Pod Save the World - The RNC live from Jerusalem

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Tommy and Ben talk about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the foreign-policy focused elements of the Republican National Convention, including Mike Pompeo’s speech from Israel, great news about efforts to eradicate polio, an update on protests in Belarus, why the State Department is wasting money promoting anti-LGBT bigotry, a military coup in Mali, police brutality in the US and India and news from China. Then Ben talks with Brazilian politician Tabata Amaral about Bolsonaro’s response to COVID, his authoritarianism, and how she’s trying to engage women in Brazilian politics.

Welcome back to POTS Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, Ben, we got a lot going on today, man. How excited are you for three more nights of the Republican National Convention? I don't even know it. I admit I didn't watch last night. I figured I could get the highlights online, which I did. Saw some very uplifting speeches about the better America coming from there. Yeah. Yeah, it was profoundly negative and redundant. But today's show is not. We have a lot going on. We're going to talk about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. We'll talk about some of the foreign policy segments from the RNC, all the good, the bad, the ugly.

There is some great news out there about efforts to eradicate polio. We'll talk about an update on the protests in Belarus, how the State Department is promoting bigotry, a military coup in Mali, police brutality, and some China news. And then, Ben, you did the interview this week. It is focused on Brazil. Tell everybody why they would be crazy to skip this. one. Yeah, Tommy, I spoke to Tabita Amaral, who is really extraordinary. She's in her 20s, but was elected overwhelmingly to serve in the Brazilian Congress, the Brazilian Parliament, and is really an important young, rising voice. And we talked about Bolsonaro, his authoritarian, well, beyond

tendencies, his affinity for Trump, why their COVID response has been, you know, as disastrous as ours, which is not coincidental to how he's like Trump, but how he's also gotten some support for his COVID response. So if you want to know what's going on in Brazil and you want to hear from one of the more inspiring young political leaders around the world, I'd check it out. Absolutely check that out. Also, Ben, a new episode of Missing America is out now. Can you give the people a little preview of what they'll learn today about authoritarianism? Because it's another great episode. Yeah, in a way, I mean, this is as important as any of the episodes because it's about China, which is, you know, the, as important as subject as there is in the

world. And we look at, you know, what is the China model? What is the kind of techno-totototelitarian model that they're building? We hear about how they're spreading that influence around the world. We hear from some very interesting Africans about how China has been asserting influence in Africa, what that looks like, what is attractive about it relative to America, particularly an American president who said that Africans come from shithole countries. And then we hear from Hong Kong protesters And we kind of tell the story of the Hong Kong protests through the experiences of a couple of protesters, the Hong Kong Bureau Chief of the Times. You really get, I think, the on-the-ground perspective that Americans don't always get about Hong Kong.

And then we talk about, well, what do we do about it? And we hear from people like Jake Sullivan, Jeff Prescott, who was Biden's Deputy National Security Advisor, Sam Power, people who are in a position to do something about it if Biden wins the election. So this is a very rich episode, and I hope people check it out. It's a great episode. And if you want even more authoritarianism, come hate watch the RNC with us here, Crooked Media. We've been live streamed the RNC with as much vicious commentary as we can muster on our group thread. It's a lot of fun, actually.

Go to cricket.com slash convention or subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash crooked media. Smash that subscribe button. Make Elijah happy. Make Dan Pfeiffer a YouTube star, as we all knew, would be his destiny when we met him back in 2007. Okay, Ben, let's start in Russia because last week, Russian opposition leader and prominent Putin critic Alexei Navalny became seriously ill. He was on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. And doctors believe this was just the latest example of a Putin opponent being poisoned. So Navalny's spokeswoman said that he got sick after drinking tea at the airport in Siberia.

After two days of wrangling with Russian authorities, Navalny was finally transferred to Berlin, Germany on Saturday morning for treatment and testing. Navalny supporters think that Russian authorities actually delayed his transfer in the hope that the poison would exit his system and I guess become untraceable. Russian doctors who first treated him tried to claim just absurdly that Navalny was suffering from low blood sugar. German doctors with him now say they believe he was poisoned with a chemical that interferes with the nervous system that can be found in chemical weapons. So this is a huge deal, Ben. I was thinking maybe we divide it into a couple parts. So they've just started with like who Alexei Navalny is. You know him better than me, Ben, but I think maybe the simplest way to describe him is as an

anti-corruption activist in a country where fighting corruption is incredibly dangerous. Navalny has said that Putin's political party is for crooks and thieves who are, quote, sucking the blood out of Russia, but he didn't just like sling these accusations. He documented and publicized corruption by some of the most powerful people in Russia. For example, in 2017, Navalny released a report about how then Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev using network of trusts and charities and offshore companies to disguise his ownership and these massive yachts, mansions, an Italian vineyard. The list goes on and on.

You know, Ben, you and I have talked on the show about how much better Obama and Medvedev got along, and frankly, the U.S. and Russia got along at that time when Medvedev was in charge. But this report makes clear that he was on the take, man. He was acquiring massive wealth through his position. The report includes, you know, YouTube links to drone flyovers of Medvedev's 45,000 square foot ski chalet and Sochi, the compound he has in Tuscany. So Navalny rose to prominence in 2008 as a blogger. He led major protests in 2011. He was been thrown in jail multiple times, once for the bullshit charge of obstructing police.

So, Ben, I know you've interviewed Navalny before. What do you think people should know about him or maybe this incident? Yeah. So as I continue to violate spoiler alerts on my book, which someday will come out. I did spend some time talking to Navalny for my book. And, you know, really liked him. He's a very charismatic guy. You know, just to give a bit of a background on how he became this figure, it's pretty fascinating.

He had been involved in politics, and then he made the decision to kind of leave traditional political party opposition and become essentially an anti-corruption blogger around 2008 or so. And he was really innovative, and he kind of doubled as an investigative journalist. This is why he's such a unique figure. And what he did that was so ingenious is he bought a very small amount of shares in each of the major Russian oil companies and used the fact that he was a shareholder to start suing them to expose their corruption, to expose essentially that they were skimming literally tens of billions of dollars off the top

to middlemen in terms of how they sold their oil, all to enrich basically Putin cronies. And this made him an overnight sensation, a celebrity, you know, millions of people watch his YouTube videos. He was writing a blog about corruption every day and really galvanized Russian political opinion in a way that the opposition parties hadn't around this issue of corruption, that the corruption of Putin and his cronies is central to the Putin regime. And that made him a leader in those 2011 protests in Moscow. He ran for mayor of Moscow and despite all kinds of intimidation being kept off the airwaves. You know, he still, you know, achieved a good vote total in the mid-30s, and frankly, he thinks probably with some good reason

that there was electoral fraud that drove his vote totals down and denied him the chance to win that election. And he's maintained this voice, and he really is the leading opposition figure to Vladimir Putin in Russia, the most potent opposition figure to Vladimir Putin. In part because he's not just the typical, and I don't mean this in a negative sense, but he's not your typical opposition figure. He's got this kind of unique persona. He's also, frankly, a little bit of a Russian nationalist himself. You know, he's not kind of a typical liberal. He certainly supports a more Democratic Russia, and we would certainly prefer Alexei Navalny being president. But that made him a more dangerous adversary. And so he's been detained and imprisoned a lot. When I interviewed him, we talked

about when he was poisoned. He was poisoned once in prison. Yeah, he's been poisoned repeatedly. I probably should have mentioned that in the lead up, but there was a lot to cover. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. Well, in the same kind of bullshit. thing, he was poisoned, got very sick once, and the Russian authorities claimed that he had an allergic reaction. And as he explained to me, he's never had allergies to anything. He's never had an allergic reaction. So he's a singular voice in Russia, an important voice, the most important opposition voice, the man who has done more to expose corruption than anything else, which is incredibly dangerous to Putin. And it's quite obvious what happened. I mean, because of that,

