Pod Save the World - Trump’s foreign IOUs

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

Trump’s taxes reveal foreign income and liabilities, why Armenia and Azerbaijan are at war, the White House’s efforts to bribe Sudan, politically-charged corruption charges in Pakistan, Europe’s Covid spike, the US threatens to close its embassy in Baghdad, new sanctions on Iran and Cuba, Bibi Netanyahu’s dirty laundry, why Yelp reviews are dangerous in Thailand and the story of a heroic rat. Then Ben’s interview with Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and author of the new novel Homeland Elegies, about what it means to be an American, and how global attitudes about the United States are affected by its foreign policy.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, by the time people hear this episode, the debate will be over. But we still have all this anxiety right now going into it. And I'm not sure how to channel this appropriately for the listeners because I don't know. I'm not ready for the thing to happen. Yeah, I mean, part of it's so odd too is like just that nobody's kind of been on a stage with Donald Trump in four years. It's always like him alone or him with the press into this idea. Just the idea of like some of. and debating him is like so far. And I mean, I remember with Obama in 2012, like he, he was terrible in the first debate because he hadn't been like, you know, challenged relentlessly on a stage for that period of time in four years, right? No, doesn't like it. But Trump, I mean, at least Biden, you know, apparently has like microscopic earpieces and steroids. Yeah, I know. Like the earpiece thing is like an old canard that the drug testing is new and frankly creative. I remember going to the the 2012 foreign policy debate. We're at, like, Lynn University and Boko-Ratone. And that was the one

where Obama just sneered at Romney and the lines, we have fewer horses and bayonets came out. That was fun. And then, you know, the Russian number one geopolitical foe mocking, you know, mixed results, I think, in hindsight on that one. Yeah, yeah, that one doesn't age too well. I mean, the funny thing is, so he had a catastrophic performance in the first debate. And so the second debate was like the whole campaign, right? Because like another one of those, and Romney might have actually won, but I think there was a sense of Obama did the work in the second one, he'd recover his footing, which is what happened. And I remember we were in prep, and Favre was there with me, and Obama was pretty bad in his first couple of preps.

And we kept hammering him on, like, do this and look this way and, you know, like make your answers concise like this. And he finally kind of lost his temper with us. And he's like, I see what you guys are saying. It's not really a debate at all. It's just, it's just like a performance. And we're like, yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah. Have you done like 30 of these? Dude, like, you know, yeah. I mean, but he was right about the absurdity of it. They're not being graded on the substance of their answers.

Let's be honest, right? They should be, but they're not. And so there's something kind of absurd about the fact that we do put so much stock in these basically performative cable made for cable TV events, you know? Totally. And like a ton of people watch them, right? 84 million people watch the first Clinton-Trump debate. But, you know, the vast, vast majority will be decided.

in this year pretty, you know, staunchly. So I did notice today that the Director of National Intelligence just declassified and released documents from 2016 that were clearly like Russian disinformation designed to smear Hillary Clinton and suggest collusion. And he put it out on the day of the debate. So that's new. You don't usually have the DNI on your side when you're debating. Yeah. I mean, the extent to which the entire government is like part of the campaign apparatus, including the debate prep team. You know, can you imagine, like, stepping out of debate prepping like, hey, can someone get the

DNA on the phone to be really helpful to declassify some of these docs, you know? Yeah, that's true. All right, so we have a lot going on today. There is a big foreign policy piece to the New York Times scoop about Trump's taxes, and we'll talk through that. There is a lot of fighting this week between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and we'll explain the history there and why it's actually a pretty big deal. There's this White House effort to seemingly bribe Sudan.

There's corruption charges against a former. president of Pakistan. Europe is seeing a COVID spike. There's news about the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, some news about Cuba and Iran when it comes to sanctions. You got Bibi then Yahoo's laundry bill. That's a fun little detour. And then why Yelp can get you arrested in Thailand and then we'll end with a heroic rat. Ben, you did our interview today. Can you tell folks a little bit of what they're going to hear? Yeah. So change your pace this week. But we have Ayad Akhtar, who's a Pulitzer prize-winning writer, basically. And he's got a new novel out that's kind of novel, but it's a lot of autobiography. And it includes his family story, right? And we go in some crazy directions with his family.

