Pod Save the World - Impeach the mofo

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

Tommy talks with national security expert Kelly Magsamen about Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine for manufactured dirt on Joe Biden, Trump’s UN speech, Iran, the Israeli elections and the protests in Egypt. Later, Tommy is joined by Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA officer who joined six of her colleagues with national security backgrounds to say the allegations against Trump on Ukraine would be an impeachable offense. Then, Tommy speaks with former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power about Syria, national security decision making and her new book, The Education of an Idealist.​

Welcome back to Potsave the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you guys for tuning in on this wild impeachment week. A couple things. Ben is on the road. So my co-host today is Kelly Magsaman. You guys have heard her on the show before. She's the Vice President for National Security at the Center for American Progress. She's an Iran expert. She's a defense expert. She's awesome. And I was so glad I had her today because of the issues we touched on, which included Trump attempting to extort the government of Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. Biden. Trump's speech today at the UN General Assembly, the latest on Iran and whether Trump will meet with Iranians, Trump's troop deployment to Saudi Arabia. We talked about the Israeli elections and then the latest on the protests in Egypt, which bubbled up over the weekend and was pretty amazing. Also, as part of that conversation about Ukraine, Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin from Michigan dialed in. She published an op-ed today with six other freshman Democratic members of Congress who have national security backgrounds about why they believe these latest allegations about Trump extorting the government of Ukraine for dirt on arrival

may be an impeachable offense. That op had signaled that so the dam had burst when it comes to impeachment and it was really important to get her perspective just minutes after she left a caucus meeting with Nancy Pelosi. Finally, we will hear part two of the crooked media conversations with Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. If you haven't listened to part one of a conversation. It was on Positive America Monday. John Favro and I talked to Sam about her new book, what it's like to be a parent in national security. Her early days is like a cub reporter in Kosovo. Samantha is smart. She's funny. She's awesome. He was like one of my favorite interviews we've done. And then the second part of it was just me and Samantha and we dug more into some foreign policy

issues. We talked about Syria. We talked about the use of force. We talked about what she learned over time and what it was like to be in these situation room meetings for the first time when you like, oh shit, these are the people that are actually going to make the decisions that are going to decide the course of U.S. foreign policy. So it was a really great conversation. I think you will love it. Before we get to the news, just two quick things. First, make sure you check out our brand new podcast, America Dissected with Abdul-Aid. Abdul is a doctor and a public health expert. He ran for governor, actually, in Michigan. He's going to cover issues like the anti-vaxxer movement, why Goop has such massive appeal in our health care system. Abdul is just the best. He's smart. He's funny.

talks like a human being. You are going to love this show. I learned so much from the episodes I listened to already. So subscribe today to America Dissected with Abdul Al-Said. Also, Ben and I are going to do a live podcast at J-Streets October 26th National Conference in Washington, D.C. We'll talk with activists and policy leaders about the U.S. Israel relationship, and we are going to talk about ways we can just all push for more diplomatic solutions to global problems and less militarism in the world. Go to jstreet.org slash pods. save to get a ticket and to join us. I promise you you'll have a good time. Okay, with that, let's do the news with Kelly Magner. Kelly, thanks for doing the show again. It's great to have you

back. It's great to be back. So let's start with Ukraine. So last week on the show, Ben and I talked about Congressman Adam Schiff's really stunning letter to the Director of National Intelligence about this, the legal refusal to forward along a whistleblower complaint. Thanks to some great reporting by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. We know. now know that that whistleblower complaint that came from the intelligence community discusses a July 25th phone call where President Trump allegedly pressured the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to manufacture an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The week before this call with Zelensky, Trump instructed his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney,

to freeze nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine. That was money that had been approved by Congress. So on top of that, the State Department has been setting up meetings for Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, to pressure these Ukrainian officials. Vice President Pence was over meeting with Ukrainian officials and pressuring them about corruption, which obviously would be interpreted as crackdown on Biden. Trump personally canceled or refused to schedule several meetings with this brand new Ukrainian president as part of this instortion racket. So it's hard for me to imagine this being more blatant.

Just a quick reminder of the context here. In March of 2016, Joe Biden pressured. the government of Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor. The reason he did that was because that prosecutor was not doing enough to fight corruption. The prosecutor himself was seen as corrupt. And this was not just us who believed this. This was the view of the European allies, the IMF, the World Bank. You know, and Biden wasn't just freelancing here. Like it was the consensus view of the U.S. government that this guy had to go. It went through the standard NSC interagency process, which means all the top people in government signed off on this. This, you know, wasn't something

Biden did on his own. There was no secret. The latest, as of this recording time, Congress just voted to release this whistleblower complaint to the Intelligence Committee. Trump says he's going to release an unredacted transcript of his call with Zelensky. The whistleblower might testify before the Intelligence Committee. So, Kelly, this is already exhausting. Let's pause there. Maybe you and I could do like this step back here. How important do you think this money is? and generally support from the United States for Ukraine. Well, I think it's very important. The Ukrainians, of course, you know, the Russians annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in March of 2014.

And ever since then, the Ukrainians have been involved in a, in a war, basically a fight with the Russians for control of Ukraine. And so this assistance, security assistance, it's mostly, you know, arms, but also other sort of financial assistance has been essential for Ukraine to be able to step up and push back on the Russians. So this is a big deal. It's a big deal to the Ukrainians. This is no small amount of money. We're talking about about $250 million for the Pentagon program, their security assistance program. We're talking about $140 million in what we call foreign military financing. So that's big money for the Ukrainians. So it's really important. I mean, it's a huge dimension of our foreign policy towards Russia right now, frankly, is to try to help the Ukrainians push back. So there's lots of angles of this. Of course, there's the

Russian angle with Trump. There's also, of course, now this new latest twist in turn. And I have to tell you, as a national security, former national security official, I am just astonished that the president of the United States essentially is trying to bribe a foreign power to look into a political opponent using the instruments of American foreign policy. That is that is deeply profoundly wrong. And it should be obvious, I think, to everybody, putting aside all of the Biden stuff or the corruption or whatnot. That's just the basics of what's going on here. Yeah. And so that, you know, in my mind, that opens a door for, you know, other countries to start investigating Donald Trump's political opponents to try to find dirt to help

President Trump. And that is hugely bad if it's the Chinese or the Russians or the Philippines or whatnot trying to, you know, essentially bend their policies towards Trump and using their, you know, law enforcement intelligence mechanism to go after American citizens at the president's encouragement. So this is this is profoundly bad from a national security perspective, putting aside all the politics. Yeah. I mean, and so like the decision to send this money to Ukraine, to send arms to Ukraine is not an uncontroversial one, right? I mean, Obama actually opposed sending more arms to Ukraine several times back when he was president. This really upset people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham. And so when I was reading that Trump reportedly thought that

sending more arms to Ukraine was ultimately meaningless because we would never get them to military parody with the Russians, but it would really piss off. Putin, I was like, okay, I understand that rationale. I can see where he's coming from. But frankly, that made the ultimate decision to just green light all this money even more confusing. Because if he thinks it's bad policy, if we know he has this history of really never going against what Putin wants, and Putin sure is hell doesn't want $250 million plus dollars worth of arms going from the U.S. to Ukraine. The fact that he would suddenly flip on this is weird. It's surprising. It's Very weird. It's very weird. And that, you know, he reportedly actually personally engaged with Mick Mulvaney at the OMB to put a hold on the money. So this is all very strange. And what's interesting is, you know, Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Graham, a number of other Democratic senators, in addition to Republicans, had, you know, basically pushed back on the White House hold. So this is a bipartisan view that this assistance is essential for Ukraine. So for the president to kind of single-handedly, you know, reach down to the budget,

process, especially the foreign assistance budget process that, frankly, he doesn't pay much attention to, to suddenly insist on a hold being placed. I have lots of questions. Yeah, me too, Kelly. So let's talk about this transcript for a minute because, look, I haven't worked in the White House since 2013, but back in the day when Obama would make a foreign leader call, my memory of how it works is the White House Situation Room would basically route the call from wherever, like the outgoing number to, let's say the country is Ukraine, through the sit room, up to the oval or wherever the president was to take it. And they would basically listen to the call and type out a transcript that wasn't verbatim but was pretty close as fast as humanly possible. I don't know if that's still how they

make transcripts these days in the White House. And I never knew if we recorded the call or not. I imagine in this case, the folks in Ukraine are recording the call. If a call is going to Ukraine, I'm sure the Russians are recording it through surreptitious means, maybe the Chinese, maybe the front, like the list goes on and on. But like, what's your sense? Like, do you think that's how it still works? And if so, I mean, will this transcript tell us everything we need to know? Well, I hope that it still works that way. I mean, as you recall, you know, the situation room would put together that that transcript. And then, of course, it would go to what we call the suite, which is the National Security Advisor's office for a review. And so the National Security Advisor would get to review the transcript and make sure that everything was correct. So I'm hoping that process still exists. I'm assuming it does, given the nature of the whistleblower complaint. I do think that it's important to remember that a transcript, it may not yield all the information. And so I think the aspect of having the broader complaint from the whistleblower themselves, there could be additional things beyond this specific phone call.

