Pod Save the World - Trump kills the Middle East peace process

Episode Date: January 29, 2020

First, Tommy and Ben talk about Trump’s plan to help Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu win reelection and how it essentially means the death of the middle east peace process. Then they discuss how Trump’s cruel immigration policies could lead to the murder of an Iraqi refugee and the mistreatment of pregnant women. Also, why John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are terrible, the Saudi hacking of Jeff Bezos, more fallout from the Iran strike, updates on Burma and Kashmir and why Putin loves puppies. Then, Tommy is joined by public health expert Abdul El-Sayed to discuss the risk from the coronavirus and the public health infrastructure in the US and China.

Welcome back to POTSafe the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I am the voice previously known as Ben Rhodes. Ben Rhodes, a bit of laryngitis. Fighting through laryngitis for the world those. This is your MJ flu game. This is it, man. You're putting this pod on your back. I can't sit it out. If Jared can put together a peace plan, I can tape this podcast. As usual, a fantastic segue. But before we get to the news items for today, I just want to do two quick housekeeping things. One, my fifth and final episode of my Pazade of America in Iowa miniseries is up. We made this one so fast. We literally stopped recording at like 10.30 p.m. on Friday and had it out on Tuesday,

which is nuts. So it's like the freshest news from the trail you can get. We also did an exclusive Iowa caucus poll, and you can find those results in that episode. To check it out, see who's winning. It was a lot of fun. I love doing it. Two, two more episodes of the Wilderness Drops John Fabros series of the Democratic Party and the path to victory.

It is fantastic. Everyone should subscribe and download and listen to it because I think it's an important gut check on winning this fucking election. So without any further ado, here are our topics, Ben. So you previewed this. We got Trump's Middle East peace plan, a story about how a refugee's life is being put at risk to advance Trump's racist refugee policy. We're going to talk a little John Bolton because who doesn't want to do that. The hacking of Jeff Bezos, some truly cruel new immigration policies, more fallout from the Iran strike, some updates on Mike Pompeo. I thought you'd like that. Burma, Kashmir, and then Putin puppies.

Putin puppies. And then something like... Two things that always go together. Yeah, they do, they do. And our guest today is the host of America dissected. Abdul al-Sayed, he's a public health expert, and he is good to help us understand the coronavirus. This virus we're hearing about that's emerging out of the Wuhan province in China that is freaking everybody out. So let's talk to Middle East peace first. So in his greatest act of procrastination since high school, Jared Kushner finally finished his Middle East peace plan.

Good for him, I guess, for turning it in. But if he gets a bad grade this time, Dad can't buy his way into Harvard. Sorry, I just can't resist swinging at that prick. But the stakes are a little higher here. So here's the gist of the plan as we know it as of recording this at 1 o'clock Pacific. So Israel controls all of Jerusalem. Israel is not forced to remove any West Bank settlements. There is no timeline for ending the occupation.

The Israelis, I guess, just decide. The administration has previously promised to pull together $50 billion in international investment for whatever is left of a Palestinian state. We should be clear that there is just no chance that money would ever material. realize that's an absurd number. Do not believe anyone when they throw it around. Just hours after Trump's speech, the Israelis announced that they would plan to fully annex the West Bank settlements. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, wouldn't even take Trump's call to discuss this plan. The Palestinians have cut off contact with the Trump administration since they moved the U.S.

embassy to Jerusalem in December of 2017. Trump briefed blue and white party leader Benny Gantz on this plan on Monday, but he didn't do a press spray with him. He did this big announcement today with Netanyahu in, I think it was the East Room, with all the pomp and circumstance and press there. It's widely seen as just an effort to give BB a political gift. He's running against Benny Gantz in the third Israeli election in a year, which is crazy. I imagine it's also just a cynical ploy to attract Jewish voters in the U.S. Ben, we should probably stop calling this thing a peace plan because it's just not.

But I'm not a peace plan. Curious what you think of the substance and the rollout here. My first thought, Tommy, is why we calling this peace plan? plan. Like, these are the terms of surrender for the Palestinians, right? Like, every single issue, this doesn't just side with Israel. And what people have to recognize is, on the history of these negotiations, right, there are a series of, quote, unquote, final status issues. So, what is the future borders of the Palestinian state? What is the future of Jerusalem? What is the future of Palestinian refugees? And what is the future of security for Israel under a deal?

Right. On all four of these issues, not only does this side with Israel, it goes beyond what anybody could have imagined as the Israeli outcome in any previous peace process, right? Jerusalem entirely for Israel, no mention of the Palestinians having any capital whatsoever in East Jerusalem. Refugees, right? People have talked about, okay, if all the Palestinian refugees can't resettle inside of what is going to become Israel, there'll have to be a mix of some people being resettled, but compensation, you know, for people. Otherwise, this whole issue is kind of not really dealt with, right? Security. The occupation is made permanent under this plan, because basically Palestinians are crammed

into a rump of what should be a Palestinian state, and Israel is just permitted to stay there and occupy that land. And it looks like this basically envisions an open-air prison for Palestinians as part of this quote unquote peace deal. And so if you look at this and the borders and Palestinians lose much more net territory than I think anybody envisioned under plan and their contiguous state, like a state that is viable because people can move back and forth across it. You don't really see that here on this map. So if you're trying to engage it seriously, substantively, this is not in any way fair, right? But it grows out of the process.

because Trump didn't even talk to Palestinians, right? So it's kind of an interesting idea to make peace with the Palestinians without talking to them, right? It shows he just does not give a shit about them. Like, his whole interest here is to just put another notch in his Netanyahu gift bag, to help Netanyahu with his politics and help himself Trump with his politics. But it's almost a cop out for all of us to say, oh, this is just, you know, Jared, doing his second semester book report on the Middle East peace and handing it in to Professor Netanyahu at the end of the process after having it be peer reviewed by the right wing of APEC,

because that is kind of what it's about. But I think beyond that, it implicates all of us in American politics, though. Like, how do we get here? You know, I mean, how do we, like, the Palestinians are human beings? Yeah. Like, how do we have so little fucking respect for the Palestinian people that we're literally having it be possible that the President of the United States can sit there with the Prime Minister of Israel. By the way, there are no Palestinians at this rollout. I don't even think they're really Arab journalists there

and talk about the future of their lives as if it's just like some video game that we play in American politics. Oh, yeah, every president needs a Middle East peace plan, so here's ours, right? Now, I would encourage people to match this against what John Kerry put out at the end of the Obama administration, and you'll see just how far things have changed in three years.

But I think it's hopefully, you know, as Trump has woken people up to a lot of longstanding structural problems in how America approaches its politics or its foreign policy, you know, like either we think the Palestinians are people who deserve a state and deserve to have their own rights and dignity or we don't. I think we do. I think we should. If we don't, we should not bother putting out peace plans. You know, it better for Trump to have not put this out than to do this. Yeah, I agree. I mean, the way to think about it is imagine the reverse. Trump does this with a boss with no Israeli president.

