Pod Save the World - InflateGate: Biden vs Balloon

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about Balloon-gate, Biden’s State of the Union address, the latest in Ukraine, the deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria and how to help, Pope Francis denouncing anti-gay laws, and gang violence in Haiti. Then, Ben talks with Rep. Ilhan Omar about her recent removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the message it sends globally.  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome back to Pod Save the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, Tom Brady posted the most divorced dad energy selfie I've ever seen, and I just, I'm still reeling from it, and I haven't had anyone to talk to about it. I somehow miss this. I've stopped consuming Brady content. You should continue to miss it.

It's him taking a picture of himself in a mirror in his underwear, covering up his crotch. It's worse than you could ever imagine. So we are at the early stages of a pretty significant midlife crisis. It feels that way. It does feel it that way. Yeah. It's, um, it's not good.

It's, uh, it's pretty ridiculous. But anyway, people don't like this part of the show. We're going to talk about a lot of important stuff today, but we're going to start with something very stupid then, which is the freak out over the Chinese spy balloon. We're going to help separate out what we should all take seriously and what is just hyperbolic media and political nonsense. We're also going to talk a bit about the State of the Union. It's hard for us because we record this on Tuesday and it comes out on Wednesday,

but there's some interesting polling about foreign policy messaging and approval. We'll talk about Trump's reported plan to run as a dove. That one feels familiar to me, Ben. The catastrophic earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the Pope's visit to Africa. We'll talk about Haiti, Ukraine, and an update from the Taliban on work-life balance. And then, Ben, you talked to a good friend of the pod, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar today. What did you guys talk about? Well, we talked about the fact that the Republicans voted to remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which was kind of

a mixture of retribution for their, like, neo-Nazi members getting voted off their committees, but also, like, kind of had the reek of racialized targeting. So we talked about why that happened, how she's thinking about it, how she's going to continue to speak out on uncomfortable issues, whether it's criticizing aspects of American foreign policy or pointing to the less and stellar human rights records of some of America's partners around the world. And just how she's going to continue to have a voice on these things, particularly around issues related to Africa, some of the things she's focused on. So it's a good conversation. And as I said to her, she's deplatformed on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She can be replatformed at POTS of the

world at least. So she's a member of good standing of this committee. Yeah, I guess all Democrats in the House have been shadow banned to some extent. I'm a big fan of her pushing on certain issues that don't often get pushed on like sanctions and a lot of the things. Peter Byrneard had a great piece about all the tough questions that Congresswoman Omar has asked on the committee that others haven't. That's worth reading. Okay, Ben, so we are hopefully exiting one of the dumbest news cycles in the history of news cycles, which is the Chinese spy balloon meltdown of 2023, Balloon Gate, Balloon Gazi, the balloons Katrina. I think we should divide this into two parts.

First, we'll take the balloon seriously, and then we can explain why the freak out is dumb. Make sense? That sounds good to me, Tommy. Okay, everyone's going to just skip to the second part. So the first part, it's worth noting that NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, their primary mission is to track Santa

and then to keep track of North America every other day of the year. They have come out and said they failed to detect the previous Chinese spy balloons that came into our airspace, given the billions we spend on, I don't know, radar, the U.S. military, everything else, that's not great. That's a tough press conference for that four-star general to give. But my understanding is that these previous spy balloons kind of dipped in and out of U.S. airspace.

When the latest one floated across the country, you didn't need a radar. You just need, like, Grandpa to put his glasses on and, like, look up. And then you could find the thing. Yeah. Yeah, when we're all watching on cable news, I think it wasn't exactly hard to detect. Yeah, no. So, but something to be worried about. The balloon probably has upgraded spy gear.

Ben, I read a research paper from the Pentagon called the paradigm shift to effects-based space near space as a combat space effects enabler. And I just want to say, you're just getting around reading that? You read that when it came out of the presses, you know? What I was wondering from you is like, why can't you come up with a title like that, you know, after the fall? What about near combat space enabler? That's some good stuff. And people wonder why, like, ordinary people don't read more of these documents.

Yeah, I skipped around a lot. So here's the short version of why balloons are good for spying. So these near space platforms, like the balloon, is an object between 65,000 feet and 325,000 feet. They can basically stay up indefinitely. They can surveil an 850-mile diameter field of view. And distance really matters when it comes to the image resolution. So the same optics on a spy balloon will get you 10 to 20 times better resolution on images

than those optics on a satellite just because it's closer. Similarly, an antenna on a balloon will collect much weaker radio signals, and they don't have to deal with technical issues that arise when those signals pass through the upper atmosphere. So we know this balloon went over military sites that are very sensitive. I'm sure those have been photographed in the past by Chinese satellites, but I did notice there was a Wall Street Journal report today about a Pentagon report to Congress on how China now has more land-based

intercontinental ballistic missile launchers than the United States and they're reportedly trying to triple their nuclear arsenal by 2030. So new information, new context. Lastly, you just shouldn't fly into another country's airspace, even if spy agencies probably do it all the time. So then obviously President Biden took this seriously since they shot it down. They grounded lots of planes, et cetera, et cetera. Let's go back to what those sit room meetings must have been like about what to do about this thing.

Like, what do you think the national security team was most focused on, took the most seriously, and the kind of options that got presented to, Biden. Well, I think there's like what is the concern with the balloon and then there was the like, what do you do about the balloon? And, you know, and what is concerning about the balloon, I think it demonstrates that China is really rambling up its efforts to kind of have a multi-dimensional effort to spy on the United States, right? So we've known for years that they try to hack it in the U.S. government computers, private sector computers. They have a very sophisticated satellite network and space capability. And to your point, if these balloons,

were focused on nuclear sites, military facilities, getting like higher quality intelligence and a satellite I could give you. This is happening in concert with them ramping up and modernizing their own nuclear forces. And in a way, they may be doing kind of what we and the Soviet Union did to each other through the Cold War, which is wanting to have kind of total insight into the different capabilities of the United States to kind of plan for any contingency, you know, including the nuclear war, which obviously was once. But I, so I think it does. show, okay, these guys are really trying to kind of peer-to-peer compete with us strategically. And part of what you want to do is learn from that spy balloon, you know, what's on it,

what are the equipment they're using can be intercept, whatever messages it's sending back to the mothership there in China. So what is just like, if I'm in the super meeting, I bet a whole first half of the meeting is just the intelligence segment. Like, what do we know about this balloon? What do we think it's doing? What can we learn about Chinese intentions for? from what it's doing. And then there was a question of whether to shoot this down. This is a no-brainer, Tommy. If I'm a president of safety, someone's like,

well, I want to shoot down this balloon. And then the general's like, well, we can't guarantee that, like, debris from this balloon won't fall into someone's living room or onto somebody's car because it's going to spread across 15 football fields area. You're not going to shoot down that balloon. It would be insane to shoot down that balloon.

