Pod Save the World - The corruption of Mike Pompeo

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

Al Qaeda stages its first successful attack on American soil since 9/11, exposing America’s broken relationship with Saudi Arabia. Mike Pompeo fires the man investigating his corruption. Israel accelerates plans to annex West Bank settlements and engages in cyber warfare with Iran. French President Emmanuel Macron loses his majority, a typhoon barrels down on India, and a financier of the Rwandan genocide is apprehended. Marco Rubio takes over the Senate Intelligence Committee as concern grows about foreign interference in the upcoming election, Trump’s war of words with the WHO continues, and we got a super duper missile in the house.

Welcome back to Potsave the world. As always, we are brought to you by hydroxychloroquine. I'm Tommy Vitor. I am Ben Rhodes. And Tommy, I saw that the doctor Sebastian Gorka is saying that he's been taking that drug for a month. Oh, my God. He's a doctor. Is it ED related or just different reasons? Yeah, yeah. It's a little of everything. We don't get into that. We have a great show today. We are going to talk a lot about Saudi Arabia. We're going to talk about a man who has been called the worst secretary of state in history. history, Mike Pompeo, a lot of interesting updates out of the Israeli government. It's brand new. There's some discussion of whether there's a new cyber war happening between Israel and Iran that's under the surface. Some updates out of France, India, Rwanda, the Senate Intelligence Committee has a new chairman. And then just a tiny touch of coronavirus stuff because we are all sick of

talking about it. So before we get to the news, just two quick plugs today. First of all, if you have not listened to Wind of Change yet. I am personally disappointed in you. It is unbelievable. It's our new podcast hosted by journalist Patrick Radden-Keefe. He's trying to get to the bottom of a rumor that the CIA wrote one of the biggest rock power ballads of all time. You can binge it for free on Spotify. Check it out. I promise you will love it. And then also, you know, since March, we have been raising money into a coronavirus relief fund. And that fund has raised over $2 million to support great organizations at the front lines of this crisis. So I just want to say thank you for your support.

And now that we've crossed that $2 million mark, we are going to select some new groups to support and get them some resources too. That includes the World Central Kitchen, Jose Andrace's organization, a group called Masks for People, one fair wage, a bunch more. Check it out. Go to crooked.com slash coronavirus. You can learn more. You can donate.

And thank you, everybody, for everything you've done. Okay, Ben, buckle up, as they say. Let's talk. So I wanted to start with this story because no other news media outlets are. And if Barack Obama was president, this would be the biggest thing in the world. So last December, a member of the Saudi Arabian military who was training with the U.S. Navy down in Pensacola, Florida, went on a shooting rampage and killed three U.S. sailors and wounded several more people. And on Monday, the Department of Justice announced that they had made. to break the encryption on the shooter's phone. And they found that this guy had been in direct communication with a bunch of Al-Qaeda operatives, including the night before the shooting. They found that he had been radicalized as far back as 2015, and that this attack was not like him being inspired by Al-Aki videos on YouTube or something, that it was the result of years of planning.

So, Ben, you know, this is a huge, huge vetting failure. This is the first time since 9-11 that Al-Qaeda has. has successfully sent an operative to the U.S. to carry out an attack like this. And when you step back and think about it, like the U.S. military and the Royal Saudi Air Force were teaching an al-Qaeda operative how to fly airplanes. Like it's hard to imagine a greater vetting failure there. So I'm solemnly swearing to listeners that I'm not going to make this into some complaint about Obama's press coverage.

But we do want to talk about the fact that, you know, if this was a Democratic administration, there would have been, you know, roadblock coverage on Fox. Ted Cruz would be complaining that liberals won't say radical Islamic terrorism, blah, blah, blah. You like, you and I know this because we live through it several times. But because we have a Republican president, the story seems to be getting very little attention. And obviously, that's frustrating politically. But much more importantly is the fact that we're not talking about a real policy problem and a problem with this program in particular.

So at the time of this shooting, DOD said that 850,000. Saudi nationals were being trade in the U.S. by the U.S. military. On Monday, the Saudi embassy put out a statement, you know, they talked about all their participation in this investigation and how they, you know, unlock this guy's phone and figure out more information about him. But, you know, then they used it as a chance to argue to continue the war in Yemen. So that was pretty gross. So, Ben, I mean, my question to you is, how do you think we can get voters in Congress to focus on this vetting failure, how broken the U.S. Saudi relationship is, and then maybe right-size that relationship in terms of,

you know, future policy advanced by Joe Biden. Yeah, I want to be very clear like you that I'm going to talk a bit about the press coverage and the political fallout, not from a position of like, oh, under Obama would have been like this, even though that's true. But because it points to the kind of peculiarities and kind of structural challenges related to these issues, right? So, we have to start from the premise that, you know, terrorism, for whatever reason, if you look at public opinion polling, terrorism is usually credited as an advantage for Republicans, right? Trump polls better in dealing with terrorism than Democrats. And that's been weaponized in many ways since 9-11, an election after election. And I think the reason this matters, it's not because

about Obama, it's about the fact that why is it that any generic Democrat could be in office And if there's any whiff of terrorism around anything, it's not just a Republican Party. The news media kicks itself into overdrive to fan the flames of the perception of American vulnerability. And it's just an absurd reality of our politics that you have a successful tack on the United States on a military facility by a Saudi national who's being trained by the U.S. government and directed by AQAP. I mean, that's an intelligence failure that in the post-9-11 context has very few rivals. And it's this kind of weird, like not even a B-Lis story. It's like a Z-List story in American politics. And I think that says something uncomfortable about,

is terrorism an issue that is approached legitimately through the evaluation of what is a threat and what isn't and how much attention did something get versus how much did it not? Or is terrorism just kind of like this issue that's in our culture wars? You know, that like, just like it's a problem for Democrats when athletes kneel during the national anthem, it's a problem for Democrats if there's any nexus to terrorism while a Democrat is president. But if a Republican's president, we don't care about those things. You know, it's, I think it does kind of point out just how much the politics of terrorism are bullshit in post-9-11 America. You know, I mean, like, so I'll start there. I mean, you live this.

