Pod Save the World - The British PM vs a head of lettuce

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Ben and Tommy cover the latest from Ukraine, the ongoing disaster that is the Liz Truss-led Tory government in the UK, how former US military officials are making big money in Saudi Arabia, China’s party congress, the Iran protests, BTS joins the military, Biden’s surprising new proposals on Venezuela and Haiti, and some comedy via Bob Woodward and Jared Kushner. Then Tommy talks with the New York Times Magazine’s Robert Draper about his new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost its Mind, and about the Iraq war. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, the midterms are sneaking up on us, man. Feeling a little nervous here. It's not great, Tommy. This isn't the usual opening banter. Yeah, midterm madness is upon us. We're like ships passing the night, though. You're in Chicago. I was in D.C.

Midterms are happening. I don't know. I'm in Chicago. I saw our former boss and recent Pod Save America guests, Barack Obama last night. And tomorrow, I'm going to... be at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics with Rana Ayup, friend of the blog. That is awesome. First of all, Rana is incredible, but also the University of Chicago, the IOP students are some of the smartest human beings I've ever been around. Like, I didn't give them enough homework and they were disappointed in me when I taught there for a little bit. Great, great, great. I forgot that you taught here. It was like a week, but

yeah. Well, let's, you know, give yourself credit. But if you are an IOP student or Chicago student, I think, come on out tomorrow, see us. They're just the best. They're the best. They're the best. Ben, speaking of the midterms, the last final and potentially greatest episode of the wilderness is out. John went all around the country. He talked to voters about their views on politics and all these focus groups, talk to experts, so that you wouldn't be surprised when those views are reflected in the results. Check it out. It's on the Pate of America feed.

You can also find the aforementioned interview with President Obama. We did some WorldO Talk. We talked to Ukraine. We talked to Iran. It's very much worth your time. And then today's episode, Ben, we were just talking Haley and I before you got on. It's like there are these big, big issues that are sort of now weekly things that we cover. So we got Ukraine, the ongoing disaster that is Liz Truss in the Tory government is a weekly thing.

We're learning about these generals and admirals making big money from Saudi Arabia, China Party Congress, Iran protests, talk K-pop, Venezuela, Haiti, some comedy thanks to Bob Woodward and Jared Kushner. And then I talk with the New York Times Magazine's Robert Draper about his new book, Weapons of Mass Dillusion. It's about the Republican Party going crazy, Ben. And we also talked a little bit about the Iraq War because he wrote one of the better books about how the war came to be. Yeah, great journalist, great writer and Liz Truss, Content Machine. Trust but verify. Well, why don't we do Russia first and we'll get to Liz Truss? So let's start with the war in Ukraine. I'll tick through some updates and we should talk about them.

So Putin continues to strike these civilian targets with missiles and these Iranian-made kamikaze drones. He's killing civilians left and right. And then President Zelensky said that in the past week or so, Russia has destroyed 30% of the country's power stations and other civilian energy infrastructure. So there's just blackouts across the country. And it's obviously incredibly worrisome for Ukraine right as they're going into the winter. On the Russian side of the border, Medusa News, great Russian news outlet, reported that 90,000 Russian troops, are either dead, disabled, or have gone AWOL, just the staggering casualty number. Putin's trying to fill that gap, as we've talked about with his draft. He's throwing these new recruits

to the front lines, a little or no training. On Friday, he said 16,000 new recruits are already in the fighting. I guess the draft has ended, or there's reports that it might have ended on Monday, at least in Moscow, but we'll see. A top U.N. officials said Russia is using rape as a deliberate strategy and tool of war. And there's increasing fear that Belarus will directly engage and enter the war and potentially attack Kiev from the north, though a lot of political analysts, you know, Ben, we talked about this last week, think that that would be political suicide for President Alexander Lukashenko. And then Biden announced another 725 million in aid for Ukraine on Friday. So let's just pause there, Ben. I mean, you and I have like kind of a

rolling text conversation about like our level of anxiety about the war. I saw that Zelensky said after these recent bombings on all the energy infrastructure, Zelensky said, quote, there's no space left for negotiation with Putin's regime. I both get where he's coming from, but also find quotes like that incredibly unnerving because there is no off-ramp seemingly anywhere. Your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack. I mean, there's one thing I wanted to say about Belarus, which kind of connects to the negotiation thing in a way. This is a thought I've been having recently because, you know, I keep thinking back to 2014-15 when we were really concerned that Putin might make move on Kiev. That was a genuine concern in the Obama White House. And

he obviously didn't. And part of that could have been, I don't know, just the screw hadn't popped loose yet with Putin. Part of that could have been that there was diplomacy. There was this kind of Minsk process with Germany and France and Russia and Ukraine and the U.S. supporting it. But another thing I realize is that Lukashenko was lukewarm. on the Ukraine war back then. And that's before he got pushed onto the ropes, right? And, you know, were those who we'll call, stole an election, they were a huge protest, and he basically turned to Russia for support. And what Belarus offered Putin is this other way into Ukraine, right, from the north. And when they made their move on Kiev, like one of the areas of advance was from Belarus.

It's just an interesting thing that I had not verbalized, and I actually haven't heard people really discussed that one of the factors it may have changed between 2014-15 and today is that he can essentially use Belarus as his platform. Now, whether or not Belarus enters the war, yeah, like that seems like, I mean, it's one thing to motivate Russians to fight, you know, Belarusian troops. I can't imagine. I can't imagine there'll be a lot of hands raised for that task. But on the broader point, I mean, I think the concern that needs to be verbalized and that we're going to probably hear more debate over the winner about, is that like Putin is getting more and more nihilistic. There's this nuclear threat lurking in the backdrop. There's,

with this new general who was the Syrian, you know, Russian commander in Syria, we immediately see the impact of that guy's promotion, right, and all these attacks on civilian targets and power stations and like. And so on the one hand, you get where, you know, Zelensky's coming from. Who wants to negotiate with people that are massacering civilian? and, you know, stealing children from their parents. You know, that's another thing that we saw recently. More reports of Russians doing that and telling kids that they're being adopted. I mean, if I were Ukrainian, I wouldn't want to negotiate those guys.

But I do think that they're, you know, and Obama mentioned this in your interview on PSA. There does need to be kind of lines of contact between the U.S. and Macron has done this in the past from France. not the kind of like, you know, Berlusconi, Putin-friendly leaders in Europe, but, but from the Ukrainian supporters, not negotiating over the Ukrainian's heads, but just having open lines to avoid unnecessary or inadvertent escalation, and to just kind of be constantly trying to feel out, you know, is there any negotiated settlement that the Russians are seriously open to, you don't see a lot of positive signs? No.

