Pod Save the World - One last war for the road?

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Tommy and Ben talk about reports that Trump asked his national security team for options to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities and has accelerated the drawdown of troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. They also discuss the spiraling civil war in Ethiopia, reports that al Qaeda’s number two in command was assassinated in Iran, why Peru had three Presidents in a week, China pulling together a big trade deal, another blow for pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong, and Biden transition news. Then HuffPost’s Rowaida Abdelaziz joins to talk about reports that data from a Muslim prayer app was being sold to the US military and Islamophobia in the US and France post 9/11.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, as far as I can tell, Joe Biden is still president. The day-to-day coverage doesn't always reflect that, but I think that's still the case. Yeah, there's only, like, what, like 62 days left in the Trump show. So I guess the coverage is getting the very last drops of the Trump reality show before we all move on. Yeah, you got to milk that. Unfortunately, we are also doing the same thing today because there's a lot of kind of weird news out of the Trump White House. I know. It's still the president. He's still the president, unfortunately. Yeah, he still got a lot of power for a couple of days.

So the first thing we're going to talk about is reports that Trump is looking for options to bomb Iran. Don't love that. The other thing we'll get into is reports that he is looking to accelerate the drawdown of troops from various places across the globe. We'll dig into the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia in the scary ways it is expanding in the Horn of Africa. Reports that the al-Qaeda number two is dead. and was assassinated in Iran by Israeli-linked gunmen, I guess. I don't know. We'll dig into that one.

We'll talk about what's happening in Peru. We'll talk about China's new trade deal that sounds a lot like an old Obama trade deal. The latest in Hong Kong, a bit on the transition. And then the interview today is great. I talked to Ruehweda Abdel-Aiz. She covers Islamophobia, social justice, and national security at HuffPost. We talked about some really interesting reporting that this app been called Muslim Pro that's been downloaded by like 100 million people was selling its data to data brokers

that then went on and resold it to like security contractors including US Special Operations Command. So you can imagine how upsetting that was for a lot of people and a whole bunch of stuff. By the way, actually I had Octar's novel inspired like half of my questions because it's just so good and like so steering. So stick around for that. You will not want to miss the conversation. But Ben, unfortunately, I think we should start with this bomb Iran piece because on Monday night, the New York Times posted a five byline story. That means five reporters worked on this that said last week, President Trump gathered his senior advisors in the Oval Office and he asked for military options to attack Iran's nuclear facilities in the coming weeks. So apparently this idea was too crazy even for the deadenders like Pompeo and the hacks that he recently installed on his national security team.

And they warned correctly that this could escalate into a much broader war. And he doesn't want that on his legacy because I guess he's going to run again. The report said that Trump might still be looking for ways to attack Iranian assets or allies, including some in Iraq. This comes after the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA found that Iran had enriched enough uranium to make two nuclear bombs. It's important to note for listeners, like it would still take months to actually make them. So don't be alarmed.

But, you know, that's the amount of material they have. Adding insult to injury, the Washington Post reported that recent satellite imagery found that Iran has successfully evaded sanctions and has been delivering petroleum products to Venezuela. So to sum it up, the maximum pressure strategy is completely failed. And now it appears that lame duck Donald wants to blow something up. So the White House is also reportedly very nervous about the anniversary of Qasem Soleimani's assassination on January 3rd. So, Ben, I'm hoping this all leaked out because someone briefed on that meeting wanted to prevent a, a missile strike from happening. But if Trump bombed Natanz or bombed Fordow, the two enrichment facilities, what do you think would happen? How far would it set back Iran's nuclear

program? And what do you think the reaction could look like? Well, yeah. I mean, I really look forward Tommy to talking about criticizing, breaking down Joe Biden's efforts to pursue diplomacy of Iran because you've had this conversation. But I mean, I look, first of all. Hey, remember when you were attacked for saying that it was the JCPOA or war? Yeah, well, that's the thing is like this is the result of their failed policy. And what happened is you had a deal in place, Trump tore it up, and Iran, as the IEA found, has significantly expanded its domestic enrichment activities because it's no longer abiding by the constraints of the deal that the U.S. violated. It's not that complicated. And I think Trump, on his way out of office, is presented with, you know, the clear evidence of the

complete and utter failure of his policy. It's hard to think. of a policy that has failed more because Iran has more... Except for North Korea. Well, yeah, Iran has more nuclear material. They're more aggressive in the region. None of the problems have been solved, right? Look, if we bombed their facilities,

just on the nuclear side, we, when we looked at this, we assessed that you probably set back their nuclear capability like a year because they know how to do this. We can't destroy their knowledge of the nuclear fuel cycle. We can't kill all their scientists.

We can't wipe out all of their infrastructure. can blow up these two facilities. But I think if you blew up their nuclear programs, number one, it would guarantee that they're not going to do another nuclear deal and they're just going to try to dash out and covertly develop a nuclear weapon. But number two, it's likely to start a wider war across the Middle East. Iran could respond by attacking Saudi Arabia. Iran could respond by blowing up the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. There's any number of things that they could do. And this is the height of insanity, to even consider this, consider starting a war that could go on for years on your way out the door? I mean, it's even by the standards of Trump,

this is about the most irresponsible and insane thing I could possibly think of any president doing on the way out the door for what reason, just so that he can, what, what, you know, just so he can say that he bombed them, just so that he can cover up for the failure of his own policy by making the situation even worse. I mean, this would be quadrupling down on something that has already left Joe Biden a problem that he shouldn't be having because it had already been solved. Yeah, a total, total mess. You mentioned a bunch of places where we currently have troops. It's a good segue to the other big news, which is, you know, we've talked about how Trump has basically decapitated the senior leadership at the Department of Defense. He didn't kill them. He fired them.

But, you know, there are lots of rumors and reports that he did so in part because he wanted to accelerate troop drawdowns. Today, the Pentagon made it official. So the new acting second. Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, announced that the U.S. will draw down troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 2,500 troops in each country by the end of the first term, Trump's first and only term, I should say. Currently, we got 4,500 troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq. The New York Times had reported that Trump would also withdraw the 700 troops doing training and counterterrorism in Somalia, but I don't think that was announced today. So for contexts, like, there have been countless reports over the last few years about how Trump

is mad at DoD at the Pentagon for slowing down these troop withdrawals. And frankly, I think he has a point. There was a recent exit interview by a guy named James Jeffrey. He was the former special representative for Syria where he was basically bragging that he lied to Trump and played shell games to keep more troops in Syria than Trump had ordered, which like, I don't care what party you're in. I don't care how important you think the mission is or how self-important you are personally or if you're the committee to protect America or whatever. It's just not acceptable to defy a presidential order about ending a war. But I digress. Like, they didn't elect Jim Jeffrey. They elected Trump anyway. So this could be why Mark Esper was fired in part the former

SAC death. He reportedly told Trump that the conditions weren't safe enough for a withdrawal in Afghanistan. Already, we've seen several Republican members of Congress criticize this plan, including Mitch McConnell, who compared it to the U.S. departure from Saigon in 1975. Ben, maybe we should do these one at a time, since they're totally different countries and situations. Maybe we start with Somalia. Again, it's been reported, but it wasn't announced, I don't think. I don't have a great handle on what that mission is at this point. I think it's like counterterrorism against al-Shabaab and then training the Somali military.

