Pod Save the World - Trump lost, the world won

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

Tommy and Ben talk about President-elect Biden’s win, Trump’s refusal to start the transition, how world leaders reacted and who Biden should talk with first, why British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a shapeshifting creep, some bizarre 11th hour Trump admin personnel moves and weapons sales, good news for science, civil war in Ethiopia, a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iran and elections in Burma. Then former Mexican Ambassador to the US Arturo Sarukhan talks to Ben about the future of US-Mexico relations under a Biden administration.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And Ben, Joe Biden is the president elect of the United States, no matter how mad it makes Donald Trump. Man, that's nice to say out loud. Yeah, it feels really good. I have to say the finality of the call, you know, even though we all knew that was the outcome, felt even better than I thought. Yeah, we saw each other for about an hour on Saturday. I have not felt that good in four years. It was a sense of relief that was just unimaginably great. I was watching TV. The call came suddenly. I was shocked by it. And then after a little while, I finally was like, I'm driving to a liquor store and buying all the champagne I can find. And there was this dude sort of like, he had like an African accent on the corner of the street,

like hyping everybody up on Santa Monica. So I just like bought an extra bottle, handed it to him on the way out. It was like total, total irrational exuberance. But it was maybe the best day I've ever had. I also really enjoyed watching you just like mowing down MSNBC hits that morning. Yeah, no, I've never been happier to go on MSNBC. And it was like a giant weight, a crushing weight was lifted off my shoulders. I didn't realize how much the Trump presidency was like a physical presence in my life from Election Day 2016 until it was called. And I'd just say I mentored this to you.

Like I got some amazing text, DMs, emails from people and other. countries just just as emotional as we were. I mean, it was, it was really, you know, it's really nice that even though Americans standing around the world has kind of collapsed, there's still something that people care about. Like, they watched our election so closely. And that, that was kind of inspiring that as badly as we'd mess things up in this country that people still want us to do better, you know? Yeah, for sure. It was a huge sigh of relief that was global. So we've got a lot of great stuff to cover today. We are going to start with some of this international reaction that you mentioned, Ben, like foreign leader statements, Joe Biden's calls to foreign leaders. Well, a little bit of a

dust up I helped create in the UK. We'll talk about some of these weird personnel moves on the way out by the Trump administration, along with some disgusting weapon sales. We're going to get into a little bit about who will staff the Biden administration. Lots of fun stuff to talk about there. There's a section I made that's just called Good News for Science. I figured we could use some good news. We'll talk more about Ethiopia where there's this scary civil war happening, seemingly some resolution between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the Nogorno-Karabakh region. Iran and sanctions and the future of the JCPOA. And there was a big election in Burma. And then, Ben, you did our interview today. Can you tell the folks all the exciting stuff they should stick around to here after the break?

Yeah, well, you know, we haven't talked as much as we probably should about Mexico and Latin American general, and given how much Mexico has been central to the Trump presidencies from the time he came down the escalator, we had a great opportunity to speak to a former ambassador to the United States from Mexico about why President Lopez-Obrador of Mexico is one of the only leaders to not congratulate Joe Biden yet, and what is going to change in U.S.-Mexico relations and kind of what the expectations are in Latin America around a Biden presidency. That's so interesting. I mean, obviously, Mexico is our literal neighbor.

it's such an important relationship. And the fact that he is sort of a leftist nationalist hasn't weighed in yet. It's interesting. There's probably some very specific personal reasons for him as to why, but I'm really looking forward to hearing that. Yeah, I know. Arturo Saurikon, the ambassador, really broke that down and told me, you know, gave me a very good explanation that I hadn't thought of.

So people should stick around and hear the interview. All right, cool. So we'll talk about the transition in a second. But before we get there, Ben, I just want to make sure you saw there were some reports of the internal squabbling and bloodletting among various Trump administration officials. And some people are mad at Jared Kushner because they think he was too focused on his foreign policy portfolio and didn't spend enough time on the campaign. So I guess we have the historic Abraham Accords to thank for Joe Biden being president.

So that was a fun one, some fun spent. Yeah, because he was so effectively managing foreign policy that he couldn't effectively run the Trump campaign. Exactly. It did assign a degree of competence to Jared Kushner and wishing that he had been more engaged. Not sure that would have tipped the outcome, you know. No, I'm not either. But, you know, I am sort of grateful now that it's over that Trump did some weird things on foreign policy, that he killed some sacred cows,

because I hope that will make the Biden administration think that they have even more flexibility than they might otherwise have had. But let's get to the transition news because, you know, some listeners may have noticed that Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge that he lost. But before we get too alarmed, you know, the more we read about it, the more we see what he's doing. Look, I've no doubt that he would keep power if he could. But it does seem like their legal challenge is designed to stroke his ego. It's designed to raise money to retire the Trump campaign's massive campaign debt. It's designed to fire up base voters in Georgia. But there are real world implications for refusing to start the transition because the GSA or General Services Administration, the most Orwellian,

slash boringly named agency hasn't formally recognized Biden as the incoming president-elect. So that means that Biden doesn't have access to facilities. He doesn't have access to a budget for his transition team. And for foreign policy purposes, it means Biden can't get the presidential daily briefing or PDB. It means his team doesn't have access to classified information. They can't meet with the intelligence agency heads. And that's not just about like getting briefed on the state of ISIS, right?

It's about understanding the intel budget. It's about figuring out what classified covert action programs are ongoing, what ones you want to stop, et cetera, et cetera. So Biden also doesn't have the State Department to help him when it comes to managing incoming foreign leader calls, which is a big deal. Ben, I didn't realize until this morning that the 9-11 Commission report specifically noted that Bush didn't have his full national security team up and running until at least six months after he took office, which I imagine was in part because of the delay thanks to the recount in Florida. So this is serious stuff. We were both on the transition in 2008 and 9. It was not my favorite period of time working for Barack Obama. But like, what's your memory of how the foreign policy side of things worked?

Yeah. So it's interesting because, you know, I remember going to work at a very boring GSA facility and having a GSA supplied email address. But, you know, a lot happens in the transition. Personnel decisions are getting made, obviously. So you're hiring and staffing the guy. government, but also there are these landing teams, right? Groups of people who are sent into agencies, the State Department, the Defense Department, the intelligence community, to literally sit and work

in those agencies to kind of get the lay of the land, to scout out what positions need to be filled, but also to get kind of briefed up on the state of play. And I remember getting briefings in the transition about the situation in Gaza. There was a war at the time between Israel and Moss about the terrorist tax that were taking place in India that took place in Mumbai. So you're both staffing, but you're also just trying to get up to speed with classified information so that when you step in on January 20th, like you know what the hell is going on in the world. I think Tom Donnellin did it for state, right? And then he went on to be deputy national security advisor and national security advisors. So these are like big important senior people in your administration to be. Yes. And this is

how they're kind of getting prepared. They're getting a running start heading into January 20th. And you're also, as you mentioned, handling this huge volume of incoming calls from foreign leaders who want to touch base and start up a relationship or resume a relationship with the president-elect. So, you know, as Joe Biden said today, he was right to kind of say, look, we're going to go about our work, we're going to do our business. I have no doubt, for instance, that they're going to be able to map out what positions they need to fill and who they want to hire. But what they're not going to be able to do if they don't get a cooperation is get into these agencies and see what's going on and read up on the documents. and, you know, they're going to be denied the momentum that they're going to want to be hitting the ground running on January 20th. And that is harmful to national security, particularly in a pandemic when there's a lot, I'm sure that they'd like to learn about what the pandemic

responses and international pandemic responses, never mind all the foreign policy issues and national security issues in place. So this is just, it's petty. It's not going to work, but it does damage the nation and the national interest. It's basically just trying to like, throw wrenches into the gears of the people who will be running the government on January 20th. They will be doing that, you know? And also racist questions I know we'll get into about what are the Trump people going to be doing over the next couple months? Because that's equally alarming. Yeah. So speaking of petty, speaking of state, let's pause for a second just to talk about disgraced, corrupt, belligerent, outgoing Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who said today,

