Pod Save the World - Trump Threatens Genocide

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Tommy and Ben try to make sense of a dark and dizzying day in American history, from President Trump's genocidal threat to destroy the 'whole civilization' of Iran, to the announcement of a two-week ceasefire.They break down what Trump's threats to bomb every power plant and bridge in Iran would actually mean — legally, morally, and for the 92 million Iranians who would be left without power, water, or functioning hospitals. They unpack a new New York Times report on how Trump decided to go to war, including Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's influential role in the push to war, the Mossad's catastrophically wrong assumptions about how Iran would respond, and which Cabinet officials were cut out of the deliberations entirely. They examine the domestic political fallout — including why Trump is getting none of the usual wartime polling boost — as well as Tucker Carlson's stunning break with his old friend over Iran, including Carlson's fear that the escalation ladder could lead Trump to using a nuclear weapon. They also walk through the diplomatic off-ramps that could bring a permanent end to the conflict. Finally, they turn to Hungary, where Viktor Orbán faces the most serious threat to his 16-year grip on power from challenger Péter Magyar, and where JD Vance showed up today to campaign for MAGA's favorite foreign strongman just five days before a potentially historic election.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. Preorder Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches and subscribe to his Substack here.

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And me, Kieran, Caryin. Stacey. Search for Politics Weekly, wherever you get your podcasts every Monday. Welcome back to Pots Day of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. So this is actually the second time we're recording the introduction to the show. Moments ago, we wrapped our recording of the initial episode. And then Trump put a truth social statement announcing a two-week extension on his threat to destroy all the infrastructure in Iran, which is obviously a good thing. We're very happy about that.

But it does mean we're coming right back into the studio to re-record the top of this for you guys to make sure this is current. So here's what Trump just wrote on truth social. This is verbatim. based on conversations with Prime Minister Shabashir and Field Marshal Asim Mnir of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz. I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double-sided ceasefire. So I think it's like tape. The reason for doing so is that we have

already met and exceeded all military objectives and are very far along with a definitive agreement concerning long-term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East. We received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two-week period will allow the agreement to be finalized and consummated consummated. On behalf of the United States of America as president and also representing the countries of the Middle East. It is an honor to have this long-term problem close to resolution. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump. I've also seen some additional reporting ban

that Israel has agreed to this short-term ceasefire. Okay, so just a few thoughts for me. I'll throw it over to you. Who writes this shit for him? Like, what is this faux legalistic, weird nonsense language? I don't get it. Again, obviously this is good news. Like, nothing good could have or would have come from some like genocidal spasm of violence on Tuesday night from Donald Trump and Pete Hegesath. And I'm truly grateful that Trump, uh, call it taco, call it a delay, like call it being responsible, whatever, that he delayed this. Um, I'm genuinely surprised that Iran would agree to opening the straight-up Hormuz for two weeks and kind of lessen. Let's see. Yeah, that's right. Like put a pin in this one. We'll see if that actually happens because it does lessen their economic and

political pressure on Trump. Again, though, it would be a good thing because as much as I, like, I want them to open this trade of rumors. I don't want people in Asia not to be able to farm and drive. I don't believe a word Trump says here about the U.S. and Iran being, quote, very far along on a long-term peace plan or the problem is gross to the resolution, I guess we'll see. Finally, like later in the show, I say that I heard from someone that the Pakistani-led talks were more for show and we're kind of bullshit. I guess I should revise and the men that take if they help facilitate getting this done. That's a good thing. But what do you make of this, this truth social postman? Well, it's great news. Again, it doesn't change anything we said,

though, because threatening genocide, even if it was part of a madman diplomacy strategy, is just as morally abhorrent. A few thoughts on Mike. Number one, I'm genuinely curious about what the Iranian, you know, we'll have to hear from them. But like, who is he negotiated? with in Iran. Does whoever he's negotiating with in Iran have the ability to control the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are the ones that control the Strait of Hormuz? What does he mean by, he says a full opening of the Strait of Hormuz? I'm very curious if that's true. Where are they going to let all traffic through there, whether they're going to continue to meter it and charge a toll? Because they've turned this into a toll, right? And if it's been mined,

like, who's going to get rid of the mines? Exactly. This is much more complicated. than just saying, oh, the problem is solved. I created this problem by, you know, launching a war that closes the straight. And now I've solved the problem and ended a war. And now I've ended nine wars. Like, no, it's, that's all bullshit. So a lot of questions about whether the Iranians have agreed to this in the short term. I mean, they've clearly agreed to something. But whether that's the full opening of the straight, like, remains to be seen. I'm also curious, Tommy, how much pushback he got today. Threatening genocide, I think, probably got the attention of Republican lawmakers. It probably got the attention of world leaders. We don't

know what calls were made to Trump today. I also genuinely have been wondered, and I actually didn't say this on the pod, so I'm glad of whether the military would follow his orders. I think there's a non-zero chance that, you know, Pete Exeth was giving them the target list or whatever of civilian infrastructure and that I don't know if it's Dan Kane or somebody. There's new mass resignation through like the kind of officer class. It's possible that they're like, we won't do it. Yeah, we won't do it. Because, you know what? Like, hopefully there's still some honor in the U.S. military. I mean, hopefully I believe there is. I just know they've been purging generals. So it's also possible that the military is like, we're not going to do this. And so he kind of scrambled to do this, right?

We don't know. We'll see. I'm sure some of it will leak out. So it's a repeat, but it doesn't solve these underlying questions. And again, we talked later in the show about the fundamentally diplomatic questions about, the Iranian nuclear program, about the war in Lebanon, which is still ongoing, you know, about the Strait of Hormuz and whether the IRC is going to control it and charge a toll, whether it's going to fully reopen. So this is not like some victory of diplomacy yet. It's only like yet another delay in Trump's threats, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. And like, look, the idea that these objectives, that the war's objectives are close to complete is crazy. I mean, again, that's crazy. That's bullshit. The key priority is supposed to be the highly enriched year. the 900 pounds of it. It's still sitting in Iran. It's a regime change war. The regime change war has gone from one hominay to a younger

homine who's even more hardline. Trump says that Iran's ballistic missiles have been totally destroyed. We've seen intelligence reports that suggest it might be close to 50 percent destroyed. And they might have just launched some at Israel too. Oh, really? Oh, good. That's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So I just have a very hard time believing that BB Netanyahu is, is going to be ready to end this war. Trump might want to find an off ramp in safe face because he is, I think, looking at polling and realizes that his presidency is slowly withering

and dying before his eyes. But as we talk about later in the episode, the Iranians have now found a pretty remarkable source of leverage and possible revenue for them. And a lot of people would argue, look, in many ways, they're doing way worse now, the regime, but they're making more money now off oil sales. They have more power now by finding this choke point

in the Strait of Homoos. So there's all these structural challenges when you look at, you know, the Iranian demands and the U.S. demands for each other that are so, so far apart. It just doesn't I feel like we're close to ending this war. And there's one other thing that I think is really important in that post that, you know, might fly under the radar. He refers to the Islamic Republic of Iran, not Iran. The Islamic Republic is the regime. Like it's a de facto recognition of the Islamic Republic. That's the system. with a Supreme Leader with the IRGC, that is Donald Trump accepting that the people he's going to be dealing with are the same regime, even if he killed the Supreme Leader.

And that, trust me, like, as someone who's worked on this, and we were very careful in the Obama administration about when we said Iran or Islamic Republic, that's a concession that he's making, which, again, is just abowing to reality. But, you know, this is no longer a regime-change war. Yeah.

It's a double-sided ceasefire. Like the tape I used to put on my hockey sticks. Okay, Ben, well, unfortunately for the world, I just, I really don't think this war is close to over. There remain all these huge, you know, political and structural problems that could lead to the war escalating, dragging out for a very long time. All those problems still exist. We cover all the big picture questions in this episode. Just know that we recorded most of it before this most recent true social post announcing the two-week extension on the war crimes, you know, Bonanza tonight. So there will be times where we kind of sound anxious and uncertain about what might happen on Tuesday night.

We play a clip from Brett Baer where he's assured by Donald Trump that there will be no extension this time. Yeah. We should have known at the time that it was bullshit. Which is useful because it shows you the chaos. It shows you the chaos. It shows you that Trump lies and that Fox News is just his useful idea. It will repeat whatever he says. But here's what we cover in this episode.