So then you're just, like, waiting until it gets a place where you can shoot it down and have a plan to get the stuff that falls into the water. And so that, that to me, was all pretty straightforward. I think the last piece is like trying to design whether China meant to do this when Tony Blinken was supposed to go there, or whether their military wasn't talking to somebody else in the system. Where do you land on that debate?

I mean, I do, I land on the side, good guesswork this is, right, that I do think that it suggests that their system wasn't coordinated, right? Because why would they go through the trouble of like having this whole reset and having this meeting in Indonesia? where they choreographed that and then Tony Blinkin's going to come out. You wouldn't do all that just a record with a balloon. No. And so I do think it points to kind of some incompetence in their system and some lack of coordination and coming on the heels of like how they miss animal COVID, like it's a reminder that these guys may not be the A team, you know, even though that's the vibe that they wanted to

give off. Yeah. And also, you know, I don't, obviously I don't know how this balloon works completely. But I didn't get the sense from anything I read that you could like program it to get to from X to point Y in like two days time or something like that. And you're riding wins. So ultimately it's up the chance here. Ben,

this balloon was shot down to bite an F-22. By some estimates, the total cost of development and production of the F-22 is over $350 million per plane. The life cycle cost, which includes like fuel, spare parts, maintenance during like a 40-year lifespan, gets you up to $678 million per plane.

This is according to a Wired Magazine report. So, congrats to the F-22 on its first air-to-air kill in history. Kind of like a military industrial complex advertisement. But it was like, you know, Top Gun Maverick, like they have to like basically run the like Star Wars gamut of the Iranian nuclear program and Dodge Mountains and stuff. And in fact, actually, the sequel is really just shooting down a three-story tall balloon, I guess, you know. Shout out to that pilot.

Yeah, yeah, it was been fun. Yeah. Okay. Uh-oh. We got a balloon. Is that Chinese? I hope that we're dealing with American balloons only on the show. So the Republican response to the balloon and the roadblock hyperbolic media coverage.

It's really one of the most ridiculous thing I've seen in politics. As we speak, how's Republicans. Sorry, we should take this a little more series. This is the content. This is the content that we need. This is our relative. We're sending a message to other balloons right now by deflating this thing. I'll wait so my voice gets better

So House Republicans are preparing a resolution condemning the balloon No, well I don't know that that balloon is weaponized We'll find out Poor Haley had to go to three-party cities Because there's a helium short So House Republicans are preparing A resolution condemning the balloon

Because balloons are famously They hate being condemned McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy wanted a resolution condemning Biden's handling of the balloon But I guess that got shot down But here's just a sampling of how hysterical the balloon coverage was over the past couple of days. Here's a clip.

The catastrophic Chinese spy balloon spectacle clearly threatened American families from Alaska to Missouri. This confirms that President Biden and Vice President Harris should resign. If you've ever seen the movie Independence Day, where people are coming out to their porches, they're pulling over their cars, it really reminded me of that. We've got 100 million or more TikTok users. That's a balloon in everyone's house.

If they know Joe freezes at the first side of a balloon, the next balloon might be filled with another virus. Pop, droplets all over, we're all on ventilators again. I have another question. Why haven't we shot this balloon out of the sky? Oh, Joe Biden is the president. Or how about you ram it with the Goodyear blimp? Since the Chinese are telling us it's a weather balloon, I'm almost thinking it's a weather balloon. I almost think it's a double bluff from China.

We had plenty of capacity to scoop that balloon out of the air. to do it all the time. Did that balloon take off from Wuhan? How about COVID-22, 23, whatever year it is? Did drop and disperse surveillance products powered by solar energy to allow unlimited surveillance. Pretty good stuff, huh? Now, that was a lot of Fox. That's great work by our team.

Amazing editing, amazing. But then, like, so that was Fox. There were still a lot of serious journalists talking about a grave moment this was for U.S.-China relations. I didn't hear a single person on TV being like, hey, guys, we spy on China all the time. They spy on us. We don't have to take this personally. It's not about our collective ego as a nation. And I think the reason you and I harp on this stuff is you do have to recognize the fact that the end result of constant alarmism is always this pressure for Biden or any other president to respond militarily. And we really don't need the conversation about China to get more hawkish. It's kind of already there. I mean, I just got to say, Tommy, this is some like dark end of empire shit that we're listening. to here. Like that how, how scared and small do we have to be to be a society that can produce

those clips, even if those are the craziest people among us? Those are people like in positions of very real power saying bat shit crazy stuff. And like let's just pull back here. Like, we spy on China. They spy on us. Did you not see the movies about the U2 planes in like the 1950s? This is not new. Okay. Now, I'm not saying that that means we should invite over every spy balloon to this country, but it does mean that this is a fucking batch of crazy way to deal with it, right? And losing all perspective, the balloon is a threat to every American. Why? Like, like, what, I mean. Independence Day? Those were aliens. I mean, those were aliens that were destroying cities. Like, if I recall an independent day, like, the giant ship would be,

like, over New York where I am now and then, like, New York would evaporate. They smoke the White House. Yeah. Like, I think that was a little bit more of an emergency moment. than the fucking balloon drifting over the Montana. I mean, people need to get their shit together here. But the serious point I make about this, Tommy, is like, we are in what is clearly going to be like probably a multi-decade competition with China, whether you will fix the kind of Cold War label to it or not. We're going to be in really tense situations.

There are going to be situations where our spies stop. We've had a spy plane shot down near China. In 2001, right? We're going to have, like, tensions. in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, they're going to be hacks back and forth. And our capacity to avoid that competition becoming a war depends on us being grownups and not being like four years old in this country. And what worries me about the political and media response to this balloon is what's going to happen when it's like an even graver crisis? And as you said,

all the political incentives and momentum are going to be to ratchet up the conflict. we have to at some point get our mixture of like late empire energy and xenophobia and all the rest of it under fucking wraps, or else we're going to find ourselves in a war over a balloon, which is not anywhere you want to be. We just psych ourselves out. It's so wild. And by the way, Joe Biden has been really tough on China. Just last week, they signed a deal with the Philippines to get the U.S. access to even more military bases on the island. that could place U.S. forces less than 200 miles away from Taiwan. So, like, you have to try in diplomacy to have some empathy for your opponents and your allies and sort of see things from their shoes.

