Pod Save the World - The Art of the Venezuela Oil Deal

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

The war with Iran reaches six months, Trump’s Pentagon cuts a corrupt oil deal with Venezuela, and Russia makes an (unwelcome) surprise appearance at a G20 meeting.Tommy and Ben mark six months of the war with Iran, including the death toll, damage to the global economy, and reports that Trump may implement a "mow the grass" forever war strategy. Pete Hegseth is clearly losing the confidence of military leaders as the Secretary of the Army resigns and the Washington Post reports that top military commanders are pushing back on his management of the war. Then Trump announces that the US government is taking a 35% stake in a Venezuelan oil company. The guys walk through why the deal wouldn’t benefit either average Americans or Venezuelans, why it’s doomed to fail, and how the corrupt business partner Alejandro Betancourt is a perfect symbol of Trump’s smash-and-grab foreign policy. Also discussed: the US hosts a G20 finance meeting in North Carolina and invites Russia, Israel’s National Security Minister posts a sickening AI video, what we know about the catastrophic glacial collapse in Nepal that killed more than 900 people, Iceland’s vote against restarting EU membership talks, and a crazy story out of South Korea about government corruption and a cult-like church. Then Tommy speaks with David Eby, Premier of British Columbia, about Trump’s trade war against the Canadians and his “cringe” name change for Lake Ontario.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.You can request a transcript by emailing [e-mail]. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, have you seen the clip of the like three massive hurricanes that have formed in the Pacific thanks to El Nino and I guess climate change? Yeah, I didn't have hurricanes on my list. I knew fires. I should be concerned about earthquakes. But now I guess we have all manner of national disasters out here in California. Earlier this week, there was a report that L.A. might get hit with a hurricane on Labor Day. Yeah. I don't know if that's going to happen anymore.

but what the hell is going on? Not good. We're kind of whistling past the climate apocalypse. Yeah. As of all the other apocalypse is happening around us. There's a climate change apocalypse that I sometimes worry about. I don't know. 31 flavors and nightmares, I guess.

Let's just say the roof of my 9-year-old house was not built for the atmospheric rivers that have been hitting Southern California. So I'm a little worried about stuff dripping. Yeah. Like, I, you know, yes, it's not going to be good. And I have a three-year-old and a two-year-old, and they are outdoor cats, and they are not going to, like, be inside if we're dealing with monsoons. Anyway, this could be a fun show because we are guys who like to have a good time. Always. When things are real shitty. So what we're going to do today, we're going to review six months of Trump's perfect war with Iran.

We're also going to talk about this resumption of fighting that's kicked off over the weekend. And it got a lot worse today. Right before we went in, there was a bunch of, there was an exchange of ballistic missile fire that we'll talk through. We're also going to talk about how the Iran wars led to some pretty dire warnings from some of the most senior military leaders about the strain the war is having on the U.S. military. Then we're going to walk you through this truly crazy deal, the Trump administration announced last week, where the Pentagon is going to take a stake in a Venezuelan oil company. That's a real sentence. Yes, yes, it is. That's a thing that is apparently going to happen. The Pentagon is getting warrants to own an oil company.

Actually, it's based in Barbados. It's not even Venezuela. It's a Barbados. Good tax deal for the Department of War. Yeah, save on your taxes over there. So no potential for corruption there. No, zero. Then we're going to explain who was and who was not invited to the G20 finance meeting in North Carolina.

We'll tell you about the latest on the recovery efforts after this just biblical-looking flood and landslide in Nepal and China, one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life, why Iceland declined to join the European Union. and then a crazy story out of South Korea that's worth watching. And Ben, then I did our interview. It's with David Eby, the premier of British Columbia. We talked about the Trump trade war. We talked about kind of the reaction from average citizens in Canada about all the things Trump has done. Spoiler alert.

They're pissed. Yeah. And it's not just this. They're pissed about the 51st date, the annexation threats, the shit talk, the calling Carney, the governor, like all of it. And interestingly, he is not a member. Premier Eby is not a member of Carney's party. He's like NDPDs to the left.

But there is cross-party support. There is, I think, was a poll we talked about last week. 72%. Yeah, 76, 72% support for Carney walking away. So it just feels like a fight that is destined to get worse and not better because Trump has like so thoroughly enraged average Canadians and awoken the sense of Canadian nationalism. That is, I don't know, seems pretty durable. Maybe I'm wrong. I think you're right because they have both sovereignty and political incentives to not capitulate to Trump.

And, you know, I don't even know what Trump's trying to achieve. I mean, it's like the Iran War, which is about to talk about. Like, what is his goal in this trade war? Like, we don't know other than you got mad. Good question. Yeah, I don't think it's soft wood lumber. All right. Well, let's start with Iran.

So we're about six months into the war with Iran. We are going to discuss some of the great achievements. from Mr. Trump's excursion into Iran that was supposed to be four weeks. But first, we're just going to walk you through this latest round of airstrikes and fighting. So over the weekend, there was an exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran for the first time in a month. Sentcom said they fired at Iranian troops that were trying to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. In response, Iran fired missiles at Jordan. All of those were shot down by interceptors.

The UAE also said they intercepted an Iranian drone over their waters. And the Wall Street Journal said, reported that several ships have been struck by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz over the past couple of days. But then today on Tuesday, the U.S. conducted a bunch more strikes that they said were intended to reduce the risk of Iranian, you know, Iran firing on ships. And then right before we started recording, videos started circulating of Iranian ballistic missiles that have been fired back in response to the U.S. Here is Fox News is Trey Yinks, relaying his conversation with President Trump from earlier Tuesday. Let's watch. I just spoke with President Trump who indicated that if the Iranians respond to these U.S. strikes against. their country, the president said they'll be hit much harder. He went on to say today's strikes

were a very big hit, and if it goes a third time, they're going to be totally wiped out as a country. Now, I asked the president what was hit tonight in Iran, specifically in the southwestern part of the country next to the strait of Hormuz. President Trump says a lot of radar, and added that they were trying to rebuild the radar systems, and the United States was watching. And then just before they completed this construction, that's one. when these strikes took place. The president says the USS George Washington, that new aircraft carrier that arrived in theater last week,

is loaded to the gills with ammunition, and he indicated that they have enough to continue this fight against Iran. Again, if the Iranians do decide to respond. So we now know the Iranians have responded. A little state media clip there. Yeah, yeah. You know, Tray Yinks has done some really good reporting back in the day in the coverage out of Tel Aviv.

It's a real bummer that he's become like a Trump phone call guy. credibly. How many times has he been about to destroy Iran with the third strike? Right. Not a lot of scrutiny on these statements. So on Monday, Axios reported that the U.S. was considering this long-term Mo the Grass strategy where they just periodically degrade Iran's military assets in the region. Ben, one might describe that as a forever war. One might. Tell me, maybe because it's six months and I'm in a retrospective mood, I'm going to start with one thing, which is, you know how Trump likes to talk a lot about how these other countries are freeloaders,

especially allies in Europe and Asia. Do you remember that country that has a prime minister that helped convince Trump to do this and has recently boasted that he was able to get Trump to Obama-Aron? Do you remember how at the beginning of this war, Israel was a part of it? Yeah. What happened there?

Who's the freeloader here? Because near as I can tell, we're in a forever war. Bibi's running a re-election campaign on how he convinced Trump to do this. That's what he said. That's not me. So anyway, just put a pin in that one. It's a good point. The election is the next month.

And we've kind of memory hold that they were a part of the war and then suddenly they weren't and we never talked about that. Yeah, not a deal. Stop, stop. Yeah, look, what's happening here tactically is pretty evident, which is, you know, the Iranians have successfully closed the straight-of-form moves. the Trump administration is going around boasting about the fact that through a combination of tactics, you know, apparently ships in the dark of night close to Oman, the destruction of some of these radars so that the Iranians can see that.