I think everyone agrees that El-Shabaab is a real threat that we want the Somali government to have some sort of military capacity. The timing seems particularly bad, given the civil war happening in Ethiopia next door, which we'll get to later. But what do you think about pulling those 700 guys out of Somalia? Well, look, you know, it's such a weird Trump thing because it actually wouldn't end the U.S. involvement militarily there. The drone bases, yeah, the drone bases would still be in place. The U.S. has troops in Djibouti, which is right there.

And so, you know, you'd be removing, you know, he seems obsessed with troop numbers, but not looking at actually what the U.S. military is doing. I think taking out those 700 would reduce the capacity that we have to be training the types of security forces that you would want to be responsible for securing that area without diminishing what I think have been way too frequent use of U.S. drones that have caused civilian casualties that have dramatically ticked up under Trump. So he's making it harder by pulling them out to be present. pursuing the solution of having security forces there taking the place of U.S. drone strikes that would continue. It's not, I mean, even if you think that we need to figure out a way to get ourselves out of the business of these counterterrorism operations in Somalia, this is just a very weird way of going about doing it that is only focused on like hitting a certain number of troops

removed from a particular area, but not addressing what the mission of the U.S. military is and whether that mission is too aggressive. And as you point out, Ethiopia, which has also been a part of supporting peacekeeping forces and supporting counterterrorism efforts in that area, is pulling its troops out at the same time. So you have this potential for this vacuum of support for the Somali security forces and support for the peacekeeping missions against al-Shabaab, the terrorist group there. Just so Trump can, I mean, is he really going to run for re-election in 2024 on the accomplishment of removing 700 troops from Somalia? It's kind of bizarre. Seems unlikely. I found

the Iraq decision similarly confusing. I mean, that government is incredibly unstable. The security situation in Iraq is apparently so bad that Mike Pompeo is threatened to withdraw all embassy personnel from our U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which is the size of the Vatican. It's like 100 plus acres. I guess this is just pulling out 500 guys in getting it from 3,000 to 20. 2,500, but did you have a reaction to that decision? It seems similarly arbitrary to me. It seems arbitrary, and it's what is the point? You know, because what you do is you look at the missions of the troops. What are they there to do? And some of them are there to protect the U.S. embassy and U.S. diplomats. Some of them are there to support counter ISIS operations, which have

largely been paused since the Qasem Soleimani assassination because it's so dangerous to conduct those operations. And some of them are there to help train or support the Iraqi security forces. Again, we don't know why they're picking this particular number. He's not going to zero, so he's not going to be able to say, I took all the troops out of Iraq. What is the magic formula that led to this number? And in Iraq, if you remember, there's like 30 nations involved in a coalition there. None of those other nations seem to be consulted. Again, it just seems like either arbitrary so he can say he drew down forces or maybe he doesn't care if things go off the rails in Iraq because that would make Joe Biden look bad. I mean, honestly, I think we, there's no limit to Trump

cynicism. So you actually might need to consider the reality that he's going to leave circumstances kind of almost deliberately more difficult for Biden. He gets to say, I drew down troops and then he gets to blame Joe Biden when the ISIS problem gets worse because he's, you know, provoked the Iranian and remove some of the U.S. troops here, again, it seems totally bizarre. Yeah, so that brings us to Afghanistan. And so, look, you know, you and I both talked many times about the fact we think it's long past time for the U.S. to be out of Afghanistan, but there are also these ongoing peace talks between an Afghan group and the Taliban.

And I guess the question is, would a fast withdrawal of 2,500 troops or so make that harder? would it lead to a hasty NATO withdrawal? Because I think there's like 7,000 NATO forces there, but they basically rely on the U.S. military for logistics and often protection. Would that lead to chaos? You could see a redux of Obama and Iraq and what, 2014, end up sending troops back in. I mean, to your point about how to make it harder for Biden, this could be part of that. Yeah, we've talked about the peace talks, right, that are going on between the Afghan government and the Taliban. and obviously you and I have been pretty pessimistic about those. But this, again, drawing 2,500 troops out, not even taking all them out, right?

Again, why is it so important to Trump to have 2,500 instead of 4,500? You know, in an action that is not coordinated with any of those NATO allies, that is not coordinated with the Afghan government, that is not factored into the peace negotiations, It is just something that he is doing through like a handful of Devin Nunes Aparachics at the Pentagon in the last minutes of his administration. He had four years to get this done. If he wanted to get troops out of Afghanistan or get out of Iraq or out of Somalia, why is he doing this now?

Why hasn't he been working on this for these four years? And people will hear me and say, well, you just want to keep all these troops in these places. No, but the question is how do you remove troops? How do you end wars? and you do it by assessing what are we doing in this country, what are our missions, what security forces are we leaving this to, and what is the political and diplomatic context for what we're doing? And so, you know, if Joe Biden wants to methodically go after this, it's changed the legal authorities so that you're repealing that 2001 authorization of the use of military force that is totally open-ended. It's real diplomacy in Afghanistan to try to empower the Afghan government coupled with, really continued financial support for the Afghan security forces so that they can be the leading

military force in they already are, but even more so in holding ground against the Taliban. It's diplomacy within Afghanistan to bring in more of the Afghan people to this process, and it's diplomacy with the neighboring countries. And yes, then responsibly you can say, okay, we've arranged the pieces here so that we can take these troops out. You don't just yank them out in the middle of a process, a peace process and a NATO process, that could then just implode because of this puzzle piece that you've removed. That's just not how you quit doing this.

So what I actually worry about is he may actually, in a strange way, end up undermining the objective of removing troops from these places. Because by doing it hastily in a way that's not coordinated and a way that's not competent, he's going to leave things much worse. And you're right. There's going to be pressure on a Joe Biden to send more troops back into Afghanistan, to send more troops back into Iraq because of the way that Trump did this. So it's totally responsible.

And Tommy, I can't even see, like, how it's politically that useful. Like, he, again, in 2024, he's going to say, like, I got troops to 2,500 instead of 4,500, so vote for me? You know, like, what? Yeah, it's petulant, capricious. I don't even get it. God, it would be so great if Biden could get the AOMF repealed, but it would, of course, require a bipartisan vote in the Senate, so it may be tough.