So we're going to start with Trump's threat to commit genocide on the country of Iran, literally. We'll explain the consequences of that. will explain the consequences of these proposed strikes on all kinds of civilian Iranian infrastructure, what they would mean legally, morally, and strategically. We'll give you the highlights of some extraordinary new reporting by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times about how Trump decided to go to war with Iran. Then we'll listen to some clips from an equally incredible monologue from Tucker Carlson, where he really firmly breaks with Trump over the war with Iran on a deep moral level and talks about why he is concerned that Trump could end up using, will end up

using nuclear weapons. It's a conversation that is very important worth having. Then we'll talk about all the talks and the secret side deals that are happening with the Iranians. Obviously, we just talked about some of the fruits of some of those, but we're kind of looking at signs of things happening diplomatically that could lead to a permanent end game, a permanent end to the war and a permanent path out of this mess. And then we're going to talk about these enormously consequential elections coming up in Hungary and how insane it is that Vice President J.D. Vance is in fucking Hungary on a Tuesday in April doing a campaign event for Victor Orban Venn. I've truly like never heard anything like this in the middle of a war, the middle of a conflict. He, you know, in the middle of a political

crisis for the White House, J.D. Vance, is over in Hungary. So that is bonkers. We did not have a guest today because we just wanted to go really long on Iran stuff. And I'm just getting back from vacation. And so we'll pick that back up next week. Podzee the world is brought to you by Haya. As parents, we worry about the long-term effects that ultra-processed foods have on our kids. That's why Haya was created to provide a real solution and a market full of vitamins that are basically candy. While some brands pack up to 7 grams of sugar and petroleum-based dyes into every serving, Haya takes the opposite approach, zero sugar, zero gummy additives, just clean nutrition. Working alongside pediatricians and nutrition scientists, Haya created a superfood chewable vitamin that packs a blend of 12 organic fruits and vegetables plus 15 essential vitamins and minerals into every dose. The ingredient list is clean, non-GMO, vegan, dairy-free, allergy-free, gelatin-free, nut-free. They've thought of everything. Designed for kids two and up, Haya shipped straight to your door.

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When there's breaking news, Ben and I often record things where we just jump on the pod save the world YouTube to put up a bonus really quickly. So please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. so you don't miss any of those. Also, if you want to support everything we're doing here, Cricket Media, and help us push back on the pro-war propaganda from Fox News and the Daily Wire and so many others, please consider becoming a friend of the pod subscribers.

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President of the United States went from threatening to commit massive, clear-cut war crimes to threatening genocide literally on a country of 90 million people. On Tuesday, Trump wrote on truth social, quote, A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. So that's something he just put in writing. And then perversely ended the message with God bless the great people of Iran. So what we all assume Trump is talking about there in that post is that a threat to blow up

all of the bridges and power plants in Iran. though he could do far worse. We'll get to that in a little bit. But here are some just of Trump's actual comments about the war in Iran from Monday. Then Fox News, Brad Bear is talking about a conversation he had with Trump on Tuesday that I think gives us some more insight into his thinking.

And then finally, J.D. Vance waited on all things Iran from Budapest. So let's watch. We have a plan because of the power of our military where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night. where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean, complete demolition by 12 o'clock.

And it'll happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to. It will take them 100 years to rebuild. The entire country can be taken out in one night. And that night might be tomorrow night. I just got off the phone with the president. He said, 8 p.m. is happening. Whether it's positive or negative, we're going to get a response. response from the Iranians by 8 o'clock tonight. We've got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't

decided to use. The President of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their force of conduct. Okay, so about a few thoughts. I'll just kick it over to you. So again, we're recording this a few hours before Trump's deadline, after which he says he'll bomb Iran into the Stone Age. It's not ideal timing for the show or for humanity, frankly. it Trump goes through with this threat, I think it'll take some time to kind of figure out what exactly was hit, like the scale of the destruction, et cetera. So we're just going to record today, frankly, just assuming that this war is only going to escalate. And then just unpack the implications of that escalation because I think that's important. There's peace talks are ongoing. There's some, you know, occasional leaks that suggest they're making progress. But it feels like the two sides are very far apart. And this is only going up. But again, and also Iran, I think, cut off the talk. with the U.S., at least for some period of time after that genocidal tweet that I just read to you. So anyway, a few thoughts from me and I'll get to you. I mean, first, again, this just is a clear-cut war crime to say you're going to bomb all the power plants

and bridges in Iran. You cannot indiscriminately bomb civilian infrastructure. There has to be proportionality to any military effort. But let's be honest, like Trump doesn't care about that. He's, you know, the Hague is not going to come arrest him, so he just doesn't give fuck. So I guess do with that what you will. In practice, though, like what it would mean to bomb. Oliver on's power plants and bridges is mass civilian death. And I think we should just be clear

about that. Like every baby on a respirator will die. Doctors will not be able to perform surgeries. There will be no power for electric pumps that are critical to getting people clean water. You won't be able to treat water to make it safe to drink. There won't be desalination plants running. There will be no way to move food or essential items around the country if there's no bridges. And there's no way of undoing this step. You know, like millions of people will die. Refugees will the country en masse, it will be a catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe. And on Monday, Ben, I don't know if you saw this. Like Trump made this insane claim that Iran, the only time Iranians are unhappy is when the

bombing stops. But then today, you're seeing images out of Iran of thousands and thousands of Iranians lining bridges and apparently surrounding power plants in an effort to make themselves human shields to prevent the United States from bombing their country. That sure seems to undercut what he told us on Monday. And then just what is especially scary about all this is this like sense of bloodlust you're getting from Trump. Axios today reported that Trump is the most hawkish senior member of his team. One U.S. officials said, quote, the president is the most bloodthirsty like a mad dog.

So, Ben, on just a human level, a moral level, a legal level, is an abomination. It would be one of the most evil catastrophic things the United States has ever done. And it also just feels like it will get to this in the Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, reporting. It feels like no one is really trying to stop Trump, no one around him in the White House, and that is equally scary to me. Yeah, I mean, I actually think this is an important day in our history because let's just deal with kind of modern history because we can obviously go back and talk about Native Americans. But we now have a president of United States who has threatened as a matter of policy to commit genocide.

And I think that the enormity of that reality is something that has been hard for people to absorb in this country. Not hard, by the way, for Iranians to absorb because they're living on the other end of it. But whatever happens, even if he doesn't make good on this threat, just the fact that we are now in a position where the president and commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world is threatening to use that military to commit genocide is something. that will change the perception of the United States for a generation to come around the world. Because we are now a rogue state. We are functioning as a rogue superpower, threatening to kill countless innocence. It's wrong. The degree of pushback from both parties, society in general, like needs to be at a higher decibel level. It's just a horrifying thing to. to read that this morning. I think I think the second thing is the way Trump talks about these

things, it's as if they're not people involved. I mean, every person listening to this podcast has crossed a bridge, has turned on the lights, has maybe had a parent on a ventilator or maybe a baby in the NICU. I mean, those people will. will die if Trump does in Iran, if Trump does what he's talking about. And the kind of lack of capacity, he clearly has no capacity to see himself and his own humanity in these people in Iran. And we somehow, as Americans, like, need to put aside policy and the stupidity of this war, and the insanity of it and the high oil prices and all the rest of it, like, threatening mass murder as a form of policy, it puts us in a more dangerous world.

It's kind of normalizing a certain conduct that we saw in Gaza, that we're seeing in Lebanon, that we saw Vladimir Putin pursue in Ukraine. Like, normalizing this to this extent is truly dangerous, no matter what happens. And it also taught me, like, it just made me think, you know, we are. are now in this scenario where we've got this autocratic leader who is dangerous, who is venal, who, you know, maybe he thinks he's doing some form of madman diplomacy. That's like the charitable version. It's pretty scary.

There were only a year and, what, two or three months into this Trump term. Like today's the first day to tell me where I was like, how are we going to make it through the rest of this term? And, you know, I know it's kind of resistance fantasy to talk about impeachment and the 25th Amendment and the rest of it. But I don't know. If he does this, I mean, you start to wonder, like, who's going to stop him, you know, from doing more of this? And so, yeah, anything. Because we're kind of in it now. This is not the first war of this administration and may very well not be the last, you know.