I have things to say about the substance of this, too. But I think this isn't just a complaint, oh, we got it worse under Obama. It's, no, there's something structural about how terrorism is viewed when Republicans are in charge versus when Democrats are in charge and the complete and utter pass that Republicans get and the complete and utter bombardment of scrutiny that Democrats get. And that, I think, explains a lot about the politics of post-9-11 national security that leads to actual real world outcomes, right? Because it leads to Republicans to feel like they can do whatever they want to demagogue this issue. And Democrats are always on the defensive.

No, I totally. This is exactly the conversation I want to have because, look, you're seeing people online frequently say, you know, the coronavirus has killed as many people as 22,000 Benghazis or X number of 9-11s. And, you know, it can feel a little bit harsh or maybe even a little bit glib at times. But I do think it's trying to make a bigger point about the value. of human life, how we kind of arbitrarily decide that it's okay to spend tens, if not hundreds of billion dollars in the war on terror. And yet our government currently is suggesting that maybe it will be okay if 100,000, 200,000 people die from a pandemic. And then the idiotic politics and resource allocations that flow from those broken debates. And like, look, I'm really

worried that this guy was able to get through both Saudi and U.S. vetting, get trained in Florida for several years while radicalized and then kill three sailors. I mean, that is tragic and awful, but there is a bigger problem just with our prioritization in the war on terror generally and with the U.S. Saudi relationship more specifically. And I'll give you a specific example of kind of what I'm thinking about here, which is just take the word vetting, right? This was the principal argument we had around refugee resettlement in the United States in 2015 and 2016. And Obama, enabled to preserve and actually expand the refugee resettlement program in the United States, put in place this kind of extreme form of vetting for everybody who was coming through the pipeline.

At the same time, this issue was demagogue to death in our politics and with the full help of our media, you know, who was grilling us every day about the vetting, running with right-wing stories about the dangers posed by refugees. There has never been an act of terrorism on U.S. soil committed by refugee like we saw from this person. And so it appears that there was basically no vetting for these Saudi pilots who were literally getting trained by the United States military. And at the same time, Trump is shut down, essentially, refugee resettlement, saying that, you know, they can't do this vetting. And it's an example where the politics and the media culture around this set of issues made it dangerous for the United States under Obama to be resettling refugees,

even though there was no basis for thinking that they posed some kind of additional terror threat. And yet there's no similar political or media pressure on a program in which we're training Saudi pilots who are being directed by al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula at the same time. And that, there's something broken. There's something wrong. Not just from a policy perspective, but from like a cultural media and political perspective that those two things are treated so differently. Yeah.

And I mean, because you can bet that if a Syrian refugee had been resettled by Obama committed, killed several people in 2016, the world would have come to an end. But a Saudi pilot trained by Donald Trump, you know, let's move on. And the issue to me that it points out is the fundamental. and profound corruption of our foreign policy by the relationship between Trump and Saudi Arabia. Because ever since this happened, Trump's top priority has not been getting the truth out, getting the answers. He initially took to Twitter and was covering for Saudi Arabia. He was literally issuing statements on behalf of the Saudi government, making clear this wouldn't

affect the cooperation between the United States and Saudi Arabia. That's his top priority. And, I mean, we're well beyond where there's smoke, there's fire here. There's raging fires that lead us to the determination that Trump is profoundly corrupted by his fealty to the Saudi government, even in the aftermath of this Saudi pilot killing Americans at the direction of al-Qaeda. We're going to dig a little more into the U.S. Saudi relationship in a minute. But just on this, staying on this issue, I mean, another thing for listeners just keep an eye on is the fact that DOJ is using this incident as an excuse to, again, go after Apple, the phone makers, for refusing to give them a backdoor into their encryption for law enforcement that could be used to access every person's phone. So, D.J is mad as they say it took them a while to break into this

Saudi terrorist's phone, break his encryption, and they want to use that fearmongering about terrorism to demand backdoor access into all of our phones. Now, Obama made a similar case for a backdoor. I think he was wrong to do so, extremely wrong. Luckily, so far then and now, Apple has said no, But it's worrisome to see this debate get revived as Bill Barr, the attorney general, is like fully weaponizing the Department of Justice for Trump. Yeah. I mean, again, and I freely will acknowledge that we took the position of wanting to break into a phone. But man, like, it's not worth it. First of all, it's basically been the case that if they have time to work on these things, they figure it out anyway.

But if the companies like Apple are forced to give carte blanche to the U.S. government to get into people's phones, with this crowd in charge, the slippery slope doesn't even begin to describe it. I mean, you know, they've used, we've seen since the Patriot Act, and we talked about this a bit last week, that they use counterterrorism authorities, and then they expand them, right? And so you start by making the argument that you only want to get into a phone in a particular case when there's been an act of terrorism. But I guarantee you that once they have that precedent of compelling companies to go along with this, they will, a guy like Bill Barr and his Justice Department will stop nowhere

in wanting to get into people's phones. It is not worth the cost to people's privacy and civil liberties for the additional convenience for government investigators to have an easier way into people's phones. Yes. Let's talk about Mike Pompeo for a bit. So late last Friday night, President Trump fired a guy named Steve Linick, who is the State Department Inspector General, in the latest loyalty purge that's happening across the government. So for listeners, Inspector General is supposed to be an internal watchdog.

within the executive branch, within the agencies. They are political appointees, but they operate independently. They often get tips from whistleblowers about corruption or mistakes from mismanagement, and then they're supposed to work with the agencies and with Congress to investigate the incidents and then make them public. It's a position that was created after Watergate as part of those reforms. So recently, Trump has just been systematically removing these IGs that criticize him and replacing them with loyalists.

In this case, we know that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asked Trump to fire Linick, the State Department IG. So Pompeo did an interview with the Washington Post. He said that Linnox's work was somehow undermining the mission of the department, but he didn't explain how. Trump was later asked at a press event why he fired Linick, and he said, I don't know. I don't know anything about him.

So really compelling. So Ben, here's some possible reasons Pompeo may have wanted him fired. First, Linick was reportedly investigating whether Pompeo had improperly used State Department staff to do personal errands, like pick up his first. food or dry cleaning or like his dog at the groomer, literally. Second, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Elliot Engel said he had asked Lennox, the IG, to investigate whether Pompeo had improperly sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to guess who, the Saudis.

