Pod Save the World - Tony Blinken goes to China

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Today’s episode covers: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, Trump’s interview on Fox News about the Mar-a-Lago document indictment, new details about Trump’s real estate deal with the Saudis in Oman, Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s visit to China, how Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is still meddling with Israel’s courts and inflaming relations with the US, the latest from Ukraine, reports that Russia tried to assassinate a CIA informant on US soil, Facebook’s stifling of free speech in Vietnam, and why it’s been a rough week for Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

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Welcome back to POTS of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. So, Ben, this is like our podcast, Jordan Flu Game, because you're in Greece. right? I'm in Athens, yeah. I'm in Athens and I'm very far away. And it's very hot here, but it's nice. It's a nice hot. I'm in Los Angeles, but the Cricket Media HQ internet is down. So, you know, typical thing that happens to a media company in 2023. So we're doing a two or doing a double remote here. Yeah. But nothing can stop us from potting. We got a great show today. We're going to talk about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visits to the U.S. Trump's Fox News interview

about his Mar-a-Lago documents case. Interesting legal strategy there to go on TV. Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, made his long-awaited visit to China, got some big news from Israel and Ukraine, and then just a wild story about the Russians, maybe trying to kill a defector in the U.S., Facebook censorship in Vietnam, and then why the former Tory Party MPs don't think anything is funny and they don't want us laughing at them, Ben. So I hope you're ready to not laugh at that. Absolutely won't be laughing at all, Tony.

No question. There's nothing funny about Boris Johnson or Lisholz. But it was so nice to hear Lammy's voice on the pod last week. I miss that man's just pronunciation. And, you know, every time Boris Johnson has yet another fall, it's very good to have David Lemmy come on and, you know, just do a little articulate and erudite dunking on Boris, you know. That's right.

Very polite dunking on Boris. Well, let's start somewhere, you know, we probably don't talk about enough, given the stakes, which is about the Indian government. So the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting Washington this week. He is getting fetid with a state dinner. He's going to address a joint session of Congress on June 22nd. According to the Wall Street Journal, Modi is expected to announce a whole bunch of defense agreements during his visit, including buying high altitude armed predator drones,

which will help patrol India's border with China. Ben, remember we sets a rollout shit like that all the time? Yeah. You'd be like calling the press. Yeah, exactly. Big drone deliverable. Big deliverable. You're giving some drones.

way. It feels icky. So China looms large over this whole visit. So the U.S. wants India to be a counterweight to Chinese influence. And that strategic goal, I think, is helping us, the United States, I should say, look past frustrations about India's purchase of Russian oil during the war, about Modi fanning the flames of Hindu nationalism, restricting press freedom, and the recent conviction of Roel Gandhi, the leader of the opposition Congress Party for defamation of Prime Minister Modi in March Bend, India's parliament even disqualified Gandhi from parliament itself. So he's sort of off the political table here. So Modi clearly thinks this is India's moments. He wants them to get the shine they deserve. They recently surpass China in terms of total population.

India's hosting the G20 in the fall. Modi's very popular back home. So he's feeling himself. So Ben, you know, look, we're not naive here, right? India is obviously a huge and growing player on the global stage. I think the U.S. is India's largest trading partner. We want to pull them away from the Chinese and the Russians. But I'm curious how you think the Biden team should straddle the line between those sort of obvious strategic imperatives and the concerning human rights trajectory and the Hindu nationalism that seems to be growing. And, you know, do you think that making India the third state visit after the first, French and the South Koreans, does that go too far? What's your make? What do you make of that? Well, I think this is like one of the most important stories that doesn't get discussed that much because there are two aspects of it, you know, that you teed up. There's a geopolitical aspect and then the what's happening in India part of it, right? On the geopolitics, it's quite clear that the United States is all in on trying to hug India as tight as it possibly can in service of its China policy, essentially.

And all aspects of its China policy. I mean, in terms of like the, you know, relationships that the United States is trying to cultivate in Asia, they've made a big deal about what they call the quad, which is essentially the U.S. and Japan and Australia and India, you know, have these consultations, have this expanding defense relationship. They've made a big deal of trying to bring India into meetings of the G7.

They've made a big deal of trying to increase this defense relationship. India is traditionally bought. bought a lot of its defense equipment from Russia and its arms from Russia. And obviously, the U.S. wants to kind of replace that. India is also central to what the U.S. policy is with respect to, like, we talked about trying to cut China off from certain technologies and try to, you know, cut off investment into Chinese tech sector and Chinese AI and really decoupling supply chains from China so that we're not vulnerable to sensitive, technological or other supply chains running through China. I think the U.S. would like to see a lot of that private sector investment that's

going into China kind of shift over time into India. And so it's a huge bet on India. And frankly, it builds off of multiple administrations that have been trying to move in this direction. And there's a lot of reason for that. India's like the biggest country in the world, right? And India has a huge border with China. India has had tensions with China. And if you bring India into the equation, I mean, Tommy, like the funny thing to me about this is that, when you and I were in government, we used to refer to the Asia Pacific region. It's literally been renamed the Indo-Pacific region, right? I do love that. I love that little detail. It's such like a foreign policy speak translated into like, you know, the real world. It's like,

suddenly we're calling this a different thing. But that's because they want to enlarge this conversation. So Indians at the table is a counterweight of China. That all makes sense, right? That's what you would rationally want to do geopolitically. You want to have as big a team as you can. You want a country of over a billion people with a huge and growing economy to be a part of the answer to these questions. The big problem is, Narendra Modi has dramatically been backsliding on democracy. And these are not small things. I mean, this is like pretty brutal treatment of the enormous Muslim minority inside of India. As you said, you know, persecution of the opposition, persecution of journalists.