And so there's a lot that could happen or not. happen in Iran. But I do think taking us a minute here to just absorb like the enormity of this threat and the consistency of it too, like he did this on Sunday too, it's really unsettling in a kind of deep way. And it makes you wonder where this country in the world is going. Yeah, it's unsettling. It's an evil threat. It suggests someone who is cavalier and indifference to the value of human life. And it's not just unsettling dust. I mean, we're going to dig into what Tucker Carlson said about this. Someone who's friends with Trump, who's a huge mega supporter. And also, you know, we shouldn't let the threat of what Trump has said he might do

hide like the horrors that have already befallen the Iranians. I mean, again, the human rights activist news agency estimates that over 1,600 civilians have been killed in the war since it started, including 248 children. The Iran's Ministry of Science and Technology. says that at least 30 universities have now been struck by airstrikes. The World Health Organization says it's verified at least 20 attacks on medical centers. The UN says that over 3 million Iranians have been displaced. So the cost for the Iranian people is massive already in terms of lives and infrastructure that will take generations to rebuild.

And one other thing I was thinking about then, I mean, I don't know if you watched the entire like 90-minute Trump, Ratcliffe, Haigsev, Dan Kane, Victory Lap. on the rescue operation in Iran. We're basically not even going to talk about it because like so many lifetimes have happened since then of news. I mean, it's extraordinary. What our military did to find these two airmen is extraordinary. But I kept thinking about a previous press conference with Hegseh, when he was bragging about how the U.S. military sank an unarmed Iranian ship with a torpedo and how cool he thought that was to put, you know, 150 Iranian sailors at the bottom of the ocean. And it just made me think about how those two airmen would have been treated by the IRGC.

Had they been captured, given like the cavalier way that Pete Hegseth, not only doesn't give a shit about civilian casualties or rules of engagement, but like seems to revel again in the bloodlust, in the killing and in like does his fucking, you know, war crimes beat poetry, Dr. Seuss. routine at these briefing. So it was just, I don't know, the whole thing. Again, unsettling is the right word. Yeah. And I think, you know, two things, the university, let's just talk about the universities, because there are these, you know, Twitter warriors who've wanted war with Iran for 15 or 20 years who, you know, like to say, well, you know, there's scientists that went to that university. And so it's a military target or, you know, and they also say, like, maybe the Iranian military

could drive something across that bridge. That's not how this works. You know bomb Harvard? You're a civilian infrastructure. What are we talking about? Yeah, I mean, you could make, under this logic, I mean, you actually do have to put yourself in the shoes of Iranians, which is something that these people seem incapable of doing,

except to want to kill them. Harvard does plenty of research, including some stuff that reaches the U.S. military. Like, how would we feel if they were bombed by Iran, you know? Just some service members might take the train. down to a base to deploy, does that make the trick? Like, this is such a slippery slope. What are we talking about? Yeah.

What are we talking about? Who have we become that we're sitting here post-factor? You know what? I can guarantee you that most of the people that went to those universities are just students. Like you and I were when we went to college. And probably the most progressive people in the country. Yeah, they're the people who fucking protested, you know?

And so I just want to call out how, what bullshit it is to kind of, you can find a crazy logic trained to make anything a target under that. Yes. And there's a reason that international law distinguishes civilian from military targets, you know? Yeah. It's, it's like so grotesque. Yeah, and it's not even a question. It's just like so self-evidently a war crime. A little bit on just how we got to this war. So again, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at the New York Times have a book coming out on June 23rd about like the new Trump 2.0, the new regime. There's a big excerpt from the book in The Times today that's all about how Trump reached the decision. to go to war that is just extraordinary.

The detail in this reporting is unbelievable to me. So if you think, Ben and I are coming at this from as news consumers, but also as people who were like threatened every day by Lindsay Graham on Fox News for like allegedly leaking shit. And now that Moore has leaked about the Trump administration in a few months than has ever leaked about any, you know, other administration in history. So they got all this detail, Haberman and Swan, got all this detail about a meeting Trump held with BB Netanyahu on February 11.

where Netanyahu made the case for war. Apparently, this is, Netanyahu was physically in the White House situation room. They zoomed in like the Mossade guys behind him. And they made their case. The Israelis made their case for the war. And it detailed all these Israeli assumptions for how things would go. And my God, were they catastrophically wrong then?

Here's a few things that the Israelis told Trump. Iran's ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Pormuz. The odds that Iran would hit U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal. And the Mossad assessed that street protests would start again. They also had plans to help foment street protests. And they thought that bombing could then help the opposition overthrow the regime. And then the Israelis, as we have now seen reported elsewhere, were driving this plan to have Kurdish forces in Iraq invade Iran and basically

attack the regime from a second front. So Haberman and Swan report that U.S. intelligence assessed that the Israeli claims about regime change and a popular uprising were delusional. But Trump apparently dismissed those, you know, what the U.S. intelligence said and said it was, quote, their problem. It's not clear in the book whether their problem means Israel's problem or Iran's problem. But that was how seriously Trump considered these, you know, this response from his own intelligence services. They also report that while Netanyahu's pitch was influential, Trump was way more hawkish on Iran than

any of his base believed and was like pretty disposed to wanting to bomb. They report that J.D. Vance was kind of all over the place. Like he wanted Trump to enforce the red line that he made in January when the protesters were killed. But Vance is also reportedly the most opposed to the war in time of the war cabinet. Vance initially said apparently tried to steer Trump towards limited strikes. But then when he realized that Trump wanted to do it, he made the pitch to go all in with

overwhelming force. So like great work there, J.D., I guess, like profile and courage from you. Heg Seth was the biggest proponent of the war. Shocker, Rubio is described as ambivalent, but didn't try to talk Trump out of it. Again, another profile and courage. And it sounds like Tucker Carlson was like the only person with any real guts here. And he told Trump that the war would destroy his presidency. Last thing then, Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary.

And Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, were excluded from the war planning. It might have been good to have someone who was thinking about the global economy, energy supplies in the Intel case, I don't know, at those meetings. Ben, takeaways from you from these reports? I mean, first of all, you and I have both over the years over the last few weeks, you know, been called an anti-Semite for suggesting that Israel pushed us into this war. I mean, we now have reporting that the Prime Minister of Israel literally flew to the situation room to give a fucking presentation about why Trump should get into the war and that most of his own team didn't even want to do it and told them that the Israelis were full of shit.

I think that's a direct quote from Rubio that it's bullshit or something. And he did it anyway. So can we please put to rest this idea that we're not allowed to discuss that Israel and Netanyahu in particular were the principal advocates for the U.S. doing it? It doesn't absolve Trump at all of responsibility. Frankly, it makes him even a bigger idiot. Makes him look a moron. You got a plate. Yeah, makes him look like a moron.

He's a fucking fool. John Ratcliffe is not some like, you know, impartial guy. The fact that he was saying like that, you know, the CI doesn't agree with this tells you a lot. So let's, I don't want to hear any more stuff about. We're not, we have to have a conversation about Israel as an expansionist power that wants to take land from Lebanon and Syria and create destruction in Iran and somehow has got Trump on the caboose of this. plan, that's a problem. Yeah, we're not even talking about this week. The fact the Israelis are now basically saying that they're going to seize about 15 miles of territory into Lebanon. But that's part of the, I think, the plan, right? Is it under the cover of this big war,

we're going to do this in Lebanon and we're doing all the stuff in the West Bank. Then it's also like, it points, it's interesting to relive that presentation from the Israelis because it reminds you that none of the objectives that Trump set are being met. There's no regime change. There's no popular uprising. The nuclear material is still sitting there. The enriched uranium is in isfahan. It may have been moved. Yeah. May have been moved. So like the stated reasons at like for what Israel was pitching and what Trump said when he launches were like those are out the window. Even in the rosy scenarios, if we get a deal somehow, don't address those things. The regime will be more entrenched. It will have demonstrated it controls the straight-of-form moves. It can extract fees from countries

that export energy through there. And that kind of like, it kind of takes me back to the pilot thing, Tommy, because I had the same feelings you did. And I saw somebody like attack you online and be like, you won't be give Trump a win. Look, obviously the people that rescued that pilot, like did their jobs. But you know what? No. I'm not going to give Trump fucking credit for like it's the same thing. If he opens the Strait of Hormuz, we're going to have to hear about it's the greatest win ever when the straight of Hormuz. You know, when it was open before the fucking war, you know? And we've seen this pattern where he creates messes and then he celebrates. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he sets something on fire and he puts out part of the fire and once like the

Nobel Peace Prize, like, no, that pilot shouldn't have been there. That's my turn. First of all, that pilot shouldn't have been dropping bombs. It's not his fault. He's got the orders, but like on Iranian universities. But then he shouldn't have been in that harm's way, as you said. And the Strait of War Moos, like the fact that we're frantically trying to negotiate its opening just tells you how much Trump has fucked up this war that should not have been fought. The other thing people were saying to me, like, not to be in my Twitter mentions, but people were saying, like, the people who oppose this war are upset that the pilot was rescued. It's like, I'm sorry, what do you talk to? No. I think if you're upset that he was shot down.

