Pod Save the World - Russian Interference Won’t Stop After Election Day

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the normalization of foreign interference in US elections, the Chinese hack of US telecoms that could be putting millions of Americans’ communications at risk, concerns around potential post-election day violence stemming from right wing groups, and Bill Clinton’s unhelpful Gaza messaging. They also talk about Benjamin Netanyahu firing his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, allegations that a Netanyahu staffer leaked classified information, reports that Russia planned to ship explosive devices on planes headed to the US, an update on the election in Moldova, and a massive political shakeup in Botswana. Finally, they cover a report about how North Korean soldiers sent to Russia are spending their free time, a time limit on hugs at a New Zealand airport, and Russia’s historically massive fine on Google. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Anything new? I don't know, man. It's Election Day. It's Election Day. Here in America. You are hearing this after Election Day, but it is currently Election Day.

And we... The miracle podcast. Polls have not closed. It's 2.10 p.m. Eastern. So we have... 5.10 p.m. Eastern. Sorry, 5.10 p.m. Eastern. 2.10 p.m. Pacific. We have no data. We saw the first wave of exit polls.

Totally useless. Utterly useless. Josh Ernest, who we used to work with, said looking at exit polls is like hooking up with your ex-girlfriend. You know you shouldn't do it. It feels good in the moment. Then you hate yourself later. So that's where I am. That's where we are.

We're going to talk about election interference, Chinese hacking, threats of election violence. And we're going to grade some foreign policy election messaging that's been happening on the trail. Then we're going to talk about a big shake up in the Israeli government, a scandal engulfing Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, about a leak of classified information, the latest from Gaza. Then we're going to talk about allegations that Russia plotted to send incendiary devices on planes to North America, the results of elections in Moldova and Botswana, and then some lighter stories by way of North Korea, New Zealand, and Russia. No guest today, because we just need to freak out about the election.

Yeah, yeah. We don't need to be around strangers today. No. What a time of council this is. Yeah. Just so anxious. Okay. So it's obviously election day, Ben.

There's a lot of fascinating things happening in the world. We hope to get to all of them. But it's just really hard to think of anything else. But so the world is watching this election. Many are anxious. Many are terrified, like people in Ukraine, for example. Some just think we're nuts. Yes.

Here's an example. It's a fair determination. Here's an example of the latter. The U.S. dumpster fire of an election is appropriately ending with the debate over which side is calling each other garbage. To recap a comedian at Trump's rally called Puerto Rico garbage, resulting in Joe Biden appearing to refer to Trump supporters as garbage, leading to Donald Trump then dressing up as a garbage man and riding around in a garbage truck. Are we sure we want to buy submarines off these people? Okay.

On one of his final campaign stops, Donald Trump declared this week that he will pull. protect women. And if that didn't sound ominous enough, he added, I'm going to do it whether the women like it or not. Trump there demonstrating his ongoing commitment to doing things to women without their consent. Meanwhile, Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, a name you'll hear either every day for the next four years or never again, steadied the ship with some more typical political rhetoric, declaring that he and Trump can win, quote, the normal gay guy vote. For all their vitriol towards immigrants who don't speak English, it's astonishing how much of what they say,

Sounds like it was put through Google Translate. It's just, I think sometimes helpful to hear about your own elections from an outside perspective. I mean, when you put it that way, right? That was an Australian comedian named Mark Humphreys. That was hilarious. Yeah, if you were in Australia right now, you would maybe be questioning whether to have sunk tens of billions of dollars into American military technology. Yeah, great August joke. A great world though, aucus joke.

I really appreciate bringing that in. Okay. So we needed that last. But Ben, you know, speaking of outsiders watching our elections, there is a serious point to be made here about election interference. So the director of national intelligence, the FBI, and the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency or SISA, they put out a joint statement that said in part, quote, the IC has been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans. the IC expects these activities will intensify through election day and in the coming weeks and that foreign influenced narratives will focus on swing states. So interesting that this statement went out, was that last night? Yeah, Monday night. They single out Russia as, quote,

the most active threat. They're making fake news content. They're making crap designed to scare people and just otherwise undermine the legitimacy of the election process. There was a fake video alleging voter fraud in Arizona that was false. The Arizona Secretary of State came out and said so. And I think, pointed to the finger at Russia. There's a bunch more examples. Ben, I just, we want to start with this because it is worth pointing out, I think, how brazen Russia is with this stuff now. In 2016, they tried to hide it. I remember talking to Jake Sullivan right after that election. He's a national security advisor now, but he was a Hillary advisor then. And he said that, you know, when they would suggest that there was foreign interference, people looked at the Clinton campaign

staff like they were wearing tinful of hats. Now this is just like an every, year every election all the time thing. Yeah, I remember on the other side of that being in the Obama White House, and there was a similar statement, albeit not as specific, from the DNI, from the Director of National Intelligence in the fall. Actually, we thought it was going to be this huge deal when it came out. We weren't allowed to edit it, you know. It was like, oh, we can't have any political hands on this.

