Pod Save the World - Putin's plush palace

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss President Biden’s first call with Vladimir Putin as President and the US-Russia relationship, Rob Malley and the fight over Biden’s Iran policy, Biden’s approach to Venezuela, Chinese sanctions on former Trump officials, why Google might be leaving Australia, chaos in the Italian government and more. Then Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev joins to talk about the mass protests in support of Alexey Navalny and how the Kremlin is reacting

Welcome back to Pottae the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, we got a lot to cover today. A lot of good Biden news. We just saw, just came over the transom here at Crooked Media Global News HQ, that Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin today. So we are going to dig into what they talked about, the future of that complicated U.S. Russian relationship. And then our guest today is a guy named Alexei Kovlyov, who is the investigations editor at Medusa, which is an independent Russian. news outlet. And I talked to him this morning about the protests over the weekend, what the goal is, why Putin responded to the allegations that he has built himself a $1 billion palace and a lot more. So we talked a lot of that Russian angle. But Ben and I are also going to talk about the fight over Biden's special envoy for Iran policy and why it's actually bigger than one staffer. I'm going to talk about some big policy moves that Biden has made on domestic extremism,

international sanctions, and on Liberia. We'll talk about why we're a little bumble. about Biden's policy towards Venezuela and then explained why China is sanctioning former Trump administration officials, why Google might pull out of Australia, why the Italian prime minister resigned, and we'll hear some very special words from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. So packed show today. Two housekeeping things before we get to the news. First, if you want to go deep on what the Biden administration is doing on policy in these first 100 days, really the crucial first 100 days, check out our podcast Rubicon.

It's from Crooked Media Editor-in-Chief Brian Boitler. It comes out on Fridays. It's fantastic. It does a real good deep dive. You will not want to miss it. Also, don't miss a great new episode of with friends like these hosted by Anna Marie Cox. This Friday, she talks with the always excellent Rebecca Traster. So subscribe to both Rubicon and with friends like these, wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, Ben, let's turn to Russia because for the last several weeks, really, we've talked about Alexei Navalny. And last week, we talked about his return to Russia and his stuff. subsequent arrest. Navalini is a Russian opposition leader. He's an anti-corruption activist, and he recently survived an assassination attempt by the Russian intelligence services. So Navalny right before he got thrown in jail, called on Russians to take to the streets and protests over the weekend. They did. We talk about those protests more later with our guests. But then, we saw that Biden called Putin today, and I figured we could dig into this White House piece because it's complicated. So according to the White House readout of the call, Biden and

Putin discussed the New START Treaty, Ukraine sovereignty, the solar winds hack, reports about Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, interference in the 2020 U.S. election and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. Sounds like a very fun call. It does underscore the complexity of the relationship, right? Like Biden wants to extend the New START treaty, which is a critical arms control agreement that reduces the number of deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. he needs Putin to work with him on that. But he also needs to warn Putin when it comes to the treatment of opposition leaders, hacking, Ukraine, this bounty story. So, Ben, what did you make of that set of topics?

And what is your guess for over, under, on the duration of that phone call with that many things to cover? I'll start with the duration. I'm going to say 90 minutes, Tommy, but maybe it was shorter because it was the first one. 90's a good call. 90's a good call. I'm going to, there's a few things that jumped out to me about this. The first is, this is the first time that Vladimir Putin is going to hear from an American president about Russian bounties on our troops, about Alexei Navalny, period, about the solar winds hack. That alone is kind of

amazing, kind of astonishing to think about that like, this is the first time an American president has uttered those words to Vladimir Putin. So it's, you know, clearly a change from what Putin had before and Trump in office. I was trying to think about how to convey to people what it's like to be on these calls because it sounds like a pretty awkward list. But the reality is with Putin, because he's willing to lie, these calls become actually very unusual. So for instance, I remember being on a bunch of 90-minute calls between Putin and Obama at the height of the war in Ukraine. And Obama will be laying out all our concerns about what Russia was doing in eastern Ukraine. And then Putin would give a very long speech just denying that they were even there. So it's not like two people yelling at

each other about awkward topics. It's kind of about you registering your concerns and pushing through the fact that Putin in response, I bet he denied that Russia was responsible for that hack. I'm sure he denied that they put bounties in our troops, right? I'm sure he said, Alexei Navalny doesn't really have any support in Russia and it's all fermented from the outside. So in a strange way, Biden has to kind of register these concerns for Putin, not expecting to, like, change his mind on that call, but rather just to kind of signal them, hey, this is what I care about. And then I think people have to understand this isn't going to be a situation where the Biden people come in and have some, you know, magic elixir to deal with these things. Part of what they're going to have to do

is spend the next few weeks getting coordinated with Europe so that we can say, okay, what can we all do together to express support for Alexei Navalny and for, for, for for democratic rights inside of Russia. What can we all do to strengthen our cyber defenses and potentially consider responses to Russian hacks and this type of thing? So Biden doesn't even currently have the playbook developed in terms of what exactly he's going to do on all these issues.

The job in this call is to set down some markers. This is what I care about. This is the kind of thing where there are going to be consequences and then spend the next few weeks, not just developing those internally, but with allies, figuring out what is a core approach that they can be taken to Russia. So, you know, this is the beginning of the story, this phone call, nowhere near even the end of the beginning. Yeah, that's right. It's also

interesting that the Russian bounties issue came up because there is a swath of people, mostly on the left, online, that is seeming to convince themselves that that Russian bounty story was not accurate, that it was walked back by the Trump administration, even though Mike Pompeo said he raised it with his Russian counterpart, I believe. So it was interesting that Biden raised that at the highest level on the first phone call seems to suggest that that evidence actually was pretty solid or else why waste your time? That's exactly right. So Biden has had access to the intelligence for a week now. And the people who came out and denied it from the Trump administration were kind of the far-end maga-hacks, you know, dead enders types, not the career people.

The career people always suggested that this intelligence was true. And the fact that he raised it shows you that Joe Biden has looked at the intelligence on both the hack and the bounties and concluded that this is true. And I have to raise it with Vladimir Putin. So there is, you're right. There's a message in that readout. Interesting. Well, not the last time we'll hear about this relationship. And hopefully there is some movement on the New START treaty because it would be bad to let that thing lapse after the Trump administration has ripped up as many arms control treaties as possible over the last couple of years.

