Pod Save the World - The FBI raids Mar-a-Lago

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

Tommy and Ben cover the national security implications of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Israel bombs targets in Gaza, good news about the Iran deal and climate change, a historic first for the Marine Corps, Trump and his generals, Viktor Orban attends fascist CPAC Coachella, and a verdict for Brittney Griner. Then Tommy talks with podcaster Emily Y. Wu about Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and the Chinese response. 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 POTS of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, uh, slow news week. Yeah. Not much going on in the world. It's very quiet out there. Are you excited for another endless conversation about, uh, how political candidates handle classified information? Because it seems like we're heading that direction. Yeah, who knew this would be the defining issue of our times? Yeah, really?

Yeah, deciding election after election. It is, um, I don't know, I want to know more. I want to know more. It's a cliffhanger, Eric Garland. Yeah. So we got a lot to talk about today. So we're going to talk about, in all scenarios, the national security implications of this FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. Yeah.

We're also going to talk about it because it's fun. Yes. Israel's bombing in Gaza. Some possible good news about the Iran deal, the JCPOA. Fingers crossed. Great news about climate change, both here and in Australia. Fantastic. Do you think the rational fear pod deserves all the credit for getting that done?

As usual, yeah, those billboards in Times Square. Yeah, they got it done. We're also going to talk about a historic first for the Marine Corps reporting. on Trump's relationship with his generals, the fascist Coachella Festival in Dallas over the weekend with one of your favorite autocrats been, Britney Grinders case. And then you will hear my interview with a friend of yours,

Emily Wai Wu. She's a podcaster in Taiwan. We talk about the Pelosi visit, how it was covered, how people felt about it, the Chinese response, and much, much more. So stick around for that.

One of the cooler names might even be cool than Cricket Media, Ghost Island Media. Totally badass. That's an podcast company. Yeah, she's got a bunch of great podcasts. Check it out. Ben, real quick before we record, I just want everyone to know that they should be listening to hysteria with Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Master Monaco because they have been killing it lately.

They're doing a tour de fuckery of terrible things happening politically in local areas that is just hilarious. Second, congrats with three amazing episodes of another Russia. Another Russia. The latest one dropped on Monday. We do after the oligarchs dispatched with Nemtsov as the next president of Russia, we go through how they elevated Putin to the presidency of Russia. It's a pretty interesting story.

Pretty important story, yeah. We get Chechny in there. We get the Kersk submarine disaster in there. Oh, that's a tough one. Good movie, by the way, if you haven't seen it. Putin's takeover of Russian television, and we end with Nemtsov's first arrest, which obviously foreshadows a lot of bad things to come. So it's a great episode covers a lot of ground.

And if you haven't started yet, we're now like far enough along. You can kind of binge your way back in, right? It's one story in six episodes, so whenever you decide to, to smash that subscribe button, you have a lot of remarkable content ahead of you. The show is incredible, and I just want everyone to know that you're on the cusp of being dead to me if you've not subscribed yet. Yeah, come on, guys. If you need to stay up late to listen to either back episodes of hysteria or another Russia,

we can help make sure you're caffeinated then because Crooked Coffee just launched a new product, the Crooked Cold Brewer. Brew your own coffee at home. Go to crooked.com slash coffee for more information. Who doesn't love a cold brew? I do, you know, I used to be like almost an exclusive ice coffee guy because I brew it at home now. I'm almost exclusive hot coffee, but I should go out for some ice room. We just get this cold brew machine. Get this gold brew. Like, go for it. Yeah, it's got. They made it so easy. Yeah. It's delicious.

What will those people at crooked.com slash coffee think of next. All right. Ben, let's start with this raid by the FBI. So on Monday, FBI agents took documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, including, as we learned from Trump's angry statement about it from his safe, his personal safe. It sounds like they sees materials that Trump brought back with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. Trump reportedly has been going back and forth with the National Archives for months about these documents. He took like 15 boxes that he shouldn't have. It does make you wonder if, you know, why would DOJ conduct a search warrant if they're already engaged in these conversations to transfer materials that have been wrongly taken? There's obviously a lot we don't know and we don't want to be irresponsible because there is a lot of idiocy online right now and speculative. about what this will mean politically and blah, blah, blah, and it's all just a waste of time.

But I think we can tick through some of what we do know and see that there's some context clues that come from that. Yes, we are podcasters after all. That's right. We can speculate. We need to talk about stuff. So first, the FBI would need to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant, which means you have to convince that judge that there's probable cause a crime had been committed.

There's also just no doubt that Lisa Monica, the deputy attorney general, who we know well in Merrick Garland, the attorney general would have to approve something this. serious? Yeah. It also seems extremely likely that the FBI would conduct a search if this was just about some mundane document retention issue. Like I don't, I don't think this is a presidential record act issue. I could be wrong. We'll find out if I'm wrong, but it seems unlikely. So we do know there was classified information in the boxes Trump took. And again, for context, the president of United States gets access to whatever intelligence he wants. Top secret, code word level, the compartmentalized stuff, the CIA is doing special Pentagon

weapons programs, sources and methods like who the CIA is paying off for information, et cetera, who they've compromised. So he doesn't just get the report assessing Syria's chemical weapons program that is disseminated broadly. He can get details about how we know the information about their program, the source of the information, maybe how we intercepted some communication. channel, maybe covert steps to neutralize it. And then lastly, I've seen some legal analysts say the DOJ wouldn't be so aggressive if this was just about custody of these documents, but only if they

thought there was some risk of the materials getting shared, maybe with some sort of foreign adversary. I don't know if that's accurate, but it is worth noting that that wouldn't have to be Trump, right? It could be like some Cooper who works at Mar-a-Lago could be trying to sell documents that he or she found to, you know, the Chinese government. So, Ben, hopefully that counts as responsible speculation. I'm curious what you made of the report so far and kind of what we've learned over the last 24 hours. So, yeah, I'd break this into different pieces

with all the caveats about what we don't know. First of all, I don't think anybody has accused Merrick Garland of being some trigger-happy prosecutor. No, good point. Very judicious guy. To your point, like I don't think. think, you know, he knows as well as anyone that when he takes this kind of step, there's going to be precisely the backlash we saw. And so Lisa, too. And Lisa Monaco, who literally,

yeah, sat across from Lisa Monaco for four years, totally apolitical human being, you know, career in law enforcement, prosecutor, counterterrorism. So these are not, you know, political hack figures right out to get Trump. No, the opposite. The second thing, this is like going to, I'm to go down a bit of a rabbit hole here, but the nature of filling up, you know, the reports were that there were like 15 boxes of classified documents. That's a lot of stuff. Well, and first of all, like, you didn't actually, I think you barely lived through this transition, Tommy, because you left in 2013 in the spring.

But basically, by the end of the second term, we got almost all of our intelligence on an iPad. Yeah, the PDB was slowly shifted. Yeah, the PDB, which I got for most of my time in. government seven plus years. I used to get in like a binder, but you know, it was on an iPad. And by the way, that iPad would automatically like wipe. So if you were like me and you didn't always return them right away and you had like a stack iPads in your office, like there was like a, after a period of days, that information would go away. Remember how the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the vice chairman of those guys all have the iPads for anyone else? And they'd bring them to sit room meetings

and people would just like ogle their iPads and be jealous. Super cool that you had these iPads, right? And so I only make this point because taking the time to like print out documents or to have like hard copies of documents shows already like a very particular level of desire to have custody of, you know, sensitive intelligence that is unusual to begin with. Particularly if it's not just like one report, but if it's like boxes and boxes of stuff. So that kind of raises some questions to me. We know Trump has been kind of casual about this stuff in the past. I think he tweeted out an image from his PDB ones before. Of an Iranian missile launch, basically. He shared some information with the Russians casually, which we know from reports.