In fact, there is actually two phone calls. President Trump made two phone calls to Zelensky, one on April 21st, an introduction call and then the July 25th call. So there's actually two calls out there. So I think it's important to get all the transcripts of the engagements with the Ukrainians, but also whatever the nature of this whistleblower's complaint is. And I just want to say one other, you know, big thing stepping back. The fact that we have a whistleblower, thank God for them. Yeah, truly. You know, this person, whoever it is, is a hero in my view, because they followed the rules. They went through the process. They didn't try to go around the process.

This isn't Edward Snowden or any of that. This is a true, serious complaint that was validated by the Inspector General of the intelligence community. And they deserve a lot of credit. And there's going to be a lot of pressure on them in the coming days and weeks. Yeah. Kelly, so I totally agree with you. The Congress needs to see this transcript.

We need to see the whistleblower complaint. But I also want to know what support the State Department provided to Rudy Giuliani as he's gone over to you. Ukraine to try to push for this investigation into the Biden family, right? Mike Pompeo was on the Sunday shows this weekend, and he's such a petulant asshole that he refused to talk about whether or not the State Department had helped Giuliani in his efforts. But Rudy's out there as recently as last night on Sean Hannity saying the State Department was setting up calls and meetings for him.

I mean, one, how unusual is it, in your view, for the State Department to set up meetings and calls for a private defense attorney like Rudy Giuliani? And if they did do this, I mean, don't you think we should figure out what kind of funding or support went behind these trips? Absolutely. It's very strange. I worked at the State Department as well. I do never recall setting up meetings, official meetings for any American private citizen. And so there are a lot of questions around that. I also think it's interesting that Giuliani decided to go to Ukraine in May shortly after the first call that President Trump had in April. So there's lots of questions. questions I have around this whole thing and the fact that that Mayor Giuliani is out there speaking to this pretty openly, I think it's interesting. And I think there should be lots of questions the Congress asks Secretary Pompeo about the nature of that. Also, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, a career official, was unexpectedly recalled shortly after the first congratulatory phone call.

And so I also have questions around that. So what is the connection between the recalling of that ambassador, Giuliani's trip, the phone call? You can just sort of lay at this. This looks like it might have been going on for quite some time. Man, what is going on here? Okay. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll have my conversation with Congresswoman Alyssa Slokkin about why this latest incident with Ukraine actually made her decide that we may need to impeach Donald Trump.

And then after that conversation, Kelly and I will keep going through this wild week in the news. On the line, we have Congressman Alyssa Slotkin from Michigan. Congressman, thank you so much for doing the show on this wild day. Of course. So this morning started, or maybe it was last night I read an op-ed that you wrote, along with six of your colleagues who are from the military or the intelligence agencies or the Defense Department. You all have national security backgrounds. And you wrote this remarkable op-ed that said, if President Trump withheld security assistance from Ukraine to get essentially manufactured dirt on Biden, that's an impeachable offense. Can you explain to listeners why this latest news about Trump was the tipping point for you?

Sure. I mean, I really do think for all of us who have served, a lot of it really came down to just remembering our oath of office that we've taken many, many times before to protect. and defend the Constitution, and then we also, of course, took in January when we became congressmen and women. I think there's two parts to it, and I don't think it's very complicated. The first part is that we have the sitting president of the United States, acknowledging through his lawyer that he reached out to the Ukrainian government and asked for them to manufacture dirt on a political opponent.

That right there, separate from the role of security assistance to me is beyond. the pale. And we cannot allow that to be normal things. Just imagine a future president of whatever political party reaching out to China or North Korea and saying, hey, can you help me out? They just cannot be normalized. So I would have a problem with that right there. But then if you add to it, the second allegation that potentially the president used the leverage of hundreds of millions of dollars of security assistance to, you know, withholding that in order to make sure the Ukrainian government passed along some good dirt. So to me, those are two parts, both egregious. And it just came to a point for me, since I've been pretty judicious about impeachment,

that we have to really forget about the political calculus and do what is necessary to preserve the bones of our democracy. So that's why I came out. Yeah, I mean, so it was an amazing op-ed. It was, you know, it was, though, conditional, right? I mean, you said, if President Trump did these things with respect to Ukraine. That is an impeachable offense. It seems like since then Trump has basically admitted doing everything he's accused of. He's admitted to raising Joe Biden and his son with Ukrainian president. Giuliani has admitted to pressuring the Ukrainians.

This morning, President Trump confirmed that he withheld military aid to Ukraine. He's trying to claim it was because he had concerns about corruption. Then he completely changed his rationale and said, oh, well, we give too much money to them. like Donald Trump doesn't know a damn thing about Ukraine. Like obviously this wasn't an issue. He's pushing them for this dirt on Biden. It sounds like, you know, the Congress is about to get this whistleblower report. Trump now says he's going to release this transcript with Zelensky.

I know you just left a meeting with your House colleagues. I mean, has the conditionality of that op-ed changed? Do you feel like the caucus and you personally are ready to go to impeachment? I'm well, I think there's people in the caucus who were ready to go impeachment, before they were sworn in as congressmen and women. So literally true. I think there's a lot of people who had called for impeachment a long time ago. I think, you know, obviously Speaker Pelosi has now come out and said she supports an impeachment inquiry.

That's obviously a big step. We all met in caucus. And I think me, you know, regardless of the mood, regardless of the energy, regardless of how many reporters are swirling around the Capitol, and there's a lot of them, it is still important to me that we understand the facts. So I am open. I think that the onus is on the administration to show us how these aren't impeachable offenses, right? If you didn't call the head of another nation and ask for dirt, well, I guess demonstrate proof that Drew Giuliani was lying for some strange reason.

If you did not leverage assistance, security assistance, in order to get that dirt, prove it. because those allegations are serious. And we've lost the ability to trust whatever first word the president comes out with. Yeah. How worried are you about the message this sends to other countries like Russia or China that they can get whatever they want from Trump as long as they help him politically or dig up dirt on an opponent? I mean, how do you put this back in the box? Well, I think that's the point of us coming out, especially those of us with a national security background. It's just you can't normalize this.

And I think the way that you say to the rest of the world that the United States is not kind of open for business when it comes to political dirt is you actually get serious about pushing back on the Trump administration. And yes, okay, that can mean an impeachment inquiry. But, you know, we mentioned in our op-ed, we should use all the tools in our toolkit. And if someone is violating the law and refuses to sort of answer time after time, at a certain point, if you're a cabinet level official, you should be helped and contempt. right? We have to have rules and norms. And so for me, I think this was the way that we stop just this genie coming out of the bottle where all our allies and adversaries are thinking of ways to ingratiate themselves with America by providing dirt that we got to send a strong signal now. It has to be organized, clear, strategic. You worked in the national security world and the CIA.

this whistleblower could have been your former colleague. President Trump is out there attacking this person's patriotism. I imagine it is incredibly scary to be at the center of this political firestorm knowing that, you know, historically things haven't always turned out well for the people who take these brave actions. What's your message to that whistleblower today if he or she is listening? Well, I mean, I think, and I thought about this, you know, especially given that it might be someone with experience on you or Russia in that kind of department that I may indeed know them. And all I can say is for the entire intelligence community, they have been beat up by the president

pretty much every single week since he took office. And they come to work every single day. They could be paid many, many more dollars by going to the private sector or somewhere else, but they're patriots who do everything they can to protect our country. And the fact that the president, the commander in chief, would be attacking his own intelligence community from the beginning, it's kind of like the coach of a football team attacking, you know, his running back or his quarterback. And it just doesn't make any sense to do, especially publicly. And so the fact that someone came forward after knowing how this president has dealt

with people who have, quote, unquote, been disloyal to him is extremely brave. It's also extremely rare. The intelligence community prides itself on being bipartisan, right? When I was in the CIA, really the Hatch Act governs our life. You do not practice politics in the workplace. You don't even talk about it at all. I never knew what people's political affiliation was because it was so taboo to talk about politics in the workplace at CIA or at the Pentagon.

So the fact that this person has come out has been engaged in such a high-profile way that felt compelled enough to do this is very rare. And I just, I hope that they know that they're doing the right thing by coming forward. We need to see the full whistleblower report. I mean, we need to understand the seriousness of it. Is it fair to read that football comment as an attack on Jim Harba?

Well, you know, I represent Michigan State. Oh, I'm sorry. I have no problem attacking Jim Harba. I mean, not attacking, but making fun up or teasing or poking at University of Michigan, I will say their show last Saturday might make them slightly jokeworthy. But we always love our Michigan team. as long as we're not in state in the Michigan-Michigan State. Right, right. Go Buckeyes. Just kidding. Bridge too far.

