Pod Save the World - Ilhan Omar’s tweets spark a debate about anti-semitism

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

First, Tommy talks with author Peter Beinart about the controversy around Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's tweets, which many viewed as anti-semitic. Then, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman joins to talk with Tommy and Ben about the time she spent negotiating with Iran and North Korea.

Welcome back to POTSave the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you all for tuning back in. We have a packed show this week. It's actually two separate interviews and two different parts. The first is a conversation with Peter Beinart. He's an associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York. He's a great writer. He writes at The Atlantic, The Forward, all kinds of other places, a bunch of great books. We talked about the controversy this week about tweets by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that were seen by many critics as anti-Semitic. We talked about why Peter's views on her conversation and the broader discussion around the role of APAC in our politics. Then Ben Rhodes and I sat down with Wendy Sherman, who is the former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, which is basically the number four ranking official of the Department of State. We talked about Wendy's role as a negotiator. She has negotiated the Iran deal with the Iranians. Back during the Clinton administration, She went to North Korea to negotiate with the North Koreans. She knows what it's like to be inside the room.

And we thought that she would just be an invaluable person to talk to as Donald Trump heads into his second major summit with Kim Jong-un. We also talked about her new book, Not for the Faint of Heart, which is a bunch of great lessons from her time in government. I think you'll really enjoy this episode. So with no further ado, here is the conversation with Peter Biner. Okay, Peter, it has been an exhausting week. in the ongoing war that is Twitter. Thank you for jumping on the phone to talk through it. I really appreciate it. I'm going to walk through the latest controversy with Elon Omar and we'll just sort of go from there. So on February 10th, this started when Glenn Greenwald tweeted about the GOP leader

Kevin McCarthy threatening punishment for Elon Omar and Rashida Thelieb over their criticisms of Israel. She responded, Congresswoman Omar responded, it's all about the Benjamin's baby, which is a reference to $100 bills and or a puff daddy song. Then a reporter from the forward tweeted, I would love to know who Ilhan Omar thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, though. I think I can guess, bad form, congressman, and that's the second anti-Semitic trope you've tweeted. Omar responded and quoted the tweet, APEC. So on Monday, she apologized and said anti-Semitism is bad.

I'm grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes. and I unequivocally apologize. At the same time, I reaffirmed the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be APEC, the NRA, or the fossil fuel industry. That came after considerable pressure from Democrats and Republicans, including Nancy Pelosi. I should also note that Omar has previously offered what, you know,

read to me as a pretty heartfelt apology for a 2012 tweet where she wrote that Israel is hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. Hashtag Gaza, hashtag Palestine, hashtag Israel. I think basically she said she was reacting to the ongoing war in Gaza at the time and didn't realize how loaded the term hypnotized was. And, you know, I thought offered a pretty sincere, thoughtful response to that. So with that, my first question was just, what did you make of Congresswoman Omar's tweets and the subsequent controversy? So associated organizations play in shaping the American debate about Israel.

As it happens, A-TAC doesn't actually give money to politicians. APAC basically has kind of associated political action committees that made up of APAC members that do, and that does play a significant role in the American-Israel debate. On the other hand, there is this long history about the idea that Jews secretly controlled government with money. So when you talk about the role of what is perceived to be a Jewish organization, APAC, even though it's not officially a Jewish organization, I think you do need to be a little bit more careful than when you talk about, let's say, the fossil fuel industry or the NRA, because which doesn't have that whole historical baggage, right? And so I guess I would say that I thought that Johan O'Meyer's tweets were a little bit a flip, given the historical baggage that this conversation had,

and I think that I was glad she apologized for it. On the other hand, in the range of sins of bigotry and even anti-Semitism that we have seen in the Trump era, I think this was a very, very minor one. And the attack was, to my mind, were both disproportionate and I think to significantly agree disingenuous. Yeah, I read the tweets and I cringed. They felt way too flippant. There were a lot of people I follow on Twitter, some Jewish, some not. who were sincerely hurt by the suggestion that, you know, you just referenced that there's some

sort of a cabal of Jews controlling politics or that Jewish money is somehow controlling our political process. That's not accurate. It's not fair. It's hurtful to a lot of people. I do think, unfortunately, the controversy around the statement may be obscured a bigger question, which is APEC is an incredibly powerful lobbying group in Washington, right? I mean, it seems like sometimes there's a suggestion that it's unfair or wrong to point that. out in the way you might point out that, say, the NRA is powerful. Do you feel like there's a double standard there? I think one has to be careful and nuanced about this because of the historical baggage. But that said, it's also important for people to talk about this. People inside the

Jewish community talk about this all the time. Look, to understand APAC, you have to understand that the organized American Jewish community essentially was too disorganized. and powerless to pressure the American government in the 1930s and 40s at a time when European Jews were being destroyed. And out of that sense of collective failure of a previous less assimilated, less well-organized, less prosperous Jewish community has come this very, very strong ethos that exist in parts of the American Jewish community that the organized American Jewish community should be organized to participate in wield power in the political arrangement.

