Pod Save the World - Did Ukraine bomb the Nord Stream pipeline?

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Ben and Tommy talk about a blockbuster report that Ukraine bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, the bombing of a dam in Ukraine, accountability for the assassination of Haiti’s president, CIA Director Bill Burns goes to China, Saudi Arabia and sportswashing, Henry Kissinger’s human rights record and accountability in Washington, Trump’s classified documents woes, media restrictions in Pakistan, nukes in Iran, reports that school girls were poisoned in Afghanistan, and British PM Rishi Sunak goes to a baseball game. Then Ben talks with Tim Mak, founder of The Counteroffensive and a Crooked Contributor, about life in Ukraine 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 POTSafe the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, what did you get Hank Kissinger for his 100th birthday? I'm his friend, so I call him Hank and Henry. I mean, you know, what I'm depressed about is I was not able to deliver my gift because I wasn't invited to the party at the gala party at the New York Public Library. Well, we should have. In my hometown, too. We should talk about why you weren't invited later. But a lot of people were.

A big show today, Ben. We got a blockbuster, a new report about who. bombed the Nord Stream pipeline. The latest. The latest. Blockbuster report. There's a slowly unfolding environmental disaster happening in Ukraine, some progress towards accountability for the 2021 assassination of Haiti's president. The CIA director, Bill Burns, went to China. The Saudis are just dominating the sports washing game. We basically just have to tip our hats to them at this point. Henry Kissinger mentioned him earlier in accountability. Trump's classified document woes, media blackouts in Pakistan and some headlines out of Iran, Afghanistan, and the UK.

Monster, a lot of a lot going on in the world today. This is one of those weeks where he could have done too. You did the interview today. A friend of mine, friend of ours. A new crooked contributor, Tim Mack, who's on the ground in Kiev. We talk about the counteroffensive and Tim's substack is usually titled counteroffensive. Yeah, great substack, by the way. I'm a subscriber. Very good. So we talk about what, what, what? What's happening now, as there are indications that the counteroffensive is beginning, what the morale issues are on the ground in Ukraine. Tim talks to a lot of Ukrainian soldiers as well as people around him in Kiev, what the views

of Zelensky are inside of Ukraine. How does that compare and contrast to the, you know, let's just say, hey, geography of Zelensky around the world. What Ukrainians think of these cross-border attacks into Russia that we've seen more and more of? So it's fascinating kind of glimpse under the hood of what it's like actually there. And Tim's just good guy. Good to hear from him.

Did you see the semifor story about kind of the Ukrainian press office, like stripping accommodations away from reporters, credentials, I should say, who sort of seemed to not tow the party line? I did. Interesting piece. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's been some interesting pieces recently about some aspects of Ukraine that, you know, we'll talk about the Nord Stream thing.

There was that long piece in the Times about kind of far right insignia on some uniforms. I don't know if you saw that. So it's important. It's important to remember there's like nuance in every society, of course, you know. Exactly. So, but a lot of interesting reporting. Yeah, but Tim Mack, a great guy. I've known him from afar.

He was a political reporter, investigative reporter. He worked for The Daily Beast and then went to NPR. And I think NPR basically said as the invasion was ramping up or it looked like Russia was going to invade, hey, could you go over to Ukraine? And he stayed for a year. And then more recently left NPR to go it alone and write for his sub-attack, the counteroffensive. Yes. And served in the military, too.

So he has that perspective as well. Yeah. So great guy. Check it out. Check it at this substack. So Ben, before we get to our news today, though, don't miss our newest limited series. It's called Dreamtown, the story of Adelanto. Dreamtown is a story of a small California town named Adelanto, known for basically having

a huge prison and not much else going on until a stranger came to town with a wild idea to make Adelanto great again by becoming the first city in Southern California to legalize commercial weed cultivation. And it just changed. everything. So check out Dreamtown. It's the story about Alanto. You can listen for free wherever get your podcasts. It's a great narrative series we've been working on for a very long time. I think you all enjoy it. So please check it out. Okay, Ben. So there was this blockbuster report in the Washington Post on Tuesday. I love when they run those big ones on Tuesday. I really do

appreciate it about the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline. So according to a summary of intelligence that was leaked as part of the classified Pentagon document leaked to the social media Discord. Apparently a European intelligence service collected information about a Ukrainian military plan to covertly attack the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which carries natural gas from Russia to Germany. That intelligence was passed along to the CIA in June of 2022, so three months before the September 26th attack that ultimately targeted both Nord Stream pipelines. This intelligence apparently came from a human source in Ukraine. The Post says the intelligence has been backed up since by evidence uncovered by German investigators. This covert sabotage team reported directly

to Ukraine's highest military officer who was put in charge maybe to keep Zelensky out of the planning, give him some plausible deniability. We don't know. German investigators believe that Ukrainian special operations troops rented a boat in Germany using false identifications in a Polish front company and then took this sailboat over the pipelines, used some sort of underwater vehicle to go 240 feet down, place explosive on the pipelines, and then blow them up. So a professional operation. The Germans found traces of explosive residue in this rental boat. Shortly after the North Stream attack happened, President Biden called it a deliberate act of sabotage and accused Russians of, quote, pumping out disinformation and lies, but he didn't directly accuse Russia of blowing

the pipeline up. But I think most listeners took it that way. I did. I did too. Since then, I think most Western, at least European countries seem to have pumped the brakes a little bit on pointing the finger at Russia. There's been some reporting that blame the U.S. I think that's been largely discredited. So, Ben, just a couple of thoughts. Like, first, I continued just to be blown away by how much unbelievably sensitive intelligence was sitting on this server for the Air National Guard IT guy to get his hands on. Like, blows my, like this, you would think that like, information fingering the Ukrainians for blowing up the North Stream pipeline that we got from some liaison service in Europe would be really closely held, no?

You would think, Tommy, you would think. Yeah, yeah. But like the IT guy at the Air National Guard Base and Massachusetts had it. Which means that thousands of people had it. Yeah, that's right. That's what's crazy about it. Yeah, that is wild. Second, if the Ukrainians really did do this, and I think, look, you know, we should caveat it

because it's one source and an Intel report. They're not always right. But it does seem like there's a body of evidence pointing the finger at Ukraine. I do think it's by far in a way, the dumbest and most irresponsibility. thing that the Ukrainian government has done throughout the entire war. I mean, remember, the North Stream Pipelines, 51% are owned by Gas Prom, the Russian state owned gas company, but the rest is owned by a bunch of European companies. And like, I don't know how you blow up infrastructure owned by the French and the Germans and then demand that they give you cash and

weapons. I don't know how you kind of hang Biden and other leaders out to dry like this and have them pointing the finger at Russia when you know it's not true. So just a huge, huge mistake, in my opinion, by the Ukrainian government here. Well, I guess, you know, it's, there's a lot of things that are interesting about this. Again, assuming this is true. First, like, pretty capable operation. You know, like, as you said, like that didn't sound like a simple operation. You know, like the lengths that they went to to conceal it, you know, false identities.

There's kind of an espionage piece of it. And then there's the operational piece of going down. So one thing that we've learned is that the Ukrainians are pretty entrepreneurial. or not given the amount of their resources they're able to do a lot. Yeah, and just if like I was totally wrong about this. I remember the first time we talked about it. I was like, I don't think the Ukrainians have like a professional military diving capability. Yeah, like I think I probably said the same thing.

So like they they clearly have a capability. I think to your point, I also would have thought that. The thing that is interesting, like I talked to Tim Mack about these attacks into Russia, right? And one of his points is that like if we are to believe the reporting that the U.S. is kind of uncomfortable with this, it's pretty striking that the Ukrainians are willing to kind of consistently buck the United States and its allies in doing these things. And Tim's point was that it's because there's such a value to the Ukrainian people to show that they're taking the war to Russia. But now we've seen that there was U.S. provided military equipment in one of these assaults on a Russia. kind of border province. Obviously, there are these drone attacks around the Kremlin, and then potentially this. And it may be that the Ukrainians are just kind of demonstrating that they realize they can do things that we don't want them to do, right? So in other words, your argument would hold if it was the case that the Ukrainians doing that was going to put

at risk their support from the West, but they may be learning, maybe wrongly, maybe rightly. I don't really know that, well, maybe we can get away with this stuff, you know. Like, this is a big question about whether the United States is okay with this or not. I don't know. Because if the U.S. is not okay with it, then that is really worrying. Then you're totally right because it's like, existentially the Ukrainians need to sustain the support of the United States and European countries to stay in this fight. It's kind of how they equip themselves and arm themselves. And so it's a giant risk, if nothing else, for them to kind of do stuff like this and presume that they can keep doing it and keep pushing the envelope and not invite either escalation from Putin or some kind of blowback from the U.S. and Europe. That leads to the Biden point.

