Pod Save the World - Foreign lobbying and what Bob Woodward taught us about Trump's foreign policy

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

Two part show this week! First, Tommy talks with the Wall Street Journal's Julie Bykowicz about new and insidious ways foreign countries are lobbying the Trump administration. Then, Tommy is joined by Vox's Alex Ward to discuss North Korea, revelations in Bob Woodward's book, new theories about what harmed diplomats in Cuba, and Burma.

Hello again, Pod Save the World listeners. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you for tuning in and listening to the show. We have a two-part potse of the world today that I think you will enjoy. First, I talk with Julie Bikowitz. She's a national reporter at the Wall Street Journal. And she wrote a fascinating story last week in the Wall Street Journal about how the government of Qatar is trying to lobby and influence President Trump by getting to know all these people around him and influence them directly, which is a huge break from how traditional lobbying. is done and a disconcerting end run around transparency rules and legal requirements. And the second piece is a conversation with Alex Ward, who's a staff writer at Vox. He covers international security and defense issues and he hosts the worldly podcasts. We do just a grab bag of things that are in the news this week, from North Korea to a whole bunch of the juiciest excerpts on foreign policy from Bob Woodward's new book to a report in the New York Times about the way the Cuba sonic attacks may have occurred and more. We covered a lot of ground this week. There was a lot in the news, but I will catch you up with just one episode.

What other podcasts can promise you that. So if you enjoy the show, rate and review us in the iTunes store. And here are the interviews. Julie, you had an amazing piece at the Wall Street Journal last week about how the government of Qatar is trying to influence the Trump administration's foreign policy. And foreign lobbying is hardly new, but I don't know that it's widely understood in its current iteration. But what Qatar is doing to try to reach President Trump is strange and insidious, in my opinion. So I was hoping we could start by just a quick overview of what they care about and what they're doing to solve that problem. Why is Qatar feverishly lobbying the Trump White House right now? Sure. It all started last June when President Trump sort of unexpectedly sided with Cutter's rivals that blockaded the tiny country.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and several other countries decided in June of last year to block Qatar financially and diplomatically. And where President Trump comes in is even though the State Department, intelligence agencies, the Defense Department, all were trying to stay a little bit out of this squabble in the Mideast, President Trump sort of dove in there and said that he essentially sides with Congress. Cutter's rivals. It really sort of took people's breath away, especially Qataris, who thought that they could view the U.S. as an ally or at least someone that would be sort of neutral in this sort of fight. So to regroup from that, they decided to hire slew of lobbyists, which is a pretty typical response to a foreign policy problem. But where they started to get a little more creative was they drilled down to President Trump himself deciding that they needed to try to get inside his head and convince him that Qatar is not a bad guy and is actually someone who was a friend of the U.S. and could be

trusted. And they decided that the best way to do that was to get to people around the president, people who are Marilago resort members where Trump frequently vacations, people who were business associates of him in New York, friends of his, people who are loosely associated with the White House. And this is just a really unique approach to lobbying in general and in particular foreign lobbying. Yeah. So, I mean, a normal lobbying operation. I mean, you have an embassy and an ambassador in Washington, but you can also hire a lobbyist to help you meet the right people. You can develop policy papers. You can hold events at think tanks. But these guys, they made this

list of 250 Trump influencer that includes random citizens that are thought to be friends with him. Alan Dershowitz was on there. Does this create a totally new and unaccountable way of influencing key decisions? It's definitely a new path in that, you know, like you said, these are in some ways random citizens. And it's sort of reflective of how the president, this particular president approaches lots of different policy decisions. He turns to sort of an eclectic kitchen cabinet of advisors, you know, people he just knows and has known over the years, people he can feel comfortable with and call up on the phone for their thoughts. And so it was up to the Qatari lobbyist to determine, you know, who exactly would be the people that the president would be most likely to

listen to. And they thought of this not as like, let's have. these people directly tell the president an opinion. Let's just try to get to him through, you know, columns they write in publications that we think the president reads, tweets that we think that the president might see that might surface on his own Twitter account, radio shows that the president is known to listen to. So it was a little bit of an indirect route into the president's mind. I think there are only indirect routes these days. Just to put a dollar figure on it, You report that Qatar spent $16.3 million on lobbying in 2017 in the U.S. Is that a relatively high number for a country, or how does that rank?

