Pod Save the World - How the world sees our election

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Tommy and Ben talk with British Member of Parliament David Lammy about how the world views the US election. Then they talk about protests over abortion rights in Poland, fears of civil war in Ethiopia, reports about US cyber attacks against hackers to prevent election interference, how social media companies handled election disinformation and reports of a Royal covid coverup.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I think I can say without hyperbole, without being fact-checked by Daniel Dale, without any reservations that this might be the best episode we've ever done because we are the closest to getting Donald Trump the fuck out of the White House as we've ever been. So tantalizingly close, Tommy. It's so close. I mean, you're so aware that that's going to be the result.

and yet it doesn't, you're not allowed to fully feel good until it's completely done. I'm so superstitious that I get mad at Hannah if she says, well, the traffic wasn't bad today before we are actually like at the destination and parked. So I am like incapable of letting myself feel good. But as of right now, we're recording at 117 Pacific here in Los Angeles. Things are looking very good for Joe Biden in basically every state, but especially Georgia and Pennsylvania and we're just slowly, agonizingly waiting for this, this counting to be done and like refreshing 538 or whatever your drug of choice is today. I don't know if you've preferred Nate. Like, I don't know where you're going to. I basically have lived for the last 48 hours

on our text chain, Twitter, and cable news, which is not a healthy diet other than our text chain. I just, but I mean, the thing is, you know, we all know people in the Biden campaign. one of the things I've been struck by is everything they've said bore out. You know, they were very bullish on Wisconsin and Michigan. They said they were going to come back in Pennsylvania. They thought Georgia was basically a tie and they had a shot. They thought they had a slightly in Arizona. These are the things they were saying Tuesday night.

So clearly someone over there, you know, was the right data nerd because it put me at ease that what, you know, what they've been predicting has basically been coming to fruition with the vote count. And we've all been in these elections. Like Pennsylvania, Philadelphia always comes in late, you know, and I mean, but you're just, you want it to be over, though. Like you said, the long national nightmare is like almost over, you know. Yeah. Yeah, you can build the best model you can possibly imagine. You can tell yourself a thousand times that it's going to take a while to count vote by mail. You can prepare yourself emotionally. You can work the media refs, but there is nothing that makes it easier when you are just sitting there stressing, watching Donald Trump in all these

places and waiting for the final results to come in, these things to flip in the last minute. It's just, it's agonizing. And you add on top of that, like an authoritarian president who has been calling everything rigged against him and stolen and fraudulent since the day he got in office. But like, it doesn't help. Well, and it's different, right, when it's an election. And I mean, first of all, the consequence of an election really hits you like a ton of bricks. I mean, I remember four years ago, I was with, I was at Dan Fyfer. and our buddy Cody watching their turns and it was like, wait, that's it?

We don't get it back? Like, is there a do-over? Like, this is, it's all over? Like, the course of American history and world history is completely altered in this moment. And now here, like, you have the same sense of watching this, but the other thing is,

these authoritarian things he does, like demanding that they stop counting votes and, you know, deploying goons and grifters to try to intimidate people polling sites and declaring victory earlier. Like, this is like, we might as well, be talking about like Lukashenko and Belarus and a pot say the world segment. I mean, this is like crazy authoritarian stuff. But like we're so conditioned that that's, oh, that's Trump.

Of course that's what he's doing. Yeah. Yeah. But it's scary, man, because this has never happened in American history before. Yeah, it is truly scary. Well, so back to the show itself today. So we have a great conversation that we're going to lead off with with David Lammy, our favorite MP, our favorite British correspondent. And he's going to talk with us about how the world. is watching our elections, what it's like in the UK to stress about America and whether we're going to get it together. We recorded that earlier this morning. So some of that conversation at the very end, we talk about numbers and states and stuff will feel a little dated. And then for our news section, we are going to talk about abortion rights in Poland. We're going to talk about

fear of a civil war in Ethiopia. Some updates on all these election interference concerns that we were talking about going into the election, whether the efforts to prevent them were right, whether they were overstated. We'll get into how the social media platforms are handling disinformation. And then there is a royal cover-up that's brewing. So we're going to bring in our special royal correspondent, Ben Rhodes, to talk us through all of that. So fantastic show today.

But let's start with our conversation with David Lammy. We are so excited to be joined by one of our favorite guests here on Ponce of the World. He's a British member of Parliament. He's the author of the book Tribes. David Lammy is great to see you. Thank you for coming back on the show. Not at all. And I'm coming back at one of the most exciting times in our recent history. So I'm very pleased to be with you. Well, we're so thrilled to have you. Our brains are mush. We do nothing but watch cable news and refresh Twitter. And it's so nice to have

a real conversation. So hypothetical question for you. An authoritarian leader is demanding that authorities stop counting ballots that were likely cast by his opponent's supporters as a way to buy time to throw an election into a judicial system that has been stacked with his unqualified lackeys. What does the UK government do about it? The UK government condemns it. You know, the UK government joins with partners in the European Union and speaks loudly with one voice. The UK government defends the democratic tradition.

So what the hell is going on is your question? Because there has been silence. We are so smug. in the United States about how we talk about foreign elections and democracy and then, you know, we're not exactly cleaning up our own mess here. How do things look from the UK? What is the average person in the UK thinking about this election right now? It's important, I think, for folk to realize that all over the world, people at this moment are getting a lack of sleep, they are glued to their TV sets, they are glued to social media. They are really, really focused on whether Joe Biden has

just done it. You know, the global community know a lot about US elections. There's a lot of analysis. We also understand the important role of the Senate, and we can see that that's not looking as good as people thought. And I guess, um, America plays or has traditionally played an important role as being, notwithstanding the issues that arise, of course there are issues that arise. I remember the counting chads not that long ago, but an important role being a beacon for democracy. So what is really worrying is not just the sort of gerrymandering around court cases and, you know, the delaying the inevitable. but actually when you look at, and I saw some images coming to us overnight, of people chanting, stop the vote, stop the vote, stop the vote, that is frightening to particularly

to Europeans and all the world. So, David, I wanted to ask you, the question of American credibility is an interesting one, because on the one hand, I think we all sense America's lost something these last four years in terms of its standing in the world, that people were concerned not to be. just with Trump, but the fact that, you know, this country could elect Trump and this, you know, the world just saw a lot of Americans vote for Trump again. On the other hand, like you just said, people around the world are watching this very closely. They still seem to care about what happens here, you know, for a variety of different reasons. Let's assume for the moment that