I mean, it does raise the question of what he was basing that statement on that, you know, the Russians are putting out disinformation. And was that part of an effort to kind of be in the gray space of a war in which, you know, you sometimes, you know, shade the truth, I guess, or did he just not know what it happened? This raises a lot of questions. It really does, you know. There's a lot of questions. You sort of alluded to this at the top. The cross-border operations of the Bulgarad town or region of Russia that we talked about last week, I think, we now know used America. American MRAPs, American armored vehicles.

I think some of the soldiers on those vehicles had neo-Nazi flags on their arms. Yes. So concerning in a number of ways. Two, I talked to some folks in the administration who said, like in general, over and over again, publicly and privately, the U.S. sends the message, hey, don't attack this infrastructure. Hey, you know, attacks inside Russia are not okay. And the response is, okay, cool, when are we getting the F-16s? You know, so it's a bit of understandable response. but I'm sure frustrating.

And then they also sort of, I think people in the government think there are questions about whether this operation on Nord Stream was really led by a general to give Zelensky plausible deniability or whether it signals something more like real command to control problems within the Ukrainian military that frankly are a far bigger problem. So this is exactly right. I mean, these are the questions that I kind of circle around on this, which is, and either one is kind of a leads to some pretty difficult conversations, right? Because there is a scenario in which this is a war.

It's a massive war in Europe. It's a chaotic existential war for Ukrainians. And therefore, it could be that there are units to do their own thing going into Russia, including, you know, a lot of Russians were in that unit that did that attack into Belgarod. Or whether there's some kind of super secret compartmented covert operations group within Ukraine that could attack the Nord Stream pipeline without Zelensky knowing about it. If that's the case, to your point, then how many more of these could we see that are kind of over time, perhaps there's more and more independent operators? Or Zelensky himself is,

you know, okay with this, authorizing it, at least looking the other way, if not, like, you know, running it operationally. And then that calls into question, like, hmm, like how far out the step is Zelensky from the U.S. This is going to be a space to watch because the trend line has been towards more and more risk-taking by Ukrainians in these types of operations. And I do think at some point I imagine inside the Biden administration, there's a real question about like, are we okay with this? Are we not okay with this, but we're willing to live with this?

Or are we not okay with this and we'd like to see this rained in? Yeah. And we don't right now, we don't really know the answer to that question. I think we'll have to see kind of probably read tea leaves to figure that out. And listen, I think it reaffirms Biden's caution to date. I mean, I think the narrative in Washington now is like, look, we're eventually going to cave on all these things, the F-16s, the tanks, the long-range missiles. The attacks into Russia too? Yes, we'll just give them everything now.

And you and I just talked through all the reasons why, I don't know, it might be a bad idea to give increasingly lethal long-range weapons to the Ukrainians, or at least it all gives voice to why there has been. so much caution because they've obviously known a lot more than we have for a long time. Yeah, and I guess the Hawks case would be this is a war. They should do whatever the hell they have to do. So destroying European infrastructure. If it's European is worth it to cut off Russian gas. Like the attacks in Russia are worth it to boost morale and Ukraine. We worked with Stalin to defeat the Nazis, right? Those are the sort of historical things you'll hear now. Now, that is true until it's not. You know, like we don't know. We're only, we're only a year in a few months into this war, we still don't know what might trigger some kind of Russian escalation,

whether it's some nuclear incident or something else. We still don't know how like the fracturing of a command structure in Ukraine might affect European support. I mean, there's a lot of risk that comes with it as well. I tend to err on the side of like as I, as you're suggesting you do, like, hey, we've got to be pretty careful about this because you can lose control of this pretty quickly. But we'll see. Yeah, I mean, at the very least, like the kind of commentary that's like more, more, more now with no notes of caution or no sort of, I don't know, humility about the Iraq war or any other sort of events of the last 30 years is troubling to me. Speaking of escalations, Ben, I mean, you're going to talk a lot more about Ukraine with Tim Mack, especially about the counter-offensive.

But the other big news today is that a major dam and hydropower plant around the NEPRO river has been blown up, probably by sabotage, putting at risk hundreds of thousands of people downstream from it who are at risk of getting flooded out or drowning in creating this long-term environmental disaster. Reports say this dam was holding back a body of water the size of Great Salt Lake in Utah, so massive. And that water is used to cool nuclear infrastructure at the Zeparisia nuclear power plants. So far, the IAEA says there is no immediate nuclear safety risk, but boy, hearing about, you know, lack of cooling water for a nuclear plant. gave me Fukushima PTSD.

There are also concerns I read about landmines getting washed down streams or detonated water supplies will be at risk in big parts of Ukraine and in Russian occupied Crimea. So the Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky blamed Russian terrorists, he said, for blowing up the dam. He's been warning about attacks on this dam for a year. I saw last week, actually Tim Mack linked to it in his newsletter. there was concerned that there was going to be some sort of sabotage operation on the nuclear plan. Maybe this could be part of it.

At the same time, the Russians, Demetri Peskov, the Russian spokesman blamed Ukraine. They said this was Ukrainian sabotage. It seems to happen just after the counteroffensive may have started. So like the big picture point is disaster after disaster for the people of Ukraine. But per our previous conversation about Nord Stream, I mean, it does get harder to know who to believe. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because it creates, first and foremost, it creates real humanitarian, even kind of ecological disasters that are going to be felt most acutely by the people of Ukraine. It also, though, kind of complicates things for both sides of the conflict. You know, it threatens, I think, the water supply into Crimea. It threatens this nuclear plan. It threatens population centers that are Russian controlled and their Ukrainian controlled. And to your point, like, given, you know, it's interesting. The Ukrainians have been very, in addition to what we just talked about with these operations,

they've also been kind of opaque sometimes about what's information, what's disinformation. And yeah, we are at a point where it's, you obviously trust, entirely trust the Ukrainians and Zelensky more, but you do kind of scratch your head. You know, it's hard to know what's happening in the fog of war right now. And what may seem apparent one day you learn later was very different. And I couldn't tell you right now who blew up this damn and why. And that's kind of going to be part of the context of things too. Yeah, hopefully we'll learn soon.

But really, really awful for all the people downstream of that thing. Yeah. Let's turn to Haiti, Ben, because there was a big update on the assassination of former Haitian president, Jovanel Moyce after a federal judge in Florida sentenced a businessman and former drug trafficker named Rodolf Jarre to life in prison for his role in the assassination. Jarre reportedly conspired with Haitian officials. He hired Colombian mercenaries and used armed ship from the U.S. to pull off this assassination. There are still big questions about the role that current Haitian political leaders, including

the then prime minister, now acting president, Ariel Henri, may have played in the assassination plot. Bizarrely, this guy, Jarre admitted his guilt during interview with the New York Times while he was on the run like a year ago. Yeah. Me later voluntarily agreed to be extradited to the U.S. There's a bunch of co-conspirators I would think have not been prosecuted yet. So since the assassination, gang violence in Haiti has exploded.

The UN Secretary General said violence in Port-au-Prince is comparable to a war zone, calls to send in an international force of some sort or international peacekeeping force, have not materialized. Instead, there's just been an uptick in vigilante reprisal attacks against gangs by average citizens and no political resolution in sight. So, you know, I'm glad that someone got prosecuted and may do life in prison now, but it's not helping the people of Haiti. Well, yeah, and first all, on the prosecution, it's pretty amazing that, like, the U.S. just prosecuted someone for the assassination of a foreign leader. It's not like a bigger deal. It's something kind of sad about the fact that, like, Haiti's seen as a place that's just violent and stuff like this happens.

I think it's really important having done this to continue to pursue the other pieces of this conspiracy, which clearly ran through Haiti itself and its political actors. And that's important to know because you don't want to be rewarding people that were involved in assassination. There were mercenaries from South America, like who were carrying this out. There may have been other people in the U.S. who are part of this. So I think very important to not stop with this prosecution and just try to unravel all the threads here and hopefully pull as many of these conspirators in as we can. And at the same time, yeah, I mean, there are needs. needs to be clearly some intervention, I don't mean a military intervention, but some more robust

intervention diplomatically and with assistance and maybe with some kind of peacekeeping component. The Canadians were being recruited by the U.S., I think, to send peacekeepers or a force to Haiti. They didn't want to do that. But the need is still clearly very much there for some kind of effort to restore some amount of stability. What you mentioned about civilians rising up against gangs is pretty remarkable. that people are putting their lives on the line through this kind of vigilante counterattack on gangs.

