Pod Save the World - Trump Says Jewish Democrats “Hate Israel”

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the looming famine in Gaza, reactions to Senator Chuck Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel, Trump’s claim that Jewish Democrats “hate Israel”, secret talks between the US and Iran over attacks in the Red Sea by Houthis. They also talk about Jared Kushner’s luxury real estate developments in Serbia and Albania, Putin’s overwhelming election “victory”, Senator Lindsey Graham’s visit to Ukraine, a new study on Havana Syndrome, Niger ending counterterrorism cooperation with the US, dates announced for the Indian election, and Trump suggesting action should be taken against Prince Harry if he lied about drug use on his visa application. Then Tommy speaks to Josh Geltzer, Deputy Homeland Security Advisor for the White House National Security Council, about the debate over reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pazade of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, you're coming to us from a non-descript hotel room. I know. Tell us more. I've been in many. I'll give you the full report. How about I give you the full report when I'm back next week?

But I'm in Asia. I like that. Yeah. I like that. Ben is in Asia. Do you have any further thoughts on whether Aaron Rogers will be a vice presidential nominee now that you've had a week to think about it? Again, for those who don't know, he's the Jets quarterback.

Well, you know, it seems to have lost out on the RFK sweepstakes there. I mean, the only solution. may be Aaron Rogers running like a writing campaign via conspiracy theory podcast, you know. That's a good idea. We did learn right after we recorded last week that Aaron Rogers is apparently a Sandy Hook truther or was it one time. So not great. He probably doesn't want the presidential scrutiny. Whatever kind of truther you can be, Aaron Rogers is that. And also didn't manage to play more than a few snaps to the Jets last year. So it's not like he's excelling in the football field either. So yeah, do more of your PT. Do more of your own research.

Yeah. But I want you guys to know that Ben is coming to us from way before sunrise, wherever it is he is, to bring to you the following show. We're going to talk about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is now described as being in a state of famine. We'll talk about Senator Chuck Schumer's speech calling for Israeli Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu to go, which was just a seismic event in U.S. politics. We're going to get into Netanyahu and Trump's response to Schumer's speech. Then we're going to talk about Jared Kushner, building buildings in the Balkans, Ben. Russia's nail-biter of an election, an update on Havana syndrome, some worrying news from Niger, India's election, and then Prince Harry's drug use is in the news today.

I don't know if you saw this. I did see this. I did this. I did. That's how much I'm on top of the Royal News, Tommy. I know. I can't go anything past you. And then I just did a great interview

with the guy named Josh Gelter, who's the deputy counsel to President Biden and legal advisor to the National Security Council. We talked about the administration push to reauthorize something called Section 702 Intelligence Collection Authority, which the White House believes is absolutely critical to keeping the country safe. And this debate is coming to ahead in April. So it's actually a very important topic that you'll be hearing more about in Congress if they actually do their job for once. Although that always, yeah, it remains to be

seen if Congress will, you know, do what it's supposed to do. Yeah, I mean, they're really running a tight ship there in the Republican House caucus. So we'll see if they can get something, get something through the transom here. Just kicking cans down the road. Geltzer's a great guy, though. Geltzer's a very good guy. Yeah, he's really smart. He's one of those people who is,

you know he's much smarter than you and, like, better educated and a real lawyer, but also can communicate more clearly. And you're like, God damn it, man. At least something for the rest of us. All right, let's start once again in Gaza, Ben, because for weeks, eight organizations, us on this show,

have been saying that parts of Gaza were on the brink of famine. Now they are saying that famine has arrived in Gaza. Joseph Burrell, the top foreign policy official at the European Union, said recently that Gaza is, quote, in a state of famine, starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine. Couldn't be clearer there and very strongly worded. The situation is especially bad in northern Gaza, where about 300,000 people are sheltering. According to a UN report, about 40 percent of Gazans are facing extreme food shortages to the point where they are at an increased risk of dying from starvation or malnutrition,

And about 30% of Gazans have almost no food and will die if things don't change. That's how dire it is. The reason is quite simple. Israel is not allowing enough aid into Gaza. Saudi government officials told the New York Times that aid trucks have been sitting in Egypt for weeks just waiting to get inspected by the Israeli government. They're often turned back for what seemed like arbitrary reasons. But just to spell out to what's happening on the ground, here's a clip of Kathy Russell, the executive director of UNICEF talking on CBS about what. it looks like on the ground.

I've seen a lot of children, unfortunately, in my job around the world who suffer from malnutrition. And it is a shocking thing to see. I mean, essentially, the body starts to consume itself because it has nothing else. And it's a painful, painful death for children. I've been in wards of children who are suffering from severe malnutrition. The whole ward is absolutely quiet because the children, the babies, don't even have the energy to cry.

I mean, it is a devastating thing to see. And you're right. it if we can manage to get, what we do is provide therapeutic feeding for them. If we can get that to them, they can survive. But often they're stunted for life. And stunting means that your ability, your cognitive ability, is impacted as well. So it is a lifelong challenge for these children if they survive. But we know now that children are dying from malnutrition in Gaza.

Again, even if kids don't die from malnutrition, it could impact them for life. So, Ben, I'm just trying to imagine what the U.S. would be saying if any other country in the world was cutting off assistance to an entire population of people like this. Again, obviously, after October 7th, the Israelis were going to respond with some sort of military response, but nothing justifies cutting off food to two million people. Again, Hamas is supposed to be about 30,000 fighters. There's something like 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip. I guess what I thought about when I was preparing this, Ben, was that you have to imagine the International Court of Justice. It's watching very closely to see what happens next as they consider claims of genocide that were put forward by South Africa.

Yeah, and Israel was warned, right, to take steps to not commit genocide. And let's just kind of deal with this in facts, as Borell did, which is we're talking about famine on a mass scale, children already beginning to die from malnutrition, children already beginning to be getting to be stunted for life, as Kathy Russell said, because of malnutrition. And the reason that is happening is because Israel is not allowing aid to reach those children. Starvation is being used as a weapon of war. And people will, what's interesting is I know some people don't want to hear this. And they'll get upset and they say, you're singling on Israel. Hamas could end this by releasing the hostages. that if that's your position just think about the logic of that position you're saying that because

Hamas has hostages that somehow it's okay to not let this assistance in and have children be dying of malnutrition that that's actually saying that as long as Hamas is still fighting this war that starvation can be used as a tool in that war and it can't this is not this is not a difficult issue This is not a policy issue. This is not a policy issue. This is a moral issue. Okay. And there's nothing really more to be said about this because this is an equation. There are children starving. And if you opened up and allowed for assistance to get to those children, they wouldn't starve. That's a pretty simple proposition. And that's, frankly, what everybody should be trying to do right now. And also, this kind of famine designation has only been made twice before in history. Once in parts of Somalia, back in 2011, and then in parts of South Sudan in 2017. This is not a term that gets thrown around all the time. And by the way, there's still a possibility that things will get worse because the Israeli government still is saying that they're going to launch a military invasion into Rafa,

that city in southern Gaza, where 1.4 million Gazans are sheltering. The U.S. keep saying it's a mistake. And Jake Sullivan was at the White House briefing, I think yesterday or the day before, saying that Israel has not presented the U.S. with a plan. for how they would move, protect, feed, or house those civilians. And I guess the Israeli government is now going to send some delegation to the U.S. to discuss it in more detail. But like this catastrophic situation, famine conditions could get worse.

Yeah. And if they do the Rolfo invasion, I don't know how it wouldn't get worse. And so this is just, you know, the thing I'd say about Somalia, because we were in the White House at that time, Tommy. And it's actually an interesting example to use. al-Shabaab, a terrorist group, an associate of al-Qaeda, was operating in Somalia at that time. And part of the reason, part of the difficulty of getting assistance in for some time was that there were sanctions from the U.S. on the delivery of certain kinds of material into Somalia because of al-Shabaab's presence.

And the decision was made to just basically ignore that. So, again, it's not directly analogous, but it is a, case that everybody kind of decided, we don't really care that al-Shabaab might get some of this food. We can't allow for a famine type of condition to persist, and we need to do whatever we can to get assistance to people there. At some point, human life has to be a priority here. And again, consultations are good and pressure is good, but it's the U.S. government that is now telling us this about famine. You know, Samantha Power had a long statement from the U.C.ID. Yeah.

