Pod Save the World - Israel Deadlocked, Suez Unblocked

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Tommy and Ben walk through the inconclusive results of the latest Israeli election, how Covid and bad political leadership is devastating Brazil, the Suez Canal, news from Biden on Afghanistan, more military violence in Myanmar, plans for a Chinese-Russian moon base, pan-European progressivism, US-Bolivia policy, and whether Prince William is actually the sexiest bald man alive. Then, Ben talks to Ricardo Herrero, head of the Cuba Study Group, about how the Biden administration should reengage with Cuba.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I just want to note for listeners on audio only that you have a new angle, new setup, and your bookcase looks incredible. How many of those have you read? I'm going to lie and say I've read most of them. I actually think I have. These are like the books that like, you know, these are the paperbacks. They travel with you. Yeah, these ones do travel. I do have Tommy, I found going through boxes, an excellent black tie photo of you and me and Cody Keenan that is on a shelf behind me. Oh, nice. Yeah. From a correspondence dinner after party. Oh, wow. I actually think it's the one the night before Bin Laden got whacked, too. So that's why I kept that photo, you know.

Is there a foreign policy angle? Was that the French embassy? That was at the French embassy, yeah. It's kind of weird in hindsight that those parties are at random foreign embassies in D.C., no? Yeah, I mean, basically all of official D.C. would like descend on the French ambassador's residence one and a year. It's kind of strange. But good diplomatic play by the French, you know. I'm sure they had listening devices everywhere too, too. Everywhere. Lots of good collection. Well, we have a great show today. Here's what we got for you on the agenda. So we're going to go through the Israeli election results so far. I'll do a quick COVID news roundup with a particular focus on the impact on Brazil. These things are getting pretty dire there. And the big boat is unstuck, breaking news. Biden makes some big news on Afghanistan, some very scary updates out of Myanmar. I read about moon bases today. I had to throw it in the show. We'll see what you guys think about that. The globalists are ascendant in the Netherlands.

We'll talk about what that means, Bolivia. And there's a very sexy controversy coming out of the UK that I think we need to walk people through. And then you are doing our interview today, Ben. What are you guys going to talk about? Yeah, I'm talking to Rick Herrero, who runs the Cuba study group. and they've generally been an organization based in Miami that supports engagement with Cuba. And I think what we're going to talk about is so far, you know, two months in, not many signs from the Biden team about what their Cuba policy is. So we're going to check it on, you know, what's the state of Cuba, what's the damage that Trump's done, what should Biden do, and how might that interact with Central America and Venezuela,

the other issues that connect. I'm really glad you're talking about that for today because we've talked a lot about the Iran deal, the JCPOA, but the other like really landmark progressive diplomatic agreement that President Obama had that you led the negotiations on was this Cuba agreement. I just haven't heard much conversation about it, except for from folks that I don't want to hear from necessarily, like Marco Rubio. Well, that's the problem. And that's the reason to have conversations like this is that guys like Rubio and Menendez

kind of dominate the conversation just because they're the loudest voices. And that doesn't necessarily mean that most people agree with them. Yeah. So you're right. And it's another one of these things like Iran where, you know, this whole team in the Biden administration, they all supported the Cuba engagement at the time. So the longer does go on without them doing something, you know, the more you wonder, is that about a substantive change of heart or is that about politics? Yeah. Great questions. Great questions. Well, I can't wait to hear that. Okay. Well, why don't we start with the Israeli elections? Because we talked about the fact that voters were going to the polls last week. Now we have some information about the results. So again, this is the fourth Israeli election in two. years. So the long story short is it didn't go well for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, but unfortunately

for Israeli voters, the results are not yet decisive. The gist is the pro Netanyahu coalition won 52 seats, including 34 Netanyahu's like Hood Party. The anti-Netan Yahoo Coalition won 57 seats. But in the Israeli system, the prime minister is the person who can pull together a coalition of 61 seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. So now all the parties have to negotiate and try to build a governing coalition. And if that fails, unthinkably, they could have a fifth election later this year. Ben, here's the incredible part about this, you know, government formation process that's happening. The two key blocks of unaligned parties that everyone is trying to coax into a coalition are, one, a right-wing nationalist group controlled by a former Netanyahu ally, and two, an Arab Islamist party.

And for Netanyahu to get control, I think he has to get support from both. So Ben, here's my question for you. Go with it or ignore it and say whatever you want. Is this a workable system? Like, what is happening? Well, I think what it shows you is the fact that Netanyahu is an impediment to Israel moving forward. You know, like he's so polarizing that every single election, it's basically the exact same result. And then the same outcome of like a multi-month coalition building process.

And I just don't think that Israel can move forward kind of. decisively in a different direction until they just first get Netanyahu out of the way, out of the chair. And I mean, I have to say, I love about Israeli politics that you've got this bomb-throwing right-wing guy, Naftali Bennett, who demanded that Lapeed make him prime minister as a condition of supporting him. Lapid's like, no, I got a lot more votes than you did. And then you've got some Islamists, like four elections ago, if you told me that in the fourth election, that the kingmaker could be an Islamist party in Israel. So you're Knesset bingo card.

No. Yeah, it wasn't there. So, I mean, as usual, like, Nanyahu is a cleaner play, which is basically like consolidate the whole right and maybe bring in the Islamists. And, you know, bear in mind what Nanyahu would say if, like, the Democratic Party partnered with an Islamist party. Or, but LaPitte has this play where he can, you know, he has to cobble together the patchwork, left, right center like we talked about.

I think, you know, we should. all root for that, but it's likely going to be a protracted mess. And again, like, the reason to get rid of Nanyahu is not just that I think, you know, he's been a right-wing guy who I disagree with. You know, he's been there too long. And the lesson of these elections is, like, nothing is going to change in Israeli politics until they can get past all the oxygen that he sucks up. Yeah, yeah. Two other quick notes are things I noticed. There's reports that some lawmakers are concerned. considering passing a law that would disqualify an indicted person for forming a government, which is just a way of barring Netanyahu from office since he's on trial in three different cases.

So that's kind of funny. And then I saw the reaction out of the Palestinian leadership is really quite sad. I mean, there is deep concern about whether, you know, BB wins or not, right-wing parties keep making gains, which further sets back. And he hope of restarting the peace talks increases concern about, you know, Israel possibly annexing the West Bank. So really, you know, bad news all around for the Palestinian side. Yeah, no, I mean, the center, if you will, of Israeli politics has moved pretty significantly to the right in the last decade or two. Some of that's demographics.

Some of that's, you know, Netanyahu's achievement, essentially, of fracturing the left and building up the right. One other way to think about this, too, Tommy, is that, like, in a lot of big countries, you know, there's been this, we talked about authoritarianism a lot on this show, but they're also just these. personalities that have, you know, if you look at Nanyahu, even people I like, like Angela Merkel, of course, Putin and obviously dominating Russia for 20 years. You know, like I think a lot of these countries, particularly these democracies, could stand to just move on to a new generation, if you will. Yeah, I could not agree with more with that. Okay, I want to do a quick just roundup of COVID-19 news because there's a bunch of different parts of this. So first, the World Health Organization in China released a 124-page report this week about the origins of the

coronavirus. The report said that COVID most likely jumped from bats to some sort of intermediate animal. Then it got to humans. And they just said in this report that it's extremely unlikely that the virus accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan. That said, Ben, like a lot of people are questioning this report, including the head of the WHO, the White House. Jensocki slammed this report today. They criticized it for withholding data, a lack of access to the the right facilities and individuals and then just sort of general lack of transparency. The other thing I saw out there was the CDC did a real world study. They released it this week of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that show they are highly

effective at reducing the risk of infection even after the first shot. So that's very good news. And then third, just to follow up on something we've talked about previously, CNBC reported that the White House is considering lifting intellectual property restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines, which would allow other countries to get in the process of figuring out how to make them. And Johnson and Johnson said they would maybe provide up to 400 million doses of its vaccine to African countries starting this summer. So, you know, we've talked about vaccine equity and the lack of access for the developing world. This is great news.

