Pod Save the World - How a virus can threaten democracy

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Today’s show is a little different. We skip the update on the spread of the coronavirus itself and instead focus on the impact it’s having on governments and people. For example, 2019 was the year of the protestor, but how do protestors continue if they can’t gather safely or legally? How can we stop leaders from using the coronavirus to consolidate power, stifle the press or jettison privacy protections? And with the news that the virus has temporarily sidelined a US aircraft carrier, how do we refocus defense policy and spending for the future? Then Tommy talks with former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro about the shocking news that Blue and White Party chief Benny Gantz is forming a coalition with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. And Ben talks with British Labour Party MP David Lammy about the UK’s response to the coronavirus.*Crooked has started a Coronavirus Relief Fund for organizations supporting food banks, health care workers, restaurant workers, seniors, kids who depend on school lunches, and others in need. Donate: crooked.com/coronavirus

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, good to see you all the way over there in Venice. We have a very cool show for listeners today that spans multiple time zones and even multiple continents that I'm excited about. So the news portion of the show will be a little different. We're going to skip the morbid coronavirus cases death toll update because you can find that in a lot of places. Instead, we're going to focus on a lot of these coronavirus adjacent issues you're seeing around the globe. So, So for example, like 2019 was the year of the protester. How do you keep up that momentum if you can't gather safely or in some cases legally? What can we do about autocrats using the coronavirus to consolidate power and stifle the press? Or even, you know, what do we do about our European allies who seem to be eagerly tossing aside hard fought for online data privacy protections? We'll also talk about how, you know, this virus is at least temporarily defeating traditional symbol. of American military might like aircraft carriers. And then we have two interviews.

So I checked in with former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, about the shocking news that Blue and White Party Chief Benny Gantz is going to form a coalition with Prime Minister, B.B. Netanyahu. And then Ben, you just got off the phone with British Labor Party MP David Lammy. What did you guys talk about? We talked about what's gone wrong in the British response to coronavirus, which will sound somewhat familiar to the whole. American year. And also, you know, in addition to just how the British Parliament is functioning

under some level of quarantine, we also talked about an upcoming election for a new Labor Party leader. And Lambe is very involved in that campaign and how coronavirus might be reshaping the future of British politics and really global politics. Awesome. Well, he's also just a blast to listen to, just the voice in and of itself. So I cannot wait to hear that. It's awesome. Awesome. And he's got a book coming out, right? Yeah, we talked about that a little bit. He's got a book out now, Tribes, which is, I read it. It's really, I mean, if you want to dive deep into what's been happening around the world

in our politics, this is a good place to start. Okay, cool. One quick note before we get to the news, the census is happening. I know there's a lot going on, but we've got to fill out our census. It will help you make sure that your district gets representation, gets funding, everything. It's really important. So go to my 2020 census.gov. It takes like five minutes.

It will have a huge impact on our democracy for a decade. That's my 2020 census.gov. Okay. So let's start with this year of the protest story that Axios wrote, which I thought was great. So the headline was the year of the protest meets the year of the lockdown. It talks about how so many of the biggest stories of 2019 were these protest movements. That was true in Hong Kong, parts of Latin America, the yellow vests in France. France in the Middle Easter protest movements.

In most of those cases, we're talking about average citizens turning to protest as basically their only means of asserting some power and demanding basic rights, dignity, or economic help. And now that tool has been taken away from them. And it's giving autocratic regimes a chance to regroup or even make protesting illegal. The one good example that Axios mentioned that I hadn't really thought about was in India. we had just seen weeks of horrific violence against Muslim communities. So at least that has stopped temporarily, but I think the broader trend is true.

So, Ben, you know, I thought this piece was just a smart observation. But it's also interesting because these cases in Hong Kong and other places are like cousins of what we are dealing with here in the U.S. Right. Like we're Democrats, we're in the opposition. We're led by probably Joe Biden. And we have to figure out how to organize and rally people without any of the state resources. And I know that you have spent like the better part of a year. talking with activists all around the globe about these challenges, how concerned are they about

losing protest as a tool? And if people shared any best practices with you or like workarounds or digital organizing tactics that can help fill the gap? Yeah. So, you know, I guess one example I would use as Hong Kong where, you know, and talking to some of the protesters there, one of the points that they made is that in addition to street protests, which have gotten most of the attention, there was a very deliberate effort to create a culture around the protests themselves. There are songs, there are videos, there are memes, there is artwork. And so there's a kind of online community that has been created. And most notably, there are these massive telegram threads.

You know, I had someone, you know, show me on their phone, a telegram thread he was on with over 200,000 people, right? And so. How does that work? Like, how do you do with a group text? I'm on one with, like, four of you guys, and it's overwhelming. You know, what they do that's really interesting is, yeah, well, that group threat is getting a lot of work out in this quarantine. You know, what they do also is they use it for kind of direct forms of democracy. And so they'll be kind of like mass voting about where the next protest should be.

You know, it's a vehicle to share some of the songs I talked about that became kind of like protest anthems. So, you know, I think there's no substance. for the fact that people are going to go to ground and they are going to lose this tool of direct mobilization and that some of this building of a culture of opposition, a culture of an alternative to an autocratic ruler or a problem like climate change, that's going to have to happen in people's homes and that's going to have to happen in online spaces like life is. I think the one of the thing I'd add, Tommy, though, is that yes, I think in the near term, no doubt there will be the wind going out of the sales of some of these movements, and there will be aggressive actions taken by

autocrats to claim extra powers. But we make a big mistake by thinking that the disruptions caused by the coronavirus are going to be resolved in six months or a year. And the example I'd used, frankly, is that when the global financial crisis happened and Barack Obama got elected, it seemed like, oh, the answer to the financial crisis is this swing, at least in the United States towards progressive politics when in fact, you know, what I've found in talking to people is that the global financial crisis created a lot of the dislocations, a lot of the anger that ended up fueling the right-wing nationalism and populism that we've seen. So in other words, after you get through the initial phase one of the reaction to a global cataclysmic event like that financial

crisis or like coronavirus now, when protesters can come back into the streets, with all the pent-up energy of the last, whether it's six months or a year, whatever it is, coupled with the concerns about some of the actions that governments have taken, you could see the pendulum swing back even harder. So I think that we shouldn't render a final verdict on what the result of the coronavirus is on politics in different countries in the next six months or even a year. This is going to play out over two, three, four years. and it may be that those types of movements come back even bigger and stronger than before.

Or the alternative could happen and autocrats could crack down. And a lot of that depends on whether there is organizing that takes place in the virtual space in the interim. Yeah. Ben, I think that long game point is really important. And it's important for the protest movements and also for some of the efforts that governments are trying to put in place to seize power in the midst of this crisis. So we'll get to that more in a minute. Yeah. But I just wanted to do just a little, you know, look, we don't get to have happy talk on this show.

So this is what counts as it these days. This is a Washington Post headline that I thought you might enjoy. It's by Jackson Deal, who is no fan of Barack Obama's foreign policy, by the way, never liked us. But he wrote, Pompeo's pandemic performance ensures his place among the worst secretaries of state ever. And look, I'm not happy that Mike Pompeo sucks at his job, but I'm glad people are recognizing it. And I wanted to just touch on this fantastic piece up high in the show to give us a smile. So some of the reasons Jackson Deal cites that Pompeo is so bad is that instead of rallying the international community to formulate a global coronavirus response, he used this

moment to just like record weird videos talking shit to Iran. He talks about how Pompeo flew to Afghanistan and announced cutting off aid to that country, a billion dollars worth in the midst of a crisis. Pompeo blocked the G7 from issuing a statement about the coronavirus because they wouldn't agree to him calling it the Wuhan virus. Basically, he said, like, we want to score more points against Beijing. That's more important to us than coordinating with Britain, France, Germany, the UK. By the way, Ben, I just saw a Daily Beast story that posted that suggests Trump might be dropping the China virus, Wuhan virus bullshit because he got on the phone with Xi Jinping and she told him how great he's been. So, you know, always interesting. And the last part that D.L talked about was during a video summit of the G20, Pompeo couldn't even get the Saudis to call off their oil price war, despite literally letting Muhammad bin Salman get away with murder.