they targeted him once again, and this time almost killed him. He was put into a coma. Yeah. And so first of all, if Ben is going to offer spoilers of his book, we all have to agree to pre-order it. That is the deal. Ben, I'm glad you brought up this nationalism thing because one criticism you hear of Navalny is that he was willing to speak at like ultra-nationalist gatherings that featured far-right speakers. There was racist speeches delivered. Some of them, they were there were demagoguing immigrants, not from Navalny himself, but other speakers at these events. He also said that Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 was illegal, but that the territory, quote, now de facto belongs. to Russia. Basically, he said he wouldn't return it if he became president. I don't mean to criticize a guy who was just poisoned. And I think his views on Crimea are complicated in some ways in that he was maybe intending to describe the reality on the ground as he sees it more than policy. But I also think it's worth trying, it's worth trying to understand who these people are, maybe warts in all, so that we don't lionize them and that we understand them fully as we support

like the anti-corruption efforts and some of the things they're doing that are incredibly brave. Yeah, I talked about all this, and I have to say I found him an incredibly appealing figure, despite, you know, as you described, warts and all. On the far right thing, you know, what happens in Russia is that there are these annual marches, basically in opposition to Putin, and everybody shows up. The far right shows up, the far left shows up, everybody in between, and Navalny participated in this. And look, he, you know, he's against Putin. He thinks that there's a corrupt regime. that is stealing the resources of the Russian people. And you've seen this in other countries where oppositions are willing to just throw a big tent over everybody who's in opposition and cooperate to some extent and certainly to cooperate in street action.

Kasek, Ilhan Omar. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in Hungary, there's a far right party that is a part of this opposition block, right? And I've talked to Hungarian politicians who are like, yeah, I can't wait to get into the parliament and vigorously debate these. these people, but right now we're an existential situation. I don't think Navalny is a far right figure. You know, I think he's a guy who's, you know, basically sees himself as single-mindedly opposing the regime and its corruption. And on Crimea, you know, I think similarly, like, it's complicated, but, you know, essentially I think he, he has serious problems with how Putin did what he did and the justifications that Putin used and the lying that Putin did. But like a lot of Russians,

believes that Crimea has this majority of Russian speakers should be seen as distinct from the rest of Ukraine. I don't agree with that view. But I don't think he necessarily believes that it was right to send in Russian troops and annex the place. I do think, you know, he's, as you said, responding to political realities. And when I talked to him, it was about how do you have a more legal process, potentially a new referendum, in Crimea with international observers to determine its fate. Again, that still, I think, would violate the U.S. position that you can't just redraw maps, right? But yeah, but Tamia, the fact that he has those views is what makes him a more dangerous political opponent to Putin, because those views are pretty mainstream Russian views. And again, this is the danger of Navalny. He's got his finger on the weakest spot, the biggest political vulnerability for Putin, which is his corruption.

And he has a set of views that are not easy to categorize as, you know, a Trojan horse for U.S. or a European influence. Their mainstream Russian nationalist views, albeit wedded to a complete commitment to democracy and transparency. And he's very adamant about the need for a free press, for independent media, for free and fair elections, you know, so he would be a monumental improvement over Vladimir Putin. And he's one of the only figures in Russia that I think people could look at it and think, well, maybe that guy could be president of Russia someday.

Yeah, and I don't mean to suggest that Kasei, Cori, Ilhan Omar, in any way extreme, I was totally making a joke. Ben, I should note that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo finally released a statement about Navalny's poisoning on August 25th, which is today as we're recording this. So we're a weekly podcast, and we almost got to this subject faster than they did. But let's talk about just poison for a second, because Andrew Kramer at the New York Times did a really interesting deep dive into Russia's use of poison to murder or silence critics or political opponents. This has happened to investigative journalists, prominent anti-government activists, opposition leaders, dissidents, defectors, including some who spied for other countries. Here's some of the stuff that they used to poison people. Radioactive polonium 210, heavy metals, rare plant toxins, and nerve agents that can kill you just by touching them. Very fun stuff.

Former Ukrainian president, Victor Yushenko, was fed a meal laced with dioxin, which is a chemical found in Agent Orange. That attack, which a lot of observers think was Russian-linked. It didn't kill him, but it horribly disfigured him. So this Times piece talks about how the former Soviet Union had secret research programs to develop these, like, tasteless, untraceable poisons. They tested them on prisoners at the time, which is really awful. The piece talks about how several activists were poisons at airports or given substances in tea.

So there's a pattern here. So Ben, just a couple thoughts. Like one, again, just when Trump is asked to criticize Putin and he does his like weird, what aboutism thing where he blames the U.S. for something. Just everyone remember, U.S. presidents don't murder their domestic political opponents or journalists. Second, why do you think Russians use these weird exotic poisons? Like some of Putin's opponents just get shot or beaten to death or thrown out of a window. Like, none of it is subtle. Why use some exotic substance to attack Sergei Skripal, the Russian military officer turned double agent for the UK or Navalny,

when like everyone knows who was going after these guys and who did it. What are they hiding here, right? And then in this specific case, like, doctors think Namalini is going to survive this. So, you know, that's good news, obviously. Well, I think that the, first of all, the fact that it took this long for a statement to get out means that the statement is completely useless because the message that Vladimir Putin takes from that is that the United States doesn't give a shit, you know. And what Mike Pompeo does, and he's done this in several occasions where Trump doesn't really

want to do anything is he waits a few days, then he puts out a statement so that later when he gets shit about it, maybe when he's running for president in a few years, he can say, well, I put out a statement. But the message to the world is that we don't care. And look, in the time period that it took for them to put out the statement, Germany was able to organize a medevac for Navalny to fly him from Siberia to Germany for medical treatment and demand an investigation all before the United States government could even say anything. I think on poison, I think what Putin wants to do is intimidate and control people. And there's some, you know, this widespread use of poison kind of sends a message to anybody. If you were considering speaking up against Vladimir Putin, you never know

what cup of tea you drink, what meal you eat might cause a horrific reaction and even kill you. And there's something very ominous and controlling about that, maybe even more so than the idea of someone kicking in your door and shooting you, right? This, this idea that they're everywhere. They're in your food. They're in your tea. I think he wants that impression out there. And it's kind of like MBS with Khashoggi. Putin doesn't care that everybody knows he did this, you know? And he'll deny it, but that's frankly bullshit. But they want it to be known that they poison oppositionists. They've done it in other countries. They've done it in the United Kingdom. There's some people who believe they've done in the United States in some murky cases.

And that's what he wants. He wants people to think that, you're not safe anywhere in the world if you criticize Vladimir Putin. And that is a chilling, chilling reality that the United States and the world has to deal with, because we can't live in a world where you can just poison people anywhere with impunity if they criticize you. That's a dark future that we should all want to stand up against. Yeah, agreed. Okay. In case you didn't get enough fascism, let's talk about the RNC for a bit. There was some foreign policy focused content last night.

So buckle up. I'm going to do this all in Kim Gilfoyle voice. So on Monday, they aired a taped conversation with Trump and six Americans who the U.S. government had helped bring home after they've been held hostage abroad. There was a U.S. Navy veteran who had been held in Iran. There was a man who had been held for two months in Syria, a pastor who had been held in Turkey for four years. A few things about the discussion that they taped and released that was just weird. First, Trump invited a couple named Joshua Holt and Terry Holt, who had been held in Venezuela.

