Pod Save the World - Rudy Giuliani's disinformation expo

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Tommy and Ben break down what we know about the connection between foreign disinformation and the latest allegations about Hunter Biden, Russia’s proposal to extend the New START treaty, Sudan getting taken off the state sponsored terrorism list, and a win for Evo Morales’ party in Bolivia. They also talk about the future of escalation between China and Taiwan, attacks on American diplomats, the White House sending officials to negotiate with the Assad regime in Syria, and a blowout electoral win for Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand. Then Belarusian journalist Hanna Liubakova joins Ben to talk about what she has seen when reporting on the anti-Lukashenko protests in Belarus and why people have been so willing to stay in the streets.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Roads. Two weeks out, Ben. Getting a little antsy, my friend. How you feeling? Two shows. Two shows. Jesus. And then actually we have won on election day, right? We've got to figure that out. Yeah, we probably should think through that. I don't know that a lot of people are going to be excited for foreign policy takes the Wednesday after an election. Although, hey, maybe we'll have no results. In fact, odds are we might not have any results. So, you know, maybe they'll want to hear it. Yeah, we'll see. We can, we can, we can, we can, we can, we can, we can, we can,

We can give them a lot of Belarus content. Yeah. Maybe we'll recreate it in our own home. So we've got a lot to cover this week. We'll try to get through all of this. So we're going to talk about new allegations of Russian interference in the 2020 election in the form of this mysterious story in the New York Post about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son. There's an arms control agreement potentially between the U.S. and Russia.

Sudan is reportedly coming off the state sponsor of Terror List, or so Trump's Twitter feed would tell us. A comeback for Avo Morales' party in Bolivia. There's still some increased concern about China's military threat to Taiwan. An update on some protests in Thailand. The latest on mysterious health problems faced by U.S. personnel in Cuba, Russia, and China. And a White House official goes to Syria for meetings. And then finally, some good news out of New Zealand. Ben, you did the interview today.

What are folks going to hear? Yeah, Tommy, I talked to Hannah Labakava, who's an extraordinary young journalist from Belarus, who's been covering the protest there. And, you know, she really takes us through the nature of the movement, why it's been sustained, why this is different than others. I got some incredible flavor. You know, she talks about the support that people in Belarus have gotten, not just from the neighborhood that they're in, but from Hong Kong.

So this is peak world though content. This is someone on the front lines of the global effort against authoritarianism. So if you want to know what's going on in Belarus and also know a little bit more about the movements for justice that are taking place around the world, definitely check it out. That is great. I cannot wait to hear that. In case you care about the movement here at home, there are less than 13 days left to vote, but you do not have to wait until then to get your vote in. Go to VoteSaveamerica.com slash plan. Make a plan to vote. Find your voting location. Tell literally everyone you know to vote as soon as they can because we've got to bank these things.

Also, we have made it easier than ever to find remote and in-person volunteer opportunities with our new volunteer hub at Votesaveamerica.com slash volunteer. We got text banks, phone banks, yard signs, voter protection hotlines, you name it. VoteSaveamerica.com slash volunteer to get all your options to get involved between now and election day. Because Ben, it's better to just do something than text your friends freak me out all morning like I did today. I got to stop doing that. Yeah, I think I was particularly grumpy on our text chain this morning. I do just want to plug Vote Save America the ballot tool because here in California, I vote. voted this weekend. And there are all these ballot measures and propositions and it's hard to

keep track for them. And it was really a great guide just kind of walking you through what all the different elections are at the state and local level as well. So definitely check out Vote Save America for activating yourself, but also for helping understand your ballot. I just walked into Crooked Media HQ to record today because I couldn't do it at home. And Tanya Somenator is sitting in our conference room with like piles of paper of ballot initiative that she's like personally going through to make that guide. So it really is a laborer of love. Also, a quick aside, if you need something to make you smile, dear listener, friend of the pod, Medi Hassan has a new show on the Peacock Network. One of his first interviews is with

John Bolton, the mustachioed former National Security Advisor. So anyone who knows Medi knows that he is like notoriously tough when he has a questioner. And I don't know how John Bolton got himself booked on this show, but it does not go well for John Bolton. I highly recommend watching it. It is pretty incredible. So the best thing is that Medi goes out of his way to hold the guy accountable for things like the Iraq War that he was largely responsible for, got him to say some crazy shit, like that the Iraq War only lasted like a couple weeks or something. Four weeks, yeah. But I do want to say just so people know that sure, Medi has a point of view, but I was interviewed by Medi when I was in the White House. The toughest interviews I ever had in the White House were with Medea San. He grilled me about drone policy for like the most uncomfortable 20 minutes I ever had. So, you know, he's an equal opportunity, tough questioner. So props to Medi on his new show.

Yeah, agreed. He does not take the job lately. So check it out. All right. Sadly, Ben, I think we probably should start with this disgusting new attempt by Trump and his allies to smear the Biden family. So the allegations are world, though, in nature. They're basically a continuation of Rudy Giuliani's attempt to claim that Joe Biden did something unethical when it comes to U.S. policy towards Ukraine.

Unfortunately, for Trump and Rudy and Steve Bannon. and those creeps. Like, this has all been investigated by the press and Congress. And no one has found any evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden. In fact, they found that Biden did things that led to less corruption in Ukraine and that harmed Hunter Biden's business interests. But, like, let me just walk you through this latest weird story. So the New York Post ran a series of reports that they claim are based off of Hunter Biden's

old hard drive. They say they got it from a lawyer connected to Rudy Giuliani, who apparently got it from a computer repair shop owner in Delaware. this shop owner claims Hunter Biden dropped off a couple computers, never picked them up. And so this dude went snooping through them, made copies and gave the copies to Rudy's lawyer and the FBI. Now, this shop owner says he knows for sure that Hunter Biden dropped them off, but he's also legally blind. So I'm very confused by that piece of the story. It's all very suspect, right? So obviously people are on the watch for Russian disinformation. Congress of Madam Schiff clearly thinks that this

sudden emergence of this laptop is part of a broader Russian disinformation effort. It sounds like the FBI is investigating the origins of it. But John Ratcliffe, the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, says there's currently no evidence of Russian disinformation. No one should believe anything John Ratcliffe says, by the way. He's already tried to cut off briefings to Congress about election interference. So, like, then here are some things we know. There are photos, personal text, personal emails that you kind of have to suspect must have come

from Hunter Biden at one point because who else would have taken them. There's at least one email I've seen out there that's been confirmed as authentic by others who are on it. There is no real credible allegation that Joe Biden did anything, right? So on top of that, we know that previously Russians have attempted to hack Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter Biden was involved with. U.S. intelligence has repeatedly said there's ongoing Russian interference efforts. Literally today, the Department of Justice announced charges against Russian intelligence officers for cyber attacks against the 2017 French presidential election, the 2018 and 2020 Winter Olympics, and some American businesses. That French presidential election hack in 2017

included surprise, surprise, leaked emails that were dumped out by WikiLeaks. So, Ben, I find myself in a very frustrating place because, like, I don't know evidence that this laptop is Russian interference, but clearly there's a pattern of them doing it. Clearly, Rudy Giuliani is a sketchy guy, and he said on the record that there's a 50-50 chance that one of his associates is a Russian intelligence operative. So, like, I don't know what to think. Like, where do you think this information is coming from?

