Pod Save the World - Lindsey Graham’s Russian Arrest Warrant

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about an anti-LGBTQ law in Uganda, violent protests in Kosovo and more reports on Trump’s handling of classified documents. They also discuss US-China relations, Elon Musk’s visit to China, heavy attacks in Kyiv, drone strikes in Moscow, Russia’s arrest warrant for Lindsey Graham, a new law in Poland cracking down on Russian political interference and Brazilian President Lula Da Silva’s relationship with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Then Tommy talks to Turkish journalist and author Ece Temelkuran about the election in Turkey and the erosion of democracy. For all the Succession fans out there, spoiler alert! Ben and Tommy talk about the series finale at the end of the episode. You’ve been warned! 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 Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben. The Boston Celtics and the Boston Bruins both got routed by eight seats in the playoffs. Yes. Yeah. This is the future that mass holes like myself deserve, no?

I should just get used to this. I mean, I think you have about 30 years of karma because of the Patriots coming away. And the Red Sox. Yeah. And the Red Sox. I feel bad because the Bruins were like the best team ever. And like that was the craziest one in round one. And then to come all the way.

back to 3-3 in that Celtic series and then to bring in all the videos and big guns about the Red Sox comeback. And then, you know, I was texting with Friend of the Pod, cement the power about this yesterday. Oh, nice. She's a C-S fan? She's a big C-s fan. And let's just say it didn't work out. Yeah. It's not good when your best player rolls his ankle 17 seconds into the game and can't really play. Not good. And when your whole offense seems to be just jacking threes and they're not falling. You need a plan B. Yeah, you need to play B. I love B. I love B. I love B. Lawson, it's like, it's my home. It's like, identify with it so strongly, but also we can be so embarrassing sometimes. Like the celebrities in the audience last night included Donnie Wahlberg.

Not even Mark Wahlberg. Donnie Wahlberg. I think Stan Van Gundy confused it to at one point and said Marcus Smart was taking acting lesson from Donnie Wahlberg. We were like to go than new kids. But yeah, anyway, we're not just going to chat about sports today, though I am a little sad. We're going to cover a lot of important stuff. LGBT rights in Uganda, tensions in Serbia, and how professional tennis is involved. There's a sports nexus there, Ben. Reports about Trump's ballooning legal jeopardy in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. What the CIA knows or does not know when it comes to Israel's intentions when it comes to potentially bombing Iran. The latest in Ukraine, why China is giving the Pentagon the cold shoulder, how Poland could

use fears of Russian political interference to silence opposition leaders. Elon Musk is in China, free speech. What could go wrong. Absolutely. The mecca free speech. Venezuela. It has been welcomed back into the South American fold. And then there's the ongoing desperation of Boris Johnson, just for fun, Ben. And then you're going to hear my interview with journalist and author at J. Temelkoren about how Turkish president tie up Erdogan, unfortunately won re-election and what it means for the future of Turkey.

Ben, spoiler alert. It's not great. So the thing is Tommy, you know, the quote that leads my last book after the fall is from her. Oh, yeah? What was it? The final take. Does not happen with one spectacular Reichstag conflagration, but is instead an excruciating years-long process of many scattered, seemingly insignificant little fires that smolder without flames.

That's a hell of a quote. Which is, you know, a cheerful way to describe what we've all been living through. Yeah. It's a more eloquent way of saying that the nationalists are boiling the frog as were. Yeah. And for Turkey, it's been 20 years of this. 20 years, right?

20 years. Imagine 20 years of Trump. No. No, no, I can't. I can't. Well, that's a great quote. But speaking of excellent books like after the fall, I know you're a big reader. And you will be excited to know that Crooked Media reads, our imprint. Our first book, Mobility is available for pre-order.

Mobility is by Lydia Kisling. She's the author of The Golden States. Great book. Worldos will love that this book kicks off in Azerbaijan in Baku in the 90s. Couldn't find a more Worldo locale than Baku in the 90s. Swinging Baku. That's right. We're wrestling for influence, the U.S.

is access to oil and gas infrastructure in the region. But it's also a coming of age novel about class and power and politics. And it's just a fun summer read. Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks called Mobility a masterpiece of misdirection and a cautionary tale for our times. Check it out. Go to crooked.com slash books. Pre-order your copy of Mobility today and be the first to read when it's released on August 1st.

I don't know how you write a full book. I can barely get a tweet out. the best advice ever got on writing a book and I'm on my third now, which is feeling very difficult to do with my time allotments, was EL Doctoro, the famous album said that writing a book is like driving at night with headlights. You can't see your destination, but you can see what's right in front of you. That's good advice. And so if you just think about doing the piece that's right in front of you, eventually you get there. A couple pages a day. Finally adds up.

A couple pages a day. It adds up. Yeah. Still, that's pretty hard. Okay. Let's talk about the news, Ben. Because on Monday, Ugandan president, Yewari Museveni, signed into law one of the harshest anti-LGBT bills in the world. Anyone who engages in gay sex in Uganda can get life in prison. Even minors can be sentenced up to three years. And just attempting to have same-sex relations can get you 10 years in prison. They also created this new category they call aggravated homosexuality, which could result in the death penalty. that category is basically sex with kids, disabled people, rape.

Activists and aid groups are particularly worried about parts of the law that create criminal penalties for promoting homosexuality and provisions that encourage the public to report on others. So we're really worried about visual anti-justice. The U.S. and other Western governments lobbied hard against his bill. Biden called it shameful and said the National Security Council, his staff, will review the entire U.S. Uganda relationship, in particular America's ability to safely deliver. HIV-AIDS services. Ted Cruz even denounced this law. That's how bad it is. At the same time, unfortunately, though, American right-wing religious groups have helped promote these laws in anti-LGB sentiment in general in Uganda. Uganda passed a similar law back in 2014 that got struck down on procedural grounds. So this is like them coming back at this. More broadly on

the continent, homosexuality is criminalized in 30 of 54 countries in Africa. Former British colonies are far more likely to criminalize homosexuality than non-forestationalty. former British colonies, that was interesting. But Reuters did a poll of 48,000 Africans across 34 countries where more than 75% of respondents across all ages said they would be strongly or somewhat dislike having a gay neighbor. So there's really some entrenched unfortunate views here. And unlike most countries, young people are essentially just as likely to have anti-LGB views as older people.

So it's not improving over time. So, Ben, you know, South Africa is the only country in Africa to allow LGBT. to marry, enter civil unions, and adopt children. We've talked a bunch of times how there is this sense in across the continent of Africa, a well-deserved sense, that the U.S. shows up to lecture them and then leaves. How do you think Biden's team can or should go about pushing back on laws like this, where, you know, this is really like a basic human rights issue. It's an enormous, it's a scary growing trend.

And there are people, you know, in Uganda and across the continent who really want our support, but also don't want to, you know, create a political context where the U.S. is doing more harm than good. Well, I mean, I think there was a precedent, you know, back in 2014, as you mentioned, I remember this kind of law coming down the transom in Uganda. And there was a lot of international pressure, including the U.S., and they kind of did back down. So the first point is, I think you do have to put things, tangible things on the table. Uganda's gotten assistance in the United States in the past, had a security relationship with Moussevani. And I do think that there are certain laws that are just kind of

beyond the pale because this is not just an LGBT issue. It's, this is, as you said, it's like a fundamental human rights issue when you have a whole community of people being stigmatized, marginalized, and facing punishment in this way. So I think the first thing is this is a case where, you know, when you're calibrating these efforts around human rights and democracy, Sometimes you can't make the perfect enemy of the good, right? Do you have to understand you can't dictate terms and laws in every country? But you have to be able to identify, well, what crosses certain lines where we will revalued our relationship. This is one of those places.

That's the first thing. I think the second thing is there really is an unholy relationship between some of these anti-LGB laws in Africa and the U.S. evangelical community. and look, it's all well and good for like a Ted Cruz to come out and say this law is wrong. I'm glad he did. But what you really need is more responsible voices in that community to try to slow down this train, if not turn it around. And so, you know, there is a tradition of Republicans in Congress in particular who've been, you know, champions for things like PEPFAR, the anti-HIV AIDS initiative that is. done a lot of good in Africa that have... Best thing George W. Bush ever did. Best thing you did by far. That have deep relationships in Africa. I think you need to be figuring how to quietly try to mobilize those people to restrain

some of the more extreme elements of their own community and perhaps use their own relationships in Africa to air different views. And then to this broader issue that you describe, I mean, I do think you need to find cultural messengers with some credibility with African publics so that it's not just like US politicians talking about these things. But look, there's a long-term effort that's going to have to be made to try to destigmatize LGBTQ people in certain parts of the world. You have to find credible voices in that effort beyond the political sphere, you know.

And so I think that's something that people need to be working on too. Yeah, it's a really good point. Man, what a terrible choice. I mean, administering and delivering HIV AIDS drugs under the PEPFAR program or cutting that aid off because of this law. I mean, that's just an incredibly difficult decision. It is a great. And I think you have to have a very high threshold

for cutting off that kind of assistance. But there are other parts of the U.S. Uganda relationship that you could start with. Yeah, like military support. There's military support. There's other kinds of development assistance. So, you know, you put that last on the list, I think. Yeah, for sure.