so that nothing like that can ever happen again. This is the sub-tech. I speak of someone who spent a lot of time in APAC meetings in the course of my life. This is essentially the subtext of the way APAC operates. There's nothing wrong with that. AAPC is a very well-organized group, which essentially uses the American Jewish community, which is a wealthy, a biomarge and articulate, critical-artic community, and to some degree pro-Israel Christians, to have a very, very strong impact on

the Israel debate, especially in Congress. And that limits president's abilities to put pressure on the Israeli government. So all you believe, as Johann Lomar, believes, that American policy towards Israel is bad for Palestinians because it basically turns a blind eye to some really terrible human rights abuses. And it's also ultimately bad for Israel because essentially America ends up accepting an Israeli occupation of the West Bank that puts Israeli democracy. What about Islam as the most boring conversation in all of politics? And it's like, the go-to for Twitter. But I do think it's worth noting that during the campaign, Kevin McCarthy, the same person who started this whole thing by attacking Rashida Taleb and Ilhan Omar, he tweeted

that George Soros, Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg, three Jewish billionaires, were trying to buy the election. I mean, isn't that pushing the sort of same anti-Semitic trope that she is accused of promoting? And do you think that the backlash to Kevin McCarthy's tweet was as significant, or was she treated more harshly by the body politic? She was treated more harshly. I mean, you have that she was denounced by the entire House Democratic leadership. And, you know, you mentioned McCarthy. But look, Donald Trump's record of saying things that flirt with anti-Semitic

tropes at least as much as El Hamas is a really long one. I remember he went before the Republican Jewish coalition in late 2015 and basically said, you're not going to support me because you don't want my money and you want to control politics with money. I mean, that wasn't even more kind of brazen. you know, invocation of this stereotype, not to mention Trump's final ad, which had, you know, three Jews, Lloyd Blankf, and George Doris and Janet Yellen and talked about, you know, special interests, global special interest to control Washington. I mean, Trump has a pretty

long history of this. So there are definitely people who sincerely were upset by Ilhan Omar and criticized Ilhan Omar and have criticized Donald Trump and criticized Kevin McCarthy. But there's also a very large group, particularly of Republicans, who didn't really really create. criticize Donald Trump or Kevin McCarthy. And for them, I think the issue is not really the flirtation with anti-Semitism. What upsets them about Il-Humar is not this tweet, really. What upsets them about Il-Humar and Rashida Tili is that they could potentially shift the contours of the Israel debate and create more space for a more fundamental criticism of American policy towards Israel. And that, I think, is what really worries those people. And I think that needs to be

distinguished from the problematic nature of this particular tweet. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, there are a lot of people criticizing or hurt by Ilan Omar's tweet. They were acting and speaking out in good faith. I think Kevin McCarthy was totally bad faith political. I mean, I think you'd have to be naive to separate out the fact that Elon Omar and Rashida Taleb are Muslim women, and they both support the BDS movement, which the Israeli government and basically the whole U.S. Congress besides them fiercely opposes

not surprisingly. The first, actually surprisingly, the first bill passed by the Senate. basically included language designed to stop the BDS movement in its tracks. I mean, can you remind us what BDS is and what you make of it as a movement? Because I know you've written some interesting things recently about BDS and what you make of that S-1, the anti-BDS legislation. Sure. So BDS stands for a boycott investment sanction.

It's a movement that arose out of Palestine and civil society in 2005. The time is the date of significant because the second of the Carta, which was a kind of significantly violent uprising by Palestinians, which included a lot of terrorism against civilians, ended in 2004. And the Palestinians were searching for some new strategy to oppose Israeli policy, and, indeed, perhaps to oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state itself, and hit on this notion, which for them was modeled on the anti-partate movement, of basically a global kind of boycott, an international economic pressure on Israel.

The BDS movement has three plans. It basically says Israel must be boycotted and sanctioned in other ways until Israel leaves the territories that it conquered in 1967, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in particular, in East Jerusalem. Second, that it must provide equality for its Palestinian citizens inside the Green Line, the 67 lines. And third, that it must accept and support the right of return of Palestinian refugees who left their homes during Israel's War of Independence between 1940. 1947, 1949. So what do I think about this? First of all, I think it's important to acknowledge that the BDS movement is nonviolent, right? I do not believe that Palestinians can reasonably be expected to sit back and accept an Israeli

occupation in the West Bank that denies them the most basic of human rights, right? And we have long, rightly said in the Jewish Union and elsewhere that Palestinians should not oppose that with violence. So this is a nonviolent strategy. And it's a strategy that is a secular strategy and speaks in the language of human rights and international law. On the other hand, it's not a movement that really respects the idea of Jewish self-determination. When critics of the BDS movement say, this is not a movement that really accepts the notion of a Jewish state within any boundary, there is some truth for that.

