Pod Save the World - The Navy’s coronavirus clusterf*ck

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

A coronavirus clusterf*ck in the Navy leads the Acting Secretary of the Navy to resign. The virus sends British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to the ICU while the Queen of England releases a message to the British people. Trump retaliates against an impeachment enemy by firing the Intelligence Community Inspector General. The White House has a new press secretary (sort of) while press freedom is under assault in India. Good news about efforts to stop the coronavirus in Austria, Denmark and New Zealand. And then Tommy connects with some Americans stranded abroad because of the coronavirus.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, it's nice to see your face. I really wish we were in the same goddamn room, though. This is getting old. Yeah, yeah. I see some nice, is that a drawing of a mermaid up on the wall there? It is. I mean, the listeners can't see at home, but we've got three mermaids and two and two. How many times have you watched Frozen 1 and 2? You know, the funny thing is I'd probably watch Frozen 100 times, and Frozen 2 came out rather. recently and yet we've almost caught up we're a frozen two household we we prefer frozen two in this house listen that's good i uh i appreciate it i also love your instagrams of you know two adorable but cooped up little girls you know having fun in the house yeah that's definitely like our best selves like uh i i think i think my my wife uh is like well where the instagrams of people strangling each other and making messes yeah but it's it's yeah not a lot of temper tantrums yeah but it's been good they've been good. I mean, I think they're happy to have their parents home all the time, so there's an upside for them. Yeah, well, they're adorable kids. And speaking of temper tantrums, let's start there. So we've

got a lot going on today. The acting secretary of the Navy resigned. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in the ICU, so we'll cover that. There was also a pretty stirring message from the Queen, and the Irish Prime Minister announced that he's going to start practicing medicine again. So we'll talk through all those developments there. Some good news out of some European countries and New Zealand when it comes to combating the coronavirus. Trump fires one of his main impeachment enemies in a pandemic Friday news dump. The White House is a new press secretary while the press freedom is under assault in India and other places. And then talk about why Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is showing Hallmark movies to his cabinet.

That's a weird story. So a lot's going on today. And then our guest today, I chatted with some travelers via Zoom who are stranded abroad. in this wild, like, Kafka-esque nightmare of almost being in South Africa, but not in trying to get back home and get repatriated. So you're going to want to stick around for that, and hopefully someone listening can help them out. So, Ben, you want to start with the saga of Captain Crozier in our Navy? Let's do it.

Okay. So some breaking news right as we started recording, which was that the acting secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modley, has resigned. This is the long and weird backstory. So last week we talked about this desperate letter that had been sent by Captain Brett Crozier, who is the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier that was dealing with a COVID outbreak. So Crozier wrote, you know, in his letter, we are not at war. Sailors do not need to die.

If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset, our sailors. That letter leaked to the press. So the acting Navy secretary, who I'll remind you all, only has his job because his predecessor resigned. after Trump pardoned a war criminal, he fired Crozier without doing any kind of investigation. And things quickly got messy. So first, this footage leaked of Crozier, leaving the theater Roosevelt, the aircraft carrier,

and getting this heroic send-off from his sailors who were calling him the goat and cheering for him as he departed the ship, like truly moving stuff. Then we learned that Crozier himself has coronavirus. And then, mostly, the acting secretary of the Navy, decided to light Crozier up in the press. And then he delivered this blistering speech attacking Crozier over the aircraft carrier's loudspeaker system.

So to all the sailors, this man was trying to protect. And he said that Crozier showed that he was, quote, too naive or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this. Because when you send a letter like Crozier did over unclassified channels to a bunch of people, you should know it's going to leak. Now, the irony here, of course, is that Moly thinking he can talk shit about the commander of this aircraft carrier over a loudspeaker to thousands of sailors without his comments leaking shows, you know, a similar lack of judgment. They obviously did. Maudley apologized.

He backpedaled. We later learned that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the senior Navy leadership had disagreed with Moldley's decision to fire Crozier without an investigation. Former leaders like Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chief said he was appalled by Mowdly's speech over the the aircraft carrier loudspeaker system, that it was undermining the leadership of the Navy and military, like, criminal justice system generally. And, you know, he's right because we know that Moadley told the Washington Post that he took this action. He fired Crozier without an investigation because he was worried that Trump would think he was being indecisive and then would have to intervene himself because, you know, Trump had been at the podium the other day saying that the letter was

terrible and said like this isn't a class on literature, I guess criticizing the length of the letter that was sent. So anyway, just a total mess, absolute cluster fuck. And I think like my question ends where we started then, which was, you know, you and I talked a while back about Trump intervening the military justice system to pardon this Navy SEAL war criminal. Now we have the acting secretary of the Navy taking stupid actions thinking he could prevent Trump from interfering in the military justice system again. And it, none of it worked. It all speaks to why you shouldn't be mucking around in these decisions that should be made by the Navy brass. Yeah, I mean, I think this whole story was like totally remarkable.

And I really do suggest that people actually read both the letter from Captain Crozier and then this just wild, wild speech. Because, like, this document is a great window into a mindset of somebody that has no respect for the kind of lives of these men and women who are serving on our behalf right now. He basically spends the first half of the speech trashing Captain Crozier, who was just trying to get help for the people on the ship who are literally, you know, dealing with a massive outbreak of COVID. And then the second half, he kind of blusters about, you know, what should be on the minds of the people who are on the ship and in harm's way. And, you know, he says he was bothered that in the letter the captain said that we're not at war, so therefore we should be able to kind of to come back on shore and get treatment we need. And he's like, well, we're not technically

a war, but let me tell you something. The only reason we're dealing with this thing right now is a big authoritarian regime called China and essentially blames the Chinese for the virus. And then basically says, if you can't deal with like, you know, the coronavirus, how are you going to deal with like a hypersonic missile coming your way? I mean, just how do we get here? What are you talking about? How do you compare a virus to a hypersonic missile? What fuck are you talking about? I know. It's a wild document, but it is, it's a window into like the mindset that is running our institutions across our government right now, which is, yeah, he's ass covering up to Trump because this letter was a PR hit on the broader coronavirus

response and he's trying to be decisive. He's kind of mimicking the anti-China rhetoric in dealing with this, but he's also showing, like, a complete absence of compassion for people in an incredibly difficult circumstance that is not a war. Like, we didn't, these people did not enlist to go onto a ship and get stranded somewhere with everybody getting coronavirus. Like, you know, that's very different than hypersonic missile coming at, at you. And so I do think it shows how this kind of mindset that, you know, there's a pattern of these incidents that we've talked about. about involving the military where the last concern seems to be the actual men and women who were serving, you know, whether it's like the decisions that we're making about national