that Joe Biden can squeak this out. And the world just saw the United States not repudiate Trumpism. There wasn't an overwhelming result against Donald Trump, but they may have just seen Donald Trump defeated and the American system kind of hold and Joe Biden get in. What do you, what is, where does that shake out in terms of what the state of American credibility is in the world and in America's capacity to speak up, you know, for democratic values or to take on issues like the pandemic? What is an America led by Joe Biden after this election look like in the eyes of the world as both a leader and as a leader on behalf of a set of values? Joe Biden's election marks a reset, and it's a reset where the global community in very,

very turbulent economic times, very turbulent times as a result of the pandemic, but also turbulent times globally because of some of the issues in Russia, in China and the Middle East, Joe Biden represents a return to normality. He represents for many the opportunity to get back into the room on the issue of climate change, hugely important, the most pressing issue facing so many across the global South, particularly. in the Middle East, I think, on issues like Iran. I think some of the decisions that have been made in relation to Jerusalem and Israel have caused much frustration and anxiety. And I think that in tough economic times, the absence of America's leadership in mobilizing in terms of how to deal with this, in terms of fiscal stimulus, in terms of support,

a sort of a coming together in terms of finding a vaccine and mobilizing across much of the global community, particularly in poorer countries. I can't tell you how absent the United States has been. And of course, it's not just the United States. Here in the UK, we have been so inward looking as a result of the decision to leave the European Union that, if you like, it's an absence of the Anglo-American voice. and Joe Biden marks the return to the debate. Now, you can have differences of opinion

about what policy decisions you then take as a result of that. But the point is America has not been in the room. And sometimes America has been shaking the foundations of the room. So worrying has it been over the last few years. Well, yeah, and you know, you know, I've talked about these topics a bunch, but, I mean, I wanted to just, you know,

ask you about two of the last few of the years. the most worrying trends that we're seeing in America that are replicated abroad, you know, that are very connected. One is this kind of authoritarian trend, the nationalist authoritarianism that we see, you know, with Trump, you know, you had Nigel Farage appearing with him at rallies, and you've got people chanting, you know, stop the count. And clearly America, even if Trump loses, still has this kind of virus of authoritarianism present and nationalism present. That is, you know, fed Brexit that has fed movements in Hungary and Poland and other places. And at the same time, we see here that it's connected largely also to race. They're chanting stop the count where the people

who voted are black. And, you know, you sit in, you know, the shadow cabinet of the Labor Party as a leading opponent of, I think, you know, the kind of crude nationalism of Brexit. And you also, you know, are one of if not the most prominent black member of parliament in the UK. What is your advice to Americans about how do we take on these issues, not just globally, but at home? Like, what are you seeing that we need to be doing better to fight both authoritarianism and racism in the way those things come together? So look, let me just come back to basics here. My personal view is that there are two hugely important engines of the world. One is the largely black and brown engine of the global south.

People that work so hard to manufacture so much that we wear, that we consume, that we use for very little. When those folk get upset, there are civil wars, sometimes terrorism, but basically the world continues. And then there's another very big engine. It's the working class engines of Europe, of North America, particularly. It's often white. When they get upset, people set up. And to be very serious, we can get some very serious global wars, in fact. And the truth is, we're having this conversation, and we have been now for several years,

at a time when artificial intelligence, changing technology, the rise of the east of where things are manufactured, affecting jobs, an aging economy, huge inequality across our societies, the pressure on that traditional community is intense. And the way you deal with those problems require, you know, a peculiar effort, big brains. let me point to someone who's not in my political tradition, but I think is broadly doing a good job at the moment

in really getting into the weeds on those issues. Let's pick Angela Merkel. So that's the serious way to address these problems. And I have no doubt that if Joe Biden is elected, he'll get into the serious business with Kamala Harris of dealing with these issues. There's another way of dealing with it. And the other way of dealing with is the populist way.

The other way of dealing is cultural wars, is find any red herring, any excuse to pick another issue. You know, it's the Supreme Court. We need to fix it. We need to ram someone in there. You know, it's Black Lives Matter. It's any, these other reasons, the other immigrants pick on them to address those issues.

And those things are never going to, these are not the heart of the issue, right? These are setting up straw men, deliberately stoking problems. And that's what we've seen Donald Trump doing. We have to call it out. We have to be better. I think particularly actually at this time, this is a time that calls for progressive parties to be really clear on their economic message, by the way,

and economic credibility. And I worry that sometimes that is getting lost, particularly in a discussion where it's, do you lock down an economy or open up an economy? We've got to be heard on our economic message. we've got to own the future. You know, where are those jobs going to come from? The language that we use has got to be, you know,

when people talk about a green new deal, not everyone in the communities I'm talking about, here's that as being anything to do with them. You know, what are those jobs? Real time in real time for me, right? So those are big, big issues. And yes, we attend to those huge issues of inequality, huge issues of racism and structural discrimination that still exist in our society.

But look, let us not lose the plot because these central issues of identity, and I'm obviously very associated with fighting for rights for black men and women here in the UK, cannot be the beginning and end of the conversation, right? We have to get into the business of both the economic and economic and the, social environment in which working people find themselves and what we are doing to support them and their families at a time where we're losing jobs. And we seem to be losing power to other parts of the world. You know, building on that sort of cultural question, I mean, one of the ways that America seems to constantly lose the plot and get distracted by sort of, you know, sidesthow cultural

issues is because of Fox News and conservative media. And Ben and I have had a really interesting conversation previously with former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about the damage caused by Rupert Murdoch and his publications specifically. Absolutely. If you look at Australia, the UK, the U.S., you see the rise of the far right in those places. Yeah, not in Canada, for example. I've sort of noticed recently that there have been attacks on the BBC in the UK. I mean, what is the state of the media in the UK?