Let's turn to Ethiopia because the Civil War in Ethiopia is really spiraling, and it's now drawn in neighboring Eritrea in Sudan, and the conflict could really destabilize the entire horn of Africa. So in an interview on Sunday with the Associated Press, the president of Ethiopia's Tigray region, which is that small northern province, got five or six million people, he said that his forces had fired missiles into Eritrea, the neighboring country, in response to Eritrea sending troops into Tigray. So it sounds like, you know, you have Eritrean troops crossing the border into Ethiopia now, which is frightening. So it's not just an internal civil war.

It's this regional thing now. We've talked about how the conflict keeps getting worse. Like, you know, the genesis of it was the Ethiopian government led by Prime Minister Abiyamed claimed that rebel forces in Tigray attacked a federal military base in Tigray on November 4th. In response, he sent troops north into the region. And they've been doing this sort of like clearing operation ever since. And they keep announcing that they've taken another town and another town. So there's seemingly some pretty intense fighting.

You know, the genesis of it is not quite that simple. The prime minister came to power in 2018. In the process, he sidelined a bunch of the old rebel leaders and strong men who had fought through the 70s and the 80s and who had deposed a really hated dictator in Ethiopia back in 1991. So there's a lot of history there and some bad blood. But, you know, this news shocked the world because Prime Minister Ahmed had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to broker a peace deal.

with Eritrea just recently. So the African Union, which is based in Ethiopia, is reportedly pushing 40 ceasefire. It's been rejected by the prime minister reportedly. There's also reports that up to 25,000 Ethiopians have crossed over into Sudan to flee the fighting. Ben, I think you mentioned this last week. The UAE has significant military presences in Eritrea, and there's reports that their drones are hitting targets in Tigray. So all the communications into the region are been cut off, so we don't really know for sure. I just couldn't be more worried about how badly this seems to be spiraling. As far as I can tell, there is zero engagement by the Trump administration to try to mediate in any way, despite

Ethiopia being by far our most important ally in the region. I mean, what do you make of the latest and, you know, what do you think Biden should be preparing to do, I guess? Well, right now it feels like the whole situation is going off the rails in ways that, you know, would be incredibly damaging Ethiopia. It would lead to a civil war, human, humanitarian consequences, could spill into Eritrea, as you said. It could create kind of ripple effects across the Horn of Africa as Ethiopia moves its forces out of the Horn of Africa. And it's going to lead, of course, to refugees as people are inevitably going to be fleeing the areas of fighting. And in that, we've seen destabilized neighboring countries or seen it contribute to a refugee crisis

where you've got already 80 million people displaced. So the current trajectory is not good. It's not good for Ethiopia. It's not good for the Horn of Africa. It's not good for the displaced persons crisis around the world. And there's just no engagement from the U.S. I think what you need is the U.S. and the European Union, together with the African Union, to be pushing as hard as possible to have a ceasefire, to just stop the fighting. We're not going to resolve the issues right now. Stop the fighting, have a ceasefire, set up some kind of national dialogue internal to Ethiopia where these questions about Tigray and its autonomy and its budget can at least be discussed, and just try to get a pause button on this thing, you know, because we're headed off a cliff

in Ethiopia right now. And I think you just, you see the U.S. obviously, you know, Trump couldn't care less. We're consumed by our election. But I mean, you need the U.S. involved here, together with the European Union. We're trading partners, we're assistance partners, we're security partners with Ethiopia. We have some leverage there. The African Union is the right front organization for this. They're based in Ethiopia. they speak with the clout of the African continent. So I just think this requires a lot more diplomacy than we've seen thus far, a lot more U.S. engagement and frankly European engagement than we've seen thus far.

And I don't think that's going to happen until January 20th. So this, like some other things that we're seeing around the world, we're kind of racing the clock here. Like how much will this situation deteriorate before a U.S. administration gets in there that might actually apply prioritization and diplomacy to this? Yeah. I saw right before we started recording that, you know, Pompeo had put out a statement from Turkey where he met with some like Orthodox Christian leader, which is just exactly what

your secretary of state should be doing if they're preparing to, you know, for diplomacy within Iowa caucus run with evangelicals in 2024 and ignoring like the massive problems that need actual diplomacy. He's going to a West Bank settlement. Yeah, he's going to like a vineyard. He's literally visiting a winery in a. settlement. Like, he's going to the go on heights to spike the football over this annexation of territory. I mean, this is insane, given all the pots boiling over around the world,

this guy's on a tour doing his domestic politics with the evangelical Christians and the right-wing Jewish community in this country. This is insane, given what's happening. John Kerry would be raising this issue at the UN. He'd be, you know, consulting with African leaders. We'd be trying to get a diplomatic process. A ceasefire you can usually get to. fast, at least for a limited period of time, to see if you can negotiate something in that period of time. None of that is happening right now in Ethiopia, just like it didn't happen between Armenian and Azerbaijan. These are not world wars, but they're not small wars either. These are pretty significant kind of medium-sized conflicts that are going on address.

Yeah, and they're existential for the people fighting. Yeah, I mean, look, Pompeo, I love Pompeo running around, talking about religious freedom, knowing damn well that his boss told Xi Jinping that, you know, building concentration camps for millions of Muslim weakers in China was the right thing to do and to go forward. He's just completely morally bankrupt and full of shit. So on Sunday, the New York Times reported that al-Qaeda's second highest ranking leader and one of its founding members, a guy who was one of the masterminds of the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was killed in Iran three months ago by Israeli-linked or maybe Israeli, I don't know, run assassins in Tehran. That's a reporting.

His name is Abu Muhammad Almazeri. This assassination was reportedly carried out at the behest of the United States and was done on August 7th, which is the anniversary of the African embassy bombings. So we don't have any intel been. It's hard to know exactly what this means for like the strength of Al Qaeda itself. But it's worth noting that Amazeri was seen as like a very capable operational leader. He was there from the beginning. our former colleague and a top intel official Nick Resnusen said in the piece that his death

will contribute to the fragmentation of the organization and splintering between like old guard and new guard, which seems reasonable. This has understandably, I think, kicked up a broader set of questions about why an al-Qaeda guy was in Iran and what their links are or are not. Historically, this discussion has created some challenges, right? We remember the Bush administration attempting to connect al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and using that to sell the war in Iraq. Do you want to offer any context about Iran and their ties with some of these, like Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda and why these goons might be in Iran? And were you

surprised by this story? I mean, hearing about, you know, Israeli assassins or Israeli-linked assassins on motorcycles in Tehran, you know, shooting at an al-Qaeda guy with pistols. That was, you know, kind of a vivid story. Yeah, I mean, it's a thing out of a movie. You know, there are two pieces. So, first, the al-Qaeda Iran piece and then this operation. I mean, this has been a very strange dynamic, dating all the way back to the Bush administration, where there were several fairly senior al-Qaeda guys that were known to be in Iran. And in the years after 9-11, Iran put a bunch of these people in prison. Some of them were under house arrest. And there was this kind of strange dynamic, again, Bush, Obama, Trump, where you had these guys that were seen as former al-Qaeda management types