What is reasonable speculation versus sort of, like, things that are, you know, sound a little hysterical? And, like, how do you think the media and the social media companies are handling all of this? So let's think about what? we know and go from there. So I think it's fair to say that we know that this is disinformation, right? Because the underlying charge, right, has been thoroughly investigated and debunked as wrong. Joe Biden did not interfere in any way to help Brezma. And in fact, Joe Biden was,

as you said, taking steps that were not helpful to Brezma's business interest. The prosecutor that Joe Biden wanted removed. I remember this well. I was in meetings about this. The whole game in Ukraine was fighting corruption, and this prosecutor was corrupt. I mean, everybody agreed on this. This wasn't some controversial thing. The European Union agreed with this, the whole U.S. government. Joe Biden did the right thing there. So it's disinformation because the definition of disinformation, right, is you are disseminating content that is designed to mislead people. So the core of this, it is fair to say this is disinformation. On the Russia piece, we know that Rudy Giuliani, for some time now, has been dealing with Russian intelligence assets and agents in Ukraine.

I mean, that's pretty well established and documented. And Rudy Giuliani himself isn't denying that. He was flying around, traveling around Ukraine. This is at the height of the impeachment scandal. We knew that he was doing this. They didn't try to hide that, right? So while we don't know this ironclad with certainty, although I don't have the information that Adam Schiff does, we know this is a disinformation campaign. We know that it originates with a guy Rudy Giuliani who deals a lot with Russian intelligence assets. And we know that this theory about Burisma and Hunter Biden is something that the Russian disinformation machine has been propagating relentlessly now for a couple of years. So there's a lot of smoke around what could be a fire of Russian disinformation.

I think a couple other things here. So then there's this confusing piece of it, right, about this set of text messages or emails. But this is what the Russians do. Like, remember what we learned in 2016. They flood the zone. So they hack some information and they release the emails in some fashion. They create their own disinformation that kind of supplements what they hacked and tries to paint the most negative picture possible. That's what we lived in 2016, right? They hacked the DNC. They hacked John Podessa's emails. They released those. They created fake news, social media bots, disseminating themes that were consistent with what they were trying to show, which was that Hillary Clinton was somehow corrupt. This is the same play, right? A mixture of potentially stolen private

information, emails, potentially totally made up stuff like perhaps what's on this hard drive. And then just a lot of, you know, online content that they're pushing out through their social media bots. We've lived through this before. And so of other countries, by the way. And this leads to the media point. The whole aim here is you get one story planted in some credulous or propaganda outfit like the New York Post that will run anything. And the reporting that it's been done that's excellent shows that even the New York Post reporters, and these aren't exactly Woodward and Bernstein, didn't want to put their name on the byline of the story because they thought it was so shady, right? But you get that one story written and then everyone else has to cover it because they have to say,

what's your response to this New York Post story, Joe Biden? And suddenly there's a story about the story, and then it becomes a snowball in the American media that creates the impression that there's some scandal around Hunter Biden. It doesn't even matter what it is. And Rudy Giuliani said on the record that he went to the New York Post because the other media outlets would end up vetting it and take their time and try to make sure it was all authentic,

and he just wanted to go to the New York Post because he knew they would just fart it out. But what's so ridiculous is we know the playbook, right? You do it. So there were these reports that even Fox News refused to run the story. Well, once in York Post ran the story, then Fox News reported on it endlessly. So then because it's on Fox News all the time, other journalists somehow feel obligated to ask Joe Biden about it. You're not being a courageous defender of the First Amendment by asking questions about disinformation. Like you're being a tool of a disinformation plot. And there's no reason for this to happen. The story here is not anything related

to this hard drive. The story is, what the hell is going on with Rudy Giuliani and the Russians? Or why is the Trump campaign closing in some argument about Hunter Biden that has been thoroughly debunked, right? And other countries have dealt with this better than we have. In France, in that 2017 election, there was this massive dump of leaks and hacked emails about Emmanuel Macron. And the media just didn't report on it. They didn't have to, there's no, you're not under some obligation to report disinformation here. And so I think so far, it's been better than 2016, right? There hasn't been the same media freak out and covering this as some massive scandal that's a problem for Joe Biden. There's been an interrogation of where did this information come from, what the hell is going on here.

But we've seen some of the same bad habits from 2016 where reporters, you know, a reporter from CBS who's asking Joe Biden questions, you know, kind of held himself up as some hero because he was confronting Joe Biden and attacking Joe Biden for not answering the question. You don't need to do that. There's no reason when we have a pandemic and an economic collapse in this country and a racial justice crisis in this country, there's no reason to spend the last two weeks for an election covering Hunter Biden just because that's what Donald Trump wants you to do. See, so my thoughts in this are the following. So one, there's a couple of new allegations. One is a suggestion that Biden did take a meeting with someone connected to Burisma, and that somehow

advanced Hunter's business interest. The Biden campaign says that didn't happen. They looked at the schedules. Maybe they ran into them on the margins of some broader meeting, but that they've denied the thrust of the allegation. The other piece is some email that people are interpreting to suggest that maybe the big guy, being a reference to Joe Biden, got money. But Joe Biden has put out, like, decades of tax returns.

So if he did get a bunch of money from this business deal, he would have then had to have to have hidden it and he'd be conducting major tax fraud. So all of these allegations seem to fall apart. I personally don't give a shit if CBS wants to ask Joe Biden about this story. They could do whatever they want. What really frustrated me were the reporters who suggested Biden's response, which was kind of chippy and clearly annoyed, was somehow Trumpian or from the Trump playbook. That is certainly not the case. My advice to these reporters is ask whatever you want to ask. But don't fucking whine about it if you ask about someone's son's business interests or a report that talks about his addiction problem and the candidate is annoyed at you. Toughen up. That's the job you chose to take.

You know, like that's where I found it to be so silly. Yeah, they can ask whatever they want to ask, but it doesn't mean that it's the right thing for them to be focusing on. And so people have the right to criticize them, just like they can ask whatever they want to ask. I do think that, again, there was an original mistake here, which is that Hunter Biden, should not have been on the border brezma. It was too close to what Joe Biden's governing responsibilities were. And they have owned that mistake. But underneath that, it's really important for people understand there's no evidence that had any impact whatsoever on Joe Biden's actions. And one of the other things that's so frustrating about this, Tommy, is here we are

dissecting this to determine the worst thing that we could potentially identify in all of this is whether or not Joe Biden took a meeting with someone, which he denies suing. Donald Trump, Trump and his family have monetized the entire federal government. Like, their entire approach to government is that meeting that they're charging that Joe Biden had, right? They monetize relationships with foreign countries. They make the U.S. government paid Trump properties over and over again, right? I mean, so there's no sense of proportionality in how this information is presented.

I mean, the idea that we're even having this extensive conversation about Hunter Biden, when the president of the United States's children are profiting in all manner of ways. Ivanka Trump is getting trademarks out of China. God only knows how much Eric Trump is profiting from the U.S. government paying absorbent fees to stay at Trump properties. I mean, this is corruption on a mass scale that dwarfs, even what they're alleging Hunter Biden did. Yeah. And I personally, look, I think we know the what about case.

I just think, like, I think that they're closing very stupidly. Like Hunter Biden isn't running for president. You know what I mean? I just don't even get why you would focus on this, right? Well, one of the thing I want to say about this is like Hunter Biden's clearly troubled guy, right? And they've harped on things like his addiction. You know, this is also a guy whose mother and sister were killed in a car crash when he was a kid and he was badly injured, whose heroic brother, Bo Biden, died from brain cancer.