I know all the arguments from the Ukrainian side that the Russians might try to have a ceasefire and use that to regroup. That is something to be worried of. But you do need to, you know, unless this is like somehow a rapid collapse of the Russian military, which is somewhat possible, it does feel like there needs to be some effort to keep flickers of diplomacy available for a negotiation and a survey. Yeah. Why don't we play a little bit of President Obama's

answer from my question on Pante America. The question was basically, what do you say to somebody who supports Ukraine, wants them to win, wants them to expel the Russians from their territory, but is really nervous about talk of nuclear war? Probably the thing that I'm most concerned about is that lines of communication between the White House and the Kremlin are probably as weak as they have been in a very long time. We're now dealing with a type of Russian regime that is actually even more centralized, even more isolated and closed off. I think Putin has consolidated decision making

to a degree that we haven't seen. Yeah, I mean, so Ben, you could tell how deliberate he is being. I mean, like, we weren't sure the clip was over because he was thinking so much between words. But, you know, look, there's a very dumb conversation happening in some quarters of the internet where it's like, stop the woke war or like Elon Musk trying to create, you know, foreign policy by Twitter poll. And there's not seemingly a lot of space for people who are like, hey, I support Ukraine.

I think we need to stop like a fascist march by Vladimir Putin going across Europe. But also, it's okay to be really nervous about this. It's okay to talk about what are the core U.S. interests and where we draw red lines and not think that, you know, more support is automatically the best idea. Obama later talks about sort of the offensive, defensive web, in distinction and how he thinks that it's important as well. I mean, that was also, I thought, telling. Yeah, I mean, you know, he's choosing his words carefully there because I'm sure he didn't, you know, intend to be criticizing the White House. And he makes the point very carefully that part of the reason why there's this lack of communication is because Putin is much more isolated

and kind of regular diplomacy is harder with a regime that is kind of shrunk down to one guy. But again, like, if you consider where this could go, because I, I totally agree with you. They're kind of Elon Musk, you know, someone who became a Ukraine expert in the last on Wikipedia. You know, yeah, on Wikipedia, you know, sharing maps of Crimea and stuff. Reportedly talk to Putin directly. Like, who knows?

Who knows? Like the Ian Bremmer versus Elon Musk debate on Twitter. But like I can see why that's frustrating people. And I'm not suggesting we have a peace negotiation via Twitter poll. And I'm not suggesting, you know, maybe the negotiation is fruitless. and it leads nowhere. And as people listen to this podcast, no, like, we really do kind of default to support for Ukraine. I think you do have to ask hard questions, though.

You have to be questioning your assumptions and questioning where this is going and trying to define what is a discernible endgame that could be satisfying to the Ukrainians, but that might potentially avoid this being a multi-year humanitarian catastrophe. Yeah, no, look, you're totally right. They have to just keep testing this thing or else we're going to just, it's going to go really dark. Ben, lighter news here. Can we do lighter news with our friends in the UK? So a new update on the trials and tribulations of the Conservative Party and our friend Liz Trust,

Prime Minister Liz Trust. So a few weeks ago, trust in the Tory Party, they put forward this massive tax cut for the rich, which is the worst idea you can have during high inflation. The reaction from financial markets, so bad, the Bank of England had to step in. they stabilize the economy. Trust partially walks back her tax plan. Then last week, trust fired her chancellor of the exchequer, quasi quartang. And then on Monday, the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said he was reversing the entire tax cut that they had just put in place a month ago. So trust's approval rating now, Ben, I think you, were you the one who flagged this last poll

that she's now at negative 61 percent? Yeah, yeah. She's in, she clocked in at 10 percent today. She clicked it. So she's up from yesterday. She's up 10 percent for yesterday. She was 9% yesterday, studied this rule. So, like, I feel like we're, you know how people talk about watching Michael Jordan or, like, Tiger Woods in their prime? Like, what is, what is the opposite of that? This is, like, the political equivalent. I've never seen anything quite like this. I think the sports equivalent is the Mets.

No. You know, blowing a 10-and-a-half game lead to the break. No, the Mets are better than with those stress. I take that back. I love the Mets. I've never seen such a lame duck politician because this is someone who had no mandate, was not elected. ran for Conservative Party leadership on the basis of tax cuts and kind of this second coming of Margaret Thatcher. So the thing that she just, you know, swallowed and, you know, withdrawing this whole

proposal from her chancellor, not even her own words, is basically the only rationale that she really had to be prime minister. So she just has no mandate. I've just, I've never seen a situation where a politician in a democracy has less legitimacy to be the leader. You almost get a sense that British people are trying to communicate through pollsters, that this just has. to change, you know? And so now you see these reports today that conservatives would prefer Boris Johnson to come back. Obviously, that's an insane idea. If I'm labor, I'm just really going hard at there needs to be an election as soon as it possible. This is not sustainable that this goes on for what, another year and a half? Like with this, you know, like it's just crazy. You can't have the prime

minister of an important country with big problems who has no mandate, no legitimacy, nor do I think you can solve this by like kicking it to the next person down the conservative depth chart. Yeah. I mean, this is like the Carolina Panthers of political parties, right? So if I'm curious, drummer, it's like election, election, election. This can happen if enough conservatives break. And I would argue to conservatives, like you guys need a wholesale, you know, reset too. And just for the good of the country, it's not sustainable. The longer they hold on, the more they're going to get creamed at the polls. So I would just really, really be trying to. to drive this to an election as soon as possible.

Did you see the Daily Star as a tabloid in the UK? They set up a live stream of a photo of Liz Truss next to a head of lettuce saying, can Liz Truss outlast this lettuce? And it's just the lettuce is just rotting. The second thing I wanted to flag for you, Truss had another audience with King Charles. Let's hear how that went. Fantastic. I'll need to see you again.

It's a great pleasure. He says, oh, you're back again. Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. Yeah, well, can you imagine what those audiences, Charles were like to, like, oh, tell me about how your tax plan went. Yeah, yeah, he's really touch with the people. Yeah, I'm sure he was great advice. Ben, a couple of quick updates on our close allies in Saudi Arabia. First, the Washington Post ran a huge report today, or I guess it's really a series of reports by Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones, who reporters over there, that talked about

the nearly 500 former members of the U.S. military working for foreign governments, and in many cases doing so in secret. That included 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals that have been working for the Saudi Defense Ministry since 2016, including President Obama's first national security advisor General Jim Jones, whose contract with the Saudis expanded after Jamal Khashoggi was executed in 2018. So tough call there, General Jones. The story noted, quote, Saudi Arabia buys more U.S. weapons than any other country in the world by far, in case you were wondering why the U.S. can't seem to quit them. A couple of their quick things last week, the Saudis promised $400 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine in response to criticism of OPEC's decision to cut oil production. That helped Russia keep

prices high, keep the money flowing. Separately, the Saudis sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he sent while hanging out in the U.S. So this guy's not an activist. He's not like doing any, he's not like agitating in Jeddah. He's a regular guy with a Twitter account who like doesn't love when MBS butcher. journalist, 16 years in jail. Finally, Ken Klibenstein from The Intercept tweeted this, it looks like an Instagram video or something, a message from a Saudi prince and relative of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman responding to Democrats who criticized the OPEC production cut. Here's a clip.