So let's turn to Iran, Ben, because there's been this proxy battle broken out over President Biden's Iran policy. And it seems to signal that all those critics that, you know, were attacking President Obama and attacking you personally over the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear agreement, are eager to refight that battle. So the dust up here starts with a report in the Jewish insider that said a guy named Rob Mali is being considered for the position of special envoy for Iran policy by Biden's team. Rob Malley is a seasoned expert on Middle East policy.

He's been on this show, actually, back in 2017. He worked for President Obama and President Clinton on the national security staff, and he has a particular expertise working on Arab-Israeli peace and counter-IS policy. And so once this news leaked, a lot of people came out and said, like, that's a great choice, right? He's an expert on the Middle East. He understands the strengths and weaknesses of the Iran deal. Mali is tight with Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the incoming Secretary of State and National Security Advice. and Ben, this anecdote made me laugh. I guess in the mid-2000s, Mali played on an indoor soccer team

with Congressman Tom Malinowski and Tony Blinken, and they won the league championship in 2005, so good for them. But, you know, opponents of the deal saw this report, and they immediately started going after Mali because he is in favor of the U.S. engaging in talks with their adversaries, including Iran, and because Mali criticized Trump and Mike Pompeo and their approach to Iran, Senator Tom Cotton, who is best known for wanting to deploy U.S. troops against peaceful protesters in the U.S. and for sending letters to Iran, trying to undercut Obama's foreign policy, said, quote, the Ayatollahs wouldn't believe their luck if he is selected, he being Malley. So, Ben, you know Rob Malley well. You have been vocal about why you think you would be good

at this job. Why do you think Rob Malley is the right fit? And what are the broader stakes of this fight over this position? Yeah. So, you know, Rob was a lot of the way. at the White House in the second term, and he was the lead NSC staffer with responsibility for Iran when we completed the Iran deal. And he attended the talks, right? So Rob was the White House diplomat in the negotiations with Iran. And so first and foremost, this is a guy who literally was present at the creation of the Iran nuclear agreement and has relationships with all the key players, the Iranians, including the Iranian farm minister, Javad Zarif, the Europeans, who Rob has, I know, been in touch with even the last several years.

The Russians who were just talking about, like Rob knows the people, knows the issues, can clearly step in and be an effective envoy right away without having to burn time just kind of getting to know folks, right? Right, getting up to speed, yeah. His qualifications are unquestionable for this job, right? He's also just, I think, honestly, you know, for progressives, you know, Rob Malley is someone who's willing to challenge convention. He's a truly committed diplomat who's got himself into political hot water in the past because he's been willing to do things like meet with Hamas to, you know, around Middle East peace type issues. Not because he agrees with these people, though. This is the thing that drives me crazy.

Not because he somehow agrees with either Iranians or certain Palestinian factions, but because you make diplomacy with adversaries. You make diplomacy not just with your friends. Like Rob is the kind of guy who understands that diplomacy requires. you to get in the room with whoever is necessary to advance American interest, to advance, you know, the broader interest of peace. And that reason for his qualification is also the reason that critics don't like him there. You know, like the reason that critics don't want Rob in this job is they don't like diplomacy to begin with. They know that Rob is more likely to succeed in getting us back into an Iran nuclear deal. That's what these critics don't want.

So it's a proxy for everything in part because they want to say, a warning shot about who gets to sign off on Joe Biden's Iran policy. You would think that it'd be normal that Joe Biden got elected on a platform of returning to the Iran nuclear deal and would pick an envoy who helped negotiate that nuclear deal. That's the normal consequence that you would expect from elections. But I think this right-wing noise machine in Congress with people like Tom Cotton, this external pressure that's inevitable to come from the Israeli government and the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE who have a lot of influence in Washington. is intended to send a message that if you don't do what we want on Iran policy, we're going

to try to extract a political cost to you. We're going to create political headaches for you. We're going to heap criticism and demonize individuals in your administration. They're trying to send a message out of the gate that essentially you have to give us a veto on who you appoint. And we know that it may not be, you know, Tom Cotton's choice who could be the Iran-on-way, but Tom Cotton's trying to send a message that it can't be your choice either. It can't be Rob Malley. Let's get some milk toast person in there who we know is less likely to succeed. That's because that's what Tom Cotton's ultimate interest in is. So it's like a, it's a proxy for the whole whole, the freedom of movement that Joe Biden has on as Iran policy. And, and,

and that's why I think it's really important for progressives to raise our voices in support of Rob Malley, because it's both about a decent guy who's be good at the job. It's also about whether or not Joe Biden is able to have political space to do what he wants to do on Iran. Yeah, very well said. And I also would highly, highly recommend people read a piece by Peter Beynart about Rob Malley in the stakes of this fight because he talks about how Mali has this like family history and experience being the son of an Arab Jew born in Egypt with roots in Syria. Rob Malley covered the war in Algeria as a journalist, right? So he saw the brutality of colonialism up close and not something we talk about enough, I think,

in U.S. foreign policy. Malie's other sin in the eyes of his critics was that he worked on the Camp David Accords in 2000 and he later dared to go against the orthodoxy that that deal fell apart only because of the Palestinians that know what else was at fault. And, you know, Peter had this great paragraph at the end where he talked about this pick and he said, it constitutes a test of whether someone who sees beyond the smug and blinkered narrative that dominates Beltway discourse, it tries to elevate the voices of people who Washington policymakers often ignore, like Palestinians, can win an important job in even a Democratic administration. Ambitious young,

wonks will take notes and adjust their behavior accordingly. I thought that was really, really well said. That's so right. And because if the message is the only way to get ahead, the only way to get jobs like this in foreign policy is to never be controversial, you know, to never explore ways of challenging convention or never getting rooms of people that might be held against you in the future, you're going to get a very watered down version of people in all these positions, right? Which is what Tom Cotton wants. You know, he wants kind of like a Democratic Party that is afraid of its own shadow on national security and afraid to push the envelope. I think the other piece of this it's worth highlighting, like Brett Stevens, who we haven't had to talk about in a while since

like, you know, he got so enraged about some bedbug issue. I don't even remember what it was exactly. But he had a column this morning that's another narrative you see against Rob, which is that Rob is somehow doesn't care about human rights in Iran. he talks to the Ayatollahs and human rights policy, you know, anyone who cares about dissidents in other countries should reject Rob Malley. And that is such utter complete bullshit. Because frankly, Rob has used diplomacy to try to free hostages in other countries. The last few years, Rob has been running the International Crisis Group, which is an amazing organization. People should check out their website if you want to know kind of the nuts and bolts of conflicts

