Pod Save the World - From Al Qaeda to the White House

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Tommy and Ben discuss Syrian transitional President Ahmed Al-Shaara’s historic and improbable visit to the White House, Trump’s sanctions waiver and special favors for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of his election, why the US is boycotting the G20 in South Africa, and how a sham election in Tanzania that’s led to mass protests and potentially thousands dead. Then they talk about how Trump could bring an end to bloodshed in Sudan with one phone call to the United Arab Emirates, a new list of problems undercutting Trump’s case for the Nobel Peace Prize, why Trump is suing the BBC for $1 billion, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s colossal infrastructure failure in the desert. Then Tommy speaks to Josh Paul and Tariq Habash about why they resigned from the Biden administration over Gaza, and how they’re trying to change Democrats' approach to US-Israel policy with their organization, A New Policy.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. 

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Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Do you know who had the event after us in the Reagan building after CrookedCon? Like the Insurance Association of America or something like that? Even better. Former General Mike Flynn. No way.

No. What's his organization? Is it like a Q&N military coup kind of initiative? Coo too. No, so apparently he was the Grand Marshal of the National Veterans Parade in D.C. on November 9th. So in the lead up to that on November 7th, in the same day as CrookedCon, he was... The Grand Marshal of what? The Big Veterans Day parade in D.C.

I would have thought Grand Wizard. Grand Wizard, yes. So he was honored at a dinner that night in the Reagan building in the same venue as Crooked Con. So for anyone wondering why the thing was like halfway closed, halfway through, that was why. Mike Flynn pacing around. I'm surprised we didn't have on a panel. Yeah. He might have had some insights.

You might have had us arrested by the marshal of the Supreme Court or something. So Michael went deep on this. So the event was emceived by a woman named Chris D. Clark, K-R-S-D-E-E-E-C-E-C-E-C-Lac. She was named Mrs. American, Mrs. American. It's more of an identity statement than a pageantry story. Okay, wait for this. So Michael went real deep on this. So not Miss America.

So apparently, the runners up to the Mrs. America contest. which I think is like an off-brand version of Miss America. So she's an off-brand version of that. So she's like the T-Mu version of Kirkland Vodka. She's like the MAGA brand version. I guess with the MAGA face. The generic MAGA face. Anyway, Mike Flynn in the house.

Could have come by. You, me, Roe, Yasmin. It continues to be completely extraordinary to me that that guy was a relatively senior official in the Obama administration. Just goes to show you that the- Extremely senior, national security personnel people, let some slip through the cracks there. Yeah, more than a few crazy people at the senior levels of the military.

Well, anyway, thanks to everybody that came out to CricketCon. Thanks to everybody who listened to it. We released it in the feed on Monday. Great event. Thanks to Yasmin. Thanks to Roe. Really just awesome all around. It was.

I mean, the vibes were great. The energy was great. It was good to see people in the flesh. People seemed fired up. Yeah. Roe and Yasmin gave a different perspective than we're used to hearing from the kind of wind-up doll. Democratic foreign policy type, so it was good. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Also, great timing, you know, post-election pre-shutown cave. Couldn't have timed it better. That was fun, too, to just bask in victory for a couple of days. Three or four days of glory. That's all we get. That's all we're metered out these days. All right, we've got a great show for you guys, though. We're going to cover Syrian president Abed Al-Shara's improbable visit to the White House on Monday.

And what got done. We're also going to talk about Trump's visit last week from Hungarian autocrat, Victor Orban. I hope they had a good time. Do you see the photo of like this right wing guy named Roderere and J.D. Vans and Orban. Yeah. They all spent like 90 minutes smoking cigars. Talking about geopolitics. Like, all right, dude.

Sounds like a good time. I'd rather watch, dude, anything else. Sounds like a lot of fun seeing Victor Orban and J.D. Vans. Yeah. Sipping whiskey and talking about politics. I hate migrants. No, I hate migrants. Okay.

We're going to explain why the U.S. is boycotting the upcoming G20 meeting in South Africa. The, we'll cover the election and the brutal crackdown on protesters that happened in Tanzania. Got an update from soon. Sudan, and we'll explain why Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion. I love that that's like his kind of pull numbers out of the air. Starting point, yeah, nice round number. We're going to explain why Trump's demand, to be known as the peace president, has hit some real trouble this past week, a lot of from a bunch of different angles. And then you'll hear a hilarious update from our always hilarious friends over in Saudi Arabia.

Not related to the comedy festival. No, not related to the comedy festival. This is just about infrastructure week, actually, infrastructure lifetime at this current rate. We'll talk about their planned Neome city and the line building, which wait around for this one. It's good. It's a good one. And then in a little bit, I'm going to talk with Tara Kabash and Josh Paul. So I haven't done the conversation yet and let you guys behind the scenes here.

They're coming in the studio afterwards. But they both resigned from the Biden administration over Gaza policy. And they have now formed a new organization called a new policy to put together and put forward. Not subtle. A smarter, more rational approach to U.S. Israel policy. So I'm going to talk about that experience. What was like to resign? and why more people didn't follow suit in their view.

We'll talk about Trump's ceasefire, the phase two planning that's happening or not happening as we speak, and much more. So excited about that. Yeah, I talked to those guys after they resigned and deeply thoughtful, interesting, courageous people. Yeah, it took real guts. And, you know, it was not a lot of followers. Not a lot of profiles and courage looking around. Yeah. No.

All right, Ben. So let's start with Syria. So Monday was this pretty extraordinary moment where a former Al-Qaeda. a guy turned statesman, hopefully, met with President Trump at the White House. No, I'm not talking about Rudy Giuliani. I'm talking about Ahmed al-Shara, a serious transitional president. So Shara led the charge to topple the Assad regime back in December of 2024. Doesn't that feel like it was more like four years ago?

Yeah, that's back when he was Jolani. Yeah, Abu Jalani. Yeah, better name. This was his first visit. Nnam Degar is often better. It would be sick to have a nom de Gare. I mean, I guess then you have to go to Gare, which I don't really want to do. But it's fun that a nom.

Yeah, yeah. Nom, nom. So he was the Alshara's visit to the White House was the first ever by a Syrian head of state. They had kind of a rough run of leaders since its independence in 1946. But this was Shara's second visit to the U.S. Remember, he was at the UN General Assembly in New York in September where he did that weird sit down with Dave Petraeus. It was also a second meeting with Trump.

They first met face-to-face in Saudi Arabia several months ago. Here's what Trump told reporters about his conversations with Al-Shaara after they I'm Syria. Can we expect an announcement on a pact of pre-Syria, Israel, or an announcement on them joining the anti-Is? Yeah, you can expect some announcements on Syria. We want to see Syria become a country that's very successful. And I think this leader can do it. I really do. I think this leader can do it. And people said he's had a rough past. We've all had rough pasts. But he has had a rough past. And I think, frankly, if you didn't have a rough pass, you wouldn't have a chance. It's like comparing himself. Like getting syphilis at Studio 54. Yeah, I was going to say, like, just in the bowels of the New York nightclub scene in the early 80s versus being in a prison in Iraq for years and fighting at multi-year insurgency.

Yeah, at Camp Leatherneck or, you know, I've had a rough past. That's rough. You know, I once got like a citation for having a 40 when I was 17 years old. Yes, exactly. So the biggest item on Sharas' to do list besides, you know, making Trump feel like he's a big, important man was to get. U.S. sanctions on Syria removed. Shara is desperate to attract businesses to Syria and also to get access to the international banking system.

On that front, he had some limited success. So on Monday, Trump announced the six-month suspension of U.S. sanctions on Syria that are part of this 2019 law called the Caesar Act. But as we've discussed before, Congress will still need to act to permanently remove those sanctions. A bill to do that is past the Senate, but it's being held up in the House due to ongoing concerns about the treatment of minority groups in Syria. So specifically, there was this really horrible incident back in.

July, where an estimated 2,000 people were killed in the city of Sweda, mostly members of the Druze religious minority. Government forces were accused of being involved in that massacre. And there's also been reports of abuse of another minority group called the Alawites. President Assad was an Alawite and sort of that minority group ruled Syria for a long time. So there's been a lot of reprisal violence. So while Trump had mostly nice and or weird things to say about Shara, he called him attractive. He's like, oh, that hot extremist over that. there. He's a handsome guy. Yeah, you know, I wouldn't. He's handsome. I don't know.

He's aligned. If we're like, if we're ranking him in terms of just heads of state, yeah, he's not the top of the list. He's not that Dutch guy, but you know, he's doing pretty good though. He's not Santa Moran. He's just like, you know, he's just in the middle of the pack. But it wasn't, it wasn't like a total love fest. Like there was no press conference. There was no pool spray. There wasn't like a Mar-a-Lago dinner. Yeah. With the extremist guy. There wasn't a big arrival ceremony. I think they just sent him in through the side door. But the main deliverables were the sanctions waiver, which he got for six months. I think the UN Security Council took Sharra's name off its global terrorist list.

That must be nice. And then Sharra and Trump, they talked about reopening embassies. There was a Reuters report that the U.S. may begin using an airbase in Syria as part of some security pact with Syria and Israel. It'll be interesting to see how the old Al-Qaeda buddies take that one. And then Shara said Syria is going to join the broader anti-IS coalition. So, Ben, I don't know. What did you make of the visit, the optics of it or lack thereof and sort of what they got done? I mean, having sat through endless meetings in the White House situation in about Syria in which we just had no answers to what was a terrible situation with horrific suffering, barbaric Assad regime, a kind of alphabet soup of different extremist groups operating proxy wars, you know, other countries backing their favorite group in northern Syria.

I mean, this, you know, it's hard to put yourself back into the place of what a gigantic disaster Syria was for such a long period of time. And I think it's just worth maintaining that perspective that how extraordinary is that this guy. One year. You know, look, whatever we may come to learn about him and whether his autocratic tendencies kind of take hold, it is just pretty extraordinary that he went from basically being in northern Syria around Idlib, you know, governing a small slice of land. to being in the White House in less than one year. I mean, like, a year ago today, that guy was, like, with some fighters, with some, like, you know, RPGs and, you know, flat-bed trucks and stuff. Like, and now he's sitting in the White House.

And, like, I kept making jokes about his past, but, like, he's done a lot of the right things since taking power. And, you know, I think you and I are both on the record of saying the U.S. should get rid of sanctions because we want Syria to succeed. Now, there's an open question of whether he will be the next generation of strong man, but, like, we got to give him a chance. No, and when you look at and listen to what he was saying, particularly right as he took over, like this guy clearly like read a lot of books, like when he was in prison and when he was like, I mean, he has like pretty evolved theories of politics. And look, I agree with the decision to waive sanctions.