quote, there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration. Now, The Trump sycophants are saying what they always say about this stuff. Oh, he was making a joke. He was trolling, blah, blah, blah, calm down lips. But the Secretary of State undercutting the U.S. history of a peaceful transition of power is a huge deal. It is truly disgraceful. It was not seen as a joke internationally. It was reported straight by a lot of outlets. And it was just infuriating. He's just the worst person until the bitter, bitter end. Well, yeah, the joke thing doesn't make any sense because it's like, what's the joke? Is he acknowledging Trump lost? I don't think he is. I think to your point, the State Department is literally the government agency that is supposed to be totally separate from politics. Mike Pompeo has already screwed that up. But it's also the government agency that the world is accustomed to commenting on their elections. The State Department is usually the voice that's issuing statements calling out irregularities in other countries, calling on other countries to conduct peaceful transfers. of power, calling on sanctions to be issued in places like Belarus where leaders refuse to give up power. He, on the way out, is torching the credibility of the State Department as he has ever since he's been there. And like, what for? To own the libs so that we, like, you know, he can laugh at us getting upset about it. I mean, the only, this guy's supposed to be some big intellectual, and the only organizing principle he seems to have is, is like, owning the libs in this kind

juvenile stupid way. And he's just kind of confirming that he will go down as the single worst secretary of state in the history of the United States of America. And if he thinks that this somehow helps him run for president someday, giving a break. Mike Pompeo is not going to be president of anything, you know? I mean, like he's just going to be this washed up has been who squandered his potential chance to do something constructive because he couldn't stop being hyper-political in his years of secretary of state. Yeah, he is just the absolute worst. So let's talk about these foreign leader statements because it was fascinating to watch foreign leaders fall all over themselves to congratulate President-elect Biden while Trump is still thrashing about making these baseless accusations of voter

fraud and the Republican parties just followed him. So we quickly saw Biden get congratulated by the UK, Canada, France, Germany, India, and South Korea. The Japanese, Israelis, and Iranians waited until Sunday, as did Victor Orban of Hungary, if you were wondering where the fascists are in this whole thing. Turkey congratulated. Biden on Tuesday morning. As of now, I don't believe we have heard from the Russians, the Chinese, the Brazilians, and then you'll talk about this later in the show, Mexico. Ben, what did you make of who released statements who didn't? It did seem like these guys were all making a cost-benefit analysis about the risk of pissing off Biden or the risk of pissing off Trump, and the vast majority

decided they need Biden more, understandably. So my favorite one is in about a nanosecond from the call Angela Merkel, which is you to stafent. Congratulations with an exclamation mark is the first sentence. And I think we should

just pause to pay tribute to the fact that Angela Merkel will outlasts Donald Trump in office. I love that. I know. Which is just so wonderful

given that she's already been there over a decade, given how much Trump heaps going on her, and frankly, given the fact that she ran for another

term as Chancellor of Germany in part because she was worried about Trump's election as U.S. President. I think you saw from all of our Democratic allies,

not just Angela Merkel, but Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron and others just you could feel the relief in the statements. I think these other guys... Bell's ringing in Paris. Yeah, yeah, bells ringing in Paris, right?

This is kind of explosion of cathartic joy like we all felt. And I think with the other ones, look, I mean, you know, if you're Victor Orban and you endorsed literally Donald Trump and put all your eggs in that basket, like, you're worried, you know, like the U.S., it's not that we're going to like, you know, attack Hungary, but it is that we're going to stand up for democracy again, and you made the wrong bet. I think some of these other people like Putin, you know, and Orban, for that matter, they know they're already on the wrong side of Joe Biden. So it's not like issuing a congratulatory statement was going to somehow make up amends for, you know, the things that Biden administration

is going to be upset about whether it's Russian interference or whether it's autocratic behavior. I think the other thing that's notable, though, is Trump really is running a bit of an authoritarian playbook here to deny the results of a democratic election. Some of these leaders may want to do that themselves. Some of them have already done in the past. Some of them may want to do it in the future. So when you hear some of these leaders talk about, well, all the ballots need to be counted and litigation needs to go forward and there could have been fraud, you know, that's some of their own ass covering too, because maybe in the next Hungarian election, you know, Victor Orban is going to make similar claims about the vote total. So, you know, it's a lot of factors, but I think it speaks for

itself, like the good guys and women are congratulating Vice President Biden, President-elect Biden. It's generally the creepiest authoritarian types who are not. Yeah, Jacinda was also quick out of the gate from New Zealand. But speaking of leaders who made bad bets. So I accidentally made a little news on Saturday. When Boris Johnson tweeted out his congratulations to Joe Biden, I quote tweeted it and I called Boris a shape-shifting creep and said that we will never forget his racist comments about Obama or is slavish devotion to Trump.

So soon after, it was a trending topic on UK Twitter. Oops, Ben, you made the point to me that I now need to remember that, you know, people probably don't just perceive us as like washed up Obama has been. Like, perceived us as maybe people that could be Biden needs or something. So, you know, responsibility is important. Now, I didn't intend for it to make news. I didn't intend to suggest I was speaking for Joe Biden because I don't, but I stand by every single word of it.

So to remind folks, Boris Johnson wrote an op. bad suggesting that Barack Obama removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office because he had part Kenyan ancestral dislike of the British Empire. Ah yes, Boris. How dare one dislike colonialism, right? Like everybody, what continent doesn't want to be controlled and looted from afar? But my dumb tweet does underscore a serious political problem for Boris Johnson because Trump was a champion of Brexit, right? He called himself Mr. Brexit. Biden opposes Brexit. Additionally, Biden cares deeply about preserving the Good Friday Agreement, keeping peace in Northern Ireland, which Brexit could put at risk.

Boris also needs to cut a trade deal with the U.S. So I don't know, like, everyone always talks about the special relationship between the U.S. and the UK. What do you think the, what do you think the status is of the special relationship? How much trouble do you think Boris is with this new political reality? Well, look, I think, first of all, what's funny about this is we were talking about it, like, you called Boris Johnson a shapeshifter on the last podcast. and I raised that op-ed and complained about it. It goes to show that Twitter matters somehow in this media universe a lot more than podcasts, even though we have a lot of world those out there.

I think that, look, at the end of the day, there's two problems for Boris Johnson. I actually don't think that most of the incoming Biden people, certainly Joe Biden himself or can I be looking to get revenge on Boris Johnson. No. But I think he does have a substantive problem and a political problem. The substantive problem is, in these Brexit negotiations, the most sensitive issue. is Northern Ireland. And whether or not some of the things that Boris Johnson wants to do that have been found to be in violation of international law and violation of the way that that

border is viewed by the EU and violation of agreements had been made, that the Democratic Party generally, and Joe Biden specifically, care a lot about the Good Friday Accords and care a lot about Northern Ireland. And Donald Trump could care less about it and was a political ally of Boris Johnson's and a huge supporter of Brexit. And so substantively at a time when he's going to be incensive negotiations with the European Union on his biggest priority, he is now going to have a U.S. administration that is going to look very negatively at any efforts to mess around with what is the status quo with Northern Ireland. And so his biggest job that he was already having a hard time with in terms of Brexit just got harder because you're going to have a U.S.

government that is going to be focused on this in a way that Trump wasn't. And it's going to frankly take positions that are aligned most likely with the positions that we've seen. the European Union take. I think the political problem, it's less the personal piece of it, although, you know, some people have long memories. I certainly do, but not that I'm going to be the president-elector. But it's that Boris is a part of this trend, right? I mean, everybody equated Brexit and Trump as one trend, right? And Joe Biden's election seems to suggest that the political wins in the West and globally, hopefully knock on wood, are shifting against this brand of kind of thuggish right-wing nationalist populism, whatever you want to call it.

And that could be a problem for him because I think if Trump had won, it would have been a sense of like, no, no, the equilibrium has shifted. And the future is these guys like Boris Johnson and Trump and Viktor Orban and Erdog and the rest of them. But I think Biden's victory, and you saw this in celebrations around the world, part of what people were so hopeful about is, well, maybe the next one up is another one of these right-wing nationalist. And so that's where he has a political challenge in the sense of the political winds shifting globally, even as he also has this problem with Northern Ireland now.