Because the way many of its leaders define equality inside Israel proper and their position on refugee return suggests to the lot of people, including me, their vision is really either a secular binational state in all of the territory, Israel, West Bank, and Gaza, or a Palestinian state alongside a secular binational state, not a Jewish state. So if you are someone who believes that there is a value in a Jewish state, a certain kind of Jewish state, then the BDS movement is problematic for you, and it's problematic for me. I personally do boycott products from the West Bank settlement. I do not buy those products, but I would not support and do not support any boycott. that is a boycott of Israel itself, because in Israel itself, Israel's Arab, Palestinian citizens

have do have the right to vote. They do serve in the connectus. They serve on the Supreme Court. So I think there's an important moral distinction between the West Bank where Palestinians have basically no rights and Israel itself, where they're discriminated against but have some basic rights. On the other hand, it's something going on too long. No, no. It's a complicated conversation. I do not believe that the BDS movement is inherently implicitly. it. Because I understand, I mean, I'm a Jew. For me, even though I have a lot of problems where Israel does, Israel's creation has been an enormous blessing for the Jewish people. But I understand why Palestinians are anti-Gyionists. I understand why, for them, the Jewish state has been largely a source of misery and discrimination. And for them, they would

like not to have a Jewish state in which they are second-class citizens, even in the state of Israel itself, right? Even in the state of Israel itself, where Palestinian is a citizen, a Palestinian father can't say to his son, you're going to grow up to be the prime minister of this country, right? Right. It's a state essentially built to privileged Jews. So while I'm opposed to the BDF movement, I would disagree with many of those in Congress, especially in the Republican Party, who say that it's an inherently anti-Semitic movement. It is a movement that comes out of the Palestinian experience, and I understand why Rashida Tili, for instance, given her own family history, supports it. And I don't believe it should be criminalized because I believe that people have the right to engage in boycotts.

The American Jewish community in the 1970s, when the Soviets were persecuting Soviet Jews, engaged in all kinds of boycotts with the Bolshoi, Balay, and other things in order to try to make great political change. I think boycotts are a legitimate political practice, even if you happen to disagree with their goal. You've been writing, thinking about the U.S. Israeli relationship, the U.S. polity towards Israel for a long time. And, you know, I think like a lot of people observed the way Netanyahu and his government have shifted further and further to the right, feels like there's basically no support for a two-state solution or peace process anymore. Settlement construction has been supercharged for years. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is horrific. I mean, shouldn't policymakers be criticizing these positions or at least talking about them more honestly than we currently do in Washington?

That is for policymakers to actually go and see for themselves, you know. One of the things that APEC is a really smart. organization. And one of the things they do is they take a ton of numbers of Congress to Israel. And those people are really impressed by Israel. And I understand why. I mean, Israel's a really impressive place. I love being in Israel. You know, it's a very impressive country. And you see things from the Israeli-Jewish point of view. But it's a little bit like, you know, going on a tour of New York and hearing a lot about police relations with the African-American community and never talking to any black people, right? Once you actually go to spend time with

Palestinians in the West Bank, it is a shocking experience. because Palestinians live as non-citizens under Israeli control. That means that they're not even theoretically entitled to any of the basic human rights that we take for granted, like due process, clean movement, the right to vote for the government that controls their lives. And when you see that up close, it's a very powerful experience. And I think that we need more politicians who have maybe the sensitivity that Ilhan Amar did not show in that tweet, but also the courage to speak out openly about the human rights. rights realities in Israel, and also about Israel's Declaration of Independence, says this will be a

country that pursues freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the Hebrew prophets. Those are very meaningful words for me. There's no way you can go to see what Israel is doing in the West Bank and believing that it is living up to the spirit of its own founding document. So the Jewish community, the organized Jewish community, unfortunately, often, I think, creates an environment where politicians don't feel entirely politically, safe to explore this issue and speak their mind. And I think that's really unfortunate because I think that we would be better off as a country, Palestinians are better off, and ultimately Israel

would be better off too. Yeah, I mean, support for Israel used to be seen as a given, I think, and completely bipartisan. And I just, I don't know that that's the case anymore. A lot of it has to do with the policies in the West Bank and Gaza. And I think you've written about this extensively in your most recent book, The Crisis of Zionism. But it also has to do, I think, with Netanyahu whose decision to intervene in the 2012 election and basically endorse Mitt Romney. Bibi's current campaign posters are a gigantic picture of him and Trump together. I think it's interesting and good that you hear Democrats increasingly expressing concern for the Palestinian people, but I don't think that is a net good for Israel if they want continued

U.S. support from Democratic politicians on both sides. I mean, do you think we're about to see a major political shift in the way Israel is discussed or support for Israel? Not in the Republican Party. I think support for the Israeli government basically doing whatever it wants is pretty strong in the Republican Party. In the Democratic Party, I think what you see is now a pretty significant gap between where Democratic politicians are and where Democratic grassroots activists are,

whereas there's been a real shift in public opinion and a younger generation, including a love of Jews, the younger Jews, who want America to take a more forthright critical position of Israel on Israel because of the human rights issues and precisely because you say, first they grew up identifying Benjamin Netanyahu with George W. Bush and Dick Chene, right? And now they're identifying with Donald Trump. So he represents many of the values that they most opposed kind of, you know, bigotry, militarism. And so the question is whether there will be a policy, I think this issue is a little bit like where the Republican Party issue was on trade before Donald Trump came along, which was that Republican politicians were much.

