Pod Save the World - Saudi murders and the war in Yemen

Episode Date: October 31, 2018

Tommy talks with The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan about the international community's response to murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the catastrophic Saudi-led civil war in Yemen.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World, me. I'm back. It's Tommy. I'm finally here in Los Angeles talking to you guys, my favorite people in the world. First of all, huge thank you to Ben Rhodes for guest hosting while I was out on the road with Pod Save America talking about the midterms. Those are two fantastic episodes. It was fun to hear how good he is at this. I hope Ben and I are talking a lot more in the coming year. My episode today is about an issue that's been on my mind a lot over the last month.

You've all heard about the horrific murder assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who was killed trying to get wedding papers when he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. I want to talk about that, the U.S. relationship in Saudi Arabia, and also the Saudi civil war in Yemen, which has been raging for years, which has created the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet and yet has gotten very little attention. It took this horrific assassination of one individual, brave journalist, to get people to take a look at all manner of things that the Saudis are doing that are bad, that are harming our national security that are harming the planet. So my guest today is a fantastic journalist named Medi Hassan. He's a columnist. He's a senior contributor at The Intercept. He's the host of a podcast called Deconstructed, which is fantastic. You should listen to it.

He's also the host of Al Jazeera English's Up Front. He has been on the show before. I love talking to him because he pulls no punches. He calls Obama out. He calls Trump out. He calls it like he sees it. So I'm grateful for his perspective. We need more people like him sounding the alarm about these issues in calling truth to power.

So here's the interview. Mehdi, thank you so much for taking the time. It's great to talk with you again. Thanks, Tommy. Great to be here. We've talked before. We've talked about this issue via direct message because we both are terrified and outraged by it. But it's been nearly a month since a Saudi assassination team brutally tortured and killed and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The story has changed enormously during that time. He started with a blanket denial. Now, you know, Mohamed bin Salman, the Crown Prince is basically saying, Someone else did it. He hopes we'll move on. My first question for you is, do you think this is a story they can't run away from? Do you think this could permanently change the way the world interacts with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Wow, you didn't start off with a softball. Did you? That is the $64,000 question, I think. It's the question I've been asking myself since the beginning of this crisis. Aside from the tragedy itself and, you know, remembering Jamal Khashoggi, who was on my show just a few months ago before he was killed, the actual geopolitics of this is, crazy because no one expected this story to last for as long as it lasted. I think someone pointed out recently to me that it's one of the longest stories of any story of the Trump news cycle. I mean, most stories as you know, Tommy, they disappear within 24 hours. Right. I mean, who remembers

who remembers the New York Times blockbuster investigation into Trump's tax fraud? It feels like decades ago. Right. It was a few weeks ago. But this story went on for day after day after day for more than a couple of weeks, which was amazing given it's a foreign policy story and you and I, Tommy, are always desperate to get foreign policy more into the news. And you had people paying attention because it was so outrageous and because, as you say, they kept changing their story, the kind of egregious dishonesty. And the mother of all cover-ups, as Donald Trump put it, the worst cover-up of cover-ups. And Donald Trump is a master of cover-ups.

If he's saying you've done a bad cover-up, it's a bad cover-up. Will it change the relationship? I would like to hope it will, but I'm not optimistic because I'm quite cynical in general and especially about the U.S.-S.-Saudy alliance, which is more than seven decades old, has outlasted the Cold War. It's outlasted everything going. A lot of other Middle East alliances have changed. But Saudi Arabia and Israel have been the diehard, reliable allies of the United States and the Middle East. And Donald Trump in particular has put all of his chips on MBS, the Crown Prince, and MBS succeeding. So I don't see how it can radically change the

relationship if MBS is still there as de facto ruler and doesn't take responsibility for ordering the gruesome murder of a Saudi national and U.S. resident in a foreign country. And that's really the problem. I don't know where the story goes from here because it has now started to go away from the news agenda, depressingly. I bet the Saudis were celebrating when they saw the news coverage of all these attacks recently in the U.S. Because it basically allowed this story to start falling off the radar. Well, so let me go back a little bit in time because you did one of your, an episode of Deconstructed your podcast, which is fantastic. And everyone should listen to it, by the way. Earlier this month, you talked about the foundation of the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

you took it all the way back to FDR. What is kept this relationship so rock solid over many, many decades? I think it's a multiplicity of factors. I think everyone always says oil, and oil is obviously a big part of it. Saudi Arabia sells a lot of oil, but oil less so in recent years, because the U.S. doesn't need Saudi oil as much.