who were in Iran, but there wasn't an assessment that they were still operational, that they were playing any leadership role, that the Iranians don't share objectives with al-Qaeda. I mean, you know, they're Iranians or Shia. Al-Qaeda is a Sunni extremist organization. They're on opposite sides of variety of conflicts, including, in places like Syria, including in Iraq. So I think there was this kind of perception that the Iranians were basically sitting on these guys. And yeah, some had been in prison, some had been in their house arrest, some, but I'm not up to date, obviously. There's been four

years under Trump of what's happened to these guys. But so that's the dynamic. It's not Iran actively supporting al-Qaeda or providing some safe haven. It's it they rolled up the al-Qaeda guys who were in the country after 9-11 and then just kind of sat on them was basically the impression that existed again through the Bush years and Obama years and Trump years. This operation raised a lot of questions to me. I mean, the one end, this guy clearly is Al-Qaeda and clearly has blood on his hands. Although usually the U.S., usually there's an operational reason that you would take somebody out. In other words, usually it's because we have intelligence. that this person is back involved in plotting terrorist attacks. So the biggest question I have

is, was this like a retribution case of taking this guy out because of his role in the embassy bombings? Or do we think that he or other al-Qaeda operatives in Iran have somehow, you know, become activated? And there was no real clarity on that. This is a different kind of operation. I mean, I think people are accustomed to drone strikes against al-Qaeda camps or al-Qaeda leaders. But working, again, if the story is right, working through Israelis and their proxies inside of Iran to essentially assassinate a guy, is just a very different flavor of a CT operation. We've seen the Israelis do this in the past, in Iran and other places, take out targets through proxies through gunmen who can carry out this kind of action. So to me, it raised a lot of questions, and some of them are, you know, as much as you

don't shed a tear for any guy like this, I'm just curious to know what the triggering factor was. You know, again, was it just we figured out where he was, and he's a bad guy and he's responsible for the embassy. You can mount a defense on that. I'd just like to know, is it that, or is it because we think that this guy was somehow engaged in Al-Qaeda operations today from inside of a riot. that's a whole other ballgame, it'd be useful if Joe Biden and his team could get national

security briefings to get the answers to that questions. Yeah, I mean, it does sort of have a retribution vibe, given that the assassination happened on the anniversary of the embassy bombings. And it does sound like, you know, various intel agencies have known that he has been in Tehran living with impunity for a long time. Yeah, I mean, the role of the Israeli sort of assassins did not surprise me because I've read Ronan Bergman's Rise and Kill First, which talks about their use of, you know, motorcycle gunmen and or bomb placers on a variety of officials, including scientists, which should talk about the morality of that someday. But yeah, it was quite a story. I do think that Joe Biden should be briefed on these things. You're right,

because you could see some sort of response or retribution, and we need to be ready for that. We need to know why. And, you know, again, if we'd known he's in Iran for years and, we just decided to assassinate him on the anniversary of those bombings. You know, that that's just a different kind of policy. You know, that's, and again, you could defend it on the basis of his guilt for that. But still, it's, you know, what kind of consequences will that bring? I mean, I just don't know enough to know why this operation happened, where it did, when it did, through the proxies that it did. Yeah. To me, it raises more questions than it answers things. Yeah, you and me both. Let's turn to

Peru, because on Sunday, Peru's interim president, a guy named Manuel Marino, stepped down after only six days on the job. He did half a scaramucci. He had come to power after Peru's legislature voted to remove the incumbent president, Martin Vizcarra. So Marino's six-day term led to massive protests, marches all across Peru, mass resignations from the cabinet. Now, according to the Associated Press, it seems like a guy named Francisco Sagasti, who is a 76-year-old engineer and seen as a centrist sort of consensus pick, he will become Peru's third president in a week, because basically they'll make him head of the legislature and then de facto that person becomes president. Sagasti and his party were among the few lawmakers

to vote against removing the first president in the first place. And I think the key to understanding this whole mess seems to be political corruption. The APs, story noted that every living former president of Peru has been accused or charged with corruption and that half of Peru's Congress is under investigation for crimes that range from money laundering to homicide. So it's pretty intense. These legislators are the ones who voted to remove the original president. They seemingly were worried because he was attempting to crack down on corruption and graft. So hopefully this will be the end of an acute political crisis for Peru, which is dealing with the world's highest per capita COVID mortality.

rate, massive economic inequality, a massive hit from the coronavirus and corruption that is basically undercutting democracy itself. Ben, it seems like we've talked like once a month about this kind of mix, right? You have economic inequality, corruption, protests. Hopefully this outcome is durable and good for the people of Peru. But, you know, I'll be honest, I don't know a ton about this situation that's sort of happening in real time. Well, you know, I think what you've seen in Peru is reminiscent of what we've seen in Chile, where you had protests about corruption, protests about inequality, young people fed up and taking to the streets. And yeah, there was plenty of corruption. You know, you lift up Iraq and Peru, and it looks like underneath it, you find

hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to a politician. I think, though, what this reveals is that this is like a crisis and governance across the Americas, where you see. You see. You see. this repeated pattern of massive government corruption scandals we've seen in Brazil, we've seen in Chile, we've seen in Argentina, we've seen in Peru, in other countries, combined with massive frustration with inequality and with things getting worse, compounded by COVID. The part of the world that has been hammered the hardest by COVID is our hemisphere, from the United States on down. And so, you know, to me it suggests that, the kind of myopic focus on Venezuela as the totality of our Latin America policy under this

administration. We didn't even get into Bolivia, right, where you had this kind of bizarre right-wing effort to invalidate the election result that favored Ava Morales and then the left winning in the recent elections. It suggests to me that there needs to be a kind of comprehensive look at what can the U.S. do together with the nations of the hemisphere. So we're in a glass house too when it comes to corruption, to fight corruption and to work cooperatively. Yeah, exactly. So I don't, this is not a case where I'm suggesting the U.S. kind of go down and tell people what to do. I'm saying, can we work together as a hemisphere to try to root out corruption, to try to crack down on illicit financial flows, to try to crack down on dirty money that washes around and finds its way into politicians' pockets, to strengthen democratic norms inside of our countries, and to not do so.

through the kind of ideological prism that Trump had, which is if you're right of center, you're good and if you're left of center, you're bad. No, I don't care if you're right, left, or center. Let's start from the premise that you shouldn't be corrupt and that, you know, we should be trying to work together to strengthen democratic institutions. Because I do feel like you're going to see this continue to migrate from country to country. And it's right that people are fed up with inequality. It's right that people are fed up with corruption. So let's come up with some policy tools to respond to that. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of global cooperation, China and more than a dozen countries in the Asia-Pacific region signed a big free trade deal

that spans roughly 30% of the world's population, roughly 28% of global trade. The countries who signed it said it would eliminate tariffs and quotas on about 65% of all goods that are traded in the region. Ben, I don't know why, but this feels familiar to me. It seems a bit like something we might have worked on in the past. I'll write the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP, which Obama negotiated and Trump withdrew from in 2017, although admittedly Hillary Clinton had already walked away from it during the campaign. So do you know what happened here? Did the Chinese pick up the proposal that the U.S. fumbled and just run it five more yards

over into the end zone? Or did this thing materially change a lot? Like, what did you make of the regional comprehensive economic partnership or recipro? I don't even know how to say it. Yeah. No, I think, and look, I recognize that we criticize Trump a lot. We have a few more weeks to do so. I'm going to do here.