Anybody that challenges the existence of this country and this kingdom, all of us, we are projects of jihad and martyrdom. That's my message to anybody that thinks that he can threaten us. Message delivered, loud and clear. Yeah, not a friend of the pod, I guess, Tommy. No, he's probably not going to note to self, don't go to Jeddah. Wow, man. Also, like, don't you wish, you know, you had one of these sweet deals with the defense ministry?

Oh, man, I'm going to go through this quickly, I promise you. I mean, the first thing is, equating criticism of the OPEC, cut in production as like some existential assault on them. You know, a little thin-skinned over there, guys. Yeah, really? They, by the way, people who've been, you know, freely criticizing, particularly Democrats in the U.S. for plenty of years. I think the second thing is, like, the right-sizing, the recalibration,

all this stuff and the relationship that you hear talk of, we've been saying since the Trump years, stop all arms sales, suspend all arms sales, put that under some kind of review. Don't resume them unless there's, like, some conditionality around them. Stop all support for the war in Yemen. period, full stop, right? There's stop support for a sort of an aggressive Saudi foreign policy in the region that is inconsistent with U.S. interest and values. We know things that can be taken, steps that can be taken right away to show a consequence, not for the OPEC cut, that's part of it,

but for the whole everything, you know. And some people will say the problem is you're going to push Saudi Arabia towards Russia and China and the Saudis. I saw put out some statement. they want to join the bricks. That's the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa block. Look, the reason MBS is moving the direction of autocrats is not because of something the U.S. is doing. It's because of who he is. He is an autocrat. He's hit him. And he's not like some guy who wanted to be on the democracy team, but then we heard his feelings and so he went over there. Like, this is who the guy is. He's an autocrat. He's in that club. He's going to be closer to China. That's going to happen. Let's deal with it instead of trying to pretend like a fist bump or whatever

the thing is is going to bring this guy back in the fold, why this stuff doesn't happen is because of that story in the Washington Post. The amount of money that they pour into the U.S. National Security establishment and business community is meant to be their get-out-of-jail-free card, okay? And, you know, why does this matter that a bunch of generals are getting rich doing this, including General Jones? Well, it's not just the impact it has of having those people aligned. It's, you know, the impact on current officials who are like, hmm, if I make nice with the Saudis and the Emirates, I've got a big payday waiting for me when I get out of government, where some of those people might return to government in civilian positions. And it's not just generals. Like the story

focused on generals, like I can tell you that between consulting and speaking fees and all of this business, all of this money that they pay for people to lobby for their interest or to speak at their conferences or to advise them on stuff, like that's not about just the advice they're getting. It's about sending a message that can we own you? We control you people. people. If you're an official who's going in and out of government, you know, you can get rich in between stints in government if you come work for us. And that's profoundly corrupting to U.S. foreign policy. It's a big problem, man. And the total lack of disclosure, I mean, these journalists had to sue the various branches of service to get these records because none of it was

out there. Meanwhile, you have like, you know, people getting prosecuted under the foreign, under Farah under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which, of course, should exist and makes total sense, but I just like, this loophole makes no sense to me. It was a crazy story. Highly recommend everyone reads it because there's also different pieces for the UAE, for Qatar, for a bunch of other countries. So Ben, last week, you talked with former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about the China Party Congress meetings happening right now. Really good primer for everything that's happening this week. I'd recommend folks check out if you want to go deeper in it. Sort of a couple interesting stories I've noticed since it started.

On Monday, China announced they are indefinitely. delaying the release of economic data from July through September. You got to assume that ain't good news. It means it was bad economic news and they're hiding it for for Xi's sake, present she's sake. Those numbers are probably bad because, in part at least, because of China's COVID lockdowns or zero COVID policy, authorities reportedly blocked anyone who had traveled to an area with even one COVID infection from entering Beijing as the party Congress was happening. That's how over the top this all was. And the Chinese authorities. already's arrested 1.4 million people for various charges to kind of clean up the place and

indiscriminately round people up. She gave it to our speech on Sunday. We won't detail it all for you. Zero COVID isn't going anywhere, it seems. The party line was reaffirmed on Taiwan. Any like thought so far on the party Congress? Like it's again, not a place where you expect a lot of surprises, but curious if you saw anything notable. I just think what we're seeing is how much weaker she is. I mean, he may be stronger in terms of his consolidation of power, but when this party conference happened, you know, last time five years ago, like he was in a pretty strong position. The economy was growing. Like China looked, you know, stronger relative to the U.S. with Trump.

Now you've got the economy clearly in real trouble that they're not even releasing data, right? Because of his policies, it's zero COVID. It's increasing state control over any semblance of a private sector there in China. And so all of these actions kind of project a lack of confidence. It's an aging population. You know, the bill come due for their one child policy. They have real structural problems that are getting worse because of the things that she is doing.

And that puts him, I think, in a real box. And so, yeah, you look at that speech. He, you know, he dialed it up on Taiwan a bit, you know, reiterated the use of force. He'll never be taken off the table with respect to Taiwan. The concern is, you know, what's scarier? Like a strong, ascendant, growing, confident China or a China that has real internal problems and might look to lash out at Taiwan or something to gin up the nationalism. I think it's a pretty unsteady time, and that's the message.

They're trying to project confidence here, but when you're rounding up that many people and you're covering up the economic data, it's impossible to project real confidence. Yeah, totally. And then this is sort of extending abroad. I mean, two stories that jumped out of us this morning that are just worth noting. In the UK, both of them actually, first, China's reportedly recruited former British military pilots to teach Chinese armed forces basically had to shoot down Western airplanes, warplanes, helicopters as well. Roughly 30 pilots got paid $240,000 for their services. They went over to China. They taught them, I guess, how British and NATO warplanes work. The British Defense Intelligence Agency, to put out some sort of warning on this. And then second, Ben, this was even more disturbing to me, was a pro-democracy protester in support of Hong Kong was protesting outside the Chinese consulate grounds in Manchester, England. He got dragged into the grounds and beaten up. He's got like the staff at the consulate came outside, tore up their posters and then dragged this dude back inside the gates and beat him up. And a British cop had to go in and rescue him. Kind of reminded me of

when Erdogans thugs beat up a bunch of protesters in Washington and Trump did nothing. Curious of your thoughts on either story. I mean, I wonder if the British government will have the guts to PNG these guys to kick them out of the country, the ones who beat up this protester. No, that's exactly right. I mean, that's what I'd be doing. I would kick these people out. I mean, you can't, like, you can't have diplomatic accreditation and just be physically assaulting people and dragging them into your facility, right? So I think they should send a strong message and kick those people out. And I think China believes that because of its economic relationships, it has all this leverage. And that kind of plays into the other story, right, which is it's not,

in a weird way, dissimilar from, you know, a bunch of generals working for the Saudis, albeit the Chinese or even more adversarial. This is like if, like, you know, Maverick and Iceman went over to the Chinese top gun and taught the fucking pilots how to shoot down F-16s and F-35. It really is bad. This is bad. And it's like the commonality with the Saudi. thing is it's like you guys are for sale. Like we in China, we in Saudi Arabia, we think all you guys really care about. You talk about democracy, but you know, what you really answer to is money. And that's something more societal that has to be dealt with. I do think like, yes, they're not handing over maybe secret intelligence, but there's got to be some regulation about, hey, don't train

this country to defeat us in a war, you know? Yeah, it seems worse. I'd look into that. Maybe it's something Liz Truss can do while she's, you know, still got a few days left to office. Or Boris Johnson with all his new free time. We're still watching these big protests in Iran. They're still growing. You know, they started on September 17th. It was after a 22-year-old woman named Masa Amini was murdered by the morality police. Then I was out in Hannah's parents were in town over the weekend.