It's a lot to do with Saudi investment in the U.S. economy, the purchase of U.S. weapons, and obviously geopolitics. During the Cold War, Saudi Arabia was one of the cops on the beat, I think Noam Chomsky and others referred to it as. back with the Shah of Iran and the Israelis in terms of kind of monitoring the neighborhood and keeping US interests safe in that part of the world. And it's always been a quite reliable ally when it comes to things like, you know, backing up

U.S. security interests, despite the fact that it also undermined U.S. security by sponsoring all sorts of awful groups and jihadists and extremists across the world. But I do think it fundamentally has come down to money over the years. And although in recent years, and I wrote a piece about this recently, and I talked about it recently on the podcast, I do think the Iran angle is a big part of it. If we're going to talk about modern politics, not just the history and going back to the FDR, in recent years, especially since Trump came to office, a lot of the alliance with Saudi Arabia is to do with Iran.

The Israelis and the Americans, and when I say the Americans, I mean, the Trump administration in particular, want Saudi Arabia to be part of this coalition against Iran. You know, all eyes are on Iran. They're obsessed with the threat from Iran. And therefore, MBS, Netanyahu, there's been this great rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and it's because of Iran. my enemy's enemy is my friend. And I think that's a big part of why right now you see the Israelis are defending. The Saudis, you see a lot of pro-Israeli groups in D.C. and beyond a lot of neo-conservators

who you might think would want democracy in Saudi Arabia saying, no, no, no, MBS is the right guy, he's the reformer. It's because of Iran. But yes, the money is a huge part of it, the money they pay for lobbying, the money they pay in terms of buying weapons. And the same applies in the UK, Tommy. It's not just the US. I'm from Britain. There's a massive debate raging in the UK about whether they need to change the relationship with Saudi Arabia. And again, again, people are citing, well, what about arms sales? What about the purchase of all these other things? So it's a mixture of things, but it has been rock solid up until now.

And I'll tell you what, I was shocked to see how much of a backlash there was in this town. And last time I was on your show, we talked about how cynical people are in this town. But I was amazed to see people across the board, Democrats and Republicans, coming out and really castigating Saudi Arabia. Because there's nothing like I'd seen before. Saudi Arabia got worse press now for killing Jamal Khashoggi than they got when 15 Saudi nationals crashed planes into the Twin Towers and into the Pentagon. That's amazing. It's mind-boggling.

In my ongoing effort to, you know, lash my own back when, you know, when discussing bad policy choices, I will say that I think for a long time, the conventional wisdom was, okay, if we can get domestic oil production in the U.S. up, that could wean us away from Middle Eastern oil. That was sort of the trope, right? But I've also been amazed with the degree to which an alliance against Iran has kept the U.S. and Saudi together. that was true during the Obama years, the first three or four years when I was in the White House,

we were constantly supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons as a hedge against Iran in their region. I mean, that was true then. Very much so. And I think the Obama administration, and we talked about this before, when the nuclear deal happened, there was a sense that the Saudis were very upset and how do you keep the Saudis happy? What do you offer them? And there was the whole idea of weapons sales. Obama actually sold more weapons to Saudi Arabia than any president in modern history. People always say, oh, Obama and Saudi, they didn't get along.