around the world. But they lobby for civilian protection. And, you know, Rob's had, employees who had been detained in China, and Rob has been standing up to the Chinese government to try to free these people. So again, this co-opting of the language of human rights by the far right to demonize people interested in diplomacy is something we've seen time and again, and we shouldn't allow that to work either. Because Rob gauges in diplomacy with unsafe reactors, doesn't mean he doesn't care about human rights. It means that he believes that the way you advance human rights is by engaging in diplomacy, you know? And by the way, most Iranian human rights activists would tell you the same thing. That's why there was a lot of support in that community for the Iran nuclear

agreement, because they felt like connectivity to the outside world was ultimately going to improve the human rights circumstances in Iran rather than the status quo, which has been horrendous. Well, we will keep an eye on this. We hope that the Biden team stays tough and that they put mally forward for this position. So we're going to get into a bunch of really good stuff that Joe Biden has done on foreign policy in a bit. But there's one area that was a little disappointing that I wanted to talk about Ben. So this came up during Tony Blinken's confirmation hearing for Secretary of State. He said that the Biden administration would continue to recognize Juan Guaido as the president of Venezuela. So just a little backstory here for folks who forget. In January of 2018,

Venezuela's National Assembly declared that Juan Guaido is. was the acting president of Venezuela. At the same time, the Trump administration led this big diplomatic effort to try to get other countries to recognize Juan Guido as president and not Nicholas Maduro. Trump even invited Guido to be his guest at the state of the union. So all those machinations came after this 2018 presidential election in Venezuela, where Maduro was reelected, but his opponents and a lot of international observers said it was flawed, it was irregular, and it was illegitimate. So also at this hearing, Tony went on to say that President Biden wants to more effectively target sanctions on Venezuela. It's obviously a good thing and promote a policy that leads to free and

fair elections. I think everyone would agree that's a good thing too. For his part, Maduro says he's willing to, quote, walk a new path in our relations with Joe Biden's government based on mutual respect, dialogue, communication, and understanding. So, Ben, you know, this effort to install Juan Guaidoas president of Venezuela predates Biden. Trump did like everything he could short of invasion to oust Maduro, right? They put on countless economic sanctions. They had an oil embargo on Venezuela during a fucking pandemic, just like an evil thing you could do. It failed miserably. The net effect of Maduro's bad leadership and these efforts to oust him has been to just decimate Venezuela's economy and really hurt the people. What do you think the right move is here? Like, how do you signal a

break from Trump's failed regime change strategy without inadvertently helping Maduro and, you know, impeding your ultimate goal of a free and fair election? I know this is like the hardest question ever, but I'm curious what your thoughts are. Yeah, and look, I think I understand why Tony in that context, you know, he's not going to rescind this formal diplomatic recognition the United States is offered. I think what was somewhat disappointing and it's the kind of thing that has to be watched in terms of where they go after Tony's confirmed is whether or not there's an indication that the current approach is not working. You know, like you can not rescind the recognition of Guido while still acknowledging like this policy has not been working. and to pretend like, oh, just more sanctions and a slightly smarter implementation of this failed strategy is somehow going to lead anywhere but the status quo. That, I think, would be the thing that would trouble me. I think what they, because what they need to do is, first of all, just kind of hit the pause button here and kind of go around and talk to all our partners

in Latin America and talk to all the people in Europe who are invested in this issue as well and hear them out on what's going on. What's the dynamic inside of Venezuela? What's the dynamic in the opposition. What's the dynamic in the regime? What, by the way, is a degree of Chinese and Russian influence with Maduro too? They just have to kind of understand what the playing field is. And at the same time, I think, signaling more so probably than Tony did in his hearing, like we're open to any diplomacy that can lead to a free and fair election. You know, like we're not abandoning the democratic principle here that Venezuela sets as a Tuesdays are a leader, but that essentially we're open to negotiating with the government and the opposition with

Juan Guaido and Maduro's people, different possible transitional governments that could lead to an election, you know, just an ability to start over diplomatically rather than locking yourself into a policy of we recognize Guido and we sanction them. That policy is not going to work. And I think the reason people, you know, would be somewhat concerned about this is as with Iran policy, there are political forces in the United States that want to make sure that on Cuba and Venezuela, Biden takes a harder line than where the Democratic Party would naturally go. And if you look at it's not just from the Republican Party and obviously that did very well with Cuban Americans in Florida.

Bob Menendez, Senator Bob Menendez is the chairman of the Senate Farm Relations Committee. He is the most hardline Democrat on all these issues. You know, he's a very hardline anti-Cuba anti-Maduro guy. And the temptation for the administration may be, we don't want to piss off this Democratic chairman, who's, by the way, going to confirm all of our nominees. And we don't want a political headache from the, you know, hardline Cuban-American community. So we'll just kind of keep doing a softer version of what Trump was doing. And I just think that that's just going to lead you to not only is that the wrong approach for the issues and the wrong approach for the people who live

in Cuba and Venezuela. I think that ultimately you're going to have to pivot anyway. So why not start at the beginning of your administration? Yeah, to your point. To be fair to Tony, this is enormously complicated. Maduro has done an absolutely abysmal job leading the country. The election was seen by many people as illegitimate. Regardless, the results are people in horrific poverty, hospitals that don't have power, let alone like gauze or critical medical supplies, people starving to death. Obviously, like some sort of change is needed.

I do think, you know, signaling some sort of break from what was an overt regime. change strategy to the point where John Bolton wrote 5,000 troops to Colombia on a notepad and basically held it up for reporters. Like, you know, there's sort of a middle ground in there that's a sweet spot that, like, I'm not smart enough to figure out, but Tony is. But that didn't work. I mean, there has to be, and this is a really key thing, the links both Iran and Venezuela. The Trump people will argue that somehow this was working, that like, quote unquote,

maximum pressure on Iran is working, so we just have to continue it because you have all this leverage, that you're recognizing Guido is this bold stroke. and Maduro is constantly, you know, they cast him as on the ropes. It's not working in other place. Like the Iranians are developing their nuclear program. Maduro is more entrenched today than the day that they recognize Juan Guido. Like, it's not working. And so you're right.