And so it was this kind of carefully worded statement from the DNI. with all the other intelligence chiefs kind of backing it up. That was the same day that the Access Hollywood sex tape, or Billy Bush tape came out. So didn't, you know, wasn't quite, yeah, wasn't quite the earthquake we thought it would be. But I make that point because it was obviously hugely consequential and controversial to not only have Russia interfering like that, but also, you know, should the U.S. government say anything? Trump called that election interference. And it just shows you how much like Trumpism, MAGAism, whatever we want to call it,

is kind of move the goalpost in American and global politics. At eight years later, it's like, oh, yeah, sure, the Russians are interfering all over the place. Yeah, they love for him. The night before the election, the U.S. intelligence community is putting out a statement. I guarantee, well, probably most of the people, if not, you know, 90 plus percent of the people listening to the podcast,

had no idea that statement even went out. It just shows you how much normalization has taken place around election interference, about the U.S. government calling out election interference about, you know, the manipulation of social media, about conspiracy theory. It's just kind of part of what we deal with now. Yeah. And, you know, while we're talking about election interference, I mean, we did want to update you on this China hacking story that we've talked about now a couple times on the show. The gist is that China hacked a bunch of major telecom companies in the U.S. and they even managed to infiltrate them to the point where they had the same level of access as senior engineers. And then they managed to

target the system through which U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies request wiretaps of suspects. So very big deal, very bad. The Washington Post reported, I think we talked about this last week, the Chinese had collected audio and text messages and that they had targeted top Trump campaign officials like J.D. Vance, et cetera. But what is still not really clear is how many people were impacted. Initially, there was a suggestion that had been a small group of targets because the Chinese didn't want to tip off that they have this access. But Josh Rogan at the Washington Post reported that millions of Americans could be vulnerable to Chinese surveillance now because of this hack and the ongoing nature of it.

And the question is basically what should the U.S. government say and when? Because it does sound like internally this is a five alarm fire. Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, quote, it is one of the most serious breaches in my time on the Intelligence Committee, full stop. So not an alarmist guy. He's been there for some shit, you know. He's been there for some shit.

And, you know, again, like, another point, I think you and I were talking about, like, 20 years ago, China having access to the phone calls of, like, millions of Americans was a big deal, but in a sense, kind of useless because you couldn't ever listen to all of that audio and do anything with it or make sense of it. Now artificial intelligence has completely changed that dynamic, and you certainly could do a bunch of bulk collection and then make use of it. And then second, I mean, one of the hacking victims who had been briefed by the FBI told Josh Rogan, quote, right now China has the ability to listen to any phone call in the United States,

whether you are the president or a regular Joe, it makes no difference. If that's the case, like, do you think the U.S. government has an obligation to maybe do a little more to notify us? I mean, we are in a new world in which the sophistication of these cyber intrusions and the pace of them is just kind of ever-present. I mean, to connect it to the Russia story, one way to think about this, of all, is that we're not kind of in siloed political experiences. Like there's kind of one competition happening globally. You know, our election is an event in which Russia is a participant, in which, you know, China could be a participant in terms of influence or, you know, information gathering.

And, you know, the world is flat and not the good way that Tom Friedman once thought it would be. Not your capital. But also to the AI point, you're right. I mean, it would be one thing if they could vacuum up everybody's email or text messages. messages, you know, 20 years ago, and it's not like, you know, spooks or analysts could sit there and read everything. What AI can do is it can sift through vast troughs of data and then do different things with it. It can kind of search for certain topics, but it could also, you know, tailor influence operations to target people based on what you learn about them. So if China wants to influence, you know, you and like, you know, someone who has a platform in this country, they can find ways to do that based on, you know, what you're doing.

and saying to people in private, you know. So I think we are heading into a world in which people have to recognize that digital privacy doesn't really exist, probably need to have some degree of skepticism about information you're consuming if it's not from a source that you really know where it comes from. Because this, there's no reason to think that this will go back into the box, you know, this is the future. It's here. Yeah, apparently Trump, Vance, Eric Trump, Jared Kushner and two other Trump campaign officials were told they've been surveilled. There were no, these were like real-time interceptions too. And also, you know, been a few years ago, even during the Obama era, there was always a big fight between the government and technology companies about the demand by the government to build backdoors into communications tools.

And the government was upset about end-to-end encryption, which would make it possible for them to intercept messages from bad guys. This is just the latest example that if you build a back door for the U.S. government, the bad guys are going to find it too. You're going to come in through the back door. Yeah. Horrible, horrible idea. Yeah. The other big national security concern around this election, though, is the potential for election day or month violence. There's been a bunch of stories about, like, right-wing fascist, racist groups like the proud boys organizing their members on Telegram, in particular to tell them to be poll watchers.

A lot of people are very worried about this. The Associated Press found that four in ten registered voters are extremely or very worried about violent attempts to overturn the results. There's a report from the global project against hate and extremism that found a sharp rise in violent rhetoric online, including, quote, in October, violent rhetoric related to election denialism increase by 317% on telegram and 105% on GAB. So those are two services with, you know, big right-wing audiences. In Fulton County, Georgia, a bunch of polling places were temporary closed today because of threats. The Georgia Attorney General has claimed those threats came from Russia. Axios talked to a number of members of Congress who had been beefing up security at their election night events in preparation. The Washington Post said the Pentagon is doing some sort of contingency planning.