security matters or whether it's stuff like this or whether it's the Navy SEAL episode that we talked about where the people who did the right thing and reported this guy who was a war criminal are now the ones being shunned and punished. You know, there's a kind of consistent lack of regard for our service men and women while there's this kind of broader effort from Trump to like wrap himself in the flag and the kind of good veneer and good feelings that people have for the military here and and I mean I hope this kind of like provides an effort to reset clearly something that's gone wrong in the Navy and it's a pattern we see across the government where you know this was an acting service secretary right not a confirmed person

he was in acting in the same way that we've got acting people in all these places because Trump doesn't like a confirmation process. So we have no confirmed DHS secretary, no confirmed DNI, no confirmed person in a whole host of different positions across the government. And there's such turnover that there's no real leadership because it's like a game of musical chairs. And that kind of thing causes problems over time. And it causes bad decisions like this to happen. And it causes PR debacle is to happen. Like, there needs to just be some stability at the top of these national security institutions as well as like a resetting of prioritization so that the health and well-being of people,

whether they are American servicemen and women or American diplomats, is like front and center for the people in charge of them. That we seem to have lost that these last few years. Yeah, I mean, so 173 sailors that we know of are sick, including Captain Crozier, who's now in isolation. A bunch of these guys were taken off the aircraft carrier and put into hotels in Guambe. Obviously, you can't practice social distancing when you're packed into a nuclear-powered metal tube, right? At sea, the House Oversight Committee on National Security said they're going to investigate. It seems like Trump maybe was trying to suggest that he might, he thinks that

Crozier shouldn't have been punished in the way that he was. It was hard to read between the lines in this in the comments Trump has been making about this incident lately. But yeah, I mean, like, this was a weird instance where clearly this acting Navy secretary was trying to channel the like MAGA solution to the problem. And the fact that that's where this guy's head is at speaks to this broader erosion of the separation between politics and Trumpism and the military, which has been happening since day one when Trump was giving wildly politicized speeches in front of men and women in uniform. form, and the Boy Scout jamboree, by the way. And like, you know, despite all the, like, media's love on people like General Mattis and others, like, no one did anything to stop it. Yeah.

And I would add that there's a broader issue here. There's the issue of how Trumpism and dysfunction and turnover at the top of these institutions has eroded the chain of command. There's also a real pressing concern about coronavirus consequences for the military, you know, because, you know, we've got people. deployed all over the world. Often they're in places where they're in close proximity to one another. They're on an outposts. They're on a base. They're on a ship. And I think there are very real concerns that the military needs to do more to kind of get on top of and anticipate both what

the health risks are to servicemen and women who are in circumstances like this, where it's hard to contain an outbreak because of how much interaction there is among them. But also, Like, have we thought about what happens if the coronavirus hits Afghanistan hard? And what that's just going to do to the broader security environment? I mean, so I do hope that there's some serious contingency planning being done around, you know, where there are risks to service men and women and also where the environments that they're serving in are going to be changed by, you know, however an outbreak hits. Yeah. And that goes for the State Department, too. I mean, I don't know how you're supposed to have meetings with civil society or government

if you're working in really any country around the world. But another conversation. So let's talk about the UK for a few minutes. So we learned that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been admitted to an intensive care unit. This happened on Monday night with severe COVID-19 symptoms. His staff today, Tuesday, said he's in good spirits. They say he's not been put on a ventilator. you know, that said, like, I'm not sure I always believe his team. Foreign Secretary,

Dominic Rob, who has been deputized to handle all things for Johnson until he's out of the hospital, reportedly hasn't spoken with him since Saturday. So obviously, we wish Boris Johnson well. We hope he has a speedy recovery. That said, I mean, he's the leader of the country. And this raises a whole new round of questions about his initial handling of the virus since just a few weeks ago. was essentially bragging and boasting about how he was still shaking hands. It also raises real questions about who is leading the United Kingdom in this time of a real crisis, right? I mean, Rob isn't well known. He's not fully in charge the way a vice president would be. He's not meeting with the queen. He's not working from number 10 Downing Street. And we don't know how long it's going

to take Boris Johnson to recover or what drastic or not drastic steps the UK might need to take to handle the virus. So boy, this is a, this is a tough situation. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the first thing, obviously, is like you don't like to see this happen anybody. We hope Boris Johnson recovers from this. It does speak to just how wild it is to look back at, you know, a month ago when some of these leaders, including Boris Johnson, we're saying, like, they're still going to shake hands and we're kind of not embracing social distancing, just how much things have changed. I think in the UK itself, you know, first of all, it presents questions about, you know, continuity of government.

It elevates in a bizarre way the timing of the queen giving the speech, which we can talk about, you know, reminds you that the queen is the head of state, you know, that that's the ultimate backstop here. And the fact that they, I wondered whether the timing was coincident or not, you know, whether the queen giving that message, surely she would know about Boris Johnson's health. The idea that the titular head of state speaks to calm the public before this news hits, I thought was an interesting political reality there in the UK where, you know, right when they're getting this jarring news that the elected leader of the country is going into the ICU, they're hearing

from, you know, the person who never goes away is the actual head of state. And to me, it raises questions more broadly about, you know, we have to bear in mind that people are going to die who are prominent in this pandemic. Leaders, cabinet officials or members of cabinets around the world, parliamentarians, and what the ripple effects of that will be. I would rather that not be the case. But I mean, if you're just kind of gaming out and thinking what are going to be some of the effects of this pandemic kind of sweeping through the world, I mean, you know, we don't know what wildcards might present themselves. So we hope Boris Johnson gets better. But I think it introduces the question in the UK and everywhere about kind of what begins to happen if very powerful people

with important responsibilities start to succumb to this illness or start to be incapacitated for periods of time because of this illness. Yeah. So you mentioned this message from the Queen of England. So really she was just rallying the people of England. She thanked all the health care workers. She thanked all the people staying at home and just following social distancing orders. And she reflected on the first broadcast she ever made back in 1940 when she was a kid to all the other children who had been evacuated during World War II right at the beginning. And so, Ben, like, I'm not like, I'm not like a big queen guy. I've no like affinity for the royal family per se. But I did find something comforting about this speech, right? Because like the queen, you forget,

she was around when London endured 57 straight nights of bombing by the Nazis. I was listening to this interview on NPR with Eric Larson, who we've talked about before, who wrote in the Garden of the Beast. He has a new book about Winston Churchill and his leadership during World War II. And it was fascinating to hear about all the ways he rallied the country during that time. Like London's being bombed over and over and over again. But a lot of what he did was symbolic. He was giving speeches that inspired people. He would go to sites where the bombs had landed and try to meet with people.