So we're going to take these one by one. But regardless, I mean, Trump is required to notify Congress about the removal of an IG and provide this detailed justification for it and has not yet done so. So, Ben, let's start with the allegation that Pompeo was asking staff to like just do personal errands for him because some people might hear that and think, like, what's a big deal? He's a busy guy. Lots of people ask their assistant to, you know, like make a reservation at a restaurant or whatever. The issue is when you're talking about a federal employee, it is illegal. So it's a big deal. A whistleblower told Congress that Pompeo's diplomatic security agents call themselves Uber Eats with

guns because they're constantly asked to pick up Mike's takeout orders. On Monday, Trump was asked about these allegations. He said, quote, I'd rather have him on the phone with some world leader, then have him wash dishes because maybe his wife isn't there. So just bringing some blatant sexism into it. Bringing the patriarchy there. Yeah, really great. This also dovetails with, you know, broader criticism that we've talked about before that Pompeo was missed to use State Department resources by taking three official, quote unquote, state department trips to Kansas when he was considering a run for a Senate seat there. So, Ben, you know, two questions about this piece of the story. How big a deal do you think these allegations are? And why do you think Pompey

PEO seems to be able to weather these kinds of, like, abuse of power allegations when other cabinet officials have been fired pretty quickly. Well, first of all, just the fact that you would remove the inspector general because the person who runs the State Department doesn't like him runs completely counter to the whole spirit of having inspectors general. Like, the people who get investigated don't get to decide that they no longer would like to be investigated. I, look, I think that there's clearly an issue of Pompeo essentially kind of personalizing the use of State Department resources that is troubling. Look, anybody who runs the State Department has the basic tension of the fact that they're running a large, sprawling government department, not unlike

the Pentagon, although not as big, with mostly career people, career civil servants and foreign servants. And there's supposed to be a line between, you know, someone's personal or political interest and what that large department is doing. And with Pompeo, you know, everybody can focus on the Uberitz with guns. I think it's the broad pattern essentially of he's using all these different resources, you know, to fly himself to Kansas or taking his family on trips or, yeah, maybe having these people do errands for him. I don't think that's the issue here. In fact, I think Pompeo wants to make that the issue. He tweeted some picture of himself with his dog. I think there's much more dangerous and unethical behavior that was likely being investigated.

And Pompeo and Trump would be happy to have a good old argument about whether or not it's okay for some diplomatic security agents to pick up dry cleaning for Pompeo and complain about liberal bedwetters who don't like that. So I think it's problematic, but I actually don't think it's the core issue here. And I think that frankly Pompeo would rather have an argument about, about whether people walked his dog and have an argument about whether he basically broke the law to expedite billions of dollars in weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia over the objections of Congress. So let's talk about the Saudi thing then. So I agree with you. Like the Saudi arms deal issue is

a much bigger deal. So here's the quick backstory. Last year, Pompeo was working on a deal to sell $8 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But there was bipartisan opposition to the Saudi piece of that sale because they had just murdered a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi, and because the Saudi-led war in Yemen had become a humanitarian disaster, and these arms were probably destined for that theater of war. So by law, the executive branch is required to give Congress 30 days notice about their intent to sell arms to a foreign country. During that time, Congress can block the sale. So what Pompeo did, the Ureference was really shady. He declared a national emergency, which allowed him to skip the congressional review process and fast-track these arms.

sales. So he claimed the emergency was a threat from Iran, but the way you know that's bullshit is because some of these weapons weren't even ready to be delivered for a year. So some emergency there. So now, look, I'm no expert in, you know, arms sales, but some experts I read suggested he might have broken a couple of laws. So first, there's the Arms Export Control Act. Two pieces of that. First, he went around Congress, which is illegal. And second, you know, you have to ensure that the arms are for legitimate self-defense reasons, and it's not clear that they were. It also may have violated the Foreign Assistance Act, which says you can't sell arms to a country deemed to be a human rights abuser. And there was this big piece in New York Times over the weekend about how

Jared Kushner and like a right-wing, you know, white house economic advisor named Peter Navarro have been pushing arms sales as like just solely a jobs program, right? Like these guys have no foreign policy experience, no interest in the humanitarian or diplomatic impact. It's just about like the defense industry. And, you know, Mark Esper, the secretary, defense is a Raytheon, former Raytheon lobbyist. So Ben, you know, like Obama oversaw a lot of foreign military sales, right, including to the Saudis. The Times piece noted that Obama averaged 36 billion a year in arms sales during his second term. Trump has averaged 51 billion a year. So it's a huge increase. So like, you know, back to what you're getting at. Like how big a deal do you think this

emergency declaration is by Pompeo is that end run around Congress? And then, you know, how is this arm sale process supposed to work? Because I imagine you were in a ton of meetings where these things were considered and vetted and either approved or not. Well, you know, yeah, first of all, I think there's normally supposed to be a process, right, where essentially the State Department has to license an arm sale going forward, right? And this can be, you know, in many cases this can be a fairly routine exercise, right, where defense contractors are working with foreign governments, and then the State Department

is licensing an armed sale, it's notified to Congress, so Congress has a period to raise some objections. If there are foreign policy kind of considerations that come into play, then this might get discussed, you know, in the situation room. Sometimes there weren't. Sometimes this is kind of routine, but, you know, for a relationship like Saudi Arabia and certainly with like a hot-button issue like Yemen, it's the kind of thing that would go through an interagency discussion process should this go forward. But then it still has to be licensed by the State Department and notified to Congress. What is so notable here, right, is first of all, they've gotten rid of any pretense that this is anything but a kind of corrupt enterprise in the sense that, you know, Raytheon

depends on Saudi Arabia for a significant chunk of its business. The former top lobbyist at Raytheon is now the Secretary of Defense of the United States. Donald Trump, when asked about Saudi behavior, like the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, or the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Yemen, consistently says, well, they're giving us a lot of money. So they're not, you know, they're not trying to hide. No hiding it.

Yeah, they're not hiding that basically their priority here is that the Saudis write checks and they sell them weapons. And if those weapons are used to kill children and innocent civilians, they could care less. What this introduces is the further point, though, that they basically blown up the process, including the legal process that they're supposed to go through. And so you have a situation where Trump is ignored, repeated and vetoed, repeated congressional efforts to stop these armed sales to Yemen. Then he ignored the requirement to even notify Congress, anticipating the objections he'd get and essentially trumped up a fake emergency because there's no emergency today. the situation in Yemen, the situation with Iran, has basically been an escalating mess for years.