Like Tony needs to have all the running room he needs to formulate new approaches. But the one thing I think we should hold them to account on is to not let political gravity drag them into kind of embracing or at least enabling. these narratives that somehow this pressure track approach on these issues was somehow yielding results. Right, right. And I think critics of this policy, critics of the Democratic Party would point to the fact that Juan Guaido got like a standing ovation from Democrats and Republicans at the State of the Union. So it seemed like it was a bipartisan support for, you know, regime change, which is not a signal we should be sending probably to Latin America, given our history of doing terrible things in the region, full stop. Yeah, totally. And the world looks at cynically if they think, and the Democrats are doing that, not because they believe it, but because they're afraid of some politics. Yeah, afraid of Marco Rubio, yeah. Yeah, that's not a reason to do that. No, that's not a reason to toy with people's lives. Okay. So some good news from the Biden folks. First of all, over the last few months, you guys have heard Ben and I gnash our teeth about like 11th hour attempts by the Trump administration to install loyalists in different parts of the the government. The concern was it might be hard for Biden get rid of some of them or that he

might hesitate to get rid of some of them. Good news, everybody. The Biden is just cleaning house. So some examples here. First, the Trump team tried to install a top lawyer at the NSA of the National Security Agency. Biden's folks put him on administrative leave on day two. So that guy is basically iced out. Then the Biden team fired officials installed by Trump at the voice of America and at the U.S. agency for global media. That's, I think, been a bigger deal. Can you remind listeners why those entities are important and what they do and why, you know,

you've really been focused on this? We should, by the way, give credit to David Fulkenflik at NPR who's been covering this story like nobody's business. So really important stuff there and grateful for that reporting. Yeah, he's been great. And I'm so glad that the Biden people

are taking this approach rather than risking, sabotage from within. I think that for the USAGM, people may have heard of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the BBG. That's what this kind of used to be called. And essentially, it's the umbrella that's over about a billion dollars worth of U.S. government broadcasting. So the Voice of America, radio free Europe, radio free Asia. Often in places, those are like the straight news sources. It's like the wire news service that just gives people the news in countries where They don't have access to objective media. Right. Right.

In some cases, and then that's mainly what it is. But in some cases, it's, you know, the capacity of the United States to reach audiences and different languages and to try to, you know, essentially represent what independent media is supposed to look like. And so there's been a firewall between, you know, when I was in government, technically, I had responsibility for this portfolio in terms of the budgeting and the personnel. but I had no ability to tell them what to do. Like there's a legal firewall that says that this can essentially become a propaganda organ of the U.S. government.

Well, what Trump did is when he finally figured out or someone there figured out that they had all this broadcasting, this basically this media enterprise within the U.S. government, they just put in some hardline hackish loyalists who were clearly going to set about purging the place of any independent journalism and kind of turn it into like some MAGA. a broadcasting outfit, like a OAN on the global scale. Mike Pompeo, like, I think pushed out a reporter who dared to ask him a tough question. Like, they were like punishing reporters in real time. Yeah, and you and I, because you and I dealt with VOA reporters. It was just like dealing with other reporters.

Right. You didn't expect them to ask you guys questions or to propagandize the Mike Pompeo for president message, which I'm sure VOA was doing. And I think what happened, Tommy, is like, the Biden people went in during transition. And we're able to take a look at just what is going on in this place. What is the morale? What have these people been told to do? And clearly, whatever they saw was sufficiently alarming.

That they were like, and this is why transition is useful because those people can come back and be like, this place is a fucking mess. And clearly, they were sufficiently alarmed by what the agenda was at that place, that they felt like we can't even let these people stay in their offices for a couple weeks. And that tells you how big the bullet is that we dodge. Yeah, big time. And good for the Biden team for moving quickly and just getting this done. I'm just do a quick, like, roundup, Ben, of some notable foreign policy news from the Biden folks, and you can just respond to any part of it. So first, President Biden has asked the director of national intelligence, our friend of Real Haynes,

to pull together a comprehensive assessment of the threat from domestic violent extremism. If the attack on the Capitol on January 6th bothered you, this is good news. They're also going to build out a team within the National Security Council to review what's currently being done. Second, Biden's team announced it's going to review existing U.S. and multilateral financial sanctions and see whether those sanctions are hindering efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. This is a big deal. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has been leading the charge to take another look at these sanctions and see how they might be hurting people, especially in places like Iran and Venezuela,

like we were just talking about. So it's a big deal. Third, Biden repealed Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military. It was bigoted. It was cruel. It's awful. glad it's gone. Lastly, Biden released an order that would protect people who were forced to free Liberia back in the early 90s to protect them from deportation. Basically, these Liberians came to seek asylum in the U.S., and they were temporarily protected by President Bush and then President Obama. And then because he is a racist, President Trump basically started a process that would have sent thousands of Liberians back home, even though they no longer live there or hadn't been there for decades. So been no real common thread for those items besides the fact. that elections matter. Those are really good, important things. And please, you know, jump in on any

part of this. Well, I guess the only common thread you can identify is that they all basically responding to the kind of inhumanity or insanity of Trump, right? So domestic extremism, there was no evaluation of the threat because Trump was unwilling to look at the extremist aspects of his own base, you know, the use of immigration policy to punish people common thread, the not caring that sanctions are potentially killing people. So this shows what it looks like when the U.S. government has to arrange itself once again around facts and around caring about human beings. I think on the domestic extremism, because we touched on this a little bit, I think people need to let's see what they come up with before we freak out about the construction of some new war on terror framework. We need to know the facts. We need this kind of analysis of who are these groups? How organized are they?

You know, what are their ambitions? You know, just, just gathering that information will then allow you to make decisions about what kind of policies full of than that. And I do want to say just on the sanctions piece, you know, finding carve-outs for medical and humanitarian purposes and places like Iran and Venezuela can both be very important in just saving lives in a COVID context, but also with the new administration can create an environment for diplomacy to potentially get a footing, you know, like, okay, we can't agree on just about anything, but we can agree on just trying to save lives of people who are at risk from COVID. So I think this is all positive and it all, you know, it all is what a normal, well-meaning administration would look like at the beginning. Yeah. And, you know, so on this piece you mentioned about the concerns that are understandable about, you know, constructing a new war on terror that's domestically focused. I did some calls around to various offices of people. that would be a part of this. And my takeaway was that, you know, their focus is they really want to

coordinate with the Biden team. They want to figure out what's necessary. They want to talk to the ACLUs of the world. They want to think as narrowly as possible to make sure that there are these law enforcement tools. But like, I think everybody is quite mindful of the mistakes that were made after 9-11. This isn't like Jim Sensenbrenner dumping a 2000-page, you know, Patriot Act on, you know, a desk and saying, vote for this before you read it. I think this is a process that would be incredibly deliberate to figure out, okay, what are we prioritizing, where are the resources focus, what is missing, then let's move very slowly and have hearings and really vet these things before moving forward. So that made me feel a little better. Yeah, the scrutiny

should be there, but this process allows for the scrutiny to happen. And to your point, after 9-11, they just gave them every authority that they could possibly imagine having through the Patriot Act. this is more like, hey, let's understand this threat, and then let's have a debate about what new tools or authorities we need. And as long as that process is kind of transparent and deliberative, you know, that's the right way to go about doing it. Trust but verify. You know, like that's a good thing. Just because people are well-meaning. Doesn't mean they can't, you know, end up trying to push too far.