No, Lou. Go green. Go green. Final question. And thank you for allowing me to be an idiot on a serious day. You're a member of Congress. You used to work in the intelligence world. I think you probably spent a lot of time thinking about how foreign countries react to things we do. I imagine that most countries are used to the U.S. having these brutal, divisive political debates. but it does feel like we're at a whole new level of just disarray and dysfunction. Does that worry you at all? I mean, I sometimes think that our adversaries could look at how broken our political system is right now

and think we can do whatever we want because there's no way that this country is going to come to a consensus and be able to respond. Well, I definitely think we're sort of at a low point for American leadership in the world. That's for sure. And that just worries me greatly as someone who really believes that America has a special role in the world, that our values are not just American values, they're universal values, that you can be anyone from any background and pull yourself up and make something to yourself. That's a very sort of idealistic, worldwide dream that our country represents for a lot of people. And so I want us to be leading from those principled places.

is. To be honest with you, I know that the general foreign policy or establishment sort of laments that we aren't doing what we usually do and wants to harken back to a different era. And I understand that. But I think we need to accept reality, that we have a generation of young people who grew up basically without remembering 9-11 or after 9-11. They know us in long-entrenched wars that we can't easily get out of. We've invested tremendous blood and treasure in those wars, and they see the shrinking middle class and the shrinking opportunity sometimes for themselves. So I think, frankly, I'd like to think a little bit optimistically beyond President Trump, that we may actually have a moment of opportunity when we have a next president to really rethink

some of the things that have been taken as hallmarks on national security for a very long time. And that doesn't mean violate our norm. That doesn't mean, you know, something crazy. It just means we may want to take an opportunity to rethink some things and not just do it the way we've always done it. And I hope people are thinking about that potential opportunity. Agreed. Congresswoman Alyssa Slokin, thank you for doing the show. Thank you for speaking out against this president's corruption. And we will watch this very, very closely. Thanks so much. Have a good one. All right, Kelly, we are back. So Trump's at the UN General Assembly today. Normally, this would be a significant day for an administration. You'd try to advance some sort of

foreign policy objective. But to me, it felt like Trump kind of sleptwalk through his speech to the General Assembly today. The delivery was awful, but the speech itself wasn't much better. He essentially attacked the UN as an institution by saying that, quote, the future doesn't belong to globalists. It belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations. a reminder that the UN was set up to help the world do collective, take collective action and prevent wars from, you know, states that adopt nationalism. Anyway, he had a litany of criticism for Iran, but he didn't really dig into the recent attack on Saudi Arabia that they blamed Iran for. Trump whined about immigration. He complained about social media companies being mean. It was

deeply uninspiring. Kelly, did you have any thoughts on Trump's speech today and, you know, anything else? Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting day to give a speech in some ways it doesn't matter. You know, what I find interesting about the speech is that it was an incredibly unorganized sort of strange series of conspiratorial rants and nationalist viewpoints. I mean, it felt like it was kind of pulled off of the alt-right Twitter. It was actually very depressing in some ways because it was a small speech. It's very clear that President Trump and many in his administration don't see value in the United Nations. They don't see value in multilateralism.

This is all about America First and nationalism and sovereignty. And it's interesting to me because this is the house that the United States built, you know, and we're essentially walking into it and burning it down. And so I think it's, it's, it was a sad state of affairs today. I suspect I'm going to predict that if President Trump is not impeach. by next year and is still around that he doesn't go back to the United Nations ever again. I just feel like this is a each year it feels like the speech just gets worse, right? It was like fire and fury.

Remember that one? Then last year it's kind of weird one. It was so bad. Also on the nationalist front, it was the Stephen Miller speech last year. This year seems to be like Stephen Miller light. Like Stephen Miller maybe like took a nap or something. So it's just, it's a sad sort of retreat from the global stage that we're watching in real time. Yeah.

I mean, Stephen Miller is just a terrible speechwriter. It is so funny. Like, look, the UN is a flawed institution. There are a lot of things they do. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. There's a lot of things they do that are unhelpful at best. It can be destructive at worst. But it was set up with a whole bunch of rules and procedures in place that is, they're incredibly advantageous to the United States. I mean, the fact that we're on the Security Council and have a voice in every single significant vote. It means you'd think you'd want to preserve institutions that are constructed like that. Yeah. I mean, you would think. You would think. Especially when we're looking at, you know, an increasingly competitive world where China is getting more influence, both economically and security-wise, to sort of take a backstep and, you know, not utilize one of the biggest assets that we helped create is amazing to me. My favorite parts actually were, must have been the Ivanka Trump inserted like three lines about women's rights. championing the roles of women and LGBT rights.

And I just wanted to like, I just wanted to hover outside my body because it's like the exact opposite what the entire administration is doing, whether it's the child separation policy on the border or the rollback, the trans ban at the Pentagon. I mean, it's just as if, you know, she just sort of inserted some nice lines in there that are completely untrue. Just exhausting. You know, often at the UN General Assembly, you know, the speech is sort of the main messaging. event, but you get a lot done on the margins through one-on-one meetings with foreign leaders,

or you bring a group of people together to advance some sort of common interest. There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not Trump might meet with President Rouhani of Iran while both of them are in New York. Kelly, you spent years and years working on Iran policy. Where do you land on whether it would be a good idea for Trump to meet with Rouhani? Oh, man. Not an easy one. Oh, gosh. Well, first of all, I think that, well, Rihani's Gook is actually going to go on Fox News apparently later today, which is a slightly strange thought in my mind. I want to watch that one. So that's interesting. I find that interesting. I think that Donald Trump is just absolutely desperate to have a meeting with this guy because all Trump cares about is the sort of perception that he's doing better than Obama. on foreign policy, whether it's on Iran or North Korea. It doesn't matter about the substance of what's occurring. I think he's looking for a way out. He has backed himself into a corner on the Iran issue. The only option he has left is essentially military action, which is something he is,

you know, clearly doesn't really want to pursue or more economic pressure, which at this point, Iran's already under such tremendous economic pressure. There's not much more space to go. and frankly, that's part of what's generating the instability in the region in the first place. So the only place he has left to go and to give himself a way out is diplomacy. And I suspect that the Iranians are not the North Koreans in this regard. They are much more complicated politically. I think they have less incentive to engage with Trump directly. That said, I think it would be interesting if Trump really was interested in pursuing diplomacy,

which I think would be a good idea. he should consider a broader sort of multilateral approach, whether it's maybe through the Umonis again or maybe some other parties in the region who might want to see a de-escalation of tensions. Yeah. Well, so the elephant in the room in this whole discussion is the recent attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure, which the Trump administration says was conducted by Iran. So in response, President Trump deployed U.S. troops and some missile defense infrastructure or equipment to Saudi Arabia last week. I haven't seen an exact number of troops that they sent over, but the Pentagon suggested... Because it's made up.

Is it really? Okay. So they said we're talking like hundreds, not thousands. So Kelly, I mean a couple of thoughts. One, curious generally if you think this response is smart or sufficient. But second, an Intel expert friend of mine told me that, you know, given all the material and training and defensive weapons, we've given the Saudis over the years, they probably should have been able to intercept this attack and that he thinks that this deployment of U.S. troops is basically an admission that their military is incompetent and they don't know how to run these systems. So I'm curious if you have thoughts on either of those questions. Yeah. Well, their military is notoriously terrible and has been for a number of years. Listen, I think this deployment is a total fig leaf and a way for Trump

to kind of get out of this situation. So when Pompeo was sent to Saudi Arabia after the attacks, I am 100% certain or I expect that Pompeo showed up to tell the Saudis, listen, this isn't going to happen. We're not going to war. What do you need to look like the U.S. is providing additional defense to you? What do you need politically to sort of safe face in this context with the Iranians? And I think they came up with more missile defense, maybe more security assistance. And so I suspect it would probably be about 300 guys and gals. who are probably sent out there as probably another, some sort of patriot battery.

But I don't think it's anything necessarily meaningful in the context of what's actually happening between the Saudis and the Iranians. I think it's just a way to look like we sent and did something to defend our ally in Saudi Arabia. Excuse me, our partner, they're not an ally. Right, right, our partners in Saudi Arabia. So, you know, the much harder question is if the Iranians did launch this attack, what might an appropriate response look like? because you do hear a lot of people saying we need to reestablish a deterrent to prevent Iran from doing this again.

Part of me thinks it seems like a deterrent was remaining in the JCPOA, the Iran deal, giving them the sanctions relief that they were promised as part of that deal. But maybe that's naive. Like I know these guys are not good actors, the IRGC, they're Public and Guard. I mean, they fund terrorist groups, they support Hezbollah. Like, we're not Iran fans here on this podcast. But there are goons, remember? Yeah, there are goons.

But like, you know, we're trying to think of how will we create the best outcome? And I'm not sure what that should look like. And the recent history seems to suggest that a response from the U.S. that is escalatory might be met with an escalatory response, which no one wants. Yeah, no, it's a very good question. And I hear this, you know, reestablished deterrence line quite a bit as well. And first of all, it's very hard to have conventional deterrence. It's always been very difficult.

But I think it really starts with clear messaging and a clear objective to where the Trump administration is actually trying to go with Iran. They are all over the map when it comes to their strategy on Iran. And so what I see happening is that the Iranians are confused. I see even American officials confused about what our policy is and is not aimed towards. I see our European allies confused. And in the absence of clarity around what we're actually trying to do with Iran is are we trying to get them? back to the table. Is it that we're trying to contain them? Is it, is it, is that, is a, is a, is a, it's a regime change? Without that clarity, none of our allies and partners are going to want to sign up to help us reestablish that deterrence and de-escalate the situation. So, you know, there's a been a reason why, you know, many of our European allies especially have not signed up for this maritime initiative because, you know, they could sign up for that one minute, put their people at risk. And then the next minute, Donald Trump is flying to Tehran. Right.