So, you know, Ben, like the very petty part of my brain, which is a significant chunk, wants to frame this article and send it to the State Department for Mike. But, you know, then I think about how much better off we'd be if we had like John Kerry or Hillary Clinton trying to coordinate the world and I get sad again. Well, it's really amazing because like what the hell is Mike Pompeo doing? Like you would think that he'd be out there mobilizing some international coordination around the development and distribution of, you know, healthcare equipment or how are we going to coordinate in dealing with the global financial crisis or global recession that we're in or how are we going to try to standardize guidelines about the resumption of certain kinds of business and travel. He's doing none of that, you know. And instead, all we get is this kind of

petty bullshit like the Wuhan virus. And by the way, the measure of whether that succeeds shouldn't be whether, you know, Mike Pompeo gets adoring commentary in like right-wing talk radio weird circles. It should be whether any other country goes along with what you're doing. And the fact that there's not a single country in the world that is saying China virus or Wuhan virus means that he's completely striking out. He's over 200 in convincing other countries to go along with this thing. And the other thing I'd say is that crises really do reveal like who you are. Like everything about you is magnified in a crisis. And everything about Mike Pompeo that we've talked about in this show is he's petty, he's an ideologue, he is mean-spirited, and he's dishonest. And that's what we see because

instead of seeing coronavirus as a challenge it has to be met, he sees coronavirus as an opportunity to kind of further punish these obsessions of his. So, you know, to impose new sanctions on Iran instead of lifting sanctions to save lives. To impose new sanctions on Venezuela instead of lifting sanctions to save lives. You know, across the board, he's not trying to solve any problems. It's like he doesn't recognize we're in a different kind of moment here. And so he's still singing from the same songbook that was already failing. and already mean-spirited two months ago, and now it just looks ridiculous. And he's, you know, totally, frankly, irrelevant, which is the ultimate criticism you can make

his secretary stated. He's irrelevant to how the world is responding to this other than being an impediment to basic things like a G7 statement. Yeah. So one more issue, just to add to the Mike Pompeo's Sucks list that wasn't on Jackson Deals list in his piece, which was on Monday, North Korea said that they have lost all appetite for dialogue with the U.S. because of Pompeo's continuous pressure on them to give up their nuclear weapons.

I think they were mad that Pompeo said at that G7 summit that the world has to be united and calling on North Korea to return to talks. And he called on all these countries to continue applying diplomatic and economic pressure on the North Korea. And so, look, in this case, I almost feel bad for Pompeo because obviously the goal of the diplomacy, the sanctions, all of it is to deal with North Korea's nuclear program. But Trump wants to be the good cop and send Kim nice letters. so they blame Pompeo for the thing failing.

But what I found really annoying was Pompeo lecturing the G7 about unity when Trump has repeatedly hung Japan in South Korea out to dry on North Korea policy. By the way, I don't know if you saw that North Korea is reporting that they have no cases, which is just, you know, another record in their propaganda bullshit. Take that to the bank, yeah. Yeah, right, right. I mean, it just shows you, too, though, that, like, he has certain accounts that he focuses on, right? Mike Pompeo doesn't focus on everything.

He focuses on North Korea, on Iran, on Venezuela. And by any measure, like, none of those problems are moving in the right direction. They're all moving in the wrong direction. Like, we've been able to test now for over three years, whether these approaches work. And none of them are working. And at a certain point, like, you have to measure somebody against results, not just against their projection of their own, you know, greatness, which is what Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump constantly want to remind us of. And the North Korea thing, I mean, two years ago, it seemed like

that was going to be the main focus of Donald Trump's whole foreign policy and that he'd be running for re-election as someone saying he's, you know, solved this problem that no president solved. And it's much worse than it's ever been. Last week, we talked about efforts by leaders in Israel and Hungary to use the coronavirus to sees more power. And I talk with Dan Shapiro about how some of the checks and balances in Israel actually worked and thwarted some of the things Bibi Netanyahu is trying to do. But unfortunately, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban succeeded and now he's basically an absolute dictator. So he can now suspend whatever laws he wants. No elections can be held. He can basically imprison

reporters if he doesn't like their coverage. And worse of all, you know, it will be nearly impossible to undo these emergency powers because you need like two-thirds of the parliament and then the president would need to agree with it. So, you know, Ben, this is a long time coming. Orban has been slowly strangling Hungary's democracy for many years. He declared a state of emergency in 2015 to prevent refugees from entering the country and those powers are still in place. So Hungary's democracy is dead. And the question becomes, what does the international community do about it? So I saw that the European Union said they're going to assist. whether Hungary's new laws violate their rule of law standards. Fred Kaplan, at Slate,

points out that the NATO charter, you know, sort of basically has similar language about promoting free institutions. And Kaplan argues that NATO and the EU should just kick Hungary out. And, you know, you and I have talked about this a bit with Turkey in the NATO context. It was a little bit different because they were buying Russian weapons. But I was curious what you thought about Kaplan's suggestion that for the EU, for NATO to have any teeth, they should boot someone like Hungary out, that the EU shouldn't give Hungary a dime when they have a despot ruling and that NATO shouldn't ever have to come to a place where they invoke Article 5 and come to Hungary's defense if they are a dictatorship.

Yeah, well, a slight tease here. I've done it yet on this podcast, but I've been working on a book now for some time that, let's just say it has a hungry section to it. So I've thought a lot about Evictorba, a lot more than I ever thought I would in my life. And this is really alarming. And I think, you know, part of what's happening here is I think if the current trends held, he very well might lose the next election, you know. He's kind of run out of, you know, shiny objects to throw in front of the Hungarian people.

And so what I think he's trying to do now is use coronavirus to avoid ever having to face the Hungarian people again and to try to complete his project of transforming what was a democracy into a one-party system under him. I do think I spent a lot of time talking to Hungarian opposition politicians and journalists and activists. And they've been torn about whether or not institutions like the EU or NATO should essentially kick Hungary out. Because what they worry about is, you know, if he's kicked out, if Hungary's outside the climate, club, then you lose any capacity to affect his behavior. And frankly, he's tried to hedge. So, for instance, it's not a coincidence that the biggest Huawei production center in the world is in Hungary, in the West is in Hungary. Interesting. It's not a coincidence that Russia's building

a multi-billion dollar nuclear power plant there. He may have been trying to set up an economic backstop where if he did lose the European lifeline, he could rely on Russia and China. think that's kind of dubious though. Hungary gets a lot of money from the EU for basic things like infrastructure. It's a pretty good share of their GDP. And look, if this behavior doesn't get you suspended from the European Union and from NATO, then nothing will. I think there has to be teeth here. And you can frame it different ways. You know, you don't need to kick Hungary out, but you could say that you're not going to provide any EU assistance to him, that you're going to review his membership, what have you, but I do think it's time to use the leverage of these

institutions to try to pressure him to back down from these actions. And the EU, I think, is the best position to do that because they transfer billions and billions of dollars to Hungary. That's a serious pot that they can work with. I'd also like to see other European political parties speak out against this. You know, Hungary and Orban's parties in a group of European center right parties that, you know, many of whom are not as far right as his, they should kick him out of that group. Now is a time for people to show solidarity with the Hungarian people and to show Orban that there are going to be consequences if he goes this path. Yeah, I agree with you. Okay. Let's stick with the EU for a minute because in 2018, the European Union put in place a bunch of new data privacy

laws. We can debate how stringently or effectively those rules are being implemented, but the general data protection regulation or GDPR was basically designed to give users more control over their personal data on the internet. That's a very simplified version. But now, I mean, people are noticing and are concerned about how quickly those rules are being discarded in the name of tracking the coronavirus. So the EU is asking telecom companies to hand over mobile phone data to track the spread. the coronavirus decentralized it so they can figure out like are sick people crossing borders, for example. Politico reported that in Brussels also drones are being deployed to enforce quarantine rules just to really round out the like I am legend dystopian hellscape vibe.

But you know, this is pervasive. Like a telekind company in Norway has been sharing location data with scientists. Politico wrote that Spain, Romania, Slovakia, and Poland have all created a version of like an apt to tractsic patients. Germany's working on a way to aggregate. and they claim to partially anonymize the data. So, you know, they're basically, these countries are following the lead of China and South Korea, which made infected patients download apps that track their movements and the people they came in touch with as a way to isolate the virus. So of course we want governments to do whatever it takes to save lives and, you know,

stop the spread of the virus. But there are concerns here, which, you know, they're sort of twofold. Like first, experts say you can't really anonymize location data. It's just too easy to pick a couple, you know, data points and reverse engineer where you've been. And second, like we've talked about in other places, like once these emergency laws go into place, it is very hard to get rid of them. Take, for example, Ben, the Patriot Act right here in America. Yeah, I was going to say that. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I guess my question to you is like, you know, you and I have lived through this post

9-11. Do you think there's any hope of having a rational debate about these topics when people are scared shitless? And if there is, like, do you have thoughts on ways to message it or approach the debate politically so that people might hear both sides out? Yeah, I mean, I think that we all citizens need to be very tuned to what might be happening now. Hungary is the most extreme example of somebody basically ending democracy because of the coronavirus, or that's what he claims. But there are going to be a lot of things like this that happen, and it demands a lot of attention.