So, Ben, you know, talk about any part of this you want. But I just feel like we're going to be debating this question about the origins of the COVID virus for a long time. Last week, the former head of the CDC, Robert Redville, said he believes that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, he said it's just an opinion. I would love an answer to this question, but like, why can't the former CDC director base his opinion on facts and evidence? I'm confused here. Yeah. I mean, first of all, great news that there's movement towards disseminating vaccine globally. We should keep beating that drum. It's so important to understand the origin and not because, you know, we need to go dunk on the Chinese, but because understanding how COVID-19 happened

is going to help us prevent future, you know, pandemics. And again, I've mentioned this climate change point, but as the climate changes, animals are living in closer proximity to one another and human beings in certain places in different ways than they used to, you know, because ecosystems are changing. And so we have to understand what the hell is happening. Like, you know, if it moved from a bat to another animal to human, like, what was that animal? How did that transmission happen? I'm not the expert on this, but I know enough to assume that that's very important to know. And I would hope that the Chinese, you know, could see that they have a self-interest in being more transparent and open about the origin of this virus. I think part of what I'm sure that they are embarrassed about, or maybe they're not embarrassed, but they want to cover up, is that they were lying about this for a period of time after they knew about it. You know what? We already know that they were lying about this. Like, it's in China's interest, America's interest, the world's interest, to just know what happened, you know? And in the absence of that information, though, I think it's very important for people

to lay out evidence-based cases for why they think something was the origin. I don't think just like theorizing about what happened in some lab that we don't have access to is that helpful to this. And it seems more designed to kind of just gin up the anti-China fervor that is swept Washington. Yeah, look, I mean, if this was like some sort of gain-of-function experiment gone wrong in a lab and it got out because some, you know, worker got sick. I want to know that, but I want to know that based on evidence and not just because people have been speculating about this for the better part of a year now. And I want to know that because there are other labs all over the world. I mean,

this is like really, really important. I mean, you know, World is like, how much do you not want to do this again in like five years or 10 years or 20 years? And all the experts have said that it's probably not going to be another hundred years before something like this happens because of the changing ecology. So, you know, people need to stay on this. The WHO needs to stay on this. The Chinese should be held to account and have their feet held to the fire, not because they need to be punished, but because we all need to understand what happened. Yes, for sure. One place that is in, like, increasingly, truly dire shape because of COVID is Brazil, and it's also because of their horrible political leadership. So Brazil is reporting more new cases in deaths per day than any other

country in the world. So far, COVID has killed more than 314,000 Brazilians. They've way smaller population than the U.S. And the trajectory looks like it's getting worse, they're not better. Brazil is dealing with new variants, a health system on the verge of collapse, one that was good before this, by the way, and then just like devastatingly bad political leadership from President Bolsonaro. There are, you know, political leaders who say mitigation efforts, like lockdowns are just untenable at this point because so many people live in poverty that, you know, that will kill them from hunger. Bolsonaro. stupidly turned down offers to get early access to the Pfizer vaccine.

And instead, he has been downplaying the severity of the disease and pushing these ineffective treatments. Like he's still talking about hydroxychloroquine all these months, years later. So unfortunately, Ben, this story gets even worse. So this week, Bolsonaro suddenly fired his defense minister. And then the heads of Brazil's Army, Navy, and Air Force all resigned after meeting with the new person Bolsonaro had named to be defense minister. And this resignation from these three heads of the armed forces was reportedly because of a dispute over whether the military is loyal to the Constitution or to the president.

Sounds familiar. Sounds scary. So in the past, Bolsonaro has openly longed for the days when Brazil was a military dictatorship. Last year, I forgot about this, he joined anti-lockdown protests that included calls to shut down parliament, shut down the Supreme Court in return to a military dictatorship. Earlier this month, he threatened to declare a state of siege, whatever. that means pretty ominous. So it doesn't seem coincidental to me, Ben, that Bolsonaro's biggest political rival, former president, Lula de Silva, is now clear to run recently. So, you know, this update freaked me out, man. It's not good when you see like the defense minister

polling this kind of stuff. No, no. I mean, you don't want the biggest country in South America to revert to some military dictatorship. I think that there's a silver lining in all that. it's that the military did push back, you know, that essentially he ousted the defense minister because the defense minister didn't want to go along with the idea that the military is kind of like the personal extension of Bolsonaro's interest. And then the service chiefs all resigned. And I think that's probably an indication, you know, down through the military that, you know, they're not exactly signing up for the coup here. And so that's a healthy sign. Although it's the same thing we used to talk about with Trump, right? It's like, do you want the responsible adults to stay in

their jobs or do you want them to quit? And clearly, these guys all decided it was time to quit. I think that Bolsonaro clearly, I mean, he's expressed affinity for former dictatorships in Brazil and Chile. You know, clearly this guy wouldn't mind being a military dictator dictator. But from what we've seen, while he has some personal popularity and appeal, it's not clear that he has a support to get that done from the public, from the military, from the different elements of Brazilian society. I think the thing to watch here, though, is that the 2022 election, if Lula is running against Lula, you have kind of right-wing populist Bolsonaro against left-wing populace Lula, that is like an epic, epic campaign for the future of Brazil and what is Brazil. And, you know,

you could see a world in which if Bolsonaro is losing or feels like he's going to lose that election, and maybe that's when he makes his play and he appeals to some of the right-wing elements who didn't like Lula. That's partly how Lula ended up in prison for a while. So this is really unsteady. And this is a country of 200 million people, and biggest country in South America,

a hugely important to the economy of this hemisphere, to efforts to fight climate change, in addition to just being a place that we would like to see embrace democratic values. So this definitely bears watching. Yeah, one to watch for sure. Okay, let's turn to the Suez Canal because at long last it is unstuck. So everyone has probably seen this story by now, a 1,300-foot cargo ship transporting 20,000 containers called the Evergiven, had blocked the Suez Canal for six whole days.

It upended the global supply chains. It gave birth to a million, mostly terrible Twitter jokes. That ship got stuck because of some combination of high winds and maybe human error. It was unstuck thanks to high tides and nearly a week of work by salvage teams. Here's a quick clip of some of the workers who helped free the ship celebrating afterwards. They sound pretty amped. Ben, here's a good example of how important the Suez Canal is to global trade. Oil prices dropped 2.5% when the news broke that the ship had been unstuck.

The New York Times reported that some analysts estimate the Suez blockage was holding up to 10 billion with a B dollars of trade per day and up to 15% of the world's shipping capacity. It's going to take days to clear the backlog of ships that have been waiting to get through the Suez as they unstuck this thing. But at the end of the day, I think it's about, it's not about the cargo's destination, but, you know, the memes we made along the way. So all good news here, I guess. Well, the memes were not all good news. Like, it made me long for the memes of like the dude walking with one girl and turning his head to look at the other one. Like, I mean, that was a more versatile meme. But, yeah, exactly. I felt very like, who's the driver?