Any critics of Modi, you know, face retribution inside of India often. So how do you handle that? I mean, look, we have to be, you know, pragmatic about the fact that, like, it's a country where we're a billion people. And for a lot of reasons, you want to engage that country. We and the Obama use. Yeah, democracy as well. We in the Obama years did on climate.

But I think you can do it if you're going to roll out this bigger red carpet. I'd like to see them at least raise these issues. I'd like to see them raise them publicly. I'd like to see them raise them privately in a polite way. And you can, again, do that in the context of, like, hey, we've got our own challenges around democracy. I think that we make a mistake in believing that Modi would only cooperate with us on China as like a favorite us when like literally we've talked on this podcast time about like wars, you know, like brutal fights on the border between China and India, you know.

His troops were beating the shit out of Chinese troops with baseball bats with like nails in them at 14,000 feet in the cash beer. Yeah, right. There's obviously like a reason for him to be to pivot away from the Chinese a little bit. That's right. And, And I'm not saying that's a good thing. But like, it's just reality. It's just reality, exactly, that like he is not doing this purely for a transactional reason. So I think you can simultaneously try to bring India into a coalition of countries that are concerned about more aggressive Chinese behavior, try to develop and support investment into the Indian

economy, try to bring, as we did, India into climate change solutions while having honest conversations where we see things that we're concerned about. This feels like it's going to be the bear hug without any kind of. caveats. And I think you can, and you can affect, I think, Modi a little bit around, you know, certainly on individual cases of people that were concerned about as just kind of general. You know, like in the Obama years, Obama would always make a point. And I'm not saying we got this exactly right. But like, you know, if he went to India, had good relationship with Modi, but he'd go out and give a speech about tolerance and the importance of diversity and the importance

of recognizing universal rights. I think, I hope that they at least have a little bit of that built into this visit. Yeah, and I have to imagine that Modi will do like some massive cultural events in different cities, I suspect. You know what I was thinking about Ben is it's so interesting. I mean, now that we're a couple years after the full withdrawal from Afghanistan, it's interesting to see the degree to which Pakistan has just sort of fallen off the radar screen. I mean, we used to constantly talk about kind of balancing relations between India and Pakistan. And remember early on when we created this special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrook wanted it to include India, but the Indians were so pissed that they sort of like got

it pushed out. So there's this constant balancing. And it's also amazing that, you know, for decades, one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world was the Kashmir region where India and Pakistan were jockeying for control. India allowed some limited autonomy. That changed in 2019. India revoked Kashmir's autonomy, sent in thousands of troops, brutalized protesters, and now no one seems to know what's going on there, really, or ever talks about it.

just kind of like off the radar screen. Yeah, it's a sign of how like some of these issues, you know, I mean, we've talked about the Palestinian issue, right? That used to get a lot of international tension. Yeah. There's been an adjustment to normal and the kind of, you know, de facto Indian imposition of full control over Kashmir is something that appears to have just kind of been accepted. It's funny you bring up the Pakistan history. I just want to note, just so people know we make fun of ourselves on this podcast too, like we were just as guilty of the Indo-Pacific thing. Do you remember? remember the term AFPAC.

Oh, yeah. One of the worst, like, I'm actually embarrassed that I ever uttered those words, but like that's how much we were like, oh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, they're linked, which was true, but like, you know, AfPak is, let's just say, I'm glad that one is retired. But it does speak to the fact that, like, we used to often view the relationship with India through the prism of counterterrorism and our policy in Afghanistan, and it's very much evolved to geopolitics. And, like, make the mistake.

Like, what's complicated about Modi is he, he, is very popular in India, like genuinely popular, in part because of this Indian nationalist politics, in part because he's kind of made India this bigger player on the world stage. And so, like, you're going to have to deal with this leader. Like, he's an important figure, but you can, you know, like, they'll probably be language about this is the world's largest democracy and the world's oldest democracy, right? India, the world's largest U.S. world's oldest. Like, that, like, let's be careful to make sure that if we're talking about that, we're talking about how both of us have a lot of work to do on democracy. And I just think that if there's a full bear hug with no language and no

messaging around the importance of respect for human rights, it kind of breeds a cynicism that, like, as we talked about before, like the U.S. only talks about those things when it's like Iran or Venezuela, not when it's like any one of our friends. Yeah, or somebody we need something from. We'll definitely keep an eye on this one. I'm sure we'll talk about sort of what came out of the visit next week. But Ben, we did want to go back to what we focus on last week, which was the 37 criminal counts laid out in the indictment of President Trump's stealing of classified documents and hoarding them in Mar-a-Lago and then obstruction of justice. So this indictment comes out. You know, Trump's arraigned. And then he did what I guess every smart defendant does when facing

the possibility of years in prison. He went on Fox News to talk about it in great detail with Brett Bear, friend of the pod. Let's hear him out, I guess, and see if he puts this whole thing to rest. So this first clip is Trump explaining why he didn't just return the boxes. We did ask for it. No. And they said, can you give the documents back? And we would talk. And then they said they went to DOJ to subpoena you to get them back. Which they've never done before. Right. And in all. Why not just hand them over them? Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't want to hand that over to narrow yet. And I was very busy. sort of seen.

Yeah. But according to the indictment, you then tell this aid to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you'd fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn't. But before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things, golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes. There were many things. I would say much, much more, not that I know of, but not that I know of, but everything was declassified.

Biden didn't have the right to do that because he wasn't president. Nor did Mike Pence, by the way, have the right to do that because he wasn't president. I'm not going to... Ben, it is going to be, first of all, like, on its face. The idea that, like, you can't return the nuclear secrets because you're too busy. I just don't think that's going to fly in any court of law. Wait, wait, wait, wait. How busy was he?

