Pod Save the World - Israeli Strike Kills World Central Kitchen Staff in Gaza

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

Ben and Tommy discuss an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian embassy building in Syria that killed several top Iranian generals, Israeli drone strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian relief workers in Gaza and what they tell us about Israel’s lack of concern about civilian causalities, and growing protests in Israel against Netanyahu. Then they talk about Trump’s “shadow Secretary of State” Ric Grenell, the Qataris investing in Newsmax, a 60 Minutes report blaming Russia for “Havana Syndrome”, and one year since Russia arrested WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich. Finally, they cover a new anti-hate speech law in Scotland, the barring of an opposition candidate in Venezuela, Chinese disinformation promoting Trump in the US, a big loss for Erdogan’s party in Turkey’s local elections, and Reagan’s almost assassin complaining about cancel culture. 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. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, once again, we get to play my favorite game, which is Where's Worldo? Yeah. That's about your location. It's a magical mystery tour I've been on Tommy. I know. You've really been on the road. I've been on the road. I'll be back next week. I miss you guys.

I'm currently in Italy. And I have to say, there's some real Worldo representation happening. Last night, finishing dinner, the waiter comes over, says all your wine is paid for by these lovely Worldos. the next table. Amazing. Good Americans who moved to Portugal as a bit of a hedge, you know. Yeah. But they get a taste in wine.

I'll say that. I love that. I told you this. I did a semester abroad in Italy and we're based in Florence, but we traveled everywhere. And it's one of like the greatest experiences of my life. And I think that kind of thing is wasted on 20-year-olds. And I should be able to do that right now. Yeah.

This feels unfair. Yeah. And you come here and you're kind of like, we Americans have not really figured out how to live in the world quite as well as we could, you know. No, not at all. Yeah, you're drinking like, Vino de la Cosa. That's the only thing I learned was Vina Cosa. But anyway, all roads lead to the Duomo, Ben.

If you ever lost, you just look for the Duomo. Yes. That's the advice for anyone in Florence. So anyway, we got a great show today. We're going to talk about the Israeli strike on Iranian officials in Syria. We're going to talk about Gaza. Again, of course, we're going to talk about Netanyahu's show. shifting politics and how things are getting very precarious for him.

We're also going to talk a little bit about some of the Trump goons who would serve in national security roles. There was a big Washington Post feature the other day that led to this conversation. 60 minutes did a big report on Havana syndrome. We're going to talk about Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter, who has been held hostage in Russia for a year now. Hate speech in Scotland, elections in Venezuela and Turkey, Chinese election interference, and how cancel culture is coming for all of us, Ben.

Very special ending here. Oh, yeah. I'm not prepped on that one, but maybe I am prepped actually. Yeah, you are. You are. I've been canceled several times over. Also, apparently you can follow shows on Spotify and they release this data publicly. So follow Pod Save the World on Spotify.

Help us catch up to Joe Rogan. We're only like 15 million behind. Yeah, let's do it. I want to be in that end of the year lists of things you listen to. Yeah. I want to be wrapped. That's what I'm talking about. That's right.

All right, man, let's start with this Israeli strike in Iran because on Monday, the Israeli military bombed an Iranian embassy building in Syria, killing three top Iranian generals and four other Iranian officers. So these were top guys from Iran's Quds Force, which is the branch of their military that focuses on intelligence and unconventional warfare, especially the relationship with terrorist groups in the Middle East. one of the Iranian generals killed was reportedly in charge of Iran's military relationship with Syria and Lebanon, so a senior guy with a big account. According to the New York Times, these generals are meeting with leaders from the organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is an extremist group in Gaza that gets funding from Iran, has launched missile attacks on Israel, was a part of October 7. So that would certainly explain why Israel might want to take this strike. But, you know, Iran's leaders, not surprisingly, are furious. The Supreme Leader vowed revenge. President Reisi said the attack was a violation of international law. I assume he's referring to the fact that this was a diplomatic facility that was targeted. Israel says, actually, no, the building was an IRGC facility,

not a diplomatic facility. But boy, you know, targeting a building like that in a foreign capital is a dangerous precedent in my view. Anyway, Ben, so Iran's foreign minister also made clear that Iran blames the U.S. as much as Israel for the strike, even if we weren't part of it, which is what the White House has said, but the missile was fired from an F-35, which is an American plane. So I'm sure they will blame us as well. This is the biggest assassination of a top Iranian official since the U.S. killed the head of the IRC, Qasem Soleimani back in 2020. So, Ben, stepping back, Iran and Israel have been engaging in these kind of low-grade attacks at this warfare for years now. A lot of it comes in the form of these kinds of Israeli strikes in Syria or Hezbollah shelling Israeli targets from Lebanon firing it to Israel.

But, you know, killing a bunch of generals in Damascus is a major escalation. What did you make of Israel's decision to take this shot? And like, what are you expecting in terms of a retaliation? Because remember, the Soleimani strike, after that, Iran fired a dozen ballistic missiles directly at U.S. bases in Iraq, giving 100 U.S. service members traumatic brain injury. So it was not an insignificant response. Well, you've seen more Israeli strikes in Syria recently, and I think they must really be going at the supply chain. I think the IRGC uses Syria as kind of a hub to supply Hezbollah, and it seems like if they're meeting with Palestinian Islamic jihad, maybe that is also a node for how they

are transferring weapons or cash or whatever. But, you know, it's a serious risk of escalation, because when you take out, you know, senior people like this in the government, I think think it raises the stakes for Iran to feel like they need to respond. And so once again, we're in this place of things escalating without a clear end state of what is being pursued. So, I mean, I understand the objective, but I also, you know, looking at all of this, right, from Syria down through Lebanon and obviously in Gaza, which we'll talk about, like, there's just a lot of escalation without a lot of planes landing. I also have to say, like, it's not a small thing to hit, you know, a government building in another country.