more pro-free trade than a Republican voter, and Donald Trump saw that opening. I think the interesting question I think will be whether a candidate in 2020 in the Democratic nomination ceases that opening and distinguishes themselves from the rest of the past by taking a much more critical position on Israel. Bernie Sanders is really the only one so far who I think it seems to be moving in that direction. He's even said things about conditioning military aid to Israel, which is, as you know, not something that Barack Obama ever discussed. And I suspect if he does that, we will see that it's a political winner for him. And that shifts the debate and shows other Democratic politicians where there was a political opportunity and the debate inside the Democratic Party could change

pretty significantly. Yeah, ironically, by shifting back to the policy, he's supported by George H.W. Bush and Republicans of old. He gets the last president to really put pressure on Israel. Yeah. Last question for you. And thank you again for your time. I would be remiss not to mention the fact that we are seeing a really troubling rise in anti-Semitism globally. Do you have a sense of if there's a singular driver of these incidents and if there are things our government or other governments or individuals generally should be doing to try to stop these incidents?

Because it is scary. You're seeing in places like France. You're seeing in the U.S. I mean, it's pervasive. Yeah, that's complicated. You know, anti-Semitism is a phenomenon that has been able to mutate and take many, many different forms. I guess I would say this about the United States.

states, there's a debate in the American Jewish community about how to fight anti-Semitism. People on the right essentially say, look, Donald Trump has a kind of now ethnically, racially, religiously nationalist vision of America, but the good news, we're in it, right? It's not just Christian America now, it's Judeo-Christian America, and we're white, mostly. Most American Jews are white. So, you know, why bite the hand that feeds us? Those people love Jews, and they have Jews in their families, even in the Trump case, they support Israel. I think that's fundamentally wrong. I think for me, at the core of being a Jew is what it says, 36 times in the Torah, which is that we know the heart of a stranger because we

were strangers in New Jersey. To be a Jew is always to try to be in solidarity with the marginalized and the outcast, not only because it's the morally right thing to do, but also because it's the best thing for Jewish self-protection. And I think this for me is the deepest lesson of what happened in Pittsburgh. Look at what happened in Pittsburgh. Donald Trump would go on with this racist anti-Latin American caravan stuff. And what happened, this lunatic in Pittsburgh decided that the Jews were to blame for that, right? And so in a kind of roundabout way, Trump's anti-Latino bigotry turned into murderous anti-Semitism. For me, there's really a lesson there, which is that for our own self-protection, we have to be on the front lines defending all groups, Muslims, Mexican Americans, others who are being demonized by Donald Trump and his.

supporters and that ultimately those will be our strongest allies in fighting anti-Semitism. And I think that's the debate that's happening inside the Jewish community today. That is a great lesson and great advice. Peter Beiner, thank you so much for talking with me through this. This is complicated stuff. It can feel fraught to discuss it on Twitter because a lot of nuance and context is required to make your point and a lot of people want to attack you in bad faith. So I thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. And now for Ben Rhodes and conversation with Wendy Sherman. I am honored to have in our studio here in Los Angeles, Wendy Sherman, the author of Not for the Faint of Heart, Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence,

and frankly, one of the most experienced diplomats, not currently working for Donald Trump, all the, you know, all the really experienced folks. No, someone who has negotiated with, you know, adversaries served in the Obama White House for the Clinton administration, just an incredible career. So we are so grateful that you are here today. Great to be with you and Ben. Tommy. Thanks. I mean, you have this remarkable experience of not just working in government, but going to far-flung places to negotiate with people that you've been called the axis of evil or on enemies list over time. You negotiated the Iran deal. You negotiated with North Korea.

I was hoping you could kind of take us inside that experience a little bit. Like, you land in North Korea for talks. What happens? Where do you go? Where do you sleep? What do you eat? Who are the goons you're talking to? How does this work?

North Korea is like, unlike any other place I've ever been in my life. It is pretty much a Potemkin village. Pyongyang is actually visually very beautiful because there are monuments all over the city to the leaders of North Korea and parks. You see people, but in the capital of Pyongyang, they are dressed when they know people are coming to visit. When I went through the first time with Bill Perry, who had been in the capital of Pyongyang, they are dressed when they know people are coming to visit. with Bill Perry, who had been Secretary of Defense and President Clinton had asked him to do a North Korea policy review, and so a small team of us went to Pyongyang. We went to a rice paddy to see how the revolutionary workers were getting the job done with an ox cart, with signs along the paddy field with revolutionary slogans on them, and sort of like at a campaign stop,

an entire brass band in white band uniform at the other end of the paddy field playing revolutionary songs. This was, of course, it really felt like, you know, I'd done a lot of presidential campaigns and Senate campaigns. This felt like, you know, the advance team had arrived because they knew we were coming.

It was very sad in many ways. It was sort of pathetic. We had a performance where they sang songs in English and had a lot of, electronic chiron across the top of the stage with the words in English to like My Clementine. Now, of course, everybody in the audience neither spoke, read, or understood English. So it was for us. Yeah, right.

Right. It's spontaneous eruption. But an extraordinarily, very much of the Hermit Kingdom, a lot of buildings with no one in it. You don't control your schedule. I think Secretary Pompeo found that out. Yes, you did. He went to meet with Kim Jong-un, only to not meet with Kim Jong-un. You don't get to decide.

