Pod Save the World - Has Ukraine’s counteroffensive stalled?

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about negative headlines surrounding Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s re-emergence in Africa, a Human Rights Watch Report about Saudi Arabia’s horrendous abuse of Ethiopian migrants, a fun twist in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, and rare good news for climate change from voters rejecting oil drilling in Ecuador and a drop in deforestation in Brazil. They also discuss Canada’s unprecedented wildfires, Ecuador’s election runoff a week after the assassination of a presidential candidate, the rise of a far-right political party in Germany, GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s remarks on America’s commitment to Israel, and the crash of a Russian lunar probe. Then Tommy is joined by Kurt Campbell, President Biden’s Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs, to break down the historic summit at Camp David the US hosted between Japan and South Korea’s leaders. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rood. Ben, how many times have you watched the new hard knock season with the Jets? It's faking me like Aaron Rogers, and I don't like that feeling. It's been kind of strange, hasn't it? Yeah. Because I'd ridden the guy off as a kind of red-pilled Joe Rogan. Kind of a dick, yeah. Yeah, but, you know, he's kind of likable and you can still throw the ball.

We'll see if I still like him, you know, week three of the season. Week eight. Yeah. Also, sauce gardener. It's just a... Yeah. Your cornerback, all pro. Now, the problem is we've had previous seasons where the Jets looked really good coming out of hard knocks. And then let's just say the momentum kind of dissipated around week three.

Yeah. We'll see. Well, we'll try to butt fumble on the show today. I think that was a hard-knock season, actually. That was a hard-knock season. We're going to talk about fears that Ukraine's counteroffensive has stalled amidst a new funding request to Congress from the Biden administration. This horrifying report by Human Rights Watch about Saudi Arabia. treatment of Ethiopian migrants.

Some bad news for Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Good news about climate change and then some scary climate change news out of Canada where they're dealing with these horrific massive wildfires. Get an election in Ecuador, the far right in Germany, and then a little more flavor from our friend Vivek Ramoswamy, the Republican Canada from president who's saying, you know, look, to his credit he's saying different and interesting things about foreign policy. I mean, it's great for a weekly segment. It's great for content.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Vakes takes. Vakes takes? I like that. Space, dining and dashing, and more. And then I just spoke with President Biden's top Asia hand, Kurt Campbell. We talked about the historic summit at Camp David last weekend. Last Friday, I mean, with the presidents of South Korea in Japan.

We also talked about China, China's economy, how China might view, you know, sort of the U.S. building up defensive alliances in the region. We talked about North Korea and the threat from its nuclear program was. A lot of fun, actually. Yeah, Kurt is definitely the, you know, at the center of things on Asia policy and just a huge personality, good guy. Can we call him a czar? He's a czar. He's the Asia Zazaar.

He's the Indo-Pacific coordinator, which I think whenever the word coordinator is in your title, that's Zah. That makes you a bigger deal. That's code for Zarr. It's not just your running-the-mill senior director here. He's a BFD. He's a czar. And also just like a very funny guy who can tell a great story. Real quick, before we get to the news, do yourself a solid and join the friends of the pod community before tonight's Republican.

debate, you will be able to hop in the Discord with us, the big fun, rowdy chat room where we all laugh about what we're watching so we don't cry. You will also get bonus content, add free episodes of Pod Save America, and much, much more early access to tickets for upcoming live shows in Louisville, San Diego, and San Jose. So go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe today, crooked.com slash friends. Let's start with Ukraine, because you and I both noticed there's a bunch of reporting over the weekend or the last couple days that was very similar. about how the Ukrainian offensive is struggling. We both kind of wondered, like, was there a briefing? Like, what's going on here? Why are these all popping at the same time? Here's a few examples.

The Financial Times, quote, U.S. officials are increasingly critical of Ukraine's counteroffensive strategy and gloomy about its prospects of success. Wall Street Journal. Russia's war on Ukraine is in danger of becoming a protracted struggle that lasts several more years. The Washington Post, Ukraine appears to be running out of options and a counteroffensive that officials originally framed as Kiev's crucial operation to retake significant territory. Post again, U.S. intelligence community assesses that Ukraine's counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melatopal, blah, blah, blah. You get the point. We're not trying to be downers here in like, obviously, like the military situation can change quickly. We saw that last year and that

offensive. But I do think the coverage in Washington is relevant given that President Biden is asking for another $24 billion to arm Ukraine. That funding request is tucked into a broader funding package that includes disaster relief, border security, I think it's a drug stuff for fentanyl. So hopefully that makes the politics of voting against it harder. But Ben, I'm increasingly nervous about what Kevin McCarthy can or will be able to do when it comes to getting this past. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I don't think we should be that surprised that this has been a hard fight.

You know, we've talked a lot about how the Russians are dug in, how this is a bit of a war of attrition. You know, frankly, you know, from the get-go, you would think that. that this might be a multi-year war, not saying the reps in two years. I think the headline coming out of those stories, though, to me is a sense that the U.S. is in a different place from the Ukrainians. And so the subtexts of the stories was not just that the Ukrainians are having trouble. It's that there's some disagreement on tactics and strategy between the Ukrainians and the Americans. They really kind of boiled down to a couple things. One thing that's been

reported a lot in the last few weeks is that the Ukrainians tried out the kind of new, you know, U.S. and NATO trained approach to combined arms. And that's like, you know, trying to merge capabilities, you know, the Ukrainians would like more air capabilities, but tanks and some the long-range artillery and infantry capabilities. And instead, they've kind of, after suffering a lot of losses doing that and not making a lot of territorial gains, they've kind of reverted back to like a grinded out artillery struggle. And that the U.S. would kind of like to see them, make better use of all the weapons are providing through these different tactics. Put that aside because that's like, you know, the military experts can nerd out on that. The more fundamental

thing that I saw in some of this reporting was the U.S. really wanting them to focus on just breaking this land bridge. The idea is that the Ukrainians are spread too wide. They're fighting on too many fronts. Too many guys in Bakhm. Yeah, this kind of comes out of the Bakhmud criticism. Why are you fighting the Dombos in eastern Ukraine? You really have to focus on the south because if you can kind of break the connection between Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the parts of Russia controls. That's what the U.S. really wants to keep Ukraine as a viable state. And the Ukrainians want to take back all their territory. And to me, this is really important because I don't think that the Biden administration believes that they wouldn't say this, but that it's feasible in the near term that they're going

to take back Crimea. They're going to take back every inch of eastern Ukraine. And so they would want Ukraine to throw everything at just kind of that breaking that land bridge. That's a fundamental disconnect. And I think if you see the bad headlines, yes, that could lead to fatigue in Congress. That could be a rationale for people, and you already hear on the right, people saying, you know, why are we pulling weapons into this counterfeensive that's not making progress? But also it could create tensions between Washington and Kiev, where if you see more grumbling like this from American officials, well, the Ukrainians are going to come out and say, we're the ones dying by the tens of thousands. Yeah. Stop telling us what to do.