No, really isn't. And people can, you know, make the point that Iran is using this for nefarious purposes. Yet there's a reason that you have international law around these things. You know, these are protected facilities. They're government buildings and their diplomatic facilities. It's technically Iranian territory, essentially, you know, because an embassy or consulate is a part of the sovereign territory of another country. And the whole international system kind of depends on that principle not being

violated. So it just, again, it feels like a common theme that we're going to be talking about today is the Israeli government really not playing by any rules, you know, and that has a tendency to lead to bad places. You know, that's what I worry about is where does this escalate, what precedent is being set? What legal risk is Israel, frankly, assuming by doing this, I mean, there's a lot of questions about, you know, whether this is worth it. I mean, aren't there other ways of trying to get at this problem other than doing something so brazen as blowing up something on kind of the embassy road there in Damascus. Yeah, I mean, listen, if these were really were Palestinian, as long as jihad guys leaders at this facility, I can understand the Israeli

motivation. If these were IRGC leaders that maybe provided support to Hamas or to Hezbollah over the years, I can understand why they'd want to target them. But just to hammer home your point. I mean, imagine if Iran blew up a U.S. consulate somewhere and said, well, it's not really a diplomatic facility. The CIA works out of there. And the CIA is the one who does all the armed drone program. So it's a, it's a legitimate target. I don't think we'd react too well to that. Yeah. And I think Israel's been pretty careful over the years to do these things in a more discreet way, you know, to not announce strikes, to, you know, to hit some base that's more in a less densely populated area. This is kind of announcing, hey, we don't care anymore. You know, we're just

going to start blowing up literally diplomatic facilities. We're going to blow up things in downtown Damascus that everybody can see. And that mindset really worries me because it's, again, it's not limited to this strike. Across the board, we see these Israeli government essentially demonstrating we don't need to play by these rules anymore. And again, I think that is always a dangerous attack to take. Whoever is taking it. I think be bad at the U.S. is doing it, you know. Yeah, for sure. And so let's turn to Gaza because there was this awful strike on a humanitarian convoy led by World Central Kitchen, which is a humanitarian relief group, started by the chef Jose Andres, WCK, as we'll call it, to make it a little easier here. They respond to disasters

all over the world. They're in Ukraine. They're in Haiti. They're in like 47 countries. They're just like doing the Lord's work, cooking giant, you know, meals for people and in helping out folks are struggling. So World Central Kitchen built a jetty out of rubble to get aid into Gaza by sea. On Monday, WCK workers were leaving a warehouse in Gaza in a convoy, and the convoy was repeatedly targeted by Israeli missiles. So there were seven aid workers killed, including a U.S. citizen. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said this strike was unintentional that there would be an investigation of some sort. But World Central Kitchen said they specifically coordinated their movements with the IDF, with the Israeli government. The cars were clearly marked. I mean, you can see

them now, even though there's giant, you know, holes in the roof where the drone hit it. But according to Aretz, this IDF unit responsible for security in the area where this convoy was driving, they said they saw some sort of armed guy in a truck that was part of a convoy, so that's why they fired at it. But it wasn't just one strike. The drone hits the first car. These passengers are all wounded and, like, delirious. they get out, they escape into a second car, then the drone hits that car, then those people who are still alive get out and they try to evacuate wounded people into a third car, and then the drone strikes the third car. So again, like clearly, apparently the rules of engagement here were that seeing one armed guy in a convoy made it okay to massacre seven people, right? So that that is

insane on its face. And I think it's obviously a tragedy for the people who are killed, but also this is going to have consequences for people in Gaza because the AP reported that aid ships carrying 240 tons of undelivered aid have now turned back from Gaza. World Central Kitchen and other groups are suspending their operations in Gaza, so they're not going to be feeding these starving people anymore. And also, Ben, it gets at this broader problem that I think we've seen throughout the war, which is that you'll see quotes from Netanyahu and other officials claiming that the IDF is, quote, the most moral army in the world because of all these steps they take to protect civilians. But now there are countless examples of the IDF showing almost total disregard for civilians.

There was a report over the weekend about the IDF having kill zones in Gaza where anyone who crosses like an imaginary line is treated as a combatant. There were the attacks this past week on medical infrastructure like El Shiffa Hospital, which is now just completely destroyed. And it's why, like, you know, people like you and me flipped out last week when we read in the Washington Post that the U.S. had transferred more 2,000 pound bombs to Israel because those are the bombs that have been responsible for many of the worst mass casualty incidents in this war. So, Ben, I guess my takeaway was just enormous frustration that 32,000 people

dead in Gaza, and now this attack on a humanitarian convoy that kills an American, and even that doesn't seem to shake the U.S. off its current policy of saying, no, we got Israel's back, we're going to send more weapons, there are no red lines that have been crossed, we're not going to cut off military assistance. It just seems like there's no change here. Yeah. I mean, first of all, just on the strike itself, Netanyahu said something that really triggered me when he acknowledged the strike, but he said things like this happen in war, you know. Oh, I saw that too. They don't. The last time I can remember anything like this happening was when the Russian government and the Syrian regime bombed aid trucks in Aleppo, towards the end of the Obama administration.

Like, that's the company that the Israeli government is putting itself in. These trucks were marked. They had gone through the deconfliction process where they notify the Israeli government. They were literally picking up aid and delivering it, right? So something horrific happened here. I mean, even if this was not an intentional strike, and I think that has to be something that has looked at, whatever the nature of this military operation is is not good. Because we're six months into the war and there's no process to de-conflict aid trucks

that are clearly marked from getting food to people. that's the first thing. The second thing is, as you said, because Israel has put unrout of business, the World Central Kitchen was really stepping up to fill some of this void to deal with famine. And now they can't operate because how can you ask them to operate when their people are getting bombed? And there's this whole floating pier. Remember the floating pier that Biden wants to build? The whole delivery system of that scheme was the World Central Kitchen, taking the food from the pier and bringing it to people. So the effects of the strike are much bigger than the tragic killing of these seven people. It could lead to greater famine in Gaza.

And so this is a huge problem, right? And I mean, the U.S., I don't know how – it's actually crazy to me that we're still providing weapons to the Israeli government. I mean, what else needs to happen to understand that they're not listening? You know, I see statements, Tommy, like you and I were going back and forth. like every time something like this happens, there's some statement where there's some concern expressed and we call in these Israeli government to not keep doing what they're doing,

and they just keep doing it. And at a certain point, if you're not withholding military assistance, one, you're not following U.S. law, which says that, you know, you can't, governments can't take military assistance and just ignore the U.S. and potentially ignore international law

and how they use it. But also, you're just looking, I'm just going to say it, you look weak because you're, You just keep saying don't do something. They just keep doing it. And then you just keep giving them 2,000-pound bombs. And the last thing I'm going to say, because I was thinking about this,

I think I texted you this morning, Tommy. Like last night I'm reading the news, getting rid of a podcast. And the four stories in a row I read were the strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the strike that killed the world central kitchen workers. Bibi Nanyahu wants to shut down Al Jazeera in Israel. And this Al-Sheifa hospital, you know, being completely. completely level to the ground, this is not normal, right? This is not like a, I can't think of anything that's happened like this, certainly a U.S. ally receiving U.S. military aid.