And so I think that's the biggest, biggest issue. So the Trump administration could be doing the right things. I mean, they met with the Europeans. The Europeans put out a statement this week in New York, you know, pushing back on the Iranians. I thought that was good. So that's helpful. The deterrent stuff I think is helpful, even though I think it's useless. But again, in the absence of knowing what we're actually trying to achieve, I think that's, I think that's the biggest problem.

Yeah, very well put. All right, let's talk about the elections in Israel and give an update to the greatest extent possible. So when I recorded last week, things were still too close to call. That's basically still true. The Blue and White Alliance, which is led by former General Benny Gantz, won 33 seats. Bebe Netanyahu and the Likud Party won 31 seats. They're both still scrambling to cobble together a coalition that can control 61 seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, which will mean they get to control government.

but they haven't gotten there yet and they're basically tied in sort of their effort so far. Interestingly, a group called the Joint List, which is a group of Arab parties that took third place in the election through their support behind Benny Gantz because they won Netanyahu out of there.

This is a big deal. It's the first time it's in 1992 that an Arab political group endorsed an Israeli prime minister. So the two sides, Benny Gantz and Netanyahu and the Lakud are negotiating over possibly having a unity government

where the parties rotate who serves as prime minister. But there are some major sticking points, like Benegon saying he won't join up with Bibi Netanyahu as long as he's facing a possible indictment. So complicated factor there because he's facing like three of them. But the final campaign results come in on Wednesday. So the day this is released. And then Israel's president, which is largely a ceremonial position, he has a week to pick a candidate who gets first crack at forming a government.

Normally, that would be Benny Gantz. and then it would go to BB Netanyahu. But it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to sort of pick the top dog in each political party. So the dramatic move would be if President Rivkin chose a member of the Lycud party that's not BB Netanyahu to begin the government formation process. So we'll watch and see that. It's notable and interesting to me that Trump hasn't really weighed into sport BB since these results came in,

which like that's the smart appropriate response, but therefore it is surprising. It was like the one right thing he's done in. like, I don't know, years. I know. So, Kelly, lots of drama in Israel. If you have any predictions about what will happen, be my guest. But I think the bigger picture question is, do you think that a non-Netanyahu-led government or a Benny Gantz-led government would look all that different from the current version when it comes to policy? It's a very good question. And I think it's an important one for folks in the United States to wrap their heads around. I mean, I think it's also, you know, Benny Gantz is a former chief of the Israelal defense forces, you know, on security issues. He's got a very strong background. He actually ran the Gaza operations in 2014, which is an important thing to remember.

Yeah. So it's not as if Benny Gantz is, you know, soft on peace and security issues. And in general, you know, within the context of Israeli politics, you know, security issues have been one area where there's been a significant amount of commonality in terms of sort of the Israeli internal politics. And this election, I think, was as much about rule of law and corruption and BB himself personally, but also the role of religion and, you know, in the state. There's lots of questions about, you know, secular, the sort of secular space shrinking in Israel with the, you know, addition of additional far right ultra-Orthodox. So I think those were some of the issues that really dominated the election. Now, of course, Gans didn't threaten to annex the West Bank. True. So that's good. And I think Benny Gantz, who has practical relationships, security relationships with the Palestinians, is probably more likely to be on board with a more traditional approach towards peace process issues. But in the absence of the United States really pushing Israel to take serious steps or anything that accounts for what the Palestinians rightly deserve, in the absence of U.S. leadership, I don't know how much difference it's going to make who's the prime minister.

And that's sort of my analysis of where we're headed. So I think that peace issues are going to be largely stuck still for quite some time. Of course, I think Bibi would be far worse for peace issues. But I don't know how much more traction Benny Gantz is going to have. And he's going to have to make, you know, depending on the coalition that's formed. And if he is the prime minister, he's going to have to make some accommodations across different. interest groups as well. So yeah. Yeah. That's not a great prediction, but no, no, but you're right. I mean, listen, I think that the hope probably among a lot of people on the left in the United States is that if Netanyahu is gone, maybe there is more hope that the Middle East peace process gets restarted and that we could ultimately see a Palestinian state. But they should know that, I mean, Benny Gantz has talked about, you know, returning Gaza to. to the Stone Age during the Castlead War on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, you know, bragged about the number of Palestinians killed in that war. And, you know, so these guys aren't great on, on that policy. I mean,

they're both pretty terrible. Both parties, I think, are far to the right of where traditionally, you know, a liberal in the United States would hope they'd be where the Labor Party once was. So I think there's no, there is no left really in Israel anymore. Right. It's been... Yeah, it's, it's dark. It's dark. It's been annihilated. So, yeah, I mean, look, Netanyahu is corrupt and he is, you know, someone who I think a lot of us dislike personally.

He's interfered in U.S. elections in his own way in the past. He has, you know, politicized the state of Israel by, you know, taking sides with President Trump and preventing to Democratic members of Congress from entering the country. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. But ultimately, I wouldn't be all that hopeful. that we be closer to peace is the sad reality. And what, you're not waiting with bated breaths for Jared's peace plan? Well, right.

I did forget about that. So hope springs eternal. Two more last question for you. So we'll turn to Egypt. So first, human rights activists are saying that around 500 people are in prison after protests in Cairo, Alexandria, in several other cities across Egypt. Protesting in Egypt has been essentially banned since 2013 when President C.C. took over in a military coup. And it's hard to overstate just how risky public dissent is,

given how Cece has used lethal force against protesters many, many times during that period. There's an Egyptian man who is now exiled in Spain named Muhammad Ali, no relation. He is credited with sparking this latest round of protest because of daily videos. He's posted accusing President Cece and his team of corruption. Ali worked as a construction contractor and a part-time actor before leaving the country and his sudden influence. influence is kind of confusing to everyone, but it seems to have, you know, rallied people around a very common feeling that CC is corrupt. Trump, who previously called CC his favorite dictator, praised him during a meeting at the UN General Assembly this week. Trump said he's not worried

about the protests. Kelly, CC is a brutal authoritarian leader. The underlying economic conditions in Egypt have gotten worse, not better since he took power. I believe one in three Egyptians live below the poverty line. It does sort of seem like, risk notwithstanding the story of the Arab Spring isn't yet over for Egypt. I think that's right. And I think this is, you know, it's showing that the underlying conditions that led to the Arab Spring still exist. And I think this kind of volatility, whether it's sustained or maybe it ebbs and flows over a period of years, I think it's going to be something that we're going to, we should probably get used to seeing a lot more of in the years to come. I think the Arab Spring, you know, we both worked on it. I worked on it.

Did really well on that. It's there's something that, there's something emerging, whether it's Hong Kong or whether it's Egypt or whether it's sort of the climate action movement of younger generations. I think there is something going on where people are finding their voice and are able to find their voice in ways that are unexpected that catch people by surprise. that catch people in the National Security Council, I'm sure, by surprise, are probably having lots of meetings about it. And we should get used to that. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, I was stunned when I saw those first videos of these protesters in the streets because, I mean, you know, there was a, a woman took a video, just an innocent woman, I believe in Alexandria, I took a video from her window of Egyptian forces roaming the streets with guns. And one of these guys saw her filming and turns, runs at her, points the gun at her balcony in fires. I mean, red, that's how dangerous it is just to be filming the protests, let alone a part of them. But these incredibly brave people in place after place around the globe are still going out there.

And I think it's important for Americans to take a real clear eye look at that and remember what is at stake for us here at home. Yeah. Last question. So the publisher of the New York Times wrote an op-ed about the growing threat to journalists around the world. and it's really worth reading the whole thing, but part of it jumped out at me. He wrote that two years ago, a U.S. government official called the New York Times, and they said that one of their reporters based in Egypt named Declan Walsh was about to be arrested by the government. And the publisher, A.G. Salsberger, writes that, you know, that call was alarming but fairly standard

because they've gotten countless similar warnings over the years. And, you know, Kelly, you and I have worked on issues just like this many, many times when we were in government. whether it's a journalist or just a citizen who happens to be abroad. But in this case, the official said he was passing the information along without the knowledge or permission of the Trump administration because they basically intended to sit on it and let the arrest happen. And the Times had to ask Irish diplomats to get Declan Walsh out of the country. So I just found it to be astounding that you would just knowingly leave an American citizen stranded

to get, you know, wrapped up by an authoritarian government like that. And honestly, I also thought that the one thing Trump has really taken an interest in internationally is hostage return efforts like this because, you know, he gets to share the stage and do a press event and take credit for something. But they were ready to let a journalist just get picked up. I mean, it's pretty stunning. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's stunning, but I don't know why it's surprising to us.

I mean, Trump on a regular daily basis goes out and bashes the president. press, bashes the media, acts in ways that are not dissimilar from President Sisi, with maybe the difference being arresting journalists and torturing them. But, you know, why wouldn't the Egyptians go and pick that guy up? I mean, Trump, they have no sense that Trump would make a big deal about it. And it's clear that the Trump administration wasn't planning to do that. So it's shocking to me as somebody like you who worked on, you know, securing their release of American citizens around their world in very terrible conditions that this administration and the United States wouldn't at least make a minimum amount of effort.