And during bombing raids, he would go to the roof to watch them happen. And apparently he would like bring guests. and there was one anecdote where he started reciting like Tennyson poems. And he was also just known to like dig super deep into the weeds of everything the government was doing until two or three in the morning and like really presses ministers on all the response.

So I don't know. It was a reminder to me that one, the queen has seen some shit and made it through to the other side. And two, what good leadership could look like in the form of Winston Churchill versus a president who has nothing better to do than brief the press for two hours seven days a week. Yeah, I mean, I had a similar reaction to it.

First of all, it was a really well-done speech. Yeah, great. And that aside, like, you know, Obama, I remember when we went to London in 2011, you were on that visit. And we went to the state dinner at Buckingham Palace, and he sat next to the queen all night. And I talked to him after. And he was a big fan of the queen. And one of the points he made to me was, you know, I'm sitting there talking to her. and she's like met every single U.S. president, like since Eisenhower, you know.

She's seen everybody and seen everything, you know. She's been through World War II. She's been through the Cold War. She's been through the dissolution of the British Empire. She's been through the end of the Cold War. She's been through Brexit. There is something very powerful about one human being having their life experience span all these events. And she really represents that.

And when I met her, I felt. really intimidated. But the reason I felt intimidated was that. It was like this person has literally seen and met everybody. The other thing it did for me, Tommy, was it drove home in that regard just how big of a world of emphasis. So here's this person who's been through the Blitz who doesn't give speeches like this very often. And like that's where we're at. Like we are living through something that is at a scale of something that happens like, I don't know, less than 10 times a century, really. You know, we can debate how many events are this big.

But that's what this feels like. And so to me, that's what her voice conveyed, which in some ways it's reassuring. But in other ways, it's also like, what is going to come out on the other end of this thing? You know, like, what does the world look like on the back end of this? Yeah. And so it's a mixture of reassurance, but also like, wow,

we're really going through something. much bigger than whether I have a good mask to put on at the grocery store. We're going to go through something that's going to kind of people are going to be thinking about and talking about 100 years from now. And yeah, to your point, like, she's the queen.

Like, in some ways, she's the most out-of-touch human in the world because she's like been in the British world family of her life. And she could show empathy. You know, she could reach into people's living rooms, which is not something that we're able to experience. And it is very strange to go through this pandemic without a president who can express any empathy. I mean, I didn't like George Bush, but he was good at empathy.

Like, or he at least would try. You know, I mean, I wasn't alive during Nixon who maybe had some empathy challenges himself. But in my life, there has never been an event where a U.S. president didn't in some way try to empathize with the people affected. And I think her speech was the contrast of like, wow, actually one of those strange feelings that we're all going through in the United States is we're all going through this without a national leader expressing just empathy. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And, you know, another really cool example of leadership that caught my eye was that Ireland's prime minister, Leo Varadkar, I'm sorry if I butchered that name, he re-registered as a doctor and is going to work one day a week to help out with the coronavirus. So he was a licensed physician in Ireland until 2013. He practiced medicine for seven years before going into politics. So according to the Irish Times, he's the son of a doctor, son of a nurse, and his partner, two sisters and their husbands all work in health care.

So it's obviously a family affair, but like pretty badass, you know, sign of leadership to actually literally start treating patients who are afflicted by the coronavirus. Yeah. And I think all over the, all of the world, you know, you see that these crises, really, you learn a lot about your leaders in them. This guy, you know, is showing a lot of courage. I'm sure making people just feel like their leadership is more connected to their experience. You know, it's interesting. My parents, you know, Andrew Cuomo, who we could go back and look at some of his decisions and should they socially distance earlier. But clearly, My parents tune in every day to watch his press conferences.

It makes them feel better. You know, he's modeling a certain brand of leadership. Justinda Aheir in New Zealand, I think you sent me, Tommy, right before we start the show, the thing where she's saying... Yeah, I'm going to conclude with that. That's my good news of the day. Yeah, yeah. I mean, she's speaking to the children of New Zealand. I won't do the spoiler yet.

And that's one brand. And then you look at some people, you know, like we've seen senators in the United States whose instinct was... to sell their stocks, you know, or to buy stocks in teleworking. I mean, you learn about the people in charge. Wear a gas mask on the House floor. Yeah, the gap between a guy who says, I'm going to go back to practicing medicine, even though I'm prime minister, and a senator who says, I'm going to dump stocks because I know the economy's going to tank.

I mean, I really don't mean this as a partisan statement. It's just, it's interesting to see how much you learn about the humanity and quality of people in public life. when you go through a crisis like this. Yeah, that's very true. More good news today. I was feeling very dark yesterday, so I try to do an emphasis on some good news,

even though there's a lot of bad stuff out there. So Austria and Denmark announced concrete plans to open back up their countries after coronavirus lockdowns. So obviously they need to be very careful. They need to prevent the virus from coming back by not moving too quickly, especially since you've had countries in Asia that have tried to reopen too quickly and they saw new flare-ups. But, you know, it's hopeful.

And maybe it will be a blueprint for us because both are taking a phased approach. So Austria is going to open up little shops in mid-April, larger stores in May, restaurants and schools in mid-May. They had imposed a lockdown on March 16th and have seen cases going down. In Denmark, they're going to reopen schools, April 15th, and then they'll go to businesses. So obviously, these decisions will be subject to constant evaluation. Denmark's lockdowns. started on March 11th, but they apparently were also better at testing early on. It's very clear.

Early social distancing, widespread testing were the keys to being in a better place than where we are right now. The Danish prime minister said, quote, it's like walking on a line. If we stand still along the way, we can fall. If we go too fast, things can go wrong. Therefore, we must take one cautious step at a time, and we do not yet know where we have firm ground under our feet, end quote. So apparently tightrope walking is popular over there. I don't know. I don't give a shit. I'll take, like, good news with the side of circus metaphor any day.