I was upset that he was shot down. But like, if you oppose this war, literally the worst thing that could have possibly happened was a hostage crisis where the IRGC had one or two. American pilots. And like, because then Trump would have just raced up the escalation ladder. You know that's what would have happened. Yeah. And the last thing that kind of connects, all these things you're talking about is it is interesting to hear that Trump was the kind of bloodthirsty one. And because the worrisome thing, and we saw this with Putin, right? Sometimes you get these autocratic leaders, they're getting older. They're thinking about like the sweep of history, maybe their domestic agendas run out of gas.

This is what happened to Putin. Like he didn't care anymore about the Russian economy or whatever. He's like, how can I enter history, you know, by taking territory? And what worries me is that Trump has got the aging autocratic bug where it's like the way I go down in history is not the big beautiful bill, you know, which probably doesn't care about. It's, yeah, I'm going to conquer Cuba. I'm going to break Iran. I'm going to conquer Greenland.

Like this is why this is so dangerous, as he seems to have caught this, you know, this bug that we've seen plenty of other autocrats catch of powerful nations, you know, where I can, I can use the military as this extension of my sense of vengeance and grandiosity, you know.

Yeah, it's really, it paints a very scary portrait of Trump. I'm eager to read the rest of the book. Again, there's on this excerpt, I mean, look, you and I both had jobs where we were charged with trying to explain to the country kind of like national security issues and decision making while also guarding secrets. And every time we did the former, we got attacked by like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and other people for so-called leaks even when it was just like basic like press briefings and things.

Like after the bin Laden operation, right? Everyone lost their mind and act like, you know, somehow all this secret information was put out. And it's like I don't really think that's true. But whatever, the shit in this book, the shit in this excerpt is stunning. Like literally direct quote. of what the chairman of the joint chiefs said to Trump in a meeting of like eight people or something that happened a few weeks ago about the most sensitive decision making around Iran. Again, it's press conference yesterday. It seems so ill-considered the way that Trump and Hegsef and Ratcliffe went out and did this victory lap and disclosed all the ways that they rescued this pilot because, God forbid, another pilot goes down.

They have to do this again. But, you know, the New York Post today, Ben, said that they found the second airman. using a secret tool called Ghost Mirmer to find the weapon system officer. This is how it's described. The secret technology uses long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise, two sources close to the breakthrough said. It's like hearing a voice in a stadium except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert.

A source briefed on the program told the post, in the right conditions, if your heart is beating, we will find you. That sounds pretty fucking cool. It also sounds like the thing you probably don't want out there. But Trump was like essentially disclosed this when he talked about the ability to pinpoint the second airman from 40 miles away on the top of a mount. The CIA was also talking about running a deception campaign within Iran to fool the IRGC into looking in the wrong places for the missing airmen. It's like there was just so much they were leaking from this press conference. It was so irresponsible.

And it was clearly like just an attempt to, you know, put a gloss on this war to rally around the flag effect, to get people on board with the war effort itself. But like the just lack of long-term thinking is, I mean, it's typical for these assholes, I guess. Yeah. I mean, even if you're a casual observer of national sturdy issues or you've seen a few movies about special forces, you know that literally revealing all the sensitive capabilities that we use in rescue missions, which there'll be more of, you know, hostage rescue missions, happen, you know, semi-regularly. This is just giving the playbook away to anyone who wants to use it. I mean,

clear as day. It also just, there's a hypocrisy that it's so extreme that it kind of comes back to the point that when they would attack people for, you know, leaking, it's just projection because they know that they would leak anything if it would make them look good. And in the same way that Trump is using the military as an extension of his kind of personal interests, whether that's, you know, potentially committing genocide or whether that's purging generals, he sees these capabilities that are not his, right? Like, we taxpayers pay for them. They're American. capabilities. They're not his to, like, the idea that just this might make him, because also the politics, like, do we really think there's going to be like a surge in approval of Trump and the

war because he revealed the supersonic, you know, weapon? I mean, it's, like, even the politics of it make no sense. It's literally like a kid who just, like wants to brag about something that he had nothing to do with. Like, and this, like, it's like Donald Trump had anything to do with with what those people on the ground did. He's always like, I ordered them to do this. It's like, okay, well, yeah, that was the hard part. It wasn't, you know, fucking refueling a helicopter at low altitude going around Iran as everyone is shooting a shoot with every weapon they can find. Like, I think that was the harder part. I think that was a little harder. Fucking asshole. And also, like, everything they said, every claim they made about, you know,

how the war is going is a lie. Like the New York Times reported that Iran is still launching 15 to 30 ballistic missiles a day, 50 to 100 drones. Iran is now using cluster. munitions to defeat certain Israeli missile defense systems. Like basically, they're firing ballistic missiles that released cluster munitions, which are like little bomblets at high altitude, which lets you get around some of Israel's missile defense systems, which is why you're seeing those clips of these, you know, looks like 50 like stars kind of sinking on Tel Aviv or whatever,

which is doing enormous damage. And meanwhile then, I mean, I saw a report. It was called the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. It's a DC think tank that estimates that UAE and Bahrain have expended more than three quarters of their Patriot missile, a PAC three interceptor stockpiles. And that's one of like the core defensive missiles in their arsenal. So again, this is just a way of saying like, you know, there's, it's a war of attrition happening here. Iran does not seem to be losing it.

And the numbers of casualties and the damage and the economic fallout is going to go up and up every day this goes on. So it's just, it's not a good setup here. And they will brag in detail about the minute details of a rescue operation while simultaneously they are lying or concealing information about the damage that's being done. We get no credible transparent reporting from the government about the damage to U.S. facilities in, you know, across the Gulf, be they military bases or embassies, some of which are just closed or inoperable, Right. Do you see the thing of the Saudi, the hit on the U.S. Embassy in Saudi?

I don't know if you guys talked about that last week. I mean, apparently the Iranians put two drones on the same spot on the U.S. embassy and Saudi Arabia. They fired them at night because during the day, that area houses like 200 or 300 employees. It would have been a mass casualty incident. And the thing was burning for half a day afterwards. And we've heard nothing about it. Nothing.

Like no briefing. I mean, these are the people, remember how much they used to care about embassy security, you know? Remember Benghazi? We don't know how badly wounded. the hundreds of American service members. They are simultaneously suppressing bad news and then just like hyping the shit out of anything they can grab onto as positive news.

And that's like a, you know, that's a recipe for Americans to not trust their government. Yeah. And we pay for these things. This is what I hate about this so much is like, again, Trump acts like this is all his to do whatever he wants with. Like, no, an embassy, a military base. Like those are, those are national.

assets, you know, and they're just not leveling with us. Yeah. Yeah. Well, standing in the world is fucking gone. Yeah, it's gone. And they're, look, they're all doing it because the war is really unpopular. I mean, the public opinion started out opposed to this war. It has been getting worse inexorably ever since. Trump himself is not getting a boost or like a rally around the flag effect like you usually see in wartime. Harry Enton at CNN did a great piece on this. He pulled together some numbers. So George W. Bush got a 14-point bump in the first month of the Iraq war. His father, Ben, got a 34-point boost in the first month of the previous Gulf War. Even Jimmy Carter was up like 30 points in the first month of the Iranian hostage crisis. But Trump's net approval

is actually down four points. That is completely a historic. The only sort of like similar instance he could point to was the month after Biden left Afghanistan. He went down six points in approval rating and basically it ended his presidency. And so they also looked at the CNN aggregator, the polling on the war itself, it started 12 points underwater. Now it's 22 points underwater. And I'm positive that's going to get worse, right? Because gas prices are only going up. Other commodity prices are going up. The price of food could go up. The global economy is slowing down. There could be a collapse, but no matter what, it's slowing down. And on top of that, like during the Iraq war, which you and I live through, it was all cheerleading for the war.

