Pod Save the World - Gaza Protests Roil College Campuses

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Ben and Tommy discuss the House approving $26 billion in military aid to Israel despite strikes on Rafah and a continuously deteriorating humanitarian situation, the resignation of Israel’s intelligence chief, a report concluding that there’s no evidence for UNRWA having broad terrorist ties, and student protests over the war in Gaza at American universities. They also discuss supplemental funding for the war in Ukraine, angry reactions from Russian officials, Trump’s personal aide saying he was promised a pardon if he lied to the FBI, Elon Musk’s battle with a Brazilian judge, the US agreeing to withdraw all troops from Niger, and why Biden should stop talking about cannibalism. Then Ben speaks to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal about her “no” vote on offensive weapons to Israel and her recent trip to Cuba. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, we won the 2024 Webby Award for Best News and Politics Podcasts. How about that? I mean, is this like the version of our Oscar speech here, Tommy? Yeah. Are you going to denounce your entire religion or something? I'd like to thank all the world those, basically. I would do. Thank you guys for voting. Yeah, thanks for listening. We really do love doing the show and we want it to grow and expand. And the hardest thing, in all of podcasting is to get people to find your show because, as you guys have noticed, the discovery process is bad. So thank you for this. Also, you know, leave a review. Tell a friend about POTSave the world. Yeah, no. And it's great. There's not a lot of metrics for your podcasting,

you know, so something like this is, and I have to say, Tommy, I'm here in D.C. at a good turnout of WorldO's. This is why I should always tell people I'm coming. Yeah, for sure. Because it was great meeting people. Like I, you know, it's always nice to put faces with whoever's on the other end of the internet abyss here. So there were photos in the discord of folks who went and saw you and were just snapping away and posting them. Thank you for that. Yeah, no, it's great. So this is nice. I mean, the Webby feels like we all won guys. It's not just you and me and our amazing production team here. The world has won. So just feel good about that, you know. Yeah, that's right. Everyone, big team here, Kyrkamedo, works their ass off.

So thank you all for recognizing them and recognizing the show. All right, we got a great show, Ben. Ben is live from D.C. in the heart of the blob. So if his feed cuts off in the middle, you know what happened. We're going to talk about the latest news from Gaza and why invasion of Rafa seems like it could happen very soon. We're going to talk about accusations and evidence or lack thereof than employees of a UN agency participated in the October 7th, Hamas attack. We'll talk about reports that the Biden administration will soon cut off support for an Israeli military unit campus protests in the U.S. We're going to look at the supplemental

funding bills that passed over the weekend, what they mean for Ukraine, what they mean for the Russian reaction. And then there's also some breaking news about the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case that we're going to update you on. We'll explain why Elon Musk is fighting with a judge in Brazil. Very fun one there, Ben. And then why the U.S. is getting pushed out of the Niger and finally cannibals. And then you just did our interview. What are we going to hear? A great interview. I talked to Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the House Progressive Caucus. And we talked about Gaza and her vote with 37 Democrats against the aid package for Israel, which was a standalone boat in the House, her concerns about the Ratha invasion and the need

to condition aid to Israel. And then she was recently in Cuba. Cuba, together with Ilhan Omar. And so we talked about the acute humanitarian crisis in Cuba, the U.S. responsibility for it, and some of the steps that she and I would like to see the Biden administration take on Cuba. So it was a great conversation. We also, Tommy, at the end, we talked basically about how do we make, you know, in the same way that Jayapal and other political leaders really centered the progressive agenda and the Biden legislative agenda. We talked about how in this kind of moment, we talked about campus protests, how we might be

able to make foreign policy, you know, something that, where the party's more connected to its voters. Yeah, that was good conversation. Yeah, she's really smart and extremely progressive. And that would be nice if the conversation out in the world match the conversation in D.C. on foreign policy. Yes. We're working on it.

So, Ben, we did a special episode last week to talk about the military strikes by Iran and Israel. each other's territory. The good news is it seems like both sides have decided to de-escalate and not at least do more direct attacks. But I did notice that Politico reported that attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups in Syria on U.S. forces resumed this weekend after a two-month hiatus. So that is definitely something I think we all need to keep an eye on. You called that in the episode. I mean, this is the thing about escalation. It just ends up reverberating in different places. So we do need to keep an eye on that.

But let's turn to the war in Gaza, which is the root of all this conflict. So the Israeli government just seems hell bent on launching a ground invasion into the city of Rafa, where an estimated 1.4 million Gazans are internally displaced within the Gaza Strip and sheltering in temporary structures because of the conflict. The U.S. has said a thousand times that they think a Rafa ground invasion would be catastrophic. They say it in private meetings. Tony Blinken was saying it last Friday. But Prime Minister Bibi Dengu keeps saying that, you know, Israel has taken out 20 of the 24 Hamas military brigades. And he says the other forward in Rafah and we got to finish the job like any war has ever ended that cleanly in the last, what, 20, 50 years. The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel's military recently called up two reserve brigades seemingly in preparation for a Rafah invasion. The IDF is launching air strikes into the Rafah region on a daily basis. There were horrific reports over the weekend of a strike that killed 17 children and two women

in another strike, a man, his three-year-old child and pregnant wife were killed, and yet doctors were somehow able to deliver the baby alive. So God knows who will care for that child now. But despite Biden's opposition to this invasion, this week he will likely sign into a $26 billion supplemental funding request for Israel and Gaza. Now, nine billion of that is humanitarian relief for people in the Gaza Strip. But about 15 million will go to the Israeli military, including for offensive weapons. weapons systems. So, Ben, you know, it's hard when you juxtapose these two things, I mean, concern about Rafa with sending more weapons. I think the nicest thing you can say about U.S. policy is that it seems incoherent. But I don't know. I ask the question I have is,

do you have hope that the Biden administration is considering unilateral ways to slow or cut off the delivery of some of these weapons systems to actually prevent a Rafa invasion? I talked to Congresswoman Jaiapal about this a little bit in the sense that even though the aid package passed, there's no requirement that it be delivered. You know, the judgment could be made by, based on multiple existing laws that we've talked about, that it's not in our interest to be providing offensive weapons to Israel to support its Roth invasion. And to me, this one, I mean, anybody who listens to the podcast knows that we've been calling for a ceasefire for conditioning of assistance for quite some time now. I just don't understand how it's possible to continue to provide offensive military assistance to Israel at the same time that they are ignoring something that Biden called a redline.

You know, he said Rafa was a red line. He said, and again, not to return to the redline semantics, but I was going to say, we're good at ignoring red lines. Yeah, so exactly. But, but I mean, more than that, it's been months. now that they've warned that this would be a catastrophe. They've used very strong language around it. To me, this feels like yet another but very significant Rubicon,

where if Netanyahu just completely ignores Biden and Rafa goes in, really, I mean, I don't even know what this could do to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. In addition to the people that die in strikes, obviously this will make it hard to get more aid in. This will exacerbate the famine-like conditions that already exist. This will displace people who've already been displaced multiple times. I just don't see how it's possible to continue this logic that is embedded in that aid package, right? We're giving weapons and humanitarian aid.

We're trying to mitigate the humanitarian catastrophe that our weapons are contributing to. At some point, you can't just have a kind of verbal split from Netanyahu. You have to be substantive split. And to me, Roth is a decision point for Joe Biden. And in terms of what, I don't know, I just don't know, Tommy, it's not clear to me because they haven't been clear themselves. They've kind of hinted at conditions without specifying what they will be. And they can't be minimalist either. You know, I think this is kind of an either-or proposition.