Right. And this kind of relationship that has worked pretty well this far could get a little scratchy. And that would obviously be very counterproductive. And to that end, Ben, I saw Jake Sullivan came out and briefed reporters today by the National Security Advisor. He said, we do not assess the conflict is a stalemate, which sort of counter to a lot of the reporting we've read. I guess maybe they mean Ukraine is making incremental progress. In slightly more positive news, the Washington Post reported that U.S. clustered munitions are proving highly effective in stopping Russian counterattack. though they aren't necessarily helping the Ukrainians break through Russian lines. And yes, I'm

very aware listeners of how depressing and gross it is to consider anything to do with cluster munitions to be positive, but like this is a war and it's awful. Denmark and the Netherlands have agreed to provide Ukraine with F-16s, but that's obviously a ways off. As we discussed before, the U.S. and South Africa have been budding heads over the war for many months, especially after there's reports that South Africa was selling weapons to the Russians. This week, South Africa will host the annual BRICS summit, which brings together leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. There's a lot of concern in Washington. I think that Putin himself was going to fly to South Africa, attend this summit in person, but it turns out now he is going to zoom in and

avoid an ICC arrest warrant and I guess, you know, not give the world the middle finger like an in-person visit would have done. The South African president, Siola Ramaphosa, reiterated that South Africa is not taking sides in the war. So it does seem like it's got some good diplomatic work to get us back on sides a little bit with South Africa there. And then Ben, you know, this isn't good news, but everyone's favorite insurrectionist warlord. Yvgeny Progozin is in the Sahel region. He released a video saying he's going to make Russia great again. So great. Well, first of all, one of the thing on the counterfeensive that occurs to me is that, and your point about the counteroffensive from the Russians brought this to mind,

expectations were way too high for this counteroffensive at the beginning, right? And we were trying to throw cold water on this idea that they're going to like route the Russians and there was so much hype around this. And they may have, you know, inadvertently set expectations too high by talking about victory. They actually may be intentionally lowering expectations now. I think maybe the reason the U.S. It's like the Iowa caucuses. Yeah, yeah. Maybe the reason the U.S. and the Ukrainians might be backgrounding, oh, this counterfeensive isn't going well so that when they do make some gains but not, you know, enormous gains, it looks like a success. So that's one thing. On the bricks, summit, you know, it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's pretty disappointing that, you know,

almost two years into this full-scale invasion of Ukraine that this entity, the Bricks that Russia's at the center of that's meant to be this kind of alternative world order to the U.S. institutions like the G7 and others, that it's, you know, it's still a hot ticket, you know, like in addition to the BRICS countries, other countries are being invited and it's kind of meant to be this kind of parallel alternative world order. And so the fact that that is happening with Russian participation kind of indicates the degree to which it's just the kind of West that's seen the Ukraine war as this seismic shift in geopolitics. It's kind of business as usual for the BRICS countries and a lot of the others. And by the way, that includes like an India that was just given the

red carpet treatment at the U.S. state visit. At the same time, the fact that the Putin to zoom in is an indication that something has changed. diminishes him. It makes him look, it reminds everybody. We've all zoomed into the group meeting. You feel like an asshole. You're up on screen. You're talking over people. You never know who's in there, really. We've zoomed in, but we've never zoomed in because the ICC had an arrest war now. As far as you know. So every time that people see Putin zooming in, it's kind of a reminder that, okay, this guy is like a Puritan engrada and the international parts of the national community. So that's positive. The progrosion thing, though, does indicate that the Russian kind of bet,

on parts of Africa is still there. And we've been speculating that one of the reasons why Progirin's still alive is that he's the only guy who knows where the networks are in Africa, where the money trails in Africa, who they're paying off. And I think this video kind of confirms that. Totally. This guy is not in Belarus at some military camp just hanging out. This guy's back doing what he was unfortunately good at and indispensable to Putin at,

which is kind of running coups and mercenaries and all manner of nests. natural resource grabs in Africa. And I think that is problematic. You know, the Wagner group, a little bit of military expertise and hardware and willingness to use utter boot force can be very useful to a coup government in a place like Niger, as it was in Burkina Faso or Mali, but not good enough to fight, you know, jihadist networks that have made gains when Wagner replaces the U.S. or French. So, something to watch here. Is this just PR from Progogian or is this the start of another push by Wagner to take advantage of what's happening in Niger? I imagine, unfortunately, it's the

latter. Yeah, I think it's the latter, too. I'm probably not hopeful news for those who want the coup resolved quickly or at all. I guess his coup didn't work in Russia, but they could work more easily in Nigeria. Pope Springs Eternal when you're an insurrectionist. Let's switch gears to Saudi Arabia, Ben, because there was a horrible report released by Human Rights Watch on Monday, which says that Saudi security forces have murdered hundreds, maybe thousands of Ethiopian migrants attempting to enter Saudi Arabia from Yemen. This report says that Saudi border guards have been shooting migrants at close range, firing rocket launchers and mortars at groups of like hundreds of innocent people. It appears to be a policy of deliberately targeting

migrants and asylum seekers with lethal force. Oftentimes, these groups are mostly made up of women and children. The report covers the period from March 22, through June 2023. Human Rights Watch says the killings are still happening as we speak. Migrants who survive these attacks are often taken to detention centers where they are tortured. One survivor interviewed said that male migrants in this group were forced to rape teenage girls they were traveling with by these Saudi security forces. Just like absolute sadist. One man who refused was murdered. An estimated 750,000 Ethiopians live in work in Saudi Arabia, but in recent years, many more have fled Ethiopia to escape the civil war or just sort of general economic challenges.

The people who attempt this journey, they have to cross the Gulf of Aden. They're paying smugglers. They're paying human traffickers. And they're being abused by both the Saudi government and by the Houthi rebel groups in Yemen. Human Rights Watch gathered a ton of evidence for this report. They interviewed dozens of migrants or their relatives and friends, analyze hundreds of photos and videos. They found satellite images of mass graves. So, Ben, I mean, a couple of thoughts.

the U.S. and every other country denounces this and pressures the Saudis to change this policy immediately. The U.N. should do some sort of investigation. I believe the human rights watch recommended that. And then finally, like, I don't think anyone should need another reminder of who Muhammad bin Salman is, but this is another reminder of who Muhammad bin Salman is and why the U.S. should probably not be cutting some diplomatic deal with the Saudis where we give them a security guarantee that's NATO-like or a nuclear program. It just doesn't seem like, the best timing or the best idea to me. Call me crazy.