And how are you guys fighting off these rabid right-wig news outlets? Well, not a centre-right agenda, a hard right agenda, an anti-immigrant agenda, and very worryingly, let's be clear, an ethno-nationalistic agenda, whether you're in Australia, whether you're in the US and you see the appeal of Donald Trump, or indeed whether you're in the UK. So that is the agenda being driven by these outlets. I'm afraid it's not great here in the UK, because lots of people want. Fox News here in the UK. We've got some experiments about to begin to bring that to us in real time. And then alongside that, you've got the huge challenges of social media and the huge challenges of an unregulated innovative technology-based sector interrupting the market also open to being manipulated by powers beyond us,

like Russia and somehow a convergence of interest with some of those forces within our own country. That is a very worrying landscape. It will need stronger regulation. It just will. In the end, this requires regulation. It requires entering into the market. Going back to basics, I'm a lawyer, back to basis on sort of plutocracies and competition rules, breaking up these huge powerful forces that can be so disruptive because power is in the hands of one individuals, two individuals or a few individuals, and it's not acceptable. Much greater transparency, much better accountability.

And because this is a global issue, we've got to work across board. orders. It's got to be a global conversation and you've got to create consensus. I think there is consensus, by the way, that can be struck in that Joe Biden kind of cross-party sense of working with colleagues in the centre right as well, by the way, to forge a new path. And that's going to take a lot of hard effort. But you're right. At the moment, it's like the Wild West. It's like the Wild West, and there's some guys making a lot of money and pushing this national populist agenda. And so it's very, very sad that despite we hope Joe Biden winning, I'm afraid the forces of Trump have not departed. He has not been eviscerated in this election. In fact, it looks like he's

garnered more votes as well. Yeah. So speaking of that sort of nationalist populist agenda, and how Joe Biden will deal with it. I mean, look, Boris Johnson is a historically good shape-shifter, right? I suspect we'll hear from him if Biden wins all the same rhetoric about the special relationship. Hopefully there will be just loads of stories about the location of the Churchill bus because that was time well spent during the Obama administration. But, you know, one thing he'll have to do is Brexit negotiations. Do you think, is Johnson having to recalibrate in real time on Brexit negotiations? Like, how do you think, that plays out going forward. Well, he knows that Democrats have been really clear about their concerns

about the Good Friday Agreement and some red lines that simply cannot be crossed in relation to the situation in Northern Ireland. You know, of course, colleagues have long memories. and I think that probably Boris Johnson regrets some of the things he said about former President Barack Obama. But I still think that our interests coalesce, this is the UK-US interests, returning to the room on things like Iran, things like climate change, I think that there's a centering opinion, particularly on China, on Russia. These are very, very important issues. And whilst I, look, I'm one of Boris Johnson's most ardent critics, you know, I want him to succeed. We are leaving the European Union. We do

need to forge a strong relationship with the United States and strike a good trade deal. in a sense, I have more confidence in Trump Biden than I did in your in your in Donald Trump. But I but I but I want Boris to succeed in that relationship and the truth is we know over many, many years that the relationship between the UK and the United States is bigger than the individuals who you who occupy those high offices. It just is. Well, yeah, I mean, I, as one of the people who remembers, Boris Johnson saying, for instance, that Barack Obama, clearly, you know, the only reason he was showing up in the UK to counsel and advise our friends against Brexit was because he, he harbored some Kenyan antipathy against the British Empire. You know, we do remember that. But you're right. You know, what Democrats really care about is, is the Good Friday agreements in Northern Ireland. And, and, and, you know, in a way that Trump clearly doesn't. I guess the question I had to just follow up on that, David, is that, you know, a lot's changed now, and you have, in some ways, you know, Joe Biden is described himself as a bridge

to a new generation of Democratic leaders, and we hope that Boris Johnson represents kind of this gasp of Brexiteers in their moment. Angela Merkel, who I share your admiration for, you know, we'll be exiting the stage soon. And I guess as we look at, you know, post-Brexit UK and Europe and what is a special relationship with the UK out of the EU and how do we deal with these issues like disinformation, I mean, what do you want to see the bridge lead to? I mean, what is the, what is the future of how the U.S. and U.S. and U.K. work together, you know, beyond Boris Johnson, even Joe Biden? Like, what should we be aiming for in terms of nations, you know, that hope to share common values and interests. I know this is a very broad

question, but we're at this kind of transitional moment here, you know. Beyond the individuals in the office, what is the macro? Where are we in macro terms? We've got a generation of millennials and generation Y, very large generation, you know, the children of baby boomers, who are set to inherit a settlement, you know, a social contract that's so much less than their parents economically, environmentally, and the world is not feeling safe. You know, it really isn't feeling safe. And the UK-US alliance has to address those issues. We touched on many of them in this conversation, but the UK, it has to be central to those issues. It has to be central to those issues. We've got to deal with climate change. We've got to be really, really serious about it.

We've got to level up issues of inequality. We've got to, we've got large populations that are aging and it looks like we're going to have less work for them. So in terms of our education systems, our skills agendas, frankly, I think, and I suspect you agree with him Ben and Toy, doubling down on that sort of new deal era of how you generate work that stimulates and keeps the economy going becomes really, really important. There's no point lying to people. There's no point, you know, fighting hard to keep, you know, fossil fuels going, right? When it's just like, this is the old world. We've got to get into the new world. that's the partnership that I think our countries can play

and there are some despots around there are some bad people around in quite powerful places globally and they will need firm hard challenge going forward and I suspect the world you know the global community organizations like the UN need leadership organizations like NATO need leadership and being together. The G20, the G8, these are very, very important. And we need to be at the table.