Let's just pause in that one because there's so many things to talk about it. The guy's like... That's what I want to see, though. Yeah. This fat guy in like a golf shirt and a red hat, like, playing, like, you know, golf every day. Like, was he that's... Was he that busy? You know that's what the prosecutors are going to do.

They're going to juxtapose that clip against his schedule of golf literally seven days a week. You had to go through like 60 boxes. How long does that take to pull out the shirts? Come on, man. Most people go to the boxes of the classified documents before you leave the White House. I'm sorry, I cut you off there. It's just like that wouldn't do any way. Well, it also, as far as we can tell, most of them were marked with like big cover sheets that said top secret.

It seems like it would be quite easy to pull out the vast majority of them pretty quickly. Everything he said about it was insane, right? Like the too busy thing was insane. The idea that, like, he basically self-incriminates by being like, well, it's mixed him with, like, some golf shirts and some of the, like, that, that's how you handled, like, the Iranian war plan as, like, hard-hitting reporter Brett Bear pointed out. Like, that, like, if his excuses, like, first, that I was busy when he's not busy, second, that I, oh, I mixed it up with all my other golf stuff.

So I had trouble, like, going through it. Well, that's precisely what you're not supposed to do. Maybe it was mixed up, Tommy, after the Chinese and Russians came in and photocopied it and shuffled around. Maybe they just put it back in the fucking golf shoots, you know? Yeah, MBS isn't known for being all that careful, so maybe you just sort of rifled through it. But Ben, you mentioned the Iran war plan piece of this. So this next clip is Trump getting asked about why he waived around the secret Iran attack plan during an interview with two journalists writing a book about his former chief of staff, Mark about us. And you were recorded saying that you had a document detailing a plan of attack on another

country that was prepared by the U.S. military for you when you were president, the Iran attack plan. You remember that? Ready? You were recorded. It wasn't a document. Okay. I had lots of paper. I had copies of newspaper articles. I had copies of magazines. I know. This is specifically a quote. You're quoted on the recording saying the document was secret, adding that you could have declassified it while you were president, but quote, now I can't. You know, this is still secret. How? highly confidential. And the indictment cites the recording and the testimony from people in the room saying you showed it to people there that day. So you say on this on tape, that's just the opposite. That you can't declassified. So why have it? When I said, when I said that I couldn't

declassified it now, that's because I wasn't president. I never made any bones about that. When I'm not president, I can't declassified. That's what you said. You didn't declassified. I said no, no. I said I couldn't do. But that was in a document, Brett, there was no document. There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not. But that was not a document. I didn't have a document per se. A document per se.

Jack Smith is going to call as a witness every single person in that room and make them testify. I guess he's just trying to win the news cycle day by day. But what does that answer get you? Not much of a victory even of the news cycle, Tommy. I mean, like, first of all, can you imagine him on, like, the stand being cross-examined? Like, you know, he's flailing around like a wet fish out of water when Brett Baer is asking questions. Like, what's he going to do under actual cross-examination under oath? Like, it's just this kind of blizzard of lies.

He was, like, there's a direct quote of something he said that he, by the way, doesn't deny he said that. He just kind of obfuscates around, like, there's a bunch of. bunch of newspaper clippings, like, guess what the newspapers don't have? They don't have, like, the Iran war plan. He also, like, completely, like, basically undercuts his own bizarre declassification defense by saying, I wasn't the president. I don't have the ability to declassify. Well, yeah, like, you couldn't have declassified the Iranian war plan in the first case. Like, that's absolutely clear because no one in the U.S. government, no one in the Pentagon was aware that the Iran war plan had been declassified. Then he's saying, like, well, I couldn't declassify

anymore. I wasn't present, but it wasn't that document per se. It was a newspaper. Like, if there's a recording, like, he's complete toast. Like, I don't know listening to that clip, like, how he could possibly defend himself if there really was this recording with this document. And presumably they have both the recording and the document. I want to come back to just quickly to my favorite hobbyist real quick. Like, who is the audience for the Mark Meadows biography? It'd be pretty funny if the first president in American history basically goes down because he was giving like on the record interviews to like some people writing a biography of Mark Meadows.

Yeah. You know, like a book that this death is going to release it online as a PDF or something. Like I don't think anyone's going to read that thing. Yeah, seriously. You can hear Brett Baer in the interview. She's like, come on, man. Like, help me help you. Do better.

Like, do better. Like anything better. Come on. It's Fox News. We're trying to help you out here. But Ben, this was probably my favorite part of the whole interview. This is Brett Bear quoting some of, of Trump's former top aides talking about him.

Look, we had the best economy we've ever had. The world has ever seen. Your Vice President, Mike Pence, is running against you. Your Ambassador of the United Nations, Nikki Haley, she's running against you. Your former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, said he's not supporting you. You mentioned National Security Advisor John Bolton. He's not supporting you either.

You mentioned Attorney General Bill Barr, says you shouldn't be president again. It calls you the consummate narcissist and troubled man. You recently called and Barr a gutless pig. Your second Defense Secretary is not supporting you, called you your responsible. This week, you and your White House called your White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, weak and ineffective and born with a very small brain. You called your acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, a born loser. You called your first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, dumb as a rock,

and your first Defense Secretary James Mattis, the world's most overrated general. You called your White House Press Secretary Kay Canadian Milk Toast, and multiple times you've referred to your Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chow, as Mitch McConnell's China loving wife. So why did you hire all of them in the first place? Could you imagine if someone interviewed you and they were like, okay, Ben, Dennis McDonough said you were the dumbest person he's ever worked with. Cody Keenan says he hates your guts and hopes you get hit by a car.

