Pod Save the World - How Israel’s War with Hamas Could Escalate Into a Regional Conflict

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Ben and Tommy cover the major developments in the war between Israel and Hamas, including the widening difference between Netanyahu and Biden on post-war planning, increasing criticism of the Israeli war effort within the Democratic Party, and the escalating risks of a regional war with Iranian-back proxy groups like the Houthi rebels and militia groups in Iraq and Syria. Then they discuss Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s secret hospitalization, foreign governments funneling money to Donald Trump and NJ Senator Bob Menendez, reports that US objectives in Ukraine are changing, and the fallout from an “almost naked” party in Moscow, the stabbing of an opposition leader in South Korea, protests in Germany, and a new Prime Minister in France. Finally, Ben speaks with Taiwanese journalist and podcaster Emily Wu about Taiwan’s upcoming election on January 13th. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Happy New Year, buddy. I mean, it feels like it's been forever, man. It has been very, very long. It's been a million years. It's been the sabbatical, I think. Yeah, we have a good break? Yeah, you know.

Went to New York. Nice. A lot of kid activities. You know, when you have kids, you have a great time, but you are more tired at the end of the break than you were at the beginning. So tired. So tired. Hannah got the stomach flu, like 36 hours. to our Christmas break, and so there's a lot of it's dark chasing kids one-on-one.

That's dark. Not ideal. But it's great to be back. Just got back from Iowa. That was fun. It's that time of year, or that time of every four years. Yeah, the time of the time. It's weird, man. It's the same places. It's the same events, same reporters. Except it doesn't matter.

Content was very dark. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter, and the content was very dark. It was this incredibly hopeful thing for us, and now it's not. Yeah, we like think about it with most rose-colored glasses, this like incredible year-long effort to build a grassroots organization that really brought in new people and empowered folks. And then I get out there and it's like, January 6th was an inside job and more. I think the craziest thing to me is that Obama like crushed Iowa twice in the general election, right? So, which is like impossible. It's not a swing

state anymore. No. It's very conservative. It just shows you, I mean, some of that I'd credit to Obama, but a lot of that I put on like the information system, like all those people, people that, you know, we were trying to reach when you were the spokesman in Iowa, we're reading, like, local newspapers. Exactly. And now they're all just, like, living in some weird information system. Facebook algorithm or something. Yeah. Well, I'm going to do, I'm doing a special two-part series for Potsave America. You'll find it on that feed starting Wednesday and then Friday, so check it out. And also, I'm going to talk to what a day about visiting Iowa on their Wednesday episodes. So more there if you can't get your fix of Iowa stuff. But very happy to be back talking WorldO Stuff. We're going to cover the latest from Israel. on Gaza, the changing politics of the war within the Democratic Party and this scary risk of regional escalation. We're also going to talk about this odd saga of Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin's medical issues and secret absence. And then there's a couple important updates on foreign corruption, U.S. politics that we wanted to talk about, the latest from Russia and Ukraine, political violence in South Korea, and then a couple quick updates from Germany and France. And then, Ben, you're doing our interview this week.

What are we going to hear about? Yeah, well, Saturday is the most important election that you might not be following. It's the Taiwan election. And so we're going to be talking to Emily Wu, who's been on this podcast before and also was like a key character and voice in a story I wrote on Taiwan for the Atlantic about what are the stakes in this election, who are the candidates, what does this mean for potential tensions or even conflict with China? What's the role of the U.S. and all this?

So check it out for a really good preview of, you. the election in Taiwan with a very cool and compelling podcaster. I was going to say, you bury the lead, right? Ghost Island Media. Ghost Island Media. Emily runs a podcast company. Ghost Island Media has a podcast called Taiwan Takes that offers takes from Taiwan. Yeah, that's good. No, she's really smart. I think I interviewed her the last time. You did. You did.

And really enjoyed that. She's very smart and thoughtful. And I learned a lot. Okay, Ben, well, let's turn to Gaza because sadly, you know, we've been gone for a while, but the war is still raging there more than three months after the Hamas terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 people and more than 100 people are still being held hostage in Gaza. So some grim statistics about the fighting in Gaza from a New York Times report on Tuesday. About 23,000 Gazans have been killed in this Israeli military campaign. That's roughly 1% of the total population of Gaza. The UN says that more than 80% of Gaza residents have been displaced in 60% of the buildings there have been damaged. which is all just raising the question of when the war ends,

what do people have to go home to if they go home at all? The Israeli defense forces say they have destroyed much of Hamas's military infrastructure, including ammo depots, rocket production facilities, and parts of their underground tunnel network. The IDF also claims to have killed 9,000 Hamas fighters. But the humanitarian situation on the ground is by all accounts, just a nightmare. Here's a clip from a surgeon named Nick Maynard, who works with the organization, medical aid for Palestinians.

Nick was on the ground in Gaza providing medical treatment for sick and wounded people until Sunday when he had to be pulled out due to risks from increasing Israeli military activities. The reality on the ground here is completely different, or much worse, should I say, than we were able to get from the media and even from talking to people on the ground when we were back in the UK. it is much, much worse and you can't really appreciate the huge overcrowding and the permanent security risks unless you actually witness it all. The hospitals are in excess of four or five times

their normal capacity. Every single square foot of ground is occupied by patients or their relatives. You walk into the hospital and seeing people outside with chest drains in, with surgical drains in, with nasty infected wounds. The admissions per day often exceeds well over 100. And today there were very few members of the surgical team leaving much of the work to me and Khaled. We're seeing many blast injuries and increasing numbers of abdominal and thoracic injuries compared to when we first got here.

We fear it will only get worse. Sorry about that buzzing in the background. He was a drone over him, as happens in a war zone. So then Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Israel today. He is reportedly pushing Israeli leaders to do more to limit civilian casualties, avoid a broader war with Hezbollah, and do some post-war planning. Israel says they are transitioning to a new phase in the war, one with fewer air strikes, lower intensity combat, and fewer Israeli troops deployed in Gaza. I don't know that we've seen much evidence of

reduced airstrikes, but we have seen reduced troop levels, which happened in part because the Israeli economy was suffering because of labor shortages because so many reservists were called up. So Ben, we want to get into the regional escalation issues next. But in terms of the war itself, like so much happened when we were gone. There were reports about failures by the IDF on October 7th, the Washington Post reviewed evidence or what does and does not exist of Hamas to infrastructure at the El Shifa Hospital. There's reports of growing tensions between the U.S., between Biden and Netanyahu, and the feeling that, you know, extreme parts of the Netanyahu coalition are actually running things. But maybe the biggest rift is over what comes next, because

you have right-wing ministers like Ittemar Ben-Givir openly calling for the government to, quote-unquote, encourage residents of Gaza to emigrate, which for the record would be ethnic cleansing. but the United States wants the Pallasinian authority to be in charge of Gaza and for no one to be forced to leave and for the right of return for anyone who has. And, you know, residents of Gaza will likely hate both of those ideas. So I guess what I'm getting at then is like I just wonder if it's possible for the U.S. and Israel to even be on the same page if this current Israeli governing coalition remains in charge. Yeah, I think the short answer to that question is no, there's not any possibility to be on the same page. I mean, it's been three weeks. We can't possibly do justice to everything that's taken place. I just, you know, part of this, Tommy, is you begin to run out of words to describe the gravity of the humanitarian crisis.

I mean, when you hear that report about the hospital that we played, the first thing I'd say is that people that I know or people that I trust as very credible, people who work in international aid, people who've been in conflict after conflict after conflict. And these are not people that kind of single out Israel for criticism. These are just people that are international humanitarian aid work, right? You hear them say they've never seen anything like this, you know, and these are people that have been in Syria, they've been in Libya, they've been in Yemen. This scale and pace at which this is unfolded is just, it's new. You hear there's a military analyst too. Yeah.