I think they're reviewing it in part because they don't know that their staff on the ground can safely administer it given this new law. Yeah. Which is, which is ultimately a threshold that you have to be able to answer. Yes, absolutely. Switching gears here to Serbia and Kosovo. So 25 NATO peacekeepers in northern Kosovo were injured during attacks by Serb protesters on

Monday. These protesters were angry because last month, Kosovo's Serb population boycotted some local elections. The resulting low turnout meant that ethnic Albanians won a number of seats like mayoral ships and jobs like that. And then after those politicians were installed into office last week, angry protesters tried to storm several local government offices, and they clash with these NATO troops. And some of these troops were severely hurt. Several Hungarian and Italian soldiers serving in the NATO peacekeeping force were injured. Leaders in Serbia and Kosovo blamed each other for raising

the tensions. The Serbian president, Alexander Vuchich, even raised the military's combat readiness to a highest level. So that's pretty ominous. The U.S. criticized authorities in Kosovo, for installing these mayors in Serb majority areas where they clearly had no popular support. The key context for everyone to remember is that Kosovo declared independence from Serbia back in 2008, but many ethnic Serbs have never accepted that, especially in the northern part of the country. Ben, this is the latest in a series of flare-ups between the two sides that sort of start with these local issues, like it was license plates at one point a couple months ago. How weird are you getting that you could see things spiral out of control in the near future?

I think people should be very worried, and I think people should see this as an issue that is really important, obviously, in Serbia and Kosovo, but is bigger than that as well. So, you know, part of what's happening here at core is that you had this repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo that led to a NATO intervention in the Clinton years that saved a bunch of lives, but, you know, kind of led to the end of Slobodan Milosevic's rule in Serbia. And, and, and, and, led to this unresolved status of Kosovo. Is it independent as Kosovo has declared and as the U.S. and a whole bunch of other countries have recognized? Or from the Serbian perspective, they see parts of Kosovo, particularly these majority Serbian parts, as kind of fundamental to

their identity, fundamental to their history. And they are backed by Russia and China. And so you see that the same geopolitical fault lines that we walk across every week on this podcast, like run directly through this part of Kosovo. Did you see that Serb protesters painted the Z, the letter Z on NATO vehicles, like to mimic the Russian invasion force in Ukraine? Yes, absolutely. No one's hiding the Russian piece of this. Nobody's hiding the Russian piece of this.

And so the bet that was made, I think, around Kosovo independence was that both Serbia and Kosovo had kind of the enticement of EU integration, that someday they might be able to join the European Union and that could give them incentives to normalize their relations, kind of work through some, you know, maybe some autonomy for some of these like majority Serbian areas. That's clearly not working. That was the old globalization playbook and it's just not working. And to your point, the Russians are clearly stirring this pot. Right now you've got a nationalist president of Serbia. You also have a nationalist president of Kosovo. The Russians are not hiding this. Like I saw Sergey Lavrov, the longtime foreign minister of Russia, said the other day that,

quote, Serbs are fighting for their rights in northern Kosovo. A big explosion is looming in the heart of Europe. Those are Lavrov's words, right? So what would Russia want more today than another flare up of instability and violence in the heart of Europe that embarrasses NATO, that makes them look feckless, that makes them look incapable of managing this issue that was one of NATO's major interventions in its recent history. So there's a lot of incentive for the Russians to be pushing Serbia to take a hard line and maybe to be pushing some of these, you know, Serbian separatist actors to be doing what they're doing. And that's kind of like back to the drawing board here. I'm just trying to avoid escalation for the time being. And the U.S. has been kind of pressuring Kosovo

to dial back, you know, pushing the envelope in these areas and to show some restraint. I think ultimately that's the wise decision. You want to just reduce tensions and let this thing park itself for the time being. Yeah, not a lot upside to installing a bunch of mayors the day we need. Like maybe slow down a little bit. Is that really worth the risk here? And especially when Russia is jonesing for an excuse to stir up, you know, real violence in the heart of Europe to create a distraction or yet another boiling pot in addition to Ukraine. Yeah.

And then the tennis piece of this is Novak Djokovic, the 22 times. grand slam champion wrote in Serbian on a TV camera at Roland Garros at the French Open. Kosovo is the heart of Serbia, stop the violence, which sounds like to, I don't know, your average viewer probably kind of innocuous, but really is, you know, it's a clear statement undercutta to Kosovo's independence. I think, Djokovic, it's an ethnic Serb. His father was born in Kosovo. He thinks Kosovo is part of Serbia. He's writing this on the lens of a camera while playing. Yeah, I have to say we've learned a fair amount about Djokovic. There's a reason that he's made more appearances on this podcast and any other tennis player in recent years.

And none of it's good. By a factor of 20. Anti-vax guy, like, refused to get vaxed before he went to the Australian Open, got kicked out of that country. He's kind of weighed in, you know, generally in the flavor of that kind of stew of Russian anti-vax nationalist conspiracy theories. And to say, like Kosovo's the heart of Serbia is about. as provocative a statement as you can make on a current geopolitical area of tension. So I would hope that he's dissuaded from using his platform, pretty massive platform at the French Open from doing so. Yeah, a bunch of NATO peacekeepers just got the shit beaten out of them by Serbianatian.

And you're basically writing a slogan that could be a piece of graffiti on the wall. Right, backing them. Yeah, with a Z over it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. What an asshole. Speaking of assholes, Penn, there's been a bunch of Good transition. Thank you. Recently that suggests Trump is in serious legal jeopardy over the handling of classified documents that he stole and hoarded at Mara Lago. So we talked last week about how special prosecutor Jack Smith had subpoenaed a bunch of Trump's business records with seven foreign countries, including some of our favorites in the Gulf. Since then, the Washington Post has reported that Trump's team moved boxes of records at Maralago the day before the FBI visited in June of last year. The Post also reported that, quote, Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a dress rehearsal for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 22 subpoena. You got to practice your crimes to get them right. Then on Tuesday, the Guardian reported that Evan Corcoran, Trump's lawyer, has been managing this issue, told his associate that he was misled when he tried to do a search

at Mar-a-Lago for classified materials. Apparently members of Trump's team told Corcoran not to search Trump's office where the FBI later found some of the most sensitive stuff. That's how I assume prosecutors convince a judge to pierce Trump and Corcoran's attorney-client privilege because Trump may have used Corcoran's legal advice in furtherance of a crime. So, Ben, I have no idea if these news reports are accurate. I mean, I assume they are. The Trump people deny them. It's worth saying. But it seems like someone is going to get charged with obstruction of justice in the very near future. Yeah, this is like a pretty open and shut case. you know um in many ways in many ways yeah i mean there was you know that we talked about the new york

one is kind of this bank shot legal theory right of like hush money payments as a crime state law yeah this is like you're not supposed to take the classified documents with you if you do you get kind of a warning and this opportunity to return them um and then if you continue to not do that you are committing a crime and then if they want to come pick up the evidence of the crime and you got a bunch of people like throwing misdirection and misinformation at the FBI, and then furiously hiding boxes, like, it is pretty evident that they committed at a minimum obstruction of justice. And, like, the underlying question of why, again, why were they so intent on hiding this material? I know. Because, like, let's say they did just take some letters for, you know, for nostalgia,

sentimental purposes. Like, I don't know that you would go to great lengths to hide that from the FBI, you know. Right. And again, to your point, like, not well hidden from the FBI. There's security cameras showing these people moving boxes and out of these rooms. I was very much in the, like, kind of selfish moron, Occam's Razor camp of, like, Trump wanted to keep his documents because he thinks they're his and he's just a brat about everything. I have moved considerably into a more conspiratorial and darker place, given the subpoena of these records, including Trump's dealings with a live golf tour, which is just the perfect way. to wash money coming back to him for, I don't know, maybe some information.

I mean, every day we learn something new. And look, we're all burned by the Mueller probe, right, and all the leaks in the New York Times about, you know, whatever. So I think we're all a little bit jaded when it comes to believing that this stuff could be real. But I don't know, it seems like they got a pretty dead of rights. No, let's speculate rashly here. I love it. But like there's a lot of smoke here, right?