But now you're seeing like major voices in kind of the MAGA media ecosystem loudly opposing this one. And so today we're going to play for you guys a couple clips from Tucker Carlson in his most recent episode that I think are quite important and instructive. And for the record, yes, we know all the bad things Tucker has done and said, we know he's a flawed person. We know he's a flawed messenger. But he reaches millions and millions of people who are pro-Trump, who are MAGA, and who trust him. So what he says to them is really fucking important. And so this first clip is long, but it is worth it, I promise. So again, this is from Tucker's most recent episode

that I think came out Monday night. And so the morning of Easter is a uniquely joyful and peaceful moment. And yet that piece yesterday was shattered. That's not an overstatement. It was shattered for many observant Christians by a statement that the President of the United States put out at 8.03 a.m. Eastern Time

on Easter morning that said this, and we're going to read it in its entirety, not in outrage or self-righteousness, but honestly in horror. Quote, Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it, three exclamation points. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch all caps.

Praise be to Allah, President Donald J. Trump. Now, a lot of people reading that imagined, of course, this can't be real. Did the President of the United States really just write that? And it is real. It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done. And also the most revealing. On every level, it is vile. But then the tweet continues.

Pardon me, the ironically named Truth continues. There will be nothing like it. Open the effing straight. How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country? Who do you think you are? You're tweeting out the F word on Easter morning? You'll be living in half. as if hell is a place.

Hell is a condition, and this is an example of that condition. Just watch, praise be to Allah. So obviously you're mocking the religion of Iran. Okay. If you seek a religious war, that's a good idea. This is a mockery, not just of Islam. It's a mockery of Christianity. To send out a tweet with the F word on Easter morning

promising the murder of civilians and then saying praise be to Allah, without explaining any of it, you are mocking me and every other Christian because we're Christians. Oh, I get it. We can't support that. So that is a small slice of an extraordinary 45-minute monologue from Tucker that is, I don't know how to view this other than a pretty firm break from Trump. Maybe he'll come back. A lot of them do. But it is an attack on Trump in the most harsh moral term. So it includes Tucker attacking Trump for the following pen. he starts at the top. He says like Trump's saying that our motive for invading Venezuela was stealing their oil should have been a moment where a lot of people said, I'm out.

And I think Tucker is sort of using that monologue as a moment for saying he wish he had said that. He talks about how Trump didn't put his hand on the Bible when he was sworn in at his own inauguration, which Tucker said suggests that Trump, quote, affirmatively rejects what's inside that book. And that what's inside that book are limits on human behavior. Because if there's one theme that spans all 66 books in the Christian Bible, is that you are not God and you cannot assume his powers. You may want them, but in the end, they're not yours, end of quote. So Tucker is not at all subtly accusing Trump of thinking he's now God. He goes in on the Easter truth social post like we just heard there.

And then he argues that Trump launched this war because of literal bloodlust, like because he enjoys the killing itself. And then there's the WMD piece that we'll get to in a minute. And so, you know, Ben, I think both of us, you know, we listen to Tucker now because he's been really compelling on Iran. And it's important to know what he's saying to his audience. We wanted to highlight this because it includes a really, I think it's a strong moral case against the war that's rooted in Christianity. It includes a call for everyone to say that this is unacceptable and unjustifiable and crazy. And then again, most importantly, the message is coming from Trump's literal close.

close friend, a man who spoke at his convention, who is arguably the most important voice in conservative media. And I just think that is a huge, huge deal. And I wonder what you took away from this episode. Like you, I've been listening to Tucker because it's interesting since the war started. And what I took away is, first of all, in some of the early episodes, he was strongly against the war. But it was much of his ire was focused on Netanyahu. And there was almost a sense that Trump was this guy that was like, he left the name Trump out of some of his criticisms. He was the Israelis, you know, kind of pulling all the strings. Yeah. And, and, you know, for whatever reason, you know, sincere conviction or opportunism or both,

that felt like a total and complete rebuke of Trump from somebody who is deep, deep within the tent. And frankly, I listened to that. And part of me thought, how come Tucker Carlson can mount a clear moral case? By the way, there's no mention of Israel. I'm not here to excuse, you know, platforming Nick Fuentes at all. But the point is that that was a more morally grounded frontal assault on the war than you hear from certainly any elected Republicans other than maybe Thomas Massey and Rand Paul and frankly most Democrats. Oh, you think it's, You think it's better to make a case on values rather than process, not coming to Congress first? Tucker's not saying like, well, we didn't get a good enough briefing.

You should have briefed us. Yeah. Like, and actually, you know, I think you can learn from people who you disagree with. Yes. And I disagree profoundly with Tucker Carlson about a lot of things, including, you know, the nature of this country inside its borders. But I think we can learn just stripping out all the other things and mounting a direct moral case against what Trump is doing lands very powerfully. And frankly, I don't have the standing

that, you know, I'm not a Christian in the same way. But the fact that he and Marjorie Taylor Green's mother people are really entering this conversation through the doorway of Christianity gets it a real weakness for Trump because, as Tucker says elsewhere in that show, he's not personally pious. Like, he's never pretended to be a deep Christian, but he's kind of, you know, gaslit Christians and, you know, delivered certain things for pro-life Christians, for instance, overturning Roe v. Wade. But if you, if he starts to lose that base of support, evangelical and Protestant Christians in this country, he's pretty fucked. And I should add, by the way, there's the other American who's been even stronger on the moral basis is the Pope, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And the head of the conference of Catholic bishops in the U.S. put out a withering statement today urging Trump to walk back from his threats. So he's got a problem. And again, if people want to say, does this matter, like some of the polling shows that MAGA is behind him, Tucker Carlson, you know, I read the Cricket Reads book by Jason Zangerly, hated by all the right people. And part of what you learn about Tucker is particularly in the last, you know, decade, the Trump decade and a little bit before, this guy has seen where the puck was going and skated to it. Yeah. And so just because the polling hasn't collapsed in MAGY yet, the fact that Tucker is seeing

the direction of where the MAGA movement might go or Trump supporters might go, he's always out in front of it. He's always leading it. This is a guy that had the highest rated show in the history of cable news on Fox and then has a giant platform now. And I guarantee you that Republican politicians listen to that show. They also know that Tucker. Carlson may be preparing to run for president because it certainly feels like a lane is open

now that J.D. Vance is on board with this war. So that's a lot of reasons why this is both interesting. There's, again, I hate to say this, something to learn from the kind of moral case he mounts. And I think is a real warning sign that if Tucker is, you know, because it's not just him, we see plenty of other people that are kind of following his lead in that kind of podcast space and internet space on the right. I think it's a harbinger that people are beginning to look past Trump. Yeah. And look, like people will say, you know, there's polls, including by CNN's Harry Anton, who you mentioned earlier, that said like, quote unquote, MAGA voters are not leaving Trump. Well, yes, if you're self-identifying as a MAGA voter, you're basically saying, like, you're a Trump fan,

right and those people are going to be the last to go but he's losing republicans but i do think like the war is only a few it's like a few weeks old right and i think when gas prices continue to go up and when you have people like tucker carlson or joe rogan or others repeatedly condemning the war in terms like these or mtg uh that opinion can change over time and slowly erode and again like in american politics like trump's never trump will probably never get down to a you know 10% approval rating, but if his approval rating drops a couple points, 5%, say, that could lead to an electoral landslide in the midterms or other elections. So it's very, very meaningful. Potts of the World is brought to you by Remy. You'll never believe this, love it, but I once struggled

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There's kids. There's everything. You need to talk to someone and have a therapist and get your mental health in order. When life feels overwhelming therapy, you can help sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash crooked world. That's betterh-elp.com slash crooked world. Finally, Ben, just before we go on to this weapons of mass destruction discussion, I did want to play you one other clip from a MAGA voice, who many would argue is more influential than Tucker and the Pope all roll together. So let's watch. How do we 25th Amendment is that's asked?

The problem is to get the 25th Amendment's harder than impeachment. You have to get two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate. So what do we do? Tackle Trump and let him pretend he's president and publicly report. that he's going through a health issue and Vance takeover. That was Info Wars founder Alex Jones, who's been one of the biggest Trump fans ever screaming. How do we do it fit the men in his ass?

I just thought that was fun. But it like... Who's he talking to? Is he interviewing himself? I think... I assume that guy wrote the Hobbit. I don't know if he created like Glenn back when he interviewed an AI version of himself or something.

