists, and U.S. companies. The article is worth reading in full, but remember that this is also coming shortly after Tom Barrack,

who is his top Trump advisor, fundraiser, finance goon, was acquitted of charges that he was illegally lobbying for the UAE. And it comes after another Washington Post investigation about Gulf countries hiring former U.S. military and diplomatic officials. That included the UAE hiring 280 military retirees in the last seven years, including former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. So interesting to see that there was this Intel report on all this activity kind of bundling it together, briefing it, someone leaked it. But most of this was happening in plain sight is kind of the key point here. Yeah, that's right. I mean, like, and we've talked a lot

about this over the years, but it's because of how important it is that, and look, some of this is legal corruption, right? Some of this is, you know, like, like as we've talked about revolving door politics, like pouring money into think tanks, pouring money into lobbyists, pouring money into the U.S. media, hiring former officials so that current officials know that they have a golden parachute. The fact that there was this report is interesting to me, because usually you only do things like this about like adversaries, you know, like what are the influence operations of adversaries, clearly this, the volume of UAE influence operations in American politics was enough to raise the alarm bells in the intelligence community to be like, shit, we better

pull together an analytical product on this. And that tells me that it's probably even worse than what we've seen in terms of how much money they are spending to try to influence our politics. And part of what is so alarming to me, and this does intersect with the crypto story we just talked about, is they're exploring all these kind of like soft spots and weak spots. And you talk about like hiring U.S. ex-military or intel people to spy on dissidents. Like that's some dark shit. We've talked about Saudi's massive investment in Twitter and just the unease that creates about as Twitter unravels what's going to happen to all the data in other countries. And like the UAE and Saudi would love to have the data on people who are critical of their research.

regimes inside their countries and beyond their borders as well. And I do think there's this kind of weird space, like, of where money can just buy anything, you know? And then that's really the crypto space is part of this, right? There's like a money laundering happening there. And the Emirates and the Saudis are kind of right in the middle of that, you know, and they think they can buy political influence. They think they can buy the tools to harass and silence dissidents. And And this demands like a policy response from the U.S. government. No, and just remember, like, because of the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration agreed to sell the UAE advanced drones and F-35 fighter jets.

So some of the most advanced weaponry we have, period, as part of that deal. And there's also reported the Times about Iran and China hiring private investigators to surveil dissidents in America, which, like, all of this behavior and activity is getting so much more aggressive. Yeah, and coincident, obviously, you know, maybe not coincident to the Abraham Accords, right? You also had the provision of this NSO group, Israeli made spyware to some of the signatories of Abraham Accords, right? And we covered this story about the British pilots being hired by China to learn how to fight, you know, Britain and the US in a war. Shoot down our jets, yeah. Australia recently had another story, similar story in Australia. Like one of the most

profound issues we have to get our arms around is the world's autocrats and kleptocrats and goons and get rich quick grifters have just decided that everything's for sale for the highest bidder. Trump is kind of the embodiment of that ethos. And I think part of having like a sustainable approach to democracy is trying to get this influence out of our politics and trying to place higher values and other things. And you mentioned Barack. Like I didn't scrutinize the case. The reality is what's the biggest.

scandal is what's legal, right? Because sometimes they're just prosecuting guys like this for like not registering. But it's, you know, is it perfectly legal to take like millions of dollars from a foreign government and then use that to, you know, to work with like the head of the RNC, Steve Wynn, to try to influence American foreign policy? Like, well, it shouldn't be. And so this is something for Congress to look into as well. Well, I'm glad you, like, I'm glad you brought up the Trump piece of this because in sort of related influence peddling news, the Times reported that Trump has signed a deal with a Saudi real estate developer to license his name for a golf course in Oman. That's one piece.

The Washington Post reported that China, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE spent more than $750,000 at Trump's DC Hotel while he was president. Qatar spent more than 300 grand just like housing people over three months. I'm sure we have listeners who are annoyed that we talk about this so much. But when you add this money up, the Trump hotel, the two billion the Saudis gave to Jared Kushner, the cash that the Saudi owned live golf tournament just funnels into Trump's golf courses. They are bribing the former president in the United States and his son-in-law in plain sight. And later this evening, Trump is going to announce he's running for president again. And I'm just like, I'm beyond exasperated that we all know this is happening.

