Pod Save the World - Tripping Balls with Janet Yellen

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

 Tommy and Ben talk about a US hostage deal with Iran, a far-right frontrunner in the Argentina presidential election, a presidential candidate murdered in Ecuador, updates on the coup in Niger, and aid to Sudan. They also discuss Vivek Ramaswamy’s bizarre views on Taiwan, President Biden’s critical comments about China’s economy, Biden’s meeting with the presidents of South Korea and Japan at Camp David, the latest from Ukraine, Russia’s deteriorating economy and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s magic mushroom meal. Then Ben talks to Bobi Wine, a member of parliament in Uganda, a former pop-star and opposition leader about his presidential challenge to long-time authoritarian Uganda leader Yoweri Museveni. His wife, Barbie Kyagulanyi also joined the pod to discuss the National Geographic documentary about their campaign, Bobi Wine: The People’s President. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, has the indictment magic sort of worn off yet or did all the RICO talks? It'll get you going. It's kind of magic every time, I have to say. The RICO, the kind of, you know, large-scale criminal conspiracy, mafia-style indictment was more satisfying to read than the other ones, I think. Yeah, it was. I mean, I feel like the classified documents one is like open and shut.

But this was, this did sort of get at the broader scope of what they did and how disgusting and pernicious it was. I think what was great about this is like the other ones, you know, it's kind of centered around these individualized crimes, right? Like there was a payment to Stormy Daniels, albeit then this kind of complicated conspiracy around it, stealing classified documents, some cover up around it, Jack Smith, by the book. This is like, you know, we all know the call the Georgia Secretary of State and oh my God, they had them dead to rights. but the amount of detail of like, you know, like forging documents and like leaning on people and hacking computers. Yeah, hacking computers. It felt very, yeah, very, very like mob movie. Do you know that Raffensberger call is one hour long?

Like we hear that like I just need to find 11,000 votes clip all the time, but he just leaned on his ass for a full hour. Are you ever on a call like that and you start like, you know, scanning Twitter, check like scores on ESPN, you know, like I wonder what he was doing about 45 minutes in that call, like just checking his email. Oh, Raffinsberger? Yeah, Rastonberg. Yeah, this is recording, right? We got this on tape. Some serious force. I do, I mean, the brief world, though, piece of this is like I, we should do a segment

at a certain point about how this looks around the world. Absolutely. Because this is going to be like totally insane to have all these cases coming, you know, above water next year during our election. Usually American elections are things that people follow closely. Now they're going to have to follow like four trials and. Yeah. I think we all underappreciate the degree to which U.S. based news.

gets covered internationally. For example, I love the BBC World podcast. They've been doing nonstop Trump coverage, but also Hawaii fires coverage, which is interesting. Yeah, AmeriCast is pretty good in BBC too. Yeah, no, I imagine that this is not our finest hour in terms of our global reputation.

Completely humiliating. Completely humiliating. Well, we got a great show for you today, regardless of our humiliation. We're going to cover this hostage deal between the U.S. and Iran, a scary election result in Argentina and the murder of a candidate in Ecuador.

The latest from Niger, a little trip inside the foreign policy mind of the 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramoswamy, China's economy, Biden's meeting at Camp David, and then hallucinations. And then, Ben, you did the interview that we're airing this week with an incredibly brave guy named Bobby Wine. Can you tell us a little bit? Yeah, really excited. We had Bobby in studio here. And Bobby is a former pop star musician, actor, cultural figure in Uganda, goes into politics, gets elected to parliament, decides to challenge Musevni that basically dictatorial autocrat, aging autocrat of Uganda in a presidential election, faces all kinds of harassment, intimidation, imprisonment, torture, all of it. You name it. He went

through it. He still, frankly, despite what was clearly widespread fraud and intimidation, you know, came pretty close in that election. And now he's told his story in this documentary, Bobby Wine, the People's President, which is amazing because they kind of followed him throughout the campaign. So they have all this footage of him and his wife, Barbie, who joined us in the interview. People should listen to this to hear what it's like, what kind of decision making goes into deciding to put your neck on the line. What's it like to be, you know, in a family trying to make change while you're dealing with such personal hardship. Barbie and Bobby are both like incredibly eloquent and powerful about speaking about, you know, how they decided to take these risks. And then we talk about the coup in Niger.

We talk about the state of democracy in Africa, generally what Russia is trying to do. So we covered a lot of ground. People should definitely check this one. Yeah. Brave people have put a lot on the line to run for office. And check out the dock. Good people made it. Worldos made it.

Nice. I was glad to know that. Hell yeah. So people should definitely, it's in theaters now. So if it's in your neighborhood, in your city, check it out. If not, I'm sure it'll be streaming at some point. Yeah, for sure. Well, as you all know, we have a big election coming up.

There's going to be a series of Republican debates. I don't know about you, Ben, but Twitter or X or whatever we call it these days has become all but intolerable. And so if you want to talk about the debate in a place that isn't owned by Elon Musk, join the Friends of the Pod. You can talk with fellow listeners. You can talk with your favorite crooked hosts. We have a Discord channel, which is like a chat room for you, folks like me who didn't really know what a Discord was until about a year ago. And so we can all suffer through these debates and these moments together. You can also access bonus content, ad-free episodes of Potts of America, and much, much more.

So subscribe to Friends of the Pod now at crooked.com slash friends. Okay, Ben, so time is a flat circle. Let's talk about the U.S. and Iran deal that will free five American hostages from Iran's notorious even prison. In exchange, the U.S. will release, I believe, five Iranians serving sanctions-related prison time in the U.S. and eventually give Iran access to $6 billion in frozen oil revenue. It's sort of a sequential deal. Iran released the U.S. hostages from even prison to house arrest in a hotel. They're going to be held there for several weeks before being allowed to leave the country. That cushion, that time allows the U.S. to go through the crazy process of transferring $6 billion

worth of Iranian assets being held in South Korea to an account at the central bank of Qatar. Qatar will control that account and only allow Iran to use the funds to buy humanitarian supplies. One of these American hostages, Sia Namazi, has been held. held since 2015, so like a long time coming for these men and women and their families. The deal took months to negotiate. It was mediated by Oman, Qatar, and Switzerland. A lot of folks, I imagine you and me included Ben, hope that this could lead to a broader set of diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran that could get us back into some sort of JCPOA-like, but probably a lot less comprehensive and ambitious nuclear agreement. The good news on that front is the U.S.

and Iranian officials are speaking directly now before. I think they're doing it all through Oman. So that's a step forward. And it also sounds like Iran has slowed their nuclear enrichment works slightly, at least. So fingers crossed. Very curious about what the Saudis and Israelis say and do about all of this. The whole thing might feel a little jarring to listeners, because last week we were talking about the U.S. putting Marines on boats in the Strait of Hormuz

to physically fight off Iranian ships attacking tankers. But, you know, good news is good news. So, Ben, Republicans are responding in the most predictable way as possible. They're calling it appeasement and saying this money is going to be used to fund terrorism. It will not. What's your take on the substance of the deal itself and level of PTSD imagining, defending, and sort of dealing with the politics of any kind of deal with Iran? Well, it's a complicated process.

