Pod Save the World - How Putin Dominated Trump, and Can Ukraine Survive

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Tommy & Ben sift through the week’s flurry of meetings on Ukraine, including Putin and Trump’s Alaska summit and Zelensky’s White House visit. They discuss how territory and security guarantees factor into negotiations, what Putin means by the “root causes” of the war, and how Russia won the optics game. They also talk about why a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel isn’t likely, massive anti-war protests in Israel, the Free Press’s ghoulish “reporting” on starving Gazan children, Laura Loomer’s malicious influence on medical visas for injured Palestinian kids, and the imprisonment of a 16-year-old Palestinian-American boy in Israel. Also covered: a rightward shift in Bolivia, Trump’s mobilization against cartels, and we say a fond farewell to State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce. Then, Ben speaks with Representative Ro Khanna about his letter supporting the recognition of a Palestinian State and how to think about the future of Democratic Foreign Policy.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

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What show is this? This is what happens when you're on vacation. We should leave that in. Yeah, leave it in. This is Pate of the World. This is the foreign policy show. This is the good show.

This is where we talk about some nerdy stuff. Yeah, we'll have a lot of fun. There's a lot of overlap this week because it's quite a world a week. I mean, you know, sometimes it's that kind of week. Sometimes, Ben, so I was off last week, as you mentioned. I wasn't in D.C. I flew through D.C., but I was in Eastern Maryland

visiting Hannah's parents, which is lovely. It was great, and they're amazing. It was, like, very fun time to see family. but I can't believe we used to live in like the D.C. area in August and commute to work in suits in the metro when it was like 90 degrees and 100% humidity. I cannot, I mean, at the risk of sharing a little too much information, I cannot explain to people the amount of sweat that was involved in getting from my house, which is now like occupied territory with like checkpoints and like Stephen Miller jackbooted thugs. Like 14th and W. There's a checkpoint.

I was like a block away. But to get to work in a suit and tie in like 100 degree heat with like 900% humidity was one of the most disgusting things. It would take me a while just to like recover, you know, when I got to. I'll never forget this one time. I like worked out in the morning. I was running late. I went to my apartment. I showered fast.

You know when the shower just doesn't take? Yeah. Right? So I like throw on my suit. I run like four blocks to the train. I can hear in D.C. the longest staircases ever in like any metro. So I could hear my train coming in.

So I started running, running, running down the steps. And I just barely made the train. And I stepped on to it. And I, you could just feel like the sweat coming. And I turned around and there was this woman named Kim Ruby who I'd worked with in Iowa. And I probably hadn't seen in six years. And I was like six inches away from her on a pack train. And I started sweating so much that I stepped off a couple stops early because I was just

embarrassed. I felt like I'd just gone swimming. I was a bus guy. I used to take the bus. I took the bus sometimes, too. It's very, like, a good practice to take the bus to the White House because, you know, let's not get a... Look at you of Ben Friedman. Well, no, I'm just saying, like, you know, it's an abundance kind of agenda, like, you know, public transportation.

No. Yeah, no, you go to the Nordic route, grab your bike. Anyway, enough about us. Enough about me. It's great to be back. We have a lot to cover today. We're going to talk about the whirlwind of meetings and summits and cluster fucks over the war in Ukraine. We're going to dig into the actual substance of what was discussed in an end.

announced what Putin means and demands when he talks about the need to address the root causes of the conflict and what satisfying those demands would actually mean in practice. We're also going to talk about the optics and kind of the pageantry around these summits and what it says about Trumpism, what he cares about, and how the world has like bent itself to his will. Then we're going to cover reports that Hamas has accepted a ceasefire deal in Gaza, Israel's plan to escalate the war. What hundreds of thousands of Israelis are in the streets protesting. We're also going to talk about some really ghoulish reporting in Barry Weiss's The Free Press, and then why right-wing nut Laura Lumer.

It's just one of the worst people in the world. I think it's the best way to summarize it. Yeah, not someone I'd want to spend any time with. Not a fan. Then we're going to talk about some major developments in the West Bank, elections, and the end of a political dynasty in Bolivia. Trump's plan to target cartels in Latin America, and then we'll wave goodbye to a new but dear friend at the State Department.

stick around for that. I'm not going to give you guys any more details. Stick around for that. And then for our friends of the pod subscribers, we're going to answer some questions from our always amazing Discord community. So, Pact Show. And no, then you talked to Rokana just now.

I did. So I talked to Congressman Rokana, who's been at the vanguard of trying to change some of the foreign policy within Democratic Party. We got his reaction to the Putin summit and talked a bit about how Democrats should be thinking about the types of critiques to be made of the diplomacy, I guess we called that that's been going on.

Then we talked about the letter that he's led to try to get Democrats to sign on for the recognition of a Palestinian state. We talk about the changes in the party on support for this Israeli government or the Palestinians. There's a recent dust-up crooked media produced about Pete Buttigieg that Roe got involved in. But we talk about importantly, not just kind of what that says about where the party is right now in Israel, but how it's a bit of a proxy for the party having a backbone in general. Will it stand up to APEC? Will it present a truly different kind of foreign policy? What should an alternative democratic foreign policy be from not just Trump, but Biden, too? So we covered a lot.

It's a good interview. I really like Roe, and I'm also grateful to him for leading on some tough stuff. Having some guts, you know. Yeah, exactly. But as we talk about, you know, we have sports metaphors on this show. So Ro is kind of skating to where the puck is going. A lot of Democrats kind of observe it and then try to chase after it. Yeah.

Yeah, we're a little behind right now. All right, Ben, so let's turn to Ukraine because it has been quite a week of diplomacy for Trump, the Russians, the Ukrainians, half of Europe. Last Friday, just to catch you guys up, Trump met with Russian president of Vladimir Putin in Alaska. On Monday, Trump met with Ukrainian president of Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office. Then he had a second meeting with Zelensky that included like half of Europe. It was leaders from the EU, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, NATO, and the UK. Trump says the next step in this kind of like ad hoc Ukraine peace process could be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky. Consider me skeptical that that will ever happen or that Putin himself would take the meeting and not send some like, you know, third tier flunky to meet with Zelensky.

But we'll see. And then if that goes well, I think the plan is to have a trilateral meeting that includes Trump, Putin and Zelensky, which according to Plum, Politico would be held in Budapest, so it's good to get Victor Orban involved. Not exactly a home game for Zelensky. Glad we got another autocrat in on the game here. Why I just had the meeting at CPAC? Yeah. So we're going to break this in the chunks.

Again, like I said, we're going to do the substance, then we'll do the long-term issues, and then we'll do the optics. But, can you just imagine, like, putting together an Obama-Pooten summit in a week? That's basically what they did, with the Alaska one. Well, they didn't exactly anticipate some of the traps, though. You know, like, that's what happens when you throw it together in the week. You get rolled by the office. Yeah, you can quite nail it. Okay, so substantively, the Trump-Pooten meeting in Alaska,

it was not the worst-case scenario for Ukraine, right? Like a lot of Ukrainians and Europeans were scared that Trump and Putin would basically announce a deal and say, take it or leave it, you know, Zelensky. That didn't happen, but what came out of it was still quite bad. Trump just completely abandoned his demand that Putin agreed to a ceasefire and he's now pretending that ceasefires aren't even important. Yeah. He's like, well, who do you even cares about that? After a person for one for seven months. Yeah, demanding one for months. In the meeting, Putin demanded that Ukraine handover not only territory in eastern Ukraine that they are occupying currently, but also territory that Russia hasn't been able to capture. Specifically, Putin wants Zelensky to hand over

all at Densk and Lujansk, but Russian troops only control three quarters of Denez province. And the portion Putin doesn't control, but wants includes this 30-mile stretch called the fortress belt. It is heavily fortified with razor wire, bunkers, trenches, minefields, tank troughs. Basically like every military expert says, if you hand over that part of Denez, it will make it exponentially easier for Putin to invade again and then go deeper into Ukraine. So that was all very bad. We'll get into the more maximalist demands in a minute, the so-called root cause of the war. The one bright spot out of Alaska Bend were reports that both Trump and Putin are open to some sort of security guarantee for Ukraine as part of a deal. And that kind of

brings us to Monday. Trump again said he's open to a security guarantee that the U.S. would contribute to it. But on Tuesday morning on Fox and Friends, Trump ruled out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine or the security guarantee being through NATO. Here's a clip from Fox and Friends. I hope President Putin is going to be good. And if he's not, it's going to be a rough situation. And I hope that Zelensky, President Zelensky, will do what he has to do. He has to show some flexibility also.

I assume you've all seen the map. You know, a big chunk of territory is taken. And that territory has been taken. Now, they're talking about Dombas, but Dombas, right now, as you know, is 79% owned and controlled by Russia. There'll be some form of security. It can't be NATO because that's just not something that would ever, ever happen. He couldn't.

They couldn't do that. From Dunbass, the dumbass. Zelensky said he hopes the details of the security guarantee will be formalized in the next 10 days. Zelensky also mentioned something about a $90 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Ukraine. So, Ben, our producer saw described this whole thing as a reverse iceberg. Lots of like superficial things happen at the surface. When you look under the water line, no real substance holding it up. I love your big picture thoughts on like kind of what was actually came out of the discussions.

And then more specifically, like let's just dig into what you think like a meaningful security guarantee would actually have to look like. Because I personally am quite skeptical that a few thousand European troops sitting in Ukraine is much of a deterrent unless they're authorized to shoot back at the Russians. And if they're backed by the full force of the U.S. military. which I'm skeptical Trump is willing to do. Yeah, there are two real substantive issues that are completely unresolved. And while it wasn't the worst case scenario in terms of Trump coming out and announcing that there's an agreement and kind of forcing on Zelensky, he kind of behind closed doors seemed to have accepted that premise from Putin and then behind closed doors presented to Zelensky.