And there's a new kind of, there are definitely new international agreements beyond climate change that had to be forged. I've just raised one of them, which is the challenge of how we deal with some of these tech companies, social media, and clearly the regulation that we're going to

require if we're going to keep our people safe, safe from loneliness, safe from mental health, safe from intellectual interference. That takes serious leadership and partnership. Well, one last question. Obviously, one of the issues is climate change. And I know you have a project, you know, because I've been a little involved in it in Guyana, where, you know, your parents came from. People may not know a lot about Guyana, but obviously it connects to the Amazon, there's also significant resources there in terms of fossil fuels. Why don't you just tell the listeners a little bit about what you're doing there and why, you know, given all your responsibilities political and otherwise in the UK, both climate change as an issue is important

to you and why this particular project in Guiana is important. To understand why climate change is important to me, I encourage your listeners to just Google my TED Talk a few weeks. ago on the relationship between climate and racial justice. And to summarize, you know, if you marched and campaigned around Black Lives Matter, then please recognize this is not just in the sphere of criminal justice in countries like the US and challenges in the UK or France or or Australia. Think about those Black lives in the global south. Who is facing those rising waters? who is facing drought, who is facing the burning of the Amazon. And it's because I feel very strongly about both the pollutants in urban cities like London,

like, you know, New York, Chicago and black and brown people, breathing in terrible air, doing terrible jobs in a sort of polluted environments, but also what's going on in the global south that I'm in this space. And in Guyana, here you have a country, at the top of South America, English-speaking country, with wonderful virgin rainforests, 90% of the country is rainforested. And we have to preserve that, particularly given what's happening in Brazil

and what's happening in Venezuela. I have a project that's called Sophia Point. You can Google it, www.safiaPoint.com. And we are trying to help the University of Ghana, the biodiversity department, there and conserve their rainforests, but also not just climate change and carbon, but zoonotics. You know, how do we find the science that's going to help us in future pandemics? And, you know, we're raising funds for the charity.

And I'd be really, really grateful, if any philanthropists listening, who care about climate and, you know, recognize the important of the Amazon basin, not just in Brazil, but in Guyana as well, want to contribute, go to our website, listen to my TED Talk. Email me. You know, strangely, it's very easy to email a member of parliament in the UK. You can just Google my name and put email next to an email me. Well, I mean, it's such an interesting idea. It's such an important topic. I don't think people are sufficiently concerned about deforestation of the Amazon. We are not only releasing record numbers of CO2 into our atmosphere. We are actively destroying all the ways we can take it out. So time is not on our side here. We've got to move quickly.

David Laney, thank you so much for doing the show. Honestly, I feel better just having spent 30 minutes not refreshing 538.com or whatever stuff I've been doing all day. So this has been a real treat for me. I'm going to go do it now as well. Look, I, so look, it's my sincere hope that very, very soon we're going to get a result. Can you just tell your global audience, when are we going to get this result? It could be today. It seems like they're about to call Nevada. The people, the campaign folks I talk to think that the final Pennsylvania margin is like Biden plus 100,000 votes.

So like things are looking very good. Trump needs to sweep all the remaining states and it's not looking good for him. So fingers crossed. One last question. Given the global community looking at what's happened in your Supreme Court, which is deeply worrying. and the politicization we find very problematic, should be we worried that if this gets into the court arena, somehow this can be whipped from the American people

and handed back to Trump? Never say never with these people, but it does seem like a lot of these legal attempts by the Trump team are losing in lower courts. And if you have a scenario where Biden wins Arizona, Biden wins Georgia, Biden wins Pennsylvania, the idea of taking all of those results, to a court, I think begins to feel increasingly hard. And hopefully you'll see people in the Republican

party saying, we just can't do this. But I don't know. I should never underestimate their cynicism. I think, you know, David, the note of, like, optimism I'd sound is that, like, the extremity of what Trump would be asking to do is, you know, stop counting ballots, like, that are being counted. It's not even like Florida in 2000 when it was stopping a recount. Most lawyers feel like there's just, not like any legal basis for it. But I think the bigger concerning problem is that Supreme Court and the Republicans, if they hold the Senate, the capacity for America to do the kind of reforms to our democracy, to address things like voting, to address things like representation are much, much harder. So the good news is it may not affect this election. The bad news is it may affect

Joe Biden's capacity to set a better democratic example by fixing our democracy. We're with you, brothers. We'll stick together. We'll stick together. It's a lot to do. Global solidarity here. Global solidarity. Well, listen, thank you again for all your time. Thanks to the great work you're doing, and we hope to see you soon. Great stuff.

All right, and we are back. Ben, I don't know what it is, but this is about as anxious a morning as I could imagine, but the soothing dulcet sounds of a David Lamie conversation just making me feel a little bit better. Yeah, and just dropping wisdom left, right, and center. Yeah, no, but it does, I mean, to me, it does. I mean, to me it does underscore, you know, everybody's watching this around the world so closely, right? And I just try to imagine what it looks like when he, when David talked about the people channing stop the count, you know, and you realize it's not just like some reel that's playing on American cable news.

Like everyone around the world is seeing a bunch of lunatic white people chanting stop the count. I mean, it's not a good look for America. Another reason why we have to get through this era and get to work. No, I know. I know. Look, I tweeted this yesterday because it's not. like every news network, all the cable channels, everyone on social media were like sort of fear porn sharing the stop the count people in Detroit. And like, yes, on some level, it is awful. It is

anti-democratic. It is horrible to watch. On another level, who gives a shit with these people think? It was like 30 goobers, right? I mean, like, I don't know. Like, how many times have you been around dumb groups of people chanting nonsense? Like, I'm from Boston. We do a lot of Yankee suck chits. It doesn't mean we should be taken seriously or put on the news. It's a real problem. I mean, look, there were protests, peaceful protests all over the country talking about protect the vote and like nobody really covered those like you barely saw a glimpse of them. I mean, this kind of fear porn or Trump porn, you know, the problem is not just Trump. Like why we're giving the biggest megaphones to the craziest fascist in this country is a problem. Yeah, it seems like a bad idea. One step at a time. But you're right. I saw that tweet. I'm like you're totally right. There's no like obligation to cover like. a few dozen crazy white people, you know, yelling things in Detroit. Yeah, and you just don't want it to snowball.

Like, anyway, we'll get some more of this later. But let's turn to Poland for a bit because Poland, while we've been dealing with our own mess here, has experienced two weeks of protests that have been described as the largest in the country since the collapse of communism in 1989. The reason is not a disputed election. It's not sort of a part of these broader sets of protests we've seen about economic inequality. these are in response to an October 22nd ruling that would almost entirely ban abortions in Poland. Poland already has some of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws.

They allow abortion in three instances before this ruling. Fetal abnormalities, threats to the mother's health, an incest or rape. The October 22nd ruling would ban abortions where there are fetal abnormalities, so it'll get rid of one of the three instances when you can have an abortion, which, according to New York Times' data, accounts for basically 1,074 of 1,100 cases last year. So nearly all abortion cases were based on fetal abnormalities. So this ruling, of course, wouldn't mean that Polish women stop having abortions. It just means they will go abroad or they will get dangerous illegal procedures, which will put their health at risk.