You know, I felt like imagine being that guy. It does, what it does make you realize is to the Suez is so central to trade. And look, this came up when we would talk about like cutting off Egypt from military assistance and that somehow, you know, that Egypt was going to mess with the Suez. But I think part of what you see in this case is that like Egypt needs that traffic too. Like they have a self-interest in running the commerce that goes to the Suez. So, yeah, all's well that ends well, but maybe a reminder to double check those key through lines in global shipping because it's interesting how huge a hit to global trade, that kind of delay inflicted on a lot of places. Yeah, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, suddenly you realize that global supply chains can be a little perilous. It's actually interesting to go back and read how hot a topic the Panama Canal was.

in the political discourse in the 70s, and I guess probably the 80s, it was a big attack that Reagan used to lob against President Ford during that primary because he accused him of wanting to give back the Panama Canal. Reagan took this like jingoistic, like we're American, we're going to take whatever we want, whatever. I noticed that there were some reports that Egyptian press had published that the boat had been unstuck before it had actually been unstuck because I guess Cece is so paranoid about his reputation in the country that, you know, that's sort of like the bizarre, you know, propaganda world they all live in now. Where they want to, you know, just control information.

I mean, it makes you realize that it's not helpful to have people who regularly lie supplying information about things that are essential to global trade. So, again, another reason why it's not helpful to have like a brutal dictator like Cici in charge. The politics of the Panama Canal are really interesting. And, you know, Carter's decision to do that, you know, I think should be viewed as a really courageous move that he took that was the right thing and proved to be the right thing. Part of what's interesting to meet to you, Tommy, is that like the Panama Canal and the South Carolina and Suez Canal, these have been around for a very long time.

You know, we talk about old infrastructure in the U.S. Like, it makes you realize how much globalization isn't just about, you know, computers, right? Like, it's about holes that people dug, like, over 100 years ago. also you dug in like the 1890s yeah that's right it's exactly right Ben uh I know that you watched every minute of uh last week's Biden press conference and you thought that it all went perfectly and the questions were all great is that is that a fair representation I I was watching it and I had to watch it because I was going to go on like MSNBC right after it was over and first of all um it kept thinking why they keep asking the same immigration question over and over again um and

And obviously noticed the absurd lack of a COVID question. But I was actually surprised at how much foreign policy there was. And I actually thought that those were the best questions. Yes. And generated the best and most newsy answers, which shows you that if you ask a tough, substantive question about a foreign policy issue that the president of the United States has not addressed, he's going to make news. And I remember when we prepped Obama, you know, being struck by the fact that if he was asking, about a foreign policy issue that he was always talking about. He'd give the same answer and it'd be a waste of time. But if you asked him about an issue that he had not been heard on yet,

you were guaranteed to make news. And so I thought he showed his cards on what his China policy is very clearly and how he's going to use the China issue to try to drum up support for his infrastructure bill as like a competitiveness thing. We'll talk about the fact that he made real news on Afghanistan and on that timeline. And I thought just hearing him on packed North Korea was notable too. So weirdly, in a press conference that doesn't get high marks across the board, particularly for the press, I thought this part of it was good. And I thought Biden handled himself pretty well. Yeah, that's funny. I think my reaction was like such frustration at the redundancy in some of the omissions that I did sort of forget the fact that there was,

I think it was Bloomberg asked a pretty smart question about China. And then you're right. I mean, that's what I wanted to raise was his Afghani standpoint, because, Biden made news here when he was asked about the war and whether he'd meet the May 1st deadline that President Trump had negotiated to get our troops out. And he, Biden confirmed with a lot of us thought he might say, which is that that May 1st deadline to get 3,500 or so troops home will be hard to meet for tactical or logistical reasons. He also said he can't picture, that's a quote, U.S. troops being in Afghanistan next year, which, you know, frankly was a little less definitive, probably than many people wanted to hear. Someone leaked following this press conference

to the media that U.S. intelligence have told Biden that if U.S. troops leave before the Afghan government and the Taliban negotiate a power sharing agreement, that the country could fall mostly under the control of the Taliban in two to three years. Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are pretty stuck right now. Ben, you know, I don't know how this intelligence report became public. It certainly ups the pressure on Biden to keep troops in. It's worth noting that no intel agency, no matter how good they are, can predict the future. But, you know, I think concerns about the strength of the post-U.S. withdrawal. Afghan government seemed pretty reasonable here. So this decision is often compared. Almost every story compares it to Obama's decision to pull

all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2011, and then he had to send them back in in 2014. Do you think that's a good comparison? Do you think there's lessons learned from that decision that could or should inform Biden's choice here? That's a good question. I mean, first of all, I think I could kind of feel what was happening in the sense that we talked about Tony Blinken sent that. that letter to Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, that sounded really hard-ass. Like, we're getting out by May 1st, so get your shit together. And it felt like, okay, that's where Tony is. And they kept Khalil Zad, the Trump envoy in place. Then I noticed at the end of the trip that Blinken and Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense took to Asia, Lloyd Austin went to

Afghanistan. And he met with Ashrafgani. And clearly, I think what happened here is that the military is always the biggest advocate for keeping troops in a place. They want more resources for more time. They're obviously deeply invested in this mission that they've carried out for 20 years. So I sense in Biden's answer that his team has some divisions here, you know, that the military is probably saying, we need to extend this deadline, we need to keep troops there or else these very bad things are going to happen, whereas state is invested in this diplomatic process and they want to keep pressure on Gandhi and the Afghans and ideally the Taliban. to make some accommodations with each other.

Because Biden's answer was, he made news in that he said the May 1 deadline's not firm, but you could also tell he didn't have the answer, which is fine, right? They're doing a review, but you could tell that he didn't know. It wasn't a situation where he knew exactly what he was going to do. He just didn't want to share it. You know, you could tell that there was an ongoing process. I think that the 2011 analogy is it doesn't hold exactly in the sense that the Iraqis had negotiated a formal agreement with us to leave.

And there wasn't like a Taliban, right? There was an insurgency and there was, you know, the remnants of al-Qaeda and Iraq, which ultimately became ISIS, right? But there wasn't a situation where you had like, you know, half the country being controlled by, you know, a Taliban-like group. And so what we had is we had an agreement with a sovereign government that wanted us to leave, right? And wouldn't give any troops, any U.S. troops who stayed in Iraq.

immunities, and that means the protections from being prosecuted by Iraqi justice, which the U.S. insist on. The difference here is the Afghan government really wants us to stay and is basically asking us to stay for longer, which is different than the case was in 2011. And you have like a much more robust insurgency that theoretically there is some danger that they could just take over the whole country within a couple of years in a way that even ISIS, you know, what wasn't going to do when it reached its peak. So it's a tricky call because, you know, you'd be saying no to the Afghan government and assuming that risk of the Taliban taking

over. The problem is, I remember when we had these same conversations in 2016, there's always going to be a risk that the Taliban could take over because they're not going away. They're there. And so basically at some point, a president, whether it was Obama, Trump, Biden, or the next president, is going to have to determine they're willing to take that risk. Otherwise, that two to three year warning is a recipe to stay there forever because that's always going to be, you're not going to change that in six months or a year of having like 5,000 to 10,000 U.S. troops. That's not going to change that assessment. The only thing that could change that assessment is there's some diplomatic. breakthrough, which is why I think that should continue to be the focus. Yeah, it does seem like they're just trying to push as hard as they possibly can in this first year or so for a diplomatic breakthrough. And I don't know, knock on what, I guess.