So it's good that groups are energized. Yeah, no, it's good that there will be push and pull and there will be people like Rashida Talib and Ilan Omar and AOC. saying, hell no, we don't need new authorities. We have this debate and do it publicly. Let's talk about China for a minute, Ben, because minutes after Joe Biden was sworn into office, the Chinese government announced that they're imposing sanctions on 28 former Trump administration officials, including some of our favorites, Mike Pompeo, the former national security advisors, Robert O'Brien and John Bolton, the trade advisor, Peter Navarro, and then the multiple colored shirt enthusiast Steve Bannon.

So this press release from the Chinese foreign ministry was colorful. It said these individuals showed, quote, prejudice and hatred against China and have, quote, planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves, which have gravely interfered in China's internal affairs, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-U.S. Relations, end quote. What this means in practice is that the individuals named here and their families can't visit China, Hong Kong, or Macau. and they and then companies or institutions associated with them are restricted from doing business in

China. So, you know, Ben, John Bolton is like tweeting about how this is a great thing and views it as a badge of honor. I imagine that Mike Pompeo will make it part of his future stump speech when he runs for president to show how tough he is on China. I do wonder how this business provision works and whether it might make companies think twice about putting some of these folks on like their board of directors. for example. But, you know, Ben, you were sanctioned by the Russian government on your way out

the door in the Obama years. Any tips for Bolton and Bannon and the gang for what's going to happen? No, I got the same like full sanction. Can you tell that story? Well, I was actually in the first list of, so when we had sanctioned some Russians, the Russians reciprocated in 2014 around Crimea and Ukraine. And I was in the first tranche of like the eight Americans who were sanctioned, you know, travel ban put on me, you know, my, my ability to access the ruble, you know, which is I don't have any investments in Russia. It's funny, though, at the time I asked McFaul, who I think was still our ambassador, why I was on this list. Like, what did I do? You know, because it was like John McCain, too, and like it was this kind of random group people.

And he said that they had paired me with someone that we had sanctioned on the Russian side, this guy, Serkhov, who was kind of the master propagandist, you know, for, for, for, Putin. And I don't know if that's true or not. It was just like Mike's guess. But like it was kind of funny that the Russians had me slotted the same way that like some Republicans did, like this powerful manager of like information and echo chambers, which as you know, like, if only we were that capable in the way. It's communications office. But look, to me, here's what's interesting about it. Is it the, first of all, yes, you're right. This is far more consequential than a Russian sanction because the Chinese economy touches a lot of things. And the American corporate sector is all

tied up in China. So you're right. I mean, it'd be interesting to watch like board appointments and things like that because ultimately those companies' relationships with China are more important than potentially their relationship with like John Bolton or something, which, by the way, is bad. I mean, I'm not siding with the Chinese on this one here. You know, like the Chinese leveraging U.S. businesses to kind of shape who is a part of their community, even if it's someone like Mike Pompeo who I detest, like he should have that right. I will say what's interesting about the Chinese is that they're leaving themselves some wiggle room here to both reciprocate for some Trump sanctions without, you know, while trying to contain it to the past. So Trump had

sanctioned a whole bunch of Chinese officials. The Chinese doctrine, mentality is we must sanctioned some people in response, that, like, we can't just sit here and take your sanctions without a response. The fact that they waited until after the new administration was, you know, inaugurated, and then immediately sanctioned a bunch of people who were already out of government, I actually took as a, you know, controlled escalation, if you will, you know, that they were trying to kind of reciprocate while then allowing it to stop there and let's all move on, rather than try and have some consequential impact on, say, the American economy through who they're sanctioning or current officials, you know, rather than just former ones. So I thought it was a kind of

subtle message from the Chinese of, yeah, we're reciprocating, but we don't want this to continue. Interesting. Yeah. And now balls in the Biden's court. Like impeaching a former president. Balls in the Biden's board, that is for sure. Talk to about Australia and Google for a minute. So Google is threatening to pull out of the Australian market and here is why. The Australian government put forward a law that could force technology companies like Facebook, like Google, to make commercial agreements with news outlets and then pay them to show their content. It seems like an obvious idea. Google, though, says this law would be unworkable and that it would force the company to basically

leave the Australian market. They'd be stuck with Bing or whatever. Facebook has said that the law might end up forcing them to block news content on your news feed if you live in Australia. So, Ben, I don't know exactly what to make of this. I don't know if this is the right solution for Australia specifically. Some people have pointed out that forcing these payments could disproportionately affect Rupert Murdoch because he owns so much of the media in Australia.

That said, I do like the idea of governments telling these big internet companies, hey, you are part of why that news media industry has been decimated. You are spreading disinformation. You're going to help fix those problems. Like Google recently helped agree to pay French publishers to license some of their content. This is under a pilot program they've launched where they're trying to, I don't know, fix these relationships with publishers. So maybe there's some path forward here.

I don't know. What do you make of this proposal? Well, yeah, not only has Google and Facebook obviously turbocharged disinformation, you know, they've also cannibalized traditional media because they get all the ad revenue for the content that is created by, you know, newspapers and, you know, television media. Think about how it used to be. You'd buy a newspaper, and if there was an ad associated with an article in that newspaper, or you'd look at it online, you'd see it on the website of that news outlet.

Google or Facebook, they just wanted to drive all the ad revenue to their platforms. So all these issues are kind of connected. And I'm not sure that the Australia policy is the right one. I think what's happening, though, that's very healthy is there's pressure coming at the tech companies from all different directions, right? There's pressure on the hate speech, that you're disseminating. There's pressure on the disinformation and how you allow yourself to be manipulated by Russia or whomever. There's pressure on how much you're cannibalizing media.