And the real issues are territory and security guarantees and they're related, right? So the first point is, in addition to Crimea, which I think everybody would acknowledge, it's impossible to foresee any scenario where Ukraine's getting that back. There are four other territories of Ukraine that Russia has formally annexed. And two of them would be in the category that you laid out, Lahanska and Dynetsk, that's the Donbass that Trump talks about. So taken together, that's the Donbass, which is, you know, a resource-rich part of Ukraine, an industrial part of Ukraine. What Putin wants is essentially all of that territory, which does two things. One, it kind of confirms his annexation as legitimate. So instead of even just accepting maybe as part of some

frozen conflict while the Russians are there, they're not going to leave, but we don't reject, we reject the legitimacy of this. It's kind of saying, sure, Putin's whole idea of invading this country and then having some Potemkin referenda at the barrel of a gun and annexing it is not only legitimate, it's so legitimate that we're going to force the Ukrainians to abandon their remaining land so he can have it. So it fully legitimizes his invasion as a successful tool of territorial expansion. But then importantly to the security guarantees, it leaves Ukraine with even less defensible borders, right? So you not only lose all that fortified front line that the Ukrainians have built, right, that Barbire. Fortress built, yeah.

All the fortress thing. But you're just kind of leaving them with even less defensible borders. Like imagine if you seated the entire, you know, even. eastern coastline of the United States to an adversary that was bigger than you and they could just build up their military force there to try to reinvade you at his second point. Yeah, imagine if the Russians invaded Massachusetts from the east and they got to Worcester and then we cut a deal and we were like, you know what, take the rest. Yeah, it's crazy.

It's crazy. You're not only legitimizing what they are already occupying. You're saying, we'll give you some more so you can stop invading, right? I'm really meeting people where they're at by giving the Worcester reference point because everyone knows where Worcester masses. Anyway, continue, Google it. Now, the security guarantee thing, what the Ukrainians want is if they are going to lose this territory, if they have to basically accept some reality in which Russia is going to consume part of their land, they want to make sure that Russia cannot reinvade and that the remaining Ukraine, the 70 to 80 percent of Ukraine that they continue to keep as a sovereign state, will be protected against not just invasion, but will be kind of integrated into, you know, because they can't rebuild. They can't reconstruct.

They can't have the millions of Ukrainians who've left come back with confidence if everybody's worried that the Russians are going to try to dominate or try to take over the country again. Now, the Ukrainian preference for this would be NATO membership because then you have an Article 5 commitment to collective defense. Article 5 commitment means if Russia invades, NATO is going to come to Ukraine's defense. Short of that, they want some troops on the ground, right? But this is where it's kind of a backdoor NATO thing because if you've got the UK, Germany, France, and some of these other countries who said they put troops in, well, those are NATO countries, right? And so if you have that force there, there's some ambiguity that, well, if Russia invades and that force is willing to engage the Russian forces, well, then suddenly there's an argument that an Article 5 commitment might be triggered, even if maybe it's not Ukraine, but it's because there are NATO countries that are now in a war. And to be very clear, this isn't because anybody wants that to happen. It's because we don't want it to happen.

Exactly. You want a deterrent. Yeah, it's a deterrent, right? Now, what Trump seems to want is a toothless security guarantee. You saw some things out of the summit yesterday that will sell Ukraine $90 billion of weapons, as if giving them weapons is a security guarantee. We've heard in the past that the critical minerals agreement is kind of a security guarantee because Russia won't invade if we're like extracting minerals from Ukraine.

Or maybe... By the way, all those minerals are in eastern Ukraine. Most of which Russia is... Which we're now coughing over to... Exactly. Crazy to me that we spend so much time yelling about the stupid minerals deal when like all the minerals are now going to go to the Russians. Go to the Russians anyway.

Trying to make sense of this is probably a mistake. So the question, I think Trump might be open to these Europeans being there, but he kind of wants it to be as feckless as possible. Hey, the U.S. has nothing to do with it. Wink, we won't come to the defense of these people. we won't be part of the kind of supply lines to these people. We have nothing to do with it at all. And so essentially it's kind of a toothless security guarantee.

That touches the deepest cords of fears for the Ukrainians because in 1994, the Budapest memorandum, which we've talked about on this podcast, there was a security guarantee for Ukraine that was toothless. It was agreed between the United States and Russia and the UK that essentially Ukraine's territorial integrity would be guaranteed. if they gave up their nuclear weapons. And guess what? They gave up the nuclear weapons

and they got invaded. And so they don't trust, for good reason, security guarantees that are written down on paper without anything tangible. After the meeting yesterday, the Russians already went out and said they won't accept any foreign forces on Ukrainian soil, so they won't accept any security guarantees whatsoever.

So to rhyme back the tape, despite these two summits, despite all the pageantry, nothing is different today than before in the sense that Putin still wants all the land he's annexed. And he wants no credible security guarantee. And he appears to have Trump pretty much on board with that, although Trump's left this door open a crack on security guarantees. And the Ukrainians and the Europeans are just scrambling to kind of keep that from being the maximalist position.

Now, I think you're being unfair because I think some progress was made because Putin got Trump to walk away from his demand for a ceasefire. And apparently we're just giving up on putting secondary sanctions on other countries if they buy Russian oil. Remember when he was threatening Modi and, the Indian government a few weeks ago and say, you got to stop buying Russian oil. Apparently, that's gone. Yeah. So, okay. So Putin made a lot of progress.

Yeah, the big concession that Putin gave Trump was flattery and then a political gift by saying, oh, yeah, I would never have invaded if you were president. It was Joe Biden's fault, basically. That was like all that happened. Which is really smart of Putin because he realizes. Cost free. And this is what is so important. And we should talk more about this.

What leaders have realized is Trump doesn't actually care about the substance of the quote unquote deal. He just cares how it looks. Are people kissing his ass? Can he spin his narrative? So Putin comes and what does he bring? He doesn't bring a concession on territory, security guarantees or ceasefires or anything, really, not even partial ceasefires. I'm sure he's got that in his back pockets. He's flattering. He brings mail and balloting is bullshit and costs you the 2020 election. I didn't interfere in the 2016 election. Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which we heard from Trump at the press conference. You are. are such a great peacemaker. None of this is substantive. None of this matters whatsoever.

Let's do the optics. And one's like, well, let's do the root causes into the optics as you're right, because they fold together. But like, what he did bring that you mentioned earlier is this demand to deal with the root causes of the war. And so, but when Putin, like, it's important to understand what Putin means by that because like it's a long list. It can mean some or all of basically the following, which is freezing the battle lines and forcing Ukraine to give up tons of territory. Like you talked about Crimea, but also the eastern Ukraine, the Dombas region. NATO membership has to be off the table for Ukraine. Putin has also talked about rolling back NATO expansion to where it was in the late 90s. So I'm not sure if like the wish list is going to

include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic suddenly being out of NATO. Like it's not an insane thing to imagine. He wants to limit the size of the Ukrainian military. I'm sure he wants Zelenskyy gone. I mean, early on in the war, right, Putin always talked about the need for the denazification of Ukraine, which is a remarkable thing to say about like the Jewish head of, you know, state. But we haven't heard that phrasing in a while, but I'd imagine that Zelensky will be gone. But I think when you understand what root causes means, it just speaks to how difficult it will be to get to a comprehensive peace deal because it really isn't just about the Ukrainians and the Russians doing something hard. Like he's trying to dictate NATO's actions and dictate the actions of Europe.

That's right. And so to kind of break down a couple pieces of this are really important is that there's Ukraine and then there's NATO. Now, in Ukraine, In root causes, Putin doesn't think the Ukraine should exist as a state. Yes. He would have liked to have essentially, if not conquered Ukraine, conquered a piece of it, annexed it, and then had a pro-Russian leader back in charging Kiev, and he can kind of dominate them and not have to worry about them aligning with the West. He might still get that, right?

Because he's, you know, he's trying to pocket the annexation with Trump. But he wants them to not only not have security guarantees, he wants them to not really have a military. And his argument of Trump is, how can I deal with the military that could threaten me? The Ukrainian military is not going to invade Russia, right? So the question is just can they have a credible enough military so that they're not reinvated again? We can come back to that. On the NATO piece, I think what he wants is, look, if you look at the clock, that's when the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, joined NATO.

So it's not just, you know, yes, it's Poland and it's entire every country that essentially borders Ukraine or Russia, essentially, is, you know, Finland, which is recently joined. I think he understands Putin does maybe that it's unlikely they're going to be killed. out of NATO, but I think what he wants is no NATO presence in those countries. So Ukraine is demilitarized and NATO has no military presence. There's no boots on the ground, there's no infrastructure in these kind of eastern flank countries. You can see why that's a scary prospect, because if there's no NATO presence in the Baltics, what's to stop Putin from taking a chunk of the Baltics? And by the way, if you think that I'm now being hyperbolic, he's got a chunk of Georgia. He's got a chunk of Moldova. He's got a chunk of Ukraine. Every former Soviet state

that's not a central Asian republic, he essentially is taking a chunk of Belarus is kind of a satellite. Right. And the reason why is because Putin called the dissolution of the Soviet Union, quote, the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. Yeah. This is an imperialist, nationalist project. This is not just spheres of influence. This is about reconstituting the Russian empire for him. That's right. And he's doing it like peace by piece, you know, it's like bite by bite, right? And that is a scary, scary prospect to reward that kind of behavior in any way, shape, or form. Now, the one other thing I'd add, Tommy, because we've talked about so many of these pieces over the years on this podcast, is that Putin also knows that

the J.D. Vance's of the world and the kind of Silicon Valley, you know, all in pods of the world, have been intellectual Zambonis for Putin's arguments. Oh, NATO expansion is what let him to invade Ukraine. We overreach. Zelensky's obstinate, you know, by Trump taking Putin's side, essentially, and somehow Ukraine's fault that they were invaded, it's somehow every previous president's fault that this happened, NATO expansion never should have happened, whatever you think about those things, having the President of the United States essentially because he wants to own the libs at home,

essentially launder Putin's arguments into American farm policy, it makes it so that Putin is just pushing against an open door. I should say, if you're listening to saying, well, Ben, like, well, how the fuck should this war end? There's a way in which the war ends, in which, yes, Russia is going to be in a bunch of the territory they're in, but that everything on the other side of that is protected, you know, that essentially there is a credible security guarantee for Ukraine. They're in the European Union. If they're not in NATO, there's such a sufficient NATO commitment to Ukraine that Russia couldn't invade again. And Ukraine can become a viable, successful state where their people can move back, even if they're going to lose some land. What Trump is doing

is not only potentially sacrificing the land, but he's putting that in doubt, right? Right. He's making them sitting ducks. And you can hear that. That is clearly Zelensky's core concern. So security guarantee going forward to this doesn't happen again because Trump is like, oh, well, I think he wants to cut a deal for me. And I think he'll sign a piece of paper. For me. Yeah. Like an enshrine in legislation that he'll never invade again. And if you believe that, use are a fucking idiot.

