Pod Save the World - Elon Musk’s Quest For Global Domination

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Tommy and Ben discuss Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation, South Korea’s growing political crisis after President Yoon Suk Yeol barricaded himself in his home and refused arrest, and why we should take seriously Donald Trump’s threats to use “military or economic coercion” to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. They also talk about why Elon Musk is boosting far-right parties in Germany, Canada and the UK, the Biden administration’s determination that the RSF rebel group has committed genocide in Sudan, and Biden’s partial relaxation of sanctions on Syria and 11th-hour effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. 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 Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Happy holidays. Happy New Year. Man, that's a long break, huh? It's a long break. It's a nice. I think it's on like Wednesdays or something. I haven't gone this long without podcasting in many years. Yeah, me either. It was really nice. We had a great time with family. By the end, I needed to get out of the house. And my wife needed me to get out of the house. I think. Hannah was like, please leave. We had like a lot of activities. We did too. You have kids. In the holidays, there's like ice skating and there's parties and there's, you know, just stuff. So I was. Pretty, one of those breaks where I was more exhausted at the end than recharge, but it was good. Same. Same. We also had a couple of kind of rolling colds and flu. It's a little harder to do activities with the eight months old. But it was very fun to have my daughter learn about Santa for the first time. We had some Santa issues this year. Oh, no. I mean, basically they're pretending to believe in Santa, I think. You know, so there, but there are a lot of, because they're pretending, they know how to ask questions that you, you know, can be uncomfortable answering. You know, well, why is Santa's, this presence from Santa, why does it say was made by this toy. company in Minnesota. Yeah. They just start fucking with you. See, Lizzie's in the exact opposite phase.

She's two. So we're like at the airport. She sees a Santa doll. Oh, she thinks it's a random like bookstore. She's like, Santa. Yeah. Yes, that is Santa. Also, no, you cannot buy the Corona water bottle.

No, no, no. She also really wanted. Don't need that. But a lot of things happened then. It was very, very hard to figure out what to put in the show today. Things were not going to talk about the horrific ISIS attack in New Orleans. Yes. Or the other.

lunatic who loaded up a cyber truck with a bunch of explosive material and parked it in front of a Trump hotel. Yeah, as you and I talked about, we'll probably be circling back to these stories because they have some common threads. Yeah, we need to circle back to those. Obviously, the rise of ISIS is scary. The common threat of these guys being veterans and rise of extremism and these private militia groups that feel sort of ascendant after Trump's reelection.

Yeah. I mean, my only comment on this would be the ISIS thing doesn't feel foreign directed. It feels like this guy was inspired. But if that had happened in the Obama, we, Obama. Gama gave a address to the, because I know because I had to write it, he gave an address to the nation in prime time over the San Bernardino attack shooting, if you remember. Terrified. Which did not, was not as destructive as this one. It just shows how much terrorism no longer, you know, I don't know, so many other crazy things have happened that that doesn't seem quite as alarming of people.

A lot of other risks out there. Well, we got a great show for you today. We are going to talk about a major leadership change in Canada, this ongoing saga in South Korea. Nuts. Where impeachment turned into arrest attempts. It's one of the most shocking leadership crises I've seen in a long time. We're also going to do a long Trump section because he was spouting off over the break. Yeah.

Talking about Greenland, talking about the Panama Canal. We got Elon Musk kind of banging about in a whole bunch of different countries foreign affairs. We're going to get into that. And we'll also talk about some major steps Biden took on Sudan, some steps he took on Syria and Guantanamo Bay and then close it out with some fun stuff. So heavy show. I'm excited to talk through with you. Let's start. Want to start with Canada? Yeah. Our guy, Justin Trudeau. So not the 51st state yet. Not the 51st state yet, I do think, is the operative turn. Just kidding, Canadian friends. On Monday, Justin Trudeau announced he's stepping down as Prime Minister of Canada and the leader of the Liberal Party. So this ends Trudeau's nine years as prime minister and 12 years leading the Liberal Party. And it throws Canada into this period of uncertainty, right as our new president, Donald Trump, is coming in its office, promising to do so. slap 25% tariffs on them. Here's a clip from Trudeau's speech announcing his decision on Monday.

I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process. Last night, I asked the president of the Liberal Party to begin that process. This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election. You deliver that speech outdoors in Canada in January. Yes. I was thinking about that a lot, actually, as I watched it.

In French and English. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is always impressive when you watch these speeches, but kind of annoying when it's like zero degrees, but yeah. Yeah, so Trudeau also said in his remarks that he's a pro-rogging parliament, which effectively ends the current session of parliament without dissolving it and forcing new elections. It's basically a way for the liberal party to get its shit together, pick a new leader. It's sort of a leadership and priority reset. And then go back into session on March 24th ahead of, we assume, elections this year. They're supposed to happen in October, but we'll probably get moved up.

The new liberal party leader will be chosen by members of the liberal party. That person becomes a prime minister. As we discussed before the break, though, like the writing was on the wall for Trude over a while. his polling was in the gutter. One poll had his disapproval rating at 74% and only 16% of voters saying they're going to vote for the Liberal Party. And then in mid-December, Trudeau's deputy prime minister, Christopher, one of his closest allies, or for a decade, basically, resigned while also criticizing his economic stewardship of the country. Then Jugmeet Singh, the head of the leftist new Democratic Party announced that he was going to bring a no confidence vote against Trudeau's government in January. So Trudeau was getting ahead of that. The conservative party leader, Pierre, Pollyev is now best positioned to be the next Prime Minister of Canada, although, you know, we'll see. But Ben, let's just pause there. I mean, any thoughts from you, first of all, just on Trudeau's life and legacy here? And then more specifically, I'm wondering what role you think Trump played in forcing this move now, because obviously like his time in office had to end eventually. But Pollyav and Freeland pointed to the Trump tariffs as a factor in either calling for him to go

or her decision to resign from the cabinet. Yeah, I mean, I'll start with a negative, but then I want to pour one out for Justin Trudeau with some positive. Look, I mean, he clearly is facing the headwinds that everybody's facing. We'll talk about featuring throughout this podcast. It's not good for incumbents. More than that, though, like, clearly he's lost touch, right? He's been there for almost a decade,

and you get a sense when a leader has just kind of lost the thread, you know, and he's clearly kind of not been connected with the issues of Canadians are pissed off, about no surprise, that's cost of living, that's affordable housing. And his maneuvers to address issues have increasingly not only missed the mark, they seem to just not be what people are looking for. And antagonize his coalition. Yeah, and antagonize his own coalition. So it was time for him to step aside. I will say, you know, we're living in an age where people are just dunking on the libs. And so Trudeau is going to get dunked on a bunch, you know, join the club. Let's remember the Liberal Party was dead and buried. It came in third place in the election

before Justin Trudeau. This guy came not out of nowhere because he's a Trudeau. He's a son of, but he, you know, he's a young guy who came in, took over the party, got elected. And look, he did a lot of good things over the course of the decade. You know, he definitely elevated Canada's profile globally. He's a lot of good things for climate. I mean, the carbon tax was one of the things he was unpopular for, but I mean, he's really moved Canada, which is a fossil fuel-producing country in the direction of being a good actor on climate. There was some good economic years there. Obviously, he was welcoming to refugees during the refugee crisis in a very important time. Foreign policy, not big defense spenders, but they've been out there on the right issues, right?

