Pod Save the World - Trump Tells Putin to Invade NATO Nations

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Tommy and Max Fisher talk about the disastrous humanitarian implications of Israel’s impending offensive in Rafah, the Biden administration’s shifting tone towards Israel, and efforts to reach out to the Muslim American community in Michigan. They also talk about Trump’s comments encouraging Russia to invade NATO members who don’t spend enough on defense, react to Tucker Carlson’s (boring) interview with Vladimir Putin, Pakistan’s shocking election results, the chances of Irish reunification, and King Charles’s quirky views on modern medicine. Then Ben speaks with New Jersey Congressman Andy Kim about his campaign to oust Senator Bob Menendez, and how corruption impacts America’s foreign policy. 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 Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy. I'm Max Fisher. Tommy, what a pleasure to be back with you. It is wonderful to see you. Ben is traveling today. So we are thrilled and lucky to have you with us. Well, great to be back with my Pod Save the World Pals. Many people are saying it is more triumphant of a return than John Stewart's return to the Daily Show. You know. That's the scuttle butt on the internet. Did you watch it? Is it good? I did. I watched this. There's like an eight-minute clip going around about Biden's age and Trump's age and how poorly some of the. responses have been from the left online. It's worth watching. I, you know, everyone says it's so good. I'm sure I'll came and watch it eventually, but I can't bring myself to watch him because I already feel like I'm being forcibly made to relive 2016. You are? So I am. Yeah. So the idea of like throwing on John Stewart and

also reliving 2008, it's like it's too much. That's a fair point. I'll be honest, Max, I was very skeptical about it. It's hard to go back home. It's hard to go back to a place in time 20 years ago. I didn't know if Stewart was going to, but he slid right back into it. It was fun to watch. But we have a great, great show for you today, much like John Stewart. We're going to talk about the increasingly acrimonious fight between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister, Bebein and Yahoo, over Gaza, especially Israel's plan to invade the city of Rafo, which would be a disaster.

We're also going to cover the shift in Biden's tone when talking about Gaza. We are going to talk about how seriously to take Trump's attacks on NATO rhetorical attacks. No land force. Give it a year. Yeah, give it here. We're going to briefly recap Tucker's very lame. Putin interview, talk about the ongoing fight in Congress over spending for Ukraine and Israel. Pakistan had a shocking election outcome that is getting a lot of ink here.

Really? Really through me. Yeah, me too. Genuinely shocking. And then we'll talk about Irish unification and King Carl's views on modern medicine. And then you're going to hear Ben's interview with Congressman Andy Kim, who is now running for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey, is running against Bob Menendez. Hopefully, fingers crossed. They talked about how corruption changes the U.S. government, how it translates to our foreign policy and our credibility abroad.

A quick note. Ben recorded this with Andy Kim last week. So it was before the latest round of voting on the supplemental bill for aid for Ukraine. So if things sound a little dated just in terms of the tenses about the votes, that is why. Wait, Bob Menendez carrying gold bars from the Egyptian government in his jacket is bad for U.S. credibility? What? When you say it like that, Max, it really is hard to believe that that actually happened. What a fucking idiot.

Okay, let's turn to Gaza because it is very clear that Biden's frustration with Netanyahu is deeply held at this point. It's spilling it to public and is happening as the Israeli military prepares to launch a new assault into the southern city of Rafa. Here's a clip from President Biden last week at a press conference about his retention of classified documents. I'm at the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip has been over the top. I've been pushing really hard, really hard to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying. And it's got to stop.

Over the top, also an 80s movie about arm wrestling, I believe. Anyway, glad to hear him say something publicly about Nain Yoyo. So Biden is reportedly mad that Netanyahu keeps rejecting ceasefire. deals negotiated by the U.S. And he feels that Israel is not done enough to limit civilian casualties. Before the war, this brings us to Rafa, before the war, about 280,000 people lived at Rafa. Now there's an estimated 1.4 million people sheltering there.

Netanyahu says they have to go into Rafa. It's impossible to win the war against Hamas without doing so because there's a bunch of Hamas fighters in Rafa. They also claim that Israel's working on a plan to evacuate civilians, but pretty much everyone involved believes that invading Rafa would have disastrous humanitarian consequences to spell some of those consequences. We talked with Melanie Ward from medical aid for Palestinians about the humanitarian situation on the ground. The most crowded place on earth at the moment is probably Rafa, where, as you say, over a million people are trying to seek shelter. So the idea that

a huge military assault will be allowed to take place on such an overcrowded place where people have nowhere to run is beyond comprehension. It's not just the scale of the human casualty and the bloodshed that would take place because of the sheer overcrowding. It's also the fact that all of the aid that's been getting into Gaza, almost all of it has been coming through Rafa. My organisation has delivered huge amounts of medical supplies, although, again, a drop in the ocean compared to what's needed since this started. Almost all of it's coming through Rafa. If we cannot supply the hospitals in the middle of such a bloody attack, I mean, we're talking about tens of thousands of people who will be needlessly killed. So the

prospect is terrifying. And Rafa itself right now, huge overcrowding. There isn't proper shelter. One of the things that Israel has denied entry to in some cases are the tent poles for tents. As you know, the majority of housing has been destroyed now. We can't even build proper tents because they won't allow tent poles in. So people are constructing whatever they can in the street, flimsy pieces of nylon on bits of wood all over the streets to try to have some kind of shelter. but it's obviously been raining as well. There is no proper sewage system. There isn't enough fuel to run sewage systems.

One of the things that's happened is that Israel has systematically targeted solar panels. There were quite a lot of those which ran water pump sewage systems. A lot of those have been taken out of action as well. So the smell that there is just because of the sheer numbers of people and the waste that exists is vast. So, Max, the U.S. says we will oppose any military operation into Rafis. with that a credible plan in place to evacuate civilians. Officials of the UN say they oppose any military campaign in Rafah and will, quote, not be a party to force displacement of people.

So they're not going to help Israel evacuate. There were even reports that Egypt had threatened to avoid its peace deal with Israel over the Rafah invasion, but that seems like that had been walked back. I'm just trying to see a path forward here where Israel goes through with this, given all these concerns the international community. I'm like, how do you square the circle here of Netanyahu's insistence that they go in, with everyone else saying absolutely not. Yeah. So, I mean, the U.S. and the U.N. Secretary General and the ICC, all giving the clearest possible red light. A couple of months ago, I would have said that's a really

big deal because it's, you know, the clarity of it, the fact that they're saying it publicly. But the thing is, is that at this point, the U.S. has so many times signaled or overtly said, we don't want you to do this and then Israel has done it or said, we want you to do more to protect civilians and then has been ignored that the U.S. has kind of painted itself into this corner where it's now just proving to Israel that there are no consequences for defying it. And because they've kind of inched through defying or subtly defying the U.S. so many times that we've really shown them that there are no cost to just writing us off. And the fact that we've taken this stance so publicly now, we're kind of putting what remains, what little remains of our credibility with the

Israelis that they will ever listen to us on the line. And at this point, if we issue this warning and they defy it as they seem intent on doing, there has to be some kind of action backing it up, or we will clearly have just proven to them once and for all. You can ignore us, do whatever you want, and you will just get unlimited aid from us. Yeah, I want to talk about that aid in a minute, because you're right. I mean, steam rolling through the Senate as we speak. Meanwhile, the CIA director, Bill Burns, he's back in Egypt as we speak. He's working to negotiate another ceasefire deal. Biden talked about that ceasefire deal and the Rafa, his concerns about Rafa during a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan at the White House on Monday. But this broader set of concerns about Israel and civilian casualties in Gaza, it's not new.

Prime Minister Bibi Niyahou got asked about Israel's lack of concern, seemingly with civilian casualties on ABC News over the weekend. Here's a clip. I'd be cautious with the Hamas statistics. And I can tell you that according to these, urban warfare experts and other commentators. We've brought down the civilian to terrorist casualties, the ratio, down below one to one, which is considerably less than in any other theater of similar warfare, and we're going to do more. We're going to provide you... Wait a minute. You're saying it's only been one civilian that's been killed for one Hamas terrorist

in Gaza? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Yes. We've killed, we've killed and wounded over 20,000 Hamas terrorists out of that about 12,000, 12,000 fighters. And we're doing everything we can to minimize civilian casualties and continue to do so. So I find that very hard to believe. I guess we need to know how Israel defines a Hamas terrorist. I mean, is it just any male of a certain age? What did you make of that? It's also not a plausible claim because they are not on the ground counting casualty.