It's reported. It's an intel products in Washington Post. And Congress can't seem to figure out some sort of like. reform package to prevent it. What are we doing here? No, that's right. And I think the reason it's worth coming back to, too, is that like, we talk a lot about democracy and threats to democracy, and some of that's like election denialism and insurrection. Some of that is like voting rights and structural inequalities

and, you know, denying franchise and gerrymandering. But like an enormous piece that is global is just this corruption, the corruption of politics and countries, the corruption of foreign policy. And I think the reason it bears talking about is, number one, I think politically it's a very powerful message, right? So basically, you know, like one message that sells everywhere is like, hey, these corrupt people are trying to look out for themselves and not for you. Like, that's a message that travels far and fast. And that should be a pro-democracy message, the anti-corruption message. And the other is, like, there are real tools that we can develop to go after corruption and kleptocracy and money, elicit money transfer.

we can actually like begin to reverse this tide. And some that is going to take new legal authorities and some that's going to take the government like enforcing laws better. But this is a huge piece of the democracy agenda. And frankly, it's one that can appeal to people who may not care about more ephemeral appeals to democratic values as much as I wish they did.

But they might care about the fact that, hey, the president's for sale, you know. Oh, yeah, man. I think ethics and lobbying reform and campaign finance reform is like the core of all this. Back to Iran, though, the protests and Iran are still happening. And what's upsetting is that the regime's response, it's just getting more and more brutal. I mean, it's not surprising at all, but it's just horrible to read about. So Iran has ordered its first death sentence for a protester who the regime claims was trying to set fire to a government building.

That's one piece. And then the crackdown is increasingly targeting children. The New York Times reported that kids as young as 13 have been beaten. thrown in prison or even killed because they're a part of these protests. Amnesty International says they've documented 33 cases of minors killed in the protests. And activists say that up to a thousand minors are in prison. There was one incident where security forces, Iranian security forces, tear gassed in elementary school because the kids were chanting protest slogans at recess. Literally, like, recess. The UN says 14,000 Iranian protesters have been arrested. The EU

in the UK have responded with more sanctions. I'm sure the U.S. is considering the same. I just, I don't know what else, you know, Western countries can do, if anything, or that they should do to support these protesters. But like, tear gassing elementary school kids at recess, I mean, how low can you can you fall here? Yeah, I mean, a few thoughts on this. One is, because this is horrific and it demands constant attention and support to these protesters. I do think also, I hope the U.S. government has mechanisms to try to understand, like, what is the view on the ground? Like, you know, and sometimes in the past, we haven't really understood that dynamic. But I also think, look, you see lots of different countries taking actions in isolation.

If we could try to collectivize this response a bit, you know, like some shared messaging from the U.S. and other democracies around the world, the U.S. and Europe and others, it feels like you would get a bigger bang for your buck, if you will, in your messaging, in your sanctions if this is all done kind of in some degree of coordination. And then of course, like we have to continue to explore ways to provide communications technologies, internet access into the country, because clearly they're trying to cut people off, black out communications in certain areas. But yeah, this is going to be like a long and bloody struggle. And I just think it, you know, at some point we're going to have to like adjust to a new reality where we're

trying to find tools to just defend the human rights of these people as best we can, knowing that we have limited levers to pull. Yeah, I totally agree. A couple quicker updates before we get to Senator Kerry. So, in Istanbul, Turkey on Sunday, there was a deadly bombing on a crowded street full of shoppers that killed six people and wounded more than 80. Turkish authorities arrested a woman who they say was responsible. They claimed she had been sent from Syria by Kurdish militants to carry out the attack. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Turkey in more than five years. And Turkey accused the U.S. of being complicit in what happened because the U.S. works with and supports Kurdish-led militias in Syria. And Turkey has vowed to retaliate.