It's inconceivable that that would happen. First of all, it's probably worth noting that Benny Gons called Trump a true and courageous friend of the state of Israel and said the peace plan proposal was a significant and historic milestone. They all like it. It's also worth noting that BB Netanyahu withdrew his request this week to have the Knesset, their parliament, give him immunity from prosecution as he campaigns for this third election. and VB was indicted back in November of last year for fraud and bribery and generally being an asshole. That last part is made up. But, you know, that's why he needs his political gift so much. I'm not sure it's entirely made up.

Yeah, and we should note like we've got a president under impeachment who's clearly guilty and Israeli prime minister who's under indictment, you know, they're looking to talk about something else. And here's what they're talking about. And also for the Israeli government to come out and say they're going to annex settlements in the West Bank within hours of the peace plan tells you everything you need to know about whether this is really about getting to a two-state solution or not. I saw the Jordanian government come out and say this is dead on arrival. The boss won't take his call. So, like, again, let's not, let's find the right language to talk about this.

And any, you know, news story you read that refers to this as a peace plan and then says, on the one hand, you know, some people said it's great and some people said it's not known. This is a bunch of bullshit, you know, and it's meant to give them a two-day news story and justify. Israel's continued annexation of settlements. It's not a bad piece. No, it's a total misnomer. Okay, let's turn to Iraq for a minute. So, Ben, we talk a lot on the show about, you know, issues and stories that make us mad and there's a lot of healthy venting, I think. But this next issue I want to raise is one of the most deeply upsetting articles I've read in a long time. It was this New Yorker piece by Ben Taub about the extradition of an Iraqi refugee named Omar Amin, or the extradition case. It's still ongoing. So the U.S. has accused this individual of being an ISIS commander,

and they claimed he murdered someone in Iraq. But his defense, his lawyers, have made a very overwhelmingly convincing case that Amin was in Turkey at the time of this murder, that he couldn't have done it, and that the evidence is made up nonsense by rivals in Iraq who hate his family. The infuriating part, the upsetting part, is that the U.S. government is doing everything possible to avoid having to admit or even hear this evidence in court. They are complicit, the State Department, DOJ, and sending an innocent man with a family in the U.S. back to Iraq where he will be tortured and executed, undoubtedly. And they are trying to do it to prove right Trump's talking point that terrorists are coming to America through the refugee process. Now, we haven't talked about refugee policy for a while now because there hasn't been

an election and Trump doesn't want to scare old white people in Ohio. But it doesn't make any sense for a terrorist to come to the U.S. through the refugee process. The refugee process entails extensive vetting. And since most terrorists aren't planning on, you know, putting down roots, you could just get a tourist visa and do whatever heinous thing you want to do, and that's a lot easier of the process. So the one way, Amin's defense attorneys could definitively prove his innocence is to get his cell phone records from when he was in Turkey to prove that he was there at the time of this murder. And then, so since I first read this piece, there was a follow-up Newarker article where Turkcell,

which is a phone company in Turkey, is offered to provide those records to DOJ. But the DOJ is still urging this judge in California to move the case quickly and extradict. Amin to Iraq before they get these records. And again, if that happens, he will be tortured and he will be killed. So Ben, I know the U.S. justice system is profoundly flawed, especially for people of color in this country. That's no secret. But reading this story and knowing that people at the highest levels of the State Department and the Department of Justice are pushing this man to be extradited to his certain death, like actually, it rattled me for a while after reading the peace and like made me deeply question my faith in America.

Yeah, I think that's fair. And I mean, I think you put your finger on what's so chilling about this to me, right? Is that, you know, we often have this conversation about, you know, Trump and would be authoritarianism, right? And part of the challenge for us is that Trump will say and even do crazy shit, right? But it seems like he's so crazy or incompetent or outside the mainstream. that you almost don't take it seriously, right? You don't see it as having consequences beneath Twitter,

or you see them like signing the Muslim ban, it just seems like a crazy photo op. First of all, keep in mind that they're very real people already on the other end of those actions, right? So you sign the Muslim man, those are families immediately separated. Those are people who might have had reason to come here whose lies have been derailed.

Maybe you have had to come here for their safety and they've been harmed. But here, you're right. What you see is, again, the longer, Trump is president, right? And I will tie this the next election. The more the U.S. government is adjusting itself to this new boss. And by the way, like shame on the people who are going along with this. I mean, you know, to essentially be putting a man's life at risk because you need to justify the racist fucking talking point of Donald Trump. You know, you don't have to go to work

that day at the State Department or the Department of Justice. You don't have to work at the other I have a lot of sympathy for people who are trying to stick it out for the national interest, you're trying to stick it out because they care about this country. But if you have to sit there in front of a judge and make an argument about this guy who the evidence clearly shows is probably innocent, to try to extradate him as fast as possible just so you can have some data point that justifies what Trump said. Like, you need to think hard about the choices that you're making. But the warning, I think, is that it shows it over time as long as Trump is president,

they'll be moving people out of those jobs or maybe if that person does leave that job they'll find someone who will do it, you know? And they will find someone who will do it. And so we have to take very seriously that the U.S. government is already beginning to reflect some of the more extreme parts of Trump's rhetoric. It's taken some time to get there.

If he gets four more years, imagine where we're going to be in year seven. Like we're not going to be reading the story because it'll be so normal, you know. Bureaucracies can be cruel and evil and heartless and this is an example. You don't get to just say you're doing your job here.

Yeah. Let's talk about another similar example in my opinion. I think another act of profound cruelty, which is the State Department is adopting rules to make it harder for pregnant foreign nationals to visit the United States. The White House calls this birth tourism because, yes, I'm sure most women would agree that giving

birth is like taking a fucking vacation, but Trump wants to prevent babies with foreign parents from being born in the U.S. so they won't become U.S. citizens. The policy itself is kind of dumb and wrongheaded. It's likely to be ineffective because most tourist visas give you a 10-year window to travel, but it still means that these women will be harassed by random consular officers and embassies around the world, and they could just be denied their trip for no real reason.

It's also part of just a clear opposition this White House has to the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship generally, which is why all of us are Americans. But Ben, like the total lack of empathy kills me. I mean, having a baby is terrifying. and the U.S. has more advanced health care than most other countries. So there's a good chance that this policy could deny a mom entrance to the U.S. who would be able to give birth safely here and have a healthy baby, but who might have some serious problems somewhere abroad.

It is cruel and it is evil and that's the point again. Yeah, and it just shows you how far reaching this agenda is, you know, to restrict immigration. This is the kind of Stephen Miller thing. Like, we're not content to just, you know, try to seal off the border and deport people. like we're trying to stop all forms of immigration here. And by the way, doing ways to make no sense. Like, this is not the way in which you would try to prevent somebody sneaking across the border to give birth in the U.S. Like, like this is an effort to just be as cool and inconvenient and unpleasant as you can.