I'm sure they didn't get along personally, and the Saudis weren't. happy that he didn't do as much as they wanted him to, but that doesn't change the fact the administration you were part of in the first term did sell a lot of weapons to Saudi Arabia, a record number of weapons to Saudi Arabia. And I know we're going to come on to this. The Yemen war started on Obama's watch. And there is a school of thought that says the Obama administration, let it get as bad as it got because it was almost like a quid pro quo for, you know, be silent on our Iran deal. I want to talk more about Yemen later because it's such a horrific catastrophe that I think we really need to give it some time. But I do want to touch

on arms sales for a minute. The U.S. President talks about arms sales as if that makes us captive to the Saudis. We can't possibly stop selling them these weapons because, you know, he makes up these numbers about jobs. But the Saudis buy. 100 billion, 200 billion, 300 billion. Yeah, I mean, just a quick piece of context. I mean, Trump tries to claim that we signed a $110 billion arms agreement with the Saudis that he says will create 500,000 jobs. That is a total lie. The five biggest U.S. defense contractors who make nearly every item on the Saudi list currently employed. a 383,000 people. So there's no way that's doing 150% more job creation because of that deal. Just to give kind of a global context, the same argument is applied across the West because all

Western governments have big commercial relationship with Saudi Arabia. Britain, the UK government, which is one of the strongest Western allies of Saudi Arabia, probably second only to the US, the same arguments are going on there, Tommy, about, oh, what about arms sales, what about trade, what about oil? When in actual fact, my friend David Wearing, who's just written a book about the Gulf relationship with the West. He points out that all exports of goods and services Saudi Arabia are just 1% of UK exports. And only 3% of UK oil comes from Saudi Arabia. But we're still stuck in this kind of old mythical view of, oh, Saudi Arabia sells us all the oil and buys all the weapons. It's just not true. Yeah. And so, okay, so the Saudis buy most of their military equipment

from the U.S., the UK, France, Italy, Germany. Trump is clearly ruled out suspending weapon sales because he's addicted to announcing this fake number. But Germany pledged to suspend arms sales to Riyadh, until there's justice for Jamal Khashoggi. In the UK, I know a bunch of members of parliament are calling to halt arms sales. There's not a coordinated European response, but is there a groundswell among regular people? I think there's a temporary grounds, but again, it depends. Unfortunately, it comes about to us, Tommy. It comes back to the media and how long this story stays in the headlines. Politicians don't do anything unless pressure is put on them. And you look at what happened with Canada, Tommy, just a few weeks before the Jamal Khashoggi killing, the Canadian

foreign ministry put out the mildest of mild tweet saying, hey, Saudi Arabia, why don't you you let out a few of your political prisoners? An MBS, who is notoriously thin-skinned, who does that sound like, lost his mind. He did. And threw out the Canadian ambassador, cut off all commercial ties with Canada, pulled out all Saudi students out of Canada, pulled out all Saudi medical patients who were in hospitals, getting treatment, had to be pulled out. I mean, overreaction doesn't do it justice.

It's so fucking crazy. Simply because the Canadians put out a mild tweet. Now, you might think the Western world would have stood with good old Canada, not exactly a bully known for bullying other countries. No, nobody else stood up with Canada. American certainly didn't stand up. for their Canadian Navy. The Trump administration took a punt when they were asked about this row between Canada and Saudi Arabia. So, and at the time I thought, well, you know, the Canadians will

back down eventually. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to have the upper hand. And then Jamar Khashoggi's death came along, which enabled Canada to say, ha ha, we were ahead of the curve. But again, whether all these other countries and their mild efforts to hold Saudi-to-accounts holds is all dependent on whether the attention on Jamakashoggi holds. And we know that MBS has said in private that he thinks this will pass. We know that Jared Kushner has told Trump in private, this will pass my friend mbs he's still the right guy stick with him the caravan will move on to borrow another phrase that trams use and that's why and let me just do a plug here amnesty international put together a video of journalists from around the world including jake tapper of cnn naterr of the