Either we're kind of out in supporting this military operation or we're at least half in. And that's a very uncomfortable place to be. And it frankly makes us look weak if we tell the government not to do. something for months and then when they do it, there's not consequences. There has to be consequences. Yeah, I mean, speaking of consequences, seven months after the most disastrous attack and intelligence failure in Israel's history, arguably, we're finally now seeing resignations by Israeli officials who are responsible for security. The first to go was the head of Israel's military intelligence. Axios also reported that the head of IDF Central Command will end his service in

August when his term is up. So I mean, it's like this makes sense to see happen. You know, maybe they're maybe they feel like the war has been going on long enough that you can hand it off to to your successor. But what it really reminds me of, Ben, is that Netanyahu, despite calling himself Mr. Security, despite propping up Hamas to divide the Palestinian leadership and prevent the creation of the Palestinian state, despite the IDF having Hamas's attack plan for a year in advance, he is still taking no responsibility for what happened. He punched that question every time. He says, we'll talk about that after the war. He'll never even, never even entertain it. Yeah, and he's ultimately the accountable person. And for the reasons you said, but also,

let's remember, he divided Israel with his judicial power grab. He had a policy of, you know, moving the IDF from along the border with Gaza up to the West Bank so they could protect settlers who were picking fights with Palestinians. He is more accountable than anybody for the failures of October 7th than he's evaded it. And the way that he's evaded it is by perpetuating the war. You know, this is, it's in his own interest to continue to be in a war footing because the moment that music stops, they'll have to be an election likely in Israel and he would lose based on all the polls that we see.

And so that's part of what's so dangerous here is it, not only Israel's standing in the world and the nature of Israel's society, but the U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. world in the world is all hitched to this guy that is just trying to evade that accountability and stay in power. And that's yet another reason to kind of cut this cord with Netanyan. I don't know if you read it. Youval Harari guest on this show a few months back, wrote a long, incredibly powerful piece in Harats over the weekend. Here's a quote from it. I just had copy pasted to my notes.

Even during the worst moments of October 7th, Hamas was nowhere near vanquishing Israel, but the ruinous policy of the Netanyahu government following October 7th has placed Israel in existential danger. It was a really searing and powerful piece that I recommend everybody read. And that's what we, you know, we've talked about how the military operation is not rescue the hostages. It's probably endangered them more, if not outright, you know, harmed them when you're dropping 2,000-bounds on places where they are. We talked about how even a Raf invasion is not going to destroy Hamas. Hamas political leaderships out of the country, and frankly, Hamas itself probably draws more support from a Palestinian population that's been bombarded like this. It's not necessary to prevent another

October 7th. Frankly, just having, you know, IDF units on the border with Gaza would have prevented October 7th. You didn't need to destroy the entire Gaza Strip to do that. But also, it's fundamentally changing Israel's position in the world. And it's fundamentally, changing Israel. You know, when you engage in wars like this and you justify them to yourselves, we experience this in the war on terror. You know, if you're sitting there defending, I'll take us as an example, when Americans were defending enhanced interrogation techniques that were torture or defending Guantanamo or the invasion of Iraq, that didn't do good things to us, you know, and that's the tragedy. That's why people, they should definitely

read that piece because that's an Israeli voice, a very smart Israeli voice. making that argument that this is this is we should stop and think about what this is doing to us. Yeah, he also sort of ties the previous sort of lack of accountability for brutality against Palestinians in the West Bank for, you know, sort of the mindset that's allowing people to not see the carnage that's happening in Gaza right now. Anyway, very powerful piece. Ben, another issue that's sort of important one this week. So a while back we talked about Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA employees actually participated in the October 7th Hamas attack. So UNRWA is the UN agency responsible for humanitarian relief for the Palestinian people.

Those allegations led to the United States cutting off support for UNRWA. Congress recently passed a law that prevents more U.S. funding for UNRWA through March of 2025. So we're a critical donor for this agency and we won't be giving them additional money for at least a year. there's a new report out this week that was conducted by the former French foreign minister that says Israel has yet to provide any evidence for those claims. So just an important piece of context people should know about. But the report also does say that UNRRA needs to update its vetting procedures and improve a lot of their internal processes. UNRWA employees about 13,000 people on the ground in Gaza. And in normal times, they run schools and hospitals and other

critical infrastructure. And then speaking of vetting, there are lots of reports that are not yet confirmed by the State Department, though, that Secretary of State Tony Blinken is going to announce that the U.S. will cut off support for an Israeli military battalion accused of human rights abuses in the West Bank. This step would ban the Netsa Yehuda Battalion from getting any U.S. military training or assistance under a law called the Leahy Law. This battalion was set up specifically to accommodate ultra-Orthodox or other religious nationalist army recruits. This battalion's been accused of manhandling a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man. in the West Bank to the point where he died of a stress-induced heart attack, that among other abuses. They were pulled out of the West Bank in 2022 because of U.S. concerns about human rights violations, but they're now fighting in Gaza. Basically, every Israeli official has denounced this decision to cut off this battalion. You've got Netanyahu, Benny Gans, his chief rival, Yuav Kalant, the defense minister. But again, you know, according to Axios, Israeli officials in Washington, have been warning the Netanyahu government,

have been warning the defense ministry that the U.S. was focused on this battalion and that this could happen. Cynics might point out that military assistance is fungible, meaning this unit's still going to get, you know, rifles and bullets from the defense ministry, even if the U.S. cuts off support to them. But Ben, sort of stepping back,

like, I'm glad to see the Biden team ratcheting up pressure on those abusing Palestinians in the West Bank. But once again, we just get back to this kind of incoherence problem, which is I don't know how the U.S. position can be penalizing abuses by the IDF and the West Bank while seeming to turn a blind eye to many credible reports of human rights abuses in Gaza. Those two things don't work. Yeah. And I mean, first of all, in UNRWA, it's been totally illogical to cut off funding for the overwhelmingly

first option for providing assistance to people in Gaza. And, you know, I think it's worth noting that the U.S. was kind of credulous about these reports, but never provided the information either. And we've seen a bit of a pattern of this where we, you know, Israel brings some information. I mean, we saw this with Al-Shifa Hospital, you know, where Israel suggested there was like a Hamas Pentagon or something underneath this hospital. And we never saw that underlying information, really. And so, I don't know, it just makes the point that it's time to kind of,

We can continue to pull the threat on UNRWA, but we're in an emergency here with a famine. We need to give aid to whoever can deliver that assistance. And it's time to kind of move past this kind of pugilistic policy of punishing the tens of thousands of people that are in UNRWA that could provide aid because of an unverified allegation like this. We actually have a clip of the State Department spokesman Matt Miller kind of making some of the points you just made that might be helpful to hear. I think people forget sometimes the timeline and the facts on which we made that decision to suspend funding and confuse what it is we actually did. So the U.S. did not make that determination based on the government of Israel presenting us evidence. We made that determination when UNRWA came to us and said they were aware of these allegations. They had investigated them.

They had found them to be credible. And again, this is with respect to the 12 UNR employees who were alleged to have participated in the October 7th attack. not any of the broader allegations that have been leveled at UNRRA. UNRWA itself had done an initial investigation, had found those allegations to be credible enough that they had fired all or most of those employees. So no, I think we acted appropriately given the facts that were presented to us by UNRWA, not by Israel, but by UNRWA. And so we welcome the conclusion of this first investigation. We'll look to see what the other one produces.

So I hear a Matt saying there, and like, full disclosure, he's a friend. But I don't see how that then leads to the U.S. government cutting off all assistance done. Well, yeah, let's be very clear about this. And it's useful to play the clip. But first of all, by Matt's own statement, they fired these people. So then why do we have to cut off aid? But to be very clear, I think the Israeli allegation ginned up Congress, right? And then you started to see a lot of political pressure from Congress to cut off aid. So that may be, that may be technically. the case, but the reality is that the narrative on this thing was shaped by the Israeli allegations. There were definitely efforts to kind of push Congress to take that position, and that kind of put a chill on everything, you know? Right. So I think it's worth just kind of moving past this, continuing to investigate, we need to be investigated, but getting the Aden. On the Leahy law piece, I mean, this was before

October 7. So this was about actions in the West Bank before October 7th. Does anybody doubt that you wouldn't, that there's, and we can see similar abuses happening. There are 15,000 dead children in Gaza. It does speak to kind of the absurdity of this kind of painstaking review of a single unit in the West Bank pre-October 7th when, with our own eyes, we can see collective punishment taking place in Gaza, totally disproportionate civilian death in Gaza, famine in Gaza. Let me combine these two stories in different logic train times. Tommy, if the credible report of a few members of UNRWA is enough to cut off funding to UNRWA, why is there not a similar logic applied to the IDF?

