Pod Save the World - Justin Trudeau is in studio!

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Tommy and Ben interview Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the state of democracy, gun control, Ukraine and the best comedians in Canada. Then they cover the Summit of the Americas, the latest from Ukraine, President Biden’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, why Jared Kushner could be in trouble, how Poland is showing what a post Roe America might look like, why confidence is waning in British PM Boris Johnson, lasers and the Platinum Jubilee got weird. 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 Pop Dave of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Roads. Ben, are you excited for the Jan 6 hearing to kick off in primetime? I'm ready to go, man. Do you think that people are watching them, like, around the world? I was wondering that this morning, or was it just an Us thing? I think it's, like, probably largely an Us thing with, like, a lot of coverage into parts of the world. I mean, there's a kind of morbid, you know, put it this way, like, people around the world are alarmed.

not necessarily surprised, you know, based on my conversations, like that we so completely don't have our shit together, you know? Do you think it's like the end of the newscasts with like yakety sacks playing and it's like some super cut? Let's see what those jackasses in America. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, probably like a like B block, you know. But yeah, what's weird about, here's what's what's weird about Tommy.

Actually, I was listening to the Monday pod. Heard of it. Yeah. And I was actually thinking about this. Like nobody else outside of this country needs to be persuaded. You guys are talking about how like, and rightly about like, how we have to persuade the American people that this matters. You have to persuade them that there was this conspiracy, that it's part of a broader effort to overthrow democracy that is ongoing. And it is very bizarre that if you leave America, like everyone gets that.

Like nobody would have to be persuaded of that. They wouldn't need prime time hearings to be persuaded of it. it, but our own people are so, you know, reprogrammed that, uh, like, it's an impenetrable wall. Yeah. I bet the closer you are to, uh, the last coup in your country, the more you care. Also, yeah, I mean, all the polling shows that people just don't want to relitigate the past in this country.

It's got to be all forward looking. And like, that's kind of the hardest part about a hearing about an event a couple of years ago now. It's also why we don't learn from things like the warn of rock. Yeah, that's a good point. We don't like to learn from the past. No, we don't. Well, thank you for bringing it back to foreign policy because we have a great show.

The summit of the Americas is right here in Los Angeles. We're going to talk about the latest from Ukraine. President Biden is officially visiting Saudi Arabia. We'll talk about that and why Jared Kushner could be in a little bit of trouble. We'll talk about how Poland is showing us what a post-Roe versus Wade America could look like. Why Boris Johnson is in trouble news from China. My Boston Celtics will get a little nod at the end here. Lasers.

Why not talk about lasers? And then the platinum jubilee is finally over. Then, Ben, we got a big historic first year. Blow out guest here. We interviewed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I mean, it was just a matter of time before a world though prime minister made it into the world headquarters. I can't believe he said the thing about that other thing. We haven't actually talked to him yet.

We record the news on Tuesday. We'll record him tomorrow, which is why this episode is out late. But pretty cool to have had a state in this place. No, it is. I mean, and it's a guy I was thinking about it. It's pretty remarkable because, like, I remember the first time I was ever in a meeting with Justin Trudeau, he was like the completely fresh new guy that everybody's excited about at all the summits. Like, you know, I actually, we used to make fun of Obama because like suddenly like people were going over. His old news. Yeah, yeah. People were going over to introduce themselves to Trudeau. And they had a picture. What really drove Obama nuts is like they had all these pictures. I think it was at the Philippines. Justin Trudeau kind of like the heart throb. And then Obama was kind of like in the background like. graying hair. Like, how are you? Now, here we are.

Fast forward. Justin Joe's coming to the summit. He's been around for a while. You know, so time passes. Yeah, well, you know, Obama's got a Netflix deal, Justin. So you work on that. Work on that. Oh, by the way, and Edmonton, New Orleans just lost yesterday.

Oh, yeah, tough. Canada's not getting that cup. Sorry, Canada. Two quick things before we get to the news. For the L.A. friends who are listening right now, come see POTS of America live on June 9th. We are downtown at the Ace Theater. It'll be fun.

The 16 hearings will be happening. there's going to be some news. Come check it out if you want. Also, Ben, Cricket Media is launching its very own coffee line. Finally, we're telling everybody what's going on here. Comes out June 21st. The reason is when you are addicted to something like I am to coffee, you've got to become a supplier yourself. Just kidding. We thought it would be fun. And a portion of the proceeds, Go will be donated to register her a nonprofit that works to activate and register millions of women around the country. So go to crooked.com slash coffee. for more info. Ben, how's the paperback sales going? I mean, we get more work to do. We've gone pretty good, but like I'd really love to give this book after the fall on the rise of it there, our turners around the world, a boost into the summer, you know, get it on the summer reading list, get your friends, good Father's Day gift, the fathers in your life who are interested in what's happened to the world.

So yeah, please don't forget to pick it up if you haven't already. By Ben's book, by Dan's book. It's a great package. Honestly, I read Dan's book early. It's great. You know, it's a great, fun, smart tour through how our media and politics has been broken and what we might do about it. They really are kind of companion pieces, right?

Because my book is about these kind of structural issues around the world that have led to a decline democracy. And then Dan really digs into what's happened in this country in our political media environment. So, you pick them up together, right? I mean... It's a great package. This is summer reading, you know. Yeah, Dan's book, by the way, is battling the big lie.

Okay, Ben, so the Summit of the Americas here in Los Angeles. I love the smell of multilateralism in the morning. Some basics. The Summit of the Americas, it's a meeting that happens every three years with the leaders in the hemisphere. The last time the U.S. hosted it here was in 1994. The goal is you bring everybody together. You talk about key issues like trade, immigration, and unfortunately how isolated the U.S. is

when it comes to policy towards huge. Cuba and Venezuela. We don't know yet. The summit hasn't started yet, so we don't know what the news will be that so-called deliverables or announcements. The White House official told Politico the topics could be areas like supply chain vulnerabilities, pandemic preparedness, climate, food security, migration. It's a good list. You could also expect, you know, a bunch of conversations on the margins that focus on Russia and Ukraine or, you know, China generally. The migration piece of this was framed as emphasizing responsibility sharing and economic support. So it sounds like the U.S. will ask countries in Central and Southern America to maybe stop migration flows and support in return for some money. It's similar to Kamau Harris's the vice president's trip earlier this year. So Ben, the press focus has been on, you know, who's attending, who's not attending. President Biden did not invite the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela in Nicaragua. Now it looks like the president of Mexico is going through on his threat to boycott and not attend himself. I suspect listeners,

are well aware at this point that we disagree with the Biden decision not to invite Cuba and Venezuela. But what do you think the actual impact is on a summit like this when, you know, President Lopez Obrador of Mexico no shows and decides to send his foreign minister instead? I should note that Amlo, as he's called, is supposed to visit the White House next month, I think. Well, I mean, I think like it, you know, you've been at these summits where there's like working level business that is it's kind of a good forcing mechanism to take things that you already work on like immigration flows and what assistance we're providing, what strings were attaching to those and things like, you know, corruption in Central America, yeah, clean energy partnerships,

the kind of, you know, joint work that is important but doesn't get a huge profile. But that's kind of like, that's what the working level people are always doing. And some, it's just kind of forced them to make a new plan. Yeah, deliver something for the boss. Yeah, deliver something for the boss. I think that when you have a high profile distraction like the U.S. not inviting these countries and then a very high profile person like Amlo not coming, like you know, that becomes kind of the story and you don't get out of that.

I think what people have to also realize is that's like a real thing that comes into the room. So I've been to the summits of the Americas, and a lot of the speeches that the leaders give, you know, in part because they're for domestic audiences as well as people here, they become, like, complaints about the United States, right? And did Hugo Chavez Chase Obama around with a book or a hand-shakee of doing? Hugo Chavez chased some book about American imperialism. Great. You know, like, but, you know, Obama probably read it in college, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He took it and, like, you know, I was like, fine. Like, I'll take this book. You know, cool. Whoever wrote that book is probably on Nome Chomsky email distro. Or it may have been actually a Nome Chomsky book for all I remember. But yeah, like, so I think that it does matter. Like, it does come in the room, like, because people feel the need. You know, I was struck when we had the Some of the Americas in 2015, which was the first one that Cuba participated at.