And if we're going to have a meltdown about a balloon, how are they going to react to, I don't know, a whole bunch more Marines creeping closer to their country? Yeah. I mean, we're going to have to be able to, like, manage this competition and manage this occasional even confrontation with China so it doesn't. like spill into an actual conflict here. And, you know, part of what gets me to Tommy is like, I think that I'd like to think that people listen to POTS of the world are, you know, the kind of people like tracking what's going on. You know, you hear a lot about how Americans don't care

more about foreign policy. Americans don't care more about national security. Well, like, one of the reasons why is because like the American news media and politicians treat people like they're five years old when they talk about this thing. So you don't hear anything about China until there's like a balloon and then everybody has a complete collective freak out and they're reaching for whatever analogy they can like to make this the most scary thing in the world it's independence day it's like that i know it's that disaster movie where like if you make a noise somebody kills you or something like this is this is not like a grown-up way of dealing with it and to your point like joe biden i mean what is the the substance of the republican critique whoever that way i think was mccarthy

who said it was a catastrophe and all the right yeah it happened a couple days too late i guess because would be the shooting? That's it, right? Like, what did he not do that they wanted him to do? Because, like, the Chinese would be spying in this country, no matter who's president, right? Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, whomever, they're going to send balloons. And so this whole thing is just about whether he should have shot the balloon down over a bunch of people or waited for it. Because what was lost in that time when the balloon was in the air?

Like, I mean, this is just insanity. And by the way, George W. Bush had to write an apology letter to the Chinese government in 2001 to get them to release the 24 airmen who the Chinese government withheld after they had to make a crash landing because a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter and the Chinese fighter pilot was killed. So again, like, yeah, it could be a lot worse. It's absurd. And I would say like one of the other interesting things substantively out of this thing, Tommy,

is it at first when this came out, you could tell the Chinese are kind of embarrassed, you know, because they didn't deny it and they're like, well, you know, like they put out this kind of sheepish statement. It was a weather balloon. Nobody believed that. They had to know that nobody was going to believe that. And so they didn't have that kind of belligerent wolf-foyer thing that they do. But then, like, once this thing got, you know, kicked into hyperspace, then they ratcheted up their response too, like almost in response to our response, you know. But I think this, at the end of the day, it was an embarrassing intelligence failure by the Chinese. Of course.

Their balloon just drifted in a plane view and got shot down. Like, this didn't go well for China. I know. I know. And it's like if the roles were reversed in some U.S. spy asset got spotted by the Chinese and they shot it down, the same Republicans will be saying that that was some impeachable offense in attacking Joe Biden. You just got to know these conversations are stupid and they're not on the level and we shouldn't

take these people seriously. All right, that felt good. And by the way, Biden, I'm glad you smoked that balloon. So we're recording this on Tuesday, February 7th. It's a couple hours before the State of the Union so we can't cover it because of the timing when the show comes out. But the Washington Post and ABC News released a poll over the weekend, pegged around the so-two. And there were two foreign policy data points that jumped out of me, Ben. First, approval of President Biden's handling of the situation in Ukraine is at 38% approved,

48% disapprove. So it's a little worrisome, especially given how well he's handled it, you know? Yeah. And then handling of the border is even worse. It's 28% approve, 59% disapprove. So we'll get into a lot more substantive updates about Ukraine later. But I was wondering, what you make of those, you know, challenging foreign policy polling numbers. And if there's a way for Biden to, I don't know, move the public on these issues, not just in the state of the union, but really over the next, I guess, a year or two years. So I guess I think that on the Ukraine number, one of the things I've been a little worried about is that there's an elite conversation about Ukraine, like kind of a blob, national security type conversation. And then there's like

everybody else's view of this war. Yeah. And let me say it. The elites call you a push and Putin stooge if you oppose their plan. Yeah, yeah. And I like you, I believe Biden has handled this really well. And I know, I think people listen to this podcast know we've been willing to criticize the Biden administration where we think that they have not handled things well, but they've

calibrated this line. They've helped things together. They've helped the Ukrainians, you know, beat back the Russians. However, what worries me is that there's a lot of attention. to the kind of elite narrative around Ukraine, like the op-ed page of the Washington Post or the speakers at the Munich Security Conference. And, you know, I go to some of these events and it's kind of taken as a given that this is this great moment for U.S. foreign policy. But, like, that is not what most people see. And if I do have a critique or some advice to the Biden people, it's to stop just

talking to those elite audience. You've got the columnists. You know, like David Brooks supports your Ukraine policy. And you need a simplified, message that you can deliver around the country to people about what you're doing and why it matters and why it's worth it, you know? And you can't take for granted that they even know what NATO is or the, and so I do think it's a warning sign of sorts that if we're going to keep doing this level of assistance, which I think we're going to have to do for a long time here, we need a message, you know, to use the hackish term that we used to use. But like there needs to be a Main Street message here, not just like a Massachusetts Avenue thing-tank thing. And so the State of the Union hopefully can be the beginning of that. And the border, you know, I, like, you know, we've talked about this. There, I just think they have to use the Republican scrutiny in some ways to actually tell a story because they haven't really told the story about the border. Like, I'm actually not, I'm not sure I could tell you what their policy is. Well, you know, here's one data point that might be relevant. So a few weeks, you know, we talked a while back about President Biden.

creating this new immigration process, this new parole process for migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti. There's a lot of reasons to criticize that proposal. It changes the way asylum works, et cetera, et cetera. But the Washington Post reported that illegal crossings by migrants from those four countries are down more than 95%. So I imagine, like, that's a data point that you'll start to hear a lot going forward. Yeah. No, I think that they need to, they need to like acknowledge that this is a real challenge. But like, again, like a lot of things, this would be challenged for anybody who is president. And they just need to start to kind of communicate

how they're trying to make the problem better. And I'm sure they are doing this. But like, they have to use the scrutiny to have a story. What are the three or four most important things that they're doing to kind of reverse this trend that has a humane component as well as an enforcement component? And this is going to be part of the landscape

for the next couple years. And again, as you and I've said, like there are steps that they can take on Cuba policy, Haiti policy, Venezuela policy in particular. which is driving a lot of this migration to reduce humanitarian suffering so as to reduce the flow to the border. And I think that they should take that on and draw that connection. Yeah. So Biden's likely opponent, as we all know, is Donald Trump. Politico had a piece this week about how Trump plans to run as the peace candidate that gets us back to Ukraine again. Part of that is positioning

himself against military support for Ukraine. Here's a clip from a video Trump released on February 1st. As I have said many times before, Russia's invasion of Ukraine would have never happened if I was in the White House, not even thinkable, not even a possibility. We must end this ridiculous war and demand peace in Ukraine now before it gets worse. And believe it or not, it would be easy to do. Not a lot of detail there, Ben. Believe it or not, Tommy. Believe it or not. Believe it or not. Simple, though. The strategy also means Trump positioning himself against his likely prime.

primary opponents, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, our buddy, and Ron DeSantis. A couple of problems I see with this primary strategy, Ben, is like, first of all, Pompeo, Haley, they work for Trump. So to John Bolton, who he attacks as a crazy warmonger. So it's not like a clean argument to be like all these guys I selected to work for me or warmongers. On the flip side, like, what is Mike Pompeo going to do? Take credit for things that he did on Trump's behalf. I don't get any of it.