We've now won the great victory, Tommy, not of changing the Iranian regime or destroying the Iranian nuclear program or obliterating the Iranian Navy or military or all the other things that have been claimed. We're now claiming victory because traffic through this straight of her moves is like, I don't know, 40, 60% of what it was. Something like that. So all we're doing now is like hitting the Iranians to try to stop them from hitting tankers to try to like eat a few extra tankers through a strait that was open before the war began. And that's not a durable solution because the Iranians are not going to disappear. They live there, and they will continue to escalate, I think, militarily. They have issued some warnings in recent days that, you know, they're going to kind of return to hitting all these countries that host U.S. military facilities and places where some of these

strikes are taking place from. And so we're just another escalation cycle that is entirely about fighting over this control of the Strait of Hormuz. Why is that preferable to just cutting some deal diplomatically? the straight-to-horn movies and just calling this thing a day. Why do we have to spend tens of billions of dollars more money? We'll get into the depletion of stockpiles. We need an update on the cost. If they're keeping 50,000 U.S. service members in the Middle East. Hundreds of billions of dollars. All these ships are there. Yeah. Anyway, we're naked, everybody else. Yeah, let's stick

through some of the stats. By the way, though, if you like foreign policy coverage that doesn't just take Trump's phone call and repeat what he says, please subscribe to POTSate the world here on YouTube. Organic plug, yeah. We are trying to build a progressive counterweight. to all the right-wing crap you see from Fox News in particular that is advocating for war. And when you subscribe to our channel, you help us grow and you also help us get good information into the YouTube algorithm and get good information to people. So please do. Also, it's free. So just a couple stats, Ben. The casualty count is now, after six months, 757 wounded 18 Americans dead. We don't know the real casualty count in Iran, but the journal estimates 3,000 dead

related to combat operations. Obviously, that also, you know, that number is bigger when you include all civilians, including well over 100 girls at a school. Despite claiming he was going to rescue the protesters' life for Iranians in Iran is horrible. Inflation is at 80%. Inflation for food items is way worse. The Guardian reported that vegetable oil in Iran in August cost 383% more than it did a year ago. The price of eggs rose by 294 percent, chicken by 177 percent, and red meat by 148 percent. Oil prices are up 23 percent. In the U.S. gas prices up by 38 percent. The chief economists at Moody's put the cost of war at over $1,200 per American household between gas and inflation and interest rates. To your point earlier about shipping through the Strait of Hermuz,

so pre-war levels were about 130 ships per day. This data firm Kepler says that in recent weeks, it's about a dozen ships per day going through the strait. So that is way, way, way down. There have been 71 attacks on ships since the war started killing 19 sailors. Iran is attacked. Israel, Qatar, Iraq, Syria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, and Kuwait. So we've ignited this nice little regional conflagration. I guess the only good thing you can say about the Iran conflict is that it's currently only six months long.

But, you know, the fighting we saw today suggests that we could see another six months. quite easily. Yeah, and first of all, I still find it strange that we think there was something called like the 12-day war last year. I mean, because this gets to the cost. We've had like an advanced force posture in the region, like since that 12-day war. Like this is, this is in some ways more than the six-month war. But if you even take the six-month-old saying, I think the fundamental problem remains the

flaw at the outset of the war, which, I mean, one flaw is just you shouldn't fight wars you don't need to fight. But the other flaw strategically was, I don't think Donald Trump, in his own mind, knows what purpose this war is serving anymore. He was clearly convinced that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly and there'd be some Venezuela-like transformation, which we'll get to when we get to Venezuela. And since that didn't happen, like he just can't identify a way to end the war because there's no way to end the war without accepting the fact that this was a pointless endeavor. You know, like there's not going to be some miraculous victory of, you know, the Iranian regime surrendering. So it's just going to be tip for tad and tip for tad until Trump realizes

that the best you're going to get is opening up the straight-of-war moves, basically. And so it's an absurd reason. It's a truly absurd reason to be fighting a war. The incalculable cost is the extent to which this is like a body blow to whatever remained of America's, I don't even want to say standing anymore, because long term this is going to make Middle Eastern countries, you know, see U.S. partnership is dangerous at worst, unreliable at best. It is completely screwed over allies. who were going to start to hedge aggressively from the United States and seek other arrangements, whether it's with China or other countries. And just public opinion.

I mean, I find myself, Tommy, like, not, I don't trust what the Pentagon says. No. I have trouble even, it's not that I don't trust, but this regurgitation of Trump phone calls, you know, like. Yeah, but that's only a few, that's a few reporters and a few outlets. I agree with you, but then a lot of others are doing like pretty backbreaking reporting. Yeah, yeah. We'll get some of that a bit. But there's, you know, it's never good when like you have this kind of a country that already lacked confidence and information.

And I think we may look back on this war as like a bigger thing than it even feels like now and it feels pretty big in terms of like trust and institutions. And then lastly, I just want to put a pin on this because you and I text about it a lot. The economic disruptions you described are contributing to this. anxiety that we see most primarily in the bond markets where you have unsustainable fiscal situations in countries. You've got, you know, growing deficits, growing debt obligations, and then countries are making that worse because they're having to spend money to fill the gap to try to fight inflation because of higher energy prices. Like this feels like a straw on the back of a camel that, you know, feels poised to break. And so don't forget to tie whatever economic

disruptions we face in the next year or two to impart this decision? Oh, no doubt. I mean, we talked about it on a recent show, the degree to which increased oil costs have led to all these disturbances in the Japanese bond market, for example. But yeah, I mean, just to put some data behind that, like the 30-year U.S. Treasury yields are near two-decade highs. That's because people are dumping U.S. treasuries. Ten-year bond yields in Japan are above 3 percent for the first time since 1996. In the U.K., their bonds are the highest level since 2007 in Germany, the highest since 2011. Our debt is $40 trillion. That's 120% of GDP. France's debt is over $4 trillion, which is 117% of GDP. Japanese debt is two times their GDP. So, like, I'm not usually like a big deficit debt guy. We've heard so many

warnings about it over the years. And we need to bring back some bowls here. Yeah. But at some point, it becomes the, you know, just servicing the debt becomes so unbelievably expensive that like investors will his confidence. One last point on this. It's just likely that the kind of status quo is going to lead to higher costs in terms of, you know, the price tag, but also costs in terms of human lives because USA Today had a report out today about this new Iranian missile that they deployed that is apparently the one causing a ton of damage and breaking through air defenses and hitting bases. They call it the Castle Breaker. It's a mobile launch missile that has a 900 mile range and the warhead can maneuver as it's coming down. So it's evading U.S. missile defense systems, and they

think that that's what killed three U.S. troops in Jordan back in July. So if they have a big stockpile of these things, they start launching them at U.S. bases, like more service members are going to die. And this is what happens in every war, right? Adversaries innovate. You know, and they figure out different missiles or different drones that can penetrate different defenses at the same time that we have a munitions problem, which we'll talk about. But the other thing that's, you know, notable is that the Iranian president just met with Putin and, you know, the Chinese and the, the Russians and the Chinese have incentive to help the Iranians innovate and help make this more costly to us. They are a beneficiary of this war.

Like, make no mistake, because it bogs us down. It drains our munitions. It drains our credibility. It drives up energy prices, which is good for Putin. So I'd watch that space, too. So there's also these concerns within the Pentagon's top, top military leaders. The Washington Post reported this out. They had, they reported that a twice monthly report called the Secretary of Defense Order Books, or STOB, contained some notable dissent from within the

ranks of the military leadership on the direction of the war, who reportedly think that the Iran operation has gone on, and it's been, quote, too much for too long. So this is described by the post, the STOB quote, outlines the worldwide availability of U.S. warships, aircraft, personnel, weapon systems. It reflects the president's priorities for the force, which are carried out by the Secretary of Defense. So some of the... the moves Hexath has made that seem to have concerned or pissed off some of the combatant commanders are things like, you know, he's extending the deployment of a bunch of troops in the Middle East until next year. The head of the Pacific Command is not thrilled about having to send a carrier

strike group, so an aircraft carrier and the destroyers that travel with it from his area of operations in Asia to the Middle East. The Post says the Navy in particular is feeling taxed and overextended due to long deployments for the forest and then wear and tear on naval assets. We've talked about that in the context of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Then I talked to a bunch of people who worked at top jobs at the Pentagon about this post story. And most of them said basically the same thing, which is like it's not unsurprising or all that rare to have combatant commanders non-conquer on an order. Non-conquer means I don't like it, but I'll do it. It's like, you know, you're with your spouse. You're like, fine, we can get tie, but I'm not happy about it.

passive aggressive. I do like tie. I do that. I like it a lot of tie. So, but like the way to understand this is like you're a combatant commander, you have a specific region, you have a specific job in their scarce resources. So it's no surprise that if you're the guy in charge of the Indo-Pacific, you're going to be pissed off when the aircraft carrier in your region goes to the Gulf again. So they thought that was not surprising, but everyone thought it was extraordinary that this leaked because it suggested a level of anxiety and frustration and anger about hex-seth decision-making that is so high that someone was willing to risk ending their career, getting court-martialed, you know, maybe going to prison to leak this to the post.