I think the Chinese saw a huge opportunity. And we had negotiated over many years, TPP, which was a similarly large block of nations, from Japan to Mexico and Canada, to Singapore, to Vietnam, 11 countries in TPP to set, you know, rules of the road for trade that were largely developed by the United States. And by the way, also had protections for the environment, had protections for labor rights inside of countries. To get TPP done, a lot of these countries like Vietnam and Malaysia had to pass the most liberal labor laws through their parliaments that they'd ever passed before. And after painstakingly negotiating this, Trump just pulls out of it like on his first day in office. And I think Hillary

would have come back into TPP. I think she would have asked for changes. She would ask for improvements, but the objective, I think, would have been to keep this in place. Because this wasn't just a trading block. It was an effort to say, this essentially is our team. These are the countries that agree with us on how intellectual property should be protected, how the environment should be protected, so that when we negotiate these issues with China, we're doing that multilaterally. It's not just the U.S. and China in a bilateral negotiation. It's the U.S. and those TPP countries negotiating these issues with China. And I think the opportunity the Chinese saw when the U.S. withdrew is the U.S. is out of the business of trade agreements. They're in

a trade war with us. They're in, frankly, you know, trade wars with lots of countries. We slap tariffs on Japan. We slapped tariffs on South Korea. I think the Chinese went to these countries and said, hey, the Americans are now unpredictable. The Americans are the ones undermining global trade. Why don't you make a deal with us? And they basically just took that TPP model and expropriated it on their own terms, though. It's not the same deal. It's a deal that looks a lot more like how China would like trade to go. And it just shows you how much we lost four years under Trump. Not only did we lose TPP, but we lost the capacity to be the country driving how trade agreements are set and how rules are written. And I know a lot of people on the left don't like trade agreements. I get it. There needs to

be better worker protections. It can't have all these get out of jail free cards for multinational corporations. But I say to you on the left, if we're not doing it, the Chinese are going to get in there and there's going to be no labor protections. There can be no environmental protections. So whether it's a traditional trade agreement or some other arrangements, the U.S. has to get back in the game of at least trying to set baselines with these other countries. The reality is that the Chinese have sped ahead of us from where we were four years ago because they saw the opportunity of Trump vacating this space.

Yeah. So, listen, speaking of getting back in the game, because China's filling the space, we should talk about Hong Kong briefly, because last week the Chinese government passed a law that would allow the disqualification of lawmakers in Hong Kong who are deemed, quote, unpatriotic, end quote. So that, of course, means pro-democracy, pro-independence, pro-anything that China doesn't like. That law was immediately used by the Hong Kong government to disqualify for lawmakers. That disqualification led the remaining pro-democracy opposition, which was, I think 15 legislators total, to resign.

mass. And one of them said that this is officially the death of one country to systems and any semblance of independence for Hong Kong. Ben, I think Trump's national security advisor condemned this move. But as usual, Trump himself said absolutely nothing. My question is basically, do you think there's anything Biden or the international community can do to pressure China into walking this back at this point, especially now when the only tool that was available was protests? And those are basically impossible because of COVID restriction. or is it, do we feel like it's officially too late here? I mean, I think in terms of one country, two systems,

it's pretty clear that the Chinese Communist Party is basically putting an end to that. And I think what the democracy camp is doing now is kind of regrouping, you know, that for a while they're trying to work within the system. They're trying to win elections. They're trying to hold levers of power inside of Hong Kong and then mobilize people on the streets when they had that opportunity. when the pandemic happened and you could no longer mobilize mass protests, they lost their biggest piece of leverage. At the same time that the Chinese government, recognizing that the U.S.

didn't really care about this set of issues, certainly Trump didn't, and that the world was focused on other things, they just started ramming through all these laws and wrapping their arms around Hong Kong and squeezing as tight as they could. And so the pro-democracy camp is going to regroup here. And that involves leaving the government. So choosing to not legitimize a government that is clearly rigged against them and systems that are rigged against them. And internationally, I think that essentially we have to do a few things. Like one is if there's anybody who's at risk of persecution in Hong Kong, they should be welcome here in the United States, just as they're welcome in Britain. And I think other countries can follow suit.

Like there just has to be safe haven for people who fear for their safety or fear of detention in Hong Kong under Chinese authorities. Second, I think we should remain diplomatically focused on this. And there's legislation that we've talked about that does everything from, you know, restricting the capacity of U.S. or other international companies in Hong Kong to censor the free speech of their own employees or to kind of kow to anti-democratic moves by the Chinese authorities there. And then also this question of, does Hong Kong get a special status that it currently enjoys if it's just going to be swallowed up by China? That the cost of transactions, the U.S. financial regulations and laws are applied in such a way that it's easier to do business in Hong Kong. Well, you start

leveraging that to try to reopen some space for people in Hong Kong. And then I think what the pro-democracy camp does is they regroup and they think about when is their next move? And is their next move more protest and mass mobilization when that becomes available, when there's a triggering event? Do they try to figure out how to reenter politics in Hong Kong? Or are they kind of going into some form of exile and waiting for the international dynamic to change, waiting for the support that they can get from the national community to grow, waiting for some change within China? That's the space we're in, but I don't think that Biden should take his eye off this. I think we should continue to show

that there's going to be a cost to China and frankly, a cost to, you know, those who are doing business in Hong Kong, if suddenly Hong Kong's not really a one country's two system dynamic. Yeah. So last thing, just a little bit of transition news. So we're recording this on Tuesday, November 17th. There have been a bunch of White House staff announcements. There haven't been any foreign policy positions announced yet. Biden had a meeting today with some sort of like foreign policy hanchos that we could talk about if you want. But, you know, there is some concern about, from progressives, mostly, that Biden could be preemptively browbeaten by Mitch McConnell and Republicans in the Senate into choosing a more moderate cabinet. We've sort of talked about this

before. And I'm starting to see an interesting idea get it floated about ways to get around that by using either recess appointments or the Vacancies Act. So I am far from an expert on this, but here is sort of how it could go. So let's say you, put forward your secretary of state nominee, that's a big progressive, McConnell fights it, votes it down, blocks it. Biden could then take that person, make them like a senior advisor at state, I think like wait 90 days, and then use the Vacancies Act to make them acting secretary. And some experts say that that person could then serve in that role for about two years and basically just have the job as Trump did countless times. Or Biden could use a recess appointment

to name his cabinet. You could, you know, a recess appointment for those who don't know occurs when the Senate is in recess and the president needs to fill a role that requires confirmation, but the Senate is not around, so you use your authority to make a temporary pick. The problem now is that Congress tries to prevent recess appointments from ever happening. So Biden would have to use the authority he has to adjourn Congress, like forcibly and then make the appointment. So this is a little confusing. I'm so far from an expert on the details, but I just I guess philosophically, I wonder if Biden needs to threaten to do some of these things to help keep McConnell from going full obstructionists. So you at least know that, like, you have a lever here.