That's amazing. So you were conducting these talks on behalf of the Clinton administration. I mean, obviously they didn't end their nuclear weapons program. To the contrary, they poured gas on the program and to this day. But what do you think that those talks accomplished? Like, what's the value of that kind of diplomacy even when the long-term goal isn't achieved immediately? I want to make sure people know the facts in this situation. During the Clinton administration, there were no nuclear weapons.

There were no long-range ballistic missiles. In fact, there was enough fissile material. That's the stuff that goes inside of a nuclear weapon for one or two nuclear weapons. But that fissile material had been produced when George Bush 41 was president. So during the Clinton administration, there was no progress as such. The agreed framework, which was negotiated by Bob Golucci, a great diplomat, Foreign Service Officer, had a lot of problems, but it nonetheless kept their production of plutonium, one of the ways you produced material for nuclear weapon in check for the whole

administration. And what we were negotiating towards the end and what I got very involved in was trying to stop them from testing long-range missiles. You may recall that in 2000, we had a little bit of a presidential election problem. Yes, we did. We thought we should brief the incoming administration on what we were working on, the presidential election sort of didn't keep getting over, didn't keep getting over, didn't get over till December. We thought that was a little late to try to make a transition. And President Clinton was trying to get peace in the Middle East, which also proved elusive. But we then proceeded after the Clinton administration to President Bush trying some things, found out that in fact the North Koreans had started an enrichment program

in secret. Things went off the rails, and now we have a North Korea with many nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Yeah. Well, you know, it's an interesting parallel to look at Iran. You know, as with when you were talking to North Korea, when you started leading the negotiations with Iran, they had not yet reached the point where they had a nuclear weapon, but they had a nuclear program. They had an enrichment program. They had a plutonium path, potentially to a nuclear weapon. But the context was different, obviously, given that there were multiple parties in that. And I wonder just to set it up, how would you compare the differences between kind of entering into the negotiation with the Iranians in the middle of the Obama administration

as against what you were doing when you went to North Korea, as you described? Well, in both cases, even though there weren't other countries literally at the table in North Korea, having constant consultations with South Korea, Japan and China and Russia for that matter was a critical part of the negotiations. And in fact, when Galucci negotiated the agreed framework, the South Koreans and the Japanese were literally sitting in the next room so that there could be constant consultations. I think most listeners probably don't understand these negotiations. A lot of the work doesn't happen in the negotiating room.

It's all the consultation all the time that it takes. You know that then from your own experience, particularly on Cuba, what it takes to do these things. So it was certainly different to have all the parties around the table, though I think one of the things that was clear in both instances is although there were other interests, other parties they could veto, nothing could get done without the United States of America. Yeah. And that was true in both circumstances. The North Koreans are more transactional. Yeah. The Iranians are much more complex and sophisticated negotiators.

So that is quite different. And obviously in North Korea, you do negotiations through translators. Yeah. Though there are now some North Koreans who speak good English and Madam Che speaks with everybody in English. In the Iran situation, when Ahmadinejad was president, Zahili was the negotiator, they spoke in Farsi, we spoke in English. It was very tortured. Yeah.

during the Iran negotiations after Rahani was elected, Zharif took over. He'd lived in the U.S. for 30 years and every one of the negotiators spoke perfect English. Yeah, well, it makes it easier. To save some time. Yeah. That too. That too. I can't imagine. Although it takes time with the Iranians. Yes. And I think, I mean, not to make this too leading of a question, but one of the things that struck me in the Iran context when I was back in Washington and you were, out leading your team is you put together this extraordinary team that was almost like a national treasure. It had scientists, you know, people who knew nuclear physics. It had sanctions experts. It had diplomats. It had communications professionals. Lots of lawyers. Right. This huge team that had

these constant negotiating sessions and in between the negotiating sessions, they're back at the drawing board to come up with solutions to problems. And as someone who's looking at the North Korea negotiation today under Trump, it is kind of opaque, but I don't, all I see is Pompeo. All I see is occasionally the occasional surprise statement from the administration, the tweet from the president. What do you see looking at this with all your experience from the outside in terms of who are the team of people that they have working on this? And how can they actually address the complexity of a nuclear negotiation in North Korea without that kind of pickup team that you put together? Well, I think to be slightly fair, they've gotten slightly better in that Secretary Pompeo named Steve Began, who is a very talented, very capable, tough negotiator.

It was in the private sector for Ford Motor Company for many, many years. He was on the NSC, worked at state, worked up on the hill. And he's a smart guy, doesn't know Asian, didn't know North Korea, but he's tough. And he has put together a little team. I don't know all the people on it. he gave a speech recently at Stanford and laid out on his way to a meeting in Seoul, laid out sort of the context for the next summit that the president's supposed to be having. And look, I supported the president having a summit because both he and Kim Jong-un think

they're the only ones who matter. So I thought, well, maybe they will be able to make a breakthrough in this very difficult circumstance. But only if it was well-prepared, there was a strategy. To your point, there was a team. There was going to be follow-up. And of course, none of that happened. Yeah.