Trump never addressed Mrs. Holt at all. She was never allowed to speak in the segment, which was just bizarre. Also, when Trump was talking to the guy who had been held hostage in Turkey for four years, Trump praised Turkish president Tayyip Erdog, who was an authoritarian thug who just imprisoned this guy. Also, Trump ended the conversation about these horrifying experiences by saying great stories, which I don't think is how most people view. their time held hostage. One last substantive point, Ben, is that, like, there are many hostages still being held around the world. And if Trump wants credit for getting those folks out, he should, you know, welcome some more

scrutiny about the times he has failed. For example, there was an American citizen named Mustafa Kasim who died recently in an Egyptian president. I would like to know why Trump wasn't able to get President El Sisi, who he has called his favorite dictator, to release Mustafa Kasim. You know, Ben, you and I worked on some of these hostage-related. issues together at the White House. You dealt with many more of these issues after I left, including trying to help friend of the pod Jason Rezion, get out of Iran, and supporting the family

of Kayla Mueller, who was taken hostage by ISIS and was tragically killed in Syria. On Thursday, I noticed that Kayla's parents are going to speak at the RNC, so there'll be more conversation about these issues. What did you make of this hostage policy conversation? Well, I think it was misleading and cynical and dangerous. It's misleading because, you know, frankly, as you said, there's always American hostages in other countries. Tragically, nobody has a perfect record of getting them all out. And it's misleading because what about the people that weren't freed? What about the person who died in Egyptian prison?

What about Otto Wormier, you know, the American who was killed in North Korea? Right. And, you know, Trump continues to call Kim his best friend. He's writing love letters to him. no more mention of Otto Wormier now that it's no longer politically convenient for Trump to hold up that case. The second thing I'd say

about how cynical it is is, you know, these families have been through something that none of us can imagine, a wrenching experience that brings up all kinds of emotions that I can only guess at and what that trauma is.

And to take that emotion and to channel it into this kind of crude politics, to me, you know, is beyond disturbing, you know, and look, we celebrated hostages coming home. I negotiated the release of Alan Gross from a Cuban prison.

And yeah, at the state of the union, Obama referenced Alan Gross being there and everybody applauded. But it would never have occurred to us to like have Alan Gross go out and give a political speech like in, you know,

at the Democratic convention, you know, renominating Barack Obama. You know, this just kind of blow through kind of the boundaries of what I think is, you know, an appropriate way of dealing with a family's pain to channel that into some partisan political agenda. But here's why it's dangerous. The reason it's dangerous is that in the grand scheme of things,

the U.S. government has an overriding imperative to protect the security of our citizens, and so therefore hostages do become a foreign policy issue. But let's be clear here. It's not like Trump has solved major foreign policy challenges in getting these hostages. out. But the message he's sending to every dictator around the world is, all I care about is being able to celebrate the release of some hostage of some great deal that I did. He's incentivizing the taking of American prisoners who can then be used to leverage things from the United States so that Trump can get people out and, you know, trot them out for his political game. I honestly think that why would you not draw that calculation if you're another country? Because, you know,

it's not like Trump has gone to war with these countries to free these hostages. You know, it's been some transaction that he's engaged in. And so to me, that some total of this, it's an incredible encapsulation of how disturbing his approach to foreign affairs is. It's a complete extension of his domestic political interest. He doesn't really care about the people involved, because imagine how painful it is for the families of those who have not been freed to have to watch that type of a new demonstration at the RNC. And I, again, I can't stress enough how much I can, I'm worried that, you know, if there's a second Trump term, you know, God help us if there is, that he's sent this

message out that like, yeah, as long as I can claim a win, you know, because I got somebody out, like then I'm cool, you know, so go ahead, Erdogan, like wrap someone up for a few years as long as I get them back and I can brag about that. I mean, just dark, dark stuff. It is dark stuff. And look, crossing inappropriate political lines with foreign policy is like the theme of this thing because, you know, we're recording, you know, we're recording on Tuesday afternoon tonight, insufferable blowhard turned secretary of state Mike Pompeo is going to speak. And so that in and in and of itself is unprecedented, right? It is illegal, unethical and frankly, really weird to have a sitting secretary of state speak

at a political convention. As NBC News reported, one of three State Department political legal memos on this topic says in bolded texts that, quote, Senate-confirmed presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention. It is crystal clear. But then, of course it gets worse. Pompeo is taping his speech in Jerusalem while on an official trip. So, like, we haven't seen his remarks yet, but he's undoubtedly going to talk about this

recently signed Israel-UA-E deal, just thrusting that back into politics. Pompeo's flaks are pathetically trying to claim that he is doing this in his personal capacity and that the government isn't bearing any of the costs. but like that is just ludicrous. The State Department has a plane. That plane flew him to Israel. He will be driven around and supported by State Department staff. He was apparently spotted filming something on top of the King David Hotel,

which means his backdrop will be the old city of Jerusalem. And that venue is as visually appealing to evangelicals as pool boys are to Jerry Falwell Jr. And so according to the Jerusalem Post, Pompeo left Israel and flew to Sudan, where he's the first Secretary of State to visit since Condi Rice in 2015. the White House suggested that Sudan could be next on the list of countries to normalize relations with Israel. Ben, what do you think about Mike Pompeo filming a fucking RNC video from Jerusalem? I mean, there's no bottom with Mike Pompeo, so I guess I'm not surprised. But to break it down, it is completely illegal and unethical.

How would 2012 Mike Pompeo have reacted if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had delivered an address to the Democratic Convention extolling Barack Obama and attacking Republicans while on official trip as Secretary of State. That tells you everything you need to know about the bottomless well of hypocrisy that fuels Mike Pompeo. Obviously, it is an official visit. Not only did he fly on that plane, but I can tell you from experience that the King David Hotel is where you stay if you're the U.S. government traveling to Israel. So that means his hotel room was paid for by you, the taxpayer. That means all the security infrastructure at that hotel was paid for by you, the taxpayers. taxpayers are literally funding a political stunt for the Republican National Convention.

And then let's get to the setting itself. I mean, for years, the sacrosanct words of APAC and other pro-Israel groups don't politicize the U.S.-Israel relationship. It's meant to be bipartisan. It's meant to be about things that are bigger than petty partisan concerns. I cannot think of a more rote politicization of the U.S.-Israel relationship than the Secretary of of the United States using Israel as a prop in the president's re-election campaign, using the old city of Jerusalem as a prop in the president's re-election campaign. And let's be clear about the audience he's speaking to, Tommy, as well, because it's not the Jewish state. And it's not even particularly Jewish voters in the United States. Donald Trump himself has said that the move of

the embassy to Jerusalem, that that was for the evangelicals. That was the phrase he used. Well, what is that for? It's because the evangelicals believe that Jews have to live. live in Israel, live in the old city of Jerusalem again, so that the rapture can come and all the Jews can be converted to Christianity. This is the wink-wink that's going on here. So you're going to tell me that these are the people that aren't politicizing the U.S. Israel relationship, when they're literally using it as an alternative stage for the 2020 Republican National Convention so they can speak to a bunch of evangelicals and appeal to their desire to see all Jews converted into Christians when the rapture comes? I mean, give me a break with this.