There's pressure on privacy. And already the companies are responding, and most prominently obviously Twitter taking down Trump. The answer has to be regulation. But I think that the more the governments that share these concerns, so generally the democratic governments, are are trying to develop common ideas and common areas of concern that they're articulating the companies, the better this will go. So in Australia, it gets together the New Zealand and US and Europe and Japan and other countries that are focused on this and just try to, you know, begin to correct, you know, how messed up big tech is. Yeah. You know, maybe they, you try to compel them to do it voluntarily, but if not, there's some form of regulation that could be cross

borders. Yeah, it does seem like the EU might be coordinating some sort of ever here. too. Speaking of the EU, Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte has resigned from his position. It is not clear, sort of based on how the Italian government system works, he could try to form a new governing coalition and basically get his job back in a couple of days. Someone else could try to form a coalition and take over the prime minister job, or they could call a snap election. But, you know, Conte was in power for like 17 months. His governing coalition fractured over disagreements about how to spend this big pot of money about, I think, 250 billion-ish worth of funds from the European Union to help them recover from the coronavirus. So, you know, the timing here is

really bad. Italy got crushed by the coronavirus early. Their vaccination rollout has been slow. Holding a snap election in a pandemic seems like a really bad idea, but also so is delaying like efforts to help fix their economy and help it recover. I don't really have strong a opinions on Conte. He's been described as like a technocratic populist, but there is a real concern that if there's an election in Italy, the most likely winner would be a far right wing coalition led by this party, the league, which is pretty vile. So that's something I think we need to watch here. I mean, I think the hope is that Conte will be able to cobble together another moderate coalition and resume the job. But, you know, it would not be great to see, you know, pseudo-fascist parties in

charge of Italy. Yeah, totally. I mean, Conte kind of stabilized things, you know, because it had been drifting in the direction of the far right. And Conte kind of stabilizing is this consensus technocrat, which may not fix the structural problems in Italy, but frankly, when you're dealing with COVID and you've got this threat of like far right, you know, populism slash nationalism, you take that. So I think that the main thing you're voting for here, rooting for is that, yeah, you don't see Italy tip far to the right, that there's enough of some new coalition that can emerge from the next election, that they can kind of weather these storms. At a certain point, Italy is going to have to really go through some political regeneration here because so much of the energy has flowed

to the right and the left has kind of been fractured against itself. But for now, I think we're rooting for like a stable outcome that doesn't tip the place over. Yeah, I mean, I think Italy's been in basically constant political turmoil since World War II. to. So, you know, it must be incredibly frustrating for the people there, you know, they've reeling since the financial crisis through COVID. It's tough times. But hopefully they can get it together. Finally, Ben, I just want to close before we get to the interview with a bit of audio from our friend, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Let's play the clip. Do you think there's some senior politicians in Britain seem to that President Biden is woke?

I can't comment on that. But what I know is that he's a fervent believer in the transatlantic alliance. And that's a great thing. And a believer in a lot of the things that we want to achieve together. And insofar as nothing wrong with being woke, but what I can tell you is that I think that it's very, very important for everybody to, and suddenly I will put myself in the category of people who believe that it's important to stick up for your history, your traditions and things and your values

and things you believe in. You rarely hear a politician that deaf, that light on their feet, you know, silver tongue there. Yeah, not woke. I mean, this is the country that brought us like the Beatles. and the stones and like, you know, punk and, you know, the clash and, like, what is happening here, you know? It's like, like, they used to be a little more woke over there. I would love to know who asked that question, too, because, like, it just felt like he was

sneering and suggesting that being Joe Biden being progressive, caring about people of other races, sort of being conscious of things he says and does is a bad thing. You're right going to ask Boris Johnson that, someone who, uh, who said that Barack Obama's colonial heritage was holding back the alliance? Come on. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, I will say that the kind of obsession with like wokeness and cancel culture is like much more of a thing on the right than among like actual progressives. But yeah, Boris Johnson like is not someone, I mean, yeah, we'll never forget his views on the roots of Barack Obama's feelings on issues like Brexit being tied to the fact that he was of Kenyan heritage. Yeah, well, the good news is, you know,

Joe Biden and Johnson talked on the phone the other day. I think the relationship will endure. They'll try to work out of a trade deal. It will be special. It will always be special. It will always be special. Okay. When we come back, we'll have my conversation with Alexei Kovov about the protests in Russia, Alexei Navalny, and what's next for Vladimir Putin. So stick around. I am very excited to welcome my guest today all the way from Russia. Alexei Kovov is the investigation editor at Medusa, an independent Russian news outlet. Alexei, it's great to see it. Hi there. So we've been talking a lot about Alexei Navalny on this show. Listeners by now are familiar with, you know, his poisoning, his return to Russia from Germany

and then his call for protests over the weekend. Can you just start by describing, you know, what those protests were like this weekend? We saw a lot of clips on social media. there were clips of people pegging police with snowballs that looked different than what we'd seen before. But how are they different or not different from past protests you've seen? Well, they were quite, quite different in spirit. I mean, in the past, they were usually the people, mostly Alexei Navalny's supporters, would at least seek some sort of permit or authorization from the city government. But not this time.

This time nobody even bothered to obtain one because we are at a stage where Navalny previously considered as an enemy of this state, to whom at least some rules of engagement still applied. He's now been elevated to the status of a traitor and a national trader by the propaganda, a foreign agent. and no rules no rule of law applies to him except the laws that they use to prosecute him and his supporters and his allies are seen as co-conspirators

so it's pointless to even engage with the state to obtain some authorization so this time they didn't even bother and people just came out it's really hard to estimate how many because normally in Moscow if a produce is sanctioned by the government

it's normally confined to a square or wide avenue in downtown where these kind of kind of rallies usually take place and there it's pretty easy to say okay this is like you can look at a crowd and say okay this is 20,000 people or this is 50,000 people but now

most of these it wasn't a single crowd it was just groups of people wandering throughout the city so estimates it's estimates vary from the police's own figure

it was 4,000 people but it was clearly much more than that so the highest estimate was about 40,000 people but it's really hard to say but Navalini's people are saying that

no fewer than 250,000 people came out across all of Russia which seems to be well it might be a little too high but it's not not too much

because we've seen footage from places where people literally came out to protest for the second time or the first time in the history of this little town and there were incredible footage and images of people coming out to protests in places like Yakutsk where temperature just dropped below minus 60 Fahrenheit. That's amazing.