Right. So it's clearly they're just making this up for publicity. I think it's worth, Tommy, kind of underscoring why everybody is so worked up about Rafa specifically. Like, we've heard about so many places where there are high rates of civilian casualties, so many places with this humanitarian disaster. But, like, Rafa really is different because it's, I mean, first of all, it's the sheer number of people there, but it's also you have to understand why they're there, why they're in Rafa because, of course, Israel invaded the north of Gaza,

so it led to this huge displacement. Hundreds of thousands of people fled their home, and they ended up in Rafa, which is the southernmost point of Gaza, squished right up against the border with Egypt. So it's number one, it's already in a state of humanitarian crisis, even without an Israeli invasion of Rafa, where there's food shortages, there's an enormous health crisis there. And so any kind of bombing or intervention there is going to be way costlier

and way more damaging and way deadlier than in other places. And the other reason people are freaked out about this, And you alluded to this when you mentioned Egypt, is that because it's right up against this border crossing with Egypt, the big fear is that Netanyahu is going to try to use some sort of humanitarian disaster in Rafa to force a huge number of Gazans across the border into Egypt, which is something he's been talking about trying to do for a long time. And if he does that, that would be or could be the start of what a lot of people are considered the worst case outcome, the great big nightmare scenario, which is permanent. forced population transfer of Ghazans out of Gaza into Egypt to just say we're going to permanently remove a huge part of this population. Which you've been hearing every Arab leader say is unacceptable since the very beginning. But yeah, to your point, I mean, these are people who are, the population has grown

5x since before the war. These are people who are not sheltering in buildings that provide a modicum of support if they're in a tent. Your options now to be moved are to go south into Egypt, which is a non-star. You can't because the Egyptians are blocking it for them. Right. Or you go into an area where there's a bunch of unexploded ordinance. I mean, it's like these are bad, bad, bad, bad options.

Also, I mean, the New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence believes that Israel has degraded Hamas's fighting capabilities, but is not even close to eliminating the group. I mean, I think last week we talked about how the United Nations believes there's 100,000 people in Gaza who are dead or missing and presumed dead. The Gaza Health Ministry has a number closer to 30,000 casualties that we know of. But there's just no way that there's some sort of one-to-one ratio of dead fighters to dead civilians. It's just not possible. Right.

And it's only going to get worse because the further the war goes on, the more people, civilians, I should say, are concentrated into these areas where they're extremely vulnerable. So the more goes on, the more it targets people who are more vulnerable. And the higher the rates of civilian casualties are going to be. And like you're saying, Hamas is at this point where, you know, we're just talking about tunnels and we're just talking about like a bunch of guys who are hiding out in Gaza. Like it's not possible to eradicate this many needles and this big of a haystack. It's never going to happen. So at some point you have to ask, why is this? And I know you have been discussed this.

I'm not the first one to raise this question. But like, why are we still doing this? Yeah. It just, it seems quite clear that the policy is not working. It's not taking out Hamas. It's not getting the hostages back. It's not making anybody safer. Yeah, and that's part of what really frustrates me about how the Biden White House seems to have gotten to a point where they're saying, okay, we need to go public with this, we need to say no, but because they have done so much kind of no saying up to this point, but then not followed through on it, they flipped the effectiveness of it, where now every time they say no, it's actually actively detrimental to their goal of de-escalating because all it's doing is demonstrating the fact that Israel has a blank check from us.

Yeah, and it seems like Netanyahu believes that he needs to have this credible threat of more harsher military intervention to get to a ceasefire deal, but at the same time as rejecting all the ceasefire offers that come through, even if they're negotiated by Bill Burns and the CIA and the Mossad director. So I just don't know what the path for it is. Yeah, and it's the EU foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrell, expressed, I think, the consternation that a lot of us feel when he expressed. his outrage at Joe Biden specifically and said there's there's no point to keep saying, you know, oh, please, please don't invade Rafa, don't do this if you're not also going to cut off arms transfers. Let's listen to a clip of Burrell's comments. How many times have you heard the most prominent leaders and foreign ministers around the world saying too many people are being killed? President Biden had this is too much on the top.

It's not proportionate. Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed. It's not logical. Everybody goes to Tel Aviv. Begging, please, don't do that. Protect civilians. Don't kill so many. But Netanyahu doesn't listen anyone.

They are going to evacuate. Where? To the moon? Where are they going to evacuate these people? So I'm not that familiar with Borel, but that sounded pretty scathing. It's pretty harsh, yeah. And I think what's really striking is that he clearly has lost any faith whatsoever in either the Israeli leadership or in the EU's ability to have leverage with the Israeli leadership. And I think it's really striking that now he sees his role as targeting and pressuring Washington, which does kind of feel like Washington at this point is the last best chance. to exert some sort of leverage on this. I don't know if the U.S. limiting arms transfers would actually change Israeli policy. It's possible it wouldn't.

Right. But it's what else are we going to do. That's what's frustrating. We do have a lot of leverage, but that doesn't mean there's a guarantee that Netanyai would change course. Burrell also pointed out that a court in the Netherlands ordered the government to stop exporting parts for the F-35 to Israel to ensure they're in compliance with the International Court of Justice's ruling and its implementation. So I think that was an interesting flag by him to point out. But let's talk more about this tonal change, Max, because last week members of Biden's team, including John Feiner, the Deputy National Security Advisor and Samantha Power, the USAID administrator,

went to Michigan for meetings with members of the Arab American community who are angry about the administration's policy. A recording of that meeting leaked out. Here's some notable quotes. So Feiner acknowledged a whole bunch of missteps and said, quote, we have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians. Finer also talked about Biden's efforts to push for the creation of a Palestinian state, but bluntly noted, quote, I do not have any confidence in this current government of Israel to implement that. Finer also said there was no excuse for releasing a whiteout statement around the 100-day mark that didn't address or acknowledge

the loss of Palestinian life. We also reached out to a guy named Abbas Al-Alua who attended this meeting to get his impression of the meeting of the conversation of what he heard from the Biden administration officials. Here's a clip. In that meeting, we heard senior administration officials admitting that a lot of mistakes have been made. But unfortunately, a lot of the mistakes that they were talking about, specifically pointing to the 100-day statement, for example, the President Biden issued that failed to mention the loss of Palestinian life, a lot of the mistakes that they were pointing to were messaging mistakes. And what we were looking to hear from them is

some level of commitment to a different approach on the policy side. You know, that meeting felt like it coincided with President Biden saying that maybe the Israelis were, that maybe the Israeli military was acting in a way that was over the top. You know, in the meeting they were admitting to mistakes, but, you know, it feels like not even the bare minimum. Over the top would be if I asked someone how their day was and they accused me of, you know, being too invasive and getting into their business. I might say, oh, hey, your response feels over the top. Over the top is not what we call the killing of 12,000 plus children, Palestinian children in Gaza

using our tax dollars. That's not over the top. What that is, according to the experts who study this stuff, is the mass inflicting of of war crimes. They've dragged this conflict into a genocidal place that ought to worry all of us. And it is worrying voters here in Michigan that Biden really needs if he's going to win the presidency. So clearly the administration is a long way to go to assuage the policy concerns from the Arab-American community in Michigan.