That is just an unprecedented volume of airstrikes. You're seeing like years worth of airstrikes. in Afghanistan or Iraq happening in months? Yeah, I mean, 10,000 children killed in three months is an astonishing number. It just, you know, and that's what happens. And these are U.S. bombs, 2,000-pound bombs, huge air strikes. That's why the scale is so big. The amount of firepower and the pace of it in this densely populated area is just leading

to unprecedented human suffering, and that has to be front and center in mind. coupled with this kind of siege approach of cutting off food and limiting aid and water. In terms of the Biden approach that is basically the same with like a dial turning up. You know, it's still we support Israel's military operation, but we want them to avoid civilian casualties and let more aid in. That is not working and is never going to work with this government. And that's the key point. This government, Netanyahu, you see him looking over. at the right wing of his coalition, who is calling,

this isn't just something we're like surmising. They are calling for the mass displacement of people in Gaza. They're calling for more airstrikes on civilian areas. They're calling for essentially flattening the Gaza Strip and dislocating those people out of the area. And those are the people that they now is looking towards and worried about. And even with this recalibration in the Israeli messaging, where they're saying publicly that,

to the international community, like we're becoming more targeted. And hopefully that is the case in some respect. They're saying something different to their own population. They're saying to their own population, no, we're going to continue this as long as it takes. They're even saying, like, well, sometimes we have to say this to the international community. That's the nature of this government. And so I think what needs to change here is not saying, like, we urge this government not to do this. First of all, we shouldn't be the ones doing it.

Netanyahu should be the one saying that we're not going to displace. place people in Gaza, you know. The U.S. has to be saying we will not provide assistance to a government that has, as its policy, the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. We will not provide assistance to a government that envisions an open-ended Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. That's not good for Israel's security. That's not obviously good for the people of Gaza. There has to be a shift in calibration away from trying to convince this Israeli government to be something that, you know, that it's not. I mean, even saw today Tony Blinken saying, you know, Saudi normalization remains on the table as long as the goal is a Palestinian state. This Israeli government's

policy is for there to not be a Palestinian state. So there's this enormous discordance between the U.S. urging this government to do something that they have said that they will not do. And so either the, I don't believe that Netanyahu is going to change colors or that Ben-Gavir is suddenly going to be for a Palestinian state. This government needs to be. change or U.S. policy needs to change. Yeah, I think that's our leverage. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing else.

That should have been the leverage from day one probably. Yeah. Say, hey, B, B, B, we will get your back. But first, you got to get rid of Smotrich. You got to get rid of Itmar Ben-Gavir, these extreme right-wing ministers in your government. And then now it sounds based on reports in places like Politico, the U.S. government fears are the ones really leading Netanyahu around. Yeah, because they're his political security blanket.

Yeah. They're the people that agreed to this deal to give him immunity from criminal prosecution, right so long as he gave them everything they wanted and until unless and until that dynamic changes you know yes this may be on a pathway towards some more targeted effort but the damage is already done i mean there could be a ceasefire today as there should be and it's not like that would have you know saved as many lives as there should have been saved here and by the way as we've said time and again and we should say again like that's i don't think that's good for israel i think they are radicalizing Palestinians. I think that they are creating humanitarian crisis. I think

they're inviting, obviously, and we keep seeing, the U.S. media is behind this. We keep seeing, you know, international public opinion is beginning to turn against Israel. That was like six weeks ago. There's just a kind of weird time lag to how this is being addressed and talked about. And you're right, though, like the where the real difference widens continues to be on what the future is of Gaza, because the U.S. position is that should be under the administration, the Palestinian Authority, with some amount of Arab assistance from the region, the Israeli government has kind of shaded their position a bit, but basically it's still this idea that they're going to have de facto control over Gaza for an open-ended period of time. And I don't know how you

score those two things. Yeah, and by the way, the people in Gaza probably don't want the Palestinian authority in charge either. I mean, both of those options sound terrible to them because there were there was, Fatah was in charge in Gaza for many years and people hated them because of rampant corruption and other abuses. But I agree with you. I think everyone expected and understood that Israel was going to have a military and intelligence response after October 7th to take out Hamas's leadership. But the scale of the destruction, the scale of the civilian casualties has become a humanitarian and a moral and strategic disaster. And I think, you know, it's really hard to watch. And just one other thing, you should have some effort, and it may be almost too late because the population of Gaza is probably not wanting to talk to the United States.

But you need to have some, to your point, does anybody in Gaza get consulted about that? Who's at the table from Gaza? Yeah, yeah. Like who, I get that Hamas should not be the table. Sure, we can all agree on that. It has to be civil society. There has be somebody in Gaza that you're in court. It can't just be like an 87-year-old man, Mahmoud Abbas and Ramallah and some Americans.

and some Israelis decide, like, there has to be some voice for these people in Gaza about their own future. Yeah. So the political debate, I mean, you're right. I think the coverage has been behind where public opinion is. I also think the political debate in the U.S. is shifting. At first, it was slow, but now it's moving pretty rapidly, especially within the Democratic Party. Here's a clip of Senator Bernie Sanders speaking on the Senate floor about Gaza on December 21st. While it is appropriate to support defensive systems like Iron Dawn to protect Israeli civilians gets incoming rockets. It would be irresponsible to provide an additional 10.1 billion in military aid beyond those defensive systems as contained in the proposed supplemental foreign

aid package. Bottom line, we should not be giving more money to a right-wing extremist government in Israel to conduct a horrific and immoral military campaign, which includes indiscriminate bombardment. Second, in my view, the United States should support efforts at the United Nations Security Council to end the bloodshed. So look, I don't currently think that there's the votes for conditioning U.S. assistance to Israel if more assistance gets passed, but it was really good to hear Bernie lay those principles. And also, I do think it's important to know that there's been a lot of reporting about how the IDF has been using U.S. provided weapons. And by the way, the State Department over the break went around Congress twice to provide more artillery shells and other things,

tank rounds for what were deemed to be emergency situations. But I think it was the Washington Post had a big report about how the IDF keeps using American-made 2,000-pound dumb bombs in urban areas, leading to enormous civilian death. Yeah, and why is that, Bernie put it very well. Bernie, we should be clear, like, as someone who's taking a lot of grief from a lot of his supporters because he didn't call for a ceasefire. So it's not like Bernie's been, like, way to left on this thing from the beginning.

He's basing what he's saying off what he's seeing. And it's hard to argue with anything he's saying. Like, this is a government that is a far-right extremist government that is conducting a military operation that is clearly indiscriminately killing civilians. And the message sent to the world from the U.S. giving, I don't know what I agree them about it. I have friends in Israel. The rockets are coming in, like defending Israeli citizens against rocket fire is something that is entirely appropriate, defensible, but providing them with, what do you think those tank rounds and ammunition are for? You know, what do you think those 2,000-pound bombs are for?

And the message sent to the world, if we provide that kind of aid package, is pretty chilling, you know. And I wanted to mention the Al-Shefa hospital thing because it does speak to how the U.S. has been involved in some of this stuff. That Washington Post report did not find what Israel said, you know, about there being some Hamas command center there. Like a Pentagon style command center. The U.S. government said that it had intelligence supporting what Israel said and never provided that intelligence. And by the way, the U.S. has been willing to provide all kinds of intelligence publicly before. when it's about like, you know, what Russia is doing in Ukraine or even about some of these Hamas things like the Aaron Rocket, the Aaron Rocket, right?

It was conspicuous that that didn't come out. So we, again, we may not want to feel like we are the United States of America co-authors of this Israeli military operation, but the more we provide emergency assistance and certainly if we spend $10 billion in offensive weaponry for a country, by the way, that can afford it itself, Israel, that sends a message to where we are. So Bernie's right from both a strategic and a moral perspective. I mean, and look, to your point earlier, the global debate about what's happening in Gaza is incredibly different than what's the debate in the U.S. On Thursday, the International Court of Justice will hold its first hearings in South Africa's lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide. South Africa's arguing that Israel violated the 1948 genocide convention.