So much. So this is actually not that rash, right? we're going to roll the tape all the way back to our friend Jared Kushner, right? And there were those reports that really jumped out to us at the time when Muhammad Salman was like detaining his family members in the Ritz Carlton and purging members of the world family. There were those reports that maybe Jared Kushner had shared some intelligence on what members of the family might not be totally with the program. We still don't know that that's the case. But the reason I mention it is because the U.S. intelligence community collects, like, vast troughs of information about the Middle East, you know, about things that are going on in Saudi and the Gulf, but also about things that the Saudis are really interested in, like, you know, political developments in neighboring countries, nuclear issues in Iran or, you know, Israel or, you know, the status of whatever is happening in Libya or Sudan, any number of things that don't seem like the absolute front burner intelligence thing. So it may not be that, like, you know, Trump.

is sitting there holding the blueprints to, you know, every single last nut and bolt of information. But if he has anything that he was, like, grabbed on the way out and it's like, oh, this might be of interest of the Saudis on the line, you know, which could be a lot of things, right? Yeah. Maybe he just had a few folders of stuff because he thought it might impress and help curry favor with some of these people that he wants to, you know, extract money from or build a relationship with, like, the fucking live golf tour, whatever the thing is.

it's an entirely plausible scenario that he had some of that stuff amongst other stuff, maybe like love letters from Kim Jong-in and wouldn't want the FBI to get that stuff because he wouldn't know how to explain why he had it there. So he's trying to move it around or something, right? That's one theory. I'm getting a little more specific than previous rash speculation,

but when you look at these different reports of them like trying to move around certain stuff and kind of make certain stuff harder to find, at the same time they were hearing that these investigations into the relationship he had with seven countries and the Lyft Golf Tour might have featured everything we know about his transactional relationship and his son-in-law's transactional relationship with the Gulf country suggests that why would Trump not potentially have wanted to take some information

that could be valuable to them? Yeah, and remember that, you know, Jared Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudis despite having no investment experience for his little investment company. But yeah, to your point, again, bucket this into the rank speculation category. But Mohammed bin Salma knows that the United States and the Turkish government had him dead to rights when it comes to ordering the hit on Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist, who was murdered in the consulate in Istanbul. I bet MBS would love to know how we got that. How valuable would that? How valuable would that report be? How would he like, because, you know, I'm sure that there is somewhere like a stapled, you know, 20-page summary of the case against Mauman Salman.

Just think about how valuable piece of information that he would want to know what the U.S. knows, how we know it. How we know it. Who talked? Who might have talked? I mean, this is not trivial stuff. That is stuff that's worth billions. Yeah. Speaking of intelligence collection in the Middle East, Ben, there is another news report based on the leak of classified a Pentagon documents to the social media site Discord.

This time is about Iran. One intelligence document says that the CIA doesn't know whether Israel is seriously planning to bomb Iran's nuclear infrastructure or whether these recent military exercises and hawkish rhetoric is just designed to deter them, frighten people in Iran, frighten their leadership. There's a story in The Intercept that also looks at Biden's, you know, seemingly more hawkish position on Iran. Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, National Security Advisor, gave a speech where he recently said, quote, we have made clear to Iran that it can never be permitted to attain a nuclear weapon. In the later said, as President Biden has repeatedly reaffirmed,

he will take the actions that are necessary to stand by this statement, including by recognizing Israel's freedom of action. Two things that jumped out of Miraband when I read the story. The first is I did wonder whether intelligence about Iran's military intentions would be so close hold that it maybe wouldn't wind up in a document like this. I'm curious if you have a take there. Been two, I'm curious how you interpret Jake saying that Biden will recognize Israel's freedom of action when it comes to Iran. That seemed pretty different than the Obama era policy of actively dissuading them from starting a World War III in the Middle East. Yeah, I mean, first of all, it doesn't surprise. me, I wouldn't expect the CIA or the U.S.

intelligence community to know what Israel's intentions are. I think, you know, I don't think it reveals anything to say, like in the Obama years, when this was also a very live question, I think it was generally thought that this would be an incredibly closely held. Let's just say that the Israeli government probably wouldn't be running some broad interagency process to consider whether or not to bomb Iran. Like Bibi, his defense minister, Jeff Goldberg. Forget the Atlantic.

Yeah. That's an inside-year joke there. Yeah, recent podcast guests. No, but they have like what's called the security cabinet, which is like an inner cabinet of like the most senior security officials. And I think it's generally believed by analysts. And again, this is not even an intelligence statement that like this would be restricted to a few people, if that, you know, before it starts. It wouldn't start to bleed out into the U.S. intelligence community knowing something probably until they were actually already beginning to do it. Yeah.

I mean, the plans are on the shell. Yeah. Right. B.B. one day would say, okay, take the plan off the shelf, implement it. Just go. Yeah. Yeah, because they've done immense planning to generate options with this. I agree on the formulation from Jake Sullivan, like the Obama era formulation was, you know, Iran must be, the first part of that, we would have said, you know, they must be prohibited from developing nuclear weapon. And we would say, like, all options are on the table, you know. But then, usually when he said that, it was followed by a bunch of paragraphs about why they, we shouldn't use a military option, why we're pursuing an Iran nuclear agreement, all that,

you know, context is now gone, right? And to say that, you know, we recognize Israel's freedom of action, it's not just that statement. It's that statement without all the other language about this is a bad idea, don't do it. Right. Or any live effort to get back in the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement. And that thing's just dead. It's dead. And again, this is just sitting there. And Iran is sitting on the precipice of having enough material for a nuclear weapon. We've talked about how they'd have to take some extra time to weaponize it. But this continues to be a space where, you know, Israel could be on something of a hair trigger. And statements like that, you know, could be used after the fact to say, well, you know.

Oh, absolutely. After the fact that, well, you said we had freedom of action. We chose to act, you know. Oh, I feel like even far less specific diplomatic pablum has. has been used by foreign countries to say, we thought you gave us the green light to attack X, Y, or Z country. And so it makes me wonder, I mean,

I have to think that the US is privately cautioning against doing something that could precipitate another war on top of the wars we're already managing. But yeah, this is one that you know, you wonder whether B.B. might want to, if he wants to take this risk, given the combination of his own political challenges at home and a U.S. election cycle in which Trump will support anything and everything he does, whether he might think that he can gradually

box Biden in to not dissuading him. Not good. Not good. It's scary. Watch this space, as they say. Then speaking of nuclear confrontation, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese government refused a request for a meeting between the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and the Chinese defense minister, Li Shang Fu, at an upcoming security meeting in Singapore. There's a lot of concern

in Washington, as I think we've talked about on the show, about China's refusal to establish regular military-to-military communications with the U.S. or create some sort of hotline to manage a future crisis like the balloon idiocy. Some of this meeting refusal likely is residual anger about the U.S. shooting down the Chinese spy balloon. But Ben, the journal story also mentioned that The U.S. still has sanctions on defense minister Lee that were put in place in 2018 by the Trump administration because Lee approved the purchase of Russian fighter jets and Russian missiles. Call me crazy, but would you take a meeting with the government that was sanctioning you? I wonder, isn't that maybe most of the problem here? Might sour the mood a little bit.

A couple things on this. First of all, I don't know if you've ever been to the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore. No, I've heard it's great. So the Shangri-La dialogue is, you've heard us kind of talk about the Munich Security Conference, which is kind of like the prom for transatlanticist security types. The Shangri-La dialogue is like the Asian version of the Munich Security Conference. Or you might even say the Munich Security Conference is the European version of the Shangri-Law Dialog. So all the muckety-mucks, all the defense ministers, all the Henry Kissinger's love to show up at this place.

And so this will like reverberate. The point is that the absence of this meeting will be the hallway chatter at the Shangelaad dialogue and it'll kind of contribute to this sense that the U.S. and China are careening in this, you know, direction of conflict in Cold War. I think what's happened here in addition to the guy being sanctioned is the Chinese had this entire sequence kind of mapped out for the year, right, which was like Biden was going to meet with Xi Jinping in Bali at the G20 in November. That happened.

And then it was going to be followed up by all these engagements that were. kind of sequence like Tony Blinken was going to go over there. And then Lloyd Austin would have this meeting. And I think that once the balloon thing derailed their carefully constructed engagement plan and Tony Blinken this trip, they're kind of like, okay, that's all off like wiped the slate clean. And it's probably in their mind going to take another Biden-Shijimpin meeting or interaction to be the umbrella to then resume these kind of more thorny cabinet level discussions.

So I think it's just a sign the whole relationship is in deep freeze since that balloon thing. And it's going to take kind of a presidential level engagement to unstick it. Yeah, and Biden keeps getting asked about this. And he'll say, yeah, no call plan, but I think it's going to happen. And then he'll often say, but we really got to reestablish this hotline. You know, like they're not hiding what they want out of Washingtonism. And, you know, Jake Sullivan had this eight-hour meeting in Vienna with his counterpart recently. I was hoping that might unstick some of this stuff, but apparently not.

not the Shangri-la, which is kind of why I'm wearing, like, I'm wondering, I don't know, I'm just hoping, I guess, that the sanction piece of this is carrying some added wave and that isn't a broader relationship thing, but maybe that's wrong. Yeah, it feels broader to me, but it probably doesn't help, and you might want to, you know, just look at the Trump-Ber sanctions again, particularly in light of fact that the guys to defense minister. But the, you know, we've come a long way from when Biden used to brag on the campaign that he had spent more time with Xi Jinping than any living human being on earth, you know? Remember those days? And now it's like, I'll get to get around to calling them at some point, but we can have a hotline, you know? Hotline would be good.

Speaking of China, Ben. So free speech absolutist, newly minted Republican hero, Elon Musk, traveled to Beijing. Did Secretary of State David Sachs accompany? I don't know. Shared that's too inside. I'll check. I'll check. Elon had meetings with Chinese state counselor and foreign Minister Tinggung. This was on Tuesday. Here's what a Chinese government spokesperson tweeted about the meeting. Here's a quote. Promoting sound China-U.S. relations is like driving a car. One need to keep to the right direction, hit the brakes when the road is bumpy and step on the gas for mutually beneficial cooperation. Then now they started speaking for Musk. Musk said that with hardworking and talented people, China's development makes perfect sense. Hashtag Tesla opposes decoupling or

cutting off supply chains. It is ready to expand business in China. and share in China's development opportunities. Ben, I saw that Fidelity said that they have marked down the value of their stake in Twitter and believe it's now worth one-third of what Elon paid for it. I wonder if that is part of why he's traveling to China to kiss the ring to keep the Tesla sales going and maybe not bringing up, I don't know, free speech. Yeah, there's so much going on here. I love this story.