Yeah, and I think there's an incredible imperative here. We've talked a bit about how there hasn't been much of a coordinated international response at all. It's going to be so important, just as it kind of gives you hope to see South Korea and Austria and, you know, Denmark beginning to climb out of this. so important to learn from their experience about not just what worked in bending the curve, but how to resume things. I mean, think of it this way. There are 200 countries in the world that are going through the same pandemic that recognizes absolutely no borders. We need a capacity to have lessons learned and best practices replicated from the countries

that are doing this right that can then, you know, be copied by us or by other countries. And so the World Health Organization, other coordinating mechanisms, I really hope that, you know, we get better as an international community, this thing goes along at learning how to cross that tightrope. To extend this metaphor, which I actually really like, you know, what we should be able to learn from if there's five to ten countries that are going ahead of us and reopening things because they've bent the curve, how fast do they move across that tightrope? and how fast is too fast and cause problems and how much might have proven to be too slow and unnecessary. So I think it's absolutely imperative going forward that even as everybody's understandably focused on their own domestic situation, we're going to make better choices if we study what these countries did right

and copy them and maybe see where they went wrong if they opened up things too fast and not make those mistakes. Thus far, clearly we have failed to do that because we failed to do what South Korea did in Germany in terms of surging testing and having a backstop for health care equipment like ventilators. But maybe in the back end of this, if we can bend the curve through social distancing or when we do, we can learn from these countries about the speed at which we move. Yeah, I agree with that. All right, let's pivot to some like hardcore world though intelligence community news. So last week in a truly cynical mid-pandemic Friday night news dump,

Trump announced that he had fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community's inspector general. You guys probably remember impeachment? Remember that thing that happened 100 years ago? So, Atkinson is the one who notified Congress about the urgent whistleblower complaint about Trump's attempt to shake down the president of Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. So Trump fired him. This is clearly payback for impeachment. It comes as Trump has installed this unqualified Twitter troll to lead the intelligence community. We've talked about it before.

So Atkinson was nominated by Trump in 2017 after 16 years to the Department of Justice. And this comes as Trump has made a bigger effort to politicize and devalue the work of these inspector generals generally. So the Department of Health and Human Services, their IG release a report that detailed the way hospitals were reporting severe shortages of medical equipment, testing kits, and other stuff that we've all read about anecdotally that they need to protect their. their healthcare workers, treating patients, et cetera. Hospitals were also getting like the wrong stuff, expired supplies, whatever. So Trump gets asked about this report at his briefing and he demanded to know from the reporter who asked him, how long had this IG been in government, like essentially trying to call this person partisan.

And he later called the reporter's question, as John Carl, a disgrace, called up a third rate reporter and said, you'll never make it. So, you know, Ben, these inspector general roles are supposed to be these independent, nonpartisan watchdogs. They're charged with auditing agency operations. And administrations often dislike the IGs, but like that's how the system is designed to work. So they butt heads and like, you know, investigate things.

And Trump is now made clear that he's going to punish and fire IGs that release information he doesn't like and will dismiss their findings as partisan, even with. when he nominated these individuals to the jobs they currently hold. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I never knew the IGs personally. You know, they really are separate. You know, and you're right. Every time you get an IG report is usually bad news, you know, when you're in government. Yeah.

That's why they exist to tell you the things that they look into the things that went wrong and just tell you how bad they are. I think, you know, look, at this point we know, Trump doesn't like people who reveal the truth, you tell them bad news, who root out wrongdoing and expose it. The reason we have whistleblower protections, the reason we have inspector generals is so that there's a check on abuse of power and a sprawling apparatus of U.S. government. I think we can all agree that over the next six months, like there's not going to be a lot going on there. The Trump has intimidated, fired all of the muscle movements in the government that provide a check.

And what should concern people in the immediate future is how like two trillion dollars that is being shoveled out the door is going to be spent. And what is the oversight there? And Congress has tried to set up kind of a watchdog body that can help monitor that. To me, what this really, though, does underscore is, look, we are where we are for the next six months, we should on this show and everywhere keep an eye out for kind of authoritarian power grabs amidst a crisis because as we've talked about, that's something that happens all over the place. What I really take away from this is if Trump is reelected, we're going to be living under a government

unlike anything any of us have experienced in our lives. Do you think there's going to be any whistleblowers in a second Trump administration? You think there are going to be any independent inspectors general. Do you think there's going to be any cooperation with congressional oversight? I don't think we've kind of, because we're in the pandemic we're in, wrapped our minds around what a Trump presidency in a second term would be like in terms of his feeling completely unbound and unchecked in his capacity to ignore any checks and balances, either internal to the executive branch or with Congress. And I don't think it's possible to be too alarmist about what we could be in for. You know, when Trump came into office, it took him kind of a year to figure out where the lights were.

It took him another year to fire a bunch of people that were serving as kind of some form of check on some of his impulses. And, you know, we saw in year three increasingly egregious schemes and efforts to break rules, we know about the Ukraine one only because there was a whistleblower. God knows what we didn't see. By the time we get into year five of Trump administration, if he's reelected, we will not see anything. And that's a scary thought. No, we got to win. Okay.

Non-world done news, Ben, this is not a foreign policy topic, but it's so firmly in our wheelhouse. I just had to raise it. So apparently the current White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, is getting pushed out of that job and sent back to the East Wing. where she'll be maybe like chief of staff or something. You might be wondering Stephanie who, and that is understandable because the White House press secretary

has never briefed the press. The New York Times broke the story that a woman named Kayleen McAnanini will take over. You probably remember her from, you know, crazy cable hits in 2016. As recently as February 25th, McInney did a Fox business interview

with the since fired for being too absurd even for Fox, Trish Regan, where McAnney said, quote, we will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here. And isn't it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of Barack Obama? That's a direct quote. So, Ben, like, I worked in the White House Press Office for two years. And then two more with you on the NSC comms team. You and I spent like literally thousands of hours preparing either paper press guidance for the press secretary or being in meetings with like a Jay Carney or Robert Gibbs or whoever it was, Josh Ernest.

prepping them for the White House briefing. The fact that they don't even have a briefing, it's still like hard for me to wrap my head around what the press secretary does all day. It's like hiring a bartender who doesn't serve drinks. It just like doesn't compute. And what all the people do there? And I mean, the reality too is that like what we need now is communication from our government that is rooted in fact. Like I don't know about you, Tommy, but like I don't know how many times like I'm like sharing articles with you on a text thread with you know John and Dan and Cody to try to figure out you know how long things are going to be closed or which state is getting this right or you know whether to wear a mask or not because

I can't trust the government's information about these things the federal government's information about these things like what you would normally want is a group of communicators from the government who can provide daily reliable fact-based information. And we just don't have that. We don't even have a White House press secretary who communicates to the public. We have this one person who does cable hits now and attacks Obama and praises Trump and that's totally meaningless and useless for the function that we need from our White House. The other thing is there's all this question about whether networks should carry these press briefings. I frankly think they shouldn't because it's just disinformation.

and bullshit from Trump. But even beyond that, I watch these briefings, and there's like 10 people or five people standing up there and the President of the United States and the Vice President of the United States and, you know, Bricks or Fauci or these other people. And I'm thinking, like, how much time did they spend having to get ready for this briefing? Wasted hour.