That's a good point. Why is it the case that, you know, we have to continue providing all these offensive weapons and maybe someday in the future we'll look and see what the human rights abuses were in Gaza when we can see them, you know, why not cut that off now and make the barrier to entry Israel demonstrating that it's now complying with what the U.S. says publicly it should be doing in Gaza. Yeah. It's not the best decision by anyone involved here. Ben, another bit of Gaza Fala that's happening back home here in the U.S.

Is this wave of protests we're seeing on campuses across the country? I'll be honest with you, with listeners, there's so many different moving pieces in parts of this that I'm having trouble following all the details. I saw today that 100 demonstrators were arrested at Columbia University, which also canceled some in-person classes. There were reports that 47 protesters were arrested at Yale, 130 arrested at NYU. I think there's probably more and more. Protests are spreading to other campuses in solidarity. On Monday, a bunch of members of Congress went to Columbia to attack the administration for the lack of action against the protesters who reportedly had said or done things that were anti-Semitic.

There were others who were furious. who are furious at campus administrators at these colleges for asking the NYPD to come in and arrest kids. Some of, like, there's clips online of some of the protesters who have been saying just virulently anti-Semitic things. There's people clearly harassing Jewish students. And then there's also some pro-Palestine protesters

who say they feel threatened and unsafe. Biden even got asked about it and had to comment. So this is just a total mess. Just in terms of what the students want, Columbia University students say they want Columbia to divest from companies which, quote, profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine, end quote. I wish I had more detail on what that means because it seems expansive but also a bit vague. Protesters at Yale are a little more specific, they say, or a lot more specific, they say they want the university to divest from index funds with exposure to defense contractors and weapons manufacturers that are helping, quote, facilitate the genocide in Palestine. That's seems entirely reasonable to me. I mean, it might be a little more complicated than it sounds, because if you owned like an S&P 500 index fund, you have exposure to a bunch of big defense contractors, but it is very doable used by like the ESG version of that index fund. But weirdly,

Ben, the Yale University Committee on Investor Responsibility said that weapons manufacturers don't meet their criteria for divestment. I think they divested from some sort of domestic assault weapons sales companies. Anyway, I am confused. I'm exhausted just talking about this. You want to wait in on the campus politics debate? I mean, why not, Tommy? That's what we do here. We wait into treacherous waters. Things that get us, yes, slapped around. Yeah. Look, I think, first of all, yes, you know, the things that you see that are outright anti-Semitism or outright intended to kind of bully Jewish students because of their identity. I totally get why people are concerned about that.

I also do not think from anything I've seen that that represents the kind of broad sentiment of these protests. And I think the simple reality is these protests are not happening in a vacuum. They're happening because of the worn gossip. I mean, like there's a clear, obviously, connection between the fact that as has often been the case throughout American history, young people are seeing something that they don't like happening in the world. They're seeing the U.S. government participating in that, and they're trying to have their voices heard. And that's something that we should want in this country, you know?

You can't, you know, and politically, I'll just say this. Like, one of the things that I constantly hear from young people over the years, dating back to when I used to be one, you know. is dating back like you're carbon dating yourself carbon dating myself the rings on the trees are speaking now the hair on my head is showing or lack there of but the reality is if you just show up and ask young people for their vote every four years and kind of lecture them if you don't vote you know then you know you're screwing yourself and everything but then you you don't listen to young people in between elections they're they're going to get frustrated and they're going to try to be heard in

different ways. And so the first point is, I don't think that there should be a broad delegitimization of protest because there's some bad actors within those protests. The second point is the Republican committee that the President of Columbia testified in front of is clearly a bad faith effort. And if you wanted any evidence of that, Stefanik, at least Stefanik, the kind of leader of this McCarthyite kind of effort, after the President of Columbia basically does everything that she would want, you know, condemns the protest, condemns faculty members, orders the NYPD to arrest everybody, or invites, I guess, the NYPD to arrest everybody.

Stefanik still called for her to be fired, you know? This is about performative politics, more than like a sincere effort to have like a necessary focus on on delegitimizing and isolating anti-Semitic speech and actions on campuses. That should happen. Like there should be no tolerance for that kind of anti-Semitism. But again, just painting every protester on Gaza as an anti-Semite and demanding college presidents to be fired left and right doesn't seem to me like a thoughtful way to do it.

And by the way, it's what did they accomplish in trying to arrest all those protesters? They ensured that these protests would spread to other places because now you have students literally just protesting in solidarity with the Columbia students. And so if the goal was to somehow, you know, quote unquote, stop these protests, they've done the opposite. They've put more. And like you don't need to be a historian of social movements to know that arrests usually beget more mass mobilization. That's, you know, basic American history. Just to look at the civil rights movement. Look at the anti-Vietnam War movement.

And I saw crazy ideas like calling in the National Guard, like worked out so well Kent State. You know, we want to try that again. So again, I just think that this is this whole thing. There's important issues underneath it around anti-Semitism, around ways to be critical of Israel's military operation and its policies without the legitimization of Jews. That we've said at the beginning of this whole war. Yeah. That's garbage. That's the same thing as delegitimizing Palestinians.

That should not happen. But the way this is transpired just feels kind of almost fundamentally unsurious to me, you know. Yeah, I like, look, I support everyone's right to peacefully protests. I also understand that a lot of protests are inconvenient and designed to anger people. And that's good and that's appropriate too. And that's a part of the entire process. If you hurl anti-Semitic insult at someone, you're an asshole and you're hurting the cause. If you use violence, you're breaking the law and you should be arrested.

I think a lot of the problem is that schools have complete, like these. colleges have completely mismanaged the situation. Like there's there's no way that yales profits from defense industry investments are worth the PR fight they're having right now. Just divest you idiots. What is wrong with you? Like having a bunch of kids arrested with I mean is exactly what we said. It's clearly escalating the situation and causing it to spread. It also seems like Columbia screwed up by keeping reporters off campus because now you're having these like little out of context clips of the worst moments going viral and defining the narrative, whereas kids who go to these schools are like, actually, I just like walked by the quad and it's like 12 people just

chilling out. You know what I mean? And like these New York schools, let's be honest, they're all fucked because reporters all live in Manhattan and Brooklyn and they can just like stroll over to these and cover the protests and it becomes part of the narrative. I also think like most important though, these schools need to figure out clear rules and clear policies and then apply them consistently. Because a couple years ago, we were hearing from the same schools like speech as violence and that the meaning of words can be entirely determined by the listener, not the intention of the person saying it. And now some of these same schools and same administrators are seeming to blow off the impact of words that are anti-Semitic or at least could be construed

that way. And I think, you know, the hypocrisy seems pretty claring. I also think, Ben, like, the flip side of your point about not delegitial. minimizing protesters is absolutely, your point is absolutely right and valid. I do think the flip side of that is we do need to treat these kids like they're adults and just be honest that some protests are smart and effective and some are dumb and counterproductive. Yeah. And you have the right to do both, but I have the right to tell you you're a fucking idiot when you're throwing a soup on a Picasso or whatever. And like, I'm just sick of everyone coddling everyone online. It's like, it's okay to be, it's okay to use your freedom of speech to, to criticize all of it. And we also should be honest

So like we're coming at, our views on what's happening on these campuses is coming from a subjective place. If these sit-ins in protests were happening because these students wanted to block support for the war in Ukraine, I don't think I would view them as fondly as I do because they're working to prevent the war in Gaza, right? So it's just like, let's just be honest about our biases. Yeah. Yeah, no.