I think you put your finger on the most important thing, which is like this is who the Saudi government is. This is who Maham bin Salman is. This wouldn't be happening. This isn't just a few excessive uses of force. This is clearly a systematic use of totally extrajudicial killing and tortured brutality. By the way, at times to deal with migrants that are a result of the Saudi war in Yemen, which caused its own humanitarian crisis.

crisis. You know, what MBS is good at doing is we've talked about the sports washing. He's buying golf. He wants you to look at the, the line city, the weird thing he's building. He'll never get built. Neome or whatever. Yeah, they, yeah, the kind of New York City High Line, except it goes on forever in Saudi Arabia. Or, you know, he'll make some change, like women can go to the movies or something. And everybody's like, oh, look at this guy. He's changing society, he's modernizer. Well, no, like he, he maskers people like this. One of the problems, ironically, tragically of the Jamal Khashoggi crime, is it was so horrific to just member this Washington Post journalist, but that kind of became, you know, like the one thing that everybody talked about.

Like, how can we be, you know, buddies with this guy, MBS, who, you know, massacred Jamal Khashoggi? Well, he's also a guy that continues to systematically arrest and mistreat and intimidate any political opposition. They continue to not be anywhere near where they should be on basic things like women's rights. they continue to engage in wars in places like Yemen that have caused, you know, mass humanitarian crises. They continue to back warlords across the Middle East and North Africa or military governance in places like Egypt that has been a disaster or the guys in Sudan that, you know,

they were kind of playing both sides or not fighting civil war. Like the Khashoggi is the tip of an iceberg in terms of this guy's human rights records and all the sports washing and all the money and all the diplomatic dance around the Abram Accords is meant to avert your gaze from this stuff. So thank you to human rights rights rights for documenting it. Tragically, usually it's worse than what they can uncover because if, you know. Oh, exponentially. Hundreds is what they can prove.

What they can prove. So imagine that's what a human rights organization working that's not like literally on the ground in these prisons can see. Imagine what the broader reality is. So to me, like we constantly have to be vigilant to not allow the kind of reputation laundering, whether it's diplomatic or sports or whatever else it is, to avert our gaze from like the true nature of what kind of leader MBS is. And at a certain point, to your point about this, you know, normalization deal, is this somebody that we want to be in business with permanently saying that they're

basically have the status of a NATO ally? Like that, I don't know, this should make people deeply uncomfortable. I also would love to know if any U.S. assistance is going to these units conducting these massacres because that should trigger Leahy law provisions that would have to stop any support or cooperation, right? That's a really good point. And also, part of the normalization talks are apparently mass amounts of increased arms sales, too. So at a minimum, I hope that we're raising this diplomatically in addition to public. In Congresses, too. Staying in Saudi Arabia. So the foreign minister of Iran apparently traveled to Saudi Arabia last week for talks, including with MBS, the Crown Prince. After the meeting, Iranian state news reported that MBS had agreed to reciprocate the visit and will go to Tehran sometime in the future. It's a big deal because in 2016, Iran and Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic relations. They agreed to restore them in March of this year in this sort of China-backed reproachment. So, Ben, it's one of those weird stories were like, obviously it would be great if Saudi Arabia and Iran could get along and not wage sort of constant proxy and covert wars against each other.

But it also, again, I mean, makes it seem like a security guarantee for Saudi Arabia, which is mostly about deterring attacks from Iran, might be even less necessary than people are leading us to believe. Yeah. I mean, I think if you look at MBS's behavior, it's like he's trying to close all the accounts, you know, like the normalization deal, get all this stuff from the U.S., like patched up. I mean, I think he already gets along pretty well with Israel under the table. but like normalize there, maybe diffuse things in Iran. But what it is is it's kind of an access of total autocracy, right? So the Iranians want a lifeline at a time when they're facing a protest movement. Maybe NBS wants this off his plate because he wants to be in a bigger weight class and fighting proxy wars with Iran. The Israelis obviously under Nanyahu in this kind of far-right government stand-to-benefit. It feels like this is an effort to kind of close all the accounts and lock in

the autocratic order in the region. And look, I'm glad they're talking. I'm glad that there's this, I'd rather the Saudis and Iranians are engaged in diplomacy. I would just hope that there's some space to even at least incrementally press on these values issues from the United States standpoint. They still need us a lot. And look, I think that this could probably also be a part of, you know, the U.S. and the West doing another nuclear deal and the Saudis are more open to that because they have

this line in with the Iranian. So there's good aspects to this from like a state-to-state diplomatic standpoint. The question is, what does it mean for the people in the region, whether you're like Iranian women or Saudi, anybody who doesn't like MBS and Saudi Arabia or one of these migrants? And there, I think, we just have to continue to try to press these issues. Yeah. The person who's really benefiting the most from the Saudi relationship is Donald Trump because they continue to host live golf tournament events at his courses. Not to mention our friend Jared Kushner, who was sitting on a couple billion dollars. Apparently not having much of luck investing it.

Yeah. And but did you see in something like 98% of his capital raises outside of the United States? Of course. Shocker. Kickback. Speaking of Trump and his properties, there's a fun little twist in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. As I'm sure everyone remembers, Trump decided to take hundreds of classified documents with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and then store them by his toilet. the U.S. government, shockingly, didn't like that much. Trump now faces 40 separate criminal

counts of stealing the documents and obstructing justice to get them back. Trump has, you know, floated all these different reasons for what happened, including that he declassified all the documents before he left the White House. But according to a report from ABC News, that defense took a big hit when former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told prosecutors that he doesn't recall Trump ordering or even discussing declassifying broad sets of classified materials before leaving the White House, nor was there any standing declassification order. ABC News also reviewed an unpublished draft prologue from Meadows's book that came out last year. That includes a description of Trump having a classified war plan sitting on his couch during a meeting attended by Meadows's ghostwriter and his publicist.

Imagine being so fucking insecure as the former president that you just pretend you left the Iran war plan on the couch. This isn't a novel you were reading and put down to, like, answer the phone. It's like you're clearly placing that to try to impress these people. First of all, it's amazing. This is, you know, there have been so many other indictments that we forget. This is such an open and shut case. Truly. Every couple of weeks, like some other piece of information comes out that's like,

not only did you do these crimes, here's like nine more independent corroborations of the exact thing. Here's some texting Ivanka. Yeah, I did it. Yeah, yeah. Like, here's the Iranian war plan like, you know, Like being passed around a Mar-a-Lago wedding or something. Yeah, yeah. And so you would like, you know, if we had like the right judge on this one, maybe this is the one that could move fast.

I know. I also, like the Mark Meadows piece of this is really telling because, first of all, just to take it substantively, if you wanted to declassify, you would have to tell somebody that. Now, Trump has given this crazy Sean Hannity interview where he said he could like think something is declassified. No, there's a process. It's a process. And the process would be you'd have to tell the chief of staff or the national. security advisor or the director of national intelligence, hey, I'd like to declassize these documents, because then they run a process to do that. And that clearly didn't happen here. And that matters

for the prosecution that he has no basis to make this argument whatsoever, you know. And even Meadows seem to understand this. I continue to be interested in like who the audience is for these Mark Meadows books, you know, like, because he has his own book, which I didn't even realize to come out because it kind of came and went. I do love Mark Meadows is kind of like the bumbling Forrest Gump of the Trump orbit who just like bumbles his way into criminal activity and getting his boss in trouble left and right. Turning over his text and being like, oh, I didn't want to do that. Can I have them back? And the prosecutor is like, no, what are you talking about? Yeah. So this book is called the Chiefs which I, I'm just going to own up to the fact that I haven't read it. But I don't even know what

that means, you know. But like these guys like Meadows. and Pompeo and Mick Mulvaney, you know, like, these guys were like the complete lunatic fringe when they were elected to Congress and, like, you know, the Tea Party election, trying to present themselves as these more reasonable guys, but like Meadows at every turn made all the wrong decisions. At best, he did nothing.