Or maybe that's naive to begin with. How are you thinking about this, Ben? And again, I don't want to get ahead of the Biden people. Like, I'm interested to see who they pick. And I think we should let them pick the right people on the merits. But I do hate this idea that McConnell could somehow dictate who's in Joe Biden's cabinet. Fuck that. guy. Yeah. And again, I should just, I have, I don't know how the Biden people are thinking about these questions. So we're speaking for ourselves here. But I think that the way the Republicans have abused this system and created two sets of rules, one for Republican presidents and one for Democratic presidents, mandates that you play hardball. And look, in an ideal world, you know,

we're all abiding by the oldest agreed upon set of rules and norms. But, but for, for a couple decades. There's been one set of rules that apply to Republican presidents, another to Democrats, and we just shouldn't accept that anymore. And look, this comes into place in two ways with the Trump people. I mean, more than two, but to a highlight. One is some totally fucking crazy people got confirmed for jobs. Like Rick Grinnell was confirmed to be the ambassador to Germany. He was just a troll. He's a clown. Ratcliffe, complete and utter fucking hack, was confirmed to be the director of national intelligence. And guess what he did after that? He was just a troll. He's a clown. He's a clown. He was a complete and other fucking hack, you know?

Never mind all the acting secretaries and undersecretaries and deputy secretary. You know, we've got acting Chad frat-paddle. Acting Chad. You know, JV. Fascist over at DHS. You know, he's made a mockery of this process. And so the idea that after Trump has made a mockery of both who is confirmed by Mitch McConnell Senate and who he just kind of rams in there when even those people couldn't be confirmed by Mitch McConnell Senate, the idea that.

The idea that Mitch McConnell can then turn around and say, well, we don't like, you know, this person or that person to be in your cabinet. So here's the agreed upon list, you know, that you can choose from for your cabinet. That is insane. And there's no reason that Joe Biden should accept that. He should pick exactly who he wants to be in his cabinet. And if Mitch McConnell is messing around, then you find a way to go through him or around him. I'm sorry, this is it. And we don't have time for this nonsense.

There's a pandemic. There's a, there are all these crises around the world. There's a collapse in American standing. There's a global economic crisis. We can't sit around here and wait for Mitch McConnell to puff out the white smoke for the moderate to conservative appointees that he will tolerate. That's insane. Joe Biden won this election. He should have his cabinet.

And look, if he appoint someone who's so egregious that the nomination unravels, that's one thing. But if you appoint someone who's clearly qualified and Mitch McConnell and all these extremists in the Republican Party just don't like them for some partisan reason, then you find a way to get that person in the job. Yeah, the system was not designed to give the opposition Senate majority leader a veto on the president's cabinet. Historically, you almost never vote against nominees unless they are, as you said, unqualified. Your political opponents are going to choose their allies to serve in their cabinet. you don't should not get to say of it. I don't want to hear a word about bipartisanship or comedy or respect for institutions. If Mitch McConnell didn't have any respect for the Senate he led and let Donald Trump go around him time after time after time to put acting unqualified

monsters in charge just because he wanted to avoid a hearing that might have been embarrassed, even when they would have gotten through. They just wanted to avoid embarrassing votes. It's a joke. Then Joe Biden should do whatever it takes to get the people he's. needs in place, period. Yeah, this is not about polarization. Like, polarization is about Mitch McConnell not even allowing hearings on a Supreme Court justice or the current president of the United States not even recognizing that he fucking lost the election.

That's polarization. This is about the need to get people in the jobs. And this isn't about bipartisanship because, like, Joe Biden is the most bipartisan human that could possibly be elected president of the United States today. The people he's going to nominate are not going to be, like, far left. extremists. They're not even going to be as progressive as I would probably like, you know? It's just going to be that Mitch McConnell doesn't like certain Democrats or Mitch McConnell wants to throw his power around. And frankly, the way it would have worked in the past is these people

would at least come to a vote. And if someone was qualified, you'd probably get a handful of Republican votes. What this is about is if Mitch McConnell is a leader, and by the way, we should all donate, work our butts off for Georgia. We won't have to have this conversation. But if Mitch McConnell is the leader, this is about Mitch McConnell saying, I will block this person from even getting a vote. I won't let this person, you know, move forward and advance through the Senate. And, you know, that's just not how things should work. It's not how our democracy. This is someone using the tools of democracy an incredibly undemocratic means, right, to put himself above the President of the United States and the selection of the cabinet. And I just think Biden should

not humor this in the slightest. Totally agree. Okay, that is it for the news portion of today. but when we come back, we'll have my interview with Rweda Abdulaziz, who covers Islamophobia and social justice at HuffPost. So stick around for that. Rweda Abdulaziz is a reporter who covers Islamophobia, social justice, and national security issues at HuffPost. Ruehah, thanks so much for doing the show. Thanks so much for having me.