And I don't, I mean, I have, again, let's be very clear, you know, the anti-Semitism is beyond. the pale and and and and and the other thing that is important to note here is that this moves in all directions right so in other words um these students are part of the community of Columbia or wherever and so they have a right to be heard but so do the people they disagree with you know um like or the kids who just want to go to class yeah or kids who just kind of want to go to class and don't want to miss the end of their senior year because of this chaos right and so everybody in a school community has an opinion, you know, students who are against the war in Gaza, students who support the war in Gaza, parents of students, again, people, you can't say that the only valid speech is my speech,

you know, there has to be a respect and recognition of the validity of everybody's right to be a part of a community and not in insistence whether you're for or against protest, it's always just kind of my way or the highway here. But it's complicated, but I worry, you know, we better if we don't figure out ways for there to be outlets for speech and dialogue and discussion and deliberation around things like yale's you know endowment or whatever the thing is these things are just going to get bottled up and kind of explode in the wrong kind of ways yeah um okay so that'll get some trouble um yeah shit i'm kind of i'm already regretting i mean i'm against all the bad people and i'm yeah right here's my here's a big takeaway i would rather poke fucking needles in my eyes all day, every day, than be an administrator at an Ivy League school. Yeah, yeah. There's no worse job on the plane.

I'm a little sympathetic to some of these administrators. I'll say that. I mean, it's a hard job. I'm just not saying it's, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it sounds not fun. Yeah. You called up by Congress getting screamed at by Marjorie Taylor Green and Elise Stefan for like anything even like.

Yeah, there's no way to handle that perfectly. So I, you know, I do want to express that sympathy. Yeah. They do get paid well. Before we go to break, just want to let you guys know the entire second season of World Corrupt is now out in the world. It's on the Potsave the World feed. It is co-hosted by me and Men in Blazers, Roger Bennett. If you are a fan of the Blazers in general, you will be thrilled to learn that Roger is logging onto Crooked's

friend of the pod Discord for a round of Ask Me Anything tomorrow, Thursday, April 25th. You can ask Raj about literally anything, the latest season of World Corrupt, Saudi Arabia's investments into soccer, F1 racing. just ask him about Everton, ask him about his teams, asking about the games generally. He is one of the funniest, smartest, best people

I've gotten to work with. You will enjoy talking with him. If you're not a member, go to crooked.com slash friends to sign up for the Friends of the Pod Discord. Also, book bands are on the rise. It's on us to fight back,

Alona. Luckily, the Crooked store is doing a flash sale on all Free the Books merch. You get Free the Books. Tees, sweatshirts, and magnets are 30% off. but the sale won't last long, much like the books. So make like a conservative who found out about a book with a gay character and jump on it. I did not write that joke.

Go to crooked.com slash store to shop before the sale ends. So over the weekend, then something truly shocking happened, which is that the House of Representatives came together on a bipartisan basis to pass a $95 billion package of national security funding bills. specifically they passed $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and Gaza. We just talked about that, $8 billion to counter China, including $1.9 billion in weapons for Taiwan and $3.3 billion for submarine infrastructure. The Senate's going to take up that funding bill this week.

They're also going to vote on a bill that might force TikTok's Chinese parent company to sell the company or else they get blocked in app stores in the U.S. in a year. It's funny, Trump is trying to piss off young voters by blaming Biden for the TikTok ban. hoping they forget that he had an executive order on his way out of the door that attempted to ban TikTok. But anyway, here's a clip of Speaker Johnson explaining why he ended up pushing for the vote on Ukraine funding in particular. I'm doing here what I believe to be the right thing. I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important. I really do.

I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we've gotten that I believe Xi and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are in access. of evil. I think they're in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies. To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys. My son is going to begin in the Naval Academy this fall. This is a live fire exercise for me as it is so many American families. This is not a game. It's not a joke. We can't play politics of this. We have to do the right thing. And I'm going to allow an opportunity for every single member of the House to vote their conscience and their will on this.

And I think that's the way this institution is supposed to work. And I'm willing to take personal risk for that because we have to do the right thing in history of judges. So all the, we call him in the biz, TikTok stories, all the backstories on how Johnson came to change his opinion. Because very recently he was opposed to additional lethal aid to Ukraine, say that the intelligence he was presented with really, really convinced him and scared him. So shout out deep state. Ben, I got to say, like, credit to Speaker Johnson for bucking his party, getting the Ukraine aid passed. I think it's like self-evidently the right thing to do. I'm sure there are people listening who'd be like, he doesn't deserve credit for doing, you know, what was

morally right. But this guy put his political career in jeopardy to do something he thought was right. Just think about Kevin McCarthy ever doing that. He would not have, right? So credit to Speaker Johnson. Or, you know, Speaker Jim Jordan, if he'd gotten in there. I mean, yeah, minus the kind of weird axis of evil stuff. You didn't love that. I don't like that. That's never good. Didn't love that.

Didn't work out the first time we added access to evil. But a lot of the stuff he said there, yeah, like, that's kind of what we said we wanted to hear from Republican politicians in the age of Trump, which is saying that I actually won and persuadable by evidence. And I think the evidence is what we talked about on this podcast. Ukraine was like almost on the verge of collapse on their front lines, you know. They just didn't have artillery. They didn't have things to defend themselves with against Russians that have ramped up their attacks.

And so, you know, he was persuadable. He identified that there's an interest that exceeds his own political interest. And there, I think this was an interesting kind of message to Trump, you know, in some ways that, hey, this is, you know, there's a line that I'm not going to cross in terms of doing everything you want. And also at a time when Trump is talking about, you know, abandoning support for Ukraine and, you know, Russia can do whatever it wants. to NATO. I do think this is, you know, almost anticipating not just Trump's candidacy, but, you know, God forbid if Trump's president, this may be the party trying to send a message that, you know, like you need to kind of moderate this a bit, you know. And frankly, we've seen politically in the polling, maybe it is self-interested because Trump's position on that is not

popular, you know, this idea of cutting off Ukraine, this kind of fealty to Putin. And so whatever his motivations were, he changed his position, which is a rare thing. in American politics and that should that should absolutely be credited and let's be clear this is essential to keeping Ukraine going and even if you are exhausted by this war and think that there needs to be some negotiation um i can assure you that that negotiation is more likely if ukraine is getting this kind of aid because if Putin thinks he's just going to grind them down in the meat grinder and just swallow up more and more of Ukraine that's actually a recipe for more war and not just in the kind of dire, he might move on the Baltic scenario, but in terms of the fact that why would he negotiate

with a country that's been cut off? Yeah, I mean, it sounds like one of these intelligence briefings or conversations was in the Oval Office with Biden, with CIA director, Bill Burns, and I think maybe even Mitch McConnell, like kind of the congressional leadership. And, you know, in that context, you know, you're probably bringing out your most sensitive stuff. And it really did make me wonder if they've got some kind of evidence that of a senior Russian official saying like, okay, here's like the Estonia plan or the Latvia invasion plan or, you know, Moldova or whatever might be like some sort of next step in this process. Also, to your point on the polling, Pew has a bunch of research out today about American foreign policy priorities. And where is it?

Limiting the power and influence of Russia is at 50%, which is up like eight points since 2021. Now, obviously, you know, the invasion of Ukraine is probably responsible for that. But you're right. I mean, Trump's position of just cutting off the lethal support to Ukraine and allowing Russia to steam and roll net is probably not at all popular at this point. No. And look, you know, we're always pretty hard on the Biden administration in the Gaza segments. They deserve a lot of credit for sticking to this thing.