Speaking of a place that really needs a diplomatic breakthrough or some sort of diplomacy is Myanmar. So on Saturday, there's reports that security forces loyal to the military coup leaders had killed 141 people protesting. Reuters reported that security forces have now murdered 50010 civilians in the past couple months since this coup. We've talked about the coup a few times now. We saw Myanmar's military leadership declare that elections that occurred last November that were overwhelmingly won by Aung San Suu Kyi's party. The military called them fraudulent. They seized power. They have her in detention somewhere. Videos emerged on social media of security forces seeming to just shoot people at random. There was a photo of a soldier with a grenade launcher.

So the military seemed to up the stakes in terms of what it's bringing us these fights. The White House, the UN, they denounced the use of force in the strongest terms. I saw that China and India have not condemned the coup and Russia's deputy defense minister visited Myanmar recently to strengthen military ties. So that's great. Ben, you know, the strikes, the civil disobedience. They seem continuing, I believe, but, you know, this got really bad over the weekend. What are you hearing Adam Yamar, like, how are you feeling about what's happening? I mean, it's just awful. And I'll say, you know, I have a a few friends who I've been hearing from regularly all on signal.

You know, everybody moved off even WhatsApp when this started. And actually, the sad thing, Tommy, is that a friend of mine reached out to me today to say, hey, have you heard from, you know, our mutual friend, and I haven't, and now there's he. And so I can't find this young woman, you know. And so that kind of thing is starting to happen. And I've heard from friends whose family members have been detained. I think the bottom line is, you know, you hoped that, you know, they'd show some restraint and there'd be some opening for diplomacy.

They're now beyond any, you know, any chance of climbing back. You know, they're just shooting people and clearly determined to just totally quash this movement. Again, the lesson of Burma's history is that they just, they will never have the support of the overwhelming majority of the people who reject them. And that's not going to go away. And I think the challenge for the U.S. and our kind of pickup team here of Europe, Japan, who's been very constructive, Indonesia, the Indonesian foreign ministers trying to play a kind of shovel diplomacy role is don't let up. You know, what the military is hoping is that a year from now, everybody kind of moves on, forgets that this horrible thing happened. No, there have to be, you know, sanctions on the military,

international justice for the military, you know, support, whatever humanitarian support we can provide directly to people. You know, they're going to be refugee flows that are going to have to be dealt with. But I think the Biden administration and all of our like-minded partners need to just keep the attention on this and make life as difficult as possible for the military knowing that this is a military that enjoys like very little support in the country. So it's a very fragile dictatorship. It's not, you know, even in Egypt, in Syria, in Syria, you had a sectarian dynamic, right, where you had a whole group of people. The Alawites invested in the Assad regime. Well, not all of them, obviously, I want to suggest that there aren't some who

were horrified by that, but you had kind of structural support for Assad. In Egypt, you had people who feared the Islamist government and supported Cici. There's not popular support in Burma for the military. So I don't, they're just not as strong as they want to present themselves. But my, my heart goes out to the people there and the people I know there who've taken huge risks and staying there. They could have left the country and they stayed. And they said to me they knew the risks that they were taking. And tragically, you know, I mean, they killed small kids, Tommy. I mean, this was just, this is the most horrifying scene like this that we've seen in a while.

You know, it recalled kind of Syria and Egypt, Rabah Square and Egypt, you know, those types of things. And by the way, how gross that the Chinese and the Russians just, they don't even pretend to give a shit, you know. Yeah. And I saw that the Thai government was refusing to allow, you know, refugees to cross over the border into their territory. And it's just, it could not look more ugly. So when you look at the assortment of, you know, countries, part of what's so disappointed, is in the past, the Thai government would usually be helpful. But they had a military coup in Thailand, too. And so you look around and, you know, normally, you know, 10 years ago, we would have been

working with the ties and, you know, the Indonesians and the Indians. But now you've got, you know, Modi, a bit of a strong man there, of course, and then a military dictatorship essentially in Thailand. You know, it's not great. And, you know, I had a, I don't often respond to tweets on the podcast. But, you know, I said something along the lines of, on Twitter of that, like, in the long run, ultimately the young people in this movement will prevail. And somebody tweeted back at me with that with, I think, pretty good reason, like, hey, you say this a lot. But, like, Belarus, Burma, like, it doesn't seem like that's what's happening. And I wouldn't underscore, like, when I say ultimately, this could be 10 years, you know, tragically.

I hope not. I hope not. Same thing in Belarus, right? But the thing is that, yeah, ultimately, these are kind of rotted corrupt regimes that resort to this kind of tactic because they can't hold power through any other popular legitimacy. And I have to believe that ultimately that catches up to some, not all of these regimes. And hopefully Burma is one of them. And again, 14 Republicans voted against condemning this military coup for some reason in Congress because they are just bafflingly terrible people. Ben, this headline caught my eye today. earlier today on Tuesday, China's version of NASA announced that China and Russia have agreed to build a joint research station on the moon. They didn't give a date for when it will be done.

They did say it will be open to all interested parties, countries and partners. I'm sure that's true. So in 2019, China became the first country to land an unmanned spacecraft on the dark side of the moon. I guess that's who Roger Waters was talking about all those years ago. But Ben, this literally sounds like Mike Pompeo and Tom Cotton's worst nightmare, like fever dream. How many billions of dollars do you think they will advocate we spend over the next decade or so building some sort of missile system that can blow up a dark side of the moon base that will probably never exist? I mean, at least we've got the season two of the Steve Correll Netflix series on the Space Force.

We know what the mission is, right? Yeah, we're going to go fight over the moon. I mean, look, I dig space exploration. I got emotional watching the Mars, rover land. But, you know, if the Chinese and Russians want a poorer tens of buildings, billions of dollars into like digging a hole in the moon. Like, have at it, guys. Like, I don't, I'm not going to be stressed about that. And even if the, if the, if the Rocky four red, red-blooded, jingoistic American in me is like, well, we're on Mars, guys. So, uh, we're a little bit

ahead of you, you know. Yeah. We'll see you on, we'll see you guys on, on Dupor's moons, you know. Yeah, I'm more of a, yeah, I'm more of a cosmos guy. I like the, uh, unmilitarized version of space a little bit more. It's, it's more appealing to me. Well, no, that's, but that's a serious point. Like, space, come on, we have to, you know, can't we just go explore and learn if there was life on Mars and what can we learn from the soil there and stuff? Like, let's not have like some flexing contest for the next 50 years over, over the moon. I mean, granted, I know America's glass house as usual. I know that we, we did that whole thing and planted the flag on the moon. But like, you know, like there was a scientific, like feeling

to that process, even though I'm sure there were lots of military uses of all the technology we developed. I'd like to see space, you know, in all seriousness, like in an idea world, you'd be having the types of conversations that led to the International Space Station about how do we cooperate in space and how does it build cooperation between nations and share certain technologies? That's what we should be aiming for, even if I realize it's not going to happen with Russia and China today. Yeah, I mean, look, obviously, the sort of history of the space race was Cold War era competition. But yeah, ideally we'd be leading missions to other planets that, you know, maybe have died off because of greenhouse gases and we could figure out how to

prevent that from happening here. That'd be a great thing to cooperate on, you know, preservation of our own planet. And by the way, the hostile aliens come. I mean, you don't have to see too many of those movies to know that they're not going to distinguish between Russians and Chinese and Americans. So we might as well work together now with our space forces to repel the alien invasion eventually. COVID has me more convinced than ever before that if the aliens come, we'll kill each other before they have a chance because we're just that fucking stupid. Ben, let's talk about the Netherlands for a bit because a world though flagged this issue, this article for us on Twitter, so thank you for that. But, you know, look, we've talked many times about how over the past decade or so, right-wing populist parties have been ascendant in Europe. That trend got a bit of a kick in the teeth in a recent Dutch election when a new party called Volt won three seats in the Dutch parliament.