So that is quite ominous, Ben. Also, you might have noticed, Ben, the Elon Musk Twitter experiment is going really well. The Twitter blue verification push has led to a fake but verified account from George W. Bush, saying he missed killing Iraqis. A fake Tony Blair, quote tweeted that and said he did. Two, a fake but verified Joe Biden announced that he was masturbating at that very moment. And then more seriously, there was a guy who said Twitter locked his account for 12 hours after he posted a joke about Elon Musk supporting independence for Taiwan. So this guy didn't impersonate Elon.

He didn't break any of the rules. But as we know, Elon has a major financial interest in China via Tesla. And this guy's account gets frozen just for associating Elon and Taiwan independent. in the same tweet. So, chilling sign of what could happen to free speech in the Musk era, I decided Ben to follow suit today with a similar made-up joke about Elon supporting Taiwan independence and renaming the month of June Tiananmen Square massacre month. So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, see if you get locked out of Twitter and finally break that habit. I mean, one, this is a good demonstration of realizing that it can be worse. We've been quite critical of tech companies, but like we now know. know how much worse it can get. But the Elon Musk thing, I guess a theme of today is corruption. I mean, the marrying of his personal financial interest with his ownership of this massive global square platform should be really alarming. Because as you say, everything you know about Elon Musk suggests you place his business

interests in China above any purported value of free speech. We've already seen he's so thin skin that he puts his own ego ahead of any purported values of free speech or comedy being back on Twitter. But again, like, I think what's missing in America is like, you know, here we look at it and it's kind of crazy and maybe it's funny and tragicomic or maybe we're like virtue signaling by developing like what Mastodon accounts or something. But, I mean, the real problem is actually globally. Like Twitter is a really important, like source of information in a lot of places that don't

have a lot of free and open debate and information. and this kind of ugly turn for Twitter, I'm just imagining what it's like, you know, if content moderation is basically removed or, you know, skewed in a weird direction, you know, what's that like in, you know, Nigeria or Indonesia or India or, you know, all these places where there's, you know, really intense political competition and never mind how much data, like you and I have created quite a breadcrumb trail of our life. and dislikes by what we do on Twitter. And we're never going to get that data back and it now belongs to Elon Musk, right?

And so again, like maybe the theme of today's regulation is like something we need a little bit more of in the world because the fact that Elon Musk can basically come in like a wrecking ball like this is a little disconcerted. Yeah, no, the point about the impact of the Musk purchase in foreign countries is well taken because as much as we complain about content moderation over here, it is just, you know, What we've learned over the years is whether it's Twitter or Facebook or any other platform overseas, they have far, far, far less resources dedicated to making these platforms a safe place. Ben, I saw that the FBI has opened an investigation into the killing in May of a Palestinian-American journalist named Shireen Abu Akla.

We talked about this a bunch at the time. I would say this is a welcome, but long overdue step. Top Israeli officials immediately denounced the investigation. they said they would refuse to cooperate. So we will see how hard the Biden administration actually pushes this. But I hope pretty hard because, you know, it seems like the IDF wants to cover up their role in her murder. I mean, I was surprised by the announcement, positively surprised. There was really no accountability for this killing of a journalist.

And so, like, I think it's an important step forward. because there's just such an absence of any accountability for for anything in cases like this. What's interesting is the strong negative Israeli reaction, which is not surprising, but that was the outgoing government, right? That was the more modern government, right? It was Bennett. I think this foreshadows, this is going to be a really bumpy couple of years with this new right-wing government, not even far-right government, right?