So to think that between the time the president said there was going to be a second summit and the summit was about, looks like about six weeks, to think that you can do all you need to do with a team that's just getting off the ground in six weeks is absurd. You don't think that love letters and tweets are sufficient? Yeah, you know, bromance is a wonderful thing. Yeah, yeah. But probably won't just do the job. I guess it's the opposite of toxic masculinity.

So that's a step forward for this president. So the U.S. intelligence community said recently that Iran is still complying with the Iran deal, despite Trump pulling out of it. The Europeans have been trying desperately to keep the deal alive by providing some economic benefit for the Iranians. One, did that surprise you that they would stay in the deal? And two, do you think that this deal can outlast the Trump administration? Really good questions. I thought they would try to stay in the deal because they've invested a hell of a lot in. it because they want at least small and medium European companies to try to stay in. And because I talk

about Iranians as hardliners and hard hard hardliners, not as moderates. And the hardliners who worked on this deal want to be able to survive. And the hard hardliners got to step up when the U.S. pulled out because they could say, see, we told you not to trust the U.S. They don't respect us. they withdrew. Now we can go off and do every bad thing we want to do in the Middle East with impunity. And so I think the hardliners are trying to hold the center in their country, such as it is. And I think, you know, in spite of having been called bad names by Secretary Pompeo from having meeting the Iranian since I left government, nonetheless, my sense out of those meetings is that they'd like to try to hold on if they think Trump will be there till the end of the administration,

maybe they can keep going and then start again with a new administration. I think if they think that Trump is likely to be president for another four years after this term, they will not stay in this deal. And what do you make of the European efforts to keep them in? I mean, it's challenging, right? When we've reimposed sanctions from the U.S., they're trying to find these kind of creative solutions to work around our sanctions. Do you think the Europeans, how do you assess the efforts that they've made to date to try to keep this on life support. They've tried really hard. I think everybody understands this facility that was just set up recently will help with some of the humanitarian trade, but probably won't do a lot for real enterprise.

But at least it shows that the Europeans are making an effort. I think, you know, one of the things people haven't talked about, we all ought to be really careful about, is if the Europeans, our ostensibly best friends, her best allies, find a workaround to U.S. economic sanctions. Yeah. What's that say? Yeah. This is a big deal. Yeah.

Way beyond the Iran deal. Yeah. So it's quite not great. Not great at all. Speaking of tough deals, what do you think the best possible deal is that Trump can get with North Korea? A lot of analysts I read seem to think that denuclearization, to the extent that that's a defined term, isn't feasible. Do you agree? Is there a best we can get option that we should be shooting for at this point?

You know, when President Obama said that we should work with Iran to ensure they never get a nuclear weapon, we didn't know how long that would take or how many steps it would take to get there. I don't have a problem having the objective be the denuclearization of North Korea. That should be the objective. How we get there, what steps along the way, whether they're interim pieces to the deal, are quite likely because this is pretty complex to do, as Ben pointed out, Iran never had nuclear weapons. And look how hard that was, right? This is many times more difficult because it's really the only hand they have to play. Iran had other hands that could play. This is the only hand Kim Jong-un has to play is his nuclear weapons. And he plays it really well.

So I think it's pretty tough. I think there will probably be interim steps along the way. Look, it's good they're not testing. however, they probably are far enough along that they can use computer simulations to do whatever they need to do now. And there are credible reports that they are continuing to build up their nuclear weapons production and their missile production. That's of great concern. I think what's going to be really interesting here is how this will all get sequenced, what the first steps might be, what the president will be willing to do. It was interesting in the speech that Steve Began gave at Stanford, he said, we're willing to do this in parallel. And that is of concern to me because, yes, you can orchestrate and sequence steps so everybody can save face, but the person who has the

bad behavior here is North Korea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's one of a few complex challenges the administration faces from North Korea to Iran to Venezuela to China, trade, and on down the list. You know, you served in really the position that, you know, so people know, the job you were in as Under Secretary of State was kind of the number three job in the department, but really kind of the tip of the spear for the diplomatic corps of the department. And I'm wondering what you make of the kind of hollowing out we've seen of Foreign Service Officers retiring. I think some of our listeners, you follow this, you know, they're aware that there's been this exodus of diplomats. some of them were purged under the kind of restructuring and reform that Tillerson was doing. A lot of them have just kind of left because they either don't agree with the Trump administration

or don't feel like their services valued. What is the cost of that to U.S. interests? You know, why does it matter if we have all this experience walking at the door? I think for some people, they recognize intuitively, well, this must be a problem. But I think kind of putting that into perspective for folks might be helpful. First of all, I think, Ben, you were really generous to say what Tillerson did about reconstruction reform of the department. I think it was destruction of the department.

I mean, he, and I truly don't understand why, totally baffling to this day. How would you come in and eviscerate your own workforce? Exactly. And why would you push out 60% of the senior foreign service? These are folks who have served Republicans and Democrats. They've served people they agree with, people they don't agree with, but they took an oath to the United States of America to the Constitution, it's just totally baffling to me.