So all this is to say, very strange that he has a big volume of classified documents. And those documents could be worth an enormous amount of money, right? Or could be – and again, now we're into speculation mode. But like, these things could either compromise very sensitive intelligence collection methods of the U.S. government or assessments of the U.S. government. They could be potentially very valuable, like market-based kind of information, like predictive of things that might happen or technologies that are being developed. We don't know, but the point is that the potential for there to be a potential risk to

American national security, the potential for corruption around the maintenance of classified documents that are of value to, I don't know, a foreign government, say, Saudi Arabia or something. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, you know, I mean, if you, Saudis have a lot that they want to know about U.S. intelligence collection. We've seen a lot of profiteering. That's just kind of one hypothetical relationship. And then we also just don't know, you know, thus far, the white smoke emanating from DOJ quite

limited, but the reporting suggests it's this class of a document. But we don't know whether there's any interaction with the January 6th stuff. And whether or not there's classified documents that might also have something to do with what was happening in the run up to January 6th because sometimes stuff is classified for a variety of reasons. So stuff that might not be about like foreign phone intercepted conversations could still be classified and shed light on what Trump was up to in that transition period. So there's a lot to ask questions about. But my favorite Republican talking point is that like this has never happened to a former president. Well, yeah, like we've never had a former president like Donald Trump, who's such a connoisseur of different criminality, you know. Yeah, also that narrative is like, oh, this is banana republic stuff.

This doesn't happen in democracies. That is ridiculous. The former prime minister of Israel went to prison. B.B. Netanyahu might follow him there. France is prosecuted and convicted former president. So is South Korea. And this is in the last like two decades. Yeah.

This is what a democracy should do. to hold public figures engaged in corruption accountable. And so, you know, the idea that like, oh, you could be next because they went after Trump. It's like, ah, the point is we're all equal under the law, idiots. And the you here, like, let's say it's a class of document and stuff like, it's unlikely that you, mag ahead, have 15 boxes of five classified information in your house that you refuse to share with the FBI. Yeah, it's like you, paranoid info wars person. You're the center of the universe.

We're all coming at the Truman Show coming after you. It also is confusing, Ben, though, because, you know, the president can declassify whatever he wants. If he really needed to do that, he could have declassified it and brought stuff with him. This suggests, you know, not doing that could be sloppy or lazy or it could suggest you were trying to hide it. Yeah. And again, I want to come back to this because it's just very strange. Like, Barack Obama didn't have, like, boxes of classified information in the residence of the White House that he, like, had to give back. why would you have it like the president doesn't need to carry around with him or her hopefully

someday um reams of classified information there's the whole thing is very odd yeah it is i mean yeah Obama would basically i mean i think he'd get his memos for the night right you know the PDB is an ipad and then maybe he'd get a binder with some memos in it that he would return like you know there wasn't like a file cabinet of like secret information in the in the residence of the white house you know yeah i mean look this is the best we can do based on what's been reported, are best informed speculation. I kind of think that there's some big fact or set of facts that we don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It explains this. I don't think that Trump was carrying out the interesting secret level report about agricultural yields in Southeast Asia with him.

Water table management. Yeah, exactly. So just to put a fine point on your, I think, good speculation, which is like they're probably not after this just because they're stamped secret. Like, there's got to be another piece to this that is yet to emerge. Famously intellectually curious man takes interesting reports. Exactly, exactly. By the way, he wouldn't even show up to his PDB. We know that too. Yes, yes.

None of this makes sense. None of this makes sense. It's all so weird. What a weird day yesterday was. Okay, well, the other really big story from over the weekend was there was continued military conflict between Israel and groups in Gaza. So late on Sunday, Israel and the Gaza-based group Islamic Jihad agreed to a ceasefire that ended several days of airstrikes and rocket attacks that have killed reportedly 43 people.

and injured more than 300 residents of the Gaza Strip. The fighting started last Friday when Israel launched a preemptive strike on two senior members of the group, Islamic Jihad, which then responded by launching over 1,000 rockets at Israel. The overwhelming majority of those rockets were intercepted by Israeli missile defense systems, the Iron Dome system, but thousands of Israelis were terrified and forced to hide in arid shelters. This ceasefire was apparently brokered by Qatari and Egyptian intermediaries. I saw some truly horrific images over the weekend. Twitter that included, you know, dead or wounded Palestinian civilians, including children.

Hamas apparently did not get involved in this fighting. Israeli officials say that's because Hamas, you know, who has this government's capacity, they run Gaza, they were worried about losing economic incentives like work permits. I don't know if it's true, but if it is true, it does seem to suggest that, you know, more carrots, more economic incentives like this that improve conditions in Gaza for average people could have the effect of also making Israeli safer. It would be good to see everyone pursuing that path. This weekend of fighting also, I think, highlights some of the impact of the U.S. funding the Iron Dome missile defense system, which, you know, to be clear, I fully support Iron Dome. It's a defensive weapon that has saved

countless lives. But it also does clearly allow the IDF to take what they themselves say were preemptive strikes against targets in Gaza, strikes that killed civilians, in part, because they know that there is very little risk of Israel getting hit in response with these rocket attacks. I think 97% of the thousand rockets were intercepted. So again, I support the Iron Dome system. But when you hear from critics, you know, some House members of Congress on the Democratic side that has the potential to enable more aggressive military action in Gaza, this is sort of what they're talking about. So, Ben, you know, these same issues sort of flare up every year or so, you know, interesting this time that it was not Hamas. but problem is not solved.

No, and I mean, it is interesting that the reason this was such a more compressed, you know, operation is because Hamas was not involved, right? So Islamic jihad is not nearly a strong organization. There don't have as many rockets, don't have as many, frankly, targets for the Israeli military. You know, I think when you have to step back and look at this, we're 15 years into the blockade of Gaza. And the humanitarian circumstances remain absolutely dire, almost unlike anywhere else on Earth in terms of the degree to which they're just cut off. There's a rutenization that feels really dark of like reading about, you know, children killed in a missile strike, just as there's a routization of, you know, rockets fired at Israel indiscriminately, you know, many of them shot down by the Iron Dome. Some of the misfired and killed Gassans, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah, killed a lot of them did. And so I think that what's missing from all this is the plan to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, you know, and when there are full-scale wars, as there was last year, you often hear around the brokering of ceasefire, how there's going to be some later plan to address the blockade of Gaza, to improve the humanitarian circumstance, to rebuild things that have been destroyed. and you never hear about the follow-through. And so I would hope that there could be some,

to use the Biden administration's term, quiet, intense diplomacy with Israel to try to loosen the blockade and improve the humanitarian situation, because as long as there's this degree of desperation, you're going to have really acute human suffering. And frankly, you're not going to have, to your point about carrots, like the Palestinian leadership totally dysfunctional.