Dude, we should... Or, yeah, George Washington. We should put in an interview request for AI, George Washington's... see if I'm gonna laugh about something. I don't know. It's good to laugh about something. I don't know if anyone listened to Alex Jones anymore, but like, just him screaming.

I don't have a Twitter for the men of his ass. It's hilarious to me. But I didn't such as them. It's also like, I don't know if you ever watched Tim Dillon like sort of a. Yes. Yeah. You know, conspiracy loving kind of right leaning comedian who endorsed Trump and just, you know, like hated Biden.

Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan, right? There's like a lot of, like, it's not just one person. It's like a bunch of voices saying, hey, you lied to us. right this is not what you said you would do um and it's a moral case against trump about his character not just the policy and that's what's so meaningful about it so um Tucker's got a chief antagonist on all things Iran has been a Fox News host named Mark Levine. Lavin is very pro war with Iran. Uh, he's a huge BB Netanyahu friend and fan. I think he like literally showed up in the courtroom at Nanyahu's trial for

corruption. He advocates for war all the time on his show. He also despises Tucker Carlson and everything he stands for I'm an anti-Semite all the time. They don't like each other very much in this episode. Did you catch when Tucker compares Mark Levine to Jeffrey Epstein? Yeah. This is a weird way. He's like, neither have any real talent or power. You know, he's just a mouthpiece.

So no love loss there. But so Tucker's monologue builds to an argument that Trump has exhausted his conventional military options for winning this war or at least for opening the Strait of Hormuz, right? You can't just like bomb your way from the air to getting the straight of Hormuz. moves open, especially when you can mine the straight-of-war moves and put mines under water and block it that right, right? So that is obviously correct in my opinion. But then Tucker's next argument is something that's worth debating, which is that the escalation ladder is going up and up and up in a way

that will lead Trump, in his view, to using a nuclear weapon in Iran. Here's a clip. Here's what Mark Levins said on his Easter weekend show about what we ought to do next in Iran. Watch. And the casualty numbers as horrible as any casualty. is need some context. The Battle of Okinawa, 50,000 plus casualties, over 12,000, nearly 13,000 killed on that island, which is what convinced Truman that we would lose a million men if we didn't drop the atomic bombs that we did.

Embedded in there is something you need to know. It's an argument that is being test-driven, and since no one, to our knowledge, has pushed back against it, may be in full operation now. it's an argument for nuclear weapons. So, Ben, I don't know about you. I've not seen any news outlets report that Trump or Netanyahu, for that matter, are considering using nuclear weapons in Iran.

But I do think we should take the conversation itself seriously because in any war or any like terrorism debate, there will always be people who make some version of the argument that it is acceptable to kill as many of them over there to protect us over here. You can sort of insert whatever country you want there. But that's how you end up dropping 2,000 pound bombs on refugee camps in Gaza. That's how you get to Trump threatening to blow up every power plant in Iran. And that is how you could get to a point where the U.S. or Israel, in the most like staggeringly hypocritical act in history or imaginable, could argue that it's okay for us to nuke them so that they can't one day nuke us. And again, I know like Tucker is flawed.

I'm not going to go through it all again. But like he knows Trump as well as anyone. And it seems like something is freaking him out here about this issue in particular. And in that segment, he even implore his White House staff to make the case not only to Trump not to do this, but to ignore orders to use nuclear weapons if it gets to that point, which is pretty extraordinary when you think about the debate over like seditious six and the way Republicans were attacking Jason Crow and the other Democratic members of Congress who basically made this. Maybe those guys run to something. Yeah, which is, you know, it can't follow an unlawful order. So I don't know. What do you make of, I mean, not just Tucker as part of this. He's clearly he hates Mark Levin and that's, you know, fueling some of it. But like, how worried should we be about this kind of WMD debate? My headline on this, you know, I mentioned you Tommy. I've heard from some normies in my life, like the kind of people that don't follow, you know, foreign policy that closely. Starting to email me or text me like, hey, is he going to use a nuclear weapon? Like, it's out in the ether, you know, because what he's saying. Because when you threaten to destroy civilization,

You know, and you threaten to commit genocide. Like, that's the kind of space you're entering. And my headline in this is, I certainly don't think that that's likely. But the fact that it doesn't feel impossible is terrifying. Because, yeah, I could see a scenario. Let's say Trump goes through today or two weeks from now or whenever with this threat to kind of mass bomb civilian infrastructure. and then I don't think anything about the Iranians suggest that they will capitulate. The Iranians bomb a lot of Gulf energy infrastructure. Or desalination plants, yeah. Yeah.

And we just keep climbing an escalation ladder. And, you know, that's the top of the escalation ladder. And it doesn't feel impossible. And it should feel impossible. It also, you know, there were people on the left who were right during Gaza when they said this kind of violence, if normalized, could migrate to other places. And again, if you look at Gaza, it looks like somebody dropped an atomic bomb. Oh, yeah. I mean, every structure is destroyed. Like you said, they were dropping 2,000 pound bombs on apartment buildings to kill one person

in the process killing scores of people. And here we are in a place where we've already bombed a girls' school, where we've already bombed a bridge. Like, we're, we've already bombed. we're going down this slippery slope. Yep. Like, and the girls' school may not have been intentional, but the bridge certainly was. We're kind of, once you start saying, we can just start kind of mass bombing, you know, civilian infrastructure. It does lead to that. And the Mark Levin argument, there are two things that are scary about it.

One is I hate these guys like him and Lindsay Graham, who seem nostalgic for the days when tens of thousands of people died and Ewo Jima in the battle. Like, they literally talk about it like it was a good old thing. used to, you know, we used to have the good old days when 12,000 men would die or something. And then, yeah, he's baking. So we had to drop the atomic bomb so we didn't have to put in ground troops. And so, again, I don't think it's likely, but man, the fact that the president of the United States has sole authority over the nuclear, you know, launch codes and that we'd be counting on people to not follow a plainly illegal and immoral order is frightening. And, you know, suggests revisiting, again, proposals from the first Trump term about limiting the president's

sole authority on the use of nuclear weapons. And also that, like, you know, one of his primary advisors is fucking Pete Hegseth, who's a idiot, he's a clown. That's the guy who's in the chain of command. Does that make you feel any better? Right. Like Fox News weekend anchor, who's now the, according to the Haberman Swan reporting, like the loudest voice in favor of war with Iran. You don't think that guy's, that guy's whole identity and place in Trump's orbit and future rests on this war going well in the U.S. being perceived as winning it. You think that like that can't lead you to advocate for some pretty fucking evil stuff? I think it certainly can. And remember it's confirmation hearings that came out. One of the things that came out was him like getting drunk and like channing

kill Muslims. Remember that? Well, maybe we should fucking pay attention and not confirm sociopathic drunks. Who advocate for war criminals in their free time. Yeah. All right, let's try to end the kind of Iran section in a way that's a little more hopeful and just think about the ways this could end. Obviously it won't end well because since once it started, it can't end well. But end would be good. So like as we said before, there are ongoing talks on the Trump side. Those talks are still being led by dumb and dumber, Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff. So that's not ideal.

There's lots of reporting Ben about the Pakistanis facilitating some talks. But I've heard from some plugged in people that the Pakistanis aren't really doing shit. It's all just for show. The Egyptians and the Turks are also facilitating talks. Egypt's intelligence services seem to be the main event here because they have actual IRGC connections and can really get conversations happening with the right people at a time when it's, by the way, incredibly difficult to communicate. I mean, Trump himself said this.

Like, it's impossible to get a message to Iran right now because they're worried we're going to kill them. So, you know, they're not going to like pick up their cell phone and talk to us, right? So they're doing note passing through children is how he described it. there have been reports that the U.S. has pushed Qatar to facilitate talks, but they have resisted. That could be because both the Israelis and the Iranians bombed them pretty recently. Yeah. Feels like that would make me not want to get more involved.

Pretty good. Yeah. Not the best way to kind of make friends. And then obviously, I bet there's stuff that's still secret. Like, we don't know what we don't know. Then there's also like clearly just side deals happening with the Iranians directly. So, for example, Iran recently said that Iraq is exempted from its. restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hamoos, they could clearly cut some kind of deal.