And as we said last week, even about the Straits of Moose, like sometimes you flex a little bit militarily, you show your kind of hardline cards at the same time you're trying to get something done diplomatically. So actually don't know that those are as whiplashy as they seem. Look, in terms of what the terms of this deal are, we have to point this out because it'll be demagogued and misrepresented by all the professional Iran critics and disingenuous Republicans. The money that Iran is slighted to receive is not American money. This is what we went through in the Obama and the Iran deal It was like we were giving them a check for billions of dollars. No, this is money that they have had held in South Korea because they sold oil to South Korea,

but the sanctions kind of caught that money in the net. And so we're facilitating their capacity to access their own money. So that's the first thing. This is their money, not our money. Second, they are setting up this mechanism through Qatar, wherein they're only using that funding, as you said, for things like food and medicine, so things that have purely humanitarian purposes. So that's the facts of what's taking place here. Now, the critics will say, well, you know, if they have this amount of money for food and

other things, maybe they can divert other money to the military. Like, the reality of the Iranian system is that they, like, they fund a lot of their military through black market. Right. It's all the off-book stuff. like, so, you know, even that, I think, kind of misrepresents how the Iranian system works to some extent. Iran does have huge humanitarian challenges, so this money is like a drop in the ocean of what they actually need to improve the circumstances of their people. All the sanctions obviously remain in

place. So that's on this deal. Now the people that have been freed into detention in a hotel, I talked to a friend of the pod, Jason Rezaon, you know, one of his points is just walking out. of Avaen prison is like a pretty powerful thing. Who's held for 544 days? 544 days. Some of these people, I think, have been held for longer than that, you know. So that's a good step, but you want to make sure the reason this is sequence as it has been is that, you know, the deal can get scuttled by anybody in that system at any point. And so until these people are wheels up and out of running airspace, this deal is not done.

And so they're withholding pieces to make sure that those people actually get out. Yeah. So look, that's the contours of the deal. related to these hostages, it's a good sign of diplomacy working. It's a good sign of like getting something done. It raises the perennial questions about whether we're incentivizing this kind of hostage shaking. That is what it is, as we've talked about on this podcast. You can either try to get people out or not. And, you know, I think the bias is towards getting people out. On the nuclear question, I think it's clear to me in talking to people, including the administration, that like this is

a different channel, right? So this is the people who negotiated this particular agreement are not also sitting at the same table negotiating a potential nuclear deal. Similar to the last time. That's exactly the point. Like last time we had a nuclear negotiation and we had a prisoner's negotiation and they were separate tracks, separate people. But they're inevitably connected in a way because part of what you're doing is you're testing, can we get something done?

Can both sides implement an agreement? This is a new cast of characters from the last nuclear deal. This is not the Rahani government. So they're clearly different negotiators on the Iranian side. And so I think that this is kind of a confidence-building measure, and hopefully it foreshadows something on the nuclear deal that, as you said, would likely not be as far-reaching as the JCPOA and rolling back the Iranian program. That's the irony. You can thank Donald Trump for that. The irony of people who yelled about sunset provisions, you know, i.e. the Iranians would be allowed to do certain things with a nuclear program in 10 or 15 years.

Well, because he pulled out. We lost those things while we had them. But I think what you could look for is, is there some agreement? to kind of freeze the Iranian nuclear program in place, get a verification regime back in so that they're inspectors, and hopefully just take that issue of a potential military conflict over the nuclear program off the table for the time being. Now, there are two reasons why I think the politics won't be as bad as last time. The first is that when we were going to this in 15 and 16, quaint, simpler times, Iran was

like the number one issue in the agenda. Like this was the dominant story in our political media for like at least six months. And so Republicans were much more like a dog with a bone on it because it was the thing in leading the news. This is not the case today. I think, you know, listeners may have barely heard about this, you know. So I just don't think they're going to get as much headway because I just don't think the conversation is about this today. It's about Trump. It's about the Russia, Ukraine war.

Yeah, we got a hot war in Europe. Yeah, we've got hot war. So this is not as front burner as it was. And look, the other reality of this thing is that. that when you've done something before, it's not as novel, you know? They're kind of following in like some plowed ground and hopefully they can get something done

this nuclear issue and these people can get home and we don't have to worry about a war with Iran for a couple of years. Yeah, fingers crossed, but really, really important progress. So credit to the Biden team for getting this done. Let's turn to Argentina then, because there was a far-right libertarian slash, he calls it an anarchist basically,

named Javier Miele, he won Argentina's presidential primary on Sunday with 30% of the vote. The center-left party, the finance minister, took second place with 21% and the conservative party took third with 17%. This was a shocking result for a lot of people. There will now be a general election in October and potentially a runoff in November if no candidate exceeds the necessary thresholds in that October first round election. The broader context here is that Argentina's economy is in crisis.

The country is deeply in debt. Inflation is over 100%. But I saw a story the other day about how Argentina criminalized. burning or tearing up its currency because foreign soccer fans were coming to the country, going to games and just like torching bills and big stadiums to taunt people. So, you know, you get huge chunks of the country living in poverty. And so I think, you know, a lot of them found Miele's radical views and proposals compelling. Those views include eliminating the central bank, getting rid of their currency and replacing it

with a dollar, massive spending cuts, privatizing public companies, tax cuts, deregulating guns, making abortion illegal again and replacing the public health care system with a private one. He has also said insane things in the past where he seemed opened to selling children. He's like that committed to capitalism. I guess he walked that one back, but like, come on, man. He wants to allow people to sell organs because it's a market like any other. So, look, it's unlikely that he'll be able to pass a lot of these ideas into law because he won't have majorities in Congress to do so. But I think the fact that you can couple policies that crazy with rhetoric like, quote, we're going to end the useless parasitic criminal political cast that is

sinking this country and then overperform your polling by 10%. It's a pretty big wake-up call, I think, to a lot of people worried about and fighting back against some of these right-wing populists, of which he is won. Yeah, I think it's a sign of the times to some extent in Latin America generally, which we've been talking about with increasing frequency. And if you think about it, right, North America, Europe, you know, South America, these are the most democratic regions in the world. And what's cleared down in Latin America is there's just a complete collapse

and confidence in political elites and establishments in a lot of different countries, right? Because of corruption, because of inequality, because of a sense of, you know, politicians just not delivering them what they say. In Argentina, you've now had. successive governments, one was center right, one was center left. Neither of those clearly put the bill because people turned to this guy. And what's interesting is you saw over the last few years, a lot of that energy moved politics in certain countries to the left. So in places like Chile and Colombia, and to some extent Brazil, although that was tied to Bolsonaro. You had left-wing

leaders get elected. But I think more than a shift to the left, it was just a reaction against that you had conservatives in power. People are just looking for something. new. And so we've seen Buckele and El Salvador become a very popular leader that we've talked about. We see this guy coming out of seemingly nowhere in Argentina with this kind of weird ideology. But the constant, you know, Petro and Colombia we talked about last week came with the very left-wing platform. Gabriel Borich campaign for president in Chile on pretty far-reaching left-wing reforms that he couldn't really get done once he got elected. But what all these things have in common is people throwing ideas out.

that are radical and upending the establishment and people responding to that, you know. And so I think what is notable about this trend is that it's just about rejecting the status quo and just want to try something new. Now, the systems in these countries usually prevent, as you said, people from actually implementing their programs, which then in turn seems to feed even more frustration and people looking for different people. So, you know, it's a very, like, you know, it's not unlike here, by the way, this is not just like a Latin America. Like we clearly have a dissatisfied electorate. Most people don't like both people running, right?