At worst, he was enabling all this behavior. Like, if you were the former chief of staff, like Dennis McDonough, right, our former boss, Chief of Staff, very stricler to the rules, right? If Dennis McDonough came to my house, and after we left government and saw like the classified Iran war plan there. He might kill you.

I don't think he would just like observe it. No. And then be like, oh, maybe that's a good anecdote to drop in my prolog of my book. Hey, Buster. We're going to burn that. Yeah, it just goes to show like all these people were just so casual about national security and about criminality, you know, that his thought process and seeing the classified Iran and war plan isn't like, hey, maybe we should shred that thing or better off or turn it.

it's like, oh, this could be maybe sell a few books by dropping in the prologue. Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that Dennis would obstruct justice. I meant to imply that he would dispose of it in the proper way. And dispose of us, you know. In dispose of us in the broad way. Dennis, the nicest guy on the world who emailed us both yesterday to make sure we were okay. Los Angeles had a hurricane. Survived the hurricane, which was, you know, it was 24 hours of rain, but we did that.

Speaking of L.A. hurricanes. Let's like what climate change, Ben. Two pieces of good news for people who are worried about climate change. First, Ecuadorians overwhelmingly voted. to ban oil drilling in a national park situated in the Amazon rainforest. So the vote was 59% said no oil drilling, 41% said yes, so pretty overwhelming. The Asuni National Park spans about 2.5 million acres, and it's one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, so good to preserve that. Also, data released last month shows that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon fell 34% in the first half of 2023, thanks to Brazilian President Lula de Silva's environmental policies. So will either of those stories solve the problem? Of course not. Far from it. But it does show how important political decisions and political leadership can be, especially everybody who worked hard to get fucking Jaya Bolsonaro tossed out in Brazil. Absolutely. I mean, you know, Latin America is going to be

absolutely fundamental to preventing the kind of deforestation that could make any any effort to mitigate climate change impossible, you know, Southeast Asia, Latin America. And these are countries where, like you said, it's not like the negotiation. that happens at the cop that is doing this, it is the politics in these countries that matter. And so, like, the people that care about climate change have to care about politics everywhere. Yes. Like, significantly in the United States, too. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if you care about climate and you're, like, some big philanthropist, well, maybe you should be thinking about political outcomes as much

as, you know, financing, you know, some, you know, well-meaning NGO. I mean, we need to do that, too, to be wrong. Do both, is the point. And I think what's also important here is, that, you hear a lot from Brazilians, they don't want to be told what to do with the Amazon. It's like a precious resource to them. So there has to be kind of a partnership in trying to help them find solutions rather than coming in being like, here's what you do. And this is an indication that they understand what the value of those resources are. And with the right political leadership, it makes a huge difference. And you got to make economic sense, right?

You got to tell Ecuador, look, ecotourism is going to benefit you much more in the long run than clear cutting this place and drilling. Yeah. And that could be a tough sell, but I think it worked here. And it does also show like the connection between politics on democracy and climate, which we've talked about a bit, which is that, you know, Bolstanaro is like an autocratic self-interested nationalist. He's opened it up to all the loggers and people probably like, you know, corrupt, making corrupt deals to get in the Amazon. Like so, you know, having more small-de democratic leaders winning in places is also good for the earth. Yeah, huge deal. Okay. Here's some bad news for climate change. So Canada has been dealing. dealing with massive unprecedented fires this year wildfires.

It started with this dry and abnormally warm spring. That meant the fires started earlier and they spread ever since. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center says 1,37 fires were burning as of Monday, and well over half of them were considered out of control. Smoke from fires in British Columbia and also Washington and Oregon had blanketed the Pacific Northwest with smoke. Tens of thousands of people in Canada are under evacuation alerts. or evacuation orders because fires have gotten so close to population centers. British Columbia is under a state of emergency.

Prime Minister Trudeau said he's going to deploy the military to help people get out of there. Trudeau is also hammering Facebook. Do you see this for blocking, sorry, meta, for blocking news content. I'm not using your dumb terms. Facebook. Twitter and Facebook guys. For blocking news content in Canada. So earlier the summer, Facebook started blocking news content from Canada on its platforms

because Canada passed a law requiring technology companies to pay publishers when they link to or repurpose their content. It seems reasonable. Trudeau said, quote, right now in an emergency situation where up-to-date local information is more important than ever, Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of people's safety. We should note that Google also said they're going to remove Canadian news links in response to this law, but they haven't done it yet. So, Ben, familiar story here, climate change leading to severe weather, horrible fires, and also tech companies being assholes.

Well, and this is a good example, too, of, like, you know, some of these tech companies, you know, make donations to environmental causes, but then when their profit margin is impacted at all, it's not like Google or meta, whatever we're going to have some huge hit because of this Canadian law. Like, come on. They're trying to draw a line in the sand for others, yeah.

Do the right thing. The one thing I will say is this cries out for kind of a regional effort because do you remember the North America, American Leaders Summit. How could I forget? NALs, an acronym that nobody is aware of, which is essentially the leaders of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico would meet once a year, and you'd work on issues. It does feel to me like when you do have a good relationship, like the U.S. and Canada do, we should be looking at like a North American climate policy that would include a significant amount of U.S. resources being available to deal with things like Canadian wildfires. We just have a

lot more capacity. We have a huge defense budget, obviously, some of which could be relevant here. So one thing that I think the U.S. and Canada can do is try to kind of harmonize an approach to wildfires. Look, I was in New York this summer, and I was just having trouble breathing because Canadian wildfires. So there's a U.S. interest in spending some resources on a North American approach to mitigate wildfires. That's the kind of future we're going into with this extreme weather. There's going to have to be cross-border cooperation, not just on emissions reduction, but on all this kind of climate mitigation. Totally agree with that.

Let's turn to Ecuador because people in Ecuador went to the polls over the weekend to vote in presidential and legislative elections. Last week, we talked about the shocking assassination of a candidate named Fernando Villavicencio as he was exiting a campaign event. Louisa Gonzalez, the candidate from the Democratic Socialist Party, got the most votes with 33% in the elections. She has seen as a protege, a former president, Rafael Correa, who was living in exile in Belgium after being convicted of bribery. She will face off against a 35-year-old member of Ecuador's National Assembly named Daniel Naboa. We've got 24%. He's more of a centrist. He's a son of a rich banana business guy who also has run for president before. All of these candidates were incredibly on edge during voting, obviously, because one of their rivals had just gotten assassinated. Ecuador also said that there were cyber attacks on their elections from a number of countries, but the results were not impacted.

regardless, the two leaders will go head to head and run off in October. The winner will hold office until 2025 because the outgoing president called for early elections. So that's the latest from Ecuador. Yeah. And look, it took a lot of courage for these people to just keep campaigning. Can you imagine? Yeah. And so to me, it is a sign of some resilience of democracy here, even if, you know, the people that killed a candidate kind of made their point, too, right?