I fundamentally agree with the idea. And Trump has a lot more room to do this. And Obama or Biden would have imagined them having Alshara there. like the Fox News is rolling out the Brett Bear treatment for this guy. Well, Sharra is on Brett Bear's show at 6 p.m. on Monday night, so we haven't been able to watch it yet, but that is a remarkable thing to imagine. That whole show would be dedicated to Islamophobic commentators like crapping on Obama or Biden. But I think what's fundamental is if we're going to get out of this war on terror page and we're going to get to some kind of, look, I don't expect everybody to have multi-party representative democracy in the way that we used to have in the United States. there's going to have to be a place for Islamist. There just is. I mean, we had this fight all the way back in the Obama years with the Muslim Brotherhood. You can't exclude the most popular political movements in each of these countries. And so I think we do have to get comfortable with that. And it's in our interest for there to be Islamist movements that are capable of becoming nonviolent, inclusive, intolerant. That would be great. That's the best case scenario, right? That's actually a better scenario than like just constantly imprisoning,

tens of thousands of people like they do in Egypt, right? Because they're so distrustful of those kinds of movement. So all those reasons, I think it's worth taking a shot on this guy. The vibe you pick up and talking to people in the Middle East is like, well, he seems like pretty autocratic, you know, and like there's a huge delta between him becoming, you know, a Saddam Hussein-like character and him being an inclusive pluralistic leader who just leads here in the right direction. And I just think you have a better chance to influence that if you engage the guy. The one thing I will say is I wish that there was like a little bit more focus on creative efforts to how do you rebuild Syria. It's such a U.S. thing where it's like, we're going to have them here, weigh the sanctions.

We got to get him in the ISIS coalition. And also be nice to Israel. Yeah, exactly. It's like Israel terror. You know, like let's talk about what this guy and what Syrians are actually interested in, which is how they rebuild their country. Because it's pretty remarkable that now he's in the counter ISIS coalition. He's like shooting hoops with like American generals. The head of CENTCOM.

And the other guy who runs the global ISIS coalition. They were just, you know, playing some pickup, I guess. By the way, he's got a pretty good jump shot. But I just, this is the problem. You would say that's the next thing. We show up and we're like, we're here to talk about, you know, Israel and terrorism. And it's just like I wish we had a bigger agenda. Yeah, and the history is extraordinary.

I mean, Syria was named a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979 and has been there ever since. We just sanctioned the country to hell, understandably under the Assad regime. But by the end of Assad's reign, basically they're only economy. was creating a drug called Captagon and then selling it to addicts throughout the Middle East. As we mentioned, I mean, Shara was imprisoned by U.S. forces in Iraq for five years in a variety of different locations. He was at Abu Ghraib, Campuco. You got out in 2011. But unfortunately, speaking of like unintended consequences, those prisons were like terrorist grad school where everybody met and exchanged ideas and best practices. And so, you know, maybe another good

reason not to do it. Do you think Assad watched the coverage from Moscow? I always imagine what he's up to. Two great shows, by the way, like a biopic of Al-Shara I'd watch, and then like just a reality show of Assad's life in Moscow, I would definitely watch. But I just, on the sanctions, I'm a big believer that you don't keep sanctions in place after the purpose behind the sanctions has expired.

Oh, of course not. You need some way to get rid of these sanctions regimes that are everywhere. And I think they should lift these sanctions. Because, like, you know, we put them in place for a different reason in a different time. That reason has expired. Literally the person, Bashar al-Assad, is gone. And look, because if this guy turns out to be a creep, you can always put sanctions back on him.

So I'd like to send him to go further and just look these things. Yeah, I would too. It's also worth noting last week that when we were in D.C., a Hungarian dictator, Victor Orban, was in town too, along with, I think, like all of the stand countries. They're in our hotel. They're in our hotel. Yeah, we should have had a little informal bilat. Yeah. Well, there was, like, felt like there's some side deals happening at the, you know, you know.

in the lobby there. Yeah, some rare earths were getting sold to some madman influencers, you know, like dudes in like sharpsuits, ripping sigs everywhere. Yeah. So Orban was there in D.C. to beg for a foreign exemption from U.S. sanctions so that he can continue to buy oil and gas from Russia. And he got one, at least for a year. Trump, as we discussed a couple weeks ago, Trump sanctioned the two largest oil companies

in Russia. He has threatened to sanction any country that buys oil from the Russians. But I guess if you're a right-wing autocrat who goes to CPAT. you get a waiver or if you're Argentina, you get like a $40 billion bank bailout. So that's just how it goes these days. As part of the deal, Hungary also agreed to buy a bunch of natural gas from the U.S. And he pledged to buy between $10 and $20 billion worth of nuclear reactors, which I will believe when I see it.

Orban also hinted that the U.S. might help him get his hands on some EU funds that have been frozen due to Democratic backsliding in Hungary, maybe another bailout of his own or like currency swap like the Tinians got. So stay tuned there. They also took some time in this like spray, that pool spray they did, to shit on Ukraine and suggest that Ukraine could never win the war, which is a nice touch when you're there finalizing a deal that's going to send more money into the hands of Vladimir Putin to buy bombs to drop on Ukraine. Here's a little excerpt from the Orban Trump bilateral meeting in front of the press corps for you guys to enjoy. Affordability is what the American people elected this president to do, and he is doing it. And you guys refused to cover it.

And you refuse to cover that the previous administration created the worst unaffordability crisis in American history. And I've been watching the TV all day saying that he doesn't want to talk about affordability. That's what he's working on every day. And that's what this administration is doing. But do you know why they refuse to cover it? Because they're fake news. That's why. Can I get hurt someone?

Sure. Caroline, the prime minister would like you to work for him in Hungary. Please go see. You know what? That's a very good decision you just read. Please, please don't leave us, Caroline. That was Caroline Levitt. I mean, White House Press Secretary and getting an out-a-girl from Victor Orban.

I'm a real fan of the media. So, I don't know, Ben, Orban's facing his first major political challenge in, what, like 15 years? It sure seems like this visit was just a totally unnecessary political gift to him before that election. But I don't know, what'd you make of it? Yeah, there's no, like, vital reason for the President of the United States to be, having such a big formal bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of Hungary. And it just kind of continues what we've seen, which is that if you're one of Trump's guys, which is basically if you're on the CPAC circuit, right? If you're Javier Miele from Argentina, if you're

Nye Buckele from El Salvador, if you're Victor Orban, you know, you get preferential treatment across the board. You know, you get exemptions from sanctions. We might throw some weight around at the EU to get them to give you money that they've rightly frozen, not just because of democratic backside because of rampant corruption. Like Orban basically takes that money. It's for infrastructure projects, gives the contracts to his buddies, and they skim like billions of dollars on the top, right? And so Brussels is like, why do we give him this money? And I will also say, like, the thing about the, you know, he still has these relationships

into Russia. When he came to power, there was a lot of investigative journalism around. Seems like there's like some shady business connections with the FSB, the Russian intelligence services into Hungary, right? I mean, if someone, you started like pulling back the threads on some of these deals over the years between Russia and Hungary, you know, there's probably more there there. But Orban's there to make sure that nobody pays attention to that. Nobody's looking too closely at that. And he gets exemptions and he can still buy some Russian energy. And then he can just shit on Zelensky in the

process and kind of replenish his bone a few days. I will say that Carolyn Levit thing is gross in a number of levels. One is it like, it's funny with her. Like, she's not that good. She's better than like uh Sean Spicer Sean Spicer and then that other woman who's on like Fox now. Kaylee McAney. And and actually honestly like probably better than Queen Jean-Pierre. But like what is she she's just like he's doing affordability like it doesn't make sense. It's like dude your boss just said like affordability is fake news and stupid and to fuck off if you care about it. Yeah. We heard the tape. Her role is to like perform in front of him and like trash people and then they people chuckle. Like, we're taking this, like, you know, seriously.

And then, like, have a kind of pretty creepy in Rengen from Warburne. It's like, we would take her, you know? Yeah. Just didn't. Yeah, imagine, like, yeah, Kim Jong-un's like, oh, good spin. It's like, okay. By the way, to, like, connect the stands to this. It reminded me of, like, this bilateral meeting that Obama once did with the president of Kazakhstan.

And we actually had a Kazakh American on our team. and it was a woman in Obama introduced him to her. And because, you know, he's nice like that. And then the guy's like, that is very good. Well, we give you one of ours and now you must give us one of yours. What? And what was weird is like, think he wasn't kidding. Yeah, that joke didn't land.

Yeah, it was like, who are we supposed to give him? Like, I hope it's not me, you know. But anyway. God, if you're president, you need to deal with some creepy weirdos and pretend a lot of jokes are funny that just absolutely suck. Yeah, a lot of like fake chuckling. But I mean, we shouldn't under, again, like, we have to like kind of fight against the urge to be like this is now the normal. Like, Victor Orban is like an undemocratic, illiberal, fascistic kind of creep.

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Say goodbye to sweat stains and hello to long-lasting freshness. Speaking of awkward group events full of heads of state that are probably not that fun, but you got to go to them. Trump is apparently boycotting the G20. So the G20 is taking place in South Africa at the end of November. The U.S. is, I guess, just not going to go at all. I mean, Trump had previously said that he was going to skip it. I thought he was going to send J.D. Vance.

But now the U.S. isn't sending a delegation at all. And if you're wondering why, dear listener, it's because of a non-existent genocide against white farmers in South Africa. Remember back in May, the president of South Africa was in the Oval Office, Cyril Romaphosa, and Trump was showing him photos and printouts and videos that he said were evidence of this white genocide. But like one of the pictures was from the Congo. One was just like a video of a protest from five years ago. But those very humiliating errors did not slow Donald Trump down or prevent Trump from like real. bailing away on this. He's now boycotting G20. He's calling for South Africa to be thrown of the G20. We've completely changed our refugee policy in the United States so that we're only taking in white South African farmers. So this is, again, the reality we live in. So, Ben, I don't know. I'm surprised that even they wouldn't just like send sad little J.D. Vance over there. It seems like the net effect of this decision will be to hand the conference over to China and Russia. But what do you think?