They're from Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was living. Heard of it, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, he had an uncle, you know, a best friend of his father, who worked with the Mujahideen, supported by the U.S. government during the 80s. And then, of course, we turned against them. This guy was a doctor, not a fighter, but he treated some of the folks in that part of it. So it's a fascinating detour to this kind of different perspective on issues that you and I talked about, as well as just this book, Homeland Analogies, it just came out. It's a sensation. It's really about, like, what does it mean to be American, Muslim American, but more, you know, capital A American in the Trump years. So I hope people check it out because he's a super smart and interesting guy. And there's some

interesting bank shots into Worldlow Territory. That's cool. I've bought the book and I can't wait to read it. Also, we've got a new episode of Missing America. I'm sure everyone has subscribed downloaded, deleted the episode, downloaded again, juice the stats, gave it a five-star review, but what are they hearing this week? Well, counter-programming the debate where climate change didn't make the debate. This whole episode is devoted to climate change,

a good timing. Good timing. What we do is we look at why does action on climate not happen? And we do it through the case of Australia where Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, talks to me about when he was pursuing climate change legislation, he met the brick wall of Rupert Murdoch

and his media empire. and fossil fuel interests. So sound familiar. And then we've got a huge diversity of voices from activists to political leaders talking us through what the world actually needs to do to deal with climate change. So try to put in one episode what the problem is to getting things done and what the solution is. So people should definitely check it out. And I urge you, if you haven't been listening to series, you can pick it up here, but you can go back and binge listen. Now it's like all put together there, the eight episodes. So you can take the journey with us even if you're just popping in now. Yeah, look, it's a phenomenal series. You will love every single

episode. Download it, subscribe, give it five stars. Give, give Positas the World five stars. Yes, we haven't backed in a while. That'd be cool. But speaking of Rupert Murdoch created a brick wall. Yeah, back to the debate where, yeah, climate change is not a topic, which is making me insane. Last thing, I just want to talk to everybody about gerrymandering for one second. So in many states, Republicans have taken control of state legislatures and the governor's office, and they use. And they use that power to draw maps the disadvantaged Democrats in congressional races. They gerrymandered the hell out of them. And so we worked with our friends at Data for Progress to target some key races and key states that if we can win, we can help unfix these maps. So if you want to contribute to this,

I know we're asking you to donate a lot of time and a lot of money to a lot of things. But if this is an issue you care about, go to Votesaveamerica.com slash fuck jerry, Jerry with a or just go to Votesaveamerica.com slash adopt if you want to adopt a swing state. We got about a month left. We all got to get to work because I'm just way too anxious all the time. And I need this campaign to be over with Joe Biden as the next president. So along those lines, Ben. So on Sunday, the New York Times published a blockbuster scoop detailing decades of Trump's tax returns.

You guys probably saw some of the big headlines, like the fact that he paid no income taxes at all in 10 of 15 years examined. that must be incredible. He only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2015, and that Trump might face a $100 million tax penalty depending on the results of an audit that is brutal. But there are also some troubling foreign policy elements that we're going to cover today. So a couple specifics. In Trump's first two years as president, he made $73 million from foreign sources. That includes a million bucks from deals in Turkey, $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India. Those numbers are way bigger when you look at decades of returns. He's gotten tons more money out of those places. He also paid more taxes abroad than he did at home. So in 2017, right, the $750 year, Trump paid

