Pod Save the World - Oprah upends the British Empire

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss the latest massive state-sponsored hack on American businesses and government email servers, Biden’s efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, the need to rethink counterterrorism policies, protests in Senegal, why pineapple is patriotic in Taiwan, Russian efforts to undermine confidence in American Covid vaccines, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s sit-down with Oprah, and more. Then, Tommy interviews Verónica Gago, a professor and a leader of Argentina’s Ni Una Menos movement that helped legalize abortion.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include which podcast you would like.

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And combined, neither of us is half of an Oprah Winfrey. Holy shit, what an interview, Ben. Yeah, I mean, like, as someone who talks too much, the genius of not talking as an interviewer definitely came across. And it was like I was gripping.

It was riveting television. It was riveting. We're going to give the people what they want. We're going to get to that later. But you got to hint to Oprah. She is, she's the best in the business for reason. Yeah, you know what I learned from her? It was, as you just said, shut up and listen.

And then also from Oprah and Terry Gross, you learn the power of, like, crafting the shortest question possible, which I literally never do on this show. Yeah. Because I just, I recite a ton of context. But it is amazing how much they, like, are able to get people to open up just by saying one sentence. Well, and one other thing I learned is, and Terry Gross does this well, too, if someone says something kind of interesting, don't move on to the next question. Like, just keep them on it.

And kind of keep them on it by agreeing with them. And I've actually gotten trouble as an interviewee. The most times I've got in trouble is when the interviewer was acting like they agreed with me and getting me to talk more and more and more, you know. Yeah, I've been there too. She definitely did that really, really well. She did that really, really well. So we have a lot of great stuff to card today. We are going to talk about, I feel like we can talk about this every week, another major hack of an American software company that has potentially massive implications. We'll do an update on Biden's efforts to end the war in Afghanistan. Reports that the Biden team is reviewing all of their counterterrorism policies, including

the use of drones. We're going to talk about these protests in Senegal to everyone on social media who tweeted at us about covering this. Thank you, actually. You got it on my radar screen. So that really helps. Pineapple in Taiwan, a Russian disinformation campaign against COVID vaccines. Progress of the Pentagon.

We'll explain why bombshell news out of Brazil. And then, as we said, the Megan Markle, Prince Harry interview seen around the world. And then I just finished interviewing Veronica Gallo, who's one of the leaders of the movement that helped win the fight for abortion legalization in Argentina. So she is a really cool, inspiring activist that you will want to hear from. Yeah, I can't wait to hear that. That movement was crazy. It truly, like, we were just chatting after. And I was like, I just still don't know how you guys beat an Argentine Pope.

How is that possible? You know? It's like a godlike figure from your country. Anyway, two quick housekeeping things. Ben, you're going to love this fucking show. All right. I'm ready. Our new sports podcast, take line.

It premieres on Tuesday, March 16th, right? So it's Emmy Award winning host, Jason Concepcion, and two-time WNBA champion, Renee Montgomery. They're going to host this fast, funny, smart, thoughtful conversation about sports, culture, politics, like the ways they intersect on and off the court. I've listened to some episodes. The Knicks are going to be very present in this, which I know speaks to you.

They just have like amazing chemistry. It's smart. It's funny. It's fun. It's a break from fucking COVID and Trump. Subscribe to Take Line wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe to the YouTube channel because the YouTube's are fun too. Renee's got the coolest background, I think, of anyone at Crooked Media, so we all need

to step up our games. I know I'm saying this to you. Are you in your childhood bedroom? I am in my childhood bedroom. Yeah. Are those all your books from high school? No, yes, including actually like children's books from when I was a kid. But my parents did that thing right, like when you went away to college and they immediately

completely overhauled your room and turned to do an office. You know, like no nostalgia, you know, like no posters on the wall, you know. So it's like your parents' stuff and it's like the J.D. Salinger collected works. Exactly. Yeah, it's like my parents' stuff and like a blend of Winnie the Pooh and J.D. Salinger on the book. Perfect. Perfect. One other quick thing. You guys have heard all of us ranting and raving about HR1, this big democracy reform bill that would make voting easier and partisan gerrymandering, basically save the Democratic Party from getting run out of office by Republican voter suppression efforts for a decade.

If you want to learn more, if you want to get involved, if you want to help it get passed, go to vote saveamerica.com slash for the people. Vote saveamerica.com slash for the people. Ben, you want to talk about another hack? Why not? So these stories are always equal parts like scary and confusing to me. So Microsoft announced that tens of thousands of users of its Microsoft Exchange server email software had been hacked in an effort that was likely sponsored by the Chinese government. This hack supposedly will impact small businesses, towns, cities, police departments, local governments.

Brian Krebs, a blogger focused on cybersecurity, reported that it was a Chinese hack. group and that they have taken control of maybe hundreds of thousands of exchange servers worldwide. Microsoft said the Chinese targeted infectious disease researchers, law firms, colleges, universities, defense contractors, think tanks and NGOs. That list makes a lot of sense to me. Microsoft also noted in a blog about this hack that this is the eighth time in the past 12 months that they've disclosed a nation state-backed hack like this. Apparently, these hackers started stealing data then on January 6th. the Trump fans were like marauding through the Capitol. So, you know, I hope the QAnon

shaman's email is safe. Microsoft has patched the software, but those patches don't fix the cases where the hackers got in. They installed back doors to give them access in perpetuity. So, Ben, there was also this confusing report in the New York Times that said the U.S. government was about to retaliate against Russia for the solar winds hack using, quote, covert counterstrikes and then public sanctions. That story got amended to say they were going to use sanctions and like clandestine actions. I don't know what's going on here. Here's my question for you.

You're sitting in the White House now. You're like with Jake and in the crew. How do you think the NSC or the White House can approach these problems in a systematic way so that every month or so you aren't spending like a dozen hours in some situation room meeting trying to tailor a response narrowly to like a specific set of circumstances or country or incident? You know?

Because this feels like it could become. all-consuming. Yeah, I actually thought a lot about this when you raised this issue for the episode. I think there's three things to this. And I think what people should understand, you know, it can be confusing, you can feel opaque. But, you know, you've heard about Solar Winds. Now you've heard about this Microsoft hack. These are like massive, massive hacks of enormous amounts of American public and private infrastructure. And what's clear is that, you know, Russia and China and other actors, too, are clear. becoming less and less kind of constrained and more and more aggressive in their hacking.

And you just can't avoid the fact that we wake up to one of these with increasing frequency. So how do you deal with that beyond the one-offs? I think the first thing people have to understand is there needs to be an enormous investment in securing, updating the digital infrastructure of this country, you know? And by the way, we've, you know, just think about COVID. Think of those of you looking for vaccines, like the public health infrastructure of every state varies significantly, right? And one of the things I think they'll probably talk about in the White House is they're going

to do a big infrastructure bill, right? The next big domestic spending bill after the huge win of the rescue plan is some build back better bill. And we've heard a lot about climate change, clean energy infrastructure as a centerpiece of that. But if they're serious about kind of updating and securing American infrastructure, this may have to be a part of it because we are vulnerable. and that vulnerability compromises privacy, national security.