And people need to recognize that what we are looking at is not at all normal. And this is a government that has become unhinged, frankly. And I don't know what else to say. I wish we didn't have to say this every week. Like I'd like nothing more than to not have four more of these things to talk about. But but we have to kind of catch up to the reality of what's happening here, you know? Yeah. I mean, look, in the White House, John Kirby said that they're outraged by the strike. It's like, okay, you're outraged. So then what? I mean, but to your point, 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza. I mean, if the rules of engagement are so poorly constructed that you've killed 200 aid workers in six months, how do you think the average Palestinian is treated?

Of course the casualty count is 30,000 people on counting. And by the way, this split of like the IDF saying, well, X number are Hamas and Y number are civilians. Like, I don't trust any of those numbers because apparently if you wander into some imaginary kill zone, you're treated as a combatant all of a sudden. You're probably put into the Hamas pile even if you're just a person looking for food. And also, Ben, I mean, to your point about the World Central Kitchen being the distribution point for President Biden's plan to build this temporary peer, there was a report over the weekend

in the Washington Post about concerned that that. temporary floating pier will be just a big fat terrorist target by Palestinian Islamic jihad from Hamas, which first of all, of course it will, right? This thing could be like a floating abbey gate like we saw at the end of the Afghanistan withdrawal, like sitting out in the ocean and like that will have to be heavily defended by U.S. forces. But it didn't even occur to me that the people on the ground, you know, facilitating the transfer of this aid could be targeted it by the IDF, but that is exactly what happened on Monday. Yeah, and, you know, you return to the notion that essentially

floating piers and World Central Kitchen, there are other ways to get aid in. It's just open up some of these crossings and drive some trucks of aid in. That's what's so frustrating is that this is not, it shouldn't be this kind of complicated. But to your point, this has been a pattern. We've seen this is the most horrific event like this involving international. aid organization, but the IRC had a building hit. I think Doctors Without Borders had a facility hit. Obviously, UNRWA, which Israel is basically treated as Hamas, has been decimated. And that's not normal. Like, you know, there needs to be established mechanisms under international law to get

humanitarian aid to people that are suffering in a war zone. And if your military plan doesn't allow for that, then that military plan is not viable military plan. And certainly not one. that the U.S. government should support. So in Israel itself, discontent over Netanyahu's handling the war is growing quickly. Tens of thousands of Israelis were in the streets of Jerusalem on Sunday, calling on Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire deal to free the remaining Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. Last year, there were weekly massive protests against Netanyahu's plan to basically gut the Israeli courts, but those protests had stopped after the October 7th attack.

So seeing them start up again was a big deal. They're also showing, you know, Netanyahu is also dealing with this growing threat to his governing coalition over the issue of whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should have to serve in the Israeli military. So most Israeli men are forced to serve in the military for three years, women for two. But the ultra-Orthodox, which make up about 13% of the population, they're exempted while studying full-time at religious schools and they receive government subsidies. So the Israeli Supreme Court said, no way. Like this plan is ridiculous. It's not fair. Present us with a new one. And now Netanyahu is in this place where he has to try to appease his ultra-Orthodox members of his coalition who want the exemption to continue, but also centrist lawmakers like Benny Gantz, who's a former general.

He's like this exemption is crazy and it's untenable, especially as the casualty count for the IDF in Gaza is now over 500 troops. So finally, Ben, the Israeli parliament, as you've been, the Israeli parliament, as you've been, mentioned earlier, they approved this new law that will allow the government to ban foreign news networks that are considered a threat to national security. The ban lasts for 45 days, but it could be renewed. To your point, I mean, it was passed to just target Al Jazeera, which Netanyahu said he's going to do immediately. He's calling it a terrorist channel. I don't know what this means maybe for the ceasefire talks, which are being mediated by Qatar and Qatar owns Al Jazeera, so I bet they won't take this well. But it's just worth pointing out to your like, this is not a normal point, that

banning foreign news networks is the kind of thing the U.S. condemns when it is done by Russia or Hungary or name your country. But I don't know. All I've seen from the White House is like if true, that would be concerning type statements. Yeah. Well, you know, I think the common threat here, right, is that we're in the normal place with Bibi Nanyahu where he's just kind of navigating his own political survival, you know, so it's like balancing between the ultra-Orthodox in his coalition and balancing between the people are like, this is crazy, like this exemption. This exemption was rooted in kind of Israel's founding

at a time when there were far, far less ultra-orthodox. Like four or five hundred, yeah. Yeah, and so it just doesn't make any sense anymore. But what's so strange is watching this person who's leading a government that is in this war that has global implications, and it's like his coalition politics are the thing that's driving him, you know?

I know. And when you see the Israelis who are protesting and I think they deserve a lot of credit. You know, the common refrain is we need a prime minister who's thinking about something other than his political survival, you know, because all he's doing is just tacking around. And then this Al Jazeera thing, yeah, it just, we always heard about like the IDF is the world's most moral army. We've talked about that. We always heard, you know, Israel's the democracy in the Middle East. Well, you know, banning a cable television station you don't like is not democratic, you know.

So it's just, to me, there needs to be a kind of reset here in the Israeli government. An election, ideally someone other than Netanyahu gets in there, probably Benny Gans, again, no left-winger. But just this is not working. This current iteration is not working. Yeah, I mean, one man's, you know, concern about getting prosecuted. Netanyahu is concerned about getting prosecuted is driving this entire war. And my fear is that this war is making Israel less safe. It's making the U.S. less safe that in a couple years, some terrorist group is going to attack or try to attack the U.S.

and they're going to point to U.S. support for the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. And, you know, no one should wonder how that happened. A couple of the quick things, Ben, is just that the, remember last week we talked about Netanyahu canceling a delegation trip to Washington, D.C., to talk about their plan to invade Rafa, that city in southern Gaza where a million Palestinians are sheltering. that meeting finally happened via video conference. So I guess that was the middle ground they found. But the reports out of it say the U.S. still hasn't seen a viable plan to protect civilians in Rafa. Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, is going to Saudi Arabia later this week. They're still trying to ink this normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel despite all that's going on. So interesting that they're still pursuing that. And then just finally, there's a bunch of new polling out about American views of the war.

there's a new Gallup poll that found 55% disapproval of Israeli military actions in Gaza and only 36% approval. And then Quinnipiac found 52% of Americans oppose more military aid to Israel, first 39% who support it. So I just hope, you know, President Biden had pretty strong feelings about both his personal commitment to Israel and the politics of this early on. I hope people are just watching how fast everything is changing. Yeah. And the trajectory is very clear. and nothing's going to change that trajectory, right? Because this just keeps getting worse with time.

