Pod Save the World - Owned by Russia but itching to bomb Iran

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

First, Tommy and Ben discuss two stories about the Trump administration agitating to attack Iran. Then they discuss several unnerving reports about Trump potentially being compromised by Russia, followed by Brexit, the World Bank, and our Twitter troll ambassador to Germany. Then a Sudanese-American activist named Wafa May Elamin joins to discuss the ongoing protests in Sudan.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I hope you are still enjoying the new music for the show, as John Favro noted on Pod Save America. It is, in fact, a banger. Great show for you today. So, so much has happened in the past week in foreign policy. First, Ben Rhodes is back in studio. We talk about two stories involving the White House's efforts to try to get options to strike Iran, military, So those were unnerving. We talked about the whole basket of crazy Russia stories from this week. Trump is counterintelligence investigation, hiding the transcripts of his conversations with Vladimir Putin, and then wanting to pull out of NATO. Not great. We talked about Brexit. We talked about the World Bank, tensions with China, and then our Twitter troll U.S. ambassador to Germany.

Then I'm joined by a Sudanese American activist named Wafa May El Amin. We talked about the protest. that have been roiling Sudan for the past several weeks and what it all means and how people back in the United States can organize and help. So packed show for you today. I think you'll enjoy it. Here's the conversation with Ben. Ben Rhodes, back in studio. Back in studio.

Landed this morning. What, 20-hour flight? Yeah, yeah. I have to say the last time I talked to you, I don't think I'd slept in about 24 hours. Yeah. I apologize. You were an eight-hour layover from one day to a.m. You just got back from Burma.

Yeah. Anything you wanted to disclose before you do. you a bigger disclosure? No, I mean, look, I went there, I talked to a bunch of people. I'm going to be writing about it. I'll keep you guys updated. But they're dealing with a lot of problems in Firma, you know. I mean, I hadn't been there. You know, the funny thing is the last time I was there, there was all this hope, you know, because Aung Sanctu Ked has been elected. It felt like this moment of transition. And, you know, like a lot of places around the world, I mean, one of the interesting things to me is that, you know, I travel a lot and a lot of different places are in their

own way going through their own darkness, you know, and you hear a lot of the same trends, you know, nationalism, religious conflict, social media, playing a negative role. So it is interesting how there are these common challenges that you encounter everywhere and the less developed a country is, the more susceptible they are to those trends. Well, I cannot wait to read to what you read about this. Stay tuned. Yeah, I'm a lot of talk about it. And I didn't, I got back and I didn't know rain here.

Oh, man. I moved here and I thought I'd landed in the wrong place. Yeah, I think a lot of people have had that feeling the last couple days. All right, let's dive into some scary shit. First little Iran section, if you don't mind. Yes. So the Wall Street Journal reported that after some militants fired three mortars near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, John Bolton and the National Security Council staff asked the Pentagon

to provide the White House with military options to strike. strike Iran in response. Now, the mortars were fired by a Shiite militia group that's aligned with Iran. I should note that these Shia militia groups are not a new problem in Iraq. The Iranians have been supporting them for a long time. They provide them armor-piercing bombs that were incredibly lethal to U.S. convoy. So this is like a problem that has been big for a long time. But striking targets in Iran in response would be a pretty major escalation worth discussing. So did you see this piece? What was your take? This is exactly what I've been worried about for a while now.

You know, you have people in there like Bolton and Pompeo who have like an ideological view of Iran, that we have to combat Iran that essentially regime change is the only way to really change the dynamic there. And the thing that has always worried me is that separate even from the nuclear issue, there's always going to be some reason that you could potentially escalate with Iran. You know, there's things that happen on a fairly regular basis in the region that could be a flashpoint for an actual war. One of those is these, you know, confrontations inside of Iraq. They're in Yemen, in Syria, in the Straits of Hormuz, which is in the Persian Gulf there. There are a lot of areas where if the U.S. is looking for a conflict, they could escalate it. So, as you said, there's nothing new about these Shia militias. They've been there for over a decade, you know, well back into the Bush administration.

what, you know, Bolton could do is use that as a pretext to have a conflict. And I do think we all need to be very attuned to the fact that, you know, as Trump is under investigation, as he can't get anything done domestically, you know, as his back is against a wall, the risk of him lashing out in the Middle East against Iran is very high. And he has people like Bolton who could give him that pretext. And as difficult as things look now, you know, war with Iran would be more than a game changer. Well, so along those same lines, I mean, John Bolton isn't the only one in this White House that wants to go to war with Iran.