J.D. Vance would have loved to go, by the way. Just lecture everybody. Just go and lecture everybody about treating white people better in Africa. She could not invited to dinner. Yeah, I mean, look, the crude thing that needs to be pointed out here is it's useful to be reminded every now and then

how just fundamentally racist the whole Trump project is. South Africa is a big, important country hosting arguably the most important meeting of the year. And we're not going in some weird fit of peak because of some Fox News programming about some white farmers who are, by the way, like, we've,

come full circle to defending the white side of apartheid. You know, like, that's kind of where we're at in 2025. And that's not even that unusual. It's like, oh, you know, Trump's pulling down the G20 because of the white genocide, right? The substance thing that's important, again, is that the G20 I felt in the Obama years was the most important meeting of the year. It was the 20 biggest economies, although, like, that there are 20 countries in it that were set up at the time.

they were the biggest economy, so not all them are the biggest anymore, like Egypt and Argentina, but nonetheless, they're all there. And you're a meeting to, like, kind of coordinate the piping and wiring and running of the global economy. You're then using it, so we used it a lot to kind of respond to the financial crisis and stimulate demand or deal with some emergence economic problem somewhere. But we also used it to deal with all kinds of other challenges, right? Clean energy transition was a feature. Obviously, Trump doesn't. give a shit about that. Fake news.

But also, you know, the Chinese are there. You know, the Russians are there when they're not indicted by the ICC. So that's now a problem for Putin. The major European countries are there. Brazil's there, et cetera. So you'd use it to have bilateral meetings with all those countries, too, about whatever the other things were on your agenda because you basically have like a big enough group, 20, and there are usually some other countries invited that you can get a lot done.

But it's small enough that you can kind of see like half the people there and really get a lot of work done. And to your point, Tommy, like, by us not going to a G20 summit that is in a BRICS country, like South Africa is the S and the BRICS. We are just saying, like, Chinese, you run this meeting entirely. Yep. Right? This is your, you built this whole alternative world order with the BRICs and all these other development instruments. Now we're literally taking something from our, you know, world order we built and just saying over to you now. and whether that's, you know, the Chinese are going to be coming to talk about investment. You know, we come to talk about tariffs and kissing Trump's ass.

They're going to be coming to talk about, like, investing more in Africa, like, you know, development financing, you know, AI probably. By the way, I'd love to see the G20 used to be setting AI norms. Like, that's clearly not happening. So when Trump does shit like this, you realize it's not just a spectacle and the offense of it. It's like the opportunity cost of not being there. what's not getting done internationally they would normally be getting done on things like AI and then also just the opportunity

for like the Chinese of the world to just say like these guys are totally fucking unreliable to do with us yeah we uh we got a fake white genocide leads to a boycott of the G20 in South Africa we got a fake Christian genocide and Nigeria gets you military plans to invade Nigeria and the Trump foreign policy is like hey everyone uh Tajikistan is joining the Abraham

Accords like that's well but that's a good point like the guy can't bring himself to go to the G20, like the premier meeting of the year, but he can have this fucking cavalcade of people through the Oval Office, right? You know, Orban, Alshara, the stands, you know, some of which are probably got some corrupt side deals in play. I mean, what are we doing here? Yeah, a little Capitagon for crypto deal. I mean, this is so funny. He's like, he's, yeah, he's spending so much time on foreign policy. He's spent too much time on foreign policy. But he's not, but he's not, most of it is his performative bullshit. And he's not accomplishing anything for us. He's

accomplishing a lot for himself. He's getting Don and Eric's calls returned for the resort in Bali. But even like Steve Bannon and people are being like, dude, like the craziest right wingers are saying to Trump, like enough of the foreign policy focus on the economy, focus on affordability. And he just absolutely refuses to do it. By the way, also, like not a great look to have the press secretary, like scolding people that you're working on affordability in the bilat with the prime minister of Hungary who has nothing to do with affordability in the United States. Clearly, I waste your time. But hey, congrats on beating up Reuters guy. Yeah, good job. You're really dunked on Jeff Mason. All right, let's turn to Tanzania,

where hundreds of not thousands of the Tanzanians are killed, have been, are dead following protests over a rigged presidential election, and hundreds more have been charged with treason for criticizing the government. So President Samia Salulu Hassan won the re-election on October 29th, won in air quotes. She caught, or claims 97% of the vote with an 87% turnout. If you're if you're racking up vote totals in the 90 percentile. It's usually a pretty good sign that something is a miss. And in this case, everything is a miss. So running up to the election, Amnesty International documented widespread human rights violations, including, quote, disappearances, arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful killings, and severe restrictions on freedoms of movement, expression, and peaceful

assembly. The leader of the main opposition party has been in jail since April. The candidate from the second largest opposition party was disqualified in September. And then on election day, the ruling party cut off the internet and they stuffed the ballot box. But other than that, free and fair election. Hassan's party, the CCM, was formed in the late 1970s after a merger of two existing political parties. And it's basically been in charge ever since. In 2021, the president died in Hassan. Then the VP became Tanzania's first female president.

There was some hope that she might be a democratic reformer, but she's quickly emerged to be a tyrant, which brings us to this recent election, where there's just all these just horrifying human rights abuses against protesters and just innocent people who are like caught in the crossfire. one human rights group said up to 3,000 people could have been killed by security forces, and then just the individual stories are horrifying. I mean, the Washington Post reported out a bunch of details and examples. There's a story of this young mom who was just driving through the largest city in Tanzania when she was stopped by armed men and executed in front of her two little kids. So, Ben, you know, we've been talking about these Gen Z-led protests over the last few months. I don't know that these protesters have, like, identified themselves in the same way

and used like the Jolly Roger, like kind of pirate iconography or anything. But the median age in Tanzania is 18 years old. So it's a very young country. And the BBC reported that a third of Tanzanians aged 18 to 25 are unemployed. So it's like similar structural challenges that are leading to this anger. Ultimately, Hassan was sworn into office in this closed press ceremony. She blamed foreigners for the protest. So it's good to see that she's not struggling to figure out the kind of traditional autocratic

playbook early in her tenure as a strong woman, I guess. This is a pretty striking situation because, first of all, Tanzania has generally been a more stable country. I mean, they've also been governed by one party that dates all the way back to kind of liberation. But it was always kind of like one of the better models of stability, economic development. Obama went there. I remember we went there in 2015.

And the president, Kikwete, was like one of these guys that everybody thought was like one of the more positive leaders in Africa. And so therefore, first of all, this election was totally fucking rigged, right? They threw the opposite in prison. Even the election monitors who are pretty casual, you know. They hesitate to really come down hard.

They were like, holy shit, this is not a bad as bad as it gets. This is like some bad shit. The AU was whacking them. The African Union was whacked left and right. So to me, what's depressing about that is it does, show you that this kind of democratic

backsliding, I mean, we're so far beyond even that, you know, because everywhere around the world you're just seeing more and more brute force for people staying in power. And that's all the examples. If you look around the world, you don't see a lot of positive

examples of multi-party democracy or people relinquishing power easily. By the way, you didn't see that in the United States after the 2000 election either. That's good point. And so that's depressing. I will say there was a Gen Z aspect to this because essentially I think that, you know, if you read the coverage, essentially, and look at some of the better analysts, the resistance was bigger than clearly the ruling

party thought. They thought they could just do this and people wouldn't really bother. And instead it looks like there was big turnout here and there's a big turnout among younger people. Bear in mind, I mean, we covered the Kenyan protest on this podcast like a few weeks ago. That's right next door. Kenya has more of a tradition of political protests, but I mean, honestly, watch this trend because we've talked a lot about the global authoritarian trend. Now we've seen, and one of the things that characterizes that is it's everywhere, right? And we've said, you know, it's from Brazil and Argentina to the U.S., to Hungary, to Russia,

to Turkey, to Indonesia, all these different places. Well, here, you've had these kind of Gen Z protests in Bangladesh, in Nepal, in Madagascar, in Tanzania, in Kenya, in Indonesia. It does just feel like there's something happening out there where younger people in general, they're sick and tired of corruption. They don't believe that the future is better in the past, so they don't see a lot of opportunity for themselves. They're also, frankly, you know, a generation that had to deal with COVID and a bunch

of insanity. And it does feel like there's a pent-up feeling that is beginning to be expressed in country after country. There's no reason to believe that's going to. going to stop. And the more it happens, it seems like people are watching it happen in other places and say, well, let's do this here. And I'd say that's a particularly big warning sign or potentially positive thing, depending on how it goes, in Africa. Because their populations are so weighted to youth. Explosive population growth too. It's explosive. And on the surface, it looks like, okay, got all these

strong men. And they're kind of, you know, they're old people like Moseveni in Uganda or they're these new, like, coup leaders in West Africa. But the reality of this thing is that they're sitting on top of there's these giant population bulges under 25, and they're not creating jobs fast enough. And so I just think we're going to see a lot more of this. I really do. This was not on our rundown for the show today, but there was a story in the Times,

you mentioned Kenya about all these Kenyan moms who had no, these Kenyan women who had no economic opportunity, so they got lured into jobs in the Gulf, specifically Saudi Arabia. And the story in the Times was about women, these Kenyan women who had kids while there, and now their kids are stuck in this horrific legal limbo. like they can't get a birth certificate, they can't get any kind of legal status, so they can't get vaccines, they can't get schooling, they can't get daycare. And like a lot of these women had like, had got pregnant by another immigrant working in Saudi Arabia. Several have been raped. Others arrive pregnant and just didn't know it. But now they're in this situation where their kids live in this just sort of like statusless world and they're not allowed to leave. So the moms can leave Saudi Arabia, but they're not letting the kids. It is like, it is harrowing awful. These women are living outside these gags.

stations, but it just, it sort of speaks to the total lack of economic opportunities for young people and the links they're going to find jobs abroad and maybe send home some money and like the, and how bright it makes them for abuse. It's just not just, there's a degree of inequality. Look, there's always been inequality. I mean, we had colonialism for hundreds of years, right? But it just feels like we're entering a phase where there's something that's just going to break at some point. I mean, Elon Musk just became a trillionaire, and yet you've got people that have to go to Saudi Arabia and endure that, right?