Like, the only thing that's going to change is if there's a ceasefire and then some credible effort to address the humanitarian crisis and the political dynamic here. Because, you know, the longer this goes on, obviously the worst above all is for Palestinians, I think the worst it is politically for Joe Biden. You know, you've got even Donald Trump saying, like, they need to wrap this up.

I know. Wrap it up, yeah. So this, I think we are living through. something of a sea change in American public opinion on this issue. And I think we're going to look back on this as a pretty big, you know, pivot point in history for a lot of reasons. Yeah, I agree with you. Okay. Well, that is the section of the show where we are generally quite critical of the administration's handling of Gaza. But I do think it's worth checking in, once again, on the creeps and the goons who would likely be working for Trump in national security

rolls if he wins the election in November. So one such creep then is a guy named Rick Grinnell. Grinnell was a spokesman for John Bolton when John Bolton was the ambassador to the UN. For years, Grinnell was basically known for just being a vicious Twitter troll who was nasty to journalists and anyone else he came across. And then Trump kind of plucked him out of obscurity to make him ambassador to Germany, where he pissed off everybody except for the super far right. Then Grinnell was asked by Trump to mediate between tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, a job that he seems to have interpreted as meaning basically just side with Serbia, the stronger power with whatever they want.

Then in the last few months of the administration, he became acting director of national intelligence despite having zero relevant experience. So the reason we're talking about him is because the Washington Post did a big story about how Rick Grinnell is running around the world telling people that he is going to be the next secretary of state. He popped up in Guatemala where Grinnell was hanging out with this far right president who had lost an election and was trying to stage a coup basically and hang on to office. The New York Times reported, we talked about this recently, that Grinnell was working with Jared Kushner to try to like grease a bunch of real estate deals with Serbian and Albanian government officials. And then the posts reported in this big story on Grinnell that he had been trying to broker meetings with foreign leaders in Trump, including with Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, like,

a couple years ago when Biden was president, like things that are just completely inappropriate. So the other weird note on this, Ben, was Grinnell was apparently an executive at Newsmax for a while, which we'll talk about and a little more later. But look, it's just a reminder that a second Trump term would start out with the worst of the worst. Like, we made fun of the self-important committee to save America people, the Jim Mattis of the world, you know, the like folks who briefed reporters at the Atlantic about how much they were doing to protect all of us. But it is going to get worse. And I think it's just, you know, it's fine to criticize Biden's foreign policy, but just know that like it's going to get worse if Trump wins.

Yeah. I mean, we should say, yeah, we're quite critical in Gaza. But I mean, if you care about climate change, if you care about democracy, it's not a close call. And then when you add these people into the mix, and look, it's very clear that Rick Grinnell is in the inner inner circle here. He's going to have some big job in a second Trump term, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, something like that, which is insane. Like this guy is a petty, vindictive internet troll, essentially.

And corrupt and self-interested one at that, you know. And I think it does kind of telegraph, like what we'd be in store for. Guys like this, there's this guy, Cash Patel, who was like, you know, like a bottom feeder at the end of the administration. I think he was at, like, DOD for a while. But these are the ultra-maga people that are going to be there from day one. And I think the thing that should stand out on the Grinnell piece is, you know,

we can all kind of laugh at their lack of, you know, qualifications for some of these jobs. But I think what we should take more seriously is that he sees his roles in part kind of knitting together this far-right global alliance. Yep, definitely. And C. Bannon's been involved in this too. we haven't talked about him in a while. This is a serious ideological project. These people actually do have a worldview, and it's a worldview in which a second Trump administration

aligns itself with basically the far right in Europe. It's National Front in France. It's the AFD party in Germany. It's Bolsonaro in Brazil. It's the kind of more, even the most right-wing version of Modi in India. This is scary stuff, right? And so this is not something that is worth taking a Eskón. And I think we should have eyes open. And yeah, Tommy, I was joking to you recently.

Like, I don't know. I still kind of feel pretty ambivalent about anybody who went to work for Trump. But maybe those committee people actually hold back some crazy shit from happening. I don't know. Yeah, I'm preparing to eat my own words if he wins again and wish for the good old days of Mattis and wherever these people were. You mentioning Steve Bannon, you being in Italy maybe remember when Steve Bannon tried to open what he called a gladiator school for right-wing politicians in like a 13th century monastery or something in Italy and the courts blocked him from doing it. Yeah, but he was like all he helps, I think, the Vox party, the far right party in Spain. You know, he actually did, you know, he helped

with the Bolsonaro campaign. Like, so this is like, this is a real thing. It's easy to just think it's like Steve Bannon's podcast and some real estate deals. But like, there's also, like the ideology behind it that it's pretty scary. Yeah, and they also have a bunch of media apparatuses behind them. So the teaser about Newsmax was a reference to a big report in the Washington Post about this right-wing news site, Newsmax. According to a bunch of leaked documents from a financial services company in the Cayman Islands, a member of the Katari Royal Family invested $50 million into Newsmax through a London-based investment firm that is also owned by a member of the Qatar's royal family. So two people who were Newsmax employees at the time told the Washington

Post that around the time of this investment, both before and after, they were told not to criticize Qatar and to soften on-air coverage by quote, including by avoiding discussion of the nation's human rights record and treatment of migrant labor ahead of it hosting the World Cup in 2022. So again, this was the time when actually there was a big conversation about these issues. They also said in this story that Newsmax CEO, Christopher Ruddy, verbally reprimanded a host for on-air comments about Qatar. Ruddy and Newsmax denial of this, of course. The post at a major selling point to the Qataris for the investment was the claim that Ruddy was close friends with Trump, which is true. I mean, I think they just run into each other in Mar-a-Lago, and Ruddy became this kind of like

man about town all of a sudden in the Trump administration. He went from this fringe weirdo in right-wing media to like, I don't know, Trump's buddy. Just it's worth noting, Ben, that on top of this investment into Newsmax, there was a report done by House Democrats that found that Qatar spent about three quarters of a million dollars at Trump's hotels in New York and D.C. during his presidency. So just a lot of cash getting siphoned into Trump's pockets into right wing apparatuses that support him. So I don't know, Ben, what do you think? Good investment here? Like, I was pretty shocked by this. They would drop $50 million. Yeah. But, you know, at. At a certain point, I mean, if the previous, you know, segment was about the ideology, the second piece of the Trump project is just out and out corruption, right? And Trump likes cash and the people around Trump like cash. And who has cash?