The 57 member organization of Islamic countries is supporting South Africa's effort, as is Turkey, Jordan, Bolivia. the White House has called the case meritless, counterproductive, and completely without basis. So I'm not weighing in one way or the other. I'm just saying, like, this is what's happening in a lot of the global south is this conversation we're seeing out of South Africa. And then, by the way, then last week, Israel's Supreme Court struck down Netanyahu's attempt to reduce their power. The listeners might remember we spent months and months talking about Netanyahu's quote-unquote

judicial coup efforts. This was, you know, his efforts to weaken the judiciary and give the government, his ruling coalition more power over the courts. It led to months and months of protests. This ruling would have been a seismic event before October 7th because Netanyahu basically said, I'm going to ignore the court's rulings if they rule against me and would have created a constitutional crisis. But instead, the country just kind of shrugged it off because everyone's solely focused on what's happening in Gaza. Yeah. And I think it also points to something Bernie said, which is we all thought, including a lot of mainstream people in this country, you know, were alarmed

by the constitutional changes and the government didn't change from then to now. You know, it's the same government, just as extremist, just as anti-democratic. Probably more emboldened. More emboldened, which is, again, another reason why we should be questioning whether the right policy is to hug this government and offer advice to them in private and then give them billions of not tens of billions of dollars in assistance, you know. there's going to be Israel is in a in a crisis of identity in terms of do they want to continue to be democracy and there are people in the Israeli government who don't want it to continue to be democracy and I think

what we're seeing is that that is tied not just to the nature of its domestic policy and legal structure but it's the same people that are making this military operation or pushing for it to be more extremist or West Bank policies that are more extremists the same you know it's very overlapping then diagram here of people that want to change the nature of Israel inside of Israel to not being democratic to also wanting to be more pugilistic in Gaza and the West Bank. And those are the people we shouldn't be supporting. I mean, is the bottom line. Yes. And frankly, people we weren't supporting several months ago. I mean, Biden, remember famously refused to meet with Netanyahu with the White House for a while because his coalition was so extreme. So stepping back a bit,

the risks of this escalating into a larger regional conflict are everywhere. So the pieces of the escalation risks start with the Houthi rebels who are based in Yemen, who continue to fire missiles at ships in the Red Sea. In late December, U.S. Navy helicopters directly engaged in combat with Houthi fighters, sinking three of their boats and killing 10 men. More recently, the AP reported that a Houthi drone boat detonated within a couple of miles of a U.S. Navy vessel, and U.S. warships have shot down more than 60 Houthi missiles or drone, so there's a constant threat from the Houthis.

Biden is going to face, it has faced. all kinds of demands that he hit Houthi targets in Yemen itself, which I suspect he's hesitant to do because no one wants to reignite the war within Yemen, the one that, you know, the ceasefire is like, what, a couple years old? I mean, it's pretty fragile. So understandable there. But, you know, there's also been at least 120 attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since mid-October. And then on January 4th, U.S. military killed the leader of an Iranian-Dak militia group in Baghdad. So obviously Iraqi officials were not thrilled about that violation of their sovereignty. And then Ben on top of that, Neftali Bennett, the former Prime Minister of Israel, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recently, calling on the U.S. and Israel to take on Iran directly in a regime-change operation.

What could go wrong there? And then, oh, by the way, Ben, Iran is drastically ramped up its uranium enrichment work and now has the fuel for at least three atomic weapons. So there's just like all these fuses slowly burning out there. And I'm just waiting for one of them to light. Now, that's the right image. And we said back in October that the longer this war went on, the more the risks of escalation went up. And that's exactly what's happened.

And just to take a few of them and what people should be watching for, like with the Houthis and what's happening in the Red Sea, I do think it is entirely understandable and appropriate that the U.S. and a bunch of other countries, because the U.S. is working with a bunch of European countries, essentially, to try to protect what's called freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. This basically means that what the Houthis are trying to do is disrupt the flow of commerce, the flow of ships and container ships and commerce through the Red Sea, and the idea that you would escort ships and that you would try to push back, you know, Houthi attack boats and things.

That kind of falls within, you know, both an internationally legally accepted and also just kind of a U.S. approach to the world. That's part of what we do. Do you ever they named it? Operation Prosperity Guardian. These fucking Pentagon names, man. Yeah, yeah. Operation Capitalism, Operation Late Stage capitalism proceeds in the Red Sea. So, you know, but I think what people should watch for, and you put your finger on it, is I do not think that that should include the striking of Houthi targets in Yemen.

That's a different thing. Under what authority, by the way? That's a major, that's a major escalation, you know? And you might say to me, well, like the command and controls back in Yemen, of course it is. But are you telling me if the Saudi-led war in Yemen for years, basically the more they bombed Yemen, the more they bombed Yemen, the more. more resilient, the Houthis, we're not going to destroy the Houthis in Yemen. We have no legal basis to be doing that. And so I think that the U.S. and the U.K., who's been rumored to be a part of this or said that they might be a part of it, should not be doing that. This should be about,

okay, if this is about protecting ships going to the Red Sea, you know, Operation Capitalism, maybe that's one thing. But if this is about like we're going to go out for the Houthis in Yemen, I think that's a dangerous escalation. In Lebanon, where we've seen this uptick, the thing I'd be looking for is you saw these Israeli strikes into Beirut against Tamas leadership. The more this goes into Beirut, the more likely it is that the Hezboa response escalates. We've said before Hezbollah has many, many tens of thousands of advanced rockets. If this is going into Beirut or if this is going against Hezbo leader leadership, that's when this thing could, that's the fuse that could blow there. I forgot to even include that one. There were so many, I forgot the

fucking Israeli drone strike in Beirut. That's right. So the fuse that is burning down in the Red Sea is attacks on the Houthis in Yemen. The fused it is burning down to Lebanon as these attacks into Beirut. The fuse that is burning down in Iraq. The U.S. has obviously been taking military action as part of its ISIS campaign and parts of Iraq for a while. Baghdad is usually not a place where the U.S. takes military action. So I just, I'd have to be persuaded why that was necessary. Because there's like central Baghdad. Because essentially, too, like, what is the price we're willing to pay? Are we willing to basically sever our relationship with the Iraqi government? because of the Israeli war in Gaza,

because we're now part of this. Like, this is where you start to feel like we're on these variety of different slippery slopes, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. And then the Iran nuclear program, it just bears for accountability reasons, Tommy, and maybe I'll limit myself to once a month on this one. But the decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement

is one of the bigger catastrophes like ever. And the fact that nobody wants to talk about that because it's politically exhausting to revisit. But the reality is, you compare where this nuclear program was in the nuclear deal and where it is now, it shows a catastrophe of that policy. If people want to say, well, the Iranians are really bad guys, this is part of the, I was thinking about this over the break, Tommy. This is part of what is wrong in the world right now. There's no diplomacy. You know, it's like we can't negotiate, if you can't

negotiate with your adversaries, who are you negotiating with? We can't negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear program with Israel or with the Europeans. We can't, you know, at some point, by the way, we can't negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine without talking to the Russians, okay? Like at some point here, if we're going to take diplomacy off the table with China, Russia, and Iran, we're going to end up in a world war.

Like I don't, like, where else do people see this going? Yeah, this is sort of a pre-World War I kind of conflict in the Balkans escalating. It feels like that. And so I just, like, and good for Biden, by the way, for going to meet with Xi Jinping

and try to kind of put that on ice for a bit. That's the kind of thing. And look, I'm not suggesting we should be like, you know, giving away the store here, like take the Russians. Like, I'm not suggesting we should negotiate over the heads of the Ukrainians and cut them out. Obviously, I'm not suggesting we make all manner of concessions to the Iranians. But when you foreclose diplomacy, what's left? And right now what we're seeing is not a lot of diplomacy other than kind of trying to put out fires that are burning and not even put them out, just kind of fight them around the margins here. You know, like at a certain point, we have to decide whether we're comfortable living with this degree of escalation risk.