But I think you did see most of the political class in Ecuador stand up against this kind of thing. And there was kind of some defiance and resiliency, which is, I think, positive here. It does certainly feel like the leftist center candidate has the upper hand. We were talking also telling me about the election in Guatemala. Oh, right. Yeah, of course. Where you had, like, out of nowhere, you know, you had the political lead try to kind of strangle, you know, ban candidates. And you had the outsider candidate, the progressive candidate, the anti-corruption candidate,

Bernardo Arivalo come out of nowhere and win this election, a real glimmer of hope in Central America where the politics has been, let's just say, not great between Buckele and El Salvador and Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua. This is worth noting as like a real win for democracy and anti-corruption and progressive values against long odds. And frankly, you're kind of drawn the short straw. You're kind of walking that viper's nest of like corruption and money. for short term too. Yeah, but this is definitely a good outcome. Yeah, so you brought us up.

I'm going to bring us back down by talking about the far right in Germany. We often talk about the rise of these far right political parties, especially right-wing populace. One such party is the alternative for Germany or AFD party. AFD is virulently extreme and right-wing anti-LGB. They want to deport migrants. They talk about openly preferring like a Trumpian style of communications. They talk about the great replacement theory. all the time. According to the Washington Post, the AFD is now polling at around 21 percent,

making it the second most popular party in Germany. They are riding economic concerns, anger about immigration, and it is creating this sort of political conundrum for the center-right Christian Democratic Party is they have to decide, do we work with these people, right, and try to like siphon off some of their support? You ostracize them. So, you know, it's like a classic conundrum that people deal with when managing the far right. So it's, it's worrisome to have these far right parties doing well, especially in Germany of all places. And the other part about this that is this different in Germany is the AFD is gaining more support while becoming more radical. They're not moderating to gain support like you saw in Italy, for example. And so, you know,

this isn't like, this is not an unfamiliar feeling for us in America where we watched the Republican Party win elections by becoming more radical in 2016. But it is concerning. And by the way, it's connected to all the other things we talked about, like support for Ukraine, climate change, immigration, like all the broader systemic problems. Yeah, never good when the Nazis get like a foothold in Germany. Don't love that. Yeah.

I mean, the AFD, you know, has deep roots in kind of neo-Nazi far-right ideology. And they've been lingering around, but they've usually kind of hit Vod. 10% ceiling. And so this, this nudging up is, it should be seen as a big warning sign. And look, you know, we've taken issue with, made fun of the, and we'll probably do it again with Vivek in a few minutes here, these critiques of the Ukraine war. But the reality is part of what is happening is you had this massive energy disruption. You've had cost of living crises. You have lots of refugees from Ukraine now and Germany. And that does present a set of challenges.

And just because, you know, that doesn't mean that, therefore, we should withdraw all support for Ukraine. And, you know, like, but sometimes people don't want to talk about those challenges because they think just talking about those challenges, some kind of somehow delegitimizes support for Ukraine. No, I think it's very important to name these issues and to have European leaders, like, close to public opinion on this stuff. And just, you know, I think OLA Schultz has done a pretty good job.

job as Chancellor of Germany, but clearly there needs to be constant effort to kind of name the anxieties that people are feeling in Europe so that you don't have a set of politicians who are like, no, we're doing the right thing, nothing to see here. And then the radicals seem like the ones that are telling the truth, you know? And so I think like a much more kind of honest, close to the ground conversation about politics and all these countries is going to be necessary or else we could look up in a few years. And you've got National Front in France and Maloney and Italy and maybe the AFD is not in charge, but they suddenly... big player in a coalition. Yeah, they've knocked down the door. You know, this is something you

really got to nip in the bud. It's worrisome. It's worrisome. So you mentioned Vivek Ramoswami. The first Republican debate is happening on Wednesday, August 23rd. We record this the day before. So we don't know what's going to be discussed. But it seems like Ramoswami is going to come under attack for some recent comments he made about Israel. Here's a clip. I'm a dealmaker. Okay. I want to negotiate. Now, Abraham Accords 2.0. Get Saudi, Omer. Qatar, Indonesia, in there. Get Israel on its own two feet. And I believe in standing by commitments that we've already made. So our commitments have, I think, $38 billion in aid, military support, et cetera, going in through 2028. I want to get Israel to the place where it is negotiated back

into the infrastructure of the rest of the Middle East. We should not be worried about holding one nation or one region hostage over one particular question relating to Palestine. Go to Abraham Am Accords 2.0, that's good for Israel. It's good for the rest of the Middle East. It's good for us, such that come 2028, that additional aid won't be necessary in order to still have the kind of stability that we'd actually have in the Middle East by having Israel more integrated in with its partners. He made these comments on Russell Brand's show on Rumble. Yes, the guy from Get Him to the Greek, is doing presidential interviews. So Nikki Haley, former ambassador of the UN under Trump, came out swinging at Vivek.

She said he is completely wrong to call for ending America's special bond with Israel. Support for Israel is both the morally right and strategically smart thing to do. And if elected president, I will never abandon Israel in response to Haley. Vivek's spokesperson said, we wish her well on her future in corporate America's boardrooms. Great hits. But then Mark Levin, who's his very popular conservative radio host, also criticized him. Vivek responded more substantively saying, He will accomplish the Abraham Accords 2.0 in his first year, which means Israel will be fully integrated into the region so they will have all the support it needs.

It's just like it's classic Vivek Ramoswamy policy and that it's all four or five D chess. And he talks about incredibly hard things as if they are simple. But it is a pretty radical departure from the orthodoxy in either party when it comes to aid Israel. Yeah. Well, first of all, I just, I love that guy's verbal tics, which we talked about last week. It's such self-assurance, you know, which kind of makes it hard to not think, like, well, does this guy, like, know what he's talking about? So you see why he's kind of catching on a little bit because he says things with such, like, absolute assurance. To me, what was interesting about this is a couple of things.

First of all, the substance of what he said should actually, like not, basically what he's saying is if Abraham Accords 2.0 as he brands it is Israel's basically normalized relations with everybody and given nothing to the Palestinians and can kind of crush them, then why do we need to give them $4 billion in military assistance a year? It's not an unreasonable question. You know what I mean? Like, I don't even support the- A lot of ifs. Yeah.