Again, Ben, this is new. You know, like our elections didn't used to be this way. It's like 2020, there was this ridiculous debate about whether Trump's rhetoric was responsible for violence, in any way. Obviously that was the case on January 6th. And it's obviously the case now that what he's doing is inspiring these people. I was just reading before we came in. Steve Bannon was in prison for a while for, I think was, what would he just? Contempt of Congress. He didn't show up for his January 6 subpoena. So now he's out. Not only has he not like learned his lesson from January 6th, I just read that he is going to be back at the Willard Hotel, which is where the stop the steel assholes

coordinated their little coup work back in 2020. So they're just like repeating it all in our faces. Not exactly rehabilitated there. No. I think to kind of carry the thread of interconnection that we've had today, I mean, the first thing that's notable here is that we've talked so much about telegram in the context of its role in the war in Ukraine, its, you know, peculiarity as this, you know, tech company social media platform created by a Russia.

that evades, you know, government intrusion and becomes this dark underworld. And now, you know, it's a feature in this increasingly violent far-right kind of militia movement in this country, the proud boys, the oathkeepers. The two things that I think I'd point to from a national security perspective as a former, you know, national security official, strangers that seems to say now, is first of all, how do you separate out what crazy individuals might do, right? Somebody who's just sitting at home, they're radicalized online, they want to go do something. That's alarming enough.

But I think what is in this story that was also clearly manifest on January 6th is that there are organized extremist groups in this country that if we were looking at them like we look at foreign violent extremist groups, we would think. are a big fucking problem. You know, you're a Muslim. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. If ISIS, when we were worried about homegrown, quote unquote, radicalization in the later

Obama years, if ISIS had cells with thousands of people who were heavily armed and trained and had, you know, coherent ideology that was anti-government and violent around the country, you know, we would be, from a national security perspective, really going after those groups. I think that there's this reticence to do that. even under the Biden administration, because it's seen as political. It's seen as kind of playing into a conspiracy theory about the federal government coming to take your guns or coming to target their political enemies. But the reality is that one of the things it should be concerning is there's been this steady radicalization over four years, just because we think the stop the steel stuff was crazy, doesn't mean that there aren't people that deeply still believe that the election was stolen and will believe it again.

and they are armed people with an ideology and an organization that has been around a while now. Like a lot of these groups were founded kind of in the late Obama years, now they've been around for a decade. The second thing to connect it back to something we talked about earlier, though, we know from, you know, and I've talked to some people who are real experts and have, you know, kind of intelligence units and not in the U.S. government that monitor Russian disinformation campaigns. The way that the Russians do this now in recent years is they start on telegram. And we talk about this a bit. They'll start some conspiracy theory on telegram, and they'll see where it gets traction, and it'll kind of migrate from telegram out to their platforms. What I worry about is if Russia wants to activate the proud boys or the oathkeepers,

I'm sure they have social media personas or whatever that are in those networks. No doubt. And so if you're Russia and you want to sow maximum chaos in the U.S. and maybe if you're pissed if Kamala Harris wins, knock on wood, I would be looking out for Russian interference in the form of incitement and Russia trying to stir things up. And we already see this with the potential bomb threats in Georgia today. This could be a very real part.

I mean, because what is Russia's incentive to hold back here? You know, they think that they're at war with us, literally. And so I think we should be not to, you know, in the good, the best case scenario of a common Irish win, we could still be living with this kind of incitement from not just inside this country, but from Russia. Yeah, and you see this kind of stuff in, you know, autocracies where you don't have to stuff a bunch of envelopes into a ballot box to steal an election. You can just scare enough people out of voting to tip the scales. Yeah. Right? It happens all the time. One, and two, you're right that this, I think, the proud boys in these organizations, these names are new,

the organizing tools are new. But the reality is the United States has this long history of, like, right-wing paranoid anti-government violence, right? I mean, look at like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was Timothy McVeigh. He was inspired or angered by the government's handling of Waco and Ruby Ridge. I mean, this kind of like paranoid right-wing fringe has been beneath the surface since really like the inception of this country. And what happens in any democracy is leaders can kind of inflame those people or not. And Trump is clearly inflaming, the passions of these violent kind of fascist organizations. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a classic cycle of radicalization that takes place. We looked at radicalization

a lot, again, around ISIS, which was not nearly as large a footprint as these groups. And, you know, it starts maybe online and you start to, you know, kind of live in a certain poisoned well of content. And that leads to conspiracy theory. The moment in which radicalization becomes more concerning is then when you literally join up with like-minded other humans. So it's not just online. You're not just watching videos. It's when you join the group, you know, because then that kind of creates a permission structure for everybody to believe the same thing and to reinforce one another's

to beliefs and to kind of fortify one another, maybe to take risks. And that's clearly happened over the course of the last eight years of Trump being in our lives like this. So it's something to bear in mind. By the way, even if Kamala Harris loses, which we obviously don't believe will happen, but could, the Russians could mirror image, you know, try to gin stuff up to just to soak chaos, you know, of conspiracy theories target at the left. The difference is that there's just not the same evolved, it's not a both sides saying. It's not the same evolved. They're not a bunch of left-wing militias in this country, like you said, with like a deep history of the paranoid style of American

politics and stockpiling guns. You know, Antifa is not that. No, it's a bunch of red rose Twitter accounts saying scathing things. So that's an uplifting chapter of our election coverage. The last piece of the election is, you know, one of the most important states we're watching tonight is Michigan. We will probably have results out of Michigan by the time you hear this podcast because they count pretty quickly.