I do think the White House got the message on tone and feelings, I think that the White House themselves says are understandable and it were the result of mistakes that Biden wasn't expressing enough concern about the loss of Palestinian life as compared to the loss of Israeli life. This is a clip from Biden's statement when he did a, it wasn't a press conference because they didn't take questions, but a little statements to the press with King Abdullah during his visit on Monday. The past four months, as the war has raised, the Palestinian people have also suffered unimaginable pain and loss. Too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this

conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children. And hundreds of thousands have no access to food, water, or other basic services. Many families have lost, not just one, but many relatives, and cannot mourn for them, even bury them, because they're not safe to do so. It's heartbreaking. Every innocent life in Gaza is a tragedy. Just as every innocent life lost in Israel is a tragedy as well. So I mean, definitely better. I do wonder if that had been the tone from day one, if it might have made a difference on the margins. That's what I was thinking. Is it like, if this had been the shift that had come a month into the conflict, then I think I would be like, okay, I understand that like this makes sense as a certain

kind of like pace of evolution, but the fact that it's four months in. And the fact that this seems to be so far behind where basically everybody else, as far as I can tell in terms of allies, in terms of opinion polling, is on the conflict. It's just, it's baffling to me, honestly. And it's also hard to mean, when it's paired with pushing hard for a supplemental that does not condition aid to Israel, when it's paired with pushing hard for normalizing relations between the Saudis in Israel, it seems like they think that's the key to unlocking kind of the whole region. Yeah, the Saudi thing feels like, I'm sorry to fire off some strays here. It feels like a weird Brett McGirk side project, like zombie side project that like, it's not clear to me why they're

continuing to pursue this. And like, I think Brett McGurk is a great guy and is like really intelligent and has done a lot of really good things in U.S. Middle East policy. But it's very strange to me that he's continuing to push this long after it was clear that it was ever going to happen or play any role in how the conflict exists, you know, today post-October 7. Yeah, so Brett McGirk is a, is a administration staffer. He's worked for four different White House in bipartisan ways. He was a U.S. ambassador to Iraq under Obama. He led the anti-IS coalition efforts for the U.S. government under Obama and then stayed under Trump. Now he's doing a lot of Middle East peace work. And I agree with you, though. I mean, it does seem like so much time and focus and effort has

been put into extending the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and the Israeli government with, I guess, part of that process being some really concrete steps towards the Israelis allowing for the creation of a Palestinian state. But who trusts this government, this Israeli government, this is really coalition to implement those changes or to do politically tough things? Clearly not John Feiner, the Deputy National Security Advisor. He said as much. This is what is really confusing to me is that these are smart people at the human histories. These are smart, sensitive people. I mean, sensitive, not emotionally, but like to the...

Both. To what's going on in the Middle East. I believe that they do earnestly care about it. I believe that they do earnestly want the best thing, ultimately, for both Israelis and Palestinians. And it's just been very hard for me, honestly, to understand why these people who are so accomplished, who know this region so well,

have seemed so consistently weeks or months behind understanding, not just the mood around what's happening, but understanding the actual events on the ground and the kind of machinations and movements. I mean, the fact that it took us until now to get to, hey, maybe it's time to publicly throw up a big red stop sign after they blew through it so many times privately before. Honestly, I don't get it. I really feel like I can usually, even when I disagree with policy, I really feel like I can understand I see how they got here. And it's just I can't make X and Y connect on this one. Yeah, I mean, Biden's theory of the case in the early days was that he needed to hug Netanyahu politically and disagree in private. And that's how you got him to move.

Sure. After several months of that not working and Netanyahu, in fact, publicly rebuking you repeatedly, I would have changed course. And you know what would actually, I'm glad you brought that up. What blows my mind is that one of the architects, actually arguably the architect of the hug BB strategy, Hillary Clinton, who, I mean, she named that strategy. It came out in emails that were leaked by WikiLeaks back in the day. Um, honestly talk about flashback to 2016. WikiLeaks helping out reporters with background sources. They really, they saved me a lot of energy.

Yeah. Uh, but she articulated this whole hug, B, be closer to try to get concession strategy, you know, eight years ago, whatever it was. And she came out recently and said, we got to get Netanyahu out of there. Yeah. He's part of the problem. You're never, and I think she's right. And I think some people in the administration, I do get the sense, agree with this,

that there's never going to be a solution to, the ongoing conflict in Gaza as long as he is in office. Now, I don't know if Israeli politics are up to that job, but there does seem to be movement around it. Yeah, you're right. I do want to do a little introspection on this tone question because I saw a friend the other day. I'm going to fuzz up identities here to keep it vague. He was basically like another mutual friend can no longer listen to Pazze the world or you and Ben because you guys are so hard in Israel and so biased against Israel that is it is offensive to this person. And it hit me hard because this is a person. And it hit me hard because this is a I know well, I care about a lot. I really respect. It's just like an incredibly smart,

thoughtful person. And I do think, you know, just like stepping back, it was a reminder that even though this war has been going on for months now and it feels like it's dragging on and becoming more painful when you look at the Palestinian loss of life, for Israelis, I think they still feel like October 7th was yesterday. That wound is wide open, has not begun to heal, especially with hostages still being held. And I think for a lot of Jews around the world, they still feel threatened and scared by rising anti-Semitism. You have to acknowledge that. You have to acknowledge how cruel and unfair it is

that a lot of the people killed on October 7th were the most committed to peace and reconciliation. They were like, you know, lefties living on kibbutzs in places. Absolutely. And how hard it must be if you're in Israeli where like 10 months ago you were on the streets protesting Netanyahu for trying to shred the judicial system. Now you're trapped with this guy.

like leading a war effort. And so I think like for me at the end of the day, I think the only morally consistent position has to be that one life is worth the same amount as the other like Palestinian or Israeli. You can't say that October 7th justifies any response. Yeah.

Because the other side will use that same logic. You know what I mean? And my greatest fear ultimately with this whole thing is that Hamas is getting what they want here, a wildly disproportionate response, and it's another generation radicalized and the cycle of violence continuing. It's always the extremist

on both sides who feed into each other because they both need and want perpetual violence and perpetual distrust and hatred. And, you know, I agree with you. And I say the exact same thing to friends who are, you know, more on the lefty end, who I feel like take things a little too far sometimes in terms of dehumanization of Israelis or talking about October 7th in a way that feels like it is, you know, muddying responsibility for it or is, you know, doing some atrocity denial or is kind of like doing a little bit of apologism for it. Truth. Right.

Is that, is that every life, I know it sounds like such a cliche when you say it, but everybody's life does matter. And international rights and international laws applied everyone. They bind everyone and they protect everyone equally. And if we believe in a world for Israelis and Palestinians, where one side is free from these kinds of threats,

both sides have to be free from it. And that is not to draw on equivalency between October 7th and what has happened to Gaza. They are not equivalent. But at the same time, I think you're, I don't know, Favro and I talk about this a lot on offline, talk about how it's kind of one thing to take a morally clear and justified position, which, you know, you won't be surprised to hear.

I feel like you and Bend do and you're very consistent and clear on it. But at the same time, even if you do that, your comments, whether you want them to or not, or going to land in a media environment and a discourse that is incredibly toxic and polarized and where there's a lot of dehumanization and hatred on both sides. And that makes it tough because it makes it, you can't always know how people are going to hear you, even if you're clear and how you articulate yourself. Yeah.

And that's a little self-awareness about one's own hypocrisy is probably good. Like, for example, it is notable and concerning to me that I think in these really media, you don't hear a lot of stories about what's happening to people on the ground in Gaza about civilian casualties, et cetera. The support for the military campaign, as horrific as it seems to us, is overwhelmingly strong. Then you have to remember, six months after 9-11, ABC News wasn't doing big stories about, you know, civilian casualties in Afghanistan necessarily. For all of us, all we were thinking about was revenge and vengeance and getting the bad guys, right? And so I'm not saying that justifies either response. In fact, like Joe Biden's initial

message was let's learn from the mistakes of 9-11. That's something we talked about early on in the show. But it is just sort of like trying to be empathetic. Put yourself in the shoes of both sides and see where they're coming from. Yeah. Yeah, I've always tried to tell people you don't have to agree with or sympathize with people who you disagree with on this conflict because if you feel very strongly about it as I do and I know you do, you know, you're not going to like bend your more principles on it just to make someone happy. But I think it is important to try to give people grace when you're talking to people in your lives about it because it's a you know that's part of how we help others in our life humanize people who they might not be um uh necessarily prone

to humanizing as equally as other people is by just listening to them and hearing them out and helping them feel you know a little safer and expressing themselves yeah uh before we take a break max just won't we know that vote of america's brand new anxiety relief program added 500 recurring donors wow These are people who set up a recurring donation, monthly donation, at the level that feels right for you. Could be five bucks, ten bucks, a million bucks if you're King Charles. And Votesave America will send 100% of that donation to grassroots organizations and down-ballot races that need it the most. Then at the end of each month, Votesave America will tell you where your dollars went, and that makes your anxiety go away. It's a deal.