washington post you had uh naomi kline you had uh barakadat from india hamid meir from pakistan and i was privileged enough to be part of that group we all got together and read out umal kashoggi's last column on camera for a video that's gone, you know, suitably viral. And I think that's what we have to keep doing. We have to somehow keep his name in the headlines in order to get justice for him, not just justice for him, but make sure Saudi Arabia has held to account for this crazy, crazy policy, sending assassination teams. And then doing this weird cover-up with body doubles and fake beards and suggesting that a 59-year-old man died in a fist fight with 15 Saudi government agents. And then saying, oh, no, that was a lie. It was actually a premeditated killing,

which begs the question premeditated by who, Trey? Right, yes, of course. By the way, it was a very moving video. I mean, it was great to see that many influential individuals be a part of it, but also, you know, Karen was Jamal Khashoggi's editor at the Washington Post. I imagine this particularly difficult time for her. And she's been a force of nature on this, making sure that his name stays in the headlines. She has, she has.

And I hope the Washington both continue to make sure his name stays in the headlines. Me too. Because it's an outrage. What happened? I am amazed at how long this is the state in the news. I'm proud of the news media for the way they've covered this story. I'm ashamed of the entire Western world for the fact that we haven't been covering or talking about the Civil War in Yemen that you mentioned earlier. Listeners may have seen a recent New York Times piece by Declan Walsh, accompanied with photos by Tyler Hicks, that are beyond disturbing.

It is babies, children who are starving to death. It is the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. And it is not the result of a drought or a natural food shortage. It's because of war and deliberate choices, both military and economic, made by the government of Saudi Arabia, the coalition forces, and Iran's proxy forces who are fighting in the region. So I think we could maybe start at the beginning. I mean, when did this war start and what the hell was supposed to be the point? So just before I get into that, just on your point about, you know, the horrors of Yemen and being ashamed of the West, what was interesting when the Khashoggi news happened and it became big stories, you saw a lot of people on social media. I saw a lot of people on Twitter making this very same point, which was,

why is it that it required the death of one journalist and influential journalists with friends in high places to get Western governments and Western media organizations to pay attention to Saudi misdeeds? Why did the tens of thousands of people dying in Yemen for the last few years not get the same attention? It's one of those classic questions, Tommy, you and I can discuss forever about how you get the news media to take seriously foreign conflicts, far away conflicts. You know, Stalin had that famous line that one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. And that's often the case when it comes to foreign news coverage. It's easier to identify with Jamal Khashoggi in a consulate than it is to, you know, with nameless and sometimes faceless children in Yemen.

But thanks to Declan and his team, we actually got to see some of those horrific images. You have to go back to 2014, Tommy, and you have the Houthi rebels in the north of the country in Yemen, fighting in a civil war. Yemen's been plagued by civil wars of all sorts of different factions, ethnic and religious and tribal, been going on for a while. the poorest country in the Middle East, plagued by war and hunger, even before this current conflict. And what you have is that the Saudi, a post-Arab Spring, all sorts of deals are done to keep different presidents in power. President Hardy of Yemen is toppled by these Houthis who aren't happy with the way he runs the country. He flees to Saudi Arabia and says, you must come and help me and get me back in control. They look at Yemen and say, oh, time for proxy war,

because the Houthis, they say, are Iranian-backed militias. Even though the Obama administration at the time were saying, actually, the ties between Houthis and Iran, not so great. Saudi Arabia, under MBS, who then wasn't the Crown Prince, he was the defense minister, but was still the same impulsive, reckless and rather incompetent politician that we see today, decides to create a coalition of Arab nations to bomb the poorest nation in the Middle East. That's what he gets all the Arab air forces together for, not to protect the Palestinians, not to do other things that you could do with Arab military power, but to go and bomb in Yemen.