We went to this sort of like outdoor art fair basically in Beverly Hills. And they were just Iranian-American protesters driving around and kind of raising attention. It was actually kind of inspiring to see. There are reports that in Iran school children are joining the protests and kids are still being arrested, beaten, killed. Separately, there was a fire at Iran's even prison, which is the notorious hellhole that houses a lot of political prisoners. Jason Rezion and Yegi Rezion, who you heard from a couple weeks ago, were both held there.

There are stories of torture and worse happening in that place. There was this fire. It's entirely clear what happened. There might have been a fight between prisoners and guards, but we're learning. And then just in the vein of trying to lift up, like, courageous acts of protests. An Iranian woman named El-Naz Rakabi competed in a climbing competition in South Korea Sunday without a hijab on. It was seen, I think, by those who watched her as a protest or solidarity with the protesters. A day later, she was reportedly tricked into entering the Iranian embassy in Seoul and then taken back to Iran.

It was like a rendition, essentially. to your point about weakness earlier of the Chinese government, it does show you how unbelievably sensitive the Iranian regime is to all of this. Yeah, I mean, there's just real cracks in the foundation of the Islamic Republic. With all these schoolchildren, you know, younger people, like, clearly want nothing to do with the dictates of this kind of aging, sclerotic, corrupt government. I do think, like, though, these weak to week stories that we're covering because they're massive stories, right? Like, there is a lot. of kind of weakness in the world. Like the Russians we've detailed, obviously, their vulnerabilities

are on display every day as Ukraine takes territory. The Chinese, we just talked about, the Iranians, frankly, the U.S., right, in our democratic dysfunction. Yeah, it's probably. Yeah, part of what's so unsettling is like, where is all this going? You know, like, and how can we support the aspirations of the people protesting in Iran, the Ukrainians fighting against the Russians, you know, Thai, Taiwan's existence, American democracy, I do think there has to be a kind of concerted effort to realize these aren't just like individual events that have to be managed totally in isolation. Like there needs to be a kind of story that Joe Biden and Democratic leaders are telling about the kind of world that we want to see kind of emerge on the other end of this thing.

Because as we've talked about, and I think Obama talked about Iran, like the scale of these protests doesn't mean that there's not going to be much rockier waters ahead as you know was the case for this climber right and and where where is where we trying to get to like what is on the other side of this and in the interim you know we have to reckon with the fact that we have to talk to countries like Russia and China Iran I don't think there's much to talk about with these protests but but it just feels like a very tenuous moment to Tommy in the we've been doing this podcast for, you know, five years or so now, like, I can't remember a time where so many pots are kind of boiling, you know? Yeah, man, I totally agree. I mean, let's add a couple,

two more pots before we get some lighter stuff that are boiling. First is Venezuela. So more Venezuela policy news from the Biden team. Last week, President Biden invoked Title 42, which listeners might remember from the Trump era, it was a Title 42 came from a 1940s public health law designed to prevent the spread of diseases. The Trump team used it to expel all migrants attempting to cross the border, including those looking to apply for asylum. Under the new Biden policy, Venezuelans who try to walk or swim across the border will be expelled. And those who illegally enter Mexico or Panama will be deemed ineligible to come to the U.S. But up to 24,000 Venezuelans will be admitted to the U.S. if they come via U.S. airports. This is all very confusing because the Biden administration tried

and the use of Title 42 back in April. That effort got blocked in the courts. Now Biden team is, I guess, embracing Title 42 to address this new influx of migrants from Venezuela. If all of this is confusing to you, I'm confused too. It is clearly a sign of how difficult border politics have become for the Democratic Party, though. End of sentence. I don't know. It's just very strange.

Yeah, I mean, clearly they're feeling a lot of heat because of the border crossings. and, you know, the Venezuelans have been a focal point of that. Keep in mind, it was Venezuelans that Ron DeSantis, like, sent up to Martha's Vineyard. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago. I have one thought on this, Tommy, which is, and this gets to, like, trying to kind of turn down the burners on some of the pots, you know, are sanctions, U.S. sanctions on Venezuela are contributing significantly to the desperation that Venezuelans feel. It's not the only reason, like, don't at me.

I get it. Maduro's mismanaged and there's human rights abuses. But the reality is there's something hypocritical about a policy where we turn up these sanctions in our own hemisphere so high that it's driving all these people to our border and then we close the border to those people. So my suggestion is, like, let's start unwinding those sanctions. And there were signs that they wanted to do that and they wanted Venezuela and oil back on the market.

Like, it's time to take a different approach here. This is not working with Venezuela. And I'm not saying lift all sanctions. Obviously, you're going to keep like the creeps around Maduro. sanctioned, but like these broad-based sanctions that are just punishing these people, if you can relax those and then try to pursue some diplomatic effort, maybe given the fact that we have a new left-wing government in Colombia that can talk to the Venezuelans, as well as other leftist leaders in the region who have no love for Venezuela, right? Boric has been very outspoken about this,

but could actually have a more constructive environment for diplomacy to resolve the political crisis. That's one burner that you can turn down instead of keeping the heat up and driving all these people to our border and then setting them back. in some limbo. And look, just in crass political terms, I would rather take the hit for appearing soft on Venezuela to like a couple hundred thousand hardliners in Florida than continuing to watch the situation at the southern border get worse and worse and worse and worse and have that become the only thing Republicans talk about in every single election. That is such a good point. There's such an insanity to the politics of our national scrutiny in some of these issues because

the politics of Venezuela has been the Democratic Party is afraid to touch it and just, embraces the hard line because they're afraid of those people in Florida. But in so doing, they're contributing to a much worse political dynamic that has been created by all the people that are being driven to our border, right? And they're coming from Cuba too now. And so to me, this just shows you why you shouldn't make decisions like that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And look, and the next sort of boiling crisis is happening in Haiti. It's been boiling for a long time. I mean, so what's happening right now, the U.S. and Mexico have put forward two resolutions the United Nations designed to help deal with gang violence in Haiti. One would enact an arms embargo

in sanction gang leaders within Haiti. I have no idea how that works in practice, given that its own separate economy, but whatever, set that aside. The second would create, quote, a non-U.N. multinational force under the UN Charter's use of force provision. That's from a CBS story on this. I'm not entirely sure what it means. I think it means some sort of like- Peacekeeping force, yeah. Peacekeeping force that goes down there to back up the cops. Yeah. So look, stepping back, like Haiti's in a very dire situation. The president was assassinated in like, I think June of 2021. Gangs control, much of the country. They've been battered by natural disasters. There's another cholera outbreak that's growing. There are some Haitian officials who are calling for help in saying we need direct intervention. But there is a long, terrible history of international and U.S. interventions in Haiti just ending in disaster. And to that end, like there were some street protests against intervention. last week, I think thousands of people were in the streets of Port of Prince. So, Ben, I mean, look, this just makes me really nervous. I know, like, you know, Ambassador Thomas Greenfield,