The Philippines said their ships will get through after some sort of negotiation with Iran. There's other reports that Iran is basically charging a toll in some instances to allow boats through. And then the UK brought together more than 40 countries to build up a coalition to try to figure out a plan to safeguard shipping in this rate. Obviously, that's easier said than done. But long story short, like there's just lots of churn out there. There's lots of people like trying to figure out a path forward. Ben, did any of that reporting or what we?

seeing so far give you a sense of what an end game might look like or kind of like a path to maybe a ceasefire that gets extended long term. And then I think, you know, getting the straight of Hormuz back to where it was might not be an option, but getting it functional to the point where it is not going to lead to a global depression feels like a pretty good goal at this point. So like what are you looking at? I, you know, and again, as of this recording, like the churn was out about the Pakistani announcing some proposal for a two-week ceasefire, a two-week or delay in Trump's threat in response to some partial reopening of the straight. And look, you know, that could happen and that would be

great. Just that a civilization, a 5,000-year-old civilization doesn't get destroyed tonight, that would be great. I think what I'm looking at is, okay, what does the U.S. want, what does Iran want, and what does the world want, right? I think Trump at this point, You know, he has to decide whether he needs some more identifiable win, you know, like, which I don't think he's necessarily going to get, but like seize Carg Island or try to get the nuclear material and say you, you know, but at core what the U.S. wants is the Strait of Hormuz open, which is, again, ironic because we could have had it open if we didn't start the war. What are the Iranians one? Well, the Iranians have already demonstrated that they control the Strait of Hormuz. They've already won something from this war, and they're already getting tolls.

They're already getting fees to let like a dribble of oil and gas through the straight-of-war moves. I think what they will want is some kind of security guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will not attack them again. That probably can't just be the U.S. in saying that. Some constellation of countries, China, others may have to kind of somehow be a party to these security guarantees that are given to the Iranians. I think the Iranians will want sanctions relief. I think the Iranians will want, I'm not saying they'll get the U.S. to pull out of the region, to not have bases surrounding them. So the Iranians have a list, but at core, they'll want the regime survival to be assured and some kind of economic benefit. And they'll have a list,

from sanctions relief to reparations. And look, the U.S. may be able to reach some part of that deal to just stop the conflict where it is. But I actually think the, more comprehensive reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, we may just see other countries negotiate that. Like Trump is nuts. The Iranians don't trust him. And it may be that Europe and some Asian countries and the Chinese kind of they're the ones getting together with the Gulf Arabs who desperately obviously want the war to stop and the straight to reopen. And they just pay a fee going forward. Like if I'm them at this point, I'm like a dollar per barrel of oil, fine. That's better than like the 30, you know, the 50% increase I'm paying now in like the global.

global meltdown we're about to experience. And by the way, what a humiliation that would be to BB Net now. Absolutely. The man that said that this would be an easy regime change war, and obviously Trump, suddenly you've got a regime that is more IRGC controlled, that is profiting more off of the Strait of Hormuz. But again, I just think hopefully we get some kind of partial ceasefire just so that people stop dying and the escalation stop spiraling.

And then I actually think it's going to take a lot of other countries kind of trying to land the plane here on something that it reopens the Strait of Hormuz. And it's probably going to have to involve the Iranian regime being assured in its security and having more revenue. And that's extraordinary. That's how far Trump has moved things in the wrong direction on his own objectives from before the war. Yeah, way to move the Overton window, sir.

And like, yeah, like the stakes are so high. I mean, look, it sucks for us in California paying $6 for a gallon of gas. but like this energy shock is an absolute crisis for a lot of countries right now. Like countries in Asia are literally weeks away from running out of fuel. You got like Bangladesh had to close schools that are imposing fuel rations. Ethiopia is putting non-essential government employees on leave. There are like massive like hundreds of cars and lines to get fuel at gas stations. Farmers can't get fuel to work their crops.

And then things will only get exponentially worse as this fertilizer. shortage really hits. Because again, remember, like helium can't get the shoot through the straight or even moos, the fertilizer can't get through. The only positive I've seen been is that there are far right parties all across Europe that are now running from Trump. It's actually interesting to me that Victor Orban, who we'll talk about in a second, would allow J.D. Vance and Trump into his country at this moment when like Trump has created a massive crisis for them. But like the fucking AFD in Germany, the neo-Nazis are like distancing themselves from Trump. The Italian prime minister, Georgia Maloney, who remember she was like a Mussolini youth fan is furious at the Trump inauguration.

She's at the Trump inauguration. Like she's furious because like this is causing a massive economic crisis in Italy. Look, the downside of this is that Trump is blaming everything on NATO for some reason. He's once again threatening to pull out. He's like whining about Greenland. So that's not good. Maybe, you know, Mark Ruta can get down on his knees and, you know, do some work tomorrow with Wednesday at the White House. I wonder how many times they're called Trump Daddy. Yeah, yeah, daddy. But, you know, it's not good.

Too far? Mark Grude is such a comically pathetic and way he sucks up to Trump. Yeah. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Surf Shark. Ever feel like the internet is reading your mind? You search for one thing and suddenly your entire feed is nothing but adds for it.

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there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. So there's no risk. Surf Shark, because your search history deserves boundaries. All right, let's talk about Victor Orban, one of your favorite people. The Mago World's favorite dictator, who is currently the Prime Minister of Hungary. So Hungary has parliamentary elections on April 12th. So coming up soon. And for the first time in 16 years, Orban appears to be in some serious political trouble.

So he's facing a major challenge from a guy named Peter Magiar from the Teza Party. Reuters reported that Magiare is polling at 56, percent while Orban is at 37%, which is the most serious threat again to Orban's rule since he took power in 2010. Magyar's political views are not totally clear. I bet our audience would not love them if they saw like a kind of punch card of policies. He's not a progressive. He's not a liberal. He's certainly center right.

But he used to be an Orban ally and a member of Orban's Fidesz party until Maggiar quit the party in 2024 amid this massive awful scandal involving like horrible sexual abuse of children. And then the way presidential pardons were used to pardon the head of an organization that, you know, turned a blind eye to that abuse. And then Marguar's ex-wife and her role, it was like very salacious stuff that involved like leaking audio tapes he made of her, et cetera. But anyway, according to the Associated Press, though, Magyar is really running hard. He's campaigning in six towns a day. He's hammering Orban for corruption. And by corruption in this case, we don't just mean like this, you know, standard of corruption or the ways that Orban has enriched himself or his family. and friends, but like he's talking about the ways Orban and Ben, you can expand on this,

the way Orban is just upended Hungary's political system, the media, the courts, the economy, to make it a way to just further consolidate his own power for himself, for the Fides party. So Orban, obviously, as you'd expect, is not taking it well. He's pulling out all the stops to win votes. That includes threats. That includes bribes. Magyar has accused in the past Orban of blackmail and plotting to release his secret sex tape of him.

A police officer recently released information about a secret operation by Orban's domestic intelligence service to get data from Magyar and the Teza Party's IT systems. There have been several instances of election interference with ties to Russia, including maybe like a false flag bomb threat over the weekend. The Serbian president, Alexander Vuchich called up Orban and said that the Serbian army found, quote, two packages of explosives with detonators in northern Serbia that was close to a pipeline that feeds natural gas from Russia to Hungary. And beyond. And so, you know, Magyar says this is a false flag. I guess maybe someday we'll find out. And then finally, Ben, there is the blatant election interferes campaign being run out of the White House. Here is vice president J.D. Vance, who, as we mentioned before, is in Hungary in Budapest, today, Tuesday, on the stump for Victor. Let's watch. I love Hungary and I love that Victor. I'll tell you, he's a fantastic man. We've had a tremendous relationship. The President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the American people, we admire you. And we want you to make a decision about your future with no outside forces pressuring you or telling you what to do. I'm not telling you exactly who to vote for.

Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels? Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth, and for the God of our fathers? Then my friends, go to the polls and the weekend, stand with Victor Orban because he stands for you and he stands for all these things. So to answer your question, yes, we're certainly aware that there are elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services that tried to put their thumb on the scale of American elections, on Hungarian elections. This is just what they do. This is part of the cost of doing business within some elements of their system.

Okay. I knew this is going to trigger you. So what you heard there was, so J.D. Vance at a rally at the very beginning, he like calls Trump on his cell phone and puts it on speaker and holds it up. And then at the very end, that was a clip from a press conference that J.D. Vance did with Orban, where he was asked about something and ended up blaming Ukrainian intelligence services. Ben, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this. the Vance visit that bizarre clip of him blaming Ukraine there. And then why do you think, like, Peter Maggiar seems to have a chance while others don't and what it would mean if Orban actually lost this time?