The DeSantis piece is also weird. I think they suggested they're going to highlight old congressional votes. It's color me skeptical that you get a lot of traction there. I mean, Desantis saying he'll cut Social Security. That sounds more interesting to me. But also been like Trump tried this before. I remember the Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk, Maureen Dowd column. Ah, yes.

Infamous one. That was when his record was lying about opposing the Iraq war when he was actually in favor of it. Now he had four years in the White House that includes assassinating the top Iranian in general and nearly starting a massive war with Iran. So I don't know. you make of this pitch. It's just like some silly political thing or like actually the path he'll pursue. No, I think it's something we should take seriously. I think it's a path he'll pursue. Even, you know, throughout his presidency, he would talk about, you know, he would talk about ending

wars when, in fact, he actually, in Lucian's assessing general, he sent tens of thousands of more U.S. troops to the Middle East as kind of a like a little offering to the Saudis. Right. Yep. So there's a substantive pushback that needs to be made here. But I do think it connects to what we were just saying about Ukraine. You know, the American public is not crazy about wars in general, particularly if we're fighting the wars. And so Ukraine is kind of like in this other space where most people's experience of that

is they're seeing this terrible stuff on television. It's horrible. Their sympathies are probably with Ukraine, but they're also worried about getting too far into it. And if you've got Trump kind of locking in like a huge, chunk of the Republican Party behind this kind of isolationism, let's have peace, let's get out of there, let's be done with this. And then you factor in, as you know, like, there's a chunk of the Democratic electorate that is just anti-war too. Like, you know, they just don't

like war for, for I think, better reasons than Trump. Yeah, understandable reason, yeah. Or the spending. You're dealing with a pretty delicate, you know, balance of where do you find the support for this Ukraine policy? And it's kind of have to involve some Republicans because there's not enough Democrats. The reason you get like that under 40 number is if Republicans are against the war in Ukraine because Biden supports the Ukrainians, and then you get the Democrats who don't like war, period, that's what gets you down to 38%. And I think they have to take that very seriously, given that this is going to be a multi-year commitment. And I think it also points to the absurdity of the Pompeo's and who still think it's like 2002 in the way to like

win the presidency is to kind of flex on all these foreign policy issues. There's not really an electorate for that anymore, you know? No, there's no neocon electorate that I can see. Meanwhile, though, Ben, today over on true social, Trump was literally re-truthing some random person accusing DeSantis of grooming high school girls while he was a teacher. So that's probably the more likely path this primary goes, unfortunately. That's more likely than a nuanced debate about Ukraine policy. Yeah. Okay. Let's turn to Turkey in Syria, where a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake and several powerful aftershocks have devastated parts of both countries. More than 7,300 people are confirmed dead, and that number will almost certainly rise. Compounding the problem is the fact that it's

freezing cold there. People are still trapped in the rubble or just now homeless. The Syrian areas impacted have been decimated by a decade of war. Some parts of the impacted areas are controlled by the Syrian government. They still get very little in the way of government services, but Assad nominally controls them. Other Syrian areas are controlled. by rebel groups and are densely packed with millions of people displaced by the fighting. We spoke with Kareem XIS, who is the co-investigator of research for health system strengthening in Syria about how you can help. And we also got some exclusive audio from Taj Al-Qazy, the Syrian field director for the

International Rescue Committee. Taj was in Turkey at the time of the earthquake. Take a listen. It was really strong. My whole apartment was shaking. I immediately jumped from bed, got my phone, my jacket. and I ran down to the building. There was chaos and people were leaving the building in their pajamas.

Although it was snowing outside, many people were without jackets and even with their undershirts. The worst part of the experience yesterday was the unknown. We seriously didn't know where to go and what to do. We were just waiting to receive messages and we are hoping for the best and not to see our apartment collapsing, and not to hear bad news about our people. In one town only, in this town called Jendaris in Iffrean district,

North West Alipo, in this town only, there are more than 100 buildings that were completely collapsed. And there are no rescue teams now. Only the white helmets, the civil defense, they are trying their piss to help. And now they were able to extract few people under Derpel. But I believe that there are many more. We have more than 6,000 or 7,000 are still under Derple,

waiting for the rescue missions to come and help. So as of today, there are still people under the Ruppel. I know a lot of my friends who are still missing. I can't believe how my parents and my brother in Hatai and Takia they were able to skate the buildings before it collapsed. But a lot of people, they did not make it. So we're talking about three main areas in terms of the political control. So we have the southern areas of Turkey.

We have two areas in northwest of Syria. So the first one, which is controlled by the government of Syria, by the Assad regime, and it's mainly Alipo city and Hamas city. And those areas, although the infrastructure is really devastated because of the conflict, The government of Syria, they have an international ally to support them, mainly the Russians and the Chinese, to support the rescue committee there. But I'm hugely concerned with the third area, which is the opposition-controlled areas in north-west of Syria. Because these areas are basically a north-state area. So there is no central entity to lead the response.

it's only, the response, you know, is only made by the civil society, the NGO there. Without the international support and the humanitarian interventions in that area, there is no other support. There is no government to respond. There is no international line that can go directly to that areas. And we should not forget that these areas have witnessed the brunt of the atrocities of 12 years of the Syrian conflict. Yes. Really good guidance there in terms of where to target your relief. So in Turkey, President Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency in the affected areas. President Biden called Erdogan to offer

condolences and the U.S. is sending search and rescue teams. Eight agencies are calling on the U.S. and Europe to lift sanctions on Syria to make it easier to provide humanitarian assistance to the people hurt. So, Ben, like, first of all, like lifting some or all sanctions seems like a no-brainer to me and maybe an opportunity for the U.S. to do something politically hard. that will ultimately get there anyway down the road. And then second, I read that something like 13 million Turkish citizens are affected by the earthquakes. And so far, the government response has been a catastrophic failure. And Turkey is supposed to have an election in May.