Yeah. Actually, when I was in Iowa, for some reason, Vivek Ramoswami let me interview him. So we talked a little bit of foreign policy. It's because we gave him so many clips on Potsdam. Yeah, we're getting a lot of love here. I mean, so, look, I mean, he's anti-war. I mean, some of his plans are kind of like fantasy land, right? We'll negotiate a deal where we break the Russian and Chinese military lines. He did come out pretty hard in favor of, he's opposed to extending additional military aid to Israel in the midst of this war, which is interesting. I said to him, I was like, surprised, given your stances on, you know, being anti-war generally that you weren't for the Iranian nuclear deal. He was like, well, it was just so poorly executed. I was like, what do you mean?

He's like, well, do you really trust the IAEA to monitor these things? Yeah, I do. I entirely trust the IA to monitor these things. I mean, I want to see. And if not, like, it's nihilism. Yeah. Well, and I want to ask you about the politics in this time because, like, you're, and I wouldn't obviously cover politics.

more than I do. But the couple of things I see, or one, weirdly, like Trump is going to be running as this anti-war candidate, you know, and this is chaos, Joe Biden. And there's, I don't like the America First isolationism

root of that, because that's like, that's like the anti-war of the 30s, like the kind of, you know, but I do think it's a mistake to assume that Americans support these policies everywhere, the American support a war with Iran and war across the Middle East and kind of like an open-ended war in Ukraine.

Like, you have to be able to at least explain why you're trying to end the wars or how you're trying to end the wars. That's the first thing I'd be interested in what you think about. And then the second thing is on the politics and Democratic Party, go back to the Bernie clip, I remember in 2012 when Obama was running for reelection, you know, I was the NSC person who traveled within the last kind of month or so. And our best events were all in like college campuses. It was like Madison, Wisconsin.

and that's where Democrats go out and get the vote out, right? Is Joe Biden going to be able to do that, you know, without mass protests everywhere he goes? I mean, I'm not talking about, like, just interrupting a speech like we saw in South Carolina today. I'm talking about, like, could Joe Biden today go to the University of Wisconsin and Madison and not have like a pretty sizable protest? Today, no. I mean, I think that whether or not he could go to that same group in six months really depends on where this war is. But today, no.

I mean, from observing some of the. Republican events. One of Trump's bigger applause lines is, or even when his surrogate say it, is he's the only president in recent history who hasn't gotten this into a war. And they love that. Yeah. You know, so that he gets credit for that despite the fact that he was the one who assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRC. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. So we were like. He planted all the seeds for this current proxy. And there was a massive Iranian response. And just because of luck, no American service members were killed and it didn't escalate. But he does get a lot of credit for that. He also, Also, I mean, interestingly, he has not been out front talking much about what's happening in Israel because I think he knows there is a broader risk of escalation here.

But he also wants to be seen as the guy who did everything for BB to get the evangelical votes. Yeah. But again, you know, pulling out of the Iran deal, assassin and custom Soleimani, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, annexing, you know, pulling support for the PA. Yeah. All this stuff. I don't think October 7th happens without all that stuff in the same way that

you know, pulling the rug out from under the Ukrainians, you know, like he planted a lot of seeds here, but that's a complicated argument to make. So I think if Biden, the best thing you can do if you're Biden is not have this be a war in a few months. But even with Ukraine, being able to tell a story about how, not just why it's necessary to kind of be involved in these wars,

but why and how you're going to end them. I think that's something that has to be developed over the next 10 months. Listen, I mean, the U.S. government could respond to all of these escalation risks as one-offs, or we could see them for what they are, which is tied to what's happening in Gaza right now. The Houthis say they're going to keep firing at ships until sufficient humanitarian relief is getting into Gaza and the war ends. I'm not saying that they're like good guys or that's sort of a they have good intentions, but that's their stated goal here. similar with Hezbollah. The Israelis and Hezbollah have been involved in, you know,

on and off again, shooting war for many, many years. But things have escalated since October 7th. I think one way to de-escalate them would be for what's happening in Gaza to de-escalate. So a lot of these fires are burning. I mean, it's certainly not Israel's fault that they were attacked by Hamas on October 7th. But I do think that cooling that off and calling it a ceasefire there, getting back into good negotiations to get hostages out would be one way to chill out everything in the region. Also, I mean, there was a massive ISIS terrorist attack in

southern Iran a couple days ago at an event commemorating the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, who again, Trump ordered, killed in, it was that early 2020. Yeah. So, a lot of weird things happening. That goes to show, first of all, that goes to show a couple of things. First of all, when there's this kind of escalation and there's a fire burning across the region, all the arsonists come out to play, right? And so, the fact that ISIS is like now is the time to do this kind of thing shows how unpredictable escalation is. And it actually proves your point about it's not Israel's fault in any way, shape, or form for what Hamas did on October 7th. But just as you're like, well, you know,

Hezboa is, or the Houthis, let's say, are being opportunists and taking advantage of that. I don't like like ISIS. Just because they attacked Iran doesn't mean I think that like, you know, you end up with the wrong bedfellows, you know. And like ISIS is attacking Iran. It's like, well, you know. Enemy of the enemy is not your friends. That's exactly my point. Yeah. Well, last thought on this. I know we're going long today, but we've been off for a while and we have a lot to say. There is a place for everyone listening to do some advocacy. Call your members of Congress. Call your senators. Tell them you want a ceasefire. Tell them you want future aid to Israel conditioned. Tell them you want negotiations to get hostages back. Tell them that you're worried about the

humanitarian toll. I mean, they will listen to a whole bunch of people calling. Call the White House as well. Way in. Like, let them know. Yeah. I mean, Democrats changing their positions as we've seen is a really important message to the White House and to the world about the fact that the United States is not comfortable with the current direction of the Israeli government's policy. Okay, Ben, weirdest story of the week is definitely Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin's health issues and not. disclosure of them. So here's what we know. On December 22nd, Secretary Austin had what was described as an elective procedure. Right before we started recording, the Pentagon announced it was a procedure to treat prostate cancer. So wishing him the best, hopefully that is all cured because it's obviously

very scary. On January 1st, Secretary Austin had to be taken by ambulance to Walter Reed Military Medical Center after experiencing complications from the treatment, including nausea and severe pain. On January 2nd, Austin transferred to his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, quote, operational responsibilities that require constant secure communications capabilities. So he transferred to his deputy some sort of requirement, some of his job requirements, but didn't tell her that he had been hospitalized. She was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time. On January 4th, the Pentagon told both the White House and Deputy Secretary Hicks about Austin's medical issues. Then on January 5th, it all became public.

So we should say up front that Secretary Austin's chief of staff, Kelly Magsman, is a good friend of ours. We all work together at the Obama White House. There's some reporting coming out that says maybe the Pentagon was slow in notifying the White House because Kelly was out sick. But I would just like to point out that nearly 30,000 people work at the Pentagon. It's been a lot on Kelly's shoulders. Yeah, I find it hard to believe that only Kelly had the White House switchboard number.

Regardless, if any organization is stiff enough to create a huge, PR problem for itself by being like too rigid about who informs who or who calls whom over at the White House. It would be the Pentagon. But whatever, regardless, earlier today, the White House chief of staff ordered cabinet secretaries to evaluate their procedures for delegating authority. And Jeff Zines clarified how and when the White House should be notified. Should also point out that the Pentagon says, Secretary Austin never lost consciousness and never underwent general anesthesia. So he was conscious the whole time he was at Walter Reed. Ben, what the hell do you make? of this weird story. We know more today than we did yesterday, but like, how big a deal do you think

this is? I mean, it's a very strange story. And we, again, like you said, we learned what the underlying condition was today, which is a very serious condition. I think as a human being, I can feel a great deal of sympathy and empathy for Lloyd Austin, both because of the health issues going for, and also because, like, your first impulse when you have a surgery to deal with prostate cancer and then have complications is probably not to put out press release, right? That said, no offense to Tom Vilsack, but like this is not the Secretary of Agriculture, you know. And that's actually why I don't think- Shut at Iowa. I just got back. This is why I don't think the whole cabinet reviewing its, you know, procedures is the point here.