And I do have to say, like, on both of these stories, one, if you stack this up, like we, this is how a lot of people interact with the U.S. Like, can I come here? Can I get a visa to go there? Can I be a tourist there? And there are so many different ways in which Trump is making that unpleasant. Like, this is turning people off from coming here. And I've traveled to countries where people have said to me there have been a big drop

and foreign students wanting to come to the U.S. Because they just kind of see these various reports. And even if they're not pregnant, they just see the United States being mean and are like, you know what, I don't want to go there. I'm going to go to China, you know? And so I think there's an intangible. cost to like our standing and our connectivity of the world. And this circles back to the first one, the example we're setting. I mean, I saw some reporting on the Indian citizenship law, which we've

talked about on this pod over the weekend. And people were still using kind of like the old language because some people were saying like, you know, the United States should really speak out against this law that restricts the capacity of Muslims to immigrate to India. It's like, we set the example. Like Modi copied our law, you know. And I think. we're not, again, finding the right language to realize that, no, we're no longer the country that used to criticize countries for doing things like this. We're now the country doing it, you know? Yeah, it's just infuriating. Okay, we got to talk about John Bolton. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So John Bolton, as we've discussed in the show, seems to believe that he only owes Congress and the

American people the truth if he gets paid for it. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that John Bolton has written a book and submitted it to the White House for pre-publication review. This book, apparently details Trump's now well-known scheme to hold up $391 million worth of military assistance to Ukraine in exchange for the Ukrainians launching phony investigations into Joe Biden. The book apparently talks about how officials like Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, Bill Barr, were all aware of what was happening. And then, according to a follow-up piece in the Times today, Tuesday, Bolton says in the book that he expressed concern to Attorney General bar that Trump was granting personal favors to autocratic leaders in Turkey and China, something

you and I have talked about 100 times. And Trump was suggesting to these leaders that he could control investigations into Chinese and Turkish companies like ZTE, a phone technology company and a Turkish bank called Hawk Bank. So the piece talks about how Trump, you know, has this bizarre love for authoritarian leaders. It's something apparently that jumped out at Bolton, too. Who can forget his infamous, where's my favorite dictator line about president? LCC of Egypt, who has proven to be far more repressive than Mubarak ever was, I think. Trump's lawyers claimed that they didn't know about these allegations in the book, despite the NSC having a copy of it since December.

So, Ben, you were the only person in this room that has written a book and submitted it to a White House review. Can you explain why that happens and what they're looking for? And did anything surprise you in what we learned here? So, yeah, I submitted the book to classification review at the NSC, and that was in 2018. So what they do is they read it and that they see something that looks like it should be classified. They ask you to check it out or change how you describe it, right? And so it's only for classification purposes?

It's only for classification purposes. And that was my experience. There were no burdensome or politicized edits that were suggested, and frankly, very little was suggested at all. And nothing about like executive privilege or anything? Nothing about executive privilege, no. I mean, there were, there was questions about could anything be seen as being derived from a classified document, right? I will say, though, that was in 2018. And I knew the people that I submitted it to, let's just put it that way.

They had been at the NSC when I worked at the NSC. I'm not familiar of how that's changed in the last, you know, two years, really. Yeah. My sense is somebody would know. know if John Bolton submitted a book for classification review. Yeah, come on. And that that would be circulated around, right? Then the other thing I'd say here is, first of all, if John Bolton was so concerned

about this behavior, that's worth noting that he worked there for a pretty long time for like a Trump official. You know, I think he made it over a year. So he could have quit at any time. That's not what happened, although at the end, you know, he had this fight about whether he's quit or fired. I also am amazed, you know, about how it always... comes out that like there's this new revelation, it's always confirmatory of everything everybody

already knows, right? And so we don't have to dwell on this, but like it's worth noting that the basic story that Trump was withholding aid to pressure Ukraine to do X, like has just been confirmed about 70 times. Yeah. There have been like 70 smoking guns. And every time like the press acts like it's the first time there's been a smoking gun or something or like this is the one that's really going to break the Republicans. I think this one does matter more, though, and the reason he needs to testify is because he's first hand, right? He's the guy who's literally, as the title of his fucking book says, in the room when it happens. But to me, the thing that should jump out to everybody is this thing about Turkey and China. Like, that, to me, is my headline. Because I already

know what happened in Ukraine. That's very obvious. We've always thought that Ukraine is a tip of an iceberg, that if Trump is doing this, if he's politicizing or trying to get personal gain from a foreign relationship in Ukraine, you damn well know he's trying to do that with Saudi Arabia, with China, with Turkey, where more likely his interest, yes, it may be political, but is potentially monetary, right? And so what do we know? We know, for instance, from these kind of weird reports in certain books and secondhand of Rex Tillerson that like Giuliani was lobbying, for instance, to try to help some Turkish guy who had violated Iran sanctions. Well, now we know that Trump is promising that he can make investigations go away

if they're related to Turkey, right? So those are two different pieces of information that we know that are not hard to connect, you know? And like we hear this tape of Trump posting about how he can essentially let a bunch of grifter foreign nationals like affect our foreign policy by giving Trump a wish list of a fucking fundraiser, right? Can you imagine the corruption we're not seeing? And to channel Adam Schiff for a moment here, like, this is why he must be removed from office as soon as possible. And I actually don't believe that it's just like, no, to impeach him and hopefully get to the election. Like every day that

this guy is in office, he is selling out our farm policy for God knows what interest. You know, in Ukraine, it's an investigation of the Biden's, with Turkey, who knows what financial interest it could be, right? The Saudis, I don't even want to see. see what they do in our election, right? Because if we know they're already hacking their phone of the richest guy in the world and they have trillions of dollars that they can throw around, like what is coming in terms of Saudi interference in our election here? So to me, that reference to the other corruption is what really jumped out to me. Yeah, me too. You mentioned Saudi Arabia, which brings me to my next story, and I agree entirely that it's very worrisome.

So a United Nations report claims that the Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman, personally, personally helped hack the CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos, a noted Trump enemy, by the way. This report says that MBS, Mohamed M. Salman, sent Bezos a WhatsApp message that had a video in it, then included some code that allowed the Saudis to expeliorate data from his phone over the course of many months. Now, coincidentally, about a year ago, the National Enquirer posted a story about Bezos having an affair with a woman in Los Angeles that included text and photographs. that led to Bezos having this investigation started about how this information got out, which gets us to hear. It's not entirely clear even in the reporting whether the Saudis gave the inquire this information or if it came from this woman's brother.