Yeah, and they're spending two hours standing there and then they're probably tired when it's over. I want these people to be fucking doing their jobs, you know? It's a waste of time. And if you had a good time. And if you had a good press secretary, right? Like if you had Josh Ernest, right, like totally straight shooter guy, Josh Ernest could stand up there every day with one or two experts, you know,

could be Fauci one day, could be somebody else the next day, and do this. And Obama or, you know, or a normal president wouldn't do this every day that they'd come in when there was, you know, periodically or when there was a big announcement to make. And they'd actually be doing the job of president, right? So another thing a real press secretary could get you is take some of the, the burden of or the time that is spent on these absurd briefings. I mean, the fact that we are in a pandemic and a depression in this country. And the president of the United States main thing that he does is spent two hours berating reporters and talking about anti-malaria medication. And that's two

hours he's not on the phone with foreign leaders. Two hours he's not busting heads to get more tests and ventilators out. Like, it's completely absurd. And part of it is rooted in the fact that they don't have a White House press secretary that could do this briefing credibly and kind of stage manage a bunch of experts doing it with them. Yeah, it's a true opportunity cost that is impossible to quantify. All right, I have a few more things. I'll try to take through these a little quicker than I had planned. So, you know, we've talked about these crackdowns on the media and the name of coronavirus responses. And I just thought there was a smart piece that New York Times did that looked at the bigger picture of the state of press freedom in India. And it opened with this

anecdote about a TV station that was blocked by the government for 48 hours for reporting on these mob attacks we had seen a few months ago against Muslims in New Delhi. And it was viewed as reporting that was critical of the police and Hindu nationalist movements that are aligned with Prime Minister Modi. And it's been part of a larger strategy by Modi who is used tax investigations to punish media outlets he doesn't like or pressured sponsors to cut off ad revenue, especially government entities that advertise on some of these shows. Apparently that's a big piece of the revenue. And so now during the coronavirus, Modi is persuaded India Supreme Court to force outlets to publish the official version in quotes of these coronavirus developments,

sort of, again, ostensibly to stop fake news from spreading that could, you know, cause health problems. But you can see where this is going, right? I mean, he can just declare what the official version is and start forcing outlets not to criticize him with a heavy hand. His supporters are known to berate and harassed journalists online. So the thing about India that's so wild is just it's so big and has such a big media environment. So the Times totaled it up, India has 17,000 newspapers, 100,000 magazines, 178 news channels, and then like thousands of websites, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, whatever. So like unwieldy.

But reading this piece reminded me of our conversations like from several months ago back when India invaded Kashmir because we like, you know, so for the backstory for listeners, like Kashmir was considered disputed territory between India and Pakistan, and then India just rolled in the troops and now they occupy it, they annex it. So you and I remember talking then were like, this is this like seismic political event. And yet it was not really getting that much coverage. It wasn't treated as a bigger deal. And I didn't really totally realize until I read this piece that that was largely because foreign press was locked out. And all these Indian outlets felt the need to completely self-censor because they were worried about Modi basically turning off the satellite

feed from their stations. So, Ben, like, I raised this because, one, it would be a big deal if the forces of Hindu nationalism just, like, snuffed out the media in India. But also, this is another issue that feels like it could be the ghost of Christmas future, you know, and if we're not careful and we let our authoritarian president berate and shape the news in his favor, like, you can see bad outcomes stemming from that. Yeah, I mean, you know, what's interesting is it like you take for granted okay well there's a lot of media outlets and so inevitably you know even if there's a lot of propaganda a lot of promoty stuff like this will get out well i mean cashmere kind of was a demonstration case that the combination of keeping out foreign press bullying and

messing with the licensing and freedom of movement and capacity of local press intimidating journalists through kind of disinformation campaigns had already kind of cast a chill in the Indian media where there wasn't a lot of space or a lot of people who were willing to be anti-Mody voices as he was taking these anti-democratic steps. And I think the way to think about a lot of the emergency measures that we're going to be seeing in different places is, are they in a continuum of someone who was already moving in that direction? If they are, they're probably not for very good motivations. In other words, just like Victor Orban had already been moving in the direction of being a dictator when he granted himself dictatorial powers, it's hard to see that as a

coronavirus response and much easier to see that as an extension of his agenda. Similarly, Modi seemed to be setting about transforming India from a very open and vibrant democracy with a healthy independent media and civil society to a place where it's kind of more like a one-party state. And you start to see these features of pro-government propaganda on most stations and kind of a high bar for anybody else in terms of they're going to be intimidated, they're going to be attacked, they could see their licenses revoked and things like that. And I do think, you know, that makes you think, okay, what might India look like on the back end of this crisis? Like, okay, a vaccine, a year and a half from now, can India revert to some normal or will Modi have sufficiently moved

the goalpost that it's hard to go back. So that's one place to look. And then the other thing is, we should look at the experience of the other countries and see ourselves because we don't like to think that we could be on this spectrum. But on the other hand, you know, there's a OAN person in the briefing room. There's Fox. There's all these propaganda outlets essentially for Trump. And we're seeing what they're like in the midst of a crisis. They follow whatever shiny object Trump throws out there. So they're running all this coverage of this anti-malaria drug that, you know, medical experts say it does nothing for us. And at the same time, Trump just bullies and Hector's, the mainstream press. And frankly, it works. They, they, they, they, they, you know, there's

some courageous reporters and, and there have been some occasional incidents in the briefing room where people stand up to them, but, you know, more often not, they don't. And I think they were more comfortable, it's human nature, by the way, I'm not attacking these journals personally. It's kind of human nature that, like, you know, you're sure. shaped by the fact that there's no more daily press briefing. And so you don't get many shots to ask questions. And if you ask questions, you get bullied. And I do think we need to be wary that we might be on the same spectrum of countries like India and more acutely hungry that have seen a closing of space for independent journalism and criticism of the government.