It just shows you the degree of frustration and desperation among the Haitian people. So this is something where I hope that we just don't get numbed to this kind of constant state of violence in Haiti, but continue to try different ways, not just to have justice for this assassination, but to have a better Haiti policy. Yeah, better Haiti policy, some sort of. I mean, I don't know that they've had a functioning government in any way for years now. No. Another big story this week, Ben, was the Financial Times reported that CIA director Bill Burns secretly traveled to China in May to meet with his sort of Intel world counterparts with the goal of maintaining an open line of communications in those intelligence channels. We also know that Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, went to Vienna in May to meet with his Chinese counterpart. President Biden in public has repeatedly stressed the need to have some sort of, you know, crisis hotline type channel set up to prevent conflicts. So sending Bill Burns makes a lot of sense. since he's widely respected. He's got deep relationships all over the world. I'm sure the

Chinese feel like he's a known quantity of them and a discreet one at that. Ben, I would bet that, I'm curious what you think, that both Jake and Bill were probably sent with like a letter or a direct message of some sort from President Biden to pass along to Xi Jinping. It's interesting to me that the Chinese were willing to grant Bill and Jake these meetings while refusing to schedule meetings with the Secretary of Defense or with Tony Blinken or with Joe Biden himself with she. Do you think Bill got the royal treatment like French President of Mino Macron will a little different? Like, how do you think this went? I don't know that he had the same tea ceremony, but look, I mean, we've seen in the last few days kind of what you are worried about when you have a kind of

spiraling U.S. China relationship. In the Taiwan Strait, a U.S. warship was kind of cut off by a Chinese vessel such that the U.S. worship had to kind of put the brakes on so that they didn't collide. It's got to be hard to do with the brakes on a destroyer. Not easy saying, and what you worry about there is as the Chinese care out more and more military activity in the Taiwan Strait, the body of water between Taiwan and mainland China, that maybe next time it doesn't get the breaks in time, there's a collision and how do you manage that? Didn't they recently do this with a fighter jet and a tanker? Yeah, there's an amazing video where the U.S. had kind of a reconnaissance or surveillance plane in the sky, same territory, which we see is international in which the Chinese kind of claim is their own. and they basically buzzed it. And you can see in the plane it's like rattling and the pilots there.

I mean, this is pretty close calls. Yeah, and that's a big deal because if you fly through someone's jet wash, as we all know from Top Gun, it can lead to that happens. I mean, I got my fucking, you know, degree in aviation at Miramar like you did. I got my heart broken by Goose. Yeah, we saw what happened to Goose, right? And make these points because the reason this is connected is right now there was a sense that there was no floor under the U.S. China relationship, that things were collapsing, that from, the cancellation of Tony Blinken's visit and after the balloon fiasco and everything, we weren't even talking. Lloyd Austin's not getting meetings. It does feel like both sides are at least through this

kind of quiet diplomacy, Bill Burns, the U.S. ambassadors having meetings. You got other diplomats going over there, Dan Kittenbrink, our assistant secretary of state of Asia. There's an effort to kind of reestablish communication. At a minimum, you would hope that that could allow for Yeah, like hotlines, military-to-military discussion to try to avoid escalation around incidents like what I talked about. But at the same time that the U.S. is trying to do that, we're rolling out a big old welcome carpet for Narendra Modi. That is like a centerpiece of our anti-China strategy in the region, right? And so- Yeah, he's addressing a joint session of Congress. He's addressing joint session of Congress.

Lord Austin was just in India talking about defense cooperation. So this is the complicated and delicate dance that is being done by the Biden administration, building this kind of counter China coalition and policy and strategy while at the same time saying, hey, we need to talk to each other. I think it's right to be trying to talk to the Chinese, but they probably do need something more kind of formalized in terms of engagement and meetings and Biden talking to Xi than just doing it through the CIA director. That might be the right place to start. And like you said, I'm sure there's probably letters being carried back and forth. But I'd like to see a place, you know, and I don't think it's a reward to China to say we should be exchanging.

visiting visits with Tony Blinken and his counterpart. We should, this should be kind of more above, above water, as it were, because right now, it feels a little tenuous. Yeah, it does feel the tendency. You mentioning the India, the Modi visit, did make me realize I didn't preped anything on this horrible train crash in India that reportedly two trains collided, maybe with a third train, 275 people were killed, more than 1,100 were injured. There's no, like, not a big public policy piece of this for us to discuss in terms of

the U.S. It's more like terrain infrastructure and investment, I think. But awful and just worth mentioning. The only, the human piece is obviously the most acute, but the only public policy piece is part of the U.S. strategy as we're kind of separating out from China, right, I think is going to be encouraging all that investment that was flowing into China for so many years.

Like, hey, invest in India instead. They're going to be our friend. And this is the kind of reason that that investment doesn't happen. You know, so obviously the human piece is most important, but the kind of, you know, lack of infrastructure and corrupt. and it's opaque. This is a reminder that it's not going to be easy for India to just kind of become the new China in terms of attracting that kind of business.

Yeah, it's a really good point. You know who is willing to spend huge money on pretty much anything, though, Ben, is the Saudi government. We've got some big news on the Saudi sports washing front on Tuesday. The PGA tour and the Saudi-owned live golf tour announced that they have agreed to a merger. For you non-golf fans, the PGA tour is so the original organizer of pro-year-old. golf events. The Live Tour launched last year as this Saudi-backed alternative to the PGA. They were paying players just to show up. It led to these really kind of fun fights between players who were

still part of the PGA and players that joined the Live Tour. There was a legal battle that was going on in addition to the War of Words. And here's a sort of a representative quote from Jay Monaghan, the head of the PGA tour from last June. I think it'd have to be living under Iraq. to not know that there are significant implications. And as it relates to the families of 9-11, I have two families that are close to me, the lost loved ones. And so my heart goes out to them. And I would ask, you know, any player that has left

or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA tour? A question now everybody will get to ask. Donald Trump celebrated the news band. He trothed great news from Live Golf, a big, beautiful and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf. For some reason, he put it in all caps.

Credit to the Donald, he actually predicted this via different truth like last year. The Saudis are also making big moves in soccer, Ben, Rea Madrid star Kareem Benzima, reportedly signed a three-year, $643 million deal to play with the Saudi club. This comes after Cristiano Ronaldo

signed a deal with the Saudi club. that is reportedly worth $200 million. So here we are, man. I guess I'm not in any way surprised that at the end of the day, big money is trumping, you know, human rights considerations in sports and business, even for the U.S. government. But wow, has it been depressing to watch?

And it happened fast. What's this this asshole's name, Jay? Jay Monaghan. Jay Monaghan. Okay, like let's start with Jay Monaghan, okay? Because first of all, are those concerns no longer true anymore? So basically a few months ago, when you felt your business were threatened, you play the 9-11 card, you talk about the 9-11 families. Is that not true now today, Jay Monaghan? No, and just you're right. But also, like, him playing the 9-11 card then, I think, was a little disingenuous. Like, he was using 9-11 to win what was a financial fight for the PGA tour.

Exactly. No, but that's what's so cynical about it. So the first point is it just proves that that guy was willing to play any card, right? Right. Second point is, I feel bad for all these PGA people who took a stand. And we've talked about people that turned down a lot of money, right? I think Tiger Woods turned on like a billion dollars or something. All these people who sold out, who sold their soul, Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman, people just jumping into the bed with Muhammad bin Salman, a man who ordered this memberment of a Washington Post journalist, never mind all the other things that he's done to create human suffering inside of Saudi Arabia in his neighborhood.

Those people pocketed those. checks and now they get to come back into the fold, right? So those people won and the people that took the right stand on these issues, whether it was because they're affinity for the PGA tour, whether it's because they had some qualms with like signing up for the live tour. Those people get punished. They had a golf star named Rory McElroy, sort of leading the PR offensive against the live tour, doing all these press conferences. I think it definitely like seemed to, you know, harm his play, maybe harm his mental health, right? He was taking all these shots from Live and at live and now they hung him out to dry completely.

Hung him out to dry. And then like the main point here is like this is just showing the worst version of what MBS probably thinks, which is at the end of the day, everybody's for sale. And none of it matters. Nothing matters. What do you say about 9-11 doesn't matter? What do you say about Jamal Khashoggi doesn't matter? What do you say about brutal suppression side of Saudi Arabia doesn't matter?