I mean, that's sort of the working theory. Who knows right now? But the report says the Saudis hacked Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, which had reported critically on Saudi Arabia and used to employ Jamal Khashoggi, who was a prominent Saudi critic until Mohammed bin Salman had him murdered. Ben, everything about the story is confusing and everything is terrible. I mean, you have the Saudis acting with impunity, I'd note to target an enemy of theirs and Trump's. Just keep that in back your head. You have incredibly sophisticated spying tools for sale to the highest bidder. You have the fact that literally no one, not the richest man on earth, is apparently safe from getting hacked by these kinds of companies. And yet, none of it seems like it's enough to stop the Trump White House or

the business community from doing business with the Saudi government. Oh yeah. And by the way, Jared Kushner is known to WhatsApp with Muhammad bin Salman all the time. So God knows what they've done to his phone. Can you imagine how many videos MBS is sent to Jared? Yeah, funny memes. Yeah. What about all those U.S. journalist who wrote fawning profiles of MBS? Like, I wonder if any of them clicked on any of the links that they were sent. I mean, it's totally wild that MBS himself did it. Like, what an idiot. That's insane. I mean, like, thinking. Well, but also just like the level of impunity that he feels. Like he feels like he can do anything, you know? And that's what happens when, you know, you have the U.S. hug MBS after

Jamal Khashoggi's chopped up, right? Or throughout this whole administration, he feels like he can get away with anything. No coincidence, by the way, that Bezos is both a critic of Trump and Jamal Khashoggi's boss, right, at the Washington Post at the time. And so to me, I think It should send a message that if they're doing that to Jeff Bezos, what are they doing to, like, ordinary people in Saudi Arabia? Or to other people that they want to threaten and intimidate around the world, right? Also, again, to return to, like, another argument that Adam Schiff made that was really good one, you know, he said to the Republicans, you know, why do you think Trump is going to not throw you under the bus? Like, you know, well, I'd say that to anybody who's doing business with Saudi Arabia. Like, do you, Jamie Diamond think that you're, you know, he likes you so much personally that he's not going to potentially try to blackmail you or get leverage on you?

Like, I don't know why these people don't see that these characters like MBS have one and only interest in terms of what they're looking at for themselves, right? And so at some point we have to put some guardrails around this. Now, it's not going to happen with Trump as president, but like this Saudi relationship is so difficult. dysfunctional, that they just, they feel they can do anything, get away with it. And the sad truth is because with this present, they can. Yeah. And, you know, there was a daily bee story about a 27-year-old comedian, former student at the University of San Diego, who had a social media presence that was pretty big, who used to mock Muhammad bin Salman. He says that a unidentified Saudi man accompanied his dad to the U.S. to try to bring him back to Saudi Arabia, essentially they tried to kidnap him.

And I think we know what would have happened to this kid, given what happened to Jamal Khashoggi. So that's pretty terrifying that there's acting with impunity on American soil. And it's ongoing. It's ongoing. And we saw the stuff where they infiltrated Twitter, you know, with a couple of employees, right? And like, you know, where do you start? I mean, another place to start is you don't have to cave to this guy all the time. Like so, remember, we talked about Netflix when Hassan Menaj's Patriot Act did like an episode that Puged Fonda

criticized Saudi Arabia and Netflix pulled it, you know? Like people need to start collectively standing up to this kind of behavior because what we are doing is inadvertently rewarding it, you know, either because we're embracing them like Trump or some of these business leaders or because I'm willing to like set some boundaries and take a stand around certain values, right? And again, right now, the direction of how we're dealing with privacy and hacking is being set by the aggressors, not by people who are seeking to protect ourselves and protect our privacy. And that's something that has to change. So we're now several weeks from the strike on Kasub Soleimani, the former head of the IRGC, Kud's Force in Iran. We have learned that the ballistic missiles that were fired in response by the Iranians left 34 U.S. service members with concussions or traumatic brain injuries. Trump the other day at a press event dismissed these injuries as, quote, headaches that are, quote,

not very serious. And I just wanted to bring this up because that is so profoundly wrong. They are quite serious injuries. The Pentagon estimates that, 338,000 service members have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan from 2000 to 2018 have suffered from traumatic brain injuries, 383,000. These TBIs, they can lead to higher rates of PTSD, depression, back pain, suicide. They're the signature wounds of our modern wars, and just because they aren't visible, doesn't mean they aren't serious. And when lawmakers dismiss these wounds, they can stigmatize them, they can make them worse. Veterans groups have called on truck to apologize, but even, you know, Sycophants in Congress, even Tom Cotton, who is a veteran who should know better,

are defending his comments because they just don't care what he says. Ben, this is just one of those times where the comments are so profoundly ignorant that it should be a bigger story and it should be an educational moment for the country, really. But it's not getting discussed, I think, because of the fog of impeachment and just because he says idiotic stuff all the time. Well, yeah, and I mean, it's called traumatic brain injury for region. You know, so, I mean, this is a, you can be very, serious for people. And look, there's such common threads, and I know we're having an episode

where I'm talking about Trump a lot, but these things connect, right? Because, you know, you talked about how the troubling story about the extradition case involving Iraq, they basically are seeking to justify Trump's talking point by changing reality, even though a man's, like, life is at stake to fit that. That's what this is. Because Trump came out and tweeted, the night of that missile strike all as well. And he said everybody's fine. And so they didn't even want to admit that there were any casualties, that anybody was hurt whatsoever in these attacks.

And the press literally had to drag this information out of them, right? And so the reason Trump is saying, oh, it's just headaches, the reason he is seeking to downgrade this condition that has been suffered by many veterans is just to justify his own talking points in lies from a few days earlier, right? And in so doing, he's disrespecting every person who's had this injury. I mean, he's disrespecting everybody who has served. How would you feel if you were living at home with chronic headaches and inability to maybe hold down a job?

Maybe your life is falling apart. Maybe your marriage is falling apart. You know, maybe you don't know if you can go on because of these symptoms you've had from TBI. And then you see the President of the United States saying, it's just headaches. How that would make you feel, right? And I haven't done this, I think, in a while in this podcast. But imagine if Barack Obama had lied about there being no U.S. service members injured,

an Iranian attack on a U.S. military facility, tried to cover up those injuries, and then dismissed over 30 people having traumatic brain injuries, some people having some headaches. Yeah. Right. And I do that not just to indulge in the hypocrisy, but to make the point that this wasn't a really big deal. there wasn't a lot of noise in the media. There wasn't a lot of noise in Congress. We are adjusting ourselves to Trump.

You know, this is like, oh, sure, of course that. Of course Trump did that, right? And that should be alarming to people that, like, something like this that is literally inconceivable that this would have happened under the previous administration is like, oh, yeah, it's not that big a story because, of course, Trump would spin this and lie about it. Yeah, I mean, we should also just point out that the military

has come a long way when it comes to traumatic. brain injuries or PTSD from, you know, World War I, World War II, even Vietnam era. I mean, back then it was shell shock or, you know, it was a battle fatigue, right? There's this moment where General Patton infamously slaps a soldier who is in the infirmary rather than getting on the fighting lines. And that's just, that's not the appropriate way to treat these injuries. We have to, you know, people need to rest. They need to feel like they should seek treatment and seek it out and want to seek it out and that feels stigmatized. And if you hear about these TBI injuries, What it literally is is like the size and scale of the blast causes the brain to shake around in the head.

I mean, that just that that is not like what is supposed to happen, you know? And so this can, it can lead to like pretty serious health effects. Yeah, I mean, we're seeing it in football, for God's sake. Yeah, yeah. One more military issue, and yes, this is a Trump heavy episode, but that's okay. So we talked a couple times on the show about a retired Navy seal named Eddie Gallagher. He was accused by his steel team teammates of shooting at civilian. of murdering an ISIS captive, very awful stuff.