The Volt Party describes itself as a movement and party for the whole of Europe. It's the first pan-European party. It's pro-European Parliament. It's pragmatic, progressive. There's 390 elected representatives from the Volt Party in Europe. A lot of them are in Italy and Germany. A lot of their local parties. They hold a seat in the European Parliament and they have candidates running in a bunch of upcoming elections. This could be a one-off, but I thought it was sort of a hopeful and interesting data point that could suggest that there may be a backlash to the populist nativist backlash that we saw in the wake of the financial crisis. So worth flagging. Yeah, I've actually talked to some of these young people who helped set up this party. I guess they recognized a globalist fellow

traveler. Yeah, they know they're another one. But it's basically that point you made that there's young people that are very, you know, they identify as Italian. but also as European, they like the idea that Europe is integrated and, you know, is this kind of mix of different cultures and, and they're repulsed by the kind of anti-European populism. And so increasingly you're seeing this in different countries, young people like in their 20s, organizing politically and starting new parties in political movements. I think often if you look at these parties, they're usually like women. in particular driving this train, which is also a great trend. And I think you're right. I think it's

a backlash to the backlash, you know, that enough people took the measure of Brexit and people like Salvini and Italy and Orban, we've obviously talked about a lot and are like, this is not me. Like, I'm not interested in these culture wars and I'm not interested in, you know, throwing up walls and trying to turn back the clock. Like, and so I think this is a real positive trend to watch. if you're looking for good news stories. And it doesn't mean that everybody has to be totally pan-European, but it does mean that young people standing up for the values that Europe is supposed to stand for

and standing up against this kind of populism, I think is going to lead to much healthier politics in these places. And it also shows that young people aren't seeing homes in some of these traditional kind of center-left parties. They're looking to green parties in some countries. They're looking to pan-European parties like this one and others. So it's an interesting regeneration happening. and kind of the European center left and left.

Yeah, the New York Times had a great analysis piece on this. I think it was by Thomas Erdbrink, who used to be the New York Times, Tehran Bureau Chief, a very interesting guy and reporter. But he talked about how, like, some analysts think that, you know, the running room for Voltz is to go further left on environmental issues and try to co-op some of that, like, green party momentum,

which is cool and exciting. Also, I was just watching a couple episodes of the Q&ON doc that's on HBO right now. and there's a scene where the host of the documentary, like the protagonist, goes over to Italy to try to find Steve Bannon because he's, like, chasing down a lead that Steve Bannon is cue. And I forgot that he was, like, camped out at an Italian monastery for a while, like, all higher on the hog trying to lead a bunch of populist parties.

I'm glad that schmuck got his comeuppance. Well, I think that led to some of this backlash show because some of these young people I talked to who were involved in Volt or similar efforts, right? they noticed banning traveling around Europe in trying to create this solidarity among creepy far right parties and anti-immigrant movements. And it made them think, well, we need to cooperate too. You know, we need to cooperate across borders. I was surprised as an American, you know, because I think of Europe as, yes, many countries,

but also as European Union, I was surprised at how little cooperation there was between political parties and the left in different European countries. And I think younger people in particular saw that gap. Bannon helped them see it because they're like, well, what the fuck is this guy doing flying around here? You know, with this kind of black, you know, weird dark cat outfit and like, you know, whatever racist blog. And so I think, you know, this is a good lesson in learning from your opposition. You know, they saw the coordination that was happening on the right and said, okay, we have to do the same on the left. We have to have movements that go across borders.

We have to, you know, I've talked to some parties that, like, learn from a party in Hungary, right? How do we canvas? How do we set up a field organization program, right? So nuts and bolts of campaigning or what's a learning from successful movements in Switzerland about how to use social media and other places to fight back against disinformation, right? So the more of that sharing that can go on, the better it's going to be. In the same way that in this country, you know, there's things to learn, you know, what it, Democrats do in Georgia. I hope that the Democrats in North Carolina are studying that.

You know, the same thing has to happen in Europe. Yes, 100%. Steele the Stacey Abrams playbook, bring it to the Netherlands. Let's talk about Bolivia for a minute because on Saturday, March 27, so a couple days ago, Secretary of State Tony Blinken tweeted the following. Quote, we are deeply concerned about growing signs of anti-democratic behavior and politicization of the legal system in Bolivia. The Bolivian government should release detained former officials pending an independent and transparent inquiry into human rights and due process concerns. End of tweet.

I imagine the casual consumer of State Department statements would think, like, that sounds kind of banal and sort of standard for them. But this tweet prompted an extremely angry reaction from someone on the left, sort of like the socialist left. Can you explain the background here and why people were, like, accusing Tony of being bloodthirsty for this tweet? Well, the background, right, people, we talked about the Bolivia situation, but you had this right-wing coup, essentially, after Avo Morales, you know, ran for

re-election and there were allegations of fraud and basically the Bolivian right and elements of the military kind of used that as, you know, as an excuse to get the guy out of the country and take power. And the more time went on, you know, and at first people weren't sure maybe there was some truth to these allegations of fraud. The OAS, the Organization of American States said there was. And as time went on, there was egg on the face of the OAS because it turns out that they couldn't establish that there had been this kind of widespread fraud. And they had another election. And lo and behold, the left won, kind of validating the idea that that was the preference of the Bolivian people. I think that what really angers people on the left is when

there was a right-wing coup, you know, American observers were pretty cautious in calling at that. And in fact, you know, many American observers kind of welcomed Avo Morales' demise, you know. And now that you have a democratically elected government, I think the State Department's impulse is not unusual or wrong to say, hey, you know, they've got, you know, the person who was the interim president, after the coup is in prison and with a bunch of other people, you know, calling for due process and not vindictive justice is a normal thing that state would do. I think where the left has a point, though, is that the State Department, the U.S., even observers of American foreign policy tend to express those types of concerns more when it's a left-wing government in charge and not, you know, for instance, when Lula is put in prison in Brazil, right? And so while I

some of the criticism of Tony was just a tad to overtort, you know, because he's just trying to make a basic point here, right? Which is like, I mean, but, and here's where I challenged the left, like, do you not agree with that point? Like, you know, there, you could say there should be justice. You could even say people should be prosecuted, put in prison. That's all fine. But I think we'd all like that to be within a due process system, whether it's in Bolivia or anywhere else, you know. If Donald Trump goes to prison for one of his many crimes, it should be because there was like a process that led to that, not just because we threw him in jail, right? And so I think in the zeal to kind of call out some of this hypocrisy in the American foreign policy establishment, you know, don't lose sight of the fact that like, well, the core point is fairly anodyne in something we would think should happen everywhere, which is let's not be vindictive in the punishment of political enemies, but let's, if there is going to be accountability, let's do it through due process. Yeah, that's well said. And then it's also, as you noted, fair to point out that the history of American statements in support for right-wing governments at Latin

America brings a lot of baggage with it. And we should probably, I guess, be a little more aware of that in all of our interactions, our public comments, et cetera. And we always assume the worst, you know, about like an Avo Morales in a way that we don't about like a right-wing politician in Latin America. It's very peculiarly, this is very acute in Latin America in particular. And I think there's a lot of truth. It is true that the U.S. has acted in that way. And people should be vigilant. And so I think it is good to kind of call out what looks like hypocrisy, what feels like a double standard. At the same time, that doesn't mean that, you know, you're giving carte blanche to government of any ideology, left or center, to punish its political opponents without due

process. Yeah, agreed. Last issue before we get to your. interview. So I'm going to ask you to put on your royal correspondent hat just one more time because the sun, which is a British tabloid, reported that some UK-based cosmetics company did an analysis of the internet, whatever that means, for data to determine who the sexiest bald band alive is. And their answer is Prince William. And for our listeners unfamiliar with the royal family, Prince William is not the hot one married to Megan Markle. He's the other guy. So William beat out Mike Tyson, weird choice. Jason Statham, Pitbull, and Michael Jordan.