So you've got like the kind of corrupt, pediatric Palestinian Authority in West Bank, and then you have Hamas and Gaza, but like, these are not the conditions through which like an alternative leadership can emerge, you know, just just keeping a complete lid on a place that is already run by Hamas, you know. So I'd like to see some more structural changes in Gaza. I'm not hopeful that that's going to be the case. Yeah, I feel the same way. Okay, let's say in the same region, but go to some better news, which is that it appears that there has been some progress in efforts to get the U.S. and Iran back into the Iran nuclear deal or the JCPOA. Diplomats from the European Union circulated what they hope is a final draft text

of a deal. And now the U.S. and Iran, basically their delegates, bring it back to the capitals and the most senior leaders decide if they have the political space to agree to doing this again. If that happens, then I guess everybody takes a trip to Vienna. You sign some document. You have a ceremony and we all feel a lot better about the world. So the talks, well, they're indirect talks because the Iranians have refused to talk to the U.S. side since Trump pulled out of the deal. But the indirect talks have been going on for over a year. Apparently, the last sticking point is that Iran is demanding that the U.N. close an older investigation into traces of nuclear material at Iranian sites.

It seems like that material dates back to before 2003 when basically everyone knows these guys were working on nuclear weapons. There are some additional technical issues to be worked out. Iran does seem to have backed down from its demand that the U.S. rescind the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRDC, as a terrorist organization, which is a big concession. So, Ben, I don't know, what are you hearing from folks about the odds that this thing actually gets done? It's great to hear a little hope on this one. Yeah, I mean, it's the first time that this thing has come back to life in a while. If it does bear out that they can get

into this deal with a formulation that avoids this designation issue, great. You know, I, we've been critical of Biden for not taking that step and therefore kind of prolonging this. But like if there's a different way of getting to yes, that's great. This could become like the Joe Manchin about face of foreign policy. I love it. And I would celebrate that as as robustly as I'm celebrating Joe Manchin's turn towards climate change. You know, I do think that we'll have to see here, you know, this is very opaque. You know, we don't really know what the sticking points are. My, I guess the couple experiences I'd drawn from my time dealing with this with the Iranians and the P5 plus one and all the rest of it is, first of all, it really is an equation, right?

So you can get fixated on like, you know, one issue. And clearly that IRGC designation issue was one big sticking point. But, you know, when I remember the final negotiating days before the original, JCPOA, you know, there's like four or five things the Iranians want and there's seven or eight things we want and you trade three of those things for half of four of those things. And so what we can't see is what the trade space is on different issues. You know, maybe one will leak it into the press, but there may be three other things that are out there. So it's all just these envoys and it's harder when the U.S. and Iran aren't dealing directly, but the Europeans have really been dogged in pursuit of this, you know, hopefully that formulae that Rubik's Cube can come together.

The issue of closing the old investigation, you know, that runs in different directions too. Like some of that was about what access the international inspectors would get to like Iranian military sites. Yeah, they want cameras. Yeah. And now look, like obviously you need sufficient access to ensure that. no weaponization is happening. So in other words, that they're not figuring out how to weaponize nuclear material at some site. Like, that's, that's, the hierarchy of needs is present and future

weaponization efforts, right? This kind of resolve the past, figure out, you know, through documents or traces of materials, what happened 10, 15, 20 years ago now, like is important, but less, I think, important than dealing with it going forward. And then what the Iranians are concerned about is in part like, you know, not having inspectors show up all over their military bases across our country, which, again, like, you can at me hawks, but like no country would agree to that. You know, like if there's not a basis, you know, for some inspection, just snap inspections at like something that has no tie into a nuclear issue is not something they're going to agree to either. So this gets a little tricky, but the core of it is, can we be assured that

we can investigate all potential efforts to be weaponizing a nuclear program today and going forward? I'm sure that's the bottom line for the Biden people. Does your scenario make President Rahisi, the mansion, the Joe Manchin of this, President of Iran? Yeah, I mean, I guess like Would that make, what is Biden in that case? Like a Schumer trying to figure out how much you can take that? Yeah. So, Ybrineem Recy Mansion. We are such dorks.

Okay, different issue. Last week, WMBA star, Brittany Griner received a nine and a half year sentence in her trial for possession of vape cartridges in Russia. This was a foregone conclusion. Russian trials, I think 99% of them results in convictions and clearly she's being held for leverage by Putin. It's obviously awful. Russian prisons are Soviet-era forced labor camps, basically. the good news is that this could open up space for talks or prisoner swap. Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister said Russia is now ready to discuss a prisoner swap with the U.S. So fingers crossed

that the U.S. and Russia can resolve this quickly. I don't know whether or not to be hopeful about it, you know, clearly the good news is that clearly getting Britney Griner and Paul Whelan home is way up on the agenda for Tony Blinken and for the White House. Like they've been out there talking about this a lot. It's just a question of where it lands for Putin and I think time will tell. Yeah, I mean the Russians are clearly like playing ball in some kind of prisoner swap scenario here. They, they're pretty far out themselves and indicating that that's what they're negotiating, right? Their price seems to be quite high. I mean, we've talked about Victor Boot in the past, this kind of creepy arms dealer who's serving a long sentence in U.S. prison. And that's clearly,

doesn't seem to be enough for the Russians. Yeah, they're going to try to up the cost. Yeah, or else this would be done probably. They seem to want two people like a two-for-two swap. And the reports of who they were asking for include like a former FSB guy who's in jail for murder in Germany, right? Right, which I don't think we can deliver. Which, yeah, which we can deliver. So I think what's clear is the Russians are driving a pretty high price for this, which is likely to present a difficult issue for the Biden administration. And it shows you the bind of these things. On the one hand, they get a ton of shit if they don't get these people out of prison. On the other hand, they get a ton of shit for.

the deal that gets these people out of prison. Yeah. You know, I think what you want to evaluate is what kind of risk does the person you're releasing pose? Has the person you're releasing already served a pretty big chunk of a sentence? And like Victor Boot has, like, you know, there are ways that you can try to make this more appetizing. Again, the irony here is that, like, the attention on this, I think probably drives up

the price that the Russians are asking for. They know this is now getting a lot of tension and they're going to leverage it. It's very, very possible. So fingers crossed there. Hopefully makes more progress. With Trex, you get the most of everything. The most wood inspired. The most eco-friendly.

The most decking and railing designs. The most trusted. Trex. Performance engineered for your life outdoors. Visit trex.com today. So more good news here, Ben. Big news on climate change. Yeah.

So Biden is going to sign the Inflation Reduction Act, hopefully, pretty soon. into law and it has $370 billion worth of climate change and energy spending. And it's a massive, massive, massive step forward. But also, Australia is on the cusp of passing a bill that would commit the Australian government to reducing emissions by at least 43% below 2005 levels by the end of 2030, getting to net zero by 2050. That's a big deal because Australia is actually the currently, the world's third largest fossil fuel exporter, a very high carbon output per capita. The Green Party in Australia, was pushing for even more reductions. But, you know, this progress obviously is the result of the recent election that put in a more

progressive administration. So, Ben, the next big climate summit, COP 27 is coming up in November, in Egypt. That location is weird. Weird, yeah. Problematic for a lot of reasons. But, I mean, I won't be going to that one. Yeah, no shit. Yeah.