And what I would say is that measures that are taken, it should be written into whatever regulatory change is made or whatever law is passed, that there is a very strict and enforced time limit associated with any emergency measures. And I think the Patriot Act is the best example, Tommy. Look, there's a lot of stuff that never should have been in the Patriot Act. We know that now. It was passed in a very rushed manner shortly after 9-11. And look, if there had been a a strict, you know, one-year timeline on everything in the Patriot Act and a requirement that if you want to extend that, you have to come back. We'd probably be in a quite different place right now in terms of some of the changes that were made in terms of anti-terrorism powers. And so, you know,

I think a starting point is I wish that there were governments that would, you know, scrutinize more what tools are really needed and what aren't. I'm sympathetic to the idea that you want to do everything you can at a point of maximum peril, which is where we are right now with the coronavirus. But especially with something like this where you know that at some point there's going to be a vaccine. And the far end of that seems to be 18 months. It could be sooner. Then there's no reason not to have very strict time limitations on any additional power that is granted to government to deal with this. Because there's no reason to have those powers on the back end of a vaccine. Yeah, I mean, even to your point, like, I think Ron Wyden and Russ Feingold,

who are, like, big civil libertarians who've, you know, raise concerns about surveillance and intelligence, you know, I think they put sunset provisions on parts, like some of the most onerous parts of the Patriot Act that had to be re-upped in five years, you know, even that just creates difficult politics down the road because it's so easy for governments to say, people will die if you, if you don't give us these powers, but you're right. I mean, with something that is specifically about a virus, it does seem like you could wholly sunset it once a vaccine is in production. That's exactly right. I mean, because we went through this with Patriot Act with the infamous Section 215 provision that allowed the metadata of all Americans to be collected, the Snowden Revelation.

And that did come up for reauthorization. And it was changed on the back end of the Snowden disclosures. But frankly, something like that, you know, in this instance, you're right. Like, it doesn't even need to be brought up to be reauthorized. It can just be sunset. It can just be said that this is going to expire at a certain time or, frankly, or with the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus, right? And I think the basic principles should be none of this should be permanent. Yeah, agreed. And since we just talked about the EU, why don't we use this moment to go to your conversation, Ben, with MP Labor Party member David Lammy about how the UK is dealing with the coronavirus and our friend Boris Johnson?

I'm very pleased to be joined once again by our best British friend of the pod, David Lammy. David, among other things, in addition to being a member of parliament, is the author of a new book, a really, really great new book that I recommend to everybody who's listening out there. It's called Tribes, How Our Need to Belong Can Make or Break Society. And David really delves into, I think, the issues that are shaping our politics and both sides of the Atlantic here. It's both personal story that's incredibly evocative and you'll learn a lot about David. But it's really a story for our times. So David, congratulations on the book and thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much. The book was meant to be coming out at a time that people could actually go into book shops, not just buy it on Amazon, but here we are. It's a very, very different context, but it's definitely a context where, you know, tribalism and sinking into our own kind of inner selves and our own little domain is right. So thank you. Well, I want to ask you about the book in a bit. But just to start, how are you doing?

What has been the experience for you as a parliamentarian, you know, in social isolation here? Well, like you, I am at home. my kids are being homeschooled. My wife is at home. There is lots of emails coming in from my constituents here in North London, people who are trapped overseas and are desperate to come back to the UK, people who are really worried because they are self-employed, and they don't know where the next, how they're going to pay the bills.

So, you know, dealing with that with my staff on email and on phone calls. And, of course, the Labour Party here in the UK is about to select a new leader. I am the vice chair of his campaign. That will happen this weekend. So there's also deep politics going on, but it's going on not in the corridors of power, but in the Zoom or Skype corridors of power. And I'm just curious, you know, there's been some controversy here. Members of Congress had to kind of fly back for a vote, a very important vote, but there

was concern that they weren't able to conduct congressional business, including voting, virtually and that potentially could put people at risk. How are you guys doing parliamentary business? Can you do what you need to do through Zoom, as we're doing right now? or is there still some need for you to physically go to do parliamentary business? Well, last week, Parliament was closed. It is on recess. It should have been closed this week, but it closed early.

Now, we were able to put through Parliament an emergency coronavirus bill that gave the government all the powers it needs, powers to deal quickly with those that lose their life, power to deal quickly with those who aren't following the rules around self-distance or around self-isolation, a whole range of powers that the medical profession needs. So we put that bill through Parliament. That was effectively the last thing we did and we aren't meeting again until April the 21st. So the way in which we are holding the government to account is with the media, with social media, particularly, and using our voice.

When Parliament resumes, there is definitely going to be an accelerated conversation about how we do parliamentary business virtually, because as you've seen here, we've got Boris Johnson affected by Corona, we've got our health secretary and minister affected by Corona, our chief medical officer has gone down with Corona, the Prime Minister's top advisor has gone down with Corona. So it's clear that we are going to have to bring the issue of social distancing into Parliament as well, and that means that we are going to have to find a way to do this virtually, and I suspect the Speaker of the House of Commons is engaged in how that can be done as we speak. So stepping back here in the US, we spent a lot of time on this

podcast and other forums, you know, focusing on really how our government dropped the ball on this lost precious time when it should have been developing and deploying tests and, you know, making sure that there were adequate stockpiles of certain health equipment and, frankly, having a president who was giving proper warning to the American people instead of essentially denying the existence or danger of this virus. What has been your sense of the British response to this. How would you rate your government's efforts over the last several weeks to prepare for this and then respond to it? Well, look, the first thing to say is this is an international and national crisis. It's not a time to be partisan. It's a time to be pulling together.

And it's absolutely clear to me that the British people expect politicians like me to assist the government where we can and pull together. Notwithstanding that, it is, clear and I think it's widespread view that we have been slow on the uptake in this country, that there was this big debate in the UK because the government under Boris Johnson were using phrases like herd immunity, the idea being that actually what we need to happen is that people get this virus, the more people get this virus, if you like, the more we can get back to business as usual. And the Prime Minister's chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, was quoted in the Times Sunday Times newspaper saying,

look, some old folk are going to die. We know that. But the most important thing is the economy. So there has been criticism of Boris Johnson and his team for how slow they've been. In Germany, they're doing a formidable job under Angela Merkel with testing. You know, 500,000 tests a week is extraordinary. are struggling to make 10,000 tests. And so the general view is, whilst we're all pulling in the same direction and we want to keep their slow, Britain has been slow on this and the testing piece is really, really problematic, particularly because you cannot expect frontline workers in our national health service, doctors and nurses, to both be dealing with patients without the proper equipment and many of them have not had the...

the equipment that makes sure that they're safe at work and also that they have not received the testing. And that remains a very big debate. So what do you think right now are the most pressing needs? As you're just looking at the next week or two here, what would you like to see the focus of the government be? Where could things be better? Well, I'll deal with that.

But I just want to widen this slightly because when I make that point about Boris Johnson's government here, there is a thread that connects what I'm seeing and hearing with Donald Trump, what I'm seeing and hearing with Bolsonaro and Brazil, and what we're seeing from Dominic Cummings. And that is, there is a libertarian wing of these governments that take a sort of view that we should be rational about this, that this is about freedoms, that people will die, it's about the economy, what's the problem? And there are these folks. I think, on the right and within right-wing governments that lead us to this view.

And you know and I know that, of course, the first job of any government is to keep your people safe. And if one person dies, that's one person too many. So that's the big issue. And it unites countries that are dealing with this populist nationalism at this moment. I think here in the UK, the big issue is testing. why, for example, did the UK government reject the offer from the European Union on procurement of ventilators? And it looks like they rejected that offer, even though they could take it up, because they took this view that we're leaving the European Union,

so we want to go on our own. And they've asked James Dyson and the Dyson Company to make new ventilators, despite the fact that they've never made ventilators before, and the costs will be higher than if you procure with 27 other European countries. So ventilators, like it is in the States, a really big issue. Testing, a huge issue. We've got to accelerate the amount of people we're testing. The WHO said, test, test, test is your way out of this.