Trump pardoned him and is reportedly planning to make him a key surrogate on his election, re-election campaign. On Monday, Gallagher posted a video on his Facebook and Instagram calling members of his former team cowards, people who testified against him, putting up identifying information about them, like their names, their duty status, photos of them. I'm actually kind of surprised that information isn't officially classified as secret, but regardless, it's usually never disclosed. by the military because it puts these guys at risk. In this case, I would say at risk from both

terrorist groups that they're fighting abroad and like maga nuts back here. So, you know, again, like to our big picture of comments here, like this is what happens when you enable a guy like Eddie Gallagher clearly has some issues to operate with impunity and operate outside the military justice system. And it's really dark stuff. And I hope Fox News is proud of the role they played in this whole affair and putting at risk a whole bunch of Navy SEALs. Yeah, I mean, this Eddie Gallagher story is so amazing because, you know, he's validating Trump the behavior of a war criminal, right? Who now shows that he is so vindictive and so emboldened by, you know, Steve Ducey or whoever, like at Fox, that he's now taking aim at Navy Seals who did the right thing. You know, like these are the people who took a risk to do the right thing, who understood that it was not in their own interest, in the interest of the values they stood for.

and frankly, their security to have war criminals in their midst and report them up the chain. And think of the message it sends to that whole community, to the entire military, and frankly, to like kids across this country, that the people who reported the wrongdoing are now being targeted by somebody who committed war crimes, who's going to be out there with the President of the United States, right? And it's been a Trump-heavy episode, but I mean, it's been very useful because all of these things fit together, right? It's all about Trump, you know, kind of validating the most negative behavior that the United States can indulge in and creating impunity for people, whether they're in the U.S. or whether the people like MBS, who are engaged in this kind

of thuggish behavior. And it really points to, like, what's on the ballot in this election its upcoming is like, just what exactly kind of country are we? Because if we're the kind of country that's like, yeah, this is cool. Like Eddie Gallagher can kill a kid and shoot corpses and what have you and then get celebrated and then target the people who reported that misconduct. If we're cool of that as a country, like, that's something that we all have to like digest. And I don't think we are. But I think all these things add up to the basic choice that the longer Trump is in office,

the more we can see what his personality is doing. to institutions like the U.S. military, like the State Department, like the Justice Department, and to foreign relations with countries like Saudi Arabia, like Israel, where he's also emboldening the worst elements in those governments. Yeah. Last Trumpy thing. One thing that makes me very proud of this podcast is the fact that we have been way, way ahead of the rest of the pack in calling out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for just being a terrible human being. Yeah.

This was really driven home, I think, for everyone last week when he berated an NPR report, named Mary Louise Kelly for asking him about the Ukraine scandal in Iran and his failure to defend our U.S. ambassador in Ukraine from Rudy Giuliani's smear campaign. God forbid she asked about the biggest news in the world. Pompeo ended the interview and he apparently asked Kelly to come back to his private office without a recorder. He didn't stipulate it was off the record. She said she wouldn't have agreed if he'd had. There he dressed her down. He yelled. He dropped F-bombs. He said, quote, do you think Americans care about Ukraine? And then he literally summoned a blank map and asked her to find Ukraine on it. Now, I don't know why these guys have

blank maps just sitting around. They like draw with crayons during meals, but I just can't think of anything more condescending than that. She has a master's degree. She's an experienced reporter. He was, um, Koch brothers, uh, suckling backbench congressman until he was gifted this job. Pompeo later attacked Kelly through a press statement through the state department's main office. The State Department kicked a different NPR reporter off of Pompeo's plane for his trip to Eastern Europe. Trump is talking about defunding the company, the NPR. And today, at this press conference with Netanyahu, Trump joked about it and gave him an out of boy. So to your point, I mean, the rot starts at the top. The other thing I just have to say I'm concerned about is like

NPR is the perfect entity to fight this with one arm tied behind their back. You know, like he is, literally going after their funding. And NPR is just like, they're a little to both sides-y on their coverages from anyway. But now they're like, they're so scrupulous, they're so buttoned up.

I mean, Pompeo lied and said that she, the reporter Kelly, agreed not to talk about Ukraine. She has emails proving that to be false. But instead of just like tweeting them out, punching back, they like waited a couple days

and slipped into the Washington Post. And I just worry for these folks because, you know, NPR is an enormous service for all of us. It's great news covered. they've great reporters, but these bullies like Mike Pompeo, they only dig in when they think you're weak and they have the upper hand. Yeah, well, and he clearly doesn't face this kind of questioning,

you know, ever, ever. And I hate to, I like the State Department press score, but I've been shocked and watching a couple of press conferences he gives. He just, he's an, a smarmy, arrogant, lying jerk, essentially. And they let him just perform, you know, they don't really ask follow-ups. They're like, it's weird, like, how much he, just by bullying and bulldozing through a bunch of lies, like they're not sure what to do with that, you know? And it sounds like she actually was trying to call him out. She did a great job.

But clearly, and most of Mike Pompeo's interviews are probably like fawning Hugh Hewitt type, people kissing his ass. Hugh Hewitt, by the way, if you don't know who he is, don't worry about it, but he's a conservative pundit that's always on Meet the Press. His son works at the State Department. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's how objective he is. But I pull out a couple things.

One, would Mike Pompeo have dragged the reporter into his office and bullied them and dropped F-bombs on them and asked them to find Ukraine on a blank map if they were a man? Probably not. Probably not, right? So number one, these people have no respect for women, even though we're talking about one of the smartest reporters in Washington. Number two, Mike Pompeo is this secretary of state. He said, like, Americans don't even care about Ukraine. how do you think that sounds to the Ukrainians? Yeah, that's a lot worse.

Like the Ukrainians have already dealt with the fact that, I mean, like in this whole drama, can we award the Ukrainians like the people who've been screwed the most? Oh, absolutely. Like poor fucking Zelensky, like a comedian, well-meaning guy, gets elected president. First, he's getting shaked down by Lev Parnas and Rudy Giuliani and the crew. Then he's got Trump saying, you know, do me a favor. Then he's got Mike Pompeo saying, like, do that no Americans. even care about Ukraine when Ukraine has been invaded by their neighbor Russia and is dependent on the

United States. I mean, just the ooze disrespect for everybody in their orbit, you know? And I think the press has to decide if they kick her off the plane, everybody should get out that fucking plane. Yeah, there's got to be some collective action. There's got to be some collective action here. And you know what? Your collective action is not just like tweeting about how great Mary Louise Kelly is like, I think, you know, there needs to be some effort to say like, we're not going to let these people just rewrite the rules like this and treat us like garbage and get away with lies and then laugh about it, you know, at the press conference with Netanyahu as Trump did today. Yeah, I don't know the right answer, but there's got to be an actual cost. I've never even

seen that. Like there are like we are crossing into boundaries here where stuff is happening on a regular basis in this country that actually doesn't happen in like even authoritarian countries. You know, like often the joke is like we're turning into X and X place. Like I don't know. I've never really heard of some of this stuff happening in and in some of these other like quasi authoritarian places. Yeah. Mike Pompeo was terrible. I hope these Sunday shows will start. No, the Sunday shows have on and just like, you know, and that's when you start tweeting and I'm like, I just get so mad. Yeah, I'm like watch cartoons like I do with my kids. Okay, a couple quick policy updates. So, let's talk about Burma first. We have talked about the government sanctioned genocide of the Rohingya people

in Burma several times in the show. Since 2017, the government has driven more than 700,000 Rohingya out of the country, mostly into Bangladesh on the way there were executions, rape is a tool of war, true crimes against humanity, like horrific, horrific stuff. The sort of good news is the United Nations agreed. And last week, the International Court of Justice ordered Burma to protect the Rohingya and to report back to them regularly on how they're going to do so. This case was brought before the UN by Gambia on behalf of the OIC, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation. And the ruling was decided by a 15-member panel, one of whom, was picked and appointed by the Burmese government and even that dude cited against them.