And standing up for democracy, we've talked about him willing to do things of the United States wasn't willing to do, and calling out Modi for the kinds of things he was doing inside of Canadian Affairs, strong support of Ukraine. So stepping back, and I full disclosure, not only we had tutor on the pod, his chief of staff for his entire tenure, Katie Telford's a good friend of mine and poor enough for Katie, she did a great job. But, you know, they can feel good about this. Full stop, now what? You know? Nine years of a minute. Nine years. It's just a long time. I think that Trump had something to do with it in the sense that Trudeau was very vulnerable. He was going to limp into the next election. Yeah. It didn't make any sense to me that he was

going to run again. It seemed like he wanted to host next G7 in Canada and get through that. But, you know, he was teetering. And then Trump came in and I think was kind of the final straw because Freeland said in that letter resigning, I just disagree with how you're approaching the Trump threat. Yeah, he was offering basically, I think it was a two-month tax holiday to give Canadian some economic relief. And she was like, no, we need that money to prepare to like harden the border and pay for all these things Trump's going to demand out of us or else he's going to slap tariffs on Canada. Yeah. And so, you know, you could say Trump helped accelerate this and bring it about. I will say for Trudeau. Can you imagine that Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, and then Donald Trump again?

You're like, come on, man. Just give me one leader to deal with, right? And so, you know, it'll be interesting who comes next. You know, Freeland, leading Canada, Melanie Jolie, the foreign minister. Mark Carney, the former head of the bank of Canada. A climate hawk, too. But look, that may not be the best, that may be a bit of a poison chalice, right? For them, yeah. Yeah, because the conservatives are up 25 points. Pierre Poliav is really right wing. And I thought Stephen Harper, who was the guy before Trudeau, was pretty right wing.

He was like a friendly right winger. This guy's kind of tea party-ish MAGA-type guy in Canada. You know, like, remember those trucks that were parked in Ottawa? Like, this guy was kind of on board with that. So, you know, okay, good luck with that. Canada, you can get on the MAGA train with the rest of us. By the way, none of these people are going to save you from Trump, you know? No.

He's going to do the tariffs. He's going to talk shit to you anyway. So this idea that, yeah, Trudeau may have been handling. ain't wrong, but I don't think there's the right answer. So I hope for the sake of the liberal party that they, you know, pick a good leader and they mount a strong showing because you don't want like right-wing dominance of that country. But I also don't think that there's some magic solution to Trump for them. No, I don't either. I mean, I think to the extent Trudeau made a mistake, it's the one that every leader makes. He probably hung on a little too long. Yeah. You know,

you wonder if he'd gotten out six months ago, would that have given the liberal party a chance to kind of get its feet under it faster and, you know, be prepared for this election. Maybe. It certainly would have prevented this scenario where there's just kind of a leadership vacuum right as Trump is coming in and they're not going to know how to deal with them. It's worth noting that, you know, Krista Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister was singled out by Jared Kushner in Kushner's book. He disliked her for being kind of like a hard-edged negotiator in the USMCA talk. So credit to her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, in a press conference Tuesday, day, Trump said he was considering using economic force to make Canada the 51st state of the

United States. The good news is he rejected the question of whether he'd used military force to make Canada, a U.S. state. So I will say to the Jared Kushner thing, one of Trudeau's accomplishments is the USMCA trade agreement where they basically, I mean, tricked Trump into thinking he got a big win by basically just rolling over NAFTA and the TPP. So, like, that was pretty. savvy by Christopher Finland and Trudeau and Katie and then like they they you know this time around

though I don't think they're going to be able to do that and so it's it's going to be a rough ride I think pot say the world is brought to you by three-day blinds it's 2025 are your blinds still from 2005 hmm good question there's a better way to buy blinds shades shutters and drapery it's called three-day blinds they are the leading manufacturer of high-quality custom window treatments in the U.S and right now if you use my U.R. three day blinds.com slash world, you're going to get a buy one, get one 50% off deal. We can shop for almost anything at home. Why not shop for blinds at home too? Three day blinds is local, professionally trained design consultants who have an average of 10 years or more experience that provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your home.

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it's got to update everybody on what's happening in South Korea. So just a quick backstory. Back in December, we covered South Korean President Yun-Suk-Ewil's decision to clear martial law. That was quickly voted down by Parliament soon after he was impeached. Two weeks after Yun's impeachment, the acting president, who took his place, was impeached because the acting president refused to name more judges to South Korea's constitutional court.

And that matters because that court will ultimately rule on whether to remove Yun from office. They'll also rule on whether to remove the impeached acting president, by the way, but there's time for that. Yes. But there's supposed to be nine members on the court. It's only six now. So the opposition doesn't want to have to be a unanimous vote. So now South Korea has a new, new acting president. I think it's their third in three weeks. But somehow the story gets crazier. So investigators from South Korea's corruption investigations office for high ranking officials or CIA. office, they summoned Yunin for questioning about whether or not he actually tried to stage a coup. Yun refused. So the CIA got a warrant to detain him for questioning, but Yun's lawyers argue that

the CIA doesn't have the authority to investigate him or question him in any way. And so when the CIA sent a bunch of its members, its agents, investigators to Yun's house to try to interview him or bring him in for questioning, Yun's security guards physically block them. I think they made one of those human chains. They made a human chain. They made human chain. Those like hands around America things. They also, I think they set up a bunch of buses as barricades. They put barbed wire on Yun's home. I mean, it's crazy. I imagine though, like an analogy for listeners thinking like, what are you talking about? Imagine like Bob Mueller rounded up a bunch of cops during the Mueller probe and trying to like go to the White House. Well, I mean, we could find out

when Kasper tell shows up at Cricket and we... It's a human chain of crooked staffers. That'd be nice if they do that for us. So eventually the CIA office, the investigators gave up and they just stopped trying to bring him in for questioning. By the way, in the background of all of this, Ben, South Korea had this horrific plane crash over the holiday. I think it was December 29th. 179 people on this J-JU Airlines flight were killed. Investigators don't know what happened. They're still trying to figure it out. The second acting president is now charged with kind of handling this, you know, crisis internally for the country. So Ben, I just stepping back, You see a lot of people, experts quoted in stories about Yun's insane behavior the last month or so, saying, actually, it'll be okay. We have faith in South Korea's democracy and its institutions will hold and they'll work things out. But it's pretty precarious. And I do think it shows the way that someone like Yun, who is shameless, like strident and willing to do and say anything to stay in power can exploit gaps in their system that is supposed to hold him accountable.

He's basically exploiting this period of time between the National Assembly voting to impeach in the court, deciding whether he's removed to create mass chaos. And it feels a little familiar to us, I guess. It's completely insane, this story. I mean, this will be a theme of this entire podcast, but probably the next four years. Yeah, four years. Because this guy, first of all, to your point about his psychology, I don't think he's left this residence since, like, the coup attempt. So talk about a TV show, not to make a light of it, but just what is he doing? He's like, the man in the high castle, like, walking around with like the presidential detail, just, you know, doing human chains to prevent him.

Did you know he moved the residents from the Blue House to the defense ministry? Yeah. Which actually is very unpopular because it's more like in downtown Seoul and pissed everybody off because that traffic is worse. Yeah, well, imagine a guy just in the middle of the biggest city in the country. Just hold up. And look, at some point, you know, the die will be cast. I mean, I don't think this guy has enough support to mount some extra constitutional challenge. But who knows?

He's kind of, he's holding out in the hopes that this judicial process can get slowed down. The act, they're impeaching acting presidents now that these are not the strongest leaders I've noticed. The opposition is impeaching everyone. They can get their hands on. So it is a crisis that has its own momentum of just generating more crisis. Like, and something is going to have to, you know, kind of. of be the turning point and it's probably going to have to be the resolution of this guy's status. Like he's going to get arrested and we're all going to move on and have an election.

Like until they do that, they're in this precarious position. Full stop, I think the bigger challenge here is that this is, you know, a volatile part of the world. I mean, if you're Kim Jong-un and you're looking at this, you're thinking, is now at the time I start kind of poking the bear here like with some provocative actions. I got Trump coming in. We're one Trump press conference away from Trump's, you know, music. that maybe Kim Jong-un should take over South Korea as he's a strong leader. You know what I mean?