We've talked a lot of times about the large number of Arab American and Muslim Americans voters in Michigan and the concern that Gaza, the war in Gaza, and now Lebanon might lead those voters to stay home or vote Trump or vote third party like for Jill Stein. Last week, Bill Clinton was in Michigan. He took this issue on directly during a campaign stop. Here's a little sample of what was about an eight-minute answer about Gaza. I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan or think too many people have died. I get that. But if you lived in one of those kibbutzs, what would you do if it was your family and you hadn't done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians and one day

they come for you and slaughter the people in your village? You would say, well, you'll have to forgive me. I'm not keeping score that way. It isn't how many we've had to kill. Because Hamas make sure that they're shielded by civilians. They'll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself. I heard an excerpt of that answer online. I was like, ah, the full context has got to be better. So I watched the full eight-minute thing. It was actually worse.

I just cannot overstate how bad that answer was. Like, again, I respect Bill Clinton and what he did to really push forward the Middle East peace process. He tried really hard to get to a deal. But I don't think that American elected officials understand how an answer like that sounds to the Palestinian ear to seem to like you're justifying this ongoing slaughter in Gaza of Palestinian people. And also, he's just factually wrong. Yeah. You know, the very progressive people that lived on the kibbutz is who were killed. It is true that those are the people most committed to peace.

But those are now, they're not the people out of, like, defense. the war. They're the people protesting demanding that the hostages come home in a ceasefire deal. You know, I mean, I just think I don't know where he's coming from on this. Yeah. I mean, it's bad politics, too, because what is the, what is being accomplished in that answer? It's antagonizing. Because it sounded like it was meant to be a message to reach out to to Arab American or Muslim American voters or just voters who are concerned about Gaza. And there's not a single one of those voters that's going to find that message appealing. It speaks to how far the Democratic Party needs to move in order for its leadership to reflect what we see

in the data in the polling and from voters. You know, just to kind of pick apart pieces of that answer, I don't think that people from the Kabbutzum believe that they need to kill tens of thousands of children. This simplicity of saying, well, you too would want to kill everybody in Gaza. I don't, I actually, I would hope to think that that's not the case, you know. And the constant refrain that basically every civilian casualty is Hamas's fault, there's just so much evidence that that's not the case. That is sometimes the case.

But there's also cases of just dropping 2,000-pound bombs on buildings that they know have like an enormous amount of civilians in them or targeting of health infrastructure, as we've talked about. or, I mean, we could go on on, you know, the mistreatment or really torture of people in detentions. Stuff that goes well beyond just this kind of overly simplified. They're defending themselves. You would do the same thing. And if innocent people are killed, it's Hamas's fault.

And I just think that part of the task, no matter what happens in this election, obviously it's most relevant if Kamlerich wins. But the Democratic Party, it does feel like this has been more complicated to deal with an election year. let's just name that. I think Democrats have not wanted to stir the pot. They're donors. There's voters that are very pro-Israel and there's habits of being a certain way in election cycles. And so I think there's been a bit of a paralysis in the party. And I would expect that no matter what happens in the election, you know, one of the areas, particularly in foreign policy, where there's going to be some kind of reckoning in the party is going to be on this. Because

that answer, and we should be honest, like our boss, former boss, Barack Obama, I think gave a better answer than that, but it wasn't anywhere near what the Uncommitted Movement wanted to hear too recently. You know, I think that we have to realize that the old talking points just don't work anymore.

And the old talking points are Israel's right to defend itself. October 7th. We're for two-state solution. This all started on October 7th. Like none of that, you know, even if you believe all those things to be true, by the way, it still doesn't apply. Right now, nobody knows what the future of Gaza is. Nobody knows what the future of Lebanon is.

Nobody knows where this is going with the Iranians. So we're going to have to refresh the approach here. Yeah, again, I think we've given Kamala Harris some time and space on this issue because Joe Biden is still the president. She's been a candidate for 100 days. By the time you hear this, the election is over, no matter who wins, it's time to drastically ramp up pressure on Biden to cut off military support to this war and end it. It's just a detrosity at this point.

Well, let's talk about some big news out of Israel, Ben. So the first is that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu finally fired Yoav Galant, the Israeli defense minister saying, quote, In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the minister of defense. Unfortunately, although in the first months of the campaign, there was very fruitful work. During the last months, this trust cracked between me and the minister of defense. So Gallant is a relative moderate in Netanyahu's administration, I say relative

because that's as compared to some of the right-wing fringe freaks that he's put in his cabinet. In recent days, there was particular tension between Netanyahu and Galant over whether to exempt ultra-Orthodox students from the draft. So that that is a really important issue for Nanjahou because it is key to holding together as government coalition, keeping himself in power and out of jail. So DB made move to Fire Galant in March 2023. He reversed that decision after mass protests. It sounds like there's demonstrations for revving up as we speak. So Galant is supposed to be replaced by a guy named Israel Katz, who's the current foreign minister and kind of like a no name as far as we can.

And very little experience in security issues. Yeah, and kind of a right-wing nut according to his Twitter feed. So, Ben, there's a lot of, you know, members of Congress I talk to, elected officials who would cite Galant's presence as why they supported the Israeli military effort, even though they hate Netanyahu. Galant was the primary interlocutor with the Biden White House. He was the primary point of contact for the Defense Department. Now he's gone. It's not clear like what that channel will be.