Yeah. Reporters are doing a great job covering what's happening. CNN in particular, a lot of print outlets. Like, there's a lot of great coverage out there. I was very upset for a while. about the way the briefings were going and how much he was being allowed to just spray propaganda out without being checked. I do think it's getting better, but as you said, it's human nature not to like want to be the story

and pick a fight with the president of the United States, but like you also can't let the guy just spray bullshit to 8 million listeners or many people are watching and have that set the narrative. And look, I mean, I think any previous president would expect like, negative and hostile questions as like the norm of a press conference. And now that's just not the case.

And that, you know, that that's in part because that that room is rigged a bit with right wing outlets. I think it's also because of the the way in which that intimidation works sometimes. Yeah. So Ben, a couple of quick things. So you wrote this great piece for the Atlantic that everybody should check out about how the pandemic and COVID hopefully will be. or should be the end of the post 9-11 national security government area. Can you just preview or talk about that for people? And then everybody should read the whole thing because it's really worth your time. Yeah, I really would love it if people could check it out.

And I don't normally say that when I come out with like a random piece because it was pretty personal to me. I mean, what happened is actually really early in this situation a couple weeks ago. I woke up at like 1 o'clock in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. And I just started writing this. And a thought had popped in my mind, which is, this is the end of 9-11. This is the end of the post-9-11 error. And kind of what I meant by that is that from a foreign policy and national security

perspective, we've talked about this, the infrastructure, the resourcing after 9-11, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the global war on terror, and everything associated with it, the trillions of dollars sunk into that. And all the things that we didn't do in that time, you know, has been a massive opportunity. opportunity costs and it's accelerated a decline in American influence around the world. And it's warped our prioritization and prevented us from giving adequate focus to issues like climate change and issues like pandemics, you know. And so part of what was in my mind is that this doesn't shake us out of the insanity of our post-9-11 foreign policy. Nothing will.

Because this disease has already taken the lives of more people than any terrorist has ever even come close to killing or targeting and it's going to get much, much worse. And so therefore, if we're making risk calculations, you know, spending trillions of dollars to fight people who are trying to attack you with, you know, car bombs or other horrific events, but that can't possibly shut down our society like this, it makes no sense. I think more profoundly, though, I wanted to wrestle with the fact that 9-11 in many ways really distorted our politics and that there's this ugliness to the post-9-11 politics that manifests itself in demonization of the other in hyper-partisanship, in the kind of toxic treatment

and view of Muslims or immigrants or people who are different of people who come from other countries. And that essentially, like, we need to stop and think about who we are as a country, what our foreign policy is, what our priorities are. Does it make sense to be spending trillions of dollars to fight terrorists and build nuclear weapons and a rounding era of that to deal with pandemics or even climate change? And I do want to say something, you know, I tried to bring in self-criticism of myself and in the way that Obama kind of wrestled with us but could never really fully extricated himself from 9-11. I actually do read the comments sometimes reviews on iTunes. Everybody should rate us and review us on iTunes. But, you know, and one of the complaints I see

sometimes is, oh, these guys, you know, you're too hard on Trump or you're running down America, or you're just trying to make Obama look good. And that's not it at all. Like, and where I end up at the pieces, like, it's actually, it's not just Trump. Like, Trump is kind of the manifestation of all these trends, you know, the manifestation of not taking the role of the United States seriously in the world, the manifestation of the kind of demagoguing of security, the demonization of foreigners, of Muslims, the partisanship in the media and the gamesmanship in politics, a lot of things that really accelerated and took after 9-11. And now that we're home and socially distancing and have an election, it's time to rethink all of our priorities. I'm sure that everybody listening in some

ways is rethinking their own priorities and their own life, you know, their families, their jobs, their what gives them meaning in life. And that's kind of what we have to do as a country right now, is think about what are our priorities, like what do we do in the world? What do we spend money on? What do we care about? How do we approach politics? Like, how do we deal with other countries? Like, How do we look at each other? You know? And we have, if there's an opportunity in this crisis, it's an opportunity to kind of completely reset,

not just our foreign policy, which needs to reset, I think, from terrorism to dealing with pandemics and climate change and technology and the things are actually going to be shaping our world, but also thinking about how we can turn the page on this kind of the uglier aspects of our post-9-11 political and media culture. Yeah. Sorry, that was a soapbox.

But, and again, if you read it, you'll see I take plenty of shots at myself in this one, too. It's worth reading. It's a great piece. Check it out in the Atlantic. Two more quick things. So this is a weird one. So Axios reported that Israeli Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu shared a video with his cabinet that he believed was of Iranian officials dumping bodies in garbage dumps because they were

trying to hide the number of deaths from the coronavirus. And this went around, apparently, his national security advisor. to the whole security cabinet. And then a few hours later, they figured out that these were clips from a 2007 Hallmark Channel mini series called Pandemic. I guess the videos had been shared by a bunch of Iranians on social media. They fell in the category of too good to check. So BB's national security team did zero vetting, started using them to demagogue the Iranian response, shared them at a senior cabinet briefing. So great work there. And what's the point there? And what's the point though. I mean, it actually connects to what I was just saying, because Israel has some of this mindset, too.

It's like, your focus in a pandemic is to show your own people like shit that makes the Iranians look bad. It's the same as us with China right now. I don't care that they're hiding their numbers. I want us to be alive. The Iranian response is terrible. We can all agree on this. But like, what is the impulse that makes you do that? And by the way, remember, Bibi's son was sharing pictures online of Arabs allegedly voting in huge numbers. was like stock photos of a bunch of Turks voting in election a few years ago. Yes. These people are self-owning on disinformation. But to me, the really galling thing is just like, what compels someone to think that the most

important thing they can do is leader of the country is show their cabinet images of the Iranian screwing up, you know? Yeah, it is stupid and a waste of time. Last story. So some more good news at New Zealand. You touched on this earlier. So folks probably remember New Zealand Prime Minister, Sinda Adern. She inspired a lot of people with how she led the country after the Christchurch

shooting, especially the way she welcomed Muslims and refugee communities to New Zealand. And she moved quickly to ban assault weapons right after the massacre. She's also 39 years old. She just had a baby. She's this very cool, young, inspiring figure. She is back in the news because New Zealand's coronavirus elimination strategy has been just incredibly effective. On March 19th, they stopped all tourism, they moved to a four-week lockdown. They're about halfway through, and they are close to eradicating the coronavirus in the country. So like three cheers for them. That's amazing.