Yeah. I mean, look, the U.S. U.S. U.S. U.K. relationship will endure and will be incredibly close because of shared history, shared values, right? Boris Johnson is a shape-shifting creep. He made a huge bet on Trump, and it's going to make his life a lot harder. The other guys who really abet the farm on Trump are B.B. Netanyahu in Israel and Vladimir Putin and, you know, Turkey, but we'll see how this cuts for them. The other thing that's been interesting, Ben, is like the world closely watches who the president-elect talks to and when and what the order was, right? Like, there's a lot of jockeying to get that first call, the first visit, the first state visit. I was rereading some clips from our transition, and I forgot that Bush hosted an emergency

G20 meeting in Washington shortly after the election and that Obama had to decline to go, declined to meet with world leaders who were visiting because he wanted to respect the principle of there being one president at a time. So it can be challenging to navigate these relationships and these choppy waters, even when you don't have a president who is baselessly accusing you of stealing the election and committing voter fraud. Some examples of that, like in 93, the Canadians got pissed because Clinton met with the Mexican government first. The Canadians got pissed again at Bush for traveling to Mexico before Canada. Trump created a bunch of issues during his transition by seemingly just like dialing leaders at random. So the Biden folks will be thinking long and hard

about who to talk to. On Monday, Biden talked with Justin Trudeau at Canada. On Tuesday, he talked with Boris Johnson in the UK, so clearly things are fine. If you were planning this, Ben, like, how would you approach it? Like, who do you have Biden talk to? And how do you think you should structure a communications narrative around those calls, right? Like, do you call NATO allies and reaffirm the alliance? You put out statements about shared commitment to climate change as a way to signal you know you're getting back into Paris or you know how much do you worry about the principle of respecting one president at a time and not crossing that line yeah so first of all on who you speak to i do think you start with our democratic allies small de-democratic allies

and so it's only natural that he'd be talking to and he already has spoken to justin chudeau and emmanuel mccrone and boris johnson you kind of work your way through the allies and and and then ultimately you work away with the other countries. You certainly want to talk to people, you know, I think in Latin America, this is, you know, our hemisphere. And so that's the order that you go in. And these are mainly just to kind of strike up personal relationships or resume personal relationships, say a few words to each other about, you know, how you're looking forward to working together. These are not deeply substantive calls. But they're important, again, in resuming those personal relationships, but also in sending a message, you know, it sends a message if you are

calling all of our NATO allies. You know, I think he should. All of our Asian allies, I think he should. You know, especially after a period of time when allies were not valued, showing that that's kind of first priority, I think, is important. I think the substantive issue is much trickier this time. And we've talked about this before. But the Trump people are going to be wanting to construct a kind of what aboutism narrative

around what happened to Mike Flynn. And so there was even I got caught up. Have you noticed that? Yeah, well, I got caught up. I went on TV yesterday. I had seen the Justin Trudeau tweet saying, you know, we talked about, talked to, you know, President like Biden, talked about climate change, looking forward to working together. And all I said is innocuously that, well, you know, their foreign leaders are already calling Joe Biden to talk about how they're going

to work together. And literally today in congressional hearings, like Republicans are like, isn't this the same thing, and Ben Rhodes doing the same thing that Mike Flynn did? They're going to be desperate to, quote, unquote, catch, you know, the Biden administration undermining the principle of one president at a time. Let's be very clear, first of all about the distinction. There were all kinds of contacts between the Trump administration and foreign officials that did not attract negative attention, even if we didn't necessarily like what he was saying, right? There was a very weird call that Trump made, I remember, to the president of Taiwan that seemed to catch everybody off guard. Freaked out the Chinese. Freaked out the Chinese. And that was all fine. What Mike Flynn did is, you know, he lied about a call

to the Russian ambassador to the FBI. That's why he got in trouble. He lied. If nothing was wrong, he shouldn't have lied about it. But I do think, look, that's the political reality. And I know for a fact that the Biden campaign was very scrupulous to not have any contacts with foreign governments, which is highly unusual. Usually campaigns have, you know, contacts or meetings or, you know, informal contacts with foreign ambassadors. They went that extra mile because they didn't want to kind of open the door for this kind of nonsense. But I do think it's going to tie their hands further, that they're not going to really be able to engage in much substantive interaction with any foreign governments, because I think they are being pretty scrupulous about this.

So, you know, at a minimum, you do what you can do, which is these, you know, top-level contacts. There may be congratulatory calls as people get nominated for cabinet positions. We'll see. But, you know, the real work does begin January 20th. And so the question now is priority one is getting your people hired and in place and figuring out what your game plan is. And part of what they can do is figure out, okay, if we're waiting until January 20th to really light up these relationships to have an action plan, what's going to happen on Gen 20th. You know, who's Biden going to call then, who's incoming Secretary of State going to call, who's your incoming national security advisor going to call, given the cabinet appointments aren't confirmed yet. So there's a lot of work to be done here. Yeah.

So let's talk about some weird moves that Trump is making with his personnel before we get the Biden's personnel. Because on Monday, Trump fired his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, via a tweet where he said he was terminated. There have been reports and rumors swirling for a while that Esper was going to resign or get the acts. But I think that's kind of caught people by surprise anyway because it was a tweet. Trump said that Christopher Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is going to be the acting secretary. That's weird because legally it's supposed to go to the deputy secretary, so I'm not sure how they're going to try to get around that. Also on Monday, we learned that Trump had made a guy named Michael Ellis, the former chief counsel to Devin Nunes to be the top lawyer at the NSA. The NSA does all the signals, intelligence, spying.

Ellis has been the senior director for intelligence at the NSC. Back in the day, he was the goober who showed Devin Nunes documents on that late night run to the White House that led to his baseless idiotic lie. Obama spite on Trump Tower. And he's also the guy, I think, who tried to hide the transcripts of Trump's call to the president of Ukraine on the high side code word level server. So seems sketchy. We also learned the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy resigned on Tuesday morning. That allows the ascent of a nut job named Anthony Tata to that position who had been rebuffed

by Congress. Another former Nunes staffer named Cash Patel was installed as the DOD chief of staff. that guy is bad news for a variety of reasons. There's all these rumors that Trump might act senior leaders at the FBI and the CIA. So I don't know that. I've been stressing about this a lot. I've been wondering what the play is here, like what programs could the NSA authorize, you know, in these last days. What information are they declassifying in a political way like Rick Grinnell did during

his brief and disgraceful tenure as DNI? What did you make of all this weird jockey? at the end? So I think there's alarming scenarios and then they're more likely scenarios, right? And the alarming scenarios are, first of all, if there is some international crisis in the next two months, which sure may be, like the U.S. government, including our national security agencies, is going to be run by a bunch of hyper-political lunatics. And that's just not a good thing. Seems bad. I think there's a less likely scenario that they might try to do something aggressive, you know, maybe not start a war, but maybe launched like, you know, cyber attacks on Iran or something that is

destabilizing, that'd be problematic. But I think the most likely scenario is that this is one last chance to try to cede a sense of scandal and a cloud of scandal around an incoming Biden administration while also just kind of grifting on the way out the door. And the grifting will just be like, are there contracts that can be signed? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are there arms deals that can be done that you can profit on the back end? But I want to focus, yeah, I want to focus on the scandal point, though, which is, this is all fake, of course, right? But they, will want to selectively declassified, like, take Cash Patel. He was the guy who was Devin Nunes's top staffer on the House Intelligence Committee who concocted the whole unmasking narrative

together with Trump officials. So he went and, you know, made up this phony narrative that unmasking had been done, created a kind of cloud around it that led to kind of two years of investigation, even more than that. And finally, they had to say there was nothing here. I think what they're going to want to do is declassify things in the most damaging appearance of ways to, you know, about whatever their hobby horse scandals are about Joe Biden and launder that into the Republican Senate and try to just start the scandal snowball going so that Lindsey Graham and all these other people, if they control the Senate, have two years of chum to work with, right? That's what this is about, you know?