I mean, I wonder if this could become a big problem for Erdogan, since they're also dealing with runaway inflation and a lot of problems, though that assumes that Erdogan lets the elections, you know, happen. Yeah, I let's, you're right to kind of break this. of the two pieces, right? And first of all, like, if you were to look at a map of the entire world and pick, like, the worst place for there to be this scale of earthquake, like, it's actually arguably this place. It's like Syrian Haiti, like suffering upon suffering upon suffering. Yeah, it's like these people have already been through a decade of unimaginable suffering.

You have hundreds of Syrian refugees in this part of Turkey, as you said. And then this was like the heart, right? I mean, you're talking about places like a lot. You're talking about places in Northern Syria that saw the worst fighting. And like, you know, Kareem, who we add on, like, I know him because there's an organization, Omna, that he's on the board of, and Zarlash Halem's eye has been on this podcast. They deal with childhood trauma. So they provide mental health care for refugee children who've been traumatized. And they worked in that area.

And I make this point only to showcase it like, imagine a child who's been dealing with the trauma of war and then the trauma of displacement, and then the trauma of being in kind of a suspended state of uncertainty about your future, and then this refugee crisis. And so absolutely, I think he's right. And we have in the show notes, Omna and some of the Syrian medical units that are going to be on the ground in a place where there really is no infrastructure other than what can be provided by donors.

And these aren't simple injuries either. These are like bones getting crushed. You know, it's like complicated stuff that requires like real capacity. And it's also time. What really got me is you look into this. We were talking about this before we came on, is that the people who survived, they're homeless and they've lost everything, and they didn't have much to begin with. And so it's going to take a lot of international donor assistance to just keep these people alive and okay. And it's cold there right now. So, yes, anything that can be

done, car vats for sanctions, international relief. We encourage you guys to donate to organizations. it's just this needs help. On the tricky piece, it didn't seem like, you know, it took way too long. I mean, because you're dealing with a rescue circumstance where, you know, every hour is precious here. And, you know, just from watching the news reports, it did feel like it took 24, 48 hours in some cases to get help down there. And I think it does call into question the competence of the government in handling this. And you don't exactly see Erdogan like on the ground there with the victims. I mean, maybe I'd miss something here.

But he is one of these older out of touch leaders who may have just kind of just missed the scale of what needed to be dealt with here. And so it is worth watching how this interacts with their politics sister. Yeah, this is truly a historic disaster. So just a couple of organizations to consider when you're, if you want to make a donation, the Union for Medical and Relief Organizations and the Syrian-American. medical society or providing medical services. The white helmets are searching for survivors. Save the Children is working on the ground to help kids and families with clothing and shelter and food. We spoke with the Save the Children CEO on last week's episode. They're an amazing

group in the International Rescue Committee, the Red Crescent. They're doing great work. So a bunch of options there to consider. So Ben, turning to Africa, so the Pope has been making a lot of news. First, Pope Francis denounced the criminalization of homosexuality and said, LGBT people should be accepted by their churches. Pretty historic stuff. He said it a couple times, I think, but most recently while flying back from a six-day trip to Africa that included stops in Congo and South Sudan, South Sudan is one of 67 countries that criminalizes homosexuality, so poignant and direct message to the place he just was. Pope Francis's final event during his visit was delivering mass to over 100,000 people in South Sudan, which is predominantly Christian,

unlike its neighbor, Sudan, which is predominantly Muslim. And while in Congo, Pope Francis repeatedly denounced political corruption during a speech to 65,000 mostly young people. This is an issue Pope Francis cares about and talks about a lot of you wrote a book about it and is a huge problem in Congo. About half of the 105 million citizens of Congo are Catholic. This was Francis's fifth trip to the continent of Africa over the last decade. So I'm not particularly religious at all.

I've also a very deep skepticism of most religious institutions, especially the Catholic Church, for obvious reasons. But I do often think about kind of how surprising and lucky the world was when Pope Benedict, Cardinal Ratzinger, stepped down surprisingly and was replaced by Francis. This is like much more moderate, flawed, but, you know, seemingly decent man who tries very hard to be a force for calm and peace and good. And, I mean, all these trips are like pretty, some pretty, pretty. intense diplomacy here. Yeah, I was very moved by it. And I have to say, like, Tommy, you and I

worked on South Sudan. And there was this hopeful moment when South Sudan became an independent country. And then it's just been such a tragedy since as their leaders had been fighting, you know, each other as the natural resources, the oil and gas, it was supposed to kind of give them a basis for a state has basically been stolen by those very same. leaders and the world's attention inevitably kind of moves on even though you have these enormous refugee and internally displaced problems and violence and famine and to see Pope Francis go there and by the way he didn't just parachuted and he's been working on say South Sudan for years like he had the two warring leaders he kissed their feet a couple of years ago to send a message of

they did how they needed to forgive each other like he's very active in the church on the ground is one of the only institutions trying to actually help people there. So for me to see him go over there, bring the world's attention on this, show the people there that he cared. I mean, it was a really powerful example that he's setting. And he's an old man. This is not like easy travel to make. And he's 86. Yeah.

And so I just, I think it's a great role for the Catholic Church to play because it's kind of a shame on all of us in the U.S. and other countries that have kind of our tensions moved on from these places. And hopefully what can do is catalyze, make people there feel seen, help encourage incentivize those leaders to at least make things a little bit better, but also get the international community focused on this again. So I think he deserves a lot of credit for bringing this attention. And we should say, like, the Catholic priest on the ground are often the ones doing really hard work and really difficult circumstances. And so you saw some of those people in Congo and in Juba and South Sudan as well.

Yeah. Another country that needs some sustained international attention and help is Haiti. Haiti is still dealing with unimaginable levels of gang violence and political dysfunction. Haiti's president was assassinated in July of 2021. Four of the suspects in that case were recently transferred to the United States because the local judges involved in their prosecution were facing death threats. As of mid-January, Haiti has literally no elected officials left in office. That's because the terms of the last 10 senators in parliament who'd been elected expired. So every official currently in government is working in some sort of acting capacity because there hasn't been an election in Haiti since 2019.