Every now and then when you send topics and I just, because this is so many dimensions. this one. You know, because the first thing is obviously like when you buy one of the, one of the larger social media platforms in the world and particularly one that has outsized influence on political questions. And then you go hat in hand and kowt out to the most totalitarian government in the world that seeks to use Twitter to identify critics in other countries. You know, I've heard stories in, you know, recent months of Chinese citizens who've been arrested on return to China, for instance, because of things that they posted on social media in other countries. They obviously want to censor certain things on Twitter or control it, even outside of China's

borders. And they certainly run significant amounts of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns on Twitter. This is well documented, right? So this is not like, like, so Elon Musk owns a platform that the Chinese government uses to monitor people and to spread disinformation across the West. and he's going there and kissing their ass, that should make you wonder about, you know, where Twitter's going and what it serves.

It certainly should make you question whether his real interest is free speech or whether it's a mixture of vanity and anti-woke politics, right? I mean, this guy, there's nothing about his interactions in China and suggested this guy genuinely cares at all about free speech. Well, you know who agrees with us here is my buddy, Steve Bannon, who's constantly attacking Elon. and saying he's just a tool of the CCP, which is overstated and ridiculous, but there are some on the right in the Republican Party who are calling bullshit on this. And this photo op in Beijing will not help him with those people. No, and it's interesting to the extent to which he, you know, Elon, at the end of the day, despite the plummeting Twitter market cap, you know, like, or I guess it's private again now.

Yeah, sure, whatever. But like, like, when, when I do believe that ultimately, like his question. Poor wealth depends on Tesla. For sure. SpaceX. No doubt. Supply chains in China are part of that. Customer base in China is part of that. That he'll always put that interest ahead of whatever his hobby horse politically.

And this meeting made shares of Tesla go up 5%. Yeah. No. So it's sort of that's purpose. But like Ron DeSantis, like let's put the question to him because I'm sure he's going to be running as an anti-CC warier. No doubt. What it exposes is that this kind of crypto, bro, tech, anti-woke, anti-ESG, anti-DI, universe of people that the GOP thinks are now part of their tent, like are just diametrically

opposed to them on a core issue of China. And so whenever you see Elon buddying up with Ronda Santos, just keep that in mind, you know, one of those people is a hypocrite, if not both, probably both. But the other thing is the decoupling language is interesting because for all of his vaunted influence, Elon Musk cannot stop decoupling. It is happening. The U.S. government, which is more powerful than Elon Musk and wealthier than Elon Musk, is setting up a massive regime of export controls to deny technology into China, to deny U.S. investment in China.

And ultimately, that's going to ensnare aspects of Elon Musk's enterprise. And going over there and kissing the ring, whatever you think about that decoupling is not going to reverse it, you know? Yeah, and now Twitter has become a place where, like, right-wing morons who bought blue checks who a year ago complained about cancel culture are now trying to lead boycotts of Chick-fil-A, for hiring a VP of diversity.

Yeah. It's like, all right. This is how you spend your time now? Yeah, that's free speech. Yeah, speech. Yeah, yeah. A little whiplash. Is the Falun Gong on there?

Like, what's old Elon doing to juice the Falun Gong on? I don't know. Let's find out. It was a terrifying night for people in Ukraine, especially in Keith the Capitol, where local officials say they were subjected to the largest drone attack since the start of the war.

The AP said the attack lasted more than five hours in Ukrainian air defenses, luckily shot down more than 40 drones, but it was an attack timed for a celebration of Keyes founding in the third straight night of heavy bombardment. So just absolutely terrifying for people who live there and no one slept in Kiev for three days. However, at the same time, Moscow was attacked by drones on Tuesday in the middle of the night. The Russian defense ministry said Russian air defense has shot down five drones and caused three other severe off course, causing minor damage to civilian buildings. The Kremlin has been downplaying these attacks

Ukraine denied it was them, but did their usual kind of like shit posting adjacent, like you love to see it. You know, we expect more of this to happen kind of stuff. Ben, it's hard to get a good read on public opinion in Russia, but there was a BBC report I heard today where they interviewed some sort of like random Russian civilians who were near where this explosions happened in Moscow. And they said the drone attack made them feel like things were not as calm and stable as they've been led to believe in that a war that it once felt far away was reaching them close to home. If that's the impact on Russian public opinion, you have to think that these cross-border attacks are going to ramp up dramatically. Absolutely. You know, and we've been talking about this almost every week,

but it just keeps happening. Clearly, Ukraine has made a decision to do this. And in this case, there are a couple of things that are noteworthy about it. First, is that assuming they control the timing and some aspect of the Ukrainian government or or special services seems to control this thing. They were being attacked in Kiev, and so they're reciprocating in their minds. You know, we're going to therefore time our response to those attacks. The other thing that's interesting in both directions is use of drones, right? Because it's a lot cheaper to just arm some kamikaze drones and send them somewhere

than it is to, like, have a bunch of, you know, precision-guided missiles, you know. And so already we've seen Russians, in part because they're having trouble. with Ukrainian air defenses as we've given them Patriot batteries and things like that, pivot to like first these Iranian kamikaze drones and then Russians must be just turning these things out. And so increasingly you see this kind of these drone attacks which can terrorize, but they can't destroy kind of as much infrastructure. But that shows you we're in this new world of drone warfare. You know, we got accustomed to thinking about drones and you and I were obviously a part of this as these sophisticated targeted assassination weapons. Potentially super

precise. Yeah. Now's the opposite. It's like swarms of like model airplanes. That's right. And by the way, AI's coming down the pike. We haven't talked about the killer robots yet. You mean, this could all be AI run within, you know, relatively short period of time. And so the Ukrainians have found this kind of cost-effective asymmetric way to strike back. And the question is, what happens if that actually starts killing people or destroying things instead of just, you know, launching these kind of campaigns of see what we can do? Because you have to think at some point it will. I think on Russian public opinion, you know, there have been a couple of like surveys recently that indicated that if you kind of, if you run a net through telegram, which is the main Russian social media app,

you find kind of growing frustration with casualties. You also see these nationalist voices like to Putin's right, calling in a question like even after this episode, do we control our own airspace? How can't stop this? I think it is a problem for the Kremlin. And that too will reinforce Ukraine's desire to do it. Yep. Which, again, reminds you that the more this war goes on, the more there's the risks of things escalating of something happening that triggers a response, it triggers a counter response. And once you get into this kind of stuff, I think you just don't know what Putin might do

at some point. Yeah, and more just, you know, innocent people potentially dying in Moscow and Kiev and everywhere else. Did you see the Ukrainians released another more footage of a drone? boat attacking another, you know, Russian military vessel. Like I basically just hitting the side of it and exploding and the video goes dark. I mean, there's things everywhere now. Things everywhere now.

And the Russians, as they've depleted their stockpiles, they're going to be turning more to these kind of crude drone-type attacks as well. So it's a different, you know, kind of war. On the one end, you have this kind of World War I style front line with artillery. But then on the other end, you have all this mechanized and drone-type warfare. It's, I mean, I'd say it's interesting, except it's trying. Yeah, it's absolutely tragic. The other thing that came out of Russia was the Russian Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for South Carolina Senator Lindy Graham.

In response to comments Graham made while in Kiev last week for a meeting with President Zelensky, the weird thing about this is that Russia was mad about a total misrepresentation of what Graham said. President Zelensky's office released a misleadingly edited video of Graham speaking, which combined separate comments when he, one time he said, the Russians are. dying. And he also said the Ukraine assistance was the best money we've ever spent. Obviously, the two are linked in some sense, but he didn't put them together in one sentence. Despite the Ukrainian is basically getting him an international arrest warrant, Graham seems cool with it all. He tweeted, quote, to know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin's regime brings me immense joy. And quote, I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin's corrupt and immoral government as a badge of honor. I am tempted to make a joke about a prisoner exchange,

but I won't Ben because we're much more mature than that. But I do think we should just sort of admire how perfectly stupid and shitty this is. Like, Ms. Zelensky's office should not have misleadingly edited this video and made it look like Graham was thrilled that Russian civilians are dying.

The Russians overreact. Graham is cool with it because it helps him politically, like rinse, repeat. It's just a weird thing. Everything about this is dumb. You're right, because like the way that quote was edited And we've all watched these videos, like Zelensky's social media, like churnsies at. And one will be about like, you know, Sean Penn came to see me.

And then the next one is like Lindsey Graham, I'm talking about dying Russians. Right. Boyce Johnson high-files among the way in. And I mean, I don't want to diminish it. And then a lot of it is like very poignant and powerful leadership from Zelensky. But there is a trolling aspect to it. For sure. And juxtaposing, you know, the Russians are dying, best investment we made.