And it's all BS, by the way. Like, there's nothing there. Like, how many colonoscopies can we have of like Hunter Biden here, you know? But this is the kind of garbage that they're going to be doing. That suggests to me, first of all, that the Senate control matters. You know, there's so many reasons why people should support the two Democrats in Georgia, who are excellent candidates to begin with, chiefly Joe Biden's agenda. But a secondary concern is, if you have a Republican Senate,

there's going to be two years of this complete and utter fucking garbage, seated by all these Trumpies on the way out. Like, it's just going to be a distraction. and it's just going to make it harder to govern. And it's just going to be a pain in the ass to live through, right, for the people who are trying to do really hard jobs in the government. So that's a concern. I think the other point is these agencies were already broken.

There are already been purges in the front offices of these agencies. When the Biden people come in, they've got to get their arms around this. You know, like they'll be lucky if, like, the computers aren't nailed down because these people will walk out with them. But, I mean, it does show that these people have to be out the door on January 24. first. Like, you can't let these saboteurs hang around in the government after January 20th. There's also concern about them destroying documents that are supposed to be preserved, maybe at the White House under the Presidential Records Act or by agencies. I saw Adam Schiff put out a statement today. I mean, I could see this going a lot of bad ways.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, part of it is to try to see Joe Biden scandals, but another part of it is, frankly, to just, you know, yeah, it's going to be like that scene in Argo where they're like trying, you know, you know, frenetically to shred all the papers in the Iranian embassy before it's taken over? Like, that's probably going to happen at DoD when Cash Patel gets over there. Stephen Miller and Jared, like, try to shred their WhatsApp. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about a potential for grift, uh, thanks to the Abraham Accords.

So, uh, late Tuesday night, John Hudson at the Washington Post tweeted the following. So the Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates. 50 F-35s, 18 MQ9 reapers, those are drones with munitions, a $10 billion munitions package, including thousands of MK82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles, and more per source. So, Ben, this is something we have talked about all along the Abraham Accords, which saw normalization between Israel and the UAE and Israel and Bahrain and then possibly Israel and Sudan. It did some good things, right?

It's great that Israeli citizens can travel to those places with their, passports or catch a direct flight or call there directly. But they were always, setting aside the fact that these were deals between autocrats, there were always strings attached in the form of these arms sales, which are controversial, we know, because Netanyahu lied about the F-35 piece of it, right? He told his, the Israeli public that the UAE wasn't going to get the F-35 to help preserve Israel's qualitative military edge in the region. But, you know, so I got in a little bit of a dispute with some people online this morning where, like, you don't understand the value

of this deal for Israeli citizens. And, like, again, I stipulate that, but like, do I think that it's worth 50 F-35? Do I think it's worth having 18 MQ9 Reaper drones circling around Yemen, like taking out targets and potentially civilians? I mean, it is, that is a lot, a lot of weapons. It was pretty shocking, actually, the size of it.

Yeah, it doesn't feel like a peace agreement. No, these kind of weapons are involved. it didn't end a war and it sold a lot of weapons to a country, the UE that has used them to kill civilians in Yemen. I mean, there's a number of concerns here. But the first thing I'd say at the Aza, Tommy, is if this is so innocuous, why did they wait until a week after the election to announce it? The Abraham Accords were agreed to several weeks ago. They could have, if this is all to the good, why did they feel they had to hide this from people until after the election, right? That tells you everything you need to know about this.

And there's so many problems. I mean, one is, yeah, take the armed drones, right? Like, we're providing this to a country, the UAE, that has showed no regard to civilian life in terms of the conduct of operations in Yemen over the last few years. What are they going to do with those armed drones? Take the F-35s. These are some of the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, right? And we're just selling, you know, dozens of them to the UAE. And yeah, if you are an Israel supporter, You know, part of the concern that people have had is not only the fact that Arab governments have fought wars with Israel in the past, but, you know, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, those at 35s will still be incredibly sophisticated weapons, and we don't know who's going to be in charge in the UAE or in Saudi Arabia or what have you. So it does put at risk Israel's military advantage, which is supposed to be a goal of people who are, you know, pro-Israel supporters here in the United States. So that's another concern. I think the other concern I have, though, is just corruption. Something has never smelled right to me about this, about any of this,

about the fact that Jared was the conduit to MBS in Saudi Arabia and to Muhammad bin Zaid in the U.E, two incredibly wealthy individuals sitting on top of limitless wealth, that he looked the other way on things like Jamal Khashoggi or the war in Yemen, that the deals around the Abraham Accords were with, you know, Bachrain and the U.E, the two closest Gulf states to Saudi Arabia. And the concern I have is Jared just used the research of the U.S. government to try to dump a ton of arms to these countries further legitimizing the direction that has been taken, the autocratic direction that's been taken since particularly Mahab bin Salman came to power in Saudi Arabia. What is Jared's payoff on the back end?

And I think, you know, I had a lot of friends, you know, dunking on Trump saying, oh, he's going to be in debt. I don't know. I have a suspicion that he's going to be made whole on the back end by these Gulf countries. I think people should look at that at the risk of corruption being involved here. And so BB got something important to Israelis. Not only did Trump, you know, the Gulf got all these weapons and kind of a validation of their rule. And, you know, what's in it on the back end for Jared?

I mean, obviously, they thought they might get a boost politically before the election. That did not happen. As you noted last week, 78% of American Jews voted. That's a very high percentage, even for Jewish American voters for Joe Biden. So there's a corruption risk here, too. But this is not, doesn't feel like a peace thing to celebrate. And don't clap back at me about how the 1979 Egypt, Israel, peace agreement included arms sales.

That one made peace. It eliminated the state of war. that existed for decades. Israel and Egypt withdrew forces from territory that they're currently occupying. Like they didn't eliminate a layover. They eliminated a war. Give me a break. It's completely, it's totally apples and oranges, right? When Camp David Accords were signed in the previous like, you know, 15 years or, you know, there had been multiple wars fought between neighbors, Egypt and the largest Arab country and a neighbor of Israel. These are countries that were not in any state of war with Israel.

We're already in the process, frankly, of developing diplomatic ties. And to get a pre-election win, they're just dumping tens of billions of dollars in weapons in the direction of the Gulf. And we haven't even mentioned the Palestinians, totally cut out in the cold from this thing. Yeah. And by the way, BB's approval rating has plummeted among American Jews. Jews. So, you know, another bad bet. Let's talk about the Biden personnel because there's all kinds of rumors getting floated and news reports. So I'm just going to name some of the names that are out there.

And the cool thing is that some have been on the show, some are our friends. But, you know, Tony Blinken, who we talked to you right before the election, being talked about for state or NSA. Ariel Haynes, who we worked with on the NSC's a brilliant lawyer who was a deputy national security advisor and worked at the CIA for a while is getting floated for an intel job, possibly CIA. Susan Rice could go to state. Michelle Flournoy is talked about for DOD. Chris Coons, U.S. Senators, also talked about at state. Bill Burns, who has been on the show, who was the number two at state, a career

Foreign Service officer, one of the nicest, most impressive human beings you will meet has been talked about as State Department or, you know, maybe a senior ambassador somewhere. Michael Morrell could go to CIA. Jay Johnson could be a DOD or an Attorney General person. Lisa Monaco has been. floated for the Department of Homeland Security. Mayor Pete is getting floated for US-UN, the ambassador of the United Nations. Our old boss, Tom Donnellin, has been mentioned as potentially ambassador to China. There's talk about John Kerry or maybe Jake Sullivan as climate czar. So,

Ben, I know this is sort of like, this is a little awkward for us. Like, we know all these people well. They're all like great people. They're all qualified in their own rights. And we're just reacting to like leaks and newspapers. I don't know shit about who they're actually thinking about choosing. But, you know, do you have a theory of the case, you know, that you might suggest to Joe Biden if you were advising him on how to pick his team and who might go where, or at least just sort of like how to think about it, I guess? Yeah. No, and you're right to, I mean, look, we should full disclosure, right? I mean, particularly among that list of people you gave, like Susan Rice, Tony Blinken, Avril Haynes and Lisa Monaco, I consider to be like very close friends.