Experts estimate that the government really only controls about a third of the capital city, Port of Prince, gangs control far more territory. For the last year or so, there's been periodic talk about whether some sort of international peacekeeping force should go into Haiti and try to help restore order. this is an incredibly fraught debate, especially for the United States, given the long and awful history of the United States and other countries meddling in Haiti's affairs to the great detriment of the people there. I did think it was worth mentioning a new poll that Reuters reported on that found about 70 percent of Haitians surveyed backed creating an international force to

help the police fight gangs. And I saw that the Jamaican prime minister said Jamaica would be willing to be a part of some sort of international deployment to Haiti. So again, I have no idea what the right answer is here, Ben, but it was interesting to see this data because one of the thing we've talked about, right, is listening to the people of Haiti about their own future. And it was interesting to me that there could be sort of a Caribbean regional approach, maybe anchored by Jamaica. No, I think that's right. I mean, this just keeps getting worse. And it doesn't feel to me like there's a way that the kind of continued descent into, even darker dysfunction and instability there is going to be arrested absent some international

I was going to say intervention. I don't mean like a war, but like I think we have to be thinking about what are all the ways in which we can surge like an international capability to help both with policing and with kind of the beginnings of restoring some semblance of governance. you don't, you know, under Bill Clinton, it was like a U.S. invasion of Haiti. That's not what we're talking about. No. And I think you make a really good point.

I think the Caribbean countries have an organization called Karacom, which is a really good basis for the U.S. to engage the Caribbean. And then you have, you know, I think a bunch of leaders in Latin America, Brazil has been involved in Haiti in the past, including, I think, you know, when Lula was blast in government, I think that the task with the United States to play. diplomatically is how do you get the broadest set of countries in this hemisphere, hopefully with the Caribbean countries and somewhat in the lead, to be a part of a mixture of policing support, governance support, donations. There has to be kind of a surge of- Yeah, of all this stuff. And yes, you have to guard against the past when a lot of money was wasted in corruption or ill-spent. But this is just a human catastrophe that is also a very real border issue for the United States. States that has to be dealt with. Yes, leading to more migration. A few important updates about the war in Ukraine, Ben. So first, you know, a lot of, everyone seems to think that a big Russian counteroffensive is about to start or is basically already started in eastern or southern Ukraine. Russia has had several months now to conscript and train some new troops. So they have a manpower

advantage they didn't have before that is worrisome. Fear of that offensive is part of why the Ukrainians have really been upping the pressure on weapons shipments as of late. earlier today, Tuesday, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands pledged to give Ukraine at least 100 Leopard 1 battle tanks in the coming months. That's in addition to Germany allowing the transfer of the more modern Leopard 2 tanks, so those weapons are coming. Also, the U.S. finally agreed to send longer-range bombs to Ukraine. They're called the ground-launched small-diameter bombs. They can hit targets 90 miles away, which is well above the current high-marous range of 50 miles. And those are part of a $2.17 billion package that was announced last week,

though I think it'll take a long time, like many months, up to maybe nine months, to get those things sort of on the battlefield and usable. And then finally, the European Union, some of the leadership traveled to Kiev for talks with President Zelensky last week. Zelensky's been pushing very hard for fast track membership into the EU. The EU is, you know, a little less excited about that idea. Their message is basically like, we're with you, but pump the brakes on membership. Finally, Ben, U.S. officials say that Russia is violating the New START nuclear arms control treaty by not allowing the inspections that are required.

New START was negotiated by President Obama and his first term and extended in 2021 for five more years. It caps the number of nuclear warheads deployed by the U.S. and Russia in the means of delivering them. It is kind of the last gasp semblance of arms control left after Trump and Pompeo kind of dismantled a lot of that architecture. So any thoughts from you on, you know, this EU membership push from Ukraine or this very disconcerting news that Russia seems to be backing away from New Start? Well, I think first on the EU piece, symbolically and substantively, it's kind of really important that however this war ends, Ukraine should be part of Europe, you know,

and we hear that victory. What does that mean? Precisely because I think it's going to be complicated. Like, you know, I don't think anybody foresees the Ukrainians marching into Moscow and removing the Russian governor or something. And you would hope that maybe Putin goes and there's some full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty. But put that aside, Russia's war, they should fail in a number of respects, hopefully all respects, but they should certainly fail at their effort to kind of take over Ukraine. But they should also fail as like an aggressor that was seeking to control Ukraine's own choices about whether they draw closer to Europe or whether they are kind of under Russian domination. I say that to make the point that like, Ukraine joining the

EU is what the Ukrainian people want, and it would be the ultimate rebuke to what Putin was trying to do by saying, no, you don't get to be part of Europe. You have to be part of us. And so I totally understand that there's a lot that goes along with EU membership. There's a lot of bells and whistles and hoops you have to jump through. And it's not as simple as just saying, today you remember because, you know, there's sometimes there's a currency union and then there's a movement union, there's regulations. I think what the Europeans need to do is kind of create a new category, like where they don't just sound bureaucratic, like, well, no, you're not ready. We'll talk about that later. They have to kind of signal like, this is happening. Like, Ukraine is a part of the

European Union. They're on this pathway, and they're going to have to figure out a way where it's not maybe the exact same list of steps that every country had to do, are there some things that can be accelerated for the Ukrainians? And some things that's not. Like, you may not be able to set up like Ukraine's in the exact same regulatory framework as France. But like, what can you give them in terms of membership faster? Because I think that that's a really important message to send that like this invasion is going to fail and these people are going to be part of Europe, which is what they want. New START is really troubling. I mean, I still think that you want that. place, obviously if the Russians are just out of it, they're out of it. But like, why is it

worth preserving? Like, you want eyes on those Russian nuclear weapons. You know, I mean, a lot of the verification is like being able to go inspect where they are and what they're doing. So I think it's worth preserving as complicated as that is, unless the Russians are just, you know, not interested in which case, it's, you know, we're flying blind on nuclear weapons, which we haven't been in a very long time. I mean, this would be the first time in decades that there hasn't been some arms controlled regime like this in place. Yeah, it's very scary stuff. I mean, what it sounds like is the Russians are just saying, hey, listen, now is not the

right time to let a bunch of American expectors come to our military bases. And I get where they're coming from on that front, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable. The EU thing, I agree with you. I think it's important. And also, it helps you avoid the whole question of allowing Ukraine into NATO right now in the sort of Article 5 collective response to World War III concern that we all share. I, too, am a little confused why the EU member or leadership are kind of slow walking this, unless maybe, I don't know, maybe there's concern among EU member states that would make it harder.