According to a report in Axios, Trump used to frequently ask then Secretary Mattis, this was the first year of the administration, for plans to blow up small Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf. Again, not a new problem. These boats have been a pain in the ass for a long time. They harass our ships in the Gulf. There's a real concern that some boat could be loaded up with explosives and something very stupid that would spark a major conflict, especially since, you know, this is in

the Strait of Horm moves where something like 30% of global oil exports pass through annually. So it's a serious issue, but I'd also note that you can like watch videos of these boats online. And often it's like a dinky little speedboat driving around an aircraft carrier. So like the disproportionate powers pretty clearly demonstrated. Again, Ben, like so blowing up one of these boats would be a major escalation and an act of war. And I guess Mattis just refused to give him option.

Yeah, and we looked at the scenarios of escalation when we were in office, and it can escalate very quickly. So let's say we take out one of these boats, then the Iranians could fire back at our vessels, or they could attack our embassy in Baghdad through these Shia militias. And then we could bomb more targets inside of Iran. Then the Iranians could have Hezboa attack Israel. Right. And within like a day or two, you could end up in a full-blown war. You know, and so that's why I think we all have to be very mindful of this and watch it very closely because, again, not hard to find a pretext for conflict with Iran.

There's a lot of friction in the region. There are a lot of places where we're in kind of close quarters with them. And frankly, one of the reasons why I think Mattis probably didn't want to do this is that, you know, that could lead immediately to us being pushed out of Iraq because they could overrun our embassy there. It could lead to a conflagration in Syria. could lead to a conflict in Israel. Even if we did regime change in Iran, Iran has a more sophisticated military than Iraq did when we invaded Iraq. So this would be a real war.

This would be something that could make the Iraq war pale by comparison. And again, if you take Trump's kind of bizarre, increasingly isolated personality and you mix it with Bolton and Pompeo's ideology, we've got two years where this is going to be a real, real ever-present danger. Yeah, and it was interesting to me that Mattis was really resisting providing these options because, you know, he was asked to retire early during the Obama administration because he was viewed as being too hawkish with respect to Iran. And I think it was specifically regarding these ships, these small ships in the Strait of Roos.

And Iraq. I was in those meetings. And Mattis actually back in the day when he was a Central Command Commander for Obama, he was raising the issue of should we hit Iranian targets inside of Iran in return for what they were doing with these Shia militias inside of Iraq. So what changed Mattis? Probably the realization that he worked for a president who wasn't going to be able to control escalation. If Trump gets into a conflict, you can see him just ratching it up and escalating, whereas I think Mattis probably just assumed that Obama was temperamentally more disciplined and not willing to essentially

throw the United States into another major military conflict in the Middle East. So the fact that Mattis frankly shifted from his own position under Obama shows you just how concerned he was that Trump couldn't be potentially trusted as commander-in-chief to be rational and responsible in the use of military force. And again, we should say that Iran does a lot of bad things. Like that's why we impose sanctions on them. That's why we didn't want them to get a nuclear weapon. That's why we did the Iran deal, these guys have been nothing but tough talk on Iran. They haven't really, what are the results that they can point to? None of the Iranian behavior has changed. Even though, remember, Trump said, oh, Iran's changed because I pulled out of the nuclear deal,

that's clearly not the case. But the way in which you deal with that is, you know, number one, I think, to have the Iran deal in place so they can't get a nuclear weapon. But number two, you have to work with other countries. You know, you have to work with the Europeans. you have to build kind of a global effort to contain and ultimately try to roll back some of the Iranian behavior. Trump has actually made that harder by isolating the United States. Yeah, you're right. There's not anything I can point to you that's tougher on Iran.

Though I would note it does sound like the harassment from these small boats has tailed off in the last year or so, but no one seems to know why. Yeah, well, you know, I think we saw patterns over the course of the eight years we're in office where sometimes the harassment would tick up, sometimes it would go down, probably tied to some internal Iranian politics. Sure, yeah. They want to flex their muscles every now and then. So, again, I think the risks of there being a flashpoint are high.

The Iranians have been somewhat restrained thus far on their nuclear program. They're staying in the deal. However, the head of their nuclear program, Salehi, recently made some comments that they were thinking about restarting. starting their enrichment. Oh, good. Which would be, yeah, exactly, which would not be good. And which, again, would be just yet another potential pretext for a conflict.

So hopefully the Europeans can keep the Iranians in the nuclear deal for the next two years so that we don't have to worry about that. But I do think we have to worry about whether Bolton and Pompeo, who just went on this kind of crazy magical mystery tour of the Middle East, there was all about, you know, attacking Iran rhetorically, attacking Obama rhetorically, embracing MBS, I mean, how crazy it is that, you know, the Secretary of State of the United States is sitting there chuckling it up with MBS, like less than a few months after he had a journalist murdered in Turkey, right? So all of these factors, you know, I know everybody's got a lot on their minds with a shutdown and a lot of other things, but I'm telling you the wild card for the next two years is the risk of the potential war with Iran. Yeah, yeah, it's not good. So you go away for a week and there's like three blockbuster Russia stories. I'm going to tick through him real quick.