Tony Blinken, are out talking about these resolutions. I know the intentions are good, but I'm just wondering when a foreign intervention in Haiti has ever really ended well. I can't think of one. Well, yeah, I mean, the UN in the past, too, like, was associated with one of the previous outbreaks of cholera. It's just a mess. I do have to say this idea of, like, a regional, you know, like you do want this kind of group of countries from the hemisphere that might be able to provide some support. I think considering a role for some multinational force is worth exploring, given how chaotic situation is, provided that it's accompanied by a significant amount of assistance. And, you know, that too, not a great track record of development money, you know, going to the place. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

I like this idea that we're going to sanction the gang members and they're going to give up. How does that work? I just feel like sanctions are becoming almost, I don't want to say comical, but there's, I don't know how many times I keep seeing, you know, like we designated these six people that don't have their assets sitting in like banks in New York. Like someone can show me proof that the Haitian gang members would actually be affected by these. That'd be a different story.

But to me, you've got to focus on what is a package of assistance and security support that can try to bring some stability on the ground here, and then some really concerted effort to work with Haitian civil society to figure out a political strategy here, because it is not working. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, like, obviously doing nothing is not helping. I'm trying to imagine a scenario where you have like some,

you know, international peacekeeping mission with like an American, a Canadian and a Colombian cop shooting live rounds back at some Haitian gang, like killing people. Like, I don't know. I just makes me real nervous, but I don't know. We'll see. I'd love to know what the Haitian people actually want. Like, that's all the hard part. Well, that's the thing. That's where I ended on civil society. That's the voice that we just, it's hard to figure out, but there needs to be real diplomacy around that. I mean, there wouldn't be Americans, but in the past, you know, I think Brazil's been in the lead in the past and some peacekeeping there. But that's something to design with the Haitians who want to approach this in an effective way, you know.

Yeah. Okay, a couple later things are close. So the South Korean military been just got a whole lot more star power. after members of the K-pop band, BTS, said they will serve out their mandatory military duties as required by South Korean law. Whether or not these guys were going to serve or whether they should serve had been a big topic of debate in Korea. A lot of Koreans said they kind of wanted BTS to get an exemption because of how much the band meets to the country and to their global reputation. I bet it's a not insignificant slice of GDP for one band for one country either. So under South Korean law, most able-bodied men must spend 18 to 21 months in the military. You can delay it up to turning 30, but not after that, which is what forced the issue.

Jin, the oldest BTS member, turns 30 in December. So there are potentially no BTS concerts until 2025. Ben, I don't know, kind of impressed by these guys making this decision. It did make me think about Ted Williams, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, who interrupt his baseball career to fight in World War II. and then actually in the Korean War. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, have you ever done that thought exercise

about what his stats would have ended up with, like, you know. I mean, like, to your point, BTS coming off, going to the sidelines for a couple of years, is I think the equivalent of Ted Williams batting 406 in 1941, winning the Triple Crown in 42, and then doing three years in the Navy and the Marine Corps as a fighter pilot. And then did 39 combat missions over Korea.

Well, and let's not forget Elvis. You know, Elvis did a tour in the U.S. military. Look, I think it's, I don't know, maybe Kim Jong-un will surrender in the face of, like, BTS, too. Like, this could break the logjam on the Korean Peninsula. But I think it's setting an interesting example. I'm curious what their service will look like and, like, how normal. Like, I mean, you know, I'm not questioning the BTS guys, but just like, can you imagine the, you know, being in the unit with the BTS guys or in like some joint U.S. military exercise with BTS? Yeah, that'd be wild.

But they seem like altogether admirable dudes, and they're going to have a fucking monster tour in 2025. Welcome on Ponte at the World to discuss their military service. They have a kind of world-o angle into K-pop here. Absolutely. One other North Korea bit of news been Bob Woodward, people probably know, is the sort of crusading journalists for the Washington Post, gets lots of big scoops. He released some audio of one of his interviews with Trump. Let's give it a listen. Nobody else has them.

want you to treat them with respect. I understand. And don't say I gave them to you, okay? Okay. But I think it's okay. Normally I wouldn't have, I wasn't going to give him to Bob, you know. Would you make a photo stat of him or something? No, I dictated them into a tape recorder.

Really? That's Trump pretending to be slick and like he wasn't going to give Bob Woodward his Kim Jong-un love letters for his book. Those letters are now, I think. part of the cash that was taken down to Mar-a-Lago, although honestly the part of what he ever you have there that I care about, the absolute least. But it's kind of funny to hear him, think he's slick, being like, oh, Bob, I wasn't going to give you these, but now I will, you got me. But there's a tape recorder running, you know? Like, I mean, like, he's not aware of,

like, the recording device that is, like, capturing this moment for posterity. I just, like, the other thing about this, besides the obvious allusion to the, you know, classified documents thing, is the depth of his pride in these letters in this relationship with Kim Jong-un is something that is truly baffling to me. Because also you look at Mar-Lago, he had like the jumbo pictures, you know, the giant blow-up pictures from the White House of him shaking hands with Kim Jong-un. Like what was so magical about this relationship? Like nothing changed, right?

Like North Korea didn't give up any part of its nuclear missile program. They expanded it. like there's there's no peace agreement with the end the Korean war like there's nothing came out of this relationship except these letters and like it's like the letters I got from some girl at camp in seventh grade that I like kept because I thought it made me cooler or something but it didn't I didn't get anywhere with that girl like that I don't I don't really know what's going on here I think I told you how I've been reading this book the great successor the rise and fall of Kim Jong-un by Anna Fyfield and it's getting to that it's sort of bio of him and it's getting to that point

when Trump was sort of threatening fire and fury. And I think a lot of people, including the Chinese, were like genuinely worried there was going to be a war between two madmen. And then Kim Jong-un kind of masterfully engineered this diplomacy with his sister. And she went to the Olympics. And it led to several meetings between President Moon and Kim Jong-un and then the Trump meetings. And like you said, absolutely nothing got accomplished. nothing got accomplished. I just don't get it. Like, Dennis Robben accomplished more, I think.

You know? Yeah. Like, what the fuck? It's such a bizarre thing. And he talks about these rallies. Like, what does a Trump supporter think happened? Like, I, like, this is the red pill thing. I generally want to know, like, what accomplishment do they think, like, this is associated with these letters are associated with? Yeah, like, again, genuinely, like, in favor of talks, but nothing kind of accomplished. In fact, you could argue that, you know, No, look, I think at the end of the day, the world is going to have to just come to terms of the fact that North Korea is a nuclear-armed state and, like, maybe just stop with this policy track. I mean, I don't know. I'm talking about it on my ass right now, but like... That's a real question. That's the real question, right? Is there some different approach that it just puts aside that objective of denuclearization?