I mean, there's this sense, I think, in the hemisphere, and it's particularly acute in Latin America. Like, please, I just want something different. Yeah, and I imagine a lot of it's, you know, to do with coming out of a financial crisis, followed by a pandemic, followed by a broader set of economic problems that have really clearly acutely hit Argentina. But yeah, I mean, like outsiders, something radical change, you know, any, look, populism is at its essence, someone telling you that, you know, real Americans are good and the elites are bad and we're on the side of the real people, you know, whatever country it might be. And this is

exactly what he's doing here. Yeah. And I think the U.S. has to try to meet this moment in Latin America much more aggressively than we have. We kind of go down there with our normal list of things like Venezuela and Cuba. But I, you know, we had a role to play in Argentina's fiscal crisis. You know, there's like a bunch of American hedge funds kind of, you know, swooped in and shorted the whole economy there and made a lot of money and put them in a lot of debt. I mean, I think there have to be new approaches to helping these leaders in Latin America climb out from these holes that they're in, some of which the U.S. helped dig the holes, you know, but some of which we can also like lend a hand out. Yeah, another hole is sort of drug trafficking issues. So it gets us to Ecuador,

where an Ecuadorian presidential candidate named Fernando Villavicencio was murdered last week while leaving a campaign event in the capital. Ecuador's interior minister says, All the six suspects are Colombian and have been, and they have links to organize crime. The Via Vicentio was a vocal critic of gangs, drug traffickers, and talked openly about their links with government officials in Ecuador. He worked as a muckraking journalist. He was a labor leader. He was a member of the National Assembly and sort of a general thorn in the side of the previous socialist government. Via Vicentio had talked publicly about being threatened by gangs, including by a gang leader.

He was kind of running one of these gangs from a prison. The FBI is now going to assist in this investigation. His running mate, Andrewa Gonzalez, is going to run in his stead, and the election is going to continue as planned on August 20th. This is an especially tragic incident because for many years Ecuador had been relatively safe, especially when compared to Colombia. But that has changed in the last half decade or so as Colombian and Mexican drug cartels and gangs gain power in Ecuador. They joined forces with local prison and street gangs. Even there's gangs from the Balkans in there. They all work together to export cocaine, I think, assume mostly to the United States.

So, you know, I think a horrible situation here, but also moments like this help explain leaders like Naibu Kali, who you mentioned earlier in El Salvador, who's basically trampling on all human rights, throwing everybody in jail in the name of security and is polling at like 80%. Yeah, I mean, totally shocking. You can watch the video of this guy coming out. of his campaign event and then he essentially gets gunned down brazenly people wanting to send a message that you know this it's not safe to criticize the cozy relationship between certain political elites and these cartels and yeah shocking in that this is such a relatively new development in Ecuador a couple things here first of the Colombian thing is interesting to me because you know you had we cover the Haiti assassination I think they were like over 20

Colombians involved in that. Colombians were involved in some of the weird Mar-Lago planned coups in Venezuela in the past. This is not to cast any aspersions on Colombians because I love Columbia. I love Colombians. It's to say that as that civil conflict has, you know, wound down, you have former right-wing paramilitaries, former left-wing guerrillas, you've got cartels. Like, mercenaries for higher outfit. Yeah, there seems to be quite a mercenary for a higher outfit that has been, you know,

implicated in a lot of this stuff. And so that bears some scrutiny. And then I also think it's like time, you know, we've also talked about the emerging Republican platform to like bomb Mexico over fentanyl. I think the conversation people want to have in Latin America is around different approaches to drug enforcement, including new approaches on legalization. Are there ways to kind of bring some of this trafficking out of the shadows via legalization policies? You know, one way to do it is to arrest everybody, like Buckele, another way is to kind of decriminalize certain things so that they're less an illicit economy. I don't know that the U.S. is ready to have the conversation, but I mean, it should be because the reality is this is not, we're still what we're in like the fourth or fifth

decade of the war on drugs and we have people getting gunned down in Ecuador for this. And presumably most of the demand, i.e. the money that is financing this is U.S. demand for these drugs. This is, you know, this is our own, you know, inability to get our shit together, spilling over borders. And I would hope that we can have a more rational conversation about drug policy across the hemisphere because this is going to keep happening in country after country otherwise. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. The conversation on the Republican side is entirely securitized. It's all about who can we kill.

And, you know, talking to Ruben Gallego about this. He's running for Senate in Arizona, former Marine. I relayed to him, Ron DeSantis's comment about how. like, oh, you know, we managed to figure out who the bad guys were in Iraq, so we'll figure out who they are at the border. That's how we'll avoid killing civilians. And Rubin was like, no, we didn't. Yeah, exactly. He was on patrols, you know. So, uh, let's turn to Nijerben, where, you know, several weeks after this coup after this coup, uh, the coup leaders are still running the country. Uh, the presidential guard staged a coup against President Muhammad Bazum on July 26th. They've had him under house arrest ever since with his family. Shortly after the coup, Echo Wasse, the union of West African states gave the Huta a deadline to return Bazum to power or, face potential military action, that deadline passed over a week ago now and nothing has happened to resolve the crisis. So the coup leaders now say they plan to put President Buzum on trial for treason and they say they won't hold talks with ECHOWAS until ECOWAS acknowledges

Niger's new leadership. The coup leaders named, they appointed a civilian prime minister and I think a cabinet to implement policies. Ben, you're seeing lots of reports about rallies in support of the junta of the coup leaders. Those often include sightings of Russian flags. I think it's worth flagging. There's also reporting about how much disinformation is being spread around the region. There's like old videos of rallies in Burkina Faso and people are tagging them as being in Niger when they're not. It's also true that anti-hunta protests just get shut down by the security forces. But clearly these coup leaders have tapped into this powerful well of anti-French, anti-colonial sentiment. Last week, about a couple hundred people marched on France's military base in EJR demanded that they leave.

So, look, I don't know how you feel about this coup at this point. I'm not seeing a lot of experts who have any hope of it resolving soon or bassoon being reinstated. And I do think it's worth wondering whether there's really popular support to restore him into office or if this is, you know, something that people are just like, you know what, we don't care what elites are in charge. We're just going to try to live our lives as best we can. Yeah, I think the latter is probably the important because I'm glad that you flagged this on the, you know, protests that you see on television. I mean, I really sincerely doubt that this has like a groundswell of popular support because let's be clear about what happened here. There was like a presidential guard.

So like a relatively small military force, it was basically tasked with protecting the, you know, almost like a secret service type enterprise. Exactly. That sees power. So this wasn't like a street leader, you know, this wasn't like. somebody coming out of the people. This was like an older guy that was like, you know, about to get canned from his job and is like, actually, I don't want to get fired. I'm just going to take over the country and make a deal with these Wagner guys, put this guy in a house to rest. You know, gin some people up to protest. You could probably pay some people to do that. Some people genuinely,

yes, there's clearly genuinely anti-French, anti-colonial sentiment. And people just generally pissed off about the fact that, you know, the standards of living in Niger among the lowest in the world, right? So these people have been getting a raw deal. And they, you know, as we talked about last they begin a raw deal when you have countries, including the United States, giving hundreds of millions of dollars in security systems and life for these people doesn't get any better, they're going to get frustrated with the status quo. So on the one end, I'm not like an expert in Nigerian public opinion, but I would imagine that it's more apathy than anything else.