This is not, you know, the Hamas. run health ministry, right? It's the U.S. officials saying that we've reached famine conditions, European officials, NGOs. So again, not a close call here. And if your military strategy, whether it's intentional or incidental to your military strategy, precipitates famine-like conditions where hundreds of thousands of people are, including many, many children, it's time to change that strategy. I mean, that's all there is to it. And by the way, I mean, if you think the plan is to starve all of Gaza until Hamas releases the hostages, if you think that those hostages are getting fed enough or in a good place right now, you are,

I just could not disagree more. Yeah, yeah. And I get, you know, I'm sure you get the messages too from telling me people who are frustrated with this, but I don't know what to say anymore. You know, okay, I don't know how you can rationalize this. You cannot rationalize this. October 7 does not justify starving children. Nothing does.

Nothing does. Just doesn't. Nothing does. Let's turn to the U.S. Ben, because last week, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, gave a speech about the war in Gaza, about Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and what he views as the impediments to peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Here's a clip.

As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me, the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7th. The world has changed radically since then. And the Israeli people are being stifled right now, by a governing vision that is stuck in the past. Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, to preserve Israel's credibility on the world stage,

and to work towards a two-state solution. Israel is a democracy. Five months into this conflict, it is clear that Israelis need to take stock of the situation and ask, must we change? course at this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel. It was a really good speech about 40 minutes long.

I recommend listening to all of it. He lays out four obstacles to peace. One is Hamas, two is radical right-wing Israelis, including top ministers like Ittemar Ben-Gavir and Smotrich, who we talked about on the show, a bunch. Three, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian, and then for Bibi Njahou. Schumer said that if Netanyahu stays in power after the war is over and keep pursuing policies that the U.S. disagrees with, then the U.S. should put pressure on Israel, which I think most people interpreted as conditioning U.S. assistance or no longer vetoing resolutions

critical of Israel, the United Nations, et cetera. So, Ben, I think it's safe to say this is a seismic event when it comes to U.S. Israel policy. Schumer is Jewish. He's been a lifelong, staunch defender of Israel, for him to call for Netanyahu to go, shocked. Shocked. me. It must speak to how horrified he is personally with what he's seeing with his own eyes, a humanitarian situation, but also how much political pressure he must be dealing with both in New York and from within his own Senate caucus. I should know that Schumer did not call, as far as I can remember, for an immediate ceasefire or an unconditional ceasefire. So there's steps I think people would like to see him take, but still a big step for him. So then, again, obviously it's a little weird

to hear a U.S. Senator call for regime change in Israel and call for the Pellasel. in the authority to ditch its president. But what did you make a Schumer speech and what do you think it tells us about the politics of U.S. support for Israel? Yeah, I was absolutely shocked to kind of wake up to the speech, you know, on the West Coast. Chuck Schumer is as reliably supportive of Israel and its government as any Democrat, maybe with the exception of Gold bars Bob Menendez over the years. But, I mean, you know, just to give people an example, when the Iran nuclear deal fight was happening, right? We needed to secure enough Democratic votes in the Senate to essentially win a, you know, protect the Iran nuclear deal. The very first Democrat to announce opposition to the Iran

nuclear deal after it was reached was Chuck Schumer. Like, like, you know, it didn't, you know, it didn't take very long. And, you know, and so for him to take this position is an absolutely seismic shift. He knew, yes, he's under political pressure. we'll get to that in a moment, but I'm sure he knew that he must have gotten a ton of blowback from APEC and from some of the traditional sources of kind of pro-Israel support for Democrats. And he had to know that was coming, and he did it. And so, again, while he didn't, you know, yeah, his position isn't aligned entirely with ours. And you have to acknowledge that this is actually a moment of real political courage. And a real seismic shift in the Democratic

party when you have Chuck Schumer taking this position. On the Netanyahu piece, you know, I was enraged by the Mitch McConnell response of like, you know, you should meddle in Israeli politics for a couple of reasons. Netanyahu's been meddling in American politics forever, you know? So why is it that Bibi Netanyahu can meddle in our politics constantly, fly to the United States, give speeches to Congress against the Democratic president of the time, Barack Obama, all the things he's done? and we can't even have an opinion about the government of a country that we provide like

$4 billion a year to and give diplomatic cover to it, the United Nations. It's not like he called for regime change like he wants to invade and, you know, he expressed an opinion. That's Lindsey Graham's job. Yeah, that's Lindsey Graham's job. Yeah, that's Lindsey Graham's job. He expressed an opinion and it's the opinion that is obvious, which is that this is a dysfunctional, far-right government that has a policy in Gaza that is hurting Israel and hurting the United

States and therefore the majority of the Democrats in the Senate had something to say about it. And I think it's a really big deal. And I think it's going to lead to further introspection and reckoning discussion in the American Jewish community and in the Democratic Party. And again, I think you're right on the politics. I mean, he's also seeing, sure, he's seeing the reality of famine and a rough operation that would be disaster and, you know, basically the destruction of any possibility of a Palestinian state. about all those things, he's also seeing that the Democratic Party may lose the election because of President Biden's support for Bibi Nanyahu. And that is a crazy thing. And so he's giving cover

to both Democratic members of Congress and, frankly, to Joe Biden to change their positions. Yeah, I wondered if there was some sort of coordination there. I don't know if that's the case. I think Bibi Nanyahu certainly thinks there is, but certainly did give them some cover. And by the way, Nancy Pelosi called the speech an act of courage and an act of love for Israel. so she's getting Schumer's back. Biden said he made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concerns shared not only by him, but by many Americans. So he didn't say, you know, I agree with Chuck, but he's, you know, give him an out of boy.

But, you know, to your point about the political pressure ban, I mean, according to Politico, A PAC is planning to spend $100 million in 2024 through its various super PACs and political entities. And basically all of that money is going towards defeating progressive Democrats. Not the right-wing nuts who talk about the great-replacement. you know, theory and like draw images of fucking George Soros with puppet strings and tweet it out, right? It's only progressive Democrats. So like to the extent that politics have shifted here, like we should get it to Netanyahu's reaction in a minute. But, you know, like the Israeli government is to blame, not Chuck Schumer. Yeah. And you're right on if APEC's interest was in

anti-Semitism, they would focus on the people propagating the great replacement. theory, you know, APEC has become a right-wing interest group. They literally have endorsed over 100 insurrectionists, people that voted to support the overturning of the U.S. election, right? That's, they're like attacking Katie Porter in California and the person seeking to replace her. I mean, they've been showing us who they are for a really long time now, and it has no place in the Democratic Party. You know, if you believe in, and it doesn't have to be super progressive, you just believe in democratic values. You shouldn't want to take money. from a group that supports insurrectionists

that was very supportive of Donald Trump. But what are we doing here, people? You know, these are not the kind of friends that you want to bring into your campaigns. And so I think this is gonna play out for some time at the Democratic Party, but boy, it's pretty clear. You know, at a certain point, the Democratic Party has to be about the bulk of its voters.

And you know, and don't ask, why young voters are beginning to have problems with the Democratic Party. It's such, it looks so cynical. If you're a young voter and you're looking at this and you're looking at what's happening in Gaza, and then you're hearing that APEC spending $100 million to defeat progressive Democrats. And then, you know, people are asking, writing think pieces about why some young people are cynical about politics. I mean, give me a break.

Yeah. So, as you alluded to, Prime Minister Netanyahu was not a big fan of Schumer speech. Here's a clip of his response. I think what he said is totally inappropriate. It's inappropriate for to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there. That's something that Israel, the Israeli public does on its own, and we're not a banana republic. I think the only government that we should be working on to bring down now is the terrorist tyranny in Gaza, the Hamas tyranny, that murdered over a thousand Israelis, including some dozens of Americans,

and is holding Americans and Israelis hostage. That's what we should be focused on. And as far as what Senator Schumer said, the majority of Israelis support our governments. 82% of Americans support Israel instead of Hamas. But the majority of Israelis support the policies that we're leading. So obviously, only the Israeli people get to pick their leaders. But to be clear, Bibi Ninjahou is denouncing Chuck Schumer

on CNN's State of the Union Sunday show, an American political talk show, he books himself on those constantly because he's trying to influence U.S. policy. As you mentioned earlier, Ben, Netanyahu went around Barack Obama to work with Republicans to schedule a joint session speech to Congress attacking the Iran deal. The Israeli government openly bragged about working with state governments in the U.S. to pass laws that punish Americans who support the BDS movement. Like, Netanyahu is the guy who literally brags about his ability to influence U.S. policymakers. And the media, that's like his main selling point to voters. I just like, the fact that he is now summoning the civility police to arrest Chuck Schumer is just, the hypocrisy is just...