Yeah, I think, first of all, in the substance of it, look, why does this matter? You know, at the far end, it matters because if we have a reduced force posture and reduced munitions and all the rest of it, the huge scenarios you are concerned about are Russian provocation or military action into Europe, which we have. we've been talking about as a risk, you know, the Baltic states or somewhere else, or some Chinese action in Taiwan. Apparently, such a risk that the CIA director flew to Moscow, by the way. Yeah. So this is like, you know, I don't think that's likely, but it, at the precise

time that we appear to be concerned about, you know, at least one of those scenarios. Then beyond that, like the other thing is that these forces are often used for things like, you know, joint military exercises, like the kind of routine functioning of how we work with allies, how we do things like freedom of navigation operations in the Pacific and the South China Sea, you know, like it just makes it harder for these people to do the kind of routine elements of their job. And there are other kind of things that could happen like natural disasters where the U.S. military could help out. It's just not a good thing in principle to have this diminished a presence, even if, you know, nothing goes wrong. And I should say, for what purpose?

You know, it's not like we're fighting the Nazis here, you know. It's not even like it's right after 9-11 or something. Like, why we're doing this because of an episodic decision that Trump made in February on an ad hoc basis. On your latter point, there is a clear sign that there's just no confidence in Heg-Seth. Yeah. Even though he's purged people that, you know, these are the people who remain after the purges. You know, like the people leaking are, you know, the ones that survived him, you know, fire. a bunch of people and not promoting a bunch of people. So these aren't like left-wingers,

I don't think. And it shows you that they just fundamentally don't trust his leadership and don't think that he listens to them. Because, you know, my sense, the military does not usually leak this kind of thing, you know. And that suggests that they don't feel like they have an outlet to either Hegset or even, frankly, to Congress, you know, which, you know, oftentimes is an advocate for the uniformed military. So it shows you. It shows you. you how bottled up things are and how pent up the frustrations are. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Helix. Sleep is unbelievably important to me.

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That's Helixleep.com slash world for 27% offsitewide, helixleckslip.com slash world. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Ridge. It's 2026. We have a lot of electronic devices, and for some infuriating reason, they all seem to have different charging cords. It's annoying in everyday life and a full nightmare to corral when you're traveling. Well, those days are over thanks to Ridge. Just like Ridge revolutionized the wallet, Ridge has now changed the game for portable charging. Ridge's five-in-one travel power bank has built-in cables and lets you charge all your devices at the same time with just one power bank and no extra cables.

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This is a guy named Dan Driscoll. He has repeatedly butted heads with Hegsteth, according to news reports, over the last year or two. He's very close to JD Vance. I think they're a classmate to E.L. law school. The main beef between them seemed to be Driscoll's objection to Hegsef, purging other top military leaders that he just didn't like often because they were women or they were black or they were, I don't know, at a mind of their own, including the April. firing of the then Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, a move that Hexeth made while Driscoll was on vacation. Very courageous there, Pete.

And a position that hasn't been filled. There's also been a bunch of, there's like three other top army leaders that Hegsef forced out. The army is down from 10 four-star generals to five four-star generals since Hexeth was installed at the Pentagon. I think all of us would agree that there were probably too many, like, very senior leaders at the Pentagon. But that seems like there's been a bunch of stories about kind of the way that they're The army in particular is rudderless in this moment, and Driscoll leaving is going to add to that.

Driscoll also reportedly objected to Hegsef firing a couple of black officers and a couple of female officers, or at least preventing their promotions. He also was sent to Ukraine for negotiations that made Hegsef feel threatened. And also Hegsafe seemed to think that Driscoll might be groomed to replace him because he is not up to the job. So, I don't know, seemed bad. And also Hegsef, apparently. wants the Pentagon flack Sean Parnell to replace him, which is the idea of like the assistant secretary in charge of communications taking over as head of the army is like unheard of to me. Maybe I'm just wrong, but like that seems crazy.

Yeah, well, because there are two things is there's a Hegsep issue and then a related Trump issue, right? The Hegset issue is the complete lack of regard for competency in the U.S. military. Like we've seen this in other Trump agencies, particularly in the second term, where they really don't care if positions go unfilled, if people are competent or not. All they care about is like extreme loyalty, extreme on message. Like when I say jump, you say how high or when I show up to like do pushups with you for a photo op, you, you know, act like a, you know, essentially a trained seal. And it's one thing when we hear those stories that like,

you know, and I'm not trying to diminish these other agencies, but like, I don't even want to name, but you know, like the EPA or the ones that they want to destroy, you know. The U.S. military is not a place to, like, do this level of the destruction of competence and purges. Like, make no mistake, these are, again, hundreds, thousands of years of experience, like, you know, being sent out the door, being shown in the way, transformation in the demographics of the senior ranks of the military, like, that's bad. The Trumpian piece that I worry about, we've talked about kind of the authoritarian watch

on the military, is in the last two years of the Trump administration, I just have a feeling, like, especially if they lose the midterms, like, shit can get really weird. Like, that could be when he wants to, like, you know, make a move on Greenland over the objections of Congress, or maybe he'll come back to wanting to put the military in the streets, you know. And it does feel like this effort to come transform the military into some compliant, you know, this guy who resigned is not exactly like a resistance lib. No, he's a J.D.S. And so it makes you work.

wonder, like what the bar is to be in a decision-making role at the Pentagon. And A, does that mean they might be more likely to go along with truly crazy shit that Trump asked them to do? And B, like, we are allowed to look past Trump, like, oh, my God, what kind of Pentagon is the next president going to inherit? You know, if you're a Democratic president, you're going to walk into a military that has been emptied out of anybody except the most diehard maga loyalists or yes men, and they're all men, and they will have lost all this capability, and we'll probably also have like hundreds

of billions of dollars in boondoggle contracts with like the likes of Don Jr.'s drone manufacturers. Well, let's get to that. I'm sure many listeners were confused by recent reports that the Pentagon has led an investment into a Venezuelan oil company. You are not alone. Here's what happened and why this idea seems doomed to failed in the connection to Don Jr. So the investment was led by office within the Department of Defense called the Office of Strategic Capital. So it's called the OSC. The OSC was set up during the Biden administration. The idea was to make investments in defense industrial production. Remember, the war in Ukraine kind of exposed shortages and munitions and other technologies that have since been exacerbated further by the war in Iran.

The office's loan authority went from about $1 billion under Biden to over $200 billion under Trump. So they got a lot of cash to move around here. One of the early moves under Trump was to loan like $600 million to a company connected to Donald Trump Jr. So great start. What the Trump administration announced last week was that the Pentagon now has an option to take a 35% stake in the parent company of a Venezuelan oil company called North American Blue Energy Partners. That company is run by a guy named Alejandro Betancourt.

We'll come back to him in a minute. Under this deal, though, the U.S. has the right to buy 20% of the president. production from all of the company's current and future oil fields at cost with the right of first refusal to buy the rest of the production. Let's say there's some like emergency. We can just try to buy all that oil. Concurrent with that deal, the Venezuelan government granted North American Blue energy partners 100-year leases on 17 oil fields with reserves estimated up to $65 billion. So a shit ton of oil is the technical term. Trump is trying to sell this as some sort of like cost-free windfall for the American people that's

going to reduce gas prices. But in reality, I think there's a couple of reasons to assume that like this thing's never going to get completed. The first is just the political risk. The next U.S. president could kill this deal. Any Democratic president should. This is like corrupt and stinks to high heaven. The next Venezuelan president could too if Trump ever allows elections. And many experts think that this deal violates Venezuela's constitution. And they basically just question the legitimacy of any deal made by an interim government with a leader installed by the United States at gunpoint. I think that's a reasonable way to view it. There's also the question of political opinion in Venezuela.