It's the Gulf states. It's Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. And at a certain point, like, I almost don't blame them. Because, like, of course they're doing this. Like, you know, because if you were pumping that much oil and gas out of the ground and it's just printing money, you know, fine, you know, a few hundred million dollars here for Newsmax and a few hundred million dollars over there for, you know, real estate deals and then like a few presidential suites at the Trump properties. You know, Trump's, you know, going to have some cash flow problems given all the litigation he's faced. I mean, the vulnerability of a, again, a second Trump term to just just ungodly amounts of. corruption because that's what all these countries have concluded that this is how to do business, right? And by the way, this is how they do business in some other parts of the world, right?

I mean, we saw this in Malaysia where they basically, you know, let's just say like cash bought a lot of things, right? And so I think this is easy to we make fun of it sometimes too, but this is serious too, because essentially, you know, they anticipate that a second Trump term would be for hire for their own purposes. And by the way, it's kind of funny because Newsmax and Al Jazeera have a slightly different editorial line

on certain things. It just shows you like how little they... Yeah, different vibes on Gaza, I imagine. No, but your point is well taken because, like, imagine you're Qatar. You're like this tiny, you're a Connecticut-sized country that is off the tip of Saudi Arabia.

You are watching the heavy hitters in the region, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, others, going to the White House, having Oval Office meetings. Remember that meeting with Trump and Mohammed bin Salman where he pulled out the like, it looked like a third grader's diorama of all the weapons systems the Saudis were buying for like billions and billions of dollars?

They're seeing that happen. They're seeing their sworn enemies greasing the Trump administration and they're thinking, oh shit, we got to get in the game and we got to pay off the right guys and we got to do it immediately. So of course they're scrambling to find ways to funnel money to the kind of MAGA movement.

Well, yeah, because it was that... It's like survival. Yeah, and there was that internal fight in the GCC's, the Gulf, you know, cooperative of countries. And remember, like, Qatar got, like, kicked out and there was, like, a blockade on them for a little while. Yeah, they blockaded them, yeah. Yeah, so I think they're just like, well, we're just going to try to spend our way out of this, you know? And, I mean, yeah, like, it does show their sensitivity around the World Cup, which you experienced... I remember the government of Qatar didn't exactly take kindly to season one to World War Club.

They love that series. No, no, no. They did not. Didn't love it. Didn't love it. Well, you know, credit media could get a sponsorship from Qatar for, you know, a few hundred million. And, you know, maybe World Crupp number three could be about, I don't know,

James Dolan and the Knicks or something, you know. There we go. I'm down to do that. Anyway, great story. Great reporting by The Washington Post. Everyone should check it out. It's worth reading. Two quick housekeeping notes.

First of all, our book, Democracy or Else, is almost out. We would love if you consider pre-ordering the book. It will help us get on all the little lists that everybody thinks are important. And hopefully we can knock Don Jr. or fucking Ben Shapiro, one of those go goons off it. If you want to pre-order, please go to cricket.com slash books for all the details. Also, Pot Save America is going on the road. We are going to Brooklyn, Boston, Madison, Phoenix, Philly, and Ann Arbor. And if you're in Los Angeles, we have a live Pod Save America show on April 21st at the LA Times Festival of Books.

to learn more and get tickets, go to crooked.com slash events. Let's turn to something very different, Ben. Some more really in-depth reporting, though. So a couple weeks back, we talked about Havana syndrome, which is the catch-all term for these unexplained health issues that U.S. spies and diplomats and officials have been experiencing since about 2016 in the first cases that became public were in Cuba, so it became called Havana syndrome. We talked about the release of an NIH study that showed that there were no signs of

long-term brain damage in those who had symptoms. So good news that there's not brain damage, but obviously if you're having symptoms, you're having symptoms. It didn't make anyone feel better. What was fascinating was just a couple weeks later, 60 minutes released this really in-depth report. Like they did like half the show on Havana syndrome. And they reported new evidence that connected Havana syndrome directly to Russia. So the new evidence suggests that a Russian spy group known as Unit 29155 might be testing a directed enter. weapon on U.S. government employees around the world. This was a collaboration. It was 60 Minutes. The Insider and Ders Spiegel is about a year-long investigation. And so one of their core findings was that senior members of

this Russian unit got awards and political promotions for the work. They did related to the development of these non-lethal acoustic weapons. They even discovered that reports of Havana syndrome began happening long before the 2016 cases in Cuba. There was one victim who was knocked unconscious from this alleged weapon receiving a traumatic brain injury. After this attack occurred, she went outside, she saw a car, she saw a man by the car. Years later, Belling Cat in 60 minutes, these organizations researching or sent a photo of someone who they think was involved in these attacks, and she said it was the same guy. So they're sort of like IDing specific Russian officials at the location. So anyway, this unit that 29-155's unit, their scope is lethal operation, acts of sabotage. They're

mission is basically like take out the people that Putin doesn't like. That goes well beyond just intelligence collection. So the 60-minute piece included an interview with a guy named Greg Ed Green. He's a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army whose investigation led to the conclusion that foreign adversaries are not involved. But he said that that was only because the bar for proof was set impossibly high. Here's a clip from him from the 60 Minutes interview. Greg Edgreen, who ran the military investigation, told us he had the Pentagon's support. But in the Trump and Biden administrations, he says, the bar for proof was set impossibly high.