We talked about this last time, but like, how are they going to resolve? respond to investigation like this. What happens if there are additional killings in the West Bank, for instance, or in parts of East Jerusalem? This is one more tinderbox that could get a lot more complicated because there's going to be a lot of posturing from the far right in Israel and a lot of expectation that Netanyahu will stick it to the Democratic administration. Probably a lot of Republicans who want to make common cause with that kind of effort. So, you know, buckle up here a little bit. But I mean, the principles the U.S. should be guided by are values and accountability and rule of law. And if a journalist like this is killed, you know, never mind an American citizen,

you know, we have a right to demand that there's full accountability and full investigation. Absolutely. Two more quick things before the John Kerry interview. So, Ben, I saw that a 50-year-old Chinese marathon runner shocked the competition in early November when he completed the race in three hours and 28 minutes while chain smoking cigarettes the entire time. This fellow goes by the name of Uncle Chen. He finished 574th out of 1,500 competitors and also pulled off a similar feat in 2018 and 2019. This has led many people to wonder, is this the greatest athletic accomplishment in the history of mankind? As you know, I'm an anti-smoker, but credit where credit is due, no? I mean, how would you rank this? Yeah, as a like,

frequently recovering smoker, like the closest I would ever imagine to doing anything like that is running a few miles while chewing Nicorette. I mean, I just don't know like what this guy's lungs are made of. Like, it's like it is pretty like, but then when you go back and you look at like the, you know, the tape of like the Olympics 100 years ago and there's like dudes like just like ripping cigarettes before like running the 400 meters or something. Like so. So, I guess he comes out of a tradition where this used to happen a lot. It's a little drawing to see, but I would encourage people to use the patch of the Nicorette next time they want to run a marathon.

Maybe it's not the kind of feat that needs to be replicated, you know. Yeah, there's that like iconic photo of then Chiefs quarterback Len Donson ripping a heater at halftime of Super Bowl one. No, when I was a kid, like in the Mets, like Keith Hernandez is like my favorite player and he used to just smoking the dugout between anything. That wasn't that long ago. It's crazy. No, no, yeah. Cigarettes are bad.

Don't smoke. Don't smoke. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is about to start. Now is a great time for listeners to binge my World Corrupt series about all the reasons why FIFA made a terrible decision. And Qatar is a choice of venue is a complete disaster. I don't know if you've seen this, Ben, but there are a bunch of amazing videos emerging of the, like, Fire Fest like accommodations that Qatar has put together.

there's basically just like, they kind of like if a if a port-a-potty had sex with a trailer and then you throw a mattress in it, like that's what they're calling a hotel room over there. And then World Cup organizers are now scrambling to hide all the Budweiser branded beer stations after a last minute edict from the Qatar government that they had to be moved and hidden in some fashion. So alcohol is not banned in Qatar, but its sale is restricted, usually to like hotels where foreigners go. but Buzzweiser pays $75 million to be associated with the World Cup, and now they're stashing their wares and their branding to where people can't see it.

So I'm sure they're thrilled about this. So basically my question is, if you want to go, we could probably get a ticket and just jump out of flight to Doha. What's so dumb about this is how, I mean, you guys cover this, obviously, and world corrupts, but like how foreseeable all of this was. Like, like having a sporting event that is, you know, very connected to, alcohol consumption, that, and wanting to celebrate, you know, diversity and not be completely disrespectful of LGBT rights and on down the list, right? Never mind the persecution of foreign workers that were, like, this is so foreseeable, and this is why these kinds of decisions should

be dealt with on the front end. You know, you can't, you can't put lipstick on this, you know? Nope, nope, predictable, predicted, absolutely terrible. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. we come back, you will hear my conversation with John Kerry about the UN climate summit that he was at in Charmwell Shake, Egypt when we spoke. We got all the updates. We'll hear all about what's going on there, the demands from developing countries for more money for loss and damage, some policy he's putting forward, just kind of what the vibe is like over there. So stick around for that. I am thrilled to introduce our guests today all the way from Egypt, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, John Kerry. It's great to see you.

Happy to see you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for doing this. First question, you know, you rolled out something during this trip called the Energy Transition Accelerator. Can you explain what that is for listeners who are new to the concept and, you know, and what you might say to critics who are skeptical about the concept of carbon credits? Well, I think everybody's a little bit wary because we've learned some tough lessons about credits. And some of them have been, you know, pretty loose and goose. The fact is that, you know, sometimes things were counted twice or it was sort of a bogus kind of credit.

