Pod Save the World - Trump's Fascist Military Jamboree

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

Tommy & Ben react to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump's bizarre and alarming gathering of top military officials, including Trump's fascistic rhetoric about the "enemy within", wildly inappropriate partisan rants, and Hegseth's anti-DEI, pro-war-crimes lecture that could have been an email. They also talk about Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement of a 20-point plan to end the war between Israel and Hamas, Netanyahu's apology to Qatar for striking Hamas leaders in Doha and why the hell Tony Blair is involved. Also discussed: Marco Rubio's secret plan for regime change in Venezuela, the revocation of the Colombian president's visa by the U.S., how Trump's trade war with China could sell out Taiwan and hurt American farmers, "Gen Z" protests in Madagascar, and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's latest prison sentence. Finally, they explain why the comedy world is headed to Saudi Arabia and how Trump bonded with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over rigged elections. Then, Ben speaks to foreign policy analyst, author, and journalist Rula Jebreal about the sidelining of Palestinians in Trump's peace plan, the threat of West Bank annexation, and what the international community can do for Palestine.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. 

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Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you, helixleck sleep.com slash world. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Uh, Patriots have a quarterback, Ben. Drake maybe. Drake may. Quite good.

We smoked the Panthers. Elijah is very mad about it. Sorry everyone who doesn't like sports. It's all we have. Well, my Mets finished one of the more epic collapses in the history of baseball. So there's that. We set some records. I think we had the record for like the best record before not making the playoffs or something.

It was a long, slow, painful descent. Kind of like being an American in the last 10 years. Yeah. Speaking of which, we had quite a show for today. you today. We've got to talk about Trump and Pete Hagseth's very sort of fashy-sounding bizarre speeches to the hastily assembled U.S. military leadership. Nothing weird about that. The Gaza peace plan that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Deni, who announced on Monday the odds of its success, this funny part about apologizing to Qatar, what Tony Blair was doing there. We'll get into all that.

There are reports that Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Chief Archivist, I believe. I forgot other. Still Chief Archivist. He's a, I guess, planning a regime change operation in Venezuela, according to New York Times. We'll dig it to that. It's exciting. There's a report about how China is trying to roll back U.S. support for Taiwan. So quick updates out of Madagascar in France,

and then the international comedy event that everyone is talking about then. A hilarious event. And then we're going to end with some laughs of our own, thanks to Trump and the president of Turkey. Also, for our friend of the pod subscribers, we're going to answer some questions from our Discord at the end of the show. So stick around for that. And then, Ben, you said our interview. Yeah, I talked to Rula Gibriel, who's been on before but not in a while.

We talked about Trump's plan for Gaza, how it had completely excluded Palestinians. But we also talked about what's going on in the West Bank. You know, Rula is obviously Palestinian from Israel. And we talked about the Arab world and the kind of support or not support that they're providing the Palestinians, Europeans, what people can be doing who are frustrated at that their government. aren't in line with public opinion. So we kind of cover the waterfront here. It's a very good conversation.

Excellent. And she is a very, very engaging, smart personalist. Rula comes in, I mean, she kind of comes in and starts shooting threes, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And she keeps going on the pods. Exactly. Okay.

Well, I'm excited to hear that. All right. So we had not planned on leading with this weird military event, the, like, Heggseth, Secretary of Defense beat Heggseths. It was his bizarre in-person meeting. It was supposed to be with him in more than 800 of the U.S. military's top leadership. But then Trump got added to the docket and we watched HECSeth and Trump speeches.

And the whole thing was just more bizarre and worrisome than I think either of us had expected. And remember, these guys were all summoned on short notice from around the world to get to, I think Marine Base, Quantico and Virginia. They got no explanation for why they were just like flying from Korea or wherever you are, like Centcom or whatever. I mean, that alone probably costs like tens of millions of dollars. Yes. Remember, if you're a four-star, you travel with some serious,

infrastructure and a lot of people around you and on a plane. But anyway. So, and also like what are they leaving behind? Right. Like who's men in the store, you know, at all these places. But right. Yeah. The Chinese military didn't go away. The substance of Heg Seth's speech could have been an email. More on that in a minute. But let's just start with what Trump said. So we're going to divide this kind of rambling mess of a speech into two buckets. The first bucket is like scary, fascistic comments. And bucket two is kind of just bizarre, inappropriate political commentary. Let's start with a sampling of the fasci bit.

Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it's the enemy from within. We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy. At least when they're wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don't have uniforms.

And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military. I say they spit, we hit. Is that okay? I think so. So I hope it goes without saying that the U.S. military should not use American cities as, quote, training grounds for our military, nor should the U.S. military be part of a, quote, quick reaction forced to quell American protests.

That last bit there where he's like, you spit, we hit. that was an anecdote about a woman getting in the face of some service member and spitting on that service member, which is obviously something I wouldn't do or support. But I also think it's way worse to tell the military that they can then beat that woman. He also talks about how the invasion from within. So, Ben, just given the audience, I think I found this to be one of the most unsettling Trump speeches I've ever seen. Yeah, this is like a 10 out of 10 on the blinking red light. Are we allowed to say that? Yeah, we're allowed to say fashion. Maybe say Fashie Van's going to call a dipshit too. Maybe that's a better way of putting it. I will say it's interesting like

in the Trump news diet where every now and then there's something that pops up and you kind of like, it's not the biggest story of the day, but you kind of do a double take. And this happened for, I think, both of us when the first Washington Post alert went up like I think, I don't know, a week or two ago saying that Heggseth was calling back all these general officers, which is, again, it's like 800 people. Yeah, grade 07 through 010. I remember being like, that doesn't seem good, you know, and beyond how bizarre and unprecedented and unusual it is, in part because there was no explanation why.

And I think we all anticipated Hegsett giving this kind of performative bullshit speech that he did today, which we can get to. But I think the reason I was unsettled when I first saw it is I was probably afraid that this would happen, you know, because. one of my fears from the beginning has been, if you look at the authoritarian playbook, like Trump is running all the plays, you know, about the media, about the opposition, about the law firms, about the universities, about dissent. But really, the absolute last third rail, the absolute scariest thing, is when the U.S.

military, the most powerful institution in the world, is suddenly introduced to this. Now, we've all talked about how the first time around they basically didn't go along with any of this bullshit, you know, and that's why he hates General Millie, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. by Pete Hegseth, by the way. Yeah. So, you know, and the general officers in general has kind of seemed to nod and just keep being,

not that they weren't following orders, but they just didn't go along with this kind of weird bullshit. What is scary about this speech is he's not just kind of performing fascism. Like he's telling them, you know, enemy within. There's an invasion within. Like, quick reaction forced to use against Americans. Spit the hit.

These are deeply. fascistic ideas, you know, and they're not new ideas, the idea that there's an enemy within, the idea that the military needs to be deplored against that enemy within, this kind of conspiratorial reference to people not being in uniforms, right? This is the scariest possible stuff, because if Trump gets what he wants, it seems like he's telling us, it's not like I'm surmising this, he's telling us what he wants is the United States military in the streets of this country in the same way that they were in the patrolling streets of Iraq or Afghanistan and the war and terror. It is fully bringing the infrastructure of the war and terror home to the

United States. And the question that a lot of things hang on probably, whether it's civil conflict or potential dictatorship, just to skip ahead here, is whether he can get the military there fast enough to do that. You know, can they basically kind of purge enough generals, put enough of their people in place, drive or make uncomfortable so many people that they leave the military who won't do certain things, and then recruit people who will do certain things. And that feels to me like a lot is riding on that. I was a little worried Tommy today, too, that like, were they watching everybody's face to see who might look uncomfortable? I mean, I actually thought maybe this was a test, you know, who, if anybody voices objection to this after, they're probably fired, right? And so

there was this kind of, because the military doesn't applaud, and, you know, Trump is used to, like, rallies where people cheer for these lines and it was silent, which was kind of powerful. But because it was silent, you know, you don't know what those men and some women in that room are thinking as he's saying these things. I have to think, given my interactions to the military, that most of them were very uncomfortable. Yeah. Also, a friend of mine sent me a photo that was of the crowd. And it's just, we'll get to Pete Heggsett speech in a minute, but it's a big long screen about DEI and diversity and getting away from it. And you look at this crowd and there's like 200 white men and like five black men. And I don't think I clocked any women in the photo I just saw.

So it's just, you know, it speaks to the problem. It's also been, you know, like, look, no one's, everyone's sick of hearing about norms. But the other part of this speech that was just worth highlighting is how partisan it was, which is not normal and not okay. And it was, it was rambling and bizarre, but the partisan nature of his comments should shock people. Here's another clip. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote. We want everything.