Dan Fyford, like, that's just unloads on the guy. Hearing Trump's like childish responses, he's like a pig or whatever about Attorney General Barr, it's almost somehow worse. It makes him look so small. It really does. I mean, it makes you wonder, I mean, like, maybe Brett Behr just decided to become, you know, Edward R. Murrow here. But it does make you wonder, like, the Murdox kind of fell out of, you know, like, the Fox has kind of continued to get Trump's back.

But, like, we know from reporting that, like, the Murdox aren't big Trump people. The Wall Street Journal editorial pages they control has been pretty hard on Trump. Like, I do wonder if that was kind of a shot across the bow. Like if this was a succession episode, you know, Logan Rory got sick of somebody and tried to elevate somebody. Like that's a space to watch. But, I mean, it does, like, it is pretty jarring to hear. That's basically the entire national security team. Like, every single. Like, literally, every single member of the national security cabinet, you know, except for, like, the biggest hacks like that O'Brien guy. Yeah, like Rick Rennell. Yeah. So it does, you know, like that has to kind of get through to some people, I think, you know. I hope so. Yeah.

Even Trump people have to be like, well, it's not a bad point, you know. But when you hear that, you also wonder, like, it's, why don't more people just do that, you know? Yeah, those are very easy. Those are softball. I mean, I guess Brett, Brett Baer is in there thinking, like, I can't believe he agreed to do this interview. By the way, it just came out that Brett Baer was going to moderate the first Republican debate on August 23rd. So I'm sure he's trying to get his, like, tough journalist, Bonafie days kind of back into the discourse after all the embarrassing emails and things came out about him. in the Dominion lawsuit. Well, and also it'll be interesting if Trump uses that as an excuse to

not do the debates, right? You know? Definitely, definitely. I don't know if you had time to see this, because I know you're overseas, but right before we started recording, the New York Times published a report about one of the Trump Middle Eastern business deals. This is that real estate golf deal in Oman. So we learn in this piece. Yeah, it's a good piece. It's worth reading. But basically, it's an agreement to work with a Saudi company to develop a hotel and golf course in Oman. The deal, according to the Times, puts Trump directly in business with the government of Oman and with this Saudi real estate company that has close ties to the Saudi government and royal family. The Times says it was the Saudi firm's idea to bring Trump into this deal and that deal

has given us something like $5 million already, but will give his family direct management over these properties for 30 years. Of course, also this property is being built up by like foreign laborers and unsafe conditions. is basically slave labor. But imagine running for president again when you are like in a joint venture with a Saudi and Omani, you know, conglomerate. Yeah. I mean, and it is like something that should just also be illegal. I mean, part of the problem is that that's actually legal, even though it's like flagrantly corrupt and disgusting. And like these are countries that have enormous interests in the United States. And they're basically like paying money into the pocket of someone who's running for president.

like that's the definition of a conflict of interest. But I would like to see some people in Congress try to legislate around what people who want to be president of United States can do in terms of, you know, and we did this, by the way, just so people, like, it's not impossible. Like, I know that obviously earlier in people's careers, they're going to do business overseas, but there have been regulations around like how many years before and after you're in office you can do this kind of business for regular people who aren't president, you know. there should be some limitation on what you can do in this space. No doubt, no doubt. So that'll be

interesting to see how that plays out. But the other like really, I think maybe the biggest story of the weekend was Secretary of State Tony Blinken went to China for two days of meetings. That had been delayed since the great Chinese spy balloon murder of 2023. So I'm curious what your read was. It seems like it went almost better than expected, or at least incrementally. Tony spent a bunch of time with China's top foreign policy official. He spent time with the Chinese foreign minister. But the most positive sign was I think he got 35 minutes with Chinese president Xi Jinping himself. And the vibes and the comments in that Xi meeting were more positive than even the lower level meetings where I think the Chinese kind of aired out more of their grievances and criticisms of like export controls and sanctions and policy towards Taiwan. Here's a clip of Tony on NPR talking about Taiwan and a little bit about the visit. We have real concerns about the direction that this has taken in recent years, where China has taken reckless actions. We have a fundamental understanding that differences with regard to Taiwan will be resolved peacefully. That neither side will take any unilateral actions that could upset the status quo.

We reiterated the policy that we followed from administration to administration, Republican and Democrat alike, of the one China policy. That's not changed. I made that very clear. We don't support Taiwan's independence. And again, we opposed any unilateral actions by either side that would change the status quo. So that's Tony's kind of going back to the original or at least longstanding U.S. policy. not riffing the way Biden has about whether, you know, the U.S. might defend an invasion of

Taiwan. But, Ben, one interesting rhetorical shift that we did see at these meetings is the U.S. has gone from suggesting that the Chinese government might decide to provide weapons to Russia to use in the war in Ukraine to now they're urging China to remain vigilant to ensure that Chinese companies aren't supporting the Russian war effort. And I was wondering if you thought that rhetorical shift was a sign that fears of China, you know, getting involved in the war have abated, or if this is kind of like a clever way to make the same point in a little bit of a less caustic way? I mean, first of all, it does matter that Xi Jinping met with Tony. I know this sounds like, you know, just diplomatic performance, but like there's a real signaling that happens in the U.S.

China relationship between like when contacts happen at what level they happen. And the fact that Xi Jinping made a point to meet with Tony even for like 35 minutes is them signaling they'd like to move into some de-escalation and some slightly improved set of circumstances. So that actually matters as kind of, you know, protocol as it seems. On the, it is telling that the U.S. made that comment. I kind of read it as, you know, there's been an incredible specificity you talked about in like putting out intelligence around what we think is happening in terms of the war in Ukraine. And most notably with obviously the pre-war intelligence on Russia, but also on these red flags about China. To me, it kind of signals that, like, we believe that there are Chinese entities providing that support. You know, so to me it felt like a signaling of like, hey, here's what we're seeing.