Yeah, no, just come up with a different category then. You know, like I get that they can't, you know, be a full member of the EU tomorrow because they just probably technically can't. But there's got to be a different way of approaching this. Yeah. Last story. So here's a headline that you don't see every day. It's from Vice News.

quote, Taliban bureaucrats hate working online all day, miss the days of jihad. Interviews with five former Taliban fighters reveal the crushing unui of office life in the big city. This article is based on a series of interviews with Taliban members who hate their new desk jobs. They were conducted by a nonprofit research agency called the Afghanistan Analytics Network. Here's a quote from one of the guys they talked to. I sometimes miss the jihad life for all the good things it had, said 25-year-old. Abdul Najeef. In our ministry, there's little work for me to do. Therefore, I spend most of my time on Twitter. We're connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many Mujahideen, including me, are addicted

to the internet, especially Twitter. There was another guy, Ben, who was pissed about having to clock in at eight and then stay there until four. Otherwise, you get your pay docked. We've all been there. You know, listen, change is hard. Starting a new job can be tough. I know you don't fit in. You don't have friends right away guys. One idea for these Taliban bureaucrats, what if you stop slowly strangling your country to death and actually help the human beings starving to death? You might find that fulfilling. Maybe you let women do those jobs and then you can go out and knock ourselves out. I mean, the Twitter thing may get them too. Maybe Twitter will defeat them and, you know, I, here's the interesting thing. I was very interested. Your interview last week was really

good. And I was particularly interested in her comments about this kind of split between the Kandahar kind of clerics who are issuing all these hardline edicts and stuff. And then these like people probably like this who are like sitting in ministries in Kabul like, well, what the fuck do we do how to run this place? It does raise an interesting question over time at whether there's anything that can be done by the international community to kind of like, you know, split off, you know, incentivize like I even say moderate related to the Taliban but like incentivize the kind of more technocratic aspects of the people in Kabul from the kind of you know just retro misogynist creeps down in can are like because just sanctioning everybody I don't think can work so there may

be something there about what do you do is there what kind of government do you want to see there in five or 10 years and is there anything we can do to to nudge it in the right direction yeah and like I think the sort of perverse incentives that get created when the Taliban does something truly heinous like not letting girls go to school or not letting women into NGOs is that it makes it even easier for the United States or other Western countries to just fully cut them off and not really like debate or address the much harder issues of should we lift sanctions? You know, should we try to find a path forward, not necessarily recognize the Taliban government right away, but like find a way to work with them to save a whole bunch of lives, innocent lives,

kids, women, children, right? And I agree with you. I mean, maybe there is some sort of faction that will look around at what's happening in the country and think, we don't want this. I don't care what some guy in Kandahar says. Yeah, for our own survival, you know, and the people who know that that dynamic that you describe are the creeps in Kandar. You know, they know that like they could just, you know, like throw a hand grenade in any effort to kind of improve the lives of people there. So, So, you know, we have to just our metric in Afghanistan should be, is there anything we do to make life marginally better for more people, particularly women, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, you will hear Ben's interview with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, so stick around for that. Well, I'm very pleased to be joined by Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman from Minnesota. Welcome back to Ponzi of the world. Yeah, thank you for having me. So obviously, I want to start with the news of the last few days. with the Republican effort to remove you from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. For people who haven't been following this may not understand something as is misguided and illogical

and bigoted as this. Tell us what happened, what this means for your service on that committee and in Congress. Yeah, for those that don't know, for the last two terms in Congress, I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee and on the Education Labor Committee. I also briefly, in my first term, served on the Budget Committee. Republicans have been pushing since I got sworn in in 2019 to not seat me on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Some reason they believe there's a threshold of Americanness

that I have to cross before I'm able to talk about American foreign policy and critique it and possibly advance a better path forward for our foreign policy. And they made a promise that if they were ever to have the majority, that they would do that. And so last week, they were able to, have a floor vote and in a partisan way vote to take me off. Every single Democrat voted to keep me on the committee, which is the distinction because a lot of them kept talking about, you know,

how the Democrats in the majority took members of their committees and that, you know, this sort of fit with that standard. But the reality is the House voted to remove those. two members from the committees from inciting violence and threats lives of their colleagues. And it was a bipartisan House vote to do so. And this was a very partisan Republican saying, you know, we want a certain person who will co-sign the current status quo on foreign policy, will not critique the United States and any of its misguided foreign policy and will not critique the foreign policy of Israel or our allies.

Okay. So, I mean, obviously, it's not hard to surmise that, you know, that a good chunk of this is racialized, you know, a kind of anti-Black, anti-Muslim bigotry. Some of it is just, you know, jingoistic Republican politics. I want to talk about a few pieces of this, though. I mean, first of all, what message you think this sends around the world? Like at a time, you know, you'll hear people talk about how the United States needs to do more to appeal to people in the global south, people who are fighting for human rights around the world. I would imagine that a healthy share of those people see you as someone who represents the America that they want to. to look up to you more than, you know, people like Paul Gosar, you know, who are removed from committees for their kind of incitement of violence. I mean, do you worry about the message this

sends to the rest of the world that is watching this and is seeing someone like you denied a voice on that committee? Yes. You know, we, you know, as, as you know, you served under the Obama administration, you know, we hold other countries to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, standard that says, you know, you have to have an open society, you have to have open debate, respect democratic principles of allowing, you know, sending voices to exist in the political discourse. And now what the Republicans have done is say, here in the United States, a country that talks a lot about the freedom of speech, the rights that we say are enshrined in our first in the First Amendment of the Constitution, whether it's religious liberty or advancing

coexistence, that we are somehow deciding to reject that because we can't seat this member of Congress on this particular community because unlike the other ones, again, I'm not removed from all of my committees. So saying you can't participate in this one. conversation in this one debate clearly sets a message to the rest of the world that we are not the America that we say that we are. We are not upholding the values that we say we believe in. And I think to many Africans, you know, to see the first black member of Congress to have been born on the continent of Africa who came to the United States as a refugee, who

overcame great tragedies to rise to a position of power to have been elected by her constituents that don't share cultural, that many of them don't share a cultural, religious or racial identity with that many people took pride in now is somehow being denied the opportunity to serve as the ranking member on the Africa subcommittee that she has been on like many people have celebrated. Yeah, no, it's just a missed opportunity to have your voice there for so many reasons. I did want to press on our party, the Democratic Party, which, you know, I was glad to see everybody rally to your defense and some quite powerful statements made. by a number of members.