We want everything. You have to take a look at the map. It's almost entirely red, except there's a little blue line on each coast, and I think that's going to disappear, too. We did really great, and part of it is because of our success with the military, the rebuilding of the military. And they're vicious people, you know, that we have to fight, just like you have to fight vicious people. Mine are a different kind of vicious. They did not treat you with respect. They're

Democrats. They never do. So, the military is supposed to be apolitical, just for those who don't remember the before times. I'm not surprised by his comments. We, I think a few months ago, Ben, we talked about a speech he gave in front of a bunch of service members where he got them to boo the press, for example. But it's a terrible thing for the military, for the country. And this was, just really beyond the pale. I mean, Trump kicked off the speech by telling these guys to clap for him if they want, which is inappropriate. They're supposed to just be silent. He told a bunch of service members who served in Afghanistan that D.C. was more dangerous than Afghanistan. I bet they disagree with that. He mocked Joe Biden repeatedly by name. You just heard this weird rant about

swing states and the popular vote. He whined about not getting the Nobel Prize, the Gulf of America, made an appearance. He attacked the governor of Illinois as a Democrat. He attacked cities run by other Democrats, again, like, I hate like harkening back to the early resistance days, like, that this is not normal stuff, but it is not. And it is fact quite frightening to talk about Democrats as your enemy in front of the military leadership. Yes. And again, this is not just a normal Trump breaking norms. Like this is the biggest deal, right, because of the power of the military. And look, first, how insulting it is, right? I mean, some of those people or most of those people fought in Afghanistan. And to compare walking down to the street of Washington to like patrolling streets where these guys had their friends killed. And like I tweeted that and some idiot fundraiser for Trump replied to me with like stats on homicide versus U.S. casualties over the last decade in Afghanistan versus D.C. And I was like, ma'am, do you think that people are riding around in Humvees with body armors and machine guns in D.C.?

Like, what is this comparison you're making? You were a moron. And by the way, what that person also left out is say tens and tens of thousands of Afghans who were killed. Exactly. So if we were counting up violence, like, let's count that too. But putting aside how offensive it is to these people, some of whom are from the blue states, some of whom, you know, have kids who may vote Democrat, who Trump is calling the enemy within. Like, all that. Or just don't hate their neighbors. Or just don't hate their neighbors.

Civilian control of an apolitical military is the ultimate guarantor of democracy. Once there is no civilian control of an apolitical military, the military is an extension of the political interest of the quote-unquote leader, and you really don't have a democracy. Because if the military is sent to quell opposition to Trump, if it's sent to intimidate people in blue cities and blue states, if it is used to grandize Trump, all of this 250-year experiment is fucking out the window. It really is, because like that, you set up all these guardrails and all the checks and balances and other. the things that we're nervous about, those are basically meant to put in place protections against military dictatorship. This is literally the founding father's worst nightmare. This is the ballgame.

That's right. This is the actual ballgame. It's not Jimmy Kim. Those things are important, but it's not Jimmy Kimmel. And it's not even ICE raids, even though that's kind of bleeding into the space because it's kind of like militarized violence. It is saying, I want a country in which ICE is my domestic police force and the U.S. military is my military force.

I, Donald Trump, have a monopoly on violence in this country, not the U.S. government. And that's game over. And you swear an oath to me, not the Constitution. You swear an oath to me, you're loyal to me, not to the Constitution. Also, by the way, how do you get that back? Like, if they purge generals and try to remake this magimilitary, and we do survive this period, and then there's a Democrat in charge, what kind of weird military is that Democrat going to be inheriting?

Like, if all the generals were promoted on their basis that they believe the Democrats are the enemy within, what's going to happen when there's a kind of? Commander-in-Chief as a Democrat again. So this is not a side show. This is actually the main event. Yeah. And you better believe that kind of purge is happening. Heg-Seth even talks about it. So, all right. So finally, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegg-Seth spoke. Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chief spoke. Honestly, I didn't watch it. I think he's more reasonable person, I think. Hegseth was the one to watch because he called this meeting in the first place. Trump was the late edition. So we'll play you a clip in a minute. But my big

takeaway, Ben, was Pete Hexeth wants to run for president. He might start by running for Senate and Tennessee or something else, but this was an entirely political performance. He treated it like a political candidate or a TED Talk, right? He had a podium. He started there. Then he dramatically walked out from behind it and with a lov mic paced up and down the stage in this kind of Oprah fashion, very polished, very practiced. Substantively, this speech was a long attack on any effort to diversify the military and bragging about rolling it all back. He specifically attacked, quote, woke garbage and announced standards that will likely exclude women from certain roles. He seems very mad that senior leaders at the military

aren't working out enough and aren't in good enough shape. He was mad about people having beards or not trimmed hair. It was all just odd. Let's listen to a clip from Mr. Hexeth. If women can make it excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. It's tiring to look out at combat formation.

or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. In other words, to our enemies, F-A-F-O.

I wonder how it feels about fat, feels about fat commander in chief. How many times do you practice that in the mirror? A thousand. Yeah, not, yeah. Anyway, uh, very, um, in shape, healthy Donald Trump. Watch that and nodded along. So, uh, I watched the whole thing. Again, like the substance of it, it truly was the definition of this could have been an email, but it just seemed like his moment to kind of show off. It could have been like a fox and friends, uh, Sunday, uh, you know, diatribe. Look, substantively, the stuff he's saying there, for instance, about like rules and engagement is, should be terrifying to people.

Rules and engage in what he's getting at there is, do you try to avoid civilian? casualties. And can you get away with war crimes? Can you get it with war crimes? He's basically like, you know, it's kind of turning, we're going to be the IDF now, I guess. You know, like there, there are no rules of engagement. There are no burdensome restrictions on taking a shot if they're potentially civilians there. That is scary. But beyond that, this performative bullshit about, like, you know, anti-woke stuff, anti-DI, anti-I. I mean, yes, he's trying to turn the military into more like just the white man center, you know, like he doesn't want women in combat. He clearly doesn't minorities any kind of positions of responsibility because he keeps firing them. So there's this

pretty scary white nationalist agenda that seems to undergird a lot of this stuff. A lot of it is like political performance. It's also just, how do you think it is for a general? Pete Hegseth, like less than 15 years ago was a captain in the Army National Guard, you know. And now here he is lecturing a bunch of generals who've been in the military for like probably 30 years, who are much more, you know, and look, I'm all for civilian control, but this guy didn't earn his stripes here exactly. But like, right, he has no policy expertise. I mean, I'm sure they respect his service, but he's like telling a bunch of people who spent 30, 40 years in the U.S. military that now they really need to remember that their job is killing people. Like,

these guys are well aware of the role of the U.S. military. They've been executing on that mission since its inception. And killing people is not like something to celebrate. And one last thing on this is like lectures on personal responsibility from Pete Hegs at. And like, I mean, the man, like a world famous notorious boozer losing control of himself is suddenly now like the avatar for like, you know, personal discipline and responsibility. Right. Yeah. These are like senior military members who get thrown out if they were drunk on the job or if they had an affair or a child out of wedlock. All of which, you know. All behaviors. Pete is modeled. Pazte of the World is brought to you by Mack Weldon. It's fall, everybody. You know that.

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which once again demonstrated how isolated Israel is after Netanyahu was dragged out two years of war in Gaza. The big announcement on Monday, though, the White House was the U.S. and Israel saying they'd agree to Trump's 20-point plan to end the war. Here's a clip from their joint press conference. In addition to negotiating the Abraham Accords, I like to say that way, because the real people, that's what they call Abraham. We had big strong talk. Nobody's been better to Israel. No president's been better to Israel than Donald Trump. But we had a long, strong talk, BB and I, and he understands it's time. And you know what? Many countries have gained great respect for Israel, for the way they fight, for the job they do, including me. If Hamas rejects the deal, which is always possible,

they're the only one left. Everyone else has accepted it. But I have a feeling that we're going to have a positive answer. But if not, as you know, Bibi, you'd have more. full backing to do what you would have to do. This can be done the easy way or it can be done the hard way. But it will be done. Brendan Carr. I think it maybe is not really appropriate to take questions. We probably shouldn't take questions.

Or would you like to take a question or two from perhaps a friendly Israeli reporter if there's such a thing? Nice of Netanyahu to quote FCC chairman. Brendan Carr talking about JBC. before. I mean, I can't remember the last time that Trump's made an announcement and not taking questions. But before we get to that, a few quick highlights from the plan itself. So if the two sides agree, Israel and Hamas, the fighting immediately stops. The IDF withdraws to some predetermined lines. And Hamas is 72 hours to release all the hostages, both dead and alive. Hamas under this

plan, like basically has to cease to exist. They disarm. They de-radicalize. They have no role in a future government. No Gazans will be forced to leave. Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza under this plan. Gaza will have a temporary transitional governance that's overseen by the Board of Peace, which is chaired by Trump and includes Tony Blair for some reason. So there's 20 points. Steps 19 and 20 can like barely flick at the idea of a Palestinian state saying basically if Palestinians jump through a bunch of hoops, quote, conditions may finally be in place

for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination. So many caveats. Yeah, as other words, if you jump through all these hoops, we'll set up some more hoops for you, as they were saying. The most important part of the speech was what you heard Trump say there at the end, which is that Hamas, if they don't agree to this plan, the gloves are off. And I kind of shuddered to imagine what that means, compared to what? given what we've seen so far. The good news in the plan, Ben, is that this ethnic cleansing proposal. Trump had floated several months ago.