So that's how bad this was. Now, unfortunately, there's no real mechanism to enforce this ruling here. But hopefully it will bring more international attention to this horror. And maybe if they continue with this kind of behavior, lead to UN Security Council action. No, I think it's a positive development. And look, one way to think about this is the tragedy, one of the many tragedies of what's happened to the Rohingya is that in Burma, people don't care that much. You know, basically like, there's actually fairly broad support for what the government has done in ethnically cleansing the Rohingya.

I don't want to say that to everybody because I know some very courageous people who are activists who are speaking out for this. But when you have that situation, the pressure has to come from somewhere else, right? So unless there's some international external accountability forcing the Burmese government to have to do this reporting, to have to be mindful that they may be held accountable, like you're not going to be able to protect this population at all. And frankly, it plans a seed in the heads of hopefully officials inside of Burma, Myanmar, that there's future accountability that could come. There's further international justice that could come. There are further sanctions that could come. So this kind of thing, I think, is a useful tool if combined with the sense that like, if you guys aren't on top of this and aren't being responsive to this, there's more where this is coming from. Yeah.

And if people want to know the background on what happened there, Ben wrote a great, very long, thorough, thoughtful piece in the Atlantic about, several years of policy, including during the Obama administration, so check it out. Another update. So we talked a couple times also about the Indian government and how they invaded and occupied the disputed Kashmir region, and they revoked their semi-autonomous status. So basically they're just governing them now. This happened about six months ago, and since then, the Indian government has basically cut off all communication to the region. They shut down the internet. They cut landlines. They cut cell connections. On Sunday, the Indian government unblocked some websites. They started allowing like very, very

slow cell service, like 2G. But I had to say then, like, I read this and thought, I don't think this is good news. I mean, obviously, if someone needs Internet, like, it's good for them to have it back. But what it tells me is that these tactics are seen as useful and effective, and they're going to be used again and again and again to take these kinds of action. Yeah, it's interesting. You've noticed in a few different places recently, this tactic of cutting off the Internet for a period of time and restoring some form of, you know, order, and then slowly, incrementally, it comes back on.

So you saw the Iranians do this in response to some of the protests. Clearly, like, part of the playbook, you know, that some of these strong, man authoritarian types are going to use is blackout, disconnect people, cut them off. While that is happening, that's when you're rounding a bunch of people up, right? That's when you're silencing a bunch of people. That's when you're intimidating a bunch of people. And then incrementally turning it back on. on its speeds it can support certain type of activity and mobilization or encryption.

Or uploading videos. Or uploading videos of what has happened. Exactly. So, you know, we have to learn from this stuff. And I think it will be important for journalists to try to be able to piece together the story of just what has happened in Kashmir over these last several weeks, both so we can understand the scale, the repression that has taken place, where are certain people, you know, where are the leaders of different types of political opposition, civil society, independent journalists, are those people okay or are they not? But also what is the playbook that they've used there? Because I think, you know, it's clear that there's learning that goes

on between, you know, China and India and Iran and, you know, frankly, probably some of things that the U.S. There's an authoritarian group text that's just trading. Russia, you know, Russia was at the forefront of some of these tactics. Yeah, terrible. Okay. We're end on a happy note. Yes. So for some reason, a video was going around this week and last week of Russian president Vladimir Putin being given a puppy by the president of Turkmenistan. This happened in 2017. The video is terrible and hard to watch because the leader of Turkmenistan, whose name I'm just not even going to try to say, is holding this poor puppy up at the scruff of the neck in such a weird, awful way that Putin

freaks out and jumps out of his chair and rescues the poor thing because it's a really adorable puppy. Now, Putin is a horrible human being. He kills dissidents. He kills journalists. He invades countries. but he's a big dog and animal lover. I guess he has several dogs. He gets gifted them all the time by foreign leaders

because they know he's a soft spot. He has a dog that he once brought to a meeting with Angela Merkel to scare the shit out of her, famously. He also likes getting photographed with tigers and bears and dolphins, you name it. It'll probably militarize all of them. The government doesn't always follow his lead when it comes to taking care of animals.

They are ruthless to strays, especially around events like the Olympics. But that segment was called the more you know about Putin. well I mean the the picture of the guy holding the dog by the scruff of the neck

was one of the more you know awkward gift exchanges I've seen you know Putin I just gotta say like I've because I'm in this office

he doesn't seem like a doodle kind of guy no you know and I mean he wants a dog that could kill a you know so he broke in your house kill a smaller animal you know

Yeah, or person. Like, yeah, or person potentially. It is interesting how Putin, you know, doesn't have like a, doesn't ooze personality. You know what I mean? Like, like, like, so it's kind of interesting to think about being a propagandist, you know, in the, in the Kremlin. It must be kind of an interesting job, right? Because, because Putin can take care of the like, you know, strong man, you know, mysterious, you know, thing. But like, how do you fill in a personality a role?

around that, right? And so you've got like the puppy thing, time to bring back the 2017 clips, you know, you've got the shirtless horseback thing. You've seen the one where he's in a glider migrating with a bunch of birds? Yes, that's an outstanding one. That's a good one. Then you've got these like occasional hockey games he plays where they let him score like 17 goals. Ovechkin like Lys down, you know. So I will say like it does point up like unfortunately what this tells me, Tommy, is that October surprise is going to be Trump with puppies. And they'll probably be like that Dan Skavino hack at the White House tweeting out, they'll probably put up some leader to give a puppy with the scruff of the neck.

Because if it started with Putin, you can be sure it's going to end up with Trump. He's going to emulate it. Ben, this episode is going to go down in the annals of podcast history. Thank you for playing her. I didn't think I'd make it. I didn't think I'd make it at the very beginning. It was tough at first, but you got through. Yeah, I got through.