Truly. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. But there are a lot of places in Russia, like places in Siberia where. Right, right. Yeah, where it's well below minus 40. I mean, yeah. No thanks. You had a great piece in the New York Times today, Tuesday, that I thought was fascinating

that everyone should go read. But in that piece you wrote, it would be foolish to think that the protests are going to lead to significant political changes or concessions from the state. If anything, they will probably lead to more criminal cases and more repressive laws. Curious why you think that's the case. And if so, what Navalny's strategy is here? What is the end game for these protests if you think it could actually make the situation worse? Okay, so here's the thing.

In Russia, demanding something from the state or cornering it never yields the result you want to. Because if you demand a stop to corruption, for example, you'll get more corruption. So as to, for example, this is usually what happens with Navalny's investigation into corruption at the highest level of the Russian government, if he credibly accuses an official of corruption, he is never fired or demoted. More than that, he's often promoted. Or if the charges are really, really serious,

it's going to take, for example, in a year or so, he'll be quietly transferred to a different department, for example. So as not to create a feedback between a demand and, so as not the state is not seen as caving in to

popular demands because the state, the government, Putin doesn't want to be seen as weak as caving in to demand. So it works, you know, there's kind of a negative

feedback loop there. Got it, got it, that makes sense. So what is the, what is Navalny's endgame? It's upping the ante. He's pretty similar to Putin in that respect.

because he often does things that are almost seen as suicidal. And his latest move, like, going to Russia, despite all the threats that he will be jailed, and he was indeed arrested. And there's this quite serious risk that he will be jailed for a lot longer than 30 days, the term that he's currently serving. But he's a risk taker. Putin. And the moves he's making can be seen outside of his logic as self-destructive. For example, in 2016, when Russian hackers interfered in the U.S. elections, it didn't bring any

positive result. We didn't get anything from it. You know, if the end game was installing a friendly president who would do Russia's bidding, that never happened. know, if anything, we got more sanctions. Right. But that's well within also Putin's logic of always uping the ante. And again, punching well above your, punching well above your weight. So Navalny and Putin are pretty similar in that respect and that they're risk takers. Well, speaking of the upping the ante, I mean, you made the point to some folks on my team that, you know, we've seen some bad police abuses.

We've seen people getting beaten. But we haven't seen Russian police firing. rubber bullets, pepper spray, water cannons, things we've seen used against American protesters, frankly. Why do you think there is, like, why do you think there's been that sort of relative restraint and how worried are folks about potential escalation? Well, you know, I've been covering these mass parties in Russia for over a decade now. And although they always seem like pretty brutal on pictures. They've never crossed a line between simply beating the crap out of people with truncheons and actually, you know, attacking them with water cannons or rubber bullets.

That's never happened in the history of Russia. But here's the situation. There is no room, right now at this point where we are, there is no room for compromise. I don't see any outcome where the state, where, for example, Navalny supporters apply for a permit, and the state says, okay, sure, because in the past that's happened. You know, in the past, they would try to kind of dampen or tone down the escalation by giving some concessions.

Like, for example, sure, we'll give you that square to demonstrate as long as you do it peacefully. And yeah, sure, everybody comes for a peaceful demonstration, demonstrates, and then another week and then another week, And then week after week, the protest just whittles down. And for example, at the first, at one of the rallies in 2011, there were hundreds of thousands of people. But now weeks after weeks after weeks, then only dozens of thousands turned up. And then it's hundreds of people.

So that was one strategy of whittling down the people's motivation and commitment to protest. And that's a pretty effective strategy. But we are past the point. so there's very little room for compromise because there can be you know you can negotiate with an enemy that navarney was in the in the eyes of the Kremlin a few years ago but not with a traitor so the state cannot back down and it cannot allow peaceful demonstrations because in its own eyes it will be seen as weak, as given in.

And they cannot do that in case of Navalny. Right. Maybe if it were someone else, probably, yeah. But also, there is not much room to go in the other direction. Because if they do engage

the demonstrations with water cannons and rubber bullets and tear gas, which we do know for certain that they have in their stock. Because we can see, There have been some investigations before, and you can look at the, for example, you can look at state procurement contracts, and you can see that they have an ample supply of water cannons and tear gas and those subsonic things that make you puke. So they have all that.

Right, and they just haven't used it. Yeah. But doing that would cross a line, a point of no return, where the violence at this demonstrations will be now more significantly more will carry a lot more risk for the demonstrators than it does now.

But I don't have any definite answer to you, why it's never been, why all this firepower has never been employed before. but my kind of educated guess is that those images of protesters in Germany and Italy and the United States being pepper sprayed at short at with rubber bullets that, you know, gouge eyes and do some pretty serious irreparable damage to people's bodies. the imagery has been used for for well for the entirety of Putin's term basically I've covered these demonstrations from year 2000 and it's always been an argument in in a state propaganda like we're going easy on you guys unlike those unlike those Americans right right yeah well yeah unfortunately unfortunately he has a point in that specific case sure

But once you cross that line, you lose that high moral ground. Right. Yeah. Yeah. High moral ground in air quotes. Exactly. I agree. So, you know, you mentioned this earlier.

Well, when Navalny got back to Russia, actually when he was in prison, his team released this hour and a half long video alleging that Vladimir Putin has built a palace that cost a billion dollars, paid foreign bribes by people close to him. I've seen some estimates, including in your op-ed, that the video has been. been viewed over 100 million times. An aide to Navalny said, Putin, quote, could not ignore what the whole country is discussing, which is why he responded to these charges on the record today. Is there any way to quantify that? Do you think it's true that this video about the palace was dinner table conversation across Russia? And were you surprised that Putin actually commented on

this story? Yeah, the fact that he did actually come out to personally deny the allegations. and you can see how his legalistic brain works. I mean, he sees himself as a plaintiff in a court. What he said was literally, not me or any of my closest relatives have anything to do with the palace, which is not what the investigation claimed. It painstakingly described a network of intermediaries connected to Putin

why an incredibly intricate network of companies owned and sub-owned by different people who have at least some very remote but some degree of connection to Putin. That's exactly, that's intentional. Right, right.

So nobody actually claimed that it was Putin's palace. Right, right. It is in fact, but not on paper. So they dug up incredible amounts of all the the paper trails that lead to Putin. And I actually missed a lot of spots.

And we're doing us and other independent media in Russia are now very busy doing follow-up investigations to that. And sure, it looks pretty much what it says. I mean, it's a lot of, you know, a massive paper trail leads to its next. It's not a Swiss bank account. It's a massive, massive palace. You can't. Right, right.