First, the New York Times reports that the FBI was so nervous about Trump's behavior that they opened a counterintelligence investigation against him. Second, the Washington Post reported that Trump is so worried about U.S. officials learning what he discussed with Vladimir Putin. And there are 101 meetings that he forbid his interpreter from talking about it. And at one point took her notes away. Third, and this was today, Tuesday, the New York Times reported that last year Trump repeatedly told his aides that he wanted to pull out of NATO. good God. In my mind, these stories are all intertwined. So pick your poison. Where do you want to start? What's your favorite? What's your favorite disaster story? Well, look, I think, well, first of all, Greg Miller, the post reporter, reached out to me on that story. And he said, hey, would you guys ever take the notes away from an interpreter tell the interpreter not to share the notes? I'm like, no. I mean, first of all, because interpreters are, you know, they're civil servants.

and they're not policy aides. So for Trump to go to that length, it speaks to a degree of paranoia that is crazy. I mean, you know, first of all, if we met with Putin, if Obama met with Putin, if there was something really sensitive that you want to talk about, we would go down to what's called a one-on-one meeting. However, a one-on-one meeting, we would always have the National Security Advisor in, right? So Susan Rice would be in there, Tom Donnell, and in part because you need somebody in there to know what was discussed, to follow up on it, to back.

brief the rest of the government, right? The fact that Trump not only didn't want an aid in the meeting, but then was concerned about the translator had in their notes, is chilling to me. I mean, what is he so paranoid about that they're discussing, right? Well, can't you a quick question. So like, let's say there's a really sensitive meeting at a G20 on the margins. Obama grabs BB Net and Yahoo, the national security advisors, and they talk about a really sensitive detail of Iran's nuclear program. How is that meeting then appropriately read out to the people who need to know in a normal case. So that happened a lot. And the National Security Advisor would essentially handpick, you know, which aides needed to know something. They would, you know,

call us in. I was usually in that group into their office and say, okay, here's what they discussed. Don't tell anybody the details of this. However, you need to know this to do your job, right? So then the aides could, in working with the State Department, the Defense Department, you know, be informed by that conversation, even if they weren't necessarily telling everybody in the government exactly what was said. But you need somebody to be able to implement what was discussed. Put it this way, Tommy. Let's look at it from a different perspective. What is the purpose of a president of the United States talking to the president of Russia and not having anybody in his government know about it, right? There's no purpose to that conversation. If nobody can follow up on what was discussed, then it's meaningless for the purposes of

U.S. interest, right? So if Trump feels like he's the only one who should know what was discussed, then clearly what was discussed is something that is only of interest to Trump. It's not of interest to the rest of the U.S. government. It's not of interest to our national security. It's just in Trump's personal interest. Now, that leads to this NATO point, right? Which is, let's say Trump has this discussion with Putin. I am sure that Putin would make the case that you don't need to be a NATO. Oh, you're right. You know, you should be pulling out. So then Trump takes that on board, potentially, and suddenly he's arguing to pull out of NATO. So that leads the other crazy story, which is that there's no possible reason for the United States to pull

of NATO. None. None. Zero. This is an alliance that has basically guaranteed our global influence, our influence in Europe and the security of Europe for 70 years, right? I mean, it's been a good deal for us. Remember World War II? Yeah. That was bad. We prevented World War III because we had a NATO, right, that was strong enough as a collective defense alliance to deter Russia from, you know, aggression inside of Europe. And, you know, sure, we may want them to spend more on their defense, but to take the leap to then just pulling out of NATO would totally unravel U.S. alliances, the security architecture that has governed Europe and prevented another world war. And it is something that is profoundly in Russia's interest and not at all in ours. Russia hates NATO because it's a collective defense alliance right on their border. Former Soviet republics are in NATO.

They hate that. And so this is something that Russia wants that nobody can mount an argument is in our interest, right? There's some people out there to say some of these things Trump is doing, you know, maybe we should pull out of these wars or maybe we should get tough with China on trade. Certainly not in the way that he's been doing it. But you could make those arguments. There's not any constituency in this country. It is like, you know, yes, it's time to pull out of NATO. It's only in Russia's interest.

And that leads to the first time story, which is, is he a Russian agent? You know, and it's hard to explain any other reason for Trump to want to pull out of NATO other than the fact that Russia wants us to pull out of NATO. Now, whether that makes him a Russian agent, whether he's compromised by Russia and he's embarrassed by that, you know, we don't know. But again, this could be different things. It doesn't necessarily mean that he was brainwashed by Russia and he's a Manchurian candidate. But it could mean that Russia has plenty of compromising information on Trump. Maybe it's financial, maybe it's personal, maybe it's that Trump knows that Russia knows what they did with him in collusion to swing the 2016 election. And if he has in the back of his head, wow, if the Russians put this information out, I'm in trouble.