The redhead alert, right? I mean, you know, he sounds nervous, though. I mean, actually, that doesn't, that didn't sound like a guy that's confident. It's a guy who realizes that Chuck, this is not, you know, Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vecher saying this or, you know, or even Chris Van Hollen saying this is his Chuck Schumer saying this. And look, you're absolutely right. like, you know, we don't get to pick their government. They get to, they should pick their government, but we don't have to give them billions of dollars in assistance either. We don't have to veto

resolutions that the United Nations calling for a ceasefire. Like, we don't, we don't have to do those things either. And so the point is if the government doesn't, continues to carry out policies that are against U.S. interests and U.S. values, then, okay, then we should change our position with respect to the kind of support we give to that government. It's simple as that. Yeah, and again in that interview, Netanyahu repeatedly refused to commit to calling for new elections after the war. And as Axios pointed out, there were polls published recently by three major Israeli TV channels that found the majority of Israelis want early elections when the war is over. And if the elections were held today, Netanyahu would be defeated by his rival minister, Benny Gantz, who recently visited the White House. So yes, that did sound like a nervous BB.

Donald Trump has been relatively quiet when it comes to Gaza. his line has basically been October 7th, never would have happened if I was in charge, which is his line about everything bad that happens in the world. But he also said in a couple interviews, like he would tell BB to finish the job quickly or you'd just get it over with,

which is ominous, like, take out Hamas, finish the job, stuff like that, which means, you know, a Rafah invasion probably. But Trump did weigh in on Schumer speech and on the Democratic Party's views on Israel during an interview with his former aide, Seb Gorka. Here's a clip.

Why do the Democrats hate Bibby Netanyahu? I actually think they hate Israel. Yes. I don't think they hate it. I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat Party hates Israel. Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves, because Israel will be destroyed.

So that was wildly anti-Semitic, but Ben, it gets worse. Jared Kushner, the final boss. in the Nepo baby video game decided to weigh in on the situation during an event at Harvard, a reminder that Jared's dad pledged to give $2.5 million to Harvard, and then Jared got into Harvard. Good reminder. Flagging that one. So in this interview, Ben, Jared advocates for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The quote is, from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up by out, he means, to a desert in southern Israel. Jared also said, quote, Gaza's waterfront property could be very valuable. What an insight. Glad we had him in the White House for four years. But then you have to actually hear this exchange about refugees to believe it. Here's a clip from this little Q&A he did with a professor at Harvard. In Syria, when there's refugees, Turkey took them, Europe took them, Jordan took them. For whatever reason here in Gaza, there's refugees from the fighting from an offensive attack that was staged from Gaza. Israel's going in to do a long-term deterrence. mission and it's just, it's unfortunate that nobody's taking the refugees. But also there are real fears on the part of Arabs, and I'm sure you talk to a lot of them who think once Gazans leave Gaza, Netanyahu's never going to let them back in. Um, maybe, but I'm not sure there's much left of Gaza at this point. Jaw-dropping. Jaw-dropping. There is nothing left of Gaza, so let's ethnically cleanse the entire place. So Ben, we've been very critical of Biden's

handling of Gaza on this show, but just know that these guys would be so much fucking worse. And they're part of the reason why we got here in the first place, by the way, the Jared Kushner policies. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I don't know, Tommy. I saw this story, you know, and I thought that every single thing that we've talked about in this podcast since I joined you kind of leads up to this story, right? Let us to this moment. It just led us to this moment of like the pure exposure. of the mediocrity, corruption, venality, like amateurism, mean-spiritedness,

and just cynicism of this guy, Jared Kushner, who is the exemplar of the Trump era, right? I mean, literally this guy is looking at a piece of earth in which children are starving to death, and he's seeing waterfront hotel properties. He's like, hell of a view. That's literally like, get some jet skis in there. He's entire, yeah. And actually like shame on, you know, the U.S. media and everybody who kind of credulously approached the Abraham Accords as these peace agreements.

And we were these kind of weird outliers and kind of raising issues like, well, what about Palestinians? Because essentially this guy's view of the world, this guy's view of the Middle East is like, let's make some deals with the Saudis and the Emirates and the Israelis. And, and Bibi Naniao and MBS and Mohammed bin Zayid. and as part of that, the ideal future is that there's no Palestinian state and that, frankly, somebody else, somebody else takes these quote-unquote refugees off the hands of the land of Gaza and the West Bank so that we can do a bunch of good real estate deals together. Like, that's actually what

you want. Like, this is the end state that he seeks. It's not peace. It's like a profit. And that, you know, that's been painfully obvious to anybody who's like followed Jared Kushner throughout the years. Now, the funny thing about Jared Kushner is that he's so craving of some kind of validation from the places like Harvard that, you know, he had to buy his way into. It's like Mar-a-Lago for him. Yeah, what is he zooming in to Harvard from like Miami Beach or where he is for in the first place? It's because it's not enough for him to be corrupt and pocketing money from the Saudis

and disregarding the humanity of the Palestinians and kind of, you know, daydreaming about like golf courses and the Gaza Strip, he has to kind of act like he's this intellectual big thinker who's going to zoom into Harvard and share the benefits of his wisdom. But really, he's just, obviously, as usual, telling him on himself. Just like the most craven amoral people in the world do the, like, real-politic, you know, cosplay talk because they think it sounds smart. It's like, well, you know, lands change hand and borders move throughout history. It's like, okay, Jared, but two million people are starving, you little prick, and that's where they live, and you're trying to push them into a desert? What are we talking about here?

And he couldn't even summon an ounce of empathy. And you're right, by the way, it does show. We've been hard on Biden's a question of these people on them. My God. I mean, they would be much worse. We want to talk more about Basnepo Baby in one second. But before we move on, we should mention that the Financial Times reported that the U.S. and Iran held secret talks to try to get Iran to use its influence to get the Houthi rebels to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea. These talks took place in Oman. They were indirect talks through the Omani government. Obviously, those talks did not succeed. The Houthis have not stopped firing missiles at anything they can spot, apparently. But I don't know, Ben, I was glad to hear that these talks are happening.

It was good progress. More diplomacy is you can solve these problems without diplomacy. And so having channels of discussion are important. They rarely work the first time, but you've got to keep at it. And again, I just think you have to bring some more diplomacy into all of these equations. because violence is not solving any of these problems right now. Real quick, before we go to break, if you're in Brooklyn, Boston, Madison, Phoenix, Philly,

or in Arbor, Michigan, come see Pod Save America live this summer and fall to get tickets to learn more about the dates, to learn more about our book that's coming out, democracy or else, go to crooked.com slash events. Also, I just want to say thank you to everyone who listened to the first episode of World Corrupt Season 2. This season, Roger Bennett and I are digging into how Saudi Arabia

secured hosting duties for the 2034 World Cup and how they are generally pouring money into professional soccer in totally unprecedented ways in reshaping the support. It's an amazing series. Again, my co-host, Roger Bennett from the Men in Blazers podcast, knows more about soccer than anyone I know or ever will know. And we have a ton of fun.

There's lots of mostly good dad jokes. So check it out on Saturdays on the Potsave the World Feed. You'll enjoy it. So back to Jared Kushner, Ben. The New York Times reported that Kushner is, quote, closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, end quote. And this is all happening while his father-in-law campaigns for the presidency. Jared is working on this deal with a sentient Twitter troll named Rick Grinnell. He was Trump's acting director of national intelligence and special envoy so the Balkans somehow.

One of the projects they're working on is a proposal to build a luxury hotel in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. at the site of the former Yugoslav army headquarters that was bombed to hell by NATO in 1990. I mean, you cannot make this up. I mean, this is... What a romantic getaway. You have to show some vision. Yeah, the cliche joke about the script writer is like, this is ridiculous, you know. Yeah.