I don't even support the Abraham Accords 2.0. But like if you follow his logic train, like I actually don't know that Nikki Haley has her finger on the pulse of the Republican voter on this one either, right? Like, I think he's, he's breaking the, the wall, like, the Democratic Party's had this debate. I think what he's doing is he's signaling that this is probably a debate that's coming to the Republican Party, too, you know. And for some good reasons, substantive reasons, like, why are we giving a wealthy country that is a regional military superpower, $4 billion a year in military aid, probably some not good reasons, too, like some of that MAGA base has probably, you know, some of them are evangelicals who want the Jews to convert at the rapture.

Some of them may, you know, they like George George George, dog whistles and, you know, like what Vivek is saying for bad reasons. I think one of the things it was most interesting to me, Tommy, is like the way this was received, the New York Times. So I don't know if I'm picking on the New York Times or the nature of American politics or who. Pick away. But they have a paragraph here that said,

opponents have attacked Mr. Ramoswami for his assertions that he would leave Taiwan to the Chinese, once the United States, has sufficiently expanded its semiconductor industry, he would allow Russia to keep parts of Ukraine in order to entice Vladimir Putin away from his lines of China. Then he said he would curtail military aid to Israel after stabilizing the Middle East, perhaps the politically riskiest position yet. That's a crazy sense. Like, like, maybe this is not a shot at the Times. It's more a shot at, like, how the perceptions of foreign policy become received wisdom. It is, is it more, controversial to suggest we should not give $4 billion here to Israel than it is to say that China

can have Iran. To let two democracies be crushed. And Russia can have Ukraine. Like there's something wrong with the politics of foreign policy when that is a normal sentence, right? Yeah, I had not read that. Yeah. That is really troubling. And I know what the Times is reflecting. It's not just the Times, but it's like, you know, I don't think this is sustainable, this idea that you can't even broach these issues, you know. I think this is this debate about, aid is coming, the 10-year memorandum of understanding that guides U.S. military aid, Israel is expiring soon. And I'm not sure, I think there are going to be people in both parties are going to be like, are we sending up for another $40 billion, $50 billion in aid to a

country that really doesn't need it? And some of them are telling us they don't want it because that's mainly aid that gets channeled through U.S. defense contractors. So anyway, I hate to say Vivek has a take that is worth consideration. It's a stop clock that is right periodically, but you know, he's stirring a pot that I think is going to be stirred increasingly. It is interesting. Here's one other clip of him talking about the United Nations, speaking of pot stirring. I think we need to stop funding organizations that are hostile to the sovereignty of the U.S. That includes the WHO. That may very well include the U.N. I am perfectly open to reevaluating the U.S.'s continued involvement in the U.N. itself. If the U.N. Security Council

is staffed by the likes of Venezuela and North Korea, it is a joke. And we have to call out that farce for what it is. I've already said I would shut down the CDC. That's on my list of three-letter agencies that I would shut down here in the United States here at home. And my general view, this is, I'm only saying half jokingly here, but if it comes in an acronym, chances are we should be skeptical of it. He wants to, like, shut down half of the government. It is far more radical of the things he's saying about, like, getting rid of the CDC.

I think he wants to shut down the FBI. I forget, maybe the EPA. There's all these acronyms, agencies that just wants to get rid of. I mean, the WHO stuff is insane. Like, we, what, we benefit from the WHO. Like, do we not want any international effort to prevent pandemics? I don't like diseases. Yeah, yeah.

Like, what would happen if there's an Ebola outbreak? You know, who do you think we call in the natural system? On the UN point, the UN point is weird to me for, I get why Vivek. you know, it's an easy... Kind of like an old-school John Bolton type comment. That's what's interesting me about Vivek is doing this, is that that's kind of like retro. That's like 20 years ago.

Like the UN is really... Does anybody think the UN is the problem... Like, the problem in the UN right now is that Russia and China are paralyzing it. So like the reason the Security Council isn't able to solve any problems isn't because it's quote-unquote staffed by Venezuelaans and North Koreans.

I didn't know what the fuck he's talking about there. Yeah, they need some woke reason it's a problem or some communist reason that's really the problem one really knows Russia and China. Yeah, and the Republicans are the dog that caught the car on this one because they've demagogued the UN for so long, but now it's the Russians and Chinese are like, hey, the UN headquartered in New York City

with a bunch of rules that were written by the United States is basically, in their view, an extension of the West. And so therefore, we're going to have our own bricks thing. So Vivek's saying he's going to break the UN is kind of like breaking the pieces of the internationalism that we've fucking built. These guys want to get rid of all the institutions that benefit U.S. security, like no know as well. Yeah, exactly.

It's his self-own, like all these things that these people want to do. Totally. He's giving Taiwan to the Chinese. He's giving Ukraine to the Russians. He's blowing up the U.N., which is selling the Russians and Chinese want. Maybe it's time to ask questions with this six-month crash course he's been on seems to really benefit the wrong people. Who is your teacher, sir? Please, Philison.

Tucker, I guess. Yeah, Tucker. It probably was Tucker. So, Ben, last week, an unmanned Russian spacecraft crash landed into the moon. The Luna 25 probe was Russia's first lunar mission to the moon in nearly 50 years. It was designed to check out the lunar South Pole because scientists think there might be a bunch of ice there, which would be critical in terms of a water supply and oxygen supply for supporting life on the moon in the future. India also launched a lunar mission. It is supposed to land on Wednesday, August 23rd, so the day this comes out.

If the mission is a success, it would obviously be a feather in the cap for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a bit humiliating for the Russians since they launched their probe early because they wanted to beat India to the moon, to the lunar south pole. So Ben, I'm sure there are like some resistance accounts that are like dunking on this on Twitter and cheering about Russia's failure. And like, I get that, right? I mean, you don't want anything that sort of benefits Putin as a PR win is probably not great. right now. But bigger picture in long term, it would be great for all of us to work together

on space exploration and not have to rely on assholes like Elon Musk or, you know, not have a plan B if the planet burns. I mean, if I'm Russian, I'm like, all right, we're already like, our economy is the shitter because it's a stupid fucking war. We're dealing with sanctions. We're spending all this money in Ukraine. And why are we landing something on the moon? Like, it just shows the megalomani of Putin. Like, I just think this should be a vulnerability for him. Like, what's the point of doing moon missions. And also, like, this kind of weird space race to get to the moon, I'll be a little jingoistic here. Like, we had guys, like, hitting golf balls on the moon when, like, you know, Johnny Carson was hosting the Tonight Show. Like, I mean, like,

or decades before. Like, like, let's, I wish we could cooperate more and, like, achieve international aims in space rather than have this kind of weird retro space race. Yeah, it is, crazy. What was that great? One of my favorite attacks on Barack Obama ever. One of the dumbest quotes I've ever read. How are you going to teach our kids to reach for the stars when you're cutting funding for the very same things allow them to... R&C spokesman Danny D.S. said, it is ironic that Barack Obama's plan to help our children reach for the stars is financed in part by slashing a program that helps us learn about those very same stars. It was a quaint time when politics was about issuing statements that appealed to swing states. And that was meant to appeal to Florida.