And that's kind of the point. What's so crazy about this is that Vladimir Putin is a man who has invaded Ukraine multiple times over the objections of the rest of the world. Invaded Syria and supported war crimes there over the objections the rest of the world. He could give two fucks about what Donald Trump thinks about anything. What he's getting out of this could people keep asking me like, well, what is Putin getting? Is he running Trump as an asset? blah, blah, blah. What he's getting is that the United States looks like an incompetent, completely clueless superpower. He's owning the West. He's owning the West. The West is divided against itself.

It looks weak. It looks weak. Our system is being dismantled. We look like we're taking his arguments because Trump needs to use his arguments. And sure, he can give Trump the win of looking like the quote unquote peacemaker who's convening meetings, but he gets everything he wants. Yep. That's what's happening. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Here's a good way not to address your mental health issues. Google, mental health, health. Because you're going to find some bad stuff, love it.

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watching on YouTube will actually see some images and, and, you know. photos of what we're talking about here. And by the way, thank you to everyone who subscribed to Pod Save the World on YouTube. Lots of people did the last time we asked. And if you haven't, please consider doing so now. Because yeah, look, right wing media. They got a lot of a lot of YouTube subscribers are killing us on YouTube. Probably some bots in there too. Yeah, a lot of bots. But what that means in practice is when people search for political news on YouTube, they find crap like TPUSA or like Marjorie Taylor Green's boyfriend, wherever he works. And we're trying to get them good information in the YouTube algorithm. So thank you for

subscribing. But like, so let's just go through. these events chronologically, right? So in Alaska, Trump literally rolls out the red carpet for Putin. He gives Putin a ride in the presidential limo, something I've never seen before. There was all this chummy banter and like bullshitting around. There was a military flyover of a B2 bomber, which all these maga morons thought was some big flex. But like, like showing off military hardware, first of all, is like autocrat 101. Two, did you think that Putin thought we might bomb him? Might kill him or something? He's saying next to Trump? Like, what did people? I don't know. Then, okay, So Trump and Putin were supposed to meet one-on-one.

That turns into a three-on-three meeting. So it's Trump, Steve Witkoff and Marco Rubio, and then Putin, Sergey Lavrov and Yuri Uchikov. So it's Trump, his golf buddy and, like, weak little Marco, who's probably sipping waters the whole time against the former KGB guy and the two most experience and savvy foreign policy minds in the Russian government, right? So they're completely outgunned at that meeting. And then Trump lets Putin talk first at the press conference. he gets lectured. He barely speaks. He doesn't take questions from the press. So Putin gets the images

he wanted where he's being welcomed back into the international community before the meetings happen. Then the meetings happen. He doesn't give an inch on policy. In fact, he gets concessions from Trump. Then they skip this lunch they're supposed to have. They don't take questions from the press and then they leave. So there's a full on domination by Putin and the Russians. Then on Monday, Zelensky meets with Trump and the various delegations in the Oval Office, the Ukrainian in U.S. delegations. That goes way better than the last meeting. Trump's team told Politico, quote, the vibe between the president and Zelensky was terrific. So good to see that that was better, but low bar. And then Trump has a couple meetings with Zelensky and the European leaders.

And one of the meetings was in the Oval Office. And the image should be on the screen now, Ben, where, like, you have Trump behind the resolute desk and then all the Europeans sitting in front of them in, like, shitty little chairs. And they literally look like schoolchildren in a classroom, crowded around the teacher, who, by the way, had a map of Ukraine up, as if Zelensky needed to see a map of his own country. And so... Kid Rock gets better treatment when it's doable. Yes. And a Trump official helpfully told Politico that the goal of convening the Europeans on the same day with Zelensky was, quote, to say, we're in charge, you'll sign on to anything we say.

So they are not trying to hide, that they do not give a fuck what the biggest country is in Europe think. So, man, just to spell it all out, right? Putin gets the pomp and circumstance. and that is all he cares about, right? Like, Putin wants the image. He's an equal of the U.S. Welcome back into the West. The Europeans look like children. And as you were starting to get into,

they're all just kissing Trump's ass thinking that that's their only strategy. And then Zelensky gets kind of a temporary reprieve. He has a good meeting. He wears a suit. He like kind of does the dance. But like he's being pressured to give up a fifth of his country. Right. Like that's what's on the table here.

So it's just when you kind of spell it all that, like it's not hard to see where Trump's sympathy lies here. Yeah, I mean, you said it well. I'd just add three things to this. The first is your point about, like, Vladimir Putin has been across the table from everybody for 25 years, right? Sergei Lavrov has outlived and out served, I don't know, 10 secretaries of state. Out smoked. Out drank. I mean, that guy used to, I remember being at summits and, you know, talking about drinking. Yeah, yeah. But I, you know, I respect it. I mean, I mean, but, but look, to just set the table of how much the Russians underwere. understood and we're in on the joke here, right? Sergei Lavrov arrived in Alaska wearing a CCP sweatshirt, okay?

That's USSR, for those of you who don't know the translation. I mean, if that doesn't tell you everything about the summit, incredible, right? I mean, it's trolling, it's messaging back home. I'm sure they were dunking on all the Russian versions of Fox News. He literally arrived in the United States wearing a USSR sweatshirt, right? Just laughing at us. We get to red carpet treatment and all this stuff, and then we get to basically dunk on you as we show up.

Putin had this kind of smirk on his face. He knows he was an indicted war criminal. Now he's invited here. He's in the briefs. He gets to speak first at the press conference. Truly bizarre. Which is crazy. The host country should speak first.

Because you get to frame the meeting. So Putin gets to frame the meeting. It's business like. It was great. We agree on everything. And Trump's like, you're going, ah, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. You know, so that's the first thing. Putin invites him to come to Moscow next to.

The Russians got this joke completely. Like, they give up nothing and they get like basically completely laundered back into the good graces of the U.S. president. And the rest of the world looks at this and says, Putin won. He won the war in Ukraine. Like the Americans folded to him, right? That's one thing. Second thing is the map point you make because Trump said before the summit, we're going to, it's a real estate deal. He's constantly talking about maps.

He's got a map up. I was deeply offended by this because you will recall how many times. the right wing through quote unquote Munich at us, right? So this was like when Chamberlain, Neville, Chamberlain met with Hitler and essentially gave away Czechoslovakia in 1938 and, you know, appeasement. Now, that used to be framed as the right-wing commentators saying anything that wasn't what they wanted was Munich, right? Because if you don't like bomb Iran, it's Munich or if you talk to Cubans, it's Munich.

That's actually wrong. like the real disgrace of Munich was the idea of two bigger countries coming together and carving up smaller countries on maps without them being present. So yes, this time I think the Munich analogy holds. Trump doesn't understand how offensive it is to most of the world, including certainly Central and Eastern Europeans, at the idea that an American president can sit down with a Russian president and look at maps of a smaller country as if it's, Donald Trump's to give away. And so that is a lasting damage to any American credibility. There is no rules-based order anymore. There's no state sovereignty respect anymore. But there's also no respect for the dignity of any country other than the United States, Russia, and China. That's Trump's, those are buddies. That's the company he keeps. Maybe the Gulf, the Saudis get in

there too and the Emirates. And then the last thing is, I'm so fucking sick and tired of seeing these European leaders feel like they went to the class and learned the lesson that you have to kiss this guy's ass and call him a peacemaker. And, you know, I mean, look, I get why they're doing it. But guess who doesn't, like, give up anything? Putin, right? Or she. Or she. Like, Trump runs into a brick wall with those guys. And he folds. Or Nanyo. Like, he folds. He folds when you push back. And I will say to the Europeans credit, and Friedrich Mert seems like, he, he folds. He's got some backbone here. And Macron has seems like...

Meloni, Georgia Maloney is the one. Georgia Maloney's got some backbone. So I give them some credit. But at a certain point, this flattery is not going to be the answer. You, Europe, have a gigantic economy. Like, if you take the EU, and I know it's hard... Looks bigger than the Russian economy. Yeah.

You know, like, you've got a lot going for you here. And you don't need to be so JV about it. I think it was smart of them to give them some credit to show up altogether. the people they chose were like important. I know it was smart. I wasn't sure about the babysitting strategy at first because I was like, oh man, you throw like a half dozen really annoying European leaders. And is Macron going to wear well in this meeting?

I couldn't tell. But you're right. It did work out. Well, because, you know, Maloney, she's like in the Trump. Trump loves her. She was like a Mar-Lago and Vitee. The Finnish guy is both on the border of Russia, but he's also kind of a right-winger. And then you got Merz, Macron, Starmer.

So it was the right mix. And you got the U. Merth is a rich guy. But the only thing I would change. going forward is like can we just like and it's not because I don't like Trump which I obviously don't it's it's just like okay like just talking about what a deal maker he is and at a certain point and we're still talking about like Zelensky's suit you know like I mean like you guys have interests you know and and Putin doesn't give an inch and he gets what he wants and that seems

to be the real lesson of negotiation with Trump is if you don't give an inch he won't come back for a foot. Every time you said maps, I just thought of the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, great rock band song. That's a good song. They don't love you like, I love you. That's a message to the Europeans. Yeah, so I guess we'll find out how this may be a bilateral meeting between Slensky and Putin goes and then maybe this trilateral happens. I'm sure I'll be talking about this next week. Do you think this is making him look good? I mean, do you think in this country, because it cuts both ways. It looks like he's at center action. He's making his meetings happen. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious, too, that he's kind of taken Putin's up.