If essentially Russia can blackmail Trump, then he is as good as a Russian agent to Vladimir Putin. Right. And that would explain him constantly praising Putin, not standing up to Putin, taking these positions that make no sense. Why is Vladimir Putin the only person on earth, other than maybe Kim Jong-un recently, that he won't criticize? This is not just some, you know, rogue FBI agents who were upset about Jim Comey. I think we all as Americans have plenty of reason now to ask, is the President of United States compromise when it comes to Russia? and the fact that we're talking about that is chilling. It's just so.

Some days you need to step back and just remember how bonkers this is. It's bonkers. If you and I had this conversation in 2016, we would have laughed it off at like a bad movie plot, but here we are. Yeah, I mean, the most serious people in the government. Like Jim Comey aside. And we should say, too, by the way, Russia's already getting what it wants. We don't even have to pull up NATO.

Like this dysfunction in the U.S. Yeah. The shutdown is good for Russia, right? The U.S. having no credibility around the world because of Trump is good for them. People not knowing whether we're pulling out of Syria or not, that's good for them. They're getting more than a return on their investment. So, okay, not great. No, it's bad.

It's really. Speaking of disasters, the British Parliament just rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal by a vote of 432 to 202. That is brutal. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labor Party, said he's playing to offering motion of no confidence about May, so this is a disaster. Do you have, we should talk to David Lammy again soon. Yeah, yeah, I guess that guy. Love that guy. Is there any clarity on what's next for Theresa May or Brexit or the future of the UK? No, nobody has a fucking idea. What is it going on? I mean, here's the, there are basically two options now that people can see. I mean, one is that on March 29th,

when the deadline for the Brits to leave, right? So Teresa May filed these papers to leave the EU two years ago from March 29th. So by March 29th, they're supposed to leave the EU, right? If nothing changes. If they leave without a deal, they're completely and utterly fucked. You know?

I mean, they're like stockpiling food. They're preparing for planes not to be able to land in the UK because, again, if they have no agreement with the EU over what their border is, what their trade relationship is, you know, everything from how food comes into the UK from Europe to how they sell things to the Europeans,

all goes into question. And there'll be a dramatic economic shock to the UK for that. There are estimates that already like a trillion dollars has left the UK just out of preparation for Brexit. I mean, their economy could go off a serious cliff. There'll be profound uncertainty. And she spent two years doing just this. Imagine a government. They do nothing else. They do nothing else. It just only focus on one thing and then it fails 432 to 202. Yeah, you go there. And we should add like the reason why this is such a train wreck is the Brexit campaign was run a bunch of lies, right? Oh, we can leave and have all the benefits of the common market with Europeans and none of the pain. We're going to get more money somehow for our national health

insurance. Nobody quite understands how they made that case. They said they weren't going to have to pay the EU to leave. They are going to have to pay, Theresa May says, tens of billions of dollars. So because they were lies, as soon as people could see what the actual deal look like, they're like, well, we don't want to do this, right? But it's because all these charlatans, all these people like, you know, Boris Johnson, you know, sold the British people a bag of lies. Now there's no deal that can pass the parliament, right? The only option, and this is something that David Lammy and some others have really been pushing the UK, is to have another vote on this, to have another referendum and have people just say, like, yeah, and there's a case for it, which is like,

hey, now you guys know what the real cost of Brexit is. Do you really want to do this, right? And who funded it? And let the people decide. Well, that's the other thing is like, it hasn't gotten as much attention as here, but they have uncovered that there was foreign financing of the Brexit campaign. There was Russian intervention, Russia's social media campaigns. So there's plenty of a basis for them to say, you know what, we've learned a lot. Because keep in mind that first referendum was just the expressed will of the people. It wasn't like a binding referendum. It was like because the people have spoken, we have to Brexit. So there's no reason they can't put the question back to the people and say, okay, you know, nobody likes to steal Theresa Mayhad, do we really want

to do this knowing what we know now? And I think they have one shot to get this right. They get, they get what we don't get with the Trump. They get a do-over and they should take it. Great work, David Cameron. Another major story, the past couple weeks really, is that the current president of the World Bank abruptly stepped down. So now Trump is tasked with naming a successor. Donald or Ivanka? This morning, the New York Times reported that Ivanka Trump is helping leave. lead that search. And amazingly, Ben, they had to go on record to say that she was not under consideration. So good to know. Can you just give the 101 of what the hell the World Bank does

and like you were part of the search process back in the day? What is it, what should it be like? Well, you know, the World Bank is kind of the preeminent organization that lends money, provides financing, funds projects all over the world on behalf of our development priorities. you know, if we're seeking to help a country that is dealing with development challenges, if we're seeking to provide financing to support certain foreign policy parties that we have or that the world agrees on, you know, the World Bank is usually on the front lines. You know, so in places like Africa and Southeast Asia, it used to be in Latin America. The bank is very active, essentially, in, you know, helping to build up economies that's