Nor should people protesting. What do you think Biden can kind of do now that once he pockets this law? Like, do you think we're going to go and push Europeans and, to develop countries for more emissions cuts? Do you go and rally for more financing for developed nations to, like, shut down coal plants? Long term, obviously, the idea is, like, develop all these technologies that create more green energy, give them to other countries, reduce emissions globally. But, like, what do you think we can get done this year?

Well, a couple of things. First of all, there's, like, an interesting security piece to this bill, especially if you combine it with, like, the Chips Act, the semiconductor bill. this bill has these big investments in climate, but they're also tied to like securing a supply chain of clean energy for the U.S. Yeah, and doing manufacturing in the U.S. Manufacturing in the U.S., like the solar supply chains, kind of they call it onshoreing, like keeping it in the U.S., so that we're not overly dependent on pieces of our kind of clean energy supply chain into places like China. And the same way that the Chipsack does that. I just note that because we're in an interesting phase where the U.S. government and the Biden administration in particular, but Congress too, is kind of anticipating really rocky international geopolitical waters over the next decade or two, right, and can no longer count on kind of global supply chains. And so I think that's just worth noting that there's this kind of shift to like what we would call industrial policy or kind of picking industries and sectors and supply chains that we are going to protect from vulnerability to,

geopolitics or Russia, China, another part of the world. That's the first thing. I think that the other thing is what you really want to do, you know, you want this investment, which is really big, to count for both more domestically and globally. So like domestically, the $80 billion that was in the Obama stimulus and the Recovery Act for renewables, like ended up having a much bigger impact than that 80 billion. It basically ceded and catalyzed an exponential growth in wind. in solar. Yeah, sort of the only reason we have that industry. It's the only reason we do.

We subsidize the hell out of it. And then the market comes in on top of your money. So on top of that $80 billion, once people see, oh, this is going to be a new and cheaper way to develop energy, there's all this investment that flows in that direction. The trick globally is for governments to make it cheaper to move in the direction of renewables so that the same thing happens globally. And so I think what they're going to answer your question, what they're going to be trying to do is use this to kind of kickstart the momentum. There's been all this talk about climate

financing and transitions, et cetera, but with the U.S. government putting this kind of real money on the table over the course of the next decade and showing that, you know, this is the future of how big developed economies are going to be getting their energy, that that over time is going to catalyze a lot of investments by individual countries, but also just kind of market-based corrections in the direction of renewable energies. And they just want to get well, I guess to use a climate metaphor, like that snowball rolling down the mountain to be as big as possible. So that's one thing. I also do think that like the U.S. has been on the back foot at the negotiating table on some other climate related issues, emissions targets, you know, methane,

etc. And I do think this allows you to go around to some other countries and say, okay, look, we just kind of took a very clear, verifiable step on behalf of our commitment. You know, what are you prepared to do to make this next summit a bigger situation? success, you know, India or Brazil or countries that have been moving and not necessarily the right direction. What can we do to raise ambition with the Europe? What can we do to take advantage as a fact that Australia is at the table? So you want to piece all that together if you're John Kerry and assuming John Kerry's sticking around. Yeah, well, got a lot of work to do, but hopefully it's a little bit easier now. It's remarkable how much a better place we're in than

we were a month ago. Oh, on climate. And this is everything on climate. I mean, You know, if this money didn't get out the door now, like, who knew when the next chance was? I mean, that's why this is so huge. Could have been decades. Yeah. Different issues. So, Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, was at CPAC, or the conservative political action conference a few days ago. If you were new to this show, you haven't heard us talk about Orban.

He's an autocrat. He is strangling Hungary's democracy, has been for a decade. He gets rid of the independent media. He jerrymandered districts. He stuff in the courts full of his cronies. Bad guy. A few weeks ago, Orban gave a speech where he said, Hungarians are not mixed race. We do not want to become a mixed race. His own advisor called

that a Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels. So, you know, I think some people thought, oh, well, we'll CPAC let him speak now. I never doubted that they were. Yeah, yeah, didn't seem to be a lot of pause and reflection. No, it was terrible organization run by terrible people. It was interesting that here Orban's speech been and have him, he talked about the need to make common cause and coordinate activities very overtly. And he linked the success of the far right in Hungary with the success of the far right in the U.S. He almost sort of dissolved in nations. It was like, we are just like, you know, right-wing.

Internationale. Yeah, exactly. What the communists used to be. Yeah, the globalists, he decries. So, you know, look, there was CPAC Hungary not long ago. I'm curious, like, how successful you think this coordination has been. Because certainly Republicans in the U.S. are explicit about now seeing Orban as a model. You know, Tucker Carlson went over there, spent a week, lavished praise.

on Orban, but it's not like they needed Victor Orban to be anti-immigrant pro-Gerrymandering and to stuff the court's full of right-wing judges. I'm like curious what you think the impact is of this kind of trade of best practices at this point. Yeah, I mean, again, if you're new to this podcast and haven't heard me plug my book, I'm sorry, I apologize. But I mean, because like I, after the fall, my book that came out a year ago is like about this. It starts with Orbán and the symbiosis with the Republican Party.

And so, you know, part of it is there is a real aspect to this. It's the playbook is the same, right? You know, gerrymandering, packing courts with right wing judges, buying up the media and turning into propaganda, you know, changing voting laws. They really do share a common playbook. There also is very real coordination. So Orban has used American political consultants, you know, right, right wing political consultants in his past political runs. He's, you know, been. You know, been. advised by American, you know, Steve Bannon types in the same way that him having a foothold inside of Europe is this kind of source of, you know, inspiration to American right-wingers who like the fact that Orban says the quiet part out loud. Like he's been saying for years things like we should be moving away from liberal democracy to illiberal democracy and nationalism and blah, blah, blah. I think there's another aspect of this that's interesting to me. me though. The thing that Orban also has in common with the American right, beyond their mutual loathing of George Soros, which borders on complete fanatical obsession, is this,

this thirst to own the libs, whether they're the Hungarian libs or the Brussels libs or, and to people like you and me, it's just kind of mystifying how animating this can be to their political movements. Yeah, they hate us. But it really does demonstrate that there's this kind of global effort to own the libs, you know? And that's, if you looked at his speech, that's what it was about, like mocking gay marriage and mocking George Soros and transgender people and making pronoun jokes. We are in this kind of weird era where the nationalist, I would argue, have kind of become globalist, you know, because they've globalized their preoccupations, who they cast as the other, how they try.

try to own the libs. And I think this is, to turn it inside out, like, if what's scary about this is that there's this kind of weird global axis of far-right autocrats. Yeah, shit-posters. I think it's a vulnerability. Like, I don't, at a certain point, like, I don't know that there's not much underneath that ideology. It's just an ideology of owning liberals wherever they are. Like, you're not solving problems. You're not, like, creating economic growth. You're not, like, dealing with issues people actually care about. Like, they're not even really talking as much about immigration. They still do, but pronouns seem to get more energy than immigration.

So I actually think this is a vulnerability for them, you know? I hope that's true. I want that to be true. 2016, me would have jumped up and down to say how right that is and how they need to get shit done. But then, you know, you think about, like, Heather McGee's book about, like, Drainpool politics and, you know, the role that racism and punishing your enemy is played, in animating politics in the U.S.

for so long, and I don't know, I do, I wonder. I hope you're right. I'd rather you be right. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm sure I'm partially wrong. I mean, I guess the question, because to take Heather McGee's, everybody should read that book, by the way, it's a great book. Some of us. Some of us by Heather McGee.