The Russian narrative is, oh, they're committing war crimes just like. like we are. So we're all, we're all war criminals and everybody does it. And that's what they, that's what they're trying to foster. And I think you should try to deny them that. So the reason I critique the Ukrainians is you don't want to write their talking points for them. And if they're talking points are just pure what aboutism, don't do that. But the other thing I will say, Tommy, is like, as we talked about, like, I was on the first sanctions list in 2014 with a friend of the pod, Worldo, at least Worldo spouse. Dan Feifferton because I know Hallie's an avid war though.

The one thing I haven't, I just won't do is the like, you know, Twitter bio, like, sanctioned by Putin and like. Blocks by Trump. Yeah, yeah, because the reality is like, this is no fucking impact on my life whatsoever. No, no one wants to go to Russia. Every single person who's been sanctioned with the, I guess, exception of if there's some business person who had some investments there, like, your life is not changed, is not a big deal. It's not a big inconvenience. Lindsay Graham is not going to be arrested on some Interpol red notice next year. You're going to put this in a campaign ad.

Yeah, exactly. So there's something so dumb about it. Because, like, as you said, like, everybody gets to perform. The Russians get to, the Ukrainians get to perform about the dying Russians. And the Russians perform about the American war criminals. And then the American politician performs about, like, look at how great I am because I got, you know, sanctioned or arrest. It's just, this is a side show and it's fucking stupid. And, and again, I just, the.

mutual congratulation of people on the sanctions list that Russia puts out. Like, there are now like thousands of these people on this list. Like, it's not that special anymore to be on. So many. It's like the weirdest list of people. It's just a weird fucking list. Yeah, I don't even get it. A couple more things before we get the interview.

So Ben, on Monday, the president of Poland said he would sign into law a bill that creates a commission that is ostensibly designed to investigate Russian influence in Poland, but which in practice could allow the Polish government to punish its rivals, including sentencing individuals to have. 10-year bans on serving a political office. The Polish opposition is calling this proposal Lex Tusk because they believe it's a law specifically targeting the former Prime Minister Donald Tusk ahead of elections later this year. The new commission would investigate the period between 2022 and 2007. Tusk became prime minister in 2007 and served there until 2014. Interesting

coincidence on the timing there. During that time, Poland signed a number of energy deals with Russia. Those could hypothetically, you know, be looked at by the commission, which could decide there were two pro-Russian and ban Tusker as associates from holding political office. So experts say this bill violates Poland's constitution. Duda also says he wants to create a similar entity at the European Union, but in response the EU says they might punish Poland if Poland annexes this law. The U.S. is criticizing their proposal. So Ben, I mean, this just strikes me as a very similar playbook that we've seen before. When you have countries that reference, say, the U.S. war on terror as a way to crack down the Muslim communities or civil liberties.

It seems like Duda is taking a very cynical but maybe politically clever tact here and saying, oh, no, no, we're just having a conversation about Russian interference like you guys are. That's why I need this commission that could potentially lock out my number one rival in the parliamentary elections this fall. Yeah, I mean, what's interesting is that the Polish government has kind of been going in the Urabond direction for a while. Definitely. It's, you know, clearly has ambitions to be kind of a single party national state and intimidation. their opponents and control the media, all the rest of it. What's complicated this whole dynamic is Poland has obviously been absolutely central to the war in Ukraine. Most, if not nearly all of the

assistance that flows into Ukraine militarily goes through Poland. Poland is hosting millions of Ukrainian refugees. Zelensky, very close to that government for necessary reasons. And so it makes it more uncomfortable and awkward for there to be this divide between Europe and and Warsaw. The Polish military, by the way, is getting much stronger. The U.S. is beginning to station permanently military resources in Poland. So there's a lot going on here. And I think part of what Duda is doing is trying to use the cover of Poland's growing influence and importance to see how far you can push the envelope. Now, with respect to the law, there are real questions and issues around Russian interference in Eastern European politics,

we talked about Serbia earlier, I don't doubt that there aren't legitimate reasons why one might want to look at, okay, is Russia trying to get influence in a place like Poland? But the way the law is crafted doesn't look like that at all because why would you look at 2007, why would you roll back the tape to 2007? Exactly. And create this extrajudicial sort of entity. Exactly. This is some earnest desire to just say, like, we need more tools to spot Russian interference in our politics. It would be one thing. But creating some extrajudicial entity to like pick punishment from this massively large window is crazy. Tusc, the irony of this is like an anti-Russian pro-European politician. Just the fact that he presided over some energy deals wasn't like he was a

Russian asset or something. No. So, Angela Merkel was presiding over. Is Angela Merkel like going to be punished in that context? So I just, this does wreak of that overreach. And I think it's going to, again, the longer the war in Ukraine goes on, I think you'll start to see some tensions around things like this. Definitely, definitely. The good news here, Ben, is it does sound like, you know, there's going to have to be a review of the constitutionality of the law. It seems like there will be a lot of international pressure on Poland not to do this or to reform it in some way, but we'll see and we'll keep an eye on it. Also on Tuesday, Ben, so Brazilian president, Lula de Silva hosted a meeting of all 12 countries in South America. Lula says he wants to talk about energy, crime, possibly creating a regional currency to displace the U.S. dollar. It's like all on the agenda. Lula. I love Lula. He first, he first, Pull together this group during his second term as president, the meeting stopped for a while because, you know, he created this, you know, group of South American countries when it was all lefty leaders. Then a bunch of right wingers came in. They hit pause on bringing this collection together. But now that this meeting is back, it means that Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro is in Venezuela as we speak. People who don't know, Maduro is the handpick successor to former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Maduro had a one-on-one with Lula ahead of this. broader regional meeting. He called on all South American countries to demand the United States lift sanctions on Venezuela. Lula also criticized U.S. sanctions saying it's inexplicable for a country to have 900 sanctions placed on it because another country doesn't like it. Brazil isn't the only

country thawing relations with Maduro and Venezuela. Chile recently nominated an ambassador to Venezuela. So, Ben, you know, back to our laughing about Lula, like, I'm not surprised at all that he welcomed Maduro into the country. He's criticizing U.S. sanctions. I mean, this should be a day where we take some victory laps, I think we called this one like three years ago when Lula got out of prison that this would happen. Yeah, but here's my question. I mean, do you think that there's any chance that Lula might be able to move the Biden administration off the current hardline policy or that some of the leftist turn in Latin America? Because again, you know, like Cuba policy, policy towards Venezuela, we're not seeing a ton of change in a more progressive way and I would like to. I think, yeah, I think there's a creative tension and constructive tension that can emerge between Washington and Lula, right? You know, the U.S. government's obviously not going to sign on to everything the Lula ones.

But a lot of what the U.S. does in a lot of America is stupid and self-defeating. And our Venezuela policy is very high in that list. So this policy that had General Marco Rubio and Admiral John Bolton at the first. forefront of it, for those who don't remember, of recognizing someone who wasn't the president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, as president of Venezuela on like a legal technicality, kind of pressuring slash bullying a bunch of countries in Latin America and the Europeans to follow suit, and then sanctioning the hell out of Venezuela. Just one of the most catastrophic failures in U.S. foreign policy and recent history in that Maduro is still there. Juan Guido just snuck out of the country,

like literally snuck out of the country, right? Is now like lots of I saw hanging out up in Northern Virginia doing podcasts, you know, hanging out in Florida. Right. Definitely not the president, you know. No. And all the, a lot of the right-wing governments that the U.S. like, you know, brought along on this have now been replaced by left-wing governments. Clearly, the U.S. has to make a pretty big shift in its Venezuela policy. Because the idea of, like, just not recognizing this guy's president doesn't work.

And meanwhile, we've exacerbated humanitarian crisis there with their sanctions that has contributed. significantly to people coming to our border. A quarter of the population has left the country. We need some agreement that lifts a whole bunch of sanctions that sets an election that we promised to actually respect the result of, you know, even if we don't like the results and hopefully we do like the results, you know, but that allows for kind of a reset of what's happening between the U.S. and Latin America generally, Venezuela, specifically. I would hope, again, that Cuba is a part of this.

Lula also, I think, could be a source of useful tension. But keep in mind, a lot of people want to say, oh, this is just Lula. It's not. It's Lula in Brazil. It's Boric in Chile. It's Petro and Columbia. It's Amlo in Mexico. It's like all the major Latin American countries.

There is nobody with us in this kind of weird, Miami-driven, hardline policy. So this meeting somewhere in the, middle between where we currently are and where Lula is, is I think the smart way to go. And honestly, this kind of pressure is not the worst thing to try to shake that loose. Yeah, look, I'm sure opposition leaders in Venezuela, like Juan Guaido and Leopoldo Lopez are very good guys. They have good intentions. But to your point, I mean, this diplomatic effort to sort of install them failed catastrophically.

On the other side, I'd love to hear Lula talk. Be a little more critical of Maduro's human rights record. Okay, yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah, I sometimes get a little too frustrated at the policy. right to call that out and I'm wrong to have not have noted. I guess what I'd say though is, and is what I used to always say about Cuba, Leopoldo Lopez was not helped by that Trump policy. Right.