It is wild. I'm going to go on a little soapbox for one second because this dovetails with something that drives me crazy, which is candidates that try to do the right thing, be even more transparent or like put in place ethics or lobbying reforms, get screwed for it. For example, our old boss, Barack Obama decided to release something called Waves Records. They're basically White House visitor logs that tell you who's been meeting with who. Bush did not release those, right? In fact, progressive groups sued the Bush White House all the way up to the Supreme Court to try. try to figure out who Dick Cheney met with on his secret energy task force. It was a very big deal. Obama got like one day of good press for releasing these records and then we spent eight years

getting the skit kicked out of us every time some weird person visited the White House. Similarly, fundraising gets nitpicked to death, right? Candidates who don't take PAC money will deal with reports that say, well, you took money from people who work at the company, right? Never mind if it's some low-level person or the CEO. My point is, not that the press should be nice to candidates, But that relationship should be adversarial. It should be hostile. That's a good thing for, like, clean government. But if we want politicians to be more ethical and transparent, we have to create political

incentives for them to do so. Because right now, Trump could care less about any of this. Half the RNC is being filmed at the White House, which is totally illegal. It's a hatchack violation. And this morning, Politico referred to the White House itself as a, quote, breakout star of the convention, noting it's good to be president. We have to stop judging illegal or unethical activity on style points. End of speech.

And the reason it's so insane, too, is that if Barack Obama had done the same thing, they would not have granted him that the White House is a star. It would have been a massive, massive scandal from the press because they know that Democrats care about norms. And so Democrats are more easily shamed. And so the press shames them. And they also know that Trump doesn't care. And so they go right along with the whole optics play here.

And at a certain point, I mean, I'm going to use, I hate to do this, but I'm going to use a sports metaphor, Tommy. Please. If Donald Trump is playing an NBA game, and so is Joe Biden, and Donald Trump goes one for 20 from the field, and Joe Biden goes 18 for 20 from the field, that means that Joe Biden did a lot better than Donald Trump. But the way the press covers it is they'll cover like Joe Biden's two misses as equal to Donald Trump's 19 misses. You know, there's this need to kind of, in the name of balance, can kind of give. equal weight to this stuff. So create huge, you know, problems and scandals around arcane things that Joe Biden might say or do that Republican sees on. And then suddenly, you know, we're giving a pass to Donald Trump politicizing the heart of American government, which he, and he doesn't need

to do it. Like, there are plenty of places to go in Washington where he can give a speech. You know, so to use the White House or Jerusalem as a backdrop of their convention just shows how utterly corrupted our foreign policy is and our politics. And it also shows how incapable our news media is at processing that and communicating that to the American people. Because most American Americans are not familiar with the Hatch Act. They wouldn't necessarily know that it's illegal and unethical and unprecedented to use the White House in this way. They have to be told that by the American news media and they're not. Yep. And it's got to be like the lead of the story. You know, last sort of foreign policy you think from last night, was former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley spoke. I got to be

honestly, man, like, I don't remember a ton of it. She is one of those people who, who seems to support and talk about and reference a version of Donald Trump that doesn't actually exist in reality. I don't know if you watched her speech. Did you have thoughts? I mean, my only thought about this is that Nikki Haley has somehow kind of emerged like unscathed, you know, in the eyes I think of like official Washington and the news media, like despite being completely consistent in her support for Donald Trump. And the other thing is she's kind of held up as this foreign policy voice, like this person who has credibility of having been on the world stage. She was the ambassador to the UN for like a year and a half. You know, like this is

not extensive foreign policy experience. And what did she do? Like can anybody name a single thing that what is Nikki Haley's big achievement at the UN? Like, there is none. So this is another case of like, she's just kind of been granted this status as this person who's floated above the Trump scandals, who has this background of expertise in international affairs when all she did was essentially served Donald Trump at the UN during the year and half in which she was taking a wrecking ball to America's reputation in the world and then been a defender of Donald Trump ever since. So I just don't know why she's in this other category. Okay, let's move on from the RNC because, Ben, we have some rare, unequivocally good news,

which is that the Africa Regional Certification Commission has declared the continent is now free of wild polio. This breakthrough is the result of a major vaccination campaign in Nigeria, which had up to a thousand cases a year through the mid-2000s, and according to the BBC, accounted for more than half of all global polio cases a decade ago. The reporting on this subject can be a little confusing, right, because there's another strain of polio that can emerge from people who have been vaccinated. But the key point, the thing everyone needs to know is that if you get vaccinated, you're protected from all these strains. So universal vaccination is key, and it's how you protect these populations. Vaccination campaigns have

been difficult in Nigeria because there's a terrorist group called Boko Haram that makes parts of the country very difficult to reach. Doctors also have to battle conspiracy theories, alleging that the vaccine is actually, you know, an American plot to sterilize people. Maybe these, uh, Islamist groups live in Orange County. COVID-19 made everything harder to write because you couldn't travel. So this is a big achievement. The U.S. eradicated wild polio in 1979, which is also a great smashing pumpkin song. When the global polio eradication initiative was launched in 1988, the wild polio virus was president in more than 125 countries and paralyzed 350,000 people per year, according to the GPEI website. Now it's only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So we got to keep working on this, you know, vaccination efforts to eradicate polio everywhere because one person could bring it from Afghanistan to another country and we're off to the races. But huge credit to doctors, NGOs, funders like Bill Gates and polio survivors in Nigeria who were key spokespeople to help encourage parents to vaccinate their kids. So good news. Fun to talk about good news.

Yeah, no, it's great news. I mean, and we had the same challenge in Nigeria. And I remember, you know, we tried a lot of different approaches. including reaching out to imams who could go into some of these more rural areas and communicate to people in a credible voice. It wasn't, say, the U.S. government or some foreign health official about why these vaccinations were safe, why immunization was safe. It's harder than you'd think to do that. You know, if you're living in a rural area without a lot of access to information, subject

to a lot of conspiracy theories that vaccines are a Western plot, we've talked on this show, Tommy, about the kind of Russian information operation that HIV-AIDS was somehow creation of the CIA. That stuff permeated deep in Africa. So this is great news. And I think the other lesson of it, though, is that you can beat diseases. You know, you can fight and win these fights against diseases, which obviously matters in the COVID-19 context. It matters to HIV-AIDS.

It matters to efforts to try to take on malaria and, you know, maternal death. I mean, I think the lesson here is that if you've got governments working with private private philanthropists like Bill Gates, working with large NGOs, and working with local populations, you can save a lot of lives. And it's in our interest to do that from a humanitarian perspective, but also from the perspective that, as we've seen, disease spreads, right? So another reminder of the benefit of real international cooperation. Yeah, very, very well said. Okay, let's go to Belarus because there's still massive protests there. On Sunday, an estimated 100,000 people who were in the streets protesting President Alexander Lukashenko and calling on him to step down.

the super short version of the backstory, if you want the longer one, listen to the last few episodes, is that Lukashenko is a dictator who has led Belarus for the last 26 years. He tried to steal yet another election on August 9th, and the people of Belarus were not having it, and they've been protesting ever since. So the good news, Ben, is it seems like security forces are cracking down less hard. They're not arresting as many people. There are fewer reports of, you know, torture and abuse. But it is worrisome at the same time that Lukashenko keeps.

arresting high-profile opposition leaders and acting in a really defiant manner. Like state media keeps running videos of him, like jumping out of a helicopter with a machine gun and like generally looking threatening, which, you know, in other words, means he could get a speaking slot at the RNC. But the deputy secretary of state met with Lukashenko's opponent in that most recent election. Svetlana Tikunovskaya, they were in Lithuania, where she's now in hiding. Just before that meeting, though, ominously, the Russians released a statement alleging

foreign interference in Belarus. And I guess Lukashenko and Putin have talked at least three times in the past week. So, Ben, this thing's ongoing. What do you think people should be watching as this situation evolves? Well, I think what the people Belarus realized is that there's some strength in numbers, right? And so if everybody's turning out and if workers aren't showing up at work, if, you know, the state media channels aren't the people work there aren't showing up at work, that they can't crack down on the whole country at the same time, you know, And it's this kind of mass mobilization strategy that did work also for time in Hong Kong, as we saw. So the inspiring thing is that they've really internalized a culture of protests that has allowed them to keep the heat on Lukashenko.