And so people are, you know, warned in that sense, but so are we. And nothing that we do is going to resemble what went before in the context of that kind of looseness and lack of accountability. What we're doing is making up with the fact that no country in the world has the kind of money that you need to be able to put on the line to affect this transition fast enough. The science is telling us you guys have to reduce your emissions by 45 percent by 2030, by, you know, you've got to be the net zero emissions by 2050. And we can't get there if we don't do enough in the next eight years. we can't do enough in the eight years, if we don't have money on the table. That is to say, concessionary money, which means money that people can lose, money that gets a very, very low return or low interest rate.

And so how do you get that money? Well, we believe that by allowing credits to be purchased by certain corporations would not include fossil fuel, that would be exempt, but companies would actually wind up funding. an acceleration of the transition so we can meet our goals. And we've just proven here that we can make really sound arrangements to reduce coal to accelerate the deployment of renewables if we have a little bit of money to be able to de-risk those deals.

So this is really an effort to de-risk faster so the trillions of dollars people have been hearing about will actually deploy and invest in clean energy, new energy, batteries, direct carbon all the things we need to do in order to reduce the emissions and win the battle. And it's interesting with this cop because, you know, in the past, rich countries have pledged money to developing countries for climate mitigation to reduce future emissions. The amount of money actually delivered has often fallen short of pledges, but, you know, money has been delivered. This year, there's also talk about compensating developed countries for loss and damage, which means, you know, weather events like the catastrophic floods that we just saw in Pakistan.

I saw the year Chinese counterpart suggested he was interested in this idea. Has there been progress made at this cop towards allocating some of that loss and damage funding? Well, there's been progress made in defining the process by which we're going to try to do that over a fixed period of time. and there's an agreement that we need to find some kind of financial arrangements to be able to know that Pakistan, by the way, the United States, President Biden put up $100 million boom and just we'd send it no strings attached in order to deal with 30 million people who've been displaced by record levels of flooding, a certain amount of which absolutely comes from the climate crisis because the warming of the ocean sends more moisture

into the air, and that's why we're seeing these torrential rainfalls and flooding. So, yes, we're working on it. What we don't want to do is set ourselves up for failure by pretending that there's going to be enough money in a new fund when the old fund from Paris still has not been completed. And I just think we want to maintain a base of reality here that's critical to this endeavor. At this cop, I mean, you know, all of us in the U.S., I think, were progressives in the U.S., we're incredibly excited when the Inflation Reduction Act passed because, you know, there's this enormous step forward from the U.S. perspective to deal with emissions to

incentivize green energy production. But I've also noticed that, you know, internationally, you've seen people raising questions about that funding via the WTO, concerns that it's incentivizing U.S. businesses to the detriment about of foreign industries. How is the IRA being perceived among your counterparts? Is it winning our back? I think, yeah, I'm sorry, sorry, Tommy. Most people, first of all, there's an admiration for it

because they know that it's real, it's serious. It's going to help America to be able to meet its goal. And President Biden was able to stand up the other day and really say with confidence and reality, truthfulness, we're going to meet our goal. We can meet our goal because of this very important piece of legislation. But it does have a few little provisions in it here and there that worry some of the companies, for instance, that have to be made in America components.

And, you know, that affects car manufacturers in Canada with whom we have a good relationship. It also affects folks in Europe. And so they just don't want their products suddenly made too expensive, compared to what's happening here. And, you know, you have an all-out trade war as a result and things sort of fall apart. We need to work those things out. We've usually had a pretty good way of doing that. And we're not trying to create disadvantage in Europe, particularly Europe.

I mean, Europe's so hard hit in support of Ukraine and with the problem of getting off of Russian gas, which is a monumental task, and they're doing it. I mean, they're really working hard to deploy renewables. and free themselves from a dictator who weaponizes energy. And so there's a lot of moving parts right now, and it's pretty complicated, and, you know, it's got its risks. But we want to work with our European friends. We want to work with Canada, obviously, our neighbor.