The Secretary of Defense is different. And I'm going to commerce emergency? Yeah. Like if you are signed up to be the Secretary of Defense, the United States, and you're commanding the most powerful military in the world, and you're the person that the President of the United States, is going to have to consult about an escalation into a new crisis or, God forbid, some nuclear incident. Like, there just needs to be notification if you're going to be off the grid at all. You know, I mean, shit, when I was in the White House, if I, you know, was going out of town for the weekend, I had to tell somebody, you know. And what is kind of mystifying to me about

this is that the procedures, like there was a strike in Baghdad, we've already talked about, on January 4th, which, again, was a pretty dramatic thing for the U.S. to do. It was a strike in Baghdad. We don't usually do that. I'm almost, I mean, like I, I, the way that that would go something like that when I was in government is if we became aware that that was going to happen, even if we'd already had meetings about it. There'd be like a secure conference call, you know, it'd be like everybody had to get on the yellow phone and, and the secretary of defense would be on too. And it's kind of strange to me that and again, the holidays are a bit of a different time. So maybe that this wouldn't have. I think that's part of the story here, frankly, because it's the only time of the year that people kind of shut down.

But, you know, so I don't think this would happen, say, this week. But it is, the reason it doesn't make sense or the reason it shouldn't have happened that way is that, you know, what if someone really had to get the Secretary of Defense on a secure phone and couldn't, you know, who was getting on the call around that January 4th strike? I mean, and again, this is not to impugn people's sometimes stuff slips through the cracks. And I could totally see that, like, maybe Secretary Austin was sick. and obviously otherwise engaged. Maybe Kelly them was sick. And so just someone... Deputy Hicks was in Puerto Rico.

Yeah, someone forgot to call or someone didn't know who the... It may just be as simple as they didn't mean to hide it. It just like everybody was sick or out of pocket. And so therefore the normal notifications didn't happen. And that may have been a symptom of it being the holidays. And I think you have to remember,

these are human beings in government that could shit happens. But I do think it's worth going back and looking at, again, not to take a shot at Tomville's... but not in every cabinet department. It really is different if it's the defense department. Totally. I mean, I think if this story was just that he was in the hospital for a few days and they didn't tell the press,

that would be bad, but not totally surprising for the U.S. government. The fact that no one told the White House or the deputy secretary defense for several days, that's what makes it so weird. It sounds like, look, I don't know, Secretary Austin, by all accounts, he's not only very good at the job, but a really good guy. Yeah, he sounds like he's incredibly private. I could imagine if you were having prostate surgery that if you were one of his underlings, you'd be scared shitless about telling people about his personal medical procedure and issues.

And maybe that's where this comes from. But yeah, mistakes were made. Yeah, mistakes. I mean, yeah, I think it's a combination of that, the holidays. Just a lot of stuff probably happened that made this happen. Trump's former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, was on TV over the weekend saying that Trump's a threat to democracy. So it could be worse.

Yeah, it could be a lot of it. And look, I don't think this is something you fire. or Lloyd Austin over. I do think it's something you go back and you're like, okay, we need a protocol. If someone's going to the ICU, somebody's, you know, not reachable. Like, there just, there needs to be a notification system that is not just hoping that Kelly picked up the phone because maybe Kelly was sick, you know. Yeah. We should probably just, you know, know where the guy is at all times. Ben, two big updates on foreign corruption in U.S. politics. So first, House Democrats released evidence that Donald Trump took in at least $7.8 million from foreign entities when he was in

office. That includes 5.5 million from Chinese entities. Remember the emoluments clause? Remember that was a thing? I talk about a massive opposition research gift for like, I don't know, anyone running against him. Feel free to run with that, guys. Second, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is facing more allegations of corruption. This comes from a superseding indictment filed by prosecutors in New York last week, who alleged that Bob Menendez made positive comments about Qatar in exchange for luxury items, including watches ranging between $10,000 and $24,000 in value. Previously, Menendez was accused of accepting bribes from a New Jersey businessman with ties to Egypt's intelligence services, including getting gold bars, as one does.

The indictment then has this Menendez confidant, co-defendant now, texting him to say, quote, how about one of these, along with photos of said expensive watches? Again, very subtle, Bob. what do you make a Menendez allegedly getting bribes from both the Egyptian and Qatari government? Those aren't governments that are necessarily friendly. No, those governments that hate each other. I mean, like the Egyptians absolutely despised the Qataris. I mean, which again shows you that Bob Menendez was literally for sale.

I mean, you know, there wasn't some ideological affinity he had, not that that would have made it better, but it's just he was for sale. at a time when he was the fucking chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Like, and again, it's wild. Like, Democrats, like, we just heard about Trump. Trump is, like, corrupt is all hell and in a much bigger danger because obviously he was president,

wants to be president again. But we, why is Bob Menend is still in the farm relations? Get him out of there. Get him off that committee. This is ridiculous. This is absurd, you know. This guy is entirely corrupt and that's been evident for a lot of,

long time. Once again, we have a pretty good record on this podcast. You may not agree with all of our affirmative beliefs, but our list of villains, like since the beginning of this podcast has basically been Bibi Netanyahu, Bob Menendez, Jared Kushner, Boris Johnson. Like, I will bin Laden. We don't like Bin Laden. Don't like that guy. We don't like fucking bin Laden. I'm on TikTok, but I do not like him. I've been very clear about bin Laden where we stand. I feel pretty good about this. But Bob Menna should not be on that committee. And if people want to look for someone to be a better bat in politics, our friend Andy Kim, who's running against Bob Menendez, doing a great service, you know, support that guy. Please, just let's get past Menendez era. Two other things in the

Trump piece. So the House Democrats based this report off of documents they got from Trump's accounting firm after a long legal battle. But when the House Republicans took over, they killed the investigation. So these figures are based on like 1% of Trump's businesses. So the real number. is probably way bigger. Also, did you see that, so Trump's got this sort of novel legal theory that he's immune from all prosecution because he was impeached and it wasn't removed? The judge in one of Trump's, that case today, asked if a president of the United States could order a SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival and still have immunity and Trump's lawyer said, yes. So that's his official position. That's what they seem to believe here.

What if he killed everyone in the Senate so they couldn't vote? I mean, unfortunately, like, these are not, like, hypotheticals. Hugh Hewitt would defend it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hugh Hewitt would. Well, it just, the way they're contorting themselves on these legal theories is actually scary because they're taking, like, formal positions that this should be the law. And he's running to be in charge of the U.S. government, including the Justice Department.

So we should take it seriously while chuckling about it. Yeah. It's fucking crazy. And also it's like total. projection on the foreign stuff because like they're twisting themselves in knots to try to prove that because Hunter Biden did some business in China, Joe Biden's corrupt when Donald Trump is taking out of his money from fucking China. Jared Kushner, yeah.

Two billion from the Saudis. Which is again why Democrats are now, be a lot harder Democrats too. Like the investigations of Jared Kushner that have not taken place are a disappointment. You know, like, big time. These guys have been literally giving Hunter Biden a proctology exam for years when Jared Kushner was actually an employed senior advisor of the White House. drumming up business for his multi-billion dollar payout on the back end. I'd like to know more about that.

I would too. Ben, let's do an update on things in Russia and Ukraine where, unfortunately, there had not been any positive developments in the last few weeks as we get to the two-year mark of the war. So the winter is setting in. It's bitterly cold. Russia is on the offensive. And they've been bombarding cities with missiles to wear down civilians and civilian

infrastructure with almost daily casualties. Additionally, Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines say that Russia started using glide bombs, which are released from planes and smashed through these underground bunkers, so they're very effective and lethal. The British Defense Ministry said this week that the Russian military is on course to lose 500,000 personnel within the next year. The MOD tweeted, quote, the average daily number of Russian casualties in Ukraine has risen by almost 300 during the course of 2023. If the numbers continue at the current rate over the next year, Russia will have lost over half a million personnel in Ukraine. So just a staggering, a staggering amount of loss.