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Go to crooked.com slash store and make sure you check out before Sunday night. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about President Trump's efforts to shred NATO. Former President Trump kicked up a very substantive, very helpful debate about the future of NATO at a recent campaign event in South Carolina. Here's a clip next. If we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us? No, I would not protect you.

In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. So that was he was recounting a completely made-up conversation. He allegedly had with some European leader member of NATO. So again, just real quick, for the 100,000th time, NATO members don't pay dues to the organization. None of these countries owe the U.S. or NATO money. We all agree. to spend 2% of GDP on our own defense. It's a target, not an obligation, by the way. And the goal

was supposed to be hit in 2024. In 2023, 11 NATO members hit this 2% spending target. That means 20 of them did not. Poland, which borders Klinengrad and Ukraine, spent 3.9% of GDP on defense. So clearly proximity to Russia is a factor here. The U.S. spent nearly 3.5% of GDP on defense, which is a total of $860 billion because we're also the largest economy in the world. that is more than double all other NATO allies combined. But clearly we don't put all those resources towards Europe. A lot of them are in the Indo-Pacific, et cetera. We're pivoting to Asia Max.

You might have heard that for the last decade. So we're back at the, you preview this entire episode perfectly. We're back in 2016 at the age-old question, do we take Trump seriously or literally? Clearly countries in Europe are they're worried about these comments. What's your take? I think that that's exactly right. I think that the, what matters. is how this is read in Europe. I mean, not just because, like, we're tired of playing this game again

of like, was it bluster for a rally? Is this actually a policy position? But because specifically what he's talking about is the American defense commitment to Europe, that is all a matter of perception. That's the reason that that matters. Not because you want it to be tested because you don't want it to be tested because you want everyone to believe it's true. So what matters is do European leaders think that he meant it or might mean it or could radicalize himself into meaning it or does Moscow think that. And, you know, European leaders have expressed, you will be shocked to hear this, a lot of unhappiness with Donald Trump's claims about whether or not he will defend Europe from Russia. I have to say, speaking of deja vu to 2016, I spent a lot of time in European capitals

in 2017 and 2018, like interviewing European leaders. And they were all telling me they were like, this is it. We've realized we can no longer rely on America. We had eight years of Bush. Now you've elected Trump. We can't count on the U.S. anymore. We're going to build a new independent European security order. And you will be shocked to hear, Tommy, they did not do that. And I think that they wanted to, and there were all of these plans for like a German, French alliance that was going to lead Europe. And it's just hard. And they were just not able to do it. It's expensive. And they're just, you know, what one German defense official said to me. And they were like, look, this is all we've ever known. We can't, on a dime, just completely change how we see ourselves in the global order. They have started all spending a lot more in defense.

That's ironically more thanks to Vladimir Putin than it is to Donald Trump. I don't think that Russia is going to invade Europe because they heard Donald Trump say something wacky at a rally. But at the same time, like, you know, the Danish intelligence service came out. I don't know if you saw that. It came out a few days ago. And they said, we believe that within the next three to five years, Russia will test the Article 5 NATO mutual self-defense commitment by attacking a NATO member. Maybe that's true or not true, but if we all agree that Russia attacking NATO would be a horrible nightmare scenario

because it, at least in theory, would trigger World War III between the great nuclear powers, which is not a good outcome, then anything that makes that even 1% more likely, like the potential future again return president saying, I'm not going to, uphold Article 5, then even if we think that's not likely to move the needle very much, that's still scary. I mean, we're still debating in 2022, 23, 24, I guess, what Jim Baker said to Gorbachev in the 1990s about NATO expansion. It's actually a great new book on this just came out.

Okay, great new book. I will read it. And whether this communication led to the eventual invasion of Ukraine, I could imagine a scenario where Trump is elected president, Putin decides to invade some smaller NATO country that hadn't been paying its dues. And his public statement is like, you told me I could. What does Trump say back to that? Right. I mean, that's the, especially because we know that Putin's Russia is irrational enough to have launched this ill-fated, ill-thought-out invasion of Ukraine in the first place.

We already know we're not dealing with a like super thoughtful, like coldly rational power here. So between Trump's America and Putin's Russia, there is enough uncertainty here that you do worry about some scenario. No, I don't think it'll happen in a vacuum. I don't think we'll wake up one morning and find out that Putin invaded Latvia, sorry Latvia, because Trump said they could. But I think the scenario that this makes me think of is if there is something that happens in two, three, four, five years from now, where there's some kind of crisis that could lead to something like that, where there's some, you know, mistake along the border between NATO countries and Russia. There's some sort of set of provocations that build thing up that that could feed into the misperceptions where Trump believes that he's getting a green light from the Americans when he actually is not. Which to cover another famous historical example is there is a school of thought that that is why Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait was because he's.

he wrongly believed that he had a green light from the Americans. So these communications, the nuances of them, really matter. They really do matter. Regardless of what happens in the future, Trump selected, Biden wants the political fight. The Biden White House does. President Biden went out and gave a statement about Trump's comments earlier today, Tuesday, the 13th. Here's a clip. If an ally didn't spend enough money on defense, he would encourage Russia to, quote, do whatever the hell they want, end of quote. Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that. The whole world heard it. The worst thing is he means it. No other president

our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can. I never will. For God's sake, it's dumb, it's shameful, it's dangerous, it's un-American. When America gives us word, it means something. When we make a commitment, we keep it. And NATO is a sacred commitment. Is it in the Bible? I don't know. Is it Old Testament or New Testament that has the NATO charter in it? Maybe it's the Mormon one.

I'm not sure. It's more modern iteration. An American religion, so that would make sense. So I get the fight. This fight distracts from the classified documents case, right? It's them going on offense. There's overwhelming support for NATO in a recent pupil. Americans overwhelmingly think Russia is an enemy after the Russian invasion.

and the context has entirely changed. I do worry about this feeling like we're folding back into the very stupid 2016, 2017, Putin's puppet kind of resistance nonsense. Do you don't think that that was effective when the Hillary Clinton campaign ran on that? I do not. You don't think that that worked on? I do not. I don't know what to make of it.

I don't want to like deny reality in the fact that this is a bad comments for Trump to make. No, absolutely. As you were listening to the Biden clip, I was like, I agree with him, but like who were the voters that we think are like voting on NATO Article 5 that weren't already going to vote against Trump? Great question. This will play really well on Massachusetts Avenue for sure, but it's not clear to me how it's going to do in Peoria. Yeah, you have to make it a broader, I think, kind of weakness argument, which he tries to do, but I don't know. We'll see how it plays out. Speaking of Putin, so Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin is now available. It's on his website. I don't know why I'm advertising for the guy. So unfortunately, Ben and I promise to check it out and get back to you guys.

It turns out we didn't watch the whole thing. We forced Alona too. It was incredibly boring. It was two hours long. It started with a 30-minute monologue on Russian history. Tucker did ask Putin about Russia's detention of a Wall Street Journal reporter named Evan Gerskovich, which I guess credit to him for doing the bare minimum. Yeah.

But I know the best part, the president of Mongolia used the conversation as a chance to troll Putin by posting a map of the old Mongolian empire, which included parts of modern-day Russia. The lesson being, be careful about security. suggesting historical territorial claims are relevant. And also that it's fun to look at maps. And fun to look at old maps. Old maps are cool. And then the editor of RT wind that Putin and Tucker didn't talk enough about Putin's anti-woke crusades. So, I don't know, Max, do you put in an interview request?

You're going to go over to Moscow? I would love to interview Putin. So to me, I think the only thing that I felt like I really learned from this of any value, which I will relay now to share people, the shame and horror of watching. this. Yes, please do. I thought it was a really striking to see Tucker Carlson trying to push Putin so hard to validate the like Tucker Carlson kind of MAGA narrative of the war, which is that it was America's fault and the West's fault because of NATO, because NATO is bad, so they forced Putin to invade. And Tucker Carlson tried so hard to tee that up for Putin and he just wouldn't do it.