That's a great question. So comparing it to its own previous lobbying over the years, just a year before, it spent about $4.2 million. So it was a big increase in its own spending. And it put it much more on par with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in what those two countries have disclosed as their lobbying budgets from year to year. And that's, you know, Qatar, when the embassy was talking with me for this story, really emphasized that they just hadn't felt that they had to spend that kind of money before this blockade and before the president's reaction to the blockade.

And so they were playing a little bit of catch-up, you know, and their response was to be both creative and also just to do the traditional, let's spend lots of money in lots of different ways, root. Right. I mean, so traditionally if you lobby for a foreign country or foreign entity in Washington, you have to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Farah. So there is some disclosure and transparency, you know, around whether lobbyist Bob Smith is working for the government of Saudi Arabia

or wrote an op-ed for Qatar. But another part of this that interested me is they were paying to bring all these officials to Qatar for visits for these tours to sort of butter them up. One of the people that got paid off is Mike Huckabee. You all know him as the least funny joke writer on Twitter. He's a Trump defender. He has a terrible TV show. His daughter is the press secretary.

He got 50 grand for a visit, for an honorarium to visit Qatar. Did he have to disclose that at all or did that come out through your reporting? Well, it was a little bit like putting a puzzle together. So one of the lobbyists in this story, Joey Alehem, who's actually, one of the featured people that I talked to. He's the one who sort of went out and recruited all of these Trump influencers to try to get them to visit Doha. He originally didn't even register with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent. And that became a problem for him because, you know, this is a very high-stakes fight. And so the other countries involved were sort of scouring to see

what they could learn about anyone and everyone who was involved in the campaign. And so through a lawsuit of all things, involving an email hack of a person who is related to the United Arab Emirates through business interests, that sort of surfaced Joey as someone who was doing work on behalf of Qatar. Joey turned around and many months after he should have registered as a foreign agent, and it was through his filings, which again, he originally did not make as required that we learned about some of the people who were being paid to visit Doha. And among that group was former Governor Huckabee's consulting firm. Again, I can't stress enough how bad Mike Huckabee's Twitter jokes are. They're really

the most offensive part about this conversation. So my final question for you, like, is this the new normal, the sort of creative new ways of lobbying President Trump that make an end run around the traditional system or infrastructure, places like the State Department and traditional disclosure laws and focus more on things like Fox and Friends segments or Mar-a-Lago membership or, you know, getting close to Rudy Giuliani and his golf buddies. Is that the way lobbying is kind of trending or other countries going to do this? Well, it's certainly, you know, in some cases, clear that the most direct and effective saying that an interest group or a country can do is convince the president that they are in the

right. And so to that end, we are seeing more interest kind of pop up with commercials on Fox and Friends, drink Fox and Friends. I think everyone knows based on the president's Twitter account that he is an avid, some might say religious watcher of Fox and Friends. And so lobbyists also know that and are encouraging their clients to go ahead and advertise on Fox. Twitter is becoming more important, geolocating certain tweets to target Mara Lago members. You know, lobbyists are just having to get creative because government right now is so centered on one particular person, not even just a branch of government, but one person within that branch. And that, of course, is the president. Man, that is unnerving.

Well, Julie, thank you for doing the show. It was an incredible report. Everyone should check it out in the Wall Street Journal. and thank you for helping us understand all the ways many people, including foreign actors, are trying to legally influence our government. It is something we need more awareness of, that's for sure. Thanks for having me. When we come back, my interview with Alex Ward from Fox.