in our interest ultimately because it becomes markets for us, helping to prevent conflict, helping to prevent state failure. So the World Bank plays a key role. We've had this kind of tacit agreement for many years with the Europeans where, because we're the biggest shareholder in the bank. We pay the most money into it. We get to select the leader of the World Bank and the Europeans get to select the leader of the IMF. So if people are wondering why there's always some euro running the International Monetary Fund, which kind of is a partner in these efforts with the bank, and we provide the World Bank, it's because we have this kind of handshake agreement

of Europeans, which, by the way, increasingly pisses off countries like China and India and other developing countries. We actually tried to address that. So the last search, you know, we decided we wanted someone with serious development experience and somebody who had some diversity in their background, right? So Jim Kim was, you know, a Korean-American,

you know, least presents a diverse face to the world to lead the bank. normally what you'd be looking for, again, is somebody with an experience in international development. So they can go into these countries that have serious problems and help them figure it out, right? Ivanka Trump would not fit that mold. You know, I think generally, Tommy, another thing hasn't got a lot of attention is how this administration, you know, doesn't value foreign assistance has been gutting or trying to gut budgets for foreign aid. Congress has restored some of that funding. I'm not hopeful that they're going to go about this in a smart way.

And what they could do, frankly, is, you know, be so incompetent that the rest of the world kind of blows the whistle on this arrangement where we essentially get to pick the head of the bank. And that would be just yet another diminution of American influence under Trump. Yeah, I'd probably choose fucking Corey Lewandowski or something idiot. I mean, when I hear about things like this, it just reminds me of the number of unbelievably important personnel decisions that they're making all day, every day. that we don't even have time to talk about mostly because we're, I don't know, dealing with three stories about him being owned by Russia. This is a story you flagged.

A Canadian citizen in China has been sentenced to death after a court convicted him of drug smuggling. It's going to inflame tensions between Ottawa and Beijing, presumably. Specifically, the guy was accused of planning the smuggling of nearly 500 pounds of meth to Australia. Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau,

criticize a ruling, which comes as their relations have been strained because the Canadian, picked up a senior executive from the Chinese tech firm Huawei in Vancouver last month. So this seems fraught in exactly the kind of escalation that you feared when we first talked about this story. Yeah, I mean, remember, so the Canadians pick up this Huawei executive apparently at our asking, Trump's asking. Then the Chinese arrested two Canadians, a guy works with a crisis group of former diplomat,

another guy, who they haven't even really charged yet. They're just holding these guys for violating. Chinese national security, it's basically obvious that this was intended to pressure the Canadians over Huawei. Then they take this guy who was appealing his sentence. You know, he claims he was set up, he didn't do this. And the appeal in one day the Chinese came back and said, actually, we're going to put you to death, right? So the fact that they didn't even take a day in court to ratchet up this guy's sentence from 15 years to a death sentence makes it pretty painfully obvious that they're, intending to intimidate the Canadians.

Again, I think what this should cause everybody concern about is kind of shows you what happens. You know, there's been a lot of talk about the U.S. under Trump walking away from norms, walking away from kind of commonly accepted ways of working between countries. This kind of shows you what the world might look like if countries just start, you know, asserting themselves based on we're a big country, we can do whatever we want. So China is looking at Canada and they're saying, well, we're bigger than Canada. We can push them around. We can detain your citizens without charging them.

We can potentially put one of your citizens to death because we don't like what you did and picking up this Huawei person. I think it's a very dangerous signal about where the world could go if the U.S. is pulling back from operating under commonly established norms in seeking to make the international system work under commonly understood practices and agreements and laws, right? And it's hard to see what the way out is here. I mean, I've talked to some Canadians. You know, they really don't control their judicial system. So there's an extradition request for this Huawei person from the U.S. They detain the woman.

And it's kind of up to a Canadian judge whether or not to hand the woman over to the U.S., right? So, you know, Trudeau's hands are kind of tied here because it's not even like he's the one making that determination. But again, I, you know, I think the Chinese, of course, I mean, we should say, they are overplaying their hand because, you know, Western business people who are very important in the Chinese economy are going to be a little concerned about doing business there. Yeah, no shit. You know, this happens. So, you know, I think we should, you know, point the finger where it deserves to be pointed, which is China. They're the ones responsible for this kind of grotesque escalation. But we should also recognize that, you know, this is part of a symptom of how the Trump people have

essentially said they don't care about international rules. Well, this is what happens when countries don't follow international rules. Yeah, agreed. Last one, a little bit of a fun one. So, you know, back in the day, Donald Trump named a walking Twitter troll to be his U.S. ambassador to Germany, which is the most important country in the EU.