So the good news such as it is here is that the government has delayed this ruling going to force. through some technicalities, seemingly in response to the protests. But stepping back a bit, Ben, I mean, Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party is super right-wing. It's a radical government that's packed the court. Sounds familiar. You know, when I think about the last four years in all the progress that we've made, that has allowed me to almost feel good today, I do think it starts with the women's march. And so these protests did make me hopeful.

What do you make of this and, you know, the due to government generally? Well, you know, there have been occasional protests like this, pretty large ones related to the issue of abortion for a few years in Poland, but nothing like this. This was kind of an explosion of popular sentiment. And look, I mean, I think it's obviously focused above all on the issue of abortion, the control that women should have over their own health and bodies. And, you know, once again, you've got a bunch of men, a bunch of right-wing men in power who packed a bunch of courts and demagogue the issue of abortion and a majority Catholic. country and the women are pissed off and it makes total sense. I think what adds to it is you did recently have a very close election in Poland where the opposition almost was able to be back the kind of right-wing authoritarian government there couldn't. And they were, you know, they were dealing with not really a level playing field. Yeah. And so I think it's probably like the Women's March here, you know, it's about abortion, but it's also the frustrations in that society, you know, of having a government that just doesn't listen to the people. And, and,

has no regard for the people who disagree with them. And women, you know, are leading the way there. I think another interesting trend to watch is that women are really leading a lot of the movements in that part of the world. Well, and here too, as you said. But in Belarus, you know, we've talked about how women are leading a lot of the opposition movement there. You know, in Hungary, a lot of the opposition is comprised of women, you know, a hopeful sign,

right? As women saying they're fed up with this kind of autocratic brand of politics, it disregards women and their lives and their choices, and they want to be heard. And so I think, you know, the hopeful sign here is that this may be part of a trend of not just the kind of mass mobilization we've talked about a lot, but like women-led opposition movements, women-led popular movements that seem to be catching on across borders. And yes, hopefully they can fight back and beat back and retain some of their rights as it relates to abortion women's health and control of their bodies, but I think it's also a bit of a political bellwether in Eastern Europe generally.

Yeah. I think one thing people understand is, you know, certainly some of the, you know, religious views or other reasons that lead people to oppose abortion rights are centuries old and can be deeply held. But the law we're talking about right now in Poland isn't old. This thing was adopted in 1993. So these restrictive anti-choice laws, have been put in place more and more recently. Again, just like the United States, where you're seeing states and municipalities try to chip away to abortion rights

every single way they can. So it's really a pernicious thing that's going to require a movement to fight back against. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting to watch, like, our culture wars replicated in other countries because you've seen a lot of religious conservatism,

right-wing religious conservatism in Hungary and Poland and all these places. In Poland, it's obviously rooted in the Catholic Church and Catholic traditions. But referencing back to what Lammy said, I mean, you know, we have to fight the battle on these cultural issues for the things we care about. But one of the reasons why these governments constantly demagogue these cultural issues is they have no answers for where the economy is going. They have no answers on the pandemic. They have no answers for the explosion of new technologies. And so the challenge for progressives is to fight on these cultural issues,

defend people's rights, while also making clear, hey, we're the ones. did actually have answers for all these issues. These guys are just trying to create wedge issues to distract. And it's the same playbook on both sides of the Atlantic here. Yep, agreed. Let's turn to Ethiopia, because there's a very important story happening there that I had not paid attention to until just today because of the election obsession. So on Wednesday morning, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, went on Facebook, of course, and accused the government of a northern province called Tigray, a part of Ethiopia in the north, of treason after local security forces in Tigray attacked Ethiopian troops. Prime Minister Ahmed has declared a state of emergency

in the region. He's reportedly shut down electricity, phone, internet access, kind of reminded me of Kashmir Ben. Journalists who have been able to contact people on the ground report hearing intense fighting in the background in urban centers. That's very unnerving. Tegre's home to about six million of Ethiopia's, 110 million people. Tensions between the prime minister's federal government and leaders in Tigray are not new at all. Ahmed supporters accused the Tigray People's Liberation Front or TPLF of attempting to assassinate him in 2018 with a grenade, by the way. That's sort of a scary assassination attempt. But things got particularly bad recently when the prime minister ordered Ethiopia's national elections delayed for a year because of COVID. And the TPLF in Tigray just

refused. So Ben, these events, I think, are particularly surprising and shocking to people because of Prime Minister Ahmed's reputation. He just won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 after cutting a peace deal with Eritrea. They'd fought a horrible war for years. This current conflict is actually sort of tied up in that history. Ben, what do we know about what's happening in Ethiopia and what do you think the stakes are for the region, for the world, for Africa? So this is a really complicated one because like nobody is particularly the good guys here. So Ethiopia was governed for a very long time by a very autocratic political party. There was kind of a ran a consortium of ethnic-based political movements.

And the TPLF was kind of at the center of that. And they were autocratic and they were competent in governance. So they kind of restored stability to Ethiopia after an unstable time. But, you know, it was a closed system and they were in control. And when Ahmed, when the current prime minister came along, he kind of upended the status quo in a good way, people thought. You know, he was kind of not going to rely on the old corrupt machine. He was going to, you know, liberalize some of the practices in Ethiopia, more press freedoms.

There were releases of some political prisoners. He made this piece with Eritrea. All good stuff, right? there's a reason he got the Nobel Peace Prize. At the same time, he kind of ran a power play against the old guard and, you know, kicked them out of his coalition and they kind of were pushed into Tigray. They kind of retreated to their ethnic base. And so you had this situation where the prime minister wasn't wrong that there needed to be

some reform and that a group of people had basically been too dominant in the country for too long. and they also had kind of a closed political position on things. But now in combating that, he's becoming a mirror image of that because, you know, he delayed the election. He said it's because of COVID. And now we see this kind of very heavy-handed, forceful attack. You just, you don't want to see this, obviously, and you'd like to see some process for dialogue, some process where they can work out. Okay, what is the degree of autonomy? You know, Ethiopia's a lot of complicated ethnic politics over the years is with, you know, you don't want to see the country disintegrate, you don't want to see separatism, but can something be worked out where

the people in Tigray have some degree of autonomy, but they don't challenge essentially the authority of the Ethiopian government without this kind of conflict. I, you know, I think it's a light lesson in what happens when one party states have a change, you know, and the, the new person coming in sometimes may feel that they have to. act too forcefully, in my view, to kind of cleanse the system of the old guard, and the old guard wants to hang on to some amount of power and undermine the new guy. And that's kind of what's playing out. Again, people should watch as why does it matter? Ethiopia is a bellwether for Africa. It hosts the African Union. We talked about over 100 million people there, growing economy.