I think the thing to watch and to be worried about is if over time, you know, the mass mobilization begins to diminish, Lukashenko may be waiting for a smaller number of protests to crack down on. You know, it's hard to go after hundreds of thousands of people. But if it shrinks to a few thousand in a few weeks, then those are the people that he might try to crack down on. That may not work, by the way, particularly if people are willing to go back on strike again and essentially paralyze the country in their insistence that there be some transition there, some credible election there too. But I'd be watching for does he try to wait them out and then crack down? Does Russia get more overtly involved, as we've discussed? And on this question of foreign

interference, I think I was glad to see the deputy secretary of state meet with them. That's the right move. And I don't think we should be embarrassed by those charges. I mean, like sometimes, you know, and I think sometimes in the Obama administration, we were too worried about being tarred with foreign interference. You know what? It's the right thing to do to stand with protesters who've been totally screwed by a corrupt authoritarian leader who just completely stole an election. Yeah. And so have your meetings with the opposition. Let them say it's foreign interference and tell them that you know it's not. And the people turning out on the streets clearly, no, it's not. I was inspired to see the Baltic countries. There was like a human chain made. They went on for miles of

people expressing solidarity with protesters in Belarus. If they want to call that foreign interference, if they want to call that NATO, fine, let them. But let's all do the right thing and support the people of Belarus here because, you know, they've broken the fear factor in that country. And, you know, hopefully they can keep pushing and pushing until they get the change they deserve. Yeah, agreed. And we will keep covering this one because it's very important. This story is infuriating. It's a story about how Stephen Miller and Donald Trump's vile anti-immigrant sentiment has seemingly infected every part of the government, including the State Department. So the State Department, Ben, is arguing in court that the daughter of two

legally married U.S. citizens is not herself a U.S. citizen because the girl was born via a surrogate in Canada. State is pointing to policy written in the 1950s. It says, quote, a child born abroad to a surrogate whose genetic parents are a U.S. citizen father and an anonymous egg donor is considered for citizenship purposes to be a person born out of wedlock, end quote. Of course, that policy was written before in vitro fertilization or same-sex marriage became legal. So the parents in the situation, Roe and Adiel Cavitti are two legally married U.S. citizens who happen to be gay. In June, a judge ruled in favor of the Cavite family, but the Trump administration is appealed. because they are cruel, awful people. According to ABC News, Ben,

at least two other same-sex couples are dealing with this same nightmare scenario where they could be separated from their own children. So, again, just enraging that the State Department spends the time and money on this bigoted shit. Yeah. What possible justification is there for, too? I mean, you know, like, there's no...

And be clear, like, they're going out of their way. They're devoting resources. People are spending time on this. utter bullshit. This fight is over. It is legal for gay people to be married in this country. And to punish people like this, you know,

it is so petty and cruel for what purpose. So you can kind of call up some right-wing leader in the U.S. and say, hey, see what we're doing. We're screwing this gay couple. Like, I can't think of any other reason to do it. And by the way, like, I have a lot of people I know who are still at state

and I'm glad that people are sticking it out. But I I would not work on this. I mean, no. Like, this is just gross. You want to tear a 16 month old away from two U.S. citizens?

What is wrong with you? Why? And just say out loud the reasons why. Right. Tell me why. There's no reason other than the fact that these people are LGBT. And like what, so therefore they're not people.

They're lesser people. They're lesser parents. I mean, it's astonishing me that we're even like having this argument. But unfortunately, as astonishing it is, I guess it's not because it's Donald Trump and Steve Miller. Yeah.

And Mike Pompeo. And Mike Pompeo. Yeah, yeah. Have fun, you know, catering to Jerry Falwell Jr. And the evangelicals from the King David Hotel on my dime. A couple more quick things. So let's turn into Mali. So last week there was a military coup in Mali.

President Ibrahim Bubukkar Kata announced his resignation. Just hours after members of Mali's military took control of an army camp near the capital, rounded up a bunch of top government officials and basically took control. Some citizens in Mali actually took to the street in support of this coup, which came after months of protests. The coup leaders promised a transition to new elections, but I wouldn't bank on that quite yet. Representatives from Eco-Was, which is a group of West African countries, are trying to negotiate a deal, but they're looking to return President Kata to power, and it doesn't seem like he even necessarily wants that. So, Ben, you know, you and I did a lot of work on Northern Mali when I was still at the White House,

a dangerous place. Al-Qaeda-linked fighters have been able to operate there pretty freely. The U.S. says they are suspending joint military cooperation with Mali. The French say they're going to continue counterterrorism operations in Mali. The French have a much longer, much more fraught history with the country. They controlled Mali and called it French Sudan from 1892 until 1960. Ben, you know, I remember all these meetings we were in about these threats emanating from Mali, back in like 2012, 2013. What do you think the risk is of like a safe haven developing there?

And like, what do you think the path forward is to get through this coup, to get to a transition, like what entity should play a role? Is Eco Was the right organization? Yeah. So, you know, Mali, really what happened after that period of time when there was that spike in threats is that the French intervened and French troops went into Mali. And the French, you know, the former colonial power was kind of a bit of the de facto, you know, muscle in Mali.

but, you know, it has the characteristics of kind of a failed state in that they're deep geographic divisions, tribal divisions, there's this Islamist presence, and the French intervention was successful, I think, in dislodging a lot of those Al-Qaeda elements, but, you know, like a lot of military interventions, not successful in supporting the development of a cohesive government, right? And so I think this is just a place that doesn't really, it's, you know, it's quite close to a failed state. And in that case, the military is often the strongest authority. And when a leader is kind of corrupt and loses popular legitimacy, the military steps in. So it's that formula. I do think that ECOWAS, an organization that a lot of Americans, you know, probably

haven't spent a lot of time thinking of, is actually been somewhat effective on some of these cases. I remember when we were in government, Tommy, you may recall Cote d'Ivoire, there was a leader who refused to step down after losing an election. ECHOAS really stepped in and helped resolve that situation, ensure a peaceful transition of power. So, you know, this can be an effective regional organization. I think the UN should be heavily involved, too. So if you have the regional authority in ECOWAS working with the United Nations

and trying to figure out what the formula is to return to some form of elected government, but also to try to deal with some of the needs in the country, to address the fact that not only you need a frontman for the country, government, but you need a government that can actually function, you know, that ultimately is going to be, you know, the long-term necessity. And like it or not, the French are going to have to help play a critical role, too. They're the ones with the relationships with the military in Mali more so than the United States. So I think it's the people of Mali, obviously, working hopefully with ECOWAS, the regional organization, the UN, and then the French hopefully playing a constructive role with the military.

That's what needs to happen. Yeah. Well, another thing we will, we will, we will watch closely. So I wanted to talk to about a domestic issue in the U.S. and how it maybe connects abroad for a minute because on Sunday we saw another video of the police shooting an unarmed black man in America. This incident happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A man named Jacob Blake was reportedly trying to break up a fight. The police arrived. But when Mr. Blake tried to get back into his car and leave, you can see a video of a cop shooting him in the back several times, in front of three of his children. So it is just absolutely horrifying and heartbreaking and infuriating,

especially in the wake of George Floyd's murder. So the good news is that Jacob Blake is in stable condition. And if you want to help out people who are now protesting in response, check out the Milwaukee Freedom Fund. But Ben, I wanted to raise this in conjunction with a really horrifying story I read in the New York Times recently about systemic police brutality in India. And because what the Times reported is that despite data that shows over 1,700 people were killed in Indian police custody last year, there have not been widespread protests or really any protests at all. And this was also true in India after George Floyd's murder when you saw like global solidarity protests.