I mean, this thing looked dead a couple of times. I didn't think I had any chance. Yeah. I thought it was dead. I mean, it was always on kind of life support. But as they've done in some of these other legislative battles, they have a good mixture of patience and trying different forms of persuasion. And clearly what they did here is they mobilized these intelligence briefings. But also you saw Zelensky really reach out to the members like Mike McCall, who's the House Chair of the Armed Services Committee, a supportive of Ukraine aid, to kind of really empower certain Republicans.

or were supportive of Ukraine assistance to pressure Johnson as well. I know you saw David Cameron and other right of center Europeans making the case on the Hill. Like the effort over many weeks, if not months, to kind of keep this thing alive and get it across the finish line deserves to be commended. I mean, it's part of that I think was tethering the Israel assistance, which is unfortunate in a way. I'm glad that they had separate votes. So at least some, Democrats could register their opposition to that. But this is, you know, this, what this basically does is gets through the election. And then the election itself is a referendum on many things. And one of the things it's a referendum on is whether the U.S. continues to supply Ukraine.

But this, this takes it off the table till then. Yeah. So to that point, I mean, the Russian plan to win the war via Marjorie Taylor Green seems to have failed for now at least. They are very pissed about it. over in Russia. The spokeswoman for the foreign ministry said this will be a repeat of Vietnam and Afghanistan for the United States. That Afghanistan comparison seems a little more apt for Russia potentially, but okay. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said, quote, the Westerners are teetering dangerously on the brink of a direct military clash between nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences. The kicker to that, Ben, as he said it at a conference about

non-proforation. So thanks for that, Sergei. The House also passed the reprimed. Act, which would allow for the repossession of Russian assets in U.S. banks. The EU is also looking at new sanctions to take on Russia's shadow oil fleet of about 1,400 chips that it's using to circumvent sanctions and sell oil around the world. So lots of things happening now after, you know, six months of stalling. Ben, two thoughts on this. First, like vague kind of nuclear annihilation threats like Sergei Lavrovs used to genuinely freak me out.

And now they don't as much. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't think we should get a nerd to this, but I kind of have. And then second, I mean, I do think we should just be honest, to your point earlier, that this tranche of funding is critical for helping Ukraine hold territory. It's critical for helping them like replenish their Patriot missile batteries and save lives. But it's not a plan to win the war. And that's just scary because we don't know if the U.S. government in 2025 will come

together again to buy them another year. Yeah. And, you know, but it's useful that. this time it hasn't you know a year ago this stuff was being framed as like if we just give them a few tanks and you know they're they're going to they're going to conquer all this territory again you don't see that kind of triumphalism this time around and i think that's a positive development in some ways and again like one way or another i think there's going to be some form of negotiation in 2025 the question is does that take place in the context of don't trump cutting them off and

kind of going over the ukrainian's head and you know giving Putin what he wants, or is that in the context of, you know, Ukraine is being resupplied, it has continued diplomatic support, it's being brought into the European Union, and there's a negotiation that goes forward. I think that needs to happen in part because of the nuclear weapons threat. It's not good, like you, there's never good when the boy cries wolf so many times that you don't know when there's an actual wolf, but it does speak to the, you know, volatility of the situation. Yeah, big time. A few more things. We'll try to move a little faster. I know we're going along. You guys all remember the time back in 2022 when the FBI raided Marlago because Trump was hoarding classified documents at a bathroom and wouldn't give them back.

Well, according to recently unsealed court documents in the investigation of the documents case, Trump's valet slash assistant personal aide, Walt Nauta, was told he would be pardoned if he lied to the FBI on Trump's behalf. Here's the quote from this unredacted summary of a witness interview with the FBI that was just released. Nauda was told by F. Potus, former president of the United States, people that his investigation was not going anywhere, that it was politically motivated and, quote, much ado about nothing. Nauda was also told that even if he gets charged with lying to the FBI, F. Potus will pardon him in 2024. Last year, Nauda was charged with lying to the FBI, obstruction of and mishandling classified information. So this witness in this document is identified only as person 16. Person 16 worked in the Trump White House at some point. He visited Mara Lago where he says he told Trump, quote,

whatever you have, give everything back, let them come here and get everything. Don't give them a noble reason to indict you because they will, end quote. Person 16, I guess, told the FBI that Trump's reaction to his warning was a, quote, weird, you're the man type response that left him with the impression that he would return the materials, the archives. We also Ben learned that the code name for the investigation of this document's case was Plasmic Echo. so do with that what you will. Anyway, Ben, if I had confidence that Trump was ever going to get prosecuted for this case, I would say this piece of evidence is very, very bad for him.

But, you know, who knows at this point? I mean, the useful thing about the Trump people is that they tend to always say the quiet part out loud with their crimes. Really? Yeah. I mean, every now and then when I force myself to question my priors and I'm thinking, like, is it a good thing to be prosecuting a former president? Like, you're like, but he committed these crimes. And he committed them brazenly.

He usually boasts about having committed the crimes. He usually confesses to the crimes on tape. And it's like, what is a justice system if you don't prosecute that kind of behavior? And this is the weaponization of the presidency itself. This is basically saying, like, hey, commit all the crimes you want because then I'll, you know, I'll abuse the pardon power to let you off the hook. It's just a reminder, which we will need between now and November, of how much there are just no guardrails when it comes to Donald Trump and either the law or American democracy,

the class of a document's case kind of makes that it's like the purest distillation of it of all the different cases, you know? Totally. I do wonder, like, who people won through 15 on. There's a lot. I do, too. I'd love to know who always who are.

This is 16. I mean, I don't know what the ordering is, but this is a decoder ring. Where Mark Meadows is on that list is an interesting question too, you know? More on three. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well, to be continued, as they say. Ben, so we're all still Twitter.

junkies, sadly, no one's gotten off the thing. And some of you guys might have noticed that Elon Musk has been on Twitter attacking a Brazilian judge. And now he's being celebrated as a hero by a former Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro. And you're wondering, what are you doing now? So we got you covered. Here's the backstory. So I'm drawing a lot of this from a great report in the economist. So earlier this month, Twitter announced that a Brazilian court had ordered them to block a bunch of popular accounts in Brazil or else the company would get fined. This was on the order of a judge on Brazil's Supreme Court. Alexandre de Morais, Elon did not take this news well. Basically, he said, like, F me, no F you. Now Twitter is going to actually unsuspend previously suspended

Brazilian accounts or pull Twitter out of Brazil entirely. So in response, Judge DeMoriz opened an investigation into Elon for obstruction of justice. Elon then flipped out, called the guy a dictator, said he should be put on trial for his crimes. He's been calling him the Darth Vader of Brazil because he's sort of like stocky and bald and wears like a black robe. It's kind of fitting, if we're being honest. So Ben, it seems like it's kind of public posturing

since I guess like a week later, the Twitter or the company, I should call it X, X sent the court a letter saying that they would comply with all these declarations by the court, all the demands of the court. But the far right loved the little posturing charade that Elon put on for them on Twitter. The far right has embraced him because a lot of the disinformation that was getting pushed around

in Brazil was pro-Belsanaro, who you might remember is in trouble for a lot of stuff, including allegedly plotting a coup after he lost the election and then helping with their own little insurrection. So just a couple interesting things I learned while digging into this issue. First of all, Brazilians apparently spend more time on social media than any other country. The average is three hours and 49 minutes a day. They also use WhatsApp more than anyone else. Yeah.