You go to Addis. Addis looks like, you know, one of those Southeast Asian cities that's growing really fast. Like, stuff is happening there. They're central to a lot of U.S. priorities, you know, and global priorities around development, around maintaining peace in that region. We obviously had the conflict with Egypt that we've talked about. So you'd like to see things calm and stabilize and get through this political crisis, but it feels like it's trending in the wrong direction, of course. Yeah. God, I mean, the thought of Ethiopia, which has been, you know, sort of a real rock of stability, despite being sandwiched between Somalia, which has had enormous governance challenges and terrorism challenges, and Sudan, which split in half after a referendum in 2011

has been, you know, dealt with a lot of conflict. Yemen right across the sea. I mean, it would just be truly horrifying for the region, for the, you know, the people of Ethiopia, if this were to evolve into an ugly civil war. Have you heard anything about what, you know, any other institution might be doing to try to calm things? Or is it maybe two or really? there. No, well, you know, yeah, the African Union, which is based there, right, has been seeking to try to create some process to de-escalate and have dialogue. And, and, you know, but the problem is that this is like such power politics. I mean, I guess the story I tell it's interesting about Ethiopia, like, I went there with President Obama to Addis, and we met with the last prime

minister, this guy, Hallamarian, who seemed like very well-spoken guy, kind of technocratic guy. you could tell the economy is growing. They wanted to talk about all the right things. And then I remember, you know, Obama raising these issues where like we're an oddis, guess what there wasn't? There wasn't internet access. You know, it looked like an open place, but it was a very closed place, you know. They were a journalist in prison. And so, you know, these countries underneath the surface, you know, when they've had a lid on a place for a long time.

and then suddenly the lid opens up because a reformer comes in and the power structure changes, you know, this is what can happen. And I think it's one of the reasons why it's so important to get this off the path of a civil war and back into politics is you don't want the lesson to be. It's not possible to transition. It's not possible to move from kind of closed, clenched fist stability to some reform that moves in more democratic direction. because that's one of the excuses that autocrats use to keep power.

So I hope that, yeah, with the African Union's involvement in the UN and, you know, hopefully a Biden administration if we get that, you can get engaged here to just get this back into politics and off of violence. Yeah, that's a very important note. A brief aside, I just saw something come through that reported that Politico is saying that the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, has prepared a letter of resignation to which I want to write. Yeah, I believe the American people wrote that bad boy for him. Profile and courage. Yeah, way to leak that one. What? Like, what the hell, man? I mean, like, oh, this is when you're

going to take your principled stand, like after your boss loses the election? And what you, so you can go back and be a defense lobbyist or a defense contractor CEO or be on boards in polite society? Give me a break. Yeah, it's like he knew he was going to get fired anyway because he refused to, support sending troops into the street to quell protesters, I think was sort of the scuttle butt before. I mean, hero. Well, then you know what? He should have fucking retired after the Lafayette Park photo op that he was a part of. Yeah.

You know, like that was the moment to retire, buddy. Let's talk a little more about the U.S. Cyber Command. So on November 3rd, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA took some sort of action that they said was to ensure that foreign action. didn't interfere in the election. Specifically, the post story mentions Iran. The New York Times expanded on that reporting a bit, and they said that the U.S. had undertaken operations, cyber operations in Europe that went after Russian hackers, some stuff in the Middle East and in Asia to thwart Iran, Chinese and North Korean hackers. So, I mean, I guess here we are, Ben, like the election happened a couple days ago. We have seen no allegations or no evidence that election systems were hacked.

there was no mysterious power outage in a liberal city that prevented people in Milwaukee from voting, right? Like all the horror scenarios didn't come through. There was the disinformation stuff, but that's sort of like a different bucket. What do you think? Like, were our fears of foreign interference overblown? Is this how a vigilant system is supposed to work and correct for 2016? Like, how do you grade things knowing what we know now? Well, I always think that you had to separate the foreign interference questions into two buckets, like active cyber attacks on like the vote tally or on the election infrastructure or on the conduct of the election and then disinformation, right? And on the first bucket, you know, it seems like a good news story that those things didn't happen. And I think it's a testament to the fact that,

look, when this began to come on the radar in the 2016 election, we were catching up. We were playing catch up. You know, how do we secure the election infrastructure? How do we, you know, where do we look for cyber threats? Because it was kind of a new phenomenon of foreign governments potentially attacking our elections. And the Russians, you know, apparently, you know, got into a couple voter rolls. They didn't change any votes, but they were just kind of probing. And I think what probably happened, knowing the mechanics of the U.S. government, is notwithstanding Trump, the people who just do this for a living, who protect American critical infrastructure, like the people at Cyber Command, right, or NSA, just did their work, you know. And maybe governments tried to do things and were thwarted.

Maybe they didn't. Maybe they were deterred. But I think, you know, it got ingrained in the American national security system that this is just something we have to plan for and prepare for. And that's good. On the other end, I saw some people dunking on Twitter about like, well, it just shows you there was no real Russian interference threat. There was no Russian. No, there was Russian interference. this election. It's just the massive ongoing disinformation campaign that they wage all the time, right? And we have to think kind of almost differently about Russian disinformation. It's not just about elections. That's part of it. But, you know, they've been messing around here for years now, you know, in favor of Trump and against Democrats and create divisions and, you know, all the

rest of it. Never mind the Russian agents that were paling around with Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine and, you know, feeding him conspiracy theories, right? Never mind. I think, Tommy, I saw the reports that the Russians might have, you know, in retrospect, poured a lot of gasoline on the Q&N conspiracy theory right when it started, right? So we have to separate these things out, you know, protect the election, but there's a whole other problem here for disinformation that is both a Russia problem and a social media regulation problem. Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about the social media piece because we talked a lot about how these guys would or would not handle disinformation. I think, again, there's two pieces,

it. One is just paid ads. And Facebook had a policy in place that basically put a blackout on new campaign ads for a week before election day. It was designed to prevent, you know, shady stuff from happening, voter suppression, et cetera. That policy, I think, was a bit of a mess. The Biden campaign and others said the ban swept up older ads that should have been allowed to have been run. It screwed up their fundraising. It screwed up their GOTV efforts right before the election. but that's more like tactical stuff. So not great. But the other piece is disinformation.