But Ben, you know, there was some controversy, as you touched on. So yesterday, she announced that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are essential workers. so they will have to do their jobs during this pandemic, though she stressed that the Easter Bunny in particular might be too busy to visit every house because he has family obligations as well. It was just so awesome, man. I mean, and it gets back to leaders just like

the fundamental humanity and goodness and some people comes out. Yeah. And I met her with Obama a couple years ago, and she was like really pregnant. and like younger than me, which was, you know, a new one for me. And the most down-to-earth person like I've ever, you know, met who's been in a position like that. And was just talking about her kids and talking about how to think about being a leader and a mother at the same time.

And, man, she's impressive. Yeah, she's awesome. If you think that they're not any good leaders out there, like you need to take a look at her and the speeches she's given and the thing she's done. And thank God the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny still be at it because my kids, you know, they're anticipating visits from both here in the near future. Yeah. No rest for the weary Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. Okay, we come back.

We'll have some excerpts from my conversation with Shannon and Carl and Richard, three travelers who are stranded in this weird purgatory abroad. We'll hear about their story, what it's like to be a traveler right now. and how the State Department is or isn't helping them get home. Hi, everyone. I'm Alex Wagner, journalist and co-host of Showtimes The Circus, and now host of the new Crooked Media podcast, Six Feet Apart. Each episode of Six Feet Apart will offer a window into the hidden worlds of this pandemic, the chaos and fear, the resilience and innovation,

all of which have been necessary parts of survival in this extraordinary moment. New episodes of Six Feet Apart drop every Thursday. Subscribe on Apple Podcast. Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. So we have a very special interview here on POTS Day of the World today. We are talking to Shannon Euclum and Carl Klein. I'm going to let them explain where they are because it's sort of halfway between a lot of places, which is a situation.

A lot of Americans who happen to be abroad in the time of the coronavirus found themselves in. So Shannon, Carl, thank you so much for joining today. Thanks. So you're physically on a boat, right? Yes. And not a cruise ship or anything, but an actual proper sailing ship built in 1905. So it's a tall ship, kind of a pirate ship. Oh, wow. So let's just start at the beginning. So where are you guys from in the States? We're from California. We live in the Bay Area.

Nice. My former stomping yard. So about two months ago, you guys started this multi-month sailing trip. Where did you start on their voyage? February 1st is when we actually started on the sailing trip. Yeah. We were in Punta. arenas we had traveled through South America for three months. And then we met kind of a group of strangers. There were 15 of us on the boat from all over the world. And we sailed across the Drake to Antarctica, and then the Falklands, South Georgia. And then our final destination was South Africa. And so this went from like the coolest trip you could ever imagine in a lifetime to when did

you realize like this is going to be very challenging, scary and legitimate? challenged to get home. I think finally we were supposed to make a stop at Tristan de Kuna before coming to Cape Town. And the authorities on the island there told us that we were no longer welcome because of some health concerns. And so we canceled our portal call in Tristan de Kuna, which is one of the most remote towns.

I think it was a territory of the United Kingdom and made sale for Cape Town. And then a couple days later, we were told we should all contact our loved ones and start finding out what's going on in the world and see how the impacts are our rammed up in our home countries. I'm a nurse practitioner and I have a master's in public health and contacted some of my friends who work in that arena. And we were lucky enough, one of them emailed and kind of gave us a good dose of reality, kind of let us know what was going on.

We were really limited as far as contact to the rest of the world on the trip. We didn't have telephones that worked. We didn't have internet that worked. We had occasional emails that we really weren't even sending or using until we kind of found out how just crazy things were getting. The captain was able to keep up with the company and his family that runs the ship. But we didn't have contact for the, we weren't planning on having contact for the 54 days that we were going to be at sea. Wow. So you guys are, you know, you're hunker down now.

You're outside of Cape Town. I mean, how do you spend your days? Are you trying to figure out various ways to get back in to the U.S.? Yeah. That was part of so when we were coming in a Cape Town, the South African government notified the boat that for us to be able to land, that no one was going to be able to stay in South Africa, and that we all had to have beat out of South Africa within five days.

So they wanted us all to get commercial air travel out of the country, and we needed to do that while we were still on the boat. We all did and complied with that. But then unfortunately, when we landed in Cape Town and tried to come into the harbor, they said that their thoughts had changed and they were no longer going to allow the boat to come into Cape Town. We had bought three different legs of flights and spent about $10,000 at first trying to get back to the U.S. shutdown, all of which was unsuccessful. we did have a couple crewmates from the UK who got off about five hours before the lockdown started

and somehow magically landed flights at just the right moment. But all of us at one point did have flights and were refused entry to South Africa. To make them. So you spent tens of thousands of dollars, did everything in your power logistically, despite being at sea for part of this time to get flights home. and you were still refused entry into the country even to get on the plane. Correct. Oh.

So sorry. Yeah. Has the State Department been helpful where have you been able to contact them? We've been in contact with both the State Department, or not the State Department, but the consulate and the embassies here in South Africa and trying to get our information to them and figure out what the next steps were with not just the lockdown in South Africa, but the fact that we were technically, they were still technically not in South Africa. And there was some miscommunications with the status of what the ship was going to be doing

as they were told not to come into South Africa and getting that across. It took us a couple of tries where we finally were able to get a solid contact at the consulate's office that we were able to start exchanging information with and get someone advocating on our behalf with the government. We also reached out to, or our parents mostly, just because of where we are, reached out to a couple of our local politicians, but that seemed to be kind of a fruit. endeavor. We were more successful kind of working directly through the embassy and the consulate here. I love that I can hear the birds. Do you know what birds are overhead right now? It's a combination of turns, pigeons, and there's a couple of stigals. So, you know, less romantic

than it sounds. Yeah, they're relatively quiet right now. Have you guys been communicating all with the South African government, have they been in all helpful? No, we haven't had any contact with the South African government themselves. Yeah, we've kind of been worked through the consulate and the embassy and had no, I don't think we've had any success getting in touch with, or anyone on the boat has any success getting in touch with anyone from the actual South African government. The ship itself, they have an agent that helps facilitate everything at the harbor, and they were doing the initial negotiations with the government to get the,

boat in. But when we first arrived on the 22nd of March, it sounded like South Africa was telling the boat that they were absolutely not going to allow it in, that they'd allow us to reprovision, but they told the boat to sail on to its next destination, which was going to be the Azores, a trip that would have been an extra 6,000 miles and 40 days at sea. Oh, my God. A couple of folks recommended we do that. And someone told Carl's parents it would take us a week to get there, which on a tiny sailboat is, not the keys. So we're like, yeah.