Alex, you recently reported that President Trump promised Kim Jong-un that he would sign a declaration to end the Korean War. A quick reminder that the Korean War ended with an armistice, but not an official peace treaty. So technically, they would need this next. step to happen. Why is this promise creating problems now for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as he tries to hammer out the final details of the deal with North Korea? Sure. So it kind of breaks down to the current impasse in the negotiations, right? The United States wants North Korea to give up all of its nuclear weapons and give a list of its entire arsenal, its facilities, et cetera,

and North Korea wants a peace treaty. And so when Trump tells Kim Jong-un that he would sign a peace declaration. What that really means is that Trump would be moving in the direction of giving North Korea what it wants, that moving in the direction of the peace treaty. And that's a big deal for Pompeo, because Pompeo consistently has been authorized to ask for a lot of weapons up front from Kim Jong-un. And basically this comes down to the North Korean saying, your president has told us that he's going to sign this declaration. Why are you asking us for all of our weapons? And quite literally has told Pompeo in the room, call your president. So Trump, Trump has caused a massive issue from Pompeo.

And at this point, it almost seems like they don't want to deal with Pompeo, but would rather deal with Trump himself. So what it seems like we're learning is not only was nothing accomplished at the Singapore summit, even though President Trump declared shortly afterwards that the threat from North Korea's nuclear weapons program was now gone. But it sounds like, in fact, we may have given up far more than we initially understood because he made this promise to sign a peace declaration in the North Koreans or dragging their feet on doing anything meaningful in a nuclear program until that piece of the sequencing is done, right?

Right. And sequencing matters of great deal to North Korea. If we actually look at the document that Trump and Kim signed in Singapore in June, what it actually shows, if you look at the four points, the talks about peace come first, are the first two points. The denuclearization bit actually comes second. So if you're the North Koreans, you're thinking Trump is promised he's going to sign this declaration to the Singapore document says that this. peace and normalization of relations comes before we give up our weapons. So what is Pompeo talking about when he meets with us? It's no wonder then that they are so angry and that they'd rather deal with Trump directly. Which brings us back to a point that you guys make a lot on worldly, that I hear about a lot on the weeds, which is that details matter. And this is a pretty big detail. And the hard part of the negotiation was now handed to Mike Pompeo. And it reminds me of an anecdote from Bob Woodward's new book that leaked out today where he talks about an NSA meeting on North Korea with Trump, where he questioned why we're spending any money in the region to begin

with. And he showed, apparently, according to Woodward, so little understanding of the issues that Secretary of Defense Matt has complained that he sounded like a fifth or sixth grader. We've heard anecdotes like this since Trump first took office, but now it seems clear that he is actually screwing up negotiations when he tries to go in there by himself and meet one-on-one with Kim Jong-un or with Putin. Are you hearing any increased concern among Republicans of Congress or people at the State Department about the handling of these like fraught critically important national security issues? I mean, well, first, you mentioned the Woodward book. I think what we've learned not just the North Korea bit, but from generally is that it seems worse than we thought.

Yeah. On North Korea itself, you're basically hearing everyone say, well, we're at an impasse. It's usually the North Koreans, you know, they're at fault. They're the once-on negotiations. And look, you can make a fair argument about that. I mean, for decades, North Koreans have been cheating on talks. They've been lying. And frankly, they could be using Trump's promise as a way to drive a wedge between Trump and Pompeo. So it's possible that this is a bit overblown. But let's be real.

If Trump is promising to sign a declaration, both in person to Kim and has signed a document that says so, then it seems crazy that the U.S. at least has not coordinated on its end to work on that process before anything else to make those kind of dual commitments and then say, oh, no, we want your weapons up front before we do anything else. I don't blame the North Koreans for feeling at least a bit of whiplash. Speaking of whiplash, Trump canceled, I think, via tweet, Secretary Pompeo's was supposed to be, I guess, last weekend trip to North Korea. I guess reporters were getting briefed in real time as this happened. No, knew it was going to be a canceled and he just did it. At the same time, Trump wants to have another meeting reportedly. with Kim Jong-un. I mean, do you think that this thing just stalls out until they either do or do not