And I think to their credit, Twitter and Facebook have labeled many of Trump's craziest tweets where he declared victory or obeyed sort of baseless fraud allegations as false. But, you know, the platforms themselves are just swimming in bullshit. They're just swimming in disinformation, right? Like the various, you know, reopen the state of. of blah, blah, blah groups are being used to organize people to stop the count or keep the count going depending on which state you're in and what you're mad about. So I don't know, what did you make of the Twitter Facebook efforts so far to kind of keep a lid on disinformation?

Well, I have a very similar view to you, which is not surprising in this case. But the first thing I noticed, right, is watching Twitter, and I'm on Twitter more than Facebook, but watching them actually begin to flag stuff and take stuff down kind of shows you that matters right I mean like it's and you kind of wonder like well what would have happened if they've been doing this the last five years you know like so in taking even that kind of marginal action it it really does make a difference that that Trump's tweets are flagged and that you can't read them without seeing these warning signs and seeing the social media companies act like media companies right like saying something is verified or not

But the second point that you made that I totally agree with is this is like, you know, this is about, you know, dealing with the top of the iceberg, but not everything that's underneath. You cannot fix the mass problem of disinformation and conspiracy theory and hate speech and all the rest of it on these platforms by flagging a couple of high profile accounts or even taking down certain, you know, threads related to Q&N or whatever. you have to address the algorithms that prioritize sensationalist fear-based content, right? And so I think, you know, some of these companies, Twitter seems a little bit more structurally well-intentioned on this than Facebook, which it always feels like a PR exercise, but, you know, they may feel like there's a danger of regulation that they're trying to get ahead of by showing they can be more responsible citizens. That's a step in the right direction.

I still don't think it solves a problem. I also think that they may be breathing a sigh of relief over in Menlo Park by the Senate potentially staying in Republican hands. It makes it less likely that they'll be regulated by Congress, even though a Biden administration could do things. I think their stock went up like, what, 9 percent once they realized there would be a split Congress, so that is depressing. I mean, yeah, look, I think the story of this past couple years is they very easily could have done more to prevent the spread of disinformation from like verified people like Donald Trump, but that these spaces themselves are completely

ungovernable in some ways because just you have a billion people and they're just, they created something that they can't control now, which is kind of depressing. But the other thing we haven't seen that people were really worried about was militia violence or violent protests. Now, obviously, a result hasn't been declared. We're all just in purgatory. But I don't know, man. You and I talked about the white militia stuff, especially after the attempted kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. It is very real. It's very scary. It's something that Biden will need to focus on. It's something that law enforcement needs to focus on.

I did think we veered so hard it's a fear porn when you had people boarding up like every building in an urban area. And, you know, like people were sharing every sort of misplaced rumor about, you know, militia members going to some polling location. Like, we can't voters suppress ourselves by being. scary. You know what I mean? Like that's my deep down fear. Yeah. No, and I was like, I didn't know that I expected like a lot of violence, but I was definitely wrong in expecting at least just kind of more intimidation, right? Like we'd have been so kind of conditioned and maybe we are on social media too much consuming pictures of, you know, heavily armed dudes like hanging around statehouses that you

just kind of assume that was going to happen. But I think there's a risk, frankly, in over-interpreting the lack of violence thus far, though, because, you know, these groups are out there, the people are out there that believe in a set of conspiracy theories. And my concern, my bigger concern than election day itself has always been actually, if Joe Biden wins, I think we just don't know how these groups will react, you know, the more fringy groups, right? The, you know, the proud boys get the most attention, but there's a lot of them. Will they feel like this, was illegitimately stolen from Donald Trump, and they no longer see their guy in the White House, and so therefore they need to fight back and they need to commit acts of violence.

Suddenly you're seeing mass shootings on occasion or even planned attacks on things or plots against Democrats or symbolic targets like we saw against a synagogue. Or will Trump leaving the stage kind of detoxify a little bit our political discourse and these guys go back to hanging out at the shooting range, you know, doing what? the hell they do. I don't know. You know, like, I don't know. I fear that, you know, based on my Obama experience, having Obama in office seemed to be very triggering to a lot of people. And you saw more mass shootings. You saw a rise of white supremacy under Barack Obama in part because there was a black president. And so my worry is that we, that the, the U.S. kind of government,

you know, if Joe Biden's in charge, is going to have to think about, what is this threat? And, you know, what is the threat? And the threat. And the threat can. can't be defined as like people who like Trump, right? Who are the groups that are actually potentially violent? And how do you deal with them? You know, and this is something that, you know, knock on wood and a Biden victory, like we should give some time and attention to in the next few months. Yeah.

No matter what, we should probably look forward to a series of headlines about some giant surge in gun sales because that seems to happen around every major event. And it's one of the reasons this country is so dangerous. So last question. I mean, look, there's a very real, very scary spike in coronavirus cases happening as we speak, as we're not paying attention at all anymore somehow. I think that we have cracked 100,000 cases in a day. I'm sure that will be exacerbated by sort of late campaign activities, the Trump super spreader rallies to people polling to GOTV,

like all the stuff we were doing, much of it in good faith. But there's one mystery I wanted to get to the bottom of, Ben, because there are reports that there has been a, cover-up over in the UK that the royal family had COVID and didn't disclose it in the spring. And I'm just wondering, you know, as our Buckingham Palace correspondent, what your sources in the palace are telling you about what happened and what we know about Prince William? Is that the one that's left? Yeah, it's Prince William. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that Goober got it, right? Look, I'm very poorly sourced there these days. I will tell you, they have these giant compounds so you'd think that they could isolate in comfort.

I'm a bit of a William stand, though, I have to say. Like, you know, he and Kate, they're sticking it out. They're doing the world duties. I watched a very lovely video that I recommend to the world those with small kids of Williams' kids like asking David Ataburro, you know, the iconic British kind of earth guy. I love David Adonbrose. Questions about animals and climate change.