These are things that we have to start entertaining our head that this could actually if the chaos continues like this, present some kind of opportunity for at least a provocation from Kim Jong-un. It's certainly not good for the United States to have one of its anchor allies in Asia like admired in this kind of complete chaos. She, Tony Blinken was just there and he had to do a press conference, I think with the foreign minister. Yeah.

He kept getting asked about this. I mean, the news out of it was that Tony said 1,000 North Korean troops have been killed in Ukraine, which is a pretty eye-popping number, and also that the Russians were giving the North Koreans a bunch of technology, including, I think, military training equipment, including space and satellite technology, I think, as we sort of predicted on this show. But Tony's kind of like, has to account for why the U.S. made this big bet on Yun, in this reproachment between South Korea and Japan, what they thought was like a legacy issue. I'm sure that then when this trip was planned in the summer, it was like a legacy,

like a victory lap and yeah this is this is a mess I mean there's another way to put it and you know South Korea has been pretty resilient you know they resisted the coup attempt but they don't seem to have like a clear process for handling this phase of things or at least it's like the US it's like you said the you assume that someone's going to buy by the norms so like you assume this guy is going to present himself to the prosecutor's office or be arrested when people show up to arrest him and once one guy doesn't buy by the norms you're You're in like uncharted territory. That's exactly right.

And I read that it could take six months for the court to make a decision on whether to remove Yun. That creates a lot of space for trouble between now and then. And South Korean politics are extremely polarized. And conservatives are rallying around Yun in this moment because they hate the opposition and they like that he's fighting. And to your point about, you know, like the kind of institution's not working perfectly, the CIA was established in 2021 following the impeachment of President Park who was removed

in 2017 after a bunch of corruption and abuse of power charges. And so I clearly like they didn't work out all the kinks here. No, no. And again, like we always talk about South Korea as this like economic miracle as compared to North Korea because, you know, the armistice happens in 1953, ends the fighting but not the war. And fast forward in North Korea as this like backwards place where, you know, you can't see it from space in South Korea as this unbelievable, vibrant economy. But the, but that, that story is kind of incomplete. The truth is, that from 1953 to 1987, South Korea went through this series of kind of military coups and dictatorships and authoritarian and governments. And as recently as 1980, there were uprisings

put down by violent force by the Korean military where hundreds, if not thousands of people were killed, like depending on which account you believe. And by the way, I think the U.S. trained those South Korean troops and approved them being sent in to like put down this protest. So But there's just a very recent history of a martial law declaration ending very, very badly for South Korea. That's got to be terrifying. Yeah. I mean, this is a post-Cold War, you know, end of Cold War kind of democracy story. And we can't, you know, we have to expand our imaginations in this period of history.

You know, that these things aren't all settled, right? Like democracies don't always stay democracies. Wars aren't always prevented. This is, you know, what's so interesting me, Tom, is that you've got this vibrant economy in this incredibly almost like superpower pop culture, right, with K-pop and television. And yet their politics is an absolute dumpster fire right now. You know, I'm in a glass house here, so I'm not suggesting they're the only ones. But this is going to be...

You're a glass dumpster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is going to be hard to get out of it. And Japan is not exactly I have stable politics either. So this is not the best time for U.S. allies right now in Europe or Asia. get to Europe next. Yeah. And look, I don't, I don't fault the Biden administration for trying to push this rapprochement between South Korea and Japan. But you do need to wonder the degree to which it might have contributed to the polarization and the anger and just the kind of zero-sum nature of the

honestly. I mean, I wasn't inside, you know, those discussions now, obviously, but one of the reasons we pushed those rapprochments and we got meetings between the Japanese and South Koreans and the U.S. But one of the things that the South Green lead, both South Green presidents that we dealt in the Obama administration would tell us is, I can only go so far without inviting like a real backlash year. You know, so that's not the precise cause of this. I mean, there's all kinds of reach that this guy had. But it does show that particularly in democracies, you know, one thing we've all learned is

you can't overly personalize these policies around one person, you know, because if that one person isn't bringing everybody else along, it's not going to be durable. I mean, that's certainly what's happened to a lot of things I worked on. in government. For sure. Yeah. One day you're singing American pie at the state dinner. Yeah.

You got a human chain around your house, you know? Well, the good news is, Ben, Donald Trump's going to take charge and everything we fixed. So he did, he popped off a bunch over the break. He did a press conference today that really veered into crazy talk. So we were going to talk about those proposals seriously and cover them because I actually, I think they're quite serious. I think they're not musings. So I guess we should, we also just assumed the presidency before being sworn in. So that part complicates things. So let's start with the Greenland piece of this, Ben. So on December 22nd, Trump announced his pick to be ambassador to Denmark. It was a truth social post, of course. And in that post, he said, quote, for purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity, end quote. Folks probably, remember, Trump floated this idea back in 2019 as well. Greenland is currently an autonomous territory within the kingdom of Denmark, but it primarily self-governs except on matters of defense and foreign policy.

Greenland's Prime Minister, Muta Egggool, did not take kindly to Trump's post, responding by saying that the country is, quote, not for sale. And if anything, Trump seemed to add more fuel to the fire in the political movement for Greenland's full independence. Prime Minister's signal and a New Year's address that 2025 could be a year to remove, quote, the shackles of colonialism. But, you know, not helping matter. Don Jr. visited Greenland today. He went with Charlie Kirk, the little right-wing fascist, the TPP USA guy. and this other dipshit from the transition team to shoot video for his podcast, of course. By the way, the guy from the transition team is head of personnel. Yeah, the Sergio Gore is his name. Yeah, it's kind of random, right? Why is that guy there?

I don't know. Why that guy of all people? I think they all just like him. Like, he was like a normie, I think. Okay. Like, Rubio guy maybe, and he just kind of got his way into the club. So, like, on a policy level, Ben,

wanting to have ownership of Greenland is not crazy. I think thanks to climate change. Arctic Sea routes were opening up. Greenland is also melting and there's all these valuable natural resources, minerals, metals, et cetera. It hosts a U.S. base. But talking about it like Trump does is crazy. Here's a clip from Trump's press conference today, Tuesday the 7th. Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion? No. And can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is? Are you going to negotiate a new treaty?

Are you going to ask the Canadians to hold the vote? What is the strategy? I can't assure you, you're talking about Panama and Greenland. No, I can't assure you on either of those two. But I can say this. We need them for economic security. The Panama Canal is vital to our country. It's being operated by China.

China. And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn't give it to China. Greenland for national security purposes. I've been told that for a long time, long before I even ran, I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time. You have approximately 45,000 people there. People really don't even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security. That's for the free world. I'm talking about protecting the free world. You look at, you don't even need binoculars. You look outside, you have China ships.

all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We're not letting that happen. Whose binoculars is I talking about? Where would one be... Sarah Palin? Where would one be using the binoculars? I'm not sure.

From Greenland or from the United States? Iceland, maybe? I don't know. The question of there... Does you know about Google Earth? The question of there is David Sanger from the New York Times. Which makes it fun here, yeah. Very well. You can tell... David asked his question.

He gets the hard no. Like, the newsiest answer. Like, no, I will not rule out invading fucking Greenland. Panama, and you can tell it just doesn't register. Because that never happens. Like, people are usually careful. Oh, my God.

Yeah, this is wild. So, I'll get to the Panama. Yeah. I'll portion of this in a minute. I mean, again, like, he's probably blustering about a military invasion. I do not think he's kidding about wanting to control Greenland at all. I think this is going to be a relentless focus. And I'd say a couple of broad things that actually are going to apply to Panama too, but I'll, and then on Greenland.