Because all he wanted to do was lecture Tucker Carlson for like 30 minutes about this Byzantine and like frankly not interesting, literally ancient Russian history. I mean, it started 862A.D. We're not kidding at all. Talk about, talk about me late night at the bar. I'm talking about Rurik and the ancient Kievan Rus. If you're talking about a date with three digits, boy, we got problems. We got real problems. But I did think it was striking that Putin got the chance to explain why he launched this war, and his explanation was just ultra-nationalism for the sake of iridentism. That's what it is. And I think that a lot of us have thought that, and I think it was reassuring, or it was helpful to get this reassurance that no, NATO didn't cause the war. It wasn't America's fault that it was just hyper-nationalist, weird mythology that he is using to justify a desire to grab territory from a foreign state.

Right. And, like, again, I don't really care if Tucker interviews Vladimir Putin, like, have at it, buddy. But I did like how we tried to pre-spin the criticism by saying he put in a request and no other Western media outlets have. And even Peskov, Putin's spokesman. He's like, nah, man, we say no to press requests all the time. Yeah. No, it's good to interview bad people. Of course. It's good. You want to learn from them. We should talk to them. We should, you know, engage in diplomacy. We should interview them. Kim Jong-un, come on offline. Yeah, come on up. We should take them at their word. But a lot of this, obviously, the fate of Ukraine is tied up in this broader conversation we're having. So just days after tanking their own immigration reform bill, the Senate then worked all weekend to pass a new supplemental funding bill that does include $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $10 billion for humanitarian relief, including some for Gaza. Now, the next thing goes to the House of Representatives, right? So we got Speaker Johnson deciding what happens to Ukraine. He doesn't want to take up the bill because it's unpopular with Mago Republicans. He thinks it would lose him his job as speaker. So the question is now whether a majority of House members can make an end run around him using a procedure called a discharge petition. We'll see if that happens. But Max, once again,

Trump decided to roll a grenade into this policy debate by announcing that all foreign policy aid should come in the form of loans and not grants, not aid, including aid to Israel, by the way. So Lindsey Graham, who a Republican senator from South Carolina, never met a war, he didn't want to fund, is apparently dutifully following Trump's lead on this matter. And he said he will vote against Ukraine funding unless it's in the form of a loan. Max, I'm sure this idea polls well, right? Because people don't love foreign aid. And there's all of these polls or there are all these surveys where they will ask people, how much do you, how much of the federal budget do you think goes toward foreign aid? And people will say, oh, 10%. 15%? I think we're tithing. Yeah. But I mean, I guess, look, Trump has a, there's a history of him saying kind of crazy

stuff and then it becomes a consensus rule with your position. I mean, do you think like this is where we're heading is all foreign aid in the form of a loan now? And what do you think the impact of that would be? It's always popular for politicians to declare we're cutting foreign aid because like you say, people overestimate how big it is and people don't like it because the name is foreign aid. So they think it's a giveaway and they say, why are you giving away my tax dollars to a

country that I don't care about. And of course, that's not what it is. The reason that it exists is not for as much as I wish it were the case that we were a charitable nation just giving out our wishes to help people in need. It's because we get things in return for it. And in the specific case of Ukraine, it's because spending what is a relatively small amount of money to grind down the Russian war machine in this really, really tough war of attrition in Ukraine and to preserve what we can of Ukrainian territorial integrity is a huge upside and like it sounds class to put it this way, but an incredible value proposition. And I think you could, you know, question what value we're getting for aid to Israel specifically. I think that's a fair debate to have, although not on the

grounds that Lindsay Graham wants to have it. But the idea when you are giving money to countries like this is that they are doing something that is helpful to you, that you were getting for cheaper than if you did it yourself or that you were not able to do it yourself. you're trying to prop up a country that would otherwise collapse, that would create a humanitarian crisis, that would then be more costly to deal with. And I know that this is like the most basic foreign policy 101, but it's like some of the highest value on return money that we spend because we can influence so much of what happens the world through it. Yeah. Speaking of a big recipient of foreign aid, let's talk about Pakistan. Okay. Maybe we should maybe debate the ROI here. So last

week, Ben and I talked about how Pakistan was going to this general election. It was seen as a farce because the Pakistani military had been cracking down on former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his political party, PTI. Khan was pushed out of power in 2022. He was arrested in August of last year. He's currently sitting in jail. He was convicted on several different cases that range from corruption to revealing state secrets to his marriage was ruled on Islamic because apparently the divorce timeline didn't match up anyway. Some of those convictions bar him from running for office. So Khan's political party, PTI, they were targeted as well.

Pakistani election authorities repeatedly rejected the nomination papers of PTI candidates. They ruled that PTI can't use its cricket bat symbol on ballots. That might sound silly to a Western audience, but the bat symbol is very well known in Pakistan. And 40% of the electorate is illiterate. So the symbol is incredibly important. So all these candidates now are to run as independence. PTI candidates said they weren't getting permission to hold rallies. Their supporters were getting intimidated by the police.

The list goes on and on. So at the same time, that was all happening. The military cut a deal with former Prime Minister Noir Sharif to bring him back from exile and run him as their guy. Sharif served as Prime Minister three different times. In 2017, he was convicted on corruption charges. I think he got 10 years in jail, but he fled to London. When he came back, those charges magically went away. Noyesh Sharif actually used to be a real mainstay on the D.C. foreign policy junket circuit.

You would see him all the time, which really tells you the kind of former military dictator that he is. That's of course, of course. So fast forward to today, or last week's election, that is. Despite all of that election interference, and a bunch of election day vote rigging that we can get into, the PTI still managed to win the most seats in the election, but Noir-Sharif claimed victory anyway, said he would form a coalition government. Max, what do we make of the outcome and the feasibility of demands from some members of Congress that the U.S. not even recognize this new government without first investigating in some way, these allegations of fraud. The Islamicness of his marriage? Yes. I'm not sure how you pin that one down.

I mean, it's a truly stunning electoral victory to, despite all of this suppression that you described, to still go out and have so many people in Pakistan want him to return to office and want his party to return to office to get the most seats. He did because he fell short of an outright majority. He is going to have to try to build a governing coalition. It's entirely possible. He won't. It's entirely possible that the military-backed party will do some shenanigans or another. So he may not end up back in power. I don't know that this means like total chaos for Pakistan. The country's political system has gone through so many wild ups and downs. In the last 20 years, this is, you know, it's bigger than a blip, but it's hardly the biggest like roller coaster dip

that they've gone on. So I don't think we should expect political transformation for this. But But Imran Khan has some leverage now. He has some leverage for the size of the block he has in the assembly to try to get some kind of concessions from the military, either to let him lead the government or if not to try to get some kind of maybe let him out of jail, let him lead the party, you know, a little more directly. But I'm sure it'll end up being some kind of like backroom compromise between them. Yeah. And just to be clear, both of these candidates have had sort of on again, off again relationships with the military. military. Those relationships have soured. They get thrown out of office. Hopefully this will end in a democratic place. But on election day, the government, they cut off internet, TV stations

were told to stop broadcasting results. There were more votes for Shreif in some places than there were registered voters. So it was like the most blatant election rigging. Another remarkable piece of this is the fact that Imran Khan, he's been delivering campaign speeches, in air quotes, from prison by using artificial intelligence. Here's a clip of one of those speeches. Just the official netaich in any of the seat speeches, he's done over there. No Pakistani who's not mean it.

And international media, he's a beaufufe on it. Such is a little clip we found that included some It really sounds like him. It's remarkably, sounds like it. It sounds remarkably like him. And I find this both to be an impressive kind of end run around election interference, but also deeply on their being. I know. I think

It's really incredible how much PTI is innovating in the space here. And I wonder, like, how long until we get beleaguered political parties using AI to trot out, like, dead leaders? Like, you know, the Tories, get Winston Churchill back in there. Get some Winston Churchill speeches about the NHS and about how people need to come out in 2025. Or like, you know, Congress party is really suffering in India. Get Gandhi bot on it. Get him on the ticket. Trump will run against and defeat a dead AI Lincoln in a primary for his third term. I think Biden would, I think he would team up with AIFDR. I think that would be his choice. Yeah, I JFCK would be pretty good. I can still get it. I don't know. That's fucking weird, man. A brighter story.