You know, like, it took, like, the air out of that balloon. And people were giving speeches about how great that was. Like, whereas at the previous sum of the Americas in Columbia, You were there, apart from the fact that there was a Secret Service prostitution scandal. A little scandal. Basically, actually, Obama's press conference at the end of the summit with the president of Columbia was all questions about either Cuba or the Secret Service prostitution. Oh, my God.

It's a beautiful venue. That's all I really remember. So beyond the kind of working level stuff, which is, yeah, it's trade and energy and immigration, what we work on in the hemisphere, like this is your one chance to kind of convey a message about what is the shared agenda. in this region, what kind of political alignment do we have in this region? How do we see big-ticket issues like Ukraine from the perspective of the Western Hemisphere? And yeah, when you have like a distraction, you have people not coming, that obviously undercuts like the primary objective,

which is to kind of send this signal of American U.S. engagement in this hemisphere and shared vision and shared approaches to big issues. Yeah, it sucks to get the Heisman from a lefty president down in Mexico. God, I'll never forget when that Secret Service prostitution scandal broke. I don't know if I've ever told the story on the pod, but I was at a dinner with like eight reporters. And the AP reporter, Julie Pace, I believe, was texting me from across the table being like, hey, we got this tip to our main tip line. What do you know? I'm like trying to figure it out. All of a sudden, it's just me and her just like hammering Blackberry messages back and forth trying to figure this out before the whole thing exploded. And then it made our lives hell for like three

weeks. So it's funny, like, you know, I actually then was on the receiving end of, I think, you telling me that. And I was with Obama at the time. It was some prep session. And, you know, he always complained that summits would get overtaken by some weird distraction, right? So I was like, oh, man, we got another one of these dumb distractions. It's going to, you know, get over his tension. He's like, what is that? I'm like, well, it looks like there's like a secret service prostitution thing. And he's like, yeah, I can see why the press would be interested in that. He did not, like, yeah, he can't really fight that one. He didn't expect the comms people to clean that one out.

Nope, that one is going to get some coverage. Ben, speaking of Latin America, allow me to be on my hobby horse for a second. I did want to flag that it's been about a year, almost exactly a year, since Salvadorian president, Naib Kali announced that Bitcoin would be legal tender in El Salvador. Just a quick update. It has not gone great. About half the population has tried to download the government-created Bitcoin Wall with limited success. Smaller fraction made it work, usually in an effort to try to get the

$30 bonus the government offered them. I guess about 20% of the population uses the wallet today. Something like 80% of large firms or businesses do not yet accept Bitcoin as payment. That said, Buckely recently released photos of himself examining a mock-up of a Bitcoin city made of all gold. The Bitcoin bond that is supposedly going to fund the aforementioned city has not been released yet. And El Salvador's Bitcoin purchases, buying the... the dip, that is, are something like $35 million underwater at this point. So other than that, it's going great. In fairness, it will take a while to adopt a brand new technology or currency. I get it. But what did Matt Damon say that the future belongs to the bull? Well, the bull, Ben.

I just, I underscore this because Buckely is a bad guy who, like, going to the summit was being criticized by human rights groups. And it just tried to be crazy that the Bitcoin industry was willing to, I don't know, hug him for, to. prop up their pet project. Yeah, you don't want that guy to be the face of your, you know, governments embracing Bitcoin. And I do wonder if he's going to take his time in California to, you know, to kind of do a crypto swing.

Oh, totally. You're right. That's probably why he's coming. Like, again, listeners' podcasts know how I feel about the Kiber thing. I will say that though, this is another example. Like, because in the hemisphere, these left-right debates, they play into the negative stereotypes about the United States, right? So to us, it's just like, okay, even if you agree that the Cuba policy is dumb, it seems like

a small issue. But to them, the U.S. picking and choosing who comes to the summit and having this kind of legacy fight with Cuba from the Cold War, it drags up all the ghosts of American imperialism. Yes. And by the way, so. Rightly so. So we're talking about that instead of like El Salvador. And the fact, you know, like this should be an effort to kind of just invite the guy,

But like, you know, spotlight, try to talk to other countries about like maybe it's not the best thing for your countries to be investing in Bitcoin. Or the cool new lefty populist presidents who've been elected. Yeah, yeah, Gabrielle Boreach down in Chile. Lots of interesting changeover in the hemisphere, all of which, as we said, is the left. So there's good things happening. And, you know, look, and their agenda is the right issue set, like I said. I just think that that finding ways to not kind of have own goals on these, these hemispheric and ideological and legacy history issues is, is important in making those issues you do care about, get like the profile you want, you know? So maybe they can make some headway on that this week.

I hope so. Me too. And like, you know, because Latin America doesn't get the attention of merits given how important it is to us directly. Absolutely. It's literally our own hemisphere. Yeah. Another big topic will likely be Russia and Ukraine. So the fighting in eastern Ukraine continues just to be absolutely brutal and defined by this massive,

unrelenting artillery fire. On Sunday, President Zelensky made a visit to the front lines, like actual front lines, life in danger. He met with soldiers and citizens displaced by the fighting. Ukrainian government officials said that more than 40,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed or injured since the invasion and 3 million are now living under Russian occupation. The food crisis we've talked about a bunch is growing. the Russians bombed a major Ukrainian grain terminal, and they continue to blockade Ukrainian ports

to prevent grain exports. That led the president of the European Council to accuse Russia of being solely responsible for the global food crisis at a UN Security Council meeting. The petulant little whiny fuck Russian ambassador then stormed out of the thing like a child. Oh, good, yeah. Yeah, really. Everybody's really sorry to see that guy go. Ukraine says Russia has stolen 500,000 tons of grain from them since the beginning of the invasion.

Ben, last week, we talked about this hesitancy in the Biden White House to send longer-range rocket systems to Ukraine over fears that they could be used to shoot into Russia itself into their territory. I think like a couple hours after we recorded, there were then new reports that the U.S. will go forward with sending those systems but outfitted with shorter-range ammo and that the Ukrainians agreed not to use them to attack across the border. A couple of other things I saw, there was a piece in the Washington Post a few days back citing people around Putin who say he thinks he can just kind of wait out the sanctions. because oil prices will go up. There's another piece. I think also in the post, it suggested China was getting annoyed by all of Russia's asks for support.

It feels like a little bit of wishful thing. Yeah, I never fully believe that. But like, I don't know, it feels like this conversation we're having right now and the one really we had last week is kind of going to be the status quo for a while, like horrific war of attrition in the East, constant effort to hold together diplomatic sanctions

everywhere else. We'll see who wins the race. Yeah, I mean, I guess the things that stand out to me in that picture, you know, I think the decision to kind of get these longer range rockets to the Ukrainians on top of what's been provided is in part informed by some concern, right, that they've been losing incrementally some territory in the east and that the Russian vulnerabilities with kind of these extended crazy supply lines and, you know, very four-deployed, isolated forces that could be attacked by Ukrainians around Kiev, that they don't have to be.

that problem in the East where the front extends back into Russia, essentially. Now, they have a lot of vulnerabilities. They're losing a lot of manpower and a lot of material and morale is in the toilet. But they were making these gains. And so I think that the question is, can these kinds of systems that give the Ukrainians the opportunity to hit the Russians in a way that they haven't been able to yet from a distance putting less of their people risk? We don't talk a lot about how many Ukraine casualties. You know, we talk about civilian casualties, but military casualties have been massive, according to Zelensky. Up to 100 a day or some estimates, too. Yeah, just awful. So I think this is a

rush to see if we can reverse some of that. The Ukrainians will have to learn how to use this stuff, but they've been pretty fast at that. Then the other thing I noticed, right, is Putin in response, you know, he threatened, you know, he's going to hit us and change the front and, you know, Medvedev probably threatened in Newt America or something. But what you did see is you saw them hit Keev, and so the Russians bombed Kiev and they hadn't done that in a while they said that they were hitting some of the supply chains

of stuff flowing to the front but I do think that's another thing to watch is I don't think the Russians are going to like bomb the United States but I think they may try to get much more aggressive in hitting material coming across the border or hitting stuff in Kiev

and saying it's weapons and so that could be the way in which this war continues to be in places beyond just eastern Ukraine. And I keep waiting for the cyber shooter drop here. I know. You know, we must be doing good work. Honestly, shocking. Yeah.