It was now gone. The bad news is that, again, Palestinian statehood or self-determination was a complete and total afterthought. So, Ben, my takeaway from watching the event yesterday was there's a couple of decent parts to the proposal, but Netanyahu's comments seemed like they were designed to sound like an agreement in principle in the room without engaging on any of the details, which we know he likes to renegotiate after the fact, and that it was designed in such a way that they assume Hamas will never get to yes, mostly because Hamas has to disband and trust Netanyahu to execute on the

rest of this plan and sort of give up all their leverage in the form of these hostages in the first 72 hours. The whole proposal wasn't even sent to Hamas until last night until after they'd announced it. But now I guess, you know, if Hamas says no, the U.S. and Israel will say, well, like, the onus is on them, right, the world will blame Hamas in this setup. So I guess we'll see you and I were kind of talking before we started recording. Like I guess the question is like, who's even speaking for Hamas at this point after Israel's taking out so many negotiators? But I guess we'll find out.

Yeah, it feels like there are a couple things. Well, there's more than a couple things going on here. I mean, I don't doubt that Trump would like the killing to end in Gaza, not because he has any empathy, but because like he wants to declare some great no peace prize victory. he's kind of tired of taking a lot of water on for BB, like every U.S. President. And then I also don't doubt that BB is just looking for another thing to kind of give by some more time for him. He constantly, whenever they're deep in a pariah corner, like they try to appear reasonable. Yeah.

But as to your point, like, he is saying shit back home where he's like winking at them. And he's kind of like, see, we don't have to leave the Gaza Strip. And so, look, best case scenario is, yeah, there's some agreement and they stop the killing. and the hostages are returned and there's not a mass ethnic cleansing. But even in that scenario, which I, you know, count me as skeptical, but, you know, I'd be glad if it happened. I just don't believe that the Israelis will leave Gaza. And I don't either. They will find some other pretext.

You know, they'll pocket the hostages return, which again would be great. But then they'll find some other pretexts to kind of resume the cannibalization of Gaza, the killing of Gaza. Some security concern. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, even in the best case scenario, I'm doubtful that it actually sticks through to point 20 here. Oh, absolutely. We saw that first ceasefire didn't get to phase two. Broke down.

This is not getting to 20. Then the second thing is this Tony Blair Board of Peace is so fanciful and crazy and Kushnery. You know, it's like, magically there's just going to bring in, Tony Blair did such a good job helping set up the provisional government in Iraq that we're going to put him in charge in Gaza. it's comical that it's Tony Blair. It's kind of a finger in the eye to most of global public opinion that wrote off Tony Blair for a long time. He's this kind of guy who's floated around and vacuumed up a bunch of money in the Gulf. He's close to BB. Like, this is not a neutral party.

And then that leads me to the third thing is the utter absence of Palestinian participation. We talked to a rule about this. But the one point I would make is if you were serious about an alternative Palestinian leadership to Hamas, why aren't there any Palestinians at the conversation? Right. In fact, the only people on the Palestinian side who will see this proposal and get a vote on it is Hamas. And so they're basically setting up a dynamic where the only Palestinians who can say yes or no are Hamas. And so if Hamas says no, they can basically say, well, all Palestinians said no, so you get what you deserve.

Collective punishment for everybody. I'm sure the Palestinian Authority would say yes to this in a heartbeat. I'm sure if you found a bunch of Palestinian technocrats from Gaza, they'd probably say yes to this. They're setting it up. So it's either they get what they want because Hamas says no and they can say all Palestinians are Hamas. go, or they kind of pocket the short term benefits of the deal, which trend towards Israel, and then find some pretext to resume this. So, come me is, you know, sure, it's better. I hope it works for the short term, but Kammi's skeptical about this as a peace plan.

Yeah, I want to talk a little more about the Kushner, Tony Blair, piece of this in a second, because I, too, was bothered by it. I also wonder, like, there's other extremist groups in Gaza. There's one called Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They reportedly had control of some of these. hostages. Like, there's some reports that they have already said no to this plan. Does that mean they're holding hostages? Is that kind of blow up the whole deal? Can Hamas control them? We don't know that. The other thing that happened Monday while Netanyahu was at the white husband was Trump made Netanyahu call the prime minister of Qatar to apologize for bombing Doha. It's funny to say it out loud in trying to kill Hamas leaders who are meeting to review a previous ceasefire proposal. Netanyahu admitted that Israel violated

Qatar's sovereignty, yeah. No shit. And that Israel, They said Israel will, quote, not conduct such an attack again in the future. He apologized for the death of a Qatari security guard who was killed. Remember the Hamas leaders they were targeting were not killed. This, even this just obviously necessary. Apology. Anchored Netanyahu's far right partners. The national security minister, Itzmar Ben-Gavir, said the attack was important, just and supremely moral,

and that it is very good and that it happened because Qatar is a state that support terrorism, funds terrorism and incites terrorism. So clear where he stands. I guess on balance, I guess it's good. You know who made this call and kind of patch things up, but like, I don't know how real it is. I mean, the fact that it happened sort of speaks to Israel's impunity. Yeah, I think what this shows is that, look, the Gulf was really enraged by this bombing of Doha. I mean, you think they should be enraged already by what's happening in Gaza, and they have been.

But like this, we talked about how this kind of rattled the whole Gulf. And this is Trump doing his own politics. This is Trump trying to simultaneously maintain his barric of. of Beebe and his gravy train in the Gulf. You know, like that's all that's happening here. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay, so on the Tony Blair thing. So first of all, I'm just outraged at how Jared Kushner is just showing back up at these

Middle East peace events and there is no coverage of his glaring conflicts of interest. Like, remember, like he worked in the first Trump term. He was like the shadow secretary of state. Now he's gone. He's not a government employee as far as I know. But what Jared is doing is managing billions of dollars from the Saudi. from the Emirates and from the Qataris and his investment firm, which in my view, in my opinion, looks like kickbacks for favors rendered in the first term. And then there's the Tony Blair piece

that you mentioned. If folks, oh, no, Tony Blair was the prime minister of the UK for a decade. He, like, remade the Labor Party and won big elections in 97 and a decade of, you know, being in charge. His tenure, as you noted, like, is inextricably linked to George W. Bush and the Iraq War and the War on Terror generally. And then after leaving number 10, he served as this kind of like Middle East envoy for the quartet for this series of powers. Then he worked at JPMorgan Chase. He started this thing called the Blair Institute, which gets a lot of money from Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Very conservative. So Blair also made a bunch of money consulting. He has, I think, longstanding close ties with a lot of Gulf autocrats. I think the Qataris in particular.

And Emeraldi's too. Yeah. And so his name has popped up a few times in the last two years. like there was the his think tank was reportedly connected to Trump's original like Gaza Riviera ethnic cleansing plan. Then the the the he's been linked to the Gaza humanitarian fund. In August, he was at this meeting at the White House about post-war Gaza. The FT reported that Blair's been working on Gaza plans for over a year in sort of an individual capacity. I'm guessing he's just, I know he's friends with Netanyahu. I'm guessing he's also buddies with Kushner. Yeah, I know. question. Like, I don't know what to make. Like, look, it shows shockingly bad judgment in my view to be associated with Trump and Netanyahu in this context. Like, it doesn't look good for the labor

party either. I guess, like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to rationalize why he would do this. I guess some of these guys just kind of like can't resist being in the mix. But like, what did you make of him wanting to pop up here? Yeah, I'm glad you did the recitation. It reminds me that we have younger listeners and viewers who like may not have lived the whole Tony Blair trajectory. If, if you want to see how it started, go watch that movie The Queen when he's like the newly elected, like, reformer. He loves him. And he's like, hello.

New Labor. And then obviously Iraq unraveled all that. So we've talked about why it's a crazy move from the perspective of actually having legitimacy. In terms of what's in for Tony Blair, if you do follow this arc, you know, he, by the time he is out, he has lost the UK public over Iraq. And he certainly lost kind of the global, you know, he was never left. His whole thing was center left.