And they sort of identified the reason as being because the majority of the victims in India are Muslims or low caste Hindus. And the Times quotes human rights group saying that despite the fact that prison, in India are routinely torture to death, there hasn't been a single conviction for that crime between 2005 and 2018. So I wanted to raise this issue because we need to end police brutality in the U.S. to save lives, especially black lives. But we also need to get our shit together so that we have the moral authority to pressure governments in other countries and places to end torture and extrajudicial killings. And like, once again, hopefully provide some sort of more moral leadership on this issue because I guess, you know, you've raised this point before, Ben,

the moral leadership right now is coming from the protesters in the streets. And I guess that's something to be hopeful about, but it would be nice to have like, you know, the State Department actually doing it. Yeah. And as you say, the starting point is getting our own house in order and showing that we can acknowledge what's wrong here in the United States and take steps to fix it, both structural policy steps, but also societal steps. And then that gives you some authority to talk about these things in other countries. And if you're talking about India, you first of all, you should follow, you know, friend of the pod, Rana Yub, on Twitter. You know, because part of what it's happening there is the breakdown, both the societal breakdown and the policy breakdown.

In terms of society, it's impossible to know exactly whether Donald Trump's words, his ascendancy, the direction of the country under his leadership, how much that filters down into the mind of a police officer who puts his knee on George Floyd's neck or a police officer who shoots, Jacob Blake in the back. But, you know, I think it's a pretty safe bet that there's there's some causality there. And in India, what you have is a Hindu nationalist leader in Renra Modi, who, who along with a lot of his inner circle regularly engages in Hindu nationalist rhetoric, regularly diminishes Muslims. You've had the home minister in India refer to Muslims as termites, right, kind of dehumanizing language. Imagine the sense of impunity that gives to police officers,

just as from a policy perspective, you're not seeing consequences for police officers who kill black people in some cases in this country. You're not seeing accountability for a police officer in India. So we have to restore our moral authority. And then the question in these other countries is can people take on both the societal kind of permission slip that is given for this kind of violence? And can there be policies put in place, maybe hopefully model on policies that are working here or in other places, about holding police officers accountable for this kind of extrajudicial violence. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the targeting of these Muslims.

I mean, the U.S. needs to do a better job of standing up for Muslim lives everywhere in Xinjiang, China, in India. And then, you know, I was very glad to see that Joe Biden said that on day one, he will get rid of the Muslim ban. It was, I think, a pretty big oversight to not have a Muslim speaker in prime time at the DNC because you have such a stigmatized community in the U.S. who I just think we need to go out of our way to acknowledge that treatment and to welcome them into the Democratic Party, you know, like bring people into our democracy as much as humanly

possible and not treat someone like their other or else, of course, they're going to feel that way. Yeah, no, I mean, there absolutely should have been a Muslim speaker at the convention. And also, look, I mean, the left has done a lot of work in this country, I think rightly, in highlighting the connection between the war and terrorism in this country and some of the things that have taken place since 9-11 in other countries. The reality is when you have this kind of hyper-securitized approach to terrorism in this country, but to Muslims in this country and profiling of Muslims. And you have the kind of rhetoric about radical Islam and the demagoguery of our Muslims in this country, from Donald Trump to Ted Cruz on down. Well, you know, China, if you look at

the internal documents that were leaked about Jingjiang province, about the imprisonment of a million Uyghurs, they were citing the U.S. war and terror. And by the way, not in their public justifications. This wasn't just PR. Like, they were citing that securitized mindset. Totally. You know, and so if you think

that the way in which the U.S. has conducted itself in the war and terror, and I was a part of some of that in the Obama administration, we have to recognize and wrestle with the fact that a Modi, a Putin, a G, you know,

have drafted off of that in some of their actions. I'm not justifying what they did based on what we did, and what they've done often goes far beyond anything we've done. But we do have to realize that there are unintended consequences to this kind of hyper-focused slash obsession with terrorism and the way in which, particularly in the Republican Party, it's drifted into painting Muslims with a broad brush.

That stuff travels. That stuff goes overseas. And that's why the Democratic Party needs to do better and be better, you know. And I don't care if it's not great politics to have a Muslim speaker for, really? you're telling me that, you know, and I'm not suggesting that this was the calculus, but if someone were to make the argument that, well, everything we have to do has to be about winning this election. Well, it's also about standing for something. And I don't think like a minute or two speech from a Muslim American was going to affect the election either way.

I think that the point is we have to model of the behavior we'd like to see in this country and around the world. Yeah. And I also think there's a lot of Muslim voters who we should be reaching out to and trying to encourage to be a part of the process because, yeah, you're probably not going to vote if you feel like the Democratic. Democrats and the Republicans both ignore or worse stigmatize you. So, you know, it's a political lesson there, too. Last thing, I'm just going to do a quick roundup of China news because we're kind of running out of time. So first, CNN had this fascinating piece about a satellite photo that captured what they think was a Chinese submarine entering or exiting an underground base in the South China Sea.

It's worth checking out because it's more of a visual story, Ben, than for podcasts. Second story, colleges and universities are worried that students in China and Hong Kong who are remotely attending classes in the U.S. could be subject to China's national security law. That law basically gives Chinese authorities very wide latitude to prosecute people for essentially talking about subjects they don't like. So this is a big deal. Colleges are worried about, you know, someone in Hong Kong streaming a course where they talk about Tiananmen Square or Tibet and that being recorded and used to prosecute those

students or the teachers. It's forcing schools into this horrible place where they're either going to have to self-censor or figure out a way to protect these students as they do their work. And then the last thing we saw, Jordan Waller, our excellent producer flagged this, Chinese regulators are waging a war against food waste. So it includes penalizing kids who have too many leftovers on their plates to the point where they might not be eligible for scholarships. That seems a little intense. It is a way of going after people who over-order at dinner to be polite order to show off for their relatives. And then it's targeting a Chinese internet fad called Big Stomach Kings, where people

live stream themselves, binge eating. Ben, don't take Xi Jinping to Coney Island for the hot dog eating contest. This does dovetail with, you know, some floods and farms that have been ruined and, you know, potential long-term concerns about food shortages in a country this big. But it was an interesting story. Ben, any part of that you want to jump on? Well, on the last piece, I'm going to use it to plug Missing America. In this episode, we really break down the kind of social control that the Chinese are starting

to exert on everybody's lives, largely through technology. But the degree of kind of micro-management of the citizenry in China is really mind-blowing. And I think goes beyond what most Americans are familiar with. And this is yet another example. On the students, I mean, it's a tough and tragic circumstance. There's no easy answers. I hope that there's a way. I hope that there's a to address some of these issues over time that doesn't just inevitably lead to no Chinese students kind of studying in American universities. Because in the long run, you know, that's bad for everything. That's bad for the United States and China avoiding conflict. That's bad for the United States forging people-to-people connections. That's frankly bad for human rights in China,

if they're kind of walled off from people in the rest of the world. So my hope is as hard as it is to navigate that colleges and universities kind of earnestly try to fight away through, and it'll be easier when people aren't doing this virtually, obviously. And the goal should be to maintain this extraordinary linkage between Chinese students and American schools. Yes. Any sort of cutoff of educational exchanges, I think, would be a huge problem in something we've talked about before. So hopefully that does not happen. And this is an extreme situation relative to COVID, but let's be honest, it is probably not. But that's That is enough for the news section today. When we come back, Ben is going to have an interview with Tabita Amaral about life in Brazil under Bolsonaro and dealing with COVID. So you will not want to miss that.