Hard to hide. So we are in a stage right now. So the first, the initial reaction from Putin's spokesman was, I don't know anything about any palace. There is no palace. But, like, guys, you can see it from space. You can literally see it from space. You can go on Google Maps and see. So has this been like dinner table conversation?

Is this the thing everybody's talking about? I mean, all the little details from these investigations are basically memes now. Right. Yeah. And, yes, sure. It's the talk of the town. So back to Navalny for a second. I mean, I think a lot of listeners to this show, a lot of Americans, have been understandably inspired by his courage in the face of a regime that has tried to murder him, his fight against corruption.

Those are seen as noble things. But, you know, I think you've made the point. That doesn't mean that a Western audience would necessarily be thrilled by all of his views. My co-hosts on the show and I have talked a bit about Navalny's nationalism. his position on Crimea, for example. But could you give a listener as a sense of sort of like what Navalny believes maybe warts and all, some of the things that they might not necessarily think are shared values? Okay.

So we have to establish a common kind of measure here. Because by American and to a lesser extent European, in this American political kind of framework, what he would call liberals in Russia, including Navalny, would probably be considered right-being libertarians in the United States. Got it, got it. Yeah.

So Navalny is even further to the right in his views. And sure, he was, you can safely call him far right in the early stages of his career and he would pretty much open about that and he had given a chance, several chances actually to publicly retract his views

he never did. He actually doubled down on them and it's not it's not some secret or it's not some shameful past he's trying to sweep under the rug. Right. Yeah, he's pretty open about his beliefs. Although he's very much toned them down in the recent years. You'll never hear him refer to

people from the Muslim republics on Russia's fringes like he used to, like a decade ago. So because he understands as a politician and not as a member of a fringe right-wing movement, I don't know if he's genuinely evolved in his political views or he's just being coy so as not to alienate

a large a large swat of his electorate with a more internationalist and liberal views. I do not know that, but it's a fact that that he's much moderating his rhetoric now. But it's all legitimate points for discussion where, but the thing is that he's not being persecuted for his views.

That's, uh, he, he's views on immigration where he's, you know, it's ironic because that, uh, Vladimir Putin is much more liberal than Navalny. In, in, in, in many political areas like immigration, for example, uh, Navalny is much further to the right than Putin and probably closer to Donald Trump in his use in immigration. I didn't know that. That's interesting. That's fascinating. I mean, maybe that's what makes him so dangerous, right? He can outflank Putin on the right and in other places on anti-corruption. Yeah. And a couple of years ago, he also started courting the left-winning audience by promoting, for example, labor unions.

So he's kind of, he's definitely a populist. Interesting. Yeah. And he has. he is courting both the right being the centrist and left historians. That is true. But the thing is that he's not being persecuted for any of those views. None of his political positions on the left on the right or center matter when his persecution by the state is concerned.

He's only being persecuted for his anti-corruption investigations. That is the only thing that makes. matters. So once, and I'm not his advocate, not at all. And actually, we don't always see eye to eye. And Medusa, the publication I work for, is near the top of his notty list. Oh, really? Yeah, because we've called him out in the past. I mean, we're not his allies. But what I want to say is that it's clear that none of this matters at this point. So when he runs for office and he has some right wing points on his platform, sure, let's debate that. Let's call him out on that.

But we are not there yet or if we'll ever be. Right. No, no, I totally agree. I just think it's important to sort of understand the whole person even when so they're not like lionized today and then you feel like they let you down later because you didn't necessarily know everything about them. I mean, I think we can have two ideas at the same time that maybe we disagree with him on immigration, but that his anti-corruption fight is incredibly brave and sort of talk about the whole person.

My last question for you is, you may have noticed that the United States just went through kind of a minor coup attempt by President Trump that ended with a fascist mob attacking the U.S. Capitol. it's hard for me to imagine an image, series of images that could do more to denigrate the United States, undercut democracy, undercut our system of government than seeing those marauding thugs, you know, running through the U.S. Senate looking like gigantic assholes. Were those images, were those events the focus of propaganda or just general news coverage? Like, how is that played across Russian media? You betcha. I mean, sure, they use it.

They use those images to the fullest extent possible. And of course, it's, of course, schizophrenic. Yeah. They're using the same arguments that they're, so they are now, what I'm seeing right now in Russian television and on pro-government social media, they are portraying Trump supporters and especially those, who stormed the capital as pro-democracy activists who are defending the right for free elections. And now they are being unfairly persecuted.

So this is, I'm literally, I'm not, I'm not kidding you. This is what, this is what the Russian television is saying. Yeah. Sounds like our Fox News. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there are Russian television, on many occasions, it's really out-foxed-Fox news. But, yeah, it's not, but there's no real political position there.

It's just they're using it as a, as really just a prop to say, so you see, you know, in the states, they are, you know, people are fighting for their democracy. and the state is persecuting them much, much harshly than we are dealing with malcontents back home. So this is again going back to this kind of what aboutism that is the pillar of Russian state propaganda. So I don't think they really care about the capital or the fate of American democracy. They're just using these events as a prop. So, but yeah, I mean, in all fairness, it did really look quite, quite. Yeah. Yeah.

It was bad. It was really bad. Nothing. That's like, I mean, I mean, and it's given, you know, endless fodder for the same propaganda to, and at the same time, there's the, because they really have no internal logic that you can argue with. So in the same breath. They can claim that these protesters are, you know, this is a peaceful democracy movement that's fighting for free and fair election.

And it's in the same breath they can say. So you see what political instability leads to. Do you want armed people in Russia storming government buildings? You don't want that. No, yeah. Yeah, you want Father Putin keeping us all safe and everyone's warm and cozy. Oh, boy. Well, you know, reason number 1,500.

to be embarrassed by the events of January 6th. Alexi, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for your great reporting. Where can folks find all the work you're doing at Medusa if they want to read up more? So the website is Medusa with a Z-M-E-D-U-Z-A.O. And we have an English version as well. So it's the same URL, Medusa.io-slash-E-N.

We have an English version. There's a link on the front page, and you can see there's a bunch of my... my reporting there as well in English. That's fantastic. And I think everybody should check it out and support independent news reporting all over the planet because we need more of it. So thank you for the work you're doing.

Thanks for your time today. And really appreciate it. That was fun. Thanks again to Lexi for doing the show. Thanks to all the British press who asked Boris Johnson questions that he doesn't know how to answer. And yeah, I don't know. That's all I got.

Yeah. I got nothing. I can't top the Boris Johnson Club. We're out of words. Anyway, talk to you guys next week. See it. Ponce of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.