What's clear is that the military didn't kind of come to the aid of the elected president, and therefore we're kind of exiting the window. where you can have some quick resolution deal here for some kind of power sharing. It feels like these people are pretty entrenched. It feels like ECOWAS is not going to go forward with its, like, threat to go to war, essentially, over this. I think that what therefore needs to happen,

and you see this in a lot of the analysis, is that people need to take a minute here, because we're now looking at a situation where the entire region across the Sahel, Burkina Faso, Mali, and-Ayeer, all the way to Sudan. Which is a bit different. thing, the guys with guns fighting out, like have totally rejected democracy. And that,

that demands like a different approach than just insisting that, you know, there be another election. You know, like there has to be a different approach to how to support governance in these places and not just give these kind of dictates that we think this guy should be in charge and you should have another election, you know, even though I'd prefer that happen. I mean, we just have to deal with the reality. And so I would hope that there can be a conversation, you know, with other African leaders at the African Union, with ECOWAS, about like, hey, what's a more sustainable approach here that is more responsive to publics that feel absolutely no investment in their own governments. Yeah. And it doesn't seem like, you know, Nigeria would probably have to lead

the charge of any sort of ECOWAS intervention militarily. And it doesn't seem like there's popular support there. What seems likely, the sort of coup playbook is the junta announces a transitional government over some, you know, 18 months or whatever. buys themselves a bunch of time where the world looks away and then just sort of maintains power in perpetuity. It's worth mentioning Ben. We mentioned the sort of coup belt across the Sahel, which stretches all the way to Sudan. The Wall Street Journal reported that United Arab Emirates has been illicitly shipping weapons to the Sudanese warlord that is fighting the government in Sudan's ongoing civil war. It's a conflict that has reported. I think the UN reported that it has displaced four million people, including, I think nearly a million across. the border. So, you know, that's what our closest allies are up to. Yeah. And let's let's be clear about

these like, you know, Abraham Accord participants in the Emirates. Like they've been a big part of this coup trend. They finance the coup in Egypt, the restored, or that not restored, that restored the military, but put General Sisi in power. There's been a lot of reporting recently about General Sisi has basically completely destroyed the Egyptian economy by having these vanity projects. He's building a new capital in the desert, right? Yeah. That's their kind of guy, right? Then they're kind of arming warlords in Sudan who then end up fighting each other.

You know, this, this tolerance of Gulf money kind of washing around autocratic politics and sponsoring coups. If it's okay, and this is what Bobby's point was to me, if the U.S. is like, you know, okay with some autocracy, in his case, Uganda is what he was referring to, our credibility in a Niger situation is not there. And if we continue to be close partners with the Emirates through everybody in that neighborhood knows sponsor coups and we continue to give military assistance to Egypt,

yeah, we're not like standing on pretty solid ground to say, like, you better restore the democratically elected governing Niger. Yeah, and Max Fisher pointed out that it's the 10-year anniversary of Raba Square, yeah. Massacring about 1,000 protesters. Yeah, most shameful days of the Obama administration because we didn't call it a coup, which is exactly what it was.

Yeah, as is Niger. So, you know, the administration's clearly trying to buy as much time and space in terms of calling Niger a coup because they don't want to have to cut off assistance, but we're heading that way. The other thing we love to do in this show is bringing everyone the listeners into the mind

of the Republican primary electorate and some of the candidates in their foreign policy conversations. One of the more interesting political stories generally the cycle on the Republican side is why a candidate named Vivek Ramoswamy is doing so well. He's 38. He's a business guy.

He looks like he's even younger. He's no relevant experience, but he's running as an outsider and he's gaining a lot of traction. I wanted to play a recent clip of Ramoswami on Hugh Hewis podcast talking about how he would handle Chinese President Xi Jinping at a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. I think that his rush to do it before 2028 is going to change when I'm the U.S. president because I have now moved from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity. And I think that is best for the U.S. And I think that clarity actually helps us avoid war.

What's clear to me is that you are saying, I will go to war, including attacking the Chinese mainland if you attack before semi-conductor independence, and afterwards you can have Taiwan. So if you just wait until 2029, you may have Taiwan. Is that clear? I mean, that's what you're saying. I'll go to war.

I'm learning to be the next president. And so I expect to be the president inaugurated on January 20th, 2025. So I'm wearing that hat when I'm choosing my words very carefully right now. And I'm being very clear, Xi Jinping should not mess with Taiwan until we have achieved semiconductor independence until the end of my first term when I will lead us there. And after that, our commitments to Taiwan and our commitments to be willing to go to military conflict will change after that because that's rationally in our self-interest. So he's basically saying, if I'm president,

and Taiwan's got four years, and then it's getting invaded. That's his plan. That's fucking crazy. It's like gobsmackingly nuts, right? Because he's basically, he's making all kinds of mistakes there. You know, like, you know, he's giving a security guarantee to Taiwan, including will bomb the Chinese mainland, and then saying, but like, you know, the Chinese military modernization that will allow them to be ready

to attack Taiwan, most experts say, is 2027. So he's been saying the Chinese, like, wait, one year. And first of all, like, everything about this is so dumb, too. I've never seen anything that suggests that we can achieve total independence from advanced semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan by 2028 either. Nor of it. Like, I don't think that that's not, even with the chips act. That's physically impossible, too. So everything about that is insane, dressed up as if he's saying something smart. And he has that kind of all-in podcasting where it's like, I've been successful in one thing in life. Watch me logic this problem. Yeah.

before I'm qualified to upon on this. Here's the serious point I make that we should watch and we should keep coming back to. The U.S. position on Taiwan is all over the map. This is the most, this should get more attention. Like, this is the most dangerous hotspot in the world other than Ukraine for a potential, really global conflict between nuclear armed countries, the United States and China.

Everybody agrees that that may happen. Joe Biden has said publicly that he would come to Taiwan's defense his administration says that's not the case. We walked it back. We walked it back. Like four times. Then Donald Trump alternates between saying he doesn't give a shit about Taiwan and they stole the semiconductor from us. Then the conventional Republicans, the hawkish Republicans are kind of, you know, one of like

recognized Mike Pompeo is called for like recognizing Taiwan as an independent country. And shoving weapons. And now we've got this new position that we're going to give a temporary security guarantee until we can get the semiconductors. And then so this is the most important potential issue in the world in terms of national security and geopolitics over the next five years to 10 years. And to be honest, kind of both parties, I don't think we could say exactly what the U.S. position is. And the Democrats are much more coherent. Like there's none of these kind of crackpot proposals as in the Republican side. But this needs to be drawn out of it.

We also have a Taiwanese election in January that is likely to elect a, you know, someone who's been generally pro-independence. although he significantly moderated his position, William Lai, in the campaign, this needs a little more scrutiny. If you're sitting in Taiwan, you're probably a little confused about what's going on. And so my theory of the case on Vivek here is he's getting, generally speaking, he's like a sort of high energy, like optimistic dude to the point of rapping way too often. But he's sort of he's giving like a sunnier version of MAGA. But he's also like, we listened to that, the comment he made last week about intelligence around 9-11 and connections to Saudi intelligence and the government. They also basically like, I don't trust government at all. He's tapping into the distrust vein, like the Joe Rogan vein, the Republican Party, but also the isolationism vein.

And I think this here, this answer is basically like, I will do isolationism in a more extreme, but like 4D chess way where I dress it up with this sort of bullshit semiconductor theory of the case that I'll do in my first term. And then I promise you that we're never going to go to war with China. Yeah. Yeah, it is very Trumpy, too, that only thing he cares about is like a very narrow economic interest. Now, it's an important one in advanced semiconductors. But to your point, like, people in Taiwan who I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for, wrote a long article about this for the Atlantic, if people want to check that out, if you haven't. Like, they must be looking at this.

Like, our survival depends in part on the United States and how they play this, both because the United States could either help provoke a conflict or the United States could help prevent one or the United States could come to our aid. And if you're them looking at us, you know, you have a pretty good handle on a Biden at least. But like, if you look across the political spectrum, you have no idea what the U.S. position is on this. The Chinese same thing. Yeah, they're watching this. They're watching this stuff too and thinking like, well, you know, it's hard for us to take seriously anything that certainly the Republicans say about this issue.

And Hugh Hewitt. It's funny. Hugh is as incredulous and confused as we are, but just from an entirely different perspective. He's like, you basically just drew an Obama-style red line to defend Taiwan, but then you're hanging him out to dry. But Ben, I just want to play one more clip from Vivek in this interview that I think helps explain the whole thing. I want to be crystal clear. I will be the president who keeps us out of World War. Has said that before.