And I'm confident we will to work out the kinks. And then there's an element of folks who are sort of looking at the IRA and saying, whoa, we better get our act together and start moving on these technologies because these guys otherwise are going to own them. And we're not trying to do that. We will share going forward. But I think there is a feeling of a little competitiveness. Yeah. Well, I'm here's how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has impacted your conversations. I imagine, you know, certainly would incentivize me if I were a European leader to try to get off of Russian oil and gas as fast as I could. But I also know that you're asking people sometimes to make politically painful decisions for the long-term gain of, you know,

saving the planet, no small thing. But how are those conversations going in that context? You know, I'll tell you why I think they're not as complicated as you're saying, Tommy. And that's because this is the greatest economic opportunity that the world has ever seen and everybody is going to share in what is going to happen here. It's the biggest transformation since the industrial revolution. And that's not. an exaggeration. Every aspect of what we do is going to be affected, how we build our buildings, how we propel our vehicles, how we heat our homes, how we light our homes, how we produce electricity, how we are going to deal with waste, how we're going to deal with platinum. Every aspect

of life has to kind of shape up and become a little bit more sustainable and less polluting. I mean, this is pollution we're talking about. 15 million people die every year around the planet from the lack of quality air. I mean, and that's because of, you know, fossil fuel mostly, coal-fired power, particularly, that sends a lot of particulates up. It falls in the country, and particularly in the ocean, where it's acidifying the ocean at a rapid rate, higher acidity rates. That affects lobsters and crabs and clams and our fish stocks and other things, which are moving as a consequence of the warming of the ocean.

So there are just huge implications here. And if we want to not, you know, watch, well, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people are impacted by the shifts that are taking place. For example, 17 of the 20 most impacted countries due to climate, are in Africa. And these happen to be countries which are barely turning out any emissions. So you have 48 sub-Saharan African states that equals 0.55% of all the emissions. Then you have the 20 largest economies in the world of which were number one, China's number two, and China and the U.S. are 40% of all emissions. How are you going to prevent people from saying, wait a minute, you guys, you guys are doing this to us?

And if we don't want a north-south division that is irreparable and dangerous, we need to step up and be responsible about what we're doing. I like that. And listen, as a former constituent, I just want to say that I greatly appreciated the shout-out to the lobster industry and to the clams. You know, like, you're speaking my language, man. The other elephant in the room here is China. I know you saw your Chinese counterpart a few times at the summit. President Biden just wrapped the meeting with Xi Jinping. China had suspended talks with the U.S. on climate and everything else ever since Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. How should we lay people like myself interpret China's commitment to actually dealing with the climate crisis? If something as small as a congressional delegation visit to Taiwan can get them to, you know, diplomatically ghost us for several months? Well, we're going to find out. I'm going to meet with my counterpart, Chinese counterpart, tomorrow. we'll find out if they're really serious about making progress on the broader issue of the climate crisis.

I hope we are. I think my counterpart, by the way, is a person of integrity, very intelligent, very thoughtful. He's been at this issue. He's been involved in it for years now. We've known each other for about 20 or 25 years or so. and he has really worked hard to try to help make progress in the past. I just won't know until we really sit out and get at it, whether or not there's a chance for China to join the United States in these closing days and make some progress. Yeah. It's easy, like, you know, you know this better than anyone.

When you focus on these issues all the time, it can be very doom and gloom, and depressing and it feels like things are getting inexorably worse. I'm wondering if there's any conversations, ideas, people you've met this week where you thought, that's amazing, that's inspiring. We need to lift that up. Well, there's certainly, yeah, there are a bunch of them, to be honest with you. There's an awful lot happening here. There are a lot of companies here, major companies from the United States and elsewhere in the world that are deeply committed to winning this battle and that are producing, you know, new electrolyzers that will lower the cost of hydrogen and start to get hydrogen out into the marketplace at scale.

You've got people doing amazing things in battery storage and direct carbon capture, in carbon capture and storage. I mean, I run a list. There's now almost a trillion dollars of venture capital that's trying to chase these solutions. In addition to that, you've got a lot of folks who are really intent on trying to bring people to the table in a constructive way. and move things forward. And I see more energy in the private sector,

more willingness to try to buckle down. I mean, Ford and General Motors have joined together with Volvo to say that 10% of the steel that they buy to make cars is going to be green steel. And you've got the Maersk shipping company, which is one of the largest container shippers in the world, has said that the next eight ships they buy or lease or build, are going to be carbon-free.