So I wanted to start by asking you about a Vice News report that, frankly, I learned about because you tweeted it, that says a Muslim prayer app called Muslim Pro, which has massive reach. It has been downloaded an estimated 98 million times is one of many apps that harvest its user's data, sells it to data brokers, and they later sell that data to all kinds of entities,

including security contractors and the U.S. military. And so like that kind of data harvesting and sale, I think, is a pervasive business model for a lot of apps, but the revelation that Muslim Pro Data could be sold to specifically the U.S. special operations, Command, I think shocked a lot of people. For those who don't know, Special Operations Commanders, Socom, does counterterrorism operations. And this raises the question of whether this data could be used to locate people or even target

them in military operations. So what has the reaction been to these revelations so far? Yeah. I think the Muslim American community and just Muslims globally have been shocked, but not entirely surprised, but I think shocked just because, like you mentioned, this app is super. so incredibly popular. I mean, I had it on my phone. My friends have it. My family members have it. And it's a seemingly innocuous app. Most Muslims download it because it just tells you the prayer your times, you know, practicing Muslims pray five times a day. And it changes ever so slightly

depending on, you know, the movement of the sun and the moon. And so it just goes off and tells you when it's sunset, when it's sunrise. And so it's not, there's not much to it. But I think because it seemed like such an innocent app with so many people having access to it, a lot of people were just shocked as to why an app that has developed for Muslims and I think assumed that have been created by Muslims, which I think is a false assumption. You know, not everyone. I think the founder is not Muslim that we know of and, you know, the team is both Muslims and non-Muslims. I think so many people were just shocked that such a simple app would be harvesting not just their data, but, you know, giving it to U.S. intelligence in the military. And I think that is a huge red flag for many Muslims

who just don't really trust the, you know, the U.S. military when it comes to issues like counterterrorism and using their data safely. Yeah, I mean, understandably. And I think the Snowden Disclosures, you know, kickstarted this big conversation about intelligence collection, especially bulk data collection. And frankly, I worked in government. I was on the NSC. I knew none of that stuff. It was shocking to me. I don't think we've really had a similar reckoning when it comes to all the data that we willingly hand over to corporations. We hand to Facebook. I think the weather app is another one of these apps that is basically just a vehicle to harvest your data.

Is awareness about that set of issues heightened in Muslim communities because of this post-9-11 legacy of, you know, surveillance often illegally? Oh, absolutely. I think the Muslim American community is a lot more aware when it comes to issues of surveillance just because of history. Like you mentioned, a lot of it was post-9-11. Most notably, we think about the NYPD program in New York under Bloomberg, which essentially used census data to not just track the whereabouts of Muslim Americans, but it placed informants in mosques.

They have chatted up Muslim business owners and bodega owners. They were at the universities beyond New York in the tri-state area. And also another personal anecdote, you know, I attended Rutgers University during the same time period where it was revealed that, you know, the NYPD was spying on students like myself at the time. And so that's just one example. When we think about larger policies, we think of NCERS, we think of CVE. And so there's already a sense of distrust when it comes to Muslim Americans being surveilled and it not leading anywhere. And then being unfairly surveilled. right, because there is this guilty by association, because they happen to share the same faith of

certain people, right? And because they practice and pray a certain way. And none of that has amounted to anything. We know the NYPD program didn't produce a single lead. And yet we continually see, I think, policies and things like this. And so it makes sense when it comes to, you know, data and apps, you know, I think there's a sense of, like a running joke, like a satirical joke that runs in the Muslim American community. We were already super concerned about our phones and our laptops and would make jokes over the phone when we were talking to people, would be like, just getting FBI, right? Or just kidding to the apps, because we already knew that it could possibly be true.

So I think when the Vice Report came out, it reinforced a lot of the preconceived ideas that many Muslim Americans had. And I think it's particularly damaging because it continues to create this distrust in this community. There's a trauma that's consistently there. And I think every time we think we've moved away from this issue, something comes out to reaffirm that, you know, Muslims are still being unfairly watched in a secretive and dangerous way. Yeah. So that trauma that you talked about, you know, I've been reading Ayadoktar's novel Homeland Elogies. He's been on this show before. It's an incredible writer, playwright. But it talks about, you know, life in America as a Muslim

American after 9-11. And there was this passage. I was reading it literally last night. He wrote, quote, that terrible day in September foreclosed our futures in this country for at least another generation. And I just found that that sentiment like gut-wrenching that he felt like, you know, America refused to include him in its future while the 9-11 generation was still alive. It's just heartbreaking. And I know it's a novel. But I wasn't sure if that is a sentiment that is why held among Muslim Americans who have had to live with that unfair stigma since 9-11. Yeah, I think 9-11 definitely created a pivotal moment for Muslim Americans. I mean, you know, the common saying is being a post-9-11 kid, right? And I think this applies not just Muslim

Americans, but, you know, Americans as a whole. But let's be real, Islamophobia, we didn't start with 9-11. And it definitely was there. Again, talking about the surveillance programs, they were created back when we were failing, you know, black Americans, the Panthers and black Muslims. And so So what 9-11 did was just really amplify a lot of the structural issues in place. And just beyond policy and structure, just created an environment that was toxic to Muslim Americans that increased bullying in schools and workplace discrimination, made it harder for Muslim women who were the hijab to just go out and go about their daily lives and have them question their future.

So I present myself in a certain way, how practicing am I allowed to be? isn't normal that I have just an app on my phone to help me with my faith? What does the media say it about me? What are politicians saying about me? And I think all of that is damaging to the most diverse faith community in the world, right? Muslim Americans are still pretty small. We make up 1% of the total U.S. population, but we are growing and we are diverse. But I think so often in this post-911 era, they've been vilified and demonized so much. And I think we've seen those impacts have, you know, real life effects to, you know, where people choose to go to school or where they're living and how they're interacting with their neighbors. And I think that generational trauma,

despite, you know, being how many years far away from 9-11 is, is still pretty much here and still pretty evident. Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned the hijab. I mean, it's, it's not just evident in the United States. There is also broad surveillance of Muslims in Europe. There's discriminatory practices against Muslims in a number of countries. Most recently, this conversation has come up again in France. French President Emmanuel Macron introduced a bunch of new measures this fall that were widely criticized. How different do you think that French debate is over, you know, sort of anti-Muslim stigmas and sort of this, you know, fever pitch about ISIS that picked up again with a recent horrible attack on a teacher? I mean, how does much of that different

for in tone and tenor to the U.S. debate. I think there are a lot of parallels and similarities, but I think what makes the France situation so different is also just the deep history, right? French colonialism over Muslim majority countries and African countries is still quite evident. And I don't think they've made peace with that. Also, when we're talking about just how the French government

deals and talks about French Muslims who are much bigger, they're the biggest French minorities in the country. when we're talking about this concept of not allowing for them to have their own Islamic schools and how mosques have to have a certain relationship with the government, it really questions this concept of how secularization looks like when it comes to your Muslim minority and everyone else. I think the main issue with France is that these policies, again, like the U.S., are meant to deal with national security issues, like no one is disagreeing.

that, you know, the French government has a serious issue with extremism. You know, they've endured a series of number horrible and awful attacks, but the response each and every time continue to crack down on French Muslims. And I think something there is not working. And the fact that we want to generalize, or not we, but, you know, Emmanuel Macron and the French leaders want to generalize an entire faith group of $1.6 billion for a problem that it's facing is definitely not the right way to go because now you have French Muslims questioning their own place in their own country, right, a country that they've known their entire lives. And so the stigma and the backlash that they feel is quite real. I mean, we saw the hate crime on two Muslim women

happened in France. And it wasn't just because of this situation. But if you go back again in history, there have been a series of policies and legislation, again, policing Muslim women's bodies and the Burkini debate and others. that have really created this difficult and challenging place for French Muslims. Yeah. I mean, look, I think it should have been clear a long time ago that we kind of lost our minds after 9-11 and allowed fear to control us. But if watching a thousand-plus Americans die a day and seeing the government do nothing

about it while we spend billions forcing people to take their shoes off or are surveilling people in bulk or surveilling entire communities, to your point, with no actual outcome that improved national security or any of the things we say we were doing those measures for, you know, it seems like just completely laid bare how dumb these policies were. Yeah, and I think a lot of people are questioning it now, whether it's in the U.S. or places like France. But I think generally what's so terrifying with Islamophobia is how normalized it's become

and how easy it is to say, well, this is to protect all of us. But to what effect and to how many, or let me phrase this another way, but when it comes to at what cost, right, especially when we're talking about the costs of the rights of minority groups. And we see it being exported to other countries. We see the crackdown with some minorities in China. We've seen it in Austria, right? They're putting similar measures following France. We've seen in countries like Myanmar.