It could compromise people's wealth. It can compromise the intellectual property of companies. And at a certain point, there needs to be like a strategic effort to make this country more resilient against these hacks. I think then also we have to talk to our allies, right, about shared approaches. Are there norms and standards that we can try to set with like-minded countries as a start to both secure ourselves against these kinds of hacks, but also to try to just strengthen our hand to go to the Russians and the Chinese

and try to get them to cut this out and try to set some boundaries around what is done. And by the way, I'm sure that, you know, the Europeans in those discussions will say, we need to talk to you about the Stoid and Disclosures and Privacy. So I'm not, to those, don't at me, we're a part of this discussion too. I totally get it.

Although I don't know, you know, espionage is a bit different than some of the stuff that's been emanating from Russia, obviously, in China as well. And then lastly, to that New York Times story, this question of whether to respond to hacks is incredibly complicated, because on the one hand, you want to respond, show that there's some cost. On the other hand, do you want to go down a slippery slope of like cyber war? I don't, you know. And I thought the Times story didn't surprise me in that it suggested that they weren't going to respond kind of across the board. They were going to do the kinds of things to send a message, you know, to Putin, hey, look what we could do. You know, we can, we can get into your

whatever power grid or just to send that message of be careful here. I'd be careful. Again, I don't think that long-term answer is all-out cyber war between America, Russia, and China. I would like to think it's better defenses, some international cooperation, and then some effort to multilateralize these conversations. Yeah. It seems like the NSA and the various people in charge here took all these steps to try to preemptively hack adversaries as a way of deterring them or preventing these hacks. And maybe we skipped over the hardening of our own defenses part because it seems like, look, I'm not saying the U.S. government should be able, should be defending like every zero-day hack on Microsoft exchange software or something like that. But it just, I don't know,

the seal is unsustainable. And whatever we're doing isn't working. It is. And there's this kind of patchwork, right? There's 50 states, how many municipalities, how many private sector actors, never mind federal networks. And at the end of the day, you know, again, I'm not a techie here, but I do know it's cheap to do this. You know, it doesn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars to mount cyber attacks. And look, you know, even with better security, like you find a backdoor, like you steal someone's password who's an administrator. I don't, you know, I'm not a hacker, but like, you know, the chances are that there are going to be vulnerabilities, particularly if you haven't hardened your defenses enough. And it feels like, again, this is something where the government's

going to have to step in and try to get better standards across security and probably have to invest the money in strengthening our digital infrastructure. Yeah. And clearly, you know, small businesses, state and local governments, they need help because, like, they probably don't even have an IT guy. I mean, she said, cricket media didn't really have one until recently. So, like, yeah, people need some help. Totally. Yeah. And again, that's an, I think the state and local point is important because you don't one cities vulnerable, states vulnerable. Yeah, like software that hasn't been updated since like Windows 98. It's like, you know, not good.

Let's do an update on the war in Afghanistan because, you know, we talked about some of these negotiations before, you know, in February of 2020, the Trump administration cut a deal with the Taliban that said the U.S. is going to withdraw all of our troops by May 1st of this year of 2021 in return for some commitments by the Taliban specifically to not attack U.S. troops and to break with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The Taliban have honored their commitment to stop attacking U.S. forces, but they have ramped up attacks on Afghan forces and they have not cut ties with al-Qaeda. So now Biden's team is scrambling to figure out what to do about that May 1st deadline.

Last month, late last month, Secretary of State Tony Blinken sent a letter to Ashrafgani, president of Afghanistan, that was framed as sort of an update on Biden's thinking and in that letter later leaked. The main proposal in this letter was to create a United Nations-led peace summit in Turkey to help push the Afghans and the Taliban to negotiate like a constitution, a government power sharing agreement and a ceasefire. The letter also proposed some other meeting that would include like regional countries, Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, India to figure out ways to support Afghanistan's institutions. There was an appendix, I guess, this letter that wasn't posted publicly that included

specific policy proposals that got into more granular detail. But Ben, what I think jumped out at a lot of people was the relatively harsh tone of the letter considering it was the diplomatic message to the head of state. There's also a diplomatic message from one of the nicer guys, I know, Tony Blinken, like truly like one of the most charming, friendly, kind people. It wasn't a mean letter. It's just sort of like tough. What did you make of the letter? What did you make of some of the proposals that have leaked out? And what do you think the odds are at this point that Biden gets all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan stand by May 1st. I saw right before we came in that Bob Menendez, Senator Bob Menendez, suggested that Biden should not meet that deadline. Well, like, the good thing in the letter

is this idea of trying to get more of a multilateral discussion going with all the relevant neighbors, right? You know, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran even, right? Pakistan. Yeah, Iran. Good for them for putting Iran in there. Yeah. You know, look, all these nations mess around Afghanistan. They all have interests there. And I've long thought. that, you know, at the end of the day, you need to get everybody around that table. And look, the Pakistan has been essential to the Taliban strength, for instance, and ultimately, you know, basically violating Afghanistan sovereignty. But all these other countries have interest and could help if those, you know, countries start pushing in a similar direction. Because as the letter

points out, while we all have very divergent interest in Afghanistan, none of those countries really have an interest in a complete collapse there and all out civil war again. And not many countries, maybe Pakistan, you know, would want to see the Taliban just overrun the place again either, you know? Yeah. So internationalizing it, I think, a good idea. The tone was a bit off-putting to me because at the end of the day, it's the Afghan government. Ghani can be, I guess, a difficult interlocutor, but he is the elected president. And, you know, the proposals that leaked from the U.S., you know, they're not surprising. It's basically like an interim government that brings in a bunch of Taliban people with a bunch of current Afghan government people as a bridge to some

election and then all kinds of arrangements made for the constitution that kind of balance the Taliban's interest in Islamic State with protections for women and minorities that I think we would definitely want to uphold. And I, I, again, I, guess the one challenge here is that the criticism we've made of Trump's deal was it seemed to go too far towards elevating the Taliban and kind of diminishing the Afghan government. And the letter kind of continued that, and it fell exiled Khalilzad, the envoy. I bet he had a heavy hand in that letter, you know. He's frustrated, yeah. Yeah, and he's frustrated, and I get it, and you want some urgency here. But the challenge, though, is on the one hand, you're pushing them with all this

urgency. On the other hand, you're just launching this new international process with all these other countries. And the idea that you're going to align all these pieces before May 1st, I just don't think is that likely. And the way to align those pieces can't just be that the Afghan government kind of concedes everything at the table either, you know? And so I'd like to see if this, you know, give yourselves a little time here to test whether there's any, you know, progress can be made with this international formula to try out these ideas within the negotiations. I'm sure they have been already, but between the Taliban and the Afghan government. And to try to get the Afghan government more comfortable with the idea that some of the hard-fought

gains the last 20 years are going to be protected constitutionally. And look, you can't make guarantees here, but people should check out the Dexter Filkins piece in the New Yorker. Like, the Taliban is assassinating one by one the leaders of Afghan civil society. Like, this is not subtle. They are preparing to take over that country and terrorize their opponents. And in that environment, I think it's fair that those people would want to make sure that whatever government structure that they're signing up for isn't like a backdoor for the Taliban

and just come over and take over the place. So as someone who's very much supported ending this war and getting the U.S. troops out, I do just think that like the May 1st timeline is this kind of artificial Trump timeline that was thrown on there. it's 2,500 troops, right? We're not talking about the 100,000 troops that were there at the height of this. Just give this diplomacy a bit more time and try to bring the Afghans along and understand their concerns and see what types of assurances or can be put into whatever interim government

is negotiated so that they're not just feeling like the U.S. is handing the keys over to the Taliban while we get our troops out in the midst of what has been a pretty terrorizing. several months in Afghanistan. Yeah, all the things they're recommending are the right in the necessary steps that have to be taken. I'm just imagining you and I getting forced

into a coalition government with Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller was also trying to kill us. Yes, that's a good... That's happening. And this is the key point. I think it's... Again, I'm... Here, they're trying to get the troops out.