And it's hugely worrying that the UK, the US are hugely lagging behind countries like South Korea and like Germany. And then, of course, we have to protect our workers in our national health service and working in health care. We've got to get them the protective equipment because as these people go down, it leads to huge sources. So those are the three issues, I think, as they stack up. Well, you know, you speak about the common shortcomings in the response in the UK and the U.S., which are pretty striking, right? because we're two of the most advanced countries in the world, and we're clearly behind Germany and South Korea.

And this is clearly not just a democracy authoritarianism issue where, like, China can respond more forcefully because they're authoritarian because Germany and South Korea are democracies. And, you know, I obviously agree with you that there's something to the fact that this kind of mix of nationalism and libertarian philosophy that you see in our countries makes it harder for government to respond. in a crisis like this. I'm just wondering, you know,

because I want to talk about your book, like how do you see the things that you wrote about in your book reflected in what's happening around us now? The book was about this new tribalism that we're seeing across the world. It was about the opposite of reaching across the aisle, which was something that, you know, when we were in government, you know,

you look forward to politics, politicians of different stripes coming together and working together. And I work with David Cameron on the criminal justice system, even though I am absolutely not a conservative. And what we're seeing is this increased tribalism. We're seeing a populist nationalism trap the truth and expertise. We're seeing, on the one hand, a desire, you know, Corona, it doesn't matter how much money you've got. It doesn't matter what your ethnicity or your

background is. Corona can come get you. And sadly, if you've got an underlying issue, you're unlucky, or you are over 70, it can kill you. And it requires, above all else, international global leadership, the kind of leadership that we saw during the crash of 2008. where the G7 and the G20 are pooling resources, are combining to find that vaccine, are working out strategy quickly. How are we going to shut down? What are we going to do?

Where should we, how should we contain this pandemic? None of that happened. None of it happened. We've had an absence from the scene of the USA, totally inward looking at a crucial time. We've had the UK obsessed with Brexit it and therefore not wanting to offend anyone because it wants a trade deal internationally and also inward looking.

And guess what? Who has stepped into the breach? China. I mean, China offering help to the world. The world is turned upside down at this point. And frankly, the only grown up in the room appears to be Angela Merkel. So we've had a lack of global leadership because of this tribalism and this sort of narrow inward view, we've had a failure to find the common ground when we know that this disease

requires us to have a common purpose. And I talked about this a lot in the book. I called it an encounter culture where we're prepared to step outside our box and encounter others. I think the other thing that I talk about in the book a lot, of course, is the way in which social media and technology can fuel that division. And I think that many of your listeners will see good examples of that and very, very bad examples of that currently with misinformation being spread about the disease and all the rest of it. So it's a peculiar time, but we hope and pray that in a way we come out of this, having established more common ground. You know, all of our countries are having to step into the marketplace to support those who are going to lose their job. all of us now see the heroes that exist in our hospitals and in our communities because of how we're coming together.

But all of us also see the gross selfishness and the individualism that happens when people hoard. Even when they're hoarding the most peculiar things like toilet paper. I want to be very clear. I've spent the last two days with my wife trying to find a place to buy toilet paper and it's very hard. So one other question here on this then is, you mentioned the Labor Party selecting a leader. Tell us a little bit about what you expect to happen while you're supporting your candidate. And frankly, in this kind of world that we're living in that you've described, that's also going to probably be dealing with some form of global recession in addition to a pandemic.

What kind of leadership the Labor Party can offer going forward? The first thing to say is the Labor Party desperately needs a crucial. credible leader and we need effective opposition in our democracy to hold the government to account. Kier-Starmer represents the first time in really a decade that the Labour Party is electing a leader that instantly has credibility with the public. He's a former director of public prosecutions. He has been a human rights lawyer. He has been in Parliament a relatively short time four years. He's not, he's a bit like your old boss was, not someone who has many enemies, people like him.

And so credibility, proper forensic opposition, is I think what we're going to offer. And your question signals something significant. Of course we're all preoccupied with how we get through Corona. But I think that progressives should be deeply worried about the recession and potentially the pressure that could flow from this. when you shut down in the way that we're seeing in the United States, in the entirety of Europe, in the tiger economies of Asia, I'm afraid if that goes on for months and months, of course they're going to be significant consequences financially. And it's in that time that you do need progressive making the case for how we can get through this, but also the deep inequalities that still exist in our society. I mean,

I mean, my 12-year-old was asking me about what happens to the homeless during a time like this. It was an apposite and important question. All sorts of issues will arise and we have to challenge the inequalities. And I think because people are seeing the importance of government stepping in to support people, perhaps we are now into a new place where actually some of the case that we've had to, If you like, this is the case that Roosevelt made for the New Deal for America. It was the Keynesian approach to economics. I think that that argument will now gather tremendous ground.

And the laissez-fairest, the super-capitalists, if you like, will be pushed back, will have to be pushed back as a consequence of where we're going to be. Well, look, it's great to talk to you, as always, and hope you and your family stay safe and well. And we look forward to following what happens in the Labor Party and hopefully we can come out of this stronger. So thanks a lot, David. Thank you.

And everybody should check out Tribes, the new book by David. As he says, you can get it online now and then maybe you can support your local bookstore and pick up another copy when you can get back out again. That's right. All right, let's talk about how the virus is being used to crack down a press freedom. So the Columbia Journalism Review did a roundup of a bunch of the countries that are limiting press freedom in the name of stopping the coronavirus.

And here's just a few examples. So they talk about how Venezuela violently detained a journalist. Iranian journalists were ordered not to cover the true death toll from the virus. And reporters were detained. And, you know, that likely contributed to the spread because there was misinformation out there. Egypt revoked a reporter's press credentials. They denounced tweets by the New York Times Bureau chief in Congress. Cairo for citing data that didn't like Turkey detained journalists, South Africa passed a law,

making it a crime to publish disinformation about the coronavirus. You know, we talked about Hungary, Azerbaijan's and similar things, China. And, you know, look, in the U.S., less we think we're pure, Trump literally berates every reporter who dares to ask him a factual question about his record or past statement. So I just wanted to raise this because it's something I think we should watch. a lot of the countries I listed were probably, you know, considered bad actors when it comes to press freedom already. But I do think we need to be extra vigilant about these emergency powers and restrictions on speech that could be used for political purposes soon.

Yeah. And, you know, I think it's troubling just on a basic level where you don't want to chill free press. But even more so, what we all need right now is good information. You know, I mean, let's think about how. how this disease is actually being fought. It's being fought in most countries by the citizens of those countries, right? With the exceptions of places like South Korea and Germany where the governments have mounted effective responses, it's us who are socially distancing. It's us who are debating what to do and what not to do. And I don't know about you, Tommy, but like, I need good information about what this disease is to protect my children and protect people in my community.

and I'm not getting that information from Donald Trump and his fucking press conferences, right? I'm getting that information from the carefully reported work in the New York Times of the Washington Post, not the political coverage, the coronavirus coverage, right? And so it's actually more important than ever that we have an aggressive, independent, free press and everywhere that can report on this stuff. I can actually see why there might be some additional monitor, capacity that you want to track this disease. There's no justification whatsoever to restrict the free press in the coronavirus circumstance. There's more and more of a need for free press.

And to me, that just shows how much is bullshit. It gets complicated, right, when you start talking about, like, disinformation, right? Info wars talking about, like selling coronavirus cures. But there has to be a way to carve that out. No, and that's the thing. It's like Orban's, one of his laws basically says he gets to decide what's disinformation and arrest people for it. And that's certainly not the answer. And we should be clear that disinformation problems even in our country are largely, almost 100%, not because of like something that's happening in mainstream media outlets. It's a social media regulatory issue, right?

So it's not a question about what's being printed in the newspaper. It's a question of what's being shared on Facebook or what people are sharing on Twitter. It's a challenge for these social media companies to have better disinformation policies. It's not a challenge for governments to come in and say they get to detain a journalist who write something they don't like. Yeah. And just a quick aside on that. Like, I feel like I've been sharing lots of information on Twitter about the coronavirus.