But the reality is, for instance, we talked a couple weeks ago about Sarah Margon, who was nominated for the Senate Secretary for Democracy. And her nomination got killed mainly because of Israel because she tweeted something about Airbnb and settlements and she'd been involved with Human Rights Watch. But you could kind of go on down the line. And the reality is that, you know, when you got attacked a few years ago because APAC didn't like something. So you said, you know, a lot of Democrats,

went along with that. And a lot of Democrats didn't stand up. The Yasser and Morgon could have been confirmed, frankly, if Senator Menendez would have let that come to vote. Even though it's not Democrats who removed you, obviously, do some of the defensiveness that Democrats kind of intuitively have around certain issues, and I've been involved in this, but on Israel or on Cuba or on other things, do you think that this event should kind of force us to kind of look inward about, hey, are we facilitating this politics when we kind of go along with it? Because, you know, absent some of that kind of for outrage, we might not have gotten here, you know? Yeah. And, you know, to your credit, four years ago, when this happened, you were out there speaking about the dangers

of going down this road, right, of not calling folks in before you call them out. for not continuing to stand for the right of someone to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, for, you know, advancing human rights and advocating for folks to have access through international, access to justice through international law. I do hope that this serves at least a cautionary tale for Democrats. And I think it has, which is why you saw so many folks who are in the forefront of this recognize the damage and the misguided ways that their words now were being weaponized to somehow make me seem like I am not someone. who is solely here to advocate for for peace to fight against bigotry and someone who really just wants us to live up to the words that we say and and the things that we have, the policies

that we have on paper. You know, and just continuing this threat a bit, I mean, how do we apply this standard around human rights and democracy across the board? You know, it's not just Israel. Like we've, if you look at India, geopolitically important in the United States, but a very disturbing Hindu nationalist direction under Prime Minister Modi, obviously Saudi Arabia and the UAE, also countries that have traditionally been aligned with the United States on certain issues, but have terrible human rights records, both within their borders and sometimes exporting

that. You know, how can the United States try to be more consistent? And what can people like you in Congress do to at least try to understand, yes, there may be geopolitical realities where we have relationships with people. We don't agree with everything they do. But how do we continue to not turn a blind eye to abuses when they may be happening in countries that have some shared geopolitical interests of the U.S.? Yeah, I mean, that really has been sort of a lot of my work is to say, you know, we,

we at least have to hold the line when it comes to not just spewing these talking points about our values when it comes to human rights and law and order. But we have to carry it out in our everyday actions. it's it's one thing to to care about allies but once you say you know this allied ship is based on these principles or these values when those principles and values are challenged then then you must have the prerogative yeah to say you know hey at least you're making me look at right because I'm saying I share value with you. And when you are not upholding those values, then it is only right that I say to you, this is wrong.

It shouldn't be that hard for the United States to forcefully condemn the Saudi-led coalition, when they blow up bridges, hospitals, when they are actively starving Yemenis. This is one of the most populated country in the Middle East. The poorest, the people have been devastated over the years. Children have been slaughtered. And for us to continue our allyship as if nothing had happened

and not speak about what is taking place is wrong. You look at right now what's happening with Netanyahu's government in carrying out collective punishment. You want somebody to say, hey, that's against international law. It's against the Geneva Convention. You can't carry out collective punishment. When you look at India, we've been asking for it to be designated as a country of concern. I've questioned Blinken's under secretary on this. It's odd to me that that hasn't taken place because we have put allies or other countries that have been allied with us over the years.

We've designated it as a country of concern. You know, you have the situation in Ethiopia where it's taken many pushes from me and other. on the committee to question the State Department on what was happening there, like how long will it take for us to forcefully speak out against the devastation that's taking place in Ethiopia? And so time and time again, this continues to happen. We obviously do not hesitate to call out human rights violations that are taking place by our adversaries.

Yeah. And the world notices that hypocrisy. And the world then gets into a position where they disregard our concern and our calls for justice because they know that we don't do it across the board. And that pushes our diplomacy, our advocacy, our engagement across the world in jeopardy. Yeah. No, it's really well said. And as I always point out, I mean, it's not like we don't criticize ourselves. We apply the same standard at home when we see injustice.

Well, one last question for you, which is, how do you plan to kind of continue to be heard on these things, given the removal from the committee? Do you, like, have you given thought to how we obviously would love to have you on platform anytime? But how do you want to continue to use your voice even in the aftermath of this vote? Yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, I campaigned on my critique around our foreign policy and those around the world. I, you know, represent a district that deeply cares about this and having a voice there. And so I will continue to utilize whatever platform I have as a member of Congress and as a leader to speak on. on these issues, you know, obviously doing it with you today matters, but we're in regards to Africa. We're setting up an Africa working group that will allow us to cultivate some conversations

and partnerships around, you know, creating a stronger partnership with the continent of Africa. and, you know, I will continue to speak about, you know, the things that are happening in Central America around our trade agreements and our policies towards Central America that continue to help create the kind of migration crises that we're seeing and certainly, you know, speak up for those that have been denied justice and living with the tragedies of either being. in war or surviving more. Well, that's good. You have a much bigger megaphone than, you know, I dare I say a bunch of members on that committee. But you're welcome on this committee anytime. Congresswoman Omar,

it's great to talk to you. Good to see you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks again to Congresswoman Ilan Omar for joining the show today. Is this immature? I'm 42 years old. It's more mature than like yelling about Joe Biden resigning because of a boy. Yeah. That was Joe Wilson. Is that the you lie with Joe Wilson? I think it was. It is, yeah, like, you know, we'll see what he brings tonight. What a proud tenure. I like that the boom was in the backdrop the whole time, too. Yeah.

You know, I should have got some nitrous balloons. You ever done that? I had a nitrous dentist deployment the first time ever the other day. Big recommendation. So this is what a meet at I was in high school. Like, I don't think this should impede any future employment of mine, hopefully. But we'd get those nitrous balloons. And we figured out because we were 16-year-old boys.

is that the brief high that you get from inhaling the nitrous balloon was enhanced if you ran at full speed while inhaling the balloon. That is such a meathead move. Picture a bunch of like 16-year-old meatheads running across Riverside Park and the West 7-Newark and Hailing Nitrous. It's fun, though. I've definitely done to like wander into the woods at the concert, come out with the balloon version of this. Having tubes strapped to your nose for an hour while you get your cavity filled was a whole new ballgame. I tweeted about that. Someone yelled at me about the climate change implications of getting nitrous at the dentist,

and I just want that person to know, I don't care what you say. I wish I had nitrous because I just got some dental work done. I'll let me tell you it wasn't fun. It is miserable. I have huge dental anxiety. Yeah, me too. It's not good. Well, that's all I got.

Good luck tonight, Joe Biden, State of Union. You'll hear this tomorrow. I know you listen every day. But congrats. It went well. Yeah, excellent deal. You're really down with the balloon. put it to rest. It really deflated that balloon controversy.

There you go. There you go. All right, guys, talk to you next week. See it. POTSave the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Our associate producer is Ashley Mazuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Seaglin, Charlotte Landis, and DeSilius are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, B.B. Bradford and Milo Kim, upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week

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