I think it was set so high because we did not, as a country and a government, want to face some very hard truths. And what are those? Can we secure America? Are these massive counter-incarion? intelligence failures. Can we protect American soil and our people on American soil? Are we being attacked? And if we're being attacked, is that an act of war? So, Ben, this report, the insider, the 60 Minutes report, they just came to a very different conclusion than what the Office of the Director

of National Intelligence said in March of 2023 when they said it was very unlikely that Havana syndrome was caused by a foreign adversary. Let me just stop there. Did you want to watch this report. What did you make of it? How convinced were you? First of all, if only you or I had a voice like that, you know, like that, the six, like that, that Pell, yeah, it's just like this kind of, Scott Pelly. Yeah, Scott Pelley was, the way he winds things up is just so dramatic. You know, you just want to, you really want to know what's coming. Anyway. Yeah, he's like a human upright base, you know, which is very, yeah. Look, I got to say when this first happened, right, when I first learned of these, quote, unquote, Havana syndrome attacks, um, in.

In 2017, yeah. I was shocked because I had actually been responsible for Cuba policy at the end of the Obama administration had not heard about this. Then the immediate conclusion that I drew at the time, and frankly, you know, in Havana, I had a conversation with the U.S. diplomat, was that the only people who could do this are the Russians, right? They're the only people that have a kind of capability, a willingness to kind of harm people physically in third countries. they have a lot of interest at that time in derailing the opening between the U.S. and Cuba because they kind of put them at risk. But also I put their interest in Cuba at risk, I should say. But then I also had personal experience on me. Like, you know, probably years ago in this podcast, I probably told the story.

But when I was negotiating with the Cubans to normalize relations, I was in an airport hotel in Toronto, trailed by some Russians who clearly wanted me to know that they were watching me in Havana, the first time I went to Havana, some people came up really close to me speaking Russian, like wanted me to know, like, hey, we see what you're doing, right? And so I always suspected that if a foreign government was behind this, the Cubans would be the, you know, I don't think they had this capability. I don't think that they would have taken the risk to do this in the same way the Russians would. So, I don't know.

Looking at the report, it kind of validates. like what I instinctively believed at the time. And it also kind of validates something that concerned me, which is at that time, some of the hardliners around Trump who, you know, had Cuba on the brain, like Marco Rubio, they used the Savannah Syndrome stuff to essentially shutter the U.S. Embassy, put some more sanctions on, rollback, the Obama opening. And so what I was worried about at the time is that, well, Trump's not going to want to point the finger at Russia.

and he's got some political reasons given, you know, his people down in Florida, to point the finger at the Cubans, which is what they did. All that said, I don't know what happened. You know, like the DNI is pretty categorical in saying that, you know, we don't think this was a foreign government. I've talked to various people in out-governmental who say that they don't even know that something happened. Then you talk to other people to say this is, you know, something terrible happened. Then you see this report, which seems pretty credible, but it's pretty, let's face it.

it's, you know, even the Bellingcat thing is, you know, that's an interesting piece of evidence, but, you know, you would want more of that to kind of feel confident in this assessment. I think what we can say without a doubt is that the U.S. government has just not, you know, was not transparent about this, was not forthcoming about this from the get-go, from the jump. Because they politicized it to punish Cuba, it immediately kind of came out the wrong way, sideways. The Biden administration seemed to take a while to like start sharing information about this. And that does feed into what you heard from that guy, which is, you know, I, I see why he's saying that, you know, and this is not to kind of, this is, this is not to impugn people in

government. It's actually just to say, like, if this is the Russians, what do you do about it? You know, like, it's one of these, it's a really tough problem because on the one end, you're like, well, we can't secure our people anywhere. And the other end, you're like, well, do we go to war over this? Like what, you know, it represents this kind of new wild west that we're in that is quite scary, you know. So to me, the main lesson is just being more transparent and on top of this stuff from the get-go, which was more of a Trump, you know, issue than a Biden issue. Yeah, I mean, I had a similar reaction. The 60 Minutes report was very interesting. There was lots of fascinating circumstantial evidence. Like they had dash cam footage of this Russian guy getting pulled over

who was clearly a spy. He had weird devices in his car and like they could erase the GPS data on your car or like a bunch of passports, et cetera, et cetera. But I just, it didn't feel like they really nailed it, which again, obviously like easier said than done. But, you know, they quoted, they interviewed someone who was like, one of the reasons I know it was Russia is because a lot of the targets were our highest performing kind of counterintel people on Russia or like staff in various sectors of the government. that were tasked with managing Russia and were the most effective. And those were the people getting taken out. And I was like, that's kind of like exactly the ex post facto analysis we want to avoid in these situations as opposed to evidence. But I don't know. Again, I feel like I study up on this thing and I know less than I did before I started, but at least less certainty. I mean, the one thing I'll say is, and it kind of ties back to what we're saying at the very beginning about Israel hitting the consulate in Damascus. We do seem to be moving into some pretty choppy waters here where these norms around, you know, not harming diplomats or not blowing

up facilities or the Russians have assassinated people in third countries. We saw India assassinate somebody in Canada. These kind of basics of how the world works are beginning to fray. And that's dangerous because it's hard to put that stuff back in a box. If we could just get to a place where like diplomats are protected, facilities are protected, people aren't assassinated in third countries, like that would make me feel a lot better, you know. Yeah. Speaking of Frey norms, it gets us to our next story about Wall Street Journal reporter named Evan Gerskiewicz, who was arrested about a year ago in Russia and has been held in a prison hostage ever since. This was just a horrible case of a young American reporter getting swept up by Putin in one of his endless. political battles against the West. He's being held on espionage charges that could carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. He and the Wall Street Journal have vehemently denied the spying allegations

since the very beginning. They're self-evidently ridiculous. All this time, Gerskovich has been held in pretrial detention. And just last week, that was extended for another three months. They're not even trying to try the guy. His colleagues at the Wall Street Journal have fought hard to keep him in the news in front of mind for President Biden. Biden released a state. last Friday on the one year mark saying, quote, we will continue to denounce and impose cost for Russia's appalling attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips. And we will continue to stand strong against all those who seek to attack the press or target journalists, the pillars to free society. There's another American named Paul Whalen is being held in a Russian prison. He was sentenced to 16

years in prison for espionage. That story is even weirder. He was arrested in 2019. He was basically hanging out with a Russian citizen who Whelan says handed him a USB drive shortly after he was The Russians say it was classified information that Whelan's a spy. Again, the U.S. government and Whelan deny that. So, Ben, we talked a lot about these hostage situations in Russia and hostage swaps when Brittany Griner was being held by the Russian government. She was ultimately released in a swap for an arms dealer named Victor Bout. Putin's price to release Evan Gerskovich seems to be a Russian assassin currently being held