You know, Juan Guido, if you look at Juan Guido's political standing when he became the Speaker of the Venezuelan National Assembly and today, it has suffered significantly, right? Like, like, so I I wasn't, I wouldn't take shots at the guy for his principles and courage. I'd say the policy that he was made of a pawn of, like hurt him and hurt the Venezuelan people in the same way that Cuban, you know, Cuban opposition voices have suffered under the return to really aggressive sanctions. We have to realize that efforts to kind of dislodge to, well, to regime change in Latin America is not an expression of support for human rights, even if that's like what it's dressed up as and wrapped up as, you know? Absolutely. And it's just, it's harming a lot of innocent people.

Yeah. It's so obvious. Very frustrating. And you're right that Lula should, you know, this is where I, this is where Lula's frustrated. And also, I'm sure from Lula's perspective, he's thinking like there's a trillion voices on the right criticizing this guy's human rights record. No one is saying what I'm saying, which is sanctions are stupid. Everyone should chill out, respect to sovereignty, et cetera, et cetera. So probably maybe overcorrects one direction.

Whereas if you got him in a room, he would probably admit to, you know, the complexity here. Well, but hopefully what Alula could do that we can't is say, hey, could you release some of these political prisoners who we've heard have been, you know, treated. horribly. Maduro might be able to do that for a Lula in a way that he would never do it if we demand it. And so hopefully Lula can play that role too. But he's often not been willing to. Well, what he needs is incredibly generational talented emissary like former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who then he appears to be increasingly desperate to find, I guess anyone who will listen to him because he was recently in Texas meeting with conservative lawmakers and activists to lobby for support for Ukraine and, I guess, his own relevance.

Johnson met with former president, George W. Bush. He met with Texas governor, Greg Abbott. Very relevant figure in geopolitics. What's he doing? You spoke to the Texas legislature. Polico had a story on this. They noted that surprisingly Boris was not paid for his speaking engagements in Dallas, but don't worry, he'll get six figures to speak to an investment conference in Las Vegas.

Ben, I miss this. But did you see, I guess, last month, Trump did an interview with Nigel Farage, of course. where he criticized Boris Johnson saying he was disappointed by Boris's record in office and that Boris was a bit on the liberal side for his taste. What the fuck is this guy doing in Texas? Just like he's on a, like we're in the world with Carmen San Diego. Like he's on a global tour for relevancy. Because it's also like not even British conservatives, I think would get a little uncomfortable

the stuff that's been coming out of the Texas legislature. Oh my God, yeah. Like, they literally just passed a law banning DEI in higher education. They just impeach their own attorney general for being one of those corrupt people in the entire country. You know, total abortion restrictions, guns everywhere. This is not like something that would travel easily to the UK. But he just clearly likes being applauded and feeling relevant. He wraps it all up in this Ukraine message, you know, like, I guess there's some bank shot if, like, the, the fascists and Texas legislature support Ukraine.

Maybe Republicans will. but like it's just he uses Ukraine as a shield on everything, you know. He did say like, I saw him get up and say like keep cutting taxes or something. It's like I don't think that's the problem in Texas that they have to, they don't have a fucking income tax boris. You know, like, so like he's not really getting briefed, which is not a surprise. Yeah, it's so weird. I mean, listen, like Kirstarmor kicked Jeremy Corbin out of the labor party. Risi Sunak needs to grow some guts and kick Boris Johnson.

Johnson out of the Tory bar. Oh, man. Yeah, but that would, you know, Boris is probably still more like than Rishi is. That's the problem. Yeah, you're right. They would probably martyr him. You just nail himself to the cross. Yeah, and he and, you know, well, Nigel's already out, but, uh, Boris is exhausting.

He's the worst. Last thing for the interview, Ben, just because we love to celebrate our Australian friends. So I was listening to the BBC World Podcasts on the way into the office. They did a story about a 51-year-old Australian man named Marcus McGowan, who was bitten by a saltwater crocodile while snorkeling at a resort in Queensland and then managed to pry the crocodile's jaws off of his own head and then fight off a subsequent attack. The guy I think said out of a quote was something like, look, I was in the wrong place of the wrong time. You're damn right you were apparently earlier this month. The remains of a fisherman were found inside a different

13-foot crocodile. There's been a resurgence of these saltwater crocs in the area because I think they outlawed hunting for them. So Australians, tougher than you think. Yeah, I mean... Some crocodile done D'S shit right there. That's like a Jaws sequel right there, right? Like in an IP world where like people need, you know, like you could remake Jaws with a saltwater crock. What was that crocodile kind of horror-ish movie? Lake Placid maybe?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty good. It was like a giant crock. I think we need like, and this would have to be said in Australia, obviously. Definitely. No doubt because then you have sweet accents and stuff. I don't know about the hunting. Usually I'm four hunting restrictions, but this is.

wouldn't, I don't know, I might, I might want to see a little more hunting. Yeah, I would be good with hunting, man-eating crocodiles, I guess. 11 feet, too. Think how long that is. It's a big fucking crocodile. Massive, man. Massive. All right, we're going to take a quick break. You're going to hear two things after the break. My interview with Eché Temelkoren about the recent elections in Turkey. And then Ben and I are just going to talk for a minute about succession because we love the show. We're sad to see it go. But this is your official spoiler alert to do.

not complain at us. I won't hear it. I am so excited to welcome to the show, back to the show, I should say. At J. Tomlkeran, she is a journalist. She's an author of, I think, a dozen excellent books, including How to Lose a Country and more recently together, 10 choices for a better now. Welcome back to the show. It's great to see you. Hi, Tommy. It's great to be back. We were just chatting before we started that we were hoping it would be slightly happier circumstances. We're, of course, talking about the election in Turkey on Sunday, Turkish president type Erdogan, one re-election with 52% of the vote. This was the second round of voting after the first round where no candidate got 50% of the vote, which led to a runoff. Before the first round of voting, there was a sense of hope that Erdogan's main opponent and opposition leader named Kamal Kielitshtarulu might actually win, or that Erdogan might be punished by voter.

for the government's disastrous response to the earthquake, for example. Do you think that those early hopes were maybe based on false information or naive or did something change? I mean, how did Erdogan seal the deal here? Well, first of all, when we're talking about Turkey, it is not completely correct to take these numbers too seriously. During the last decade, millions of Syrian refugees were accepted as citizens. on the condition that they're going to vote for Erdogan.

Simple as that. I'm talking about millions. So it's quite a percentage. Secondly, there is massive election fraud. There is also a case. I mean, it's almost traditional in Turkey. It is so normal that, you know, the opposition party, opposition coalition, is revealing its program how to protect the ballot boxes from the government.

And then thirdly, we have to keep it. mind that this is not a competition on an even ground on equal, equal, in equal, on equal conditions at all. Zero. We're talking about a party state. Well, it doesn't look like North Korea maybe from outside, but actually de facto, it's almost North Korea. You know, there is no media, mainstream media, which is independent.

It is all controlled by the government. And also, if you speak against the government, even on Twitter, they find you and take you to the prison. So we're talking about such circumstances. So, yeah, of course, there was hope in the first round. But also, it's interesting to point out, to emphasize that Erdogan did not win in the first round after 20-some years. this was the first election that he didn't win. So second round was far more difficult because we knew that there will be new kinds of cheating,

new kinds of deception and so on. And he also used fake, you know, editings of videos. He used dark propaganda, all the ugly things you can imagine or cannot imagine. So, you know, I'm coming from a complicated country. and people like me who come from complicated countries, we have a habit of breaking down things for Western audiences

to make them understand the scale of the situation, scale of the problem. So here's what Turkey is now. Imagine Trump with a political genius for 20 years, plus add to that an unending process of Brexit, that kind of polarization. So we were, you know, fighting against the odds and we didn't win. I don't think we lost really the opposition because half of the country, despite all the

oppression, despite all the fear of empire, despite all the suppression on every level, they still said no to this regime. And we're talking about 20 years. You know, I don't create the new generation. And even that new generation did not totally say yes to him. So I think there's still hope there. Yeah. Yeah, there's hope.

I mean, it's funny. Ben and I were talking about this election as compared to the recent election in Hungary. And you had opposition parties coalesce around a single figure. And, you know, in Turkey, Achilles Chirolu was seen as sort of the anti-Erduan. He would record videos from his kitchen table literally. He was this sort of like low-key technocratic guy, and maybe that was seen as the answer. Now I'm seeing some analysts say, well, maybe he wasn't exciting enough or inspirational enough didn't rally the base the way Erdogan did.

Do you have an opinion on whether he was the right candidate for this moment, just as we sort of think about, I don't know, how to tackle people like Erdogan in the future? Losing against Erdogan in these circumstances does not make a leader the wrong candidate, to put it very plainly. He was not the first choice for many. He wasn't the exciting choice. He wasn't the guy who created enthusiasm, so to speak. But then what he did was amazing throughout the campaign trail.

It was full of deeper understanding of humanity. It was speaking to the basic moral values of the country. It was speaking to the core. that made the country a country basically. Turkey is a very complicated, complex, problematic country. And in such a polarized society, he managed to bring the eternal enemies together. It takes a lot of political charisma, I think, if you're talking about charisma.

And also, I think personally he reached to a political nirvana or something. He's super Zen. The attacks that he had to suffer. The bullshit he had to go through. And he did with such elegance and grace. I personally in all of him. And many people, thousands and thousands of people on Twitter on the election night when the votes were counting, they said the same thing. Thank you.