So last week we talked about how, for the first time in over 100 years, the first minister of Northern Ireland, Michelle O'Neill is a member of Sinn Féin, the political party. So Mary Lou McDonald's, the president of Sinn Féin from the Republic of Ireland, said that she believes that there will be a referendum on unifying the both Ireland's in the next six years. So that would mean Northern Ireland is no. no longer part of the United Kingdom. The terms of the Good Friday Agreement allow for a vote to be held if it appears there's a majority in support of it.

I'm not exactly sure how you determine that. Mary Lou MacDonald seems to be on the path to becoming prime minister of Ireland if the trends continue in terms of electorally. What do you make of her claim about the odds of unification? I read her wording as a very careful to be less than a promise. She's not saying I will bring a referendum, but to be more like a prediction, is saying like, oh, I'm sure that it will happen in the next six years. And I'm sure that part of this is she's got her own party expects her to at least try to bring that about. So she has to make some kind of a show of it. And I'm sure part of it is also testing the waters and trying to see, okay, let's float a trial balloon. Let's see what the reaction is from London, from Washington. Let's see what the reaction is from voters in both the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland, majorities of whom would have to approve it. I was kind of surprised to find that it's just a simple majority, like 50, 1% in both is enough. I would think you would want to hire a threshold for something that, you know, of a big change. I was also kind of surprised to look up the polling. People are less enthusiastic about reunifying Ireland that I would have expected. Within the Republican of Ireland, it's a big majority, 64%, although still not as big as I would have thought. You would think more of them would want Northern Ireland like back in the fold. And within Northern Ireland, it's only 30% in favor, 50%

against and 20% undecided. And I think those numbers are actually pretty static. They've held like that for a while. I think among 18 to 24 year olds, it's 57%. So the younger generation is more in favor. So maybe it will grow with time is the play. That was that that was kind of what happened with Scottish voters is that younger people tend to be more enthusiastic about independence. And I think what ended up happening is it was less that there was a generational change and more that young people tend to be like, feel a little bit more strongly of an emotional attachment to like, you know, the nation and national reunification or whatever, and that people who are older are a little bit more concerned with practical concerns, like, you know, will I still have access to universities in London? Which is something that you hear even Catholics in Northern Ireland say like they like being

part of the same country as the UK because they get access to stuff like that. But something I was struck by is that a clear majority in Northern Ireland, 60%, say that they would want a referendum in the next 10 years. So it does seem pretty likely that we will actually get a vote, but much less certain what would actually happen. I mean, again, three cheers for Brexit. You think that this is what, like, those guys sent this ball rolling, right? When they, you know, Northern Ireland, I think overwhelmingly voted to remain. They wanted to stay in the EU. Right. They got dragged out by a bunch of folks over and. Yeah, they kind of had the best of both worlds. They got to be in the EU and they got to be part of Britain and they did not have, but they also got to be part of

Ireland, right? Because Good Friday means that it's a porous border. And I think that it actually, I was much more concerned initially about sentiment in Ireland or even the resumption of conflict because it looked like they might have to reimpose a hard border because of Brexit. Thank God they got around that. And now people can consider Irish unification not in a crisis, but more in a like, well, if we had the option, would we want to do it? And maybe they will. It's actually the one thing, Richie Sunnack, I think, deserves a little credit for as kind of managing that crisis.

I think so. Last thing. So, again, we talked last week about Prince Charles. He recently announced he has cancer. We don't know what kind exactly, but we know it was discovered when he was getting tested for prostate cancer. So that news sent the little coterie of official royal watchers into overdrive. They all went on TV.

They all got booked places. One of them went viral last week. He said he believed that Charles would not get chemotherapy. It is more likely to get a course of treatment of just natural medicine, homeopathic medicine. Of course, this was during an interview with Nigel Farage, I believe. Yeah, so grain of salt. The biggest grain of salt, the most cigarette-smelling, goosey grain of salt. Max, what do we know about the King's eccentric medical views?

He has always been, I think you would say, a bit of a contrarian when it comes to modern medicine. He's not full RFK Jr. He's not an anti-vax guy. But he referred to modern medicine as, quote, the celebrated Tower of Pisa slightly off balance. He's a big fan of ancient folk healing. He loves to talk about homeopathie. What is ancient folk healing? Listen, if you got to ask. Okay. I don't know. It's like mandolin music? What are we talking about? Ancient folks in England. I don't know. Sorry to interrupt. Continue. What are just these people? Okay. I'm going to go, I'm going to do some reporting.

I'm going to get the English equivalent of traditional Chinese medicine. Whatever that is, it's a cup of tea, I'm sure. Whatever it is, it's a cup. Right, yeah. A stiff breeze. Yeah, that's right. And a shaggy old sweater. Unbelievable.

And he's constantly been, or not constantly, he has been perennially getting in fights with, like, the medical establishment in the UK, because he will say these off-end things about modern medicine. And then they're like, no, you can't say that. You're going to be the king. And there is part of this that I think is, I don't know, it's kind of the story of Charles where like his entire life has been this tension between like being true to himself or fulfilling his obligation to the monarchy and to his like role as the eventual king. And now he's been the king for seven minutes.

And he's got the same version of that where it's like maybe he wants to get homey, I don't know if he does. Maybe he wants to get some sort of traditional medicine. But his duty to the monarchy is to get the best possible treatment for the sake of stability. of, you know, the monarchical institutions. So it's just the guy can't catch a break. I've an angel and a devil on my shoulder think about how to respond. It's always the richest, most powerful people

on the planet who have access to the best healthcare they could ever want. Who have the luxury of questioning. With the luxury of these questions. RFK Jr. too. He can go anywhere in L.A. and get like any kind of medicine he wants and he's going to run around. Probably does.

convincing parents not to get their kids vaccinated. Obviously, you know, cancer treatments aren't 100%, far from it in many cases. Some cancers are terminal and sometimes chemo or other treatments can just make your remaining days horrible and miserable and make you feel. So we don't know what he has. And this random Royal Watcher probably doesn't either.

But I mean, it was just like last week, the conversation was how great it was that he went in and got a screening and went public about it. Because all these medical authorities in the UK say, They've been flooded with calls for people who want to come in for screenings and prostate exams. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's great. It's really been like a really virtuous thing. I should worry about that getting undone if he, you know, decides to. Well, he's publicly, and this again, this has been the tension of his very brief monarchy, is he's publicly trying to behave.

And for the most part, it seems like in this he has. If he's making a big show of getting treatment, if getting screened, then that's great. And it seems like that's going to have a really positive effect for a lot of people. Come on, Chuck. Just go to the hospital, man. I just want to just get better. Okay, we are going to take a quick break and we come back. You will hear Ben's interview with Congressman Andy Kim.

They're going to talk about corruption, the U.S. government. No connection to the U.S. Senate campaign or Bob Menendez. But stick around for that. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined by Andy Kim, a Democratic member of Congress from New Jersey, member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, which we very much like here at Potsie of the World. member the Progressive Caucus, also a former colleague of mine, full disclosure in the Obama NSC, who is now running for Senate in New Jersey, hoping to oust Bob Menendez, who, as you probably know, is facing a colorful litany of corruption charges that we've covered a lot and we'll

talk about here. But, Annie, thanks so much for joining me here in the flush in California. Yeah, thanks for having me, Bev. Good to see you. It's really good to see you. So I just want to start, you know, you were a little delayed getting out here as we were just chatting about because of this kind of chaos in the House of Representatives. And this will obviously err in a few days. But I don't think it'll become a less chaotic place in the last few days.

So, you know, the House Republicans failed to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security ally me Yorkists. They failed to kind of advance this effort to kind of, you know, peel off the Israel funding from the Senate's efforts to have a broader package. with Ukraine and the border in it. What is it going to tell people like not only what is it what's going on, but like what is it like being going to work in such a strange and dysfunctional place, especially after having, you know, in a Democratic majority things that ran well. And I mean, what is it going on there? What's it like to be in this?

Yeah. Look, I mean, what I'll say is, yeah, I've now hit my five year anniversary, if you call it that, in Congress. And in those five years, I mean, what a five years. Yeah, I've been a part of now 50% of all impeachment vote. votes in our nation history, the largest, longest, longest government shut down in our nation's history, and, you know, the successful ousting of a speakership. An insurrection. An insurrection.