The result of that, however, is a State Department that doesn't have the capacity it should. I mean, one of the things I think about the potential of a second shutdown is I don't know how Donald Trump goes off to a second North Korean summit if there's a second shutdown. Good point. It requires diplomats not only working on the summit itself,

but working all around the world to reinforce what's going on at that summit. What diplomats do, yeah, occasionally you go to reception and drink a glass of wine, which is, I think, the perspective a lot of people have, what they think of. But most of the time, you are really doing tedious, difficult work to try to represent the interests of the United States of America. Yeah. And that's really tough to do when you've destroyed the workforce. I'm out here in California in part talking to students and, you know, I'm urging them to go into the Foreign Service, go into the Civil Service. I mean, look at those TSA workers, those FBI workers,

all the folks who went to work, even though they weren't being paid. I dare say a lot of us wouldn't go to work if we weren't being paid. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Amazing. You know, one of the thing, and again, Wendy's book, Not for the Faint of Heart, is something everybody should look at if they want to know about what it's like to be in the front lines of these negotiations, but also just an extraordinary career that will have next acts as well. But, you know, you worked in politics and diplomacy. So you started in Maryland politics. You were a key aide to Barbara McCulkey, a longtime senator, worked on presidential campaigns,

and then also had all these jobs in government. And by the way, if folks out there, I haven't heard of Barbara McCleskey, Google one of her first floor speeches, watch on YouTube. She's a force of nature. You don't want to get in the way of Barbara McCulkey. As she says, I was really lucky to run her first campaign for the U.S. Senate. She was the first Democratic woman ever elected in her own right. And as she said, she was a 25-year overnight success.

And, well, given that experience, so, you know, we're obviously entering into a campaign season where you see the debates are dominated by thus far, you know, health care and the shutdown, domestic issues. But given your experience straddling politics and foreign politics, see, what are you looking for out of these Democratic candidates in terms of how they articulate, not just criticisms of Trump, but an alternative approach to the world? You know, I'm now director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard and a professor of practice of public leadership. And the reason I decided to do that is because we have

a leadership deficit around the world. And a lot of the great energy for the future is coming from young people, whether those are the kids who took the tragedy of Parkland to Chicago and joined up with the Chicago kids who face violence every single day to try to get folks to register to vote and young people to vote, whether it is all the women who took to the streets and so many women who ran for office, the diversity that's come into this midterm Congress. It's really important. And leadership should be about helping people to get through this staggeringly rapid technological and social change.

that we're all experiencing. This is going to be unlike anything I've ever lived through and much more profound, in fact, than the Industrial Revolution, what artificial intelligence will do to the labor market, what climate change will do, how it will increase the inequality between the rich and the poor and the rich in the middle class, for that matter. These are big challenges, and so leaders ought to help people navigate that,

should have a vision for the future that's inclusive that helps people get through that as opposed to really go for their fears and their grievances. Much of what I think President Trump does is he just plays on people's sense of grievance. And it's not that people have grievances. They have legitimate grievances. But you try to solve those problems. You try to take them to a better place. And I really think the energy among young people to do that, that sense of hope and inspiration is what it should all be about.

Yeah. the three of us logged a lot of hours in the White House Situation Room many times. Loved every moment. Against our will. Yeah. Loved every moment. For you listening, I was a JV backbencher. Like, literally there's a table in a backbench where the...

With very little space in between. Yeah, a little space in between where people like me sat. But the two of you were at the table with powerful people making very important decisions. And you, in the book, not for the faint of heart, you wrote this powerful chapter that you also adapted for political magazine about the challenge of wielding power as a woman in Washington. And one line that really jumped out of me was, women need to stop thinking that power is a dirty word. What did you mean by that? Women have a really strange relationship with power sometimes. We tend to be more comfortable or at least traditionally with informal rather than formal power. Years ago, I did a study when I was in social work school. I'm a trained as a

community organizer. We have a leave for radicals and all that kind of stuff. Sal Winston. Yeah, Salinsky. So, and what I found out in that study of community organization, organizations is they were most often started by women to get a light at a school crossing, stafes drinking water, deal with something in their community. But as soon as the donors arrived or grants were funded, money showed up, somehow or other you guys, there we are. There you were in charge. And you came to run the organizations we built. So I've tried to say to women, power is not in and of itself a bad thing. It's a great thing if it's used for good purposes. When I speak, without a doubt, the first three questions will be from guys in the audience. And then I'll

stop and I'll say, I'm not taking any more questions to one of you smart women, raise your hand. And you know what some of those women have told me, because we've talked about it a lot. They've said to me, well, I'm sitting there trying to think of a great question and how to frame the great question. So I don't just raise my hand. And I say, don't you understand? The guys raise their hands, they haven't a clue what they're going to ask. They just figure by the time they, the person comes to them, they'll think of something brilliant. They'll sound smart. Also true in the situation room. Also true in the situation room. Exactly my point. Exactly true. Same thing in the situation room. Well, you, as a Maryland, as someone rooted in Maryland politics,

you know, the daughter of a Baltimore mayor, I think a lot of Americans saw a woman comfortable with her power. Extremely. In a way that, you know, some people have never seen before, really, the last few weeks, just emerging as the most comfortable person in the country wielding power. What does it like to watch Nancy Pelosi in this latest act of a career? Fantastic. I mean, I've known her for a long time, obviously, and her family, both her father and her brother were mayors of Baltimore.