Yeah, yeah. We were cutting some launch pad in Florida. Incredible. Incredible. Last story before we get to the interview. So we need to talk about diplomacy, dining, and dashing bent. So here's the backstory. Four Italian tourists went to Albania.

They had a nice dinner. They purportedly enjoyed the food. And then they ran out of there without paying the check. They were caught on security video. And the clip blew up on social media. It became such big news that the prime minister of Albania raised this exact issue with Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney, while she was. visiting Albania. Maloney responded by telling the Italian ambassador to Albania to, quote,

go and pay the bill for these idiots, end quote, and she sent this guy over to the restaurant and they picked up to the 80 euro tab. So Ben, to me, this is a reminder that you might be a bit of a fascist, you might be a fan of a Mussolini, but you can also be pretty good of politics. That is shrewd. That is really good at politics, I have to say. I mean, it's a dumb thing because people run on the check everywhere and it doesn't have to be international incident, but I get that the Albanians feel like, you know, that's Italian's looking down on them. So exactly. That's, you know, there's a reason why she's, she's, she's very good at politics. I think she's, you know, I don't agree with her politics, but I think she's going to be around for a while. I do too. The New York

Times had an interesting profile on her recently. It was also featured in the Daily. They talked about some of the ways she seems to have moderated. Yeah. They are kicking out the Chinese Belt and Road initiative programs. They are seemingly a lot less anti-EU. She's not yet. banking support out from under the Ukrainians yet. So she's turned out to be more complicated, I think, than we thought she might be. She maintains her far-right view of immigration. And I think what she's calculated is that's the bread and butter for my base. And these other areas I can give in ways that help me because it's, you know,

like it's better for her to not be ostracized. She got invited to Washington. Yeah, exactly. Okay. That is it for us for the news. When we take a quick break, and then we're going to come back, you'll hear my interview with President Biden's top Asia hand, Kurt Campbell, about the recent summit at Camp David. So stick around for that.

I am so excited to welcome to the show, my friend and President Biden's coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs. Kurt Campbell, Kurt, it's great to see you. Tom, it's great to see you as well. I wish I was there with you in person. I wish you were here, too. But you've been a busy man. Last week, President Biden hosted the presidents of Japan and South Korea at Camp David for this historic summit. historic because you guys hashed out a new defense agreement and because there has been some longstanding animosity between Japan and South Korea. Can you tell us a bit about how this came together and what you guys accomplished? Sure. Thank you. Tommy, it's a great way to begin.

So first of all, our probably are two closest allies in Asia or certainly in Northeast Station, Japan and South Korea, each ally like nearly 80 years old. And we're very close and we have a security commitment to both of them. The challenge has been during the Second World War and before, obviously Japan occupied South Korea, a brutal colonial experience and also tough fighting during the Second World War. I think it would be fair to say that neither country really fully recovered from that experience. And so for decades, there have been start and stop efforts to try to rebuild trust and confidence each time that you might see a little bit of progress, then you'd see backtracking. So basically, when President Biden came to office, he had tried working on this himself when he was

vice president. Tom, and you recall when you were working with President Biden, and I remember him leaving the room saying, man, those guys don't like each other. And so when he first came to power here as president, he instructed us to basically work behind the scenes, do what's possible, to try to bring these two really treasured allies more closely together. So we had a series of interactions, mostly private, some trilateral kind of behind the scenes, shuttling, trying new ideas, new concepts. But it wasn't until we had new leadership in both Japan and South Korea. South Korea in particular, President Yun, elected last year, has taken heroic, courageous steps, basically to underscore his commitment and Creas commitment to mending fences and moving forward with Japan and Japan under

Prime Minister Kishita, I think carefully has responded. So what we saw last week was an effort to take this fledgling bipartisan sort of agreement between these two countries into a trilateral context. So we rolled out all these things that our three countries will do together in an attempt to lock in that cooperation and to place the United States at the center of this engagement. Now, Tommy, you were at Cape David many times. This was only my second time there. Terribly exciting, you know, really wonderful to see my Japanese and South Korean friends there with the president. I think everyone felt that it was tremendously significant. And, you know, the word historic is thrown around a lot, but I think it would be fair to say this was

history. Yeah, I think you know you emphasize something there, which is this meeting and these tough conversations are very difficult politics for both of these leaders back home. So it's a courageous political decision. They allowed my ass to Camtavon Wad time. It was in 2012 and they said, please don't come back. This was the G8, now the G7. My memories of it are watching soccer with a bunch of the leaders of the Champions League final. And then Dmitri Medvedev was there. It was his last hurrah on the world stage until he and his entourage were pushed out by. of Vladimir Putin. So I remember he and his crew got shit-faced until two in the morning. And then I think they tried to order 27 hamburgers from the Navy mess. So do you guys get into any, uh, any creative

diplomacy or getting any trouble? We, I mean, most of what we're involved with in staff is stealing as much shit as possible. And so I didn't have as much time to drink because I was, I, I came home and my wife said, like, Kurt, you've got 700 notepads. Like, I'll be able to write a note every day for the rest of my life. So we have shirts, notepads, everything possible. We bought lots of stuff, stuff that I will never wear. None of my kids will wear. But it just felt so exciting to be there.

We had to have things that we would take. Yeah, you got to take the Chotchkees. Okay. Allow me to pretend to be a hard-ass journalist. Sure. Okay, go ahead. So I imagine, you know, China's military buildup was probably a big, you know, part of the conversation. If you and I were sitting in Beijing, we might say,

look at these goddamn Americans. They are giving nuclear subs, the Australians, they're shipping weapons to Taiwan. They're hosting this summit. They're trying to contain us, right? They're driving this arms race and they're doing it all to check us. What's your response to that? Well, look, you know, we're obviously, Tommy in an action and reaction cycle. I would simply say, You forgot to mention the quad, other things that we're doing the Philippines. So you're right. They have a very established narrative of all the things that we are purportedly doing to keep them down.

I will simply say that probably no country has done more to support China's rise, help with investment and capacity and know-how than the United States. And almost every country in the Indo-Pacific wants a predictable state. relationship between their country and China. So I just begin with that as a proposition. I think what we've seen over the course progressively of the last 10 years is a leader in Xi Jinping that is increasingly ambitious, prepared to take risks, believes that the United States is in just profound decline and that it's China's time to basically strike on the international scene. And I think our response would be not so fast and that the United States has worked with

allies and partners to Tommy essentially construct what we might describe as an operating system in the Indo-Pacific. And that operating system has yielded unprecedented prosperity. We've lifted billions of people out of poverty. We've kept peace and stability. And this fabric of maintenance of peace and stability, peaceful resolution of disputes, maritime security. There are many elements that go into this. But almost every state that we've engaged believes that there are aspects of this operating system that are essential. And what China is trying to do as an arriving state, sorry to go international relations

on you, I like it. I like it too, is trying to revise that system in ways that, that frankly are not in the interests of these countries. So I think what we are seeing is a response to China. I do not believe that this is a news around China's neck. None of these countries want to contain China. They want to have good relations with China, but they are worried about the direction that China's policy

has taken over the last several years. They look to the United States to be stable, firm, clear, and tough. Yeah. Xi Jinping is going to build an island off the coast of Delaware and blame it on you, pal. So in their one and only Oval Office meeting after Trump won the election, President Obama reportedly warned him that the threat from North Korea was urgent, that their nuclear weapons program was something he needed to get on top of. Of course, we're sitting here six years later. North Korea's got more nukes. They got better missiles.