Trump was very popular in Venezuela right after the Maduro operation. His approval has steadily fallen ever since. Trump has propped up Delci Rodriguez, who has Maduro's number two and Stoge. He's cut side deals like this. Everyone in Venezuela sees all the corruption happening around them. And Venezuelans, let's just say, they have a history of being a touch heavy-handed when it comes to taking back oil assets that they feel were utterly taken for those. I've seen that movie.

Ask Hugo Chavez. And then there's the oil itself. So without getting too technical, Venezuela oil and oil is heavy and thick. You don't just like drill a hole and it comes out. You need specialized equipment. You need an enormous amount of investment. By some estimates, up to $100 billion all in to upgrade the pipelines, the power sources and everything else.

And it can take a decade to develop fully all of these oil fields, which is why I don't think we're ever really going to see much of this oil and why most oil and gas companies are looking elsewhere, where the investment required is lower. and it's just less like political risk generally. So Ben, I'll pause there. Then I think we should really dig into the corruption piece of this. But like I think both of us in the same reaction to this with like you read it once. You're like what the fuck?

And then you dig into it and it gets even more bonkers kind of like the deeper you go. Yeah. It's basically like a, you know, 2026 finance and natural resources version of imperialism. I mean, this is just straight up imperialism. Like we went in, we removed the leader of the country. under, you know, as bad as the guys, he was pretty strange, dubious purposes. Like, do we really think that was about narco-trafficking? No, it was about oil.

No. So it's straight of imperialism, that's bad. Like, we shouldn't be in that business. Like, it's wrong. The second thing is let's talk about the Venezuelan people and then the American people. The Venezuelan people have gotten very little out of this whole enterprise. You know, look, you and I, me probably in particular, because of my role in Cuba, at times have been on, you know, the wrong side or people have been critical

who wanted to remove Maduro and want to remove the Cuban government. And my argument has always been, not that I'm not sympathetic to your plight living under an autocratic leader, it's that the United States and particularly Donald Trump doing that is not in service of your interest. And here we are, like months after this operation, and nothing about the Venezuelan government has changed. It's run by the exact same people, except not Nicholas Maduro. It's still corrupt. It's still authoritarian. Maria Machado, remember her Nobel Peace Prize winner is nowhere to be seen. They won't even let her go back into the country. So it's, this was like, this was not about in the same way that the Iran war wasn't about, like bringing democracy to Iran.

Like, that's not what this was about. And then the American people, you know, I'm sure on Fox, this has been treated as like some big win. And, you know, Rubio likes to, you know, pose in the Maduro sweatsuit on Air Force One, but what are we getting out of this? Like, nobody can articulate. Like, I think it's wrong. But even if you're like, don't care about imperialism and stealing other people's resources, like, I, I don't, the gas prices are up. Like, like, I don't, nobody's explained how this is going to make anything better for Americans. Like, it just, this feels like such a strange inside play that is in this pivots of corruption, and going to somehow end up lining the pockets of a small set of people in Venezuela and the United States.

Yes, that's what this is. It just does not feel like anything that benefits any larger interest, either Venezuelan or America. Yeah, like, first of all, this is a deal that would make Hugo Chavez proud. This is, you know, like just nationalizing these. So Trump is struggling to get major oil companies to invest in Venezuela because of the- Too expensive, too risky. The instability and the costs. So they have the Pentagon form a partnership with an alleged money.

launderer, that's who this Bettencourt guy is, to facilitate this deal. We don't know any of the financial terms, as far as I can tell. We don't know if there's other private capital that's part of it or like some secret side deals to divide up the revenue. Ultimately, it's just part of this like smash and grab job presidency where Trump gets himself richer. He tries to extract as much money as he can from everything and for his family and for his friend and for people who cut him bribe. So I think it's really worth watching who else gets involved in this publicly because I think they deserve some scrutiny. And then again, on Betancourt, he's like a princeling in Venezuela. He got rich by getting state contracts from Hugo Chavez. He later backstabbed Maduro

had to flee the country, came back, became like maybe the reportedly the go between Trump and Delci Rodriguez and Rubio, like, during the Maduro operation or after. Again, but he's been investigated for money laundering and for allegedly helping embezzle more than a billion dollars from Venezuela. The Trump administration apparently lobbied the Swiss government to get them to drop the charges. And now this guy is the U.S. government's partner on this deal? Sounds perfect. I mean, sounds perfect. He's like tailor made for the Trump operation.

And it just shows you, yeah, it's a smash and grab operation. in the absolute best case scenarios, like you said, take a decade to kind of get this thing online. Do we really think Trump's singing that far ahead? Like, they're just going to squeeze the juice that they can out of this stuff and spread the money around in a small circle while they can. And this just shows you the lack of regard they have for certainly the Venezuelans. Delci, everybody, you know, Delci Rodriguez and her brother get to kind of maintain power,

and I'm sure they get a cut. This guy gets a cut. people around Trump get cuts and and that's about it. It's not like some grand strategy. This is old fashioned smash and grab imperialism. Yeah. I just want to know the financial details

because what the U.S. gets is warrants in this parent company of Bettencourt's oil companies. What a warrant is is like an option where at a certain price you can exercise it. And apparently they're called penny options. So it sounds like we paid like literally like literally a penny for these warrants, but then, you know, if the value of the warrant goes to $10, you exercise the option, and then all of a sudden you have all this additional value.

So it's interesting because the U.S. government is now incentivized to get these oil fields producing more oil, but also to see the value of this corporation go up, right? Because we have these warrants. We have equity in this guy. Right. We have equity in this fucking oil company. And so my question is, who else has warrants? Like, does John Jr. have a bunch, like, to other corrupt people around the Trump administration?

Because, like, imagine, like, having a warrant in something where the U.S. has a vested financial interest in seeing the share price go up. It's just, it's the whole thing is super shady. The fact that this, like, Barbados-based company just got 100-year titles for Venezuelan oil fields. Like, first of all, that's going to be stuck in litigation in perpetuity. Yeah. We know some of the gut people who are probably pursuing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, in the fact that it's clearly opaque by design.

But if you just take a step back, like, why is it? I mean, this is like a leftist fever dream. Like the Pentagon taking a stake in an oil company to steal the natural resources of a Latin American country and put in a shell company in Barbados. Like, that's the thing that is happening in the world, you know, that is completely absurd. If Russia was doing this, you know, there'd be seven trillion Atlantic articles about it. Like, you know, Anne Applebaum would write a book about it. You know, like, this is, like, what the fuck is going on here? This is nuts.

It's wild. It's wild. Okay. I'm glad we got that off for chess. Meanwhile, the G20, the finance ministers are meeting as we speak in Asheville, North Carolina. Let me tell you a little bit about the guest list, Ben. On the guest list, Russia's finance minister. This was his first time at a G20 meeting since 2022 when the Russians evaded the Ukraine. I believe that year it was on Zoom, and the Germans, like stormed out of the Zoom meeting.

There's got to be his first trip to the U.S. in a very long crowd, too, right? I looked at him. I look that he's in, like, a hippie town in North Carolina. I love Asheville. Asheville is beautiful. My first political job was in Asheville in Buncom County. I did debate prep with Obama. Oh, yeah. In 08. It's like beautiful rolling hills, clouds and stuff. Great, great town. Okay. So Besson has a bilateral meeting with the Russian foreign minister, not invited to this meeting, South Africa, or their representative. The Trump administration is still mad at South Africa about a non-existent genocide against white farmers in South Africa. So for those of you keeping a score at home, the guy from the country responsible for. for killing hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine and also his own country invited, the guy responsible for the made up fake genocide, not invited.