You know, I go back to the Red Panda analogy of your like spinning plates. Like, yeah, I think it looks good to hold a bunch of peace summits and kind of look in charge and you're kind of decisive and you're doing things. I mean, the Alaska Summit was clearly humiliation. He didn't get anything he wanted. But like, I think Trump's base thinks that he is a pure victim in any Russia-related story because they have been convinced that the election interference was a hoax and he was unfairly treated, right? So that just kind of leaves the like narrow shred of people paying attention who may or may not be into. as sort of movable on this. I do think kind of the Trump as push for peace guy

is not a bad play for him. Yeah, no, that's true. He's got to deliver though. But that's, well, that's the question. It's how long can you get away without delivering? And if he delivers something that is a pile of dog shit, I mean, this might be the thing, question, right? Is if there's a quote unquote,

because I don't think there'll be a real piece, but if there's some kind of frozen conflicts totally on Russia's terms and Trump says, give me the Nobel Prize and Fox is, you know. Well, this is where the Europeans being lame is, being lame, it comes in, it is a problem because, like, someone's got a message back when he's full of shit. Like, Trump's out there being like, I solved, I ended six wars. When you look at the list, it's like India, Pakistan.

Like, I don't know that they laid down arms. Yeah. Iran, Israel? Like, pretty sure they still hate each other. I'm pretty sure that the fucking, you know, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there's still like a militia occupying. Yeah, the M23s doesn't care. The M.

The M. 23 is not left the DRC. Like, none of those were, Azerbaijan and Armenia, which we talked about last week at the Aldo, but that ended because Azerbaijan won the war. Right. So every one of these is bullshit. And yet because these leaders kiss his ass and he's got a information system that just... Appliant press court. Yeah. Yeah. It's frustrating. Okay. Well, to be continued, I guess. All right, Ben, so we got a bunch of Israel Gaza stuff to cover today. So there's been a lot of reporting this week that Hamas has finally agreed to a ceasefire proposal from Qatar in Egypt. This deal is based on Steve Whitkoff's old framework from earlier the summer, which basically is a 60-day ceasefire, a phased hostage release. It's 10 living hostage. 18 dead hostages were released during this truce in exchange for like 200 Palestinian prisoners. During the 60-day ceasefire period, both sides are supposed to have negotiations on a full end to the war.

However, we should say like during past ceasefires, those long-term talks just never happened because neither side has really, well, at least these are rarely sides is not really wanted them to. So we'll just put a pin in that. The New York Times, though, said that Hamas has basically shifted its position on every major issue since July. which is a good thing. And then the Qatari said the plan is, quote, almost identical to what the Israeli side had previously agreed to. So normally I'd hear that and think, well, that's really hopeful. But both Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have recently said that they no longer want to pursue a piecemeal approach and instead want all the hostages to come home at once. And then you also have the same kind of right-wing zealots in Netanyahu's coalition out attacking the plan or the

attacking Hamas, whatever they agree to. People like Smotrich and Ben-Givir, like the really right-wing scaries. complicating this picture are two big factors like the IDF has just approved plans for this massive escalation in Gaza, this incursion into Gaza city. This operation will take weeks. It'll involve the mobilization of tens of thousands of reservists. I think the plan goes to the defense minister and the security cabinet this week. But, you know, this is talking about a major military escalation in Gaza city where there's like 700,000 people, I think. And there's also all these hundreds of thousands of more people sheltering there. So all these Gazans are going to get once again displaced

like for the what, dozens of time to southern Gaza should this operation proceeds. So it's a big deal. It's very scary. It would be horrible. And then also over the weekend bend, huge numbers of Israelis took to the streets to protest for the release of hostages and end to the war. So there's estimates in various publications that range from hundreds of thousands. So I think Ha'Rat said millions, but a shitload of people were out on the street saying like they want a hostage release deal even if ends the war. Hostage families, a bunch of former hostages participated. They're obviously understandably worried that further military operations in Gaza will endanger the lives of the remaining hostages and not lead to their rescue. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's well known that Hamas has

orders to kill hostages if they see Israeli troops getting close. In response to these protests, Netanyahu said, quote, those who are calling today to end the war without defeating Hamas, not only harden Hamas's stance and delay their release of our hostages, they're also ensuring that the horrors of October 7th will repeat themselves again and again. So that is some cynical stuff. Ben, I would love to see even a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. I just have no hope that Netanyahu will take this. Look, 100% hope I'm wrong.

I just don't believe it will happen. I mean, Netanyahu is cast his lot with the far right of his coalition because maybe he is one of those people. He said he's going to take over Gaza. he said he's going to do this offensive. We've seen Hamas agree to these types of terms before, and Israel never agrees. And so I'll believe it when I see it. You know, other than that, it's just kind of almost a distraction, right? Like to act like there's some negotiation that matters.

Nothing matters. If Israel ended the war, the hostages would come home. That is very clear, you know. And it's because Netanyahu does not want to end the war. It doesn't mean Hamas isn't responsible for horrible things. They obviously are. But the fact of the matter has been for well over a year, that if Israel would end the war, the hostages would come home.

And it's not a reward for Hamas. Hamas has been totally, you know, decimated. Like the reason that there's some replenishment in their ranks is because, you know, of what's happened in Gaza. So let's just put that aside. I hope that there's a ceasefire. I don't think that that's likely given what's going on. What is going on, though, is that, like, the war just keeps getting worse.

And if you see this offensive go forward, you know, So we've learned it can always get worse in Gaza and it just, it looks like what it is, which is an attempt to ethnically can the Gaza Strip, to destroy the Palestinian people there, to have no regard to the number of people who die. That's what's happening until we see otherwise. That is what it is. Along the lines of the two points you just made, I mean, on the ethnic cleansing point, there are a bunch of reports today that Israel is in talks with other countries about relocating

Gazans to those countries as part of this ethnic cleansing plan. And the Times had reported on a bunch of talks between Israel and South Sudan, of all places. I can't imagine anywhere less safe. And the Wall Street Journal says there have been talks between Israeli officials and officials in Libya, South Sudan, Somali land in Syria. So again, hard to overstate how unsafe sending a bunch of Gazans to those locations would be. And also how potentially destabilizing it would be for those countries. And then... Not to mention fucking racist.

I mean, you know, there's nothing... First of all, the Palestinians don't want to leave Gaza. So it's all over their heads. But, like, they have as much to do with South Sudan as they have to do with Norway. You know, like, it's just saying that, like, these people's lives value. What's a place that we can look at the globe and think that life is not important there? Oh, South Sudan, where there are always civil wars and people, you know, suffering all kinds of ills. And so we'll just send the Palestinians there.

Yeah, and a government that I think is in a perilous enough position that they're looking at this and thinking, well, the Trump administration will like it if we take it all these people. Yeah, we'll go get a check. Yeah. God help. What happens to those people? when they get there. And then there was this a recording leaked of the Israel's ex-head of military intelligence where he says, quote, the fact that they're already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations. He also said, quote, for every one person on October 7th,

50 Palestinians must die. So this is a guy who resigned in April 2024. But like language like that from someone this senior certainly will be a part of any genocide case at the ICJ. Because that's illegal. That's a war crime. What that man said is a war crime. And the number of Israeli officials who have admitted to genocide on tape, even that they didn't use the G word. But if you say that, or if you say we need to starve these people,

or if you say we're going to take Gaza, you're admitting to the worst war crimes. Like that's not a part of war. You know, like that's not just something that happens, right? That's a policy that is against international. law that was set up after World War II to prevent the horrors that we saw in the war. Yeah. And I think it's all being enabled by the dehumanization of Palestinians and just two kind of data points we wanted to talk about that I think speak to that dehumanization.

So the first comes from Barry Weiss's publication, The Free Press. They decided to write an entire article attacking other news publications for running photos of kids in Gaza who are starving to death and look kind of emaciated like their ribs are poking out, like really horrible images that really shocked the world. And the free press, the argument they make in this article is that the images don't prove there's a famine because the kids featured have other health problems too. So it's sort of like hard to overstate how ghoulish this is. But one example really drilled at home from me, Ben, which is they have like 12 different examples they use. And one is a photo of a 14 year old boy named Mossab al-Dibs.

He was featured in a CNN story. He is described by CNN as suffering from malnourishment. But the big gotcha from the free press. is that the story didn't mention that the kid suffered a traumatic brain injury after he was hit in the head by shrapnel from an IDF airstrike. So they think that is making their point. I was incredibly triggered by this as you were. And I guess only two things I'd say about this are, first of all, if your reaction to looking at children literally starving to death in a place where 20,000 children have already been killed by bombing and shelling and other causes.

If your reaction to that is to try to dunk on those kids or publications or the New York Times or putting a picture of one of those kids on the front page by pointing out that there's some other condition that the starving kid is suffering from, I actually, like, that's sociopathic. I like worry for your soul. Well, that's the thing. I actually feel some pity for you, right? Like, I mean this. Like, there's something wrong with you, deeply, deeply fucked up with you.

If you look at starving children and then go try to launch investigations to prove that those starving children have other conditions, and then to think you're somehow owning the Palestinians or the left or whomever you're trying to own with it. The other point I want to make is that the free press, I'm so sick. And let's lump like the Jonathan Greenblad of the ADL under this umbrella too. But I'm so sick of people that have complete impunity and now have allies in positions of massive power, right, casting themselves as like truth-telling victims or something, right? Like Donald Trump is literally made it illegal to support Palestinians on campuses in this country. the ultimate cancel culture is around anybody expressing solidarity with Palestinians. And yet there's still this mentality from places like the free press that they are somehow the counterculture.