What do you say about the war in Yemen doesn't matter. What Joe Biden says is a presidential candidate making him reprient. None of it matters because at the end of the day, they're going to win because they have the money to win, right? And we're now, I mentioned you, like we're going beyond a state of sports washing, which we've talked about is like the reputation laundering from hosting events and just having their brand associated with these sports to like just kind of buying these. They're buying players. They're buying franchises. They're buying golf tours, right? They're, you know, they're dealing with Trump. And they get away

with it all because they have money. And like until people decide to care about something more than money, this will continue to happen. They're going to be making plays into soccer. They're going to be increasingly aggressive, get more players, get more teams. They might get Limele messy. They might get into other American sports leagues and franchises. And like, this is just where it's going. And, you know, like the PJ tour that had seemed to take a stand that was about something other than money, turns out, they were just kind of leveraging a deal out of the Saturdays to get like a big payday. The grossest thing I saw is some guy saying, like, once I had the, this meeting with my Saudi counterpart in Venice, and by the way, not Venice, California,

then I knew everything was going to be okay. Like, what? What? Like, what are you talking about about? Yeah, they took a brave stand for about a year. There's one theory that the PGA tour cave because they couldn't afford to compete with the Saudis in court. And they were worried about what could come out in discovery about their, quote, not-for-profit status as an organization. So, you know, that's something to be mindful of. Ben, there was a statement released, though, by the 9-11 Families United National Chair. Terry Strata, she lost her husband on 9-11. She said PGA commissioner Jay Monaghan co-opted the 9-11 community last year in the PGA's unequivocal agreement that the Saudi

Liv project was nothing more than sports washing of Saudi Arabia's reputation. But now the PGA and Monaghan appeared to have become just more paid Saudi shills. Pretty well. Seems accurate. Better rant than mine. We should note that Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, is going to Saudi Arabia June 6 through eight, so today, tomorrow the next day. He is going to talk to them about. about Saudi Arabia maybe normalizing relations with Israel. The New York Times says that would require a U.S. security guarantee to defend Saudi Arabia from future attacks, including from Iran, and U.S. help building a civil nuclear power program in Saudi Arabia and more weapons sales. So let's hope those talks don't go very far because I'm not totally sure what we get out of it.

And that would, well, like if it's just normalization with Israel, then it's just Israel gets something. The Saudis get a lot. Yeah, they both get embassies. Yeah, we'd have to see what's in it for... We get to pay a ton of money and maybe get dragged into a war. Yeah, I mean, that's obviously a space to watch here, because that's like where this discussion is going. Again, like the geopolitical context is, I think the U.S. is concerned about what happens

if the Saudis pick up all their toys and all their money and just go fully into China-Russia camp. And so that's kind of lurking in the backdrop of this too. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Saudis are cutting oil production because, prices are going down and they can't let that happen. Yeah. And so it's, you know, there's more to it, I think, than just

Abraham Accord. Let's take a quick break and we come back. We're going to talk about Henry Kissinger. With Trex, you get the most of everything. The most wood inspired. The most eco-friendly. The most decking and railing designs. The most trusted. Trex. Performance engineered for your life outdoors. Visit Trex.com today.

Okay, Ben, so Henry or Hank. By the way, perfect, the realpolitik transition, Henry Kissinger is a pretty natural place to move to the Saudi relationship. Henry Kissinger would love a Saudi deal. There's no human being alive who would be a bigger validator. Well, he probably is. I mean, he just turned 100 years old. That has sparked a big round of media coverage and parties and celebrations of his life and career. Parties that we should add were attended by several people that we used to work with, that we know well, that we love and respect.

Podcast guests. Podcast guests. So, but you know, the, the, Kissinger celebrations started about a month ago. I happened to be watching CBS Sunday morning and caught live this like shockingly fawning piece about Kissinger that made my blood boil. I can't remember if I whined about it to you on the show

or just via text in Twitter, but it was a piece by Ted Cople. It's 90% about like what a genius. It's like, hagiography and like about the statesman and the genius of Henry Kissinger. Here's the loan. section of criticism. Here's a clip. Many of his critics were not even alive when the events they condemn occurred.

There are people at our broadcast who are questioning the legitimacy of even doing an interview with you. They feel that strongly about what they consider. I'll put it in language they would use your criminality. That's a reflection. of their ignorance. It wasn't conceived that way, wasn't conducted that way. Look, there is no question when you and President Nixon conceived of the bombing of Cambodia. You did it in order to interdict... Come on. We have been bombing with drones and all.

kinds of weapons, every guerrilla unit that we were opposing, it's been the same in every administration of either party. The consequences in Cambodia were particular- Come on now. No, no, no, we're- This is a program you're doing because I'm going to be 100 years old. Right. And you're picking a topic of something that happened 60 years ago.

have to know that it was a necessary step. Now the younger generation feels that if they can raise their emotions, they don't have to think. If they think, they won't ask that question. So, Ben, some what aboutism on steroids? Probably Viagra as well there. Had you heard that before? Did you see this segment? I've not. I actually saw the Isaac Chotner interview of Ted Cople about the segment. So I'm embarrassed to say, when I watched it, I thought that it was George Will, not Ted Cople, because they kind of look alike and sound alike. And I thought it had to be from kind of a neocon perspective.

But you're right. Isaac Chotner in New Yorker interviewed Ted Cople about the segment, and it did not go well for Ted Cople. So, Ben, let's just divide this into two parts. Let's talk about Kissinger's record, why people detest him, for lack of a better word. And then the question of accountability for people who worked in government. So in terms of Kissinger's record at the risk of sounding like I'm doing just a liberal screed, should we start with Kissinger sabotaging Vietnam peace talks and extending the war for five years?

Do you want to start with the secret bombing of Cambodia that killed 150,000 civilians? You want to talk about genocides in Bangladesh, East Timor, coups in Latin America. Where to begin? I mean, let's begin, because I think we need to get to all that. that because this is worth digging into. This is kind of the heart of this podcast, actually, this conversation that we're about to have. If you talk about Vietnam, because you're not wrong that that war escalated under Lyndon Johnson, like that war, like was well on the way to killing a lot of people in the United States and even more people, obviously, in Southeast Asia.

There's a number of things worth identifying here. One is that in 1968, there were peace talks, and there was a kind of a peace agreement, kind of on the table. And there were kind of backdoor communications from the Nixon campaign, which Kistinger is a part of, saying, don't make that agreement, wait for us, you know, blah, blah, blah. They didn't want to help Huber Humphrey. Yes, they didn't want to have a peace agreement to help. They get elected, and what do they do? Okay.

The war continues for five more years, as you said. During that, the bombing of places like Laos and Cambodia goes up dramatically. I've been to Laos, I've been to the most heavily bomb parts of Laos, where to this day, children are still picking up cluster munitions and getting their fucking arms blown off because of that bombing. Those are human beings. Henry Kinscher wants to say that the young people that were born after this happened don't know what happened. You know who knows what happened? The young people in Laos who continue to get their fucking arms blown off because of the bombs he dropped, they decided on the way out. Their theory was to preserve U.S. credibility because we were not going to win this war. We basically had to bomb the shit out of these countries to send a message to anybody else, not to cross the United States. The peace deal that they got at the end of the day that Henry Kistinger got the Nobel Peace Prize for was basically the same fucking deal that they could have in 1968. Tens of thousands of Americans died. Millions of people in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia died. The Khmer Rouge ends up taking power in a completely chaotic and destroyed Cambodia, kills another million people.

Okay. So these are not, he draws his equivalency. everybody should hold, you know, drones. Yeah, hold us accountable, okay? But we're talking about millions of people. We're not talking about drone strikes. We are talking about indiscriminate bombing of civilians and children for the sake of quote unquote credibility to credibility to get a better deal

that was no different than the deal they could have had. Right. So to give a couple more numbers here, this is from a great piece on Kisinger and the Intercept. Between 1969 and 73, when Kisinger was National Security Advisor, the U.S. dropped 500,000 or more tons of, munitions on Cambodia. During all of World War II, including the atomic bombings, the United States dropped around 160,000 tons of munitions on Japan. So that just gives you the scale of the indiscriminate carpet bombing. Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's what I have to say about that. I mean,

the Latin America piece, you know, basically under the guise of anti-communism, supporting the dirty war in Argentina, which is the torturing and disappearance of civilians. In Chile, Kissinger, we have tapes, right? There's not like theoretical. There are tapes, right? It's not disputed anyway. On one of the tapes in describing his support for a coup in Chile, Kissinger says, quote,

the issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. Just think of how haunting that quote is, right? And so then he supports a coup that puts Pinochet in charge, a dictator who governs for the next couple decades. Again, like people could argue that the cause of fighting communism and winning the Cold War was so important. But we can't ignore that this happened, you know.

What we try to, I think, bring to this podcast is the perspective that, yes, foreign policy is interesting and important and tough and usually involves contradictions and tradeoffs and sometimes in search of a greater goal like winning the Cold War, you do some ugly things. But, you know, the cost of that is delegitimizing America's support for democracy because people across the world, particularly in the global South, we have conversations today on this about why people in the global south don't side with us on Ukraine. This is why, because they don't believe the United States when we talk about things because they've heard tapes of people like Henry Kissinger saying, and it's too much important to let the voters decide, U.S.

foreign policy should decide. In the bombing of Cambodia, that was kept secret from the American public, from the U.S. Congress, from people in the Pentagon. And Kisinger also has a uniquely direct role in these events. He not just was there at these meetings. He was helping make the policy. He was helping choose targets in Cambodia. Like, Pentagon. on staff would come over the White House and he'd be like, bomb there, bomb there, bomb here, right? Like, this is a guy who was directly involved. You know, we won't dig into it in more detail, but, you know, Kizinger also, his record is so long that he, you know, turned a blind eye towards Pakistan's slaughter of Bengalis.