And in fact, they're at about 19 ships, even though their pledge last year was eight. I mean, things are moving here. And the marketplace is beginning to reflect this as people see their products they can buy. We have a lot of big companies. I mean, you know, FedEx, Boeing, LaFarres Holson, largest cement dealer in the world,

Salesforce, Apple, I mean, you can run a long list here of big companies that have stepped up to help accelerate this transformation. And I personally believe, you know, we've shown that Glasgow, a year ago, we stepped up, and a lot of countries raised their game. They set targets that actually could achieve keeping 1.5 degrees as the limit of warming. And we still have some other countries, but Mexico has moved. Vietnam has moved a little bit.

There's thinking about what more it can do. Indonesia has moved. Egypt has moved. I mean, there are countries that are growing economies or big economies that are part of the G20 or very close to it that are now really accelerating their efforts, Tommy. And the result is going to be really helpful to our moving towards the goal. We still have some big countries that are not yet aligned. with the Paris Agreement.

And we need to get everybody aligned with it. Yeah. Listen, and the last question for you, and thank you for your time. Having seen you at work at summits like this, I know you are tireless at these things and talking to a billion people and just everywhere. So really grateful for the time. This cop summit is in Egypt. The next one is in the UAE.

You know better than anyone that neither country is a great human rights record. There are activists who say, look, human rights considerations cannot be insolent. or a separate topic, they're critical to all of our success because without activist protesting, academics, journalists, fair courts, we will never push governments around the world to take the hard steps they need to take. And when you have a host country like an Egypt or UAE, it undercuts that broader commitment to human rights. What do you say to them? We are always committed to human rights and we always raise the issue. The United States of America is founded on human rights and President Biden raises that issue.

with leaders everywhere. So does Secretary Blinken. So do I, others. We're all engaged in that ongoing discussion. And frankly, I think bringing the world to the table in the way that we are here now sheds greater light on it and helps people to have a focus they might not have otherwise. But I got – but, you know, we can't – I mean, first of all, you know, there's a process by which those choices are made. We don't make the choice. And in the global community, You know, you've got to meet with people. You've still got to arrive at moving the process forward in the ways that you can. But we do so always pushing for advances in human rights or for a particular case that we're aware of.

And I think we've been able to make progress in that in many countries around the world, and we will continue to. All right. Well, special envoy carry. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for all your work you're doing in Charmel Shake and best of luck. Thank you, Tommy. Appreciate it. Good to be with you.

Thanks. Take care. You too. And think about our socks. We need better. The Red Sox, fix them. We need, can you get Tom Brady back? Could you trade him to maybe Florida?

I don't know. You might have to trade Belichick if we do. Goodbye. Hi. See you. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Take care.

Thanks again to, I always call him Senator Kerry, Ben. I can't like break myself out of that as a mass hole through and through. But was he not special envoy, Cary? Yeah, but I'm stuck in secretary, Kerry, because I, you know, like,

you know, I had the second term with him, but I'm a John Kerry fan, man. I've always admired John Kerry. Just a great guy, works his ass off, like seemingly loves this job.

It must be very challenging, at times, thankless, difficult work, but, you know, I'm getting... Yeah, and just, he's after it.

And I'll say my one plug time is I'm heading up to New York for the Obama Democracy Forum, the first of its kind, a global convening of young leaders in particular from around the world on issues related to democracy. I'll be moderating the panel on pluralism and democratic societies, which will include our guest, Tabita Amaral, from last week.

So check it. It's live streamed if people want to check it out Thursday. Just go to the Obama Foundation website and you'll figure it out. Nice. Okay. Well, we'll all do that. We'll have to tweet that from the old Pod Save accounts. Yeah, let's do it. All right, excellent.

All right, man. We'll have a great week and talk to you guys soon. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production, The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth who upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.