Tragically. This is a guy who's had been dealt, like, just an awful hand, you know, in life. How about having some empathy for this guy? And I think you're right. It's a dumb closing argument because in a pandemic and a recession and everything else, talking about Hunter Biden isn't exactly where people's heads are. But also, like, can we please, like, detoxify the cruelty out of our politics here? I know.

There's something cruel. And in the debate, I think everybody saw it. That wasn't effective when he's yelling at Joe Biden about his son being a druggie. I mean, Joe Biden loves that son ferociously, in part because Joe Biden was with them in the hospital when their mother and sister were killed in a car accident. And because they had to lean on each other when Beau died. So this is kind of missing from some of the coverage, just to have grotesque and kind of cruel it is

to be dragging this guy relentlessly through the mud like this. Yeah, honestly, I think it's coming through. I think the cruelty is coming through. Everyone knows someone who's had an addiction problem. Everyone is a family member that's suffered. What they're doing is just horrific. But let's just turn to a related Russia news. So on Tuesday, I don't know if you saw this, Ben,

Russia proposed extending the New START treaty for one year. New Start for listeners is an arms control treaty that was negotiated by President Obama. It limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads for the U.S. and Russia. It was a big, important piece of business. There was real concern that Trump was just going to let it lapse. And so the devil's in the details on these kinds of treaties. They get very technical when you're talking about like counting warheads and bombers and blah, blah, blah. But this extension, it seems like at least keeps us from plunging into another arms race, so that's a good thing. What's frustrating is that this so-called breakthrough is that the treaty allows the U.S. and Russia to just extend the agreement for five years. So that's been

on the table this whole time. Both Biden and Putin have said that they would extend it. The Trump White House has been demanding. I think that China participate in the talks along with new measures. Ben, would you make of this one-year extension and maybe the timing as well? Well, look, I think this will be a theme as we get to a couple of the subjects on the agenda for today, where they're just seemingly trying to, like, create the appearance of foreign policy breakthroughs and successes right before the election. That's not what this is. I mean, it's an Obama accomplishment, an arms control treaty that was meticulously negotiated over the first year of the Obama administration, that what they're just going to re-up for a year when they could have re-uped

for more, like, just so they can go out and, like, spike the football and claim that they had some big win, just like they did with that ceremony with Bahrain and the, you. UAE and Israel at the White House. That's what's going on here. And really, if you, if you trace the substance of what the Trump people themselves said, they said they didn't want to just re-up new start because they wanted to bring China into it. And both Russia and China said, well, screw you, we're not going to do that. So that's not happening. So to me, yeah, it's better to keep new start in place. Extending it for a year is not as good as what you could have just done automatically through the existing treaty. And this just shows just they don't care even about nuclear weapons. They just care

about like the appearance of some win before the election when it's like a metaphor for everything with Trump. Like the only successes he's had as president is when he's continued things that Obama did like, you know, the economy for the first couple years and then spikes the football. So along the same theme, let's talk about Sudan for a minute. So on Monday, shortly before he mocked Dr. Fauci for having a bad arm when he threw out the first pitch at an ad's game. Trump tweeted that the government of Sudan has agreed to pay $335 million. to U.S. terrorism victims and their families. So once Sudan makes that payment,

Trump said the U.S. will lift Sudan from the state sponsor of terrorism lists. Subsequent reporting from Barack DeVeed at Axios says that the Senate leadership is going to then pass a bill giving Sudan immunity from future American terror lawsuits. And then the U.S. announces an aid package from Sudan that will include financial aid. When that happens, the whole play here is designed to allow Sudan to announce a normalization process with Israel. You just mentioned this. We've talked about it before. The White House has been trying to broker these deals between Israel and authoritarian governments in Bahrain and the UAE. This is part of that

process. Ben, here's my question. Like, if this deal starts with a payment from the Sudanese government to terrorism victims and then ends with a big package of aid from the U.S. It kind of sounds to me like U.S. taxpayers are actually footing the bill for this terrorism payout so that Trump can get this announcement before Election Day. Second, you've previously expressed some concern or misgivings about the political implications of a normalization effort with Israel for this sort of nascent government in Sudan. What did you make of this announcement? So there's a lot that is strange about this. I think what's good, right, is that I think Sudan is ready to come off the state sponsor terrorism list. I mean, the links between Sudan and terrorism have been ten years for some time.

since Bashir, the dictator, was removed in a popular uprising. I think those links in the legacy of support for terrorism are obviously less of a justification for having them on this list. So I think it's the right move to be removing them from the state sponsor of terrorism list, and it's good that they're paying these claims. However, the whole way that this is being done raises a lot of questions and concerns. First of all, the state sponsor of terrorism list should not be used in this kind of transactional way. It should be based on whether or not a country, is a state sponsor of terrorism. And, you know, you've countries now, like, kind of paying to get off of it.

I mean, this is, this is, you know, the ultimate playing politics or playing transactionalism with what should be, you know, cases that are valued on the merits. Then also, I think, leaning on the governor of Sudan for a scheme that is, it seems to be entirely about getting to normalization with Israel. Like, yes, we want more countries to normalize relations with Israel. But we also want this nascent potential democratic transition to succeed, you know. And what this is doing is kind of bringing them into this, you know, group of autocratic countries, the UAE in Bahrain, that we essentially say, as long as you normalize relations with Israel,

you can do whatever you want at home, you know. It totally diminishes any interest in the United States promoting democratic outcomes for the people in these countries, right? It essentially says you can do whatever you want as long as you give us a photo op or a talking point a couple of weeks before an election, you know, vis-a-vis pro-Israel voters in the United States, you know? And that's just not the way you should be conducting foreign policy. I mean, what does that suggest? Why are we spending, like, the mass efforts of the U.S. government to just tally up two or

three countries that they can say normalize relations with Israel, you know, when we have so many other interests. And to your point about the monetary aspect of this, where U.S. taxpayers could be footing the bill in the assistance package, well, we also learned after the fact that we're selling some of our most advanced aircraft, providing them to the UAE, in order to keep the normalization deal with Israel going. So we're doing all these things, you know, selling weapons to countries like the U.A. that are using them against civilians in Yemen, again, kind of pushing the Sudanese government into the arms of countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and the UAE that are autocratic at a time we should be supporting democracy. We're doing all of this just to give

Trump like a few things to talk about before an election when it comes to normalizing relations with Israel. It's just a bizarre upside down way to make foreign policy. Yeah, and you mentioned the UAE. I think it's also worth noting that over the weekend, I think it was the Times of London, had a really troubling story about a British woman who was in the UAE. in February to work on a literary festival in Abu Dhabi. And she was sexually assaulted by a sheik, the Minister of Tolerance, by the way, that's his title, and a member of the ruling family. And this is just an incredibly troubling incident.

The way she described it, it sounded like something that was a pattern. So it's like, you know, these are some of the top officials in government that we are dealing with. Anyway, I just wanted to mention the story because like these are the, you know, it's not just the country. These are the people we are cutting these deals with. Yeah. And you know what's so weird to me about it, Tommy, is like, and you look at the politics in U.S. more, they're doing all of this and mobilizing all these resources of the U.S. government for things that I don't think are going to matter in the election. You know, like a one-year extension of New START, like Sudan normalizing relations with Israel. Like, I don't doubt that that's, that is important to people who care about Israel. But like, they seem to have an overestimation, I think, of how much these relatively obscure. foreign policy things are going to like, where they're going to swing the state of Pennsylvania to Trump, I just don't see it. I think that the Israel deals are working with Jewish voters in places like Florida that they see as sort of a way of stitching together constituency.