And country after country, you just see that governments, economies don't have the answer to the need for job creation, the need for cost of living reductions. And frankly, the only answer out there in the global economy right now and where you find growth is AI, which is probably not going to create jobs. It's going to take them away. So there's just like a ticking time bomb out there that, I mean, shit, I can feel in Los Angeles, pretty stratified place. but it means nothing compared to, you know, Dara Salam, Tanzania. Or Nigeria where the population growth is going to be just explosive. Okay, so staying in Africa, Ben, so in recent weeks we've covered Sudan a bunch, there has been this horrific attack by a rebel group called the RSF on the city of El Fasher in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Remember, the RSF, they've been laying siege to El Fasher. They did it for about 18 months. And the Sudan-Eas civil war has been raging since April of 2023. So this has been just an ungodly awful past few years for everybody in Sudan. And then there was finally, like the Sudanese Armed Forces left the city of Elfasher and the RSF took it and the atrocities that have been documented are just ungodly awful. There's been some amazing great coverage that we'd recommend. Check out work by Usra Elbegger at Sky News. The New Yorker had a really comprehensive great piece called the title was Rebels Post Videos of Mass Killings in Darfur as the world watches that got at how these RSF forces. I mean, there's one guy in particular who was like bragging about having hit his goal.

of killing 2,000 people. Apparently, he sort of became a mini-celebrity among influencers from the UAE. It's like just disgusting shit. The Times and the Journal, they've covered all the ways the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, has been prolonging the war, worsening the war by funneling weapons to the RSF. So just check out, you know, those outlets for doing a great job here. It's hard to overstate how bad this recent massacre in Al Fasher seems to have been. Some have compared it to the early days of the Rwandan genocide, just indiscriminate massacres everywhere. If people manage to escape alfashire, their troubles don't end there. The Doctors Without Borders says they're seeing a massive hunger crisis in Toeweila, which is the closest town, which I think is like 40 miles away.

70% of the kids there under five are acutely malnourished. 35% are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. MSF screened like 1,100 adults in Tuila. 60% of the adults were malnourished, about 40% of whom were severely malnourished. So we reached out to the Norwegian Refugee Council who has people on the ground in Tawila where these displaced people who are able to make it out of Valfasher are gathering. This is a clip from Shaswav Sarov, the country director at NRC Sudan. Please listen.

People who are arriving in Tavila talk about the horrors that they've encountered in Fashir and also on the way. They've talked about how they have had to run with bullets flying all around. how they have been detained on the way they have been beaten and at times have also been asked for money. When they arrive in Tavila, one of the things that strikes us is that every single individual who's arriving in Tavila talks about how they have become an incomplete family. either they don't know where their husband is or their wife is or siblings are or parents a young woman arrived today she mentioned that when they were leaving fashar there were bullets flying everywhere and her three-year child was on the shoulder of her husband and by the time she realized with all the running her husband and the

child were nowhere to be seen and then she walked for days to come here but she has no idea where her husband and child is just unimaginably awful and you know that woman who's survived uh there's not a lot of resources there because obviously um uh as you mentioned newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk destroyed USAID so a bunch of NGOs are desperately trying to fill even a small part of the void that's left by the US departing uh if you're looking to like donate to an organization, the NRC, the Norwegian Refugee Council, there's Doctors Without Borders, there's the Sudanese American Physicians Association, there's Save the Children, that's just a few. You can look up a bunch more places like charity navigator or other sites,

but the need is just enormous, so just consider it. Yeah, and it's really frustrating and angering to come back to this each week, and there's just this relentless dehumanization of these people that are just trapped in this. I mean, in the Emirates, they just so fundamentally clearly don't give a shit. You know, they are literally, you know, funneling guns to this genocidal militia of the RSF and just vacuuming up gold, you know, that they can wash through the, you know, gold trading post in Dubai or whatever the fuck it is. And just, you know, not even burden it at all by the fact that this is happening. By the way, like, you know, someone, so we're not in a glass house here, like, we shoveled weapons out the door that were dropped on kids in Gaza. Like, there's a contagion to these things

where it's just like over time, you know, people are supposed to just kind of be numb to this degree of suffering. And I would like to see, and we, Cricketcom was really, I thought, good at this time. It's good because when you're a crowd, it kind of forces you to make that turn to the positive, you know, and so I want to do that here. I just think there's a space to kind of reclaim some basis of morality in politics. You know, nobody tries anymore. I mean, nobody's, you know, because I can show me all the polls about how people are like foreign aid? And when's the last time anybody tried to go out there and say, hey, we should value human dignity, human life around the world?

We should try to do something about these things. It worked 20 years ago in the Darfur region. There was a huge movement. From the far right to the far left. It was evangelical Christians to, you know, lefty liberals. There is a space out there, whether it's in this country, hopefully, you know, Democrats or anybody, frankly. But other foreign leaders, like, there's a space for people, because you see this in the Gen Z protest. I don't think most people are like the way things are going in the world right now.

And one thing to try that nobody seems to be trying is to give a shit again, you know, and not just be on defense, you know, like, well, we we don't like migrants either. or like, you know, or we're trying to sit in the lab and develop the talking points that can speak to our working class. Like, I'm not suggesting that's not important, but like sometimes there needs to be a space for just like a moral purpose here. And the world has a huge vacuum. Especially in a moment like this when like a genocidal massacre is happening and there's a moment for moral clarity and sounding the alarm. And I think people, I agree with you. I think people do care. I think young people in particular care.

And if someone sounds the alarm and talks about what's happening and talks about our responsibility to do something about it, not in a way to make you feel guilty, but like a responsibility to speak out and state the truth and talk about the forces that are making this massacre worse, like the UAE and the way they are just funneling arms into this civil war. It's so interesting because one of the things Trump has done is he's shattered all these norms, right? like he and that would actually get he will never do this but like imagine if someone like Trump who doesn't give a shit you know you can make one phone call what if he went out tomorrow and said you know what this is fucking bullshit I'm getting all these briefings these women and children are getting massacred and it's just so a bunch of gold can go to the UAE and they can be like a little bit richer than they already are and I'm just not going to sell them anything you know I'm to tariff them 300 percent and cut off weapons tomorrow if they don't cut this out this

fucking war could be over, you know? It could be over to, it really could be like, this was true in Gaza, right? Like, we could just shut off the spigot, stop sending the Israeli arms. But if Trump called MbZ, the leader of the United Arab Emirates and said, stop this right now, or else there will be consequences for you, they would have to listen. I think they would. And so there's actually like a weird space to take some of this Trumpian impulse foreign policy and use it for good, you know. But we don't see that.

We're going to take a quick break. But after you listen to this whole show, if you're looking for some more content. Check out What a Day. It's the Daily Show from Cricket Media. They just landed a great interview with Senator Bernie Sanders about why this Democratic Party just caves on the shutdown thing, Ben. It's pretty frustrating. But listen to What a Day, wherever you get your podcasts. Jane Kosen is a fantastic host, hilarious person, super interesting political views, great interviewer. So check it out. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. With Wise, you can send, spend, and receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple

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That's right. Make only memories at the Louvre. Be smart. Join the 15 million customers. wise. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. Terms and conditions apply. Let's sort of talk about where we're at on the whole Peace Watch thing. You know, Trump is constantly demanding the Nobel Peace Prize. What are we up to, nine? Nine wars? Probably 10. You know, I've been, I've been checked in lately, but there have been, so we couldn't cover all of these issues in depth. Doesn't feel like it

based on the show. No, it does not. So we wanted to like just fold kind of four important things happening in the world right now that just speak to the way the president of peace is making all the things safer. So in Venezuela, regarding this ongoing Trump-Rubio regime change operation that's happening down there, this week we learned that the UK has stopped sharing intelligence with the Trump administration about ships in the Caribbean because they think it's probably illegal to murder random people in boats off the coast of Venezuela. It stands for reason. And also the USS Gerald Ford, which is the Navy's largest aircraft carrier, is now in the Caribbean, along with three Navy destroyers that escorted everywhere and about 4,000 sailors. So that sounds very peaceful.

Sounds like a lot of peace. Nobel Prizey. Speaking of which, Trump constantly demands credit for a peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia. Unfortunately, that deal seems to have fallen apart, at least for now. On Monday, there were several Thai troops who were wounded by landmines near this disputed border, which is what this whole thing is about. The Thai military accused Cambodia of laying those landmines, which Cambodia denies. Either way, the Supreme Commander of Thailand's military said, quote, he was halting all agreements until Cambodia clearly and sincerely demonstrates that it will not be hostile.

on the nuclear front, then, after Trump's announcement last month that the U.S. is going to resume testing nuclear weapons, the Russians said they would respond in kind. Geez, who could have seen that coming? And then finally, Ben, on Monday, there was a car explosion in New Delhi, India that killed at least 10 people. This happened in this very historically significant tourist area near the Red Fort, which is a famous monument and symbol of India's independence. We don't know the cause yet, but India's counterterrorism agency is handling the case. Then on Tuesday afternoon, There was a bombing outside a courthouse in Islamabad, Pakistan that killed at least 12 people and wounded many, many more, dozens more. Pakistan's prime minister, Shabhashiriv, blamed India for the bombing, calling it, quote, Indian state terrorism. Now, we should note that a faction of the Pakistani Taliban or TTP says they were responsible for this. So there's no evidence that these two events in India and Pakistan are connected, except for, you know, time and the fact that it happened one day after the other. but these are the kinds of events that start wars. So, Ben, I guess, like, if Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, it's like, I don't know if my advice right now should be to get to work

and start mediating some things or just go away and stop with this Venezuela shit. Yeah. Look, first of all, the Brits cutting off intelligence, these people follow us into Iraq. You know, like, the Brits are usually pretty lenient about the special relationship. This just tells you how insane and extraditional this killing is that the United States is doing in the Caribbean. I will say we've, you know, all these conflicts, he never solves them.

He just wants the photo op. And he's betting on the kind of stupidity or short attention span of most of the American media. They will cover his peace announcement and will never follow up and pay attention to whether or not Thailand and Cambodia are actually, you know, not fighting anymore. To me, the one that worries me is this India-Pakistan one. I was going to say, I mean, it's the most recent, but also that's, that's very scary. It's very scary and there's a bigger dynamic happening in that region, which is that the Afghan Taliban, after years of being, you know, in bed with the Pakistani intelligence

service and having a safe haven in Pakistan, well, they're back in charge in Afghanistan. They have the, there's a, there's a Pakistani Taliban that it's different, but, you know, there are links there. And there have been some pretty brutal border skirmishes, including, like, Pakistan literally bombing, you know, Pakistani Taliban on the other side of the Afghan border. And, you know, it feels like it's getting a little hot there. Now, what's a connection? Well, the connection is the Indians, you know, are now building out relations with the Afghan Taliban, you know. And so if you're Pakistan, you're probably like, oh, shit, we're going to get flanked. You know, we thought the Afghans were our allies, but now they're reaching out to her.