I'll say it again. If there's one presidential candidate who has the depth, nobody's gone into it remotely this level of detail here. I agree. It's not even close where the rest of the Republican field is. And here's a funny little fact. Also, let's just call this spade. spade. I didn't know much of this six months ago, but the only difference between me and the other

candidates is I'm the only one actually willing to admit that. I think many of them still don't know it now. And so I think this depth of understanding combined with strategic clarity actually is what will keep us out of war. That is the most tech guy mentality in the world. I spent six months studying foreign policy and memorizing some things and therefore trust me to solve the world's problems that keep us out of all wars. It's just like unbelievable hubris. It's just, I love also the verbal text of, let me be crystal career. Let me call a spade a spade. Like, if you just say things like that, then it lends some credibility to what you're going to say next.

I love Hugh Heard, like, pouncing in like, I agree. You know, this is a guy who beat the fuck out of me, like, for eight years because he said I had no experience. Even though I'd had like six years in national security before I went to work for Obama, this guy is talking about like boning up on this in six months. He's like, oh, I agree here. You should be president. Like, this is insane. It's totally insane. It's truly incredible.

The complete amateurization of presidential politics in the Republican Party that Trump has facilitated is wild to behold. Truly. And this guy is polling in second place in some polls. So, you know, lest we should not look past these people. So, Ben, speaking with China, as you mentioned earlier, I mean, one thing President Biden loves to do in, mostly in fundraisers, is talk shit about the Chinese government. Just fucking throw shade. So he called Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator of one in California. And then last week, he said that high unemployment, in China's aging workforce is a ticking time bomb at the heart of the global economy. Now, like that might, I'm sure that didn't, the Chinese probably didn't love that, but Biden is not at all wrong here. China recently decided to stop reporting its youth unemployment rate because

the number had gotten so high. It was 21.3% in June. They've also restricted access to other economic data. The Chinese central bank cut interest rates recently. There's a Chinese real estate developer, I think the biggest in the country, that recently failed to pay its bondholders and warned they would post a record loss for the first six months of the year. You're hearing more and more analysis saying that this Chinese real estate bubble was in part totally fake demand, like real estate developers getting paid to build stuff that's now getting torn down because no one ever wanted to live in it. So, you know, that's what Biden's getting at. But the other part of Biden's comment about China's economy was, quote, when bad folks have problems, they do bad things,

which I think essentially raises the question, do China's economic problems make it less likely for Xi Jinping to make a move on Taiwan, or does it make it more likely because someone like Xi knows intuitively that like whipping up militaristic nationalism is a tried and true method to manage economic discontent among its people? Do you have a theory of the case here?

It seems like Biden certainly seems to think it could be more likely. So first of all, like I don't know this to be true at all, but it does kind of feel like Joe Biden shares some of his briefings at these events, you know? Because it seemed like he recently got a briefing on the Chinese economy. Yeah, Kirk Campbell said something interesting.

Yeah, yeah. And but like I, like, and it's an interesting choice to call, he's, make no mistake, he's calling Xi Jinping bad people there, which Xi Jinping will certainly hear. Not love. So once again, he's kind of, you know, he seems to, because he used to talk about how much he loves Xi Jinping and he went to Iowa. They're boys that hung out.

They're boys. Something bad happened, I guess, along the way. I'm more inclined to agree with Biden's analysis. So the Xi Jinping, you know, he's not as kind of overtly, obviously odious as Vladimir Putin is with his nationalism, but like Xi Jinping has methodically cultivated a cult of personality and a more hardline nationalism and the so-called kind of wolf war diplomacy. Like he he doesn't soften. Like he seems to only move in one direction, which is like a harder line direction. And absolutely, I think if he felt like the thing was coming

apart economically, you know, he's amassed enough strength to make maybe a move on a Taiwan and to change the conversation in terms of domestic politics and geopolitics. I think these economic issues are very real. The irony of it is that China benefited from kind of this unfettered globalization for forever. But then when they started kind of cracking down and reverting back to a Marxist-Lendonist approach where the state controlled the economy, they're chasing out, you know, foreign businesses, they're like making it harder to engage in private enterprise. Locking up tech guys.

Not saying I'm some Uber capitalists, but like the reality is capital is going to look at that. and say like, maybe we're invest in Vietnam or Mexico or India. And so at the same time that all this new wealth that got created, well, guess what happened? Some of it disappeared into the hands of corrupt people. Some of it went into kind of ghost real estate. And look, a lot of these countries that have rapid growth in industrialization, I'm not like an economic historian here, but there's usually a crash at some point. You know, like that's happened in this country multiple times, right?

And if they have a crash and it's a very big country and they have the country, and they've got mass youth unemployment, there are ingredients for at least localized unrest in different places. So this is a real thing. And again, Biden sharing it suggests to me that, like, given his lack of filter, that maybe that's what's in his briefing. Yeah, you're probably right. Probably hearing that, you know, she's going to do whatever it takes of what a new that Tiananmen Square. I think it was the New York Times magazine had a big piece over the weekend about Biden's export controls and how the, it's really hurting China's ability to do AI work. Oh, yeah. So on FTA report, the Chinese these internet companies are scrambling to buy $5 billion worth of Nvidia chips.

That's the, these are these like video gaming chips that have proven incredibly useful for AI processing. It just sort of shows how these export controls are really working. Yeah, so they just announced another round of this recently that got at like investment restrictions, so not just like technological inputs, but make no mistake. Like one of the most important foreign policies by administration that doesn't get that much attention is this web of export controls that are basically meant to choke off. China's capacity to build, you know, an AI base and to compete with us in certain, you know,

quantum mechanics and other areas. And this is beginning to, I think, scare off not just investment in those sectors, but it's beginning to scare off other investment in China. Because like Western firms are looking at that and they're thinking, well, how far are these export controls and sanctions going to go? And so you start to get into a place where you're impacting investments even beyond what you're putting in restriction. And so, you know, I think the U.S. policy is contributing to this squeeze at the Chinese economy's under. Yeah, no doubt. Staying into Asia, the President Biden's hosting the presidents of Japan and South Korea at Camp David on Friday.

According to the Associated Press, they're expected to announce plans for more military cooperation, especially dealing with ballistic missiles from North Korea. This comes as North Korea has announced more production of weapons. They're reportedly selling shells to the Russians. And there's, you know, the sort of broader mood music is just China messing with everybody in the region and building bases out of sandbars. Biden is hosting a group lunch. There's one-on-one talks with each of them. There's other events. God only knows. We talked in previous episodes about some of the thawing between South Korea and Japan that dates back to Japan's brutal colonial rule of the Korean

Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. But, you know, this is one of those kind of wonky, nerdy events that is a big deal, you know, it's kind of historic in nature. But I'm curious, like, what you think might come out of this. I think it's a really impressive act of diplomacy by the Biden administration because, you know, in the Obama years, the South Koreans and the Japanese were locked in these fights over history. And we had to work really hard to broker just, like, trilateral meetings at neutral venues, you know, like. And that's continued to be the case since then. And, you know, for them to put aside that depth of historical grievance and nationalism and

intipathy and come all the way to Camp David for this kind of summit, I think is a sign of like a, it's not fully repaired, but that the U.S. has kind of steadied this relationship between its two most important allies in Northeast Asia. So just the fact of the meeting is important. Now, I think it's also like a part of their strategy in Asia to make sure that our alliances are functioning, not just, you know, individually with us, but, you know, with each other, you know. And so, you know, it would be interesting to see what comes out as some North Korea. Frankly, I think like you, I don't have a lot of hope that that's going to change for the better, but you still want to be

aligned with these folks. But also, like, are they on the same page on China on things like export controls, on things like Taiwan, on the war in Ukraine, where we've kind of prodded them to do more, particularly South Koreans. So, you know, we'll see what comes out of it. We'll also see, like, how strong the political standing of these leaders is, because, and this is beyond the control of the Biden administration to some extent, but like neither these guys are that well positioned at home right now. And so they're taking some risk. Yeah, hard to make concessions. Yeah. So that I'll be watching that too. But, you know, this is a, you know, it's a positive step. And it's a good use of Camp David. I mean, I wish we, you know, we used it for a G7 and some other things. It is really good to get up there and, you know, you're kind of off grid with this. Yeah, it's cool and special and makes the leaders feel like, you know, it's a big deal back home. Yeah. I think. it's good. Sort of a hodgepodge of updates from Russian Ukraine. So military experts now believe that Ukrainian troops involved in the counteroffensive are making what they're describing as tactically significant progress. That translates to about like 10 or 12 miles of territorial gains, but ones that are forcing the Russians to redeploy from other places on the front lines and maybe weaken their defenses.