Ben, two questions for you. Do you think Cambridge Analytica was involved in this? One and two, do we need to get David Lammy and host a Stop the Steel rally? Well, look, I'm particularly qualified on this one as a bald man to weigh in. Like, William is not the look that you go for as a bald guy, you know? Like Jason Statham is the look you go for, the kind of buzz thing, right? Like, the rock. Williams got the kind of classic horseshoe pattern with like the hair, you know, patches over the head and stuff.

So, so first of all, it's just not true. Like, yeah, the rock, Jason Stathen, like, you know, Zadon, the soccer star we were talking about. Oh, yeah. At the same time, it felt like such a sad move by like the Royal PR machine, you know, like, I doubt that some cosmetics company just randomly did this and this leaked out, you know, two weeks after the whole hairy thing. Clearly they're look at this and they're like, okay, the cool attract. hip, well, no, wait, let's be clear. William and Kate are pretty attractive people. So I want to be on the record on that. But the cool young Netflix, you know, a couple, Harry Megan, they're hanging out in California with movie stars. So what's our play, right? Well, the coolest people left in the

royal family are Will and Kate, right? But sexiest bald man, I think there's a better play. And by the way, I put Kate front and center in this thing, like a little bit more, too. Like, that's just not hang at all on like the sexy bald guy thing. And I say that hoping that bald men can be seen that way and not erased, you know. Yeah. Do you see the rock tweeted, how in the cinnamon toast, FUCK, does this happen when Larry David still has a pulse? I thought that was a good take on it from the rock.

Hot take. Yeah. You really can see. You can imagine some like stodgy royal PR department being like, we change the narrative. I know. Well, like, I'm old enough to remember, like, William was like the heartthrob in like, you know, when he was like 18 or something, like girls had posters of him on the wall and stuff. As much as I remember fondly those days, they were a while ago, you know. Yeah, listen, I think all that went out the window when Harry ripped off his microphone and sprinted to a helicopter in Afghanistan and took off during a live interview.

That was a pretty badass moment. Okay. That's it for now. That's all our royal news. When we come back, you'll hear Ben's conversation about Cuba in Central America and all the big challenges facing the Biden administration when it comes to those policy areas. So stick around for that. I'm very glad to be joined now by Rick Herrero, who is the executive director of the Cuba Study Group, which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group promoting civil society development in Cuba and reconciliation between Cuba, its diaspora communities and the U.S. Rick, really good to see you again, man. Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

So, you know, let's just start with kind of the state of play in Cuba. Like you and I interacted a lot over the years, in particular in 2015 and 2016 when you had the opening and normalization process under Obama. How would you sum up for people kind of what the outcome of four years of Trump's policies were? How did he roll back the engagement policy and what did that do to the Cuban people? So I think the best way to sum it up is that for the Cuban people, it's, they're a, a resounding failure for the Republican Party in Florida. It was a big success. The policy from very early on, we know,

was motivated by political reasons. It was, from the very onset, it was more about reversing Obama's policy than anything else. And then after 2018, when we saw that the Republicans here in Florida, launched a very effective campaign during the midterms in favor of dissentists against Andrew Gillum, basically broad-brushing all Democrats as socialists and Republicans as capitalists.

They saw that sort of rhetorical strategy really worked with Cuban-American voters. Shortly after that, you have the crisis of Venezuela breakout, the start of maximum pressure policy, and you really saw a much deeper, more aggressive rollback of the Obama opening, of the Obama opening and travel and remittances and so on. And it was completely folded into electoral strategy, right? It was the slow drip drip of sanctions being announced on a weekly basis, some of them serious, some of them trivial, but the point was that you had a steady drip drip of sanctions being announced

on the news here, grabbing the headlines. And it was all in support of the campaign message, which was, we are the true American capitalist that we're trying to stem the tide of socialist, of socialist trying to take over our country, and we're doing so in order to really sort of banish our bona fides, we're constantly piling down on this small, poor communist country, 90 miles off our shores.

And that really became the driving force behind the Trump policy. Yeah, no, and I definitely want to come back to the politics of this later, in particularly in South Florida. But, I mean, just first, you know, people often talk about the politics and then ignore the outcomes in Cuba itself. I mean, what is your sense of what impact all these sanctions have had? I mean, has it done anything to dislodge the Communist Party? Has it done anything to help the Cubans that people even in South Florida say they want to help, like the Cuban entrepreneurs, you know, small. shop owners and business owners. What is this meant for Cubans themselves? Not at all. It's, I mean, for Cuban entrepreneurs, it killed their market to a large degree because so many of those

entrepreneurs counted on tourists to really to basically enjoy their goods and services. They're the people that had real purchasing power going into Cuba, not just tourists, but visiting Cuban American families and others. By limiting flights, by putting all sorts of restrictions on remittances on the island, to the point that you can't even send a single legal remittance from the United States to Cuba right now, it really choked off support, it's choked off the private sector. It also brought a lot of hardship to Cuban families that largely relied on remittances from family members abroad in order just to make ends meet.

And then one of the worst things that this policy has done, is sort of bring back this mentality in Cuba among Cuban officials that they are a nation, a country under siege, and that they have to clamp down on dissent, clamp down on the opposition in order to stay in power because now all the, the entire opposition, including artists and journalists and anybody who is in any way critical of the government, must be a mercenary of the United States, this country that's trying to choke him into submission. through very heavy-handed unilateral sanctions. So now, as far as the objectives of the policy,

which were to bring about regime change and to basically drive an axe between Cuba and its support for Maduro, we know fully well that it hasn't accomplished either of those objectives. So what it's done ultimately is bring a lot of pain for the Cuban people, compound the pain and suffering from what they already suffer under the policies of their own government, and drive Cuba and, Venezuela into an ever tighter co-dependent corner and make, if anything, any sort of development

or growth that we saw towards more democratic principles during the Obama opening sort of get washed away in the process. So you've got, you know, the Cuban people suffering, Cuban family suffering, the Cuban government kind of more hostile to dissent in the U.S. and Maduro still entrenched in Venezuela. This, let's be very clear, like this is the outcome of maximum pressure, but the Republicans have used it well to electoral effect in South Florida. Now, so what do you do about this with the new administration? Your organization, the Cuba Study Group, which has been a very thoughtful group that I listen to a lot in South Florida because, you know, it's a strong Cuban American voice, but it supports engagement. Knows the issues, though, as well as the politics. you guys put out some recommendations for the Biden team.