But so the key thing to know about this gorgeous, bombed out Yugoslav army headquarter is to get access to this deal, Jared would need to get government approval. So, you know, I wonder why the, uh, the Serbia. and government would not do a favor for Trump's son-in-law and Rick Grinnell, who runs around telling people he's going to be the next secretary of state. And so remember, the money Jared has to play with here to fund these deals is from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. The Saudis gave him $2 billion. Definitely not a kickback for services rendered covering up the Khashoggi murder or a decision to murder him by MBS. So this time story also flagged an interview that Rick Grinnell did

in Albania last year when he was asked about possible conflicts of interest. and he said that because he was out of government, there was no problem. This is the quote, Ben, no one should ever apologize for wanting to make money, end quote. Put that on the bumper sticker for the Trump reelect. So Ben, like, grifting aside, this business deal also comes as there's enormous concern

about renewed violence between Serbia and Kosovo. I think it was last year, like late 23, the prime minister of Kosovo accused Serbia of sponsoring a terrorist attack in Kosovo, basically funding these militia groups and arming them and sending them in. They killed a police officer. So I don't know, Ben, I don't even know to begin with this, take it wherever you want. I just, I personally will just forever be angry that we've been talking about, like,

the impeachment and congressional hearings about Hunter Biden for however many years now. And no one in Congress, no Democrats in the Senate, nobody in the House did any kind of meaningful oversight over Jared Kushner's business dealings and the obvious overlap with his time in government. Yeah, I mean, like I don't have a subpoena. power. But let me try to do this, Tommy. Let me just do the hearing in 90 seconds. Jared Kushner installs himself as essentially the kind of Middle East peace envoy guy, the person that's dealing and managing relationships in the Arab world. He uses that to parlay

favor trading while he's in office. He runs interference from Muhammad bin Salman. He sets up this whole Abraham Accords structure. And on the back end of that, he leaves government, and he gets $2 billion from Muhammad bin Salman to start his own investment fund. Over here on the other side of things, Rick Grinnell is named the envoy to the Balkans. I don't think it's a region that Rick Grinnell has had a longstanding, deep-rooted historical interest in. He does some kind of strange, minor, partial deal, you'll remember that he announced, where he said that there was like a Serbia-Cosevo agreement for a greater economic cooperation or something, turns out it wasn't really anything. He leaves government. Then he spends the subsequent time out of

government taking Serbia's side on all these things. Remember, he's always bashing Tony Blinken. We've joked about on the show how much he seems to insert himself into these Balkan disputes. Well, lo and behold, it turns out that part of what he's doing is trying to gain favor so that he can do deals. And lo and behold, the two peace envoys for the Trump administration, Jared Kushner used his Middle East platform to get the $2 billion, and Rick Grinnell used his platform to get the relationships so they can just do a bunch of big real estate deals at the old headquarters of Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal army, right? This is what happened. The president of Serbia is this guy, Alexander Butchich. I believe he was Milosevic's like press guy. I'm almost positive, that's right. It's just so clear as day, and you're right. The Democrats in Congress didn't investigate this. The press is kind of like, what's going on here? This is. interesting. Look at Jared Kushner. I'm glad the Times is covering the story. Good for the times. You don't need, good for the times, but you don't need to be like, you know, Inspector Cluso here to realize that these people are corrupt and that they were using their past government service

and the possibility of future government connections and service to do a bunch of fucking real estate deals. And that's, that's an insane way to run a superpower. I mean, the Serbian government is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can develop this random island. Sure. You're the obvious person to do this, Jared Kushner. Of all the people in the world that I want to develop this island, it's Jared Kushner, right? It's just so unbelievable. It's so crazy that we're talking about Hunter Biden. Whatever you think of him, the fucking, he never worked in government. He never worked in government. Yeah. This guy was the shadow secretary of state. He's reading the PDB every day. Rick Grinnell was the acting director of national intelligence. What are we talking?

Yeah, the guys like in the Republican Party, like looking under a magnifying glass at like the notes from Burisma board meetings, trying to find something that Hunter Biden did to profit Joe Biden. And Meanwhile, Jared Kush's... They're holding up pictures of Hunter Biden's dick at congressional hearings. Meanwhile, Jared Kush has got $2 billion in the Saudis that he's going to plow into some fucking real estate that Rick Grinnell, like, you know, it's just so... Ah, it's so obvious. Like, what is going on in this world? I don't know.

I don't know. Okay. Well, that was nice. That felt good. Yeah, I got up our chest. Yeah. I'm glad we talked about that. Okay.

So back to serious things. So Russia held elections, in air quotes. Like, maybe not that serious. weekend. There's a real nail-biter. Vladimir Putin's going to serve a fifth presidential term. You got 87% of the vote. He broke his own record. Good for you, Vlad. So Russia says 77% of eligible voters voted. Obviously, nothing about this election was free or fair. Real opposition candidates were prevented from running or at Alexei Navalny's case, just straight up murdered. Candidates that were allowed to run, like those from the Communist Party and the far right,

LDPR party, are all Kremlin friendly and they're part of the establishment. There were small, hopeful signs of dissent opposition figures outside Russia have been calling for a silent protest called the noon against Putin movement something Alexei Navalny had supported for his death. The idea was for people to show up at polls exactly at noon on March 17th and disrupt the ballots in any way possible so they wouldn't count for Putin. That means vote for another candidate, write someone else in, or just show up, show up in numbers.

And there have been a lot of images shared online of ballots with words like murderer written on it or no war written on them. So some very brave people did actually protest. So also outlets like New York Times and Medusa, which is a great independent news outlet that was basically run out of Russia, did report that a lot of people showed up at noon at certain polling locations across Russia. Also, according to the Russian foreign ministry, 372,779 Russians living outside the country cast their ballots, which they called unprecedented. We talked to Tihun Zidko, the editor-in-chief of TV Rain, which is an independent media outlet. that was also forced out of Russia. He stood in this long line in Amsterdam to vote,

and here's what he had to say about the experience. The atmosphere there was absolutely fantastic. People were so happy to see each other because it's absolutely sure that the majority of the people in line, they were anti-war, anti-Putin, and they came there, even understanding that the election would be rigged and that the election would be...

that it would be fraud. But it was really important for them to show to each other that there is a lot of people there and to show to the world that not all the Russians as you can sometimes reading the Russian press and the Western press are pro-Putin. And we saw these huge lines in Haig, in Paris, in Berlin, and in Russian cities as well,

Muslims in Petersburg and the Ukitsenburg and other cities, other towns. Opposition invented this noon against Putin. It's the legal possibility to protest because all other ways of protesting are forbidden Russia and are not safe, but it is safe to go to the Poland station and stay in line. So, Ben, China, North Korea and India congratulated Putin, most of the world. Western governments condemn the election. Thanks for our friends in India. Obviously, this was a total farce, this election. But I do think we have to contend with the fact that there's just not that much evidence two years into the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that it's heard as popularity.

Again, obviously polling in an authoritarian country is very difficult, but one independent polling group found Putin's approval rating at 86%. So it seems like, I don't know, U.S. sanctions haven't crippled the Russian economy. There's probably just a lot of people who like like an authoritarian strongman leader or at least for now. I don't know. What did you make of this result in some of these protest movements? He clearly sustains like a healthy amount of popularity. The challenge is that we just don't know what the scale of the opposition is. Because how, you know, I don't trust the 87% number, which already excluded any, you know, credible opposition. But it is true, though, that that the Putin's got staying power here. And, you know, some of the early kind of wishcasting in the

Ukraine war, you know, it turns out that actually he's been able to, you know, maintain and even consolidate his position in Russia as he's maintaining and consolidating control of parts of Ukraine. I looked at, you know, the rally he had. He had this kind of bizarre election night kind of rally in Red Square where he had the three guys that he allowed run against him were on stage with him. I mean, this was the most kind of North Korean piece of it is that, you know, the three people that were actually allowed to run, which is like a communist and a, you know, a couple other, you know, weirdos. They all gave speeches talking about how great Putin was. I mean, that's a man trying to send a message that this is not a democracy, you know, he's not pretending that this was a competitive, competitive election. But on the flip side, it wasn't exactly Grand Park there, you know, at the Putin event.