You got better. You're like MJ. Jared got my blood. up. Yeah, that's right. By the way, we didn't congratulate the coffee guy who really, oh, Avi Berkowitz. You know, the Avi Berkowitz, who's the guy, the kind of guy who did Jared's homework for him when he was at Harvard, right? Because Jared didn't actually write his term papers, right? So this whole process was Jared gets the peace plan. He brings in Avi Berkowitz, who then does his homework for him, and they put it in a nice, like, kind of, you know,

stapled together presentation that you give at the end of your term paper. Yeah. And give it into avey new PowerPoint so we could put some some pictures on there okay when we come back we're going to talk with you all have that friend who had a new PowerPoint yes the host of america dissected public health expert abdul el said on the line is the host of the fantastic podcast america dissected public health expert abdul el saad abduel is great to have you back Tommy thank you so much for having me so i wish it was under better circumstances before we started recording we were just like chatting about politics and life and it was fun and jovial. And now we're going to talk about scary viruses. So there is this coronavirus that we're

hearing so much about right now. It's started in the Wuhan city of China and seems to be spreading. Can you explain just the basics of like what is the coronavirus and why is this such a threatening outbreak? Yeah. So so let's start from the basics. Viruses are these, you know, it's interesting in a scientific debate. We debate on whether or not they're alive or not. But basically what they are is just a little bit cellular machinery and some either DNA or RNA, which is the operative version of DNA, and they make us sick and they propagate. The interesting thing about coronavirus is that under normal circumstances, humans would never be exposed to these kinds of viruses.

They tend to be common in wildlife, in bats in particular. But in two circumstances, we're starting to see more and more of these outbreaks. One of them is in situations where you have a lot of human contact with wildlife in situations like the wet market in Wuhan, where it's likely that some animal that was being sold at this market had come in contact with a bat that was infected. It itself got infected and then passed it on to humans. And because our immune systems aren't ready for them because we don't usually come in contact with bats, it starts to spread like wildfire. The other, though, and this is sort of an unsaid topic,

is these kinds of outbreaks are becoming more common because of climate change, which is driving wildlife more and more into the habitats of humans. And so the interactions that we're having with wildlife are a lot more common, which increases the likelihood of these kinds of outbreaks. So our immune systems are not ready for them. And once they hit us, they spread like wildfire. And this particular coronavirus, we're just starting to understand it. But of course, there is no vaccine. There is no medication because it's not something humans have ever seen before, as far as we know. And it's starting to spread out of Wuhan.

It's infected people in about 15 different countries. It's looking like it's relatively contagious. And we don't know as much about the mechanisms of spread, but it's spreading quickly. We have over 4,000 cases now and over 100 deaths. Yikes, Jesus. So one more question about the media narrative around it before we get to the specific. So I feel like you often see alarming news reports about some new and scary sounding disease. and then, you know, some smart doctor will remind you that way more people are likely to be killed by the flu.

Do you feel like the coverage of the coronavirus is appropriate? I mean, how are you feeling about, you know, the way this is being treated? Well, you well know, as somebody who's worked in PR, the things that get coverage are the things that are new. And, you know, given that this is new and it is spreading fast, I do think it warrants the kind of coverage. But, again, the probability of dying from coronavirus is far low. or than the number of people we know will die of the flu in a particularly bad flu season. And so, you know, on the one hand, you look at this and you say, wow, this is an epidemic, and all of a sudden people are wearing face masks and airports.

And that's a fine thing to do. But sometimes the very same people who are so worried about coronavirus having gotten their flu vaccine. And it's just statistically far more likely that you're going to get the flu A and B, that the flu could kill you or kill somebody that you love because you inadvertently pass it on. And so we can't forget that even though this is new, serious problems that are more endemic and don't get the kind of coverage that this coronavirus is getting are still out there and they're still dangerous. And we do have the means to protect ourselves. And so if you're looking for something you can do to keep yourself healthy in the context of coronavirus, go get a flu shot. Okay. Good. I did that for once. Okay. So, you know, this emerged out of China. In theory, you know, this is an autocratic state.

you would think they could prevent people from traveling, quarantine individuals in ways that I don't think you would see in a democracy and just control the population generally. But you know, you said to me before that there's a tradeoff there because people don't trust the government. Can you talk about the need for government trust and why that might play a role in this thing spreading? Absolutely. So, you know, the operating credo of public health is, is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. if you have a new outbreak of any disease, the thing that the public health apparatus, the government apparatus ought to be able to do is identify new cases, get them treated, and then quarantine them, and then trace the contacts of all of those people, and make sure that they're quarantined

so that they're not inadvertently spreading the disease. We do this all the time with all kinds of outbreaks of all kinds of things. That requires a couple of things, that, A, you have a, consistent flow of information and that people are willing to tell the government the truth about what's happening and what's going on. And B, that that government has the capacity then to follow that information downward. And then C, that government is exchanging information with partner governments so that they're aware and engage on the problem and ready to pounce if they need to. The challenge that we have with this outbreak right now is, A, people don't necessarily trust their government because they've seen their government due to

terrible things to other people. And so when you require the free flow of information, you may not be willing to give it to folks. And then B, we're in a situation where the Chinese government hasn't actually built out primary care. It's built a lot of hospitals. Those things are glitzy. But primary care is less glitzy. And the problem is that when people think they're sick in the context of an outbreak, they just go line up and try and get care at a hospital, which of course gets overwhelmed. But what do you have? You have a bunch of sick people who are now lined up in one place, which is probably the worst possible thing you could do for actually exchanging the disease and in mitigating the spread. And all of this is because the government is more worried about saving

face than it is about actually a problem. And we've seen this kind of behavior in Chinese government in a number of places, but this is one of them. So, you know, the government can build a thousand-bed hospital in six days, but they couldn't build the basic apparatus to be able to contact trace and mitigate a disease early. And then now we're seeing this quarantining of whole cities, which doesn't quite help because when you quarantine a city, people are going to get out. And you're allowing all of the disease spread to move within that city rather than having the precision ability to contact trace and mitigate spread at the micro level, which, of course, is how a virus spreads. And so all of this is really detrimental to the spread of an outbursts.

like this. And it just shows us why being able to have a government that prides itself on the free flow of information on the investment in infrastructure that's not necessarily glitzy, but important, matters so much. Yeah. So China dealt with a similar epidemic in 2002 and 2003 went SARS. Do you think that they learned lessons? Have they taken steps to improve their response? I know it was a pretty brutal response by the Chinese government then. It was. I mean, I think to their credit, this response has been somewhat more effective, but they're still a long way to go. The other, you know, the luck of the draw on this one is it looks like this is about as infectious as SARS was, but it seems like it's a lot less deadly. So epidemiologists talk about this number called the R-Nought factor.