Now, you know, obviously Biden to Bebbenanyahu, but, you know, on a staff level, are they going to talk to Ron Dermer, who's this kind of like right-wing Republican political hack who's been around Netanyahu's whole life? So I'm going to sign. And clearly he dumped this news out on Election Day for reason. Yes, yeah. You know? Yeah, this is something that's been brewing for a while.

It does speak to some pretty critical issues. You mentioned the ultra-Orthodox thing. This is BB saying, I'm siding with the ultra-Orthodox members of my coalition, even though this is hugely unpopular in large swaths of Israeli society, in the IDF, that you have these exceptions for this growing share of the population that doesn't have to bear the burden. By the way, so you've got some ultra-orthodox who support these really hawkish, you know, policies in terms of the war in Gaza and Lebanon and then don't fight in it, you know, and you can imagine what that triggers for people. But also, Galant importantly, was the leading voice in every report for a

ceasefire. He came out after this happened and said, we could have had a deal to get the hostages back, you know. So Galant was the kind of person that wanted to do a ceasefire for hostages deal, and B.B. clearly is not. And so this does suggest that any sense of an end to the war in Gaza or some negotiated ceasefire is even less likely than it was yesterday. By the way, Tony Blinken also called Gallant yesterday. So as usual, Tony Blinken is getting the rug pulled out from under him for what number time has happened. And the other thing I'd say, Tommy, is that early in the war, there was a sense, and we said

this, and Netanya was, you know, at heightened maximum political vulnerability. Oh, no, yeah. Solidified. Yeah, exactly. This is a sign of a guy who is confident that he's in charge. In those early days, he was kind of hugging people like Galant and bringing Benny Gans into this unity cabinet, this war cabinet. Remember all these Israeli guys wearing like black shirts together, which was kind of a strange

color choice. But that's gone. Like Benny Gans, Galant, those guys are no longer useful to Bibi. I mean, again, it just also shows that Bibi ends up fucking every one of these people, right? We've seen Ehud Barack come to his government, Galant, Benny Gans, Zippy Livni back in the day, right? If you become a minister, because it sounds like a good idea that you're going to somehow moderate Bibi or you're going to advance your politics, this happened to Lepid. You always end up getting fired by this guy, you know. And so I hope the lesson to the Israeli, anybody in the opposition, even the more right-wing opposition, which is what Gans and Gant would be, this is how it's always going to end.

Always going to end this way. But here's maybe a sign of trouble for Netanyahu. Here's a backstory here. So there's a growing scandal about the leak of classified information. So the backstory, Ben, is we discussed this a bunch of times, like Netanyahu was in these negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release deal. And then he kept introducing new demands that made the negotiations harder and blew them up. He, of course, would blame Hamas. But it was clear that he was introducing new things that were problematic, including that Israel, retain control of the Philadelphia corridor, which is that buffer zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. I think Netanyahu initially denied that he had included the Philadelphia corridor in his list of demands. But then on September 1st, Israel recovered the bodies of six hostages who had been executed by Hamas in a tunnel in Gaza. That led to widespread anger and demands that he cut a deal and get the rest of the hostages home. So the next day, Netanyahu goes out, does a press conference where he defended putting in place these new conditions by claiming that Hamas could smuggle hostages out of Gaza into Egypt and then to

like Iran or Yemen or something where they could never be recovered. And he also held up a document that he said was from Hamas and had instructions about dragging out the war to like undercut the IDF narrative and wage psychological warfare on the Israeli public. So this is what he said publicly at this press conference. A couple days later on September 5th, this London-based outlet called the Jewish Chronicle published a piece by a freelancer that said Yaya Sinwar was planning to flee Gaza via the Philadelphia corridor to Iran with some hostages. So basically exactly what Netanyahu just said. Cited intelligence based on interrogations of Hamas officials and some other documents. The IDF was asked about this afterwards. They said they were unaware of this intel or

planning and the story was actually retracted. Then the next day, a German outlet called Bill to rent a piece supposedly based on Hamas documents about a plan from Hamas to drag out the talks and wage psychological warfare on the Israeli public. The IDF was asked about this. Again, they said the intel was overstated, but this was actually kind of a real troubling leak. So basically, Nenjahou does this press conference, and then you have these two leaks to foreign publications that are obviously designed to back up his claims. So fast forward to last week, we learned that there's three suspects in custody, in Israeli custody for these leaks of classified information, not just leaking this stuff, but also allegedly manipulating and editing the documents in ways to further buttress Netanyahu's position.

One of the, the one name has been, you know, released by the courts. It's the guy, it's a guy named Eli Feldstein, who's a spokesman in the prime minister's office. He had previously worked for Itzmar Ben-Gavir, who's the most right-wing, nut job security minister in the cabinet. And this guy, Eli Feldstein reportedly failed a background check for a security clearance when he got the job. So when Netanyahu's team was asked about, this leak investigation. They initially said, oh, no one in our office has been contacted. Then a day later, they said, oh, actually, you know, this guy, Feldstein might have been a part of it, but he didn't have a clearance. He wasn't part of these debates, et cetera. So a lot of backstory

there. But, you know, Ben, I know Netanyahu has survived countless scandals, corruption, you name it. But if he actually had a staffer manipulate and leak classified information to screw up the hostage release talks, that seems, like as bad as it gets politically. Yeah, but there seems to be no, you know, part of what's frustrating is, yes, I mean, this is pure self-interested autocracy, right? I will not only lead classified information, I will edit the classified information to back up my narrative for why I'm continuing this war in perpetuity because that serves

my political interest. And if hostages die because of that, I don't care. I can't imagine something that says something worse about the character of a politician. And yet, it just doesn't feel like there's enough pushback from people with real power, either in the U.S. government or the Israeli political establishment. Yeah. There are very many brave Israelis who are protesting. They're protesting right now, this kind of stuff among the public.