And it's interesting, both she and Mikulski, Jerry Ferraro, Barbara Canelli, all went to all women's colleges. That's not true for everybody anymore. I started at a women's college as well where women are expected to raise their hands. There is none of you guys are around. So I think that watching Nancy, not only does she rock, but she is just so clear. She's so skillful. She really said to those who doubted whether she should be the majority leader because she

was the speaker because she was too old and she was the past, not the future. that if you want to get to the future, better have somebody who knows how the hell to get there. And she certainly does. So I think a lot of listeners of the show are pretty young. And I think some of them wonder, should I go into Foreign Service? Should I join the intelligence community?

Should I join the military? And my experience in government was working with a lot of cool, powerful, dynamic people, right? Susan Rice, Heather Higginbottom, right? Like Ben, Jake, all these great people. But Ronan Farrell worked at the State Department before he was head hunting. creepy executives in Hollywood.

Blurbed my book. I'm very grateful. Oh, that's good. But I don't know that the State Department has the reputation of being cool, the way the CIA does because of movies, because of Argo, whatever. What's your pitch to young people listening, why they should join the Foreign Service, why it's a meaningful, exciting career? First of all, you yet to live all over the world. I mean, what's cooler than that?

Now, you may get sent to someplace you don't want to go, and some of the places are really tough to live in. but it is experiencing the world. It's just amazing. Even if you're a brand new Foreign Service officer and you're sitting on the visa line in a country, you are absorbing everything in that country, what it's like to live someplace else,

how other people think. We all live in a world that's so interconnected and so close, you have to know what else is going on outside of your own little world, and it gives you a chance to do that. The State Department's gotten better because it needs to about giving people more agency, more ability to do cool things. I certainly had a lot of young people who worked with me on the Iran negotiation who were my control officers. That means the person who sort of follows you around and make sure all your logistics work.

It's a great title. But yeah, controlling me, right? Yeah, good luck. But that person, the way I did things, got to sit in on everything. That's great. When we had team meetings at the beginning of the morning at the Palais-Coburg in Vienna, those last 27 days, that control officer sat in on the meeting. They got to hear all the inside stuff.

And they were, you know, a first-tour career foreign service officer. The civil servants at the State Department are equally terrific. And a lot of the new areas like climate, economics, non-proliferation, are a lot of civil servants because they've learned that, and they aren't the generalists that some of the IR International Relations Foreign Service guys are and gals. So I hope people come in. The president won't always be president. If they come in now by the time they're in a place to make a real difference because they're the policymakers, life will be very different.

We need them. Yeah, I think there's a huge opportunity for the next president to kind of take advantage of all this energy that has been building in the country and kind of, kind of, galvanize a new influx of people in public service, whether in the foreign service or other parts of the government or peace court. We should have national service in this country. We should because kids do it anyway, you know, whether you take that as a gap year before you go to college and do some service or you do it after college. It's fantastic. Yeah. Last nerdy question that I forgot to ask you before. President Trump has decided apparently to pull out of the INF treaty, which is a non-proliferation

Treaty that presumably will keep us from a nuclear war with the Russians. What do you make of that decision and how concerned are you about the broader nonproliferation regime and arms control regime being unwound by Trump and Pompeo and Bolton? I'm very concerned about it. You know, NATO has supported him in saying that within six months he will formally withdraw, but has announced the suspension of the INF Treaty, which is about cruise missiles of a certain range and certain kind of cruise missiles and ground-based launchers. And the reason it's a problem is once you get rid of the treaty, you've started an arms race again. And you basically are saying that we can develop weapons, which means that Russia will develop more weapons, which means

China will develop more weapons. And Senator Chris Murphy, I thought, put it well, just because someone breaks a law, you don't throw the law out. Good point. So why are we throwing out a treaty because Russia has, in fact, not fully complied with it? We need to keep as many constraints on proliferation as we possibly can. So to me, it makes no sense that we would pull out. I think we are ultimately going to put NATO in a really tough position and Europe in a really tough position because my sense is that at the end of the day, in six months, Trump will withdraw completely. and that is going to be terribly dangerous for Europe because you're basically saying Russia, do whatever you want. Yeah. The book is Not for the Fane of Heart, Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence.

Wendy Sherman, thank you so much for coming to visit Crooked Media HQ. I'm sorry that my little fluffy dog barked to you for some reason. She barked it Ben on the way, and I don't know what's... Yeah, she's a little cranky time. Something stuck on her crawd today, but we'll sort it all out. Well, I just want your listeners to know that these two guys worked really hard in government. Sometimes they were a pain in the ass. Yeah, true. But really cool guys and as somebody who's just slightly a whole lot older than

they are, they're pretty cool. Well, we learned a lot. Thanks, guys. Thank you. And everyone should read the book and then join the Foreign Service. Yeah, it's a deal. It'll be fun. Yeah. Yeah. No big deal. Do it. Cool. Thanks, guys. Thanks again for tuning in to Pots Save the World. Share this bad boy with your friends. Rate and review us in the iTunes store. And I hope you enjoyed the puffed at Easter egg. Have a good one.