$145,000 in India and over $156,000 in taxes in the Philippines. So that feels a little bit un-American. So a couple of things you guys need to know as listeners, accepting these foreign payments is illegal. It's a violation of the Emoluments Clause. It feels like a more innocent time when we used to talk about that. It's also not the only way that these foreign countries can steer money into his pocket. There have been countless stories of a government's book and rooms at a Trump hotel in an effort to buy him off. But what's also now clear is that he is just under a mountain of debt. We don't really know who Trump owes $420 some odd million to, but we also know that he desperately needs any revenue he can get to stay afloat. So Ben, as many people have pointed out,

a massive debt like this would prevent you or me from getting a security clearance and having access to class-of-it information. In some ways, you could argue that this disclosure by the Times makes it even easier for these countries to find ways to bribe Trump, but I think they probably knew he was a venal to begin with. So, Ben, anything jump out of you in this reporting, especially in terms of the potential for foreign influence via his financial challenges? Yeah. I mean, I think there are two basic things that. need to be really driven home here. And they may be obvious to people, but it's worth really putting a point on them. First, who does he owe this money to? And does that give them leverage

over him, right? And so presumably if he owns, if he owes tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to some foreign interest, well, then the President of the United States is, you know, terribly compromised in terms of standing up to that interest. Let's say it's a Russian interest. Let's say it's a Turkish interest or whatever it may be. You know, that's a problem. And that's why the rest of us when we go to these jobs have to disclose all of those kinds of conflicts, and that's why if we disclose too much leverage from the foreign source, we wouldn't get a security clearance. That's the first point. The second point, though, which is, I think, less fully appreciated, is how this is shaping his actions as president,

not because of the fact that they're staying in his hotel rooms, although that helps. The payoff, and I've said this a couple times before, but the payoff is on the back end, right? that's what the Saudis are up to, right? Like, they're not so, you know, dumb that they're going to write him a $400 million check while he's president and just give it to him. What they do is they have conversations, hey, you take care of us, we're going to take care of you. And they make good on it. And by the way, if you want to see the aboveboard corruption that happens, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis basically cut checks to build both Bush libraries, right? Hundreds of millions of dollars, right?

they made good to people who they thought did right by them. And so the idea that Trump in his dealings with Mahm bin Salman or type Erdogan might be saying to them, hey, I'll do you this favor, as long as I get my payoff on the back end, is very, very likely. And if you look at some of these decisions he's made that make no sense, right? Like we've heard that he talks to Erdogan on the phone all the time, including outside of any normal channels, they just call each other up. And oh, by the way, over the advice of all of his government and all the Republicans in Congress pulled those troops from the Turkish border

so the Turks could go in and clean out the Kurds, right? Or never mind the fact that he basically ran interference for Mahm bin Salman for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. It is not at all unlikely that the payoff for this is going to come on the back end, right? And people might say, well, what if he loses? Why would the Saudis pay off a guy who loses? They have every interest to do so

because they want to send a message. next person coming along that if you do right by us, we'll take care of you on the back end. So I think there's a massive, massive danger that our foreign policy, our national interest, has been fundamentally compromised by what's in these tax returns. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Turkey because Turkey's an interesting example, because not only have they named like former Trump associates business partners of him to positions of influence to really grease the skids here. But there was an anecdote about how Turkish Airlines conveniently chose Trump's golf club to host

this big event. So you're right that like the Saudis can do the payoff on the back end, but there's also this evidence that it could be happening in real time. It was also fascinating to me that despite how much we learned from these stories, just like volumes of incredible investigative reporting, his finances in many ways are still incredibly opaque. For example, I was reading the Scotsman this morning, which, you know, as I do every Tuesday, and they talked about how despite the time story, we still have no idea how Trump financed his golf courses in Scotland, especially given that no reputable bank would loan him money when he was in that much debt and he was still, you know, pouring money into these courses. So I kind of feel like

there's a bunch more turns to the screw here. Well, yeah. And the other thing you have to do, Tommy, is right, you have to kind of go through your massive index of Trump scandals in your head and remember, oh, I remember reading that thing about Rudy Giuliani getting involved in a Turkish sanctions case to try to make some, some charges go away against. It's a Iran sanction by the, yeah. And then, oh, I remember something about Rex Tillerson saying that Trump broke the law and it might have had something to do with Turkey. And, oh, by the way, you know, this is how Erdogan does business. He has a massive amount of corruption that runs through his son-in-law.