He pulled that party to the center. But he was still this pretty credible figure, and I remember him being involved in some these quartet efforts. I will tell you in the Obama years, whenever he became engaged in some track two way with Middle East peace discussions, it was always a thumb on the scale for the Israelis. Yes. Or it was always like we could do some like development project in the West Bank, you know, we could build some hotels.

Like it was, it didn't smell right. Like they were just say, like it seemed like there was some, you know, something, some other agenda, right? because then if you follow the trajectory, and there's been some great investigative journalism this, he just started taking money from Central Asian autocrats, Gulf autocrats. Like, there was just a gravy train. He's still on like this center-left circuit, you know, so it's kind of weird. And you're still like advising Kier-Starmour. But once he gets out of the UK, his politics become very like strong man real estate deal,

like wood coffee, cushionery. And I think what you see for Tony Blair here is the convergence of two, things, like grift and being in the room, you know, like somehow there's money to be made in this, you know, like it may not be direct money for the whatever board seat on the board of peace, but, you know, there might be some other golf deal or some other thing with Kushner. I don't know what the thing is. I'm not saying I know exactly, but I assume that there's some interest there. And then, yeah, I think these guys, some of them just can't exit the stage, you know, like, well, I'm still in the room with Trump and I'm still like in these conversations and I can

solve an opinion and I can take back to London about like what's going on in the Middle East. Like at a certain point, it's not worth being in the room. This is where Obama could be a real role model. Just kind of dipping out. I will say like Obama gets a lot of shit. Push too. And someday we'll talk about this like, you know, maybe he could be doing more. But like this is actually the cautionary tale.

I know. I know. You're just chasing relevancy. You know your old age. And on the Kushner piece, we also know this week we learned that the Saudi Piff, their sovereign wealth fund is buying EA sports for $55 billion. So the Saudi Arabia's public investment fund. They're partnering with Jared Kushner's little company and then a group called Silver Lake Partners, which is like one of the biggest tech investor firms in the world.

They have, I think, 110 billion under management and about 1,200 staff. Jared Kushner has like 5 billion under management and 30 staff. And half of his money is Saudi money. So why is he part of this deal? Like what does he bring to the table? He has no expertise. He's just reinvesting money the Saudis already gave him. Like, why is he there? according to the Financial Times, it's because it is believed that he could help Greece the process through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. or Sipheus, which reviews these deals for national security reasons. Jud Legum at Popular Information did some great reporting on all of this. But there you go. It's just like all corruption and a grift. And look, we tried, like, I'm going to give us some credit here, Tommy. Anybody who's gone on the journey of this podcast the last few years knows that we were pounding the drama on Jared Kushner and these back-outes.

payments of like $2 billion invested in his fund by the Saudis. The failure to make a bigger deal of that, I think by the media, by Democrats, I mean, some people spoke about it. But it kind of like grease the skids for now, oh, it's just normal that there's like billions going to here, billions going to the crypto business. Like Jared's got a piece of EA. Wiccoff hasn't divested yet. Oh, his son's running the crypto thing with the Trump kids. Like it's all just normalized. It started with Jared was like patient zero for this normalization of family corruption. And this is how a lot governments do business. You want a big investment? Like the son-in-law has got to be on the board or the son-in-law's got to get in on the take. Like that happens in a lot of countries. It's happening now

at scale because it's the United States. It's also like as an OG EA sports guy, I'm not really a gamer anymore. But they're TikTok EA sports. They're these big relevant companies that it's like the Trump family, Trump family oligarchs and foreign interests are just consuming, you know? Yeah. We'll get us a little more of that kind of cultural space too with these oligarchs too. But yeah, it's just gross, man. It's gross. So I guess we'll keep watching this one. I mean, next week, I'm sure we'll know for sure.

Yeah. If Hamas is, I mean, I think odds are, look, I think odds are Hamas will get to know. Maybe they'll try to renegotiate and buy some time here. But we'll see how much time they're given by Trump. And then, you know, the other story that could have led this week is Venezuela. For the past few weeks, we've been covering this merger of the war on drugs and the war on terror that has resulted in a series of air strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela by the U.S. military that the Trump administration says, were operated by gang-affiliated drug runners.

We see no evidence of that, but that's what they say. Trump calls them terrorist organizations. So last week, NBC News reported that the U.S. military is preparing options for strikes on drug-related targets within Venezuela itself, though those have not yet been approved by the White House. And then on Tuesday, this week, the New York Times reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading an effort that goes well beyond kind of drug interdiction or whatever and is actually designed to depose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The Times notes that there are now 6,500 U.S. troops in that Caribbean region, and that the escalating military pressure is aimed at trying to force Maduro out, in other words, regime change. The Times says the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, and Stephen Miller, the vampire penis-looking chief of staff, Deputy Chiefs Staff. Sexual Matador. They both support Rubio's hardline approach. They talk about how Rubio's meeting with opposition leaders in Venezuela, who claimed to have a plan for like the hundred hours after Maduro is deposed. The U.S. technically recognizes Edmundo Gonzalez as president of Venezuela. He's widely believed to have won the 2024 election, won overwhelmingly, but then Maduro stole it.

So the time says if Gonzalez asked for the U.S. intervened, that could be, I guess, taken as some sort of consent for a U.S. intervention. I guess they're suggesting that would be their legal authorization or framework, which is crazy. The story says Rubio wants to take up Maduro in part because he thinks it will weaken. Wait for it, Ben. Cuban government. that always works a little bankshot diplomacy double regime change uh yeah tick out of rock and you'll get Iran and it sounds like one of the sole voices of reason

in this whole conversation is Rick Grinnell who long time listeners of this show is not our favorite person he's kind of like a sentient Twitter troll who came to life who became what was he like deputy DNI or DNI in the first term I think he's running the Kennedy Center now too great he's kind of like a really caustic

kind of right wing guy work for John Bolton but apparently he is the one advocating for keeping a line of dialogue open with Maduro. So any port in the store, my friend. So, Ben, just a couple of thoughts. First of all, there's no legal authorization for regime change war in Venezuela, and no one should pretend otherwise. Second, I would just ask anyone who supports this plan to name one recent U.S. regime change operation that ended well. There was an article I read Ben that quoted a Venezuelan businessman who said, if you take out Maduro, Venezuela turns into Haiti. Now, this person can't predict the future. But I think that is the kind of like,

downside risk that is highlighted well in that quote and something we should take seriously. And then anyone who's worried about mass migration at a Venezuela should fear that scenario. I know a lot of the population is left, like a quarter of the population has left. But if it turns into that kind of like war zone like violence, the rest of people are going to be gone too. And I think it's worth pointing up, Ben, that Trump and J.D. Vance ran on combating fentanyl in the United States. But fentanyl is made with chemicals from China that are mixed in Mexico. fentanyl does not come from Venezuela, so this will not even address that problem. And in terms of cocaine, there was a 2020 State Department report that said only 10 to 13 percent of global cocaine supply goes through Venezuela.

Your bigger problems are Colombia and Ecuador and other places. So every part of this is crazy to me. Like when there was a small group of America first kind of isolationist magotypes who were upset when Marco Rubio got selected to be Secretary of State. And this is their fever dream. When you look at why Marco Rubio is doing this job, because a lot of people are like, look at his body language, he doesn't like to be there when Trump is embarrassing Zelensky because he's kind of more your neocon flavor. I've always thought that the reason Marco Rubio might be selling his soul and all these other things like Russia and China that he used to be Hakashan is because what he's really been animated by is this kind of anti-Cuban anti-Voan anti-Voan anti-Voan politics. that he kind of came up through Miami anti-Cuban, you know, Cuban exiles who were against the Cuban government. I cross paths with them on that account when I was negotiating normalization relations with Cuba.

And I kind of felt like the deal was Marco gets to be the Secretary of State of Latin America, as long as he kind of does whatever we want everywhere else. And so here you see this kind of fever dream these guys have always had. Here's what's wrong with it. Beyond the obvious point, the regime change wars don't work. We've been through that movie. The Venezuela military has been propping up Maduro, in part because all of these sanctions that basically criminalized economic activity lead to in Venezuela and Cuba, these kind of black market economies where the military is more and more wedded to preserving the regime, because that's how they keep their piece of the pie. So the idea that you can just decapitate Maduro and all of a sudden everything will be hunky doing while of democracy in Venezuela.

Crazy. Absolutely not. This is a huge oil producer. people are going to be fighting over the oil. This is a black market economy. People are going to want to keep their peace. This is a place where a lot of people have committed human rights abuses. They don't want to be held accountable.

So this would be removing the top of a Pandora's place. Maduro's reportedly deployed a four million strong militia to defend the country. Do you think those guys are all going to agree on the next leader? So the likelihood of either violent chaos like you said or even worse military dictatorship or civil conflict or mass migration, like all these risks in Venezuela. and in Cuba are quite high. And we've seen Rubio try to engineer this in the past. This leads me the second point.