It's a guy named Rick Grinnell. Surprise, surprise. When you, you know, make someone an ambassador who is known to be misogynistic, to just viciously attack journalists and any other critics on Twitter, it doesn't go well. Ders Spiegel did a story about how he's basically

persona nangrata in Germany. No one but the far right political parties will meet with him. He has been openly meddling in German politics. He seems to spend most of his time doing Fox news interviews to get noticed back in the U.S. So, you know, Rick Cornell is not a nice guy. He's not well suited to the job of ambassador. But what do you think this costs us as a country in terms of our relationship with Germany? Like when an ambassador can't get a meeting with the people in power, does it actually hurt us? Yes. I mean, and like, you know, Rick Cornell, I mean, that guy would troll the shit out of us in government. I'd be like, well, this guy like this is never going to be a future republic.

I just muted him because I thought he was too nuts. Yeah, you know, I mean, this guy would never be appointed by a normal Republican president anymore. You know, I mean, he was a U.N. spokesperson when John Bolton was there. First of all, I mean, I loved our U.N. spokespeople, you know, Mark Cornblu and Aaron Pelton. But I think they'd be the first to say that they wouldn't expect to be named ambassador to Germany, you know. Yeah. The point is that Rick Grinnell did not get appointed ambassador because he had the requisite qualifications. He got appointed because he's a troll.

He got appointed because he owns the Libs on Twitter and goes on Fox News. That's how Donald Trump makes his appointments. But this is the most important country in Europe and one of the most important countries in the world. And since he got there, Rick Grinnell has basically been like a grenade with a pin pulled ever since he arrived in Berlin. And, you know, he's attacked Angela Merkel. He's embraced the far right. We should have an ambassador there, by the way. He was trying to help the German government push back against the far right.

There's not a really good history of the far right in Germany, okay? Like you generally want to keep that, you know, it's bad enough in Hungary and Poland. Like, you generally want to keep that in a box. Yeah, you know. And the fact that our ambassador, like, can't even get a meeting with the German government because he's just a walking troll just shows you how much. like the U.S. has no influence anymore. Like we have so many things that we should be working with Germany on, you know, like

Iran, like the global economy, you know, like the future of the EU with Brexit, right? Like you'd want somebody in there right now saying like, what are we going to do if there's a hard Brexit and the Brits League of the EU? Our ambassadors should be having that meeting. But Trump doesn't care about diplomacy. He cares about owning the libs, I guess, you know? And, you know, Rick or Nell spends more time doing Fox News interviews. I don't think our ambassadors in Germany, Phil Murphy, who's now the governor of New Jersey, John Emerson.

We're like beloved, by the way, still. They were beloved there. They didn't do like cable news hits from Germany because they were actually doing their job. Everyone we named to be an ambassador fell in love with the place they were living in. Totally captain. All in. Totally. Yeah.

But what shows you is these guys, I mean, the ties all this stuff that we've been talking about together, Tommy, he said, they don't know what they actually want to do. Yeah. Right? They hated Obama. They attacked Obama. They hate diplomacy. They hate the Europeans. They hate the libs.

And so they get into government and they have no idea what the fuck to actually do in government, right? There's no plan. So Rick Grinnell's out there giving Fox News interviews. Mike Pompeo's like giving speeches in Cairo attacking Barack Obama. Like nothing is happening as it relates to actually containing Iranian influence. We're absent from debates about the future of Europe, which really profoundly in our interest. The President of the United States is a Russian agent who wants to pull out of NATO. Like they don't have any.

ideas, right? Because this is what happens when you put a bunch of arsonists, like, in charge of the fucking fire department, right? And, you know, we're all going to be paying the price for this for years. Yeah. Rick, just resign. Come back. Troll us from stateside. Ben, this has been fun. Yeah. A little depressing, but fun. Yeah. It's going to get it off my chest. It's interesting, at least, right? Yeah, it is very interesting. It is great to have you back stateside in studio. Thank you for calling in from your layover, but I hope you never do that to yourself again because that was... Yeah, it was kind of grim. I had a 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. layover in the Singapore airport, which is, like, kind of a...

Is anything open? It's kind of a funky place overnight. Not really. There's, like, a bunch of, like, weird backpackers sleeping in the airport, you know. I did not have the Tom Friedman experience, right? Of, like, breezing through, like, palatial Chinese airports that made me realize the importance of influence. structure. Maybe next time. Yeah, maybe next time. And when we come back to my conversation with Wafa May Elamein,

on the line from Richmond, Virginia is Wafa May Elamene. She is a Sudanese American activist. Wafa, thank you so much for doing the show. Of course. Thank you so much for having you, Tommy. So there have been protests in Sudan for several weeks now. For those who haven't been following this as closely as we have, why are these protesters out on the street in Sudan?