Oh, and we read something about how Jared Kushner has a channel with that son-in-law, you know. So, like, some of this requires just kind of like sorting through things that you were mad about two years ago and being, aha, you know, that's the connection. And again, I think if ever we could, you know, this stuff really will all come together and connect. I mean, because it's a pretty simple story. It's like a story of a corrupt guy, like grifting his way through a failed real estate business and taking a flyer in politics and then realizing that he could leverage politics to pay off all his debts and become rich and take care of his son-in-law and Ivanka, right? And this is not that unusual. Frankly, it's what happens in a lot of other countries, right? It's just, it's happening here, you know.

Yeah, it's, it's remarkable. And this makes me, I mean, the other thing, look, there's been a lot of appropriate commentary about the need to change our tax code. There's also need to have far more transparency about money flows generally, right? Because this kind of these flow of illicit funds and shell companies and all the financial tricks that Trump uses is what all these corrupt goons use, all these corrupt leaders use. And it's frankly the same tools that, you know, the organizing. crime uses as well. So one of the things I think that we can do from a policy standpoint is insist

on much more transparency about money and where it's flowing and where it's hid and how stuff is financed. Yeah. Ironically, Rudy Giuliani knows the ropes here from both directions. But speaking of Turkey, so they're relevant to this next story, which is for the past few days, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting in the latest iteration of this long-running territorial dispute that dates back to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1980s. So the area is called Nagorno-Karabakh region. It's technically part of Azerbaijan, but the population is mostly Armenian, and the area, I think, is functionally controlled by Armenian separatist groups that are backed by the Armenian government. There's also a sectarian piece to this conflict because Armenia is a majority Christian country. Well, Azerbaijan is

majority Muslim. And then on top of all that, like so many of these disputes that on their face can seem parochial, it is complicated by regional power dynamic. So specifically we're talking Turkey and Russia. Turkey was the first country to recognize Azerbaijan in 1991, and they are still a strong ally of theirs to this day. But Turkey has no official relations with Armenia. And Armenia has a deep distrust of Turkey that dates back to the 1915 Armenian genocide. But Russia and Armenia have a mutual defense agreement. And Russia has a military base in Armenia, so close ties on each side. There's also a global economic interest because there's a major oil and gas infrastructure in the region. So, The latest reports about the fighting say that dozens of troops have been killed. You can see videos online already of drone strikes on tanks and like very serious weaponry being brought to bear. Reuters reported that Turkey is sending Syrian rebel fighters and other military advisors to support Azerbaijan.

So it seems like this could escalate. The fighting that happened previously, 1988 through 94, is believed to have killed tens of thousands. I've seen 30,000 referenced of people and displaced up to a million people who are just pushed around or moved out of territory. The organization for the security and cooperation in Europe or OSCE has in the past facilitated peace talks that were led by the U.S., France, and Russia, but they haven't been able to get to a peace agreement, just a ceasefire in 94 that gets broken pretty often. So, Ben, if there's any background I left out, please feel free to add it.

And then two questions for you. I mean, one, how concerned are you about this fighting, escalating, and dragging on for a long time? And then broader, like when you look at Russia and Turkey on opposite sides of conflicts in Syria, Libya, and now open fighting here. How concerned are you about this proxy war that's happening in like three different fronts? Yeah, well, it's a fascinating conflict because so many threads converge, right? And another one, in addition you mentioned, is just the dissolution of the Soviet Union, right? And Armenian, Azerbaijan becoming independent states, but not really knowing where the borders were, right? And we see, you know, that's contested, you know, with the Russian occupation of parts of Georgia, obviously now the Russian

occupation of Crimea, like the, you know, history of the last 30 years demonstrates that, you know, the breakup of the Soviet Union wasn't quite as clean an event as, as we thought it was at the time. But, you know, when I remember when we were in government, you know, there were people that worked on this. Like, that's what they did. Like, for years and years, they just worked on Nagorno-Karbach and they came to work and that's all they thought about. and the key to somehow unlocking peace between these really, you know, virulent adversaries was the U.S. and Russia and Turkey kind of all playing a constructive role and all kind of pushing in the same direction. And we never got there, right? But there were times we got close.