get back together at some form? I think that's right. And in a weird, ironic twist of fate, I think, you know, Trump and Kim are the kind of only ones that can figure this out at this point. You know, when Trump says, I want to meet Kim and others kind of bock at that, I think it makes some sort of sense. Obviously, this is diplomacy turned on its head. This isn't the usual way it should be done or, frankly, even the way it just should be done in general. But we've reached a sort of a point where they kind of do need to meet again and they do need to maybe hash something out. Of course, taking Mattis's warnings, it would be nice if Trump cared about details more than at a fifth or sixth grade level because to discuss these issues with Kim requires a pretty deep

understanding of what's happening. But I don't see, you know, sending Pompeo or the new top negotiator, Stephen Began over there, will really lead to any sustained progress unless Trump goes in and maybe has to something out. And meanwhile, I mean, is North Korea slowed down any of its nuclear development efforts? Are they benefiting from sanctions? I mean, how do you feel like they have fared from the deal so far, such as it is? Up front, I mean, North Korea is continuing its nuclear program. We've heard that from our own intelligence estimates.

We've heard that from the International Atomic Energy Agency. We've even heard today, Dan Coates, the director of national intelligence, say that, you know, North Korea basically continues a pace and that he's not even sure that they really do want to give up its nuclear weapons so that they're willing to concede anything. So if you're the North Koreans, you've kind of won something. You've won prestige. You're still in negotiations with the U.S. The talk of war has gone away. You're possibly getting some economic benefits, right? You've seen China and Russia and even South Korea relax some of the sanctions that they've been put on earlier. So you're coming away with fewer threats, more money, and still developing a program.

they may have to give up some nuclear weapons or some part of its arsenal down the line. But as of now, it seems like a general win for North Korea. Yeah. I want to stay on the Woodward book for a minute because, you know, he's obviously a once-in-a-generation reporter. But these books take on an added weight in Washington based on who he is. And, you know, his process is pretty well-worn and successful over, you know, I think eight presidents now. basically what he does is he invites administration officials over to his house. His chef cooks you dinner.

You aren't seen coming and going because you can park in the garage. And then he sort of sits down with a list of criticisms of that staffer who happens to be in his house at that moment. And they quickly cough up all the details and talk shit about their colleagues. And Brintz repeat, you got a great book. So you learn something from these things. One thing I noticed today, and I believe you wrote this up for Vox, was apparently President Trump told General Mattis that he thought we should assassinate President Assad of Syria in response to use of chemical weapons. I think that's an understandable sentiment in the moment. But I read that

and I wondered, should I feel like, okay, that's a very impulsive response and it confirms my fear about this administration? Or should I feel like Mattis has actually done a pretty good job of walking back some of these worst impulses or maybe a combination of both? What did you make of that? Yeah, I felt both. I felt one that. So I kind of want to take away, putting aside, and I can't believe me to say this, but putting aside what's good for America and the world. if you just take the process by itself, right? Trump has a feeling. He wants to pursue an objective. It's unclear if it was an order or just kind of an on-the-phone comment,

but let's say it was an order. And Mattis effectively kind of slow rolls it. That does go away against the process of U.S. foreign policymaking. To a certain extent, obviously staffers provide options and the president decides, but it seemed pretty clear what Trump wanted to do. And so for Mattis to kind of push back on that, I find just kind of interesting and a breakdown on the way this administration works. now putting back in what's good for the world and for the United States.

It of course makes sense why Mattis would push back on this. Killing Assad would not only be a massive escalation of America's involvement in the war, it would be somewhat logistically hard because, you know, who knows where Assad's going to be. He also might be in some sort of bunker or some deal. It would clearly anger Russia and Iran. It would just become an even worse crisis in Syria so you can see why Mattis would push back. But yeah, I mean, to your own fears, this is, we've known this from, about Trump before. I mean, in 2011, he was criticizing Obama for not killing Gaddafi or openly

calling for his death and said that basically if he were leading, he would do that. So, yeah, it looks like if Trump is leading, which he is, he's going to at least bring this issue up. But at sort of a norms level, if Woodward's reporting is true and there's really no reason to doubt it at this point, it looks like the president of the United States has abolished the norm that has sort of been going on of, we do not try to kill the leaders of other nations. Yeah, assassinations have been a no-no for a while in the White House. But, you know, what are you going to do? Another theme that seems to emerge from this book, in my opinion, is this disrespect for the military.