Good for whoever's defending us. If you ask me the biggest surprise I have about this war, it's that there's not a more evident Russian cyber campaign against the United States. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this happened when I was out right before the war started. It is still remarkable to me that. that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin trotted out to do an event together or whatever press conference right before the war started and talked about having a no-limits relationship, like right before Putin invaded.

If I were Xi at this point, I would feel a little set up by that comment. Yeah. Well, I mean, it could be that, you know, I agree with the analysis that the Chinese probably aren't thrilled with how this has gone down. But I also don't think they give shit, you know, like they're not sitting there. They're like, I mean, they care about like some of the global economic shocks and the inconvenience of some of these sanctions. But I think we make a mistake in presuming that that Xi Jinping doesn't fundamentally agree with Putin's idea that you have a sphere of influence and Ukraine's in ours and Taiwan's and yours. And that's that. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of presidential travel, President Biden has officially decided to visit Saudi Arabia.

It's going to go later this month when he's already on the road going to Europe and Israel. Biden during the campaign pledged to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state. But as we know, the war in Ukraine has led to huge spikes in oil prices. And the U.S. is basically hoping and explicitly saying that they want the Saudis to increase supply, drive down prices. So far, OPEC is not really playing ball. They announced a small increase in production in July and August. The U.S. is hoping for more in the fall. But it's not clear that it'll meaningfully bring down prices.

On the positive side of the ledger, Ben, the Saudis have extended a UN-led truce that has led to some peace in the war in Yemen. Hopefully that will turn into some sort of permanency's fire or just cessation of the war. There was a Wall Street Journal report that the Saudis are engaging in serious talks with Israel to increase economic and diplomatic ties. See how long it takes for that to bear fruit. Stepping back, I fully understand and empathize with the bind President Biden is in here. High gas prices are politically devastating. And frankly, he ran as like Joe Biden helping the middle class, right? And high gas prices hurt low income people most.

But beyond just like the moral and ethical concerns about working with the Saudis, my issue still remains that I don't trust them. Like I have no faith that MBS will release more oil. I have no faith that this conveniently timed leak about talks with Israel will amount so much. I think MBS wants Trump back. I think he's going to bank this handshake or whatever win and the, you know, whatever he wants out of this. And then probably tell the Democratic Party to fuck off at the end of the day. I mean, that's my concern here.

Yeah, I hate this. And, you know, I just want to, like, we happen to be talking about issues that I differ with the administration on. I find a lot that they do to be very good. Yeah, especially Ukraine, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. managing Ukraine. Here's what I don't like about it.

And I want to start from the position of understanding why you do these things. But I'm going to start from that position by saying, like, that is what I regret. You know, like I like we in the Obama administration, we talked about this a lot. One of our, if not our biggest mistake was going along with the Saudi war in Yemen, you know, providing logistical support for that, even though it's not something we wanted them to do. and the idea that like engaging them could moderate their behavior and we don't want to have a rupture in this relationship and and all these people lobbying so aggressively from the outside and from Congress at MBS is a reformer and so let's work with him and yeah and by the way a lot of

the people in the Biden administration shared that regret you know and it's a reminder that like what may seem like the necessity at the moment you know we have to do something about these gas prices we just got to resolve this you learn you live to regret that you know and I think when if and when there's a photograph of joe by then shaking hands with mhamman salman in saulman in Saudi Arabia and we'll come back to that in a second like that's not an image that those guys are going to feel good about five years 10 years from now there's a lot to unpack about what's wrong with it I'll try to do this quickly I mean we talked about if you're in a war of democracies versus autocracies globally you're not going to win

with mahon bin salman on on your starting team you know um it just makes us look like hypocrites You know, by the way, like, what would, like you just in front of the whole hemisphere here said you wouldn't invite three countries because they were not democracies. And then you travel to Saudi Arabia the same month, you know, like it makes the U.S. look full of shit to the world. And we've always had hypocrisy, but the Saudi relationship has always been the beating heart of hypocrisy in American foreign policy. So there's that aspect to it. Then there's like, I see a lot of reporting that's like a triumph of real politic over values. the real politic thing presupposes that the Saudis have all these aligned interests with us. Right. And that's sort of the argument I'm trying to make.

Yeah. Okay, put aside your fuzzy-headed human rights concerns. Like, I just don't think they're going to deliver on the things they say they're going to deliver on. Well, and let's go through the rap sheet of they oppose the Iran nuclear agreement, which the Biden administration wants to get back into, right? They've been mucking around in places like Libya and Sudan against America's interest. They've been continuing this war in Yemen. And hopefully, though, there's a breakthrough there.

That's the best thing that could come of this. but these are not people that, like, have, like, share our interests. So the real politique thing, I don't quite get it. The only issues that you can identify are gas prices and Abram Accords on gas prices. Look for the Saudis to make a lot of noise and say a lot of things about increasing production and not to follow through. Right. Like, that's the pattern with them. Never mind that if you care about climate change, the optics of continuing to kind of go to the Gulf and beg people to pump more oil is kind of kind of kind of.

Yeah, and look, and I agree with that, and that's why I have sympathy for Biden because, like, Joe Manchin's ruined all chances of that making that bigger pivot. I've sympathy on that. Then the Abraham Accords, like, let's stop on this for a second. And we've been willing to question that elements of that approach for a while. It is a horrible look. If the Abraham Accords just is like the get out of jail free card for any autocrat in the Middle East to do whatever the fuck they want. That's how that journal story read to me. And I watched Biden give a press conference where he was asked, like, why would you go to Saudi Arabia? And he looked clearly uncomfortable. He said like, I can tell he hates this. He can tell you. He's like, I decided. I haven't decided yet. But then he said, if I went, it wouldn't be because it will be because we're trying to make peace between Israel and the Arabs. And I cringed a bit because you can see why that might work as a justification politically. And, you know, I bet, you know, Saudi Arabia is on its on. on the road to the Abram Accords, whether they're on the express lane or the Sloan lane, we'll see.

But like, Bach Rain and the UAE wouldn't have done the Abram Accords if Saudi didn't sign off on it. So they're already in the Abram Accords, basically. And the journal reported that, you know, young Saudis, especially under 30, actually now want to create diplomatic ties with these rules. I don't know if that's true, but it's interesting. But I think that like, it would be good. The optic, though, is that the Abram Accords can allow you to get away with killing journalists. The Abram Accords can allow you to get away with being autocrats.

Abram Accords can allow you to get away with anything, you know, and that's not locking up women who just want to drive. Yeah, that feeds the cynicism. Like I was just talking about hypocrisy on human rights. Like, why does this, you know, in Biden and describing used the language that we used to, you know, frankly, make fun of that we're trying to end these wars between the Arabs and the Israel. Like, the Saudis are not at war with, so I just don't like it. Even though I, like, we did things like this in the administration. I want to be very clear. Like, it's not like some new thing.

We sold the Saudis a lot of weapons. I just think this is like we keep learning this lesson again and again. And the last thing I'd say is there is a way to calibrate it. Let's say they do think that they have to somehow repair this. And like I said, I don't fully agree with that. But let's say traveling there, like on it's the word like why not like there was a report that we were prepared to shake hands with them at the G20. That's much different than like this optic of like going to him. Yeah, because it's already being reported as kind of, uh, uh,

kissing the ring type thing. And that's what it looks like. You've been, like you go to Saudi Arabia, like the king, or in this case, Crown Prince, like, it's like a, it's a rural court. And you literally are visiting his rural court. And, you know, the optic is, it's not just like a bilateral meeting. It's like you are visiting the royal here, you know. And all the other Arab states will be convened, the Gulf states.