You know, like there's some good reporting on the basically a lot of the people in the audience where, like, government works. you're told, like, you know, you have to come down to the rally. And the other thing is that he didn't, like, lay out a vision for, like, infrastructure development and healthcare and Russia. It's all Ukraine. I mean, the entire Putin presidency and project is basically about dictatorship at home and this war in Ukraine. And again, that's enough for him to be in this kind of strongman position for the time being. And he's successfully evaded a lot of U.S. sanctions. But I just kind of feel like, how long can this run the gamut for the Russians as they're losing people at this pace and as their whole economy and society becomes about this war over, you know,

pieces of eastern Ukraine. So I don't know. I just, it's depressing, but I also, I also think it's, it's not a great long game for Russia, you know. Yeah. To your point about it all being about Ukraine, Alona flagged that the day after Putin secured his victory, Russia celebrated, this big concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it does speak to what the focus is. Speaking of Ukraine, real quick, I just did want to mention that apparently Lindsey Graham visited Ukraine again. Remember, he most recently decided to side with Trump and opposed additional aid to Ukraine deciding to go with this like last minute Trump gambit that no, no, no, all aid going forward

should be loans, not grants. The headline coming out of Graham's trip to Kiev was calling on Ukrainian lawmakers to implement a draft and make more citizens eligible for the draft, which, you know, on a policy level, Graham is not wrong necessarily. Like, Ukraine needs more troops. But the nerve of this motherfucker to go over to Ukraine and say, draft more of your sons and daughters to die, but I'm not going to lift a finger to help you get the weapons you need. It's just, it's, again, staggering. Yeah. And this guy, you know, we spent years like, you know, pretending to be mini John McCain, like flying around, taking the hawkish positions on things, you know, bashing probably Barack Obama

for not giving more weapons to Ukraine. And then he literally pulls the plug on these people because he's, you know, what he really cares about is Donald Trump. I mean, this man, you know, like makes Mitt Romney look like the winner of the Profile and Courage Award, you know. And can we not take him seriously? Like, I don't know why we have to pretend to take him seriously. It's like some national security thinker or something, you know.

And if I'm the Ukrainians, this guy, yeah, he stabbed me in the back, this piece of shit. And then he flies over here and he's like telling us to have a draft so our kids can go. get blown up because they don't have U.S. weapons to defend themselves with because Lindsey Graham won't vote to provide them with those weapons. Just maybe sit this one out, Lindsay. Just sit it out. Unbelievable. A couple more quick things. So we wanted to update you guys on Havana syndrome, which we covered a bunch over the years on this show. If you need a quick refresher, in 2016, employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba sought medical attention after hearing

weird noises. They had odd symptoms like balance problems, cognitive issues, pressure in their heads, hearing loss, et cetera. It sounded very awful and debilitating. This led a speculation by the intelligence community that perhaps a foreign adversary was using some sort of weapon to harm them, some sort of energy weapon. They ultimately concluded that was not the case, but the cause of these ailments is still a mystery. So the National Institute of Health just published a pair of studies conducted over a five-year period starting in 2018 of the effects on the brain. CNN reported that, quote, scientists ran a battery of tests on 86 U.S. government staff and family members who reported Havana syndrome and compared them with 30 people who had similar jobs

but had no such symptoms and found that by most clinical and biomarker measures, the two groups were the same. So these MRIs found no brain abnormalities or clinical differences between those with symptoms and those without symptoms. not finding brain damage, it's a good thing, right? But it also doesn't mean that the symptoms experienced by people weren't real. And the conclusion of the study states that, quote, a lack of evidence for a brain injury does not necessarily mean that no injury is present or that it did not occur at the time of the incident.

Alternatively, the attack's physiological effects might be so varied in idiosyncratic that they cannot be identified with the current methodologies in sample size. So, Ben, basically the studies are saying that they're not saying that, you know, nothing happened or that this energy pulse weapon idea didn't occur. It's just saying that there's no long-term brain damage in the people they looked at. But basically, my takeaway is like the more we learn about Havana syndrome, whatever it is, the less I or seemingly anyone else understands it. Yeah. And I think, you know, just to continue the theme today of like the Trump people like being full shit, I mean, part of what happened here is also they were so not transparent about this

at the beginning. You know, this happened, and they saw, like, a convenient way to move back. What the, what I thought was the proudest thing I'd done in my life, right? You know, they're like, they see this kind of mysterious thing happened, and they basically pull out of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, you know, slap on sanction after sanction after sanction. By the way, there's people with malnutrition in Cuba right now. This doesn't get a lot of attention, but there's a serious shortage. is there because U.S. sanctions are obviously a huge contributor to that. And they, they, they never,

we never got any answers. And it wasn't until, like, the Biden people came in that you started to at least see some transparency around this. And take it seriously, yeah. And, and frankly, like, there's just, there's no evidence to suggest that, like, kind of what the initial narrative was, that the Cubans were walking around with lasers, like, zapping people, you know, and, which, so, this is, I don't know. I mean, like, the more transparency, the better, It's weird. We don't know what happened. There are clearly people that suffered from something. But really, there's been no capacity despite pretty exhaustive efforts to establish what the thing was. And this could be a bunch of people who got sick. This could be a bunch of people who were harmed.

We don't know, as you say. But more transparency earlier would have made this feel less conspiracy theorish, you know. Yeah. Another story we wanted to revisit, which is coups in Africa. So last year, I mean, like every other week we were talking about a military coup in the Sahel region of Africa. One of the most significant was a military coup in Niger where the U.S. had just recently built this $110 million drone base to conduct surveillance over parts of Western Africa. So we just made a huge investment in Niger as part of this sort of security architecture in Africa. So the question at the time of this coup, occurring was basically will the U.S. call it a coup, will the U.S. cut off military-to-military cooperation with Niger or will Niger kick us out first? It seems like we have our answer, and the story gets weirder, Ben. So the Wall Street Journal reported that Niger decided to cut off counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S. after U.S. officials, quote, accuse the country's ruling junta of secretly exploring a deal to allow Iran access to its uranium reserves. So the Nigerian like junta appointed prime minister,

apparently flew to Iran, met with President Raeisi, and talked about this deal in January. The talks got so advanced that they got to the point where the two parties signed some sort of preliminary agreement. And then in the last week, officials from the State Department, the Defense Department, and the U.S. Africa Command confronted their counterparts in Niger about this deal with Iran. So, Ben, I mean, like, you're probably having the same reaction I am, which is it's hard not to have a little PTSD. Yeah, time is a flat circle, right? Right. So for those who aren't, you know, broken brain like us, like back in 2001, the Bush administration claimed that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger. They made it a key part of the case for invading Iraq. That intelligence turned out to be total bullshit. The rest is history.

No one is suggesting that's what's happening here. But like the echoes are terrible and weird, but I don't know, man, like any thoughts on what the U.S. should do there? It sounds like, according to the journal, there's still about 600 U.S. troops in Niger doing something. I don't know. They're just being allowed to conduct drone missions or something. But is it time to pull out? Like, does this, does pulling away from engagement make you more worried that there will be a uranium deal with Iran? Look, for the Gen Z years listening, just Google Valerie Plain and just set aside like a couple hours. Go deep. We see that. Carl Rove comes into the picture. There's a weird time magazine. scandal. That used to be a thing. People go to jail.

People went to jail for this stuff. I saw this and I was thinking, you know, why, how'd you like to be one of the 600 guys just hanging out in Niger right now? What are we doing here? What are we doing here? As a basic rule,

if the government of the country doesn't want you there, it's not worth the drone base to just keep a few hundred guys there. I mean, I don't know. Like it's pretty straightforward. Like, if the coup government doesn't want you there and it's this insecure place, I think there's real risk in leaving them there. It's as simple as that. And they're not going to be there and foil the uranium sale. So I don't know that it solves that problem either. I know that's how the kind of national security mindset can work sometimes. These guys have to be there to watch for the uranium.

and what, but they're vulnerable, they're exposed, they're not welcome. I don't know, unless you can fix that relationship with the government. I mean, I think you have to think about taking those people out. Yeah, their security risk is real and would worry me a lot too. Turning to India, Ben, so India is going to have an election coming up. It's going to be a seven-phase general election. It starts on April 19th. It's going to last nearly six weeks because the country is just massive. So you have to reach voters in all the regions of India. You have to go to the Himalayas. It requires 15 million employees stationed across more than a million polling stations. During the last election in 2019, nearly 615 million people in India voted.