But to your point, like, in a world in which none of those summits happened and he never met Kim Jong-un, I actually think today is exactly the... same. Like there's literally zero difference in North Korean society, nuclear program, missile program, foreign policy. It's just the only human being out of the seven billion people on earth that was affected in any way by this diplomacy was Donald Trump. And all the media freak out that treated it like some genius thing when it first happened. Yeah, the Singapore summit coverage was unbelievable. I guess though reading these letters is better than Trump tweeting about how the Jews need to get their act together before it's too late, and then scheduling a dinner with Kanye West after Kanye delivered.

One of the most anti-Semitic rants on a radio show I've ever heard. This could have been delivered on the Daily Stormer. It could have been, you know, one of those Tiki Torch holding protesters down in Charlottesville. It was like, it was textbook anti-Semitism, Jewish lawyers control the world, blaming them for everything, blaming them for his wife talking about sleeping with her new boyfriend. It was shocking. And then Trump's reaction was to call the guy. Yeah, no, this guy, like Kanye Yee or whatever, you know, like he could read the protocols of the elders of Zion and like be on Tucker Carlson the next day and like be hanging out of Trump. And then Trump, yeah, like, I don't, like standing up and being

like Jews got to get their act together. And the premise of what he was saying is that they should only vote and evaluate him based on Israel, right? Not on any, like, Jewish Americans are Americans who are Jewish. Like, he continually makes these statements that assumes that their only interest should be in right-wing Israeli politics. It's the most anti-Semitic trope possible, right? And, like, to me, like, we've talked before, but we should say this again, like, the weaponization of anti-Semitism charges against people, like, there's such a more. massive freak out over any criticism of Israel and calling those people anti-Semitic, then there is of this. I was called an anti-Semite by Mike Pompeo, friend of the pod,

because I said, literally, that, like, you know, if you look at the lengthy quote I said, but ethno-nationalism is bad, ultimately for the Jewish people. And Bibi Netanyahu's calculation that he's going to be this kind of corrupt, cruel guy because it's a tough world is the kind of mindset that has been, you know, very damaging in the past. Now, like, there's such an irony that Trump, the avatar of ethno-nationalism and now anti-Semitic tropes is kind of weirdly like this attached to the head political ally of Bibi Nanyahu's trying to become prime minister of Israel. Bibi Nany, by the way, who's apparently going to sign up with like a party in Israel that is so right wing that they were at one point.

I think sanctioned and not allowed to come to the country because of they supported terrorists so right wing that Bob Menendez, the Senate Form Relations Committee chair, reportedly flew to Israel, met with BB and said, if you form a coalition with these guys, it will harm us. Menendez is not someone who's really ever critical of Netanyahu. But yeah, I mean, they're sort of, again, like the Republican Party in the U.S. in exorably moving to the right into a more and more extreme position. And it is just shocking to me that, like, Jared Kushner can run Kanye, try to run in for president as a cynical attempt to like peel off black voters. And yet you don't hear anything when Connie like unleashes this anti-Semitic screed. And a genuine conversation about any Semitism, which is absolutely necessary in this time of extremism and prejudice, has to acknowledge that the most virulent and potentially dangerous forms of anti-Semitism that we're seeing come from the far right, which by the way is not like some surprise. Like that like look at the Nazi party. Like the far right ethno-nationalism, right? And, And what's frustrating, too, is it, like, you look at an APAC, you know, that has devoted a lot of time

to this kind of mentality that the focus is on critics of Israel. Like, we have to understand that, like, people criticizing Israeli government policy are not the problem in this question of anti-Semitism. It's people who subscribe to far-right ethno-nationalist ideologies. And, yes, people who support, like, terrorist violence and violent delegitimization. of the state of Israel. Yes, absolutely there's any semitism on that side. But this kind of like training our sights on any criticism of Israeli policy as if it's the problem, it gives this huge free pass over here to Trump and Kanye West and Tucker Carlson these people to engage in

like the deepest dog whistles and cords of anti-Semitism in our history. Yeah, not even dog whistles. One quick thing before we go to the minor youth draper. I was speaking of Jared Kushner, we just mentioned a minute ago. I was shocked to learn that Trump's political committee spent nearly $160,000 on books. We don't know what books. Right when Jared Kushner's book came out, one of those political committees is now giving away signed copies of Jared's book. If you donate $75. And then Jared got number one on the New York Times bestseller list with that little cross thingy, which indicated bulk purchasing.

It's just so pathetic. Yeah. Yeah, like, you know, Scotland Yard, you know, could crack this case. I mean, or Angela Lansbury. I mean, this is not like, but like how expensive way to get on the New York Times best seller list? How small do you have to be to like have your father-in-law like buy your way in the bestseller list? You know, I should have like one of those email blast Tommy that like the nine million

Democratic fundraising emails I get today that are like, you know, Rachel Maddo says like buy after the fall by Ben Rhodes to stick it to Jared Kushner or something. Yeah, there you go. It's a good idea. But man, what a, what a, like, just what a pathetic little twerp. Such a twerp. Okay, enough about that twerp. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, you'll hear my conversation with Robert Draper about his new book, Weapons and Mass Delusion when the Republican Party lost its mind. Stick around for that. My guest today is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the author of the new book, weapons of mass delusion when the Republican Party lost its mind, Robert Draper.

It is great to see you. Great to see you, Tommy. Thanks for having me on. It's so great to have you here because you're also the author of one of the best books I've read about the Iraq War, which is called Fittingly to Start a War. So I kind of make it to mix them both in. It's a fun interview for me because I get to do a little politics on the foreign policy show and a little foreign policy in the politics conversation.

So you're giving the people what they want here. Anyway, you get this long piece in the New York Times Magazine, week. It's about Marjorie Taylor Green. She has gone from someone who I think was viewed, even in her own party as kind of a fringe character, a bit of a pariah, to someone Kevin McCarthy now has to work with, somewhat even say appease. There was this constant debate during 2016 about Trump and whether he believed his own schick, whether he would act on it, right? That was kind of the big thing. Here's what you think about that same question for MTG. Does she believe it? Like, what did you learn about her from spending all this time with her?

Yeah, it's a great question, Tommy. And the answer, I think, is that she believes enough of it. She knows as well that hyperbole sells, that the attention economy rewards people who say outrageous things and do outrageous things. So she does all that. But the fundamental tenants that Democrats aren't just wrong or even immoral, but that they're like evil. And, and, you know, and, you know, and, And that President Trump is the greatest President America has ever seen, that the stakes are existential, that children are particularly at risk. Stuff, by the way, that is also fundamental to the Q&N conspiracy theory. She believes in its core. And she'll amble that stuff up, comparing Biden to Hitler, for example, saying that Democrats are communists.