He gave the green light to Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Both of those are basically ethnic cleansing situations. Yeah, genocidal ethnic cleansing. So the list goes on and on. That's why he's sort of like, I think, seen as a uniquely, you know, evil figure in the U.S. by a lot of people. And the only one is to say, because there is positive record.

We'll get to. Yes. It's important. Soviet Sinatra, but you should tee that up. The only one thing I say about this is, couple and a lot of these people, they'll frame it as, like, critics say that these things, no. This is objective reality. Like, these are people's lives, right?

And so I just think it's worth calling out, like, this whole, like, your critics call you this, this, but everybody else says you're genius. Like, these aren't critics. These are like, this is reality. Like, ask a person in Laos, ask a person in Chile, ask a person in Cambodia, ask a person in East Timor, ask a person in Bangladesh. Yeah. No, I could see your face. People couldn't see it because it's a podcast, obviously.

You reacted to the same thing I did that it raged me when I watched that CBS piece, which was they're showing photos of Code Pink protesters. And they're like, his critics weren't even alive when some of these events occurred. Like, that's somehow relevant? Like, we can't read a book. That's what really got me because we're not fucking idiots, you know? I mean, like, ugh, there's a dripping disdain for. people that like that are anti-war and again we get we should get to the positive side of the record let's just do it positive side right like you know it's sort of uh reproachment with china he he led those

efforts that got nixon to china i think he helped as a professor uh get our nuclear policy in a less insane place yeah and uh helped with nuclear disarmament what else would you add there those are to me the two big ones are essentially um the detan with china that led to normalization relations to china that really did contribute to the end of the cold war and obviously kind of opened up the gates to Chinese economic reforms, which led to efforts to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China, right? Henry Kissinger deserves some credit for that. We're obviously now living with the Chinese Communist parties is still, is, you know, deeper entrenched? And is that going to be, you know, it'll take another couple hundred

years to know whether that was the best. Yeah, 70s Kissinger might think that's a mixed bag. Yeah, exactly. But that historic achievement, the time with the Soviet Union, like, basically, that work Kissinger did as an academic and then as a national security advisor and secretary of state and leads into the arms control era of the 70s and 80s lowering the risk of nuclear war. And, you know, that's important. That's hugely consequential and smart things. I mean, part of what I notice in Kissinger's record is the great power stuff, like when he's dealing with people that are kind of near his weight class, you know, it's about diplomacy, it's about detaunt. It's the lack of regard for the less powerful, you know, the smaller countries, the people that don't get a voice

at, uh, and Ted Koppel's programs or at gala parties at New York Public Library, you know, that's what is to me complicated, not just about Kissinger, but about American foreign policy generally, right? Is that, you know, our successes tend to be about our own interest or managing great power relations, um, but the record as it relates to what we say are our values in these other places. I mean, I just, you know, I just, you know, I just, you know, just don't know how you can square any of us that signed up to serve an American foreign policy and you and I did have to accept some hypocrisy have to accept some contradictions but Henry Kissinger made that like not just an art form it was like he's the avatar of that and I I don't think

that's something to celebrate and just indifferent to the harm caused to civilians and look and I also I think that this conversation around Kissinger folds into a broader conversation about accountability for people who served in government and the challenge. We've had about finding what's right there. So, you know, we've talked about this when it comes to the architects of the Iraq war and the cooked intelligence basis, the CIA torture program. I suspect there's a very good chance that our kids will one day yell at us about Obama's use of drones. How could you've been in the room when these things happen? And honestly, good, they should.

That's a good thing. I think that's conversation important. But I do think since Nixon was impeached, we have done a terrible job with accountability as a country. You can look at Iran-Contra. You can look at Trump's impeachment proceedings and sort of the lack of any kind of real outcome there. And, you know, look, that's not to say you can't learn a lot from Kissinger. There's people out there saying like, oh, Tony Blinken interviewed him for his thesis when he was in college. Well, of course he should.

This guy was like in the room when decisions were made. His most powerful figure in history of American foreign policy. Right. And I'm also, I'm not suggesting that you need to like throw shit at him on his 100. 100th birthday. But I do think the way he's being celebrated right now in the CBS piece, in these parties, in a lot of the media, is part of a broader story about frustration with like kind of chumminess in elite circles in government and business and media and kind of the impunity of powerful people. And he is the poster boy. Yeah, I mean, we didn't get in the fact that when he left

government, he talks about the last 40 years. What he's been doing is profiting by setting up one of he consults corporations and governments. Nobody knows who, but he's kind of created this revolving door like lucrative business. He was going to be on the 9-11 commission, but resigned because he would have had to disclose his clients. Yeah. And he put those interests over the interest of getting bottom. I mean, I guess the way to tie this in a bow, and it's such an important conversation, is like, you're right, like just saying let's cancel Henry Kissinger or even having some expectation that he'll be prosecuted as a war criminal, there's a lot of challenges with that. And a lot of people who serve in the U.S. government would be opening up a lot of cans of worms.

I would say the list that we went through at the beginning of this is very, that's a different level of magnitude than anything that's happened recently with the possible exception of the Iraq war. But also, somewhere in between, like, being prosecuted as a war criminal and being fetid as, like, an oracle and a genius and celebrated in every editorial page and gala after gala and getting softball interviews, there's somewhere in between those two things. And the degree, the two problems I have are, one, the degree to which, like, our establishments wrap their arms around Henry Kissinger, it's why people are cynical. It's why people are single about politics. It's why people are cynical about establishments. It contributes to people like Trump. When Trump comes out and says,

remember back in 2016, well, we have some killers too. It proves Trump right when it suggests that Henry Kissinger is going to get the biggest foot rub in the world for his birthday party. And the other thing is it'd be different if Henry Kissinger showed any degree of self-reflection on this. I mean, we sit here and beat the shit out of ourselves

about these things. Like, he should go to Laos and look at those places. is where those bombs still are. He should go to Cambodia. He has not done that. Instead, he gets defensive and says, we had to do it. He didn't have to do those things. And he's made no effort to kind of come to terms of them or to try to see the world from the eyes of those people. And I would hope that the people that go to those birthday parties, in addition to doing that, that they make themselves look at the world from the eyes of a Gabriel

Borich, a president of Chile today, or of someone in Laos. Because that's what too often the U.S. foreign policy establishment refuses to do. Yeah. Speaking of lack of accountability, let's talk about Donald Trump. We're going long today, and I guess that's just okay. So a couple updates just on the hoarding of classified documents. So first, this week, Trump's lawyers met with special counsel, Jack Smith and other prosecutors at the Department of Justice about the case. Merrick Garland did not attend.

The Attorney General did not attend. The Washington Post reported that during this meeting Trump's lawyers said they believe their client is being treated unfairly, oh, surprise, and urged DOJ not to prosecute him. NBC News reported that a federal grand jury in Florida is meeting this week to hear more evidence in the case. CNN reported that an employee at Mar-a-Lago drained the resort swimming pool last October and ended up flooding the room

where the servers containing the video surveillance logs were kept. I hate when that happens, but luckily the IT equipment wasn't damaged. The guy who drained the pool is a maintenance worker who also helped Trump's body man move classified boxes before the DOJ subpoena was served. The post says special counsel Jack Smith has audio of Trump bragging about having

a classified plan to attack Iran during an interview with two guys writing a biography of Mark Meadows. They now can't find that document, although it seems like he was waving around in the meeting. That audio actually demonstrated that Trump knew the information had not been declassified. There's other audio from his lawyers that talks about classified documents he had. So I don't know, man, like what else do we need to this guy? If he did not get indicted sued, I will be shocked. There's so much evidence that they obstructed justice and had this information.

And it was important information. I talked too much in this podcast right. I'm going to ask you some questions here, first of all. Like, first of all, like, what is the, what is the Mark Meadows biography? I had the same exact. Who's the audience for that? Apparently two people are working on, I think it's an autobiography. It must have been his ghost writers writing a book about Mark Meadows.

Yeah. Second, I want to put in context, like they're talking about a war plan, maybe an Iranian war plan. Do you recall, like, a leak investigation around, I don't know, potential cyber, alleged U.S. cyber operations against Iran? Pretty intense one. I remember having to talk to the FBI about it. Yeah, I do too because the point is that like that is like incredibly sensitive material. The sensitive is it gets.

That the U.S. government would go after people, prosecute people, pursue people over just a hint of this. And if he's just walking around with war plans and then draining pools to try to move and shit around and kind of cover it up, that's not nothing, right? Yeah, there's a suggestion that maybe, you know, the classified documents he'd take in were like, oh, the letters to Kim Jong-un or trip memos or whatever, like intel about foreign leaders saying nice things about him. No, the Iran war plan is getting waved around in a meeting. And I guess, like, the basic point here is that if the last question to ask is if, if you are able to walk out with war plans and, like, try to destroy things, pool water or move shit around and then just kind of get away with it. What message does that send about?