I have a lot of respect for some of the people in the Venezuelan opposition. You know, they've taken huge risks. We tend to also like overinflate their capacity to have like a three-day plan. By the way, it's not a fault of theirs. But I think Rubio hears what he wants to hear from these guys. Like, oh, we got the skids grease. We know some generals. Like, we'll make this all work, you know.

Recall that in the first Trump term, Rubio, remember, was down, like, live tweeting in Columbia that Maduro was like on the ropes. Mike Pompeo said he was like a plane on the tarmac. And none of that was true, you know, they were getting bad information because they were looking for the thing they wanted to hear, not the truth. And this also puts a lie to this whole boat operation. It's not about narco trafficking. It's really not about fentanyl, as you said. It's about kind of creating this sense of escalating conflict that could then spill over into Venezuela.

Yeah. And look, I'm with you. I have a ton of respect for people who are in the office. opposition who have fought against Maduro. Like, I'm not trying to belittle or, or, like, seem indifferent to their concerns. Like, I know a lot of people who are friends with Leopoldo Lopez, like my brother, my cousin went to school with him. Like, he was thrown in prison for years, separated from his family. Like, Maduro is a horrible person. The world would be a better place. So is Saddam Hussein, by the way. Right. If you were to go away. But just, the idea that the United States should do this militarily is insane to me. It's just, like,

feels like we have, we have not learned any lessons. And I just, I don't support it. I've refused to allow my tax dollars to go towards. that I think it's wrong. And also, Ben, you know, the Times had a long piece. They had a reporter down in Venezuela. I feel like a week. This reporter interviewed a woman who, you know, regarding these airstrikes, said her husband as a fisherman, he'd gone out to fish, went out for the day, never came back. The suggestion in the piece was he was on one of the boats that the U.S. military blew up. Now, we don't know for sure, but either way, this woman now will raise four kids on her own, right? I'm not sure why I trust like Donald Trump and Steve Miller more than that woman.

No, me either. At best, it's a 50-50 call. And I know you wanted to talk about this. A journalist named Ayda Chavez quoted, she tweeted, a senior Dem staffer is discouraging Democrats from coming out against regime change in Venezuela. The staffers using Bush era a rock line arguing that opposing Trump Rubio's regime change amounts to supporting Maduro. How is that still happening in 2025?

All I want to say is Democrats do not be idiots like this person is urging you to be. This is an insane thing for Democrats to be cautious about. Americans don't like war. They don't like regime change wars. MAGA people don't like that. America First is not regime. change war in Venezuela. Be against this. It is wrong to go to war in Venezuela. It is wrong to have

policies of regime change. It is wrong to kill people extrajudicially in boats. Full stop. Like, you don't need to throw clear about Maduro for 10 minutes. By the way, like, Saddam Hussein's a bad guy. Kim Jong-un's a bad guy. I don't think we should go to war in North Korea tomorrow. Like, there are ways of opposing this where that, because if you throw clear about how terrible Maduro's and you think you need some like 12-point plan to present about Venezuela, no, you can just take a stance here that this is the wrong thing to do. All the politics, I mean, the policy certain shows that, But all the politics of recent history tells you that when Democrats become Republican light and they draft behind these insane Republican regime change wars, we end up wearing the

fucking jacket for it, you know? So just don't do that, please. Please don't do that. Yeah, I just think you're in such good political ground here. Yeah. Like America First, the Democratic Party does not want regime change in Venezuela, neither does America First. America First is not regime change in Venezuela.

It is not a $20 billion bailout for Argentina. It is not reinvading Afghanistan to take Bogger. from the Taliban. It is not Donald Trump running Gaza for some reason with Tony Blair. Like, this is crazy. We are in a crazy place and it only took nine months to get here. The other quick thing, Ben, I just want to mention is I'm sure you saw that the State Department revoked the visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro. So during his visit to the UN, Petro participated in this protest over the war in Gaza. He told U.S. soldiers not to point their rifles, quote, against humanity and to disobey Trump's orders. That led the Trump administration to freak out.

Throw them out of the country. And I think on Monday, Columbia's foreign minister renounced her U.S. visa as well. I guess my takeaway from this is like, when did we become so thin-skinned? Like, dictators, tyrants have come to the U.N., have given three-hour speeches about the evil of the West and of the United States. And like usually we just brush it off. Like, we're going to throw this guy out of the country. No one would have heard of this if they hadn't highlighted it. And then from an important country, right?

Columbia's been like our closest partner in South America for a lot of the last few decades. And look, yeah, to your thin skin point, like everybody from the fucking escalator operator at the UN to Petro, like, we are the biggest snowflakes in the world. We're trying to act like we're tough, but actually we're so thin-skinned and so weak that we're like, you know, can't take the heat of Petro's rhetoric. Give me a fucking break here. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but before we do, we talk a lot on the show about authoritarian states and how they try to silence dissenting voices. Unfortunately, those same anti-democratic methods are showing up right here in the U.S. of A. is why the work of independent media is so important. We're not going to listen to Brendan Carr over at the FCC when he tries to shut us up. We are not going to be intimidated if J.D. Vance calls us

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customers who choose Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit Wise.com. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, a few more things. So the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping has determined that Trump basically only cares about getting a trade deal or some other economic deal with China, obviously. You didn't need a. As usual, student is at analysis. Yeah, you didn't, you didn't Joe Biden's PhD in international relations to suss that out. He's just that good. He's just that good. So she thinks that Trump, basically she's views like Trump is just so horny for a deal that

he might even be able to extract a major concession on Taiwan, that being getting the U.S. to say that the U.S. opposes Taiwan's independence. That deviates in a very serious way from America's longstanding and, frankly, kind of nonsensical one China policy of ambiguity where we say there is one China, but then we funnel weapons to Taiwan, but we don't support Taiwan independence. We predicted this would come for a while, Ben. Clearly, Trump wanted trade. He doesn't care about human rights, but watch this space, especially if there's a Trump Xi meeting in October. And also just worth noting that despite like there was Liberation Day tariffs and then there was this escalation with China and then there was basically a truce where everybody hit pause on the tariffs. But despite that tariff truce, ABC News reported that the trade war with China is really crushing American farmers at the moment, especially soybean and corn farmers. And that is because in response, Trump's bullshit, China decided to buy fewer soybeans from the U.S. and buy more from South America, especially Brazil. And it's gotten so bad that Trump is once again pitching a proposal

to basically buy off these farmers who are getting hurt with tariff money, which is basically what he did in the first term. So it's just kind of worth noting that, like, Liberation Day feels like a lifetime ago, but the impact has not gone away. Yeah, and I'd just say on Taiwan, why does it matter if the U.S. says we will not recognize their independence ever? It's cracking the door open to Xi to connect to these threads saying, okay, so you're recognizing now that Taiwan is, you're basically de facto recognizing that Taiwan as a part of China, this is an internal security matter. In the same way that you have an enemy within, that you're going to deal with your military,

we have an enemy within that we're going to deal with it with ours. And so it does legitimize any future potential Chinese military action to forcibly reunify Taiwan because they'll just say, well, the U.S. basically recognizes that. this is internal security. Yeah, it would be a big, big deal. There will be some hardline hawks within the Republican movement within the Maguworld, probably, that oppose this, maybe some resignations. But I don't know, they seem to acquiesced everything, so we'll see.

Two quick things that we wanted to mention, we don't have time to dig into that are totally unrelated, but I'm going to squeeze them together. The first, Ben, is, as you predicted, when we were talking about the Gen Z protests in Nepal, the Gen Z protests are spreading. They're now in Madagascar. The protests are over water. and electricity shortages that exploded. Reportedly, 22 people have been killed.

The UN blamed security forces for those deaths, along with other gangs. In response, the president of Madagascar fired his prime minister and most of the government, so we're going to be watching this one. But, you know, by the way, some worldos sent me messages, videos of these protests, making this point. Oh, really? So, like, we got a world or alert. We got an intelligence gathering network of worldos who were, like, watching for protest movements. Oh, interesting.

You know what we missed that we should dig into sometimes the proliferation of pirate imagery and how that became part of these protests? It's a very cool story. Also, again, totally unrelated news. Former French president, Nicholas Sarkozy was sentenced to five years in prison last week. His crime is seeking campaign funding from the regime of Libyan dictator, Omar Gaddafi, rest of peace, in exchange for diplomatic favors. This is a five-year sentence is like real deal serious stuff in the French system. And for Sarko, like he's 70 years old, so, you know, clock's digging. Sarko's got a bunch of other legal issues that we don't need to dig into here. But Ben, And as you and I have discussed, I think off mic, it really does make you rethink how eager Sarkozy was to depose Gaddafi back in 2011. It's like pretty sickening, actually. By far the most aggressive leader in the world and wanting to go to war to remove Gaddafi from power. No question. You know, it was, you know, Obama, reluctant, Cameron, and kind of interested.