Yeah. So that's how this works now. It tells you a lot. And, you know, I do think, you know, I watched this and Bessent, who's, you know, kind of going up my power rankings for odious Trump administration officials? Because it makes his shit talking to the TV. Yeah. Like the sheen is off from like, you know, early Trump.

market whisperer Normie Scott Besson. Like he's becoming more and more just a cartoon. But, you know, he's out there demanding that, you know, these other countries join his non-existent economic deeday against Iran. He's like speaking for them. He's saying everybody agreed, but notably they're not with him. He's doing that by himself in like interviews. He's got trade wars going against, you know, the Canadian finance minister and terrorists on the Europeans. Like, this is a place I mean, again, not to come back to an obsession, the G20 is where you're supposed to deal with the global economy. You know, that's what you're supposed to be working on there. These issues in the bond markets would be a normal thing that a bunch of finance ministers should come together and figure out how to coordinate measures to deal with that.

And instead, he's just jawboning these foreign ministers about cutting off the Iranians and forcing them to sit in a room with the Russians. You know, how do you think the Europeans felt about that? Right. It's honestly worse than not solving the problem. It's like the way you solve the problem right now for a lot of these countries is you end the war in Iran. So the gas prices go down. And instead he's like, why don't you join us in this effort that's going to make everything worse? Because all these, you know, you can call it economic D-Day, but the Iranians are going to respond to economic D-Day with ballistic missiles.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's smashing up this institution, which I got to tell you, like, whatever you think of, you know, the international system, the G20 is like, that's, you know, that's, you know, place, that's where you can actually get the most done. And it was the most important institution in some ways of the Obama era. That's where we coordinated the response to the financial crisis. And that's clearly not what they're doing. Like they're just kind of taking their short-term obsessions and bringing them into this forum and then bringing their racism into it. I mean, they don't get to choose, like who's in the G20, South Africa is in there. And they're in there

because they were one of the biggest economies in the world. And also because they're representative of sub-Saharan Africa. So they're kind of representing a region, too. And it just shows, again, the utter lack of regard. Meanwhile, the Financial Times just reported Russia secretly helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles. Leaks reveal a program behind one of the most significant known transfers of military technology from Moscow to Tehran. This is what I told you. So Putin, you know, earlier today met with the Iranian president. And, you know, I speak some Putin. You know, he talked about how he was admired what they were doing in the war and we're going to help them wink, wink, you know, and that to me is Putin saying like, yeah, this kind of stuff

is going to happen. The Iranians are going to get armed. I think Putin also suggested he would help them kind of break this blockade, like resupply with some stuff like overland. So we're just driving the Russians and Iranians closer together. And, you know, Russia, Iran, North Korea, China are getting closer. The Indians are moving in that direction. Like, that's, us being so contemptuous of these other institutions that we built or driving people into the arms of each other, including the Russians and the Chinese. Did you see that Zelensky said that North Korea may send another 50,000 troops to Russia? Yeah.

That is a lot of people. That has a lot of manpower. I mean, Kim Jong-un doesn't seem that worried about this. Been one of the best deals he's made because it's revived the North Korean economy. Ben, as we were preparing for this episode, I was procrastinating. and checking out Twitter. I came across a video that had been posted and then deleted by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar bin Kabir.

Have you seen this thing? I've seen, unfortunately, the algorithm tends to feed me the Ben-Givir content. Okay, so let's watch what this... Is this the concentration camera? Gentleman posted. Yeah, that's same. So this is a bunch of overweight Palestinians being marched into what looks like a concentration camp. Now they're coming up skinny and crying.

So for those who couldn't hear me over the soundtrack, Ben Gavir was taking a bunch of overweight Palestinians, bringing them into a concentration camp on a train tracks, and then they came out skinny and crying. Again, this was posted by the Minister of National Security. He's part of the Israeli government. He's part of the Netanyahu coalition. His party, Jewish power, has six seats in the Knesset out of 120. Yeah, I mean, let's be very clear about this. There's no question that's concentration camp.

Like, there's walls, there's barbed wire, there's a guard tower. The inmates are wearing drab identical uniforms with numbers on them. They're coming out skinny. This is not at all subtle. And this guy is the national security minister of the state of Israel. So is he extremist? Yes. But he's an extremist who is in one of the most important positions in the Israeli government

that is in charge of the police. That plays an enormous role in the West Bank. That is fundamental to Bibi Nainiao's political survival, these last several years. So he's both a fringe character and a mainstream character. And I have not entered this discourse. I will get out of it very quickly.

But we've got a lot of people in this country that want to spend a lot of time pouring over thousands of hours. We're done talking about the soundpiker and fucking Twitch screamers when, like, this is a disproportionate amount of time spent talking about a Twitch streamer compared to this gentleman who is in the Israeli government

is crazy. This is the only thing I'm going to say about this. Like, Hassan is about a five-minute drive from here right now. Is what it is. In his house doing its stream. And this guy is helping run the fucking Israeli government. It's crazy. This is the actual problem.

And people can try to not look at it. People can try to pretend it doesn't exist. People can call you. I mean, if I said, because that objectively looks like Nazi concentration camps. Like, that's what it looks like. That's not, you know. By design. That's an objective reality.

That's not my opinion. And if you say that out loud, you know, you get resolutions against you in the Congress, you know. And then the national security minister of the state of Israel posts that. And we're supposed to pretend it like it doesn't exist in the physical world. It's crazy stuff. Speaking of defeating right-wing psychos, van, the midterms are coming up. I don't need to tell you that. Votes of America has identified 12 of the most beatable Republicans up for reelection this year.

We're calling them the crooked dozen. I think we already got two of them out. So kick in the crooked dozen, it is very doable, but it's going to take everybody stepping up between now and election day. Vote Save America is here with practical actions you can take to help us win. It literally takes two seconds. Just sign up at Votesaveamerica.com. This message has been paid for by Votesaveamerica. Vote Save America.com.

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By now, I'm sure listeners have seen footage of this terrifying landslide in the flash floods in Nepal and China. It's like truly some of the scariest stuff I've ever seen in my life. The stories from survivors are gut-wrenching. The disaster was believed to have been caused by a giant chunk of ice, part of a glacier. It split off a mountain, fell 4,000 feet. and the force from the fall was so strong that it registered as a 5.2 magnitude seismic event and seemingly pulverized the ice into water, which went downhill and led to this massive flash flood.

The New York Times reported that the floodwaters were so strong that bodies have been found literally hundreds of miles away in India. That's how strong these waters were. As of Tuesday, more than 900 people are confirmed dead, several thousand more than more missing. The Red Cross estimates that 90,000 people have been impacted by the disaster. Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday that over 10,000 people have been rescued so far, including 323 foreign nationals. Rescuers are still trying to free hundreds of workers who are trapped in tunnels at this like hydropower site. We got this message from CNN International

correspondent, Hanako Montgomery, about those rescue efforts. Let's listen. The focus of the story has been about the hydro power plant workers. And we spoke to about a dozen or so survivors, people who were rescued from those plants. And what they saw was truly devastating. I mean, they were in tunnels working when the flood happened. And they said that if they hadn't climbed up higher in the tunnels, if they didn't hang on to parts of the wall tightly enough,

then they would have been swept away in the full. and they saw a lot of their coworkers, their friends, their family members swept away in the floods too. I'm also currently right now in Baratapur. We are about 60 miles south of the worst hit areas, but we're in this area because a lot of bodies, hundreds of bodies have been washing up in this area downstream from the Himalayas. So the disaster is also increasing political tensions between Nepal and China and has raised a bunch of questions about whether China was sharing enough information about flood risks and glacier levels. The Chinese have also removed videos and images of the disaster from social media.

They've been accused of covering up the death toll in Tibet. So kind of no surprise, yeah. Not a lot of transparency. No, no. Remember that COVID thing? It's also a huge challenge for an Nepal's brand new government a couple months ago. We covered the election of Berlendra Shah, this 36-year-old engineer and rapper, who's now prime minister.

He took power in March. there were these huge, like, you know, Gen Z-led protests, and now he has to tackle this kind of unfathomable disaster. Ben, I mean, this is like just a climate change fever dream, I guess. Yeah, this is entirely a climate change phenomenon. That's why glaciers are falling off of mountains. And I should say, like, where we come into it, I'll try to pivot this into something affirmative

because there's a lot of negativity today. But Nepal was responsible for less than 0.1% of total greenhouse gas emissions. So how would you feel if you're living in a country that did absolutely nothing to cause man-made climate change? And because these other rich countries, the U.S. and China, chief among them, did so little to restrain their own emissions, you've now got like mass flooding in a country. It demonstrates a kind of moral necessity as well as a practical necessity to take not just action to slow greenhouse gas emissions, but mitigation efforts, right? The idea that we need to help countries prepare for these kinds of things. And that leads into the USAID point.