in a German prison camp. That's a tall order to get the Germans to release this guy because he's a real killer. So, Ben, I don't know, it's just like it's a year into this. It's an impossible problem. It's not clear to me if Putin views this in isolation, right? Like he takes Evan Gerskovich. He tries to swap him for something. And that's like a contained thing or whether this is all tied up into broader fights over Ukraine or whatever grievancy has. And obviously, you know, we all want these Americans to come home. But I do think it's fair to wonder if the grinder swap may be incentivized Putin to kidnap more Americans because, you know, as he can get something. out of it. So I don't know, any takeaways from you, sort of a year into this detention? Well, I think it's both Putin wanting to get something in return. And it also may just be Putin trying to send a message that there's no reporting a lot in Russia anymore. You know, so I think there were kind of two dimensions to the Evan Gershkowitz's wrongful detention. And, you know, he's kind of succeeded in the latter, you know, like it's, Western journalists are kind of not

really operating. Obviously, Russian journalists have been largely silenced or exiled. And you're right. I mean, the cost keeps going out. Like, Victor Boot was a pretty high price to pay, you know, one of the world's leading arms dealers. And then when you start talking about, you know, other countries releasing assassins, at a certain point, there are swaps you don't want to do, you know. I think for Evan's sake and his family, you have to keep trying everything you can. But I do think you also have to start saying there's like a ceiling on this. And it does seem kind of, you know, asking third countries to suddenly start getting involved in these swaps.

That feels like we're introducing a whole new slope that could become slippery too. So it's a horrible situation. But, you know, yeah, there is a balance between not wanting to incentivize and reward this kind of activity. And unfortunately, one of the tragic lessons is like Americans have to be really careful about where they go. And I'm not, that's not at all to blame Evan because he was doing his job. He wasn't like a tourist, you know, but it's just, it's kind of what we were just talking about. It's a more dangerous world. Yeah. And look, the U.S. just has limited leverage here. I mean, Vladimir Putin gets to decide if he released this guy. Let's turn to Scotland then a couple more

quick things here. So there was an interesting report from the BBC about a new anti-hate crime law in Scotland. So, quote, stirring up hatred, end quote, about someone's age, disability, religion, in sexual orientation or sexual identity is now a crime that can get you up to seven years in prison. Here's a graph from this BBC story about all this. A person commits an offense if they communicate material or behave in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive with the intention

of stirring up hatred based on the protected characteristics. So there was already a hate crime law in place in Scotland about race, color, nationality or ethnicity. but this new law, the bar for prosecution seems to be a little lower. It includes insulting behavior and the prosecution only needs to show that the end result of stirring up hatred was likely, not that it was intended. So, I don't know, they supposedly have some safeguards in place and protections for, you know, kind of like shocking ideas or disturbing ideas. Opponents of the law say it's flawed. They say here's an example from, again, from the BBC, quote, if an assailant punched someone in the face while,

also making a hateful comment about their age, that might be assault aggravated by age-related hatred. So that's sort of a bizarre case that you could see emerging from the law. There was a lawmaker who voted no, who pointed out that you could actually be arrested for, quote, stirring up hatred because of comments you make in your own home, not just public places. So I don't know that. I haven't studied this law deeply. I obviously don't want anyone to be using hate speech ever. but like I think the the American in me, the First Amendment lover in me, kind of stood back of the idea that, you know, you get seven years in prison for speech. But I don't know, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, you know, Rick Grinnell's Secretary of State, you better

stay away from Scotland because he's done. He's done. He's gone in the can. I mean, yeah, it does make you wonder, you know, this just feels like it's pushing too far. And it's not not clear what problem it's solving that you couldn't address through more narrowly tailored hate crime laws, you know? And again, I'm not the free speech lawyer, but like this does feel like a pretty broad definition. And of course people would try to push the envelope, you know, in its application. So it may be that, you know, look, we're all having debates about this. And we all share the objective of preventing hate crimes, but we also, I think, get a long uncomfortable if it's kind of, if it's just insulting speech or something that you're doing seven

years for, even if it's speech I hate. So, yeah, this is one, it'd be interesting to watch how this plays out, you know, because I assume there's a backlash and we'll see if there's a way to more narrowly scope it. Yeah, to see how it's applied ultimately will be, I think, the key test. Let's turn to Venezuela, Ben, because there's once again some serious doubts about whether President Nicholas Maduro is going to allow free and fair elections. So the latest new is that a candidate named Maria Machado, she's a popular Venezuelan opposition leader. She's been barred from running against Maduro in the elections this summer. Machado is a 56-year-old member of the National Assembly.

She's well-known. She overwhelmingly won the primary last year with like 90% of the vote. Now she can't run, so she's going to support some other candidate, this lesser-known academic. But the decision to not allow Machado to run could have big ramifications in Washington because last year, the Biden administration agreed to ease sanctions on Venezuela's oil and gas sector if Maduro allowed a free and fair election this year in 2024. At the time, the bar was set by Tony Blinken, I believe, at free and fair being that all candidates have to be reinstated and allowed to run.

So obviously, that has not happened. So in practice, what they did to ease sanctions was have the Treasury Department authorize, give a six-month license giving American oil and gas companies the ability to work with Venezuela for that period. That license expires on April 18th. And so the question now becomes, will Biden reimpose sanctions in a couple weeks when it expires? The Wall Street Journal reported that they are leaning against reimposing sanctions, the reasons being concern that sanctions would just jack up gas prices, that they would lead to more migration out of Venezuela and probably north to the U.S. and basically just cause Maduro to turn away from the west even further and

look to Russia and China to sell oil and gas. So, Ben, this is a tough one because obviously, you know, you don't want to let another government just renege on a promise like that. But in addition to the concerns we just, I just mentioned here, it is also the case that U.S. sanctions on Venezuela have done absolutely nothing to weaken Maduro's grip on the country. They just seem to have caused enormous economic hardship and suffering for the people. I hope the Wall Street General report is right and that we're not going to mindlessly kind of slap sanctions back on Venezuela. Maybe there's a more targeted approach specifically at Maduro. But I don't know.