And the optic is like we're going essentially to, what, apologize for, and I know we're not apologizing, but like the optic is essentially, we, we. you're going to the extra mile to make amends in this relationship for the guy who killed this journalist? It's just not good. No, no. You know who would like this trip, though, is Jared Kushner. Yeah. He's having a rough couple weeks, though, bad. Well, yeah, he might actually piggyback. So January 6th hearings turns out Mark Short, Pence's chief of staff, tried to go to Jared to, like, chill things out and try to reduce Trump's rhetoric and attacks on Pence. And Jared told him he was too busy solving Middle East peace, which is just hilarious.

But also, Ben, the House Oversight Committee at long last sent a letter to Jared Kushner seeking information about his $2 billion bribe from the Saudi government. I do not know if or when Jared will respond to this letter, but I do know that it earned Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York. My endorsement in her primary against Jerry Nadler. Because goddamn, it's about time. Someone looked into this. So I say two things here. This is your home turf. Yeah, so like listeners who complain that we agree too much, like I'm an Adler guy.

Really? Did you love it to ask Tish James, the Attorney General of New York, if she was prepared to send peacekeepers to Zabars? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, hilarious, Joe. I don't know, this letter is all it took for me. I'm a cheap date, then. Yeah, no, I just, I love Jerry Nath and I dealt with him a lot on the Iran deal, and he supported

us on that, right? Yeah, I actually have nothing bad to say about Jay-Barrs. So that's why. But no, seriously, like on the issue at hand, I'm really glad she's doing it. And this is like such a glaring example of corruption, you know. And I just think anything you can do. I don't expect a lot of cooperation for Derek Kushner, especially after DOJ has now set a precedent that apparently you can totally ignore congressional subpoenas and not his consequence. But like do whatever you can to get.

And I'm not saying this for political purposes. Like, we need to know. Oh, I'm doing it for both. I'm shamelessly political. Well, I want to do it for that too, but like... I'm a hack, then. We need to know, like, was the entire American farm policy apparatus being run to set up an investment fund? And by the way, what information was exchanged?

Was there sensitive information exchanged? Jared Kushner continues to know very sensitive things from... It's good substance. It's good politics. Also, it just gets reporters to follow the story. And, like, that in and of itself is worth it, I think. I will say that the Times has been pretty good at, like, not letting this thing die. but like cashing out to the tune of $2 billion after you ran all of this part of American

foreign policy as Saudi-friendly as possible for four years, and you might get back in the White House, like, someone should look into it. Yeah. Turning to a different flavor of authoritarian state, let's talk about Poland, because Poland has laws on the books that create essentially a total ban on abortion, that's sort of table stakes in this discussion here. But last week, Poland's Minister of Health signed an ordinance expanding the amount of medical data that can be saved about patients to include pregnancies. So advocates are understandably concerned

that this pregnancy register, as it's been dubbed by critics, could be used to investigate and prosecute women who have miscarriages or who travel abroad for abortions. The government says, no, no, no, don't worry, we're just making these changes in response to like EU recommendations about best practices and data and health care, blah, blah, blah. But I do think it's pretty understandable that Polish women would distrust this current government. and the impact could be that a bunch of them just avoid prenatal care to stay out of the state medical system. So dark stuff and frankly the kind of story that I think kind of hits home as we await Supreme Court's final opinion about abortion rights and kind of ponder like

what states could be like in a post row America. No, I think I think that's entirely the case because if you look at a poll end, what you see is the kind of logical endpoint where abortion, anti-abortion absolutism leads, right? Right-wing Christian nationalism. Yeah, there's been this kind of methodical effort in Poland to first dismantle the right and then to restrict the access and then to punish for it. And it mirrors what we're seeing in certain American states. So it absolutely is the case.

And it bucks the trend, as we've said, where more countries are actually moving the direction of abortion rights. I think the other thing it reminds us of awkwardly is that in the context of the Ukraine war, Poland has emerged as this heroic ally. They're taking in all these Ukrainian refugees. They're on the front lines. They're supporting morally and financially and weapons to the Ukrainians. And it's kind of let, you know, like, you know, understandably, all the Western leaders go to Poland because that's where the refugees are and the front line is. And it's kind of obscured the fact that this Polish government has got some creepy, far right nationalist characteristic.

The one thing I will say underneath that hood, though, what's been interesting is that the Polish government is broken in a big way from Orban. They used to be this kind of alliance of right-wing nationalists on support for Russia. So there's been like this trash talk back and forth. So at least if there's any civil aligning, it's like this kind of fracturing of some of the sense of a far-right block. But yeah, not a good story for the women or people of Poland. Yeah, when feeling like you're next on the invasion list hits home like this for Poland, I imagine it'll help them. break away from Orban and Putin and anybody else. Exactly.

That, you know, the, the Orban, I mean, you know, it is interesting how much like Orban has emerged as like the true outlier on this stuff. True, true, true. Let's turn to the UK, Ben, because confidence in British. It's low. Because confidence in British prime minister board Johnson, it's waning. So on Monday, 148 conservative MPs voted to give Bojo the boot and a no confidence vote, while 211 111. said he could stay at issue, obviously, was his addiction to partying during the pandemic, his brazen lying about it. Johnson's team tried to claim victory after the vote. Johnson himself

called it extremely good, positive, conclusive, decisive result that allows him to move on. Focus on delivering things for people. Technically speaking, he can't face another no-confidence vote for a year, but I think that rule could be tweaked. Regardless, lots of smart people think this is the beginning of the end for Boris Johnson. That's what happened to former prime minister's Theresa May, John Major, Margaret Thatcher. They won no confidence votes, but just being challenged, started the clock on their political demise. Ben, Boris and his wife also got booed while walking into a Thanksgiving service for the Queen during the Platinum Jubilee Festival. More on that later. He does not seem to be anything close to firm political ground, but I don't know. Do you care

to make any predictions about this shape-shifting creeps future. He is a survivor. I mean, first of all, like, he scored less on the confidence-building vote than those other people. Yeah, than Theresa May. Yeah, than Teresa May did or John Major did. And so that's like, that's a telling sign that his days could be numbered as David Lammy, friend of the pod tweeted, that he's a dead man walking. I love the kids.

That's intense language, yeah. We say lame duckers. I was like, yeah, like, sometimes you think we have strident language. I kind of like that from Miami. But, I mean, the flip side of that is like, you know, Boris Johnson, like, I just, I don't seem resigning. Like, he doesn't seem like the resigning type, you know? No.

He seems like the hang around. Like, Teresa May was the kind of person who, like, takes the lay land and leaves. I think the thing to watch, if people want to watch anything as an additional indicator here is that they have these periodic kind of local elections or constituency elections in the UK. if the conservative party continues to get their ass handed to them, that might be the thing that tips him over. And they just are like, you've got to go.

He's not some visionary impulsies. He's just a popular guy who wins elections. Yeah. And so if the ship continues to be sinking with him at the helm, then maybe like someone gives him the final shove overboard. But, I mean, he'll try to stick it out. I think that the challenge now for labor and for Kier-Starmor is to spend the time between now and the next general election,

okay, we know what our message is against these guys. Like, you know, you got to close the deal with enough of the British people to win that election and win it, hopefully, knock on wood, you know, convincingly. Yeah, come on, guys. Let's win this thing. You're running against the end of the end. Yeah, look what we got in Canada. Look what we got in New Zealand, Australia.

Let's get, let's go. Let's go. A couple more things before we get to our interview with Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. So, interesting news out of China on Monday, Ben. The Chinese government announced the. end of a year-long investigation into D-D-D-D-Di-D Global, I don't know how you say it, basically the Uber of China and a couple of their tech companies. We talked a while back now, like a couple of years ago, about how President Xi suddenly decided to crack down on tech leaders like

the Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, who I guess had just, I don't know, spoke out too much, amassed too much power, whatever. Lots of smart analysts think that this investigation was concluded by the Chinese government because there's all these economic headwinds facing Xi from COVID, from Ukraine from slowdowns in the tech sector based on them hammering these guys. And it just became a little too much. That in turn led to speculation that maybe she is losing his grip on power. With the caveat that I think if she were to be losing his grip on power, we in America, probably like the last ones to know, is there even a process or a mechanism for him to get pushed out other than a coup? I'm just like trying to understand where this speculation is even

really coming from. Not really. I mean, he's he's trying. to kind of utilize the organs of the party and including upcoming, you know, party conferences to kind of make himself the permanent, you know, supreme leader of China. And so there could be bureaucratic, you know, and party machinations there. I think more likely is this isn't like a sign that he's literally in danger of losing power. But it is a sign that this kind of trajectory of Xi Jinping consolidating power. might have reached some kind of limit, you know, because all of the momentum since Xi Jinping took over has been towards him taking more power. And the tech sector was a big piece of that.