These people are somehow the outsiders holding power to account when literally Donald Trump, who is the most cynical ally you could possibly have, is basically criminalizing the kind of people that you're trying to own. Yeah, I guess like the quick things I'd say to these reporters is like, first of all, who do you think dies first in a famine? It's people with preexisting conditions. It's the weak. It's the sick. It's the young. And that's what's happening here. Second, not mentioned is the fact that the IDF has blown up all the medical facilities in Gaza. So these kids can't get treatment. They might need to look less emaciated or be healthier. Also not mentioned, again, is the Israeli government won't let international journalists into Gaza without an IDF minder. It would be a lot easier to avoid mistakes and to do. fact checking if you could have boots on the ground. And what's especially shitty about this, Ben, is the free press is weaponizing the fact that outlets like the New York Times actually care. They care about getting it right. They have standards. They work really fucking hard to tell the story. They issued a correction related to a kid that had a preexisting condition while he happened to be starving to death. And look, I know, I know corrections are frustrating for anyone has worked in this

business because they come late and they're downplayed compared to the bigger story. It's a whole thing. But these are reporters who are doing their best in a difficult information environment. And sometimes you don't have all the context because what are you supposed to do? Or you're supposed to go to the hospital that was blown up and find the records for these kids? Like the free press story is so condescending. It's like you don't need in-death reporting or to be on the ground. You just need Google. It's like that is, fuck you.

Fuck you. And you're the obnoxious scolding tone. Sanctimonious. And again, you're looking at people who are objectively starving. and your reaction how to quote, cover that story. It's trying to poke holes. Try to weaponize it. Yeah.

I mean, it's just gross. It's grotesque. But the only positive thing I'd say about this is a year ago, this might have traveled better. Now it's clanging more. And I'm not just talking about it because like Medi Hassan dunks on them. I mean, I just, it doesn't feel, it feels like Normies, who may not even follow his conflict are beginning to be like, oh, that's kind of ghoulish, man. That's kind of gross. All right.

We're going to take a quick break, but before we go, Ben, I want to tell you about a brand new show. It's called Shadow Kingdom. It's New Year's Eve, 1969. Jackie Blonsky, a charismatic labor leader, is campaigning against corruption. His wife and his daughter are murdered in their home. Ben said, the case shocks the country, and it sets off one of the most dramatic power struggles in American labor history. This season on Shadow Kingdom, Coal Survivor, get it? See what we did there? I got it. Yeah, it took me a second thing. Cool.

Nicholas Nicola Minone. investigates the deadly rise and fall of Tony Boyle, the corrupt mob-connected head of the United Mine Workers of America and the young son of his murdered rival who risked everything to take him down. They got exclusive tapes, original reporting. First day and interviews, this season reveals how a union meant to protect its workers got taken over by a leader willing to do whatever it took, including murder to hold on to power.

I didn't realize that Shadow Kingdom was like a serial of Cricket Media now. We got it, baby. Yeah, we're serialized. Let's go. We're doing South Park style 27 seasons. Let's buckle up. Listen to the trailer now on the Shadow Kingdom feed and subscribe to catch the two episode premiere on August 25th. Friends of the pod subscribers can binge the whole season starting on August 25th by joining at crooked.com slash friends or through the Shadow Kingdom Apple feed. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Hems.

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hymns.com slash world. Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety effectiveness or quality. Prescription required. See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information. And finally, we're going from gross to grosser. We've talked about Laura Lumer on the show before, unfortunately.

She's this right-way nut. She once changed herself to the Twitter office building in New York while wearing a star of David to protest being kicked off. That's your ally free press, by the way. That's your real ally. Yeah. She celebrated the drowning of Muslim refugees, including infants in the Mediterranean. I think she did the applauding emoji or something.

So that's who this person is. These days, though, Laura Lumer has got a direct line to the Oval Office. She has gotten lots of top Trump officials fired for perceived insufficient loyalty, including like the head of the NSA. But this latest move from her is just like, it's pure evil. So Laura Lumer heard about this organization called Heal Palestine and the work they were doing. This organization, what they're trying to do is like temporarily bring kids from Gaza to the U.S. for urgent medical treatment. So the State Department approved medical visas for 63 or so children plus accompanying adults.

The kids range from 6 to 15. And most of them like they lost a limb or three limbs. You know what I mean? These are kids in dire, dire shape. And the plan was treat them in the U.S. and then take them to Egypt, where they would then reunite with their families. So this was temporary. These were not like people moving to the U.S. to live here.

But Laura Lumer saw like Instagram videos of this organization, Heal Palestine, and the work they were doing. And she deemed it a national security threat. And she somehow got on the phone with Marco Rubio directly, who then suspended all visitor visas. And so I just, I want to say a lot of mean things about the two of them, but I kind of think like their actions here speak for themselves. Like kids are going to die.

It speaks for themselves. like a six-year-old amputees. I mean, you shouldn't have a national security threat prism on this anyway, but like that's so absurd. To me, to echo the point about feeling sorry, I don't feel sorry for these people, but it's just a sign of kind of societal collapse. You know, like that Laura Lumber is getting on the phone

with a sector of state, natural security advisor, National Archives of the United States, Markerubia, and stopping kids who've had amputations from come and get treatment for a temporary basis. It's, this is what you want. This is MAGA. Then it's a, it's a sign of a deep moral bankruptcy. Yeah, have that it.

This is good, good luck with your soul. Yeah, yeah. You got a higher power to worry. Good luck on the other side. So another sort of thing, we talked a lot about settler violence in the West Bank on the show recently. But today we wanted to highlight some broader developments in the West Bank that I think could really just all but kill off any hope of a future Palestinian state, such as there

is one at this point. So Israel's finance minister. Bezalel Smotritch approved a plan for thousands of new housing units that would connect East Jerusalem to another settlement in the east. So Smotris said on the record about this new group of settlements, quote, this reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize. Now, the Trump administration is also fully supportive of the settler movement. And U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee said of the expansion, quote, it is not a violation of international law, which it absolutely is.

because absolutely is. So that is a very big deal and a huge problem. And also I just want to highlight some very excellent and dogged reporting, Ben, from a reporter named Jasper Nathaniel, who writes for his substack, Infinite Jazz. So Jasper closely tracks developments in the West Bank. He recently highlighted the story of Mohammed Zahir Ibrahim, was a 16-year-old Palestinian-American boy, who has been in an Israeli prison since February. So this kid, he's 16, he was accused of throwing rocks on an empty street.

That's it. The kids been sitting in jail with adults. In the past, we've talked about his cousin, Seifola Musilat, who was beaten to death by settlers in July. So Jasper did an interview with Muhammad's father. Here's a portion of it. I know for a fact that the U.S. Donald Trump and down wanted to get him out and takes one folk. And you think they've just not decided to do that?

They have not. So now we know they haven't because he's not out yet. But so, you know, the U.S. government, they can put pressure and release it. He's an underage kid. He didn't do nothing, you know. Like, the way you see is like if he took your son to a grocery store in America, a 15-year-old, and he grabbed a candy bar, stole a candy bar and went home, would you expect the dirty soldiers to raid his house because he stole a candy bar?

That's what we look at that, you know. What do you do, you know? It just, I think, speaks to both the horrific treatment of Palestinian to the West Bank, but also the fact that the U.S. government under Trump and is just not giving a shit about them. Two quick updates on it, though, Ben. Like, first, I sent Jasper's reporting about Muhammad's case to Congressman Greg Landsman. Listeners might remember he was on the show a few months back. We debated, like, Iran policy and Gaza policy.

He's a representative from the Cincinnati area. It turns out that Greg, on a recent trip to Israel, had brought up Muhammad's case with both Ambassador Huckabee and with Netanyahu directly. So it sounds like this might lead to some movement on the case, which is amazing that Greg, Like, look, Greg and I have a huge disagreement on policy, but this guy has like a boundless faith in the value of engaging in pressuring the Israeli government. And if he can make some progress on this, like more power to him. But also, Ben, you know, I just like I talked to Jasper on the phone for a while today. And I do think he makes a very persuasive case that what is happening in the West Bank is just a it's just a crisis. And like all every liberal you hear talking about the need for a two state solution or Jal just sort of ignoring the fact that it is about to be rendered. an impossibility because of this settlement expansion that is enabled by the settler violence that is also enabled by the fact that Smotrich was basically put in charge of all these settlements even before October.

By design. Seventh. Yeah. And this is all sort of by design. It's just like this death by bureaucracy that is sort of hard to cover. And it, you know, it can sound like boring and bureaucratic, but it is, you know, it's a crisis. Yeah. The only thing they add to this because, look, these settlements have been going on.

for decades. They've been particularly accelerating under Nainiou, particularly accelerating into this recent government. If you look at a map, there's no viable contiguous. That means connected Palestinian territory in the West Bank anymore. There's these little islands of where Palestinians live that have been, you know, are these shrinking islands. The only thing I want to add to this is you're going to see some weird, you know, argumentation from Netanyahu supporters that it's McRone's fault or something. Because, because Emmanuel Macron recognized the Palestinian state, like, that is utter bullshit. They've been doing this last year, two years ago, three years ago. There's a reason Smotrich is in charge of this, right? So just,

just please discount that argument. They would be doing this whether or not European countries were recognizing Palestinian state. And on the amount of words anymore to describe the double standard of what happens to American citizens, Americans in the West Bank versus anywhere else in the world. I just say Trump is someone who has constantly prided himself on these efforts to get, quote, unquote, hostages out of difficult places. You know, he basically made the 2020 Republican convention, like, had a whole night about this.

Like, why can he get these people out? Yeah, one phone call. He's totally right. One phone call, they'd be out. and I don't know if that's because the kid's not white. I don't know if that's because the kids in the wise bank. It's probably both, but it's shameful. Yeah, it is shameful.