And R-Not just tells you, on average, how many people will get a disease from somebody who's already carrying the disease. And the R-Not for SARS and for this disease look like it's somewhere between two and five. By comparison, the R-Not value for measles, which is one of the most contagious viruses we have, is between 12 and 16. So it's less contagious. And the mortality rate for SARS was like 10%. So one in 10 of people who got it passed away from it, whereas for this, it's looking like it's somewhere between 3 and 5%. So it's not as bad as SARS was.

but because of the way it spread and because of how quickly it's built, it's looking like it might be a bigger epidemic, though potentially less deadly. Yeah. So, okay, there were a bunch of global health emergencies during the Obama administration. There was bird flu and then, you know, Ebola was, I think, probably the most well-known one. I think that the administration at the time learned a lot from the response to the Ebola outbreak. But I'm worried that Trump rolled back or tried to roll back a lot of that work. So, for example, his first budget called for a 17% cut in the CDC budget. I believe he signed a bill into law that cut $750 million from the prevent and public health fund. How worried are you? about our preparedness right now? I'll be honest. So our public health infrastructure is strong, and I think that's really important. I do think, however, that these kinds of cuts take us down a slippery slope

that could be very dangerous. And we don't ever really know how much we need our public health infrastructure until it's too late. The hard part about being, and I was a health commissioner for the city of Detroit, and the hard part about public health is that you wanted to be ready,

in the moments you don't think you're going to need it, right? Nobody's ever planning for the next outbreak. You have the benefit of not worrying about it happening until, of course, it happens, and then you figure out that those people, those jobs, those, that infrastructure that you cut, were mission critical for just this kind of thing. And so, you know, going out and cutting public health budgets because they're not glitzy, that's the kind of thing that they do in China, right? That's not the kind of thing that we do in the United States, because in this society we've made a decision that we are invested in our government functioning effectively, not just looking like it functions effectively. So I worry that, you know, maybe not this epidemic, but potentially

one down the line over time, those consistent cuts to public health budgets, they take a tool. And we don't know when we're going to have the next Ebola outbreak. And we don't know what the next outbreak is coming, but we do know that these are becoming more and more likely, given the impact of climate change. And we do know that they're becoming more and more global. So something happening in sub-Saharan Africa or happening in East Asia, that becomes an American problem quickly simply because of the nature of globalization. And so we have to be more ready, not less ready, than we have been in the past.

And we've got to be building our public health infrastructure and capacity. And the last point I'll make something that I think you touch on so well in this podcast, is that, you know, if we want to continue to be leaders in the world, then we have to be leaders in the world. And that means that oftentimes we're brought in to solve problems even beyond our borders. Unfortunately, you know, we've seen this sort of American adventurism when it comes to potentially picking wars in places like Iran, whereas when we actually can do the world a public good benefit by investing in our public health response, people like Donald Trump want to cut those budgets. And so we're not investing in the right places and we can do a lot better. Agreed. You mentioned

at the top that global warming is exacerbating the problem and leading to more of these types of outbreaks. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Sure. So, you know, think a little bit about the wildfires in Australia. What's happened is that a lot of wildlife escaping these wildfires has come in contact with people in ways that traditionally we don't see very often. We know that animals carry diseases just like humans carry diseases, and they carry different diseases. And most of the time, their diseases can't affect us and vice versa. But there are always some that can. Think about the bird flu or the swine flu. Those are diseases that are endemic common in animals that can jump over and affect humans. And sometimes those diseases are even worse in humans

than they are in animals. And so as we're getting more intermixing between wildlife and people, because of the consequences of climate change, just like the wildfires we saw in Australia, the probability that one of those viruses hops over and is extremely serious, extremely deadly, and extremely contagious in humanity is just higher. And so we've got to be on alert around what the consequences that are. And at the same time, of course, be working to save our globe by addressing climate change in the first place. And so we forget sometimes that these issues are so related. But, you know, any time that you have a circumstance where we're not living as we've lived in the past because of the changing climate and the changing globe, that's a risk factor for people.

So if you were coordinating the response right now sitting in the situation room, what would you be telling the administration to do? Yeah, I'd be doing a couple of things. I think, number one, we have a pretty incredible United States Public Health Service. and I would be deploying that public health service abroad in Wuhan, certainly, working with the local officials there to be able to increase their capacity for contract tracing because the best thing we can do is limit the contagion at its source, which right now, of course, the epicenter is in Wuhan. The second thing I'd be doing is just like the administration and local governments are doing right now,

which is testing people coming from the affected parts of the world. Third, I would be working with vaccine manufacturers to start working on a vaccine that we, you know, it's called crashing, but they would crash it into service, getting it out there to get folks vaccinated who may have been exposed. And then constantly be working on the antiviral research that we need to be able to treat this disease. Also, we need to be able to invest in medical services there. Oftentimes, I think we forget that, you know, disease anywhere is increasing the risk of disease everywhere. And right now, one of the big challenges that they have in China is that there's not a strong primary care

infrastructure. And so making sure that folks out there, you know, because we care about our humanitarian and ends because folks are our equals in humanity and we want to support them is making sure that we are moving medical infrastructure out there to be able to take care of people and support them to heal. Right now, there is no treatment for the virus itself, but, you know, if you can support somebody with good medical care, the probability of survival is a lot higher. And so I think we have responsibility for that. But I would say let's tackle it at the source. Let's make sure we have both a vaccine and a medication. Let's increase our capacity for providing providing health care abroad, and let's make sure that we are testing anybody who's coming

into our country from the affected area, who may have any of these symptoms and signs and potentially quarantining them for some time to make sure that they're not spreading it on the home front. Good policy advice. Last question for you. So you mentioned that people who are worried should get a flu shot. Is there anything else you would suggest that people do? I imagine there's some people right now who are thinking, oh, I don't want to fly, I don't want to go to crowded places, are they overreacting? How do you think about this at the moment? Well, you know, I think in the context of the kind of news that we're seeing, it's alarming. And, you know, people are justified to be worried. I would say that the number of cases in the

United States has been very, very low. I think officials are doing a great job, making sure that, you know, person to person spread in the United States is exceedingly limited. But I would certainly say anybody who has visited the affected area in Wuhan, that, you know, they keep themselves away from other people, that they check in if they have any signs of a virulness, which, you know, are sniffles or a fever or body pain. And I would say that, you know, as the CDC's just recommended, avoid flying to the affected area right now. But for most of us, the high probability is that we're not going to be affected by this. Thankfully, because we have a strong public health infrastructure in this country, and we've

got to keep it strong. But it is alarming, and whenever you hear about a contagion like this, it's alarming, and people are right to be a bit worried. And if, you know, they want to protect themselves by making sure that, you know, you're doing the basic things you protect yourself to protect yourself from the cold or flu in the first place, making sure that you're using hand sanitizer, you know, coughing or sneezing into your elbow, you know, potentially wearing a face mask if you're feeling any symptoms or you're worried about getting sick. Those are all perfectly justifiable things to do. And even

if they're not going to protect you from coronavirus, they will protect you from a colder flu, which is a good thing anyway. Yeah, agreed. Great advice. Abdul, thank you so much for walking me through this. I was a little freaked out. By the way, I should say, America Dissected goes through a whole host of medical issues to strip out the hysteria that you sometimes see in the media and talk about them in a thoughtful way. So everyone should check out the show. It's fantastic and great talking to you. Tommy, thank you for covering this and thanks always for a great show. Positive the World is a product of crooked media. The senior producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nara Malconian, and Milo Kim, who film and share these interviews on video each week.