I don't know if the journalist was an American citizen or not. I think he might have been an Irish citizen. But to make at least a minimum amount of effort to ensure that doesn't happen or to intervene with the Egyptian government to suggest that there might be consequences to that, I think is very disturbing. But I honestly, the way he talks about the New York Times and Washington Post and the the fake news and I'm sure it's music to CCC's year. Yeah, it really is.

Yeah, I mean, to clarify, you're right that Declan Walsh is an Irish citizen. I think that the Salzberger and the Times staff assumed that because they're an American company, because they have a deep, longstanding relationship with the U.S. government that, you know, normally you'd receive assistance, but, man, depressing stuff. Nobody's home, man. Nobody's home. It's just. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Kelly, with that, I'm going to say thank you so much for joining today. It is always fun to talk with you. I learned a lot. I don't know. Happy impeachment day. Yeah, maybe this time next week we'll be starting impeachment proceedings.

I mean, my God, what a difference a week makes. Yeah, no kidding. All right, buddy. Thank you again. I'll talk to you soon. All right, bye. Stick around because after the break, we'll have my conversation with former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power.

Welcome back to Potsave the World. I am honored to have Samantha Power in part two. At ESPN, they call this a car wash when they bring a very important guest and they make you do like 15 shows. This is our version here. But we're going to ask you about like Syria and Mugabe. Sam, the book is The Education of an Idealist. It's fantastic. Thank you so much.

Thank you for writing it. Everyone should read it. Everyone should buy it. The Education of an Idealist, a memoir by Samantha Power. Okay. The first question. So we worked together for a long time, and I don't have kids, but a lot of people around us are parents and we're parents. And it's this funny, unique thing to be like a national security parent because I imagine every mom or every dad has to explain like, what is evil, what is death.

But you had to tell your kids what Ebola was. You had to explain the annexation of Crimea to a five-year-old. You would explain who Robert Mugabe is. is that weird? Is that challenging? Is it funny? Like, how did you get through those moments? Well, first I think there's an open question about whether I did need to do all of that or whether my son, years from now on the couch, will be saying, I don't know. I think I was five. And she was telling me about this 90-year-old dictator in Southern Africa and that he was stealing the land and that he was killing his people. And maybe that's why I'm dating the wrong. girls. You know, like, so who knows? So I'm prepared for that or I'm beginning to brace myself for that. So Declan now is 10. And when I was at the UN, I was coming off four years at the White House. He was born. My water broke probably in a dispute with President Obama over whether we should

recognize the Armenian genocide. I can't pinpoint the moment, but certainly that in a two or three hour period around that dispute. I lost, but I had a baby who was born on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. And so, you know, all along, I would talk to him even about that, about his birthday and about that this terrible thing was done, and that we light a candle for these people, just given that crazy context at the beginning. But after four years at the White House, he's older, he's a little more verbal. We get to the UN. As it happens, I learn that I'm the youngest ever UN ambassador and just by virtue of that stage in life that I was in, I happened to have, again, a young son and a young daughter who I was still nursing when I got to the job. And that creates

some awkward scenes in the book, which I'll not describe because they're a little graphic. But in Declan's case, you know, he, I felt like since I was absent a lot that when I came home, I wanted to try to humanize what it was I was working on. I wanted him to feel like he was part of what we were doing. and, you know, they're all reading about super, and watching cartoons about superheroes and so forth. I wanted him to see that we were at least trying to make ourselves a force for good in the world. But it did lead to kind of, again,

scenes that every working parent I think can identify with, but the content of the scene is just a little bit different because it's a national security context. So I'm on a conference call with Secretary Kerry and others talking about a new round of sanctions that we're going to impose on, Russia in light of the takeover of Ukraine. And Declan's trying to get my attention.

He wants to know the score of the Nationals game. And he's just at me and at me and kind of poking. And I'm just like, again, so many parents can relate. They're just like, let me finish. He's like, it's important, mommy. And I'm like, this is important too. This is important, I swear. And then eventually the child gives up.

In my case, Declan gives up and he stomps off. And again, every working parent has had a stomp off scene. but in my case my son is stomping off saying Putin Putin Putin when is it going to be Declan Declan Declan Declan Declan and that tension and so I'm laughing on the one hand I'm trying to focus on the conference call and making my point Secretary Kerry on the other but you know I just thought better that he at least know the stakes of it and to try to translate aggression also without like being completely freaking them out and making them have nightmares

but just to liken it to like imagine if someone comes into your house and steals your stuffed animal collection and then walks away, well, that's what Putin's doing in Crimea. So I tried to relate it. He actually, it's funny because he became very interested in the world and we would go around and point to different parts of the globe and we would liken different ambassadors

to characters in this amazing book series that I grew up on when I was in Ireland and that both my kids grew up on the Mr. Men series. So there's like Mr. Impossible, Mr. Greedy, Mr. Chatterbox. We had a big stiff competition among UN ambassadors as to who was Mr. Chatterbox. Top one.

But then the ambassadors would come over for a reception or for some kind of working dinner at the ambassador's residence. And then my son would be introduced to the Russian ambassador. And I could see he was just about to blurt out which Mr. Men character we had discussed applied to him.

But then, like, his diplomatic, his youthful diplomatic instincts kicked in and he would restrain himself and say, Mommy, I have to talk to you. You know, and then outside he'd get a great laugh, that this was the actual person from the Mr. Men book. I love that. I love that.

And I also love just the scenes of you in Declan and Cass in the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom, just hammering wiffel balls up into a chandelier that probably costs $10 grand or something. You're like fishing them out. Serious fire hazard. Yeah. I wasn't, again, imagining John Bolton,

one of my predecessors, you know, with his glove in the big ball. sort of grand living area of the Waldorf with his broom, trying to get wiffle balls out of the chandelier, probably not so much. So this is all a way of saying, this is a very fun book. It's not all policy, but this is kind of a wonky show. So I'm going to dig into a couple of things. If you have a minute, I think you do.

So I think one thing we do, I try to do on the show, is to talk about mistakes Obama made and not just defend them because that was my job for a long time. And I got sick of getting boxed into these conversations. So setting aside Syria, because I think that's a bigger or more complicated conversation, I wonder if there's some obvious mistakes in my mind. Like supporting the civil war in Yemen in hindsight was a colossal mistake. But I also can't help but think that the Afghan troops surge in 2009, when Obama sent tens of thousands of more troops over there, was also a mistake.

Because I'm not sure what core national security objectives we advanced for the United States. I'm not sure what the benefits were to the population of Afghanistan writ large, or if those benefits outweighed the downside of having just even more heated conflict and fighting at all times. You know, the counterfactual is impossible to know. Maybe we never get bin Laden. Maybe things unravel and get way worse. But I'm just, I'm curious what you think about that Afghanistan decision with the benefit of hindsight and knowing that we're still talking about having 14,000 guys come home, you know,

maybe by the end of Trump's first term? I don't know. Well, to draw first a kind of, if we're going to go wonk, let's go full wonk, but to draw kind of a process lesson that sort of comes to mind out of your question. I mean, I wasn't involved in those discussions as the President's Human Rights Advisor,

sort of interestingly. I mean, part like so many people were involved and the rooms were very crowded with opinions. And so I'm not sure had I been steeped in what he was thinking about what I would have recommended, given, again, the various equities, for lack of a better word, I mean, girls' education, sort of a baseline level of stability that would allow civilians to avoid harm, but then weighted against the toll on our families, which is, of course, needs to be

a dominant factor, and the fact that already, by the time we took office, they were on their fourth tours, their fifth tours, and now, in some cases, Lord knows. and then the sort of core substantive question of will it do any good and can you and so I'll come back to that but but the process context I think is worth noting which is president Obama has decided that secretary Gates will be a holdover secretary of defense you know our our chairman of the joint staff is a holdover by definition just because of the tenure for bush yeah and candidate Obama I think rightly had said look I'm not against all wars I'm going to against dumb wars, and I don't think there are many who dispute the need to have gone into Afghanistan

in the first place, given the safe area that al-Qaeda had established for itself. And I don't think anybody could dispute that the, you know, misbegotten, ill-conceived, incompetently executed war in Iraq was a major diversion from Afghanistan. So I guess just to state a couple perhaps obvious points, but I think as the president comes in and he's pulling us out of the economic chaos, you know, again, the depths and the gravity of which is even hard to put our minds back in that space of how many jobs we were being hemorrhaged each month. And your top two sort of military advisors, your uniformed military advisor and your secretary of defense are telling you, you know, not only we should stay, and that's a baseline thing, but I think we can do real good

and put ourselves in a position by, you know, achieving the momentum on the battlefield, getting the Taliban on their back feet or, you know, the terror. however one was defining the arm groups at that time and then mr. president we're going to put you in a position a stronger position to leave by virtue of surging we can train many more afghan security forces you know the the wonky process point is it's hard when you get that advice from people who are so connected with our our soldiers and their families and you know but the problem with that is what cass would call the sunk cost fallacy right you've already invested so much much. And so the temptation is always to say, let's just invest a little more so that we can make