And this is just, I say this, it's a Tinderbox, you know. You've got Kashmir. you've got this hot and on and again off again, India-Pakistan conflict that involves nuclear weapons. Now you got this Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict. I mean, you've got variety of extremist groups. I mean, the peacemaker here, I know Marco Rubio made one phone call for which Trump declared he'd solved

to the India-Pakistan conflict. But if you just want to sign of how stupid that is, we got another reminder of this week. And by the way, politically but also substantively, like Trump fucking owns this thing. If you want to go out and claim that you made the ceasefire and you solve this problem and you should get a Nobel Peace Prize, well, when shit starts to blow up, like, that's on you, motherfucker. Absolutely. Like, where is your peace effort now?

What are you getting out of the fact that the Pakistanis nominated for Nobel Peace Prize? They only really did that to fucking troll India and to kind of get you more on their side in the next time they have a fight with India. So are you going to be a trusted interlocutor or not? I mean, this is, he's playing with fire with these peace deals and I don't think people understand that. Yeah, and look, the last major attack in Islamabad was in 2022. So this hasn't happened in a while. And now you have an even more autocratic strong man in Modi who's been stoking nationalism all day, every day for the last, however long. You've got a weak leader in Prime Minister Sharif in Pakistan, who immediately pointed the finger at the Indian government, but really the military is calling the shots. And also the Pakistani military was distracted at the time of this attack because they were focused on rescuing cadets at this armed. Iran College in South Waziristan near the Afghanistan border who were attacked by militants and were being held hostage. So like there's all these reasons for that government to not the point the finger at, you know, the TTP or other Taliban forces that are more likely to have done it and to

try to stoke nationalism in service of their political project in blame India, which, as you said, ratchets up tensions and makes things really, really unsafe. Yeah. So get back out of. Good work, everybody. Okay, a couple more things, Ben. So thinking back to our time in government, Do you remember when the British press would just hammer us all the time over all sorts of perceived slights to the U.S. The bust of Winston Churchill. I'm still living through the bus. The bust of Winston Churchill was moved somewhere and everyone was upset about it. It was replaced by a bust of Martin Luther King in the White House, but they didn't have the perspective to understand why the first black president made to do that. Details, details. Well, now Donald Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for a billion dollars.

So I think that's what the nerds would call the Overton window shifting. So here's what happened, Ben. In October of 2024, the BBC. BBC aired documentary called Trump a second chance, question mark. This existence of this documentary was news to me. It seemed like no one really gave a shit about it at the time until last week when the Telegraph, a conservative paper in the UK, published a leaked memo from a former advisor to the BBC board that included a litany of criticisms of the BBC for perceived bias, being too hard in Israel, et cetera, that included criticism of the way this specific documentary was edited.

So remember Trump's infamous January 6th speech at the ellipse? They edited it in a way that I think was genuinely bad in misleading. Basically, they edited together, Trump saying, we're going to go walk down to the Capitol with a line 54 minutes later in the speech that said they have to fight like hell or you're not going to have a country anymore, which, look, we all know what Trump was doing in that speech. We all know he's sick to those people on the Capitol. But it makes it sound like an even a more direct call by Trump for violence and to take the Capitol by violence. and it just wasn't necessary, and I don't understand why someone would have done it. So this leak to the telegraph led to a bunch of former BBC journalists to speak out and ask why nothing had been done earlier to kind of fix the problem.

And then you had Trump threatening to sue for false defamatory, malicious, disparaging, and inflammatory edits. On Sunday, the fallout was pretty quick. The BBC's Director General and Chief Executive of BBC News resigned, but that did not appease Trump. And what makes this all so complicated, Ben, is that the BBC is partially financed. by the public, by this fee, a license fee that's charged to basically any British household that consumes BBC content. It's about 300 bucks a year. So Trump is essentially threatening to sue the British public and his storied institution

in the United Kingdom. So this seems not great for the BBC. Like all news media here in the U.S., the BBC has been just battered by charges of liberal bias, anti-Israel bias. It is constantly attacked by, you know, conservative politicians in the U.K. and conservative news outlets like The Telegraph. But unlike most U.S. based news outlets, they get this public funding and they are desperate to be seen as kind of above the political fray, which is all but impossible, I think, at 2025. So the BBC has until 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday to respond to Trump's demand for money.

He's also demanding an apology and a retraction of the documentary or else he's going to sue for a billion dollars. The BBC board's chairman apologized for the documentary in a letter to parliament. They called the edit and error of judgment, but I don't think they've contacted Trump directly. What do you think they do here? This is so fucking stupid. I think I hate everything about this story. I mean, look, did they edit the documentary?

Fine. I don't sit combing through frontline documentaries. I'm sure there's some things in there that I didn't like the edit on, you know? I don't sue them for a billion dollars. I just think that this is taking something that, like, the BBC airs like, endless content. There's number of channels. Like, I just don't get this.

This outrage. It's just him being a whiny little bitch. So what? They edited some documentary where you didn't like. Like, embarrass him in the telegraph. Make them apologize. Okay. But like, why, was the CEO of the BBC, the editor on this fucking thing too?

I don't get this. Like, just stop capitulating to this guy. I mean, it was weird enough when CBS had to like bring in Barry Weiss because they edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris the way Trump didn't like, now other countries are like, I mean, it literally feels like an American media company, like other countries are having to like bend the need to Trump and kiss his

ass and apologize and deal with lawsuits because they edited some documentary that literally nobody saw. I mean, I can't think of anyone's side. Because if you think about, like if you actually want to look at it from Trump's perspective, did this documentary harm him in any way? Well, this is the thing that's interesting about this. So the statute of limitations

has expired in London. You have a year to file a suit. But in Florida, you have two years. So he's filing this suit in Florida because he can get it under the statute of limitations, but also he's going to have to find some Florida voter who says they saw this documentary and that it harmed them or like harmed their standing of him, which just seems impossible. There's probably not, there's not a single human being on earth whose view of Donald Trump was changed because of the way this documentary is edited. That's it. Like then I also want to say that the BBC, like they've been working the refs over there like my whole adult life that the

bias over there. And so much of it is just bullshit, like Boris Johnson, like Tori, Nigel Farage, kind of bullshit. I mean, even on the Israel stuff, like, now they're so scared of that that they'll have some poor Palestinian on and they'll, like, scream at the person to, like, condemn Hamas and to like, you know, but there's, I mean, what are we doing here? This is a great institution. We spend a lot of time talking about British identity on this show. If these guys, and I say this, my brother runs Sky News, like a competitor, but I'll say, like BBC is a core to British identity. It's like up there with like the rural family

about what people know and respect about the United Kingdom. It exists since 1927. It's an institution. And if they're going to tear this thing apart because of like weird Nigel Farage type grievances against the liberal media or telegraph crusades or Donald Trump suing them, like show some spine, some backbone here at BBC

because before you know it, you're just going to be like a, you know, Barry Weiss is going to be running the fucking BBC by the end of the Trump's She's a side hustle. Yeah, I mean, look, this thing's been around, again, in 1927. It's up for renewal in 2027. I think they thought they might have, you know, Cures Starmor might make it a little easier

for them to grease things. Now it's gotten complicated and tied up in Trump. There have been a bunch of other BBC controversies. Like, they didn't move fast enough to deal with an anchor accused of sexual misconduct. That was bad. Now, that was bad. There was the suspension of this beloved soccer commentator named Gary Lindaker for criticism of the Tories immigration policy.

There was sexual harassment by another. presenter. There was this Gaza documentary that you mentioned where it turned out the father of this 13-year-old narrator was a Hamas official and no one knew it, which has set, you know, opened them up to all sorts of accusations. But again, you know, like the BBC collected about 7.8 billion in revenue in the last financial year. About half of that was from these license fee payments. The rest was from commercial pursuits. They've got, you know, 627 million in cash on the books currently. But a Trump, Trump wouldn't win a billion dollars. Like it seems ridiculous.

But, you know, he could clear out a big hunk of that. So they got a fight. And to be clear, I have no idea who these two executives are. I couldn't pick them out of the lineup. They may have done a shitty job. They may have done a good job. Some of these other things you said, I followed those controversies and they seem bad. But even if they sucked at their jobs, I just don't like the optic of like Donald Trump being like, hey, this documentary that came out a year ago.

And it made me sad. Like, you know, I'm mad about it because I, you know, someone showed me a thing from the telegraph. And so now you've got to fire. Like it's just, it feels like we're globalizing our own media drama. And that makes me sad. No, it's not good. It's, yeah, it's globalizing just the, in this case, legal attacks on the media that's trying to destroy it in service of all these right-wing populists.

Like, it's an interesting, like, commentary about nationalism that someone like Nigel Farage would side with Donald Trump in taking a wrecking ball to a British, you know, institution that is really important and treasured and powerful. and a good way for the UK to project power. Yeah. Over taking the side of his own country. I realize that it's all tied up in his party and his identity and he thinks the BBC is liberal and it's mean to him.

But they also, you know, they give the guy tons of airtime. So he benefits from the BBC. Good luck not having a BBC. You know, I'm sure the whole world will be tracking GB news, you know, like whatever white wing rag and Nigel Farage lies. You can maybe stream if you're lucky. Finally, Ben. So long time listening to this show,

know that Ben and I are not the biggest fans of Saudi Crown Prince. Muhammad bin Salman. I'm not sure, Ben, if for you, it was the butchering of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi or the crackdowns and even executions of human rights activists, including women who just, you know, wanted to drive a car or the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen. The list goes on and on. But the rest of the world, especially the business world, has largely moved on from those things and largely forgiven MBS's transgressions because he offered a full-throated sincere apology and promise to change his ways. That or the trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund. So guys like MBS though who are ruthless and rich and powerful, they inevitably end up surrounded

by yes men who are too afraid to tell them when their ideas are stupid, which brings us to something called the line. For those unfamiliar, the line was a planned linear city in the Saudi desert. The full vision for the line was announced back in 2021. It includes a structure that would ultimately accommodate nine million residents, so a linear city, uh, in a 170 kilometer long building that is 1600 feet tall and mirrored on both sides. So imagine two walls that are significantly taller than the Empire State Building. The building is between those two things and then repeat that for 170 kilometers. So it was obvious at the time. I'm pretty sure we said as much on the show that this was a ridiculous boom dog. We've been doing this show long enough that were there.