So this will be tricky, right? But we will try to tell it to you completely straight. here. And I think what I would say is, look, these are people, yes, this is a very Obama heavy list of people that we've heard, essentially, rumored for these jobs. That shouldn't surprise people. It was the Obama Biden administration. And Joe Biden worked very closely with all these people and, you know, clearly saw things that he liked in a lot of those people. And frankly, he's going to have to hit the ground running in the middle of pandemic. You might want people at the heads of these agencies, you know, who know the machinery and have relationships around the world that are relatively current. You know, so it doesn't surprise me. We could go through

each of them and speak to their strengths. I do think that this is not the, this is a center-left group, not a progressive group. But it's not like the hard edge of the center-left. Like, trust me, there are much more hawkish people than the people. that we've discussed. I think these are pragmatic people. I mean, if I were to speak to the common characteristic of everyone we've talked about, they are very pragmatic, decent people who believe deeply in international cooperation, right? The basics. I do think part of what I would advise is make sure, though, that you're cultivating the next generation and you're bringing in progressives and you're bringing in people from diverse backgrounds. And you're bringing in people from diverse backgrounds.

and you're bringing in, frankly, people who weren't in the Obama administration. And you're bringing in gender and ethnic and racial diversity as well, which, by the way, is embedded in this list of people. It's a very diverse group of people, very focused on women in senior roles. So that's all to the good. But that's what I would argue is it makes complete sense, and I think is entirely appropriate that you would have a lot of Obama-Biden people, particularly at the beginning of a term, hitting that ground running. But one of the exciting opportunities for them is to make sure that the administration is filled out with younger voices, progressive voices, diverse voices. Yeah.

And I'd also just like think about what your priorities are, right? Like if I were to do a quick and dirty things, I'd like to see. Like I want the United States back in the Iran nuclear agreement. I want them to negotiate a follow on. I want full disclosure about Mohammed bin Salman's role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. And I would like that relationship right size. I would like us to get the hell out of Yemen and stop contributing to that horrific war. I would like us back in the Paris Climate Accords and aggressively negotiating a follow-on agreement.

So, you know, I guess I think all the people we talked about would be on board for that set of priorities. So I looked at that list and I was quite happy. And also like, to your point about the Obama administration being sort of heavily present in the Biden administration, I mean, if you worked on the NSC, you worked for Barack Obama and for Joe Biden, one, so they were his employees, too. Two, I mean, like a lot of these jobs, like the experience you need to have these jobs, you can kind of only get by being in government in some instances. So, like, I remember kind of being annoyed and surprised when there were a lot of Clinton

administration officials populating the Obama administration, but like they had done the gig before. Like, it really helps to have that lived experience. It just does. Well, and a lot of the, but when I talk about bringing in younger people, too. Like some of these people, like Avril, right, was, you know, relatively young, you know, new in the executive branch. And now she's potentially poised for like a potential cabinet level role. Like that's, that's where I think that's important that they have this pipeline. And there other things that they could do, I totally agree with you, the early things to watch, Iran deal,

the Saudi relationship, Jamal Khashoggi, the defense budget and the size of the defense budget. You know, there are going to be some interesting things to watch. But another thing is just how they organize themselves. So, take climate change. I felt like we were not properly organized in the Obama administration. You know, in the second term, we were much better organized in the sense that we set up essentially a parallel structure to deal with climate change of principles, committees, you know, not to use the jargon, you know, cabinet level meetings. But essentially, if climate change is going to be this existential priority, which it should be, you can't just have a situation like we had

where there's like a climate envoy at the State Department, you know, this needs to be. This needs to be embedded. What is the structure that signals the prioritization of climate change? How does that structure manifest? How does the State Department staff up and have more people dedicated to this? Do you have a bigger and a C component focused on climate change? Do you create a whole new freestanding thing in the White House that is just dedicated to harmonizing domestic and international efforts on climate change? So it's both going to be the priorities they set, and you listed a number of good ones. It's going to be like the tough calls they make on things like Iran out of the gate or Saudi Arabia. but it's also just going to be how do they set,

they're going to send a message, not just on who the people are, but just how they set up the government. And one of the things I've noticed, Tommy, it's been really interesting, is you remember for being in a transition, you start to repeat what are going to be your priorities. There's been this very disciplined repetition

from Biden and Harris about COVID, the economy, climate change, and racial justice. Like, clearly those are the four issues they see defining the Biden-Harris presidency. I think a similar exercise will soon, happen on foreign policy, I would assume. What are the things that they're going to be signaling? When they tick off the three, four, five foreign policy priorities, I'm very curious to know what those are. I hope that those are essentially, you know, democracy, small the democracy, climate change,

technology and disinformation issues. But, but, you know, we should, we should look closely for those signals. Yeah. All right, we're going to speed round these issues. We went a little long in transition, but it's super interesting. So this section is just called Good News for Science, Ben. First, Pfizer announced that in a clinical trial, their COVID-19 vaccine is apparently 90% effective. That is awesome. They could have 15 to 20 million doses by the end of the year. Additionally, researchers found a game-changing drug to prevent HIV and women by giving them a single injection every two months as opposed to a daily pill, which would just be a game changer because, according to the UN data, women and girls account for half of new HIV infections last year. So just a huge deal.

also the Biden administration is confirmed that they will reenter the WHO on day one. So a lot to celebrate there. And I also noticed that that Pfizer vaccine was developed. Now, I know Trump is trying to take credit for it, but it was developed by a Turkish German couple and husband and wife team. One of them was four when he moved from Turkey to Germany. His wife, I believe, was born to a Turkish doctor in Germany. So thank God for immigrants, one. And that's nice to see science, you know, getting its day here right after the election. Yeah. And there'll be a huge task in. coordinating the dissemination of the vaccine here in the U.S. and globally, we've talked about that. And I feel much more comfortable in the Biden team doing that than Trump in an equitable, smart, competent, thoughtful way. So that's good news. And yeah, I just want to, like, the fact that these are Germans of Turkish origin sends a great message in Europe that has had these identity issues around immigrants, around people from Muslim majority countries.

hey, what a great sign that all of our societies are enriched when we benefit from people from all over. Literally saving humanity. So we'll turn to Ethiopia. We talked a couple times now about the fighting happening in Ethiopia. Quick catch you up. Government forces declared war on rebel fighters in a small northern province called Tigray. Ostensibly, it was in response to attacks on Ethiopian soldiers. There's reports of at least 550 people killed so far.

Military officials on Monday said that Ethiopian. Air Force planes are, quote, pounding targets with precision. So you hate hearing rhetoric like that. I saw that Sudan has sent 6,000 troops to the border just to really, you know, put some more, you know, Tinder in this fire. The UN is warning of a potential humanitarian disaster. I've seen no sign of dialogue or peace talks. We're working with very little information here, Ben, but, you know, it does seem worrisome that the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, might view this as a chance to just fully take out his enemies in the region, topple their local leadership and kind of get something done he might have wanted to do for a long time. I've seen no public readouts

or calls or statements from the White House or from state. I'm not sure if you had. Again, though, like respecting kind of one president at a time here, can or should the Biden folks be doing anything? I mean, how do you view this? Yeah, I mean, I think that you're right that, you know, it's not the only calculation, but it's certainly possible that, you know, this is one of those instances where it's like, let's do the most difficult part of this while there's no attention. Because Donald Trump could give a shit about Ethiopia. You know, he probably couldn't find it on a map. So even if we have diplomats who are actively working this, those diplomats are going to be ignored if the president and secretary of state aren't personally invested, and particularly if they're

lame ducks. So I think you're right to raise the concern that they try to do the worst part of this in the next couple months. In terms of what can be done, you know, not much. I mean, if you, if you are respecting the principle of one president at a time, you know, I remember during our transition that Gaza war was happening and there was civilian casualties on the Palestinian side. And, you know, President Obama in one of his press conferences, you know, was asked about this. And he certainly spoke out about concerns about civilian casualties, but had to couch it in support for U.S. policy. You know, I think he went out of his way to say, like, look, I'm not going to contradict, you know, the policy of the U.S. government. And frankly, we had a cooperative