Sarkozy was one really pushing for it. So I don't know. Connect those dots. It's not a pretty picture. Yeah, it makes you think. Also, Ben, jet-setting elites like Mr. Sarkozy, they know that there are some can't-miss cultural events in the world every year. I'm thinking like Art Basel for the contemporary art fans, Coachella or Glastonbury for the music lovers, can't film festival for all you film buffs out there. Well, now, comedy lovers can add the Riyadh comedy festival to that august list because no country loves to laugh like Saudi Arabia.

This event is happening as we speak. It's going from a couple days ago through October 8th. You still have time to get there if you want. The event is part of this kind of broader Saudi cultural effort, PR effort to distract from their human rights issues that spans from soccer to boxing to F1 racing to golf to a Justin Bieber concert here and there. They got paid influencers coming to Saudi Arabia. Anything to get people to post stuff about Saudi Arabia that doesn't talk about Jamal Khashoggi,

for example. The common thread here is tons and tons and tons and tons of money. Some comedians were reportedly paid up to $1.6 million for the gig. Some famous names include Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Bill Burr, Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K., Pete Davidson, Tom Segura, Chris Tucker, Whitney Cummings, Wayne Brady, and Jeff Ross, among others. Not among them anymore is comedian Tim Dillon, who claims he was offered $375,000 for the gig, which he accepted and then did a really long bit making fun of it. And here's how that turned out. Let's talk about the biggest free speech issue right now in the world. I was fired from the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

They called me and he said, they heard what you said about them having slaves. And I said, I was being positive about it. I was defending them. Apparently, this got to the people in Saudi Arabia and they were unhappy about it. I certainly wasn't going to show up in your country. insult the people that are paying me the money. One, it's illegal. So I wasn't really planning to go to a Saudi jail. This is the first time I've been fired by people that actually do really bad

things. So let's take this win. Let's take this win. I'm now with Iran. Iran's against them. I'm with Iran now. You've pushed me into the bosom of Iran. Do you understand that? I'm going to Tehran to do their comedy festival. I don't care. This is geopolitics. Very funny.

Tim Dillon is very funny. Does anyone tell them it's Iran? I'm not going to be the lib here. So the event is this comedy festival. It's supposedly the brainchild of MBS's close confidant. Saudi Kurds, Bahamah bin Salman's close confidant. Turkey al-Shake. Noted a comedy lover.

Yeah, he reportedly likes to throw people in prison if they make fun of them on Twitter. Human Rights Watch noted that the festival's dates include the seventh anniversary of the state sanctioned execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That was October 2nd, 2018. This is happening just a couple months after the Saudis executed a journalist for speech. So, Ben, I have, we've been doing the show for a long time. I've basically given up any hope that we've lost this argument. Yeah, the business world will care about anything but money when it comes to Saudi

Arabia. And then when Joe Biden went to Saudi Arabia gave MBS a fist bump, it was hard to ask, let's say, a professional golfer to take a harder line on the Saudis than the U.S. government was. But I still think this comedy festival still bums me out. I'll just put it that way. Because comedians occupy this space in our culture where they call out bullshit. They call it hypocrisy. They mock people who are assholes. And it just feels like they are folding in the most, you know, craven way here. And so, I don't know, I guess like it makes all the complaints about cancel culture and censorship feel very, very hollow. If you are doing stand-up in Riyadh, I just, I don't really think you care. Yeah, it's the thing. That's your choice. Look, you, we've definitely lost that moment after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi where, like, for about a year, people were nervous to go to Saudi Arabia. They have very credit words due. They very successfully laundered their reputation through sports.

Through a lot of money. Through culture, through business, obviously, through crypto. and now through, you know, comedy. It is particularly appalling because this is like for rich people in Riyadh to come. Like, you couldn't say the things that they're even going to say there. And presumably they're going to go a little soft on the Saudi royal family. But if you said anything remotely like that out in the Saudi countryside, you get killed. You get executed thrown in prison.

So these people are full of shit. They're hypocrites. And because that leads me to the last point here, Tommy. I've always kind of had culture podcast envy. So I'm just going to make this point. Comedians in this country need to grow the fuck up because they are actually now more powerful than they act. Like they, you know, especially these kind of right-leaning comics.

Like we've heard for years about how persecuted they are by cancel culture and they can't say certain things. Well, you know what? You guys won. Like Donald Trump is the president now. All your favorite buddies have the biggest podcast, even bigger than Podsade of the world, you know? and you're still acting a grief. I mean, there's like a, I'm not saying every one of those people.

I'm sad to see Bill Burr on that list, for instance. I'd like to think he might like have to think of us. He was the one who surprised me the most. Yeah, because Chappelle at least has been kind of like, hey, man, I'm just getting paid. Like, I wish Chappelle didn't do it too. But Pete Davidson's dad died in the 9-11 attacks. That's a dark. That's a surprising one.

But the Saudis make a point of showing. Like, they're smart. They want to make a point of showing that we can get an ideologically diverse set of comics. We can get comics like Pete Davidson. who have personal connections back here. We have guys like Bill Burr, who like have leaned a little bit more anti-Maga, we can guys like Chappelle. But the comic industry, such as it is in this country,

kind of needs to recognize it. Like, you cannot be the underdog outsider complaining about censorship and then go pick up the check in Riyadh. It just makes you look as full of shit as every other sector of American society, which is how anybody who hears about this, and a lot of people are hearing about this are going to feel about you. Yeah. And again, the Saudis, they got the 2034 soccer,

People World Cup, right? Like, they're winning. I get it that every industry does this, but like, if you, fine, then go pick up your check, but then don't come to me and say that you're pissed about cancel culture. You guys, they do occupy a special role, I think, as people who are seen as using comedy to tell the truth in funny ways. I would like to think, like George Carlin would not have gone. I would like to think that too. Well, and also saw that Barstall Sports founder Dave Portnoy claimed that Tom Brady is getting paid $75 million to play a flag football game in Saudi Arabia. it's the fanatics flag football classic apparently is what it's called next year in riah now brady says that number is bullshit but like tom brady man like you don't need the money how much is enough

like i know we got a divorce and i think chazelle had the most money but he still has to be worth like hundreds of millions of dollars he's getting paid like hundreds of millions of dollars to call like a game a week and anyway it's just all of american elite needs to ask themselves like how much is enough because right what's the point of making fuck you money if you never say fuck you Exactly. Thank you. Like, that's all I need to know. Finally, Ben, this moment from a Trump's pool spray with Turkish president, Tai Abed Erdogan, made us both laugh last week. That's so good.

Let's watch. Rigged election, you know, he knows about rigged elections better than anybody. But for context, earlier this year, Erdogan had the mayor of Istanbul, who was widely seen as his toughest political opponent arrested, along with like a hundred other people. Istanbul University also annulled the guy's university. degree so that he could not run for president under Turkish law. Ben, do you think, do you think what happened there? Do you think he was making a joke? Was he being a dick? Was he just sort of oblivious? I think that we saw in real time the kind of confusion of Trump's projection versus Trump saying what he's going to do, right? Not a novel insight that Trump describes

his enemies as doing the things that he does. And so there we saw this kind of weird three-dimensional projection because it's like, is he saying that Erdogan has been up against other people trying to rig the elections and he rightfully put them in prison? Or is he saying, like, I really admire how this guy's rigged elections over there. And Erdogan didn't know what was going on. Like, he didn't laugh. You know, did you see it? Like, for those of you on the video, please subscribe to YouTube. Yeah. But like, he's just kind of sitting there like, do I chuckle? I know. Is he waiting for the translation? Is he pissed? What's going? Because they've had a pretty, you know, they've had a rough go of it. Or maybe he took it as a compliment. Now I'm pretty good

rigging elections. I steal the shit out of those elections. So funny. God, it sucks that Trump is funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unintentionally. Unintentionally. The guy makes me laugh and very few people on the Democratic side do. And we need to work on that. Not in Riyadh, though. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear Ben's interview with Rula Gibriel about Trump's peace plan, about the absence of Palestinian representation and talks about the future of Gaza and the Palestinian state. So stick around for that. Pazzi of the world is brought to you by Smalls. Does your cat have gut issues? Maybe it's time for a diet upgrade with Smalls.