They're trying to end this war. They're trying to turbo-charge diplomacy. Those are all worthy objectives. I just think you can give yourself a little runway to do that. Yeah. You know, imagine if all those countries agree to show up. That's a pretty rag-tag group of countries. You know, like, it's going to take a few meetings, right, to get an international consensus, just as you're trying to get an Afghan consensus. And I don't think they're under huge pressure to hit the May 1 deadline. I don't think the troops, by the way, at the end of the day, are the most essential thing. The most essential thing is what agreement can the Afghans come to?

So we can, you know, the troops can come out a few months later, or whatever arrangement we make to support the Afghan security forces that we basically pay for. That's clearly going to be a part of this. So that's separate from whether we have troops there or not. There's a lot to talk about. I think, I think, you know, they should give themselves a little time here. And I think they should take a tone that is a bit more, even if Ghana is frustrating, it's not just Ghana. It's the Afghan people who are your audience. And particularly people who put themselves on the line the last 20 years started in.

NGOs, women who've entered politics who are worried that they're going to be killed if this kind of thing goes through. And you've got to see if you can do more internationally and with the Afghans to set the table a little bit better as you're winding down the war. Yeah, I hope they take the time. I hope they do it right. If Biden goes sort of serious strikes a Khashoggi MBS decision followed by not getting out of Afghanistan on the timeline negotiated by Trump. I think that is that is going to be lead to some angry people on the left, understandably. But hopefully. And the Iran and not exactly looking like he's in a rush to get in the Iran deal. See, I see that. I mean, look, as someone who has like, you know, I think like fairly progressive,

you know, hopes for the Biden administration, I don't know. I think that the Iran thing is a much bigger tests than whether, you know, the 2,500 troops leave May 1st or September 1st, you know. I agree. I agree. So much of the criticism of Biden is impatience. You know what I mean? Like you see a lot of people whacking him. And then he later does exactly what they wanted to do for, you know, $2,000 checks, et cetera, et cetera.

So, yeah. Well, here's another very important issue, both in terms of counterterrorism then, but also to the left, which is, you know, counterterrorism policy and drone strikes. So the New York Times reported that Biden's team has imposed temporary limits on drone strikes in commando raids outside of battlefield zones like Afghanistan as they decide how much oversight that White House wants to have, the NSC wants to have over those kinds of counterterrorism operations. The Trump administration had deferred authorities to the CIA to the military about when to take strikes.

They got rid of rules and processes that were designed to reduce civilian casualties. So, Ben, you know, this review, it's like this is good. but not surprising. President Obama, you know, you were there for all of this, took a number of steps to try to increase oversight over counterterrorism operations to reduce civilian casualties. The interesting thing I saw here is that the Times reported that Biden is considering potentially just tightening the Trump rules

and not necessarily going fully back to the Obama era restrictions. They're also reportedly debating whether to disclose information about counterterrorism strikes and estimated civilian casualty numbers. Ben, what kind of stuff do you think these guys are debunker? dating right now. And like, I don't know, is there a chance for Biden to move this conversation even further forward, right? Now that drones are far more widely available than they were in 2009, 10, 13, 14 when Obama was really pushing these things. What role do you think the U.S. can or should play in trying to establish international rules and norms for their use in the same

way we were talking about cyber? So I actually think that this is more important to kind of ending the Forever War than, you know, when the 2,500 troops leave Afghanistan, right? Because this is about whether or not we're, you know, killing people with a kind of pretty vast architecture of intelligence and military assets in several countries spanning multiple continents, you know? And I think there are a couple of questions. There's a question essentially if who signs off on a strike. And if Trump pushed that decision-making down to the military and the intelligence community, that definitely raises the risk of additional civilian casualties because they're much more aggressive, at least in the Obama years, in the targeting that they do than what would clear, I think, a process that was run through

the White House. That's why they were always complained about the Obama White House being micromanaging. But there's a bigger question here, right? So another thing that happened last week is that the Biden team put out that they're going to pursue an authorization for the use of military force, you know, the authority under which were at war in all these places, frankly. And when we began to explore this at the end, we tried to get one at the end of the Obama years, part of what we wanted to do is say legally, you are only authorized to take any military action in these countries against these very specific organizations. Because the 2001 AOMF is so broad that it's been used to take drone strikes in Yemen and

Somalia and Libya and all manner of places, right? And so I think the AOMF and this review is an opportunity to say, the burden of proof is back on the U.S. government to go to Congress and make a case for why they need to take a drone strike anywhere, right? I mean, actually, I think the baseline assumption should be we don't need to take drone strikes. And the burden of proof is to go and say, well, no, there is this particular terrorist organization that has a particularly dangerous safe haven in ex-country. Let's say they think Somalia, al-Shabaab continues to pose a threat that requires drone strikes, when have we last had to debate about that as a country or a discussion or, you know,

at least through our elected representatives in Congress? And so I think the goal here should be to shift the presumption away from, you know, the presumption has been for, you know, over a decade now, we just do this. We just take drone strikes and we do it in a whole bunch of places. And what we're trying to do is calibrate civilian casualties and the numbers of these drone strikes. I think we should question core assumptions as to whether we need to be doing this at all. And again, if we do, be very specific. Don't just say we need authorities against anybody who's associated with al-Qaeda anywhere, but say, no, no, this particular affiliate, you know, Al-Shabaab is a threat in Samaya, here is why, so we need an authority. I'm not

even sure maybe that would pass must or maybe it wouldn't. But I think that's the kind of mental shift that needs to take place here. Otherwise, you're, you know, otherwise you're really just kind of turning up or down the pace of these things. Yeah, that's right. Right. It does seem like right now. I mean, what was described in the New York Times about sort of the boundaries of this debate did seem sort of like a continuum from Obama to Trump. I do hope that there's a broader set of conversations like you just described going on. That could honestly be scope to efficacy, right? Like we keep talking about attacks on U.S. troops serving in Iraq from these Iranian-backed militias. We respond, allegedly, to deter them. And then they happen again. At some point, it's like, is this working? You know, like, I'm not saying hang our guys out to dry, never respond if they're getting attacked. But, like, you do need to question these core assumptions. Like, is this protecting them? And the same thing with, look, and people are right to say, well, what do you look at what you guys did in the Obama years?