We know that the government itself may not have a policy of providing this assistance, but maybe there are these companies inside China that, let's face it, at the end of the day, they're all controlled by them. No company in China is going to be like, you know what? what we're going to do today, we're going to, like, sell arms to Russia, sell military to Russia, sell uniforms for the military to Russia. That's not happening about the approval of the Chinese government. So you're right that they were kind of, you know, by putting the onus on like, please be vigilant about these companies. It's less of a direct shot at them.

But I think it is us shining a spotlight us, the United States on the fact that, like, we think this is happening. It may not be lethal equipment and maybe other kinds of support. And it's a more polite way of trying to compel them to take some steps. The Taiwan point, we love Tony, like, God bless the man, those are the exact talking points that, like, they would have been prepared for any, like, the, any U.S. government spokesperson for the last 20 years. And so for Tony to read them is actually a message to China. Like, hey, we're back on the script. You know, we're not looking to pick a fight on this. You made the important point, though, which is at some point between now in the election, Biden's going to be asked probably more than one time, you've been. You

said multiple times that you would like intervene militarily to support Taiwan, which is not actually U.S. policy, it'd be interesting to see if Biden's sixth of that line or not. To me, that's going to be a very notable thing to watch. Yeah, for sure. You know, to your point about the Xi Jinping meeting, did you ever watch that god-awful VH-1 reality show, the pickup artists? I mean, I may have watched an episode or two. You're aware of it. So for those who aren't as lame as us. It featured this creepy dude named Mystery. He had terrible facial hair and weird hats. And basically, he gave advice to lame guys about how to get girls. And it always boiled down to negging them, which is like being mean to people and making them feel insecure. So they like you.

It's just the worst show ever, the worst advice ever. I feel like the Chinese are very good at negging us. They like deny us routine meetings and make getting other routine meetings like this feel like a huge win. I shouldn't say it's it's not necessarily routine for the Chinese president to meet with our Secretary of State, but like we should be having conversations up and down. Regardless, I'm with you. Like, I'll take it. I'll take it. It's good.

It's good. Yeah. The question I think, I mean, tell me if you agree, she and Biden will be in San Francisco in November at the Apex Summit. Question is whether they get together in person there. Hopefully that's the kind of final piece of this puzzle. Yeah, I think so. And I think this is probably meant to kind of tee that up.

And look, again, this may seem like protocol, but like it's a signal from both. sides that they'd like to calm things down, they'd like to reestablish channels, usually what happens. If the president started meeting again, we talked on previous podcasts about like the military to military channels. Usually those resume after the presidents are talking, like it sets a tone that permeates down. And also, this is closely watched around the world. And most countries don't want the U.S. and China to be as at loggerheads as they have been. It'll be received as a positive signal around the world. Like, okay, maybe like we can chill out a little bit about how fast things are escalating from the U.S. and China. So it'll have market effects. Like it'll, you know,

like it's actually like a 30-minute meeting that actually matters, which is not always the case. Yeah, for sure. And Chinese I mentioned around the world, I did notice that not Xi Jinping, but I think like the number two official in the Chinese system was in Berlin for meetings with Olaf Schultz. So it's the first meetings between the Germans and the Chinese, I think, for three years, mostly for COVID reasons. But like it does seem like there's a bit of a thawing happening. here between, you know, sort of the West and the Chinese leadership. And look, the Chinese, I mean, and look, to be clear about this, I think this is actually partially the Chinese feeling like they don't have the strongest hand.

Like, their economy is not coming back through COVID in the same way that they thought it would. Like, they, I think they are feeling like, you know, we need to take some of this edge off the relationship a bit, too. The question is whether this impacts policy, because part of what China doesn't like is the U.S. tightening the squeeze on, you know, denying inputs and investments into the U.S. into the Chinese economy. So it'll be interesting to see where this leads substantively, but we're all for talking. That's certainly better than the

alternative of not talking. Yeah, for sure. So very separate, but, you know, another like sort of slow burn issue we've been watching for a while is in Israel. A couple months back, we did a special episode about the changes that Prime Minister Bibiananayahu had proposed to Israel's judicial system and how those changes could undercut democracy itself in Israel. If you want to get into more detail, check out the Israel on the Brink episode we did in May. But here's an update on this process. So Netanyahu, in the wake of all these huge protests like every week in Israel, he suspended efforts to push forward these judicial changes. And he started negotiations with the opposition with the president of the country to see if there's some sort of compromise, I think, would end

the protests, let's some steam off for BB politically. But I think, ultimately, right, get him what he wants. Those talks unraveled this week after Netanyahu tried to intervene in the current judicial selection process and see if he could get more judges name from his party and not from the opposition. So it was not a good sign. And then on Sunday, Ben, the Israeli cabinet approved a resolution that would shorten the process for approving settlement construction in the West Bank. This resolution gives approval authority for new settlements to a right-wing minister named Bezalel Smotrich, who was born raised and I think currently lives in an illegal settlement. Smotrich is also called for Israel to annex the West Bank. He doesn't believe there

should be a Palestinian state. And he once called himself a proud homophobe. So this is a great, you know, a leader in the Israeli government right now. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, wonderful guy. So this, these changes, it sounds like esoteric, right? But it empowers this far right wing zealot to get into the settlement process and it pulls back the ability for political leaders to intervene and delay settlement construction if you let's say the the UN or the United States gets mad about it. So the government also advanced planning for over 4,500 housing units in West Bank settlements right on the eve of a visit from the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, this feels very familiar to U.N. B.B. Ben, because this happened to us on the eve of a Biden visit.