in March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition goes to war. Saudi Arabia thinks it's all going to be over very quickly, and yet over three years later, Yemen is still at war, the president still doesn't control the country, the Houthis are still fighting, and human rights groups have accused both sides of committing massive human rights abuses, the Houthis and the coalition, but they say, and the UN says as well, the majority of civilian deaths have come from airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition. And on top of that, you have hunger and disease. disease, which is, as you just pointed out, is not natural disaster. This is a man-made tragedy

due to Saudi blockading ports, blockading airports, bombing water sanitation plants. Every day last year, 130 children under the age of five were dying from extreme hunger and disease. That was just in 2017. There was a new report out from Oxfam the other day, which pointed out that one civilian has been killed every three hours, Tommy, every three hours in fighting in Yemen since the beginning of August. That's just from bombs and bullets, not from disease and hunger. Yeah. So it's a humanitarian catastrophe, as you said. The UN aid chief said earlier this year that the situation in Yemen today looks like the apocalypse. That was a phrase of use. It looks like the apocalypse. And the key point to keep ramming home, this is man-made. This was a war that didn't need to be fought,

that should have been stopped a long time ago. Jamal Khashoggi before he died was saying, please Saudi Arabia, my government, do a ceasefire, do a unilateral seafar, shut this thing down, stop the suffering, and yet the suffering continues. And Donald Trump, and let me just make this clear, because people will say, you went on Tommy Vita's podcast and didn't point out that it was the Obama administration. Tommy, you were part of the Obama administration. The Obama administration was the administration

that signed off on this Saudi-led bombing campaign. The US has been complicit in it from the very beginning, but having said that, Trump has escalated US support for the Saudi airstrikes in Yemen, has taken off any restrictions that Obama had on there. And look, both presidents are culpable, but right now Trump is really, really culpable for what is going on and we're on the verge of a horrific famine there. Yeah, I want to dig into the Obama piece of this because I think it's definitely worth exploring more.

But just two quick points. There was a recent paper by a lecture at the London School of Economics that analyzed coalition airstrikes in Yemen. And they found that they were hitting bridges, factories, fishing boats, fields, suggesting they were trying to destroy food production in areas held by Houthi rebels. War crimes. Another thing that's important to note is that the Saudi-backed Yemeni gun. government had to transfer their capital. Then they just started printing money anew and it led to massive inflation so people can't buy things even if they wanted to. A whole bunch of government employed individuals no longer got salaries. So like this is a crisis that it crosses the entire

economy. It's not just people getting bombed and killed. It's people starving to death because there's no food. And here's what's interesting about the bombing and killing part of the equation. The Saudis operate the same lines that they did with Jamal Khashoggi. So they bombed a school bus, Tommy, as you know, in August, a UN school bus. 40 kids murdered, massacred. And by the way, they dropped a US-made bomb. Kudos to CNN, which did an investigation and found that the bomb was supplied

by Lockheed Martin here in the United States. And, you know, people say, why do they hate us? Why do people in the Middle East hate the US? Well, maybe it's because of bombings like this. The Saudis bombed the UN school bus. And when they're asked about it, first they say, well, it wasn't us.

Then they say, okay, it was us, but there weren't any kids on the bus. They were all fighters. And then they're like, okay, there were kids on the bus. Maybe it was an accident. And it's a classic, same thing again. they get away with it time and time again. So I reached out to some former Obama people and I'm going to explain their thinking and then you can have your way with it. You know, they would argue that Obama

started gingerly supporting the war in the beginning and then walked back some of that support. In December of 2016, Obama halted some arms sales to Saudi Arabia citing these civilian casualties. But one thing that bothered me a lot is they continue to refuel coalition planes that were part of that bombing. So there's certainly no clean hands there. I think their sense was if they cut off support entirely, they would lose all ability to throttle back the Saudi or coalition forces. But clearly that didn't work very well in hindsight. So I would say two things in response to that. Number one, I completely agree that the Obama administration towards the end of its term in office did try and rein back the Saudis in terms of arms sales and some of the restrictions.

And Trump obviously kind of took his foot off the guys to do what you will. I don't think that's a defense for the overall conduct of Obama with Yemen. And people say, you know, Syria is the stain on Obama's conscience in the Obama administration when it comes to foreign policy. I actually think it was Yemen because the end of the day, Syria, whatever you think about Syria, it wasn't a war that was, you know, the US had exact direct control over it. Whereas in Yemen, just to push back against your line about, well, you know, losing control over the Saudis. The point about the war in Yemen and Senator Chris Murphy made this point when I interviewed him on my podcast a few weeks ago is that this is not just a Saudi-led war. This is a US-Saudy-led war. And you mentioned refueling, refueling, intelligence, arms sales.