They've been there since mid-December. Where do they protest? So people have taken to the streets in Sudan. It's been about a three-week-long ordeal that's been happening, and people are just taking to the streets to kind of just tell their leaders and people in power that, you know, they're just fighting for their basic rights, their economy improvement, access to education, healthcare. It's just kind of been the last breaking point for the country as a whole and it's people. So people have taken to what they know, and that's to kind of peacefully protest, walk the streets, and just say, justice and peace and really just do it collectively. So that's really the main reason people are really, really, really seeing that the conditions in Sudan have reached a point where people are no longer able to sustain themselves, people are dying, getting sick. So it's just one of those things where Sydney's people are very steadfast and we tend

to be resilient and stand up for what we believe is right. And a lot of people believe that having access to things that would give them better opportunities is the step in that direction, and that's how they're doing it through these protests. I should note how incredibly brave these protesters are. Sudan has been dealing with a pretty awful leader for a long time. Omar al-Bashir is a horrendous human being. He took power around 30 years ago in a military coup and now holds the distinction of being the first president indicted by the International Criminal Court or ICC for his role in the genocide in Darfur. so a historically awful human being.

How is he reacting to the protest so far? There has been, he's made a few appearances to talk about the protests and to guarantee the citizens that him and his administration plan to make changes and hear the cries of the communities and the people. So he's taken a lot of time to be able to respond in that way and has shown that they're listening and that's something that's happened before in the past. And I think people are really just still taking to the streets just to remind the leaders that, you know, we want to hold you guys accountable for representing us and doing right by the people. So that's one of the biggest things is he's gone and had marches, he's had speeches.

He also led a million march in Sudan as well. So there's a lot of he's responding and his administration is responding to the protest. And that's a big, big deal because a lot of times Sudanese people or just people in general who are feeling the impacts of inequalities, they tend to not be able to, they don't feel heard. So I think that's what these protests are doing. They're giving people voices and the right people are listening. Yeah. So a little more background. In 2011, South Sudan broke off, seceded, whatever you want to call it, had independence and became its own independent state.

It was a long, fraught process for many reasons that went back to the Bush administration in several decades. But part of that process meant that 75% of the former Sudan's oil reserves are now in the south. And Bashir and what the process we're talking about right now are in the north. Has that 2011 referendum and the subsequent shift in resources and resource allocation contributed to these protests? Because I was reading that, you know, there was a massive increase in the price of bread and other staples and inflation. and a lot of this seems to be very, you know, a lot of economic hardship sounds like it's driving some of these protests. So I think that, you know, in regards to the secession of South Sudan, that was very much so the liberty of the Sudanese people. South Sudanese people, they also did, that was their revolution.

That's what they protested for, was for their independence and for their rights and for their autonomy. And, yeah, majority of the oil reserves are in South Sudan. But I think the economic conditions in Sudan have been declining far before. 2011 since before, you know, it's been just a steady decline for the last 30 years, I want to say, it's been going in that direction. And it's really, really shown now, especially last year with the listing of the U.S. sanctions in Sudan as an attempt to kind of increase more opportunities and more investment and development in the country.

It's kind of had the opposite effect with inflation being higher than it's ever been in a really, really long time. So I think that there is a correlation to what's happened in South Sudan, but Sudan itself is a very resource-rich area and can also benefit and profit in its own ways. So I think just understanding the size of Sudan as a whole before the split and how it's still one of the largest countries after the split in Africa, I think that's also very important to note that the resources extend far beyond the oil reserves there. So I think just understanding that the secession of South Sudan, I think that's also another thing

that's really important is to voice that South Sudanese people fought for their independence and fought for their freedom a lot. There's a lot of parallels that we can tie into that with what's happening today, the same reasons they fought for economic independence and all of that,

and that's what people are currently doing when they take to the streets, is they're fighting for that kind of independence, that kind of liberty and that kind of freedom to be able to have the foundations established by their governments and by the people in power to represent them to be able to sustain life. Right.

Yeah, I should note that there should be more than enough resources to feed, clothe, house, people in Sudan if you had good leadership. So brings me back to Bashir. I mean, I've seen an activist quoted saying that Bashir is weaker than he's ever been, that he might be at risk of the military and security services turning on him, notably some former political allies have turned on him. do you think that there are signs of that movement is loosening Bashir's grip on power, or do you worry that that's wishful thinking?

I think that I like to kind of focus more on the people, and I think what the movement is doing is strengthening the people themselves, and that's what we've seen a lot, I guess, globally speaking, in regards to revolutions and change, is it stems first from a grassroots level, and that's what's unique about these protests and how it's working. It's coming from a bottom-up approach where the narrative is, coming from Sudanese people and communicating that out. But I definitely think that it is showing that the grip of the government is getting weaker, but I think that's just because in correlation

to the grip of the Sudanese people, it's getting stronger. That unity is becoming stronger in Sudan itself. So I think we see that immediately with the response to the protests from, you know, the security forces. You know, they're using live ammunition. They're using tear gas, a few days, a few days, ago, they actually tear gas, the hospital and intensive care unit in Umurman, and people were there getting treated for the tear gas and having been shot while peacefully protesting. And, you know, it's just showing that with this increased use of force, there is a little bit of intimidation from the administration to kind of just they're recognizing the power of the people, and I think that's the most important thing is the people are all powerful, too,