When I don't really think she believes that they're communists, she thinks that they're. She thinks that they're somehow worse than socialist, and maybe to her that is the definition of communists. So she believes enough of it, for sure. Man, it's unnerving. I want to get to Q&On in a minute. But there was a detail in the piece that jumped out of me, and I could tell by your writing that it jumped out at you, which probably means we both been in politics for too long, which was that MTG hired a guy named Ed Buckham to be her chief of staff. Ed Buckham was Tom DeLay's chief of staff for many years.

He was like a huge DC power broker whose career ended in disgrace because he was getting money from a corrupt lobbyist named Jack Abramoff. What do you think I should take away from learning that Marjorie Taylor Green hired this like DC fixture, like the insider's insider and Milo Yanopoulos, who I'll let you attempt to describe for the audience here. Sure, sure. Well, Miley Annopoulos is this right-wing provocateur who got in trouble after a statement he made in 2016 that appeared to be quite sympathetic towards pedophiles was excavated. And he sort of fell into oblivion only to be resuscitated, career-wise, at least, by Marjorie Green, who brought him on supposedly as an intern, but in fact, he was being paid by Green's campaign staff. It didn't work out, not for any. reasons relating to pedophilia, but he was quietly let go. Meanwhile, at Buckham, as you mentioned, was the chief of staff to Tom DeLay, who despite Delay's notoriety, was as majority whip for the Republican control house and then as the majority leader, really one of the most cunning and effective legislators of the last 25 or so years. So the Green brought him on should be, you know, a clear indicator that she's not doing it for show.

Because Ed's a very, you know, Blasey guy, 63 years old and doesn't care about getting any attention. She wants to get legislation passed. She wants to form coalitions. And she hired him very specifically for that purpose. She told me that she wants to be a serious legislator. Now, we can discuss whether that's actually possible for someone like Green and actually possible for this Republican conference. But those are her intentions.

And, you know, people should pay attention to that. Since, Tommy, I should bring up that a lot of people have criticized my book and the excerpt that you mentioned that it appeared in it, not for what's said in the piece because I don't believe they read it, but just for the very notion of giving Marjorie Taylor Green any attention at all. They just said she's an attention seeker. why don't you just, you know, ignore her and she'll go away. We've heard this song before, right, with Donald Trump. And I really don't think for whatever criticism, some cable these organizations

might deserve for showing Trump over and over at his rallies, I don't think that's what swung the election. I think it's that Trump appealed to a base that the media and others didn't fully comprehend. And that's the case with Marjorie Green as well. So that she is a person beloved by the base a person of influence because of being beloved, and now a person who intends to use that influence to get things done is a fairly sobering reality that I think merits some discussion. Yeah, I mean, I think that sort of don't give people oxygen point is like a well-intentioned piece of truth that gets oversimplified. Like, I think that, I think for a long time, Democrats like myself, mostly on Twitter,

were retweeting, you know, videos that people like, MTG saying the most outrageous stuff saying, look how outrageous this is, that is. I think that definitely helps her. I think a long magazine piece, examining her motives, doing deep reporting, figuring out what she means for the future of the Republican Party, I think that's something we all actually should be doing and reading. Well, and also, you know, I began, I didn't really take her seriously at first either. When I got the contract to do weapons of what the book that would become weapons of mass delusion, it was December 2020. Trump had lost. He hadn't yet conceited.

We all figured he would concede. The notion that there'd be a ride at the Capitol was unthinkable. And Marjorie Taylor Green, who had just been elected, was this, you know, wacky, soon-to-be-marginalized Q-Anon person from Northwest Georgia. No one had any reason to believe that she'd be taken seriously. A month into her tenure, she was stripped of her committee assignments. And it really did seem to be then obvious that she would be consigned to the Star Wars. Bar of, you know, Republican whackadoodles along with, you know, Louis Gohmert and people like that.

And yet then in the first fundraising quarter, she raised $3.2 million, which is a crazy amount. And over time, began really to grow in influence. And so, you know, that's, I mean, while, I remember going to, in May of 2021, going in Mesa, Arizona, to see Matt Gates and Andy Biggs, the head of the Freedom Caucus, Paul Gosar, right-wing congressman, and Marjorie Green, all talk, do this rally. And again, she had only been in office for about four or five months, and she owned that crowd completely. It was my first indicator that she had a national following. And then I started walking by her office in the hallways of her office and finally inside all of her office walls were just festooned with all of these fan notes from, and they weren't from Georgia. They were all from all over the nation, and they are all where we love you.

You're a warrior. You're a fighter. And so this stuff that seems outrageous and we feel like, you know, shouldn't merit any attention at all is catching on regardless of whether you or I tweet about it and is commanding a following that, that again, you know, I think it's hiding in plain sight. Yeah. Look, I listen to Bannon's podcast enough to know that she's sort of a fixture on there and there's an audience. I asked us not to be obnoxious anyway.

Is she Marjorie Green and not Taylor Green after the divorce? No, no, she's, Green is her husband's name. Her husband has filed for divorce. Got it. She used to always call herself Marjorie Green, and at a certain point, I think someone gave her the idea that it was catchier to say Marjorie Taylor Green. Got it. Yeah, yeah. But in the past, it was Marjor Green.

Got it. So in the piece you describe how, you know, Kevin McCarthy has MTG sitting in these, like, high-level policy meetings talking about the National Defense Authorization Act. There's a report in Punch Bowl news this morning. that if Republicans take the majority, Kevin McCarthy said it'll be a lot more difficult to pass aid to Ukraine. I don't know that we should be surprised by that. I think you've seen a lot of MAGA types criticizing U.S. support for Ukraine and the war. I'm curious how difficult or how hard you think that the MTG wing of the Republican Party will make passing war funding. And like what what of their opposition is genuine, frankly understandable concern about, you know, an escalating war with Russia versus just

opposing anything Joe Biden does. And the fact that supporting Ukraine is kind of tied up in the first Trump impeachment. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, while, well, Green has talked to me about, you know, the notion of endless wars and how Iraq was a terrible idea. And I've heard the same thing from talking to the senior staff of Paul Gosar of Arizona. It's hard to know, you know, if this is where they'd always been or if it was that Bush supported it, therefore, it must be bad, the rhinos supported it, that Ukraine is all entangled with, not only the fact that the aid comes from the Biden administration's pushing for it, but also that it's Ukraine against Russia and that to talk about Ukraine is to go down the rabbit hole of the first impeachment and, you know, though only a few Republicans express any kind of sympathy for Russia, the Viamen opposition that some of them show

for Ukraine and aid for Ukraine is almost certainly tied with, bound up with this whole convoluted thing with Trump, Russia, and Ukraine. So there's that. And to your question of like, you know, is this going to be a heavy lift in a Republican majority? I think the answer is yes, and I think that it will be treated, and McCarthy is basically flicking at this, as a kind of leverage moment, much as the whole we will shut the government down unless you repeal Obamacare moment that took place in 2013. And I suspect that we will see this with a debt ceiling, but we'll see it with anything else that the Biden administration considers necessary, that we can see it being tied to, for example, finished Trump's wall, or, you know, or seal off the border in other ways, you know, no immigration, no immigration of any kind.