The Saudis could not do this war without US support. The US is not just supporting this war from afar, it's complicit and on a daily basis. And I just want to read out to your quote from Bruce Riddell, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, former advisor on Middle East policy, to four US presidents, including Obama. He said, quote earlier this year, if the US and UK tonight told King Salman, this war has to end, it would end tomorrow. The Royal Saudi Air Force cannot operate without American and British support. Think about that statement, Tommy. A former CIA guy who knows his stuff is saying that if the U.S. told the Saudis the war has to end, it would end tomorrow. We, the West, the U.S., the U.S., the U.S., the U.S., the U.S. U.S. U.K.

crisis tomorrow. And we're not using that power. Yeah. That is a complete travesty. I personally think it's indefensible. When I left the White House in 2013, all the work that I had done regarding Yemen was, you know, specific to targeting AQAP within Yemen. and that was a very serious threat emanating out of Yemen from AQAP, I cannot, for the life of me, understand the strategic interests

in helping a proxy war against Iranian-linked sort of forces that is just destroying a nation and killing an entire population. It's indefensible. And the point about the proxy war is interesting, because of course I mentioned a few moments ago that when the war started, the Obama administration itself privately did not think that there were massive ties between the Iranians and the Houthis.

But you know what has happened in recent years? There have been massive ties between the Iranians, The NBS has pushed the Houthis into Iranian arms. It's backfired. Classic MBS. I call him the reverse midas. Whatever he touches turns to shit. So, you know, he wants to blockade Qatar and cut them off from Iran.

He pushes Qatar into Iran's arms. He bombs the Houthis to cut them off from Iran. He pushes them into Iran's arms. You know, he kills Jamal Khashoggi to silence criticism of his country. He gets way more criticism than he ever anticipated. And just on the point about AQAP, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, regarded as one of the most vicious al-Qaeda groups, The US has been droning Yemen for a while now, and we can have a separate debate about whether that worked or not and whether that was right or wrong.

But what's so interesting about the current conflict is that all of the investigations on the ground, Associated Press, did a massive story in August, is that the Saudis and the Emirates and this coalition are actually employing Al-Qaeda fighters, Tommy, to fight against the Houthis. So not only is it a complete moral catastrophe and humanitarian catastrophe, from a strategic point of view, it makes no sense for the US to be engaging in a war and backing a coalition. of which al-Qaeda is the part? What was the point of 17 years of the war on terror if you're just going to join a coalition which includes al-Qaeda makes absolutely no sense? You mentioned Senator Chris Murphy, I know also Bernie Sanders. There's some movement in Congress to help push to end this war. I should say, Rand Paul has been very tough on calling for accountability with Chmachos. And Mike Lee of Utah. Mike Lee of Utah. So do you sense any momentum in Congress to actually end this horrifying war? Yeah. So that is the only bit of good news.

and the silver lining on this horrific cloud is there does seem to be momentum. I've been tracking this for a couple of years, and I wrote about it last year, and I talked to Chris Murphy about it earlier this year. And Murphy believes, and others believe, Congressman Rokana in the House, who's been very vocal on this, they believe that there is a momentum in the House and the Senate towards ending the war in Yemen, towards at least ending US involvement in the war in Yemen. There have been several votes, Tommy, on this, in terms of arms sales, so you can use them as a proxy for support for Saudi Arabia.

And normally Saudi Arabia used to win votes in the Senate and the House, you know, huge margins. And now they're all tight. They keep getting smaller and smaller, the margin of victory. And I think it was earlier this year, late last year, there was a Senate vote on arm sales. And it was something like, I can't remember, I had 53, 47. It was tight. Murphy's side, Sanders' side, almost won.