I do agree that like when you look at the thrust of the things that are really focused on, it's stuff like these Israel deals. It's Haasthan negotiations, which we'll get into later. They are looking for like sort of bite-sized wins and headlines like right before the election. Yeah. What's interesting about all them, we'll get to the hostas. They're all just these kind of transactions. You know, I mean, right. Because I think the broader point is, yes, we want nations to normalize relations with Israel, but not because we had to kind of buy them off to do it. You know, like there should be some process, a diplomatic process to get to those objectives. But whether it's like some trade for hostage or some trade, you know, weapons to normalize relations with Israel or money to normalize relations with Israel, the way that they're going about these things, incredibly damaging, I think, to the idea that the United States represents kind of a set of interest and values in the world and not just these incredibly short-term pre-election gambits. Yeah, the pre-election piece of it is certainly ridiculous. We'll talk about Bolivia for a minute. This is a very important story. On Sunday, voters in

Bolivia went to the polls to vote in the presidential election. This was basically a redo of last year's annulled election. And former president, Avo Morales's party and his hand- pick successor, Luis Arce, appear to have won by up to 20 percentage points. Most importantly, he got over 50% of the vote, which means there won't be a runoff. Arcei was Morales' economic minister. Morales weighed in from Argentina where he is in exile saying, we've recovered our democracy. Avo believes he was driven out of office in a coup. Frankly, there seems to be some evidence to suggest he was right. All the reports about election irregularities are pretty questionable at this point, but he was barred from running again by the current interim government.

Ben, this is a total mess. Can you remind listeners of the backstory here about this election and explain what you think this might mean for Morales and the future of Bolivia? Yeah, I mean, you know, very quickly, you had a situation where, you know, Morales, I think, had done some things that seemed to, you know, stretch democratic norms extending his capacity to stay in office. You had an election that the OAS, the organization of America, states found that that election result that favored Morales and his party, you know, they had allegations of fraud associated with it. I think those allegations don't look too good in hindsight because they were never quite that. Yeah, they were never particularly specific about what they were.

They were used by the military to justify kind of taking power in this heavy-handed way and exiling Morales. And lo and behold, when they had another election, it was basically the same. same result in favor of Morales's party, right? So the bottom line here is that the OAS with U.S. support, and there have long been charges that the U.S. kind of throws its weight around in the OAS, seems to have done something that aided right-wing forces in Bolivia to oust Morales and make this play to have this kind of new right-wing government that when the question was put to the Bolivian people just failed spectacularly, right? So I think it's a big win for Avo Morales. It's a big win for the left in Bolivia and for indigenous peoples in Bolivia.

Avo was the first indigenous president of Bolivia. It's a huge black eye, I think, to the OAS. It's going to have to answer for this. It makes the U.S. in this kind of Cold War-style policy where we just go around Latin America opposing any leftists. It makes us look bad. Terrible. Certainly Donald Trump and people like Marco Rubio who helped shape his policy in Latin America. But the good news is at the end of the day here, the voters got their.

say, and they got to pick their leaders, and this whole scheme collapsed and unraveled, right? So it's a story with a happy ending, but why Bolivia had to go through that. And there was a lot of instability and even some violence. You know, it's a black eye on all the people that were trying to essentially use undemocratic means to go against what is clearly the will of the Bolivian people. Yeah, really terrible story. Hopefully there's some sort of international investigation into how this possibly could have happened, how these election observers could have been so wrong, how the OAS could have been so wrong, because it's just pretty outrageous to have someone exiled out of a country who won an election. And then, you know, anyway, it was just a complete mess, a complete mess.

I cannot believe how badly it was mishandled. No, and this is why you need to kind of detoxify this ideological conflict that too often shapes the politics of the Americas, like, which we tried to do at the end of the Obama administration with opening to Cuba. And, you know, and And, you know, dealing with not just the center-right governments, but dealing with Ava Morales's government, dealing with, you know, governments of all stripes across the region. Because the more that we polarize the region into these camps, you know, there's the leftist camp and then there's everybody else, like, the harder it is to get anything done. And yes, we should be calling out the extreme versions on left or right. And so, like, a Maduro is obviously an extreme version of a leftist turned into an autocrat. But, you know, just because you don't like Avo Morales's politics, doesn't mean you get to out.

him as leader when he has the democratic legitimacy or his party has democratic legitimacy. Right. Yeah, well said. Speaking of a scary power grab, so the South China Morning Post, which I think it's fair to say Ben is seen as the most credible paid newspaper in Hong Kong, had an alarming headline over the weekend, which was Chinese military beefs up coast forces that prepares for possible invasion of Taiwan. Invasion of Taiwan got my attention. So the sourcing was a little sketchy here. They cite military observers and sources, end quote, whatever that means. But the proof points that they look at are basically China has upgraded their missile bases, including the deployment of these like more sophisticated hypersonic missiles. They talk about how China has deployed

a sophisticated missile defense system to the area that would be able to shoot down Taiwanese fighter jets like the minute they took off. It notes that that China's been stepping up the scale and intensity of like military exercises in the region, including invasion drills last month. The backstory for folks is, you know, the Chinese government views Taiwan as a breakaway province and they want to reconnect things. Taiwan's leaders firmly believe that they are a sovereign country and they reject that idea. Things have gotten so tense lately that Taiwanese and Chinese officials serving in diplomatic roles in Fiji got into a fistfight. Did you see this story? I saw that.

There was like a party at like the Taiwanese embassy or whatever they call it, the interest office. Some of the Chinese officials came over. they beat the shit out of each other. Something got hospitalized. I don't mean to laugh, but it's like, oh, my God. Ben, I don't know what to make of this story. Like, a lot of people talk about the risk of China doing something military to Taiwan and that it's growing. But there wasn't a lot of proof points in this piece that I saw necessarily to back up the claim that they're prepping an invasion.

What do you think? Like, what's your level of concern about Taiwan and, you know, this sort of like newly belligerent China? So I think that my level of concern is very high. And I think people are going to have to watch us very closely over the next kind of five to 10 years. And here's why. There was always this tenuous status quo, right? And the U.S. is part of the tenuous status quo. We are. We technically recognize a one China policy, dating back to when we normalize relations with China, that Taiwan is a part of China. But we still basically deal with Taiwan as its own entity. We have our own kind of intersection there. We sell them arms. We have our own agreements with them. The Taiwanese have kind of balanced between, you know, some rapprochement with Beijing, some movement towards autonomy, an independence movement in the country. But here's why I think we should be concerned. China has clearly been more assertive in all the ways that we know. The Hong Kong situation has pushed, I think, Taiwanese, understandably, more in the direction of independence. Because they're looking at Hong Kong and thinking that, well, the deal that Beijing would give us someday is

essentially you can be autonomous to some extent so long as you accept that you're part of China. Well, the Chinese Communist Party demonstrated in Hong Kong, they can't be trusted to keep those deals because they violated it completely in Hong Kong this summer when they essentially rammed through these national security laws that did away with Hong Kong's autonomy. And so what happened is after China's efforts, heavy-handed efforts against the Hong Kong protest movement, you saw in the last Taiwanese election the kind of pro-independence party do overwhelmingly well. So I think the dynamic you could have

is China's getting more aggressive and more assertive. And Taiwan and the Taiwanese people, in reacting to that, want less and less to do with China. And that kind of creates an insurmountable problem here, you know? And the risk is that the Chinese decide,

well, screw it. We're just going to try to take this place back by force. And then the question is, does the U.S. defend Taiwan? And is there a risk of a major war in Asia? And so, I think this is something, I don't know how credible, you know, the reports of planning for an invasion are, but I think it is certainly credible that the Chinese are getting more belligerent and probably, you know, their military spending is designed to win a war to take Taiwan.