It was like, you know what, I don't like that these tech companies have a bit of independent power and wealth. Yeah, or data or. And data, right, they have, they have the, you know, the Chinese are smart, unlike us, they know the tech companies at the power of nation states. And so they, they started putting Chinese Communist Party people on the board, and then they started pressuring them to kind of only be listed in China. And what they proved in the early stages of that kind of takeover or micromanagement, if you will, their tech sector, was that they were willing to lose a lot of evaluation of those companies to take control of them. Now, because of a range

of factors, including their insane zero COVID strategy and other economic vulnerabilities, they can't do, they can't prioritize that anymore. And so I do think it's a sign that like, you know, sometimes the iron grip has to loosen a little bit, right? And that doesn't mean he's going to lose power, but it doesn't mean that like the laws of gravity do apply. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of the iron grip,

so June 4th was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre that, if you folks don't know, was an incident in 1989 when the Chinese military just massacred hundreds of students with machine guns and tanks and horrible. Since that time, so the Chinese government is basically wiped the incident off the map, erased it from history. One amazing recent example I saw

of this censorship was written up in the Wall Street Journal. So there was an online influencer named the Lipstick King. He was promoting a brand of ice cream on a live stream last week, I think on June 4th. I guess he assembled the ice cream

and then some cookies into a shape that looked like a tank and then all of a sudden, the stream gets cut. So no idea if it was an accident. This was on purpose. A lot of young people in China literally don't know.

have yet Tiananmen Square and couldn't have alluded to it. But I do think it shows like just how powerful Chinese censorship is. Fucking ice cream ad. Gone. Yeah. No, I, you know, for my book, four after the fall out in paperback, I talked to a number of, I talked to someone who was at Tiananmen and was kind of a student activist there. But then I talked to a bunch of younger people who told me that they didn't know about Tiananmen Square until they left.

Like these are people who left the country, right? one in particular I quote and book, like that you could grow up, be educated, be well off, be online, and literally have no idea that that happened in 1989.

Not believe a different version of it. You're not believe that they were writers. Like literally, it's just erased. And it started with like, keywords don't lead to certain things. And then it led to just like literally pulling down any content. I even heard of efforts that,

they were trying to buy up some of the, like, photo catalog of the Tankman photographs. Like, you know, just so that they wouldn't even be available, like, at other places, it would be harder to get, you know, something like that. This is the lengths that they've gone to. Now what they've done is there used to be Tiananmen vigils in Hong Kong. Right. And now they, like, they've obviously outlawed that since they've erased any real legal divide with Hong Kong. And then I saw a bunch of the consulates in Hong Kong, like, tweeted.

like commemorations and they were like pulling down that those tweets like it's just it's like 1984 level stuff yeah big time um and by the way tannman square fascinating if people want to read like there's some it's it's it's a it's a great subject to dig into it's because it's a it's a what if that had gone oh absolutely absolutely um ben my boston celtics coach i may udoku uh in the toronto raptor's gm we're making some news you mentioned you flagged this article they're calling out the nigerian for withdrawing its basketball teams from international competition and potentially the Olympics. Udoka played for the Nigerian national team back in the day. He coaches the Celtics now.

The broader issue I get to play here is like a leadership struggle at the top of the Nigerian Basketball Federation. I don't know a ton about this, but Udoca is the man. And I want any excuse to talk about the Celtics as we hopefully destroy Steve Kerr's warriors in the finals. Yeah, I mean, look, there's actually an interesting backdrop to this is it. basketball's been growing a lot on the African continent in terms of, you know, the number of players that have come to the NBA.

And the NBA is launched in NBA Africa League. And these basketball federations, these national basketball federations are pretty central to, like, the pipeline into the NBA or the development of African basketball leagues and professional basketball. And both Musa, Jiri, the Raptors GM, and your Boston Celtics coach are Nigerian and have also been involved in this effort to kind of like. like globalized the game of basketball. And this just shows you like, I couldn't even really figure out what the issue was.

But yeah, like they're two different. They elected two presidents and they're fighting out. It just shows you like basic kind of corruption of like sports. Yeah. Like that's what it feels like to me. Like they, you guys can't get your shit together over like who runs this federation, which probably means like who's on the take from who such that like you're going to

disadvantage your players. And that's why it was cool to see them speaking up. Because the people getting screwed in this are the Nigerian players who want to play at the Olympics and want to play international competitions. And they spoke out at a time when people are really paying attention. Yeah. So, you know, kudos to them. Like, that was cool. She also note that there was this just awful, I assume it was a terrorist attack at a church in the Nigerian town of Owo.

They killed dozens of people. No one has claimed responsibility yet, but just truly awful. And normally a region that I think is not dealt with like a bunch of Boko Haram attacks. Yeah, no, that's what was, you know, To see that kind of violence, not, I mean, you don't like see it anywhere. But this is beyond where Boko Haram has kind of been, you know, menace in the past. So, yeah, that bears watching too. Yeah, for sure.

A couple more things. One, please start drafting your apology note to Marjorie Taylor Green because the Israeli government has built a laser gun that can shoot stuff out of the sky. Just kidding, MTC is an idiot. Please mock all you want. So the system is called the Iron Beam Ben, which is a nod to the U.S. iron dome short range missile defense system. The iron beam shoots super targeted laser beams at projectiles in the sky until they burn or burst.

It's a lot more cost effective than shooting super expensive missiles or rockets to knock down these projectiles. It feels very Ronald Reagan Star Wars to me, but they tested it. Apparently it works. So I don't know. Lasers, I guess. I mean, we know they won't share it with Ukraine. But I guess like what it does show is it like, and to be serious, like the

one of that it is serious, they're not sharing their equipment with Ukraine. But it's important for Israel, obviously, given the threat it's faced from rockets to invest in these technologies. And it shows you where this is migrating. You know, like this is the next generation of what once was like Patriot batteries is now like lasers, I guess. Yeah. Warfare is entering the 22nd century. Scary stuff. Scary stuff.

Finally, Ben, the platinum jubilee celebrations honoring Queen Elizabeth. the second are over. It got a little weird. Yeah. Videos of the queen having tea with Paddington Bear. They were drumming spoons to the tune of,

We Will Rock You by Queen, of course. People cheered for a horse-drawn carriage with a hologram of the queen in it at a parade. There were corgis. There was a controversy about Printeri and Megan Markle showing up. There were viral videos of like the royal kids

kind of acting like brats. The youngest one there. I mean, not to single out the... Yeah. Lewis. I don't know. Anyway, final thoughts. I think on the last show, you were like,

the more watch this, the weirder it gets. And I was like, every time I turn it down, I'm like, what is going on? The deeper we go, the weirder got. It was like a Tupac hologram of the queen and a carriage. Yeah, it's like when Wolf Blitzer was doing the hologram thing. Oh my God. The Paddington thing was cool.