And I'll often see replies from people that are like, man, I would love to read this, but it's behind a paywall. And while I understand that frustration and I know, like I get the people think that, you know, life and death information should be made available. it is a good time to remember that like these journalists are putting themselves at risk, the institutions that pay them need to make money too. So it would be a good time to subscribe to some papers. But off my hobby horse.

Well, the quick thing I'd add there too is like a lot of these outlets that aren't big like the New York Times, their advertising is about to take a huge hit, right? Yeah, yeah. Their advertising's already been cannibalized by Facebook, right? Because people are reading the story is not on the website of the outlet, they're reading on Facebook. And so it's a time actually to subscribe to magazines or to do something to try to keep journalism what's left of it afloat. Yeah, especially your local paper because I don't know about you, but I'm checking like what's

going on in the L.A. area. So it's a good time to-L.A. Times has been great. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about Mexico and how our neighbors in Mexico are managing the coronavirus. The short answer is not great. So President Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador or Amlo, as he's known is modeling terrible behavior. He was going to political rallies for way too long. He was hugging and kissing supporters. I mean, it's sort of his part of his message is that we don't need a war on drugs. We need like hugs instead, right? It's a very, you know, look, I respect and appreciate it, but in this context, it's dangerous. Mexico started limited social distancing in March and late March,

which I guess is on par with the U.S. I guess we were probably ahead of them in terms of the spread of the virus getting here. But it was not ideal. Ben to hear that on March 14th, Guns and Roses headlined a two-day music festival in Mexico City that sold 70,000 tickets. So, yeah. So Mexico is half as many hospital beds per capita as a U.S. anecdotally, it does not seem like people are following social distancing guidelines. That's understandable for a lot of people who don't have the choice of not working, but it still means the virus will spread. On top of that, the country seems to barely be testing. So bad trajectory here from Mexico, disappointing personal behavior from AMLO, and also not great for him to have his

behavior sound a lot like Brazilian president, Yaira Bolsonaro, who might have gotten the coronavirus, but who also told citizens recently to confront the coronavirus like a man, not a boy. That's a quote, because, quote, we're all going to die one day to our earlier conversation. Facebook and Twitter took down some of his posts and actually stopped a live stream. Bolsonaro was doing halfway through because he was spruce. writing dangerous disinformation. Yeah, it would have been nice that they did that with Trump when he was saying, we're going to have cases go down to zero. Yeah, I think, and look, Amlo, you know, he's a leftist, but, I mean, he's got the same kind of populist cult of personality that we've seen built around

more frequently right-wing populist in places like Brazil or places like Hungary. And, I think it is telling that leaders around the world right now, because of this kind of trend towards big personality populist leaders, they're not well suited for these types of crises, because it's all about them and not about what government needs to be doing for people. And it's a reminder that certain kinds of populist tactics and rallies and having yourself be the center of attention all the time. The problems with that aren't limited to when it happens on the right. It can happen on the left, too. And, you know, you take a country like Mexico, you know, you have a lot of big cities. You have a lot of people who are in close proximity to each other. You have a public

health system that is not fully equipped to deal with a certain level of outbreak. So my hope is that they, you know, or well past the point of the, the G&R concerts as much as I am glad to see, you know, guns and roses back together. Let's wait. Who knew? Let's wait. Let's wait and do that on the back end here because, you know, it could get really bad there given given the population density. Yeah. So speaking of populist, leftists, this is a weird one from Venezuela. On March 26th, the U.S. indicted Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro on charges of narco-terrorism. in international cocaine trafficking. They also announced a $15 million reward for information that leads to his arrest.

The indictment basically says that Maduro worked with the FARC, a militia group in Columbia, to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking into the U.S. and to get the FARC military-grade weapons, and that this kind of behavior, the bribes, the facilitation continued when he became president. So obviously, if true, they were very bad. these allegations have been rumored for a while. But I wondered about the timing of this indictment. It folds into a bigger regime change play and strategy

that the administration has been trying and failing to execute in Venezuela for the past few years. Since early 2019, the U.S. has recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the president of Venezuela. But in addition to doing this in the middle of a pandemic, it seems likely to kill off what maybe small chance there might have been left to negotiate an exit for Maduro, right? If he thinks he's going to go to a U.S. jail forever, he's not going to ever, ever leave power.

More broadly, you know, Venezuela's economy is destroyed. Their hospitals lack electricity a lot of the time, let alone respirators that you need to keep COVID patients alive. So it just feels, you know, back to our Pompeo conversation, it feels vindictive at a time when even if you have a regime change policy like Pompeo does. that policy seems like it might be better served if you found a way to get aid to the Venezuelan people even if it was through Guido's people, right?

And I'm not suggesting that as a policy outcome. People love to listen to what we say on this podcast and act like we support regime change in Venezuela. We do not. But it does seem like another step that harms the Venezuelan people is just, it seems indefensible. Yeah. And first of all, I haven't dug into these.

I mean, notably the FARC signed a peace deal with the Colombian government. And so it's not unclear to me how much of this, like, you know, how far back some of these charges go. But the more important point is the one you made, which is that this Venezuela policy was not working already. Maduro was just as entrenched as ever. Juan Guaido is actually, I think, in a weaker position than he was when Trump recognized him as the leader of the country.

country, so that wasn't working. And at the end of the day, the only way you're going to get some kind of change that leads to a better future for the Venezuelan people, I believe, is through some form of negotiation. And what is more likely to bring that about? If you make this existential for a Maduro and the people around him, it's much less likely that they'll ever negotiate with anybody. At the same time, it has weird echoes of when the U.S. invaded Panama to arrest manual Noriega on a set of drug charges. Venezuela is much bigger than Panama. I'm not suggesting that's going to happen anytime soon, but if Trump's reelected, you know, who knows? And the same thing we said about Iran. If you want to actually solve the problem, first of all, there's a human component

here, which is why are we still enforcing these sanctions on a country where people already couldn't eat and now we're dealing with a pandemic? We should be trying to help these people. That should be our motivating factor in dealing with a pandemic anywhere, irrespective of what the government is, just when it comes to the basic humanitarian question. But even the strategic question of how you try to advance democracy for the Venezuelan people, if you were able to be very generous, if you were able to try to mobilize support to get life-saving assistance and food and water to people in desperate need, that could be an opening for a negotiation. That could be an opening for some people around Maduro to say, you know what, I'm tired of going down

with this ship. I want to, you know, talk to the opposition or I want to talk to a group of regional countries. That's more likely to actually get to the objective of a better government for the Venezuelan people than this. So in addition to being vindictive, I just, once again, I think it doesn't even advance what the state of objective of their policy is. Yeah, I agree. It's just, look, when Jackson Deal, the Washington Post, columnists we were talking about earlier, is criticizing you for trash talking Iran. Like, he's a pretty hard line anti-Iran guy. He's as hard lines as it gets. Yeah. It seems like it's pretty clear to everybody that these are self-defeating policies. Three more quick things. So a quick

update out of Russia. We talked last week about how there really hadn't been a lot of coronavirus news out of Russia. That changed last week. On Sunday night, Moscow residents got a four-hour heads up that they are going to be quarantined until further notice. And it's a very draconian quarantine. You can walk a pet. You can take out the trash. You can go to the grocery store. But I think that's it. It was announced by the mayor of Moscow, which is interesting because Putin gave a speech a few days earlier on the virus where he did delay the nationwide referendum that he'd been pushing, which could promote or which could lead to constitutional changes that would allow him to be president for life.

But when it came to delivering the really bad news about how life's going to suck for a while in quarantine, he let the mayor do. it, which is pretty tough, pretty badass. We also learned today that the doctor who gave Putin a tour of this big coronavirus hospital in Moscow has the virus and there's photos of them shaking hands. And so, Ben, I mean, like this is inevitable that Moscow was going to get this saying. But what has jumped out at me over and over again is how quickly the virus has directly threatened the most powerful people in the world. Like the best guarded human beings on the planet were instantly threatened by it, right? Bolsonaro either had it or might have it. Tons of senior officials in Iran got the coronavirus. Trump was exposed at CPAC. Now Putin, and it does make you wonder if it will

cause them to think a little differently because for the first time, they are at risk. Well, I am. First of all, like, this is all a bit of a game of chance, right? Because we've seen healthy people die of this disease. And, you know, the percentage isn't high like Ebola, but it's real. And so you do wonder at a certain point, you know, are we going to start to see leaders, you know, become very ill. And I'm not trying to be gruelish or anything. It's just, it's kind of a law of averages here that that somebody could be incapacitated by this disease. I do think it is striking how much, look, it's just a reality that countries with with these kinds of nationalist self-obsessed leaders have been far behind the curve in dealing with this, where countries like

Germany and South Korea with reasonable kind of technocratic leaders have not, you know. And so, you know, I think it's a wake-up, you know, everybody's gotten the wake-up call eventually, Putin or Modi or what have you, and they tend to go 180s from being relaxed about it to being utterly draconian. But again, I think it's just another indication that there's something about this brand of leadership and politics that gives people blind spots where they don't respond until it's too late. And then when they do respond, they have to do it in the most draconian way possible. Yeah. So one other interesting story of the coming eye. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on this letter from the captain of the aircraft carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt,

about a pretty desperate situation with the coronavirus. So there's a major outbreak on the boat. they're pleading for help. At least 100 sailors out of the crew of more than 4,000 have the virus. They're trying to manage it while docked in Guam. And so, Ben, like my heart goes out to everyone on that ship. And frankly, to all the service members who are serving in places where social isolation is impossible or dangerous. I mean, imagine a submarine.