good on all of the heartbreak that this deployment has caused, you know, so many Americans. And so, you know, I think that it was a, basically would have been reasonable, I guess, to go in any direction. The reason I probably would have, had I been in those discussions, been supportive of trying to do Afghanistan, quote, right, even though we'd lost a lot of momentum from the beginning, and so maybe it was almost too late to make that big difference, is the core recognition that in order to get out, we had to have Afghan security forces who could do the job and the belief that if you surged, it wasn't about even doing more battle, it was about training more people or making sure that their training was deeper. I mean, so to remember that it wasn't,

and so while it's true that you can look at, here we are 18 years later, and you could ask yourself, what good to the surge do? And we know that the Afghan security forces have not performed at the level that our generals expected them to have. I mean, and that was true throughout the eight years of Obama's presidency. I mean, there is, as you say, the counterfactual question of how much worse could it be? I mean, would you have Kabul having been overrun? Would we have an embassy there? You know, would ISIS, which once it grew up in Iraq and Syria did begin to develop satellites, you know, in Nigeria and Libya and elsewhere and also in Afghanistan, would that have expanded in a manner where even just for core national security reasons of the kind that

caused us to go into Afghanistan in the first place after 9-11, maybe that would have brought us back. You know, as it did, remember in Iraq, we had to go back to be training people to deal with ISIS. And so, you know, again, I don't mean to not have a tidy answer. No, no, no. It's not a tidy question. Yeah. I mean, look, I was convinced at the time. And I thought it was a compelling argument. But I think the challenge was that the governance piece was never there, right? Like Hamid Karzai was the president of Afghanistan. He was a mess.

But also, I think Obama was sold on this idea. Like, there's this great New York Times op-ed that ran maybe last week written by a journalist who was a Marine who'd gone into Marja. And that was one of those early- I saw that piece. It was devastating. And so the idea was, okay, these Marines go in and they clear these areas that are Taliban strongholds. And then there was supposed to be something called government in a box where we, sort of created this set of, I don't know, governance structures, services for people that allowed

Afghans to take control of this area and then we could hand it over to them. And that piece just never materialized, which sort of gets me to a broader thing that I've observed in a lot of our colleagues since we've left, which is a deep skepticism of the ability for the U.S. to just intervene militarily in places and think it's going to be positive, right? Ben often quotes Phil Gordon, who said, like, we intervened in Libya and it was a disaster. We didn't intervene in Syria. It was disaster. And that's not to be fatalistic. But it's, you know, I hear that skepticism of military intervention in Ben's voice. I think I hear it in Biden's voice, frankly, when he's out there talking. And that's probably a legacy of the Iraq war as well. But I'm curious where you land

on this incredibly complicated question after eight years in government. Yeah. Well, first, maybe an easy response to a really hard question. I think right now there is that skepticism out there, but there's also a tendency, I feel like, in the broader public, to conflate U.S. leadership in the world with the deployment of military force. Totally agree. And so that is a problem, right? Because there, indeed, if we don't lead in diplomatic ways, if we don't lead in building coalitions, whether to deal with climate change and all the refugee flows and other,

and conflict that grow out of climate change in addition to all the expectations. weather events and so forth, if we don't lead in order to try to deploy our public health experts when there's a big Ebola outbreak here or there, if we don't lead to try to diffuse conflicts peacefully like that in Yemen instead of being complicit in war crimes, if we don't lead to try to somehow get the Iran situation and the proxy wars that are being carried out between Iran and Saudi Arabia back in the box. I mean, that lack of leadership is going to mean such instability, it's also going to mean that China, licking its chops and seeing currently an AWOL America, will seek to reshape the international order such as it is in their image

in a way that ensures that even the baseline norms, however breached they may have been over the last decades, that those norms change and that indeed there's just a tendency to say, whatever you do within your own borders is your business, and that's the world order that China wants to shape. So just caution against that conflation. Then you get to the really hard question of when the deployment of military force can make a difference positive to our national security. Can it make alterations to structural challenges and ills in parts of the world that we're not nearly familiar enough with? I mean, you know, it really depends, I think, on what we're talking about. I mean, in Libya, the U.S. led a coalition that averted a massacre of

potentially tens of thousands of people. I don't know. Some people think more. Some people think less. But, and then we were told by the Libyans, we don't, you know, thanks so much. You've let us live to fight another day, unfortunately to fight another day, but also to have a vote and to have elections and to try to build institutions from scratch. And because of the latent tensions and the lack of institutions in that country, you know, and the fact that there was no international presence afterwards, or but maybe if there, I'm sure if there had been an international presence, it wouldn't have made much of a difference given how deep those fissures were. But fundamentally, sometimes you have to have also limited objectives, and then it's,

but it's not going to be a panacea. I still think, you know, you talk to most Libyans, they're really grateful that that Benghazi wasn't besieged and that the other areas where the whole. international community came together to say, we've got to stop this madman from doing these things. By and large, people are very grateful for that. And then they say, well, wait, where were you in the aftermath? And then you remind them and say, well, you said you didn't want international and international presence. And it's very hard to offer the kind of support that maybe you did need from afar. But so there's an example of like, you know, is there a way to sort of limit?

And also sometimes, and I see this with UN peacekeeping a lot, where the U.S. doesn't, doesn't contribute, but it is worth noting that every day of the year, there are 100,000 troops from other countries in really dangerous places like Mali and Lebanon and the Central African Republic and Congo. Again, the problem is not solving the underlying challenges, a kind of stopgap finger in the, hole in the in the in the dike kind of deployment. But nonetheless, again, you ask people on the ground and they're so frustrated that there's not peace, full proper peace or that they can't move on, but at the same time, they

say, please don't let the peacekeepers go because sexual violence will be rampant, child soldiers will be recruited. So again, there's really, I think, depends on the circumstance. But I share, and it really always have a skepticism that the military, especially the U.S. military from so far away, is going to be able to crack the code in societies that are so far into us. And, you know, I mean, That was, I understood that a little bit from having written the book a problem from hell because I interviewed so many U.S. officials and they would describe, you know, the limits to our knowledge on the front end. Yeah. But when you're actually in the situation room and you mentioned Syria and you're debating, you know, should there be a no-fly zone or how do we respond to the chemical weapons attack and you see these maps and that there's no one often in the room who can tell you who the various factions are, who their financiers are, who they're, you know, and it really. really should breed great humility about what our forces should do. And, you know, we've now moved

away from the idea of fighting active combat to more of a conception of, again, building local forces up and training them. That's probably, from my standpoint, a better course to pursue, but it's itself incredibly risky because, you know, very few of these units are clean and we're trying to instill in them respect for international humanitarian law and the Geneva conventions. And we're starting so late in the lifespan of these units or of these militaries. And we've seen that with Afghan forces that commit abuses. As we've first in the Obama administration and then in this administration roll back ISIS, the abuse is carried out by forces on the ground, you know, just in lumping people from one sect,

you know, treating everybody like they're an ISIS member. And so that's the peril of this sort of. second order approach of investing in local forces. But the world we want to get to is where governments, you know, of course, respect the rule of law, civilian control over the military, where local security forces respect the human rights of their people, and where outside forces are not needed, you know, in order for them to be able to patrol security and ensure the protection of their own civilians. And that's what President Obama really, I think, tried to transition us to. But then you see in Iraq, when that doesn't work, ISIS develops a caliphate. So we get out, we think we've trained,

they get overrun in a heartbeat. And then it was like, you know, a knife through butter. And then we're back in the, we're back there in a training role and an air support role. And I don't think we can, for all of the skepticism, very worthy skepticism, which I share about the use of military force, particularly in the Middle East and beyond in areas we don't know. And these large countries with these very complex dynamics, I still think none of us look back and think that we could have afforded to let ISIS continue to expand its caliphate. So then you end up in this horrible chicken and egg, right? Because we know that terrorists get fuel on one level from the presence of U.S. forces. And yet, if you're the president of the United States and you're seeing these threats to American

tourists and airliners and embassies, you really don't have an option of just allowing that, you know, whatever the original sin that the terrorists are invoking, from their standpoint, you know, you don't have the option of just allowing those threats to go unmet. Yeah. And even with Iraq example, like it gets simplified to troops being there or not, but, you know, you had this, you had Syria unraveling and then there's no border and people are flowing across. It's complicated, I guess. The answer will look, Syria is sort of the elephant in the room of this discussion of the book. And, you know, reading it, you write a lot about Syria. And I can, you know, you agonized over what was happening to civilians. You agonized over the

choices. You agonized over the deliberations in the situation room, as did Obama, even though he is a lot less public about, I think, that agony. And in fact, you know, you talk about how you believe that sometimes he can be defensive about the things that he's agonizing about the most. But, you know, at the end of the book, you talk about how you believe that Obama should have responded militarily after the chemical weapons use, the so-called redline moment. You talk about, you think that he should have mobilized the international community to at least try to put up a no-fly zone in Syria. And I was hoping you could try to take us back to those debates at the time and why you think, with the benefit of the hindsight, that we should have done those things. Well, I write the book in a

manner that I try at least to bring people into the situation room. I mean, both you and I were new to the situation room when we first arrived. And it really is the case that, you know, when an issue comes to the president, as what he used to call it a turd sandwich, a turd sandwich with a side of fries, you know, I hated that too. I think that was Dennis McDonough's contribution to the lexicon. But, um, thank you, Dennis. But to be in the room and to be weighing on the one hand, you know, the latest chemical weapons attack against civilians in Syria. Because remember the one that everybody remembers where 1,400 people were killed was on the heels of many much smaller chemical weapons attacks to which we responded, yes, but in a kind

of in a discreet way where no one was really aware of our response. And therefore, there was a perception that the red line that Obama had said had been crossed without a response. And therefore, I think it's fair to say that. Assad felt that there wouldn't be consequences and therefore he staged this attack against 1,400 people. And so after, let's say he gets away with that in quotes, and there is no international response in August of 2013 or thereafter, I mean, he's already showing he's ratcheting up his use of chemical weapons. And so as I looked at that situation from the situation room, as Obama did, you know, you're just thinking, this isn't going to stop. I mean, why would Assad stop? This is working for him. You know, he's driving the opposition.