The Ukrainians have a long way to go to meet their ultimate goal of getting to the sea of Azov and cutting off Russia's land bridge to Crimea or other supply lines. And the Russians are counterattacking and they're firing cruise missiles at cities across Ukraine, but it's limited progress. In Russia itself, the U.S. ambassador of Russia met with Evan Gerskovich, the Wall Street General Reporter, being held by Russian authorities. It was their third meeting. The Russian Central Bank was forced to raise interest rates by 3.5 points. The more since the war started, they're dealing with rising prices and a weakening economy.

We also, last week, I think we talked about the Black Sea and sea drones taken out Russian boats. On Sunday, the Russian military intercepted, you know, fired war. warning shots at and then boarded a commercial ship that was flying the flag of Palau owned by a Turkish company, but it seems like things are ramping up further there. And then we saw that the Poland is deploying more troops to the border with Belarus raising tensions about the risk of a direct NATO conflict there. And I imagine, you know, Poland's not thrilled about the Wagner group setting up shop right across the border. And they are also, you know, the broader concern, I think, for NATO is Poland has that key land border.

that connects them with the Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, other more isolated NATO allies. Yeah, I mean, all those updates kind of illuminate some of the trends we've been talking about, like slow gains on the counterfeensive, but still moving forward, it's just a great cost. The Black Sea is this kind of tinderbox and a little too close for comfort military activity between, you know, NATO's borders and Russia. I think the other thing that jumped out, you know, I was saying you, Tommy's like also the Russian economy, seemingly taking a bit of a hit here. They raised interest rates. They'd like jack those up because the ruble is like, you know, collapsing, basically. And the reason that's collapsing is because all these Russian companies are like borrowing to basically pay for the war effort and their munitions production. So, you know, Russia's domestic economy is now a part of this. It's totally propped up by the war. It's propped up by the war and borrowing. And so. There's just a lot of volatility right now, and it's not, you know, it's not particularly going well for anybody, not the Ukrainians, obviously not the Russians. But it feels like one of these pots is going to boil over, you know, something in the Black Sea, something between Russia and NATO, something internal to Russia, maybe the Ukrainians kind of find one opening that they can push through. You know, there's a momentum here that has been stuck in a lot of places while tensions have been building. And, you know,

I would be surprised if, you know, by the fall, we're not talking about a pretty dramatic set of circumstances in at least one of these areas we've been circling around. Yeah. And sort of more broadly, I mean, you flag some polling out of Europe that shows that people don't necessarily blame the Russians for the war. A lot of them blame the U.S. The Times had an interesting piece about Sweden's efforts to combat Russian disinformation about the war. They're getting much more aggressive. And then I saw, you know, Russia, I think, pulled together a meeting to try to necessarily. to diplomats from sort of the non-Western world. And I read this quote from the head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, that was amazing. He said, quote, this is a speech to, you know, this summit. Man has created in the image and likeness of God, but Westerners seek to replace him with all sorts of transgender people in biomechanoids. Indeed, for a physically and spiritually

healthy person, it's unpleasant and sometimes even scary to arrive in Europe, given how many different kinds of perversions have bred there. So these like Russian fucking, you know, bloodthirsty intel goons are essentially using rhetoric that you might hear on a Tucker Carlson show or in the Republican primary. Oh yeah, they're like all in on the, you know, anti-cancil call. Kanye could basically take Dimitri Medvede's job over there, you know. Foyntez or whatever. Fointez or one of the, you know, Tucker obviously could be like their lead broadcaster. That data also like came from like the Navalny operation. They were. preparing for these protests that they're trying to mobilize across Europe on August 20th

against Putin. So people want to get out, you know, protest Putin. It's a pretty easy thing to protest against. But yeah, like I, you know, we should be watching the U.S. if you're Putin, you're watching the U.S. election, the French election, some of these elections that are coming up next couple years as as maybe your escape hatch here. Yeah. Last story here. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently visited China for some meetings. She went to a restaurant with a big group that the restaurant is a chain. It translates to in and out, no relation to the overrated burgers here. Some other diners notice Yell in order to dish that includes a mushroom whose name roughly translates to C-hand blue. That is apparently because if you push on

the inner surface, it turns blue when you squeeze it, but it also could have to do with the fact that it can make you trip balls. A botany professor told CNN that his friend mistakenly took these mushrooms and hallucinated for three days. Whoa. I don't know, I don't care what festival you're at. That's, that's Burning Man style there. Yeah. So here's Janet Yellen describing her experience to CNN's Erin Burnett.

May I ask you? I'm just quite curious. Apparently. What was it like the mushroom experience? So I went with this large group of people and the person who had arranged our dinner did the order. And there was a delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later, I can tell you.

Later, like when you were sleeping and having visions? I was read that if the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I'm sure they were at this very good restaurant, that they have no impact. but all of us enjoyed the mushrooms, the restaurant, and none of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them. So I think we all probably can agree that tripping your face off during like several days of meetings with Chinese officials

wouldn't be the best. But Biden and Xi wandering around the woods of Camp David, talking to some trees. You mean talking about life? I feel like that could. Talking about their goals. That could be with the doctor order. Yeah, so many things funny about that,

including that Jenny Yelan is not the cabinet member. I would think be most likely to be tripping balls on mushrooms, you know. But I also think that she said, if you listen carefully, and she's laughing a lot, like, she had a good experience, she suffered no ill effects. Right. She didn't say effects. That's a good point. Right, you mean?

Like, maybe it was just a good trip. And she came out with a little more clarity. Maybe, like, you know, a little more, you know, she saw, like, the financial markets from a new perspective, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, she, yeah, connected with them people in ways she didn't expect. Yeah, it'd be funny if the Chinese did steer visiting foreign dignitaries to places where they just got completely bonkers on mushrooms. And you just have the time of your life. Yeah, a little ayahuasca.

Yeah, a little ayahuasca. Yeah, a little ayahuas ceremony in China. Listen, I think listeners probably know this is a drug positive podcast, but I genuinely don't think it's the worst idea. It's actually not. I mean, like, on occasion. Imagine if there's just one G20 where everybody agreed to do mushrooms. And it was like, no judgments, right? Like, you know, like you're with you're like, we're in a.

judgment-free zone here in the G20. Yeah, Putin's crying. He's pulling up that woman. Yeah, yeah, he said, I wish I was your mother. You know. You get 24 hours, we're going to seal off the space. We're going to be, you can get to take walks and get some air. But like, judgment-free, take some mushrooms and see what you come out of it.

I guarantee you that it's more likely to resolve things and to lead to more wars. Yeah, you know, Biden could probably book some pretty good bands. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You get the dead out there. Yeah, yeah. Maybe John Mayer.