Okay. I'm very pleased now to be joined by Tabita Amadal, who is a member of Brazil's Congress. I met Tabita a few years ago in Sao Paulo before she was elected and could tell she was on her way to great things. She's a politician to watch in Brazil, a hugely important country. And we're really glad to have. for with us here today. So thanks Tabata for joining us. Thank you, Ben. It's an honor and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Me too. So here we are. We're both in some form of, you know, lockdown. And Brazil, you know, like the United States, has had a lot of challenges with COVID. Brazil passed three million cases and over 100,000 deaths. And there's still a lack of testing, I know in parts of the country. How would you describe, you know, the experience of COVID in Brazil and the government's response to it? Well, unfortunately, it's not very different from what you are living in the U.S. We have a president that has a lot of authoritarian inclinations, and he made

a very dangerous, a very sad choice not to do anything to fight the pandemic. He saw the pandemic as an opportunity, a political opportunity. He has for the last few months. He has been putting the population against the Supreme Court, against the Congress, against governors and city mayors. And he has been saying that it's just a small, a little flu, that people shouldn't worry about it, that people are going to die in a way, so he can do anything, and that we should only focus on the economy, but he's also not doing that in that sense.

So he literally, we have an expression in Portuguese that says that he crossed his arms because he thought it was the best political strategy, and in some way it is working. People are really angry at what is happening. We have lost over 100,000 lives. We have almost 13 million people unemployed, and the next few months are going to be even harder for Brazil, because it's more than just a health crisis. We have a lot of people that if they stop receiving the emergency benefit

that they are receiving now, we will fall into poverty and extreme poverty. We know Brazil is entering an economic, recession and we have this huge political crisis. So what makes me angry and what makes me sad is to know that all countries have to face the pandemic, but Brazil is suffering so much more than it was needed. If we had a leader that recognized it that it was a real crisis that should be fought since the very beginning, I'm sure we wouldn't have lost so many lives. And we would be in a very different situation right now.

And what is public opinion like? Are there people who agree with Bolsonaro's approach and just think, you know, we open everything and kind of wait for this to go away? Or is he facing a significant backlash there? So we had two different moments in the pandemic. In the beginning, he lost some, he started losing approval. and support because his declarations have been very inhuman. So like a few days ago, he said something like,

we just need to go through that and like move on. We're going to lose some people, people are going to die, but there's nothing that we can do. And he makes out of jokes about our devs. And he, in a very homophobic statement, he said that the use of masks are, something for gay people, but he said in a much worse way. And even now that he was diagnosed with COVID-19,

we would see him like talking to poor people. And he has been causing many agglomerations. And we got to the point that a judge had to rule over the fact that he needed to wear a mask. So those things made people very angry. But in the last few weeks, we have actually been seeing, increasing his approval rate. And that's what makes me said. And I interpret this data as he winning the narrative.

He told people that if we cared about the pandemic, our economy would be destroyed. He did nothing to stop the pandemic. He did not to aid our economy out of 10 laws or things that were passed to fight the pandemic. Nine came from our Congress, which is a very odd thing. And now people are seeing that the economy is actually in a bad situation. And they say, oh, Bolsonaro was right. It was best to have saves the economy.

And, you know, we obviously have a similar debate happening here. One issue that's getting a lot of attention here is schools. I know you worked a lot in education. Your background was as an advocate on education issues. What is the state of the debate about reopening schools in Brazil? And what would you like to see happen in terms of the education approach during the pandemic? Well, education has never been a priority in my country. And in the last a year and a half, things have gone much worse.

We had two ministers that were very much engaged in the cultural war that is so important to the government, but who did not advance one single education policy in almost two years. And so things are already hard in education. And during the pandemic, we know that most of our students do not have access to remote education. Some of them don't have access to anything. Others are in a very precarious situation because Brazil is a very unique country. We have millions of families. who share a small house with many family members

who don't have access to internet and we haven't had classes since March. So as what happens with other things in this polarized world, we now have a polarized debate about education. On one side, you have people who say, oh, the pandemic is nothing, so we should just return to classes. And on the other side, we have people who say that,

well, we should just cancel all the classes until we have a vaccine. But there were two important studies that showed that around one-third of our high school students consider not returning to school. And that's what scares me the most. Brazil has a very bad dropout rate from high school, and I believe things are going to turn out much worse after the pandemic. and so we have to find a complex solution to this complex situation. I don't think we have the option of just waiting for the vaccine

because if we wait all those months, I'm sure you're going to lose a lot of students. And this has a huge economic cost for us, but more than that, the dropout rate causes a huge social cost. So we have to find a way of, of bringing back the students who can, maybe building a hybrid system in which some of the classes, some of the students are online,

the others are present, are in class. And it's really hard when everything is so polarized, and especially when the federal government is doing nothing. We asked formally if they knew how many students were enrolled in some type of remote, education and they said they don't know. Yeah. And we asked them what they were doing for education in the pandemic and they just answered that that was not their responsibility. So that's how our Ministry of Education

behaves right now. So in summary what we need is to have a plan to build some time of hybrid systems and to say that our priority should be the poorest students who are at home without internet right now. And especially I've been working on a on a law project for some time now to provide access to internet and equipment to all students in public school. We are doing that without the help of the government, but I think we'll be able to pass an important legislation on that in the next few weeks. So it sounds, again, to the Americans who are listening to this, there's so much that's familiar. Obviously, Brazil has some greater challenges, like you say, with access to the internet.

it. But in terms of the pandemic response, in terms of not really caring about the people affected by it, you know, Bolsonaro and Trump have more alike, you know, than any other two leaders, really, in this pandemic response. I mean, do you feel like they, they watch each other? And, I mean, obviously, Bolsonaro was with Trump right at the beginning of this in March. I mean, how much do you think Bolsonaro, you know, models himself after Trump? or how much do you think the two leaders kind of influence each other? Or do you think their politics just lead them to do the same types of things? Bolsonaro is a big admirer of Trump, unfortunately.

But I do think the relationship is on equal terms. And when we watch closely U.S. policy, it's very clear to us that this admiration goes from one side to the other. And it's really bad for Brazil because Bolsonaro chose one, an authoritarian, very inhuman leader for him to watch. And that's why Brazilians in general are very much interested and following closing the U.S. elections. We do believe that what happens in the U.S. in this year, and I'm hoping that the elections happen when they should happen. I have been following this discussion, this is going to be very important to Brazil and to the whole world, because we are going to question whether populism, regardless if it comes from the left or the right, has some place to survive in the next few years.

So if I just could make this request for our audience, you have no idea how important your election is going to be to our future. Because again, we have been talking about all this irresponsibility of the Bolsonaro government with the sanitary crisis, with our education system. But we could also be talking about all the authoritarian steps that have been made in Brazil. And Brazil is a very important country in the region. And when we look to other countries around the world, Hungary, India, I'm very scared. I believe that when we look from very far away, things are always. getting better in our society, but I'm really scared of what is happened, what's happening in this

particular moment. And with the pandemic, what COVID-19 does is to expose and to deepen all our inequalities. So things were already bad in education. They get worse with the pandemic. Brazil is a very European-eco country. So we see now indigenous, black people, poor people suffering and dying much more at a higher rate with COVID-19. So we have some important fights in the next two years. Yeah. Aside from the COVID response and how that is heightened inequality, what are the authoritarian steps, you know, that are most concerning to you that Bolsonaro has taken? So there have been a big fight between the government and the Supreme Court. And a few days ago, we had this breaking news say that Bolsonaro considered to take out, to get rid of our current ministers in the Supreme Court,

and to have a new selection, which would be a huge attack on our democracy. And even we have been had a lot of attacks on transparency. So for a few days, we couldn't have access to the data of how many people had died of COVID-19 in Brazil. And now we have to follow the work of some journalists who are putting this data together. We Bolsonaro and his ministers were sued because of all their sexist declarations. and all the attacks that are being conducted against those who disagree with the government. I myself have been a victim of this gender violence. So what they do, they are funding a huge network of fake news,

funding it with public money. There's a lot of evidence in that to basically shut up those who disagree with the government. And just one more thing that's important to say. There have been many attempts to intervene in our federal police because there are many corruption scandals and investigations around Bolsonaro and his sons. And as the investigations got closer to the family, he actually changed a lot of the people who direct our federal police, with again other attack on our democracy. So in this situation, how would you describe the Brazilian opposition? Because obviously we've come to a very tumultuous period in Brazilian politics.