back on its heels. He's killing a lot of civilians. And of course, Assad just judges anybody who happens to live in a certain part of the country as opposition and brands them a terrorist, even if they've never picked up a gun or even if they have a completely moderate ideology. He doesn't care. He's just going to kill more and more people. But the strategic consequence of that weapon being at large in the region and very quickly, as we know beyond, right, once it starts to spread. We already knew that there were terrorist groups who were. being recruited to come to Syria. So the question of what would happen

if those chemicals fell into the hands of the wrong actors. And then we already had the refugee flow into neighboring countries and for all of the deliberations none of us foresaw we foresaw refugee flow

and everybody talked a little bit about spillover and what would it mean for Jordan and Lebanon and Turkey but nobody foresaw the mass migration and potentially changing the face of European politics

Right. Changing the United Kingdom's relationship to the European Union, at least, you know, one factor may be that mass and uncontrolled migration of 2014, 2015. So, but we knew that they, or at least I felt strongly that there were going to be strategic consequences that went beyond even the devastation that Syrians were experiencing. So you have all that on one side of the letter, which is the kind of leads you just to do something, do something, right? But that doesn't tell you what to do.

and how when you take some step, you keep it contained in a manner that doesn't lead you, you know, entangled in a conflict that, again, all of us had great humility about what we could do about the underlying sources of that conflict. It was really more of a question of can you convince this monstrous leader to stop using this one weapon that has all these other knock-on, potential knock-on effects. And so what I say in the book is I show, I think, you know, and there's a bit of a review. visionism really about this moment in 2013 where people remember Obama, you know, kind of getting squeamish about using military force. And that really wasn't what happened. I mean, I mean, as I show in the book, he was very firm, much, much firmer than I expected. I expected some big debate, right, because he had so not wanted to use military force. And yet, as soon as that attack on 1,400 people having said, you know, I want my targets. I'm going to do this.

he told me, as I tell in the book, go get the weapons inspectors out of Syria. I don't want any humanitarian or UN the risk of hostage taking and so forth. And what happens is the UN decides to keep its inspectors on the ground in Syria to look into the new attack. That was, I think, not the right decision on the part of the UN, even though it sounds, it stands to reason that they would do that. It sounds like such a wise thing to do and how could we possibly disagree with that. but they had no mandate to look into who used chemical weapons

and the whole Russia, Syria, everybody agreed that Sarin had been used but the only dispute was on the thing that the inspectors had no mandate to look into. So the whole thing was crazy. But they kept them there and the clock ticked and the week were on. Someone in our situation room meetings leaked the targets to the Wall Street Journal. What? You know, so as you're going, it's kind of looking like, that's crazy, but not, I suppose, I mean, not the first time it's happened. I didn't remember that.

That's just outrageous. Yeah, crazy. And then David Cameron, with all of his renowned strategic foresight, decided to go to the British Parliament. And, you know, in a preview of his ingenious decision to hold a referendum on Brexit, he goes to the parliament and he gets snubbed. And so suddenly already we're in a situation where Russia is saying, oh, they didn't do it.

It was the opposition and, you know, lying. And also in a situation where, and again, this is an important word to the wise for the future. we tend to think, oh, well, Barack Obama took over and he had such credibility with the international community. When Barack Obama says the Syrian government carried out this attack, that's going to move people because he has that credibility. But it turns out people don't forget what's happened in the previous administration, that whole rock thing. You know, both on the intelligence question and the factual predicate, but also on how military force in the Middle East tends to go down. And so over the course of just that four or five days, you start to, really see public opinion turn internationally away from, you know, such revulsion at what

the Assad regime had done to real questions, the same question Obama had, of course, which was, and all of us had, which is how do you keep this limited? So in the end, he makes the decision, and this, I don't think anybody can say, proved the right decision. He's already come out and effectively said the world is unnoticed that he's going to carry out limited military strikes, you know, against parts of the Syrian program. There were parts of the Syrian military that have been involved in the chemical weapons attacks, but of course not the chemicals themselves. And so it's already a complicated military piece of business.

And but having said that, he then at the last minute, reroutes and decides to go through Congress. And what I describe in the book is, you know, not us not having really the insight that we needed for him to make that decision. I mean, charitable, yes. Yeah. I mean, I was new in my job. and I try in the book to show the humanity of all of us in these jobs. I mean, I mean, not always in a very self-generous way, but just how human we are. I'm three weeks into my job, and I'm thinking going to Congress, like, you know,

Congress needs to take its responsibility and authorize the use of force. And the executive should not be carrying out even limited military engagement without that congressional debate. I mean, that's what our democracy is about. I'm thinking that on the one hand, but I'm thinking this is not at the level. I've just come out of our confirmation. Right. But, you know, getting confirmed by the Senate and all the posturing and everything, I thought, this is not at the level.

Like, is it, you know, he's already announced he's going to do this. What if Congress says no? Yeah. And, of course, he says, like, I will still, you know, proceed regardless. But I look around and I see Chuck Hagel and John Kerry and Joe Biden, and they're all, you know, very unks ridden about it, but ultimately come down and say you will get the votes. You know, Israel is very supportive of us doing that.

Some of the, you know, very influential groups in Washington. internet are supportive, we will get the votes. And we didn't get the votes. And instead, Obama improvised and we managed to dismantle the vast majority of the chemical weapons program. But when I look back, and it is, hindsight is 2020, but it was a moment where we did expose to the world that pretty much under almost no circumstances were we going to deploy that tool in the toolbox, in Syria. Even in the most limited ways in Syria. And, I think it's very hard to know causality. I mean, Assad was proving himself capable of great brutality,

even, I mean, including that very attack. But the war did grow so much more savage after that. You did see many more millions of people purged from their homes through the fierce bombardment. And you could just, you just could tell that Assad was like, all right, like, no one's going to stop me. And so it can both be the case that in a given instance, all things considered, you know, it's just better not to use military force, but telegraphing

that under no circumstances will you ever can also leave you with very little leverage. And while John Kerry and I and others, you know, pound of the pavement to try to use kind of smoke and mirrors to make progress diplomatically and from a humanitarian standpoint, in a way, when I look back, I didn't feel this at the time, but when I look back, I feel from that moment it was kind of a chronicle foretold, you know, and the, President Putin also sort of sensed our weariness domestically and, you know, on a lot of different fronts was testing us more and more. And again, whether it links exactly to that moment or just generally what our democracy was feeling and was telegraphing in other ways, you know, it's hard

to pinpoint. But I think looking back, you know, again, to have not given the stakes on all of those levels to just not be willing at least to try to contain the conflict or to mitigate it in some way, or at least to try to mobilize others. There were plenty of countries saying, criticizing America saying, oh, red line, look at Obama, you know, feckless, he said he was going to do this and that. And we never really went to a country like Turkey and said, all right, what do you prepare to do? What are you to do? You know, we'll support you from the sideline. So there was even a way, I thought, to be aggressive around a no-fly zone and have the United States be part of the planning and this and that, but have other actors carry it out. And again, that wouldn't have been a panacea.

That would have been just a place for some number of Syrians potentially to find refuge. And some asshole and the Republican Party would have said we were leading from behind again. Yeah, of course. Our debate would devolve into stupidity. Just stepping back even further. I know we're short on time. You have this great quote in the book from Tom Donnellan, who was the deputy national security advisor at the time went on to be the national security advisor. I think notice you in a meeting about something you cared about deeply where you hadn't spoken up.

And Tom said to you, hey, you work at the White House. There is no meeting down the hall where these things are going to. get decided. This is the meeting. You are the meeting. And I love that anecdote because it did encapsulate the like, oh, fuck moment that anybody who steps into that room feels. And I was wondering if you remember what that meeting was about or remember the first time you stepped into a meeting and felt like an imposter or like there had to be some adults down the hall who were going to figure this out. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, you know, the paradox of being, of operating at the highest levels of government is that on the one hand, you're watching the cabinet,

I was backbencher, as were you in the first four years. And so you're watching the cabinet debate things. But the cabinet, members of the cabinet often are generalists, right? And so often the people who really know the guts of what's going on in a particular crisis. Scribling notes passing them forward. Yeah, exactly. You're scribbling notes and you're passing it forward. But it takes some adjustment, right, to note that being on the back bench, you have a

responsibility to raise your voice as well. It's intimidating. I mean, I mean, and remember, but given my campaign history with with Secretary Clinton and their Secretary Gates, who's, you know, got a slightly different personality than my own. Biden's going on for 10 minutes. I remember Biden's chatting away. And so to be, you know, excuse me, Mr. President, you know, I have something I'd like to add to the discussion as a newbie, until you feel like you've got the lingo and you, and you also know how to formulate in a way that's, should we say adaptive. So, you know, that's what I say.