Why don't you sum up essentially what you guys are recommending, what you'd like to see happen? Sure. So our recommendations are actually both to the Biden team and to the Cuban government, at least those elements within the Cuban government, that do want to return to a more constructive relationship with the United States. We believe that this may well be the best and last opportunity for a long time to come for the United States and Cuba

to achieve that more constructive relationship, one that can last regardless of which part. is in the White House, but it will require both governments to act. For Cuba, it means taking advantage of the next four years to at a minimum, advanced, meaningful economic liberalizations, steps that they're already taking to fix their economy, as well as guaranteed greater rights for Cubans on the island and improve its relationship, its relationship with its diaspora, particularly its diaspora here in South Florida, which we know is the only place where this issue really plays politically. For the United States, it means lifting

all those harmful Trump sanctions that disproportionately harm the Cuban people, support the growth of Cuban civil society, and facilitate greater U.S. investment in the Cuban private sector. The deeper that we sort of at the heart of our message is that the deeper that we can, that we can grow social economic ties between our countries during these next four years, the greater the constituencies will be able to generate that are able to resist any future effort at a rollback that can be driven by, you know, depending on, you know, Republicans taking over the White House again, or sort of domestic political interests, as we saw during the Trump years. The more, you know, what we want to have is more resilient relations that are more defined by social economic bonds, by deep U.S. investment in the Cuban private sector, and that make it hard to just sort of increase the cost of using Cuba as a political football.

So I would say just as far as immediate steps that the Biden administration, we hope, will take, those include lifting all restrictions on travel for all Americans, travel to Cuba, as well as expanding the number of, you know, restoring all the license categories for travel, as well as all the destinations in which you can travel to Cuba before now. It's only Havana. Lifting all restrictions on remittances, reopening consular services, returning the five-year visa, sort of reducing those stresses that are right now driving illegal migration to the United States or irregular migration to the United States, excuse me. And basically lifting all those

sanctions that were put in place in Cuba that are making it harder for civil society to really grow and thrive and for the private sector to scale. You know, it's remarkable to me that we're even having this conversation, given how popular travel to Cuba is among Americans, how popular I thought reminses to Cuba were, even among Cuban Americans. But it feels like, you know, two months into the Biden administration, we've not heard much about Cuba. In fact, the language we've heard is pretty standard language about, you know, we're going to promote human rights, but no specificity. What is your sense of the Biden team and where they're headed?

And why do you think they might be moving somewhat slowly here? Yeah. It seems like it's multiple factors, most of them internal, internal differences as to whether to sort of re-engage with Cuba, sort of go back to a policy very similar to Obama's, or not, or do much more limited engagement. It seems like there may be some people there that don't want to touch Cuba at all because they see very little upside. there also seems to be some of the principles around Biden who are very deferential to Senator Menendez,

who we know is very influential, very powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has always supported a more hardline policy towards Cuba, and also all the other priorities that are taking, that are basically sucking up all the oxygen in the administration right now for those working on the Western Hemisphere, the border. and the situation in Central America is really paramount. So I think the confluence of those three are sort of delaying at sort of some of the early steps that we would really like to see this administration take. But sort of the result of that right now is that the policy that remains in place is the

Trump administration's policy. And that was a policy that was chiefly tailored, again, to support Republicans in Florida, to gin up support for Republicans in Florida, not to stimulate Democratic changes in Cuba. So the longer you allow that policy to fester, you're just validating that policy. You're validating Trumpism instead of holding it accountable for its many failures. And it's also leaving a leadership vacuum in which by not articulating a new approach to Cuba, you have local hardliners here and politicians already claiming that they're the ones that are influencing the Biden administration and keeping it from steering away from the Trump policy

and establishing their own. Yeah, no, and the longer it goes, the more that that's cemented, the more, you know, adversarial the Cuban government gets. And I'd be concerned, too, that kind of limits your options on Venezuela, too, to try to do something diplomatically there. How have you seen the Cuban-Benzuela issues linked? Because you saw this kind of full embrace of Juan Guaido, kind of understandable among people who support democracy. but that too clearly failed, the Trump maximum pressure approach there. What's your sense of how is it the same dynamic on Venezuela that we're seeing on Cuba where the kind of hardline status quo that Trump pursued continues kind of by force of gravity?

Yeah, I mean, the thing, the grave error that the Trump administration made vis-a-vis the Cuba-Venezuela axis is trying to just throw them into the same bucket and trying to somehow stir them apart. You can't do that. You're treating both countries the same, piling the sanctions on both of them. You're just pushing them into a greater codependent corner. We do believe that policies for Cuba and Venezuela should be decoupled to a large degree, and that Cuba should, we should, through a lot of these initial steps that we're recommending the Biden administration take, so it starts reestablishment. trust, that trust that we started building during the Obama years, to bring Cuba to the table,

to see if they can play some sort of constructive role in the Venezuelan crisis. They may not be able to, but we haven't even tried to do that yet. And Cuba, of all the countries that have a vested interest in the Maduro regime, Cuba is the only country with which we do not maintain some sort of independent dialogue with aside from their involvement in Venezuela. And that's completely counterproductive. So we do, we should at a minimum, be engaging Cuba on this front. So yeah, another missed opportunity here. Correct. Well, I want to end on the politics because I think that's obviously a key part of this. And I guess the first question I want to ask is you're a close political observer down there.

You know, the kind of the conventional wisdom at the end of the Obama years was you had a split community, Cuban American community. You had particularly older people who, favored a hard line, but the younger people seemed increasingly open to engagement. There was some enthusiasm in pockets of Miami, at least for engagement. But I think if Trump was successful, one thing, as you said, it does feel like he expanded support for hardline policies among Cuban Americans. Why is that? Why was there, why were there some inroads? I saw polls that suggest as many 66% of Cuban Americans oppose normalization now, which is a much higher number than when we were actually doing it at the end of the Obama years.

What explains that success politically? I mean, I think it's a couple of factors. One, the Trump campaign invested more in South Florida and in Florida in general than arguably any campaign ever has in the history of U.S. politics. They were all in. I mean, Florida was due or die for them. They knew that sort of the Republican establishment here

was going to be a reliable block for them and that it was an essential block for them to maintain under their umbrella in order to lock in the state. But they had a steady presence here. Unlike any sort of national party ever has, either Trump or his lieutenants, we're in Miami on a monthly basis, holding rallies, events, interviews, meeting with members of the community, really selling the policy and feeding off the grievances of Cuban Americans. this is where the second factor comes in. Not only do you have sort of the more historic exiles

who still have those deep scars from their experiences, losing their country, the Trump administration, the Trump campaign and the administration were able to really exploit those resentments, but also with more recently arrived Cubans, those that largely supported the Obama opening, who traveled to Cuba, who said remins, as many of them who invested in the private sector,

just because they supported that, we found this out. We conducted a lot of research down here, countless interviews and focus groups. And what really we found is that even those folks harbored resentment toward their own country, towards their own government, actually, towards the system they left behind. Because even though they traveled and they supported entrepreneurs and they sent remittances, it still rubbed them the wrong way that when they got to Cuba, they had to, you know, do all sorts of things under the table. it brought them the wrong way that they had to maintain a bunch of working age relatives on the island. And that Cuba did not continue down a path of reform.