First of all, you know, this is. is a classic case of, you know, Trump is, won't ever stand up to a guy like Putin, but he'll push around 50,000 people in Greenland or Panama, you know what I mean? Classic bully behavior, right? Denmark. Yeah, he's picking fights with Denmark and Panama and Canada. He would never actually pick a real fight with Russia or China. But then secondly, I actually am really worried about this. I mean, I literally spent a lot of time thinking about this because he's, what, 78 years old. I mean, if you apply the logic of any aging, narcissistic autocrat in all of human history,

they all believe they need territorial conquest to be remembered a certain way, right? To be on Mount Rushmore, to be a great leader. He's looking at Putin. He saw Putin take Crimea. Putin got a big boost in the polls. That kind of thing matters to Trump. I take this profoundly seriously. I believe him that he wants to get Greenland while he's president.

I truly believe he wants to do that. And the same thing is true with Panama. And by the way, it is like if the U.S. suddenly snapped its fingers and controlled Greenland tomorrow, there are tons of natural resources and strategic reasons why that would be beneficial. And I don't know what exactly his play is because it's not really for sale. Right. It's not like a real estate property that Denmark owns that they can sell to us. I think, you know, what he might want to do is to dangle a bunch of money in front of those 50,000 people.

like, well, you can be part of the United States and we'll pour some money into you. Well, he's probably trying to buy, I don't know what Don Jr. is doing over there. What he might be doing is, you know, in addition to drugs. Just kidding. What he might be doing is, yeah, no, just kidding. No libel happened here. Thailand is what I meant. Exactly.

We all take drugs like that on vacation. But, you know, find the person in Greenland who says, yeah, we want to be with the Americans, you know. And then suddenly you have a basis for a dispute. and you say, well, look, these people would rather be American. And so we can all laugh at this because it is kind of funny, but I also think that we'll be talking about this a lot in the coming weeks. You know, it sounds ridiculous in 2019. I think it's not at all.

And I think Bloomberg tried to take the idea seriously too, and I think they came to the same conclusion you did about how the process might work. Like, you'd kind of want or need Greenland to gain independence first and then decide to sell itself to the U.S. Yeah. They weren't thinking about the invasion option. I mean, they also tried to estimate the cost of Greenland. They noted that its GDP in 2021 was roughly $3.2 billion, and then it gets about $600 million a year from Denmark annually.

So I don't know how you value a country. But here's the thing. Every time he talks about it says it's a national security issue, I think that means he wants to put money in the defense budget. You know, so the defense budget's a trillion dollars. Yeah, it's easy. That is, you know, what X of, you know, the GDP of Greenland or the 550 million? dollar subsidy they get from Denmark. So there's a lot of money that he could play with here. But how do we do this valuation? We're doing a P.E. ratio or you're doing multiple on Ibit

or revenue. Square footage. You know, yeah. Greenland should call themselves a tech company. They get like a 20x multiple. I mean, the other thing is like Trump, we've seen him bust norms and get away with it, right? You guys had a great episode on January 6th yesterday. Why wouldn't he do the same thing internationally? Like, why wouldn't he roll up the U.S. Navy to wherever it can actually land in Greenland and just say it's ours? I mean, this is a man who, who looks at the same. I mean, this is a man who literally sent a mob to the capital and then got elected president. So you think he's worried about the norms against like invading Greenland? I don't think so.

No, I don't either. I think we should lease it though, just in case they were released a new Arctic model. Well, yeah, it's like it's like the electric cars, you know, like you got to wait for the battery to get better. So to your lease. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Uh, man, this is bad. This show was sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Trump said if the rates are not lowered, quote, we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the U.S. in full, quickly and without question. So some quick history and background on the Panama Canal. It was built between 1904 and 1914. The U.S. completed the project. It was started by the French. It spans 50 miles through like, you know, mountainous terrain. It required workers working in brutal conditions or rampant mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever and malaria. Tens of thousands of workers died over the entirety of the French.

an American construction effort, mostly workers from the Caribbean. The U.S. controlled the canal until Jimmy Carter signed two treaties in 1977 that handed over control of the canals of the Panamanians while also guaranteeing U.S. access to it. Panama took sole control of the Panama Canal in 1999. So for context, 14,000 ships go through the Panama Canal per year, including 40% of all U.S. container traffic. We make up 75% of the canal's total traffic. So there is some truth to the idea that rates have gone up. That is because there was an extreme drought that dried up the lake that allowed that, you know, has the water that goes into the canal and allows it to function. Thank you, climate change. I'm not aware of any evidence that the U.S. is being charged more money than other

countries. I don't know if you are. But, Ben, my theory for why Trump is obsessed with the Panama Canal is that he remembers when this was a huge political issue, right? It was before the Big Macs, the kind of hardened his brain and the Diet Coke. Reagan used to attack Jimmy. Carter on this all the time. The mantra was, we built it, we paid for it, and we're going to keep it. If you read any Rick Pearlstein book. I was going to, you stole my take. We read the same shit. Okay, no. So like, anyway, Carter, he called Carter. We called him a teaser. Keep going. It folded into, I think, Cold War hysteria about Russian influence and or Soviet influence in Latin America. But again, like, I see the strategic value of Greenland. I don't get being mad about the canal.

I think you're exactly right. And we did not coordinate these takes before. And people just, we actually totally agree on this one. I was thinking about Reagan Land, the Rick Pearlstein book. Unfortunately, I was consuming Rick Pearlstein's like Twitter fights with Mark Andreessen over the holidays. So that was sober. Which is kind of crazy. What did Pearlstein say that

Indrisen said at a dinner party? Something about OxyContin? Something about like people from like basically poor white people who read Hill Bell Age should like he's glad there's oxy. And video games to distract them from being so pathetic. Yeah, that's a shitty thing to say. It was a shitty thing to say.

A recent denies it. We should know. And he denies it. That's why there's a Twitter fight. It's actually kind of entertaining. But there is a, if people want to get more background, it's actually really worth reading the Penmont Canal section of that Reagan land book. Because it's kind of the origin of this kind of Uber right wing, fuck the world.

Jingoism. You know, jingoism. Reagan really did use it. He was flown around the country in like a private jet making these speeches about how awful this was a betrayal of everything. And that was clearly a time when Donald Trump was informative. He was soaking in. And I think basically what probably happened to your is, yes, China has more and more influence

in Latin America generally, not just Panama everywhere, right? Trump gets one briefing about how like the Chinese, you know, have some interest somewhere in the case, because they're not running the Panama Canal. He's lying about that. But they have, you know, they have the economic presence in Panama. He's like, fuck it, give it back to us, you know? And this is just red meat for right wingers. But so I don't think that there's some military play here.

I think I take Greenland more seriously. I actually think this is a much dumber play for him too because the Chinese do have more in more influence in Latin America and this is the kind of thing that is a gift to the Chinese. They go to Panama, they go to all these other countries, they say, look at the Americans, they're reverting back to their imperial, coal war, assholeish selves.

We're just trying to make deals down here. We're building you ports, you know? So I think the Trump years are going to be a massive boon to Chinese influence in Latin America because Latin America hates this shit. You know, the Panamanians, it's in their land. It's their canal. Like, not just because it's a treaty.

It's like, it's an absurd proposition in the United States would somehow be running like a piece of waterway in Panama in 2020. Or base in Cuba? Exactly. I thought the same thing, right? So I don't know. Like, I could see some dumb thing where he like puts sanctions or tariffs on Panama, but to what end? Like, what is he? I don't even get what he's asking for.

I don't either. Do we really want to operate the Panama Canal again with the U.S. military? Like, just to, you know, usher some container ships to do there? Do we want to connect? Do we want to collect fees on the Marisk shipping containers? Like, he's not even saying what he wants there. So I think this is kind of just weird right-wing red meat. But I don't know.