Like there's not any reason that this is now suddenly an emergency. The only reason to do that would be to avoid that congressional scrutiny. And it just sounds like since Pompeo took over the State Department, they've got it the State Department's normal process of reviewing these things. So we have the fact that there's a fundamentally corrupted relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. we have the fact now that they are basically ignoring any kind of process that they are supposed to go through. They're legally compelled to go through in order to move forward with an arm sale.

And it makes you wonder what might an inspector general discover if he started poking around? What kinds of conversations has Mike Pompeo had with people? What has he directed people to do? Has he directed people to violate laws or protocols? What possible corruption might there be between the, Trump officials and the Saudis. You know, what is happening? Is there a whistleblower who might have some awareness of the corruption between a Jared Kushner

or Mike Pompeo and the Saudi government? Because the hard truth is, no matter what the Saudis do, no matter how bad this war in Yemen goes, the arms sales just keep increasing. And no matter what, the congressional scrutiny, right? So clearly Pompeo had a minimis flouting what he should have been doing as normal process and notifying Congress. the question is just how nefarious it goes. Yeah, we have not heard the end of this story.

I mean, it sounds like this inspector general might have been at the very end of his work on this exact investigation into this arm sale. So I'm glad that Engel is sounding the alarm. Hopefully we learn more information soon because, you know, that's a big problem. Yeah, and look, Engel's been a pretty cautious member of Congress. I would frankly like to see him be more aggressive about these things. Me too. I'm glad he's doing this.

But, you know, like, this is, This is one of the biggest unanswered questions of the Trump presidency. Just what is going on between them and the Saudis. Is there money involved? Is there real estate dealings involved? Are there promises about a post-presidency windfall for the Trump family involved? What the hell is going on? Because it is not in America's interest to be shoveling these weapons out the door to a country that is using them to bomb Yemen into smithereens,

kill all these innocent civilians, and not achieve any of their stated objectives with respect to Iranian influence. All right. Let's talk about Israel for a minute. So Axios had a great scoop this week where they reported that Israel's ambassador to the USA, unpleasant fellow named Ron Dermer, has been lobbying the Trump administration, lobbying Congress, lobbying right-wing pundits to build support for Israel to annex the West Bank settlements before the November election. So annexation for listeners who weren't familiar with the term would basically mean that Israel would permanently take. control of settlements in the West Bank without a negotiation with the Palestinians or without providing them with any reciprocity, any sort of land or anything in return. Axios says the Israeli government is worried that if Biden wins, he would oppose annexation and stop them. Israel's new unity government coalition that has BB Netanyahu as prime minister and Benny Gantz, formerly his rival as his deputy. They were sworn in on Sunday. Pompeo took a trip over there to meet with them, they could vote on annexation as soon as July 1st. So this is moving pretty quickly.

Friends in the region are not happy. King Abdullah of Jordan warned that annexation will quote, lead to a massive conflict with Jordan. So that's a pretty stark warning from Abdullah. During the Democratic primary, this issue came up a lot, in part because of questions from you and me, Ben. A bunch of candidates said they would withhold military assistance to Israel if they annexed the West Bank. Not only has Joe Biden not taken that position, but his advisors have said he opposes tying military assistance to Israeli political decisions and that they don't think the U.S. and Israel should debate these contentious issues publicly. You know, that was from Tony Blinken in a recent piece. But right before we started recording, there were a report that

Biden was doing a call with an audience of Jewish Democrats, and he said he does not support annexation and that Israel needs to stop the threat of annexation and stop settlement activity because it will choke off any hope for peace. So I was pleasantly surprised by that comment from Biden. Ben, you and I both signed a letter recently with J Street calling on the 2020 Democratic Party platform to specifically oppose annexation of West Bank settlements. Can you talk one more time just about why that's important? And how worried are you about this annexation activity starting before, you know, the election even occurs? Yeah, look, the reason

annexation matters is basically the death of the Palestinian state. If Israel starts formally swallowing up chunks of the West Bank, there's just no viability for a Palestinian state. It also shows that the Netanyahu government was completely full of shit for the previous decade

because their argument time and again against the UN or the U.S. putting forward potential borders to this conflict was that final status issues like the borders could only be determined through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. And so nobody else should prejudge that. Well, now they're taking the opposite position, which is essentially we get to define the final status issues unilaterally, right? So annexation is a really big deal.

This is not just like building additional settlements. This is the Israeli government as a matter of policy saying we are going to start to consume as a former part of Israel, the West Bank, which is not under any international law recognizes part of Israel. So it's a big deal. In terms of the response, and I should say, like, we should have every expectation. Ron Dermer is basically, you know, a Republican political operative in the context of American politics. We have every expectation that Trump will embrace whatever B.B chooses to do because all he sees is his narrow political interest and wanting to look like he's Bibi Nanyahu's best friend and attack Joe Biden and Democrats generally.

I think with Biden and the Democratic Party generally, what worries me is, you know, there may be an impulse to do the normal thing to some folks, which is we're very troubled by this. We're deeply troubled. We oppose annexation, but no consequences, no teeth, nothing behind that. Look, Tommy, I wrote a bunch of statements. I know what it's like to write a statement saying you're deeply troubled by something that Israel is going to do and then know that we're not really going to back that up, which unfortunately in my mind happened a lot on this Palestinian issue. It's like a Susan Collins kind of statement, right? Deeply concerned. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

And look, you have a menu of options. You know, you can, yes, one is conditioning assistance or saying that whatever amount of assistance that we can determine would go to support, you know, settlement expansion or annexation. We're going to deduct that amount of assistance. Or we're going to scrutinize the assistance more so that there's more transparency around where the money's going so that we can be assured that none of it's going to this. But there's also things.