The 2024 election will see 960 million eligible voters, maybe hit the polls, making it the largest democratic exercise for any country in history. We're going to talk much more in depth about this later, about Modi, about Hindu nationalism, about all of it. But we wanted to share one, just incredible fact from the Carnegie Endowment for International piece, which is the following graph. India's electoral rules say there must be a polling station within two kilometers of every habitation.

This means many of India's 11 million election workers must track across glaciers, deserts, jungles, and an ocean to make sure every eligible Indian can vote. For instance, the sole inhabitant of the remote Geer National Park in Gujarat, home to the last free-ranging Asiatic Lions, has his own polling station complete with his own electronic voting machine because there are no paper ballots for in-person voting. man, and we claim that voting is hard in the United States, that is some impressive stuff. That's awesome, including the fact of the Asiatic Lion. Yeah, I mean, look, we'll get into the Modi of it all. The result of this election is not in that much doubt, obviously.

Modi is very likely to win decisively. But there's something kind of inspiring about that, that, you know, like the logistics, the sheer logistics of India being a democracy are pretty astonishing. Indonesia is the same way because they have like 17,000 islands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, there's still something about the lengths to which, you know, it's not to say everything is perfect in Indian democracy just as there's not in the U.S., but just the fact that they undertake this is pretty impressive.

Yeah. Finally, Ben, in an interview with GB News, which is like the crappy British equivalent to Newsmax or some other terrible right-wing digital out. Yeah, some garbage. Trump said that Prince Harry could be deported if he lied about taking drugs on his U.S. visa application. So this was the full exchange from G.B. News. Who else was the interview with, but Nigel Farage, the right-wing racist, UKIP leader, prick, who now I guess has a show on G.B. News. Here's the full idiotic exchange, thanks to Politico, who transcribed it. Quote, we'll have to see if they know something about the drugs.

And if he lied, they'll have to take appropriate action. Trump said, which might mean not staying in America, Nigel Farage asked, to which a seemingly coy Trump answered, oh, I don't know, you have to tell me. You just have to tell me. So, political also reported that the Heritage Foundation has been suing DHS for Harry's immigration records. It seems like they want to compare whatever he wrote on this application to whatever he wrote in his memoir, spare, where he talks about trying cocaine, marijuana, and mushrooms.

Ben, two questions. Have we found Kate? And why can't people just leave Harry alone? well first of all like you know Kate did seem to appear at a farm shop and you know so for those not following this closely as some of us are you can just Google you know Kate Milton

and farm shop more questions and answers but yeah yeah yeah I just want to say like keeping the theme of like however many years being this podcast you know Donald Trump Nigel Farage BB Netanyahu like Lindsay Graham these people never go away you know like I didn't saw the G.B. News thing. I didn't realize that the interview was with Nigel Farage, right? Of course. These people literally like there's a zombies that just continue to walk through our lives.

You know what they do, do, Ben? G.B. News is this made-up right-wing news outlet paid for by some billionaire who loses money but has political influence. Guess what? Donald Trump helps them gain market share and influence by doing interviews with them. Hey, Democrats, what if we tried the same thing? Yeah, yeah. Supported progressive news. Just an idea. Right of we came on Crooked Pod. Yeah, I, what is the problem with Harry? I don't, I mean, I guess he's woke and Megan Markle is black or something. I don't really understand what the, why, why this is worth their effort, you know? I don't get it either. It was funny, though, that Megan Markle launched a new lifestyle brand in the middle of the wearer's Kate's stuff. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah.

That timing was interesting. You know, Megan's had a decent year, right? Like, Suits has, you know, got this whole renaissance on Netflix. But I, I, if I'm here, I. Harry like the rest of us may be needing to look at land in the Canadian Rockies or something, you know. Who knows what that fuck is going to happen if Trump wins his election, you know? Last thing, Ben, I did hear on, I think it was BBC, did an episode I was listening to BBC World Podcasts, World News. Netflix is apparently making a movie about Prince Andrews disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. I watch that.

This family, they cannot catch a break. I mean, in this case, they probably don't deserve to catch a break. But wow, a tough news cycle. It's just been a tough news cycle for the world. That's all we can say. The hits keep on coming. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we come back. You'll hear my interview with Josh Gelter from the White House about Section 702

and Intelligence Collection and why he believes that Congress needs to reauthorize a program. So stick around for that. Josh Gelter is Deputy Counsel to the President and Legal Advisor to the National Security Council. Josh, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for the chance to join you. And as I was saying earlier, I would have not worn a Patriot sweatshirt if I had remembered. I was talking to someone from the White House. So that's on me. So we're here to talk today about something called Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It gives the intelligence community, certain authorities that are going to expire on April 19th, I believe. So we're recording this on

March 19th. So a month from today, these authorities will go away. Can we just start with the basics then, what is Section 702 and how does it work? Let me give you a one-sentence version and then maybe a few-sentence version. Love it. The one-sentence version is that it's a piece of federal law that allows the executive branch in a court-supervised way to work with U.S. technology companies to obtain the communications of certain non-Americans outside the country who might be of foreign intelligence interest. That's one long sentence.

Let me break it down a little bit. non-Americans outside the country do not have Fourth Amendment rights. That means generally when foreign intelligence is collected from and on them, there's no law required. It's not done by statute. It's done by the president's authority alone. But about 20 years ago, a quirk, a wrinkle emerged, which is those non-Americans located outside the country were using U.S. technology companies to communicate.

And the question became how to get those communications. And in a sense, they've gotten a little extra protection, those non-Americans abroad, because they're using our own technologies. And this is the law that lets us go to those companies and get those communications. And so that is an important point, I think, because I think executive order 12333, is that right? The U.S. government derives most of its authority from that executive order to collect intelligence. Folks who just know that that the President of the United States gets to write his own executive orders and put them out and that gives him his authority. but in this case, you're going to Congress to get this special authority because it involves U.S. companies, essentially?

That's exactly right. I mean, in a sense, it's counterintuitive. You have these non-Americans located abroad who are suspected of being terrorist recruiters or proliferators or recruiters of hostile spies in our country. And they're getting a little extra protection because they're exploiting our own country's ingenuity and technology against us. They're using U.S., let's say, email service providers for the same reasons we all do because they're convenient, because they're cheap, often free, because they're generally reliable. And the question became how to structure our, meaning the executive branch's engagement with those U.S. companies in a way that protected the companies and gave access to the communications of foreign intelligence value, but only of

non-U.S. persons located abroad. So if bin Laden was faced. Facebook messaging, Zawahiri, you needed some extra authorities to get access to that. It's a quirk of the wires in a sense that those outside our country do use these services, and sometimes they use them against us. Yeah, reject that friend request, by the way. Okay, so the challenge with these debates is it often boils down to people say, well, why does the intelligence community need these authorities? And it kind of boils down to trust us, because obviously, like, unless you're a Mar-a-Lago

member with access to certain bathrooms and closets, you can't just, read any intelligence you want, right? This is for people like you in the national security side of the house. You have access to this information in service of whatever. But the broader context for just, you know, people hearing about this for the first time is they think about intelligence failures. The 9-11 attacks, the Iraq war, Benghazi when I was in the White House, the predictions around the timeline for the collapse of Afghanistan. So a lot of people might be pre-disposed to believe that this information is not necessarily as valuable as the government says it is. Can you make the case for why you believe it is actually valuable and necessary to collect?

Absolutely. And we've tried to declassify a lot to try to make exactly that case publicly, because we think that's important. Let me give you one stat and then some more concrete topics on which 702 is essential. The stat is that about two-thirds of the articles in the president's daily brief. So two-thirds of the pieces that the intelligence community thinks it's most important for the President of the United States to see on the most pressing national security issues, those contain 702 information. What type of information? Well, counterterrorism information, for sure. 702 helped us identify and locate Aiman al-Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaeda two summers ago, before he was taken off the battlefield. It helps us with cyber threats. It helped us,

identify the perpetrator of the colonial pipeline ransomware attack and actually recover some of the funds paid to resolve that attack. It has helped us with Russian atrocities in Ukraine. It's given us insight into forced relocations of Ukrainians, deliberate Russian firing on Ukrainian fleeing refugees. Honestly, if you care about fentanyl flooding into our country, if you care about protecting our critical infrastructure, if you care about the China threat, 702 informs our governments understanding all of these topics at this point. So I want to push you a little bit on this stat about the PDV, the president's daily briefing. I think I was reading with the P-Club, what is the president's civil liberties, oversight board?