He'll do something, I assume. Right. And it's also worth noting that Reagan won the election. He became president for eight years. No, I know. He didn't take back the canal. We may just be the libsu just. point out that these things are

immoral and unethical while Trump vacuums up the canal in Greenland and gets his fucking face on Mount Rush. Yeah, but I think Reagan ultimately decided that, you know, okay, he was a big cold warrior. He was worried about Nicaragua and El Salvador and Soviet influence in other places and he thought

maybe I shouldn't actually rip off the Panamanians and try to make them an ally. And that was part of what, yeah, that was absolutely Reagan's calculus. That was certainly Carter's calculus. And again, Cold War thinking, this is dumb because the Chinese are going to get much more influence, not just in Panama, but across that region because of this. I was reading about the Panama Canal, just to go deep on this,

apparently when the French, it really is fascinating. It's an incredible engineering accomplishment done on the backs of, you know, massacring tens of thousands of people through a lot through mosquito-borne diseases, but also just unbelievable working conditions. These guys are like literally dynamiting mountains. The dynamite would go off too early. It would blow them up. There would be landslides, et cetera. When the French were working on the Panama Canal, they gave up eventually. All these people were getting sick. So they set up field hospitals.

And the patients in the field hospitals were lying in bed. And what would happen is, like these like army ants or something, would crawl up the bedpost and crawl all over them and it just drove them insane, right? So what the French did. It's like a war sphere. Truly. So what they did, though, was they put the four corners of the beds in little water cups, which prevented the ants from crawling up, but created the perfect grounds for mosquitoes to lay

their eggs. which drastically exacerbated the disease issue, the yellow fever and the malaria, et cetera. One of the innovations that the U.S. had was actually, I think, figuring out that these were mosquito-borne diseases, figuring out mitigation efforts, putting up screens in, like, the lowest paid workers, homes, like putting oil in standing water, et cetera, to try to defeat the diseases.

But yeah, nasty stuff. Yeah, well, now we want it back, I guess. Let's get that back. You know, Woodrow Wilson, I think as the one who pressed the button in the Oval Office that set off the dynamite, that detonated the dike that was holding back the water and finally flooded the canal. That's a cool thing to do. Have you seen the Panama Canal? No. It's pretty extraordinary.

Like we went, there was a summit of the Americas down there. And there are these huge locks, right? These huge things that, you know, the open and close and the ships go through. It's pretty cool. It is. So maybe Trump just wants to press the button and open and close the locks. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Let him open the thing. All right, Ben, we've talked about a bunch of ways the world kind of feels unsteady at the moment. One reason why is a guy named Elon Musk. So Elon, he's taken his global interference project, global. We talked about this a bit on POTSave America yesterday, but I think you and I could really geek out and dig in. But let's focus on Germany, the UK, Canada, anywhere else you want. In Germany, Elon has been attacking Chancellor Olaf Schultz, the Social Democrat.

He's endorsed the far-right AFD party, both on Twitter, And then in an op-ed, he wrote for this conservative online newspaper owned by Axel Springer, the same company that owns Politico in the U.S. Remember, though, all of these other political parties in Germany refused to work with the AFD because they are so extreme. German intelligence considers parts of the AFD and extremist group. And some of the leaders, they just keep accidentally using banned Nazi-era slogans at political rallies. Just like, you hate when that happens when a Nazi slogan just kind of slips out as you're campaigning in Thuringia.

in the UK, Musk has shown support for the right-wing reform party. He met with reform leader Nigel Farage at Mar-a-Lago. Farage said Elon floated donating up to $100 million to the reform party hilariously, though. Elon then said Farage, quote, doesn't have what it takes to lead reform because Farage isn't a fan of this violent right-wing thug named Tommy Robinson, who we can get into or not, depending on where this goes. Elon has been attacking Prime Minister Kier-Starmar and the Labor Party, most recently dredging up this horrible story. from over a decade ago, about 1,400 or more kids, young girls who were sexually abused in what came to be called the grooming gang scandal. It is a truly awful story. The local police failed to protect these kids on every level, in part because they were worried about singling out Pakistani men in a way that could be perceived as racist.

But Elon has decided to really pick up and demagogue this, ignoring the fact that the Tory party was, of course, running the government during this period. but Trump is saying like Elon Starmor is to blame. He deserves to be in prison, et cetera. And then finally in Canada, back in December, Elon tweeted about Pierre Polyev, the conservative party leader. He said, quote, seems great in response to a tweet from some Canadian professor about Polyev. That was a clip of him advocating for bombing Iran or supporting an Israeli military strike on Iran. I thought MAGA was anti-war now, but I guess not for Elon. So Ben, heads of state in France, Germany, Norway, and the UK, they've all responded to Elon Musk in some way in the press.

Here's a clip of Kier-Starmor responding to Elon's attacks at a press conference that was supposed to be about fixing Britain's National Health Service. On the question of Elon Musk, look, I think most people are more interested in what's going to have to the NHS, frankly, than what's happening on Twitter. those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible. They're not interested in victims. They're interested in themselves. So, Ben, I think the question here we should try to answer is why. Why do you think Elon is doing this? I honestly think that Elon has gotten, there's an ego answer and then a practical answer.

And the ego answer, he's gotten this taste of like world power and not. domination, you know? And I think he's got a personality type, everything that you see about the guy, that is kind of this boundless ego and ambition. And he feels clearly like he bought and won an election here. I'm sure that in his head, Elon Musk thinks he made the difference for Trump. And maybe he did, actually this. Certainly bought his place in the administration. And then he's looking at the world and he's seeing one thing that people have to understand, particularly our American listeners, is that there's not a lot of money in politics in these places. Like, nobody's ever spent 100% million dollars on a British election, not even close to it, right?

Germany, France. And if he can find ways, if you have unlimited, 100 million dollars to him is like a hundred bucks to you and me, right? If he can find ways to just plow money into places, he's like, well, I can become the global oligarch, not just the American oligarch. If I can start, you know, picking winners. Now, what he's picking is consistently the far right. I mean, the AFD in Germany, the National Front in France, like whatever nutcase, you know,

the reform party or even the nudier guy. in the UK, the right-wing guy in Canada. So that's, this is really dangerous. I mean, I think this, like Greenland, we have to take this seriously because Elon Musk has the money to do this. Now, what countries need to do is prevent it. It's illegal in the UK, for instance, for a foreigner to just donate $100 million to political party. What's not illegal, though, is you, you spend $100 million. You know, you set up a media outlet. You set up some NGO and it's all to promote the foreign party, but what these countries need to do if they're serious about this is to fortify their own electoral systems so that they're not like us, so that there's not, and we, the Supreme Court

decided. We're a cautionary tale. Yeah, we're the, don't become us. Like the Supreme Court and Citizens United allowed for unlimited money and unlimited dark money. But what he's showing us is this ambition to fuck around everywhere, this clear far right preference, right? This guy clearly has far right tendencies. Those are the only parties he's supporting. If I were to find a like a practical reason, you and I've talked about this offline a bit, Tommy, like he seems to want to be disrupting everything. And I think he believes that it will serve his economic interests, whether that's his investments that he's going to make into crypto, whether that's the kind of state like power of Starlink and Tesla and SpaceX. He clearly thinks disruption helps him in some way. I, I, I

I'm not inside of his businesses or what his ambitions are for crypto. I mean, if you like crypto and you see that as a place you're going to put more and more money, you kind of want governments to fail because then people don't rely on government currencies and they go to a place of crypto. So that could enter into it. But I take this versus. The last answer to tell me is, man, Elon Musk is simultaneously what people used to admire about the United States, like an immigrant entrepreneur who comes in as well. But this has got to make, people must fucking hate us.

By the end of the Trump term, like, I don't know how people are going to feel about the United States in most of these places. Because the arrogance of just going and messing around in their politics and with no regard even to the history. In Germany, you're talking about the AFT. You're talking about people with neo-Nazi roots. Just because it kind of entertains you online is really grotes. Yeah, I mean, we've talked a lot about the AFT. I mean, I think it's worth noting. Tommy Robinson, this kind of online pot-stirring extremist in the UK.