What did you make of these reports and the political decision the Biden team's going to have to make? I agree with you that it's not like sanctions work in Venezuela, you know. And I think that what you need to do is what are the other tools you have? Like, yes, maybe there's something more targeted at Maduro and people around them, but also, like, what can be done to continue to raise the volume of this issue in the region? So it's not just the U.S. talking about it. You know, it's other countries in Latin America, including some left-wing leaders down there whose voices can be important and kind of continuing to kind of put a spotlight on what Maduro is doing, continuing to speak out in supportive elections. You want to build a kind of a course of countries that are pushing on this. So it's not just like every sitting back and watching the inevitable drama of like the U.S.

slaps some sanctions on Maduro arrests more opposition leaders and just, you know, you know, gets cozier with China and Russia. So I think it's the sanctions reaction, while it could be understandable, it's not the right lever to be pulling here. It's other diplomacy, other ways of keeping the spotlight on this. Yeah, I hope we just can move beyond the politics here and not let, you know, Marco Rubio, browbeat, the administration of the putting a bunch of sanctions on that won't work. A couple more quick things than we're done.

The New York Times reported that China is getting into the election disinformation game by using a bunch of fake social media accounts to promote Trump and various right-wing conspiracy theories. So what's happening is all of a sudden social media accounts that used to, you know, attack the Dalai Lama and Mandarin or whatever are purporting to be, you know, soccer moms and dads from Ohio who love Trump. a nonprofit called the Institute for Strategic Dialogue said that a Chinese-linked account on Twitter posted conspiracy theories that Joe Biden and the CIA sent a neo-Nazi to fight in Ukraine, a theory that is easily debunked, but it received a lot of traction when Alex Jones retweeted it the next day to his millions of followers. It does not help that these accounts, these Chinese disinformation accounts, can just pay Elon Musk and Twitter like eight bucks a month or whatever for verification and algorithmic amplification.

A lot of the accounts are not trying very hard. Many of these newly minted suburban dads in Ohio who love Trump didn't delete their old tweets in Mandarin. So, you know, it's not like the most sophisticated effort. So everyone, stay vigilant out there. Don't fight with people on social media. But look, this sounds like just an unfixable problem to me because, you know, if Alex Jones is going to just share whatever, like what, who cares if it's from China or Russia or, you know, just some weirdo.

That's the nature of the information space. Now, you're going to have to turn off this information. You're going to have to educate people about it. You're going to have to give people context around it. I think the couple of things are interesting me about this. It does feel like China's preference here, if you look at the information space, is for Trump to win. And that may surprise some people because of the way Trump has talked about China and the trade war and everything. But I think it makes sense to reason because Trump is a huge geopolitical opportunity for China, right? The U.S. is discredited. We look ridiculous. And, you know, they kind of fill in the space that the U.S. used to occupy in terms of creating their own world order. So something to watch is just kind of what can we learn about the Chinese government's preferences through these information campaigns? And then the other thing is like, this is pretty rudimentary stuff, right?

Like guys with Twitter accounts, but AI's coming, you know, and the Chinese have a lot of money invested in artificial intelligence. So Tommy, you're, you know, the deep fix that. you know, we shared, could have a, like, a Chinese address on them, too. And so we should, we should be mindful of that, you know. Yeah, this is going to get worse before it gets better is basically the takeaway from me. Ben, some big news out of Turkey where President Erdogan's party lost key mayoral elections in five of Turkey's biggest cities, including Istanbul, or about a fifth of the population lives. The opposition party, the Republican People's Party, they had a great

night, according to Politico, they focused on economic factors. They were able to defeat Erdogan's largely, like identity politics-based campaign. Who knows what that will mean for the future of Erdogan's political party, the AKP, or for his political future. He said this would be his last election, but I think there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical of that. But I don't know, hopeful news here, hopeful for the future democracy in Turkey. But any other takeaways from you? It's hopeful. And, you know, and I guess the thing to why, watch here is, if Aaron really is like in this process of maybe exiting the scene, because he's also older, it's just kind of interesting to see what fills that vacuum, you know? Can it stay within his party?

Or, you know, you've got some good local officials getting elected in places like Istanbul. Hopefully one of those people kind of emerges into a leader that can, you know, bring back a little more democracy to Turkey. So it's a hopeful development worth watching, but also it points to like, you know, the next five 10 years in Turkey, you're going to be very interesting politically because there could be a vacuum that opens up or there could be a positive transition. Yeah. Final story, Ben, cancel culture is striking again. So John Hinkley Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, he's very upset because he said that he had yet another musical performance canceled because of the aforementioned attempted assassination. He spent 30 years in a mental institution

after trying to kill Reagan. He was found not guilty by reasons of insanity. Since his release in 2016, he has become a folk musician, apparently. He's got a bunch of followers on YouTube, but the poor guy just can't seem to find a venue to allow him to perform live in front of an audience. So I don't know, Ben, you know, first the woke mob came for the failed assassins, and I said nothing.

You know how it goes. Was an event that was canceled in Skye? Scotland. You know, with the new law, like, uh, uh, oh, could you send him over there? Look, I have to say, like, I like folk music as much as the next guy. Like, I'm not sure that when I'm thinking about, like, who I want to hear sing me a song, like, John Hinkley's not exactly the person that comes to mind here, you know? This may be a supply and demand issue in terms of what he's supplying is not in demand, you know? Yeah, he told the New York Post, he said, I'm not the person I used to be. I have a different mindset than I did

long, long ago. I don't want to dwell in the past. Let's stay in the present. I mean, noble sentiment. But he also said he is stuck in the 60s and 70s musically and doesn't like, quote, the pop or quote, the rap. So maybe he's just having a hard time finding the right venue. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's tough finding an audience out there, I guess. You know, even for, I mean, I forgot that John Hinkley existed until this segment. So, The only reason you remember him is because the Hinkley Hilton in D.C. It's because everybody calls it the Hinkley Hilton, yeah, yeah. Which is just weird when you think about it.

Yeah, it is a little creepy, actually, you know. That's where, like, the Correspondence Center was. Yeah. Anyway. Okay, that's it for us this week. No gas bees were coming back from a holiday, and it was a shortened week. But thanks you, Ben, for jumping on from Italy, and thanks everybody for listening. No, I'm looking forward to being back in the studio with you guys next week.

We're excited to have you. You're going to be so jet-lagged. It's going to be hilarious. It's going to be hilarious. Yeah, yeah. All right, talk to it. See it. If you want to get ad freak episodes, exclusive content, and more,

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