Russia is also getting a ton of help from North Korea. In November, South Korea's intelligence services briefed members of parliament there that North Korea had already shipped Russia a million artillery shells. That is far more than the European Union is supplied to the Ukrainian military. Russia is also using North Korean ballistic missiles. And the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials believe Russia is planning to buy missiles from Iran as well, ballistic missiles. Over the break, there was a story in Politico that said the U.S. in Europe,

are shifting from a strategy of total victory over Russia to one geared towards improving Ukraine's leverage in an eventual negotiation to end the war. The White House denies that there's any change in administration policy. But, I mean, after the counteroffensive kind of stalled, I find it hard to believe that anyone is on board with the stated Ukrainian goal of taking back all of eastern Ukraine and all of Crimea. I wonder at some point whether the administration will feel the need to be more public about their actual goals for this war? I think so. And I mean, I think everybody knows it. It's like an elephant in the room. I mean, I don't expect Zelensky to change that position because he can't so long as we, you know, the problem for Zelensky is we have heard reports of how Ukrainians are treated and occupied

territories, children being kidnapped. And he can't come out and say fine. But at the end of the day, it's also the case that we can't see a pathway to Ukraine taking that territory militarily. Now, I just, as a matter of practicality, despite supporting diplomacy, as I said, and I don't think any settlement is likely any way before our election, because Putin's going to try to wait out the election, too. But I do think you have to start to be thinking and testing and having conversations with the Europeans and the Ukrainians and maybe in back channels with the Russians about some pathway of de-escalation. Now, I also think that Putin is good at projecting like everything is going great for him, but

that that casualty number, you know, it took 10 years for the war in Afghanistan to kind of help collapse the Soviet Union. You know, the longer these casualty numbers, you know, sink in and the more they have impacts back in communities, it usually takes some time for that to have an impact politically. So I don't think we should underestimate the fact that, like, Putin is going to have some challenges in Russia for a long time now because of this has also been a brain drain that they're going to have to deal with. The last thing I just wanted, you know, ruminating over the break, probably, unfortunately not about positive things because the world doesn't seem that great.

This North Korea piece, there were some like North Korean escalations provocation towards the South Koreans over the break. Who knows what they're getting from the Russians in exchange for all this artillery? They must be getting something. And the thing I was thinking about is, okay, the world's on fire. And the thing we talk about, a lot of people talk about is like you got Ukraine, you get the Middle East, and then you got Taiwan. Like, hey, let's not forget the Korean peninsula here.

because if if Trump wins, okay, do you think that the U.S. would come to the defense of South Korea in a Trump administration? Like, this is a man that literally, I haven't thought about it either until for some reason I thought about this over the break, but like this is a man has love letters from Kim Jong-un displayed on his wall.

I think it's a big accomplishment, boasts about how tidy is with the guy. You've got Kim Jong-un clearly feeling emboldened by the sport he's getting from Russia and China I don't know. I watched that one. It's another reason for Trump not to win because I kind of feel like suddenly the Korean Peninsula becomes a hot sputting. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's easy to mock North Korea as sort of a backward Potemkin cult of personality, but they have a military industrial complex that is... That's all they are. The churns. The whole state is a military industry. They got a lot of shells that can transfer over. And also, you know, in the United States, there's still this big question about this supplemental funding bill and frankly the entire fate of the Ukraine. Ukrainian war effort probably rides on it. Yeah.

It's a lot up in the air in 2024. Have you been tracking the Almost Naked Party controversy in Russia? Very close. Okay. So for listeners at home, over the holidays, a TV presenter and blogger with like 18 million followers, a younger woman, through a party with a theme almost naked. The guest list was this who's who of Russian socialites and celebrities. And there were, of course, everyone was posting it on social media and the pictures and videos

went up online. And everybody was, as one might expect, almost naked. per the theme. A bunch of ultra-conservative media figures saw these photos, flipped their shit, started arguing the countries at war and this behavior from elites is unacceptable. So now we got the host getting sued. There was a rapper who attended who wore only a sock where you might expect he would wear it. He was thrown in jail for 15 days under the new anti-LGB laws. So I do think, you know, I was talking to a loan about this, it's a signal that everyone, even these rich elites in Moscow who can feel, you know, safe are now, they can't escape the hard right ultra-conservative

pivot that is happening in Russia. It's hard being a Russian oligarcher influencer these days, Tommy. You can't go to an almost naked party and post the pictures on Instagram and not have a backlash. I mean, to me, what it shows is the ultra-consertive thing, but it also shows somebody in the Kremlin, maybe Putin himself, recognizing that the kind of Marie Antoinette, like late regime, let them eat cake vibe of, you know, we've got hundreds of thousands of casualties out in the provinces, but the Moscow elite is still partying with like vodka and caviar and socks in certain places is like, that's probably not the content you want available to Russians who've lost

loved ones on the front lines. Because let me tell you who's not fighting the war in Ukraine, the children of Moscow oligarchs or the, you know, influencers who are at the, you know, influencers who were at the almost naked party. This was Alexei Navalny's genius. Yes. Because his organization would fly drones over the various, you know, Russian officials, chateaus in Bordeaux or whatever, and post-long YouTubes of, you know, Putin's half a billion dollar house that he just built on the ocean, et cetera, et cetera, and show this kleptocracy

that was pervasive. In like one of the only countries in the world that had a successful revolution against like a kleptocratic oligarchic elite. So it's only 100 years ago that the czar ended up with his head cut off here. And we can laugh about the almost naked party, but like that's the kind of stuff that leads to people with pitchforks. Yes, that's true. So we just recently celebrated the anniversary of January 6th. Happy anniversary.

Thank you. So political violence is front and center. Do you celebrate on January 6th Eve or on January 6th? On January 6th proper, we do. We break one window on the 5th. Yeah, yeah. You know, just to get a mood, get us going to punch through a neighbor's window. But we did want to, like, changing tones.

We did want to flag this scary story out of South Korea because on January 2nd, an opposition leader named Li Jiamy was stabbed in the neck during a campaign event. So this is the opposition leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. This was not the first politically motivated knife attack in South Korea. In 2006, the future president, President Park, was slashed in the face at a rally. by like one for critics. And in 2015, our friend, yeah, Mark Lippert, who at the time was the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, was slashed in the face at a public event by this like anti-American nationalist lunatic. Neighboring Japan has dealt with scary political violence recently. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated in July of 2022. Then in September of last year,

a man threw a pipe bomb, the Prime Minister Kashida at a campaign event. That was another close call. So look, you know, the secret services record here in the U.S. is spotty at best, I would say. But there's a lot of infrastructure to protect U.S. presidents. But having just gotten back from Iowa, Ben, like, you are reminded of how unbelievably vulnerable candidates are. Yeah, yeah. I shook Rhonda Sances's hand. I bet he regrets that. You did.

Yeah. It was weird. Was it like slippery or was it kind of? It was just waxy. Yeah. Well, we feel like a human hand or like? It was me. Lacey and Caroline Dunfie, who I think you probably know a little bit, who does the hilarious videos here.

So we go to the event, he sort of goes into the crowd and we go up to see if we can record him and, you know, talking to voters. And I'm trying to like back away into the corner, right, because the staffer in me feels uncomfortable. And also, I don't want them to like clock me and not let us into any other events in the future. Dunfee has no anxieties about any of this. And basically as I admire people like that because I'm not like that. I'm very self-aware. As I back away, she basically is like, hey, idiot, tosses me her phone and, like, I get a little selfie of her with him, which is great. But he did the smile, and she tried to mimic it, and it was very funny.