She's a sense of humor, it seems. I like Paginton Bear. If she's doing that, she's game. Obviously, the big story is that she didn't show up in most things. She was there at the very beginning and the very end. I guess, like, beyond just the fun of the funny. fundamental weirdness of it all. And yeah, like the kind of, you know, the formal, complete, like, separation of Harry and Megan. Because, like, you saw them out all in the balcony,

like, Charles and Candelow. And, like, they're just, they're not there, right? Yeah, it's weird. The thing that I struck me is, like, when she didn't go to those events, like, the spotlight was shifting to, like, Charles and William, and I was kind of thinking, like, not sure. I like William, but I'm just not sure if they're going to have the same particularly Charles is going to have the same unifying I don't know if they're going to be doing the hologram

when he's king. Well I mean a lot of people like the queen. That's what I'm saying like the royal family. Yeah that's kind of what I was gently alluded to is like will they be will this institution have the same support that it has now when it's led by Charles like it's an interesting question. It might be tough. It might be tough. Okay we're going to

take a quick break and we come back. You will hear our interview with Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. We are so thrilled to welcome to the show, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Welcome to Los Angeles. Thanks. It's great to be here. You're here to pitch a show to HBO Max. Is that right? How's it going? Yeah, no, that's what everyone comes to L.A. for. No, I'm here for, obviously, the Summit of the Americas. Got it. And Netflix, too. Ben, fire away.

Yeah, I wanted to start with the Summit of the Americas. And I should say it's great to see you. We were just talking first met at a summit when I was working in government. now I have a podcast and you're still the prime minister, so different life directions for us. But one of the things I've noticed, and we talked about in the podcast, is this movement to the left across the hemisphere. If you look at elections in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile, you've seen progressive leaders, leftist leaders, younger leaders like Gabriel Borich, who I know you recently met with, get elected, which is a pretty big shift.

and I'm wondering what opportunities does that create for a different kind of agenda in the Americas around issues like inequality and climate change? And when you meet with someone like a boriche, a younger progressive leader, what have you learned that you can kind of transmit about the difficulty of meeting expectations of progressive change versus the reality? Because I've seen he's already running into some trouble in Chile. So how does this change the conversation around this summit? and in the hemisphere? Well, first of all, it's a good thing that there are more progressive, you know, open, leftist leaders getting elected around the world. And every country is a little bit different, but these are voices that really matter. And the one thing I talked about a lot with Gabriel and I sat down with him a few days ago, first of all, was, you know, for all the standing up

for rights and including the most vulnerable and, you know, moving forward on women's rights and and LGBT and doing all those right things, you have to stay focused on the inclusive economic growth. That if you're doing all sorts of great progressive things, but you're not making sure people are putting food on the table, feel better about the direction of the economy, the direction of their inclusion in economic growth, then it's easy for people to be turned away because they have to be reassured that the plan you have is going to work. And the advantage is that progressives are right.

You only build a strong economy if everyone gets to fulfill their potential. If everyone gets included, if everyone can contribute. And that's where the things that we were focused on in Canada from the beginning and the things that he needs to focus on and things that all of us need to focus on are those things that actually matter. Because when you're getting elected as a progressive, you're reaching out to thoughtful people who have a lot of things going in their life. who don't live and die by politics, who aren't going out there marching in the streets, although sometimes when you have to get rid of a particular right wing, you need to. But mostly these are people who are focused on their families, on their jobs, on their career,

on the idea of fighting climate change, but not the minutia of what government is doing. Whereas when you get over to either the far left or the far right fringe, there's a lot of political motivation to get involved. And what progressives have to do a good job of it is meeting people where they are. are in their lives, in their daily lives, and talking to them on that level. And that's why we move forward on things like childcare most recently, but family benefits. We lowered taxes on the middle class. We raised them on the wealthiest 1%.

Things that actually make a tangible difference, even for the people who aren't watching politics and feeling good about their team getting elected or not. Yeah. One of the challenges that we dealt with in the Obama years in getting that conversation focused on things that matter in people's lives, particularly from a progressive perspective, is so much of the politics in the hemisphere can be trapped in really old ideological debates. And nothing manifests that more than the kind of U.S.-Cuba rivalry competition conflict in the hemisphere of the years. And obviously this summit, like some past summits of the Americas, has a bit of a cloud of Cuba not being invited,

and then therefore some leaders aren't coming, including the leader of Mexico. How do you, you know, Canada is in this place where you're very close to the United States, but, you know, you have what I would call a rational Cuba policy. What do you think of the decision to kind of return to a place of not including a Cuba at this summit after, you know, obviously in the later Obama years we did? And how do you more broadly move past pretty stale left-right divides in this hemisphere to get to the issues that actually matter in people's lives? I mean, first of all, to be very clear, we continue to stand up strongly on pushing for more human rights in Cuba, more democracy in Cuba. We were one of the leaders in the Lima group on Venezuela and condemning Maduro's murderous illegitimate regime there. So we're not that far off from a lot of people's concerns. But our approach, particularly here at the summit, is going to be to meet with and engage with as many people as possible and really try and move forward.

beyond those ideological divisions to, you know, how do we actually make life better for people? How do we actually make sure we're responding to the challenges of, of, you know, fighting for people's rights, defending their opportunities, and bringing them along in the fight against climate change, in the fight against income inequality, in the fight against all the things that we need to do in positive, tangible ways? Shifting years a little bit. I mean, as you know, the United States is dealing with this horrible epidemic of gun violence in mass. shootings recently in schools. You recently announced some new gun safety legislation, including a buyback program for semi-automatic weapons and restrictions on handgun sales, noting, quote,

we need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter. That was accurate, but hard to read as an American and, you know, it's a little depressing. So two-part question, does the lack of gun control in the U.S. make your job harder? Is it a security threat to Canadian? because weapons are getting trafficked across the border. And two, I mean, obviously the U.S. and Canada, we have very different political systems. We have a different constitution. But any lessons that you might have for demoralized Americans about how to actually get something done?

You know, a couple of things. First of all, over the past, you know, a couple of weeks, including on your show last week, there's a sense that Canada responded to the shooting in Texas by suddenly turning around and banning guns. But lovely if it were true, but we've been working on this for seven years. You know, when I was 17 a long time ago, more than 25 years ago, we had the terrible mass shooting of 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique, which was a few blocks from my high school at that point. And that's where we set on a path where we needed to do it. Now we had lots of setbacks, conservative governments that loosened gun control. But since we had elected seven years ago, we've been steadily.

working on strengthening gun control to a conservative party that is pushing back on us for everything we do. So we have the same kind of dynamic in Canada. It's just we've been able to actually advance. And two years ago, we banned all military style assault weapons. So AR-15s, the Ruger Mini 14 that was used in Polytechnic all those years ago, and a number of guns. And that's, we can keep adding to that list of banned assault weapons. And just a few weeks ago, and we've been preparing this legislation for months, we move forward on a total freeze on handguns. So when this legislation passes, and it will pass, I mean, the conservatives are pushing back hard. They filibustered to prevent us from, you used methods to prevent us from debating it last week

as we were supposed to. But we will, we have the votes. We will eventually get it passed, hopefully sooner rather than later. And then it'll be illegal to buy, sell, transfer, import, handguns anywhere in the country. We're basically. freezing the market and you know that will make a big difference but to go to the second part of your question one of the big challenges we have is illegal guns flowing across the border from the US into Canada and our proximity to the US and the gun numbers here has always meant that we have more guns than then perhaps another equivalent country would in Canada so we've been really cracking down on

the border last year we seized more than twice the amount of the previous year of illegal guns smuggled across the border. And there's lots more to do. And there are debates. And we have a culture where the difference is guns can be used for hunting or for sport shooting in Canada. And there's lots of gun owners and they're mostly laws respecting and law abiding. But you can't use a gun for self-protection in Canada.

That's not a right that you have in the Constitution or anywhere else. If you try and buy a gun and say it's for self-protection, no, you don't get that. get it for hunting. You can get it for sports shooting. You can take it to the range. No problem, as long as you go through our rigorous background checks. But there's a difference around the culture. One of the things that we're seeing with the debate in the states is you get more and more of the American style, you know, right to carry self-defense arguments filtering up through the usual more right-wing communications channels. Yeah. I just want to flag that the prime minister is aware of what we talked about last week on the podcast. I may or may not have

actually listened to it last week. I'm going to assume that it's a weekly thing for you. I knew more about BTS now than I did before, so there you go. You got to be on the right side of BTS. I am definitely going to be a real talk with them. There are people who are mad at us for joke love and made three years ago. They're terrifying. Anyway, pivot to serious voice.