And good on members of Congress. Look, I don't like these eight-pack trips, but like if you're going to go, this is the kind of thing. Absolutely. You might have an impact. You're probably not going to be able to stop the war in Gaza, but you could do something here. Absolutely right. All right, Ben, let's head to South America where in the first round of the presidential election,

Bolivian voters cast a decisive vote against the nation's once dominant. Socialist Party. Sunday's winners include Centrist Senator Rodrigo Paaz, who garnered 32% of the vote and right-wing former president Jorge Tutu Kiroga, who received about 27% of the vote. And so they will likely face each other in a runoff in October on the 19th. So pause, the centrist was a dark horse candidate who defied most expectations. And a lot of people said Bolivia's right wing just wouldn't do well in these elections. And it looks like he did. The country's current socialist President Luis Arce is so unpopular that he decided not to run for re-election. And the candidate running in his place, I think heaped out about 3% of the votes. So not a good showing for the

Socialists. And just an extraordinary collapse for the Moss Party, which, you know, has held power for nearly two decades, thanks to former president, Avo Morales, more on him at a minute. The main issues in this election will not surprise anyone. There was inflation that I think hit 24%. There were shortages of commodities like fuel, long gas lines, like all the things that piss off voters everywhere. Avil Morales, you know, we should get it to, I'd love to hear. You just sort of sound off on who he is. And he's a force in Bolivian politics. He was born into poverty, became a leader in the Coco Union, served as Bolivia's first indigenous president from 2006 to 2019. He was barred from running for a fourth term. That led to a bunch of protests. He had

temporary exile. And he had a falling out with the current president who was sort of a protege. And then Morales was charged with some really fucked up stuff, human trafficking, the statutory rape of an impregnating of a 15-year-old girl, which is a charge. I don't think he even doesn't even deny that. Yeah. So he is now hold up. And the Washington Post described it as a tropical fortress in this sort of like cocoa producing region of the country where he has all these supporters either sleeping out like

by this compound or at the ready that he can kind of like summon via a radio call to come defend him. So it's a very weird situation. But he was surging his supporters to cast a null vote. in the vote on Sunday. So, Ben, two sort of questions for you. First of all, I'm just see if you wanted to sound off on Avo Morales and like his legacy in Bolivia or Latin American politics generally. And also, you know, we've been kind of watching these elections in Latin America and looking for like bellwether signs of a rightward shift. This feels like a bad one. And maybe could be

worrisome for Chile, who's got an election coming up in November, I think. Yeah, I guess, look, Avo Morales was a dominant. figure in the politics of Bolivia, you know, in the earlier 21st century. And look, we should say did some good things, right? I mean, a lot of people out of poverty, you know, lifted a lot of people out of poverty, a lot of redistribution of wealth to communities that have been totally cut out. Obviously, like a pathbreaker for the indigenous community in Bolivia, it's a very large one, came out of kind of labor movement, you know, somewhat like Lula in Brazil. And so at the, at the beginning of his tenure, you know, you could see him as someone who was addressing social

justice issues that were long overdue in a place to Bolivia. And then, like some of these other leaders we've seen in the region, you know, just didn't want to let go. And, you know, the longer you stick around, the longer you try to hold on the power, there usually tends to be a whiff of corruption and autocracy that kind of starts to grow up around you. He didn't go as far as, say, like a Chavez. But, you know, he was kind of hanging on. Now, then I think, you know, we've covered some of this over the years, you know, the right, like, had some genuine support. And there were some questions, though, also about some of the past elections. What is clear is right now, it seems like people of Bolivia are moving on, right? And the thing I'd say is Aval Morales, whatever you think of him,

positive, negative, or mixed, he's the past, you know, like he's not the future of Bolivian politics. He's not the future of the Bolivian left, you know. And so that's, you know, when I step back, and I think about the left across Latin America, what's interesting to me, and I've recently been talking to a bunch of Latin American politicians, some of these travels I've had, what I've been struck by is that you've got Lula, who's kind of the elder statesman down there.

Then you've got these guys like Morales, Maduro's like kind of the far end of it, you had Raphael Correa in Ecuador, those guys kind of yesterday. Claudia Shanebaum, is the hero. Like Claudia, if you're looking for the playbook for a, like, left-wing leader in Latin America, it's Claudia shame-bound.

She's not sacrificed her convictions, but, you know, she, she's not a cult of personality. She's just a- She's just a very effective leader, you know, who's making good use of social media, good at getting her message out, picks her spots of when to fight back. It's not as much of the machismo, right,

of some of these other guys, right? So my advice is, like, I think Claudia Seymbaum, even more than Lula, is got to be seen as a center of gravity and the template for a kind of left-wing politics that can work in the hemisphere. I think Chile will be interesting because it feels like it's going to be one of these elections where it's going to be like the communists for the far right, you know, and we'll see which way it goes, which makes it not the best bellwether because it, you know, just. Yeah.

But, yes, you're right. Like, it seems like Bikale has been a bit of a model, some of these places that are exhausted. But you can find evidence for your own theories because Shanebaum's popular. Loules hanging on. You know, we've got Petro taking some stands in Columbia. He's a left-wing leader. We'll see. The trends are kind of mixed down there.

Yeah, and the shame about what gets her in a second. We're going to talk about cartels. It's interesting because Amlo, her predecessor, President Lopez Obrador, was such a force in Mexican politics. A lot of people were like, ah, she's just going to be a puppet. You know, she was seen as sort of like technocratic and maybe not able to, like, dominate the media landscape the way he did. But no, like, she's been wildly impressive.

Yeah, and doesn't necessarily need to do the three-hour press conference every morning. Every day. But she does a lot. She gets out there. Yeah, she gets out there. Well, let's talk about Mexico. So staying in Latin America then. So last week, CNN's Natasha Bertrand reported that the U.S. is sending about 4,000 Marines

and sailors to the waters around Latin America and the Caribbean is part of Trump's fight against drug cartels. The Trump administration is also sanctioned another two cartels. And Mexico sent a much of high-ranking cartel figures. to the U.S. for punishment. So it's been like, there's been a series of like executive orders and designations of these cartels as terrorist groups. And then earlier this month, New York Times reported that Trump has secretly authorized and directed the Pentagon to start using military force against cartels. The Times reported the order, which DOD declined to comment on, quote, provides an official basis for military operations at sea and on foreign soil. So Trump is merging

the totally effective war on terror in that military. tourism with the totally effective war on drugs, what could go wrong? With the totally effective history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Yeah, yeah, the perfect mix. Everything that we've done wrong for the last hundred years is in this strategy. So after this Times article came out, the Mexican president of Claudia Seymomb, she like forcefully rejected the idea of the U.S. military, like taking action on Mexican soil. She said, quote, the United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military.

We cooperate, we collaborate, but there's not going to be an invasion that has ruled out, absolutely ruled out. When has been brought up, we've always said no. And there's a lot of reasons to believe it has been brought up. I mean, former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and Trump 1.0, wrote in his memoirs that, imagine reading that guy's memoir. I think it was a lobbyist to sex death like six months. Did you do the audiobook time? Oh, God, no. He said that in 2020, Trump wanted to, quote, shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs. So this is an idea that we used to think was crazy, and we were talking about them, but then like it became a big talking point in the in trump's 2024 campaign you heard a bunch of republicans talking about it i remember seeing

i couldn't find the polling but i remember seeing some polling that was like surprisingly popular although i think that that popularity goes down if the u.s takes action without the mexican government's approval thank god but again like a few years ago i think i would have said this is crazy and even trump wouldn't do this now i kind of feel like we're months away from the CIA or the military taking a drone strike in mexico against some fentanyl all that which is totally insane I mean, this is our neighbor of 130 million people. The idea that the United States, I mean, how are we different than Russia? You know, like, if we're just suddenly, like, using military force without their consent in Mexico, right?

That's the first thing. And to your point about the war and terror, like, let's hold ourselves accountable here. Like, the normalization of drone strikes, well, now, you know, like, it seems far away when it's in Pakistan. But now that, those chickens, to quote Jeremiah Wright, you know. Start coming home to roost, you know. But just to add the layer of alarmism, which you kind of got at is this kind of, this is the frog boiling. But like, you know, you start using military force in Mexico. You start like deploying weird military presence in the, you know, Caribbean.

Like Eric Prince is, you know, contracting out to do stuff in Ecuador. And Haiti too, I think. Panama Canal looms, right? Like that Trump, you know, wants to take back. I mean, Haiti, Canada, Canada, Cuban, Venezuela are sitting there as adversaries. But like there, there's a weird Trump turn towards just kind of like, because these are wars you might think he can win, you know, like we can, even though you, I mean, like you said,

it repeats all the mistakes of the past. So I don't know, it's a terrible idea on its face and it's illegal in Mexico. I also just kind of worry about some, we're looking up in four years and like we're having segments on Panama, Mexico, you know, some Caribbean, you know, maybe, maybe Cuba. Like we're Bay of Pigs 2.0. Like, I mean, honestly, like this, we're to start using our imaginations here because once you break the, this is the key point. Once you break the seal, like the U.S. doesn't tend to stop doing things.

If we start bombing Mexico, when do we stop? Because then the cartels will keep being there and then we'll have to keep bombing them. And then we'll be like, oh, the cartels aren't just Mexico. There's supply chains run down to Ecuador, you know, or Venezuela's harboring people. And all of a sudden you got like a, you know, use of force in multiple countries. If you think this is crazy, just look at the war on terror. Yeah, and, like, Trump will just love being seen as taking action against drugs and being decisive and I'll love it when the libs freak out.

And yeah, you can totally see it spiraling. Yeah. Good stuff. Finally, Ben, some sad news. So I think, like two weeks ago, we announced our plan to do a weekly check-in with State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce. Frequent State Department briefing watchers may have noticed that she doesn't seem to know how to talk. Yeah.

Which is a problem when you're briefing the press. for a spokesperson. But then Donald Trump came along and announced that he was given Tammy a promotion. She's going to be deputy UN ambassador. I didn't see this. I know. I learned before these guys. Presumably.