We don't have a USAID. Usually that would be the tip of the spear of our capacity to help a country like Nepal deal with this. And so once again, we see the cost of like big balls and Elon Musk and their, you know, ketamine-fueled fever dream at the beginning of Trump administration. Now, again, the affirmative part is to be like this is when we ultimately can rebuild a different kind of U.S. foreign policy apparatus, we're going to need to think about climate change and climate mitigation and disaster response again. You know, so all these things that are happening that we're seeing a lack of response for, we're going to need not just a U.S. space, but kind of a collective effort to deal with emergencies like this because they're going to keep happening. Yeah, I mean, there's a great report in the New York Times that said that climate change could erase as much as 75% of the remaining glaciers by 2100. So this is coming pretty quick.

Yeah. Very scary. Speaking of ICE over in Iceland, Icelanders rejected a referendum to restart time. talks to join the European Union. So to be clear, this was not a vote about joining the EU. It was a vote on whether Iceland should restart talks with the EU about membership. Iceland had applied in 2009, but they basically shut down talks in 2013. The vote was 52.8% against 47.2% for with over 82% turnout. Pretty damn good. This all came in the wake of Trump's threats to take Greenland, but the referendum was moved up a year after Trump mistakenly said Iceland, four different

times when he was talking about his plan to annex Greenland. So funny, funny how things happened. Iceland's already a member of NATO, which before the Trump era would help deter others from invading you, especially members of NATO. But things change. The fishing industry campaigned hard against the referendum because it would force Iceland to open its territorial waters to other European ships. Not surprisingly, the rural areas where these fishermen live voted against referendum. The urban areas were for it. Iceland's already in the EU single market, so they got a lot of benefits of membership without being members.

Ben, any thoughts on this vote? And what do you think about the pitch? I actually asked David E.B. about this, that Canada should join the EU. Well, I thought this was interesting. I kind of went down to Iceland rabbit hole in this. You know, not be, like, Iceland is a fairly bespoke, in a unique country, obviously, given its geographic circumstances and its industries. But it's a good test case of, like, how does a small country deal?

with global chaos and instability, right? Because the fundamental argument for coming into the EU fully is that in a really fucking messed up world where there's going to be a lot of conflict and their trade wars and all the rest of it and there's likely to be financial instability, that maybe it's better off like tucking under the tent here, the EU, and that that can provide us with security. The counter argument would be the inverse, like in that kind of world, like we need to go hunker down, do our own thing, preserve our way of life, preserve our identity, avoid these clubs, spare our fishing industry disruptions, that kind of stuff. And so I thought it was like an interesting test case of where opinion is in like a very

reasonable country, like Iceland as reasonable people. They also had suffered the mightily into the 2008 financial crisis, people remember. And so similarly, it's like, do we, you know, do we get closer to these places or we stay outside the club? And, you know, it's yet another barometer that people are kind of like clinging to their traditional identities, you know, like there's a kind of sovereignty conscious nationalism. I'm not saying that, you know, Icelandic nationalism is a little different than other places. To me, that's like what's interesting about it. I, you know, I'm an integrationist, so I probably

would have been like one of those urban Icelandic people who voted to join, but, you know, that clearly people are not sold yet. And Canada's interesting because what Carney has to demonstrate is like, is there some alternative way in which, you know, that? medium-sized countries, bigger than Iceland, can build trade agreements and supply chains and, you know, regulatory regimes together, or you just got to, like, jump in the club that's available, you know? I think he would prefer the former than the latter, but we're going to see if that's possible. Yeah. Last story. We wanted to circle back to South Korea, where we covered a lot a couple of years ago because of all the madness there, but we haven't touched on it in a while.

So listeners might remember former South Korean president Yun-Suk Yule's declaration of martial law back in 2024. It did not go well for him at the time. And now Yun is set to spend the rest of his life in jail. His wife now was also in a bunch of trouble. She was the genesis of a bunch of political scandals during his tenure. For example, in 2022, she was caught on camera accepting an expensive Dior handbag. But this year, she received both a seven-year sentence and a separate four-year sentence for bribery stock manipulation and doling out political favors. But where this gets weird and interesting

is that her political downfall has also ensnared an 83-year-old woman named Han Hachja, who is the widow of the founder of the Unification Church. Listern may have heard of Reverend Sun Young Moon. He called himself the Messiah. He built this cult-like church following. Han is now like kind of the heir parent of the church. She is accused of giving Mrs. Kim, the former First Lady of South Korea, about $60,000 worth of gifts. The court said the gifts were bribes to increase the church's political power and influence. So the Unification Church has a lot of business interests. The Financial Times said they range from skiing to like ocean and golf resorts, construction, defense, and automotive parts. They also own the Washington Times. Newt Gingrich is a columnist there.

He wrote a column asking Trump to intervene in Hans case. Weird shit. The new report, public had a great breakdown of the whole story. They pointed out that the church paid Trump $2.5 million for speeches in 2021 and 2022. Here's a clip of him praising Hunt. I want to thank the Universal Peace Federation and in particular Dr. Hawke Jahan Moon, a tremendous person for her incredible work on behalf of peace all over the world. So the Unification Church. Also, remember the guy who assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shenzhou Abe said he did so because of Abe's ties to the Unification Church. The shooter's mom gave away all her money to the church. That was a big thing with the Moonies. You're asked to like sign away your life savings.

So it harmed a lot of innocent people in Japan and South Korea. And then in the U.S. has just these fucking weird longstanding ties to the Republican Party that I think date back to Nixon. So very weird stuff all around and just kind of like interesting to see, you know, Yunsuk Yule gets drunk one night, declares martial law, and it pulls a string that unravels to here. To Donald Trump like taping videos in front of strange. From space? Backgrounds in space. Never before, you know there's some kind of profit motive for Trump.

You know, I'm just going to guess. We don't know. We have to make that disclaimer. Has he pronounced an Asian name that well? He nailed that one. You know, he nailed that one. There's got to be some incentive in it for him. That's the first point.

The second point is these $60,000 in gifts, like, you don't think that in a country where this is what's interesting me, they put like almost all their former presidents in prison, you know, and they're like you got to, this stuff is going to get out, you know, like, how do you think you're going to get away with taking the $60,000 for the gifts? Like, is it really worth it, you know? It's got to be the typical iceberg. Like how, yeah, there's got to be more to it than that, probably. And the only thing I want to say about the Washington Times is because it triggered me in a way, you know, I knew you had a birthday recently, Tommy, so happy birthday. And you are not at my advanced age and never will catch up. That's one of the things about Father Time. But do you remember the days when the right wing media in this country was like the Washington Times?

Ronald Reagan once said that the Washington Times is the first thing he read each day. You know, I'd love to go back to the day. I know. Washington Times is the only game in town. Then Fox News comes along. Yeah. And now it's this like, yeah,

31 flavors of madness. But by the way, to your point, like Haunted or Chief of Staff, I think they're accused of embezzling $7 million in church funds. And then they rated her place and they found $26 million in like a safe in the bedroom.

It's also one of these churches, if you go down the rabbit hole, no matter how much you read, you can't understand it. You know, like, like I can't describe what they believe. it's this kind of cultish thing that is all these business interests and this rich guy who likes to spread money around to politicians.

It's just like a very odd, eccentric part of geopolitics. The whole thing is odd. It's like the M.E.K. or something. Yeah, like two of Han's sons were January 6th. And they also run their own like spin-off fringe crazy church now called the Rod of Iron Ministries, which is like infamous for having the worshippers hold semi-automatic rifles. Like just the overlap of these. Were there mass weddings? Yeah, yeah, the Moonies of the mass weddings.

The whole thing is just a fucking bizarre. Very strange. Cults. And so, of course, the Trump people glom onto it. They're like, how can I get a piece of this? Yeah. Any organization with a little, like, cohesiveness that they think they can bolt on to their political coalition.