Whatever you're done, it doesn't matter what the result is. Thank you. because we've seen a politician who is embracing the entire country, who is showing us what politics can be, how elegant and graceful and full of love it can be. As you know, or you might not know, his sign was this heart shape with hands. I know it looks really, really cheesy, but we're talking about a country where lack of love is so solid that it became fatal.

I'm talking about basic human love. So it was a very important statement, and he carried up that statement throughout the campaign, despite all the attack that he got, with amazing stamina. So I think we owe him a lot of appreciation for keeping his cool on such a level. Imagine Trump, again.

with political genius and you're keeping the, you know, going high as they go low. I mean, like he was the embodied version of that sentence, I think. Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned Seraeduan had support from all over, you know, the media institutions, decades of patronage. He was also able to get financial support and loans from countries like the Saudis, the UAE, Qatar, Russia, the stave off. economic problems and then take that cash and essentially hand out money to people in the run

up the election. How important do you think this, you know, autocrat creditor network was to Erdogan's ultimate success? Absolutely very important. Many people think that it's only this emotional part of the situation like, you know, the voters, the masses becoming one with the leader and so on, which is very, very prominent, but also Erdogan, since he came to power, like any leader of that kind, he created a web of political money. So the money that he collected from now and from here and there through really, you know, dark ways, he trickled down to his smallest supporter. So this web actually became his security web to keep him in power.

So when people were voting for him or when they were fighting for him, they were actually fighting for their own livelihoods. This is very important to understand because when these leaders come to power, what they produce

as a political system, as a societal system, becomes unbeatable quite quickly, actually. So that was very important. And then, you know, when you look around the world, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Trump, or several leaders like that, Modi in India, they run their countries like a grocery shop. You don't really know if they have a foreign policy. You don't really know if they have a financial policy. There's this one man who knows everything and we don't really learn what's going to.

on behind the doors. They go and meet somewhere, as Erdogan and Putin does, for instance. They decide things, and then it becomes country's policy about a certain issue. So I think countries run by autocratic leaders become like mafia mobs, and these mafia mobs are making agreements with each other, and we are following their agreements or disagreements in some cases. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I first of all, I've heard you say that this victory for Erdogan will essentially lead to fully formed fascism in Turkey.

I've seen other analysts say that five years from now, Turkey is going to look a lot more like China than sort of a Western, you know, country. Can you help us understand how he'll do that or how that might happen in practice? Unfortunately, it will be more complicated than that. I am, you know, trying to conceptualize it with some sort of Dubaiization. It's going to be like something like between Dubai and Afghanistan, let's say. Afghanistan in terms of total destruction of culture and freedom of speech. Dubaiization in terms of no sense. The sense of citizenship will be lost.

It is already very much damaged because Erdogan, in every opportunity he has, he said the same thing. He insinuated the same thing, at least, saying that there are citizens who are my supporters and there are the others. And the others, you don't know what happens with the others because they are now enemies. For many people in the Western societies, it's not easy to imagine this. and they imagine autocracy or fascism as an abstract concept. Whereas when you talk about fascism in daily life, you mean something like this. For instance, you get divorced. You want to get divorced.

And then you want to have the upper hand in the divorce case. And then you certainly come up with this idea. Oh, my husband has been criticizing Erdogan and here you go. You know, you get the upper hand. Or suddenly, let's say, you know, smaller things. Like, you know, your neighbor is doing this massive noise and you go to the police. And the police looks at you and you don't look like an AKP supporter. And your, you know, neighbor is AKP supporter.

You know, there is like very, very tiny chance that you get what you deserve. So imagine this on every level of life, on every bit of life. That is how the daily life is controlled, how fascism infuses into every bit of life. So it will be more and more like this. On the night of the election, and this was a big topic on Twitter in Turkey, many people started to close their accounts on Twitter, on Instagram, on YouTube, because they're afraid now. And even the street, you know, interviewers, YouTube, you know, independent reporters and so on, they're, you know, they were showing people. They do not want to talk anymore. They're going away.

So this is how it is. The fear will become more and more present and people will be more and more silent. However, you know, there's good chance that in two years, the massive economic crisis, that Turkey is going through can damage the image of Erdogan. And even his devotees might be saying enough is enough. Then we'll see. I mean, like, I think Turkey is going to have witness like or experience two interesting years, two and a half years.

I'm expecting that. No scientific evidence, but this is my feeling that it's going to be less than five years. That's my point. with the sort of massive inflation and Erdogan just pumping money into the economy to sort of get through today and not sort of thinking about the longer terms. That's sort of what you're looking at. But yeah, also, not only that, there's something deeper than that. Erdogan gathered all the conservative forces to stay in power. And these conservative forces include Turkish Hezbollah, which is absolutely a criminal organization.

You know, they are famous for, I don't know the English word for that, but like, you know, they're famous for certain kind of torture, killings and so on. And they're radical Islamists. And now they have MPs in the parliament. So we will see if the fundamental contract of Turkish society can accommodate this kind of politics in the parliament or not. because this is a country that has been secular, at least nominally, that has been democratic nominally. And now there is a clear change of direction to ultra-nationalism and radical Islamism. It was there already since 20 years, a new generation was born. as Idawan calls them that cling to their religion and wrath.

But this time it is more serious. And people are fearing for the lives of their daughters, for instance. Because we are talking about this Hezbollah, Turkish Hezbollah, now turning to a party, becoming MPs. They want the single women to be owned, adopted, so to speak, like pets. So yeah, it's going to be an interesting time for Turkey, not in a good way, obviously, but yeah. Yeah, well, that sounds terrifying. I mean, the other evolution, I think we're kind of watching in real time is in Washington

and sort of the ongoing reassessment of the U.S. Turkey relationship. It was, you know, then I were talking about how, you know, in 2009, we went with Obama to Turkey, you know, sort of seen as this success story that was worth highlighting. Now you have the Biden administration essentially openly rooting against Erdogan in this election. And now they have to figure out how to work with him. Biden wants Sweden into NATO. There's this debate going on about selling Turkey F-16 fighter jets or this on again, off-again sale. What do you think Erdogan wants out of the U.S. Turkey relationship?

And are there things you think the U.S. can or should do to moderate his behavior or create some guardrails? Two things. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm coming from United States and Western Bloc for Erdogan turned him into a so-called global leader. And I remember 10 years how those audiences uploaded him, you know, boosted his ego and so on. So I really expected Biden administration showing the same enthusiasm for Kalishdaroly to be honest. Because, you know, yes, we have this problem of Erdogan, but we didn't on our own create this problem. It was, you know, Erdogan was shown as the exemplary leader for the Muslim world.

And he was really vetted for it for that position. And the United States administration had a lot in that. This is the first thing. The second thing is, let me put it. this way. These leaders, including Putin, you know, Erdogan, whoever you want to, this ilk of politicians, they thrive on the moral fragility, to put it politely, of the Western societies, Western governments, rather. A European Union, as you know, has been making agreements with Erdogan to keep the refugees in Turkey, and they were literally paying for each person.

That money, we don't know where that money went. I mean, like, Erdogan got that money, and we don't know how it was used. That's one thing. But then, you know, can you imagine European Union being absolutely enthusiastic for Kulistarolu coming to power, when they know that they cannot do the same indecent, you know, deal? with them. It's a good point. Yeah. I thought about that. Yeah. You know, F-16s are no less indecent. My point is that. So if you want democracy to win, excuse me, you have to cooperate with democratic forces. You cannot do like, you know, we want democracy, but also if they don't have democracy,

we can go on business as usual. No, it doesn't work like that. I'm like, I'm not expecting United States to, you know, rescue Turkish people from this anti-democratic government. No, we can do it on our own. However, they have to keep in mind that, you know, collapse of Turkish democracy, the total final collapse of Turkish democracy will have far more bigger consequences, far more deeper consequences than Syria falling down. Turkey is now the front line of fight against new authoritarianism or new fascism. If you lose it there in that front line, you can be sure the next front line is Central Europe or Western Europe.

Yeah, no, that's a very good point. And I think the U.S. relationship with places like Turkey has often been, you know, long-term goals are undercut by short-term priorities that are usually revolve around fighting terrorism in some sort of nebulous sense in these security relationships, which lead the U.S. to do things like, I don't know, sell the Saudis, billion dollars worth military hardware while they, you know, suppress women, for example. Yeah. When it comes to women, which one is more? expensive? Okay, the nukes. So let's go part of the nukes. Yeah. Yeah. We have to think a little more

long term. Well, speaking of long term, I mean, that was the final question for you. We in the U.S., you might have noticed, are trying to fend off an autocrat who wants to return to office. Yeah, we've got kind of a low-key technocrat named Joe Biden in office now, who's doing a pretty good job on a lot, a number of fronts, but, you know, his approval is stuck. He's got this sort of bombastic, venal Donald Trump waiting in the wings. Any advice for us on how to approach an election like this? I gave the same advice. I give the same advice to British people as well, because you two countries on the, on each side of the pond,

you have the same kind of funny hair in your life as a political threat. Yeah, that's why actually my advice is not to laugh too much. Because you're laughing because they have funny hair. They too are funny hair. Yeah. But I think we have to be careful about our laughter when we laugh, how we laugh, to whom we love, and with whom we laugh together. Because once you start laughing at them, you don't know when it becomes too serious that you cannot laugh anymore. laughing on your own.