And so this is something that I think a Biden administration will have to deal with. And if Trump is reelected, the risk of this becoming a flashpoint, I think, is quite hot. Yeah, I think you said that perfectly, like five to ten. 10-year risk, maybe not five-to-10-week risk, like this story seems to imply, but definitely something to watch in the long-term. Let's talk about Thailand for a minute. I think you flagged this one for our group chat, Ben. So a while back, we talked about Thailand.

They have these absurd lay magistrate laws that criminalize any criticism of Thailand's royal family. Donald Trump would love this. You can be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if you make fun of him in any way, including, like, the royal dog. But despite that risk, protesters in Thailand, Thailand seem even more emboldened lately. For months, people have been in the streets. They've been calling for reforms to the Constitution. They've been calling for a new election. They've been calling

for reforms of the monarchy itself so that is governed by the Constitution and doesn't sit above it. And last week, there was this remarkable incident where the Thai royal family was driving down the street in their Rolls-Royce limousine, and they were basically heckled by protesters. And again, this is something that's unheard of in a country where that can land you in jail. And so there was this great piece, I think it was in the New York Times, about all the ways that short of, you know, giving the finger to a limousine, I don't know if that happened, but, you know, you get it, have been quietly rebelling, right? It ranges from people in movie theaters no longer standing up when they're shown, like, propaganda photos of the king. And then there's members of parliament calling for an

investigation into the royal family's finances. So back to this heckling incident. The day after it happened, the prime minister had the police clear all these protesters. They declared a state of emergency they banned gatherings of more than five people. They told the media they couldn't report on some of this stuff. None of it worked. Tens of thousands of protesters turned out the next day. And like the good news is that so far things have not gotten violent, but a bunch of protesters have been arrested.

And there have been stories in the past of, you know, protest leaders being disappeared. Two people turned up dead in like a river. Their bodies had been filled with cement. So clearly they were like murdered by some, you know, state actor probably. A lot of citizens believe that the current prime minister is illegitimate since he came to power in a coup in 2014. So there's this fascinating confluence of events here. Like COVID has crushed their economy because there's no tourism. The king is unpopular, but he's also trying to take

more control of the country's money. You know, you have a long history of protesting and also coups, but also brutally harsh laws. I don't know that what are you watching for here? Like what are you looking to to see if this thing actually builds and leads to a real, like meaningful structural change. Well, I mean, here's why I find this so interesting, right? Thai politics have been polarized for a long time. And there's kind of a left-right element to it. I think this guy is illegitimate.

He came to power in a coup and then basically is strong-armed his way into winning, you know, very questionable elections. And to me, what's interesting is that the rural family used to be the one thing that was off limits. So even when there was street protests, even when there was political violence, even if there's a huge left-right tensions, everybody kind of revered the old king who recently died. And now, in part because I think the extent of the repression in Thailand, the lack of any movement towards meaningful democracy since the military took over in 2014, but also because the old king died and this new guy is in charge, basically there's a burn it all down vibe growing with these protests. And what's interesting to me is I heard the same thing in my interview today with Hannah Lubbukovah about Belarus, where I said, you know, what do they want? What is the opposition one? She's like, they're just, they're over it, you know? Like they're, something fundamental has changed, like a switch has gone off where they want the whole system overturn, you know, and obviously the president Belarus Lukashenko out. The analogy I'm drawing here is that these protesters have crossed over into a space that has never been touched in Thailand, which is the monarchy itself. And so that's what I would.

watch is whether the protest movement will continue and whether, you know, that creates a kind of binary. Either that protest movement will have to be crushed by a repressive government, which would be terrible, or there's going to have to be some effort to meet the demands of these people, you know. And I think it speaks to a strain that we're seeing on a lot of different parts of the world of people just being fed up. They're fed up with corruption. They're fed up with repression. I think that that's healthy, that mobilization.

but obviously you hope that it doesn't lead to a violent crackdown. Yes, agreed. One we will watch, I'm sure cover again. Here's something I know you care about a lot, Ben, which is these reports about something called a Havana syndrome. So the backstory for folks is for many years, there have been these incidents of American employees working in Cuba or China or Russia, where these personnel have described what's become called Havana syndrome.

The symptoms are basically like headaches, dizziness, blurry vision, memory loss. There's a ton of speculation about what could be causing it. They range from microwave weapons to an illness to a psychosomatic disorder. I don't think we have a great answer yet. But what we learned from a New York Times piece this week is that the response by the Trump administration has been totally inconsistent depending on where you got sick. So in Cuba, Trump withdrew most of the embassy staff, issued a travel warning, expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the U.S., and then launched this major investigation.

They made a big deal. In China, the Trump team initially evacuated more than a dozen employees and their families, but then labeled what happened, just a health incident, put the staffers on administrative leave and even made some of them use sick days in unpaid leave. State hasn't launched an investigation into what happened in China. They never talk about it. The Times also reported that CIA officers running counter-Russia ops, basically, who are visiting Russia, have experienced this same set of problems, which has led to speculation

that Russia is behind all of the stuff. Again, we don't know the answer. But what's clear is that the initially harsh response and recriminations with Cuba had everything to do with a political desire to be hard on Cuba. And now we've seen these attempts to cover up incidents in Russia and in China, and those seem to stem from wanting better relations with those countries. The American victims were an afterthought here.

So, Ben, some of this happened during the Obama administration. It's one of those mysteries that, frankly, makes me wish I still was in government because maybe we could figure it out. But do you have a theory of the case about what happened? And what do you make of this disparity in terms of how staffers were treated based on where they were serving? Yeah. So I learned about these incidents in Cuba in the summer of 2017, around when they became public. And I was really shocked.

They didn't add up because it suggested that these attacks had taken place kind of at the end of 2017. kind of around the time of after our election and incoming Trump administration. And the reason it never added up to me is that the Cuban government at that time was furiously trying to preserve the opening between the United States and Cuba. They were trying to make contact with incoming Trump officials. They were furiously trying to negotiate agreements with me to kind of lock in the progress that we'd made. And so the idea that at the same time that Raul Castro on the highest levels of the Cuban government were trying to keep relations moving in a positive direction with the United States, the idea that they'd be literally attacking U.S. diplomats and intelligence personnel in

Cuba never added up to me. I also saw the Trump administration justify its Cuba rollback, in part because of these so-called attacks. And so they basically downscaled our embassy so much so that there are just like a few people there in the embassy we opened in Havana who can't even process visas. They're not enough people serving at the U.S. embassy in Havana to process visas for Cubans to like visit their family in the United States. That's how much they've gutted the whole thing down there, right? So, okay, there's some incidents in Havana and the Trump administration is clearly using it to roll back Obama's opening, which I had negotiated with the Cubans. Here's what else I knew, Tommy, at the time, I was tailed by the Russians when I was negotiating

the agreement between the United States and Cuba. I remember being in a hotel lobby in Toronto where two people came up to me. They wanted me to know they were watching me. They walked up a few feet away from me at the check-in desk, took out an iPhone and just started taking pictures of me, right? It wasn't such. Jesus. I was down in Havana. Yeah. I was down in Havana.