They had a great report, real beach read, about 300 pages of this stuff. I was reading through that, and it said a similar stat, it said information source to 702 supported 59% of articles. in the President's Daily Briefing. So the issue I have with that stat is that sounds impressive, but the word supported is a bit vague. As you know, you're a consumer of intelligence. These pieces can be on big topics, right? Like the strength of the Chinese military.

They can be several pages long. They will use as many sources as possible to corroborate things. Is there any way to unpack that more? Like, how do we know that Section 702 data isn't mentioned in one tiny footnote of a much longer piece. It's actually really from a CIA source in the Chinese military. Look, we try to give this information both macro and micro to understand that as best we can. It is true that any given piece in the PDB, the president's daily briefing, has almost always multiple sources behind it. But think about what it would mean for two out of three pieces

that go to the president each morning to subtract some piece of information that the intelligence community right now has lawful access to and thinks is worth including. And these are not multi-dozen, multi-hundred-page pieces, as you know, Tommy. These are a few pages generally. Why blind the president to senior advisors, the leadership of our intelligence community to information that is being deemed worthy right now of at least enhancing, augmenting two-thirds of those pieces and sometimes being the very heart of them? But we can also make this case on very micro, very detailed terms. There was lethal plotting on U.S. soil against a dissident that Section 702 collection, and in particular our ability to conduct these so-called U.S. person queries of them,

which have become controversial, that that information, that ability to access, sift and sort the information in a time-sensitive way, enabled us to disrupt that plotting. That's saving lives. Yeah. One other stat I saw this P-Clab report. And again, I think we and I should talk about, renaming the P-Clob, because that is a god-awful acronym. But it said, as of mid-September 2022, almost 22% of NSA reporting on terrorism was sourced in whole or in part Section 702. So there's just another data point for folks listening to think, does this program matter or not? You mentioned this issue of abuse or misuse of searches for U.S. persons for American names or selectors like phone numbers, email addresses, et cetera.

there have been news reports about or, you know, IG reports about some of these abuses, including searches by FBI personnel in Washington, D.C. They conducted 141 queries of identifiers associated with activists who are arrested in connection with protesting the murder of George Floyd. That obviously was inappropriate. There were searches for a U.S. congressman, searches for a U.S. senator. I would not want to be in that oversight hearing afterwards if I were responsible for that. So I've heard you talk about some of the reforms that were put in place in 2021 to fix problems with the way 702 data was being searched in particular at the FBI. It sounds like the FBI's intelligence search engine, for lack of a better description, it's basically like, imagine your Googling intelligence data. It was originally designed that you had to opt out of searching 702 data.

Now it was changed so that you have to opt into searching for 702 data when you query. some term and also provide some case-specific justification for why it was appropriate to do so. Is that an accurate description of what they did? Totally accurate. And let me unpack it, because I know it sounds wonky, but it's really important. And maybe the first place to begin is that compliance errors are not okay. These systems are complex. There are fallible humans who try their best to operate them, but the government shouldn't make mistakes, especially handling sensitive information. And we recognize that. That is why we have, over the past three-plus years, worked to institute

as a matter of policy, some changes that have dramatically improved compliance rates. And you're pointing to the most important one, maybe just the easiest one for a listener to grasp. It used to be that if you're an FBI agent or if you were an FBI analyst and you were querying, you were sifting and sorting information lawfully in the holdings of FBI, and you weren't supposed to include 702 collection in that sifting and sorting, you had to remember to opt out. That is not a good system to sign. You may forget that.

You may conduct the query and go, shoot, I should have opted out. But by then, the compliance error has been conducted. So that presumption, which took a whole system redesign to achieve, but it's been flipped. Now, if you're sitting at the Hoover Building, you're sitting in FBI field office, if you think you're supposed to sift and sort the information held by FBI in a way that includes 702 collection, there's a pop-up thing. You need to click that you want to include it. And then it says, well, why?

What category of OK query are you in? And you do a drop-down menu and you choose that. And then it says, all right, why, in your own words, particular to the facts of the case you're investigating, should you get to conduct this query? You need to type that in so that it can be subjected to auditing and oversight and congressional oversight later. And only then can you get through to the 702 information.

This has dramatically improved the state of affairs. In the first year of this being in place, the number of U.S. person queries conducted by FBI, by FBI dropped by 93 percent and the compliance rate improved. And now we're up to 99 percent compliance rate by FBI. We want to get to 100 percent. That's why we've stood up enduring offices to keep improving. But at the same time, there's something big Congress can do. We can take the improvements we've made as a matter of policy and it can put them into law through this reauthorization cycle so that neither we nor any other administration can roll them back.

Yeah, I mean, look, the compliance rate is certainly drastic improvement. I also read that those changes plus more oversight and more training led to a 93% decrease in the number of these searches of 702 data. Right? So the intelligence community optimist listening to this might think, boy, I'm glad smart people like Josh are in government. They're fixing systems like this. That's a good news story.

The cynics might say that is an inexcusably stupid design for a system that searches intelligence where the U.S. government spying on me, foreign citizens, people, you know, hoovering up all this information that led to there was poor training, there was rampant abuse, and they might wonder what other systems that might be as poorly designed don't I know about? Like, what would you say to sort of assuage those concerns? Look, I would say a couple things. One, it was not good system design. I'm in fundamental agreement with that, and that's why we've overhauled it, and the results show it.

So I think we start out in a place of fundamental agreement on that. But that's not all we've done. The fact that there is training now, the fact that there's higher level approval, required for the most sensitive queries. The fact that if you want to do a batch query, which just means searching, querying two or more things at the same time, you need to go get higher level approval even to do that, because if you screw up once, you actually screw up at least twice in that scenario, we've tried to think through those sorts of circumstances, and we have stood up within FBI enduring offices that will keep looking at the compliance rate

and go, all right, what is the difference now between 99% and 100% and what haven't we thought of to get there. But I would also say, this, this is an extraordinarily complicated system administered by well-intentioned government servants. They have worked hard to improve it. And meanwhile, the payoffs for stopping lethal plotting on U.S. soil, for uncovering Russian atrocities, for preventing fentanyl from flowing into our country, those payoffs along the way have been just extraordinary. And we think those can continue even as we improve the compliance rate further. Right. So we talked about this improvement in the compliance rate. But there's also more broadly been a big increase in the use of

702 data generally. So again, according to this Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report from September of 2023, said, quote, during calendar year 2022, approximately 246,073, non-U.S. persons located abroad were targeted under Section 702. The number of Section 702 targets has nearly doubled over the last five years. What accounts for this drastic expansion of the use of that data. And couldn't that signal that its use is going beyond the original intent of the program itself? You know, here's what it signals. It signals just how much people around the world like using American technologies to communicate. I mean, this began as a post-9-11 counterterrorism tool. It was really terrorists who first got on the radar, so to speak, of the U.S. government

as using these sorts of email services and other forms of communicating in a way that took our own to ingenuity, took the fact that these are free, globally accessible, just kind of fun and easy to use, well, well guarded and secured, and turn that against us. But over time, other bad actors have caught up to the terrorists. You have proliferators. You have foreign powers trying to recruit spies in the United States. You have those sending the chemical precursors from China to the cartels in Mexico that become fentanyl as it makes its way to our borders.