And by the way, great anecdotes you mentioned, which is that like literally they, rather than integrate pools in the south, they literally just drain them. It's the equivalent of taking your ball and going. home from the playground. Screwing the white working class just so that the black working class can't swim in pools. But the trick, I guess, is like, how do you make them either overreach, you know, or how do you make them appear so out of touch that they can pay a price for it? At a time when European voters and American voters are concerned about things like inflation,

I don't know, like Victor Orban clearly just feels so secure. at home that, you know, his audience is now like Tucker Carlson and like CPAC. You know, it's not even Hungarian. I mean, they're probably not sitting in rural Hungary thinking about pronouns. It just shows you how much the American far right agenda has now colored people like Gorbon who once may have been models for the American far right. He's now totally mimicking the American far right talking points. Yeah, look, I mean, I'm hoping that they're over just starting. I mean, there's a there's a story today about Nebraska police subpoenaing a teenage girl's Facebook DMs because they wanted to prosecute her for having an abortion.

Yeah. I suspect that that's the kind of thing that would offend 80% of the country. Yeah. Or that everyone would think is wrong. Even if you're personally pro-life, you don't think the U.S. government that cops should be like going after teenage girls for having a medical procedure. Yeah. And I think if you're to turn it to the Hungarian perspective, like I'd be making the case to the Hungarians.

Like, why does it help you guys? if this guy's in like Texas yelling at a bunch of nut cases about pronouns. Like what does that do to solve gas prices in Hungary? What does that do? The challenge forever those people is Orban's buddies own all the media, right? So they have to get that message out like guerrilla stuff. A hard way. Yeah.

Here's another good story. On Saturday, Ben, General Michael E. Langley became the first black Marine to receive a fourth star, the first in the Corps' 246 year history. So during his 37-year career, General Langley served in Afghanistan, Somalia, Japan. He had senior jobs at Centcom and at the Pentagon. He's now going to command the United States-Africa Command. Our friend Helene Cooper over at the New York Times wrote a great piece about Langley's promotion that just talked about how much, you know, you could see in real time how he was inspiring

these younger black Marines. They mobbed him for pictures or handshakes, just like kind of see him was powerful. It also, frankly, underscores just how much work the U.S. military has to do when it comes to diversity. especially at these senior ranks. The Marine Corps was integrated in 1942. Since that time, 73 white men have achieved four-star rank and now just one black man. Yeah, and there have been a lot of black Marines in that time, right?

I mean, I think, you know, what's important here is obviously leadership at the top, four stars, that's the highest ranking you can have, but also like filling in those higher officer ranks too, right? So other general officers, one, two, three-star generals, kernels, because like my experience, you know, working National Security is like you would go into a big hall or mess area full of, you know, enlisted people, privates, et cetera, incredibly diverse. Yeah.

Like, in fact, like, you know, probably overrepresented black and brown people. And then the higher up you get in the ranks, the more it's just like white men with crew cuts, you know? And so I think that like important. and welcome and step to celebrate. Hopefully they're also continuing to work on just that entire senior officer corps being more more diverse as well. And again, this is not for lack of people signing up. No, what's important to understand is like an up and out system too, because you either advance or you're kind of retired. Yeah, exactly. At a certain point. So speaking of generals, there's a new book about Trump's relationship with his generals during his time as president,

two reporters, Susan Glasser at the New Yorker, Peter Baker at the New York Times. They worked on this together. They're married. So the New Yorker published an excerpt from the book. In my unending effort to just trigger Ben on the pod as we go, I'm going to read a couple excerpts. So the first one, deeply unfunny, just disgusting, Trump told John Kelly, his chief of staff and retired general who had lost a son in combat that he didn't want any wounded veterans in a proposed July 4th military parade in D.C. because this doesn't look good for me. Yeah, just complete, monstrous asshole. Dark. Dark. We talked about this on PSA on Monday. I do hope that John Kelly will have, take the time to say this on camera at some point.

There's not to be a TV ad, just do an interview that someone can use later. Yeah, I mean, and so far as, you know, there is a chain of command. Like the second Donald Trump became commander chief, like the people that were getting grievously wounded were doing so on his orders. Like, I'm sorry, that doesn't look good for you. Like, it's not easy for the person is disabled for the rest of their life either, you know. Yes, I sent those to a friend who got shot in Iraq and he was just like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. What other evidence you need that this guy's wrapping himself on the flag is better bullshit. Yeah. Also, Ben, so apparently Mike Pence. Can I make one more John Kelly point? Please. Were you going to do the Nazi general thing?

Tell that story. Okay. Because the other thing that got a lot of attention is, is like Trump saying, like, why can't you be more like the German generals? And he's like, what German generals? And he's like, Hitler's generals. And I'm actually going to use this. We'll come back to why that's gross for Trump.

Well, actually, we don't need to. It's just gross, right? I mean, who wants Nazi generals? You don't want Nazi generals. Good rule of thumb. But I also think, like, and this is not really shot at Peter and Susan. It's shot at John Kelly. Like, I did not believe the dialogue.

Like, like, the dialogue was like, because it was so John Kelly was like, can you be more like the German generals? What German generals? All right, stop there. Like, what did John Kelly thought, like, today's German generals, right? And then he's like, the German generals that Hitler had, Then he's like, let me tell you, sir, the German generals tried to kill Hitler three times. It just didn't sound real, right?

And a lot of this John Kelly stuff, it has the ring of truth. Like, I certainly believe that Trump made some comment about wanting German generals. But it always ends with like John Kelly facing him down. Like, just come on tell us this. Like these things keep popping up in books or. Yeah, the excerpt read like Mark Millie authorized biography. Yeah. Or John Kelly as well in parts.

A lot of people doing a lot of talking. Yeah, to like, it's just like just come on and tell us this. Give an interview. Like, tell us the story. Like, instead of like, creating this like, you know, movie drama dialogue for books. Like, it just, I don't know, something about it's, I'm feeling tired of it. I'm with you. I'm with you there.

The other thing that really jumped out of me, a couple more things, but Mike Pence was advocating for Trump to take tough measures. That's how they describe it in the excerpt against Iran in the final days of the administration. So it's not totally clear if that means a military strike from the context. It very much seems like it is. But then General Millie says, like, why do you want to do this? And Mike Pence said, because they are evil. So good to know that that kind of Bush era, you know, religious us against them,

access of evil stuff. It's very much alive and well. Mike Pompeo does a lot of reputation rehabbing in this book. And it's infuriating. So they have him, they report that Pompeo was like quietly opposed to the post-election coup efforts. Oh, that. Despite very publicly backing them and saying, we're going to transition to a second Trump term. Yeah, after the election, like he said publicly at the State Department podium, we're transitioning to a second Trump term.

Yeah. And so they had like, oh, it was important from Pompeo to serve until the very last day because he's like a committee to save America guy. What was Mike Pompeo saving? What role was the State Department playing in preserving democracy? It's unclear to me. Pompeo testifies for the January 6th committee today, Tuesday, as we're taping, so we might learn more. And then no surprise, Ben, the BB Ninia who was pushing for Trump to attack Iran even in, like, December before Biden's inauguration. There are just a lot of people that are like very committed to war with Iran for like a variety of reasons.