Way too long. Yeah. Yeah. That this was never going to happen. But the financial times has a report out about like in it specifics about just what a disaster this project has become and why it seems like it has been put on ice so everyone should read it because it's really it's worth your time and it's too long to summarize here but a few things that jumped out at us one uh the budget estimate went from 1.6 trillion in 2021 to an estimated 4.5 trillion in earlier this spring um so the design for the line is it's broken up to these uh modules that are kind of repeated to create consistency in the manufacturing process. But the scale of the resources you need for that manufacturing is just unimaginable. So here's a couple examples. One ex-employee, he worked on the building's construction,

said that to make the concrete for the first 20 modules, the contractors would need a supply of cement every year that would be greater than France's annual output. Seems like a lot. Someone else told the FD that the plan would eat up something like 60% of the global production of green steel per year, which obviously jacks up the price of all these commodities. A senior construction manager said that for 12 modules to be built by 2030, a 40-foot container would need to arrive every eight seconds, 24 hours of day from now until then. And the line was sold with all this like bullshit, sustainability, environmental protection, kind of branding bullshit. It was like they talked about how because it's built vertically, the footprint of the

city was so much smaller than normal city, right? And it was good for the environment. but people pointed out that in practice what they were creating was a 500 meter tall, 170 kilometer long wall blocking the path of all these migrating birds. And the wall was surrounded by wind turbines. So these birds, they either get chopped up in this like wind energy blender or they crash into the world's biggest mirror before plunging to their death in like a fiery hot desert. So that seems bad. And then there's the human element.

So there's a village in the lines. path that essentially was knocked down. And according to this FD report, some members of the tribe protested being evicted. And 15 were sent to prison, some for up to 50 years, and three were executed. So that's how they treated the people who didn't like this dumb idea. So 50 billion has been spent. I guess we'll just see if MBS adds to that. He did already detonate an entire mountain. So there's some sunk costs, as they say. There's all these, you know, know, often Silicon Valley guys that are super totalitarian curious, you know, and they like the kind of, well, you can get things done in a authoritarian system. Well, this is the counter

to that, which is that when everybody has to say yes to every idea that the autocrat has, like you get cluster fucks like this. Just to point out a couple things that jumped out to me, Tommy, did you notice it like one guy said to him to MBS like, hey, you know, high speed rail is great. We can go from one side of the line of the next in like in 20 minutes or something. And so they started planning to build this light rail because MBS is really psyched about it. But it turned out that high speed rail only works if it never stops. Yeah, we have to mention they stop. So, like, everybody lives in between the two ends.

But nobody wanted to tell MBS because, like, he was promised a 20-minute high-speed rail. And so they didn't point out that you get – same thing with, like, getting to the airport. It was like, oh, I'm going to take the rail of the airport. But there's not enough room in the railway cars for bags. Yes. And so they had to pick up your bags like eight hours. like eight hours before to get to the airport. All these little details like this.

I'd also just say, there's a global cabal of, like, management consultants. And honestly, I would bet anything, I don't know this, that the same kind of people that were having, like, pitch decks prepared for, like, the Gaza Riviera, definitely have a piece of this thing. There just must be these people that go around vacuuming up money for, like, the wild ideas of the super rich or the autocrats around the world. Because that $50 billion got spent on a lot of things other than concrete. It's like consultants, architects.

Yep. There were, MBS is talking to quantum physicists. Like, why the fuck is he talking to quantum physicists? And I'm like, well, like, maybe a nice side hustle if you're a quantum physicist to go talk to MBS about the line. And then the last thing is, even if this worked, which it's clearly not going to do, who the fuck would want to live in a wall in the middle of the desert? No one. Literally no one. It's like 25% of the Saudi population.

Nobody could ever explain to me, like, why anyone would want, like, even. and the beautiful drawings that they made of like this wall with like, you know, trees in it and stuff, you'd be like, well, that seems like a recipe for claustrophobia. Seems like I'd be going out of my fucking mind inside of this prison. Yeah. And there's little basic things like, what if there's a fire? Oh, yeah. I guess we run horizontally.

The opening of the story is about how they had to create a marina where the world's largest cruise ship could, I guess, dock in the building for some reason. Why, though? I have no idea. There's plenty of beautiful places on earth for the cruise ship to dock. There wasn't even a marina, so they'd, like, dig the harbor, but then the water was stagnant, so it would, like, be a horrible health hazard. And then wasn't there a soccer stadium above the marina? They wanted to build a 30-story glass and steel chandelier, and above that a 45,000-person soccer stadium.

This is beyond, what's after late-stage capitalism? I don't know. Whatever this is. Because, like, who needs a chandelier that big? Who wants to even look at a chandelier that big? Saudi prince, I guess. also love the anecdote where MBS would show up at like planning meetings with literally a 40 to 50 person under rush. And I guess it would just be dead silent as they walked around. And if you like something,

the whole group would be like, um, yes, guys got to let's go. And if you didn't like anything, they'd all tut at it and like tisks and wag their fingers. But like, can you imagine the stress? Like knowing what this guy did, Jamal Khashoggi and God knows how many other activists and opposition leaders in Saudi Arabia. Like, imagine, you know, he's, like, not happy about your window mock-up or whatever? It just definitely feels like not all the people were delivering the bad news to MBS on this project, though, because... Because you'll get high-speed railed. Yeah.

Not good. I mean, it's actually going to end up being one of those great artifacts of history if it gets, like, one-tenth of it built. And, like, 100 years to now, people are going to go on, like, tourist destinations just to see the, like, you know, wreckage of some concrete that was poured in the middle of the dust. desert or something. Yeah, it'd be like aliens. Guess it'll be fine. The birds will be fucking fine. The birds. Yeah. Imagine the birds. Birds like, oh, I can't fly over this thing. I guess I'd just fly around it. Yeah, 170 kilometers later. It's like, I'm going to guess I'm dead. All right, that is it for the news portion of the show, but please stick around for my interview with Tara Kabash and Josh Paul. We're going to talk about why they resigned from the Biden

administration over God's a policy, what they think a better policy looks like. And all they know about the Trump administration's Seatsfire Deal and Reconstruction efforts in Gaza. It's a very important conversation, so stick around for that. Positive the World is brought to you by Simply Safe. Is your home actually safe if you have an old school home security? I don't know. Traditional security systems respond after someone breaks in.

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Thank you both for being here. Thanks for us. Folks probably know of your name just for context. Both of you resigned from the Biden administration over its handling of Gaza policy. Josh after spending a decade at the State Department and Tarek was serving as advisor at the Department of Education. I want to talk to you about that experience. in a minute, especially what it was like and why maybe more people didn't follow you out the door in your opinion. But I wanted to start with just your opinions on what we know about

this Trump-Gaza ceasefire deal. I mean, there was a report in Politico this morning. They had a leaked PowerPoint presentation about the, it's about how the administration is struggling to get from ceasefire to phase two of this deal, phase two, including disarming Hamas, the IDF withdrawing for more parts of Gaza, Palestinian governance and reform, economic development, you know, the easy stuff. The White House is also reportedly struggling to put together an international stabilization force to secure Gaza. There have been all these reports that maybe the plan is to only rebuild parts of the Gaza Strip that the IDF controls, not anything under control of Hamas. The Atlantic reported on the plan to create what they're calling alternate safe

communities where I guess up to 25,000 Gazans may like live together in these little hamlets, I don't know what to call them, and not be allowed to travel to parts of Gaza under Hamas control. So just throw an information at you guys here. Josh, back in September, you wrote an op-ed for the Guardian calling the Kushner Blair Plan, reconstruction plan for a post-war Gaza, a moral and policy atrocity. Has that view changed since you've learned more about what they're actually planning to do? No, not really. I think the thing that's changed is it's become increasingly clear that there's, despite this 20-point Trump proposal, really the absence of a plan in terms of how you get to the next phase, there's certainly inputs that are coming, I think, unfortunately, from the wrong quarters, both from business interests. I think there's a lot of people who are looking at Gaza and thinking about how they can make money off this. And, you know, Prime Minister Nusson Yahoo is doing all he can to, if not scuttle this, then bend it to his will, which of course is not the route to a just and lasting peace. So I think where we are now is also, unfortunately, taking a leaf from the last two decades or 25 years of failed American policy in the Middle East.

And in particular, where we see the absence of any sort of Palestinian role in this plan and the imposition of governance from the outside, that's what went wrong in Iraq. And we have taken apparently no lessons from that. And the war will pay for itself. Yeah, Tar. I mean, there's basically nothing in there about Palestinian self-determination. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's pretty much right. And to Josh's point, it's the same problem we continue to see with American foreign policy in the Middle East.

It's always happening in contra to what the actual people are looking to achieve. And without having a self-governing system, without giving Palestinians the authority, the ability to speak for themselves, we're going to get this wrong. You need to have Palestinians actually at the table. That's Palestinians in the region. That's Palestinians in the diaspora, not a U.S. government that is dictating what they think is best for Palestinians. In the same way, we don't tell Israelis what to do. Far from it, actually, we give them complete autonomy to decide what they want to do sometimes for their own detriment. Why don't Palestinians have that same type of voice? Why don't they have that same type of self-determination? I think it's actually in the United States best interests as well as all peoples in the region to create that space for Palestinians to be part of the solution.

So the Washington Post reported that this U.S.-led civil military coordination center has now taken the lead in overseeing the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza. I guess on one level, it's maybe a little bit of a relief that it won't be as disastrously handled as the GHF, the previous iteration of assistance was. But in response to that news, I saw that your organization, a new policy, released a statement that said, quote, the U.S. must avoid a mission creep that makes Israel's legacy our responsibility. Can you guys just elaborate on that risk of mission creep? And then just sort of what do you think is an appropriate role to make sure that these civilians in Gaza who have been bombarded or starve for the better part of two years actually get the humanitarian assistance? Yeah. I mean, first of all, the good news, right, which is that I think it's very clear to everyone that Israel is not the appropriate authority to be in charge of humanitarian assistance going into Gaza.

It has weaponized that assistance, not just for the last couple of years, but for decades, restricting the flow of medicine, of food, of construction materials to the Palestinians. And so if there's to be any hope of a successful reconstruction, it has to be taken out of Israel's hands. And, you know, the United States is an appropriate partner to play a significant role in that. Of course, the downside is that we know how U.S. operations in the Middle East tend to go. They start slowly, and then before you know it, you are pulled into something. that is not in America's interest. And, you know, I think we all wonder what is going to happen when the first American soldier gets killed in one of these operations, you know, it seems at some

point or other, you know, the more and more we get involved, the greater the risk becomes. And then what is the next step after that? What is the long-term plan? Again, are we committing ourselves to an operation without an exit plan, without a long-term plan and without clearly a plan to transition this role to that Palestinian governance and leadership that Tarug was just talking about. There's been a Palestinian-American kid named Muhammad Ibrahim who has been rotting in Israeli prison since February. So for like nine months. He's 16 years old. The crime is allegedly throwing stones, I think, in an empty street in the West Bank. It doesn't seem like anyone in the Trump administration has lifted a finger to get this kid out. there have been a number of journalists who have tried to raise awareness about the cause.