That's totally fair. And I'm saying we should be asking these questions now so that they're asking them to the beginning of the Biden administration because can we argue that these drone strikes haven't in addition to killing, at times, innocent civilians, contributed to radicalization, contributed to instability in places, what is the cost of continuing to do this kind of forever? Because I will say, as someone who, you know, could defend individual drone strikes against, you know, certain Al-Qaeda leaders through the Obama years, if you had told me in 2009 that we'd still be taking drone strikes in all the same countries in 2024, I would have been like,

what? Like I would just not have assumed that the length of this thing, you know, as against the threat, you know, posed by these groups, it feels just way out of whack. And this is, they have a chance in their first year to try to rethink it. I hope that they are as ambitious as possible. And I think it should interact with the congressional question of whether to get a new authors, or not whether, but to get a new authorization that they use military force that is limited to certain countries and certain groups and time limited too, by the way. It's not open-ended, you know, three years and has to be renewed so that there's not the kind of blank check 20-year-forever war circumstance that we've had. Yeah, and look, I don't think either of us are naive to the risk

either because, you know, we live through Faisal Shazade and the Times Square bombing. We live through Umar Faruq Abdul Matalab, the Christmas Day bomber. We both lived, worked through, you know, I lived through, meaning we were in the White House, the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, package bomb that nearly took out, you know, planes landing in the United States. So there were instances, I think, where there were like real threats that were focused on the U.S. that needed to be deterred. And some sort of like military response will likely be part of that. But to your point, I mean, Jesus Christ, a decade plus later, if the policy has not gotten rid of the problem, you've got to kind question the policy. Yeah. And one more way to think about this is like, should, if there is a

target, a terrorist training camp that is tied to like an active plot against the United States. Right. Okay. Like, that's something that I think there would be pretty broad support in the country for. But that's not what most drone strikes are anymore. You know, these are kind of steady efforts to degrade, you know, terrorist organizations, you know, and do we need to be- You know, the military will see, like, activities that appear to be threatening, right?

Exactly. Six guys in Afghanistan and in the back of a truck with guns. And the thing is- driving towards a base. Yeah, drone strike should be more extreme and exceptional. It should not be a normal tool for open-ended for decades like this. And I think that that's what should be on people's minds here. Let's turn to Senegal because last week, Senegal's main opposition leader,

Usman Sunco was arrested for allegedly raping a masseuse in February, very serious allegation. He denies, Sunco denies the allegation. He claims he was arrested because Senegal's president, Mackie Saul, wants him sideline for political reasons. So Sanko, this opposition leader supporters, took to the streets. There have been about a week plus of pretty violent protests. Amnesty International says that at least eight people have died. That's as of today, Tuesday. Ben, you know, again, these allegations are quite troubling.

And the site of these violent protests in Senegal, which has been a stable democracy for, like, several decades, half a century, has a lot of people worried. President saw one re-election in 2019 with 58% of the vote. His opponents are worried that he will run again for a third five-year term. Saul's critics also point out that several of his previous political rivals have been arrested on corruption charges. So they're suggesting that all of these arrests are part of a pattern. I don't know. Ben, what do you think the stakes here are for Senegal, the broader region, and U.S. relations with Senegal. So putting aside the rape allegations, right, which you know, you and I are talking about we, it's so hard to evaluate and it's obviously a serious charge. Separate from that, there are

already concerns about Mackie Saul. And I think what the stakes are, what's kind of depressing to me about this, Tommy, is that we went to Senegal in 2013, in part because we were so pleased with how the election the previous year had happened, Mackie Saul had been the opposition figure and the outgoing president had for a time looked like he wasn't going to allow for a peaceful transition of power and a kind of coalition of civil society and youth helped propel Mackey Saul into the presidency. And he seemed to be the younger, more reform-minded civil society-friendly leader in West Africa, a region that has had some democratic progress in places like Senegal and Ghana. But at the same time, a region that is also occasionally.

have leaders who change have a change of heart and suddenly they want to do away with the term limits that they used to support. Suddenly they're attacking the civil society organizations that used to be their allies. Suddenly they're making deals with the same kind of corrupt actors that young people are frustrated with. And that's certainly been the case in Senegal. And because the stakes are if a country like that, there was on a relatively positive democratic trajectory backslides like this and you have yet another leader changing the game. and trying to stick around in power and quash his opponents, you know, that's adding to a trend that we're seeing, again, not just in Africa, but in lots of places. And you obviously talk to

Bobby Wine. You know, Uganda's not had the same democratic progress as Senegal, but that's obviously an acute example of it. So I think it really matters because you want, you know, Senegal's been a relatively, you know, democratic, relatively prosperous country in that region with a vibrant civil society, a really engaged civil society, and you see that in these protests, and you really don't want to lose that. So I think that the number one interest here, separate and apart from obviously whatever the, you want, however this case goes forward, you'd like it not to be politically motivated, but driven by the facts. You'd like to see, you know, I think, support for Senegal civil society and in a sense that, you know, a guy like Maggie Saul should be the Mackie Sal who

who he was when he was first running for office and not the one who's seeking to hold on to office like this. Yeah, well put. So I'm sure we'll keep watching this story. I'm going to jump to Brazil because it's, I don't know, seems related as a wrong word, but interestingly similar. So major news out of Brazil this week, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice throughout criminal cases against former president, Lula de Silva, which will allow him to run for office again. So Lula was the president from 2003 to 2010. He was preparing to run again in 2018, but was ruled ineligible because he was convicted of corruption charges back in 2017. That cleared the path for far-right candidate Jaya Bolsonaro to win. So Lula de Silva is seen as the biggest political

threat to Bolsonaro. He's the world's best hope for getting rid of Bolsonaro, who like openly pines for the days when Brazil was a military dictatorship, giddily watches the rainforests get burned and exacerbate global warming. So we've got to get them out of office. Ben, I mean, this is an amazing story. Yeah. Credit, by the way, it's to the Intercept Brazil, which broke a bunch of stories about how some of these anti-corruption cases against people like Lula were totally politicized and rigged. Are you, I mean, am I wrong to feel a burst of hope from this news? Like Lula, defeating Bolsonaro would be a huge deal. I think so.

First of all, yeah, because, I mean, it's clear, whatever you think of Ola, there was clear political motivation. I mean, the judge, you know, who with glee, you know, pursue these charges then came into the Bolsonaro government. Yeah, it was like texting, like, prosecutors about what to do. Yeah. I mean, so the, and look, the reality is that Bolsonaro, this kind of giant buffoonish Trumpian figure of the Brazilian right had, you know, on the back of these corruption charges and just

through the kind of force of his personality kind of, you know, splintered the opposition and was taking Brazil in a very bad direction and has been. It sets up a potentially fascinating election where you would have a populist of the right against a populace of the left. I couldn't really think of another example where you had kind of two perfect avatars. of very different brands of populism going against each other. Lula, very much of the working class, you know, out of the labor movement, out of the opposition to the military dictatorship in the country, and Bolsonaro, who embraces the military dictatorship.