Imagine barracks in Afghanistan. I read that all port calls for U.S. Navy ships are currently canceled, which is just like sucks for these men and women in terms of their own. life. But there's also something of a parable here, which is that, you know, when a virus can cripple a $5 billion aircraft carrier or, relatedly, when climate change threatens like two-thirds of the military's operationally critical installations, as outlined in a DOD report last year, maybe it's time to start rethinking our spending and defense priorities, full stop. Yeah, I would, and may echo, I feel for all these men and women who are, you know, trapped in

proximity to each other and dealing with the spread of a virus. And there's a limited number of surfaces in a boat and presumably this disease we're told can live on surfaces. And so it's a difficult thing to avoid. I'm really glad you made the point you did. I hope that one of the things that comes out of this is a massive rethinking of our defense budget and how we think about national security generally. It's been very clear for a long time that spending trillions of dollars fighting a few thousand terrorists is not the best way to allocate resources. It's been very clear for some time that spending a trillion dollars modernizing our nuclear weapons stockpile is not the best way of dealing with actual threats.

If this is not a wake-up call, we will never get one. The threats that you and I are going to face, that my kids are going to face, are from climate change, from pandemics, cyber information wars, stuff that we're just not spending money on. Just like we're not spending enough money on basic research. and development and public health infrastructure. If we actually want to have national security policies that deal with the threats to American individuals, which is what government is supposed to do, we don't need to spend the levels of money that we are, not just at war, but on certain weapon

systems. We've got a military design to fight wars that aren't fought anymore, you know, conventional wars. And this pandemic problem, because of globalization, unless, we're going to change the nature of globalization, unless there's not going to be global freedom of movement and supply chains, you'll notice that these are happening more frequently. You know, MERS and SARS and H1N1 and then something of greater lethality like Ebola, now this. These things travel faster. And so this is not going to be unfortunate the kind of thing where we just get through this one and then we're not to worry about it again. So I do think we're, and this is something Joe Biden should pick up, we're due for a massive rethink

and how we spend money and allocate resources for national security because we're dealing with all the threats of yesterday and plainly we've found out that this administration in particular is incapable of dealing with the threats that we actually are facing. Yes. The climate change, you know, the rollback of the fuel efficiency standards plays right into this, right? I mean, he's setting us up to be even further behind the curve

on the next existential threat after a pandemic, which is climate change. Yeah. that was not a cool thing to drop on us in the middle of this pandemic nightmare, at least. Hopefully it'll get tied up in the courts until Joe Biden or whoever is the next president. Last thing. So on Sunday, out of nowhere, President Trump tweeted that the U.S. government will not pay for Prince Harry and Megan Markle's security costs if they move to L.A. I believe that tweet immediately followed his four-part tweet storm bragging about his TV ratings.

So this week, Harry and Megan officially stepped down. from their roles in the monarchy, whatever that means. Going forward, they won't be referred to as his or her royal highness. They won't live off British taxpayer money. There are reports that they're officially moving from Canada to L.A. Because they just have a network here. So obviously, they'll need security of some sort, given their profile. So it was very cool of President Trump to highlight that need to his millions of deranged

to Twitter followers. But, you know, Ben, I know you spent some time with Harry back in the day. hopefully these guys can find some privacy, some anonymity in L.A. I mean, they're still going to be famous. They'll still deal with TMZ, but hopefully it's better than the British press. But I can assure them that we hear Crooked Media will never hire paparazzi or stake them out. Yeah, I was a little shocked to see them end up in L.A. this fast. I thought they might end up here someday, but it's a bit of a shame, you know, to see them leave

not just the United Kingdom, but the Commonwealth, under the kind of cloud that they did. I guess LA's a place where she can resume her career. To your point, I mean, I guess LA is also a place where there are a lot of famous people who live behind high walls or hedges and the fact that Donald Trump decided that that's something that he was focused on. I mean, I have to say I got a news alert, I think,

from CNN that they lost their world titles. I'm like, I don't think it's possible for me to care less about something. Same. You know, in the midst of a pandemic and a depression. So maybe, you know, maybe actually that's the argument for them that just leave these people alone. Like, why are we thinking about this? Why are we devoting any brainpower to whether or not Donald Trump, you know, thinks that Megan and Harry should have security? They want some peace.

They want some distance from their family. It's a good time to have some distance anyway. It's socially isolated. And maybe they'll come out on the other end of this as a happier and productive people who can provide for their own security. And we can all move past this pandemic and start worrying about Megan and Harry again. Yeah, that'd be nice. That's a high class problem.

All right. When we come back, we will have my interview with former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro. I am now thrilled to be joined all the way from Tel Aviv by my friend, former ambassador, Dan Shapiro. He served as President Obama's Ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017. He was on the National Security Council before that. And now he's a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. Dan, it is so great to see you, even if it's from, you know, our mutual quarantines. It's great to see you too, Tommy. And I guess this is the closest we're going to get for a while. So let's enjoy it. That's right. So, Dan, it has been a wild year in Israeli politics, right?

You know, you've had three different presidential level or prime minister elections. Mr. B. B. Netanyahu in his chief rival, blue and white party head, Benny Gantz, were seemingly deadlocked over and over again. Netanyahu looked politically vulnerable or wounded because he was being indicted on these corruption charges. And then, seemingly out of nowhere to people like me, Benny Gantz said that because of the state of emergency around the coronavirus, he is going to cut a deal and form a government with his arch rival, B.B. Netanyahu. This did not go over well in Benny Gantz's Blue and White Party. But why do we just start there? Like, what do you think happened? Why do you think Benny Gantz left everybody's head snapping here when so many political analysts

thought that he had a path forward to build his own coalition and become prime minister? Well, what happened, I think, in a word, is coronavirus happened. Let me just back up a little bit. You talked about how Israeli politics has been in this kind of stasis for over a year through these three elections. After the most recent election on March 2nd, Initially, actually looked good for Netanyahu. We had a big election night party. LeCood once again became the largest party in the Kness at the parliament. But it quickly became clear that he actually fell short.

His block only had 58 seats. They needed 61. And in fact, there were 61 who supported Gans to at least get the mandate to form a government. Right. But it was actually illusory because those 61 were not cohesive. They were not willing to all sit together in one government. They had conflicting ideologies, conflicting identities, and included one of the party that represents the main Arab minority of it.

Israel and there were people in his own party, he had gone, his own party who didn't want to join with them. So the truth is he didn't have 61 votes for government. What he did have, though, was unity among those 61 to try to push BB out because they're agreed on that. They're tired of the corruption. They're tired of his divisive leadership style, tired of the way caters to the extreme religious and right-wing factions. And it looked like they had a strategy to try to do that. But at the same, and actually at the same time, Bibi was using the coronavirus emergency to try to strengthen his hold on power, which only increased their desire to push him out. He used the fact that there were social distancing restrictions first to try to get the parliament,

not to be able to meet at all. Well, blue and white went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, no, they have to meet. Then he launched an electronic surveillance program to track people with the virus or people who had been in close proximity to see if they should be quarantine. And there was no parliamentary oversight that. So they went to the Supreme Court and said, no, you have to let the parliamentary committees meet to do that. And then his justice minister, who is kind of a real sycophant of his, decided, oh, you know what, social distancing means the courts can't meet. And 40 hours before BB's trial, there's long a way to corruption trial for bribery and other charges

was about to go underway. The courts were shut down. So all of this only. increase their desire to push Nyao out. But at the same time, the virus is spreading. And as he's done in many previous crises, sort of took charge of the national response. He was on a nightly briefing on television.