Yeah. Like any employee that wants to walk out of the U.S. government. Back to our accountability point. I mean, total impunity for all these actions. The obstruction of justice, hopefully, will make it impossible for DOJ not to prosecute. Yeah. I mean, I just don't know how you can allow this to stand. And, you know, never mind the questions that remain to be answered that I hope Jack Smith can get at, given this crew, as to whether or not this Saudi nexus and this, you know, who might be interested in the Iranian war plan?

Hmm. Saudis. Saudis. Like, who might be interested in, you know, getting leverage over Trump, Saudis, right? So, like, I hope that that's a part of this conversation. Yeah, me too. The Intercept reported that the Pakistani military invited the owners of the country's largest media organizations to a meeting and then ordered them to stop covering former Prime Minister Imram Khan. That directive was passed down to journalists who leads it to the Intercept, among others.

And it's also just been confirmed that Khan has basically vanished from the news in Pakistan. Remember that Imran Khan was pushed out of the prime minister's job in a no confidence vote last April. that vote was widely seen as orchestrated by the Pakistani military. Khan has been engaged in this furious PR campaign ever since, blaming his ouster on the U.S., saying it was some sort of Western coup. He demanded his supporters take to the streets. He was finally arrested on corruption charges last month. Erasing Khan's name from the news would basically be like U.S. outlets one day just not covering Donald Trump anymore. I'm sure there are listeners thinking, oh, that sounds wonderful, but I assure you it would not be

if the Pentagon was the one dictating that editorial decision, which seems to be happening in Pakistan. Well, and also, like, it's proven to be a horrible strategy. All-time backfire. Everything that the Pakistani military has done to shut up or to evict Imran Khan from politics, like, it's just made him more powerful and made him stronger. And so, you know, like, this will backfire spectacularly, is my guess, because, like, Imran Khan seems to have a way around all of these things.

And so their effort to kind of, this is a guy, by the way, that was not like an effective prime minister. No. But he's a populist leader. His approval is going up now. Yeah, exactly. And so their effort to silence him is only contributing to his, because people, guess what people don't like? They don't like the corrupt deep military state in Pakistan. And if he's seen as the victim of that, it's only to strengthen him.

Yeah. A couple quicker headlines to close this out here. The AP reported that Iran is building a new nuclear facility deep enough in the side of a mountain that it could be beyond the reach of. even U.S. weapons designed to blow up these heavily fortified targets. Another part of the Trump legacy pulling out of Iran. Yeah. Congratulations.

Exactly. It comes as the Iran's uranium stockpile is over 10 times what it was during the Iran deal when the Obama deal was in place. And talks to get Iran back into the deal seemed dead. On Tuesday, Iran unveiled what they claim is a hypersonic missile. So I'm sure that'll flip everybody out. So again, yeah, one of the bigger cell phones in U.S. foreign policy history pulling out of the JCPO.

Yeah. And not, it's interesting, like, because it's Iran, like, there's not really accountability. It's good back to your accountability point. Like, there's not really accountability. We talked about the Venezuela policy failed spectacularly. The Iran policy failed spectacularly. But, like, if your policy kind of fails against a Washington boogeyman, like, it doesn't matter as long as you were, like, you know, taking wax at that boogeyman.

You don't see Tom Cotton, right in opeds being like the JCPOA was working. I was wrong to say we should have a problem. Yeah. Or you don't see. saying like, you know, how could we ever allow the people that were the authors of the withdrawal from the Iran deal to ever serve in government again because this is such a big cell phone? So something tells me it's harder if you were like worked on the Iran deal to get confirmed in Congress than it is if you were part of pulling out of it. No doubt.

Officials in Afghanistan believe that nearly 90 schoolgirls were poisoned along with their teachers. So the victims reported nausea, shortness of breath and headaches. Local officials blamed maybe intra-village rivalries for this happening. Others suspect the Taliban was behind it. There have been similar incidents in Afghanistan before in 2012 and 2016. And then more recently, hundreds of schoolgirls in Iran got sick earlier this year and what some Iranian officials thought was a deliberate wave of poisonings. This obviously comes after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021.

And it's severely restricted women's rights, including prohibiting girls from attending school after sixth grade. So again, these were very young girls who may have been poisoned just for going to school. Yeah. You were a sick fuck if you were doing that. And I mean, like, it just, it speaks to a level of nihilism, like, embedded in a faction of Taliban and their society that, like, we can't, you know, it's hard to get your mind around that. I mean, we, and it speaks to the need to continue to spotlight what's going on there. Yeah. Last thing before Ben's interview. So British. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is in Washington this week. It's first official visit. He's going to hang out with President Biden, members of Congress, business leaders. And he's apparently planning to go to a baseball game between the nationals and the Arizona

Diamondbacks. Ben, it is UK-US Friendship Day at Nat's Park. I was going to make fun of this and act like at Fenway. We just have like, you know, like beer night and bleacher brawls. But then I googled it turns out we do a lot of these events. April 16th was Cocoa Mellon Day. at Fenway. For those of you who don't have young kids, you might not know Coca-Mellon, but you will. So I'll shut up. So lots of speculation, though, about whether Sunak will throw out the first pitch.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. So the Daily Mail is reporting that staff at number 10 are very worried about it because they don't want him to pull a Dr. Fauci and airmail the thing like 15 feet outside the batters box. What do you think? I mean, do you think, first of all, does Rishi play sports? I think I read that you might have played cricket. Yeah, which would be practice. Like, Grishi Strickman is the kind of guy, though, that would practice for, like, a really long time for that pitch. Remember Obama practiced a lot. Yeah, and it still doesn't always work out. Like, you have an armor or you don't.

You can throw or you don't. Like, what does he wear is important? Like, is he wearing a bolder best? Is he wearing the skinny tie and, like, the, you know, tight shirt, or is he trying to do sportswear? It's just hard for me to see him being, like, a authentic, you know, American jock-type. baseball player, but we'll see. Yeah, he looks in shape. I don't know about athletic.

It's kind of a metaphor for the entire thing. He'll probably do better at this than Boris Johnson or his trust would have done, but it still won't be that good. Very, very true. I'm wikiing him right now. I'm trying to look for something sporting in his early life. This is great radio right now. Who knows?

I guess what I would tell them is you don't need to throw off the mount. And, you know, like, I think you can get plenty of press just for going to the game, just for being seen with the right people. I mean, maybe he'll go with Joe Biden. I have no idea. Maybe he'll go with Dr. Jill Biden. We did, Obama and David Cameron went to a basketball game, right? Yeah, they went to a NCAA tournament play-in game in Dayton, Ohio. Tommy, you and I both contributed to the planning for that trip and went on that trip. Just to show that we are not above cynical politics, the selection of Dayton, Ohio. in a presidential election cycle. Totally happenstance, right? Totally coincident that we decided to fly there on Earth Forcewoman with the British Prime Minister.

David Cameron, by the way, interesting David Cameron's story, had no idea what the rules of basketball were. No idea what the hell was going on. Like Obama was trying to explain, literally didn't even know like, you know, like nothing. And it was also like pretty, let's just say it wasn't like a high scoring game. Shitty game.

It was a shit game. The coolest thing I went to maybe in my entire time at the White House, was in 2011, we went to the carrier classic. Do you remember this? I went to that too. Basketball game. Amazing. On an aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, where we saw UNC play Michigan State.

One of the coolest things I ever done. And like a great game. But also these poor kids, like shooting a basketball is hard to begin with. Shooting when the background is like the San Diego skyline when you're used to a gym. Yeah. And Barack Obama's there. Yeah. Brock Obama's watching you play.

Yeah. It was pretty intense. That was really cool. Yeah. And it's at the beginning of an Asia trip. We went from there to Hawaii to Australia to Bali. Yeah, that's one of those 10-day trips. Yeah, I love that.

By the end, you're just like, who am I? By the end, you're like, Dr. Ronnie. Dr. Rani, I need all the pills. Anyway, we miss you, Dr. Rani. Come back to reality. Just kidding, that guy sucks. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and we come back. You'll hear Ben's interview with Tim Mack about all things Ukraine.

I'm very pleased to welcome to the podcast, Tim Mack, who is the founder of the counteroffensive, which everybody should check out online. It's a great resource for... news about the war in Ukraine. And Tim is also a crooked contributor. So Tim, welcome to Patsi the World. Thank you so much. This is my first crooked contributor appearance. So this is a big milestone for me. Yeah, your first activation, as it were. Well, we'll look forward to hearing you across different crooked channels and platforms, and people should follow yours. But you're in heave. So like everybody, we've been talking for for months now about this counteroffensive.