There's the insults of McCain, including confusion, that he left imprisonment in Vietnam early rather than actually staying and refusing to be released early. So until his fellow soldiers were released, he mocks General McMaster. He apparently blows up at a group of generals during a meeting at the Pentagon and one in the situation room. There's some elements of this that are a little gossipy, right? Like making fun of the way McMaster talks. But there's also the fact that he still hasn't visited U.S. service members in Afghanistan. And I'm just waiting for some real rumblings out of the Pentagon about the repeated disrespect. I'm curious, have you heard anything like that?

Are you surprised that the disrespect during McCain's funeral weekend, for example, that more, you know, military officials weren't speaking out? I'm not surprised that military officials didn't speak out solely because they stay apolitical as much as they can while they're still in uniform. I mean, you've seen retired people come to like Brennan's defense or whatnot, right? But usually in uniform, they're not going to even really much in background even say anything. However, you will notice that when Trump was disrespecting McCain, you just saw veterans groups come out in droves. And right, this was when the flag went back up. Veterans groups just came out and droves to say how hurt they were. Clearly, people that were in the

military and certainly are in the military to, I'm sure, have noticed this trend with Trump. You didn't even need him to be president to know this. You could see this with the Khan family during the campaign. You could see this, as he talked about in McCain himself, you know, he was captured, I like people who weren't captured. Trump's disdain for the military or at least lack of respect for it in the way that he should as commander in chief has been evident for quite some time. And frankly, he's also done very little to command it. I mean, since the very beginning, he offered the military total authorization, quote, unquote, to do effectively what it wanted. That's led to massive bombing increases in the Middle East, in Africa, really all over the place. And so his respect for the military is you go off and do what you want. But when it comes to individual members, their service does not necessarily matter to him as long as they are loyal to some sort of extent, which actually makes me wonder what's going to happen between Trump and Mattis now. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, the one area where actually I feel like he has not gotten what he wanted was Afghanistan. You know, there were all these rumblings that he was just going to pull out all troops and end our involvement there in a precipitous manner. In fact, he sent more.

Do you think that there is any likelihood of policy changes in Afghanistan or is this something that he's just put on the back burner and not focused on anymore? There's good reason for Trump to have pushed back on his advisors about Afghanistan. Right. It's been a long war. Why are we there? Is there really any chance to win? win. If you remember even Tillerson was kind of like, look, we may not win, but the Taliban won't either. There was sort of this feeling in the administration that we're just kind of there for being their sake at this point. And so I'm wondering at what point Trump kind of blows up here and says they're all coming out. Obviously, we know that it took months and months and months for the administration to really convince Trump that he needed to stay. Of course, then he only chose about 3,000 or so troops, which helps at the margins on advising Afghans. but at the end of the day won't change the battle,

and you're also having them come back into the city. So, sorry, that's a long way of really saying that. No, no. I'm genuinely interested in how Trump views this war day to day, but my instinct is Trump is not following this war day to day. And so, therefore, something really, really, really bad news happened in Afghanistan in order for him to take notice, even though the war has obviously been getting worse over the last couple of months and we just lost a sixth service member this year.

Yeah, I'm genuinely very interested in what he decides to do too, but it's also strangely a policy area where I'm the most sympathetic to his frustrations about the lack of a plan that seems different or new or designed to change the outcome in any way. And it does seem like there's this consensus in Washington that, as John McCain said in 2008, that we can kind of muddle through is an acceptable or maybe the best policy. And I do wonder if a Trump-like, eruption maybe the only one to break through that, you know, log jam that's existed for, what, 17 years now? Right.

I mean, that's totally possible. And the thing with Afghanistan especially, and this is sort of the other part that interests me, is, as you just rightly said, there's really kind of no winning option here. But Trump likes to win. And so even though he has this instinct of, I want to get us out of there, we're spending too much money. You know, our troops are dying. How many more lost limbs do we need, can, you know, can we afford? There's a part of him, I'm sure, that goes, well, if I kind of pull everyone out, Am I not admitting defeat?