The Biden administration said is deeply troubled by the news, sort of again, back to your, you know, sort of familiar talking points. Troubled or not, there was no talk about consequences. And on the contrary, it does seem like there's still this pretty intensive effort going on to broker a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia that would involve the U.S. giving tons and tons of stuff in terms of security guarantees and nuclear infrastructure to the Saudis to get Bibi Netanyahu a huge political win as they are, you know, de facto annexing the West Bank. So it doesn't feel like we're in a very good place there. It doesn't. I mean, and like, first of all, like, this is who these people are. This is who this government is. This is who this government is believes in a settlement agenda. This government

believes in the judicial changes that they tried to ram through in the face of public pressure and then pull back. Like, just the fact that they kind of tactically retreated for a little bit after all those protests in Israel doesn't mean that they weren't going to come at these types of issues. And we see them coming back at these kinds of issues. This kind of total empowerment of the settler movement to be in charge of settlements, you know, is a pretty unsubtle message. And to me, and there's been like violence we've seen, you know, in the West Bank flare up. So nothing changing in terms of treatment of Palestinians as well. And you put your finger on it. Like right now, like all reports are that, you know, there are these intensive discussions with the Saudis

around a normalization deal where the most kind of problematic issue, you know, the most kind of problematic issue, And we'd obviously have to see what the terms of the deal are and whether there are other elements that the U.S. negotiates with respect to American interests. But like basically the U.S. would be giving a lot of things to Saudi Arabia, you know, security guarantees something in the nuclear space, you know, defense sales, whatever. In exchange for Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel, which is, you know, a huge boom for Israel, the fact that the Netanyahu government, knowing. that that's happening, they know that's happening, is just literally like punching the United States in the stomach on the two issues that we constantly raise, which is backsliding on democracy in Israel

and treating the Palestinians. What does that say about Bibi Nanyahu's respect for the United States of America? You know, like, why are we expending, why would we go to great lengths to provide enormous and difficult things to help Israel an Israeli government that is doing this.

You would think that in the context of the U.S. doing something that would be very good for their government and for Bibi's politics, as you say, that they would at least put this on the back burner. And so, you know, I hope that people call this out. This is complete another bullshit. And of course we expect it from Bibi,

but man, if he's doing this when the U.S. going to great lengths to try to help him out? What's you going to do on the back end of that? Yeah, and I think it probably speaks to the reality of the deal with the devil he made with this current government coalition where he promised them all these things, right? He promised this Smotrich guy who I think recently said that a Palestinian village or town needed to be wiped out, like, you know, genocidal language. He promised him this role overseeing settlement construction. he put all these other sort of right-wing zealots in positions all across the government. So I kind of wonder even if he wanted to slow some of these trains down, whether it comes to

annexation or, you know, generally sort of like eradicating any hope of a Palestinian state, whether he even could at this point. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely like this is the direction he's gone. And this is why, you know, like this coalition, this particular government, this is the choice like BB's made. I guess the only reason he might be able to rein those people in. is if he were communicating to them, hey, the U.S. is currently in like pretty important discussions with like the most important Arab state. Like maybe we shouldn't be doing this

crazy stuff. So just as a matter of tactical respect for that process, you'd expect him to show restraint. But you're right. Like he ultimately he's, you know, he's the frontman for like a pretty, like, well, not pretty, very far right collection of characters that that will demonstrate. demand that this kind of action on settlements and this kind of action in terms of judiciary. So this stuff is not going away. Yeah. And it's time to, I think, update the policy and the talking points to reflect that reality. By the way, like someone should go back and do accounting and they can account past

administration's not saying like bad enough like the number of times that's the U.S. has been deeply concerned about settlement announcements. It's like. So much concern. So much deep concern. Deeply concerned. Yeah. Profoundly.

We deplore these actions. but won't do anything about them. Let's talk Ukraine because, you know, not a ton of new major news there. I mean, I think the first thing that's worth just mentioning is that folks are probably, if you're waiting for like a day by day or week by week update on the Ukrainian counteroffensive in terms of progress, you probably shouldn't be. There's these scattered reports of like Ukrainian troops taking small bits of territory here and there, but this is going to take months and it will be incredibly bloody,

which is why it's very annoying when you see the sort of like leading, MAGA voices on Twitter saying it's now a fact that the that the counteroffensive has failed and blah, blah, blah, it's like, no, you know, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kitchen Cabinet. That's not the case. But it does seem like the Ukrainians are having some success with these behind the line strikes. Like I think they blew up a Russian ammo depot the other day. This could be just them using this new long range British missile, the storm shadow missiles that were given to them. Or it could be these, you know, sort of cross-border actions. We don't really know. Ben, I don't know if you saw this. The New Times had an interesting piece about how challenging it's been for Ukraine to like get and maintain

good weapons. It talked about how, you know, they spent, I think, $800 million worth of purchases that just were either partially or not at all fulfilled and that 30% of their stuff is under repair at any moment. It's just sort of like an interesting window into it's not just about getting the stuff from the Western partners, about maintaining it. And then I did also see that Putin did a two-hour interview with a bunch of Russian military bloggers where he, like, gotten the weed on tactics and tanks destroyed and production of new stuff and disputes between the Wagner group and the Russian military. But it was just interesting to see him sort of try to pre-spin the Ukrainian defensive and do

his own little PR thing, even with these like, you know, 18 military zealots, basically, they call themselves journalists. Yeah, well, that's interesting, too, because the place that Putin's. face some pushback, right? Because they've shut down all opposition media. But he's kind of from the right and from these kind of military bloggers and these kind of nationalist, ultra-nationalist telegram channels and the Wagner guys. And so to me, it's also kind of interesting that like that's the audience that Putin needs to speak to, you know? Like he's a little worried about that. And he's trying to chill those people out a little bit and look like