And there's indications that something may have begun at the front, a lot of activity in the last couple of days. What are you hearing there about what's taking place and whether this is what we've all been waiting for? I'll tell you how you have a sense that something really big is happening is that all the folks that we've been talking to that are troops, soldiers in the front lines, they suddenly don't want to talk. They're all quiet. They don't really want to discuss anything, even like what they're feeling or what they think. There's been this kind of veil that falls across the front line, and there's been this messaging, particularly from the Ministry of Defense, that plans love silence. And this is kind of like the loose lips

sink ships of this war. And that people are just in general, not really, really. interested in talking right now. And that's been a real departure from the past when people have really wanted to tell their stories. And it's an indication, at least to me, as a reporter and journalist, that something is happening. And then beyond that, there are clues from the Ministry of Defense, the Deputy Minister of Ukraine, one of their deputy ministers, was saying that a lot of their troops are now moving from a defensive posture to an offensive posture. And then, of course, there are other news items that I'm sure we'll get into that indicate something big is happening on the battlefield. Both the Ukrainians and the Russians have started signaling that a major counteroffensive operation.

In terms of what to expect, and I'm going to get into the different dimensions because there's political dimensions of this and psychological dimensions as well with this war. But just in terms of the physical sense of this, you talked about people not talking. which is an important indication. In the past, you know, the last time there's a major offensive, we saw kind of an initial focus on the south around Curisone, but then this kind of surprise movement in the northeast around Kharkiv. It seems like the priority, at least certainly the priority from the U.S. perspective, is breaking that land bridge that connects, you know, eastern Ukraine down to Crimea

through southern Ukraine. Do you get any sense? It seems like, first of all, there's pretty good operational security on this stuff, but do you get any sense from your sources or just your own intuition about this war, about what to expect in terms of the Ukrainian priority geographically in this counter-offensive? Let's talk about what they've said is their priority in the immediate short term. So the ministry defense has talked about how some of the fiercest fighting still remains in the Bakhmut region in eastern Ukraine, in what's known as the Donbass area, right, which has been some of the most hotly contested areas

that have been contested over the last few months. There have been a lot of predictions made, and I don't want to be made a fool of. You know, if you listened to military analysts a few months ago, I guarantee you none of them said that Russia-aligned fighters would be fighting in Russia right now in the Belgarad region and holding territory from the Russian state. I mean, that was a real wildcard that has developed and is currently underway. There's fighting on Russian territory by Russian soldiers, Russian nationals that are aligned with the Ukrainian state. I think you're right that strategically it makes a lot of sense for the Ukrainians to aim to cut up the land bridge.

And there's not only a general military sense of that, there's also a big moral and emotional sense to it. that you'll think back over the course of this war, some of the most important stories involve things like the siege of Azavastal in Maripul, right? That some of the most, some of those emotional and important stories that the Ukrainians have to tell among themselves are the people who sacrificed in order to resist the Russian invasion in the early days and then continued to resist even when it looked to be hopeless. That's at the Azostal steel plant in Mariupol. And so there's a strategic sense to it, and there's also kind of moral and a moral sense to it.

And the Ukrainians have really been focused on not only information operations, but also on kind of convincing or trying to convince the Russians that Ukrainians have a much higher sense of morale than they do. This may or may not be true. I think certainly the Ukrainians have more to fight for. But if you talk to Ukrainian soldiers along the front, they're exhausted just like I'm sure the Russian soldiers are. They're fighting on home turf in a lot of ways. But they're trying to eke out these moral wins, these things that will boost the general confidence of the country to continue the prosecution of this war. And that's been as important in a lot of ways as, you know, strategic military victories. This is really interesting because I want to get into this.

First, I want to start with objectives and then I'm going to get into this morale issue. You know, on the objectives for what to expect, say, over the next, you know, six to nine months, right, until things really get cold again and the front line kind of hunkers down like we saw this winter. I've been struck by the fact that probably to project morale and to attract support from the West, the Ukrainian political leadership is very maximalist. You know, we're on the verge of victory. A great victory is coming. You know, we had Jeff Goldberg on recently, who was, you know, interviewing Zelensky.

And, you know, we can feel victory in the air. And yet, if you talk to military analysts, I don't think anybody believes that, you know, in the next six to nine months, they're going to evict Russia from, Ukrainian territory, absent some really dramatic collapse essentially of Russian forces. When you talk to Ukrainian sources, what is actually success in this counteroffensive that has been so discussed? I mean, in terms of, I almost worry as someone who's obviously pretty supportive of the Ukrainian cause here about the gap between what is potentially achievable on the battlefield and what the kind of rhetoric of victory is, are people aware of that? Are people aware of that? that gap and just managing it? And how do you think, what do you think success is in, say,

this calendar year? Again, not asking to make real predictions about this exact amount of territory, but what do you think the kind of the practical military planners there think would be like a, you know, significant progress over the course of the rest of this year? Well, one thing that's really clear to me is that this is not a counteroffensive that's being conducted out of military necessity per se, it's being conducted at this particular time out of political necessity, right? That this counteroffensive is being seen by a lot of Ukraine's staunchest allies in the West as your big chance. We have given you all this aid, all this money, all this hardware. You need to show us something in exchange for it. You need to show significant gains. And so

the Ukrainian government realizes that and is operating on more of a political timeline than unnecessarily a military one. That's one thought I have. I think there's some understanding that on the battlefield, not everything can be won back. At the same point, what we've seen also is that when Ukrainians push forward outside of Donbass, where there have been really steady lines for some, you know, eight years, that when Russian forces collapse, they collapse in a pretty dramatic way. You've seen that around Kiv, you've seen that around Harsang, you've seen that around Harkiv, and that they, that this is kind of getting back to the morale question and the information operations question, right? That when it comes to these huge victories

that Ukraine has won on the battlefield many times it's because of Russian collapse as opposed to, you know, Ukrainian military brilliance. Not that, of course, of course Ukrainians are fighting and dying and have shown their resourcefulness in a thousand different ways. But they've been aided by a relative lack of morale on the Russian side. And when the Russian lines do collapse, the collapse in a terrific and dramatic manner. Yeah. So on this morale point, which as you're identifying, is kind of central to everything from Western support for Ukraine to battlefield success, you know, we see Zelent, you know,

you're in Kiev, right? The rest of us who are sitting just about anywhere else in the world, Zelensky is kind of centralized in his person, the embodiment of Burr. morale and it's incredibly defiant and it's credibly certain of victory. But, you know, you, I know you talk to soldiers. You talk to people on the ground. Obviously, you're surrounded by Ukrainians. Is that an accurate representation of the Ukrainian mindset? Because, you know, it's kind of been social media memed, right, of this kind of constant sense of Ukrainian fortitude and resilience and unity. I'm not suggesting that there's not truth to that. I just know that, you know,

nothing is ever that simple. And I'm just curious what your sense is on the ground of the mixture of resilience, exhaustion, is everybody behind this war, is everybody behind this political leadership, or people frustrated with the West? Like, what stands out to you as the, as the nature of Ukrainian morale now? And what might be areas of concern as we look ahead? I want to make a point about Zelensky, and then I want to make a point about resilience. So let me start with Zelensky, that he is really deified in the West, as you mentioned. And Ukrainians have this long and, I think, positive history of complaining constantly about their leaders and their political situation, much like Americans do, much like many

people in the free world do and are responsible to do when they feel so, right? I think a lot about conversations that I've had that go kind of like this, particularly in places in central and eastern Ukraine where before the war, Zelensky was not super popular. You may remember that before the war, actually, his ratings were really in the toilet. I mean, the vast majority of- 30s, 20s and 30s, yeah. Very, very, very low approval ratings. And, you know, you talk to folks there and they are unified in one sense, right?