But anyway, political violence is bad. Yeah, political violence is bad. And it is like there's an uptick in this stuff. And, again, the more, I mean, the serious point, I think, is the more people everywhere, not just in this country, are being radicalized by conspiracy theory and grievance because of online. of information, the more there's going to happen because, like, you know, people get more and more worked up. And, yeah. Brazil just had their insurrection first anniversary, too. Yeah, but they dealt with theirs. They're dealing with theirs. They're dealing with theirs. They're dealing with theirs a little better than ours. Yeah. Two other quick things. One, I just want to flag that, uh,

farmers in Germany are staging a week-long protest this week against the government's plan to phase out tax breaks on diesel fuel used in agriculture. You might be wondering, why do I care about this? because it's kind of interesting. So Chancellor Olaf Schultz proposed this plan last week because he has to close an $18 billion gap in their 2024 budget that was left after Germany's Constitutional Court ruled the government cannot repurpose emergency COVID relief funds to use for programs to combat climate change. So Schultz's government has been scrambling to figure out how to close that budget gap because they have strict legal limits on how much debt Germany can rack up. The constitutional limits are 0.35% of economic. output. It's a debt limit put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. This is the big fight we had with the Germans. Austerity versus stimulus, blah, blah, blah. But it's interesting because the far right in Germany has been doing well in local elections and now they're using this strike and the anger over these subsidies for political advantage. They're saying they support the protesters and they're saying they would expand the subsidies for farmers and trying to sort of become, you know,

sort of a Trumpian move to try to become the party that they, they're saying they're saying they're saying they would expand the subsidies for farmers and trying to sort of become, you know, sort of a Trumpian move to try to become the party that backs the farmers in this sort of populist way. So something to watch here. Yeah, it's interesting because, one, it shows the difficult politics of climate change. People don't like the tradeoffs. Two, we see this kind of rise at the AFD, the far right party in Germany. And like you're saying, trying to align themselves with a seemingly left position. And then look, whenever you have the far right in Germany saying that they're the ones that can keep the trains running on time, that's not worth it.

Okay, guys? Like, it's just not something we want. Well said. But 2022 is also the hottest year on record, so we should probably not stop these efforts to prevent climate change. Last thing, French President Emmanuel Macron appointed a 34-year-old named Gabriel Atal to be his new prime minister, 34 years old. Atal previously served as education minister and was the government spokesperson during the pandemic. He is the first openly gay prime minister in French history. And it seems like all of this is Macron looking for a political boost ahead of the European parliamentary elections this spring.

And also like probably someone to take his place once he's... Well, that's, yeah, I was going to say what's interesting. Macron's been pretty shaky political ground, but there's been a kind of guessing game as to who might be his like anointed successor. And that doesn't mean that's necessarily this guy for sure. But, you know, that if the German elections won to watch because you don't want to see the rise at the far right, the French election, you know, similarly, the question is to be who's going to basically be against Marine Le Pen and this guy now enters a conversation.

Yeah, he's got some Riz. Yeah. Seems cool. Yeah, it seems cool. But like, there's a good chance we wake up in some period of time a year or two. I don't really remember when all the elections are. And we see the AFD or Marine Le Penz party in charge. The trajectory feels a little scary there. It's a little scary. I mean, the AFD, like, in charge seems like a far away. But like the, I don't know, like I just the far right in Germany is just, nobody wants that. No. It's just like, like, if ever there's a place where we don't want that. We can stop at one place. It's good to pick Germany. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we come back. You'll hear Ben's conversation with Emily Wu about the upcoming elections in Taiwan.

So stick around for that. Okay. So on January 13th, that's Saturday, Taiwan is going to be holding presidential and legislative elections, a country of 23 million people. Having an election, of course, with the question not only of what the people of Taiwan want, but obviously questions related to the world of China and what it wants, questions. around global security and stability. So no matter who Taiwan's people choose to replace the outgoing President Tsang Wen from the Democratic Progressive Party, we know that obviously a lot is at stake for the future of the people

of Taiwan, but also for the future of the world. Luckily for us, we have today as our guest, Emily Wu, who is a Taiwanese journalist, a podcast host, the founder of Ghost Island Media and someone that I've really learned a lot from about Taiwan over the last couple of years. So, Emily, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Ben. It's a real pleasure to be here. Love your show.

Tell a lot of people about your show, and thank you. Well, I will say at the beginning, for people want to go deeper, check out Ghost Island Media Pods because they're really awesome. They're kind of the crooked media of Taiwan. So, Emily, I just want to start by asking you, for people, listeners who may not have been following this, can you just describe to us the current state of the election and kind of what the vibe is around? voting coming up this weekend? Yeah. So, well, so every presidential election had been really major in Taiwan, all for very different reasons, right? Going back to 1996 when we had our first direct presidential election, that was momentous on its own. The next one in 2000s, it was the first time that a non-KMT person would possibly be a president.

That was momentous. 2008, when the HMT might take the presidential office back again, that was momentous on its own. And because every time, every political party into Taiwan, there's very different, everybody has a lot of different domestic views on domestic policies, but really where they come down to, the greatest differences come down to the relations with China. And this time around, we've had eight years of Tai-Ingu,

where we've seen really good international, I think, development in Taiwan. We've come out of COVID quite well. But dual politics has changed so much that, first of all, so for the world looking in Taiwan. But also in Taiwan, I mean, every open election is so different. But this time around, we have a third party that is quite strong. That's been very interesting. And we don't know. It's quite up to a couple days ago when the polls ended, when the polls said there's a polling blackout in Taiwan 10 days prior to the election.

Up to then, polls tell us one thing, but we just don't know. And so people are nervous, but people are telling everybody to get out to the vote. Elect campaigns are happening. It's really heated up, and we're really just looking forward to Saturday. So you indicated a bunch of things that I think I'll give quick context and lead into a question with this. I mean, the relatively new nature of Taiwan being a democracy, right? Because for decades under the KMT was kind of single party autocratic rule until the late 90s. Then this question of relations with China, the KMT, ironically, because they were the ones that, you know, lost the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party.

but they've become the party that favors, you know, better ties with the mainland. The DPP, which has been the party of Tsang Wen, has been the party that has been more, you know, de facto, we're our own country less willing to negotiate around a one China formula. I want to get at a couple questions here, but just starting with, you know, I guess the, I think the frontrunner in most of those polls has been William Lye, who is the vice president. president to Tsang Wen, but has generally usually been seen as a little bit more, at least the perception I can say from the U.S., is that Tsang Wen is a little more pragmatic, a little more cautious. William Lye had described himself in the past as being a pragmatic pro-independence kind of politician. He's moderated that formula a bit in this election campaign. What are the perceptions of William Lye and, you know, how do you assess

the relative strength of his candidacy versus the other two parties as we had in the home stretch? For real and line, it really looks like it would be a continuation of what Taiwan has looked like in the past eight years in terms of foreign policy. Actually, the facts that all the candidates have said that they would continue foreign policy as it exists today, but they come down to detail differences to what relations with China or relations with the U.S. would be. on the most part, the continuation of Taiwan's involvement in the world, engagement in the world. But within for the DVP, yeah, it looks like as it is now. And that means really also warming ties with the U.S. But that also means that China would continue with the aggression

on Taiwan because China does see DPP as quote unquote separatist. The issue of independence or status quo, William Lai has said he would continue. knew the status quo. The status quo being the way we are now, which means it is still the country as it exists today. Is that? Yeah, it's kind of an autonomy. I mean, basically, we don't have to declare independence because we already are our own country, so that's kind of a status quo. I mean, I guess one thing I'm interested in, so if you've got William Lai saying, I kind of want to continue sighing wins policy, right, closer to the United States, you know, obviously buying a lot of arms from the United States, but trying to not upset the status quo

too much with China, not trying to be provocative. The KMT, you know, more willing to negotiate with the Chinese, probably less inclined to kind of cozy up to the Americans. One question I have for you, though, Emily, is that how much do voters think about the China issue when they go to the polls versus, I'm sure there's all manner of other domestic issues, you know, as in any country, There's policy related to health care and the economy and, you know, DPP has been pretty progressive on certain social issues like gay marriage. And do you and your friends, or is your sense of the electorate that the dominant issue is this question of relations with China and the U.S.? How much is that factor into voting versus other issues that are more domestically focused? So when the KMT and also the TBP, the third party that's led by the former mayor of Taipei,

who's now running for president, what they say is that when they say they would like to engage China, it's via what's called the 1992 consensus, which is in a way kind of Taiwan's own one China policy, which means that China, both China and Taiwan agree that there is one China, but there's two different definitions to that. And so the 92 consensus really to the DPP means that you are agreeing with China that Taiwan's part of China. And so that's where the engagement, the condition for engagement. So when DPP has continued to, the TISA's administration has continued to say they're really welcome to engagement with China, but under the condition that this is on equal parts, Taiwan and China. So when the when I think the voters are looking at how is KMT and DPP, TPP, the third party, going to

get China to have to talk to Taiwan, that is that question that's at what are you, what are we giving up our sovereignty? That question, I think, It comes around during every election, and I think there will be some people who say it's also split. On the one hand, polls will tell us that Taiwan, most people want to continue the status quo. On the other hand, when it comes to election issues, there is housing is an issue, salaries another issue, labor, another issue. I think it's different, different people. Some people say, well, you know, let's see what happens this time around with more engagement with China.