But among these people we've talked about, Benny Gans and Lepid and Galant, they don't really seem to have any strategy for how to deal with how much the guardrails have fallen off around BB. And the U.S., which has all this leverage because we've given tens of billions of dollars in military assistance to BB, don't use that leverage either. And so he's just kind of feeling right now like he has all this running room. Yeah, it's like Trump. There's scandal after scandal mushrooms. And if nobody's really willing to hold them into account, then he's just going to continue.

Yeah, he's just waiting on Trump. victory, which who knows at this point. But again, just out of Gaza itself. I mean, on Monday, the IDF repeatedly bombed a hospital in northern Gaza, the Jabalia area, injured medical staff in patients. I bring this up because, you know, the terrific. And I was just reminded of the kind of early days of the war when people were outraged, if you suggested the IDF, whatever, bomb a medical facility. And now it just happens all the time. Kathy Russell, who we know well, the executive director of UNICEF said that, quote, the entire Palestinian population, in North Gaza, especially children, is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine,

and the ongoing bombardments. They've just been cut off and starve to death for weeks and weeks now. And then finally, Ben, I mean, the Washington Post reported that the Biden administration is sitting on about 500 reports detailing instances where U.S. made weapons were used to kill civilians in Gaza. The U.S. has taken no action based on those reports. So, again, the election is now over when you're hearing this. it is time to ramp back up political pressure on these guys. And this would be the thing I would focus on, that last item, because we are in violation of our own laws. And there are potentially hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reports of the U.S. violating its own laws by continuing to provide this military assistance.

I would be saying an incoming Harris administration, knock on wood, must follow the law and should immediately accelerate a review of how we enforce those laws. This is the vehicle to change policy because it is. is on the books already. You don't have to change law. It's on the books already that we don't provide this assistance. And if Trump wins, then, you know, we're obviously in an even more dire circumstance. God only knows. Okay. Well, enough about gossip around. Let's turn to Russia bed. So here's a scary story. The Wall Street Journal reported that Western intelligence officials believe that Russia covertly shipped two incendiary devices on DHL cargo planes as part of a covert plan where they ultimately wanted to, you know, mess with the U.S. and allies in Europe through,

you know, terrorism, basically. These devices caught fire at a D.HL logistics hub in Germany and the other in UK. It was believed to have been a test run as part of a plan to ship these kinds of devices to North America. They were disguised as like sex toys or just like massagers or something, but something in the battery lit on fire and water wouldn't put it out. So it would either would have down to the plane or forced to landing. Poland has arrested four people. people in connection with this plot. They're looking for two more. The head of Poland's foreign intelligence agency said that Russian spies were to blame, specifically the GRU, the Russian military intelligence. Obviously, Russia has denied this, but European countries have been

warning for months now that the Russians were carrying out these arson attacks across Europe and also in the Baltics. So, Ben, I realized that the U.S. and Russia have been engaged in a proxy war for many years now in Ukraine. But if the Russians really went all like Al-Qaeda on the U.S. passenger plane. Can you just imagine what the political pressure would be to, I don't know, wage a full-on military response, a direct one, or send more weapons to Ukraine, or get rid of all restraints on the use of U.S. weapons? Like, I just, I don't get why Putin would do this, given how overwhelming the U.S. response would likely be, unless Trump is president. I mean, one possible scenario is that this is a probing exercise and that this is the kind of tactic he may want to have in reserve.

I don't know, to respond to the U.S. If the U.S. lifted all those restrictions on Ukrainian weapons being fired against Russian targets inside of Russia, maybe he'd do something like this in response, you know? And so it just, it's a reminder of how tenuous is all this. It's like we are so focused on the election. Whoever wins, this is going to be the situation with the Russians. By the way, that Brick Summit that we talked about, Putin advanced the ball a bit on kind of creating parallel alternatives to payments to avoid sanctions and having a lot of the global economy there. He's feeling pretty emboldened on the battlefield. You know, they're making gains there.

And so he may feel like now is his time to press, you know, his advantage. He's got the North Koreans there. And then you've got this war in the Middle East where Bibi is feeling emboldened. I mean, it is not the cleanest inheritance for whoever the next president is. No, big time. A little kind of good news from the region. So a couple weeks ago, we talked about these Moldova elections where there was a referendum to enshrine a path to joining the EU that just kind of barely squeaked by. Also, up for a vote was the presidential race where there was a pro-Western candidate, Maya Sandu, who got the most votes, but not enough to avoid a runoff against a pro-Russian opponent.

The runoff happened Sunday. Sandu won with 55% of the vote who arrivals 45%. So good news. I mean, there was a messed up process. There was lots of accusations of vote rigging, election interference by the Russians itself. But, you know, good that she won. And then pretty clear results.