He was too extreme for Nigel Farage. I think Farage left the UK party because they were obsessed with Tommy Robinson. Who's a comparison? It'd be like that, who's at any semi who went to Mar-a-Lago and had like Nick Fuentes? Nick Fuentes. It's like that level of trolley fucking goon, right? Yes, if Nick Fuentes was mixed with a soccer hooligan who was really violent and gotten lots of fights and had gone to jail a bunch of times, I think there was some domestic abuse,

I think there was a big mortgage fraud thing. It's like Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, and, yeah. And the irony about Tommy Robinson, I think, like, sensibly, Elon says he likes him because he's standing up to the grooming gangs and, like, fighting the woke forces that allowed them to fester. Tommy Robinson went to one of the trials of these grooming gangs, filmed it in contravention of British rules that are supposed to keep the jury from getting tarnished or learning about things that are happening. and also rules they have set up to protect the identity of victims and was live streaming it, and they arrested him for that. And his actions that day almost got the case overturned. So we almost helped get these guys off for their horrific abuse of children because of his action.

So like the idea that he is some noble, you know, protector of young kids is like completely backwards. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing, you know, I was ruminating on this over the break too with friend and lawyer of the pod, Mike Gottlie. You know, you look at Elon right now, and I think part of what is probably weighing on people, you know, certainly Potty of the World listeners, is like, they're winning. Like, they're winning. Like, they're these fucking ketamine-taking crypto-brough assholes, right, who like live in a world with no values and no guardrails and no behavioral constraints, like, we have to acknowledge that

they're winning. They run the United States of America as of, you know, a couple weeks from now. And right now you see even the media does not process it, you know, like, so it's, you know, it's like, what is Elon, you know, there's a kind of a, because people kind of worship wealth and celebrity in this country, it's viewed as interesting and not dangerous that Elon is doing all this. Nobody's pointing out that, you know, know, if Barack Obama or Joe Biden or George W. Bush, by the way, had like the richest person in the world hanging out with them with huge government responsibilities, with huge conflicts of interest and huge ambitions to meddle in the politics of other countries on the far right

parties, the world would have like imploded. And now it's like, how interesting is this, right? I acknowledge that they're winning. I acknowledge that they just won. I acknowledge that more people want them to be in charge than want Democrats to be in charge. That does not make it right. And that does not mean that they're going to win in the end, whenever the end is, right? And we have to remind ourselves of that. These people want to create a sense of inevitability that they have so much money and so much power that it's just going to be their world. And I don't think we have to accept that. And that's why I think it's good, you know, if I was Schultz and not that Schultz is going to be around for that long, then McCrone and Starmor and all. They, they better protect

themselves while they can. Yeah, I want to talk about the response. I was thinking about the theories of Y, too. It's like, maybe he's a genuinely unstable guy who does like, drugs and spends too much time on Twitter and is easily swayed by a right-wing adjutaprop. Maybe he is kind of a fascist and just has like a genuine like for these people. Maybe he's softening up leaders that Trump doesn't like on Trump's behalf in some way. Maybe there's a business interest. I know Tesla's got a manufacturing plant in Germany. I don't know if that's relevant.

Misinformation on Twitter played this big role in those far right riots in the UK last summer when Elon is tweeting things like civil war is inevitable. that led to a government crackdown on misinformation on social media, which I imagine, you know, hits him in his pocket because of, you know, the financials of X. Regardless, I'm with you, like, these leaders need to figure out a way to respond. I think Starmor was good in his press conference the other day on the facts of this case. But the problem for him is Elon doesn't care about the facts and he's going to move on to the next thing and just keep demagoguing them. Olaf Schultz said something like, you don't feed the trolls.

And I just think that is so. wrong mentality. That's, yeah. It's not going to go away. That's like resistance 1.0 thinking all off. You know, like we got to, you know, what you need to do is get, I mean, what I'd be doing is fortifying the barriers to foreign money in politics because that's a practical thing you can do.

But you, you're more like in this, you know, whatever verse. I mean, I think you raised a really important question, Tommy. Like, is Elon Musk in, like, the conductor of this social media, like, you're, like, Netherworld or has he had his own brain broken by it? Yeah. And I don't know. That's a scary question because I don't know the answer to it. I think it's a really important question.

And judging by the people he constantly interacts with, I think it like leans the ladder. Yeah. Like he can tweak the algorithm behind the scenes, but he's like responding to just weirdos. Yeah. I mean, this is a guy like, you know, cat turd takes like seem to really land with him. Someone pointed out, I was reading an article that pointed out that he was fighting with a parody account for the cat that lives outside number 10 about free speech in the UK. It's like, what is it happening here? But I was texting with a friend who's got like high up connections

at labor. And like I kind of think what Kier Starber needs is some burly drunk guy from Liverpool on the street shouting something like fuck off billionaire Elon Twat and have that go viral and be the framing around everything to do with his meddling in UK politics. Like you got to fight nationalism but nationalism. You need some new, yeah, you need some new tactics and new approaches here,

like beyond just don't feed the trolls. I mean, and the reality is, this is not going to go away. It's like the Greenland thing. Like these guys, these tech pros have a taste for, you know,

they've always thought they could run things better than the politicians, right? And now, I think a guy like Elon thinks that the opening is there for him to actually try to run the world, you know,

and then Mark Andresens of the world and the David Sackses. Like, they, these guys, like... They made an investment. They're VCs. Yeah, and they think they know better than the rest of us how to run things,

and, you know, they're going to try to run countries. Last thing that's kind of fun, Ben, on the Trump stuff. So he, they named a Fox News host named Tammy Bruce to be the State Department of spokesman. Did you see that she has all these tweets attacking Marco Rubio?

She caught him at Little Marco seven times. She referred to him as, quote, a kid waving frantically in the back of the room trying to prove relevance. She called him. a tool of the establishment and an inexperienced senator who's never run a thing in his life. If you want proof that Marco Rubio, I was talking to somebody who, like, is in one of these places where they kind of like Marker Rubio's foreign policy more than Trump's. So they're like,

well, don't you think Rubio? I'm like, this guy from day one, Trump is going to set out, not only will Rubio not have any influence, but they're going to humiliate him. I mean, you know Trump doesn't forget this stuff. Like Trump didn't forget the 2016 election. So he's basically going to humiliate this guy and this selection proves it. The new spokeswoman for the State Department in 2016 said she, quote, had to mute Marco. I think that tells you all you need to know about how she'll approach the job. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do, it has been four years since the insurrection, and we're still examining the reach and the limits of presidential power.

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We talked about the Trump administration. Let's talk about the Biden administration, starting with Sudan, Ben. Earlier today, Tuesday, Secretary of State Tony Blinken released a statement on the Civil War in Sudan, which has been raging since April of 2023. Blinken said that one of the main paramilitary forces in the conflict, the RSF or rapid support forces, had committed genocide, so a big determination. The statement says in part, quote, the RSF and allied militarily, have systematically murdered men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis, and deliberately

targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people, escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing life-saving supplies. So a very clear-cut statement there. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Sudan in the civil war. Millions have been displaced in the course of the two years of this conflict. So Ben, just reading this a couple thoughts. I mean, obviously, first, we should talk about it, but this genocide declaration is going to infuriate anyone who wants to see Biden do something to stop the killing in Gaza or put any pressure on the Israelis to stop bombing. Right. Second, it was notable,

look, I'm glad they did this. It was notable, though, that this statement didn't put any real pressure on the UAE for funneling arms, the RSF. I can't remember if we talked about it on the show. There was that weird letter from the White House, from Brett McGurk to Congress saying, quote, despite reports we have received suggesting the contrary has occurred to date, the UAE has informed the administration that it is not now transferring any weapons to the RSF and will not do so going forward. Sure seems to just, that all seems to absolve them from fueling this war. It's complete bullshit.