he's in control. Like, he hasn't done much of that. So he must felt the need to get ahead of, you know, and frame the counterfeits of a bit and show that. that he's actually, like, invested in this, because part of what he's done is just not talk about the war that much, which I have to think if you're Russian and you're seeing the casualties, it's going to start to grate on you

that, like, he can't even acknowledge this. He can't even talk to us about this. So it's a sign of some amount of pressure he might be feeling, but you're right on the counteroffensive. I mean, last time, you know, the success that the Ukrainians had around Kharkiv and Kerosone

didn't come till the fall, you know? Right. And so I think people basically have to realize this is going to be a timeline that plays out until the end of the year. But as they do have diminished stockpals, like you're right. Like the incentive for them to do these kind of behind the lines attacks is going to continue to go up. Yeah, for sure. One of the really interesting Russia piece that I saw was, I guess there's a new book coming out called Spies, the Epic Intelligence War between East and West. This book details what U.S. intelligence believes was a Russian plot to assassinate a defector.

a Russian defector on U.S. soil. So the Times excerpted or got a copy of the book and wrote it up. So this defector is a guy named Alexander Putiv. He's a former Russian intelligence officer who helped the U.S. uncover the illegals program, which this happened when you and I were in the White House Bend, was this sleeper cell network of these like deep cover Russian agents who live sort of normal lives in the U.S. while trying to build contacts with government officials or academics or whatever, whomever might provide them intelligence in the long run. It wasn't the most successful program, I would say, but the FBI arrested 10 of them in June of 2010 and later expelled them from the country in a prisoner exchange and then also became the show of the Americans. That might be the most successful part here. So, you know, Sergei Screepal was one of the people released in that exchange. You might have heard of him because he was a Russian military intelligence analyst who was selling secrets to the British, got caught thrown in prison, came out in this release. And then the Russians tried to assassinate him while he was living in the UK with a nerve agent. So around the same time, Put-Yev, this other defector that the U.S. had been working with relocated to the Miami area.

For some reason, he applied for a fishing license and registered to vote under his real name. And then that led to the Russians forcing some Mexican doctor they had leverage on to find his car and try to, like, surveil him. That guy got caught, got kind of roughed up in the process. And it led to this sort of like tit for tat where the U.S. in 2021 imposed sanctions and expelled 10 Russian diplomats. including their chiefest station, they responded in kind, et cetera. But I think the main takeaway, Ben, was if Putin is willing to assassinate these people on British and American soil, I'm not really sure what guard rails exist anymore. I guess, like, assassinating a, you know, CIA agent in Moscow would be kind of the next thing there. Yeah. I mean, we've seen him like,

you know, the detention of, you know, an American journalist, but this is like stuff that didn't happen in the Cold War. You know, that that's part of what is. so striking of that. Like for all the nuclear brinksmanship and geopolitical copagint of the Cold War, the idea of like assassinations on each other's territory, you know, there was some respect for, you know, diplomatic niceties. And it does beg the question, a certain point, like, we expelled these people, but like the ability to let the Russian government operate on U.S. soil. Like, obviously they're going to need embassy. But you could start to see restrictions on how many people can be there and what they can do. I mean, like, they're assassinating people here, like,

as they've done in the United Kingdom, I think you have to kind of really look at, like, can they operate here as like a normal foreign governor or sorrel? And obviously, I'm not saying no diplomatic representation. We need that. We need the ability of conversations. But, like, you can put limits on that. It does strike me that they're just beyond, like, a point of guard rail. So they're crossing all these different lines. And at a certain point, you have to kind of adjust to that reality. I think the U.S. is doing it. that, by the way. But yeah, like we've seen them literally assassinate multiple people in Europe and the UK. If they start doing the United States, like, and there's been reports, there's

been some murky reports over the years. There was a guy who turned up dead in O'Tahoum in D.C. A few years ago. And nobody could ever really figure out, you know, what happened. Was he drunk? But there was smoke there, but they never found the fire. But, you know, this does feel like something that could be part of Russia's escalation in general. Yeah, definitely does. I mean, also, How are you like a Russian double agent? You get sent to Miami in some secret CIA relocation program and you register to vote under your own name. Like what are we doing here? I mean, Kerry Russell and Matthew Reese were much better than that in the Americans. I was like, man, the Russians actually had spies like that, that'd be a big problem. You know, the illegals were, you talked about. Those were people like, they were like hanging out in the U.S. and just kind of sending some reports back about what they saw. It was not that, it was not that exciting. Yeah, it was not. that exciting, although wild a couple weeks for us when we learned about that and rolled it up. Two more quick things than we're out of here. So the Washington Post Ben ran a very depressing report about how Facebook has been slowly agreeing to more and more demands from the Vietnamese

government to stifle free speech and basically silence critics of the government. The post reported that Facebook has, quote, adopted an internal list of Vietnamese Communist Party officials who should not be criticized on Facebook. There's all. Also this graph in the story. So meta has tracked government censorship requests in Vietnam since 2017, according to its own transparency reports. As of June 2022, it had blocked more than 8,000 posts in the country, most for allegedly containing content opposing the Communist Party and the government of Vietnam or information that distorts slanders or insults, organizations, or individuals. The report says, so they're just taking down tons of stuff. Facebook back in the day used to be

an important space for free expression in Vietnam, but now former Facebook employees, the company is basically agreed to far more draconian restrictions on speech than in other countries in the region. And this matters because, you know, for Facebook, Vietnam is their seventh largest market worldwide. And again, the thing to understand here for Vietnamese people is that Facebook isn't just like an app that your grandparents use that you don't anymore. It's like 70% of the roughly 100 million people in Vietnam use Facebook. It has huge influence. But this, you know, increasingly repressive government has worn Facebook down. It sounds like Facebook is no longer really fighting these requests. Maybe the staffers who used to work on these issues have been laid off.