Not enough, I would argue, but it doesn't seem to really penetrate. You two know far better than anyone about the Biden's administration's failure to use leverage and pressure Israel to do things. For all this talk of U.S. leverage, especially the billions in military assistance that we give them, it seems that historically, or at least in recent history, we've rarely used that leverage. Why do you think that is? I think it's a political problem, plain and simple. You know, to your point, Biden had all the time in the world to use U.S. leverage to stop the ongoing atrocities that we were witnessing in Gaza, the forced starvation, the continuous bombing of civilian infrastructure. We never did anything. And I think the reality is that regardless of it's Democrats or if it's Republicans, there is this entrenchment in U.S. politics today. and for many years now, that has been completely captured by special interests. And the special interests here are extremely wealthy billionaires that are operating in Democratic primaries,

that are operating in Republican elections to ensure that there is an unconditional support to the Israeli government's policies of oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And I think that is fundamentally the problem that Americans have been watching for, years and they ever realized in the last couple years is not working in their own interests. These positions that politicians are taking to fail to use U.S. leverage is working against all of our communities. And it's something that Americans are increasingly frustrated by. We've seen these tremendous shifts in public opinion that don't want to see U.S. tax dollars and U.S. weapons being used against civilians. They want that money to be reinvested in their

communities and they're realizing that Palestine is actually this litmus test in American politics because there is going to be the establishment in both parties in this duopoly that is going to continue to allow these special interests to dictate to them what leverage should or shouldn't be used. And then there are a lot of people who are increasingly frustrated who are going to be running against those establishment type figures who are going to say, we need a different solution and that means we need to be able to reject those special interests. We need to actually fight for our communities. And that's kind of what a new policy is here to do. It's a change and to break that political chokehold on our politicians in Washington, D.C. Yeah, I definitely want

to ask you more about the organization and the way you can break that chokehold. But I mean, are you guys ever surprised that, look, the rights of American citizens don't trump other priorities? Like this kid's 16-year-old American kid robbing in prison. There's American citizens on these flotillas that the IDF is reportedly bombing, like dropping incendiary devices on drones. And seemingly the United States government, at least under the Trump administration, doesn't say a fucking word. Well, I'm glad you bring this up, right? Because, I mean, yes, you know, Mohammed Abraham has been in prison now for nine months and is suffering there. But, you know, there's been at least 13 American citizens who have been killed by Israeli security forces over the course of the last few years with impunity.

apparently, there has never been anyone held accountable for any of those killings, including of American journalist Shereena Buatclay, but of other Americans as well, including, for example, an elderly grandfather in his 70s who was, you know, kicked and punched by Israeli security forces in the West Bank, Omar Assad, and then left to die, which he did. If you could think about any country, any other country in the world where we had seen over a dozen Americans killed by their security forces, Congress would be really raising hell. The White House would be on the phone to that government saying, what the hell are you doing?

We want to see accountability. We want to see people put on trial. We want to know exactly what has happened. And in the case of Israel, the opposite is happening. And it's pretty shocking. There's actually a retired U.S. Army colonel, Colonel Steve Gabbavik, of the former U.S. Army military policeman who served in the West Bank for the last few years, who just spoke publicly to say that he investigated one of those killings of an American citizen. He took his findings up the chain, and he was told, no, we're not going to say that. We're going to follow Israel's version of events there. It's, to me, I think, one of those issues where if we can't even stand up,

and, you know, saying this is also someone who served in the State Department for a long time, if we can't even stand up for the security and the safety and the rights of our own citizens overseas with one of our closest partners who depends on us for their defense, What on earth are we doing? Yeah. So, look, you guys made both of you this gutsy decision to resign from jobs in the Biden administration over causal policy. Can you just tell us, you know, what was that like? Was it lonely?

Was it scary? Did you, were you surprised that more people didn't follow suit to our ex start with you? It was lonely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I've never actually told the story about, like, the moment that I decided to resign for me. You know, after days of, you know, very dehumanizing rhetoric from the president himself, you know, from conversations with colleagues, there was like a particular moment. It was minutes after the first hospital got bombed. It was Ella Lee Hospital in Gaza City.

And I turned to a colleague where in a meeting. And I was like, what the fuck are we doing? And she like just didn't know what to say. She knew I was Palestinian. She knew that this was an issue that was close to me that I've been raising concerns about U.S. complicity. And she looks at her phone, she sees a notification from the Washington Post.

She's like, the headline says that it was a backfiring rocket from Hamas. And in that moment, I realized, like, there was no amount of humanizing myself within the administration with these colleagues that I worked with for years because the propaganda machine that always played out that I had been so familiar with as a Palestinian that our stories,

that our voices were never trustworthy enough, that it was always going to be, the Israeli official said this, and so that's what we have to go with. And in those conversations with senior officials in the Department of Education, in the White House, my voice didn't actually matter. And, you know, a few weeks later, the Washington Post came out with a very thorough investment investigation, making it very clear that there was no way this is a rocket backfiring. This was always an Israeli rocket that had hit a hospital that killed 500 civilians. And that allowance of, you know, this idea that, you know, oh, it could have been something else allowed for dozens of hospitals to be invaded, to be bombed. And like, it was very clear that, like, this was a lonely road for me. And despite that, I still continue to communicate with many colleagues. who were increasingly frustrated, who wanted to take a position, but because they had family circumstances that made it impossible for them to leave, because they needed to have health care, because costs are getting more and more expensive in these cities.

Like, there had to be someone else to raise their voice and to do what I, you know, ultimately had to do, which was resign, and to be public about it. And I don't envy other people for not being able to make that decision. But I do wish there are more people who took that position. It is really, I mean, galling to think back to those early days when there were these debates over whether medical infrastructure was being targeted and then it was just routine. Or when you'd cite the health ministry death toll and people would scream at you and say, it's Hamas Run. How dare you? Obviously, they're lying.

And now those numbers are not even disputed. And if anything, they're widely perceived to be an undercount. Yeah. But thank you for triggering me. Josh, what was your experience of resigning? Can you tell folks or what you did at this point? Yeah. So I worked in the state department in something called the Bureau of Political Military Affairs,

which is the part of the U.S. government that is responsible for what we broadly call our defense diplomacy. But essentially, it's the overlap between military diplomacy and foreign policy. And that includes arms, transfers, security assistance, as well as a host of other functions, global humanitarian demining, security negotiations with countries around the world. And so in that bureau where I'd been for over a decade, you know, there was certainly plenty of difficult issues. I went into it knowing that there would be plenty of difficult issues that we would struggle with as we strike a balance, right? As it always is between America's hard security interests and, you know, human life, frankly. What was different in this context, I think were two things.

First of all, the absolute scope and scale of the harm that was being done so quickly with American weapons and not just American weapons, but weapons that we ourselves were paying for for the most part. By the time I left October 18th of 2023, there were already 3,500 people who were killed in Gaza, at that point almost all of them with American weapons. The other thing that was different was the absence of debate. In fact, the unwillingness, frankly, the top-down direction for there not to be any sort of policy discussion. And if you know the State Department... Top-down from whom?

Certainly from the White House, but in my experience from the Secretary, from the undersecretary level, flipping a process on its head that is normally a bottom-up policy process to say, you will approve these arms sales. We will not discuss these questions. We will not listen to your concerns. And these questions are like, is this in accordance with U.S. law in a lot of instances, right? Yes. Is this accordance with U.S. law?

But also even the more simple question of what the heck are we doing if the whole theory here is for the US piece of this puzzle to be the provision of security in order to lead to peace, that's clearly not worked. That's clearly collapsed. So what even are we doing in the underlying policy? But also are these arms transfers that we know are going to be used to violate international law, we know are going to cause immense civilian harm? Should there not be some use of leverage, first of all? And should we not also be conditioning those as the law requires, whether it is the Leahy law, whether it is the Arms Export Control Act, are plenty of hooks that are normally applied, I have to say, in most contexts around the

world. But in this context, a blind eye was turned. I remember those early days. I mean, President Biden famously went over to Israel. You know, there was the embrace with Netanyahu on the tarmac. And the conventional wisdom that was sort of articulated via news reports from, you know, background quotes from officials in the Biden administration was very familiar to me, having worked in the Obama years. And the idea was basically Americans, politicians cannot disagree with Netanyahu publicly. You have to do that privately. They call it the Hug BB strategy.

The closer you get to him, the more leverage you have. Has that ever worked? Did that work with Biden? Did you ever see that leverage, you know, exerted privately or hear about it? No. No, I mean, the level of influence was always coming from the other side. It was always Netanyahu had leverage over Biden. and not because any particular reason that he had leverage,

but because Joe Biden, because Democrats were unwilling to use their leverage, it gave Netanyahu all the leverage. He was the one that was dictating the policies. He was the one that was making decisions about what Israel was going to do when. And it was our weapons. It was our money. And we didn't have a say. We were completely operating without any sort of oversight.

without any sort of real role, who's the superpower? I think that's always the question it comes back to. Is it us? Is it the United States of fucking America or is it someone else? The famous Bill Clinton line, right? You walked out of a meeting. Then, yeah, I said, who's the fucking superpower here? Yeah.

So tell me about the organization, a new policy and the associated political action committee. I mean, what are you guys trying to create? Is it a policy framework and white papers for the wonks? Is it political support and leverage all of the above? Like, how are you thinking about it? Yeah, I mean, first let's just clarify what the problem is, right? And Tarek's touched on this, that, you know, the problem we face here with this unconditional, this policy that transcends administrations of unconditional support to Israel is not just a foreign policy problem.

It's also a domestic policy problem. In my own experience, it is a problem that if you want to give that unconditional military support to Israel, you have to break American law to do it. You have to be willing not to enforce American law. You also have to be willing to tear apart the international rules-based order, you know, sanctioned the ICE, as not only President Trump is doing, but as, you know, previous administrations were as well. You also have to be willing to sacrifice America's global leadership and credibility because the rest of the world can see very clearly what's happening and the hypocrisy of our approach. You also have to be willing to shut down dissent and protests here in a way that is fundamentally un-American.