So the other thing, we're watching closely this week in the U.S. aside from the gun debate is Congress is holding hearings about the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. I read some articles from the time that you were watching the events that day in real time. I assume you were as horrified as. we were. One of the goals of the Summit of the Americas is to strengthen democracies in the region. How worried were you about the state of democracy in the United States that day? And how worried are you about the future of the U.S. democracy if we don't get our act together? I think it's a larger question than just a U.S., although the U.S. is obviously a key concern

for all of us as one of the most important places for democracy in the world. We're seeing a backsliding of democracy everywhere around the world. And it has a lot to do with all sorts of different things, you know, anxieties around the pace at which the world is changing and people are looking towards easy answers or strongmen leaders that are sort of reassuring. And democracy is hard. And it requires, it requires work. It requires tending. It requires deliberate efforts to not just, you know, believe simplistic answers, either from the left or the right, but know that you have to, actually work at it and plug away and be almost earnest in how you lead things. And that idea of responsible leadership contrasts directly with some of the simplistic button pushing that happens out there in accelerated and enhanced by social media tools.

But the challenge has been there a long while. When I got elected in 2015, so seven years ago, one of the things that we put forward, and I remember saying this a whole bunch of times, attack politics, divisive politics, negative, stirring up of hate and fear and differences. The dirty secret is they work. Even back in 2015, they work to get you elected. You can do that, you can mobilize and get elected. It's just what we're seeing is that once you've used those methods to get elected, it becomes incredibly hard to govern responsibly for all citizens in bringing people together.

and getting big things done because once you start, you know, churning up anger, it just, it just feeds on itself. And if you're not continually throwing fresh raw meat at it, it will get away from you entirely. And that's where we're seeing in Canada a certain number of, you know, people who stirred up that starting to have it sort of turn back against them a little bit. I want to pull this right a little bit with you. And, you know, in getting ready for this, I was thinking about like a meeting that President Obama had with you in 2016 after the Trump election. It was in Peru.

Yeah, yeah, we're there. You remember. And he said to you, and you were about a year in, you know, hey, look, even though Canada, you know, the Canadian role in the world. world stage is not the American role in the world stage. Given the absence of small D democratic leadership and people who support kind of progressive or inclusive values that he was hoping that you would speak up more on those things. He told me to hold the mountain. He told you to hold the high ground, right? And easy task. And that was, yeah, hold the high ground. He said the same thing to Merkel on that trip. And in many ways, like people like you have, and we've seen some.

incremental progress in some elections, but as you say, the overall picture continues to feel like it's moving in the wrong direction. Even when there are elections that move in ways that I think are the right way, like here in the U.S., it feels like democracy itself is still in worse health. And so drawing on the now seven years you've had, you've been on the high ground trying to hold it and seeing literally the mob try to climb up the high ground with pitchforks, what what what is how do we deal with this and I'm going to give you just two different potential hypotheses like one is that different people just need to win elections in as many places as possible right that that and that maybe there's an argument that there needs to be greater

connectivity and solidarity among people who value democracy in different countries supporting each other in the same way that the far right does and that's kind of an electoral approach of just democracy delivers, win elections. Then the other is deep structural problems that facilitate this. You mentioned social media platforms that are kind of unregulated that allow for the, you know, mass scaling up of conspiracy theory and hate. You could talk about all manner of other threats to democracy, corruption, money and politics. The Murdoch family. The Murdoch family. Like what is, how do we reverse this tide, not just in a single election? Is this a matter of political coordination? is it a matter of structural reform?

It's a small question, but I mean, we might as well try to get into it. I think I'd go back to the root of what democracy is. Democracy is about people choosing the leadership and the future they want. And, you know, you can put forward some of the best possible candidates for election or build all the right structures around it. If people themselves don't ask for and demand, responsible leadership, they're not going to get it. And that's, that's, and that problem has, yes, it has manifested itself in a lot of angry,

right-wing, you know, misinformation and disinformation online. But it also comes through in, you know, cynicism of otherwise thoughtful, positive people who, who get wrapped up in, okay, it's got to be fixed overnight. I mean, like, a lot of young people who supported me in 2015, and said, you've got to do more on working with indigenous people. You've got to do more on fighting climate change. You've got to do more on gender equality and fighting racism than this country has ever done. And over the next four years, we did that.

We did more on all those things than any Canadian government had ever done. And there's always more to do on those things. And people said, yeah, you didn't really do enough. And, you know, they looked for other alternatives. So at one point when, and we had a moment. much reduced presence in government at that point, or we lost our majority, went to a minority. And that's fine. That's the way politics has to work.

But when people are making the perfect, the enemy of the good, when people realize that hard things are hard and you actually have to plug away at it over a longer period of time than perhaps we're trained in our daily lives to be able to expect, making generational change, might actually take a generation, not just one election, that expectation that things have to happen really quickly is really hard. And that's where, to get back to one of my first points, making sure that whatever stripe of government you are, you are actually delivering on the things that matter most to people,

like steady economic growth, good jobs. Through the pandemic, we made decisions that massively invested in small businesses and families. and we've now bounced back to 115% of the jobs that we lost in February of 2020 back, and the U.S. is only at 95%. And like we actually have really leaned in to try and support people through it because that's where people are going to sit. Right now, inflation is the biggest challenge. And yes, intellectually, people will say, yes, we need more gender equality.

We need better fight against climate change. But as we're seeing with gas prices right now, as soon as inflation or gas prices go high, people are like, oh, no, no, we need more oil and gas. Oh, I thought you were an environmentalist. Yeah, but I'm paying huge. I can't afford to fill my tank anymore. Because, yes, but we got to get beyond that. So you have to bring people along where they are.

That's why our answer to inflation, for example, is what we fought on in the last election, which was $10 a day childcare right across the country. And that's one of those things that we actually are delivering right now that means, yes, better opportunities for kids, lower costs for families, but mostly we're bringing more women into the workforce. We're making sure that people actually have choices between kids and not have to make a choice between kids and careers. And that kind of policy, which yes, is a progressive policy to make sure you're making a child care affordable.

And conservatives voted, fought against us in that election. But it's actually fundamentally economic policy. And the more you can tie progressive policies to things that actually matter in people's daily lives, the more you bring them back into a reasonable place in democracy. So it's not just about the right leader. It's about creating a culture again where people understand these countries that we love so much, they didn't happen by accident and they don't continue without effort, deliberate, sustained effort to say, no, we are going to,

make the tough choices and make it better and be patient as we make it better in a steady way. So I definitely hear that around accepting victory, not making the perfect enemy of the good, and having a politics that can succeed within a democracy. Climate change is an issue that enters into this, right? Because to save democracy and to not have the cynicism you talk about, you need young people to care about politics and to think the politics can, to outcomes that they care about. And climate change is increasingly like a number one issue for younger voters. And I think we all see a reality in which, you know, we're not doing enough to

deal with climate change. Governments, corporations, you know, everybody needs to be doing more to meet this threat. And yet, as you say, you know, there's always usually an electoral reason or a kind of structural reason why there's a ceiling on what can be done, right? You know, high gas prices become a higher priority. There's, you know, there's a big fossil fuel industry here. There's a big fossil fuel industry in Western Canada. What do you say to a young person who's like, that's all well and good, but like if we don't do more now on this in 20 years, like my future may be lost, you know? First of all, that's absolutely true. We do need to do more. We need to act. But again, we need to bring people along with us. Because, and that was the big challenge always,

around, you know, Canada has known, and the Liberal Party, my party in Canada, has always known that putting a price on pollution, as all the economists say, is the best way to do things. And there were a couple of different attempts that really didn't work, that weren't electorally palatable. And then we brought in a measure that actually puts a really strong and ever-rising price on pollution to send that signal to businesses and producers that they have to upgrade and reduce their reduce their carbon emissions in a predictable way over the next 10 years. But we actually are returning more money from the carbon price directly to 8 out of 10 average Canadian families.