He seemed very much in command. He made early decisions, which actually were good decisions. He closed the international airport. He put in place quarantine requirements. He kind of mobilized the public, which knows how to follow instructions in emergency situations. And not surprisingly, his own number started to go up as people started to focus on the crisis, the emergency,

their health, their economic concerns. And, of course, the crisis is real. It's not as bad, I don't think, as the United States, but I think they're up to about 4800 cases here. Certainly, the economy is in free fall, 23% unemployment, 1 million. Israelis filed for unemployment this week. And Gantz looked at the situation, and he saw that, you know, even though he seemed to have me on the ropes.

he seemed close to his goal. He just didn't have the numbers to follow through and form a government. So if he pressed on, the most likely possibility would have been a fourth election. Nainiang would have able to withstand all of these. And on that one, Nainau would be running as the leader managing the crisis. Israelis are sick and tired of this political stalemate. And Gans, very likely, he had internal polls showing this, would have lost that election outright. So I think at that point when he looked at his office,

options and he had a bunch of bad options and the, he felt the least bad was going to the unity government, at least gain partial control or partial partnership with Netanyahu. They put in place or are putting in place an agreement that should, is supposed to give him in a rotation, 18 months, Netanyahu's prime minister, and then 18 months, Gantz's prime minister. We'll see if that ever comes to pass. But I think for him it was the least, at least bad option. But those are the political calculations. I'll just say one more thing about GANS. I think there were some personal considerations as well. is not a natural politician.

Yeah. He spent 40 years in uniform as a soldier serving the country following orders. I mean, he's a genuine patriot. He came into politics late. It's not his lifelong goal. And he sees the country in crisis. He sees a paralyzed government. He sees the people exhausted with politics,

really in desperate need of a government that can make decisions, past budgets, really deliver relief to people. And I think, you know, he said in one of his interviews in the final week before he made this flip, he said, there are principles, meaning my principles that I'll never sit in the government with Netanyahu, who's under indictment. And there are circumstances. And that referred to the emergency. And in the end, I think he did what he felt he had to do, the best of the least bad of his bad options, but also what the country required in the moment of emergency. So that's interesting. Because I've seen some, you know, critics of Gant's, a lot of them in the U.S. say, the real problem was that he didn't have the political will to forge a coalition with the joint list, which is a coalition of, I believe, 15 Arab lawmakers. And you even saw articles in the New York Times that was like,

how much democracy is too much for Arabs in Israel, which really kind of rubbed me the wrong way because it's talking about a class of individuals as second class citizens in the country. But you think that, in fact, the math was not there to get to 61 with blue and white and the joint list. Gantz himself had said in the campaign that he did not intend to form a government with them or with their support from outside is how it would have been done.

But I actually think he overcame that. And I have to give him credit. He was very articulate in the final weeks of the campaign and then during the transition period to say, look, all citizens are citizens. It doesn't matter if they're Jewish or Arab. In fact, many doctors and nurses and pharmacists and people on the front lines in the crisis are Arab

in Israeli society. and their votes are as good as anybody else as. I actually think he had overcome that hurdle. He did have members of his own party and at least one other party that was intended to be part of the coalition that were not there yet. And, you know, that goes to the fact

that some of these particular members of the Arab the joint lists are very outspoken against Israel's existence of the Jewish state. A few of them have even expressed support for Palestinian acts of violence. So the critics would say, well, it's not the fact that it's an Arabian, party, it's effective, the specific news they hold. Nevertheless, I think Gantz had overcome this

hurdle internally, and he was prepared to do this, but he simply did have the support of some of his own people. Now, maybe if he had squeezed them harder, maybe if he had that political politician's killer instinct, he could have squeezed some of his own allies to ultimately follow through and do that. But it would have been very difficult. It would have been a very unstable government. It's not clear how long it would have lasted. Obviously, though, the joint list feels very burned. They feel like they stepped forward. They did recommend him to get the mandate, something they've not traditionally done

after Israeli elections. And they did it because of that unity of purpose, which is getting him now out of office, someone who they desperately want to see gone. And then at the last minute, Gantz switched directions on him. So he's been bitterly criticized by the Arab parties, by some of his other by many of his own voters. He's been sort of cursed and mocked and called a political weakling for what he did by some of the same people who backed him just a few weeks before. Yeah. So under the terms of this deal, I believe that Bibi Netanyahu is supposed to lead the country for 18 months. And then Betty Gantz will

take over as prime minister in September of 2021. Does Gantz have any way of ensuring that that transition actually happens? Like what would prevent Bibi from, say, calling another election beforehand? over the reins. Right. So most likely nothing. Most people in Israel think that Naini Now has some trick up his sleeve, whether it's to call a new election or reshuffle the government in some other ways, and the guns will be made to look like a fool. And it's possible. I must say he's going to enshrine the 18-month rotation in law, but it's a law that can be changed, and certainly when a government falls, there's no way to carry it forward. What does he get in the meantime? He gets an empowered deputy prime minister role and he'll be the defense or foreign minister. Very importantly, his party

will control the justice ministry. They were very upset that the justice minister under Netanyahu seemed to be using that position to help slow down and block and delay Netanyahu's trial. This is to ensure that the trial will go forward. So during the 18 months, Netanyahu is prime minister, he will be on trial for bribery and breach of trust and fraud. He is supposed to have an equal number of ministers in the government, even though he has party only has 15 seats now. It's split. Half of his party refused to follow him into this deal. So he has 15 seats to Lecooch 36, but he's supposed to have an equal number of ministers. So even during those 18 months, he may have a reasonable amount of influence over the agenda. But the big question is, will that rotation ever take place?

A lot of people do. Yeah. So you raise an interesting point about the justice ministry. I mean, in the past, B.B. Netanyahu has asked the Knesset at the Israeli parliament for immunity from prosecution while he's prime minister. Those efforts have failed so far. Do people think that those efforts will be revived now, that he's back in charge? There really are no votes for him or not sufficient votes for him to gain immunity. And that's something I don't think Gans would give him or any of those people who are going into the government with Gons. So immunity is not in the cards. Netanyahu, I think, has also accepted the reality that he will be standing trial. Now, standing trial while he's prime minister will give him various advantages.

Ways of delaying it, ways of saying there are certain crises that are going to monopolize his time, so he can't come to court that day, that kind of thing. And possibly if he wants to negotiate a plea bargain later in the process, he'll be in a stronger position to do so as prime minister than otherwise. Some people, he says to some of his associates that he really wants is just a graceful exit. He doesn't want to leave embarrassed. He doesn't want to leave convicted. He doesn't want to be pushed out of office.

He wants to negotiate a graceful departure from public service. I'm not sure anybody who watched his career really would take that seriously. That's the guy who believes he has a kind of special destiny to leave the country. And we'll try to hang on as long as he can. But the trial will go forward. I think that we can say pretty safely. And Gantz wouldn't, I think, go into this deal unless you could guarantee that. Dan, I've been thinking about you a lot in all the Middle East peace meetings we had way back

of the day because I've been reading Rise and Kill First by Ronan Bergman. I don't know if you've read the book, but fantastic book. I mean, but it's about, you know, I'm about 150 pages in, right? So I'm at the mayor de Gaon, I believe, is just sort of come onto the scene. And it's fascinating to, it's such a recent history of a country. And the leaders were so often plucked from these elite warrior groups, like a secret. its subgroup within the IDF or the Shinbet or the Mossad. And it just, like, I can't recommend it enough because I think when you read about the history of Israel and the existential threat that

a Jewish person would feel in, say, 1950, it helps you understand Zionism better. But that doesn't mean that all the choices that flow from that fear or those decisions are good for the country or good decisions writ large. Anyway, just a book plug in the middle of an interview here. I agree with all of it. I mean, Ron Bergman is a great reporter. It's a terrific book that tells a very compelling story. And I do think you capture something there that most Israelis have grown up with some sense of existential fear. Either they are Holocaust survivors themselves or the children or grandchildren, Holocaust survivors. And so they know that story or of people who were expelled from other countries and had to come to Israel for refuge. And Israel in its early decades did face wars of survival. against its Arab neighbors who actually were trying to destroy it. And even more recently, it's had terrorist attacks and Iran talking about finding its way to nuclear power. So those fears are, I think, legitimate and they die hard, even when they're a little bit in acrostic.