Go out with the dead one more time. Yeah. Yeah. Dust off Bobby and Mickey and get him back out there. Bobby, you know, Bobby could kind of run the G20. That's right. Yeah. Why not?

Okay. Well, listen, I know we have some government listeners, so get back to us on whether we can make this happen. Think about it, guys. Let's make it up. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear Ben's interview with Bobby Wine. So stick around for that. I'm very happy to welcome back to Potsay of the World.

Bobby Wine. Bobby is here with his wife Barbie as well. They're here because there's, an extraordinary documentary that people should check out called Bobby Wine, the People's President. It's currently in theaters in L.A. and York coming in San Francisco, Boston, hopefully others. And it'll be streaming this fall on National Geographic Disney Plus. For those who don't know, Bobby is a Ugandan singer and political leader who leads his party, the National Unity Platform, very courageously ran for president in the last Ugandan election

against the longstanding autocratic leader, President Museveni. Barbie is a writer in her own right and worth checking out her work and has obviously been along for this entire political journey. So welcome guys to Los Angeles. So glad you could be here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ben. So I want to start with a question that for both you really, which is how you make this decision to get into politics, Bobby. You have a successful career as a singer, as a performer, as an actor. You know the risks, I imagine, of taking on someone like Musevani. What drew you into politics? What got you on this journey? Thank you very much. It's true that I had a successful career and a relatively comfortable life, but it's just this one time that I was awakened to realize that regardless of how comfortable I was,

if everybody else is uncomfortable, my comfort was an illusion. And that's why I rose to the occasion to fix it for everybody else. Otherwise, it was illusion. It's still illusion to think that one is a right when it's surrounded by sheer poverty. And Barbie, what about you? I mean, you had to know what was in, I mean, maybe not everything that was going to happen. but you had to know this is going to be a tough journey. What was your thoughts?

Yeah, on 27th August 2011, I gave my vows to stand by his side for better for us. Well, that's not like the main reason. But I had had also my personal experiences. I work with a charity which I started with friends 10 years ago. It's called Caring Hearts, Uganda. And I had had this rare chance to traverse the country and go to. all the rural places. So I didn't like the roads I went through. I didn't like to see the poverty that I was seeing. Even when we were helping with keeping the girl child in school through

menstrual health and menstrual hygiene, it was not helping because we needed the government to do something bigger than just an NGO can do. So when he said he was going to run for MP, I said maybe that's the beginning of legislation. He would make changes. The government had promised that they would give free sanitary pads to the girls in schools, and that had not come yet. So I said, why not? Go there. Add on the voices of the many who want to do better for the country. So it was for the best that I would just support him to go and do that. So the film shows, you know, I think your marriage comes across powerfully, the partnership that you bring to this. It also shows the reaction that you get when you're campaigning.

You know, you run for parliament, then you run for president. And I wanted to ask you, Bobby, like the, you know, people don't see or understand, I think, what the concerns are and the aspirations are of the kind of people you are inspiring, the young people in Uganda, even if people travel through Kampala. You know, they don't get out and really see what's on the minds of particularly younger people. in what is the youngest, you know, certainly the youngest region in the world. How would you describe who you were connecting with and what they wanted from the government? Thank you very much.

Uganda is a country of 45 million people. The majority of them are young people, actually, to be precise, 85% of the population in Uganda is under the age of 35. Uganda's second youngest country in the world. you know, very blessed naturally, natural resources with oil, with gold, and all manner of natural resources, including a good climate. So it has a lot of potential. Now, on the other side, Uganda is ruled by General Yerberim Saveni, who took power in 1986, that is 37 years ago, promising a new day for Uganda. but up to today, 80% of those young people are unemployed and are living below the poverty line. There's gross violation of human rights and the rule of law and persecution for anybody that raises a voice. So it is that population that I am appealing to to take charge of their destiny

and ensure that those that rule over us use the natural resources of the country to transform health care, to transform education, to transform infrastructure, because you are faced with 20 women dying every day while giving birth of 300 children under the age of five dying on a daily basis. We are faced with an education system that is failing, a healthcare system that is failing where those that are in government actually seek healthcare outside the country. So we are a population trying to transnational,

transform that to change that because it's possible. However, those people are also concerned that that government is being aided by the international community, especially the United States, which gives Genome 70 to the tune of a billion dollars every year in terms of security cooperation. We appreciate that, but the people of Uganda are saying the United States should review that and make sure that the support they give in Uganda is not. a problem to Uganda, but a blessing by putting conditions to that. So all those aspirations are what I represent and are trying to give a face and to communicate to the world. And just for people, you know, who may not be entirely familiar with the story, describe the kinds of intimidation, detention, abuse. Like, what was the experience of running for president as an opposition figure in Musevni's Uganda like?

Thank you. It is not only running for president that is problematic, but any voice that dares to challenge the status quo or to call for reforms in Uganda faces it rough, including actors, journalists, musicians, religious leaders, and any citizen. Many of them have had to run to exile. Many of them are in prison and many of them are in prison. and many of them have been killed. But however, me, I went a step higher to challenge General Seveni for the presidency. For 37 years, there has been a facade of democracy because this is what tyrants do. They put sham elections to paint a good picture in the Western world

that it is all well. Now, when I showed up, the young people massively followed me because I was a pop star, I'm a musician, I'm very popular, and I speak slang like the masses of the people. So I tell them, yo, guys, we can actually change this. And when I showed them, they saw it's possible. Now, this threatened General Seven so much that he unleashed and told terror on the people of Uganda. Today, as we speak, there are abductions, state sanctions abductions and extrajudicial killings.

going on every day, the gross human rights violations. Now, in the film, you will see gross human rights violations, but that's not even 10% of what actually happens. You know, there are hundreds of political prisoners today because General 7 feels so threatened by the real imminent threat of change. and end of his military regime. So Barbie, what is that like when Bobby is, you know, he's tortured at points, obviously, ends up under house arrest after what was widely perceived as a fraudulent election?

I mean, how do you find the resilience to get through that while still trying to inspire and motivate, you know, you're dealing with your family in your own circumstances and you're also still you know, obviously a symbol of importance to people across the country. How did you deal with that? I mean, how do you find the resilience to get through that? It's really very tough. First of all, it is hard because when he's under house arrest, I am under house arrest.

And then out there, they are unleashing terror on our people. They are arresting them. They are killing them on the streets. And I am helpless because I can't be out there to contribute on helping with, the court sessions to have them release or to like locate them and know which prisons they're in or to go to the families like talk to their parents and talk to their wives and talk to their children. It is more helpless to be under house arrest than to actually be in prison because you know you are watching what's happening outside the fence and it's more painful because the

people you would want to run to rescue are there with no one to go to the, to go to them and help them. But how do we find the strength? Personally, how do I find the strength? I know that I am not alone. I know that there are other several women out there fighting for the freedom of their husbands and their sons. And I get stronger because I know I am not alone.

I know that we are fighting as a group and we are fighting as mothers of the nation. And I pray. I pray to God and ask for strength. And then I have groups of friends. girlfriends who pray with me, who talk to me, who meet me, who help me with the children when I'm overwhelmed. I have a large family. My parents are both alive. I have siblings. I have a lot of support. But the harder part is knowing what is happening to the more helpless families of those who are part of the struggle,

where I am supposed to be helping, like, give them moral and strength and energy to go on. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, Bobby, despite all this, you, you know, you still motivate an enormous vote share. There's clearly a lot of indications of fraud. You endure house arrest. Now you're traveling. What's next?

I mean, what are, you know, General Museveni is very old. he has a kind of sociopathic son that he seems to be grooming for potential succession. This is a guy that likes to threaten to invade Kenya on Twitter. But what's next for you and your party and for Ugandan politics? It's a big question. I would say, I don't know, but I will not say that. I'll say not giving up. Not giving up is the only way forward.