You have those who want to penetrate our critical infrastructure. All of those actors have essentially caught up to the terrorists in realizing that America's own tools to communicate can be used against us. What we're trying to do with 702 is just keep pace with that for those non-Americans abroad to keep targeting their communications where that's appropriate and having a court-supervised, congressionally supervised way of interacting with the companies to do so. So you mentioned terrorism, and I think it was. my impression that these kinds of intelligence searches are only allowed for terrorism,

foreign intelligence, government collection, basically, and then counterproliferation work. But I read that the FBI is also allowed to search 702 data for evidence of general criminal activity. Doesn't that seem like an inappropriate use of intelligence collection for what should be a law enforcement activity? So let me separate two things here. And I realize this is all quite complicated. There are three categories, and you hit them perfectly, that are the certifications. They're the topics that the FISA court approves each year, the executive branch, then working with communications companies to obtain relevant communications to inform. And you hit all three of them. Then there are querying rules. In other words, once that information comes back,

what are the court approved, also court approved rules, for how to organize it? Because sometimes you learn things in information that isn't exactly the reason you got that information in the first place. Think of just an ordinary criminal investigation. Sometimes you're investigating somebody for one thing, but as you, let's say, get a warrant, you realize they've committed other crimes, too. Nothing inappropriate about it. You're looking for a P-tape, you find Carter Page, right? Something like that. Something like that. And someday I'm going to get you to laugh. And so the question becomes how to sort and sift this information. And here, the, first of all, actually, it's worth pointing out that FBI gets very little of 702 collection, less than 4%.

only the 702 raw information that's actually connected to an FBI predicated investigation. Within that, the court has allowed them to, where it's appropriate, query, sift and sort that information for evidence of even a non-national security crime, such as, let's say, child pornography, or such as, let's say, quote, ordinary murder or rape, as if such a thing can be ordinary. There are debates right now about whether to take that piece out of the equation by statute to say, you know, this is overwhelmingly, predominantly a foreign intelligence and national security tool. Maybe even if we, the government, have lawfully collected that information, we should not have access to it. That's a healthy conversation to have. But I would point out it's a very, very tiny usage of 702, and it is right now statutorily approved and court approved.

I want to dig into this U.S. person searches issue, because according to this P. Club report, I keep saying that word, it's awful. I'm sorry to all the listeners. quote, the vast majority of FBI's U.S. person queries of Section 702 information that are conducted return no results. For example, in 2022 FBI personnel access content returned by a U.S. person query for only 1.58% of such queries. Now, I know you guys oppose pushes to make the intelligence community get a warrant to conduct these searches. I could see how that might be onerous if you're searching hundreds of thousands or millions of times. why not force them to get a warrant or some other step, some other review step, to actually review the information about a U.S. citizen in this 1.58% of cases where there is a result or like, you know, design some sort of process that works for you guys.

This is super important. So let me even step back. Non-U.S. persons located abroad. Talk to all sorts of people. And when you're collecting communications, there's always going to be, at least in at least two people involved in a communication. Right. So the question is, what happens when those non-U.S. persons located abroad are communicating

or seem to be communicating with a U.S. person? Now, this was always anticipated. In fact, this is part of the gap 702 was designed to fill post 9-11, that if we saw some terrorist abroad communicating with somebody who seemed to be a U.S. person in the United States, we'd at least be able to begin further investigations by seeing whether that communication was innocuous, which often it is. Terrorists communicate with lots of people, not for terrorism reasons, but just because they communicate, or for terrorism reasons, in which case a lot more work needs to happen very quickly. This is something always anticipated. Indeed, part of what 702 was designed

to fill. So what do we do with that sort of information that's been lawfully collected? Well, court after court has said it is constitutional and consistent with the statute to query to say, if we've already collected it by targeting the non-American abroad, it's okay to organize it around what seems to be an American they may be in communications with. Often that American is a victim or about to be a victim. It's a company that's about to be hacked. It's the target of lethal plotting for an assassination attempt. It's someone who might be collaborating and recruiting spies

or might be getting recruited as a spy himself or herself and should be warned against going down the road they're going. So court after court has said there's nothing wrong with organizing this information from that end in appropriate circumstances when it's reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence. And when it is, that can be among the most important and time-sensitive uses of 702 collection. And that is why we really do oppose quite strongly the notion that in this already lawfully obtained, lawfully collected, lawfully held information, we should have to go back to a court without any analogous requirement in another context to that, then organize around and look at what's already in our holdings. That is the opposite of what the 9-11 Commission and the Ford Hood Commission said to do, in which they urge the executive branch to make better use of what's already in our holdings.

Can you explain what a defensive briefing is and how many of them you have had to give to my co-host, Ben Rhodes, since he left the White House? I want to know if Ben's laughing at that, regardless of whether I'm laughing at that. He's out here, so. But look, a defensive briefing is when it seems that, an individual, and for our purposes, is often an American, is being approached or recruited in some way they don't realize. They may think there's some wonderful potential employer out there who really wants to talk to them, or some incredible university researcher who wants to sponsor their research. And in fact, they are being recruited by someone we, in classified holdings or all enforcement investigations,

have realized is trying to recruit Americans as spies. So the American has done nothing wrong up to this point. We don't want to just sit back and watch this happen. What we want to do is get in front of that American, warn them about what's happening, and help steer them away from an encounter they presumably don't want to have once they've been warned, and we certainly don't want them to have. Just stepping back, I mean, you mentioned at the top that non-U.S. persons don't have Fourth Amendment rights, obviously, because the Constitution protects Americans. My question is, should they? Because, I mean, a lot of the way we think about intelligence dates back to a previous era where you had a CIA guy like steaming envelopes and breaking into apartments and tapping phones individually. You know, this was an onerous time intensive, labor intensive process.

Now it's just bulk collection. Now we're just hoovering up shitloads of data from Google and Yahoo and Facebook. And it does make me wonder if we should have a, take a beat and think more broadly about whether there should be some sort of universal right to privacy that exists for everyone on planet Earth. And I say this is a giant hypocrite coming out of the Obama administration that did all kinds of spying. Well, I think the answer is there should be protections for those non-Americans abroad.

They're just not the same protections, right? The Constitution in the hands of court after court has been calibrated in its application, including the Fourth Amendment, in a way that respects the distinctive privacy rights in particular of American. But it's not that or nothing. And in fact, 702 is remarkably protective of non-American's privacy as well. Indeed, it's the most transparent, most overseen, and, and thanks for adding to this, most discussed intelligence collection authority in the world anywhere.

So the fact that you have FISA court, which is just federal judges sitting by rotation, overseeing this program, the fact that four committees on Capitol Hill, the two judiciary committees and the two intelligence committees get rigorous, engage in rigorous oversight and get detailed information about 702 collection and how it's being conducted, the fact that in a reauthorization cycle like this, we do our very best to declassify a lot of things that explain why this matters, why this gives us insight into topics Americans care about, all of that helps protect even the non-U.S. persons abroad who are the targets of this collection. Final question for you. So your job is to protect the country from all manner of national security

threats. And your core focus, I'd imagine, is to make sure absolutely nothing slips through the cracks and something bad happens again. And I get that and I respect that and I worked in government and I know how well-meaning the people I worked with are and a lot of them now work for Joe Biden. and I know how well-meaning and patriotic they continue to be. But we just went through four years with Donald Trump as president of the United States. There's a 50-50 chance he'll be back. My civilian brain now thinks the bigger threat to my safety, my security, my civil liberties is U.S. government overreach.

And as much as I trust Josh Gelzer and Joe Biden to do the right thing, I do not trust Donald Trump or Cash Patel or Joe. Jared Kushner or whatever bonehead they put in in your job in four years, God forbid, if he wins again. And so I just wonder, wouldn't the best thing for the country be to reduce the threat of government surveillance and overreach on American citizens while we have the time? So it's not going to surprise you that I'll stay away from commenting on Donald Trump or 2024 in particular. But I think there's a point that I need to engage on here, which is the idea that we plan these things. We work through statutes. We entrenched policy, not just for now,

but for the future. And there are lots of things, and you've been around these tables, that those of us who serve in government rightfully say, how would we use this, and how would someone else use this? Here's what I'd say about 702 collection. If one wants to infringe on the civil rights and civil liberties of Americans, this is the least efficient, most bizarre way to do so. In other words, abuse of 702 by over-collecting somehow against non-U.S. persons located abroad and hoping that you ensnare a bit more of Americans' communications, and then over-quaring that and the hope that that generates some sort of insights, I could not imagine a less efficient and frankly less scary way of infringing on American civil rights and civil liberties. I do not take lightly

that those of us who serve in these roles need to think about futures in which these roles are occupied by folks who are not us. But the ways in which we are thinking about doing that and trying to do that responsibly, I think start in a lot of places other than FISA 702. Josh, thank you so much for doing the show and explaining this unbelievably complicated topic. I really do appreciate it.

Really grateful for the chance to be on. Thank you, Tommy. Thanks again to Josh Jelter for joining the show. Ben, thanks to you from zooming in from a faraway place and talk to you soon. Yeah. If you want to get ad-frog episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at

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