The first time I went down to Havana, I was getting a tour of the city at night by some of my Cuban interlocutors. And there was a couple that kept kind of showing up where we were going. And lo and behold, they very clearly walked by me and talked to each other in Russian. They wanted me to know, right? We're watching you, right? the Russians have a long-term investment, obviously, in Cuba dating back to the Cold War. And they had every interest in spoiling the opening between the United States and Cuba.

They wanted us out of Cuba. They thought Cuba's something for them and the Chinese to exert influence, not America, right? We also know that Russia regularly harasses our diplomats. Russia's poison people use strange weapons, use strange toxins all over the world. So when this happened in 2017, me and a lot of people I know who worked on Cuba thought, this sounds more like the Russians than something that the Cubans would do. These stories couldn't be more alarming and more confirming of that possibility. Again, I have no way of knowing for certain that the Russians did this, but I know the Cubans

didn't because the idea that the Cubans were launching attacks against American diplomats in Russia and China is crazy. They just don't have that capacity to do that, right? Only the Russians and the Chinese have that kind of capacity. There's almost no one else you can think of who has that capacity, right? And what is so galling and offensive to me about this is that Trump people put it out the Cuba stuff, kind of suggested there was a Cuban government without any evidence, and then did nothing when this happened to our people in Russia and China and frankly tried to cover it up by all indications. And I can't help but think these are the same people, these Trump people, who spent four years banging the drum around diplomatic security because of the tragedy that happened in Benghazi. And they literally have no help to give to people. people who are suffering grave injuries who've been harmed in service of the United States overseas because, God forbid, they would potentially have to acknowledge that Russia did something bad. I mean, it's like all the bad things about the Trump foreign policy in one story.

Like the politicization of our foreign policy, the prioritization of trying to appeal to a few hardliner voters in Miami instead of trying to get to the truth, the lack of regard for people serving the United States overseas, the complete failure and unwillingness to stand up to Russia about absolutely anything. It's all here in one story. It should be a much bigger deal, too, by the way. I mean, it's barely registering in the insanity of our news cycle. But just think of this.

The U.S. government covering up bad things that happened to our diplomats in Russia and China because they don't want a bad story about that. Or giving them, like, subpart medical care, not letting them go to Walter Reed. It's really dark stuff. I highly recommend reading this full report on that. But, yeah, if Joe Biden wins, hopefully we'll figure out what that'll happen here and get to the bottom of it. Well, yeah, the information is in the U.S. government. There's also a story in GQ by a friend of the pod, Julia, Yafi, that suggests that there was a similar attack in the United States.

So, I mean, we need to figure out what the hell is going on here. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we'll try to speed around these last few ones. So this really caught my eye, Ben. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration sent a White House staffer to Syria for meetings with the Assad government in an effort to secure the release of two Americans that they believe are being held by Assad. These are the first known talks since 2010. The administration wants to get Austin Tice, who's a freelance journalist and a former Marine, and a man named Maj Kamalmas, a Syrian-American therapist, back home to the U.S. Austin Tice, in particular, has been missing since 2012, so it's a really long time. Syria is notorious for just a horrific prison system where victims are frequently tortured and frequently executed. The White House is made securing the release of hostages, generally a big focus of their foreign policy. We all remember that event they did at the Republican Convention. Last week alone, the White House cut a deal to get a couple Americans back from Houthi rebels

in Yemen in exchange for the return of 200 Houthi fighters who were stuck abroad. So Ben, back to a sort of transactional foreign policy discussion. I guess my initial response to hearing about this meeting was pretty much positive. I hope it means that the U.S. has intelligence that says Austin Tice is alive and they can get him home. It also made me sort of relieved that the Trump administration. administration might set a new precedent for just having a conversation with the Syrian government. So that Joe Biden wins, he could do the same thing without like getting demagogued by idiots like Lindy Graham. But I don't know, maybe that's like a naive take care. What was your reaction to reading

this piece? Well, I think the thing that caught my attention is that the guy that went is Cash Patel. Yeah. And for those world, those who don't follow Cash Patel, this guy's had his hands on just about every piece of rotten, corrupt national security policy. He was working for Devin Nunes on the Intelligence Committee when they hatched the whole unmasking thing that turned out to be BS. He's been associate of Rick Grinnell when he was taking an axe to the DNI's office. This guy kind of seems to pop up in the worst places. And so, yes, while you, look, Austin Tice, your heart breaks for him, his family, and you want to bring him home, I just was struck that such a kind of hackish political figure.

Yeah, that was weird to me. Yeah, that was weird to me. ...engaged in the talks, right? So, yeah, you want to get our people out of Syria. You know, we tried to work this hard with the Russians as kind of a potential interlocutor to help get Austin Tice out. But, you know, to me, it further suggests, like, why aren't our diplomats working on this? You know, why is this kind of weird political operative, essentially, the guy that they're

charging with this task? And again, further suggests the theme of transactionalism, looking for pre-election wins, kind of willing to disregard how the U.S. government normally operates. If we're going to have these conversations, let's have them through the State Department or through, you know, credible diplomats and not through guys like this. Yeah. Last bit of news is some good news, which is on Saturday, New Zealand held national elections and one of the favorite leaders in the world for all of us worldos,

Jacinda Ardern, won a historic victory. Her Labor Party won 49% of New Zealand's popular vote. That translates to 64 out of 120 seats in the country's parliament. It's their biggest win in 50 years. She's going to continue on as prime minister, and the fact that they won an outright majority means they don't have to form a coalition government, which makes it even easier for Jacinda to enact all the progressive priorities that she wants. A major factor in her decisive victory, surprise, surprise, was an incredibly successful response

to the coronavirus pandemic. They have had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, but they've only had about 2,000 cases and 25 deaths, which is unbelievable. When you compare that to the United States, life is basically back to normal there. Kiwis also voted on two major national referendums, one to legalize marijuana and one that would provide terminally ill patients, a right to physician-assisted suicide. However, the results of those referendums are not yet public. like, Ben, like, what is just into doing right that we can steal as progressives here?

What do you think she can accomplish? And do you know anyone in the embassy there in case Trump wins that we need to get our asses over there? Well, I, look, she's, she's handled everything so well as prime minister. Obviously, COVID sins out, but also you'll recall in the aftermath of the Christchurch shootings. Yeah. She was both like a phenomenally empathetic leader. She stood up against kind of hatred and xenophobia and stood with the very small Muslim community there. But she also took on the policies of this. Why are these tech platforms

spreading this kind of hate and kind of led a global effort to try to inject some sense into how hate-based content, particularly extremist content, is removed from these platforms. So she's governed effectively in crisis, and she's also just been an incredibly competent leader. I think there are a few things to take away here. One is Jacinda Ardern is younger and she's a woman. And those are actually the progressive leaders who've begun to break through in lots of different places around the world, particularly in Europe, we've seen a rise of a lot of young women in their 30s or early 40s, rising to levels of prime minister. I think it suggests that people have a hunger for generational change. They want a younger generation. And frankly, I think it suggests that women leaders,

you know, are doing better than men on the progressive side. And, you know, I think this is something I think you're going to see increasingly replicated in other places. I think she's had the areas of progressive focus, like climate change, like drug legalization, represent the interests of young people. So not only is she a younger person herself, but she's talking about and working on the issues that younger voters care about. And I think that's something else that can be replicated. And the last piece is saying, you know, we were going back and forth on our text train on this.