Yeah. So one book plug ago, so my last book after the fall, I wrote about Hungary. And I'm not just saying this to reference the book. One of the characters, so I profiled some people in opposition. and one of the three or four Hungarians that were kind of characters in my book that I spent some time with in Budapest, is an investigative journalist named Saubalch Panii, writes for an outlet called Direct 36. He's a great investigative journalist. And I mentioned him because he got charged by Orban and the Hungarian authorities with espionage.

So it's kind of weird, you know, to write about somebody who's a journalist and then see them being accused of, you know, colluding with the foreign government. It's all bullshit, right? But it was part of what what, what, what, Sae Bolchpani had reported on is all the Russian interference in the Hungarian election, which is obvious. I mean, like they're projecting on the Ukraine what Russia is actually doing. Yeah. Right. And it's bogus and people have called out that. But I, what is so interesting about this is, again, Hungary can seem like a smaller country. Victor Orban is both an ideological leader of this far-right brand of, I don't even call it populace anymore, like this kind of far-right blood and soil nationalism that we've seen.

He has been a propagator of the playbook to enshrine authoritarian power in Hungary that the Republicans have copied here. He's at the fulcrum of efforts by Russia, Israel, and the United States. Putin uses Orban to sow disunity inside. the EU related to Ukraine policy. B.B. uses Orban to sow disunity in the EU around Israel and any potential sanction of Israel. And Trump and Vance use Orban as a fulcrum inside of Europe to fuck up whatever they don't like about the EU. And that could be anything from, you know, potential tech regulation to just, I don't know, having liberal democratic policies, right? And so it is quite interesting that this

man who's been in power this time around since 2010, that Putin, Bebe, and Trump, all the worst people are desperate for this guy to win because he's a tool of their efforts to upend European unity and bolster the far right across the continent. So the stakes are very high here. Now, Magyar has a chance where previous, one of the problems that we've seen in past Hungarian elections is that the center to the left is very divided. And some of that is, again, almost not their fault. Some that's kind of by design. Like, there's a lot of, like, influence operations by the Fides party of Orban, by the Russians and others to turn people against each other to create, you know, their version of Dems and disarray there. Some of it is because the legacy was of very deep disgust with the governing center-left party before Orban, right? So there's kind of a stink around some of the kind of more conventional parties. And so to have a guy like Magyar, who is a defector from the conservative movement in Hungary, creates a new political opening because obviously you have the lefts, is willing to vote for anybody to get Orban out, but then you win over some of the independents. But also, Orban hasn't delivered. Like if you look at Hungarian standards of living, Hungarian poverty levels, Victor Orban has enriched himself and become some big international

celebrity to the far right. But life for Hungarians, it's not like he's like, not even like the Chinese Communist Party where they can say we raise standards of living, like this is not working. And I think also just people are sick of this guy after 14 years. It feels similar to a little bit like Navalny too, right? Like in that the Navalny in many ways was a nationalist and attacking, not attacking Putin from the right, but was not like trying to be some big squishy liberal. He thought that his path to taking down Putin was focusing on kleptocracy and also just coming at him from like a far more conservative perspective.

That's right. That's exactly right. And look, we should just say, like, these guys have put, Victor Orban, if he wins, it's because, you know, he's got the media completely on his side in Hungary. He's God knows what corruption is happening. He's got the Russian intelligence services helping him. If he wins and eeks out a win, like, that's kind of status quo ante. If Victor Orban loses this election, it is a seismic event. It is a fucking earthquake in global politics. And we should, it, And by the way, we should insist that it is one because, you know what, these guys put all the chips on him. J.D. Vance flew there to bolster him in the middle of a war. A catastrophic war.

Like he's campaigning for a midterm election congressional district right before the election. So this would be humiliating to Trump. It would be a huge stepback to the far right in Europe. It would be wind in the sales of Democrats in small D Democrats in Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe where they've been fighting some tough battles. So like, you know, the pod save the world endorsement is with MacGar, like such as it matters. Yeah, it would be size. It would be incredible for the European Union. It would be great for the continent.

It would be great for like some wind in the sales of progressives all over the world. I want to, I just want to quickly trigger you if that's okay. I was watching the Vance Orban press conference. And I wanted to play you a little clip that I enjoyed greatly. This is, again, our vice president in Budapest today. I want to say something. One final observation about this election. What has happened in this country, what has happened in the midst of this election campaign,

is one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I've ever seen or ever even read about. The bureaucrats and Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They have tried to make Hungary less energy. independent. They have tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers, and they've done it all because they hate this guy. But I think that what the people of Hungary, what I would encourage them to do is ask themselves the question, not who's pro or anti Europe, not who's pro or anti the United States of America, but who is pro you? Who is pro the people of Hungary? How about the absolute incredible hypocrisy of the Vice President of the United States going to

stump for Victor Orban and then complaining about foreign election interference. By the way, with all the context that we know about Trump, you know, remember when he offered Argentina a $20 billion bailout and told voters there that like either, you know, vote with Harvey Malay or else like the U.S. would cut off support. Like these guys are brazenly interfering in elections all over the place. And he's still, J.D. Vance is still like his, he's a one note like tiny little man, fucking pathetic little baby loser and he's whining about bureaucrats in Brussels because that's like all he can that's entire playbook at this point yeah i mean you hit that point only i'd add is on the substance victor urban and his cronies have been stealing EU money for years the the the EU provides billions

of dollars in assistance to hungry because it's one of the poorer countries in the EU for things like infrastructure projects and all the money just gets skimmed off the top and goes to enrich or cronies and finances politics. So if he's got problems with Brussels, yeah, part of it's that he's way out of step with the Europe on things like Ukraine, but part of it's that he's been fucking stealing from Europe, right? And that's why they don't want to keep shoveling money to the guy. So not that J.D. Vance cares about that. So, and for him, I mean, the Ukrainians are being bombed and invaded. For him to to accuse, it is such an atrocity, like that this guy is sitting they're taking pot shots at people that are a million times tougher than he is.

And have sacrificed a million times more than he has for democracy. Spare me the lectures about election interference from Budapest, JD. The other weird comedy made, Ben, is he said, like, he was doing some weird bit about how Orban's leadership is a model for how other European leaders should be dealing with the energy crisis in Europe, which, as far as I can tell, like, Orban gave, like, huge government subsidies or basically just like forced like state agencies to absorb a bunch of costs. Then they were super pro Russia and they just like advocated either for purchasing oil and gas from the Russians or removing sanctions from the Russians.

And now they're sucking up to Trump even though he is creating this new massive energy crisis via the war with Iran. It's just like what does he think vote? Like I guess he thinks voters everywhere is stupid. Maybe that's just the answer. He does. I mean, he thinks he can like J.D. Vance them, you know. And this stick is.

just growing really old. Because like, you know what? Who in America, the only people that give a shit about this are like the ideologues at like the Claremont Institute, you know, like it's like far right intellectuals. Like, it's not like, you know, the working folks of Ohio that J.D. Vance represents or claims to represent or sitting there, you know, in rural Ohio being like, you know what we really need? We need an Orban victory in the Hungarian election. Like, you're, who's the fucking elitist cosmopolitan? Like, give me a break, J.D. Vance. Go to back. to Ohio and like actually talk to people who can't afford their bills instead of like spending taxpayer money to fly to stump for somebody that probably nobody in Ohio's heard of.

It is very weird. And there is also by the way, I mean, remember Tucker Carlson did his week of programming from. Oh, yeah. That's where we break from Tucker. Yeah. Big time, big time. The way the way politics is kind of getting reshuffled right now is very interesting. I mean, this was probably inevitable and bound to happen. in some ways because Trump is essentially a lame duck president and everyone's kind of, you know, jostling for, uh, their spot and figuring out what's next. But there's no doubt that Tucker was right when he told Trump that, you know, the war in Iran would end his presidency and would be the undoing of him, uh, and potentially the MAGA project. And it does feel like we're at the beginning

of that happening and it's happening more rapidly than frankly I would have expected, but I'm not sad about it. Not sad about it. Not sad about it. Okay, well, uh, that's it for. us today. Thank you for listening. Thanks for subscribing to Pod Save the World, wherever you get your podcast or here on YouTube, and we'll talk to you guys soon. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonnergy. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Roads. The show is engineered, mixed, and edited by Jordan Cantor.

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