transition in the sense that we were getting briefed on the war in Gaza at the time. So, you know, I think, I think they can send messages. They can speak broadly about, you know, the interest in accountability or the interest in protecting civilian life and supporting peaceful dialogue and de-escalation, but practically speaking, there's very little you can do until January 20th. Yeah, it's unfortunate. Speaking of sort of civil wars here, we're fighting at least. We've talked a bunch of times about the intense fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the Nagorno-Karabakh region. It's a disputed territory. It's technically part of Azerbaijan, but in practice has been controlled by Armenian-linked separatist forces. After about six weeks of fighting, the two sides signed a peace deal today,

along with Russian President Vladimir Putin that will result in considerable territorial gains by Azerbaijan and just really a major change in the situation on the ground as it existed for what, you know, 28 some odd years. Protesters in Armenia were so pissed off by this outcome that they stormed the parliament building, physically assaulted the speaker and according to BBC, looted the prime minister's office. Ben, not to go all like Tom Friedman on you here, but I had an Armenian Uber driver the other day who was talking about this conflict in really existential terms. He was citing the Armenian genocide. He took a really unfortunate detail. tour into how the Israelis, he said, were funding Azerbaijan. I don't think that's remotely true,

but it seems like the kind of conspiracy theory you might hear. They're understandably horrified by reports that, you know, Turkey had dispatched Islamic extremist fighters from Syria to do their dirty work. There's also reports today that a Russian helicopter was shot down and that Russian forces were killed. I don't know, but what did you make of this peace agreement in this outcome? It's just sort of inevitable or what should we think? Well, I mean, first of all, you know, and the Israel stuff, yeah, you shouldn't overstate the Israeli rule here. They did, what he's probably referring to is they sold some weapons to the Azeris over the years, but the Turks are above all, the chief supplier of support to the Azeris. I think what struck me the most was the

complete absence of the United States or the European Union from this process. Right. Normally, that's those of the players are the US, the EU, Russia, and Turkey. This was a Russia, Turkey deal. Okay. And, and, you know, that tells you a lot about how absent America is from diplomacy and all these conflicts. And the fact that the EU has absent is probably has something to do with us being absent. This is like 19th century stuff, like Russia and Turkey controlling this part of the Black Sea and the Caucasus and what have you. And I frankly think that tilts things to the Azaris, because, because the Turks are the chief sponsor of Azerbaijan, and they had been throughout this conflict. Azerbaijan was the aggressor in this conflict with Turkey support. Russia, you know, has kind of cut both ways. I mean, has a relationship that's pretty close with Armenia, but is less close to this Armenian government because of a democratic revolution that succeeded in Armenia. Yeah. So to me, the number, the two things that jumped out to me were the absence of America and the U. And the fact that probably not coincidentally, this does feel like a deal that tilts more in the direction of Azerbaijan. Yeah, it definitely does. Let's talk Iran for one minute just because Axios reported that the Trump White House intends to work with Israel, with a bunch of Gulf states to slap a bunch of new sanctions on Iran between now and January 20th in order to keep Biden from reentering.

the Iran nuclear deal, or at least make it harder. Biden has previously said he wants to get back in the deal. He wants to negotiate an extension. But the Axios report said that the focus of these new sanctions won't be on the nuclear program, but on Iran's ballistic mystical program, such as it is, assistance to terrorist organizations or human rights violators. Apparently, Elliot Abrams, who is best known for helping support death squads in Latin America during the Reagan administration, is going to fly to the UAE and fly to Saudi Arabia. to coordinate this effort. So Ben, it made me very mad to see, you know,

that the Trump administration is trying to lock in conflict between the U.S. and Iran. And, you know, I just wanted to flag it and reiterate our hope that I hope the Biden folks see this as actually an opportunity to overcorrect the other direction and reject the Trump-era policy on Iran that was clearly about regime change and is exactly what Trump campaigned against, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think here's what they're trying to do in addition to just their kind of sadistic focus on Iran. There's a set of sanctions that if the nuclear agreement was in place, the U.S. would be obliged to suspend those sanctions, right? What they're trying to do is create so many new sanctions that the Biden administration, just to get back to the status quo of addressing the nuclear-related sanctions, the Iranians are going to say, hey, we're not going to talk to you about going back into the Iranians. Iran nuclear deal until you lift all these sanctions, including these ones that are not a part of the deal. And I think what the Trump people are betting is the politics of Iran and the U.S. will make it difficult for the Biden administration to lift ballistic missile sanctions or all these other sanctions that they're going to be concocting in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi over the next few weeks with L.A. Abrams, that they won't want to take the political risk of just unilaterally lifting sanctions

on Iran that have nothing to do with the nuclear deal. You know what? Like, this is ridiculous. You know, there are people's lies who are affected by these sanctions. Like, it's transparently political to be ramming as many sanctions out the door as you can on the way out. I think the Biden administration is going to have to take a whole look at these things and lift some of them. And frankly, lift some of them for humanitarian purposes. Like, find also, even in the existing sanctions, the carve-outs need to be made given the fact that there's a pandemic and people are dying. And medical equipment isn't getting into Iran. So I'm not arguing where you should lift every sanction on Iran by any stretch of the imagination.

What I'm saying is, like, you shouldn't let an outgoing administration sabotage the diplomacy that you've said you want to pursue to get back into the Iran nuclear deal if the Iranians start complying again by adding a whole new thorny dimension of new sanctions that you have to contend with, recognizing that if on January 21st Biden lifted any one of those sanctions, you know, Lindsay Graham would go light himself on fire in front of the White House. Like, the Biden people should make their own decisions and shouldn't be bound by a bunch of 11th hour. L.A. Abrams sanctions, you know, concocted in Saudi Arabia and the UAE on like January 19th. Yeah, I agree. And then last thing, Ben, there was a big election in Burma or Myanmar this week. What happens? Fill us in because I have not read about this one yet. Yeah, so the quick thing is Aung San Suu Kyi and her political party, the National League for Democracy, won an overwhelming majority again. So she will be returned to her position as state counselor. their problems with the election in addition to COVID were obviously the disenfranchisement

of the Rohingya Muslim minority that has been largely ethnically cleansed from within Myanmar and also some of the other ethnic areas where there's been fighting and conflict for a long time. There are plans to have further voting in those areas to come. Big takeaway, Zhang San Suu Kyi remains in her position. Now what she will try to do and what people should watch is she wants to reform the Constitution to reduce the role of the military and politics, to allow herself to be president, but also being president,

being essentially in charge of the military, instead of the military being somewhat its own independent actor. So that's the next piece of this to watch. Obviously, you want to watch whether or not a Biden administration can address the Rohingya humanitarian crisis. I think in terms of politics in Myanmar, it's this question of whether her resounding re-election and her party's resounding re-election

leads to these constitutional changes that establish civilian control the military, which I think would be a good thing, even if, you know, Aung San Suu Kyi's star has dimmed, given the events in Rakhine State. Yeah, well said. Last last thing. Did you see that Lamont, a major French newspaper, did a Q&A where they had to explain to their readers who gritty was? No, no, I didn't see this.

I couldn't understand what it said, but I think Jordan or Michael sent it around. It was fantastic. It was like a little cue and a long answer about who. who gritty is, you know, just letting the world know who the heroes are of the 2020 election. You know, some of them are, you know, fluffy mascots in Philly. Some of them are also, though, to take the international heroes, like K-pop stands on Twitter. Oh, absolutely. But, but yeah, I have to say, I was very moved by how, I mean, I did a thing this morning

with a bunch of Europeans, and they were talking, they were like name-dropping counties in Pennsylvania, you know? Really? Yeah, people are focused. They're focused. They were also named Czech. the four seasons like the presence of a crematorium in a sex shop around Rudy Giuliani. So everything travels around the world. Everything Americans do gets watched. The good, the bad,

and the ugly. Yeah, all the humiliation. Okay. When we come back, we will have Ben's interview with the former Mexican ambassador to the U.S. about what a Biden presidency could mean for the relationship. So stick around for that. I'm now very happy to be joined by the former Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Saracan, an old friend, a colleague that I haven't seen in a long time, but thanks so much for coming on the show. It's great to be with you, Ben, and it's great to reconnect at these extremely important times for democracy in the U.S. and democracy worldwide. Yes.