So disinformation just spreads like wildfire. The AP says 40 million Brazilians or 18% of the population uses Twitter at least once a month. So clearly it's a big market for them. And then I just didn't realize how much power Brazil Supreme Court has. So again, from the economist, the U.S. Supreme Court received 7,000 petitions a year and reviews 100 to 150 ademes of national relevance. Brazil's court heard over 78,000. new cases in 2023 and made more than 15,000 judgments. And the way they're able to do this is they let individual judges rule on cases. Only 10% of the court's decisions are taken up by the

full court. So basically what happened here, you have this one judge, you kind of annoyed it himself, the de facto social media regulator, arbiter. He even ordered the arrest of a congressman who posted some anti-Supreme court diatribe about them on Twitter. I guess he's justices, we're facing a lot of death threats and stuff. So it's just kind of a fascinating example of a country struggling to find the balance between free speech, democracy, its history of fascism, and then having to deal with like this crazy American arsonist tech guy coming down and kind of, you know, lobbying a grenade into their politics.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, the Elon Musk thing is notable because it's pretty clear, like, who this guy is at this point. He kind of tries to present himself as a free agent, a kind of ideological free agent who can move between one party and the other, who deliberates about things. But consistently time and again, he is shown both in terms of his commercial interests, but also his kind of personal views that he generally aligns increasingly with the kind of Trumpian flavor of leader around the world, you know, whether that's Donald Trump here, whether that's Bolsonaro in Brazil, whether that's Modi in India. So that's a problem, given that X is like a major platform here. And we're going to see in our election what it's like when there's not the same kind of content moderation that Twitter had in 2020, where it did label state sponsor disinformation. It did take down a lot of stuff. I think this is a very real live issue that the U.S. as well as other countries is going to be dealing with now that Twitter is kind of out of the content moderation business.

I also think it raises the question that I've felt uncomfortable about as an American for a while, which is like our social media platforms, which are designed and made to line the pockets of people in Silicon Valley, have these outsized influence in all these countries, including Brazil. It is right that there are people in these countries that want to figure out thoughtful ways of addressing that, you know, not the kind of I want to censor everything for my political benefit, But, you know, the absence of any global norms around social media regulation mean that you just have these ad hoc fights everywhere. And that's not the most constructive way of doing things.

But ultimately, what you'd hope is that the more thoughtful ways, and I've mentioned this before, Germany, when it kind of threatened Facebook with some punitive measures, suddenly you had more content moderators for Facebook in Germany than anywhere else. You know, I mean, there's hopefully some creative process that can lead to better outcomes. But, you know, it feels like Elon Musk is not, that's just to say he's not invested in achieving the most thoughtful ends these days. Now, he's clearly being used by Bolsonaro to advance his cause because he's out on the streets of Copacabana, leading like pro-Elon Musk's kind of pep rallies that are just Bolsonaro rallies.

And the problem to name is that Elon Musk's commercial interests align with Bolsonaro's political interests because the more garbage hate speech and bots there are just spreading information, the more that can be monetized by X and the better that is for Bolsonaro. And that's the unholy alliance that's happening. That's exactly right. Two more quicker things. So this is a story we've touched on before, but now it's official. So after discussions between the prime minister of Niger and the U.S. deputy secretary of state,

Kirk Campbell, the U.S. has finally agreed to withdraw all 1,100 U.S. troops from the country. So this is a big blow to the U.S. counterterrorism strategy for the region. Niger is home to a recently built $100 million U.S. drone base. We spent millions and millions of dollars training Niger's military. But after a coup last July, the leaders in Niger said they were not interested in having us around anymore and said, get the hell out of here. This comes as there are serious concerns about the spread of jihadi violence in the Sahel region where some local militant groups have pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda or ISIS.

And Niger is just the latest African country where countries like the U.S. or France have gotten pushed out while the Russians are coming in. About a week ago, CNN reported that 100 Russian military instructors arrived in Niger with anti-aircraft systems and prepared to train local, the local military there, so not good. Chad, the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya. They're also improving ties with Russia or the Wagner group, the Russian paramilitary group. We talked about that a bunch last year or the year before or wherever the hell that was. So Ben, you know, there's also this weird story a few weeks back that the kind of final breaking point in the U.S. Niger relationships was U.S. officials accusing Niger of potentially selling uranium to Iran. So it's still not clear what happened there. Regardless, I remember having a conversation with you on the show like a year ago where I think you said the U.S. basically needs an entirely new Africa strategy. And it really seems like that's playing out week by week. by week. It's kind of unrecognizable from the relationships we had, especially in the

Sahel region, like four, two, three years ago? Yeah. I mean, first of all, it's the right thing. You can't, you know, one, you put U.S. service members at risk, just kind of having them hang out unwanted in this place. Two, I'm not sure we really wanted to stay in a place with this kind of coup government to begin with, you know. But also like more fundamentally, yeah, it is time. And well, three, I hope they kind of blow everything up on the way out. I don't know what's at that base, but like, you know, you don't necessarily want to be handing off the drone base to the Russians there in the Wagner group. But it is a time for rethink about both Africa strategy and also about counterterrorism strategy because maybe it's not sustainable to have, not maybe.

I don't think it's sustainable anyway to have this kind of permanent U.S. military presence kind of permanently fighting jihadist networks, you know. You obviously have to watch the intelligence in terms of how the threats evolve from that region and then kind of form that. responses. But on the Africa piece, the one thing I'd say, and we can kind of come back to this at other times, part of what didn't, you know, like ring true to, you know, obviously the government in Niger, but I think it's true of other countries, including better actors in Africa, is when the U.S. kind of comes in and it's like binary, like, you know, you have to choose completely between us and China, you know, these countries want to have relations with lots of different countries, you know.

It's very cold war feeling. It's very cold war. And it's not the right approach in Africa. I mean, I think these countries have a right to have relationships with whoever they choose to have relationships with. We're not going to like all of them. But I think there's kind of a paternalism to it when we're kind of forcing them into this binary choice. Again, Niger is a bit of an outlier because, you know, it's not great that they're cozy up the Wagner group. But you see the same thing happen in kind of more mainstream African governments. And so I do think this is a chance to step back and a set back. okay, like we can't be so zero sum in all of our approaches here.

Yeah, well said. It does not play well. Countries feel pushed around. Finally, Ben, diplomacy is a delicate business. One poorly chosen word or jester, you can offend a foreign leader. You can offend an entire country at time. So we certainly were guilty of this. Obama took years worth of shit from right-wing British tabloids for removing a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. In 1992, George H. W. Bush, puked on the Japanese prime minister. That too is a no-no. Jimmy Carter had some issues on a trip to Poland in 1977. So this is from a Washington Post report from the time, quote, when Carter told his welcomeers that he had come, quote,

to learn your opinions and understand your desires for the future, his interpreter, Stephen Seymour, translated it to the audience as, I desire the polls carnally. Whoa. I'm glad I wasn't in the comm shop for that one. This goes on and on. Apparently, he just had a really bad interpreter who got everything wrong in like the funniest way possible. It's definitely worth Googling. So what I'm trying to say is President Biden is in good company after some comments he made on the campaign trail recently made some unwanted news in Papua New Guinea. Here's a clip of President Biden speaking. My uncle Bozzi was a hell of an athlete that told me when he was a kid and he became an Army Air Corps before he. the Air Force came along. He flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones. He got shot down in New Guinea. And they never found the body because there used to be, there were a lot of

cannibals for real in that part of New Guinea. So the Prime Minister in New Guinea did not appreciate his country being accused of eating Joe Biden's uncle. And he responded by saying, quote, President Biden's remarks may have been a slip of the tongue, however my country does not deserve to be labeled as such. Fair point. Fair point. He also pointed out that Papua de Guinea, they didn't want World War II to happen. The war came to them. So they weren't, they weren't psyched about any of this happening either, but it's a tough one. It's a, you know, it was a huge, well, first of all, I want to say one thing about the, for the younger listeners, the Bush throw up thing actually happened, and there's like photos of it. People should go, you know, it's pretty, quite funny.

He literally, like, vomited on the guy at the state dinner. So anyway, I guess it was back in moments of American primacy, so we could get away with that kind of thing. But, yeah, like the cannibalism twist at the end, it kind of builds to it, and it kind of comes out of nowhere. To put the foreign policy context on it, too, though, we're in this kind of, you know, building out the Africa discussion. The Chinese are, like, trying to get more influence in New Guinea.

You know, you've got to kind of mind your piece and cues here. Yeah. with these island nations that you know feel often uh stereotyped or generalized about uh probably not the best thing to drop the cannibal bomb into the anecdote there um i think we can all praise president biden's uncle's service uh yes you know without the kind of cannibal ending which which as you know he noted himself is not exactly verified is hard to kind of verify that to begin with so extremely hard to be. Just keep that story in the holster.