I mean, the New York Times has a tremendous investigation where they used, you know, all kinds of sources, including over-at imagery and things. And actually, even, you know, some of the companies that are sanctioned by the Biden administration have these connections. of the way the UAE transit sings across, you know, Africa. So to do this while running interference with the Emirates, I'm sorry. I mean, like, I'm glad they called this out. But, you know, ultimately, you have to, if this is a genocide,

then presumably the people that are supporting the genocide should be held accountable. Now, I know that Gaza echo is probably not good for the Biden administration either, right? So I don't know, I guess like this is useful in spotlighting the horrific nature of the RSF. We should also point out that they are the kind of legacy of the John Deweed, who were also found to be committing a genocide in Darfur way back when. These are some of the same characters, you know, and it may put additional pressure on the RSF internationally, and that's good. But ultimately, you know, if you don't go after the people, the sources of support for the RSF, it's not going to be as impactful.

Yeah, I was talking to an expert that we used to work with about Sudan before the break, who was telling me that the key to ending this war, it sounds like both sides know that this has gotten to a really bad place and there's not going to be a clear-cut military victory, but you have to stop the UAE from arming the RSF. But associated with that, you have to stop this flow of gold from Sudan into the UAE.

But Sudan is, I believe, the fifth largest producer of gold in the world. And apparently nearly all of it flows through the UAE or the Russians. And now Sudan's doing all of its banking at Emirati banks. You have this weird scenario where there's RSF controlled gold mines and they're flowing all that gold into the UAE. But also the government is doing its banking in the UAE. So they're sort of like funding both sides of this thing. There's complicating things even more. The Saudis have an interest in Sudan.

They get most of their meat and wheat from Sudan. So they want a compliant regime. The Egyptians have these. deep military ties with Sudan. I think the current military leader of Sudan, like, went to military academy with General Sisi. And also the Egyptians want to make sure that the Nile is not messed with in any way because it flows through Sudan up into Egypt. So long story short, it's this massive proxy war. And I think the challenge for the Biden team is Tom Perielo is trying his best to conduct some diplomacy. But he needs to be able to elevate this and get these regional

actors to move, like the Saudis and the UAE in Egypt. And I think those actors probably know, those countries probably know that there were higher priorities. Yeah. Yeah, constantly. And especially the UAE, there are other U.S. farm policy interests that are higher. The only I'd say here is, I just don't understand. The U.A., they have so much money. Like, they can weather the hit of a couple gold mines or whatever the thing is that is their interest here. So this is the deal that I would like to see, you know, I'm not hopeful that Donald Trump's going to prioritize it. No, I'm with you. You know, I'd like to see Donald Trump call NBC and say, let's cut this guy off and, you know, like if you want to get credit for something, let's try to get credit for this.

Make another part of the Abraham Accords or something. Like, sir, this could be a historic thing. You know, you solved this genocide problem that Joe Biden couldn't. Like, whatever it takes to stuff to fighting. Whatever it takes, just stop this killing. Although this person I was talking to made the point to me that Trump will probably want something for it. You know what I mean? He'll demand like a cut. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, back to Gaza, Ben. So things in Gaza remain horrible. Over 100 Palestinians were reportedly killed in airstrikes over the weekend.

The Washington Post had this absolutely gutting report on how at least seven infants have died in Gaza by freezing to death due to the cold. Trump keeps threatening that all hell will break loose in the Middle East if there's on a ceasefire and hostage release deal. He keeps saying that all hell will break loose. I don't know what that means. I mean, it kind of already broke loose in October 7th. Yeah, hell has been loose. there's the reports that Hamas maybe is agreed to release these 34 hostages as part of a follow-on-seas-fire deal. But then there's other reporting.

I think it was in the Times that said that Israel says they need more information from Hamas about which hostages are alive and how they'd get out. So it is all just unbelievably depressing and tragic and infuriating. And depending on what Trump means by all how will break loose could get a lot worse. Yeah, but I don't, first of all, it just seems less than less likely that there is going to be like a big ceasefire for hostages deal. But there may be something, right? It may not be all the hostages and it may not be a permanent ceasefire. So there may be something that is more incremental. I don't know what he means, though, because does he mean the U.S. will get involved directly militarily?

Right. Because Israel can't really unleash any more hell than is life in Gaza right now. So it does seem like I think what I take from his message may be more to the other regional players. Because he, you know, Qatar and Egypt and like I want this done by the time I get in and you guys have to deliver it for me. You know, so I think he's probably just trying to brush back those countries. But ultimately, as we've seen, it's really just two voices here. It's Netanyahu and Hamas. And we frankly don't even know what Hamas's kind of command structures for this anymore.

I think it's like Sinwar's brother. Do they, yeah, do they know where all the hostages are? Like, there's some questions there. We'll see. But, I mean, I see that threat as more just like at everybody else to get their shit together. But I think they've been trying. That just doesn't mean you can get it done. It's excruciating.

I do think they are, the Biden team has tried to broker a deal. It is very hard to read, you know, some of these quotes by these. sort of exit interviews by various senior officials, where there's still this line that only Hamas is the hold up in these hostage talks when like, no, the hostage families don't believe that. The hostage families are the last ones to believe it. So you're kind of gaslighting the hostage families who are like, we, we, they've been briefed by people. You had the former Minister of Defense of Israel saying this. I mean, so I do think if something happens, the people that have incentive to deliver for Trump the most are these regional actors, like Qatar, you.

Egypt and Italy. So if it happens, watch it happen on like January 20th, like Carter hostage style. Right. Like, because they want to humiliate Biden. Right. And by the way, Hamas probably wants to humiliate Biden too, right? And so I think if a deal gets done, my guess would be it happens literally like right before or maybe even on inauguration day. But that doesn't fix Gaza. Like it's still just as big a mess. The best, that'd be great to get the hostages home and hopefully get some aid in, but if Trump thinks that this is going to go away as a, you know, quote unquote problem, it's not.

I think it will go away insofar as he will ignore it. And activists, he just will not listen to activists who talk about the humanitarian situation. Yeah, and media attention. And there will be a long term. Mediattentional drift on. Yeah. It will lead to extremism and a massive cost down the road that we will all pay for in some way,

shape or form. We will all pay for this. We will all, this is not, I mean, we'll come back to this obviously, but this is not, this is not a victory. this is going to have consequences or not. Catastrophic. Moral and others. The big, the other big sort of opportunity or crisis, depending on how you look at it,

that Trump is inheriting, is Syria. I think it's more of an opportunity than crisis, frankly. So the administration issued this week what's known as a general license exemption that will allow some transactions with the new government in Syria for six months in order to allow the sale in supply of natural gas, petroleum, electricity, and other energy because they've been obviously suffering from constant blackouts and other massive infrastructure needs. The Treasury Department said that this general license will also apply to other essential services like water and sanitation. So it's basically like a partial time-limited sanctions

waiver. It's not a removal of U.S. sanctions. It's not a lifting of the designation of HTS as a terrorist organization. It's just kind of a half measure that is trying to help a little bit in the near term, but mostly hunting the decision to Trump. So that's one big policy update when it comes to sort of U.S. policy towards Syria. The other thing that I think is, worth noting is this interview you flagged Ben, which was with this close aid and former chief of Bashar al-Assad. He talks through some of the details of those last days. The best part, if you're just an Assad hitter like we are, is that Assad went to Moscow. Putin made him wait two days before giving him a one-hour meeting and then send him back. And then as, you know,

Assad's in back in Syria watching city after city fall, Putin wouldn't take his calls. And and would just, you know, unavailable, would not also guarantee to provide support to the Iranian military if they came in to save their regime's ass. So with friends like these. Well, it was really nice to read that thread. And actually, you can see the whole interview if you speak Arabic. But in picture Assad sitting there trying to get Putin on the phone. The moment when Assad realized it was all over that I would have liked a GoPro in the room, that would be good to see. I will say the general license is a classic Washington half measure.