So, yeah, I do think a hostage situation is likely to occur regarding Ugrim. Wonderful. Although I do think we're a couple weeks away for Biden coming out for the wall, given how difficult border politics have become for Democrats and how scared seemingly the party is. For sure. Stepping back, though, like your previous book, To Start a War, it's this brilliant chronicling of the group think, the mistakes, the paranoia, the terrible staffing that led us in. to the Iraq war. It's a great book. I highly recommend it. You know, maybe pair it with Tom Ricks's

fiasco to really get a flavor the whole thing from this side of the ocean to the other side to the Iraq side. But, you know, so I was thinking about that book. And then in your MTG piece, you talk about her believing some of the wildest disturbing like threads of Q&ON. And believe me, listener, there are different, it can get much weirder than just kind of core QN. I raise those two together because whenever I want to mock someone for believing wacky conspiracy theories, I think about the staggering, you know, errors, mistakes, lies. Some would say that got us into Iraq and how much that destroyed faith in facts and institutions. I'm curious if there's a connection there, especially since MTG seems to act like she was forced by Democrats to believe in Q&ON. It's a weird,

you know, description by her. Yeah, sure. That's, I mean, there is a connection. And it's the one thing guaranteed to make Bush loyalists go ballistic is to talk about Bush and Trump in the same breath regarding this kind of stuff. And I do think these guys are miles apart temperamentally, substantively, and all that. However, I think the phrase, alternative facts, began with promoting three entirely false ideas after 9-11. Number one, that Saddam was this evil supervillain who craved world domination. Number two, that Saddam, a secular dictator, was in cahoots with Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden. And, of course, most notoriously, number three, that Saddam possessed this awesome arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

All of those things were untrue. And they were alternative facts. But I think that the real connective tissue, Tommy, that's especially salient regarding the Iraq debacle and Trump was that it gave Trump his best talking point. And it wasn't just saying, boy, Iraq was a dumb war. It was saying, boy, look at all these supposed experts who gave us this dumb war. And it opened the door then for a reality TV show host with zero political experience to be able to become president of the United States. It really signaled, in my view, Iraq did, the death of expertise. And so I think that that's, you can draw a straight line from the Iraq experience to the Trump presidency.

Speaking of Iraq, one more question on Iraq. I don't know if you saw this, but I think last week, a reporter named Garrett Graf started tweeting anecdotes from this Senator Pat Leahy's new memoir. I did see that. I don't know if it's out yet. The book's not out yet, but I guess during the Iraq war vote in that run-up period that like terrifying, fraught, heightened period when, you know, testimony at the U.N. and, you know, the Bush administration officials run the Sunday shows talking about the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud. Leahy was out walking with his wife. A couple guys, he didn't say that their gender is actually. Two people jogged near them and asked him what he thought of the intel briefings. Leahy's wife walked away.

Senator Layy's wife walked away. The joggers told him to read File 8. He went in read File 8. couple days later, they approached him again, they told him to read file 12. He read file 12. Then he voted no. I mean, this is like straight up Lecarre spy novel stuff. Have you ever heard about this kind of like cloak and dagger internal intel agency effort to get lawmakers to focus on the right stuff? No, I did read that. I mean, my initial reaction, Tommy, when I read Garrett's Twitter thread was to want to fling myself out the window for not having known that, not having thought to interview Pat Leahy.

I did, I do remember in talking to Florida, then Florida Senator and head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, that Graham had gone to both Germany and to Poland in the summer of 2002, where they both basically showed them their intel, which indicated that Saddam had long since abdicated his weapons program. But no, it's, I mean, and it's especially has even more spy thriller of a sheen to it, given that, I mean, you mentioned that it was like, have you seen file eight, have you seen file 12? And what Leahy apparently says is that they actually had code names. You know, have you seen, you know, Hawk 19. Have you seen Golden Eagle? And, and yeah, so the punchline is that Leahy, who apparently was sitting on the fence about this, came to the conclusion. And, you know, what I don't know if any of that is. true, and I'm eager to read Leahy's book, or at least that portion of the book. But I do know that it bears

the ring of truth because I talked to so many CIA analysts who put together the really sad sack, ultra-rushed national intelligence estimate that said, you know, we judge that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction when they held in their hands the evidence that strongly indicated that this was far from conclusive, way out of date, and amped up by people who wanted to go to war. Yeah, I mean, Leahy voted no. You know, I don't want to blame him. He obviously did the right thing, but it did make me wonder why he didn't sort of march every single one of his colleagues into that skiff and say, read this and that.

Although maybe, you know, there's a lot of momentum in the other direction at that point. Last question for you. Since Trump came on the scene, I have felt like there is this, what feels like in inexorable march by the Republican base towards a more extreme place. And increasingly feeling like we could end up in a place where the political system, like the parties are too far apart, we just sort of stop functioning. And I can't tell if that's recency bias in that if everybody always thinks that they're at the central moment of history, right, we're all living in a historic moment in our own minds. Or, you know, if there's a version of me that during the Tea Party probably had the same feeling

or the Reagan Revolution or Nixon might have felt the same way. I mentioned living in 1968. Or if this really is sort of a special fraught moment. And I was curious if your time with Marjorie Taylor Green and sort of working on this book led you to come to any conclusion on that. Yeah, led me to the conclusion that this, we are in a sweet, generous period. And though, you know, we're all prone to reasoncy bias to seeing, you know, the experiences that we live through.

as the most important of experiences. There's nothing on, you know, in the historical record of a case where truth was utterly up for grabs and where, you know, whole swaths of the American public, by which I mean tens of millions of people who are registered Republicans believe that the election was stolen and believe other, you know, other adjacent lies. And I honestly don't see, you know, look. part of why I'm not sure that there's any turning back from this is that Trump showed the Republican Party an easier way. I mean, it's hard to persuade people who don't like you to like you.

Trump's way was, no, we didn't have to do that. Let's persuade the people who like us to love us, to love us like crazy. And let's demonize the people who dislike us and maybe suppress the vote. And in any event, if they beat us, we'll say they didn't. We'll say they cheated. That's an easier way to go. Yeah, well, that's a depressing conclusion, but we got to leave it there. I also do children's parties, by the way.

The book is Weapons of Mass Delusion when the Republican Party lost its mind by Robert Draper. You should also read to Star War, a fantastic book on the Iraq War. Truly, you really loved it. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on the show, and hope to talk soon. All right. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks again to Robert Draper for joining the show.

Thanks to Liz Truss for, you know, keeping things light. All the content, you know. I appreciate it. The head of lettuce thing is really great. I think it's probably like seven or eight days in by now. Yeah, I saw like another article titled The Iceberg Lady. Which is pretty, I mean, it's just. I almost feel bad for her, but then she's not at all a sympathetic person.

No, not at all. And I really didn't think I could find someone funnier than Boris Johnson, so I appreciate the effort. What's going on in the Tory party? Like, where do they find this people? I don't know, man. Let's get David Lammy in there, Foreign Secretary. Let's go, Lammy. All right.

That's all we got. Talk to you guys next week. See it. POTS of the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth to upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.