So it was a way of doing it, but actually not like many countries do, putting it into, you know, investments in renewables or this. We did a huge amounts of investments in renewables. But we just needed to put that price signal in for businesses. and actually return money to consumers. So if consumers don't change their behaviors, they do better. If they do change their behaviors and upgrade their furnace or whatever, they actually get more money back at the end of the year.

So this shift was actually what allowed us to do something unthinkable in electoral politics around the world. We won two elections on a price on pollution that was that the conservatives continue to fight against. And quite frankly, we're dealing with them, you know, saying right now with high gas prices, you need to slash gas price, you need to take away. the price on pollution. I say, you know what? Yes, we have to be there to support families, which we are, but it means we actually have to move faster to get beyond our alliance on fossil fuels, particularly given Russia and the tensions that we're seeing geopolitically with rising gas prices

and the challenges of depending on parts of the world that don't share our values. Speaking of Russia, and frankly, this global fight for democracy that we've been talking about, I mean, back in May, I know you went to Ukraine. Can you just tell us a little bit about what you saw? And then it seems clear that Putin's play here is to bomb, you know, eastern Ukraine all day, every day for as long as he possibly can until they relent and basically weighed out Western sanctions. And I ask my question is, what argument do you think you can make to Canadians to keep them committed to the cause in, say, six months if gas prices are up, if food prices are up, and this is really hurting them personally? That's a question that a lot of countries are facing right now in Europe, even in the U.S. Canada's not facing it.

And one of the big reasons is we have the second largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world. In the early 20th century, a wave of Ukrainian immigrants came and basically settled our prairie provinces. And therefore, there is a deep connection. And Canada, of all the top economies in the world, all the G7, of all the G-20s, of all the G-20, we are the ones there who are most unequivocally in support of Ukraine. And it's a very useful position to have around the table. And everyone knows whether it's all our allies. They know, you know, Canada, Canada is totally pro-Ukraine.

And my relationship with Zelensky, who obviously I got to see when I went there just a number of weeks ago, is based on that trust. That he knows, like, there's differences of perspective in some European countries to say, oh, you know, we have to be careful about how the end game plays out. And that's totally legitimate. But the fact that I get to be around that table as well in all those discussions and say yes, but nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. You can't create some sort of deal to end this without bringing Ukraine in as part of it because they have suffered. They have fought. They are dying for it. And they are angry as hell. But they get to have a say in how this resolves. And all that together, I mean, the one thing that I am incredibly confident about is Russia's not going to be able to outweigh the sanctions.

We have put in these sanctions internationally and we are going to hold them for as long as it takes. And it's not just about support for Ukraine. It's about realizing that here is finally a moment where democracies have decided that the line is there. And Russia crossed that line and we either stand up and fight for democracy. democracies and stand for it and push back really hard, even if it's, or especially if it's at cost to ourselves, because we have to be able to follow up on the conviction that we have, that democracies matter, that the rules-based order matters, that the UN Charter matters. And that's where collectively we know, as hard as it is, we need to stay absolutely steadfast

on sanctions and they will stay in place for years, if necessary. And on the Russia bombing in the Dombas, the most interesting thing about it is before the war, before Russia's invasion, if you would talk to citizens of Kharkiv or Mariupol, they would have said, oh, yeah, no, we feel as much Russian as we do Ukrainian because it's much, much more. Language culture. Exactly. Now, like, even those most pro-Russian in the past are like, oh, my God, we are such proud Ukrainians. even though I can't speak Ukrainian, but I am a proud Ukrainian. It is totally backfired in terms of that. So no matter how he reduces it to rubble,

which he's in the process of doing right now, which he needs to be held accountable at the international criminal court and everything when this is all said and done, he will never be able to win over Ukraine the way I think his first thought was. And at the same time, the fact that one of his justifications was, oh, no, there's too much NATO on our borders. we need to push back.

The fact that he has so failed abjectly because Finland and Sweden are now joining NATO really shows just how much he totally miscalculated, misunderstood both the strength of Ukrainians, but also the strength and ability and resolve of democracies to stand up for themselves. So when I was in Ukraine a few weeks ago, I saw people who were exhausted,

who were tired and worried about all of their friends, family members who are on the front, their brothers, their husbands, their family that are, you know, fighting and dying. But grimly resolved to see this through because the nightmare scenario for them is there is some sort of peace agreement now. And then three years ago, three years from now, Russia decides to, you know, finish the job that it wasn't able to finish then. And the world will be distracted with something else. Or you're living in the next version of Bucha under Russian command. So we're running at time here. We just wanted to get one last sort of question to you about Canadian exports.

One of your greatest exports is comedians. Will Arnett, Sam B, Dan Aykroy, Jim Carrey, Seth Rogen, Catherine O'Hara, John Candy, Norm MacDonald, Lizzie, Mike Myers, Robin, Bill, McIlder. Of course. I mean. Norm's brother is one of our great CBC reporter, Canadian Broadcasting Coving Reporter. So I could have listed a dozen more. Do you have a favorite? We need some clickbait.

And more broadly, what is so damn funny up there? I think Canadians are, you know, very naturally self-deprecating. I mean, we live beside a country filled with, you know, amazing, you know, patriots who thumped their chests all the time. And Canadians have learned a certain level of self-deprecation that I think, you know, these days you see extraordinarily well embodied by someone like a Ryan Reynolds, for example, who is got just a brilliant sense of human. that is very, very Canadian, but translates, you know, very well to Americans. And when he points out that his American gin is now proudly owned by a Canadian, you know, we all cheer a little bit. And there's, you know, there's something there. I mean, if you look like that, you can say literally anything and people think it's funny,

though. That is his advantage. I mean, Seth Rogen also, what's interesting is you guys pursued what I find to be very rational marijuana legalization policies. And now, coincidentally, Seth Rogen's here in California has followed Canada's... So, you know, Seth Rogen has exported more than... He's an entrepreneur. You know, yeah. Well, we, on marijuana policy and drug policy in general, we follow the science.

We follow the facts. We follow the expertise. You're not Seth Rogen. And, well, yeah, there are different perceptions on that. But, you know, we just move forward on a careful project that is decriminalizing harder drugs and opioids because of the opioid epidemic in British Columbia, where we're creating wraparound, you know, justice system. and mostly healthcare services and frontline services, to try and go at that problem as a health problem,

not a justice or criminal problem. But that requires a level of not ideology, but a trust in science and a use in research and experts to make policy as opposed to gut instinct. I think we need a little more of that in politics in general. God, I hope we can look at your data and steal that approach because there is... We're happy to share.

We're Canadian after all. I did detect it not directly. Ryan Reynolds there, though. Yeah, yeah, I feel like we... Ryan is probably number one. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you for everything you're doing to, you know, hold up the liberal... Code the high ground.

I'm glad that we're steadily seeing reinforcements. And quite frankly, the work that you guys are doing here is really, really important in getting people to think carefully about how as individuals being better informed, being thoughtful about how we contribute every day to shaping the world. matters. So thank you for everything you guys are doing. We just hired Jared Kushner to open a Middle East Bureau for us, too, so we're trying to expand. I told you I wouldn't comment on any other questions. Thank you again. Appreciate it.

Thanks again to Prime Minister Trudeau for joining the show. Yeah, and thanks for coming to the cricket. Can't believe that guy agreed to talk to us. You know, I mean, like, we have a bunch of Canadian world of us. We had a first minister. Yeah. Scotland. We had Obama. We had a, yeah, we had a prime minister of Estonia. That's right. That's right.

We like Canada. I like Moulson's. Maybe the queen will join. Labots, you ever drink Labots? I had a Canadian beer two weekends ago called Moose. That was very good. My dad used to drink Moosehead. You know, I think it was different, but I've heard of Moosehead.

Yeah, yeah. This is just straight up Moose. I have a Canadian friend. We actually call Moose. Very Canadian. Like what else? So like hockey. Yeah, gradsky.

There used to be a putteen truck downstairs. I'd eat that sometimes. Incredible. And I didn't deliver very good content after. I was going to say nap for an hour and a half. Okay, see you guys next week. See it. Pazzi of the World is a crooked media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seguin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, B.B. Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth, who upload our episodes as videos at YouTube.com

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