But the reality is like right now that's clearly not going to happen. So one of the things that concerns me is just there's no scenario right now, at least with Trump in office, where there's some U.S. effort that is well coordinated with Turkey and Russia to try to de-escalate. And then you're right. I think that the risk here is that there's all kinds of stuff happening. There's been Russian and Turkish confrontations around the eastern Mediterranean. There's Greek and Turkish competition around natural resources in that part of the world. And like there's a lot of flashpoints kind of on this this borderline between the Middle East, right, which people are accustomed to conflict and Europe, right, where we're seeing more conflict. And so I think the risk is that these all get conflated and they escalate and you start to have bigger wars that involve major powers, if not fighting directly, than fighting through proxies.

And then also more migration flows, right? Because whenever you're going to be adding to the refugee pool, and we've already talked a lot about how, you know, people are exhausted with 80 million displaced people, well, they're going to be more if there's more fighting like this. So this bears attention. And if I know if Joe Biden wins, he's going to have higher things on his party list in Nagorno-Karabok, but hopefully a U.S. that can re-engage diplomatically can maybe help reduce some of these tensions. Yeah, totally agree with you. Okay, let's turn to an area where the administration is spending a lot of time in political capital. We've talked a few times about the White House's effort to facilitate normalization agreements between Israel

and its Gulf neighbors. So so far they've succeeded in getting agreements with Israel and Bahrain and Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Their big target, the big cahuna, the white whale here is Saudi Arabia. But that hasn't happened yet, reportedly because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman understands that it won't play well with hardliners back in Saudi. So the next target they are looking at is Sudan. The New York Times reported that the White House has offered to take Sudan off of the state sponsor of terror list, or we'll call it SST list for short, and to provide Sudan with $800 million in direct aid and investment paid for by the U.S. and the UAE. So, Ben, this SST list question is a little complicated for you and me to answer.

Sudan was put on the list in 93. I remember being in a million meetings with you about this exact question. It makes it really hard for Sudan to get foreign investment. Some people argue that the SST designation isn't warranted anymore because Omar Bashan, year, the former dictator is now gone, and he was the creep who really had the ties to terrorism. But you and I have no clue, right? Because we don't see intelligence anymore, so who knows. But this 800 million is just a bribe to get the White House something. They can call a political win before the election, in my opinion. So, Ben, two questions for you. Is there anything you

can explain about this SST issue to sort of help folks understand how these processes work or why it's important or what the right decision is, I guess? And then second, do you think the 800 million for Sudan will be delivered via pallets of cash or will they find another mechanism? That's a world though deep cut for the listeners at home. Well, first of all, the state sponsor terrorism list is a hopelessly politicized tool. I mean, just consider this fact, right? Pakistan is not on the state sponsor. Terracean list, right?

And we know that elements of the Pakistani government, the ISI, the intelligence service, have for years basically been state sponsors of a whole range of terrorist organizations and militant organizations that operate in Kashmir, in Afghanistan, in other places, right? Cuba was on the list until we took them off. And we asked, well, why is Cuba on this list? And the only thing they could drag up was that some Basque terrorists from the 80s, and people who conducted car bombs in the 80s, lived in Cuba.

Really? And so we called the Spanish and said, hey, apparently the only reason these guys are on this list is these bass guys. And the Spanish said, oh, yeah, we asked the Cubans to take them because we wanted them to get out of Spain. So they're doing us a favor by hosting these guys.

And we're like, by the way, by all accounts, all the rumor mills, the Trump administration is going to put Cuba back on the state sponsor. terrorism list. Oh, good. Pre-election, right? One more thing he can trot out in Florida.