Yeah. Absolutely. The rest of it, you know, it's wonderful. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We come back. You'll hear Ben's interview with Congresswoman Pramila Jaipal. Okay, we are very, very pleased to welcome to Potsayette the World. Our guest, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, one of the leading voices and leading progressive voices in the United States Congress.

Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Ben. It's great to be with you. So just beginning with. recent news. You know, recently we saw the $95 billion funding package advanced through the House this past weekend with four separate bills, one on Ukraine, but then also one on Gaza that included both offensive and defensive weapons. You were among 37 members of Congress who voted against the Israel portion of the package. Why don't you explain, you know, what you're thinking was and

what the messages that you were trying to send along with your colleagues. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll say that there were 37 of us that voted no, but on the Democratic side, but I will say that there were a lot more that were very close or wanted to be able to do that, but for various reasons felt that they couldn't. I mean, the conversation is very alive, I guess is what I would say. For those of us who voted no, it really felt like a moral moment. It was the first time that Congress was actually getting to weigh in on the direction of this war because the other votes on aid had usually been tied to something else or in some cases not tied to Ukraine aid and therefore, you know, we didn't want to advance anything leaving behind the

Ukraine aid. This was a situation where we had already passed the Ukraine aid. This was just about aid to Israel. It was not, there was no differentiation in the package between offensive aid and that would be used to go into Gaza and defensive aid that would be used for Iron Dome or to fight Hezbollah or Iran. And that was very, very important for all of us, because we feel that we need to raise the stakes for Netanyahu to come to the table and to feel that there is some reason why he should come to the table for a ceasefire, for getting the humanitarian aid into Gaza,

and that sending additional offensive aid at this moment when we've been seeing what he's been doing in Gaza with famine now starting in the north with 34,000 people dead, you know, depending on what estimates you look at, 74,000 people injured. And 1.1 million people on the brink of starvation, no plan to actually, you know, preserve innocent lives in Gaza. but instead continuing with the conversation about full-scale assault in Rafah and all the settler violence. I think these are not good signs that this is a partner that we should be continuing to send offensive aid to. And for many of us, I think it felt a little bit like in Iraq war moment. I mean, obviously very, very different situations. But I think we often get into these situations in Congress and members of Congress feel that they can't stop. stop funding a war. And maybe five years later, ten years later, in some cases, two years later,

people say we shouldn't have done that. We shouldn't have given up our leverage to try and get to peace. But you need to do it in the moment. And so I think that these 37, including two Jewish American members of Congress, Becca Ballant and Jamie Raskin, which I think was important, said, this is enough. We cannot be sending offensive aid to Israel that have absolutely no conditions and where there's absolutely no change in policy from the Netanyahu government. Yeah, I mean, I think it was a powerful message. I mean, that's a pretty significant number of members to vote against an Israel aid package. It's never happened before. It never happens. I think people, even people who would like to see higher numbers should know that this is still a sea change.

Yeah. To your point about Iraq, it might not be five years. It might be two weeks in the sense that the Roth invasion that the Biden administration keeps warning against, you know, all evidence continues to suggest that that will go forward at some point. And that that could, you know, certainly compound the humanitarian conditions and the famine conditions in Gaza. What would you want to see happen if that Roth invasion goes forward? What do you think should be on the table for the Biden administration? Now that, as you said, that Congress is probably not going to get another chance to vote on something

other than kind of more symbolic resolutions, what should be the reaction if we do see that Rafa invasion go forward and we do see the famine conditions continue to escalate in Gaza? Well, look, we authorized this aid with the vote, but that doesn't mean it has to be sent. that the aid has to continue to be sent by the Biden administration. The president has said that that is a red line for him. If Israel moves forward with the Rafa invasion, I will say that, and you know this, you know, there are strikes happening right now in Rafa. In fact, most recent strike, 22 people killed 18 reportedly children.

And so this is happening right now. But I think if Netanyahu goes ahead with the full-scale assault on Rafa, the president needs to stick by his red line where he said he would at that point condition assistance to offensive assistance to Israel. And I think, you know, I just think we have to stop sending the money that can be used to continue this war because they have shown really no restraint. I guess some people would say the fact that they haven't gone into Rafah yet is restraint. But we have to change the calculus. The cost. benefit analysis has to shift. And the only way to do that is to stop sending aid because they would

not be able to launch this war on Gaza without U.S. aid. Now, again, you know, we made clear in our statement when we voted no on the aid package that we would still be in support of defensive aid. We know that the United States is going to continue to be there as we were just recently on the Iran attacks. But there is no way that we can get. to any sort of an agreement for long-term peace without a ceasefire, without the humanitarian assistance going in, without the hostages being released. And I don't see that Netanyahu really has an interest in ending this war. His political career, his political future depends on the war continuing. And I, you know, I think that that is one of the big problems that we have right now

is we don't have a leader on the Israeli side that is actually interested in working with the biggest backer of military aid to Israel other than Israel itself. If we're partners, Ben, I feel like that partnership has to be taken seriously. And we should get something for the aid that we're delivering and in terms of strategy, in terms of policy. And that is not what's happening right now. Yeah. No, I think you said it exactly right.

And, you know, there's an elephant in the room too, which is, it insofar as this among everything else. And obviously, the most important thing is what's happening to people in Gaza, but insofar as this causes political problems inside the Democratic coalition, that may be something that Bibi Nanyahu is fine with, too. Well, I wanted, yeah. I've wondered. I mean, I've wondered about that, too.

And I, you know, obviously we care about the humanitarian situation, the peace for, for Israelis and Palestinians. How do we get there? How do we address the situation? the long term. And how do we stop the killing of all these innocent people? And I do wonder whether Netanyahu has in his interest reelecting Joe Biden or not. And so I do think that that's an issue. But one of the things I hear sometimes from the White House is that, you know, they have done a lot to stop some of the worst things from happening. And I guess I would just say to that, while certainly

understand that. We may think we're controlling Benjamin Netanyahu from doing certain things, but he is actually, in my mind, he is actually controlling us. He's dragging us further and further into the morass of his war. And it is contrary to all the stated positions that the United States has had, whether it's on settlement expansion, no settlement expansion. You see what's happening there. We do have the Biden administration now putting some sanctions on, which is which is, you know, a step forward. We see his state, Netanyahu statements about not supporting a two-state solution, which has stated U.S. position.

And we see the, you know, what the president has called indiscriminate killing of people in Gaza and indiscriminate bombing of people in Gaza. And I think we just have to be really clear that if we huff and puff too much, but we don't actually back it up with any account. accountability, the House will not blow down, and our president, who we want to look strong, will look weak. And I think that is important for the United States' role in the world. Yeah. No, I think that's very well said. Well, I wanted to transition to the fact that you were recently led a delegation that traveled to Cuba, to Havana. Obviously, this is an issue

I've worked on in the past that hasn't gotten as much attention, but I just wanted to start by asking you what your impressions were in terms of the level of the humanitarian crisis in Cuba, which again, you know, we see mainly in terms of the increased migration to the southern border. I have not been to Cuba since 2018, but from everything I hear, there's a fairly acute humanitarian crisis there. I mean, what were your impressions from your trip as to what circumstances are like right now in Cuba? There really is an acute humanitarian crisis happening. People can't get food. You know, there are breadlines that stretch around the blocks. The shelves are empty in stores, but also in pharmacies. You can't get basic medical supplies. And, you know, Cuba has an incredible public health system, but it's really handicapped because you can't even get Tylenol or a leave. and I think that the, you know, much less vaccines and other things that are really needed for the public health system to function. Electricity is extremely difficult.