And it's a healthy competition, but I would hope, you know, that the Lula would win that competition. And like you say, that's tied to Brazil. It's also tied to protection of the Amazon and to, you know, beating back far-right politics globally. So, you know, very surprising news and potentially hopeful news. And I will say in the long run, though, I don't know that the long-term answer to Brazilian politics, I want to be clear here, is Lula. I mean, he's a 75-year-old man. And so part of the problem has been that these giant figures suck up all the oxygen. The best thing would be a young generation, you know,

coming to the fore. And we've had a great young Brazilian parliamentarian on this podcast before Tabita. But I think right now, Lula is a better option than Bolsonaro. Let's just put it that way. Yeah. I mean, Bolsonaro is like even more deranged Trump. So, Ben, move over freedom fries. Here comes patriotic pineapple because people in Taiwan are consuming massive amounts of pineapple after China banned imports of the fruit from Taiwan citing some sort of biosecurity reason. I guess there was like a bug or a fungus or something that didn't pass inspection. So in response, consumers in Taiwan ordered in three days more than 41,000 metric tons of pineapple, which is basically what Taiwan exported to China last year.

The Wall Street Journal had a fun write-up of this, and they noted that doctors have had to start warning people in Taiwan about overconsumption of pineapple, that it could lead to health problems and that a whole pineapple is about 1,000 calories. You don't want to put, you know, one down, you know, multiple times a week. interestingly, but pineapple translates to prosperity in one local Taiwanese dialect. So it's interesting the way that gets interpreted. So if you're a small business owner, it's great. If you're a doctor or a firefighter, it's seen as ominous because that means you'll get really busy.

And if you're a firefighter, you don't want to be busy. So they actually had to do like studies to dispel this myth. Amazing. Anyway, that is everything I know about pineapple in Taiwan. Are you going to have pineapple pizza later? I know you're in New York, and that's, you know, a delicacy there, right? I don't like to mix it to. I do like a good pineapple, though.

I like a good pineapple. It's an underrated fruit. It's just hard to get good. I mean, when I'd never been to Hawaii in my life until, you know, we went, you know, with our former boss. Because like I'd go be a staffer on that trip. The pineapple in Hawaii, once you've had good pineapple, and I hope the Taiwanese pineapple is good, it's much better than the frozen stuff in the supermarket. I will say it's a cool story, but it's also like a reminder to like watch Taiwan, man,

because there's interesting stuff going on there and they're moving away from China. Like that one of the outcomes of that Hong Kong protest movement is Taiwan took one look at that and was like, we don't want that to happen to us. And the other thing that I find interesting is that if you look at the protests, we haven't talked that much about the protests in Thailand, but that obviously, of course, in Myanmar, there's an element that was learned from the Hong Kong protest about boycotting certain businesses, buying other things, in some cases, you know, trying to boycott Chinese products because of their support for, you know, some of these policies. So this is like a new,

this is a new thing where, you know, I mean, people in America think that where this place has been taken over by politics where all your choices are politicized, including like the things you buy and the content you download or whatever, that's happening everywhere. It's a fascinating trend for better or worse, we'll see. I have an idea for you. So this week, it's been a week of like, you know, clout chasing clickbaity Twitter controversies, right? Like the New York Times saying that California has the best bagels. You should do a reverse and tweet a photo of a pineapple covered piece of pizza and be like, ooh, love a New York slice.

It's like so good to be home. And then a bunch of obnoxious blue checkmarked, like Brooklyn-based journalists will dunk on you and not know that they're only helping you get attention. But it's actually, this is basically what I'm describing as Andrew Yang's barrel campaign. I was going to say, like, I would do that except I think Andrew Yang's already going to do that. I think he's one step out of me. Like he might tweet like a shipment of California bagels that he got or something. Yeah, he's just trolling his way to the mid to the mayor's office.

You notice it like since Trump left that this is what Twitter argues about now? You know? Yeah, we're all stuck inside. So we got nothing to do. It's just the saddest place. in the planet. Well, let's talk about one of the really important story that I would call infuriating, but not surprising. So the State Department's Global Engagement Center, Ben, an organization you know well, they've identified a Russian-back campaign to undermine confidence in Western COVID vaccines.

So they're doing that by playing up the risk from the side effects or claiming that like MRNA development, that the process was rushed, that it's unsafe, right? And they're pushing these stories to outlets you've never heard of, like New Eastern Outlook or Newsfront. But the State Department says that these publications, they listed four in total, are controlled by various Russian intelligence agencies. I think it's kind of fun that, you know, the SVR, like the GRU, everybody's got their own little news outlet. The goal seems to be to like denigrate the West and promote Russia's Sputnik V5, I guess, vaccine. We talked previously about how, you know, back in the 80s, the KGB ran a major disinformation campaign to spread the

idea that the U.S. had invented HIV-AIDS. And so that's why I said that this latest disinfo campaign is not surprising, but these efforts can be incredibly effective and incredibly damaging. Ben, what did you make of the State Department's decision to go public with these accusations? Is there more you think they should be doing to combat this kind of disinformation? So what's interesting is, like when we set up the GEC, the Global Engagement Center, late in the Obama years, one of the thoughts was that they would do this. all the time, you know, just constantly blow the whistle on Russian disinformation campaigns, which are not that hard to spot if you're looking for that. Right. They're pretty brazen.

Yeah. And then, you know, Trump people kind of, you know, obviously put the K-Bash on the GEC for a while. It made me wonder how much didn't get revealed at the Trump years about what Russia's doing. I think this is really good to do. And I think it's good to do with other countries, too, like that, you know, just, just informing people, you know, when you spot it, put it out. Like, here's what the Russian disinformation is. People should be aware of how people are trying to manipulate them. Whatever the U.S. government knows about Russian disinformation campaigns or any disinformation campaigns, or that matter, why not make that public? It's a public health issue in this case, obviously. And it's just shitty. I mean, it's so shitty. I mean, we talked about this,

like, I want the Russian vaccine program to succeed wildly. I want the Chinese vaccine to succeed wildly. I want the Chinese vaccine to succeed wildly. I pick a country, you know, Iran, you know, like this should, this should be no politics, no geopolitical competition, like, like human beings should get vaccines. And that's ultimately good for everybody, right? Because the more we stamp out this virus, the more places we stand out this virus, the safer we all are from it, you know? So come on, GRU, like go back to trolling Democrats, you know, like, you know, like, Don't get into this vaccine bullshit. It's really pretty terrible.