Yeah. You know, like evil. Evil. Millie was worried that Trump was going to attack Iran to distract from the election or something for political purposes to own the libs. Like there's just a lot of reasons that people really want to war with Iran. And I don't think it's a good idea. It's got to be a better way. There's got to own us.

Better ways to like, yeah, own us without starting wars. You know, it's, yeah. And all these Mike Pompeo, his reputation rehab, you know, spare me. Pour one out for Mike's reputation. Not going to happen. Ben, two more things. Here's a headline for you from Reuters. Quote, a sinkhole in Chile has doubled in size growing large enough to engulf

France's Arc de Triumph and prompting officials to order work to stop at a nearby copper mine. here's my question. You didn't stop mining when the sinkhole was half the size. Yeah. Are the Arctic Triumph? Also, what is this point of reference, writers? I saw that, though. I actually clicked on the image overlay, and I was like, well, that's a big sinkhole. You know, the Archerylum's pretty fucking big, you know. They also say six Christ the Redeemers. Yeah, this is not something we need. You know, there's enough shit going on in the world without a sinkhole like that in Chile.

160 feet across, 656 feet deep. That's a big sinkhole. Yeah, maybe stop mining. Well, friend of the pod, Bernad Mian,'s head down there to be our ambassador. Did she get approved? Yeah. And so she'll have to look into it. But not get too close. Not look into it too closely.

Not too deep in it, yeah. Maybe there's a helicopter ride or something else. Bernardette worked with us on the NSC. She was a hot shot for Hillary Clinton at the State Department. One of the smartest, nicest people, you know. We stayed at the NAC until the bitter end, too, yeah. Indeed, it was bitter. Last story.

This one comes from The New Yorker. Apparently, you don't want to be named Kevin if you live in France. The name, according to this report, peaked in the early 90s, probably thanks to Kevin Costner and Kevin McAllister. If you like a movie Home Alone, I believe they went to France, right? Kevin McAil. I mean, you're the South of it. Kevin McAil, there's another one. You're right.

You're right. I left them out. But now the name is shunned and viewed as a crude cultural import. So a French guy named, I'm going to butcher this one, man. Kevin Fafourneau launched a campaign to fund a documentary called Save the Kevin's. That's how it translates, about the need to save the name from snobs and discrimination. One watchdog group says that job candidates named Kevin had a 10 to 30 percent lower chance of getting hired for a job than a dude named Arthur. I wonder how they came up with Arthur for this comparison.

I don't, is this like a Karen type thing? I mean, what's the critique of Kevin? I think that there's no roots. There's no roots in French culture. It's an Irish name. So they just don't like the name. Yeah, they just don't like the name and it makes you sound like your, you know, lower class, I guess. Come on.

What I want to say is... This is when the French kind of get on my nerves a little bit. I mean, I love the French. I love... It's like that, you know, that friend you have that you really love and they have these eccentricities. Yeah. Like, just go easy on the Kevin's. I think it's time for Kevin's, uh, bacon, heart, Durant to step up.

No, Durant's not really... Get your asses to France. Durant. Durant. De Ron. Kevin Durant. You could francophone that name. That would be good.

They could go play some hoops. I would ask that Kevin's Spacey and McCarthy, you sit this one out. Spacey sit this one out. You know, maybe they'd like the name more if they adapted the Americanized Kev-Bev-Bo. What's Kev-Bo? Like, hey, Kev-Bo. Like, it's not a Trump thing? That's a thing that people do.

Sure. I've heard it. I don't know a lot of Kev-Bos. Really weird. So strange that the French don't like people named Kevin. I don't get it. Yeah, I guess it is one of these names that doesn't, like, Tommy, there's like a Tomas option or something. I guess there's not really a francophone option for Kevin.

Who knows? Who knows? Okay. Why hit on the Irish, though? Everybody likes Irish. Everybody likes the Irish. Yeah, you've got to be careful. We'll come for you, too.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, and then you're going to hear my interview with Emily Wai Wu. She's a podcaster in Taiwan. We're going to talk about the Pelosi visit, the Chinese response, including launching missiles over the island, Not cool. Never fun. So stick around for that. With Trex, you get the most of everything, the most wood inspired, the most eco-friendly, the most decking and railing designs, the most trusted. Trex.

Performance engineered for your life outdoors. Visit Trex.com today. I'm so excited to welcome our guest today, Emily Wai Wu. She's the co-founder of Ghost Island Media, which is a women-led and multilingual podcast network in Taiwan. she hosts the metalhead politics podcast and produces the Taiwan take and the Waste Not Why Not Podcast Emily, it is great to see you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for doing this.

We were just laughing about how the time zones are wild from Los Angeles to Taiwan. It's 7.30 here, 10.30 p.m. there. It's, you know, we're all a mess. It's worth stirring daylight saving, so this is good. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, first thing I want to ask you about is, you know, Speaker Pelosi visited last week. I'm sure there were a range of opinions on the visit. People are thrilled to see here others less so. But is there a way to sort of judge or assess the overall sentiment of Pelosi's

visit and, you know, sort of associated issues of like whether or not the Chinese Communist Party should be dictating when and where foreign officials a visit? Yeah. So much has happened since last week, since the visit and then the beginning of the military drill. I think General Mood is leading up to the visit. People were excited. Most people are really, really excited. I mean, we've had congressional delegations is a very normal thing. And we're so happy every time somebody visits. Just over this past weekend on Sunday, a delegation from Lithuania arrived. Over earlier this year, the vice president of the European Union Parliament of the EU Parliament was here. The EU Parliament, more delegation was here

last year, over in the U.S., bipartisan congressional delegations. It's a normal visit. It's a normal occurrence, and so we're always excited. However, I think now, fast track a week later, I think with the military drills, obviously it is natural to be a little bit scared, of course, when you have missiles flying at us. It's a very complicated feeling, but this wasn't totally unexpected in the sense that the threat from China is something that's been there for decades.

It's something that we grew up with. Military threat, economic coercion, and international isolation. That's been a trend, and there was a time when it didn't seem like it was ever going to end. that it was ever going to change. But it's, I think now it's clear to everybody around the world that it is China that keeps

threatening the war and threatening the security of the region. So I think for us, you know, what they're doing this week, this month, it's not winning anybody's over in Taiwan and it's showing the world how dangerous they are. We're on alert. I think daily life here continues. I just came back from a dinner with my college alum's. It was a very lovely dinner. Life continues, but we're on alert.

And sure, a little bit scared because how can you not be? By the same time, we're a bit numb to this because it's just something that we're so used to. Right, right. I mean, this might be a silly question, but was the Pelosi visit, like the biggest story? during those few days or was there like a huge soccer match that was driving headlines that we'd ever hear about in Los Angeles or something? It was definitely as soon as it was confirmed that she was about to come on Tuesday evening and then it really hit.

I think leading up it was big story. But then there were other big stories happening too. There were always there's, you know, we're getting ready for a midterm election. There's always some kind of gossip news happening. The news cycle continued. But basically when she arrived, that was the big news. It was a it was celebratory. It was a lot of people went out to watch her the airplane land.

Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So she landed in the city airport. It's a very, it's a much smaller airport. Sometimes there's, that's where the domestic air, domestic flights go or flights to Japan or Shanghai. But it's inside a city. It's really easy to get to.

a lot of people went because you can stand actually at the end of the runway and watch the planes land. That's cool. It's a really cool. It's a really popular spot for like for friends to hang out, for dates even. Really easy to get to. And so I didn't go that day, but for the footage that day, you see on social media, it's just celebratory, right? Like it was a party. People were really excited.