When Kevin Red said something really interesting to me, the former Prime Minister of Australia a while back, which is, if you look at the so-called five-eyes countries, the English-speaking countries that cooperate closely in a lot of areas, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, and News Corp is very active in three of them, the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, and has not been active or has been kept out of Canada and New Zealand. Well, let's review the Bill of Goods here, right? We've got Trump and in a radical Republican Party in this country and extreme polarization. We've got Brexit and Boris Johnson and polarization in the UK.

We've had a string of successive right-wing, pretty incompetent prime ministers in Australia and a lot of polarization there too. And then in Canada and New Zealand, where there is no Murdoch, you have Justin Trudeau and Justinda Ardern. I mean, you don't have to connect a lot of dots here. I mean, we have five test cases and I think can demonstrate that quote-unquote polarization is largely something that has been driven in places where Rupert Murdoch is very active. Yeah, the asymmetric polarization, as they say.

Okay, when we come back, we will have Ben's interview with Hannah Lubukova about Belarus, so stick around for that. I'm very pleased to be joined by Hannah Lubikova, who is an award-winning journalist who's been covering the protest and the events in Belarus, which we've been following for the last several weeks. Hannah, thanks so much for joining us here today. Thank you. So just to begin, you know, today is the 73rd day of protests that we've seen. And obviously, you know, for those of us who've been following this from afar, from the United States, you know, we saw the pretty clearly fraudulent election result. We saw the protest. We've seen really inspiring determination by the

people of Belarus. If you were to explain what the objectives of the opposition is right now, what the protesters are demanding on the streets, how would you explain that? What are the people in Belarus fighting for right now? I think it's also important to mention that those people consider themselves not the opposition, but the majority. So that's understanding has kind of changed, you know, incredibly. So they are fighting for, I would say, dignity in the first place. This is not only about Lukashenko, they are not only kind of against Lukashenka, they are against police brutality. They want justice, they want their rights to be respected. And yeah, well, in the first place, they want to kind of punish those who are responsible for tortures and ill-treatment

of the protesters in prisons. So this is a huge, a long list of reasons for the discontest. For the discontent of those people. And if you ask me about my predictions, I would say that the list is, the list is just too long to kind of satisfy to appease those protesters. So what it seems like in watching this is that the fear factor broke, that whatever might have made people reluctant to protest or to come out in the streets, something happened around that election. Whereas you say, the opposition realized that they're actually the majority. Why do you think that is? What was it about this election or what has been happening in Belarus

that has led that kind of fear factor to break and for people to be willing to turn out in these numbers? Lucashenko has been around for so long. Why now? Why is this different than what's happened in the past? That's a question we have been all asking ourselves. Basically, no one, I think no journalist, no analyst in Belarus and outside Belarus could ever predict that this year in August,

you know, people would become so mobilized, so politicized, so self-organized, so they would protest for basically more than two months. There are, again, many reasons for people to not be satisfied with the Lukashenko's government. It all started with the pandemic. Lukashenko's bangle response to the pandemic, his basically disrespectful attitudes towards people all his remarks about the elderly, about those people who are obese,

that they are kind of responsible, they are all to blame basically for their deaths, made people so angry. And then there were a lot of lies, you know, from media and people lost trust in media and lost trust in Lukashenko himself. At the same time, there are this, you know, kind of reasons, I would say long-term reasons, such as the economic instability and general tiredness of Lukashenko. He's been in power since 1994.

It's been 26 years and no wonder people are tired. No wonder people want to someone new. They want to change the men at the top. And, well, generations also changed. Now people, this young people, they basically see that, well, Lithuania and Poland, you know, those countries live better. Why are we living in such, well, awful conditions, I would say, right? So these are those questions, you know, they've been asking themselves. And they also kind of began wanting their political rights to be respected, right?

They wanted to vote and they wanted their opinion be heard and they wanted kind of the constitution, even they respected. So these are some kind of fundamental changes in people's mentality that I've noticed when I've been traveling across the country before the election. And now we have the 9th of August. Lukashenko announced that he has won more than, what, 80% of the vote? And people just disbelieved it. They just did not, you know, trust the result. And it made people so angry. So they came out to the streets and they were greeted.

They were treated with rubber bullets, with stungrinates. They were badly beaten. Many were badly injured. There were deaths. And, well, it all made people even angry. And I would say that political divides that probably have existed before the 9th. of August have been blurred right now. Again, people are protesting against injustice. This is not only about Lukashenka's, these are not only political reasons, right? So this is now more. This is

kind of an uprising, well, I guess, dignity. Yeah. I've noticed in your Twitter feed is great to follow to try to both see these remarkable images and also understand what's happening. I've noticed that women have played a particular role. There have been kind of all women protests. There have been the leaders of many of the opposition groups or women. Why do you think that is? To what extent, you know, is there a clear leadership role that women are playing in this movement? It all started before the election when basically main rivals of Alexander Lukashenko,

those three male candidates were jailed or barred from running in the election. So, three representatives, three kind of aides of those male potential candidates took the lead. The female trio united and they were able to unify their position and subsequently unify the population, basically. And again, I've been traveling kind of, I've been covering their rallies all across the country in major cities, in small towns. And people were so happy to see this female trio. They were so inspired by women. You know, those women were empathetic. They listened to people.

They were kind. They were subtle. They were full of respect towards people. And that's a kind of complete different with what they've experienced from the experience from Alexander Lukashenko. That's why they respected it so much. And then when after the 9th of August, when so many people were arrested, women basically came out to the streets all in white having flowers and it changed the mood of the protests. Now security forces felt puzzled, I guess, and confused because how would you attack

those women, you know, who are unarmed, who are in white and who are completely, you know, peaceful and smiling. So it also brought, kind of, it broke, I guess, the stereotype. that we have in Belarus that women are weak. And now basically, kind of we all see that women are, you know, strong and they are kind of powerful. They are great power in this protest. And so, and you as a journalist, you mentioned, you know, traveling the country and covering the election and you've obviously been following the protest. And how is it to cover this story as a journalist?

You know, I've noticed some journalists have been detained, harassed inside of Belarus. What is it the environment like for journalists inside of Belarus? And how do you, as a journalist, try to cover this story? I think I already noticed before the election that the level of repression is as high as it was a decade, 10 years ago. So we knew that after the election it would be even higher. and basically dozens of journalists were detained before the election. And I also noticed when I traveled that I was followed. So that was kind of, I guess, scary.

And then right after the election, during this worst days when stung grenades were exploding near me and my colleagues when we were working, it was kind of physically dangerous to be on the streets. What I think was most challenging is that you didn't really know how to be. Should you say that you're a journalist? Should you run away? Should you hide? Because if you say that you're a journalist, you might be detained because you're a journalist, because journalists were targeted even more sometimes because the authorities are so scared of information. They want, you know, they basically consequently wanted the election not to be covered by foreign journalists. That's why they denied those press accreditations. And that's why many foreign journalists did not come. And then, they attacked Belarusian journalists. So we also, there were moments when we were in the crowd, like we were this group of journalists, and we all had this press west.