And so I think it's terrifying to not recognize that this is a global, racist, right, that places like India, for example, another one as well, that we can allow for these policies and legislations to happen under the guise of national security and that we're doing is to protect people, but not reconcile with the fact that other people, right, Muslims are having their rights taken away from them. Yeah, pretty horrifying that the documents that were leaked about Xinjiang talked about the U.S. war on terror. If that doesn't get people to do some soul searching, I don't know what will. So Trump campaigned. on a Muslim ban, he's demagogued refugees. He has written off and disrespected the entire

Palestinian authority. But none of that seems to have prevented him from developing close ties with Muhammad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, with the UAE, with other autocratic leaders. Do we square that circle by saying, like, autocrats going to autocrat? Or like, how do you think about that? I think what's really important is to understand that, look, there's no, there's not going to be one particular entity that speaks for all Muslims, right? It's not going to be Saudi Arabia. It's not going to be Iran. It's not going to be ahead of a state that has its own interest and wants to protect its own interests. And that's what countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others are doing. And, you know, Muslims aren't a monolith, right? We think differently. We operate differently.

And we sure as heck don't look as to one country that's going to protect us in our interest in international news and within the international community. So I think there's a lot of there's a disconnect there. And I think what's also really unique about like a country like Saudi Arabia is that at the end of the day, it, you know, people point to Saudi Arabia to either defend Muslims or to attack Muslims, right? It's an interesting cap because people look at it and the human rights violations that happen there and say, well, this is what all Muslims are like, right? And this is why they're a horrible and backwards and vile people. Look what's happening there. And then people can point to Saudi Arabia and say, well, we haven't banned them. They're not on the list, which is why we like Muslims. And so oftentimes Muslim are just like, we don't really know how, you know, governments are interpreting this relationship, but regardless, it seems to be hurting us. And it's not like Muslim, you know, Muslim majority countries in those heads of states can't perpetuate Islamophobia themselves, right? When we're looking at the crackdown of Muslims, it can happen anywhere. And so they can definitely be perpetrators too. So I think it just really muddies the water from, I think, the clear-cut goal of Muslims and them just asking for,

basic dignity, having their rights to practice freely to, you know, have access to safety and stability like everyone else and not to be singled out differently, whether they're traveling on a plane, whether they're going to a mosque or going to work or going to school, because of faith that they happen to ascribe to. Yeah, no, that's very well said. I think my question was probably too broad. I think the thing that gave me whiplash was, you know, for decades, a lot of sort of Gulf Arab countries were seen as sort of guaranteeing a, the PA, the Palestinian authorities seated the table when it came to negotiations with Israel, when it came to the U.S. And then when the Trump administration just completely screwed them and said you basically

could get a fraction of, you know, the last sort of negotiated amount of territory, there was a there wasn't much pushback. There was a lot of silence from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, some of these countries. Yeah, because I think at the end of the day, you know, they're going to look out for their own interest, you know, as a government. They're not going to really think about what, you know, Muhammad in New York, the bodega owner, things, right? At the end of the day, if they're getting whatever deals that they're getting, that's what's going to matter to them.

And I think that's just an issue that, you know, that's where like politics is one thing in their own interests and how we live our lives is something else. Yeah, fair. And especially when you don't have to worry about, you know, the population rising up and pushing back and depose. you can just sort of are in total control. So last question for you. I mean, you know, Joe Biden won the election despite what we hear in the news. Are there policies that he has talked

about that he's promised that are most important to Muslim Americans or to the international communities or sort of like a wish list of things folks are hoping he will do first to deal with both Islamophobia, but also to just sort of, I don't know, fix a lot of the broken immigration policies and other things that Trump has put forward? Yeah, he made a lot of promises. that I think Muslim Americans are really keeping an eye out for. Domestically, he vowed to repeal the Muslim ban on day one when he's in the office. So I think that's definitely a big ticket item to see what's going to happen with that, increase refugee caps.

And I think a lot of that also comes from a lot of Muslim majority countries. You know, he specifically put out a whole agenda, I think, on his website that talked about issues that pertain to Muslim Americans and beyond immigration things, things like access to health care, talking about, you know, know, the high levels of bullying in schools and fostering a safe environment. Internationally, he talked about the situation in Kashmir as one that he pledged to do right by. He also did talk about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with caveats there. So I think there's some hesitation there. A lot of caveats. Yeah. So there's that. But I think

he's bowed a lot. And I think a lot of folks are just going to be paying attention and, you know, trying to hold him accountable to see if he follows through with a lot of the promises he's made. Absolutely. Well, hopefully we can have you back. We can hold him accountable in six months. I don't know, whenever he actually has a government in place. Mitch McConnell will let it happen. Rueheda, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for all your reporting. Where can folks find you online if they want to follow you, read your stuff, et cetera?

Yeah, I'm on Twitter. It's at Rueheda underscore Abdel, and you can find my work on the HuffPost.com website. Excellent. Everyone check it out. And thank you again. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Rueheda for joining the show. Thanks to you, Ben, for, you know, talking to me.

Yeah. I need friends these days. I feel more isolated than ever. Thanks to this god-awful virus. So here we are. This is the longest conversation that I have all week, I think. And again, it's so weird to feel the gravity shifting from Trump to these Biden people. I think what we'll have in the coming week, so, is we'll start to have appointments and nominations.

Yeah, that'll be awesome. That'll be fun to talk about because then we won't just be talking about Trump. burning things down on the way out. We'll be talking about at least who's going to try to rebuild from the burned out foundation. Amen. So next week, we are doing a mailbag. If you have questions, hit us up on social media. We were recording this week so that we both can do the Thanksgiving thing and be off next week after a long, long four years. But we really look forward to the mailbag episodes. Actually some of my favorite ones. We get great questions. So talk to you all soon. See your world does. Patsy of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is

Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Quinn Lewis for production support. And thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.