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that means they will refund you if your cat won't eat their food. What are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve for a limited time because you are a Pod Save the World listener. Get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com slash world. One last time, that's 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com slash world. I'm very pleased to welcome back to Pod Save the World, my friend Rula Gibriel. She is an author, a journalist, a foreign policy analyst. She's a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. She has a lot of knowledge and lived experience, and she's also the author of a new book, Genocide, which is out in Italian and is coming out in English in the next couple of months. Rula, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me, Ben. Okay, so you and I saw each other at the UN General Assembly, but a lot's happened since then. We talked earlier in the podcast about Trump's 20-point plan for ending the war in Gaza. plan calls for a committee of Palestinian technocrats to run Gaza, supervised by a, quote, Board of Peace, which would include Trump and Tony Blair. Eventually, if certain reforms are met, the Palestinian Authority will take over. The plan kind of nods at some eventual statehood for Palestinians, but not a lot of detail there. There's a lot to unpack here, but my first question rule is just what is your reaction to this plan?

What do you think Trump and Netanyahu are up to with this? First of all, I want to underscore how Palestinians want this genocide to end. Every night, hundreds of Palestinians get killed in Gaza and 400 get injured. There's real mass starvation and real suffering. So they want this to end. However, it's clear that Israel's ethnic cleansing plan failed completely. But this Trump plan is full of booby traps. Let's put it this way.

The first one is, first of all, they never consulted any Palestinian for this. plan. They're treating Palestinians as objects, and they're not addressing the root cause of at all, which is military occupation, which is Israel long decade of illegal military occupation. Immediately after Trump and Netanyahu spoke, Nathanielho exited the White House and gave an interview in Hebrew, where he stated, he and followed by his minister, they said that they will not basically respect all the details of the plans, especially they are against Palestinian statehood. Trump, Nathanielo said that Trump understand that for Israel and for his government, Palestinian statehood is a political suicide. I don't know what he's talking about.

If you want security, you need statehood. These two things are intertwined. Second, they said that they will never withdraw from the Palestinian occupied territory of Gaza. So if the whole peace plan or Trump plan boils down to, we will give you some food, you give us the hostages, but then Natanyahu has the full right or he can ignite the genocide after the hostages are released. This is not a peace plan. This is a charade, I would call it. But above all, it's trying to frame the whole plan as we gave them a choice, which is not really a choice, and then blame it on Hamas. like, well, we tried, but then blame it all in Hamas. And the final part is that Palestinian sovereignty, there will never be Palestinian sovereignty, according to this plan. They said they will try, but it's clear from Netanyahu's statement.

There will be pressure on Hamas to disarm, but then there's no pressure in Israel to do anything to protect Palestinians, especially those who are get killed, or to dismantle the occupation of the colonization. So again, it goes down to the crude cause of everything, is not addressing it. It's just giving to, I would say, you know, Donald Trump, Netanyahu, some time. So they can repackage the genocide in terms of like, we try to tell them they're refused. And now we have no choice but to continue and complete the job. The job is annihilation. Yeah, we've seen this movie before. This just has a little more detail on it. I did want to ask you one more question on this,

which is you mentioned the fact that they basically made a whole plan for Gaza without consulting any Palestinians. And really, as you said, it's normalizing permanent occupation or retaking of the Gaza Strip by Israel. But I do want to ask you about this question about they're talking about Palestinian technocrats. They're talking about some future without Hamas. But they're not even talking to Palestinians. And look, I know they're not going to do that. That's who they are. But what would it look like to actually meaningfully consult Palestinians?

I mean, what is the piece that is missing here? Because I guess you could even talk about, let's put aside even Trump and Nanyahu, the Saudis and the French, they had an initiative too. Who are the right Palestinians for other countries to be engaging with in discussions about Gaza and the future of the people there? Palestinians are there. You have, I mean, even if you consider the Palestinian Authority a corrupt entity, whatever you consider it, but the Palestinian civilian civil society is there. There's Hanan Ashrawi, Mustafa Bargutti. There's so many amazing Palestinians who have been former negotiators, people who are engaging on the issues, understand the details, engage with Israel for a long time, but not only them. There's a vibrant

civil society across the Palestine. You know, who I would include actually, Ben, somebody that you met last week, Ayman Aude, a Palestinian-Israeli, who continue, who is a member of the Israeli Knesset, he continued to advocate for democracy and equality and freedom for both sides. These are the voices that need to be heard. There's one aspect of this plan, which it just clearly has Kushner and Whitkoff behind it and Natanyahu, which is Tony Blair role. I mean, Tony Blair is a discredited human being who lied about WMD and about the Iraq War that led to the murder of 600,000 Iraqis to the destabilization of the whole region. He's somebody who profited from his consultants with, you know, murderous regimes. And this is the guy you want to choose to lead,

you know, some kind of be the governor of Gaza. I mean, it's like, this is a failed plan. Palestinians always demanded one thing, self-determination, freedom. And this is tied directly to ending the military occupation. These two pieces are intertwined. I don't know how can Trump think that he can bypass all of that exactly the same way he bypassed Palestinian through the Abraham Accord and not understand this is heading towards an explosion. I mean, there's no way to put these three, four elements together and not think that this is delusional. Well, what's interesting, too, is that the only people they are talking to is actually Hamas. And I mean, they're doing that through a third party, presumably Qatar.

But for people who say they want an alternative leadership, they seem to only talk to Hamas, is notable. I want to also ask you about the West Bank. The other announcement that kind of came out of last week is this promise from Trump that he just won't allow the West Bank to be annexed. At the same time, though, we've seen this kind of rapid expansion of settlements. We've seen horrific settler violence against Palestinians. This summer, we saw the Knesset vote by a wide margin for a symbolic resolution calling for the annexation of the West Bank. And since several countries recognized the Palestinian state, Netanyahu and his coalition have been making noises about annexation. What are you hearing? I know you're in touch with a lot of people in the West Bank

or in parts of the contested territories. What is your sense now of where things are going on the West Bank? I think there's a full-fledged ethnic cleansing taking place in the West Bank, and there's no way to hide it. This Israeli government empowered and armed Israeli extremists who are every night attacking Palestinian villages. And not only the Boghrens, I mean, and B'an Aya and many other areas, especially in the areas near B'It Lahan, Bits'Hood, every night. And there's no justice for Palestinians. There's no protection. There's no Hamas also there.

There's a Palestinian authority that is a, you know, subcontractors to the Israeli military, you know, commanders. Again, Trump says that there's not going to be annexation because he understands what is happening, unlike Natanyahu. He saw that the support for Israel is collapsing in the United States. The polls are very clear. Not only that, he also saw a lot of pressure at the United Nations from the global south, but also the initiative that you just mentioned, the Saudis and the French initiative. He wanted to play a role.

Obviously, he took parts of those plans, of the Saudis, of the Arab initiative, but he is ignoring the main, I think, plan that the Arabs put and repackaged many times, which is total recognition of every 57 Muslim and Arab countries of Israel in exchange of one thing, ending the occupation of Palestinian statehood, Israel rejects that. Israel think that militarily they can dominate the entire region. And one of the reasons I think we don't understand what's happening because our media refuses to tell the American citizens what Israeli ministers every day on national television say to their audience.

just three days ago, the Minister of Technology from the Likud Party, she stated on national television that the West Bank will be annexed, but also she went further. She talked about mass-enforced expulsion, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank. Smotchurch stated the same, Bingvir stated the same. Generals are talking openly about we would like to expel Palestinian from the West Bank. The vice president of the Israeli parliament two days ago said it clearly, unequivocally,

that for Israel they need to change the demographic equation, that there's seven million and a half Palestinians, that many of them need to be expelled for Israel to feel, for him, he was talking about the religious, you know, aspiration of a Jewish dominant and exclusive Jewish state. This is a reality of Israel today. I mean, you have a newspaper, a magazine, 972 magazine, an Israeli magazine, that the headline three days ago was, what's happening in Gaza is a Holocaust and we need denazification. I mean, these are the kind of things that we don't know a lot in the United States, but somebody like me who will follow and consume Israeli media.

What these politicians are saying represent a huge sentiment, a popular sentiment in Israel today. Yeah, and they've been doing what they said they were going to. to do for the last couple of years. You lead me to this question about what should others be doing, right? And let's put aside Trump for the second now because, you know, it feels like last week was an effort to kind of buy time, right? We have a 20-point Gaza plan. We're going to say they're going to annex West Bank. But meanwhile, the facts on the ground keep moving forward. Yes. You mentioned the Arab states. I've sensed a growing frustration among the Palestinian voices that I kind of follow in Gaza and the West Bank, that the Arab states aren't doing more

to protect them, to stand up to Israel, to press the United States, where they have some leverage, obviously because of oil and other investments. We did see MBS take a more out-there role in this kind of recognition conference around Palestinian statehood. What would you want to see the Arab states doing that they're not doing? What's your assessment of how the Arab world has acted in solidarity or not with Palestinians? I mean, look, we're talking about the regimes. Also, I am a European citizen.