And I was like, you know, that's it. I think there were masks involved in that. But, but I mean, like, here's my main takeaway tell me. He's like, the queen, she's pretty old, right? And so I just, I hope William was keeping his distance, like, you know. And their public institution, like, they should be transparent about these things, right? I mean, because part of what you want to do is model behavior. And part of behavior is contact tracing, right?

And being upfront. So as much as I love William, you know, more transparency and vigilance around contact with the queen. We need her to get through this. That's fair. Listen, and I got to say, you treasure and revere the queen. I'm a Dave in Attenborough stand through and through. I will listen to that man, narrate a long penguin walk all day every day.

Nothing puts me to sleep faster. If you want COVID content, there's like a lot of Atombrough, including a new Netflix documentary about the guy that is, that I highly recommend. Yeah. Oh, I want to check that out too. By the way, I took your advice. I read King Leopold's Ghost. It was not really the reprieve for my brain from the stress of the election that I needed, but hell of a good book. And then I've since picked up Ayadoktar's novel, which is fantastic. Remind me the name. Homeland Elogies, yeah. I'm glad you, I'm glad you check that out. I read everything on Kindle, so I never know what the

name is of what I'm reading, but a fantastic book so far. So in keeping with my depressing, and kind of authoritarianism reading list. There's a really good book called Putin's People. Oh, yeah, I have that. You have that by Catherine Belton. And it's kind of about the circle around Putin and Putin himself and how they, you know, their system and how they put it together and went after the United States and the West. And then also I picked up Between Two Fires by Joshua Yaffa. He's the Russia correspondent for The New Yorker.

Another really good book. So I just decided to get a little bit more into Putin reading. Who knows why. It's kind of masochistic, but they're very good books. You know what? I don't have that one, that Putin book. I have a different, of all the Kremlin's Men by Mikhail Zygar, I believe, a Russian guy. Anyway, great book list.

Just so listeners know, no real updates since we've been reading here. I feel like we're just kind of slowly rolling in. We're waiting on Pennsylvania. So hopefully next week we'll get to do a jubilant potse of the world where we talk about all the things Tony Blinken promised to do under a Biden administration. But it'll be a little while, I guess. Well, hopefully people, you know, wake up, see the pod on their phones together with the news alerts that this is called. And we can all get on with our lives. And then we can talk on Tuesday and dunk a little bit on Trump and then look ahead.

Oh, number one. before we get to that, it's important to point out that according to the exit polls, which I don't trust at all, but according to the exit polls so far, Donald Trump got the lowest share of the Jewish vote since the year

2000, which means that pretending that direct flights from Jerusalem to Bahrain or Jerusalem to, you know, Sudan, was somehow equivalent to the Camp David Accords, as Jared Kushner has been doing with his nonsense fucking press release

Abraham Accord garbage. Did not work. It did not fool anyone. No one believed it was a big deal. So sorry, Jared. I'm very sorry. Yeah, that clearly didn't work. And the Rick Rennel brokered Serbia, Kosovo economic discussions about potentially having

discussions deal didn't work. And I'll say what's interesting is like, I'll sell you more serious note, the Cuban Americans down in Miami, you know, I spent a ton of time in that community, including like in person myself. And we can unpack that some other time. I actually think it's less about, and obviously I have like my views about Cuban-Venezuela policy issues. I think it's somewhat less about just that Trump had a hardline Cuba policy and more about one like they spent a lot time paid a lot of attention there and one of the things I learned about that community is like showing up really mattered and you know they Republicans show up all the freaking time down there and they

work and they and they do the work and they organize two is this whole socialism thing which I think has some residents down there and then lastly like it's just they've got a really good machine down there I know the Democratic organizers because they were all like Obama people basically. And like the reality is over many decades the Republicans have built some massive machine. So even that, I think is much less about their foreign policies on Cuba and Venezuela and more about just the investment in time they put in that community. But all these other last minute gambits around Sudan and, you know, whatever the hell else, you know, foreign policy, quote unquote wins they were trying to chalk up. Clearly it was like poorly spent time by Trump, frankly. Even better off like doing do another shit campaigning, you know, talking about the economy.

Yeah, not getting owned by BB on a conference call in the Oval Office. Yeah. Yeah, it should remind you. We should figure out what of these sort of sets of issues we could unpack next week. We should do a deep dive on Kushner. We should just fucking drill that moron Twitter troll Rick Grinnell, who is currently like in Nevada or Arizona, making baseless allegations of voter fraud just to remind everyone that he is an absolutely unsurious person. who was only given his job because he is pliable and willing to lie and sort of just an, you know, immoral schmuck.

So we'll get it to all that next week. But, you know, I think that's all we got for now. Thanks again to David Lammy for joining the show. Thanks to everyone for taking some time out of your doom scrolling to listen to this episode. And, you know, hopefully what's been good news next week. Yeah. Thanks everybody voted, organized, did everything. Yeah.

including a best friend of the country, Ben Wickler. Ben Wickler, yeah. Do you know, Tommy, Ben Wickler, you know, he's on the advisory board of National Security Action. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's because Ben ran the move-on effort in support of the Iran deal. And so I kind of got to just be a massive fan of his, you know. And so when we were setting up an organization to help Democrats deal with the politics of these issues, I was like, hey, man, can you get on this board?

And then I saw him at like, I think Jay Street, right? How on brand is that? Like a couple years ago. And he's like, yeah, I'm thinking of going out to Wisconsin to help run the Democratic Party. And I was like, I suddenly felt better about Wisconsin. Yeah, me too. I met Wickler in 2006 when he was working for Sherry Brown. And I went out there to help out like the last month of that campaign because Ben LaBole talked me into it.

And like as I was getting on my flight, a poll came out that showed them up 10. And I was like, well, it'll still be fun. But, yeah, Wickler's the man. And to all the listeners out there, if you knocked on doors, if you made calls, if you text banked, if you donated money, you were the reason we won. This thing was so close. Look how close this is. So, like, those margins are the extra work that young people did in these places.

Yeah, it is truly remarkable. So thank you all. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Joe Biden for, you know, not catching COVID. And we'll talk to you all next week. Yes. POTSEA the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Quinn Lewis for production support. And thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.