like, do you give blank check support to Israel diplomatically? You know, would the United States continue to veto resolutions, let's say the resolutions in the UN that are critical of Israeli annexation? Are we going to block those or are we going to potentially let those go through? Diplomatically, are we going to explore other ways to work with other countries to raise concerns about this issue? Are we going to resume direct support for the Palestinians? If Joe Biden is elected president, would he recognize annexation if Trump has already done it or would he rescind that recognition? So there's a bunch of. things. The basic principle that I will be watching from the Biden campaign is, are they just

expressing the talking points about being deeply concerned, but saying there'll be no change, essentially, in the U.S.-Israel relationship if annexation moves forward? Or are they going to suggest that there'll be some consequences of some sort? And they may not want to detail those. I get it. It's a political campaign. You may not want to spell everything out. But look, I mean, that's the fundamental question here. Are you going to back up your words or not? Hard to ignore that a lot of has changed on the ground if you're using the same exact rhetoric from the Obama administration or previous presidencies, you know, it's not going to cut it. Yeah, and I want to go into the way, this is not about questioning our support for Israel,

the country, right? I would rather not be in this position, but the reality is the talking points were written like 15 years ago. We supported two-state solution, negotiations between the parties and the final status issues. And in the intervening time, particularly accelerated under Trump, you know, facts on the ground have changed. Settlements have expanded, right? Israel's annexed the Golan Heights. The U.S. has moved its embassy to Jerusalem, which is supposed to be a final status issue to be negotiated. And now they're literally talking about annexing territory in the West Bank.

That was unthinkable like a decade ago. And so you've got to update your approach. And look, I want Joe Biden to be president of the United States. He will be much better than Donald Trump on this issue and every other issue for sure. But I do think there's this debate in the Democratic Party that you and I have been a part of in a way, Tommy, at least in teeing some of it up. And it's about what's a new consensus about U.S. policy towards the Netanyahu government? Because clearly, we've got a guy in Netanyahu who's moved Israel in a very radical direction

and fully embraced Donald Trump. Yep. Right? Basically become like an accessory to Republican politics. And if the Democrats can't update their thinking in that context, then they never will. Yeah. And we should be clear that Netanyahu is rooting for Trump to win re-election. No question. One other thing out of Israel just, you know, I just think it's important to note these things because they could escalate. So in late April, Iran allegedly attempted a cyber attack on Israeli computers that control water flow to parts of Israel. This was detected quickly. It was fixed that caused no damage. But any cyber attack on critical infrastructure like that is a big deal. Flashword to today, or this week at least, according to the Washington Post, the Israelis responded,

with a cyber attack of their own by crashing computers that control the movement of ships and trucks and other goods at a major Iranian port. I think this happened on May 8th. And it basically shut down this port for days, which is no small thing in a normal time. It's especially not a small thing during a pandemic. So just flagging this story because we worry about conflict between Iran and Israel. We look for escalation. But these are good examples of this sort of ongoing low-grade warfare that just occurs.

and something we need to watch because it could escalate, it could cause real damage, it could hurt real people, and it's just worth, I think, flagging. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I'd throw into this, Tommy, is that whenever there was discussions about offensive cyber capabilities, and I'll be very careful about how I talk about this. But the thing that, you know, it's tempting to think of this as a, you know, low-cost weapon or a weapon that is less, you know,

damaging than dropping bombs on somebody. But whenever you started to look at these capabilities, it's very hard to not have collateral impacts. Like you shut down a grid well as a hospital on the grid. You shut down the port is life-saving medical equipment coming to that port. You know, like, and so in either direction here, these aren't just kind of probes and, you know, malware messing with people's computers. This can be life or death stuff. And these weapons can be as destructive as dropping bombs, right? And so it is worth watching.

Yeah. One of the quick update. So this comes out of France. French President Emmanuel Macron lost his majority in Parliament on Tuesday. After seven liberal members of his party, they left to start a new coalition with a bunch of others that is more focused on environmental concerns. So, you know, Macron's folks are pretty pissed because they feel like, you know, he has a strong environmental record to begin with. He pushed for the Paris Climate Accords. he got in big trouble because he tried to put in a, you know, a gas tax basically, and it led to a huge

protest movement that rebuked him. And he's got a reelection coming up in 2022. But I thought it was just interesting to see these defections coming from his left. I know very little about the French National Assembly or any of these lawmakers this just happened today. But I thought it was notable and interesting how the coronavirus is changing the global political landscape, you know, as his group sites because they saw the pandemic as an opportunity to refocus their politics on the need to change our lifestyles in the face of climate change. So just an interesting fallout from the pandemic. Yeah. And one interesting about, you know, Macron basically created a political party when he ran for president. It didn't exist. It's called On Marsh. I went to France in 2018 a couple years ago,

and I met with a whole bunch of these people in the National Assembly who were in On Marsh. And what was remarkable about them, Tommy, is like, they were like normal people. Like the year before they were elected to the National Assembly, they were like doctors and lawyers and, you know, activists. And it was a remarkable achievement that he basically built this whole party. Now, at the beginning, you know, that meant that the party was very much tied to him. Like on Marsh was basically Emmanuel Macron's vision for this kind of centrist progressivism in France. And it's not a surprise, though, that over time, some of those people, you know, care about different things and have different priorities. It just shows that, you know, building a party and making sure it has a uniformity of views on things is very hard.

I do think you're going to see this roiling politics everywhere, including here, for years to come about as there are limited resources and limited things that governments can do and there's a depression and people are going to have to build back from that. What is the focus? You know, do you have an environmental? Is it a green stimulus focus? Is it purely just firing up the economy, no matter of the energy that that depends upon? Is it something else, right? And I think you're going to see similar kind of fractures in different coalitions on the right and left as we deal with this COVID reality. Classic neolib, McCrone, getting busted on your left by the Red Rose Brigade. Getting owned on the left and attacked from the right, classic. One other quick story I just want to note. So there's a massive cyclone heading towards India in Bangladesh that will likely make landfall

on Wednesday. So after this comes out. So look, a storm with 165 mile per hour winds is fucking terrifying at any point, but especially so in the midst of a pandemic and in a very delicate place. It's predicted a Passover, Kolkata. It's a city of over 14 million people. It's full of history and cultural sites. Some officials in Bangladesh fear it could hit.