I'd like, if I may, talk about the Europeans. Yes. Who lectured the rest of the world for years about democracy, women's rights, animal rights, and then stating clearly in multiple occasions, the difference between, you know, regimes or autocracy and democracy are the respect of international law. Well, Israel has been violating international law for decades. With Gaza, genocide, they've been clear.

Lager in violation of every, you know, every norm, every convention, and yet they did nothing. Europe happened to be the biggest trading partner, the most important trading partner, Israel. They did not spend any trading accords. Israeli citizens travel easily to Europe without a visa, including those who committed war crimes on video. They actually filmed themselves where they're killing civilians. But above all, there's countries that continue to arm Israel, Germany and, and, you and Italy.

In the case of Italy, it's even more egregious because they have an special agreement where Israeli soldiers are allowed to vacation in Italy, in Sardinia and in the Marque, with the police protection. If this is not complicity, I don't know what. I can go to the Arab world. I think we need to understand that the reaction of the Arab world is very different now, especially after the Iraq war

that destabilized the whole region, after the Arab Spring. And it's just a different Arab world. I think a lot of conservatives, and I might agree with some of the analysis, that Netanyahu, you know, was one of the cheerleaders of those wars, the wars in Iraq, the wars in Libya, et cetera, because he wanted to dominate the region, and he wanted to destabilize any opposition to his rule, right? I think what we are seeing today in the Arab world

is the byproduct of those 20-year-long war on terror, which is a weakened region, a region that is divided, but also a region that is much more dependent on the charity of the United States. And even that charity or even that kind of military agreement did not protect the Qataris when they were bombed. So I think now they're evaluating, the region is evaluating that the relationship with the United States that had to go through military agreements but also financial agreement, it's not working. and they're now actually talking actively with other parties. But why they're not reacting towards Israel with strength, with more, with more,

because for a long time, and I hate to say this, for a long time, I think there was this idea that if you have an agreement with the United States, it doesn't matter, you have to obey the rule, and they would protect you. That rule, you know, was blown away into pieces when they attacked Qatar. So I think they are reasoning differently. Do they care about the Palestinians or they care about their survival? I think they care first and foremost these regimes about their survival. But I know for a fact that many, especially countries that are affected by the genocide in Gaza, Jordan, Egypt, and even the Gulf in their own way, with special Dakota, tried very much to engage with both Democrats before and Trump.

And they basically were shut down. They were ignored completely. The Europeans were ignored completely. Trump changed his mind from the Riviera to this peace plan or whatever you want to call it, not because he loved Palestinians or because of the absolute pressure on the United States, on Israel, in international arena. Yeah. Well, I'm going to ask you about the public piece of this because you importantly, at the beginning of your answer there, said there's a difference between people and their governments.

Yes. And when I look around the world right now, in the United States, you've got this, really rapid shift away from support for Israel. The recent poll showed a significant majority more supportive of the Palestinians. In Europe, it's probably even more in terms of people being out of step with their governments. You've seen people kind of take matters into their own hands and trying to organize boycotts of, you know, Israeli participation in Eurovision or, you know, Israeli participation in sporting events. You, from Italy where you live part of the time, There's these flotillas that are getting bigger and more ambitious.

What is useful for people to be doing? So many people feel this imbalance between what their governments are doing and how they feel about things. What is the most constructive way for people to be trying to support Palestinians now or trying to bring an end to the genocide in Gaza? Look, last week I met President Petro from Colombia. and he was in a very bold way together with South Africa and other countries. They challenged Israel in the international arena, especially in the International Court of Justice.

And I think it's very important to understand that people around the world felt betrayed by their own governments. What the Global South did, which was ignored a lot in the American media, is it challenged the United States, but especially Western. countries in an indirect way, saying, well, you know, while you are supplying weapons and being complicit, we will do something else. We'll take, you know, we'll use the leverage of the law, we'll take it to the courts. And I think they challenge something very important, which is, you know, the moral superiority of the West. But not only that, I think there's a deep, you know, pivot from the United States geopolitically. And why a lot of people, you know, people are

people, I mean, I was stunned with Petro was here, thousands of people who showed up to listen to him in the streets of New York at the organization that hosted him to speak. I'm like, his, is a, you know, Latin American leader, but spoke to the heart of a lot of young people in the United States. There is more people protesting, Nathania, outside, you know, the UN, than people listening to him inside the UN. These shifts are radical shifts and are very important to us to do.

So if I am somebody, whether in Europe or in the United States, I think I would support three, four things that for me are very important. If you are a lawyer, and I know it comes with a lot of, you know, a lot of risk, support the case against Israel in the International Court of Justice. If you speak English, if you speak Arabic, if you speak Hebrew, I think the documentation, and especially if you are an engineer, tech engineer, please start collecting whatever data that is, the Israeli themselves are uploading about those war crimes.

Second, if you could, and you have the means, you know, the financial mean, support any organization that, whether orphans, Palestinian orphans in Gaza, whether injured in Gaza, or even lawyers who are collecting, and especially NGOs, who are collecting war crimes evidence. I think it's very important because without justice, I think the genocide will go down the history as, you know, they got away with it. They can't repeat it elsewhere. And they can't repeat it not only against Palestinians in Gaza, but elsewhere. They're already promising that the, you know, that the West Bank will become like Gaza. And if I may conclude, support any politician, and especially in the Democratic coalition, support any politician that can stand up

and say, not in my name. I'm not going to send funds to Israel, no more weapons and arms unconditionally to this country, and especially that support the rule of law. I mean, Netanyahu and Israel is violating America's only law, on top of violating international law. So I think there's so many things to do. I would support Mamdani.

Like, start by supporting Mamdani, start by challenging the people who supported and champion the genocide in the Democratic Party. And I think we can start from there, but there are so many other elements. And if I might conclude, if you know any Palestinian, if you have a platform anywhere, invite Palestinians, speak to them. Don't speak about them or for them. Just speak to them. I wish as a recline will invite more Palestinians.

I think I find it outrageous that he would invite Ben Shapiro and all of these guys. And he never talked about to one Palestinian except one, Bacconi, who I love, but he talked. to him specifically about his book about Hamas. And that was immediately after October 7. And nothing else. Nothing else. Well, one last question after you. You know, I've known each other for a long time. Yes. And so you, you know, you're very outspoken. And you split time between New York. You're a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. And you also are Italian. You know, you've got Trump in charge here. You've got Maloney in charge. Obviously, Israel, you've got Nanyahu in charge. How do you feel, if you don't mind my asking, about speaking your mind at a time when we've seen these efforts to kind of target speech or delegitimized speech in all the places where, you have ties or citizenship? I don't think they can achieve what they want if we stand up and if we stand together. The overwhelming majority of the people in the world wants are becoming moral guarantor of humanitarian norms.

Our governments are failing. Meloni is actually slipping in the polls, specifically because of our opposition on Gaza. I believe Democrats in America, and I think we need to address this point, Democrats in America lost the election, sacrificed democracies over their support for the Israeli genocide, and there's no running away from this.

So when we talk about targeting people, I don't understand, Ben, and for me, it's just baffling. In these three years when Miloni was, you know, became prime minister. I was sued by Miloni. I was sued by her vice prime minister Salvini and by the vice president of the parliament, Rampelli. I want two of those lawsuits. And yet I look at these billionaires and these platforms and, you know, and all of these incredible, powerful people in America capitulating to Trump.

And I was like, I wonder, like, I mean, what's going on here? I have no idea how you don't understand a basic rule. If you submit, if you capitulate to a bully and a thug, you're never free. It's just the beginning of a long trail and a long road where you have to give in always. But if you stand up once, it might be painful, it might be costly. I mean, at a certain point, principles and economics matter. There's no good economic under dictatorship. If you want to stay wealthy, even from the standpoint of your own economic outcome,

you have to stand up for what's right. Otherwise, you will lose your credibility and you will lose the audience. I don't know how it will end up with Miloni, but I know one thing, that after these three years of critical opposition to Miloni, she's slipping in the polls. People are aware that her politics,

which is identity politics, and racist politics did not work. And now they see that extension in her foreign policy. They see when she says, you know, Italian first, but then she basically submit her, you know, she's totally submissive to Trump and Netanyahu's foreign policy agenda. And I think people, you know,

they might make the mistake of electing these people once, but I think if we create a real opposition, an opposition that is rooted in legality, morality, but also that opposition that is in touch with the base, we can win. I have no doubt about that. All right, well, look, Rula, thanks so much for joining us. We covered a lot. There's a lot going on.

If people should look for the English translation of your book, which is out in Italian now genocide in a couple months. But best of luck to you, Rula, and we'll be in touch. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Thanks again, Rula, for doing the show, and talk to you guys next week. POTSY of the World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith.

Saul Rubin is helping out this summer. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Heffcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our senior vice president of news and politics.

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