People don't drive cars. I mean, you go to downtown Havana and I've never been, so, you know, I only know what I've seen and what I've heard and what people described to me. But it really is extremely quiet, a little bit like a ghost town. So many people have left, Ben, 500,000 people since. 2021 have left Cuba. There is a massive shortage of doctors. 12,000 doctors have left. There's 17,000 vacancies for teachers in Cuba because so many people have left. So there's just a massive drain of people away from Cuba who really stuck it out and tried to stay as long as they could, but then couldn't earn a living, couldn't, you know, get basic, basic food and other things that they needed to

take care of their families and themselves. I think one of the, and I want to thank you for your work in the Obama administration on Cuba, because one of the things that maybe is most difficult for people to absorb is how close they felt to success during those years, those Obama years, and people talk about it in these beautiful ways. I mean, it gives me chills just thinking about it now, but, you know, they talk about the concerts, they talk about the tourism, they talk about the entrepreneurship that was beginning to start. They talk about the internet coming in. They talk about all these ways in which they felt hope and were committed to building a different Cuba and then how that was taken away like that. And then their disappointment that even though Trump was the one to put Cuba

back on the state sponsor list of terrorism, it has not changed under this administration. And so I think the humanitarian crisis is severe. And for the United States, it is just not in our national interest to have a failed state, 90 miles south of our southern border. And so on every level, and we had some really interest. I mean, we had a very diverse group of meetings. Of course, we met with the president. We met with the foreign minister.

We met with the chief justice. We met with a lot of government officials. but we also met with a lot of private entrepreneurs who are also very disappointed because there were some much more minor but important reforms that the Biden administration had committed to just so that people could open bank accounts in the United States,

just so that third country banks could also process transactions from Cuba, things like that, that would at least help them to continue some of the progress that they've made, including some of the reforms they've put into their constitution. And so I think that it was a very difficult time. People would cry talking about where the situation was,

about the struggles that they were having, about the fact that, frankly, you know, many people are tired of hearing about the embargo because it was there for so long, and then it was significantly reduced. They don't really know what they can anticipate, for the future. And so it just feels like this tremendous uncertainty and loss of a country, of an identity. That's how a lot of people talked about it. And so much to that is obviously

U.S. created with the reimposition of all these sanctions under Trump, many of which have continued. I mean, what did you take away as the most important steps that the U.S. could take to address that? Well, the single most important is to take Cuba off the list of state sponsor of terrorism. And interestingly, we heard that not only from Cubans, but I had one of our best meetings was a meeting that we had with the ambassadors of a number of other Latin American and European countries. So it was the ambassadors of Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Spain was there, the Spanish ambassador to Cuba. And I'm missing one that will come to me in a minute. But that group of ambassadors talked about the impact of what was happening in Cuba in the rest of Latin America. And also the United States role in the rest of Latin America.

How could we be taken seriously when we were essentially contributing in their views to a failed state in Cuba? And how that would impact all of Latin America. The Spanish ambassador talked about the fact that there are 300,000 Europeans who visited Cuba from a number of different European countries and now are not eligible for the Esta visa waiver for the United States because they went to Cuba and they didn't know that that was happening. He also talked about all the people who are moving to Spain, Cubans who are moving to Spain because of the humanitarian crisis and the economic crisis and the U.S. imposed sanctions and SST. And

said that, you know, they come to Spain and they still can't get a bank account. They still can't establish themselves even in another country. So I think that's the single most important thing that we heard over and over again. Obviously, allowing tourism to continue, you and I have talked about this, you know, allowing relations to normalize so that we can at least get tourists to be able to go back and forth from the United States to Cuba without the restrictions, the bank account pieces that the Biden administration had announced. Those are important, but I think people feel that the ability for Cuba to function as a country is deeply limited by the SST. The estimate that they gave us is that it costs $2 billion per year more because of the embargo,

and that's sort of on the low side, depending on which estimates you look at. And so they have to pay more for everything. They can't get gas. They can't keep their electrical grid working. And the Cuban government feels like they have done so much to show that they are committed to the kinds of reforms, including some very difficult, we had some very difficult, conversations with families of people who had been taken prisoner on the July 11th protests, which really erupted around the lack of food, frankly, but had a very extreme response from

the Cuban government. Well, you know, let's hope that, you know, we can move in that direction, obviously agree with you. One last question I wanted to ask you kind of ties this together. You know, you've been such an effective leader, both in terms of politics and policy. On the domestic side, I think a lot of people saw you in the Biden legislative agenda, really surfacing a lot of priorities that progressives have, that younger voters have, that communities of color have into that agenda. So that, you know, I mean, we don't need to relive the negotiations with Joe Manchin and you. But, you know, I mean, without you, it's probably like unlikely that just to take one example, right?

You have historic investments at that level in climate change action or, you know, I know you've been pressing on student debt and a lot of issues in the Progressive Caucus. We've been talking about these foreign policy issues, which sometimes are treated as kind of more niche or separate. But we're speaking at a time when we see, particularly Gaza, more. than Cuba. But in a weird way, I think it's the same mindset, right? I mean, like the U.S. Cuba policy doesn't make any sense, except it's kind of the way we've always done things. And in some ways, the kind of reflexive support for the Israeli government is tied to that. And we're talking at a time where we've got young people camping out on campuses. We've got concerns about the ability to mobilize voters in key states like Michigan. What do you, what do you, do you think there

can be a similar kind of reform within the Democratic Party and coalition in the same way that you kind of brought that into domestic policy. Do you think that that's possible in foreign policy and that we may be at that moment of reckoning because of Gaza? I do think it's possible. I think what we need to do is build more infrastructure domestically with our organizing groups, our organizing infrastructure so that people understand foreign policy a little bit. better understand what the connection is to domestic policy, whether it's in terms of the money we spend on wars versus the money we spend on health care or child care, or whether it's actually about our value system. And when we say we as Americans want to lead the world or we are leading

the world, we have to understand that the values can't be divorced. What our values are at home can't be divorced from our values overseas. There's all kinds of ways to look at how we frame foreign policy and make it more relevant for people in the United States, I think it is possible with this next generation. I mean, I do think that young people may not know a ton about all these conflicts and other parts of the world, and they're legitimately focused on how am I going to get health care, how am I going to have a planet to survive

and all of the things that are in front of them. But they also have a value system that is directly tied to the, the moral values that we espouse as a country. And they want to see a consistency between our moral values on the foreign policy stage and our moral values here. And that's what you're seeing right now with Gaza. There is a real desire, I think, and it's open the space. We need more, I'm kind of an infrastructure, gal, you know, like I believe we need more organizations that can train people about specific areas of foreign policy,

how to think about it as it relates to domestic policy, and then can organize in key districts around the country because we have really good think tanks now increasingly, more and more people that are doing good work at the policy level of defining what progressive foreign policy looks like. We just don't have as much that can mobilize those voices. Gaza is an example of how it is possible. It is also an example of how we need to build strategic

organizing that can move the dial, which I think we've done. I mean, we started by talking about 37 votes. It's unprecedented. I know people are like, that's not that many, but it's unprecedented, as you know. And the conversations we had, the people who did not vote no, but said, we need to condition aid, which is another, you know, which is a whole other conversation. But that number was really, really significant. And I think that that is what we should take, you know, some hope in that these protests across the country on Gaza, the stances people have been taking have made a difference. And we need to do that on all foreign policy because there's a lot that the United States can, should learn, has learned, but needs more work to actually implement and

and make sure Congress is, you know, in this case, make sure Congress is where the people are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's right. Well, look, thank you so much for your voice on this and your leadership on this. It's really appreciated and it was great talking to you today. Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you for your leadership. You've been a great, strong voice on all these issues and deeply appreciate it. Thanks very much. Thanks again to Congressman Jaya Paul for joining the show. And Ben, good luck with the blob man. Yeah. I'll be back next week if they let me leave. I'm sure I made this show up before, but they're very slowly coming up.

They have it for a long time. Oh, man. All right, talk soon. Yeah. If you want to get ad freak episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pots subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events.

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