Here's some good news. So on Sunday, President Biden nominated two women to four-star commands. It's the highest command you can have. General Jacqueline Van Ovo's nomination to run the Transportation Command. And Lieutenant General Laura Richardson's nomination to run Southern Command will now go to the Senate for confirmation. What's unusual about this process is that their promotions were approved during the Trump administration. but held back by Mark Esper, who was then the Secretary of Defense, because the Pentagon was concerned that Trump is so sexist and so racist that he wouldn't approve any candidates who weren't

white males for these positions. But, you know, but, you know, look, enough of that asshole. So General Van Nobost is she's currently a four-star officer and the only woman of the 43 four-star generals and admirals in the U.S. military. So, you know, credits to Helene Cooper at the New York Times for being all over this story. Congratulations to General Ovos and Lieutenant General Richardson on their new jobs. And I'm glad they got this done. Yeah, no surprise that Trump, I mean, you know, he liked people to look central casting. Central casting. I feel like every general he promoted was like a square-jawed white dude with like, you know, crew cut or something, you know. But look, it was, you know, I was in a lot of rooms with a lot of national security officials.

and there were very few women in uniform at the four-star level. Clearly, there was a huge need to promote gender equity there. Because, by the way, if you go into a room full of enlisted people, there are a lot of women there. So it's not a matter of they're not women in the military. The upper ranks of the military did not reflect the younger ranks. Now, part of that's generationally these people are climbing up the ladder, but that means they should be allowed to climb up the ladder.

I hope over time, think of the joint chiefs of staff. Like, that's always a bunch of dudes or combatant commanders. And so this is beginning to crack into the four-star space. Hopefully that means, you know, the joint chiefs will start to have more gender diversity. And, you know, that's important for equity. It's important for the perspectives you get from people of different backgrounds. And, yeah, it's just a good thing. And it's good that Joe Biden, he really, you know, today he put out a photo of him with these two generals in the Oval Office and saying you wanted

everybody in the country to see this is what a general looks like. That's great. I mean, I'm glad that they're going out of their way to signal that they're doing this. Yeah, I am too. All right, Ben, let's give the people what they want. Let's talk about the royal interview. You are our royal correspondent. So as everybody on the planet probably knows, Megan Markle and Prince Harry sat down with Oprah for this exclusive interview about all things. Royal family life in why they left the UK. I will admit that going into it, I was like I could care less about this. conversation and then once it started, it was riveting. In case you missed it, here's some of what we learned. At times, Megan felt so isolated and abandoned that she contemplated suicide. We learned that

the royal family didn't want Harry and Megan's son Archie to be a prince, which meant he wouldn't receive security. We learned that a member of the royal family expressed concern about how dark R.T's skin would be, which is horribly racist, obviously. But I also just like, I found her, the way she talked about the royal family to be fascinating. Because I feel like I almost had the same perspective that she did going in. She talked about working in Hollywood, right? And being around famous people. Like we've been around presidents.

But she said it was like there was no preparation for the singular nature of the monarchy in the UK and the way they're looked at and the way, you know, the press harassed them. Today, Tuesday, the royals finally released a statement saying the whole family saddened by what they heard. and that the issues race, particularly that of race, are concerning and they'll be taken seriously and addressed by the family privately. It was not the best statement I've ever seen. So, Ben, I guess, like, I've never seen a group of people or an institution have its reputation as thoroughly damaged as this in, like, in one shot.

I mean, I don't know. Do you think this could portend, like, the end of the monarchy? Is that something that's even possible? What did you take away from this? What were your thoughts watching? Yeah, I mean, I was trying to come up with like the world angle on this because, I mean, the human angles, you know, have washed through the discourse appropriately with a lot of focus on the things you talked about. And I do have to say it was, it was just riveting to watch. And to see, you know, when she was talking, I was thinking, because she got some shit from people being like, well, how could you not know what you're signing up for?

it's a very strange institution. And then I thought when Harry came in, and he was kind of talking about the symbiotic relationship between the rural family and the British tabloid press and how that organism had kind of savaged her, that is a very unique. Like, I don't think you can understand that from the outside. It's a very strange world. So in terms of consequences, I, I don't think. I don't know that the rural family is in danger of its position, but I think that there's

a number of big problems that they have. One, this is a time of like, real questioning about the national identity of the United Kingdom, right, which is a united kingdom of a bunch of different places, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England. Post-Brexit, you've got Scotland, you know, Jonesing for independence, particularly after Brexit. You've got Northern Ireland, you know, obviously there are people in Northern Ireland who'd like to be part of Ireland. And so what is the thing that holds this place together? And one of those things, not the only one, obviously, but one of those things has been the world family.

And the queen in particular, the queen, right? Like the queen is universally admired, right? But the question is by Harry and Megan. Yeah. They were still down with the queen. By the way, that was noticeable. They went out of their way. Totally. My rural correspondent in years perked up. Clearly, they went out of their way to be like, the queen we respect. And Harry even put out that clarifying statement, the queen was not the person who asked the color of the skin question. But the queen is 93 years old. And the next in line is Charles, who's obviously, you know, complicated past there. You know, they had Prince Andrew hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. Like, is the world family after the queen passes going to be the same unifying institution? This kind of

to interview is a pretty big blow to that concept, right? And like, posit, I'm not British, so, you know, I get it. I don't know this nearly as well as you guys, but just watching with the outside, that was a question I had. And then even on a bigger scale, they're the center of this Commonwealth, right? I mean, don't forget, there's still a Commonwealth. And the Queen is kind of the head of state of a bunch of places where most people happen to be black and brown because they colonized those people, right? And these allegations, of racism and, you know, this seeming kind of indifference to Megan's concerns, you know, is probably not going to sit well in a lot of those places either. And it's not like Britain runs

those places so the World Family does, but it's important to them. So they've got a lot of work to do, you know, to demonstrate that they get it, that they get, you know, you don't have to, I'm very sympathetic to Megan and Harry. You don't even, you don't even, you don't even, have to agree with every single thing she said to think that like you guys don't seem to be in the 21st century on some of this stuff you know um yeah on issues of race on issues of identity um and and they got to do some serious work and they're they're they're so cocooned that it's hard for them to do that so i think it is a big problem for them that they're going to have to figure out yeah and like the the the way that Megan was savage going into this and the way that there are all

these sort of hangers on who were ready to not only preemptively attack her and defend the royal family against anything she said. To the point, I don't know if you saw this, but some, I don't know if they're like pranksters, podcasters, like some young guys convinced a bunch of royal correspondence, in quotes, to do interviews in advance of the Harry and Megyn Oprah interview coming out and give their reaction to it before they'd even seen it. And just like showed what asses these people are. Speaking of asses, Pierce Morgan, basically lost his mind on live TV and then announced that he was leaving his show today. So this thing, like, it's wild to watch this interview, this conversation, like, tear apart

the UK. I have no sense of like what people's, the rank and file opinion will be on what happened, though. I just, I don't know how to read it. Yeah. I mean, there's so many layers to unpack. I mean, you know, because good, part of it is, you know, they've had a reckoning there about their imperial, you know, after BLM, you know, they're having their own reckoning about their imperial history, about statues of people involved in the slave trade, things of that nature. I have a bunch of British friends of color, you know, who will pretty much uniformly tell you that they don't feel like the kind of established institutions of power in that country have done enough to, you know, to make clear that this is a multiracial, multi-ethnic country

that understands, you know, the good and bad from its own past. Can you just jump it? There was a conversation you had with David Lammy in Missing America where he talked about just how homogenous the UK is, especially outside of London, that I found stunning. You know, he really opened my eyes in that interview about, like, somebody's issues. Well, because you go to London, and it's like the most cosmopolitan diverse city in the world. It looks just like New York. And part of what Dave was saying is you go to Northern England, and he's,