Am I not the president that lost? And you could imagine, you know, that's going through his mind. And just on reporting on Afghanistan and just kind of talking through this with people in D.C., I literally find myself in almost every conversation going, I feel like I've asked this question before. You know, I feel like I've had this conversation before. There's really nothing new at this point. We're having the same debates over and over and over and over again. And obviously it's leading to no real results on the ground.

Yeah. I mean, look, I lived through the 2009, you know, Afghan politics. policy review that President Obama did and, you know, the decision to send tens of thousands more U.S. service members into Afghanistan. And it does, you know, I wonder what real value was derived for the United States. Was it really in our national interest to do that? I mean, there's an argument to be made at the time that things were getting so bad that you might have lost major cities or population centers or the government could have fallen, and that would have been a catastrophe. But no one has articulated a plan for success that makes me feel better about the prospect of

losing more men and women between now and when we eventually get out. And not to interview you on your own show, but I'm wondering in sort of your own debates of Afghanistan, I mean, was the ultimate objective was, I'm assuming, at least the discussion, was can we win this war? And if not, what can we manage? I mean, were you, I'm assuming you were having that kind of high-level discussion. And then I'm assuming you guys had the conversation of winning the war is probably not a really viable option, right?

Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think, like, one of the earliest things President Obama did was to try to step back as far as humanly possible and say, what is the objective here? Is it to destroy Al-Qaeda and deny them a safe haven from which to plan the next 9-11? Yes. Is it to destroy every last vestige of the Taliban? No, because that's probably not possible. And so I think it was an effort to push the Taliban and other forces back to build up local capacity for the Afghan police, army, everyone else, you know, increase our intelligence collection, our counterterrorism. abilities in the region. But yeah, I mean, I think like scoping what's possible is very important.

And President Trump, from the reports out of Woodward's book, seems to have no real sense of what he wants the objectives to be. He's like, just wants them to kill bad guys and doesn't know really what that means. Right. But I do think it's at least visceral for him and frankly a decent question to ask, which is all the things that you described, right, building partner capacity, you know, improving ourselves. I mean, all of that's good and important. But I think his sort of mainline question is, is all that worth American blood and treasure, which is at the end of the day, kind of the ultimate question. And I think he's fair for continuously asking that. He's, he's become a kind of one-man red team for that administration on Afghanistan and, frankly,

sort of our debate on this issue. And I think that's at least a healthy thing for him to promote. Now, what that ultimately means for Afghanistan, most importantly, and ourselves dealing with that issue and dealing with that war, I think obviously those are the next big kind of questions for him to also deal with. But for him to, harp on that main issue, I think is frankly, I don't want to say it's correct in any way, but I think it's completely natural for him to keep doing that. Oh, yeah, I think it's valuable. I'm with you.

I think that the great thing about the U.S. military is that they believe that they can work through, fight through every single challenge. And I think sometimes the president's role in these cases is to say, looking at the entirety of what you have to be in charge of, the federal budget across every department, national security interests in every region of the world, whether it makes sense to take on that fight, given the potential losses that could come from it. And yeah, I'm glad Trump kind of pushes them on this too. I mean, you're going to, as you well know, I mean, the military's going to say, of course, you know, we can do that. Why wouldn't they? I get their optimism.

Right. Right. But you listen to intelligence officials and they have a completely more somber view of this. Yeah. So it's fascinating, you know, just, you know, where you stand depends on where you sit. But I do kind of, again, not to be a broken record, but I do kind of get Trump. insistence on really red-teaming this issue out as far as possible. Switching gears a little bit. One really crazy story that we've been tracking for a better part of a couple of years now is what happened to U.S. diplomats in Cuba, a bunch of them fell ill. They had concussion-like symptoms.