refugee camps that are the temporary home to like a million Rohingya refugees who are driven out of Myanmar. So I just wanted to flag this one. All we can do right now is hope for the best. But, you know, if this is bad, maybe think about ways to help the people who are impacted because, you know, these are folks in a very desperate situation, especially when you're talking about a refugee camp. Yeah, these are always hugely destructive and, you know, created all kinds of humanitarian challenges. You know, I remember when we were in government, it caused further displacement of people,

loss of life, and it was hard to deliver humanitarian supplies to these places. Now, even pre-pendemic, that's gotten a lot worse, given the scale of the refugee challenge in that part of the world, given the million Rohingya who've been displaced. And it makes me think that not only should we watch this typhoon, Tommy,

but all these kinds of events that are going to transpire, in a COVID context are going to get less attention, you know. Extreme weather events that lead to humanitarian crises, famines, like the philanthropic community, national governments, everybody's focusing close to home. And I do just worry that the most vulnerable people in the world are going to get creamed by not just the pandemic, but by the normal things that can happen to them, like an extreme weather event, and there's just going to be a much smaller pool of support for them. So it's something to pay attention to. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, here is some good news about one of the

darker events in recent history. The Wall Street Journal reported that French police arrested a man named Felician Kubuga in an apartment near Paris. Kabuga, I hope I'm saying that right, is accused of bankrolling a Rwandan militia group responsible for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of deaths during the Rwandan genocide. So for those not familiar with Rwanda genocide and what happened, the short version is there are basically two ethnic groups. There were the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis. And over the course of about 100 days in 1994, Houtu extremists killed an estimated 800,000 people included Tutsi, men, women, and children, and more moderate Hutu. So it was truly horrific. So Kibuga is accused of not only bankrolling,

militias, but of also helping run a radio station that was used to incite people, spread propaganda, like literally read the names of prominent people that they wanted to see killed. He was indicted in 1997. He's been on the run for two decades. So awful history. But good to see that he was captured and hopefully he's successfully prosecuted and that there's, you know, some measure of justice for the victims. Yeah.

And these types of things are important, not just. for the justice that is being done for the victims, but for the message it sends to other would-be war criminals or current war criminals, right, which is that, you know what, like you can't escape justice for this eventually, you know, that, you know, even 20-plus years later, if you can be found, you will be prosecuted, right? And so I think it's important part of the reason to have an international criminal court and have international justice related to war crimes is to deter future actions. And hopefully, you know, people, you know, as diverse as people sitting in the, you know,

Burmese military who've done what they've done to Rohingya to, frankly, you know, any number of actors in the Middle East, even those that may not recognize the ICC's jurisdiction, of course, or at least looking at this and thinking like, you know, that could happen to me someday. Yeah, exactly. And then the search for people like him does not end even after 20 years. I'm Patrick Radden-Keefe, a reporter at The New Yorker magazine. On my new podcast, Wind of Change, I investigate a rumor I haven't been able to shake since I first heard it years ago.

It came from someone inside the CIA, and the story was that the agency had written one of the best-selling rock songs of all time, a song that changed the world. So that was the tip that started me on this story, and it only got crazier from there. Listen to all eight episodes of Wind of Change for free on Spotify,

a new original series from Pineapple Street Studios, Cricked Media and Spotify. Okay, a little lighter stuff, maybe. Here's a headline, fans of irony will enjoy. Marco Rubio tapped to lead intelligence committee. So the former chairman, North Carolina Center, Richard Burr, he was forced to step aside because the FBI is investigating his stock trades. We talked about this couple weeks back.

Burr dumped all of his stock after getting a closed-door briefing on the coronavirus, despite the fact that he wasn't exactly sharing the extent of his concern with the rest of us, but, you know, he managed to tell, I guess, his brother-in-law who also sold his stock. So he stepped aside and could be in big trouble. Now, Rubio is in charge. This puts him as part of the gang of eight, which is this small group of lawmakers who get briefed on all the most sensitive intelligence matters. So, look, listeners of the show know that, like, we don't love Marco Rubio. We're hoping maybe he can do a little reset here.

He has a chance to rise to the moment. In particular, Ben, I mean, I know that you and a lot of now, security experts are increasingly worried about foreign election interference this cycle. Can you talk about why folks are growing so concerned? And maybe if you think there's a role, the Intelligence Committee could play in calling out some of this activity or preventing it? Yeah. So quickly, Russia is going to intervene in our election again. And never mind whether or not a Saudi Arabia would, too. And that's another question. But, you know, there's no question. I mean, we've been warned already that they are still intervening in American politics.

And they could do it in a number of ways, right? And the most obvious way is if, like, they did in 2016, they're creating huge volumes of content, social media, fake news, amplifying conspiracy theories, trying to flood the zone for Trump re-election. But more profoundly, right, they could mess with voting. I mean, you know, why wouldn't they? You know, like, why would the Russians not choose to try to hack voter rolls or affect voting totals in some ways or undertake, you know, other ways to actually affect the result of the election? That should be a real worry. There's no reason to think that Russia wouldn't intend to do that. And there's no reason to think that Donald Trump would try to stop them from doing that.

Now, as people have been worried about this, a couple of things have happened. Rick Grinnell has been put in charge of the intelligence community, right? who we've talked about, so I don't need to review the bill of particulars there. But interestingly and importantly, there were reports over the last few days that he has sidelined the FBI director, Chris Ray, who's now called the deep state operative by Sean Hannity, even though he was appointed by Trump. Right. He's kind of pushed the FBI out of this space on election security and briefing people

on election security. Basically, Grinnell has taken control of the flow of information about election security, which, by the way, normally would include briefings. to the campaigns, including the Biden campaign. And if you think that Rick Rinell is going to play it straight, then you're fucking crazy, right? And so this is a – and then I just add another dimension to this. One of the aspects of Obamagate is this constant banging on the 2016 stuff does create a bit of fatigue about, oh, God, we have to talk about Russian interference in the election again.

I think that's part of the play here, right? To just make this all toxic stew of stuff so that the devil's. Democrats start crying about Russian intervention. It's like, there they go again. Press, don't fall for it. See, it's Obamagate. They're trying to delegitimize expressions of concern about Russian intervention. Because if you believe Trump, which is not true, and this didn't really happen in 2016, then we shouldn't be worried about in 2020. So all that is to say that's something to worry about. And one of the only checks on that, one of the only places where people can at least try to get this information are in the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Now, Marco Rubio has been a

Russia hawk by his own, you know, telling for the years. And he's also been a complete disciple of the cult of Trump. Those two things are not reconcilable. Like you, I would hope that he does the right thing here and cares about the national interest in Russian interference. I'm not, you know, optimistic about that, though. Yeah. Look, I'm no hope in Marco Rubio as a human being. But what tends to happen with these controversies is like immediately these guys understand that like allowing a foreign country to interfere in our election is wrong. It takes a few days for the partisan politics of it all to catch up with them and for them to bow down to Trump. So maybe we have some time there. I mean, it is like it's disconcerting though. You know, like Richard Burr, I wasn't a fan of his.