And a kitty somewhere. Yeah. Maha, RFK. Sure. Come on over. Yeah, it's good. Whatever it takes. All right.

That is it for a better. I portion of the show. But stick around for my interview with British Columbia premier, David E. We're going to talk about the U.S. Canada. Trade War, what Trump wants out of it, the reaction in Canada, the economic impact. Very, very interesting interview. You will want to check it, so stick around for that. Pod State of the World is brought to you by the new podcast, Burden of Proof, Luigi Mangione.

From our friends at ABC Audio in 2020, Burden of Proof, Luigi Mangione is ripped from the headlines. You already know the story or you think you do. In December of 2024, shots rang out on a Manhattan sidewalk, and United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead. Luigi Mangione has pled guilty to federal charges, but there's so much more to this story. In his new podcast, Burden of Proof, Luigi Mangione, ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmeyer, goes deep into the case and what it means. He'll unpack the murder itself, the two men at the heart of the story, and how this case has affected the conversation about health care in America. Leave your preconceptions at the door and follow Burden of Proof Luigi Mangione wherever you get your podcast or listen ad-free on Apple Podcasts by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus. Again, that's Burden of Proof Luigi Mangione.

I'm here today with David Eby, the Premier of British Columbia, Canada. Premier Eby, thank you so much for doing the show. Well, thanks for having me. I really do appreciate it. So we're obviously talking about the ongoing trade war that President Trump has launched on Canada. It's been a rocky couple of years in U.S. Canada relations. Trump is called Canada the 51st state repeatedly. He suggested the U.S. would annex Canada.

He slapped tariff after tariff on Canada. He's insulted Canadian leaders in the country. First question, what is the mood in Canada about the U.S. in the wake of all this? And do you worry that public opinion could make it harder in the long run to kind of find an agreement on a deal? Well, people are pissed off. There's just no two ways about it. And you can see it in any number of indicators. Like, we've got friends and family and longtime relationships in the United States as Canadians.

And our trips to the U.S. are down more than 25 percent. We're buying Canadian products and basically any other product other than American products right now. And there's an ongoing liquor boycott. And, you know, I'm not sure that's really gotten through the noise in the United States to just how deeply unhappy Canadians are with the American administration. And it's a conflicted feeling because, you know, we still have good relationships with Americans. It's the president in the White House we're really struggling with and I guess the broader administration right now. Yeah, no, it's a totally understandable decision to boycott U.S. items, but then in practice, that hurts the human beings producing those in Americans, just average people who own, you know, a winery in California or whatever it is. So it just feels like these decisions by political leaders are hurting everybody on both sides.

And so when I talk to trade experts or foreign policy experts about the talks between the U.S. and Canada and why they broke down, They'll tell me, it was three buckets. You know, the first was tariff and economic, the tariffs and the economic impact on Canadian industries like the auto industry, for example. The second was there were provisions that felt like an attack on Canadian sovereignty and the ability for Canada to make bilateral trade agreements. And the third, the thing they'll reference is, you know, these cultural points, French language protections in Canada, et cetera.

But then when I look at the Canadians who are commenting on clips we put out here, crooked media about this issue from Canada. They will say, nope, like we've been done with you guys in America for a very long time. This is about sovereignty. This is about Canada, just like putting its foot down and not getting pushed around anymore. What's the right answer in your view? Both, if that can be true, at the table, were elected officials who were having serious conversations at the federal level about trade negotiations and what the prime minister and I think our federal team reasonably understood to be a trade negotiation that it devolved into something different, like, you know, you can't have trade agreements with these third countries. And also, you know,

we don't want to see French language on packaging and those kinds of things, which were non-starters for them. So that was true for the elected officials at the table. For Canadians, there were polls out that said more than half of Canadians, almost 60% of Canadians said no more concessions to the U.S. We've all watched countries make concessions to the U.S. to this president, and then the president comes back for more. Canada has made concessions to the U.S. We've stepped back from digital services tax, and we've stepped back from other initiatives

that the president found objectionable, hoping that that would, and I say we, these were decisions made by the prime minister, hoping that that would keep us moving forward, but the president just kept coming back for more, and I think everyone just understands that the agreement's not worth anything. Basically from the moment the president finishes signing it,

It's what's next. And we're just done with it, I think, as a collective group. And so, you know, it's fine to say you're done with it. The U.S. is a huge market. We're deeply integrated. Trade continues, all these other pieces. But almost to a person, certainly Canadians and elected officials, how do we diversify away from the U.S.? How do we build other relationships?

How do we protect ourselves? This relationship is not going back to the way it was before. And how do we make sure that we're more independent of the U.S. because we allowed ourselves to get too integrated and fail to keep our honor on the prize of ensuring that we're an independent country that can stand on our own two feet? And that's what our project is now. Yeah. I think one poll said 76 percent of Canadians supported the prime minister's decision to walk away from the talks, which is just an unheard of level of support for any issue here in the United States. Last Friday, Trump released this executive order where he renamed Lake Ontario, Lake America. Over the weekend, he posted a video of Canadian. Canadian geese with like Trump hair and machine guns, which again, I don't really get how it any of it makes sense because they're Canadian geese, but whatever. Obviously, this is childish and stupid, but sometimes symbolic gestures like this have the most potence and potency in like political debates. What's the reaction been so far in Canada to the Lake America nonsense?

It's so cringe. It's just deeply embarrassing for us on your behalf. And you'd think that the reaction would be rage, but most of everyone's just like, I mean, what? It feels like parity, like it's crossed over a line. And if anything, it undermines some of the seriousness that I assume the president wants to bring to his concerns with Canada. So we just, you know, we just carry on. I feel sorry for Americans right now. You know, you guys, you're grappling like we are with a cost of living crisis.

the president seems totally indifferent to it. He's destroying your reputation on a global basis. Like if Canadians are your enemy, then who's left? And, you know, it just, I feel awful for you that this is happening. And we are losing jobs. And this is having impact. And this is hurting British Columbians and Canadians. And, you know, we hope for a brighter day of a better administration.

But to be totally blunt, the Democrats have not been clear whether or not if they get elected, they're going to end this, like what has been described as the stupidest trade war in history. And I hope they do. I hope Democrats come and say, look, you know, if we get elected, we're going to end this dumb trade war because we all benefit when we work together as Team North America. And I think that's true still. Oh, I think, I mean, look, I haven't talked to a lot of Democrats about this. I think there's almost no doubt that they will want to unwind this madness because it's just

going to hurt us economically. Let's talk about the economic impact. Canada is looking at tariffs at about 20 tariffs on a budget. about 20 billion U.S. dollars worth of goods, potentially half a percentage shaved off of GDP. There was one analysis that found Canada could lose 90,000 jobs because of the trade war. The CBC says that these newly terrified items represent about 13% of British Columbia's exports to the U.S. Can you understand, kind of in practice, what this impact would be on businesses and individuals in BC if it continues? Sure, yeah. For us, you know, we're one of the least exposed provinces to the United States because we're on the Pacific Coast. We trade a lot with Asia. And still, the U.S. is by far and away our largest trading partner. And the sectors that are particularly hit by the president's action, the softwood lumber sector in British Columbia, we've always had a tense relationship with the U.S. under multiple administrations around softwood lumber. But the bottom line is Americans cannot provide as much wood as America consumes. And so what's happened with

the national security tariffs, if you can believe it, on Canadian softwood, we now have worse market access to the United States than Russia and Europe. So you are preferring Russian and European imports to Canadian lumber imports to the United States right now. And that means and has led to layoffs of Canadians and the closure of mills. The softwood lumber prices are already very low. And so when you couple that with the tariffs, it has an impact. But also, it has led us to pursuing with the federal government, encouraging them to pursue free trade agreements with India, for example, that does currently have a tariffon-canadian softwood of 10%. And if that's reduced to zero under a free trade agreement, we're going to have a significant

new market there. So, you know, this is having impact. We are pivoting. And it's kind of disgraceful, in my opinion, that our ally, the United States, has decided to prioritize Russia and lumber imports from that country over Canadian imports. Yeah, that seems insane. Prime Minister Carney has promised basically a dollar-for-dollar tariff response. You've suggested he should go further. You've floated ideas like reconsidering the purchase of the F-35 fighter jets. You've also encouraged Canadians to kind of take this into their own hands to avoid traveling

to the U.S. to buy local products instead of U.S. options on Canadian shelves. how much room for escalation do you think there is on the Canadian side? I think the prime minister's measure has been a very, I mean, it literally is the definition of proportionate response. It is dollar for dollar in the same areas, except for some seafood areas that would have affected the cost of food for a lot of British Columbians and Canadians. And so that is kind of the minimum to protect Canadian business in these sectors and encourage Canadians to buy Canadian rather than American to replace.