It's a pandemic. A lot that's happened. But even with all of that, I mean, just the level of dysfunction right now is unreal. I mean, it's really sad. It's sad to see such an incredibly important pillar of our government. Literally article one of our government brought to the knees because of just the incompetence of this speaker. I mean, he has no idea what he's doing.

Yeah. And it's just, it's so apparent. I mean, I actually kind of felt bad for him when I saw him. with the gavel last night as they as they lost the vote on the impeachment of Majorcas, because like he just had no idea what he was doing. You could just see him floundering. But look, I mean, it's his own doing. Yeah.

And this is just, this is what they, what they sowed. You know, they, when you create a caucus that is all about just tearing down government. Yeah. It doesn't surprise us that you don't know how to govern. Yeah. You know, so it's really just, you know, it's sad for our country. It's humiliating to the rest of the world. I mean, the rest of the world leaders are just like, what is happening in America?

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that piece of it because obviously, you know, there's a lot of stuff that Congress isn't doing through no fault of your own or House Democrats. But, you know, like take the Ukraine funding, for instance. This is not like some fancy new capability that has to be advanced through Congress. This is basically maintaining the level of support that literally is allowing people on the front lines of Ukraine to survive, to have artillery to fight back against Russians, to have the basic ammunition and air defense systems to defend themselves. What is the bigger cost here? Because sometimes people look at this and it's almost comical, like look at, you know, comedy of errors in the house. What is the bigger cost, you know, and you could say the same thing by the border, by the way, like instead of trying to fix that. they're just trying to like impeach the sector of human security.

But how do you put it in perspective in terms of the credibility issues that are on the line here? Yeah. You know, one of the most vivid conversations I had in the last year, it was actually last year. You remember, like we were on the precipice of defaulting on our debt as a country. Yeah. And I had this, you know, leader from another country call me and just asked me like, Andy, like, you're not really going to default on your debt, are you? Yeah.

And I was like, well, look, like, I'm going to default on your debt, are you? do everything we can to not have that happen, but I cannot actually tell you for sure. And the person on the other end of the phone, like, you can hear him just kind of like, kind of like, kind of chuckle, like, he was just like, huh. And what he went on to say, just stuck in my head, he said, I just want you to know that when I'm talking to other people, my government, or when our government is talking to other countries, you know, this particular leader was, is in Asia? He said, the question we ask ourselves is, is America a reliable partner? Yeah. And he says, we have to say, we know the answer to that.

And that's what I find so sad right now is like we can have the biggest military in the world, which we do. We could have the largest diplomatic footprint all over the world, have the strong economy. But if people don't think you're reliable, what value is it? Yeah. You know, and I think that that's what I've been thinking about is trying to redefine what strength means. It's not just about, you know, how your hard power. It's not just about capabilities and how many. you know, aircraft you have or ships you have. Strength is also about reliability. And right now,

the fundamental question is, what is the value of the American handshake? Yeah. And I think people don't value because they say they actually have this term that I keep hearing called American whiplash. Yeah. You know, you join the Paris Climate Agreement, you leave the Paris climate agreement, you come back in. They don't know what to trust. And right now they just assume their baseline assumption is that the next administration, if it changes parties, will just just, you know, rip off and tear down everything that was done before. Yeah. And so that credibility is gone.

Yeah. When you see the clown show in Congress right now, it certainly doesn't help. Okay. So a different credibility issue deals with, you know, one of your opponents, assuming Senator Menendez continues to run for reelection, different kind of handshake deals that he was involved in. But with other countries. Well, that's the thing.

I mean, like, I wanted to ask you, you know, well, first of all, let's just start with Menendez, and then I'm going to broaden out to kind of this issue of corruption more generally. You know, what did you, you know, you announced that you were running pretty much as soon as these latest corruption allegations hit, and it felt like you did that because it kind of had a visceral reaction. What was your reaction to seeing this? You must have gotten to know Menendez. We dealt with him, or I did, not. very pleasantly. When I was in the White House, he was not a fan of the Iran deal in Cuba,

but put that aside, you must have dealt with him in New Jersey politics. He had a bit of a whiff of corruption around him. This isn't the first time. It's a second indictment. Yeah, exactly. But this one is so extreme, right, with gold bars in his house and he's spying for the Egyptians and he's leveraging the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee for foreign interest. What hit you? What was your reaction and why did you decide to run for office? Yeah, you know, I mean, it was a kind of, a culmination of a lot of feelings, and it wasn't just about the senator. I think, you know, being there for five years and seeing, like, the way I often say is like, I work alongside

people that in Congress that should just should not be there. Yeah. You know, like the people who are much more interested in being social influencers rather than lawmakers. Yeah, yeah. And they don't respect the gravity of this job that, like, I work a job whose job description is in the Constitution of the United States. Yeah. Like, Article 1 is our job description. That is a humbling experience. So when I saw that indictment of my senator, I just kind of, I just hit a breaking point.

Yeah. And I just, you know, I just said, like, look, like, we deserve better as a country. You know, like, how is it that in this amazing nation of 330 million people, some of the smartest, most innovative people in the world, like, how is it that we can't find, you know, 435 people in the House of Representatives and 100 people. All we need are 535 Americans that, like, have integrity, have capabilities, expertise, strengths in that capacity and honesty. But we struggle.

And so I just, you know, at that night after the indictment, I just couldn't get a single minute of sleep. I was just so my head was just spinning. And the next day, you know, I sat down with my wife and we talked about it. I said, you know, and we made the decision together, as they should be, that I think I need to step up. Yeah, because you, I mean, you had no, like, master plan to be running for Senate this cycle. No, I mean, I'm a tired dad of a six-year-old and an eight-year-old.

Oh, man, I got seven and nine. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, exactly. So, like, probably not high in the list for, for, in your mind is to run, stay wide. I'm doing a podcast, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I want to broaden this out, too, because, I mean, I found it disappointing that Menendez is, you know, still on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But there's this issue of foreign corruption. You know, we dealt with in the Trump years. It wasn't subtle that, you know, the Saudis are pouring money in Trump hotel properties. Jared Kushner, you were kind of waiting for the back-end deal. And sure enough, as soon as he leaves government, having been, you know, the Saudis point man in Washington, he gets kind of $2 billion plowed into his investment fund. Look, when you and I were at the NSC, you know, I, you know, even, things like the lavish kind of parties that, you know, emirates or Qataris might throw in

Washington. I mean, particularly from the Gulf, there's a lot of money. And we should be clear, these Menendez indictments include Egypt and Qatar, a feature very prominently in them. What can be done to kind of restore some confidence among Americans that this isn't for sale, that what Menendez was doing isn't the norm? And even I should say that, like, if Menendez may be the extreme version of it, you know, like taking gold bars and doing favors, that there's still some kind of almost legalized corruption. Like a lot of the stuff Jared Kushner did. Yeah. Didn't break a law because there's not a law that exists against, you know, taking care of some rich people in office and then cashing out immediately on the back end. I mean, have you thought it all

about how to restore confidence? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a big part of what, you know, what broke in me that said, like, we got to stop this. I mean, we live in the time in the greatest amount of distrust in government in modern American history. Yeah. There's a survey in New Jersey. 84% of people in New Jersey believe that their politicians are corrupt. 84. Like, this is existential to our democracy.

If we're, and it's, as you said, it's not just here in the United States. Right now, we're at large around the world. There is just this division that's occurring where people, a lot of people in my congressional district, they just think like government is just, you know, on some of it. elite plane and they're playing with other people's chips. They're not feeling the hurt themselves. They're not feeling the struggles themselves. And that gets reinforced when you just have, you know, millionaires and billionaires. I mean, this is why, you know, probably the biggest, most popular piece of legislation that I have right now in Congress is that, you know, I have

legislation that would try to ban members of Congress and senior executive branch and judicial branch officials from owning and trading individual stocks, for instance. Because people just have this deep distrust. They just feel like, you know, sure, you know, they're just making these decisions that are just trying to benefit their own personal ambitions or their bank account. And, you know, it just, you know, when you see things like what happened, what happened with Senator Menendez or what you were saying with Jared Kushner and others, like, it just reinforces that, right? Yeah. And so what the danger is on that front, and I see it in New Jersey, and this is what we're fighting against, because I've been saying

this line a lot lately, and I feel like it's becoming more and more true of just saying, I believe the opposite of democracy is apathy. Yeah. And there's so many people that are like right on that cusp. I'm sure some Americans have gone over that where they just feel like like the corruption is too deep, too entrenched. Yeah. There's nothing we can do about it.