I didn't care about him much either way. He was a bit more of a straight shooter than like a Devin Nunes who was over on the House side making shit up about the Obama administration. And Burr literally called him out. But, you know, right now like last week we talked about this unmasking controversy, right? Unmasking is when the intelligence community spies on some foreign target. They talk to or about a U.S. person, and the U.S. person's name gets redacted to protect their privacy in intelligence products, but officials can ask to have that name revealed if it's crucial to understanding the intelligence. Right after we recorded last week, Rick Grinnell decided to declassify and release a list of Obama administration officials who may have unmasked intelligence

about General Flynn, right? They're kicking up this Obamagate thing. Today, they released an email from Susan Rice from January right before Trump took over where she memorialized a meeting she had about a Russian election interference where, like, the scandal apparently is that Obama said he wanted it handled, quote, by the book, right? So they're just churning the waters. And the problem for conspiracy theorists out there and the Republicans is that like there's no there, but they're just throwing chum in the water.

Lindsey Graham says he's going to hold hearings. Right before I was going in, I saw that idiot Ted Cruz claim that Obama was spying on Trump, right? So, like, you're exactly right that even talking about it right now is creating fatigue and it is going to lay the groundwork for everyone to say, there we go again, we don't care if Democrats try to sound the alarm come November. Yeah. I mean, they're counting on the mentality that kind of nothing matters in terms of the facts,

but if they repeat the charge is enough like it creates a cloud. I mean, a few rules of thumb about disinformation really quickly. One, it's usually projection. So the people who are corrupt say, no, you're corrupt. Or people who are criminals who say, no, you are the ones who committed crimes. That definitely rings true here, right? The second thing is it tends to have to continually flood the zone. There's always a new angle.

There's always a new charge. There's always a new piece of the conspiracy theory. that they're just throwing at you and bombarding you. And that leads to the third point, which is disinformation is meant not just to mobilize and fire up Trump's base. It's meant to demoralize the other side, to not want to make certain arguments, to not want to stand up to this. And you know what?

They're good at it. And it's going to take a lot of discipline from all of us to not succumb to that kind of apathy, but to continue to be concerned about this set of issues. Frankly, I wish we had a media in the United States that didn't follow them down every fucking rabbit hole. Susan Rice's email could say, basically does say, we did everything by the book, and they'll say, see, it's a huge crime. And then the story will be, you know, Republicans say Susan Rice committed huge crime, and this is the worst thing that ever happened, comma, Democrats say it was by the book. It's like, no, no, that's what it actually says, you know. And so, like, we just have to know

that's the dynamic that we're in. Yeah. Two more quick things. So a tiny bit of coronavirus news here at the end, just snuck it under the wire. On Monday, President Trump threatened to permanently cut off all funding to the World Health Organization. He did so by sending a bizarre four-page letter that really reads like a campaign opposition research document. It basically pulls together a litany of complaints about the WHO being too nice to China or criticizes the WHO for not being mean to China about certain things. Here's an example. Trump is mad at the WHO for not commenting on discriminatory. retreatment of Africans living in China, which, hey, I'm all for that. Like, let's call out that

kind of racism. But we should be honest that that kind of, you know, social justice activity is not usually at the top of Trump's list of concerns, right? He also attacked the WHO for waiting until January 30th to declare a public health emergency around the coronavirus, despite the fact that the U.S. waited several weeks later. There's some major error, like just factual errors. Like they cite a study that didn't actually come out until a month later, whatever. But this letter comes right after a big World Health Organization meeting where the Chinese announced they plan to donate $2 billion to fight the coronavirus and that they're going to dispatch doctors to the developing world.

So I raise this for a few convoluted reasons. One, I'm very worried. I remain worried about any global pandemic response being effective if we're not a part of it. And two, I'm worried about China, like, winning a global PR war because they're pledging funding. They just agreed to allow an international investigation into the origins of the virus. And Trump literally refused an invitation to speak at this meeting. And lastly, like, because I know domestically, I've seen some recent polling that shows that these blame China attacks work really well. They actually upset and move voters.

So I think we need to get ready for much, much more. of this tit for tat fighting with China and not less that might get us through the election, but could set back like the broader pandemic response effort. So the politics here are broken again, and they're set up for a bad outcome. Yeah. And look, the World Health Organization is the mechanism that we have to mobilize international cooperation on pandemic response. When you think, look, we've been here for two or three months, self-isolating. We're at the beginning of this. If you think about the gargantuan task of scaling up a potential vaccine and disseminating it globally, when you think about the complexity of resuming international travel and supply chains,

as countries have varying amounts of COVID outbreaks, and then you think that you're going to do that without any mechanism for international cooperation, like this attack on the WHO is going to put Americans at risk. Like everything that Trump has done in this COVID response, it could lead to actual health effects in this country, right? It also opens up the door wide to China. If we're not the one helping to drive where the WHO is going, China will be the one who are doing that.

But we will be, again, to use the phrase, like, we're not at the table, we're on the menu here. The Chinese are the ones with the money. They'll be the ones in the room helping to mobilize and generate the international response. What happens that the vaccine is developed elsewhere, by the way? We want access to it. and we've just taken our toys and walked home from the collaborative effort.

And the last point you made is really important, Tommy, which is, look, I get it. Surf the way, you know, people are going to surf this wave of anti-China sentiment. And look, I have all kinds of problems with the policies of the Chinese Communist Party and a range of issues. I worry, though, that, like, you stir this up and it's kind of dangerous. You know, you know, the, if Trump is fueling hatred of China, I mean, never mind the kind of a potential backlash year at home that we've already seen for Asian Americans. Like, I don't want the U.S. and China to go to a war, you know, like, I don't want to conflict to escalate in the South China Sea. I don't want to kind of spiral into a trade war that is compounding a depression.