Well, I want to start there, and we'll get into the Mexican government response, but I just wanted to get your perspective on how you think the election results is being received in Mexico itself by the Mexican people. And what is your sense of the reaction there? Yeah, I think that in general, there's a great sigh of relief at seeing Trump defeated. As you can imagine, Mexico is one of the countries, not one of the countries, is the country where the positive perceptions of the United States fell the most these past four years, positive perceptions of the United States collapsed in Mexico during these four years.

And even though some do believe that Trump is a means to provide checks and balances on a Mexican president that seems to be scared of confronting Trump, I think that in general, Mexico has responded extremely well to the United States. news of now president-elect Biden's victory. I think many people had, even though at some point they learned that sometimes his bark is worse than his bite, I think people were fed up with having Mexico be a political electoral pinata these past four years. Well, I mean, given that popular sentiment in Mexico, which isn't surprising, given all the things President Trump has said about Mexico and Mexicans. One of the striking things is that there are very few foreign leaders

who have withheld congratulations to Vice President Biden. One of them is President Lopez Obrador, Amlo, who has said that he wants to wait until the litigation is done. The votes are completed before he congratulates a winner. And this kind of continues a strangely, I don't know if it close is the right word, but some strange affinity that a left-wing populist in Amlo seems to have with President Trump. Why do you think it is that he is not yet congratulated President-elect Biden? What do you think accounts for this affinity that there seems to be between Amlowe and Trump? Yeah, sort of piggybacking on Vito Corleone admonishing his son, Michael Corleone, in the Godfather when he says, you've got to learn to distinguish between what's personal and what's business.

In this case, I think it's both personal and business for Lopes-Obrador. It's personal because I think it's wholly consistent with who he is and the way he interprets his loss, particularly in 2006 elections, when despite having lost by, you know, 500,000 votes, a flurry of coals came in congratulating Felipe Calderon, and he carries that weight on his shoulder. he feels that that sort of turned a contested election into a de facto triumph for Felipe Calderon. And so he's carrying that baggage as he looks at this particular election. And also reflects, I don't think he has a worldview, because he's probably one of the most, he's probably the most uninterested Mexican president in foreign affairs that I've ever seen

but it does reflect his take on foreign affairs, which in many ways is sort of built on this Westphalian view of national sovereignty and non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries. And in many ways, it's a combination of him looking in the rearview mirror what happened to the 2006 election, but also looking forward, most likely thinking, how do I inoculate myself, and next year's midterms in Mexico and the presidential elections in four years

from what he sees as quote unquote foreign meddling in Mexico's domestic political processes. But there are huge contradictions in this, Ben, because his arguing that he doesn't want to intervene in the domestic affairs of a lot. the countries is in stark contrast with what he did just a year ago in the Bolivian election, which was also contested in which Emo Morales finally had to resign and leave the country. And Mexico was one of the first countries that immediately called to congratulate Evo Morales.

So, you know, what we're seeing here is that it's like an emergency, your emergency lights in the car where you switch them on and you switch them off. he switched them off to congratulate Morales, and now suddenly he decides he wants to switch them on this year, and withhold congratulating President Biden until, quote, unquote, all legal aspects have been solved. So it's, and it's also, I think, very telling of a president of a man who doesn't understand the U.S. and who doesn't understand how democracy, works in the US and who certainly doesn't understand how the elections are run and work in the United States. Now, having said all of this, we have to recognize that there probably is an affinity

with Donald Trump. They seem to be sort of brothers to different mothers, but there's this, there's a number of things that sort of make them very similar. How they've sown distrust regarding institutions and democratic processes, how they lambast continuously lambast the press and characterize the press as the enemy of the people here or in Mexico as part of the mafia of power. It's different, different tags, but it's the same discourse. And it's very likely, Ben, that the president decided that he felt much more comfortable dealing with Donald Trump, who really doesn't give a hoot about anything else in Mexico except migration and now increasingly fentanyl trafficking from China coming through Mexico on its way to the United States and

feeding the opioid pandemic in certain states in the United States. And he obviously, you know, I think was betting on Trump winning. And the problem is that this obviously, after his trip in July, in the midst of a presidential campaign is adding insult to injury for Democrats. And you've already seen those first reactions by several Democratic members of Congress, by a former Democratic member of Congress, Beto Rourke,

all of them who've gone from dismay to outright condemnation of what President Lopso-Rour has said and has doubled down on in his press conference. yesterday. And by the way, let me just very quickly underscore again the huge contradictions. Yesterday when he again doubles down on what he said over the weekend, when he was prompted by a reporter, whether he was going to congratulate President-elect Biden or not, yesterday when he doubled down in his daily press conference, he again said, you know, well, it's because I'm not going to,

I don't believe in talking about the internal political affairs of our nations. But then in a heartbeat, started criticizing the U.S. media for quote-unquote censoring Donald Trump and moving away when he was talking about a rigged and stole election, when the media stopped transmitting those comments. Lopsur-Nal-O-Los said, but they're censoring the president of the United States. So if that isn't talking about the domestic political affairs of a non-the-nation, then I don't know what is. Yeah, well, it's very interesting and peculiar. But I had not made the connection. That's so interesting that he might have harbored a sense of grievance about comments and calls made in 2006. Absolutely.

But so I do just want to try to explain to people. The U.S.-Mexico relationship is so big and complicated and important and doesn't usually get the attention. It deserves. So I briefly want to go back in time to just our transition in 2008 when you were there as a key foreign policy advisor to President Calderon. I was already the ambassador. And already the ambassador, yeah. This is not just a matter of foreign policy. You know, there's border policy and there's, you know, migration policy and asylum policy. And in 2008, there were the issues around drug trafficking. What, what is, when you were a diplomat in Washington, 2008, how did you think about the relationships you needed to build with the new administration? What was the issue set that you were focused on? Because it's not just the State Department, right? I know it was DHS and other agencies. Look, let's start with the basics, which is to underscore something that you know well, Ben, which is there's probably no bilateral relationship on the face of the earth that impacts

the daily lives and well-being and prosperity and security of Americans than the relationship with Mexico. Yes, you know, China and the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, these are salient geostrategic issues for the United States and they usually suck up all the oxygen in the White House and in the State Department. But in terms of the day-to-day impact of a bilateral relationship, there's none more important the relationship with Mexico. And it is probably the most multifaceted bilateral relationship that Washington has. Not even China or Canada have the number of issues and connections with every single

single government agency in Washington, D.C., like the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship. Whether it's water issues on the border, infrastructure, trade, North American security, intelligence sharing, the fight against transnational organized crime, obviously the incredibly important critical trade relationship, Mexico, is now the number one largest trading partner of the United States. On any given day, Mexico and the United States trade one point. five billion dollars in both directions that's billion with a B so it is it is an extremely complex relationship but it's also a very asymmetrical relationship in terms of hard power you know you're talking of a of an emerging economy yes the 12th largest economy in the world but that is nowhere close

to the to the to the to the power quota that the the economy that the economy and the military might and the diplomatic heft of the United States can bring to the table. So it's a very complex relationship. It's a it's a relationship where Mexico throughout the decades has had to have a very constructive relationship with both political parties in Washington both Republicans and Democrats and where Mexico can't afford what it has done now twice in the past four years which is getting into bed with one of the candidates. The Peñaniate administration did it when it invited

Donald Trump to go to Mexico in 2016 and it's done it again by L'Opsorador now, a different Mexican government coming up to DC in the midst of a political campaign. So the first thing, Ben, to respond to answer your question is how do you face a transition when one party, when it's from one party to the other like what happened in 2008. I had been ambassador for two years with the Bush administration. We were in the midst of a transition to a Democratic administration, with you guys coming in. One of the keys was that during the campaign we had established important and close ties with the Obama campaign. There were many of your colleagues whom I had met when I was a diplomatic tadpole here in Washington in the early 90s when we

We negotiated and after Dennis McDonough and so many others that were on the campaign team with President Obama, who were friends from my first stint in Washington in the 90s, that it was relatively easy to establish a relationship. And it came to fruition with something that you know well, the only foreign leader that President-elect Obama decided to meet with before being sworn into office in January of 2000. was with Mexican president. And not only that, President Obama had the huge, huge, I think, the kindness of not only saying, let's get together, but I want to go to you. And he came to the Mexican Cultural Institute, which for those of you who live in Washington, you have to go and see it. It is a gem of Mexican culture in the United States and in Washington.