Yeah. And that's when people just start to give up, you know? And, you know, you can feel that right now in the electorate as we get towards the 2024 election. I can feel it in New Jersey. People just being like, like, look, the Sopranos was filmed here. Yeah, yeah. That this is just a part of like Jersey politics, you know, is corruption.

Yeah. But what I'm proud of is that with this campaign and shining a light on it, standing up to it, you know, and look, like, it's not just the senior senator from my state. I'm literally running against the most powerful political family in my state right now in the primary. In the primary, with the governor's wife in this race. But like, I think people are just kind of tired of that. Yeah. You know, and I think I can try to represent and hopefully bring about, you know, a sense that, you know, politics doesn't have to just be for the elite. Yeah.

It doesn't have to be just for the well-off and well-connected that like a son of immigrants, a public school kid like myself, you know, should have a fair shot. Yeah. And that hopefully helps kind of shatter that sense of apathy. Do you think, do you worry, you mentioned the identity piece of this, we're out here in L.A., I'm sure that there's, like, a pretty proud, you know, Korean-American population. I hear about what you're doing, but you also see all this rhetoric, anti-Asian, anti-Chinese, and this intersect with foreign policy, all this demagoguery of the Chinese in particular. Like, does that kind of ugly kind of foreign policy or identity-based discourse, how does that reverberate through some of the communities that might feel vulnerable about that here?

Yeah, look, it's real concern. And, you know, I say that as someone who's working in foreign policy on the committees that are dealing with this, I'm also on a select committee about U.S. China Religious. And, you know, I think about it a lot as someone who worked in diplomacy before, but also as an Asian American. And, you know, my wife is Chinese American. My kids are Korean, you know, Chinese American little boys. And, you know, I've seen already just, you know, my oldest son came home from school one day saying that, you know, the bigger kid just kept teasing them calling Chinese boy, Chinese boy over and over again. And we've seen the violence and discrimination

in the Asian American, facing the Asian American community. And I worry that, as a we look at this question of U.S.-China relations, which will be challenging for decades to come, how does that not turn into a new era of xenophobia in our country? How do we do this? How do we engage in this, talk about it in a way that doesn't inflame that? I'm not saying I've found the magic solution, but I think finding ways to be able to engage communities here and in New Jersey and elsewhere and listen and lift it up. And I hope to be able to play that role. If elected, I'd be the first Korean American ever in the Senate. I'd also be the first Asian American ever elected to the U.S. Senate from the entire East Coast of America. Yeah. You know, I think there's opportunities

here to show that we can have a seat at the table. Yeah. But I think the other thing that I'm proud of is that showing that, you know, I have every bit as right as much right to represent my district or my state as anybody else. Yeah. And I represent not just people that look like me, Asian Americans, but Asian Americans, we can represent not just Asian American heavy areas of our country, but anywhere. And so. And so, So, you know, the more that we can have that sense of representation, that sense that, of, I don't want to say integration, but that sense of just connectivity. Yeah. I think the better.

And, you know, I mean, you and I, we worked there at the White House. We saw how, you know, political figures and the white houses, like, they often can bring in diaspora communities in the United States to get their thoughts and get their buying. That doesn't really happen when it comes to issues. about Asia. Yeah. You know, like, I've never experienced that. Even as a Korean American in Congress, like, I don't hear people go, oh, like, what do you ask these people what they think?

Yeah, yeah. Like, who in the Korean American community do you think we should talk about, about North Korea and what? Like, it just doesn't happen. Yeah. Like it does when it comes to Israel, when it comes to Europe or elsewhere. So, you know, I think that that's a place where we can do better. Yeah, or even out here, Armenia, you know.

Yeah. One last question, you know, because you mentioned the time in the White House, and, you know, it's been interesting hearing you basically talk about, you know, just basically treating people with dignity and listening and respecting views. One of the things I remember most of all working with you is that you and I, and part of this was diaspora, but part of this was also just meeting with vulnerable people in the midst of, at the time, it was ISIS, right? So you and I met a bunch with Yazidis who were being targeted by ISIS for genocide. Syrian Christians that basically we're losing their place, you know.

Sometimes I worry that American farm policy, you know, is so focused on these big pieces that are moving around the map or, you know, we have the drama, you know, of disagreement with Nanyahu or we're trying to make a deal of MBS. What we should bring to the table that Russia and China doesn't is that we should kind of care about those communities, you know, like the forgotten communities, the Syrian Christians, the Yazidis and all around the world. I mean, is there more, now I'm calling back a fairly, you know, specific experience you and I had together.

But now you've been in Congress, you were looking at maybe being in Senate. I'm sure you'd potentially be on the Senate Farm Relations Committee. Like, is there more that can be done to kind of broaden how American foreign policy looks at countries and populations around the world? Yeah. I mean, I think just very large, you know, as our world is getting more and more complicated, You know, when I was, before I got into diplomacy, I remember writing, you know, a paper where I talked about how transnational problems require transnational solutions and this like idea that there needs to be a density of connective tissue, you know, just kind of around the world. But, you know, as you saw, like when we're at the State Department or the White House, it's easy to just kind of go state to state.

Yeah. And just kind of engage at that level. And because, you know, that in and of itself is very complicated. But like, especially when we're thinking like U.S. China right now or others, like, we need to be thinking a lot more of just like people to people. Yeah. You know, and also for our foreign policy to be thinking about how we can engage in that capacity. You know, I've been trying to encourage a lot of national security officials, ambassadors and others, go out there and talk of college campuses in America. You know, like let's learn how to talk human about some of these issues that are going on.

Like these town halls, people want to engage. There's this kind of idea that voters don't care about foreign policy unless we're directly in a war. It's not true. Yeah. I just did a town hall. Half the questions were about foreign policy. What I've learned is that people, they sometimes don't know how to ask the question. Yeah.

But if you raise it first, they will respond. Yeah. And they have a lot of thoughts and a lot of questions. And a lot of confusion probably. A lot of confusion. A lot of confusion. You know, especially right now when, like, you know, they're hearing from colleagues of mine saying, like, are we in a new Cold War with China is like, is there, are we on the verge of war and the Taiwan

straight? Like, people are like, what do you talk? Like, what? Like, you need to talk to us first, you know, before you start making war plans and things like that. So I think that we have to do better at understanding like how we reach out beyond the usual Rolodex. Yeah.

And be able to engage, make sure that, you know, that, you know, you're not just responding to those who yell the loudest. much of, like, I work in arguably the most reactionary building in America. Yeah, yeah. You know, and like, it's so easy to just respond to those that are screaming and yelling or, you know, calling your office a million times. Like, that's important. But you also got to make sure that you're looking at the whole picture. If you're only thinking and doing the work in Congress reaction, in a reactionary way, then you never have strategy. Yeah. You never have objectives. You never know what you're actually trying to achieve. Yeah, and the same as foreign policy. Like,

You can't look at a country. It's just its leader. There's a whole picture there. Well, look, it's been great catching up with you. Where can people follow what you're doing? Yeah, they can go to Andy Kim.com and then follow me on the platforms at Andy Kim NJ. Okay. And keep an eye on this Senate race as we gear up towards June 4th primary. All right. Well, we'll keep our eye on it and wish you all the best. Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks again to Andy Kim for coming on the show. Thanks again to you, Max. Thanks, Tommy.

Very nice talking with you. It's such a pleasure to be back. It's a pleasure for me too. We had a lot of clips today. I love clips. Thanks to Alona, thanks to CJ. Cutting those bad boys. Good deck of cards.

Razor sharp. Razor sharp indeed. Well, that's it for us this week. It's a lot of jokes we cut and we'll end it there. All right. Thanks, Sammy. If you want to get ad freak episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.

Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events, plus find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. And if you're as opinionated as us, consider dropping a review. PotsAve the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Cherlin. Our producer is Alona Minkowski, and associate producer is Ashley Mizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls, Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford,

who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.