Like, I've tried to show the human dimensions of being in these roles. And, you know, many readers, I think, can identify with being in a different kind of meeting, right? And thinking themselves, yeah, my boss is saying isn't good. Not so much, you know. And yet feeling, like, doing the cost benefit in one's head of like, and especially women, I think, feel this maybe even more than men. and so that kind of imposter syndrome or the intruder alert that one feels.

But yeah, and Tom, so the way I sort of dealt with this in the early months in the administration is often I would slip a note or after a meeting was over, I would go up and I would say, here, you know, here's just something to bear in mind. And like Tom Donlin, then Deputy National Security Advisor, about to be national security. I was like, why are you telling me this now? You know, we just had the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Staff, the President of the United States, a room, this is important. And I said, well, I just figured somewhere, you know, somebody was bearing this in mind. He's like, there is no other somewhere. You're in the White House. And as soon as you realize, there is no other meeting, you're the meeting. It'll be the scariest moment in your life where you recognize that. And it was really, and again, I think it has application, certainly outside

national security, outside government of just if something's on your mind, I mean, let me put it this way. when I talked to a lot of people as I was writing this book to make sure I was reconstructing things as accurately as I could and not trusting only my memory. And across the board, when you ask people, like, are there things you would do differently or are there things you regret? The thing people most regret who I've talked to who are part of our little family, occasionally dysfunctional family of Obama administration people, is not what they said or like that they went on too long, or their Obama cut them off. I mean, I remember those moments. definitely for myself.

Everybody's regret involves what they didn't say, what they thought about saying. It's a good lesson. And they sort of left it in their head. And so that's what Donnellin was trying to impart is, you know, say it if you've got a mouthful. My final question, because I want to leave folks with some advice here,

but it's going to be super nerdy advice. So it's hard to look out into the world and feel like the trajectory for human rights is good. Right? You've got China is locking up millions of Uyghurs in these concentration camps. Sometimes they're beaten, sometimes they're tortured. I mean, it's horrific, right?

India just invaded Kashmir, and you're reading reports that Muslims in parts of India are being told that they need to prove their citizenship, or they too will be sent to newly constructed concentration camps or departed. And I don't see a lot of global outrage. And I can't tell if that's because of an absence of U.S. leadership or in that absence,

is there something citizens can be? do to try to fill that void and try to push people in government or at the UN or other places to at least just sound the alarm about the stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think there are a number of things going on. Let's do the diagnosis. Sure. The wonky diagnosis first. I mean, there is a lot of conflict and suffering in the world at present. And I mentioned, or I discuss in the book when I go to Bosnia, when I'm in my 20s and the whole world is focused on that single conflict. And then Rwanda happens, and then attention very belatedly, unfortunately, shifts to Rwanda. But you could kind of get by keeping track of the conflicts here or there.

And now with climate change purging people from their homes or forcing them to flee, the natural disasters associated with extreme weather events and all the suffering that ensues, the weakness of various states also and the kind of proxy support different armed groups get within those states. You just see either state kind of erosion, state collapse. You see, of course, terrorism and the proliferation of groups that people can't keep track of. And then, you know, conflicts that just introduce themselves on a given day. And it's hard. I mean, it's hard.

I'm a private citizen now. And, you know, but I remember this from the UN of just one security council crisis meeting after another in places that had not been pretty but had been stable like Ukraine, you know, getting added to the list. Nigeria again, a major sort of profound democracy, an economic powerhouse. My God, the Ebola chapter in this book is like riveting. Well, thank you. We're not going to tell them anything about it. You're going to have to buy it to get that goes up. Indeed.

Holy shit. Maybe. Talk about a scary meeting. Yeah, a scary meeting and an example, I think, of catalytic U.S. leadership. And that's what leadership has to look like, right? Is we need a team captain. It's a collective action problem that people face in their own lives. And we don't want China to be the team captain on anything related to human rights and humanitarian issues.

I mean, we'd like them to do their share, as they did in Ebola, and they need to be co-captain, probably on climate change. But on issues of war and peace, their tendency to neglect atrocities against civilians and so forth means that if we're AWOL, that's the most likely candidate to step up and take leadership. But we need the U.S. I mean, right now we're absent, and we're attacking our allies. And so the democracies of the world are not banding together to contest the kind of autocratic spread or the freedom deficit and the backsliding even in established democracies, nor are we investing in the diplomacy needed to address a lot of these conflicts. So it's a particular moment now where it just feels like chaos afoot, 70 million people displaced and counting, right?

That's how people feel. But at the same time, you know, some really interesting things are. happening of late. I mean, you see when China seeks to repress the people of Hong Kong or take rights away that they have lived with for so long. You know, if you're a rational actor in Hong Kong, you might think to yourself, like, shit, China's got a big old military. They got big old security forces. Like, you know, I may not have been alive when that Tiananmen crackdown happened, but my mother was, and I've heard what that was like, I'm going to stay home. But that's not what the people Hong Kong are doing. They're saying, we are keeping our rights. We're not going to be

part of this global backsliding trend, even in Russia, where, you know, if you could think, as again, put yourself in the shoes of being a Russian citizen, even as the economy stagnates, even as, you know, the demographics in the country are not auspicious in terms of the economic growth in the country long term. But if you're, again, trying to figure out how to spend your day, you know, going out and getting beaten up by Putin's thugs in Red Square, you know, wouldn't be highest on your list necessarily. And yet, people, People are doing it every single day. And if we come back to your question and in this country where the United States is either absent or, I think by and large, on a whole series of foreign policy issues from Iran to climate, to you name it, doing things that are disruptive to the international order.

So far from trying to shore up the international order and deal with these crises, we are a part of compounding them by and large. But even here as proof, again, that the voices of our citizens matter. And it hasn't borne full fruit yet. It's a little bit analogous domestically to the gun control debate, which is going to bear fruit if we keep at it. And you can feel the tipping point either being approached or crossed, but we haven't, you know, again, there's not one piece of legislation yet that that reflects that. But similarly, you know, would you have ever thought that in a bipartisan way Congress would come together to insist that Trump get out of Yemen? No. Never, right?

And the idea that Republicans would sign on to that. I mean, given the sort of taboo around the Saudi relationship, and which was, you know, again, never really reflected on critically. It was just this kind of knee-jerk, oh, you know, and it's like, wait, no, we're actually kind of energy independent now. We're not like the circumstances in which that relationship was forged and those habits were formed is not the circumstance we're in there. We need to, you know, take a fresh look. And members of Congress have taken a fresh look in part because they hear from their constituents and they see images of, emaciated children because of the Saudi block aid or other dimensions of the war, including Houthi abuses. And they just say enough. We should be part of the diplomatic solution to this,

but not to perpetuating this conflict. So there's, there are, again, a lot of very dark trends. And I think that the fact of the United States retreat and the fact of us creating confusion about whether we're even on the side of human rights globally really compounds that sense of an unmoored planet right now, but one of the themes of my book is this idea of shrink the change, that if you feel you have to tackle the whole problem, all of climate change, all of global displacement, all of conflict, like, forget about it, you're not going to get out of bed in the morning. If you're me, you're going to watch SportsCenter all day and, you know, in the loop and sports center to baseball tonight, to sports center to baseball tonight, and that's not going

to be very productive. But if you try to figure out what is your slice, you know, if you're mad about Trump's Muslim ban and now that he's contemplating reducing the number of refugees who come into this country even further, you can be mad and you should be mad and you should call your congressman and you should above all activate for 2020

to get a different commander-in-chief in the job and a wholly different set of individuals in Washington, yes. But also, remember, refugees are still coming to this country and are living in our communities and are arriving at airports, granted many fewer, a quarter of those that would have arrived,

in the last year of the Obama administration, but they're arriving in the least hospitable climate that refugees have ever really arrived in probably since the Second World War. And one has a chance as a tutor or somebody who drops off bed linens or somebody who drives that individual to a job interview or, you know, you name it. There's always something you can do. Right. That's great advice.

It's a great place to end it. Shrink the change people. There's so much great stuff in this book In Education of an Idealist, there's the Ebola chapter, there's the friendship you had with Vitali Cherkin, the Russian ambassador of the UN, which that could be a movie.

There's your foreign trips, there's cast being funny and wise. I cannot recommend it enough. Samantha, thank you so much for coming in to write in the book. Thank you. Great to see you. Great to see you.

Thank you again to Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin. Thank you to Kelly Magsman, and thank you to Samantha Power for joining the show today. A lot going on. Ben will be back in studio next week. And thanks again for tuning it. Positive of the World is a product of crooked media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nara Melconian, and Milo Kim, who film and share these interviews on video each week.