was empathizing with those people. You know, so, you know, David was saying, hey, I get it. Like, you know, suddenly like this, your community that used to be homogeneous is changing, and you're made uncertain by that. So there has to be space for some dialogue. And this, you know, one of my resolutions post-Trump is, is to try to look at polarization more clearly. Can they find some space for nuance in these conversations? Because when I was watching the British press response like you, it looked like ours, frankly, and everybody was in a camp, right? And the people who were kind of pro-royal were just guns fucking blazing, you know, just attacking Megan, trying to poke holes in her story. I'm like, wait, let me just say two things here. One, this woman was

clearly upset. Like, there's no question, and there's no question that she was savage by the British press and that there was something weird going on with the family there. So they left the monarchy. Yeah, they left the fucking monarchy. Like, seems like it would take something. to make that happen. And so at least acknowledge, you can still try to like say she's wrong about something, but at least acknowledge her pain. But the other thing is you can say, you know what, I love the queen and I love this institution, but we should have a conversation about some of these things.

It doesn't, it's just in, and obviously we're guilty of this in America too. Like they have to figure out a way to have these discussions where it's not all or nothing. You don't have to agree with every single thing that everybody in the monarchy, does and savage Harry and Megan, who were pretty sympathetic younger people, one of whom is a woman of mixed race who's clearly been targeted in part because of that, and the other of whom lost his mother because she was hounded to death by the press, right? You can hold both ideas in your head that the monarchy has a role to play and that the queen has been great, but that, yeah, you know, I mean, last year they had that scandal with a guy who wouldn't apologize to the victims

of Jeffrey Epstein, his pedophile friend. I mean, they need to modernization is in order here, guys. Yeah, it was also very telling to see the worst people from like kind of the Maga American right way universe just dive into this story. Like, I was scrolling through Twitter and I saw like Donald Trump Jr.'s reaction to the Megan Markle interview. It's like, hey, man, no one fucking cares. Like, well, look, for them, it's just all culture wars all the time.

It just shows you, though. Thrilled to be a part of this. Yeah, I was wondering where you. I was going to ask you about this, like, how much the culture war is now, like, global? Because I was on today, and I saw, like, like, Rick Grinnell, like, dunking on people, like, dunking on Megan Markle or something. I'm like, what is happening? Like, do we have to, does that mean I, like, I don't, do we all have to take the opinions of the,

the same culture war? And it's a strange thing because you've seen some of those same people backing a Modi, you know, it's creepy. Yeah. There is a weird drift towards authoritarianism. anti-social justice, anything. Yeah, there's no, like Charlie Kirk is tweeting out his extended rants on why he doesn't believe Megan.

You don't know Megan Markle. You don't know anyone around her. Like, all we could do is take these words at face value. And the royal family didn't deny the story. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. They didn't deny the story. And even if, you know, and I saw the same kind of like political tactics used.

Like, you know, Megan, you know, she's wrong about this one thing. the whole story falls apart or something. And I'm like, can we just step back and accept that this person was in a lot of pain and that maybe you guys should think about why that is, you know? And instead, this globalization of the culture wars, like, I couldn't believe I was watching like a Twitter fight between like Lovett and Megan Kelly yesterday about like Oprah or something. I mean, God bless love it. I was on a side in the Twitter fight.

But I'm like, why is Megan Kelly like trolling around the internet looking to fight with people about Oprah and Megan Markle? Like, it's just bizarre. None of the, like, these people are just so eager to attack Megan Markle. They don't sit and pause for a second and wonder why Prince Harry would decide to leave his life and criticize his own family to back around. Like, what is the suggestion that she's brainwashed them? It's just, it's total madness.

I've mentioned before that Obama and I went to Kensington Palace in 2017 and met with Harry for a while. And it was mainly about, like, what he wanted to do? And I was thinking about, you know, helping young people. people around the world and things like that. And at the end, Obama asked him about it. And he's like, it was clear he was totally in love with Megan Markle. Like, and happy about it. Like, let him be happy that he, yeah, they love each other. The one thing, you know, that's clear from both of them that they do love is this family they're building. Like, you don't have to hate dunk on people.

It's just, everybody should pull back here and reflect on on how we got here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again credit to Oprah amazing interview oh yeah the goat no question so uh let's go from the monarchy to uh another uh terrible person from a useless institution uh we have a little bit of audio that we want to play for you guys before we go to our interview hello i'm naisal parage and cameo is my latest incarnation so if you want a message for mother's day a birthday a wedding to surprise somebody I'm happy to do it, but I promise you, I will mention Brexit, I will mention Trump. God, I hope the pubs are open soon. You know what that is, Ben?

That is the ghost of Christmas future for Donald Trump. His ass is going to be on cameo, scraping together checks to pay his legal bills. Nigel Farah's right-wing asshole. It just shows you what a grift this whole thing is, right? I mean, like the people who led political movements in the past didn't end. And like, and Nigel Farage succeeded. He got Brexit. And what's he doing?

He's doing cameo? Camio. You know, like, that's what this guy's up to. I mean, don't get me wrong. I hope someone gets a good spoof cameo from Nigel Farage that we can all laugh at. But, you know, it's just kind of pathetic at the end of the day. Pathetic is the word. Okay.

Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll have my interview with Veronica Gaiyo, who is one of the leaders of the movement that helped win the fight for abortion legalization in Argentina and sparked a global movement. So stick around for that. I am so excited to introduce our guest today. Veronica Gago is the leader of Nihuna Menos, the feminist movement that helped win the fight for abortion legalization in Argentina. She's also a professor. She's a published author. Veronica, thank you so much for doing the show today. Thank you. I am very honored to be here today. Well, it's wonderful to have you. So you guys had this enormous win last December in Argentina.

Abortion was legalized. It was thanks to incredible work by activists like you, groups like Nunei Manos. How were you able to build a coalition that was diverse and intersectional and strong enough to defeat anti-abortion politicians, you know, social norms, religious opposition to abortion? I mean, it's a pretty incredible feat. Yes. I think that is a great victory and we are completely excited. And Argentina became the fourth country in Latin America to legalize abortion after Cuba,

Uruguay and Guyana, but it's the biggest one in terms of its population. So it is very important also because it's a regional battle. So we assume that our victory is also a victory for all the region, and we hope that different countries and different national campaigns will be the next in this kind of legalization. I think that it was especially important this legalization in Argentina, and it's meaningful because it is a result of a massive feminist political mobilization. I think that this is the main point because it's a part of a transnational movement across Latin America, but also around the world.