They had hearing issues. A bunch of really strange, mysterious problems. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that doctors and scientists are increasingly looking at whether microwave weapons are the culprit. it. What the hell are microwave weapons you ask? Good question. I ask that myself. Apparently, you can concentrate microwaves on an individual's brain to incapacate them or potentially even cause them to hear specific words. So I could microwave words or seemingly thoughts into your brain, which is crazy science fiction stuff. The story itself is fascinating for a bunch of reasons. Like, we don't know

what happened and that's a huge problem. We don't know who did it, though. There is some assumption that it might have been the Russians. But, you know, if, This is an attack on these U.S. diplomats and not an illness of some sort or something else. There is a real serious question here about the risk to other service members, diplomats, intelligence officials around the world, right? I mean, is this something that people are concerned about? Well, I mean, yeah, it'd be concerning if there's another entity that has this weapon that they can effectively target American and Canadian diplomats wherever they are.

I know the U.S. had previously tried to have this kind of weapon and I'm kind of referring to Sharon Weinberger's report. here, who for years had been following sort of the sonic weapon development, the Air Force has been trying to do this for quite some time. We haven't perfected it. So it'd be worrying, one, just that another country has it, and two, that another country has it, and we haven't been able to figure out that technology.

Obviously, there were some stuff with microwave weapons in the Cold War, and so this is I get why this is a theory, but I got to be honest, I don't buy it. I really am skeptical that I feel like we've all gone to the least likely option. Yeah, the maximum

interesting, sexy, reportable option versus a more likely one, which is that one person got sick. I mean, there's literally a syndrome called mass hysteria where all of a sudden groups of people start thinking they have the same illness at the same time. And I've seen other reports that maybe point to that as the solution. Right. I buy that. I buy that they all, you know, maybe drank the same food or water or whatnot and led to some sort of infection that's causing that. I buy that more than a coordinated microwave weapon campaign. Look, doesn't mean it's not possible, right? I mean, it's, and if so, my God, the implications are, are mystifying and horrible to effectively say that no matter where we send our diplomats or troops, that our adversaries have a weapon that we don't

really understand or can defend against, and they figured out before us. I mean, that is, that would be remarkable, but it's almost for those reasons alone that I don't feel that's what's happening. But look, if that's what's happening, then we really need to rethink this. Yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, and that is what's interesting about this story is I agree with you. I think it's probably the least likely option besides something more mundane like an illness, like some other problem. But the implications, as you said, of being able to just, you know, take someone out of commission without killing them and without leaving any trace that we can, you know, point the finger back to whoever did it or cure them or figure out, you know, how to prevent it is truly disconcerting. And if I was the same, you know, in the State Department. I would be very, very nervous. Right. I mean, I don't want to minimize the fact that, you know, 30 plus folks, you know, diplomats, Americans, Canadians are hurt. They have suffered real medical complications. Obviously, we don't know what caused it. But something has happened. Our diplomats are getting hurt

abroad. We've also seen it happen outside of Cuba. I'm not exactly remembering which country, but it's happened in China, right? In China. That's right. It happened in China as well. So there is something going on, and we do need to figure it out because obviously our folks are getting hurt. Very strange story. The last subject I want to ask you about is Burma, something that we've talked about a bunch on this show, which is the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya Muslims in Burma. On Monday, a judge in Burma found two Reuters reporters guilty of violating a so-called state secrets law and jailed them for a seven-year sentence. These reporters have been investigating the massacre of Rohingya villages in Burma by security forces. This is a horrifying, horrific, ongoing humanitarian disaster.

It's also a massive setback for press freedom and democratic progress in Burma. So do you expect the administration to take, you know, stronger steps like potentially sanctions or actions of the UN in response to this? Or how do you imagine they will handle this? They might do some UN things. They may sanction. Burma right off the bat with the UN or unilaterally. That seems to be one of Trump's favorite tools. But the one thing you can basically rule out is that we won't be, at least coming from the White House, we won't be hitting Burma over press freedom. I mean, it's just we've kind

of lost that authority, it seems, right? When you've got, and I don't think I'm saying that and I'm not proselytizing or doing op-edding here. I think that's just a stated fact. We've lost the moral ability to say that, you know, you are hurting American reporters or just reporters in general and you need to stop doing that. We've stopped being the vanguard because of the White House of press freedom. And we've kind of seen that play out in the president's own diplomacy. He didn't ask Chinese leader Xi Jinping to stand for a press conference. He let Kim Jong-un go in Singapore without really talking to press. We're not standing up for First Amendment press issues.