I'm sorry, the solution was at one point, hey, sorry, you can't come in, leave the port and spend another 40 days at sea? And the Azars is closed, so actually it would have likely been 60 days until we got back to Holland, the Netherlands. Oh my God. Yeah.

It's a weird situation to be when you're coming into a place where you have all your plans and it's not only focused on And then as you look at the world, everyone just setting down their borders and saying they're not taking anyone new. And we're not just on a flight, but you're on a ship that really has no choice, but to have to sail an extended periods of time. And we really feel the ship as well because they have to sail home. So there's still four crew members on the ship that have to sail to the EU. And we're taking up their food, their water, their time on a trip they have to do. So it's kind of a bummer for all involved.

Yeah. I mean, I feel so badly you guys are such an impossible position in the crew as well. So, I mean, when you sit there and like when you're sketching out possible courses of action, what kinds of things are you considering? The biggest thing is like the initially it was who we could contact and tried to get us into South Africa and then to look at available flights. but since the country has been locked down, it's really been waiting for the governmental, the intergovernment negotiations to take place between the U.S. government and the South African government.

And some of our kind of shipmates have, we had one Irish woman who got off the boat two or three days ago now, and she was the first one after the shutdown to get off. And it sounds like two more of our folks are getting off tomorrow morning. So there's been like really slow movement, but actually until today,

when we received the emails about the upcoming flights for the two and a half weeks we had nothing solid from the U.S. And yeah, kind of a little lost because everything is so shut down and there's so hard to reach anyone that has the power to do anything. I think the hard thing too is that no one wanted to give anybody information unless they had solid information to provide. So nobody can give, I get estimate of how long it might take to work out or get solutions. We heard at one point that there was a possibility of some flights happening earlier this week. But then we got the email saying that those had all fallen through and that they had to go back to the drawing board on contracts with carriers to carry them out. Man, I'm so sorry. So, I mean, I guess, you know, we're talking now.

There's an audience of people listening. Maybe some of them worked in the government. Maybe some of them have a ways to help. Like, what's your message to listeners about what you need or what other stuff? stranded Americans abroad need right now? I mean, anything you want to say? I think we're in an especially odd situation given that we're not actually in any country. And I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands of other people in equally odd,

challenging situations. But we travel a lot and we know a lot of other Americans who travel. And so in every tiny corner of the world, you're going to find U.S. citizens that planned well for where they are until something like this happens and they just need more options and kind of more connections to to the embassies and the governments and then actual plan items where we could make, like we just feel really stuck, I think is the hard part. The hard thing too is like when you get in a find yourself in a situation like this, you really can't be afraid to advocate for yourself and really keep on pushing.

And if you don't get an answer that you're like, yeah, just have to keep on calling and looking at other venues to get your information out there and to get an answer that's satisfying because it was at one point it sounded like everyone's like oh nope the ship's going to go onto the zors uh even passed our information onto the government and the zores and the embassy there and so that we can get home from there hopefully but that wasn't really amicable with with us or the ended up being with the ship either yeah god well i'm so sorry you guys are stuck and this is so frustrating and I hope we can at least get you into a country soon so you can begin the process of having a conversation.

Yeah, we'll take almost any country right now. I mean, that is a, that is a unique challenge. I was not even ready for this mentally. My brain is in a pretzel right now. I mean, but I'm hopeful you guys will get back here. I'm glad you're on a boat. I'm glad you're safe. You know, we're all pulling for you guys.

if we want to keep talking to you, hopefully we can keep updating on what's going on and let us know if there's any way we can help you. Yeah, awesome. Thank you. I was told I was going to say hi to someone named Richard, too. Hey there, Tommy. Hey, Richard. How are you? Good. How are you doing? I'm good. Where are you from? So I'm originally from Vermont, but I've been living in New York the last two years. Are you part of this, this voyage that has gotten waylaid slightly? Part of this fun, chaotic adventure. This modern Gilligan's Island in a pandemic. Yes.

I'd actually sailed on this boat, 50-day voyage, and no hiccups. So this was truly unexpected. Oh, no. So you did 50 days across the entire ocean, and then all of a sudden a pandemic has, hadn't you stuck in this weird netherworld? Yes, yes. Very unexpected. How are your attempts to contact the State Department?

department, local elected officials back home, anybody going? So when I originally tried to reach out to the embassy here in Cape Town, they were not answering their phones at all, left us feeling very, very stranded. But luckily, you know, we were able to get in contact with family back home. And I'm a constituent of Bernie Sanders in Vermont. He's my senator. So we were able to reach out to his office. And they were helpful in being able to kind of get the

attention of the embassy and the consulate. But like Shannon had said before, you know, it was not very fruitful kind of contact. They kind of were repeating information. We kind of were already getting having registered with the State Department for the step program and all of that. God, it's so frustrating. Well, do you have any message back home, you know, hoping that somebody at the State Department or anywhere else is hearing? Let's be friendly with our neighbors. You know, I think that may maybe would have briefed the gears and kind of kept things moving very well. One thing that was interesting being on the boat is us three Americans were surrounded by a number of Europeans. It seemed like they were getting more information from their government than we were. And kind of

their governments were much quicker to kind of get the diplomatic process going to kind of get these repatriation flights happening. So certainly a bit envious of that of some of the help they've gotten. But I think in general, just kind of, I think we might take our diplomatic relations a little bit for granted at home in the U.S. So I think that's one thing to think about. That is very good advice. Well, listen, I'm so grateful to all you guys for talking to me. I know it's late there. I hope this all works out. I hope someone is listening in the State Department who can help you get that stamp that you need. But Shannon, Carl, Richard, thank you for everything. Stay in touch. I want to hear about your safe and happy return home.

Yes, awesome. Thank you. I can barely see you guys. This is nice. Bye. Bye. Thanks again to Shannon, to Carl, to Richard for connecting with us all the way from the deck of a boat at 10 p.m. South Africa time. Ben, great talking to you. I hope you're doing all right with all the lockdown stuff. Yeah, world is out there, stay safe and reach out to us. You've got stories that are as good as the ones we just heard, right? I mean, we want to hear them. Yeah, we want to hear them. We have a reason to believe that there are people within the bowels of the State Department

and intelligence world that actually do listen to the show despite Donald Trump being notionally in charge. So maybe they can help. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and by the way, if you guys are, you know, want to share a story about being stuck abroad or just generally how you are dealing with the coronavirus, you can text us at 323-405-9944. All right, buddy. Have we going. Yeah, you too.

Pote of 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 Segglin 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.