and power doesn't only lie within the people who are with the government. Right. I've seen some reports of journalists getting arrested. I've seen other reports of maybe social media getting locked down. Maybe you can use a VPN to get around that, I'm not sure. But, I mean, how difficult is it to communicate with people in Sudan right now? So communicating with people in Sudan, you know, it's a hit or miss. There are certain avenues where people have been able to navigate around it from the 2013 uprisings

and the protests that happened around the same time. It's kind of been a common theme. They always happen around Sudan Independence Day, which is January 1st, and that's when Sydney's people feel the most prideful in being Sudanese. So it's a common theme. The 2013 ones happen in December. This one has also started in December. And I think journalists have been getting arrested in large numbers because they are the ones

who are sharing that information out and trying to, attempting to disseminate it to the rest of the country as well as the rest of the world. and in response, there has been internet blocks on certain apps, and people haven't been able to communicate with their families at certain points. And that's really, really scary for a lot of us as members of the diaspora, who all of our family is in Sudan, to kind of know that we can't, we don't know what's going on. So in an attempt to kind of alleviate that the Sydney's diaspora community

has attempted to just use our voices, because we kind of have that barrier of safety. with where I'm from the, we're in the U.S., so we have freedom of press and freedom of speech, whereas in Sudan they don't necessarily have that. That's often met with extreme force and violence. So, you know, it's been, people have found different ways around the blocks that come up, and then it's still like large quantities. There was, I think it was like a net, a study showed what apps and what usage is being blocked,

and a lot of it was WhatsApp. And WhatsApp happens to be the main way that, that people communicate in Sudan because there is no freedom of press. That's the news platform for the people. It's how they share information amongst themselves, and it's so quick with this Asian technology to be able to communicate with everyone. And that's, quite frankly, how the diaspora has heard about it, is because we get timely reports from people in Sudan of what's going on,

and it's kind of our responsibility and our due diligence to do what I'm doing right now with you. So by speaking to you and hopefully more people will be able to hear this and engage in the conversation and spread the word and raise awareness about what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, additionally, you shared on Twitter a platform where people can get a better sense of what's happening on the ground in Sudan. What are you hoping will be the effect of those images and video clips getting circulated and getting more visibility on social media? My hope is just to kind of keep the conversation going. And I think that's kind of a similar hope for everyone going on, just knowing that, you know, extreme violence and force is the first response from very strong leaders who, you know,

use that kind of tactics to, I guess, control their constituents. I think the main hope is just to let Sudan know that, you know, the diaspora is standing with you, and we are also feeling the same pain. So when I share photos and videos and pictures online, it's just to show people about what's raising awareness about what's going on in the world. I feel like sometimes we're so closed off and so centered and what's going on here in the U.S. and in our day-to-day lives, which is a lot. There's so many social issues to deal with and address that it becomes kind of exhausting sometimes, and people don't know about what's going on in other parts of the world. So

just using my platform and having other people use their platforms to share within their networks, that's just what gets the conversation going. Agreed. And sort of last question along those lines is, you're organizing in the U.S., you're leading protests here. I mean, how can listeners help you out? And what do you think people should be doing and saying to raise awareness about what's happening in Sudan? I think people can just write to their senators and congressmen to, you know, take it from a point of international diplomacy. You know, we as in the U.S., we have leaders who will, you know, who are there to listen to our. voices and to see that the U.S. is contributing positive things. And I'm American just as much as I am Sudanese. And I think people, if they just keep using, like check in with the hashtag, share reports, any media access, any press coverage we can get. That helps so much. And, you know, we're organizing protests. They're happening actually globally. I've seen they're in D.C., Canada,

New Zealand, all over the world, the diaspora, has Germany even has organized, I want to say numerous protests in correlation to what's happening. So every single time there's a big protest in Sudan, I've seen two or three pop up around the world. I'm also, you know, as in an organization moving forward to Sudan that I oversee, we are planning an event, an educational event coming up to kind of just talk about the uprisings in Sudan, the history of them. So because this isn't the first one, the Sudanese people have overthrown a government before through peaceful protests and revolutions, just like this one. So just keeping the conversation going. We've created a website to kind of just house up, like the resource, as many resources about what's going on. People have

shared their art and creativity to kind of express their sentiments as well. That's great. That's cool. Wafa, thank you so much for helping us understand what's going on. If there's anything else we can do, I'd love to have you back and keep an eye on what's happening in Sudan because it is very important. It's important to the world. So thank you for all your work. Of course. Thank you so, so much for speaking with me and I'm happy to be back whenever. All right, great. Have a great week, everybody. Talk to you next week.