Not deputy FBI director? Because I saw they layered by the general of like Missouri, I think, is now like the co. He's a co-depeed FBI director. There's a such thing as a co-debanyi FBI. They just layered Dan Bonjino for being too emotional. By the way, if they're okay with the service of all these other people, but they're like, Hey man, Bonino really needs a win man. Can you imagine what the hell Bonino is doing every day?

It's bad news. It's bad news. So I assume, like Tammy got this job at the UN because he just doesn't care about the UN. But we did just want to give an official Pod Save the World goodbye to Tammy, who, you know, like a giant hypergiant blue star. Blue hypergiant star, I think is the one I googled. She burned fast and she burned bright. And to honor her, our great producers put together this tribute video, which Ben and I have not seen yet because it's too painful. but without further ado, here's Tammy's supernova at the State Department. By the end of the week, does that mean by Friday, by Saturday, by Sunday?

I think generally it could be the collection of the days at the end of the week. President Trump has not just the desire to ask for new ideas. He asks for them because he gets them. He knows new ideas are possible. His life is a new idea. Am I on that? Is this like a silo-sabin journey? To be here and do work that facilitates making things better for people.

And in the greatest country on earth, next to Israel. The details of the decisions made by the president. What that will entail, I have no details for you. That is not something that I can speak to. As far as your question about the details, I won't go in. to the details. I think it's important to not second-guess the president. I'm not going to speak about opinion of the government. I would just suggest calling the White House to make a determination of the Trump policy. I, first of all, I'm certainly not going to remotely address that.

How does square a circle? Well, it is, it's not, one doesn't need to complete the circle or square it. Wow. What a tour to force. What a video. It felt like of the Oscars in Memorial section is beautiful. I didn't know how much depth there was to her, though, right? Like his life is a new idea. Like this is someone who seems like there's like a meditate, like in place of prep, there's like a meditation or something. It's just so weird. Why, how do you not know how to talk? You're a Fox News person. Anyway, Tammy, best of luck. Well, she has to get confirmed by the Senate. So maybe she'll be better. That seems like a slam dunk. And Waltz do. Mike Waltz, former. Seems like another slam dunk. National Security Advisor.

Okay, that is it for us in the news section today. I was very happy to be back. I missed doing this last week. But thank God that Putin summit was... Such a success while you're gone. Such a success. Yeah, and we've cleared up all these issues. We're going to take a quick break.

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To claim this deal, you must go to high. Health.com slash world. This deal is not available on their regular website. Go to h-I-Y-A-H-E-L-T-H-H-T-H-C-T-H-C-R-E-H-E-L-T-H-R-R-E-H-E-L-R-E-H-E-E-L-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E-E-E-E-W-E-E-E-E-W-E-E-E-W-E-E-E-E-W-E-E-W a lot more than I am. But look, we're going to get to the Palestinian issue, but I want to start just, you know, yesterday we obviously had this meeting with all the European leaders after the summit in Alaska. And I guess I was thinking about the way to get your reaction to this. And I wanted to ask you a kind of strange feeling I had in watching this and commenting on it because there's so much that I don't like about what I'm seeing in terms of Trump's kind of movement to the Putin position and the Europeans kind of needing to try to pull him back with flattery.

And I guess what is your reaction to what you've seen in trying to digest these meetings, but also how do you balance the necessity of being critical of things that just look like, you know, a U.S. president essentially taking the Russian side in this war with like the sincere desire to see, you know, peace. Like we would like to see a settlement, but we want it to be just, right? So how do you balance that role of being kind of a critic with that role of, of, of of wanting to see a resolution that is at least somewhat favorable to Ukraine? You know, I was at a town hall last night in Atlanta, and usually foreign policy is not something

that people really care about at a town hall. But I talked about the fact that Donald Trump has made American leadership just purely transactional. It's all a deal. Almost any American president when they had the press conference with Putin would have said, Mr. Putin, give back Ukraine its land or some sense of Mr. Putin, your invasion was wrong. Almost any American president, when they welcome Zelensky, would say, and we stand with the just cause of Ukraine. I think the problem people have is not that Donald Trump is trying to bring an end to the war or get a deal, It's that he's doing it without any sense of moral principle. And in this, our foreign policy and our domestic policy are similar.

It's just transactional. It's just the maximization of Trump's interests, and people sense a loss of morality, a loss of principle, whether that's Ukraine, whether it's Gaza, whether it's domestically, and people are reacting to that. that's a really interesting and well-stated point and i guess my one follow-up would be is there anything because i i share your view completely um yet at the same time you know trump has got so much control over the gears here of both foreign and domestic policy on ukraine is there what is the role of congress or what is the role of democrats in congress who don't have kind of their hands on the levers

of power um how do you think about your role in being a kind of source uh or voice of accountability or support for Ukraine? I think one, it's almost to overcorrect and say we can't abandon Ukraine because I think that the challenge is that Trump is instinctually very willing to just throw Ukraine overboard and say, well, just give up the terror party. So it's important that the 300, 320 members of Congress who believe that we can't abandon Ukraine speak out. That said, and I was part, as some people may remember, of a progressive letter in 2022, where some of us said, look, we need to stand with Ukraine, but dialogue is fine and that there should be some dialogue towards a just peace. Well, I don't think that Democrats should reflexively just say, well, no to any dialogue or no to any sincere efforts to facilitate a just end to the war out of hyperpartisanship. The problem here is that,

Trump has not, I mean, he can't get himself to say that Putin's invasion was wrong. He can't get himself to say, give back the territory or even as a matter of first principles. Like, you should give back all the territory. Okay, now we're having a negotiation that's not just, but we have to meet the realities. He's not even, he doesn't even have the first principles that Ukraine was right and Putin was wrong. And that's the problem with his negotiation. Yeah. And I suppose in your, and this kind of leads us into the Palestinian question, but part of what you can do, right, is remind Americans in the world that Trump does not necessarily speak for all of America, right? You can reflect that solidarity in that kind of values-based position. And that leads me to this

letter that you've spearheaded asking the Trump administration to recognize a Palestinian state. As our listeners know, this is not an out-of-the-mainstream idea globally. In addition to most of the world recognizing a Palestinian state. We've seen a number of European countries move in that direction. First, countries like Spain and Slovenia and Ireland, but then more recently it's moved into countries like France and Australia and the UK, moving into the G7 or traditional U.S. allies. What was your thinking in terms of the timing and purpose of this letter seeking to generate democratic support for the idea of recognizing a Palestinian state right now? I'll say there are three reasons why now.

First, Lakuz Charter has always been the greater Israel from the sea to Jordan, but now they actually have people in the government acting on that. Ben-Gabir, Smokrish, Netanyahu, expanding settlements, not just in the West Bank, talking about having a Gaza free of Palestinians. So the need to affirm a Palestinian. state is not just aspirational. It is urgent. It is to say Gaza, West Bank, this has to be a Palestinian state. Second, the United States risks becoming totally isolated from the moral consensus of the world. Now you have not just nations of the global south or nations that

were former colonies speaking out for a Palestinian state. You have France, you have Britain, you have Canada, you have Australia. These are our allies shifting position. Why do we want to isolate ourselves from the world? How is that in our strategic interests? What do we gain by being the sole holdout on the recognition of the Palestinian state? And third, if we want any hope of something better whenever this war ends, this is the time to lay out a marker for a positive vision of the self-determination

of Palestinian people living side by side with a secure Israel. And it's a sense that there's got to be something better and hopeful after what we're seeing. Yeah, and so I want to deal with like the substance of this and then we can get into the politics and the Democratic Party. But beginning with kind of the immediate substantive question, I share your view completely, right, that it's important to lay down a marker against the kind of erasure of a potential for Palestinian state in the West Bank of Gaza. There's also the question, though, of like, what does this do to end the war? And it does seem to me that there's some interaction between what you're trying

to do in signaling from the Democratic Party this shift towards recognition with what Europe's trying to do with what we see in Israel, which is hundreds of thousands of people now protesting to end the war. You've also said and supported the effort that Bernie Sanders had in the Senate to cut off weapons, which would obviously be not going to be adopted by Trump, but is kind of part of that signaling that if you keep going down this road, Israel is going to be isolated so therefore stop the war. I mean, how do you think about what your efforts do to interact with what Europe's doing, with what those Israelis are doing who are protesting? How does the recognition, or at least the letter, suggesting that this is where the Democratic Party is going.

How does that interact with efforts to end the war now? Well, one, it's saying very clearly, we're not taking our marching orders from Netanyahu. I mean, Netanyahu literally said early on that he wasn't going to visit countries, which officially recognized Palestine. What is he going to say? He's not going to visit the United States. And I think that anything that says we're going to, to call the shots for what is just and not going to be beholden to Netmihou or the Israeli government

is a clear message that they need to end what's going on. Now, it's not sufficient. We also need to support Delia Ramirez's bill to say no military weapons that can be used to kill civilians until this war ends. We need to support Sanders' resolutions. on it. But collectively, I think it shows that a growing number of Americans, both actually on the Democrat party, certainly the majority of the Democrats, I would say at this point, but also an increasing number of people on the right are done with this kind of blank check approach to Net Miyahu. And within the party, you know, moving into kind of where the substance

meets the politics, it seems to me in watching this from the outside and talking to different people and different members of Congress. There's kind of three, you know, buckets, right? There are people like you who are willing to go out there and say, you know, in some ways this relationship needs to change, given the nature of this Israeli government, and you're comfortable with things like weapons cutoffs and Palestinian recognition. Then there's kind of far more conventional people that, you know, support Israel, that they're traveling to Israel on AIPAC, sponsored trips, that kind of thing.

But then there seems to be a vast middle of people. right, who they're not comfortable with the Nanyahu government, but they're also kind of not comfortable maybe signing under a letter like yours because it's just so out of step with what they've done in the past. You and I, let's just name it,

you know, you mentioned making news. I mean, you may have been referencing, you know, I was quite critical of Pete Buttigieg's answer. Someone, you know, I think you and I both admire for the work he's done, but he kind of gave a word salad answer to Pod Safe America in which he kind of didn't take a position,

kind of named a bunch of things without saying, whether he'd cut off weapons or recognized Palestinian state. In your conversations with people in that middle, right, people who don't like what's going on but haven't kind of gotten to where you are, what is your sense of where things are moving? What are the conversations that you're having with your colleagues about trying to get them on your letter? How can we try to shift the Democratic Party's view on this in the way that I think you're trying to show some leadership on?