Right now, as we speak, General Moseveni, is in Russia with his son, you know, and a few other, you know, dictators from Africa, those that have just taken over power, undermining democracy and, you know, asserting themselves that shows that the anti-democracy forces are solidly working together and enforcing each other and helping each other and looking out for each other. He's tightening his relations with the East and all that. But, you know, we also continue in Uganda to sensitize the people and to tell people not to give up. But even if we continue to give people hope, even if the people continue to ask us to continuously challenge Moseveni in elections, even if we know that he controls all the systems, we refuse to give up. we refuse to give up and that's why I come to the international community to make sure I try to make my voice

and the voice of the people of Uganda heard by those that make decisions here in America to ask them to stop sponsoring our operation. We can defeat Moseven because we defeated him in an election and if America was to stand

by the democratic values that it represents as a world's greatest democracy and say, we are not going to work with you, Moseveni, because you abuse democracy, Moseveni would still be no more because the people of Uganda would be able to protest publicly. But, I mean, every time we protest, people get massacred on the street.

Much as we get voices of condemnation, we don't get enough action. Now, we are hoping to get action. We petitioned the International Criminal Court and we hope this time the International Criminal Court holds Moseveni on the same standard as all other dictators. You know, if that happens, if he gets sanctioned like some of his generals have been sanctioned, but we want Moseveni, the overall person and his son, those are the people that cast, that unleash the untold, you know, torture on the people of Uganda. If they're sanctioned, then they will think twice before they massacre people. Our demand is a free and fair election. That is all we want and we want the international community to help us achieve that.

If we get a free and fair election, that will be the end of tyrant in Uganda. And if you would like the U.S. there for to kind of condition any assistance around a free and fair election, you know, no more blank check from resumption, you know. Yes. Yes. What do you, you know, is a different part of Africa, obviously, and we always have to remember the diversity of the continent. But we've seen this string of military coups in Niger most recently. And now we see this kind of risk of potential almost conflict between the countries in West Africa that have had recent coups and the rest of ECOWAS. I mean, how should we think about that? I mean, do you see a trend that is a, a, a, a the continent or are these different situations in different regions of the continent? It's very unfortunate what's happening. Very, very unfortunate. Africa is responsible, but the West is also responsible. It's a great threat to democracy. When a coup is tolerated in one country, when military dictatorship is tolerated in one country, it's a clear communication

to those that seek to establish dictatorships elsewhere, that it's actually possible and acceptable. And that is why we've always been asking for conditional, you know, aid or relationship. General Museveni is the master of violence in the Great Lakes region of Africa, and that's the inspiration that he gives. That's why we have prop-up dictatorships in Sudan and many, other countries, you know, because they see that it's actually acceptable.

But if the West puts his foot down and said, we are not going to deal with dictatorships, I can guarantee you that dictatorships will in many ways be averted. Yes, now you see that many of them are trying to match their way to the Russian side. because less demand is there from that side for democratic values. But I insist that at the end of the day, democracy wins. So let us make it win. It will not win as a miracle. It will take decisions and efforts.

And, Barbie, you're traveling now. People obviously see this movie outside of Uganda. I mean, what do you want people to think and do? How do you want people to respond to your story that's in this film and that you'll be talking about as you're traveling around? First, what I want them to see, I want them to see besides the operation and brutality. I want people to see the hope in the young people of Uganda who have refused to resign, who have refused to give up the aspirations for a better Uganda, not only change, but change of policies and change of direction and reallocating our priorities, you know.

How do we want the world to respond? First, we want the world to give us its attention, you know, and we want world leaders to hold the government of Uganda, this one, and all those that will come after to the same standards, to the same standards, and the same standards, and I always say it that if what is happening in Uganda was happening in any European country, I'm sure it would be alarming. I went to Ukraine in the hate of the war, and I visited butcher. I saw the mass murders there. It was alarming.

Yes, it made it wild news. But the same thing is happening on a regular basis in Uganda, the same country that is a US ally. So we want the world to help us elevate our voices. know that leaders listen to their people. If, when it's treated by me, a Ugandan, you know, it usually doesn't get the same weight as when it's tweeted by an American. We cannot come and start protesting in a country that is not ours. The few Ugandans that are here are actually better off not causing any trouble or any

loud voice because they are here on probation. They left trouble in Uganda and they're even lucky to be here. So they don't get the confidence to come and protest. But we're asking you the American brothers and sisters to also mind us, and I've communicated this to also the black community here. You know, we've seen them speak out loud. They should also say African lives matter so that we don't get massacred while the world watches. For us, that is enough for us to have our case followed.

up and our voices elevated. Yes. And Barbie, what's the experience like of seeing your life, you know, revealed to the world like this? The film has both, you know, political moments but also personal ones. I mean, what's this experience like for you to take this story global? In the beginning, we did not know that this story would come this far. We were just living our lives, having more.

one camera around us, doing what we do every day. And sometimes it was tough to show the real us. And sometimes we told the cameras to get off. And then sometimes we forgot the camera was there. Because there were so many years. It was about three years of filming. And so seeing the end result of it all, first of all, it brings back the chills and the memories.

for some moments I say oh my god I need a psychiatrist then the other days I say wow also this happened and the other day I feel the relief of this story is not staying home the world is seeing it and the people are seeing exactly what is happening home unfiltered and censored it's not it's not fiction it is real story so I am happy that our story they are using our lives to tell the story of many other young people in Uganda, many other

young families going through the torture and the human rights violations and everything else happening at home. So it's thrilling and relieving and also gives us hope that our struggle is not in vain. We're actually pushing the story of Uganda outside the borders and going against what the government would want. They blocked Facebook. They don't want. want, they have raised taxes on using social media apps. It is very expensive to buy MBs and data. So they have excluded young people from using social media in so many ways. Having this story break the boundaries and the barriers and breaking the borders of Africa

and coming to the whole world just makes me feel like, yes, we are a step forward in the struggle of relieving ourselves of dictatorship. Well, look, we really encourage people to check out the movie when they can, Bobby Wine, the people's president, but also just to follow your continued work. As you've powerfully made the case today, this is both something that the United States has influence over, and it's also kind of connected to really a global movement right now of people that would like to see respect for basic universal rights and democracy. So thanks so much for being with this year today. Thank you very much for having us. Thank you, Ben. Thank you.

Thanks again to Bobby and Barbie for coming by the office doing the interview. I'm sad I missed that one. Just great to see those wonderful people and wish them the best. I want to say,

Tommy, speaking of our mushroom conversation, I have something to plug. What do you got? Which is my two-hour appearance on the Escape Hatch Pod. What's that? That is our friend

Jason Goldman's podcast where they watch movies and go fucking deep on the rewatch. I thought it was called like no... It was called DunePod. And it's now, it's true. changed to a Skate Patch because they talk about obviously more than the movie Dune.

We spent over two hours in the movie Her and on the subject of AI companionship. Okay. So this thing will be hitting your feed soon. And yeah, maybe you go to the same restaurant Janet Yellen was at. Like my two-hour hot take on her will. I think the podcast is longer than the movie, which is the way to do. That might be possible. I thought you were to say it was like an aliens pod.

Yeah. Well, Jason's very smart. One of the smarter tech people. One of the smarter guys. One of the only tech people I've met with like a true. True conscience. Yeah, and hates David Sacks more than we do. Fair to say.

Because he actually knows him. I mean, like us, you just come from and far. Okay, that's it for us this week and talk to you next. POTSave the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Audio support by Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episode. and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World. Thanks to Saul Rubin and Rebecca Rottenberg for production support. Our intern is Naomi Beerenbaum.