And because I think this movement has to be situated in the context of the five parliaments. years in the context of the Nunei-Manos movement, not one womanless movement. That is, I think, part of this transnational feminist movement that came from the global south. I think that is also important to highlight this origin and this force that came from the global south. I think that is very important also the role of the national capital. the national campaign for legal, safe and free abortion. That is a campaign formed 15 years ago as a national white network and it has a federal character and is also very pluralistic in its composition. And the symbol of the green scarf had become internationally popular as

sort of iconic or emblem of this feminist struggle. So we can see today in each demonstration in very different parts of the world, this green scarf as iconic of this feminist struggle. And also I think that the discussion about abortion is not only about the right to free abortion, it's also about autonomy. It's also about sexual education. It's also about public health. It's also about

the struggle against the Catholic Church, very strong in our countries. So I think that the struggle for the legalization of abortion is more than a demand to the parliament. is more than just a right. It's an expression of a collective desire of autonomy. It's an expression of a political movement that is changing the political agenda in our region, but also in the world. And it's also part of a way of doing politics,

a way of producing a new form of activism that has to do with this capacity to at the same time ask to the Parliament for laws and at the same time occupying the streets and producing assemblies in different spaces and also a collective organization with a very massive capacity to mobilize, to protest and to also produce a sort of new political vocabulary in terms of feminism. Well, and what's so interesting is, you know, I know that I've read that you and amenos started as a response to really horrifying and pervasive gender-based violence and then evolved into this broader fight that included abortion rights. How did that evolution occur? I think that the first Nunei Meno demonstration in 2015,

was especially against femicide and against violence, machista violence, as we call it. But a year later, we called for a national women's strike. And in 2016, and we connected with the strike, with the form of the strike, the struggle against patriarchy and all different kinds of machista violence with the violence of neoliberalism. So I think that we could connect this web of violences, and we could confront them with a new form of struggle. At the same time, an old form of struggle, that is the strike,

but recreated by the feminist politics. So I think that this idea of a feminist strike was very powerful. And in March 2017, we called for the international feminist strike. And in that year, there were more than 50 countries in the international women's strike. And now we are calling international feminist strike. the names were also changing, expressing, I think, the composition and the very complex dynamic of the strike. And, well, since 2017, until now, we are organizing this international strike each year, each March 8. So we had yesterday the new feminist international strike, and I think this is a very important political process that we are maintaining, that we are nourishing, that we are producing and now in a very complex situation and conjunter in the midst of the pandemic.

So I think that the strike is a key element to understand how we achieve to politicize machista violence and how we achieve to connect institutional violence, violence in workplaces, violence in terms of domestic violence, of course, but also in terms of dispossession, exploitation, different features. of neoliberal capitalism that I think for the first time the feminist movement is able to produce as a massive discourse because we have different moments when the feminist is a very powerful movement but I think that the central feature of this cycle of feminist struggles has to do with this massive composition, especially in Latin America. So, you know, for me, 2020 will always be defined by COVID and then these protest movements, right? I mean, we talk about it a lot on this show.

We love talking to activists like you who have been leading these movements and really to trade ideas, but, you know, we saw people in the streets in the U.S. in Latin America and Hong Kong and Belarus. It was truly global. Are there lessons that activists can or should? take from your work and your success. And then relatedly, did you look to or speak with other leaders and other movements for ideas and like swap ideas? Well, we put a lot of activist work in doing political coalitions all the time. We are weaving all the time these kind of

coordinations, transnational coordinations, but also local coordinations with unions, with students, with different kinds of migrant collectives, with workers' collectives, of course. And I think that all the time we are trying to produce proximity between different kinds of conflicts and to produce a feminist proximity in terms of how we can build these new languages, for example, to rethink work

in terms of reproductive work, in terms of care, in terms of public health, for example, in terms of the pandemic crisis, but also how we can combine the slogan, Nune Amenos, not one woman less, in terms of not one migrant less, for example. It's a name of a collective that all the time is trying to rethink the situation of the collective. of migrants in terms of feminist perspective but also feminist practice. And I think also the situation of racism, sexism in workplaces is all the time as part of, for example, different calls to assemblies in different spaces. And I think that the main point is all the political time that we dedicate to build this kind of coalitions and alliances and how we sustain them

during all the year, not only for events, not only for special dates, how we sustain and how we fit these alliances during all the year and being the best. very close to different kind of conflicts. Yeah. I know you've co-authored an agenda, a feminist agenda, for what to do when the pandemic ends. What opportunities do you see for governments around the world, really, trying to build back after this global pandemic?

Like, how can we make things better and come out of this, you know, in a better place than where we started? Well, I think that the demands for public service, is one of the main points in terms of health, education, but also in terms of housing. I think that these three points are like a common sense after this year of pandemic in terms of what is the popular feminist like an agenda from below that we can see after the pandemic crisis and still it is a crisis that we are still in it. For example, here, the evictions is a big problem because the debt related to housing is an explosive situation, but also in terms of unemployment, in terms of how the popular networks here, and especially feminist networks,

are in the front line in the crisis, producing all the time community cares or communities of care and also communities of, for example, for agro-cological food and all different self-managed experiments to confront the crisis, but also to rethink the crisis, but also to rethink the life we want to develop. My last question for you. The U.S. has a troubled history of interfering politically in Latin America and interfering in a lot of places. So I feel like I always want to tread lightly when I talk about what the U.S. can or should

do to support movements like yours. But is there something, is there any sort of help you would like to see from the U.S. government or, if not the government, just people listening to the people listening to the government, the show who, you know, hear about the work you're doing, want to express solidarity in some way, want to help in some ways, is there some way that people can contribute from outside of Argentina? Well, it is always a very important issue in terms of solidarity, but not only in terms of solidarity. I think that this idea of coalitions in terms of political coalition is very important. And for example, for the first women's strike in 2016, it was very important for us,

different comrades from Latin America in the United States organizing the strike in different places, of course, like little events that started to produce different kind of networks, to organize migrants and to also to start to rethink politics in terms of this transnational solidarity, but I insist not only in terms of solidarity, I think that we have to go beyond solidarity and to build in terms of coalitions, in terms of cooperation, in terms of how we are rethinking this transnational dimension of politics from below. Yeah, it's well, well said. Veronica Geigo, thank you so much for doing the show.

Thanks for all the work you're doing. I really appreciate it. It's great talk with you. Thank you. Thanks again to Veronica Geigo for joining the show. Ben, I hope you got a cool, you know, like New York agenda all planned out. How does it feel there? Like, are you dining outside?

What's it like? I'm not doing that, but I'm basically like going on walks and long walks with my friends in Central Park or in other places. And like people are out. The dining outside is clearly cranking up. The weather's starting to warm up. How's the vibe? Is that Manhattan energy back? Like, I haven't been since February of last year.

It is kind of back. And I will say everybody wears masks more so than L.A. You know, like you just don't see a person without a mask. So I think they've kind of like adjusted to that culture more. But it does feel like they're pumping out the vaccine here fast, too. They're going 24-7. You can go in the middle of the night to like city field. So it's a hopeful feeling, but I hope people are cautiously hopeful because just stick, you know,

we got a month or two to go before we get enough vaccine before you can really go back to like doing stuff like eating outside all the time. Yeah. Well, I hope everybody gets it, ASAP, and I hope you snag one on your way. back from New York, California. So that's it for this week. Hopefully there will be another royal interview for us to talk about next week.

But until then, we'll talk to you guys soon. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yel Fried, Naram El Coneyan and Milo Kim,

who film and share our episodes as videos each week.