There's a smarter way to be tough and to stand up to China. And I just worried that this demagoguery could lead us to places that might seem improbable now, but could seem a lot more probable in a year, especially if Trump has been reelected here. So like, let's like I'll think very clearly and soberly about just how much we want to drink, you know, the anti-China juice here, how drunk we want to get on that because it could lead you to drive to dangerous places. Yeah. Last thing. So I know we're all worried about the coronavirus, but I have some good news, which is that a couple days ago, Trump announced that we were developing what he called a super-duper missile. He says it's 17 times faster than the missiles we have now. He is, he is,

is probably talking about R&D on a hypersonic missile, which is technology, that you'll hear, you know, weapons nerds talk about the Russians and the Chinese developing because they could potentially beat missile defense systems and be destabilizing. So I guess my question, Ben, is do you think he is making up the fact that this thing is 17 times faster, or did he just disclose a highly classified information specs about a missile that have a bunch of Pentagon planners, like, shitting their pants that everyone now knows exactly how this missile we have works. It's probably a little bit of both because he probably did reveal some missile that travels

much faster, but then he probably exaggerated it. Yeah, yeah. And I don't get why he does this, like Space Force and the Super-Duper Missile. Like, I don't, like, who's going to be voting on the Super-Duper Mistle? Like, he gets kind of like a small child when he's discussing, like, space. or weapons. Or actually more so, like he's kind of like Dr. Evil in Austin Powers, you know? It's like there's a doctor evil mentality where he's sitting at the head of the table

and there are all these kind of straight men sitting there in uniforms briefing him on a weapon. And he's like, what if we called it the super duper weapon? You know, and they often nod and say, oh, great, great idea. Yeah, yeah. Have another name storm. I mean, there is like, look, I'm not going to lie. When I first got into the White House and you go to your first, like, interesting, you know, military-led meeting or you learn about some, like, capability we have, it is really cool.

It is really interesting. It's information that you've never had access to before in your life and you never will again. But over time, I think that, like, the implications of that technology start to sink in. Yeah. And, like, a super duper missile isn't as much cool as it is a terrifying, destabilizing arms race creating way to kill a shitload of people. Yeah. And maybe like when you're the guy who presses the button or decides whether the launch

codes get implemented, you should like feel that a little differently by year three. But like he just never evolves on this stuff. No, no. And that's like the pictures of him with the space force in the Oval Office were. Yeah. We're troubling in that regard, right? Which is like this should not be that exciting, you know? This is like I'd hope that there's not a war in space.

Like that would be a bad thing. if we're suddenly shooting down satellites that are falling down, you know, into the atmosphere. So, yeah, just a little for the guy who has his hand on the codes, which is supposed to be kind of a sobering thing, like he's a little too happy about it. Yeah, a little too into it. Okay, so we went no guests today because we really just wanted to take our time talking about our friend Mike Pompeo. So no regrets there. But I want to just end with like a little update on the reading list. It's like month two of this quarantine nightmare.

Speaking of Space Wars, I just last night started reading Ender's Game. Have you ever read that? No, no. It's like just straight like sci-fi, like fiction. Cool. Totally not anything serious. I'm excited to read Dexter Filkin's New Yorker piece on Iran. I have not gotten into that yet.

Have you touched that bad boy? I have not sitting there in the queue. Yeah, it's like one of those things that I know I will love every minute of reading. And I'll probably be like texting you excerpts of as I go, but I just haven't found an hour to do it. But last thing for WorldO's, if you're looking for a good TV show, Dave on FX and Hulu is really fun and just stupid and funny. It's about like a rapper in L.A. going to ridiculous meetings trying to get his music made. So that's what I got. That's what's happening over here at the Vitor House.

I guess my only updates, some of this continues. I think I've mentioned before. I'm kind of started at the beginning of the Sopranos. And actually, one of the interesting things about watching Sopranos is how long ago, like the late 90s feels. It feels like you're watching a show, which I remember well at the time, right? So it's dating me that looks like,

you know, what it used to feel like to watch stuff from the 70s, you know? The cars are driving, everybody's smoking, like, you know, the technology. There's no real, like, phones are going to pay phones and all the stuff. The last dance was like that, too. Like USBN footage from 98 looks like a million years ago.

It makes me feel old that 1998 now looks like what I used to think, 1978 looked like, right? A couple other things I threw out there. A great recent magazine article, if you want to catch up on New Yorker reading that's non-COVID related, John Lee Anderson did a long piece about Avo Morales, which we haven't talked about in a while, but he got to AVO. Like, John the Anderson seems to be able to get access to any Latin American dictator. So he got access to Avo in Mexico. He spent a lot of time

in Bolivia, and he really unpacks what's happened there, what happened in this coup or non-coup, depending on how you look at it, how the politics are fracturing, what the hell Eva Morales is up to. It's funny and colorful in the way that John Lee Anderson stuff always is, while also being incredibly informative about both Bolivia, but also the kind of broader Latin American dynamic. I hope that John Lee Anderson tries to get to the bottom of this Bay of Piglet. He wrote a piece called the Bay of Piglets already, a short piece for the New Yorker, but I hope he digs into this because he's the guy to get the answers. A couple of other things. I read a great book.

Worldose, I mentioned book recommendations. I tend to go with an author for a while. So I did Julian Barnes. I've read a bunch of books. I just read The Sense of an Ending, which I hadn't read before. Great short book, if you want to plow through like a smart kind of mystery-type novel. And then the last thing I'll plug a friend of mine, Greg Barker is a director.

He directed the final year. Tommy, remember we did that pod with him and Samantha Power. he adapted Samantha's book about Sergio de Mello into a Netflix movie called Sergio that is it's streaming on Netflix and what's great when you watch it is this story about this guy who died he was the UN envoy in Iraq

but he was also like one of the iconic UN guys of all time like he'd been Mr. Fixit he'd been in all these different hotspots and it tells the story of like his experience in Iraq but also flashbacks and kind of covers his life in places like East Timor. If you're a world though, like they don't make mid-level budget movies like this anymore. Movies about diplomacy and Iraq and Paul Bremer's in there.

And then we get the East Timor process of independence. So it's a cool movie and it's a cool way. It's just cool that Netflix or anybody is still making, you know, thoughtful content that's, you know, not about superheroes and, you know, animated films that watch my daughters. Or reality shows. Yeah. All right. Good Rex.

Well, that's all I got this week, man. Good to see you. Yeah. Talk to everybody next week. And, you know, send us any content ideas you want to hear about because we're always looking for stuff. Welcome. Yeah.

Thanks, everybody. Pot Save the World is a product of crooked media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malconian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.