I think people are realizing that the old talking points are no longer working. And that's a good thing for people to be able to grow, right? One of the talking points that even I was told when I first got into Congress, and every member of Congress hears is, well, friends disagree with each other privately. They don't disagree publicly. And this used to basically be the standard APEC talking point. that anyone running for Congress, Senate, governor would hear. And, you know, for the last seven, eight, ten, twenty, thirty years,

just saying that was safe. And suddenly people are saying that, and they're being ridiculed. And these are thoughtful people. These are people who care about many times about America's moral leadership. And so they're saying, okay, something is changing. And I think that we as a party have to be open. and non-judgmental when people are making a shift. So, you know, I appreciate actually that Secretary Buttigieg in a subsequent interview

clarified and he said, no, I actually would vote for Sanders Amendment. And I'd support, it seemed like he said, I'd support Rose effort. That's great. I want to build a consensus towards a new position. And if people adopt that position, we shouldn't say, well, you were, you know, late to adopt it. Let more people get to that position because that gives us the best shot to actually get peace and a change in policy. And right now, you know, the reality is this. It's for APEC, I'm just going to speak bluntly, apparently signing on to my letter or recognizing a Palestinian state as a red line.

And some people are afraid of crossing that red line. I personally don't think this is going to be a red line that will be enforced. I think APEC will quickly recognize, or many of APEC will recognize this is not the place to have the red line. J Street has endorsed the letter now formally, move on as endorsed it, and Indivisible has endorsed it. J. Street actually is going to be making this a day of action on September 16. So we have 20 signers already, which is pretty good for the summer recess. We want to release it before the General Assembly, and I'm hoping we can get to 50. I you know that's that's the internal goal I've said so I want to put this in a bigger context

for the party on foreign policy and politics and look obviously the most important thing is what is happening to people in Gaza right now and the humanitarian you know catastrophe there and the imperative to try to stop it I also think though that this issue is something of a proxy for where the Democratic Party is going you know, and just to credit you with something, I mean, you know, I don't know how many people are soccer fans, right, or hockey fans, but there's the kind of famous saying, right, you, you skate to where the puck is going, you run to where the ball is going, right? Things are changing very fast in this country and around the world. And on this issue, I see you trying to, instead of

being behind the curve, you're trying to get to where public opinion is going, but also where policy is going, you know. But how much is this issue kind of a proxy, for the party not fighting or not having an identity, right, in the sense that if you're not willing to stand up to APEC on its threats, how are you going to stand up to Trump, right? Or if you're not willing to stand up to Netanyahu, how are you going to stand up to Putin, right? I mean, how do you see this issue as a proxy for a bigger question

about the future of the party and whether it has backbone and whether it has independent views separate from the old talking points. Yes, I go. On the most basic level, are you willing to stand up to powerful interest groups? I mean, people, APEC, who's put in millions of dollars in primary campaigns and people who are either going to cut off your donors or cut off funding or he actually target funding against you. And are you willing to stand up clearly against that kind of pressure?

That doesn't mean that you don't have conversation. It might be. I have conversation with everyone. And you've got to bring along a large part of the American Jewish community, in my view, to be ultimately able to bring peace. But are you willing to stand up to that? On a deeper level, though, it is about are you willing to fight for, an America that stands up for human rights and the dignity of people, regardless of race,

regardless of religion, right? If we want to, if the central premise of the Democratic Party is to be a cohesive, multiracial democracy, it also is a cohesive multiracial democracy that recognizes the dignity of people, white, black, or brown around the world. And the injustices in the United States of slavery and the Jim Crowe, are also part of a global injustice, right? W.B. Du Bois said it wasn't not just the problem of the color line. It was a problem of the global color line where there was colonialism, where there was imperialism.

And a new generation says, well, I want you to stand not just for an America that is a cohesive multiracial democracy. I want you to stand for America that is going to lead for justice around the world. And particularly the young generation of folks. And so this has become a symbol. If you're not going to do it here, well, do you really believe in that kind of human rights conviction-centered politics? Yeah, I mean, and this also gets to policy. I mean, that's a very well-stated position of values and political philosophy that I wholly, you know, support. This happened a few weeks ago, but I do want to play this clip of senators.

Gene Shaheen, who's the ranking member on the Farm Relations Committee, in reaction to a point you made about the Democrats needing to be the anti-war party, which is both a political and a substantive point you made, right? That politically, we need to be in that position, but substantively, we need to be in that position, and we've let ourselves become cast by Trump as kind of the party of Forever Wars, which has got some truth to it. So I want to play this clip and just have you respond to this question of, like, what does it mean for the Democrats to be a party that kind of embraces more of an anti-war identity. So we'll play that now.

I interviewed Congressman Roe-Kana recently, who's been advocating for the Democratic Party to be the anti-war party. He said that the party has become too hawkish, in his opinion. Is this an opportunity for Democrats to move more in that direction, as you're hearing from Americans that they don't want us? I mean, one of the reasons so much of the president's base

is frustrated is because they voted for him, because they felt that he was the anti-war president, that he made promises that we would not be entangled in foreign conflicts. Is this an opportunity for Democrats? Might you be missing that opportunity if you don't sort of look at that messaging as a path for the party? No. And I think Rokana is wrong. Okay.

The fact is foreign policy isn't that easy. You can't just say I'm against all conflicts because they're all going to be. be against America's interest or against global interest. So what would you say to that idea that, you know, you don't get it or it's too complicated or, you know, trust us. We know what we're doing on these foreign policy issues. Well, I was actually, when I saw that clip, I was surprised about the vehemence of the anger with my position.

Usually politicians are more diplomatic. And I reached out to Senator Schenheim efforts. as I had spoken at the Shaheen McIntyre dinner and have always respected her. I was heartened that she actually then voted for both of Senator Sanders' amendments to oppose the offensive military weapons going to Israel. But look, this is the standard talking point, right, to dismiss anyone who is arguing for more restraint and less war. I remember Secretary Clinton making these arguments against Barack Obama,

Oh, he's so naive. He doesn't get foreign policy. He's not part of the high priesthood. And how naive of him to think that the war in Iraq was a mistake. How convenient. He wasn't even in the Senate. He didn't get those classified briefings. And there's this sense that if you are the anti-war position,

if you're the human rights position, then they don't dismiss you by the argument. They just dismiss you as incompetent, as unable to lead, is not being fit to be in a position to be trusted, is not being an expert enough. It's the same way the economists dismissed those who were against some of the free trade agreements or warning about the hollowing out of the country.

Oh, they don't understand basic economics. And that worked for many years, but now people are catching on, and it's not going to work because on a basic level, what Trump was saying, and what some people on the left, including me, agree, is that we spent way too much money overseas on staying in Afghanistan, 20 years, on Iraq. We had failures in Libya.

We had failures with Yemen. And those are resources that we should have been spending in the United States, developing our own economy. Where I differ with Trump is I don't think it's just about the waste of resources or the projection of power in a way that's not an American's interest. It's also a moral issue that ultimately these wars of choice have not led to more justice, have not led to a better outcome in the world, and that we should have a little bit more humility about our approach in these regions to really be promoting human dignity around the world consistent with our values.

And I think this is becoming an increasing sentiment now within both the Democratic and Republican Party. And frankly, it's easier to less courageous for me to take those positions than when Obama had to take those positions in some of them in 2008. Yeah, so the last question I want to ask you is, to that point,

you're out there a lot, you're doing a lot of town halls, you're around the country. We're clearly not going back to the old foreign policy, or at least I think it'd be a mistake, both substantively and politically, to suggest you're going to run the tape back to kind of American hegemony and, you know, all

these other things. First of all, the tools won't be there. There's no USAID, the so-called, you know, deep state or whatever, national security state is kind of being deconstructed. But if you were to give, and I'm sure you get this question about, you know, essentially what is the elevator pitch for what a democratic foreign policy should be going into the future. I know that's a big question, but how would you give a short, you know, answer to somebody at town hall who's like, you know, this world's confusing. I don't like what Trump's doing, but I also don't like what Biden did on some of these issues. What's a democratic alternative for the future on foreign policy? It is a foreign policy that is human rights based, that is conviction based, that says that America is strongest when

we recognize the dignity and human rights and aspirations of other nations around the world, and that in America that now has literally the stories and struggles of people around the world is poised to be a leader in shaping a more just world. And so that does not mean disengagement with the world. It does not mean isolationism, but it means that we should be reluctant to just engage in militaristic wars of choice, partly because that has not helped our own country in developing, and it has cost a lot of resources,

and it has not made a more just world. And we should really engage in statesmanship and diplomacy based on our values to regain the moral high ground. I'll close because they were just in Atlanta. I met with Jason Carter, who was President Carter's grandson. And we had both interned together in 1996 at the Carter Center. And one of the things I remember I heard President Carter preach in Sunday school, which he did as a former president.

And he said, you know, wouldn't it be great if America is a superpower were known not just for our military power, but if we were known as the peacemakers, if we were known as the statesmen, if when there were problems around the world, people would come to America to seek our guidance to help create a more just world. And that to me is my conviction of what world I would like America to be. And whether it's sellable politically or not, I don't know. But I think that's the right vision for the nation. Yeah, well, it's definitely preferable to either Forever Wars or approaching things like Ukrainian sovereignty as a real estate transaction. Rokana, thanks so much for joining us. And thanks for all you're doing out there.

Appreciate it. Thanks again to Rokana for doing the show. And Tammy. Thank you for your service. Let us know. Ben, you could probably have some restaurant recommendations in New York. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Get together. They're restaurants, but I wouldn't go into the food. Can't get the details. On the plates. There is a menu. There's some silverware. I won't discuss what was on it. I won't square that circle for you.

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