There was a lot of expectations during the Obama years that you would see some degree of reciprocity or at least unilateral steps towards greater reform in Cuba. Instead, you saw a backlash. We saw sort of the hard line sort of grew a little worried, more than a little worried, sort of panicked after the great opening and started flexing their most. muscles, especially after Trump took over and it was clear that there was going to be a reversion back to a more hostile policy on the U.S. side, they put a halt to a lot of those, to a lot of those reforms and to a lot of those expectations. And that further fueled the

resentment here. And if we know anything about the Trump campaign, is that they're very good at basically appealing to resentment in an electorate. And they were able to do that very effectively here in South Florida. What's so interesting to me about this is that, I mean, only had a year and a half of engagement. But there were steps, right? There has been expanded internet access. You do have this private sector. We'd like them to move faster. The question I have, Rick, is you mentioned those younger recent arrivals, many of whom, you know, not many, but I've met a bunch of them. And, you know, the theory of engagement was not to, you know, it was to promote positive change in Cuba. You know, it wasn't to lock in the status quo there. It was the idea that, you

know, as you and I've discussed, that if you have a growing private sector, growing interconnection to the world, growing kind of dynamism in the society, over time that's going to lead to some form of political change, certainly more likely to lead to some form of political change than the status quo, which is kind of mummified the Communist Party in charge there for 60 years. The question I have is, and I really don't know the answer to this, right, is the hardline faction down there, particularly people who've kind of a to a harder line. Do they actually think that these policies of sanctions are going to work in changing the government, you know, regime change or what have you, better than opening

things up and letting Cuba connect to the rest of the world? Or is some of this just kind of, you know, vindictive, punitive, right? We're going to punish these people, right? Like, is there, is it about a sincere belief that this is a better way to make change despite 60 years of evidence, right? Or is it more like, you know, we're so sick of the repression and the authoritarianism of this government that we just want to throw the book at them, you know? Yeah, I think it varies. I think sort of on the more hardline side of the spectrum, you have a combination. You have some true believers that really do believe that by tightening the screws around Cuba and piling on ever greater number of sanctions, eventually the country will implode and democracy will rise from his

ashes, right? They still harbor, they sort of hold on to that pressure cooker theory, even though it's never borne fruit, but they think one day it will. Then there are others who sort of see the political calculus and all this, and they say, well, if we can actually achieve regime changing Cuba through the pressure cooker, great, we'll end up in the history books. But if we don't, it's still great politics for us here in South Florida. It keeps us elected. It keeps us in power. So why change a winning formula, right? I think for the bulk of Cuban Americans, most people in the middle, I see some folks on the Democratic side as well, they just want to see change. And they want, they want their leaders to articulate a policy and

implement a policy that's going to drive change in Cuba. That's going to improve the lives of the Cuban people. It's going to help empower them and put them in a better position to, to usher in greater changes in their own country. Now, if they see that a president is willing to give a window of opportunity to Cuba to implement reforms, to welcome that opening, and to improve relations with the United States and with diaspora, don't give it a chance. And I think this is where leadership really matters.

One of the reasons why Trump was so effective during his four years is that Democrats were largely absent in South Florida. There wasn't much of a presence here, really sort of championing engagement policy. But if you see the Biden administration articulate a policy, a policy that they can articulate how increasing, how improving the economic well-being of Cubans is a way to advance human rights,

how improving the freedom of movement is a way to advance human rights, how increasing their access to tools, to information, to contacts, to capital, puts them in a greater position, helps establish more power centers within that country that can push back against the government and that can demand greater changes. If they can, if they can present all that as advancing, human rights in Cuba, as opposed to a policy of resource denial, which we see time and again does not do anything to improve the human rights condition in Cuba. I think you see the Biden administration articulating that policy. You will see support for it within the Cuban American community.

But leadership has to come first. They have to take those steps. They have to reset the narrative. Otherwise, the static quo will remain and people will still be thinking in terms of maximum pressure. Well, look, I think that's a great note to end on. I really hope that Biden team and President Biden don't put this aside because, you know, if you put it aside, there's never going to be like some convenient time, right? Like this year, it's we have a whole bunch of stuff to do domestically. Next year, it's a midterm election. There's always some political reason. And the lesson of the Obama years, look, it's funny to me, Rick, because this was popular, right? Like all of all those things that about Iran deal, Paris deal. This was the most popular thing in that foreign policy kind of world

flush that we had the last couple years. People loved to travel down there. They love to bring stuff back. They saw that, you know, sending money could help the Cuban people. You know, baseball was making deals down there. So once we took control of the narrative, it was not hard to do that opening. And Menendez and Rubio didn't like it, but there's so what? There are a couple senators. I mean, I get Menendez is in more powerful position now, but what the strangest thing to me about this is I get the complexity in South Florida. But it's not like Democrats were winning elections by taking a harder line in South Florida, the last couple cycles. That has never happened. It's never happened. As a matter of fact, nobody did better than President

Obama. And this was after he said he was willing to meet with Roadcaster without preconditions, after he opened up Cuban American travel, after he lifted some of the initial remittance restrictions. You can be pro-engagement and still win in Florida, but you have to play in Florida. And that's what Democrats before Obama and after Obama seem to have forgotten. I think if I can end with one note of what's really important for the Biden administration to understand is that allowing these Trump policies, particularly the really harmful ones to fester, doesn't advance U.S. interests in the region, nor the well-being of the Cuban people. And arguably, not the interest of the administration either, because allowing these executive orders to really fester, undermine. human rights in Cuba. The administration has said that human rights is a central pillar of its policy, but the current travel and remins restrictions limit freedom of movement and economic well-being for

for everyday Cubans. And worse, as I mentioned earlier, far from curbing the worst exorcises of the Cuban government, it's empowering those most, the more recalcitrant orthodox elements of that government who want to squash all opposition. They feel empowered now because they feel that they are nation under siege. So maintaining this policy is only undermining, it's making it harder to advance human rights, respect for human rights on the island. Second, the deteriorating conditions in the island risk aggravating the flow of irregular migration to the United States from Cuba. We've already seen a threefold increase in the number of desperate Cubans that are now taking to the ocean and makeshift rafts since October, threefold increase over the previous fiscal year.

that can only be expected to increase. And that's on top of the thousands that are being smuggled over to Central America to make their way up the border. And then finally, as I mentioned earlier, maintaining the status quo doesn't help item politically here in our estimation because it's still playing up to Trumpism and it's validating Trumpian policy in South Florida as opposed to holding it accountable for its failures. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, if people are going to look for the hardliner, it's not going to be the Democrat.

It's not going to be the Democrat. Yeah. All right. Well, look, Rick, this is great. Let's keep in touch and appreciate you coming on here. And we'll hope to kind of nudge the Biden folks here to do what I think most of them at least believe is the right thing. But we'll see. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Ben. Thanks, thanks to everybody for listening. Thanks to Rick Herrero for joining the show. Thanks to your new bookcase for looking damn good. Great internet, too. Guy, I had great internet, Tommy. I upgrade. I got the first. 5G at the Huawei special. No, no, we're not Huawei here. Don't worry, guys. I'm at the office right now because our internet just drops constantly. I've had four service people to my house. Spectrum sucks. Nothing can fix it. Although when I tweeted about it,

it made me think it might just be a regional internet problem for L.A. because people are like, oh yeah, mine drops like two or three times a day and there's nothing I can do about it. I've never wanted to be in an office as badly as I wanted to be in an office the last few months. soon, soon. Things are getting better. If we all just wear masks, get jabs. We'll get there. We'll get there. But until then, we'll talk to you guys soon. Talk soon. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yilfried,

Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.