That's great. Nancy Pelosi, I met you could throw a mean party too. So you alluded to this. I mean, the Chinese military, they stepped up their threat. threatening exercises in quotes, exercises in quotes in the wake of Pelosi's visit. The PLA, I believe, fired missiles over the island of Taiwan itself. A lot of analysts described these drills as a rehearsal for an invasion. Just like maybe again, a dumb question.

Like, can the average citizen literally see these activities or are they just things you hear about in the news and people are talking about? Like, what does that feel like? there are people who have traveled to the islands to see if they can see the missiles I am told that you actually cannot see the missiles they're way too fast that you cannot see them and if we do see them it shells and so given that so anytime you see footage of missiles, it's coming from China's state media. And so the government has also vamped up its warning against disinformation because

these footage are only coming from PLA, coming from China state media. And they are getting picked up by wires. And so it's, yeah, they're vigilant right now and trying to let us know, which is which might be a fake news being debunked. But to answer your question, yes. In this generation, we've never seen this, right? The last time they fired live missile drills was 25 years ago. And so information spread back then in 1995, 1996 was a bit different.

Yeah. But I'm told that you cannot see them. So, or don't go. No, I mean, we understand. But there's just so much coverage of the broader Chinese military buildup. and then these constant incursions into Taiwan's airspace. I mean, is the feeling that this harassment has just sort of slowly increased over time? Does it spike around events?

Like, do you think the purpose is they're just trying to scare people? Yeah, yeah. They're trying to scare us into, I don't know, into submission or into kind of tearing ourselves apart maybe. But them flying into our zones, that happens every day. Sometimes it's two flights. Sometimes it's 20. And whenever somebody visits, they do vamp up the number that enter. There's actually, if your listeners are interested in this, just to keep watching,

there is a really good Twitter feed that reports every day on how many planes have entered the zone. I've definitely seen it retweeted because some days you'll just see like 64 flights in, you know, You know, they're like, okay, that's so many. Yeah. You sort of wonder why, what's the rhyme or reason behind these things? And maybe we just can't know. Well, I think they're pushing that border even more, right? Every time I think historically, if we compare the maps from 1995, 96 to now, the zones that they're firing the missiles in, they're pushing that, what are our perceived borders even more.

And what does that mean? That to me is the scary part is that they're pushing, they continue to push that line. Oh, wow. So you mentioned the Pelosi visit delegation from Lithuania, several others. I mean, what do you think the U.S. or other countries can or should do to be supportive of Taiwan? You know, I think now, and you see this with the different parliaments and the Congresses, started to speak out for the Uighur Muslims in China and then Hong Kong. all the human rights abuses and then also how the democratic world have spoken up against Russia for Ukraine. I think it's even more visible now that the democratic world needs to stand more together because as China continues to get stronger and stronger, and this is an issue that affects the world. It's not just Taiwan. It's not just Asia. It affects the world.

So I don't think it's the U.S., but it's also our partners with the different countries around the world in Asia and Europe. It's just sort of put China's treatment of Taiwan into that broader conversation about the global fight for democracies, like what we're seeing get talked about with Ukraine right now. I mean, backing that up, but there's obviously a lot of rhetoric in support of Ukraine, but there's a ton of arms sales, there's a ton of financial support. I mean, are there more things you'd like to see countries like the U.S. doing? So I know, you know, by law, the U.S. is required to provide certain military assistance to Taiwan. Is that something that people would like to see stepped up? I'm just curious how the thinking is there. Yeah.

So I can't speak to government-to-government relations and how that's handled. I completely trust our administration to be handling that and to be making these kind of relations and these decisions the best they can. But I think on a citizen-to-citizen level, I think foremost is just the understanding of what it is that we're going through these decades, decades of threat, what that means,

and international isolation and what that means. I think there's part of the reason that we haven't heard about that a lot of people, I think, are not aware of what's happening in Taiwan has to do with our international isolation. And this happens at every level, at sports,

at the Olympics, at organizations, in academia. And I think for now, it is, on a citizen level, it is a time that we need to be telling these stories more because we need to understand this is the impact all around the world. And then on the citizen level, I think that's the kind of what I'm working on, but then trusting that, you know, the governments are working together in the best way they can.

I've been very thankful of the democratic world standing with us this week. And the same we stand with the democratic world. I mean, I think a lot of people forget that Taiwan, we came out of 38 years of martial law just in the late 80s. When it ended in 1987, it was the world's longest martial law. It recorded at the time. We've, I think, experienced firsthand how authoritarian rule can just harm society's breakaway families. And we are absolutely certain we're not going back to that. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's interesting and I think important to hear you say that hearing people talk about Taiwan and show that solidarity is so important. Because I do think, you know, people want to be supportive, but they don't always know how. And sometimes, you know, hashtag activism or, you know, Instagram posts or tweets get dismissed or mocked as sort of meaningless. But, you know, it's interesting to hear you say, no, actually, like being a part of that conversation about this global fight for democracy is important and meaningful. It helps. Any of that helps whenever or even just being more aware of how for brands and companies, for example, right? You're seeing this with Apple at this moment, forcing them to change. China forcing the labeling of Taiwan to be Taiwan China or Taipei China or some sort of

variations of Chinese Taipei whenever. And that, again, if your listeners are on Twitter, you know, if you search for that every day, there's somebody saying, again, another company, another company. And there was a time when it just didn't seem like that was going to change. So I think for citizens, every time another person in the world speaks up and say, wait, look, that's not fair. Look at what's happening. It helps a little bit more. It definitely helps. That's great.

I mean, that honestly is an important message. You know, like speaking of just the democracy in Hong Kong, I mean, you guys have midterm elections coming up in November, I believe. I know these are mayoral and county level races. I'm sure there's lots of local issues that will drive the outcomes. But just curious if you feel like there are larger trends at stake or things people should know about your midterms. Because we got midterms coming up. God only knows what they will be about. Maybe they'll be about inflation, maybe abortion, maybe about, you know, Donald Trump's house getting rated.

Like, we're just a mess over here. But what do you guys got going on? Yeah, I really don't know. I mean, this week has been all the, you know, the military news all week. This election is interesting because the, um, the, the, previous midterm four years ago was when I think we saw an increase of disinformation campaigns coming from China. There's a lot of groups, think tanks and scholarly groups doing really good research. And they're just sharing this for the world right now because the idea is that because

of our shared language, Mandarin, the written language, Taipei is a testing place for CCP infiltration. And so they're just sharing this. So the groups are getting really good at just starting to share all this, all this research. And a lot of that, a lot of that research came from and the data came from the previous midterm. And so four years ago. And then there was another set coming for the general election two years ago. And there was a comparison to, you know, how disinformation, disinformation affects midterms

versus national election and so on. and I don't know how things will swing this midterm, but there are a couple of interesting things happening is the Taipei narrow race is up. Taipei usually traditionally is seen as a stepping stone to the presidential race coming later on. You see this in previous president, Chen Shibia, and also again in Aynjo.

And the kind of the three contestants, this time around, you know, One is our former CDC commander who did a brilliant job the past two years. I think he can't link the pandemic in Taiwan. And then he's up against the great grandson of Chen Kai Shik, who brought the Chinese nationalist army over to Taiwan in 1949. And then a former deputy mayor. So that's a very interesting race to see.