I believe they're able to launch them from subs now, despite all of Trump's, you know, let's call it creative efforts at diplomacy. do you think it's time to admit that we are not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube here and that North Korea will never give up its nukes? So I'm still about trying to get that toothpaste back in the tube. It's a thankless task. But I will say since President Biden has come to office, his determination has been to do whatever possible to reach out without condition to make clear that we want to resume a dialogue and work constructive. with North Korea. Look, Tommy, I will tell you this, that when COVID struck North Korea,

we were terribly worried that this would lead to, you know, enormous human consequences. We offered vaccines. We offered support behind the scenes, very carefully, not done for publicity or propaganda purposes, but to hopefully signal our genuine desire to support and help the people of North Korea. Essentially, since President Trump, stormed out of Hanoi now seven years ago. We've really had no engagement with North Korea, but we are not alone. Japan, South Korea, other countries have also tried.

They are simply, I think, in the current context, working closely with China and a few things, practicing some military tests, and essentially unhappy with the status quo in Northeast Asia. We're gonna continue to engage our response, to North Korean provocations is what you saw in Camp David last week. Solidarity, a sense of common purpose between our allies and partners in Northeast Asia. I know you got to go soon. So let's try one last question. I assume you have a, you know, you're probably going to go to a

meeting where you try to deal with the North Korean nuclear program or something. Ben and I noticed that Joe Biden did a fundraiser likes to talk about China. He recently called the Chinese economy ticking time bomb in many cases. He said they've got some problems. That's not like. good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things. Ben and I kind of wondered if this was maybe, I don't know, an intelligence assessment. And there was a sense that like Xi Jinping might, you know, see this massive youth unemployment. They might see this looming economic crisis with this kind of ghost real estate bubble that's been built up and think, I don't know, one way to distract from that is to make a move on Taiwan. Is that something folks should be concerned about?

So look, I think the truth is, is that we're still trying to understand Tommy. what's happening in the Chinese economy. You pointed to a couple of things that were tracking closely, youth unemployment, the property bubble, some issues associated with debt, not only at the national level, but at local levels as well. The Chinese economy has slowed down substantially.

The government has taken steps that, in many respects, we believe, undermine innovation. They've made it illegal to talk about, just data in the economy as a national security threat. So there are many things that are going on in China that are impeding growth, that are causing the wheels, if not to come off, certainly to slow down substantially with respect to Chinese economic performance.

The question is always in that environment. If you are facing domestic headwinds and challenges, does that cause you to be, less ambitious internationally to hedge your bets to be more careful, or does it cause you to think about, look, we've got to distract attention and take steps that would lead to more provocative actions. And I don't think we really know the answer now. And the truth is, you can see, you know, one strategy followed for a while and then suddenly the other. And so I think it requires the United States to be deeply focused, to remain vigilant, to work with China where we can,

which we're determined to do and work closely. As we speak, Tommy, it was just announced that our very able Commerce Secretary Ramundo will be in China next week. We are keeping those lines of communication open. In truth, I think no one would have expected that the U.S. economy, post-COVID would be booming and China would be facing challenges. But it is a lesson that those who underestimate the United States do so at their own peril. Well, Kurt, I want to tell you that one, Ben and I pledge that if we see one of those spy balloons over Los Angeles, we'll shoot it down ourselves. And two, congratulations on the summit.

I can only imagine how many hours you guys spent in the situation room preparing for this thing. It must have been an ungodly amount of work. It was a lot of work, but blowing up those balloons also, your arm muscles get really tired. Awesome. Well, listen, thanks again. And it was great having you on. Let's do it again soon. Great.

Say hello to everyone for me. Thank you very much. Thanks again to Kurt for joining the show. Don't dine and dash people. It's just a dick move. You know, okay, I did this once. How old were you? I was like 17.

There was like an all-night diner that you could go to like, drunk at two in the morning and get like eggs. Where are we? We're on the Upper West Side. And I had like a couple of meeted friends who I think had done this once before. And I was uncomfortable with it, but they're like, we got to do it. It was really stupid because we'd go to that place all time. So like I think that the idea is like we were going to end up paying these people anyway at some point.

Let's just say like we all run out. The guy who chases us decides to follow me. Oh no. I was fast. I thought they'd go after the slower guys, but I think he wanted to go after the faster guy. Oh, no. And he, like, kicked my ass. Oh, no, really?

He dropped kicked me. Like, he fucking drop kicked me. Was it literally kicked you in the ass. Literally kicked me in the ass. I was like, I'm sorry. It wasn't my idea. Here's money. Like, you know, and you know what?

Good. Good on that guy. Lesson learned. Yeah. I, you know, I, like, my brief career in, you know, petty whatever. Petty theft. You know, the, the $5 I owed for this eggs and hash browns I paid. And I deserved it.

So, like, good. good on that guy for kicking my ass, literally. Try to think if I ever done it in Dash. I don't think I ever did. I have a really well-developed sense of guilt, and I'm not that fast. I was pained with guilt, like, just, I remember feeling guilty before this even happened.

So I was, like, secretly, I think, felt like I got what I deserved when this guy was, like, literally drop-kicking me. Have you ever been to the grocery store, and they sell, like, lemon-looking, plastic things that squeeze out lemon juice? Yes, of course. I remember for some reason I was, like, six or seven,

and I went to the grocery store with my mom. I stole one of those. We got home. She was like, where the hell did you get that? And I was like, I stole it. She threw me right back in the car and we returned it. So I think that was an early, terrifying lesson. I had to do that once with my daughter,

because when she was like two, she would ride in the cart and she just, I guess, had grabbed a lime and was just like holding it. And I get out in the parking lot. I'm like, I don't think we pay for that lime, you know? Yeah, we got to teach the rule. I did return it. If you eat it in the store, it's okay.

Yeah, it's a reminder. I guess, you know, produce is easy to swipe if you're two, you know. And I think if we were turning, the person was like, I don't give a shit. I just worked here. I don't know. I don't know Roach Brothers. What are we doing? Although with the Aeroon in Venice, that lime probably costs like five bucks.

400. So I returned it. I returned it to be quick. God help. If you try to go to an Arawan in this city and you make a smoothie with a couple different parts to it, you're paying $200. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, enough about L.A. problems.

That's it for us this week. Talk to you guys next week. See it. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, and Phoebe Bradford,

who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World. Thanks to Saul Rubin and Rebecca Rottenberg for production support. Our intern is Naomi Beerenbaum.