And the first luncheon and the first working meeting between President-elect Obama and President Calderon took place at the Mexican Cultural Institute. So one of the key issues is how do you ensure that strategic long-term issues of a bilateral relationship as complex as this one can continue with the same traction and the same synergy of what we had developed in the previous two years of my tenure with a Republican. administration and it was very, very quickly apparent that President Obama and his team understood the strategic significance of the relationship, understanding that there will be disagreements in a relationship as complex and as challenging as this one, but that by adopting a key paradigm of joint responsibility, that is that in this very complex relationship, if one finger gets pointed in one direction at the border, two or three fingers are going to be pointing back at, at the other side and that we needed to adopt this this principle of shared responsibility which basically

means that both countries need to work together to constructively solve all the issues in our bilateral agenda we're not going to we're not going to solve issues of of mexican or now central american transmigration to the united states if we don't work together we're not going to solve issues of the rule of law and the fight against transnational organized crime if both countries don't work together and as Mexico seeks to improve to eradicate corruption and impunity and improve its ability to shut down violent transnational crime that we need the support of the United States to shut down the flow of weapons illicitly purchased in the United States and traffic across the border into Mexico or of bulk cash trafficking which feeds the ability of organized crime to corrupt

and to buy weapons and to hire killers and to undermine federal, state and local institutions of Mexico. So President Obama and his team were very quick and understanding that the name of the game had to be joint responsibility and not what we've seen these last four years of President Trump's Sinatra doctrine of My Way or the Highway. Yeah. Well, and so bringing it to today, the border is going to be one of the issues in which policy kind of changes the fastest in the sense that, you know, President Trump is, you know, talked about building a border wall. He hasn't built much of it. But, but he's also basically, in addition to the attention that's gone on to policies like separating children from their families, there's been this, you know, essentially ending of the asylum policy. People kind of stuck in a limbo denied any asylum process at the border. in Mexico, a lot of pressure on Mexico to stop the flow of people coming up from Central America.

And I think right off the bat, there's expectation that Joe Biden will have through executive orders, policies that obviously stop construction of a border wall that may seek to restore a functioning asylum process. How do you think about what needs to happen between the U.S. and Mexico to just get back to some recognizable status quo in terms of managing the flows of people up to the border in terms of managing asylum processes in the U.S. or with people coming through Mexico? Well, the first one is getting rid of the most toxic elements of the nativist and xenophobic immigration policy that Trump has implemented over these past four years. And unfortunately, Mexico has been a facilitator of Patsy of that policy by allowing, by bending the knee,

and by allowing Trump to dump potential asylum seekers, refugees, and Central America migrants on the Mexican side of the border, where they've been caught in a sort of limbo, because the state and local governments on the Mexican side of the border don't have the wherewithal to be able to take care of them. This current Mexican government has eviscerated the budget for its immigration and refugee agency. So we're doing stuff that not even Mexican agencies today have the wherewithal and the resources because L'Opsovrador in a sort of austerity and budgetary zeal completely eviscerated the budgets of the immigration and the refugee agencies in the Mexican government. So I think the first thing is to eliminate migration protection protocols, the euphemistically called

remain in Mexico, which I call stuck in Mexico. And that would be a very important first step, which I think the Biden administration has a clear sense of ending on day one. The second one, obviously, is to extend protections to the hundreds of thousands of dreamers under DACA, a great majority of whom are kids born in Mexico and brought without papers to this country by their parents, and who've known no other. country van the US but then there are more structural and strategic things where I think Joe Biden will be uniquely positioned to work on with Mexico because he played a

role as vice president and President Obama's wingman in Latin America and particularly in Central America in working with Mexico and other like-minded countries, Colombia, Canada, maybe some of the European Union partners in dealing with the structural causes that are creating transmigration push factors from the three Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. And they're different because in Guatemala,

it's more rural and more driven by climatological impact and the effect that has had on drought in the Guatemalan countryside, whereas in Honduras and in Guatemala, it's much more urban and driven by public insecurity. But Joe Biden worked on this as a vice president. So the opportunity for Mexico and the United States to work on coming together and putting forward a package, a program, a vision for sustained engagement

to start impacting the structural causes of Central American transmigration through Mexico, I think would be a very important and very welcome step in how I think a Biden administration will put. probably seek to engage with Mexico. But again, here, as in most things in life, Ben, you need to to tango. And you're going to need the U.S., which I think will step up to the plate. But you're going to need a Mexican partner. And a Mexican partner who so far seems to be utterly committed to adding insult to injury

with what has happened in the past six, seven months, both in terms of the visit in July and now, you know, these, I think, mistaken, erroneous and costly statements of saying, you know, I'm not going to congratulate the president-elect of the United States. Yeah. Well, and, you know, hopefully that there are habits of cooperation that can be built, not just between leaders, but obviously between government agencies on both sides and state and local governments. And bureaucracies, yeah. And bureaucracies, yeah. One last question I want to ask you. You mentioned, I mean, Joe Biden is a very well-known commodity in Latin America in addition to Mexico.

So what do you think the expectations are in Latin America generally about what a Biden administration should focus on and what progress might be made? I think they will be very high and that's a problem. And I think the president and his now transition team know this. We also, I think many observers in Latin America know that Latin American and the Caribbean probably won't be at the top of the list of the priorities of a Biden administration. But I think they are looking for several things. A re-engagement with a rules-based inter-American system. A voice that doesn't just chauvinistically do chest-thumping on Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, but really thinks of and talks about human rights and the strengthening of democratic institutions across the region

in a much more systematic way. Certainly in a region where climate change is very, very important and where citizens do feel that climate change is of the utmost importance, this is, I think, a lot of countries are looking forward to to having a U.S. administration re-engage on climate change, on renewables, on the green economy, bringing back the U.S. to the Paris Agreement, where Mexico, where President Obama and Calderon, played such an important leading role in moving this conversation forward, not only in the G20,

but also in the COPS, and where Mexico and the United States were partners in this effort. And I think these are issues that a lot of countries in the region are looking forward to. but obviously the challenge will be expectations will be high. And so how do you temper those expectations while at the same time triggering meaningful engagement by a Biden administration? I have no doubt that the team that will surround President Biden dealing with hemispheric issues will be a top-notch team. You and I know a lot of them, many of them have accompanied the vice president. when he was in office. And I think they could be very promising times

even for the normalization of ties with Latin America and the Caribbean. Yeah. Well, it sounds very good to hear you go through an agenda that has been totally neglected for years, but that there's a lot of work to do on together in addition to obviously to COVID. So thanks so much for giving us this perspective. And it's been great to have you on the show

and we'll see what happens. It's great to join you, dear Ben. Thank you to Ambassador Sourkeh Khan for coming on the show. Thank you to everyone who worked or volunteered on the Biden campaign and helped us get to a point where we feel this enormous relief, mostly, even with these creeps trying to squat in power as long as they can. And thanks to you, Ben, hopefully maybe this vaccine will allow us back in the studio someday. A guy can dream.

Yeah, but we made it. We made it. Well, January 20th, I guess is when we'll really have made it. But we made it through at least the Trump. We made through the Trump presidency, hopefully knock on wood. And now we just have to make through the pandemic. God bless. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, everybody. Talk to you next week. POTSA of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Quinn Lewis for production support.

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