You know, and if you look at the Georgian election, you know, went a different way. And there's obviously questions about whether there were irregularities there. Sandu also overcame that flood of came. that we talked about. Resign Sandor or whatever it was from Lindsay Lohan and everybody else. Like exhibit. But, you know, Moldova is a thing to watch.

You've got this spectrum and Ukraine, there's a war. Belarus has kind of been swallowed up by the Russians. Georgia's kind of right in the crosshairs. And then there's Moldova. Those four countries are obviously the different levels of Russian invasion and interference. And Moldova is thus far showing itself to be the one that is, you know, resisting through whatever anybody's. it has this kind of Russian encouragement. Yeah. Switching continents from in a minute.

I'll talk about Botswana. Yes, let's talk about Botswana. I think we're our first Botswana discussion on the show. The Botswana Democratic Party, that's the ruling party in Botswana since independence in 1966, lost an election to this progressive umbrella for Democratic change party led by someone named Dumma Boko. This was Boko's third time running for office, but this time as Coalition won an outright majority in Parliament.

The transition is going really well. going president conceded promptly and said, quote, you can count on me to always be there to provide whatever guidance you might want. So it's like surprising, better than our transition of power. So what you ask, might ask, leads to this kind of massive sea chains in an election. It was the economy, stupid. Specifically, the diamond market. So Botswana is the second largest producer of diamonds behind Russia. There was a huge downturn in the market. That led to a collapse in economic growth in Botswana and a spike in unemployment to nearly 30 percent. So obviously very tough to run as an incumbent with numbers like that. Obviously, a huge moment for Botswana itself been, but part of an interesting

trend that we started to cover where you've seen parties that have been in power for generations, really decades, like the ANC in South Africa, take a big hit in elections. And then there's an election coming up in Namibia where the party there, the Southwest Africa's People's Organization party or Swapo has won every election since independence. So you can see, you know, a series of kind of like dynastic parties maybe going down. Yeah, I think across southern Africa, you've had these institutional parties. Botswan has generally been a democratic bright spot in the region. But, I mean, what I take away from this is, yes, there's like an anti-incumbency, anti-sense of corruption or kind of sclerosis in these parties that is opening the door to

some opposition movements, but also the peaceful transition of power part, you know, that's notable. It's certainly not been the norm in all parts of the African continent for people to accept election results like that. And it's a reminder, too, on our election day that there's this, quote-unquote, year of elections, and it's a very mixed picture so far. You have some bright spots, and I think these two elections, Moldova and Botswana in very different parts of the world, offer some bright spots in terms of small the democracy. The U.S. election will be a part of that. And it just shows you how contested democracy it is globally. Let's have some dumb stuff to end the show, shall we? Last week, we talked about these scary

reports that there's like maybe 10,000, maybe 19,000 North Korean soldiers who have been sent to Russia to fight against Ukraine, including some of their elite special forces. It's obviously a big deal. It's a scary, like, tangling of alliance that has some real World War I or maybe three vibes. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said that Ukrainian troops had fought with North Korean soldiers for the first time, so they're actually engaging. I saw a photo on Twitter of a man who was believed to be the first North Korean soldier killed. It's pretty dark.

But again, we need a laugh today, which is why I wanted to read you this tweet from Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times, he tweeted, quote, a usually reliable source tells me that the North Korean soldiers who have been deployed to Russia have never had unfettered access to the internet before. As a result, they are gorging on pornography. End of tweet. So, I don't know, maybe we get some creative adult film stars to convince them to defect somehow. I mean, the South Korean intelligence service is sometimes fairly aggressive, like the U.S. intelligence community, and releasing information that it thinks, I don't know, maybe embarrasses as North Koreans.

I'd love to know the search terms. Good call. Because these North Koreans, they've probably not had any internet access. Can I go on a limb and suggest that they probably haven't had much access to pornography generally? Can you imagine all of a sudden, you know, there's somebody in the unit who figured out there's something called Pornhub? And can you imagine what the search items are?

Like, I feel like the South Koreans need to tell us. Because this is probably not hard to monitor either. This is open, this is open internet. These dudes are just hammering away on their little old BlackBerry device. This is like me in eighth grade getting AOL and being like, sex? Google search? Yeah, exactly. So I don't want to posit my own theories as to what they are.

But I'd really like to know. I think we could learn a lot about the North Korean psyche, which has been a bit of a black box to outsiders by the search terms that they're using. Yeah, this honey trap writes itself. Just get these guys. Lure these guys over. Or the old school trick of like, I'm a real life person, I'm your girlfriend.

Just take a picture of where you are and send it to me. Yeah. All these North Korean soldiers need a girlfriend in Leviv. Yeah, yeah. Our next story, Ben. So airport authorities in New Zealand, apparently one of Rob screenwriters of one of their favorite cliches by placing time limits on airport hugs.

This news comes from the Dunedin Airport in New Zealand, which now is a three-minute time limit for hugs in their drop-off area. So London's Heathrow, they decided to troll them by posting signs that say, max hug time, comma, unlimited. See what they did there. But the New Zealand airport chief pointed to studies saying that a 20-second hug is enough to release oxytocin and serotonin, to which we say, shut up, nerd. But so what do you think, Ben?

Well, I think Love Actually would exist as a film if this rule were in place. We're getting ready for that time of year where I will be watching Love Actually. Yeah, Christmas time is coming. November 5th today. When is your, when are you going to start? When you switch into mode? The window starts for me after Thanksgiving. Yeah, Hannah's going to make us get a tree the day after Thanksgiving.