And they believe that post these midterms, especially in the House, there will be a huge momentum to really reassess the relationship with Saudi Arabia, arms sales to Saudi Arabia. There may even be a majority in the House, if not the Senate, to cut some of these arm cells of. And that's why I say to people, you know, midterms, the most important. an election of your lifetime, we're told. It's not just about Medicare for all. It's not just about impeaching Trump. It's not just about climate change. It's not just about all those other issues. It's actually, voting in these midterms could actually possibly, potentially, save the lives of tens of

thousands of Yemeni kids. Damn right. Think about that next Tuesday. Yeah. There's been some pressure from businesses. There was a big investment conference in Saudi Arabia recently. A bunch of major CEOs canceled their appearances. More recently, the WWE, the professional wrestling, they're under pressure to cancel an upcoming match in Riyadh. Some colleges are rethinking, accepting, accepting donations from Saudi state-run businesses. Is this pressure real? Or do you think we'll get back to the bullshit Davos and the Desert investment conference in a year? I think not only would we get back to the bullshit Davos and the Desert, even the desert, even happened, and American company still turned up. And they argued on the basis of, you know what, we can't make investment decisions

based on the death of one guy, who we didn't even know. So, and obviously Yemen's not even on their radar, at least Khashoggi is. So unfortunately, I don't think, I think, I think, I think, the businesses and the corporations are going to be the last people to this party. I think we can affect change at a political level, I hope, especially post midterms. The media has a role to play here. And I think the businesses will be the last people to come along because for them, it's their bottom lines. And Saudi is still a very good bottom line. And MBS knows that. Yeah. Last question for you. Is there anything listeners can do to actually help with humanitarian relief efforts now? I mean, is the IRC a good avenue? What do you think would be a good way to

actually help? I mean, off top of my head, there's a lot of fantastic charities operating. Obviously their limited access because the Saudis have literally blockaded. I don't even saw there's a story out that I just caught today or yesterday. I didn't look at the details of it, but it was basically the story out was being reported that MBS was insisting on any aid programs that happened in Yemen that they should also reflect favorably on Saudi Arabia. I mean, this guy is astonishing. So if you're going to do aid workers out of Saudi Arabia,

you also have to praise the Saudi coalition and publicly say they're doing a great job in letting aid into the country, which they're not, by the way, according to most independent observers. I think, look, aid is a very important part. of this equation, and I think there's another important part of the equation we forget. People say, what can we do? Right now, there's a refugee ban going on. There's a travel ban going on. I think we need to work to get rid of that travel ban. I want to hear from Democrats that the next administration is going to do something about the travel ban, the next democratic administration, and the House and Congress are going to do something about it. Just because it's had Supreme Court

approval doesn't make it any less heinous and Islamophobic and racist and completely inhumane. You're blocking refugees. Trump has cut the number of refugees from the Middle East while upping the number from white to Europe, surprise, surprise. And we have this travel ban, which includes countries in the Middle East like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia. So I think there's a lot we can do on the policy front in terms of not just aid, but also shifting our conversation about, you know, right now Trump wants to talk refugees all the time. He wants to talk migrant caravans. And as much as I hate operating on that terrain with him, sadly, he's able to get the media to dance to his tune. So if we are going to be on that terrain and then we need to be making the case for why we should be letting in more migrants, both from an economic perspective and from an asylum refugee position.

expectiveness as the United States of America. Totally agree with you. Medi, thank you so much. I love that you pull no punches on this stuff. People need to hear it's actually happening and where we as a government are complicit because we can do better, but we need to know what we've done in the past.

So I'm very grateful. Appreciate it, Tommy. Thanks for talking about these issues on your show. We need more people doing it here in the US media. We'll keep trying, man. Thanks again, and hope to see you soon. Appreciate it, man. Take care. Bye, Betty.

Thanks again to Medi. You guys should all check out his writing at the Intercept, his podcast deconstructed, his work at Al Jazeera English is up front. And thanks for listening. Talk to you guys next week.