The party of the left of Lula and Dilma is subjected to a lot of investigations, imprisonments. You are kind of part of a new generation that isn't tied to the old party structure. But how would you describe who is the opposition in Brazil, how you work together and what the prospects are for a different kind of leadership for Brazil going forward? There are two main challenges. The first one is to make all those people who are Democrats, who are Democrats who are in the opposition to the Bolsonaro government, to talk to each other. The last election was really hard, was really polarized, and many people still insist on pointing their difference, then White unites us. And to be very sincere, Ben, I don't know how we are going to get to 2022 when we have our next election.

Because putting those people, who for me have so much in common together to talk is really hard. and especially because we have a huge gap of leadership in Brazil. We had great leaders in our country when we talked about Fernando Enrique Cardoso and Lula. I think they represent two different worldviews, but people who are important to our country. But their parties and what they represented did not do a good job of forming new leadership. So you see now a lot of young people who form movements such as the one that I have co-founded, of which I am part, but there is a gap between those two generations. And people in the oldest generation don't seem to be doing it very well in terms of talking to each other.

But there is a bigger challenge, and that's the one I've been focusing the most, which is talking to those who support Bolsonaro. We have a strong one-third of the population, who still thinks he's a good leader, who still thinks he is unimportant, he's doing a good job. And more than that, we just had this research that was released that showed that if the election was today, regardless of who Bolsonaro was competing with, he would win the election.

So it's more than just uniting the progressive parties, the progressive leaders. It's more about talking with those who still support Bolsonaro. And in that we are doing a bad job. Those people are dismissed as fascists, as people you shouldn't talk about. But again, I really don't think

that one third to half of my country is made of fascism. No, those are people who don't see our traditional leaders answering to their demands. And I think this is a same problem in the US, and maybe you can say more about that. If you don't talk to such a big amount of our population, we're going to have a very big problem

because only one side of the political spectrum seems to be listening to their demands. Well, and one solution I know you have, this is the last question I really want to ask you, is an effort, I mean, you're in your 20s, Tabata. You've got a huge future ahead of you, but I know you're also trying to encourage other young women in particular to run for office,

which can be part of the solution here and bringing in new people and the type of people who can reach broader audiences. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that effort. I know you have an organization you're launching Bamahuntas. Did I get that right? And you've written a book about this. So what are you trying to do to make sure that it's not just you, that there are other young women that are able to get into politics?

Well, this is a big investment in the future. I'm sure you know about it, but there was this research that showed that when we are talking about the fight of the COVID-19 pandemic, women are doing a much better job in any sense that we look to. So I do believe that when women, black people, young people, poor people actually occupy their place, their space in politics, we start to have a political scenario that actually produce solutions to everyone, not only for the group that is usually represented in politics. So, VAMUUUTS, which will be something like, let's go together for a woman.

It works better in Portuguese, but it's a super party national movement to get more women involved in politics. So right now we have 51 leaders from all over the country. We have pre-candidates who are transgender, who have disabilities, who comes from all sorts of and who are, who have this disposition to transform their local reality through politics. We have a lot of violence against women in politics in Brazil. We have had female political leaders killed in the past, in the recent past. Marielli Franco is one of the biggest examples of that.

So we have a lot of work to do with this woman, fighting all the violence, at their face, make sure that they have a chance, even though their political parties won't give them any support. But I'm sure when I listen to those women that our future, our near future is going to be so much better. So I hope that with more women and just a more diverse politics, things are going to look better for our future. Well, that's a hopeful note to end on.

Thanks so much, Tabeta, for giving us such a good insight into what's happening in Brazil, and we wish you a lot of luck, and hopefully we can get our election right so that America gets back to not setting the wrong example to the world here. So good luck. I hope you stay safe and well, and I hope you continue to be successful in your efforts. No, thank you so much, Ben. I know things have also been very hard in the U.S. So we need to be strong, you need to be resilient, and just to know that things are going to get better, but we need to fight for that. and looking very closely, I'm watching very closely, the U.S. election.

Great. You need not to, it's very important to us, and you should know that. I know. Well, we all have to stick together, so good luck, and it's great talking to you. Thank you. Thanks again to Topta Amaral for joining the show. Ben, thanks to you. Thanks for missing America. I don't know, anything else distracting you these days. My latest book is a really depressing bio about Alan Dulles, the, I think the first CIA director who was just a horrible person, literal Nazi sympathizer.

So I don't know that I should be picking up these awful depressing books. Jordan is going to hammer me for going into a dark place again with my reading list. But I don't know if you got anything better. I mean, I went on a rabbit hole of reading about the Dallas brothers once before. And it's pretty dark, you know. I mean, the stuff that... Way worse than you think. Yeah, and the stuff that the U.S. government thought it was okay to do,

in terms of kind of coups and covert operations, you know, I think really does it that to me. The book I read is called The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer. Stephen Kinzer are a great progressive journalist and author. If people want to, you know, peel back the curtain on the Dallas Brothers, that's one place to go. That's a good one. Here's a great show.

If people need something that will make you feel enormous joy. There's a show on Netflix called Love. on the spectrum, which is about people with autism dating. And it is the perspective of the show is like so generous and humanizing. And you sort of like, you go with folks on good dates and bad dates. You learn about how you can teach yourself social cues and learn to react with people. And everyone's from Australia. So they all have great accents. It is one of the best, kindest, most uplifting shows I've seen in a really long time. I just couldn't recommend it more.

It's just great. It's great. What's it called again? Love on the Spectrum. On Netflix. Love on the Spectrum. I'm going to check that out. I think Anne will love it.

You will feel better about humanity when the show is done. Well, yeah, the only plug I have, too, is I got a book sent to me a week ago by Julia Gallard, you know, who was Prime Minister of Australia. So maybe we'll have to have Julia Galard on to have our second. Prime Minister of Australia. But it's women in leadership, realized real lessons. And what they, what she does is she profiles a whole bunch of women around the world in terms of how do they deal with the, you know, distinct and unique challenges of being women leaders, but also it's, for dudes like us, it's a window into the additional challenges and complexities that women face in

the arena. So I'm going to throw out that plug, women in leadership by Julia Galard. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. And by the way, if any world those want to have fun, Google Julia Gallard Tony Abbott speech. Oh, yeah. Do you remember this take down she did in the Australian Parliament where she just basically lays into this kind of right-wing buffoonish blowhard about what a misogynist uses for two, three minutes?

And the reason the rabbit hole is fun is it's so awesome that it's become a meme in Australia. So you can also go and see all these Australian women who basically made their own videos cut to Julia Valar's voice of them like kind of getting ready for the night or that, and so it's a good, it's a good rabbit hole to go down.

That's really fun. It's so fun to like dip into some other countries' meme that you don't understand at all unless you have the vector. You kind of understand it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Okay. And, you know, Michael Martinez slacked me that he's going to watch Anaconda this weekend.

So we got more, we got recommendations from all over. So this is great. All right, that's it for us today. Thanks again for tune. and subscribe to Missing America, and we'll talk to you next week. POTS of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller.

Pod Save the World is mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our amazing digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmelkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes and videos every week.