Yeah, it starts after Thanksgiving. The music comes on. You start working through the movies. Love Actually is on there. I will say to take a political angle here, because that's what we do on the show. You know, just in Ardern, got some shit when she was prime minister for, she was a real hugger, right? I didn't know that. And she was, but like, in a wonderful way, she comforted people.

after the Christ Church shooting. Right, right, yeah. But there was this some, you know, gross misogynist pushback of, like, why does she hug people so much? I don't know if this new right-wing government there, this is part of, like, Jacinda. Is this Jacinda Eurasia that's happening at the airport? I don't know. Because if you want to hug somebody for a couple of minutes, I don't know why that's their

fucking problem. Yeah, I feel like this is a bizarre rule. Like, who's hugging for three minutes? No, to be fair. I mean, yeah, I guess I don't think I've ever really hugged anybody for three minutes, but if there's somebody that would like to do that, your offering? No, no, no.

No, no. Well, if, after this election, I may need somebody to come hug me for three minutes. Yeah, in about two hours I might need a three-minute hug. Three-hour hug is more like it. I may, actually, you know what, to just, again, merge threads here, if Trump wins, I may have to move to New Zealand and be hugged for three minutes when I arrive there. So if there are any Kiwis listening, one, if you've got an extra bedroom and two, you know, just group hug.

We'll group hug it out just to be clear that this is about. I do want to put it out there that if you're in a friendly foreign country and Trump wins, consider us when you're thinking of who to allow to have dual citizenship. Yes. Just, you know, come and slide into the DMs here. We'll pay taxes. We'll be civically engaged. Tax abiding, law abiding, you know, citizen. I gather.

Citizen of the world. All the time. Finally, Ben, we talk a lot of shit about Putin's Russia on this show. But when it comes to trolling, you really do have to hand it to them sometimes. So here's the context. Google has refused to pay fines that Russia levied on them

for blocking Russian state media on YouTube. So the fines just keep doubling and doubling and doubling every single week to the point where Google now owes Russia two undecilian rubles which is the number two followed by 36 zeros.

And I believe is larger than the GDP of the entire world. I guess so good luck to Google for, good luck sorting out of payment plan. Sundarba Chai. Google Pay. Just another one on Google Pay. That's really funny.

That's funny. I'd like to know whose job it was to kind of come up with the number for the payment. Just to keep it running. That's some A plus trolling. I mean, if you can't laugh at some of this stuff, what are we doing here? Yeah, hopefully maybe, you know, get that debt forgiven. Bernie Sanders style if there's a new leader over there. Oh, God.

Before we go, Ben, so just a reminder this week, Crooked is going to bring you daily election coverage, as long as the race isn't called. So every day, every morning, what a day is going to be fresh in your feet, with Jane Koston, giving you everything you need to know in 20 minutes. Then POTSafe America is going to release new episodes every day until the race is called.

And then hysteria and strict scrutiny, they're going to do shows across the network to unpack breaking news and illegal news. So subscribe to all of them. wherever you get your pods and on YouTube. And then also, when a voter casts a ballot by mail, if a requirement isn't met like something silly, they're missing a signature or something's wrong, it gets rejected. And then if the voter doesn't take action to cure their rejected ballot, their vote doesn't get counted. So that's obviously terrible. During big elections, thousands of mail and ballots are often thrown out. And right now, thousands of voters' ballots

are facing these issues and a ton of them may not even be aware of the errors of the deadline to cure them. that's why we need your help in reaching these folks to correct their ballots by going to Votesaveamerica.com right now and signing up to volunteer to cure ballots. And if you can't commit time but you still want to help, consider donating to Votesave America's anxiety relief program, which is supporting critical voter protection efforts happening in swing states right now. Go to Votesaveamerica.com to take action right now and help us win this thing. This message has been paid for by Votesave America. You can learn more at Votesaveamerica.com. This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.

Well, that's it for us. Boy, you and I were on a couple text chains together. We both have about 7,000 messages about exit polls. Oh, God. I'm afraid. It's important to remember that first wave exit polls are garbage. First wave exit polls are absolute garbage. I remember when we were gorging these in the 2008 campaign,

because however many primaries there were, there was always an exit poll. They were almost always wrong. 2004 John Kerry was winning by Atlanta. Yeah, so just let's not. The last thing I'd trust, in Anne Seltzer, I trust more than the Exipulse. Come on end. Come on end. Key Iowa pollster.

Okay, well, that's it for us for today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for downloading this little time capsule of a show. Next time, you know, we'll know a lot more about this. I will say, Tommy, one thing that's kind of interesting, I was thinking about this, I've been in a reflective mood because it's been eight years of Trump, casting this dark shadow over our lives. And this whole podcast is kind of, even in the Biden years, it still was there, right?

One way or another, we will know next time we talk whether we are finished with Trump in an entirely new kind of era with all the same problems, but not with Trump. Or, you know, the alternative. So that does feel pretty momentous, yeah. Yeah, pretty momentous. It sucks. Yeah, yeah. But it could be great. Could be great. Let's hope it's great.

I think it's going to be great. I think it's going to be great, too. Cautiously optimistic. But talk to you guys on Tuesday. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more. Consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events.

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