They say, look, I didn't vote for Zelensky in the last election. But I have just been blown away by how he's unified the country, his courage in staying in Kiev when his life was in personal danger. And his, you know, the way he's executed the war in a way that has been much better than most Ukrainians, even themselves, would have predicted, would have happened at this point. And then, you know, they let a beat pass. And they say, but I wouldn't vote for him in the next election. election either. You know, it's kind of like that, you know, it reminds me of Winston Churchill in World War II, where as soon as the war was over, they didn't want a wartime prime minister, and he didn't win

re-election after World War II. Ukrainians have that kind of, they have that kind of relationship with their leaders. They're very supremely skeptical. They have, over the last few decades, engaged in a number of, um, um, you know, um, um, you know, color revolutions, other kinds of mass street protests in order to make change in their governance. And you get the sense that with so much sacrificed over the course of the war in the last year and change, that if things don't go the way they like, that they'd be ready to do it again, that there's a lot of energy on, you know, in the public. So they're not exhausted in that sense.

that there are two wars really, the two reasons why the war is being fought. One reason is the obvious one, which is that Russia invaded and that they're fighting to defend their territory. And the second reason is that I think a lot of Ukrainians feel that they're fighting a war to create a more progressive, a more free, a less corrupt, more aligned with the EU kind of country. And they'd be very angry, disappointed, and will rally on the streets if they don't get that outcome. And especially if whatever candidates are available in whatever future elections come about

don't represent that version of the future. So that's my feeling on the political situation and Zelensky. On the resilience side, what I found so interesting is, well, for one, I mean, just looking at the course of the last year, I thought in the winter with no power in the city, there'd be a total humanitarian disaster. People wouldn't be able to heat their homes. Businesses wouldn't be able to operate, Keeve would be a ghost town. And it turned out not to be, right, that people were a lot more resilient than I gave them credit for. People found a way to adjust their businesses, adjust their lives, adjust their transportation, and continue to operate. And what's so strange about life in Keeve today is that if I were to go outside, I'd find

it's a nice, warm kind of spring, summer day, and people are out on patios, drinking cocktails and eating sushi and and, you know, enjoying a nice espresso or something like that. And then everyone retreats to their homes around curfew and overnight, as most nights in May, probably more nights than not, there are explosions everywhere in the city. And everyone gets up at two o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the morning and, you know, it either goes to a internal corridor or to a bomb shelter or something like that. And no one sleeps well. And everyone wakes up. And everyone wakes up and then you go into the city and it's packed and people are trying to live their normal lives again. There's this enormous sense of resilience and people trying to live life as it's

normal. And one more point I'd make about that is that it's kind of a double-edged sword. When soldiers come back from the front lines, they look at this and they say, well, these people are totally out of touch with the war that's going on, right? Like, you know, people are drinking cocktails in Kiev or in Western Ukraine in Lovina. have they forgotten about us and what we're enduring on the front lines in Donbass or, you know, closer to where the action is in Harrison, for example? You know, a lot of soldiers are split on this issue because on the one hand, this is the normalcy they're fighting for.

This is the sort of thing that they are literally risking their lives to try to preserve. But on the other hand, that's sort of the sort of pedestrian nature of life in the big cities makes them wonder if people haven't just tried to find a way around confronting the reality that there's a war happening. So there's that, there's that feeling as well. It's funny you mentioned this. And this just occurred to me. I was talking to this woman about a week ago, who is a Ukrainian disability advocate.

She's a disabled woman who was actually a model and is now runs organizations and efforts to try to promote disability rights. Because starting in 2014, she was in she was in hospitals in the Donbos, you know, working with newly disabled troops to kind of prepare them for a life. You know, she's in a wheelchair to prepare them for that life. And just having this one conversation with her made me realize, like a big chunk of the Ukrainian putting aside the dead, which is obviously, you know, a horrific, a number of Ukrainians killed, the number of men and women who are going to be wounded, who are going to be, we've seen in our

country, a very small sliver of our population, suffer grievous wounds, PTSD. This is not the main event, I know. But is Ukraine ready for the fact that generations of people are going to have scars, you know, and is that already manifest and are people coming back with disabilities? It's something it doesn't get talked about much, but I'm trying to contrast the front line and the cafes and Kiev, as you say, the kind of in between of that is, you know, relatives coming home with serious wounds. Is there a recognition of the degree of trauma that's going to have to be dealt with in this society for a very long time? You know, I talk to soldiers and, you know, I'm a former soldier myself. I was a U.S. Army combat medic. And I feel I relate to them in a number of

ways, but one thing that they, that I hear a lot is that people feel a lot less stressed on the front line than they do when they're silence at home and back on the home front. And they're forced to confront and reckon with the things that they saw when the adrenaline, the adrenaline was really pumping, you know? And I think that there's a delay in the reckoning. I think when I talk to folks about this, they say Ukraine is pretty behind even the United States when it comes to mental health issues. There's a real kind of macho attitude towards it and a feeling that, you know, real men, real strong people don't need mental health when they're struggling, that they can just deal with it. And that's a, that's a mentality that's, you know, counterproductive

and something that will need to change if these issues are to be addressed. But there's also a generation of people who are young and interested in solving the problem and nipping in the bud who are trying to say, well, hey, the way you deal with it is to talk about things and being as open and transparent with people and have that social support from your friends and family and say, you can talk to us and we're here for you. And there's that part of it too. I think that there's going to be a big delay in addressing this issue because there are more Maybe I'm not putting this in the most artful way, but to Ukrainians, there are more important issues to deal with right now

Yeah, yeah. And there are more urgent issues, which include the physical violence that needs to be conducted in order to win this war. This is an important and interesting issue to be dealt with, but really it's not a core priority. Yeah. And so I think there's going to be a delay in the reckoning there. And I think, but I think you're absolutely right to identify this as a huge problem, a generational problem that will challenge society here for many, many, many years once hopefully this war ends. So one more quite like, on the morale side of things, we've seen these attacks into Russia that are a bit more brazen, right? You know, there have been car bomb assassinations, there have been these drone attacks, including

around the Kremlin that, you know, the U.S. apparently believes Ukraine was behind. There's been this offensive, as you mentioned, of kind of Russian nationalists using probably Ukrainian provided weapons launching cross-border attacks into Russia. How much of that is about, you know, really wanting to bring the war home to Russians? And how much of that is projected back home, like, see, we can bloody their nose, too, is part of that strategy around these kind of pretty brazen and risky attacks, is part of that to send a message to Ukrainians back home, see we're going to bring the war to them too? Well, look, you know, the Ukrainians have conducted or been responsible for or supported these

actions despite the objections of the Americans, one of their most important and strongest allies, right? And so the United States has been pretty clear about this, which is that they don't support attacks on the Russian territory. They don't condone them. And so, So when the Ukrainian government, which is sometimes often denied involvement in these operations, does get involved with this sort of thing, they're doing so despite the objections of their strongest and probably their most important ally. And they're doing it, well, let me put it a different way. I've never seen Ukrainians as happy as the morning they woke up and realized that there were strikes in Moscow for the first time. a barrage of strikes in Moscow for the first time. Like people were smiling, they were grinning, they were saying, you know, we've been

beaten up for more than a year. Finally, we got to throw a jab back. And not even like a particularly, you know, as compared to what Russia has done to Ukrainian territory, not a particularly equal jab, but, hey, at least we got a strike back. it was huge for Ukrainian morale. I mean, I remember that day very distinctly because of how many people were laughing, smiling, joking in a way that you don't expect people in a war zone to laugh, smile, and joke. And so I would say those attacks were not really done for huge strategic reasons. Probably on the strategic side, it's a net negative.

You know, if you're alienating, you know, your biggest ally and going against their stated and explicit wishes. but on the morale front, it was huge. And on the information operations side, it was a signal from Ukraine to Russia. By the way, we can reach out and touch you to. Yeah. Well, look, Tim, we'll, I'm sure be coming back to you. Where should people follow you to just give our listeners a sense of like

what you're up to and where people can follow you as we'll be checking with you as well in the coming months? Yeah. So basically, I launched a new publication based in Kiev, in Ukraine, focused on fighting Ukraine fatigue by doing compelling human interests and investigative stories. So we start all of our issues with a first-person narrative from someone in the news. Basically, we think of the news as vegetables and like a compelling, a compelling human narrative and narrative journalism using the tools of fictions and fiction.

and novels and applying it to nonfiction, using that storytelling method as a way to kind of wrap the vegetables around something a little meteor. And so we've launched this thing called the counteroffensive, and you can read it at counteroffensive.news. And it's a substack where we put out, you know, regular updates on the war through human lenses, and we will always have a dog of war at the end of every single edition. So I hope your listeners will check it out and take a look at what we're doing. Great.

Well, we appreciate it. I hope you stay safe and we'll look forward to being in touch here. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Thanks again to Tim Mack for joining the show. Thanks again to Dr. Ronnie for lots of good times. And good luck, Richie Sunak. Good luck with that pitch. Yeah, we'll thank you for sticking around through all of our various rants.

twist and turns. But it was a lot. There's a lot to have passed. A lot going on. The USS Carl Vincent, 8,000 people were in the stands on the flight deck of the 95,000 tonne

Nimitz class ship. That is very cool. Most of them uniformed personal. Michelle Obama was there. That was a great. What a fun day. Everything about that. That was one of the cool thing.

Every now and then you got to do something like that in the White House and you're like, yeah, our former colleague friend, Josh Ernest was so geeked out because he's like a real sports fan. Did you see on the Ernest Family Instagram that Josh was there for the

Kansas Chiefs at the White House. Nice. And Josh's kid met Mahomes and everything. Well deserved. By the way, good radio here too, but there you go. It's a good picture. The career crowd. It's a great pick.

Excellent. All right, that's all for us today. Talk to next week. See it. POTSave World is a Cricket Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse.

Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Seiglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vesilius Futopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, D.B. Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week and check out the Potsave the World YouTube account. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support.