Others will say, we cannot allow that to happen. It's really split. It's really split. And we'll see in the, yeah, we'll see on Saturday. But is there a sense, I mean, so again, as you've sketched this out, right, like the DPP that's Sahing Wins party, the current president, William Lai, kind of the frontrunner, the other two parties, KMT and TPP, more willing to engage in this one China policy, which again, so listeners understand, part of what's peculiar about this is that like, say, the KMT, right, this is the party that lost the civil war and fled with Chen Kishak to Taiwan. Part of the reason why they accept the one China policy is that they kind of believe that there's still the government of China, which, you know, is that it. It's rooted in a lot of history.

I guess the question I can see is that, okay, if I'm sitting this, if I'm imagining what it's like to be Taiwanese, and I obviously can't put myself fully in your shoes, on the one end, I can see that, well, wait a second, I can't accept one China as a basis of negotiations because we've seen in Hong Kong that if you accept a kind of one country, two systems type formula in the long run, you get swallowed up by China. So that's scary to me. But on the other hand, you could look at a William Lai and say, well, I'm scared that if he wins the election, that might provoke China and that might make it more likely that they continue military provocations, continue squeezing China. I mean, what is that balance of risk, right? There's the risk of engaging with China and a one China negotiation that kind of loses sovereignty.

On the other hand, there's the risk of not engaging China and they're having to be a provocation. I mean, when you're talking to your friends, when you're talking to other people who are, you know, thinking about how to vote, how do you see that risk calculation happening? As long as I can remember, there's always been the threat of missiles and the threat of China attacking. And, you know, would it happen? Could it happen? You don't know. And that threat is really scary, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And, like, growing now, you kind of even, you joked about it because that's just something that. that would probably never happen.

Because why would people wage war against you? That's such a scary thing to think that it could be real. But as you get older, you realize, you just as a person, you realize how much you have in this country and how good it is. And any thought of losing that is a really scary feeling. So I think this is why I'm struggling so much with that question. I think that during this election, there has been a lot of that talk on war and peace.

It's just as one part of the election. This isn't the entire election. But it is one, you see a lot. I mean, there's a campaign car for one of the smaller parties, a very pro-China conservative party. The campaign car just says, peace across the street. A lot of election posters say peace across the street. say peace across the street.

And these are for KMT parties. The slogans for DPP is, you know, democracy, you know, holding democracy. It's in one way framed as an election of war in peace versus democracy or autocracy. But the thing is, we just have to remember that it is not whichever political parties that we will continue to exercise. democracy and ask for peace. And it is, at the end of the day, it is China that has the power to attack should they want to when disregard of who is in power. Yeah. Well, I think you said it well there. And I guess another question I have related to that is what has been your experience in this election of Chinese kind of information campaigns or influence campaigns? You know,

when I was in Taiwan, I was struck by the volume of Chinese disinformation or misinformation or messages saying, you know, look at Ukraine. This could happen to you if you make the wrong choice. Is that a part of the election backdrop? I mean, do you sense, can you identify what is Chinese influence operations? Does that form part of the background noise to an election? Disinformation is really bad here for particular. for many reasons. And I think one thing to remember is that it happens throughout the year, election or not, but during the election, it gets activated.

The government's being very vigilant about it. There's a lot of fact-checking groups in Taiwan because as the government tries to be vigilant, they cannot, there has been, they cannot put in regulations, against disinformation in the way that costs over the question of censorship versus free speech. So all they can do is they are, for example, last month, a guy was arrested, somebody in Taiwan who runs an online site for election mantling and for interference from China. What happened was that he supposedly ran polls and he released eight polls, and it turned out they were under the direction of the CCP in Fujian.

So that's really major. Disinformation groups, we have multiple here since 2016, and then especially after 2018 elections and more after 2020, a lot of a lot of civil society groups who are doing the fact-tracking to call out for disinformation and to set the record straight. And so every day they're reporting this. I don't have the number that they are catching on the daily basis. Just as a small number perspective, there was a survey on disinformation, on the amount of misinformation that people received just last year.

This is out of election year in 2023. About a third of people said they received this on a daily basis. It's a lot here. And sometimes it is hard to tell what's what's what, because sometimes these are, yeah, sometimes it's really hard to tell. I mean, I guess last question is just, you know, on the one end, democracy is relatively new in Taiwan, and people are very proud of it, and it's a part of Taiwanese identity now. On the other hand, there's, you know, all these extremely unusual circumstances.

Do you feel like hopeful heading into an election? Do you feel nervous about what might happen the day after the election? I mean, particularly young people, some people may be voting for the first time. And I know that's not easy. You have to be 20. And sometimes you have to go home to your household registration to register. But what is the sense you get, particularly among young people, about the mood? Is this a hopeful time or is it a kind of a tense and nervous time in Taiwan?

Or both? It's both. I'm hopeful. I mean, election turnout in Taiwan is incredibly high. We have about 70% 80% election turnout. It helps that it's on a Saturday. It's on the day off for most people. I'm hopeful looking at, for example,

last election when we had what seemed to be a really strong opponent who's a populist. And election results showed us that, you know, there is hope. This is good. This is good for us. You know, we are on the right track. Taiwan's on the right track. I'm hopeful in, I think, Saturday's turnout for the, for the election.

But I am very, I think all of us are wondering what will happen after this, because we're picking the president, but also the legislative, the parliament. And there is the case that there's going to be a split parliament and which might create difficult. for the next four years. So that, I do hope that Taiwan continues its engagement in the world, that it has the last several years. There is one talk that young people are particularly interested and love this one particular candidate,

the third party candidate, that's the former mayor of Taipei. I think to the young people, the DPP has been a, has been the establishment. So they want to break out of the establishment. They don't like the establishment. Neither do they like H&T.

So they are eyeing for this different party, this different person. DPP's been seen as a more progressive party traditionally. But what you're saying in part is that now that they've been the establishment for a while, maybe the third party of it is less progressive, more open to ties of China suddenly as an alternative, right? Which is interesting. Yeah. It shows you how generation scramble. Well, look, everybody should check out. Dispatches from Taiwan is going to be the new series from GoStyl Media. It's going to break down different elements of the view from Taiwan. But Emily, we'll look for the results like everybody else. I don't know if you want to make a prediction here, but do you have a prediction or do we want to just wait and see what happens?

Yeah, we'll wait and see. I don't want to make a prediction for the U.S. election either, so we share that in common. But look, we wait the results. We obviously hope. hope that whatever the result is, that peace endures in Taiwan, and thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ben. Thanks again, Emily Wu for joining the show. I don't know. Thanks to listeners for listening, because it's fun to be back. Thanks for coming back. Yeah, yeah. I hope you came back. We're going to check the numbers. We're going to make damn share. Yeah, yeah, please. But rate review, share with your friends. Oh, yeah, all those things. And talk to you guys this week. I've been here. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our

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