That is an interesting race. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the outer islands, which is also really interesting, is that one of the outer islands called Matsu, that's traditionally a very Chinese nationalist, very K&D, because it's a very military, it's a military base. For the very first time, the Democratic Party is running a county magistrate and is running candidates. So we're kind of in a way seeing real time how to do, like, how to grow a grassroots effort. So that's also a really interesting race we're looking at. That's fascinating.

So do you feel like you guys are dealing with a growing disinformation campaign by the Chinese government to try to interfere in your elections? You said groups are starting to expose this, their reports on this? Like, what are they learning? They are the very initial ones. They modeled from four years ago, they tracked some of the disinformation. and then try to find out where it's coming from and the different models. And they broke it down to basically the methods of it. So, you know, how do proxies work?

Who are some of these usual proxies? And just then sharing those research so that we can then start being wary, being, we can start kind of, yes, be wary of these sources and have a bit of a better media literacy. Now, are Taiwanese citizens responsive? to that because in the U.S., you have, you know, half the population, maybe more. Yeah. It's like, oh, my God, Russia tried to interfere in our election.

They're doing these disinformation campaigns. And then another half that's like, we love this stuff. We love this Russian content. Let's share the shit out of it. Do you guys have a split reaction like we do or people hopefully offended? It's really hard because it hits everybody. It hits, there's no, I mean, the point is to create conflict and chaos and then fear. And fear, I mean, that's such a powerful emotion and it could just hit everybody.

So now the tactic, I mean, now we all know it's just telling more people, right? So, but in Taiwan, a lot of the disinformation happens in our messaging app is called line. So it's kind of like WhatsApp in the way that it's closed. It's completely close close. So it's not like Facebook where it's on a public forum. So it's really hard to track it because if you're on a closed forum. So people started building these apps in line where you can then, you know, copy and paste a message that somebody sent you. And you can paste it over to this other account and they'll tell you if this has been reported yet.

And if it comes back. That's cool. Yeah. And it's the hope that you can then tell, you know, report back to your group and say, actually, this is fake news and this is why. And this is, yeah. So there's a lot of more ways of. of countering that are being developed. But yeah, line is a big battleground for disinformation.

That's really interesting. Yeah, during COVID, during our first outbreak, the amount of disinformation happening, that was also very alarming as well. So it just takes somebody to say, to speak up in the group. And that can be a very scary thing, right? You're in a public forum.

Maybe you're with your relatives or with your neighbors group, which is very common here. And you have to be the one that says, what actually, that's not correct. Yeah, I mean, I think in the U.S., we've talked a lot about tackling disinformation on Facebook or on Twitter or Instagram. There's a whole other looming problem

underneath the surface of WhatsApp and disinformation getting spread via WhatsApp groups that are just far harder to monitor that we got to figure out as well. Yeah. One mechanism that Facebook does do that, I do appreciate is that when you, forward something, it's marked as forward, right? But on the line chat, it doesn't say that.

So it's really hard to detect it. So. Well, it sounds like people are doing creative ways to try to figure it out, which is important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Staling and Think Tinks in college are actively sharing all these studies now in English as well, hoping to share this with the rest of the world because we are, as they say, kind of this is a testing bet for China. Yeah.

So last question for you. I mean, I know like so much of our conversation today, the reporting revolves around China or semiconductors, et cetera. You know, I'm just curious, like, what you want people to maybe know about Taiwan itself, the people, the democracy. I just want to paint a picture for listeners of a place unto itself and not a country threatened by another government, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Well, so the, I think the Taiwan that I grew up in is, well, first of all, my, that it's, we came out of so many years, decades of martial law and really, really value our democracy. And I say this because so our last presidential election two years ago, our voter turnout was almost

75%. Wow. You put us a shame. So we really mean it when we say we love this democracy and we don't want it to go away. We have really good health care. We have universal health care. which is really nice. We have the highest equality ranking in Asia. So 40% of our parliament are women. In the last five years, more women than men have started businesses. We were the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. We have so many languages here.

There's Mandarin, but there's Hakka, there's Hokka, there's Hokken, there's all the 15 or more indigenous language languages and new immigrants from Southeast Asia. This is a really, really culturally diverse place. I think that's something that we don't talk about as much. It's not as China likes to claim it, you know, all Chinese. That is definitely not the case. Before martial law, we were colonized by Japan for 50 years. So culturally, there's a lot of influence.

there as well. We share some of the trade colonial and trade pass of the Dutch when they pass through Asia. I mean, this is a lot of our history is so diverse that if the stronger that China CCP's propaganda gets, the more people forget that this is such a diverse place with our own history.

Yeah. Yeah. And their propaganda is getting really, it continues to get stronger. And that's, that's quite scary to us, too. Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, it does sound like just such a vibrant, like so many cross currents of culture, like swimming together in different cultures and democracy and language. And I can see why people absolutely love it.

Also, we have some of the best biodiversitys in the world. It's a beautiful place. I really urge everybody to visit to come to sit and see it for yourself. It's just a lovely place. Okay. Well, we'll sold. Emily, it was fantastic talking with you. Thank you so much for making the time. Ghost Island Media. Everyone check it out. The Metalhead Politics Pod, the Taiwan Take Pod and the Waste Not, Why Not podcast, all of them. Go find them. Listen, download, subscribe. It'll be great. Thank you so much. It's been fun talking. Thank you again to Emily for joining the show. Who else we thank in here, Ben? Kevin's everywhere. The FBI. Kevin's everywhere. Kevin Neelan.

Kevin Nealyn, good one. Climate change. I'm not thanking Victor Orban. That's for damn sure. Thanking Joe Manchin, Climate Hawk. You know, actually, thanks to all the real climate hawks, like the Brian Schatz's and the Jeff Merclis and people like that. You see shots cried when they voted.

I mean, that's cool. I like shots. I like, no, I don't say that to mock him. I say that that's like someone who deeply cares about an issue. Yeah, no, that's what I mean. Well, the important thing to remember here, right, is what's interesting to me about this is you know, we remember Bill Backbiter had all this stuff in it, right? Like, you know, family leave, community college, et cetera, et cetera.

It is interesting to me that the prioritization of climate change evolves such that, you know, it's one of the top, it's up there with health care. The number one. What got done is basically health care and climate. Like those are the Democratic parties, top priorities. And that's because activists, young people, climate hawks. Like this is the product of a couple of, a couple of, decades of people forcing this issue up the list. And that people should, you know, should feel

good about that. Think about those votes in 2009. I think the cap and trade bill lost like 20 to 30 votes in the House from Democrats. That's right. This was not a tier one priority issue when it came to congressional action. People who cared about it were mocked as caring about polar bears and shit. You know what I mean? It was like this tree hugger thing. And that's just the further sank than the case these days. Yeah, no, I mean, we got that, thankfully, we got that climate funding and the Recovery Act because, yeah, like, that's a good example of, like, we did health care, we did Dodd-Frank, like, Wall Street Reform, you know, we did a bunch of other Democratic parties, but climate we couldn't get through the Senate. And this just shows

you how much that's changed. Yeah, the politics is changed. It's huge, huge deal. Okay, that's it for us this week, but we'll talk to you 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.