I've been involved in general licenses in the past because the problem with it is you're keeping the sanctions in place. You're just saying we are going to provide a license for anybody to do these things related to these. We do this on Cuba because we couldn't get Congress to lift the embargo. We did these licenses for certain things. The problem with that is that nobody will invest in Syria. The business is. Because, yeah, because they still see a sanction. And they're like, well, why the fuck would we invest here if in six months this could go back to being insane?

sanctioned. They're still technically sanctioned. You're just saying I can do this stuff. So what this will allow is you saw some shipments from Qatar and Turkey, which who seem to be the closest governments to HDS, allowing for electricity and fuel and stuff like that to get in. So it'll be good to kind of meet immediate needs around things like energy, but it's not going to allow for investment and reconstruction essentially to go forward. That requires lifting the sanctions. And punning that to Trump, I mean, I don't know why you wouldn't, again, I know HGS is flawed. There's some bad characters associated with it.

There's some tensions happening within the opposition. My whole approach is this has always been lift the sanctions, try to get the best bet to get people in there to stabilize situation, start to rebuild. And if you start to see creepy behavior, you can, everything can go in place tomorrow. You can just take the existing sanctions and just reactivate them. So I would rather lift them, but this is better than nothing. Yeah, it's better than nothing. I mean, I think the reason you wouldn't lift them.

them is political risk? Political risk and I guess leverage, you know, like they would probably argue that you need to incentivize good behavior by HGS over time. But I don't know, like they're never going to be perfect. Like no. Like what government and the world like doesn't do things we don't like? I mean, you have to allow for flaws in this government. It's better than Assad.

Yeah. I'd like to see better than Assad work out rather than it be another civil war because they can't fucking do anything because they are sanctioned. I've seen some people argue that, uh, this outcome, the brittleness of the Syrian military and regime generally is, you know, an indication that sanctions worked. I'm not really sure that's at all true. I, I think it harm to Syrian people while the, while Assad set up a massive drug production and Capiton operation as somebody's government.

Yeah, someone who's there when the sanctioning was put in place. So I would have an interest to me like, oh, look at what we did. No, it had nothing to do with that. Like he was making the, the, the, the, The rest of the country suffered, and he's making money on some weird enphetamine trades. Billions dollars off Capiton. Finally, Ben, there's one thing I think Biden does deserve a lot of credit for, which is the Pentagon announced, I think this was Monday. The Medal of Freedom to Ralph Floreen.

Yeah. Funny the Pentagon gave that award up. They announced that they moved 11 many many prisoners to Oman this week from Gitmo to Oman, which now brings down the total number of those detained at Gitmo to 15. It's the-so ridiculous. I know. It's the smallest of Gitmo population. has ever been. It's down from 40 detainees at the start of the Biden administration. This deal itself has been years in the making. It sounds like, though, per usual, Congress stepped into block.

I guess they had a plane on the runway in like 2023 and Congress fucked it up and kept these guys in detention. Look, this is an imperfect solution. Oman had 28 detainees, took in 28 detainees years ago. I think they expelled them last year. People are understandably upset about that. But I think like the war in Afghanistan, Gitmo is a mess that Biden inherited. I'm just going to give him credit for doing everything he can to close it down because it is a stain on our justice system, our military, our intelligence community. It's a colossal waste of money to stand on us in the Obama administration for fucking up the politics and not getting this thing closed. Obviously, Congress is the reason for that. They passed laws that made it impossible to transfer people to the

U.S. or the military justice system was a disaster and we weren't allowed to use Article III courts to prosecute prisoners. There's a whole back story. You're bringing back all this PTSD. But good for Biden for starting to move to get these guys out of there. Good for Biden. The absurdity of there being 15 people in this prison that we spend like hundreds of millions of dollars on. Like half a billion.

You know, just to stick it to Barack Obama. Like, like, Brock Obama hasn't even been president in eight years. I can't think of another reason that Lindsay Graham and all these goons. These aging terrorists down there are not so, I mean, it was always absurd that we couldn't move them to a supermax prison in the United States because what they're going to bust out like Kali Sheikh Mohammed's going to like run through the wall like the thing or something. This is about politics and it's about sticking it to Obama. Obama said he closed it.

It's so stupid that we're still doing this eight years later. But it's good. Like the lower that number gets, the more absurd this whole proposition is in the first place that we sold or spending half a billion dollars just to keep a prison open in Cuba to make some point, which I've even lost track of like what the point is we're making. I don't know what the point is either. I mean, I think the challenge is that you have, you know, a handful of actual terrorists who did bad things and our ability to prosecute. Yeah, you're a court. Yeah, yeah, KS. I'm there and we can't prosecute these guys, be a lot of them

tortured because the military commission system is a flawed disaster and we can't use Article 3 courts. But then there were a bunch of guys there. Why can't we use Article 3? That's what's so stupid. I don't know. Well, but, look, this is one of those things where I was thinking about this recently because it is true like people always yelled me about how we didn't close the gammon. I'm like Congress basically passed a law in the first year of the Obama administration saying you couldn't transfer this is one where I like admire Trump you know maybe that's not admirers the wrong word you love that guy Obama no Obama should just said fuck you I'm going to put these people on a plane and move you know like like we were being super normie about it you know

like by normie I don't mean normal I mean like norms lovers right and it's like you know what like fuck you it's stupid that we have a prison down there we got plenty of prisons in the U.S. or in other U.S. territories. And like, we're just going to move these people. Like, like, we, it's crazy how much time has been put in by democratic lawyers and the Obama and Biden administration to negotiate these transfer deals to places like Oman when we should just fucking put these people on a plane to anywhere other than Guantanamo. I know.

And a lot of, full stop. I mean, four of the current members, and this Carol Rosenberg has done amazing. Always, she's a terrific reporter for, for decades. And it was like the, the guimaux queen of the beach. The Anne Seltzer, oh, I shouldn't say that anymore. And Seltzer? Pictures down. Yeah, yeah, we got that.

But I meant in the same, she's got that thing where she just owns this. In a way that Anne Seltzer, like, owned Iowa polling. Like, she owns Gatmo. Like, Charlie Savage used to own the, like, legal. Yep, yep. But she pointed out that, you know, there's now 800 troops and civilian contractors at Gittmo, 53 guards and other staff members for every detainee. Just, it's so stupid.

It's absurd. And a lot of these guys who had been held there, not this current, not who's left now, but a lot of people had been held there, like, didn't do anything had been cleared for transfer. Yeah, it's so stupid. Just couldn't figure out a place to send them.

It was just such a stain on the country. So good for Joe Biden for, yeah, moving to get these guys out. There you go. Well, we just went for an hour 15. We had no guest today because we knew we had a lot of shit. So maybe we just hit it and there.

Yeah, no, it's good, good, God. See, Marine Le Penh's dad died? He was still alive. Rest in peace, you're Nazi piece of shit. Yeah, talk about a, you know, bad guy. Bad, that guy.

Roots in like the, you know, suppression of Algerians and it's not good. Yeah, bad dude. So anyway, some good news, I guess. All right. Naprilan Musk, yeah. I know, sorry, sorry, Elon. That's it from us today. Next week, maybe we'll talk about the drumbeat for war with Iran that's happening in the media.

It's not going to go away. You know, at the end of the year is when all the newspapers do their like real big deep dive investigations. I think try to get Pulitzer. Is it like Pulitzer season? Yeah. It's like the movies. Like really say Academy Award, but, you know, movies.

Yeah, you click the link and you look at it and it says listening time like 20 minutes and you're like, oh, we're going deep on like the Hezbollah Intel here or like all that TikTok on Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll get to some of that. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Talk to you soon. See.

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