We all had this identification signs. And we noticed that, yeah, we were targeted even more with tear gas or kind of security forces attacked us. There were a lot of threats. But what's also scary is that authorities are basically now kind of trying to find those most popular journalists and either detain them or threaten them again or search their house. So it all kind of brings some, of course, fear, but also self-censorship, I guess. And many journalists have been experiencing this in Belarus. So just to wrap it up,

there are several issues, obviously your physical safety, but also this kind of mental, you know, self-centeredhip, things that you also have as a journalist. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, thankfully, you know, the story has gotten out. I think it's a credit to, you know, the incredible work that journalists have done and the danger that they faced,

even as it's a tricky, very challenging situation. I also wanted to ask you about the region. I've noticed that, you know, Lithuania has stood in solidarity with the people of Belarus. I've also noticed, you know, opposition movements in places like Poland and Hungary that have more, you know, right-wing and sometimes authoritarian leadership have stood in solidarity. How much does the movement in Belarus feel connected to some of the movement? the other democratic movements or democratic governments in other parts of eastern Europe and some of the former Soviet space, but also into places like Poland. How important is that sense of solidarity across borders? What role does external support play and at least, you know,

suggesting the people in Belarus that they're not alone? In the past two months, I've never received so many kind of positive, I guess, or messages of support from Hong Kong. So you've asked about Eastern Europe, but I would mention Hong Kong and they experience and they basically follow the events

in Belarus to that extent that we've journalists been receiving those kind of messages on Twitter all the time. So it's very kind of interesting you suddenly find this connection with a completely different part of the world. We've been also, well,

protesters have been kind of connected. They've been supporting, those protesters in Minsk have been supporting protesters in Habarask, in Russia. So this kind of experience, this solidarity is incredible. You ask about those kind of movements that happened before, right? You ask about the solidarity movement in Poland. Of course, I think it's, all of this is kind of inspiring, right? And protesters are trying to find ways they are trying to find formats.

they are kind of they are obviously having their own new formats but they also kind of they are inspired by what happened before and all this solidarity I think well Belarusians have never experienced so much solidarity

from nearly every part of the world basically and it's been very I can kind of feel how what's happening in Belarus right this kind of revolution of dignity, how much it inspires other people. And, well, as much as the world is expressing solidarity with Belarusians, it's also incredible to see that Belarusians are

helping each other in the country. When someone cannot protest, like they are scared or they just have, you know, small children or whatever, they are trying to bring bottles of water or some kind of medical equipment to those protesters who might be injured, or they just stay at home and they support people who are on the streets with, you know, white, red, white philocks. So there are so many signs of solidarity inside the country, and I think it's very important as well. And diaspora, Belarusian diaspora, has been extremely active. I think it never happened before.

We basically had the map when dozens of countries where Belarusian diaspora exist. They've been active and they've been supporting the events in Belarus. So it all brings kind of this sense of unity. And I would say that it's, I guess, important nowadays especially, not only for Belarusians, but basically for other countries, you know, this kind of sense of, that we are connected, connected as humanity as human beings. Yeah.

Well, and what about the role of the United States in this? And I guess Russia, right, the two, you know, two big powers. On the one end, you have, you know, Putin has expressed some support for Lukashenko, obviously. In the United States, you know, President Trump hasn't really spoken about this, but, you know, our embassy, I think, has been in the lead. What would you want to see, you know, the U.S. obviously has an election? What do people in Belarus, what kind of role would they like to see the United States play? Is there something the United States could be doing and speaking out more about this? Is there something the United States could be doing and speaking to Russia about this?

How do you see the role of America, understanding that we have an election in two weeks or our president may or may not change? What the protesters are generally expecting and what they would appreciate is basically, I guess, two directions. So firstly, this, you know, again, solidarity and this expression of when governments, not only of the U.S., but other Western countries, do not recognize Lukashenko as a legitimate president, as it's very important for people to feel this, because they do not recognize him as the legitimate leader either. So it's kind of very important to continue this rhetoric. At the same time, they would expect more pressure from the authorities. of those countries, not only the US again, but generally Western countries.

Well, people are asking for justice, and basically no police officer was punished because of tortures and what they did. So people, that's what kind of people expect, you know, sanctions against, imposed on those responsible for police brutality, but also election rigging. They, I guess, would also expect some kind of movement. and some perhaps information, I would say, about what would come next. And now I mean those kind of reform and these assistance that might come when Lukashenko is gone. And I think in the first place, they would expect, again, unity and a strong, unified, clear position of the West and the U.S.

And when it comes to Russia, you might see that these first. protests that have been taking place in Belarus in the past months, they are not pro-Russian or anti-Russian, they are not pro-EU or anti-EU. But when Putin openly, or at least he showed his support for Lukashenko, politically, morally, even economically, and even militarily, when he promised to deliver some police reserve to suppress the protesters, people felt that, well, Putin is supporting Lukashenko. People do not support Lukashenko. So they kind of those banners, anti-Russia and anti-Putin banners,

began appearing on the streets. And these protestors began to understand that basically well, if Russia supports the leader who is so brutal, then perhaps we do not want this kind of see this neighbor as a friend. So then

not friends, right? They feel that they were deceived by such a neighbor. So these are kind of several issues. And I think what's important, while this protests do not have any geopolitical dimension, people organically, naturally would feel that the West democratic countries, Europe are much closer to them in terms of their bellies than Russia is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it is, it does. feel like in watching this, you know, Belarus, the people of Belarus are reminding all of us in the West and many other people around the world, as you mentioned in Hong Kong about the importance of those values. One final question is just, you know, so how do you, you mentioned

your prediction before that the protests weren't going to go away because there's so many demands. Where do you see things going next? What should we be watching for in terms of how you expect this to play out in the coming weeks? I think it's important to see what would come the kind of next Sunday, the opposition with Anna Tjano Tjofan Oskar announced the people's automaton. And that's what people kind of expected her to announce because, well, all of a sudden they understood that they've been protesting with no result, basically no visible result. So they wanted to have some deadline.

And we will see what we will see. would happen on Sunday. And basically the position announced that this nationwide strike. And it's very hard to organize in Belarus because, well, workers just do not have any protection. But there is a lot of kind of readiness from workers, from the state enterprises, to join the nationwide strike. It also, the same is true for businesses and, you know, so many people across the country. So I think that's kind of the first point we have to observe.

And I would say that, well, the economic crisis is coming. And even if these kind of uprising, these wave of protest stops, there might be another wave of protest, you know, that would come with the economic crisis. It's hard to predict when it happens, but it's kind of clear that, well, people might get tired, of course, but they would have, they would come out to the streets. again, they would fight, they would try to find other formants and they would try to kind of self-organize. You can actually see how people are organizing on this smallest kind of local level in their neighborhoods. And this is the beginning of local governments, basically,

of this kind of self-governance. And that's an important trend. And I would say that there are so many kind of new things that are, that have been appearing in the past months, that we are also kind of surprised, we don't know really what to kind of expect. But these kind of trends, when it comes to people and their politicization, their mobilization, their solidarity, the unity, are incredible to watch. And I think it's really important to keep Belarus on the agenda, because, well, if the world is silent about Belarus, Lucas Chen. I would try to defeat to suppress the protests. Great.

Well, that's a great note to end on, Hannah. And everybody should follow you on Twitter. We'll make sure to lift that up when the show comes out. Thanks for the work you're doing. And best of luck, you're going forward. Thank you very much. Thanks again to handle the bulk of up for joining the show. Thank you, Ben.

Thank you to everyone in the Crooked Media HQ, where I am today. by everyone, I mean, just me and Tanya. It's kind of empty here, and it's weird. Two weeks to go. It's a big weird picture of a book of Ronald Reagan sitting on this desk. I assume it's this thick and you can use it to prop up anything you want. Who's reading the Reagan book over there? I don't think anybody.

Next episode we'll be able to wrap up the quote-unquote foreign policy debate, though, Tommy. That'll be good. Yeah, that's right. Good call. So stay tuned for that. It'll be great. Patsy of the World is a crooked media production.

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