So, of course, we might say the niceties of, you know, bring these Americans home. We might harm you for jailing them. But if the U.S. speaks from the vantage point of, you know, we are the vanguard of press freedom, that argument rings hollow now. Yeah, I mean, literally this morning he questioned whether NBC should lose its license for mistakes made. God, that is a very depressing reality, though. Is there anything that journalists or Reuters can do to put more pressure on the government to try to fix his problem, get these guys out? I mean, it truly is horrific injustice. Right.

I mean, I don't know what specifically they can do other than just kind of bang the drum that, you know, these fine reporters are in jail for doing their job of exposing government horrifyingly, you know, killing their own citizens. Right. But what I will, there might be some bright side here, which is perhaps one of the best parts of Trump's foreign policy or this is not really a hostage situation, right? But he does seem to care deeply about bringing Americans home. home. He's done that in Egypt. He's trying to do that in Turkey, although you can quibble with the exact reasons, but he's done that North Korea. I mean, this is something that he does seem to genuinely care about. And so if it's brought up to him that, you know, these two Americans were unjustly imprisoned in Myanmar or Burma, then he may move on that. That's completely possible. And in a way,

it may change somewhat the perception of him as this person who's so standoffish on the press. Obviously, even if he does succeed in bringing those reporters home, that wouldn't really change the overall dynamic on that. But it would help a little bit. But I think it has to be framed that way, that two Americans, reporters for Reuters, are stuck in Myanmar. They shouldn't be. You, President Trump, could possibly bring them home if you brought attention to this, both, you know, with your Twitter account and with policy. But I'm going to guess that's not going to go to the top of his inbox. Yeah, I mean, I'm candidly more swayed by your first point, which is the deployed. lost the moral standing to push on press freedom. I mean, it was notable that the initial response came from the State Department spokesperson and not from Secretary Pompeo himself, not from the White House. I mean, when I was at the White House, I mean, we would put out statements from the

NSC spokesman all the time to sort of raise the stakes a little bit to show the White House's concern about a specific issue. And I feel like I almost never see them do that. You know, it would be great to see President Trump come out and call for their release. But I'm not hopeful that this White House is going to push hard here. And I mean, statements in and of themselves, as you say, they can push certain direction. I would quibble that I don't think they have probably a massive impact. I think you'd probably agree at the end of the day.

But at least you could argue that in the Obama White House, those kinds of statements carried some weight because you knew where he stood morally on these issues. Trump, if he puts out, I mean, even today there was a statement about Trump's call with Argentina, about their financial crisis and how he's dealing with it and he talked to the president there. I mean, there were two things that stuck out in this statement. was, you know, we totally support Argentina dealing with us through the WTO and, you know, they're a major non-NATO ally. And you're kind of reading that and you're going, well, Trump doesn't really care about NATO. He doesn't really care about the WTO. So I'm not buying this

statement from the White House. Same kind of deal might happen if he does put out a statement saying, you know, on the basis of press freedom and just Americanness, we'd really like these reporters to come home. But that would also ring hollow. Yeah, I mean, I hear you. The statements certainly don't fix the problems. I do think that other countries watch our words very, very closely, and they will interpret who something comes from, give that even more weight than say even we would. The statement comes from the White House. If it comes from a spokesperson, it comes from the secretary or from the US-UN ambassador. So I imagine the folks in Burma who are making these decisions are not sweating that response from state very hard today.

I wish I could disagree with you, but I can't. Yeah. Alex, thank you for talking with me today. Everyone who listen today should check out your podcast, the worldly podcast, part of Vox. You guys do amazing work reporting out North Korea issues, reporting on what's happening in the world every week. And it's a great show. So thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Alex and Julie for coming on the show and dropping all kinds of foreign policy knowledge on us. And thank you all for tuning in.

Talk to you next week.