I think United States is better in taking it seriously than Britain, to be honest. This is my observation. Still, not enough political energy and determination is put into how to fight against anti-democratic forces. there is this belief that we can still fix it if we get rid of this guy, rid of that guy, that leader and so on. No, unfortunately, it's not the case. Imagine Trump, only four years.

He was in power and now women in United States are in big trouble because of the abortion issue because he did just one appointment and then everything is gone. So what they are doing, the damage that they're creating, is far serious than we think. So we have to be one careful, but second, we have to do the boring job.

Like, you know, making fun of Trump is easy. Attacking him on Twitter is easy. What is more boring yet difficult is to follow which appointments he did, to follow where he's going, what he's really saying and to take him seriously. Yeah, the long-term structural work of defending a democracy.

in party building. EJ, thank you so much for joining the show. In five years, we're going to do this again. And we're going to talk about how, no, two and a half years. Two and a half years, excuse me. Yes. And, you know, we're both, you know, building this brighter future for both countries that does not include Erdogan, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, or any of these creeps. Well, actually, I want to see Donald Trump as a TV star.

That would be nice. Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, give him a show somewhere. I don't care where it is, maybe in Russia. RT or something. Thank you again. It was great talking about you.

Thank you, Tommy. Thanks. Thank you again to Etche for joining the show. Fantastic interview, as always. This is your spoiler alert. We're about to talk about succession. We have engineers in the studio right now, literally putting their fingers in their ears.

So here we go. Now we're going to talk about it. So turn off the podcast. Okay. What do you think? I think that's fucking great. I loved it. I loved it.

I loved it because I thought it kind of like was very OG succession, right? Like the election night one and the funeral were like just some of the best television ever seen, just these high wires. But it kind of went all the way back to the basics in the last one. Like we're back with the kids. We're back with like the rot of like late stage capitalism and their monstrous father and the fact that they are all going to lose in the end.

And if this is basically a metaphor for like how America itself has like become a, you know, like a dying empire, the end of this, like captured that perfectly, right? That, like, this kind of Elon Musk's swede comes in, buys up the thing that is, like, rotting America so he can profit off of it. And these kids are just not even up to the task

of holding on to what they think should be theirs. With their father created and why he hates them and refuses to let them take over. Here's what I loved about it just from, like, kind of a TV writing perspective. Yeah. Sometimes shows that go on for this many seasons have plot points that you,

think of and are like, hey, remember when that happened? Like in Game of Thrones, there were the, uh, the White Walkers that just kind of disappeared after like episode six in the final season. It was just like, that plot line wasn't relevant anymore. And I was always just like bothered by it. You know, like, come on. This was like the driving force in the show, the wall for the entire time. And now we don't care about that anymore.

I felt a little bit of that when it came to, hey, remember when Kendall killed a guy? Yeah. Seems like that was a big deal that we're never talking about, right? But him lying about telling his brothers, admitting to that, to his brothers and sisters, seemingly came back to bite him in the ass in the very end because they were kind of like, if you're such a psychopath that you would lie to us about that,

then we can't trust you with anything. And it just shows that like, this is why, like, Kendall is actually like the beating heart of the show as much as, like, Logan Roy was, like, the fun part to watch. Because, like, he's just so broken. Like, nothing matters to the guy. So broken. And yet even though he gets,

Because the other thing I was, like, thinking about is that his father used to always tell him, like, you don't have to be willing to be a killer. You have to be willing to do anything. Like, he was. Like, he was willing. finally got there. He got there. At the end, he was willing to even lie about the thing that he did that he told the siblings about. And having got there, he still can't get hold of it. You know? It is just like, and to me that's why Kendall's like the heart of the whole thing.

I saw Jeremy Strong who like, you know, gets shit for being like a bit serious. He sounds like way over the top, like super method actor, a horrible person to be around at times. There's like crazy New Yorker profile of him where he just sounded like not. fun to hang with. I totally dig it though. I listen to like some interview with him where he quoted like in the course of the interview like young Shakespeare, you know, like he's just, but like he's in it. He's like deep fucking in it. And his point was that he always thought of Kendall as this like metaphor for like late stage capitalist America. And you've given everything up and sacrificed everything and you somehow have still lost everything, you know, even though he's still like fabulously rich.

That's a funny thing They're also worth like billion Yeah, I mean he's staring in the In the water But he's like worth like $1.7 billion or something You can buy that water I liked the ending on Kendall

I like that Roman is like Got a Martini and seems to be smiling at the end Like you know what actually Maybe it's not the worst thing That I'm out you know I kind of like that Shiv and Tom Are like chained together

In their miserable existence I love that cousin Greg survives To fight another day I love the Greg Tom dynamic Something That's the part of the show I'll miss the most. I love that. Speaking of World, those, Conner's going to Slovenia. We could do

a spinoff of just Connor as ambassador in Slovenia. I was talking to Max about this. Max is so impressed by Connor's knowledge of random diplomatic posts, you know? When he says to, he says to the fascist of president-elect, he's like Pan-Hapsburg alternative to the EU.

Thoughts? Like, it's actually the most world-o-line that's ever appeared in the... So funny. So funny. When they're first talking about, was he offered Somalia? Yeah. Mugidisha, I think. It's like, we'll do car bomb me. Yeah, yeah, we'll do car bomb me.

It's good. So I give it A-plus. I'm going to miss it. And I'm worried that we're never going to see another show like that. The fact that HBO Max, like the discovery in their corporate right-wing overlords decided the max is a better brand than HBO. When Max, all I think about is watching like soft porn when I was like, skin a max, yeah, 19 years old. What were they thinking? That just shows you that you're not going to get another succession because all those prestige shows.

or HBO shows. I was listening to Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway talking about the Max rebrand. It's like, imagine taking the most valuable brand in all of media and just burning it because a new CEO came in and was like, eh, I don't want the last crew to get any credit. I need to restamp this with my identity. But Succession, we'll always have that as a document. By the way, it'll be a fun one to go back and watch in the beginning again. So Hannah hadn't watched it for the first two or three seasons, so I rewatched them all with her.

I think during COVID, and it was a blast rewatch. Shiv is better in the arc of it all, too, right? Because, like, her character, her character lagged a bit, no fault of the great Australian actress, Sarah Snook. But, like, you know, she had better plot lines early on. And to your point, like, the things she does towards the end of the series makes sense if you remember where this kind of started at the beginning and her whole relationship with Tom and all the rest of it.

Yeah, they really tied it together well. Yeah. And there's so many, like, great fanfic theories. He's like some people think that Tom was named after some random baseball player that played in like the 1920s that did his perform to triple play on his own. And the writers had to come out and be like, no, man. No, it's just a funny name. Frank Rich is like, what are you talking about? The one thing that is cool is that this is such a British show, right?

It's like Jesse Armstrong, this genius showrunner. And then, you know, Brian Cox, the actor. Who was in Super Troopers. Yeah, yeah. The guy plays Tom, I think, is a Brit. Yeah, he's a Brit. The woman who plays Shiv is an Australian. But it is kind of like telling that this is what smart Brits think of America.

Like we're very critical of UK politics on this show. But like we got it, you know, in our direction, this is what we must look like to the rest of the world. There's some really telling lines like when Madsen is talking to Shiv. And he's like, you've only been a democracy for like 50 years. And she's like, what do you mean 50 years? He's like, well, that's when you guys like gave black people full, right? So, you know, you probably shouldn't discount that. You guys have a tendency to do that.

It was such like a perfectly articulated, a dagger. A dagger. A dagger. Yeah. He said like you in Botswana, you know, it's about as long as Botswana. What do you, is Mattson in your mind, is he like Elon Musk? Is he like, is he like some mixture of like Spotify and Mark Zuckerberg?

Like what do you think he is? It's a good question. I don't know that I was able to pinpoint him. I do think they gave him sort of like a like a musky, musky archetype where you know, he's sort of inscrutable and then is revealed to be just kind of a bozo in some ways and a creep and, you know, just sort of like a typical shitty CEO. I think when you're first interested in him, you think, oh, this guy is really smart. He's kind of like a genius.

And then the more you get to know him, you're like, actually, no, he's just as big a boob as the rest of him. Yeah, he just talks better and he's Europeans or he sounds better. And that's actually like our experience with every tech CEO. Absolutely. Like, you're always like, this person's a gene. The first time you encounter Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, you're like, what a genius. And then like, you're like, the more you get to know these people, they're like, uh,

No, these people are just kind of full shit and they kind of got lucky with something and hired the right coders or anything. Exactly, exactly. Luck and timing. Okay, well, that's it for our recap. That was fun. That was fun. Let's do that again soon. Let's pick another show and just do a recap.

We should. Let's just turn this into the rewatchables. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Why not? Done, done. All right, guys, we will talk to you next week. POTSave the World is a cricket media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez.

Our producer is Haley Muse. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Seguin, Charlotte Landis, and Vesilius Futopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week and check out the Pots Save the World YouTube account. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support.