And all of that emerges from, you know, that is not a set of policy choices per se. That is a set of political choices. And it is so, therefore, we're not a policy organization. We're not a think tank. We are a political organization that is here to fix that political problem. And the way we are doing that is through taking this incredible transformation and this movement and this energy that we see across Americans of all creeds, of all backgrounds, of all political perspectives who want to see change and driving that into politics

in a way that politics and American politics at least is designed to respond to, which means lobbying. It means votes. And then separately, on Tarek's side of the House, it means that. money. So for directly for candidates, for campaigns. Yeah. It's it means that we're going to support candidates that are going to protect American democracy and that are going to fight for U.S. policies that actually align with the interests of their voters, their communities, and what's good for America's national interests, plain and simple. What we're trying to do is not change

where people are. We're trying to meet Americans where they are and bring politicians along. It's been extraordinary watching people start to rethink, you know, this sort of blanket support for Israel. I mean, there's a lot of it on the left, but more recently there's a pretty serious conversation about U.S. support for Israel on the right, including the very far right, the scary right, the literally neo-Nazi right, that is tearing apart the Republican Party as we speak. For those who haven't followed this, the kind of inciting events was Tucker Carlson invited this kid named Nick Fuentes on his show, who is, you know, Holocaust denier. misogynist, open racists, said Jim Crow was good for black people, like that level of neo-Nazi. But I think it has sort of laid bare what was simmering under this surface, which was, you know, young Republicans don't understand the kind of blanket support for Israel. And I think they would argue, I don't know if this is fair to say, but they would argue the lack

of space to openly debate these issues has led people to more extreme quarters and people like Nick Fuentes and voices like his. Do you think that observation or that sort of excuse for the anti-Semitic fringe is accurate? And sort of how can a new organization, like more openly talking about this, help kind of be a pressure valve? I mean, I think there's an obligation on everyone to be talking about these issues. And I think what's happening on the right is a function of where American politics has been in terms of what you are allowed to talk about. I mean, the repression that we are now seeing in American civil society on college campuses, that didn't start with Donald Trump. That actually started under the Biden administration. It was one of the big

issues that made my job as a political appointee in the Department of Education almost impossible to do because there was no willingness to actually defend these institutions that were getting called in front of Congress and being berated as quote unquote anti-Semitic because they were allowing schools and their universities and their student and faculty demographics just to have conversations or question existing U.S. foreign policy. And so, like, this idea that, you know, this is only a function of, like, the far right is actually, it's definitely happening. That conversation is happening there.

but it's happening because there's been this blanket repression about what you can talk about, who you can criticize in this particular moment. And I think it's a really dangerous place to be in American civil society because there is an obligation for reasonable politicians to actually engage with their voters. And the more that reasonable politicians ignore what people are feeling and the pain that they're feeling, the more likely people are going to lash out and it's going to be a lot less, safe for a lot more people. So when you are looking at candidates who you might want to support, what are the kinds of issues?

I imagine it's like arms to Israel, you know, A-PAC. I don't, would you factor in like kind of support for the Abraham Accords or at least more honest debate about what they were and were not? Like, how are you thinking about this? I mean, so we're thinking about a pretty broad landscape of policy questions. I think, you know, all those issues are on the table and they're discussing. with candidates. I think first and foremost, like reconstruction, how you think about Palestinian self-determination and the role of Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian life. You know,

what does the role of, you know, the United States or, you know, an international community look like in terms of reinvesting in Gaza and rebuilding? What does accountability look like? All these are like really important questions. But another big piece of this is making sure that you are identifying people who are going to be successful and being able to win. Because at the end of the day, this has been an issue that has far too long been on the fringes in American politics. This is not a far left issue anymore. This is a kitchen table issue. It's a litmus test for Democrats and increasingly so for Republicans. And so what we are starting to see is that there are politicians that have been elected for many years start to talk about not taking APAC money, not being paid off

by Republican billionaires and Democratic primaries. I think that is an important step. But I think you also want to make sure that these politicians are actually signing on to bills that are going to condition weapons to a country that is violating U.S. law. That is a pretty clean cut, straightforward, in America's interests or not question. And if that's a question that you're not willing to answer or engage in, you're probably not a candidate we're going to support. Josh, one other issue that's been a challenge for a long time, but it's getting a lot of

attention lately has been settler violence in the West Bank. A recent guest on this show, a guy named Jasper Nathaniel with a great substack, and Infinite Jazz was over in the West Bank covering the olive harvest, which has been a particularly violent time for Palestinian farmers who are trying to go to their olive groves, harvest their crops, and come home. They've been attacked by these lunatics, terrorists in the West Bank. Jasper posted a video of one of these settlers clubbing a woman, elderly woman, nearly to death, which I think made a lot of news. It's my understanding that, you know, U.S. weapons are being used in this repression, right? I mean, was this something that you felt like you were allowed to discuss when you were at the State Department

and working on these arms transfers? So this is not an issue that just arose in the last couple of years. This is a longstanding issue, and it's certainly one that the State Department is well aware of and has been asked about many times by Congress. For example, we know that U.S. funded and provided military bulldozers are used to demolish Palestinian houses in the West Bank in an act of collective punishment. We know that U.S. manufactured firearms are provided for commercial resale to these settlers who then use them for that violence in the West Bank.

Or passed out by Ittmar Ben-Givir. That was actually a live discussion ahead of that sale that I myself was a part of. This was back in 2022 when actually that same sale was being considered. and saying, hey, we should probably not do this. And, you know, I was overruled by the White House at the time. You know, I think it's important to note as well that the settler violence is not just a sort of a thing that happens and, you know, a movement that is happening by itself. You can overlay where that settler violence happens with Israel's own public transportation strategy for the West Bank, its own infrastructure plans. And you can see.

And there's a great organization called Breaking the Silence. which is an organization of former IDF soldiers who have now speaking out, who have done this mapping and this overlay. And there is very clearly a strategy behind it. So I think, first of all, you know, look, there is a need to absolutely condemn that violence. There is also a need to withhold the means for that violence, but there's also a need to withhold the means for the mechanisms that supported. And what I've been by that is the settlement enterprise itself, both as a function of Israeli government policy, but also as a function of, of US funding again. And here I'm not talking about government funding, but private US funding.

A lot of the settlements are funded through US charitable organizations, which last time I checked shouldn't be supporting what are clearly illegal operations. And yet here we are. Yeah. It feels like, I mean, you're right, this has been a longstanding issue. It has clearly, like, been one of the biggest obstacles to the notion of a two-state solution, which I think a lot of people rightly have observed has been off the table, or at least unrealistic. for a long time. But it's a little discussed. I mean, it's starting to come to the fore,

but I'm not entirely sure why now, not earlier. Yeah, I mean, I think plain and simple, people are realizing how Israel's policies, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, are completely out of sync of what our values are. And I think as Americans start to realize this more and more, as we see more independent media start to talk about these issues about how, you know, we're witnessing a lack of democracy, actually, and how Israel operates, how we're witnessing actual injustice, actual, like, state-sanctioned settler violence and terrorism against civilians that already don't have equal rights. As we see more people engaging in this de facto annexation, even if it's not an official policy of annexation, it is how.

happening. We have seen more and more Palestinian land get stripped from Palestinians. I think people are realizing that, like, we are financing this. We are creating these problems. It's our job to fix them. Whether we like it or not, we are all part of this problem. It doesn't mean that, you know, you're giving to APEC you're part of the problem, but it means your tax dollars are going to Israel and they are creating these types of problems. So we all have to be part of the solution. We all have skin in the game because we're Americans. Just on that, I mean, I think particularly for the Democratic Party, there's a challenge here, right? Because the dogma has been, you know, since Clinton, the belief in the two-state solution.

And it's a dogma that is rolled out again and again. And it's very easy for, you know, Democratic electives to say, well, you know, I'm not pro-Nuttonyahu. I support the two-state solution. Right. But it's Charlie in the football, right? It's being pulled out. And when you look at the settlement of violence, when you look at the expansion of settlements, the expansion of infrastructure, the ethnic cleansing, frankly, of Palestinians from many villages in the West Bank, the way the best bank is being cut up.

Okay, so I believe in a two-state solution, but that solution is no longer viable on the ground. Where does that leave me? And I think that's one of the reasons why Democrats are now suddenly beginning to really focus on the West Bank because they realize, oh, crap, I'm left holding the bag for this policy that isn't going to go anywhere. And so there's a lot of, I think, this is almost a form of backpedaling and trying to rewind history. Yeah. I fear it's too late. Or at least, yeah, ground the conversation in reality. So if people are listening and they think, I like what these guys are talking about, I want to be a part of this organization or I want to learn more. Where can they go?

You can go to act.anewpolicy.org slash pod save, actually. Okay. We create a special link just for you. And what can people do? If they want to help out or be a part of it, what can they do? So we also have a volunteer intake on our website. So we have hundreds of volunteers that are already, you know, working with us. We activate people through our advocacy program. there's always opportunities to engage with your member of Congress, to engage through political campaigns, to doorknock.

You know, our organization has the infrastructure to do all of these different things. And it's going to take all of us, it's going to take millions of Americans to realign our politics with the values that we care about. And when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to Palestine in particular, this isn't just a foreign policy issue. It's in every single issue. It's domestic policy. It's civil rights. It's health care. It's immigration.

It's our neighbors and our colleagues getting abducted off the streets by ICE. I wrote about this back in July that what happens in Palestine doesn't stay in Palestine. What ICE is doing today, what ICE has been doing for years but has been expanded under Trump's big beautiful bill, has been this effective occupation of our own cities and communities, where I have to go on Google Maps and check and see where the, the random checkpoints are because there's a bunch of traffic that should not normally be there and go around it because I'm a brown guy that looks like me. This is what Palestinians deal with every single day in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

We are importing these policies. We're importing their technology that is allowing ICE to be able to hack into our phones and look at our encrypted text messages. Ice trains with the IDF. These policies always end up coming back. And so it's always going to be on us to think about how we solve the problem. If APAC is the problem, a new policy is here to be the solution. So follow us online, follow our social media.

As Tarek said, go to act.anupolicy.org forward slash podsafe. Sign up for our newsletter. If you are capable of it, do think about contributing. You know, American political work takes money. But more than that, it takes all of us raising our voices. And we look forward to working with millions of Americans across the country to translate their desire for change into that real and lasting change.

Well, look, I bet a lot of people listening will want to do that. Thank you for the work you guys are doing. Thanks for the courage it took to quit a job with no clear path for what it meant for the future and for being here. Great to see you both.

Thanks so much, Tommy. Thanks again to Tarek and Josh for coming by and we will see you guys next week. Thanks for coming to CrookedCon. Yeah, that's great. Good ass time. Fantastic. Good to see everybody there. Potsie of the World

is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cancer is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seiglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Heffcote,

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