So just very depressing stuff here. You know, like Ben, really the best thing Mark Zuckerberg has gone for him is Elon Musk like blotting out the sun when it comes to tech reporting because their Facebook's reach and impact is far greater than Twitter in any of these places. Much bigger, much farther. And like, you know, first of all, in Vietnam, like you said, it is massive than Vietnam. Like the interface of the in Vietnam is often through Facebook, right? So it's not just like some extra app. It's like people are doing everything on Facebook. They're checking the news. They're messaging. They're posting. And like keep in mind the next time you hear anything from Facebook about connecting people and the open internet and all the gobbly gook and talking

points that they use. Like that's bullshit. It's about profit because it was actually about those things. It was actually about connection and openness and an open. Then Facebook would not go along with like a government trying to control what is on their platform in this way. And I will say also, like, they have a bit of leverage. They're so big in Vietnam. They're so big in Vietnam that if the government said we're taking down all of Facebook in Vietnam, the government would have problems, right? Like, I don't think they could do that given how much people rely on it. So, you know, like you said, they're not the only bad actor in the tech space. Elon Musk is cooperating with the all manner of autocratic governments, but this is another one

to bear in mind the next time you hear the Facebook PR campaign on this stuff. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think what the Vietnamese government figured out is like these guys won't draw any lines so you can just keep pushing them and pushing them back. And, you know, to your point, the story notes that Google takes down lots of stuff on YouTube and in other places. Like Facebook's not alone here and sort of doing these censorship requests, but they're just kind of seemingly acquiescing. Yeah. Yeah. No, but that's an important point, but like they, I just, like, I wish they realized that there are other ways of approaching it. Yeah, just try. Final thing. So, Ben, it's a tough week for former Tory party prime ministers. You talked to Borst

about Boris's resignation, Boris Johnson's resignation from Parliament last week with David Lamie. But since then, the report on Johnson's partying during COVID came out, and it's just like scathing. 106 pages. It's written by a seven-member committee from Parliament, some conservative, some labor, one Scottish national party. In summary, it says Boris repeatedly lied to Parliament about following COVID rules at number 10. And then he lied again when he told investigators that he thought his original lies were true. and then he deliberately tried to mislead the investigative committee in all kinds of ways. And then finally, they basically gave him a look at this report as a courtesy before its release.

He wrote that pissy letter that you talked about with Lammy, resigned from Parliament, and attacked the committee. He called like a kangaroo court. So the committee was going to recommend suspending him from Parliament for 10 days, but bumped it to 90 days, which is just an unheard of ban. So basically now you're at a point where like the only people defending Boris are the people he did favors for, like giving them knighthoods and other honorary titles. There's a petition I just saw demanding that current Tory Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, block all those special favors, all the peerages that Boris gave out at the end of his tenure.

So disaster for him. And then speaking of disasters, Liz Truss, the other former Tory prime minister, was asked recently in an interview about the live stream that compared her 44-day tenure as prime minister to a rotting head of cabbage. And she said, quote, I don't think it was particularly funny. I think it's pure aisle. So there you go, Ben. Beg to differ, Liz. Pureile.

I mean, actually, the whole world thought it was pretty funny. It's pretty funny. It was objectively funny, I have to say. It was a cabbage. It was very funny. Yeah, it was very funny. And like the Boris thing, like, on the one hand, it's nice to see that, like, apparently, like, you know,

they're real consequences for lying. Like, can you imagine if members of Congress could be, like, suspended for a lot? I know. I'm incredible. They'd be handing down suspensions like, you know, uh, uh, uh, Dreem on Green playoff games or something. But like, the, uh, the, the, the, the crazy thing, though, is like, Boris isn't done, you know, in talking to Lammy, like the idea, you know, of him just kind of taking the hit here, like,

pulling back, letting Rishi lose the next election and then coming back as, you know, like, he's never going to go away. But, like, this is about as damning as it gets. And, like, you could just sense the frustration in this report. Because also, like, he'd love. he did something stupid. And it's the Trumpian thing he did is like he would not admit it. It was like the Brett Barrett would be like, if he just been like, you know what, like,

we made a mistake. We shouldn't have this party, but like people were stressed out. I actually think like, you know, he wouldn't be prime minister, but people would be like, well, okay, you know, like the fact that he like refuses to acknowledge that things happened that factually happened is what is so pathological about this guy. And it's kind of dangerous because like if you're that crazy that people are like, When you do this, we have this evidence, we have this report, and you're like, can't go to record, you know, this is bullshit.

Like, this is what people are sick of. Yeah, he won't admit, he won't give an inch on anything. And a lot of this stuff is coming out at the same time that the COVID inquiry that the Brits are doing about sort of like lessons learned and how to make sure this doesn't happen again is coming out. And you're hearing these like gut-wrenching stories from doctors and families who couldn't go to funerals. It couldn't be with loved ones.

And you're like juxtaposing that with videos of Boris's staff. you know, fucking around and drinking and dancing at number 10 as they were putting in place all these rules. And it's just like, it's inexcusable. Yeah, one rule for everybody else and one set of rules for us and then no accountability for us. I mean, it's exactly what people hate about politics. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, that is it for us. Apologies if anyone heard crying babies or lawnmowers or anything else in this room. We're doing this from home today, but appreciate you guys listening. And I think we're back in the studio next week, right, Ben? Yeah, yeah, no, I'm back

from like whatever country I'm in. I was going to say like, yeah, am I home tomorrow? I think I'm home next week. Anyway, we'll figure it out. It'll be great. Talk to you guys next week. See you. POTSave World is a crooked media production.

Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Seaglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vesilius Futopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital

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