Israel is now by far the strongest country in the Middle East. That book tells the story of some of the most creative ways. They have extended their power to defeat and eliminate various enemies. And Israel is not in any existential danger today, even while there are still some who call for its disappearance. But then you have to ask the question. So if you live in that mindset, that you're always fighting for your very survival, might that make some decisions questionable or not the right ones at a given time or misopportunities to take risk for peace? because of that very deeply, and I think, again, understandably rooted sense of fear. Yeah.

So keeping on your theme there of existential threats, let's talk about the coronavirus. So, you know, you touched on some of this. I mean, some have accused Netanyahu of using the virus as a pretext for a major power grab. Somebody even called sort of a soft coup, as you mentioned, the shin bet, which is Israel's domestic intelligence service. I guess you could sort of compare it to the FBI. They've been granted these new powers to track the virus. But even stepping back from the sort of government world, I've read about there being an acute shortage of health care workers in Israel. So I'm just curious from your perspective how people in Israel are feeling about the virus and like how well positioned Israel is or is not to manage the crisis.

Yeah. Well, I think they have managed it reasonably. well by the standards of Western countries. Today, I think they are tracking about 4,800 cases. There have been about 18 debts as a result. It's not on the scale of the outbreak that appears to be happening in the United States. The hospitals are not overwhelmed, or at least they're not overwhelmed yet. But it is growing, and they are expanding testing, and it may be that the numbers will grow further. I have to say, I think the scale makes a difference. There's one international and they closed it very early.

There's 9 million people and a very easy means to communicate a unified message to most of the country. And most of the country is used to following those kinds of instructions. So people have been quarantining since earlier. People are now basically housebound with except for emergency needs. And most people are observing it. So I think that they have the health aspect of it in about as. well in hand as they could.

The economic aspect is obviously devastating. Small businesses are closing. I think I mentioned a million people out of a population of nine million just filed for unemployment benefits. That's a jump from 4% to 23% in about two weeks' time. So that's really quite devastating.

You know, I would think it's probably overstates the case to say that there's a coup underway. I think many democracies experiences, as we did after 9-11 and many others have in other situations and maybe now, when there's a crisis and people are afraid and they're looking to the government to protect them, they allow certain expansion of powers that maybe wouldn't happen in peacetime or in non-crisis times and none of those have to be on bailed. But it's not the extent of, say, Hungary, which just as we passed legislation to essentially allow Orban

to rule by decree and to cancel elections and to eliminate any need to consult with parliament. But then you actually did try to, he did start the surveillance and he did try to delay meeting of the Kinescent. And his rivals went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court struck it all down. So the democratic institutions here, I think, are holding. And I think they will come through it without seeing major damage done to those democratic institutions. Yeah, good to have checks and balances.

That's a big theme of today's episode is all the bad actors around the world who are using this to, you know, past emergency laws or cracked down on the free press, it is troubling, including here in the United States, frankly, when you see Donald Trump berating every reporter who asks him a question that dares to question whether 200,000 people dying is a good outcome. Turning to the Palestinian side, I mean, I've seen a lot of concern about the potential for the coronavirus to just decimate the Gaza Strip in particular. Some U.S. senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, they sent a letter to Mike Pompeo, calling on the U.S. to send some more aid and they called on the Israeli government to lift restrictions

on humanitarian aid into Gaza. How acute do you think the problem is likely to be in Gaza, given their infrastructure? And do you think there's any hope of some sort of lift of those restrictions? So in the, you know, Gaza's isolation in some ways, you know, may have protected it, at least until recently, from the outbreak. There's very few people are going in and out of Gaza, but eventually, of course, the virus didn't reach there. A couple of travelers arrived, I think from Pakistan, and they were diagnosed. I think their cases are now up to nine or ten. And the worry, of course, is that in such a poor and very, very densely populated area and with very poor infrastructure and very substandard health care facilities, that it could spread like wildfire, they are apparently

the local authorities, such as Hamas authorities, are apparently setting up quarantine camps and trying to deal with this. The truth is, this is one of those situations where Israel and Palestinians, even when they are bitter rivals, and that's obviously true even between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where there are relations. But even in the case of Israel and Hamas, where there's no former relationship, and Hamas and Israel are sworn enemies, they have had some ability to look past the policy, politics and find ways to cooperate in practical ways. So, in fact, Israel has facilitated in the last week or two, the entry into Gaza of swabs and surgical equipment and laboratory equipment and protective gear for doctors.

There's more of that even going into the West Bank. The health authorities in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government are actually in very, very close touch and really trying to coordinate in a way. because there the populations really live in intertwined areas, and the virus could easily spread from one to the other. There's less of that direct coordination through Gaza, but I have to say the UN representative, Nikolai Mladenov, just yesterday, he actually complimented Israel and Hamas

for finding ways to get more aid through the crossings, finding ways to allow additional financial assistance to come through, mostly financed by Qatar. And it's work in progress. This is not to say that there isn't huge risk here and that there isn't more that needs to be done to try to get the supplies and the health care requirements met in Gaza. But I do think it's one of those moments when ideology and identity is being somewhat sublimated to the practical reality. This is a threat that does not observe borders. And if it breaks out in Gaza, obviously it's going to be.

humanitarian catastrophe there, but it will also deepen the crisis for Israel. And the same is true in the West Bank. So I'm, I don't want to say everything's solved, but I'm cautiously optimistic that all sides are addressing this as they should, primarily as a public health emergency that needs to be dealt with in that way. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're, there, there is some optimism there. I mean, I guess people are probably pretty upset that all the joint Israeli-Palestinian celebrations of Jared Kushner's peace plan will not be allowed to go forward. Is that disappointing? Well, as a major critic of that plan, I won't be sorry to not see that plan go forward.

By the way, that's a very interesting subplot of the unity government that Gans and Netanyahu are about to forge. Netanyahu, of course, wants to proceed with the unilateral annexation of about 30% of the West Bank that's envisioned in the Trump plan. Gants, who did go to Washington and said some complimentary things to Trump at the time, has also made it clear he doesn't believe in unilateral annexation. He wants to do things in agreement with the Palestinians. He doesn't want to hurt Israel's relationship with Jordan,

which would be very strained by annexation. And so they are currently haggling over whether that process can proceed. I mean, it would be sort of a crazy use of resources and attention and any government attention whatsoever to focus on. annexation while you're fighting this, this public health thing, but it is a part of the legacy that Netanyahu wants to accomplish during Trump's reign. I suspect in the end they're going to wait and see what happens in our election in November. If Donald Trump's re-elected, you know, it'll be hard to maybe withstand that tide over the next four years. God for me. If Joe Biden is

elected, why would you start an annexation process in the final weeks or months of 2020, only to have an immediate clash with a new Democratic administration on January 2021. Yeah, that's, I mean, a great question. I guess maybe they're probably going to be putting the intelligence community on overdrive to figure out just how intense that clash would be with Biden. Because I do think that, you know, Bernie, even Mayor Pete, a number of people talked about conditioning aid if there was annexation of the West Bank. I believe that Biden was one of the few holdouts.

So, you know, look, that may have. that may or may not be real signaling. He might have just been not commenting at the time, but, you know, something I bet they're watching. He did say that he doesn't favor conditioning aid. He also said in his speech or the video recording he sent to APEC that Israel had to not do annexation, had to stop the threats of annexation,

much less the implementation of it, had to stop the expansion of settlements. That those things he really was calling on Israel to do to keep the two-state solution alive and viable, just as he was calling on Palestinians to end incitement and the like. So I think it would be a clash, exactly what the mechanism that that clash would take. It's hard to say it would make very little sense for an Israeli government to rush into that in the final weeks or months before. Yeah, well put. Oh, Dan, great to see you, man. Thank you for all these updates. It is fascinating. It feels like so much work is always ahead of us

in these policy discussions, but I guess that's how it's going to be. Well, thanks Tommy. Great to be with you. Hope you and everyone out there staying safe and healthy. You too, too. We'll be passed this before too long. Yeah, amen to that. All right, that's it for the show this week. Thank you to Dan Shapiro. Thanks to David Lammy for joining in. It was fun to talk to people in faraway lands who are trapped inside like us. So thank you, Zoom. Yep. And if anybody out there knows how I can get my hands on some toilet paper, I'm all yours. All right, take care, guys. Bye.

Pod Save the World is a product of crooked media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melconian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.