And so that piece is great, and it's helpful for a Canadian business, but I'm not sure that it sends the message about how we benefit when we work together. So the idea that you get kicked in the back by a friend, and then you turn around and you spend $12 billion on fighter jets from that friend and integrate your military further is like, how does that make any sense? We've got a great proposal from Europe for a bunch of jets from Saab. They're going to build a bunch of factories in Canada to put them together. let's just move on with that. Let's deepen our ties with Europe and the rest of the world instead of the United States. This is what we should be looking at as well. And it doesn't mean this isn't what's going to happen.

But I'm encouraging the prime minister in that direction and the reasons, I think, speak for themselves. For listeners at home, you should understand that you're not in Prime Minister Carney's political party. There has been broad support, though, for his response so far, including from conservatives as well as folks to his left. As these tariffs bite and citizens get hurt more or pissed off or, you know, maybe there's cracks in how different politicians think we should, Canada should respond to the U.S., the political waters can get rockier. How durable do you think, you know, kind of the support for Carney is right now and the sense of nationalism and unity?

You know, one of the great defining characteristics of Canadians that we always point to is that we are a different country from America. This is like, and you're like, well, what is, how is that? It is a defining thing we think about as Canadians. What are we as Canadians? Well, we're not Americans. And having that identity as a separate country under direct attack by the president. I mean, it might seem silly to Americans or, but this is very important to me.

It's important to all Canadians that we're able to set our own destiny, including a destiny that's closely tied with the United States. So we can choose that as Canadians. And that's what's under attack. And that's what the president and J.D. Vance and all these guys love to bring up the 51st state and all of this. And Canada should just, they want to be the benefits of the state without becoming a state and on and on. It is constant energy for this Canadian movement and the willingness to make sacrifice for it. And Canadians have had enough. And I think there is a lot of juice in the tank for this.

Obviously, as the cost start to mount, there will be reckonings in Canada on this question. But ultimately, there is a significant majority that supports this. And also the lesson that we're not going to go back to the way things were before, which is an important lesson for Canadians to have taken from this and one that needed to be taken from it. So, yeah, I mean, Prime Minister Carney's core argument was laid out during this speech in Davos, I forget when, earlier this year or last year, who knows anymore, what time is a flat circle. He said, it's time for Canada, move on from America. It's time to build this broader alliance of so-called middle powers. I think that makes a lot of sense. In theory, if you're Canadian, it's a little

more challenging in practice. How do you think he's doing? And also, one idea I've seen floated is that Canada could join the European Union and diversify away from the United States that way. What do you make of that proposal? Well, you can see what the prime minister is doing, in my opinion, he's quite transparent about it, including in his speech at Davos, is that he is seeking to deepen our relationship, including with the EU, but also with India, with Asia, the APEC meetings are going to be happening. In China, Canada will have a strong presence there, seeking relationships with other Asian countries. We are a Pacific trading country, and Asia Pacific will be crucial for us, and that's where a lot of growth is happening. So I think what you're going to see going forward is Canada is seeking to deepen relationships around the world. The Prime Minister has negotiated a number of additional free trade agreements, and there's more to come.

And we're just going a different direction than the United States in terms of our global relationships. It will be a long-term benefit to Canada. We can never replace the U.S. market. And both of those things can be true at the same time. It would be great to have a strong, productive, positive relationship with the U.S. again. and at the same time, we can't assume that that will be the case. And bluntly, I don't expect it. There's a referendum coming up in Alberta where

Albertans will decide whether to hold like a Brexit-style referendum on independence from Canada. Earlier this year, it came out that Alberta separatists met with Trump administration officials a move you called treason. I'd love for you to sort of unpack your feeling on that meeting and also give listeners, a sense of whether you think that separatist movements like the one in Alberta are likely to come to fruition and the level of political support there. It's an unfortunate thing that's happening in Alberta, and I think that most Canadians

are concerned about it. Having watched Brexit, I think that anyone who says that this is a foregone conclusion that Alberta will vote a certain direction needs to give their head a shake. it is a serious threat to the sovereignty and the integrity of Canada, and I think everyone should treat it that way, and we'll watch to see what the results are. Currently, the polling suggests, just like it didn't Brexit, that the vast majority of Burtons will not support this, but it is what it is, and people will be voting, and polls have been wrong before. So I certainly feel anxious about it. The concern that I had, that I have, is that the United States is actively

involved in and interfering in the referendum, which is like an astonishing thing for me to say. And, you know, there's always been concern around the influence of American culture and politics on Canada, just given the scale of the United States compared to Canada. But actual meetings with separatists and they say assurance is made to them about what life would look like in a post-separation environment in terms of relationships. ships with the United States and the 51st state references and so on and maps being released that show Canada as part of the United States and whatever. Like it is deeply concerning to me and I think just beyond the pale and just way beyond

anything that we've seen in our relationships previously. And a departure that doesn't get noted or commented on particularly and in a worrying way because if that bridge can be crossed with little apparent public conversation, then what else can we reasonably expect in Canada? And do we need to consider our relationship with the U.S. in terms of interference here on the same plane as we do consider interference from China or from Russia or from other countries and in terms of protecting Canadians? One element that was apparently on the table in these talks was

the Prime Minister Carney reportedly revived the Keystone pipeline or put that on the table in some form or fashion. What's your reaction to that? Do you think that should be something that is negotiated still? I understand why it's part of the conversation. You know, the president's adventurersism in the Middle East has led to incredibly high oil and gas prices. Canada's a reliable provider of oil and gas products to the United States. And I can understand why that's a priority of the presidents. And certainly it's something that the prime minister has been open to. The thing that strikes me is the bizarre assurances from the administration that Americans don't need Canada in terms of energy because you've got Venezuela.

You know, Canada produces five times more oil and gas than Venezuela does in terms of a stable partner for providing energy. And British Columbia provides a huge amount of electricity down the west coast, Ontario, to the eastern parts of the United States. I just can't fathom that president is leading you in the direction of ever higher energy prices and reliance on an unstable energy partner. But, I mean, that is where he is taking things. and it seems strange to me. In terms of oil and gas and climate change and overall concerns about that, I think we need to be doing important work together that has been completely abandoned since the end of the Biden administration

and has completely changed the conversation about carbon emissions internationally, unfortunately, in a way that is quite damning, given the wildfires we saw this past summer in British Columbia in the United States and across Canada and in Europe. So hopefully the U.S. assumes a leadership role again at some point on this important issue. Yeah, the weather patterns are losing their mind.

Europe is being baked all summer. There are reports that next weekend here in Los Angeles, we might have a hurricane, which is not something we're used to here. So, yeah, I wish we were talking about bigger things like climate change and artificial intelligence and not stupid AI photos of geese by our president. Let me just end with a statement, which is that to you and to anyone listening from Canada, most Americans think this sucks too. We find this embarrassing as well.

We want the president to stop threatening our very friendly neighbors to the north. So sorry for this bullshit, but hopefully, you know, we can get past this guy together. And I appreciate your time coming on the show. It's that plain speaking that endears Americans to Canadians. And thanks for that. Thanks for me on the show and to the Democrats out there send that strong message that we'll rebuild our relationship if you're elected in the midterms. And generally, that would be a positive thing. We'd look to that kindly from Canada.

Well said. Thank you. Thanks again to Premier Eby for joining the show. And I'll see you at Unification Church on Sunday, Ben. I mean, I'll bring you a purse. Is there a cut? Yeah, I'll get you a cut. Is there some gifts? I'll get you some cash. Don't worry. Yeah, okay, thanks. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Inisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGrope, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.