So this is complete and utter bullshit. This list is just like some extension of the domestic politics of presidents. It's an outdated tool. And so I think we have to rethink this whole thing. It doesn't mean there shouldn't be some way to designate, you know, governments for punitive action for sanction. There should. Right.

But this list is not it. I mean, this list is, you know, hopeless. What credibility does a list have that is just like, well, we know, rotating cast of characters that are basically whoever the current president doesn't like, you know? The second thing is, you know, I think even more profound, which is why this is our top priority with Sudan. Would I like Sudan to recognize Israel? Sure. Me too. Absolutely. Yes. But there's a big but here. Sudan is in the middle of a political transition where a peaceful movement ousted this brutal dictator. There's a lot of question as to whether this,

kind of interim government will follow through on a transition to democracy and allow for credible elections and a meaningful civilian leadership of that country, there's the biggest concern is that the country's whispering in the ear of the Sudanese military to not allow democracy to happen are, wait for it, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, just like they did in Egypt, Sudan's neighbor, right? So what was the worry that some of us had about this whole enterprise to begin with, that all it would do is strengthen autocracy in the region. And if you have a U.S. government going to Sudan and saying the only thing we care about is whether or not you recognize Israel a few weeks before the election, so we can have a talking point in Palm Beach. And,

oh, by the way, we're going to pay you with the Emirates who've been telling you to not have a true democracy come to root in Sudan. It's grotesque. Okay. It's not. It's not. what should be driving the priorities of the United States of America. It's not a good and healthy way to have countries recognize Israel, right? That's not how this piece should not happen because of a pre-election bribe and some muscling and politicization of a terrorism list, right? So that's what I think about this whole thing. No, man, look, and the frustrating thing is that this nakedly political play, I think, is working for some people, for whom, you know, Israel is their top issue. But at the same time, our government is going back to like a 50s-style CIA coup-happy foreign policy

that I think is incredibly troubling. It reaffirms all the worst things about American, you know, hegemony and, you know, self-interest in various countries and is going to be devastating to us long-term, I think. If we actively help prevent democracy from, from taking root in Sudan, we are, you know, we are worse than what they say about us. Yeah, what happens if there's a crackdown in the next peaceful demonstrations? And, you know, we've given away all of our leverage and, you know, over this. And I want to say, I have friends, you know, who disagree with me and say, this is so important for Israel.

And yes, you can see that I'm sure this is having some positive political benefit for them with some voters who care a lot about this. But think about, is this really the way you want countries to come about normalizing relations with Israel? In the long run, is a healthy way for Israel to be accepted by the community of nations. Donald Trump and Muhammad bin Salman as his proxy, like strong arming them before U.S. election and paying God knows what under the table. Yeah. And not really, you know, like, it's not, that's not how peace is made and sustained. never mind the fact that I don't believe it's in the long-term interest of the Jewish state

to have a press United States who is supported by white nationalists and ethno-nationalists, right? Like this is not the transactional win of chalking up a couple of small countries in the column of recognizing Israel is not worth the greater risk of emboldening this brand of politics. you know, in the world, in the U.S. and the world. Yeah, I agree. Okay, you mentioned Pakistan a minute ago. I just want to go there. The former president of Pakistan, Steve Zardari, was indicted Monday on money laundering charges that his supporters say are part of a broader campaign by supporters of the current prime minister, Imram Khan, to punish or stifle Khan's political opponents. Zardari, if you don't know about him, was married to Benazir Budo, who is the former

Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was assassinated in 2007. Before being elected president, Zardari, actually spent about a decade in prison. He was even elected to Parliament while in jail. And that was on top of many other allegations of corruption that have been made against him. Pakistani authorities also arrested Zardarri's sister. They arrested a guy named Shabaz Sharif, who is the leader of the opposition in parliament and is also the younger brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. So, Ben, I have no idea what to make of any of these charges in large part because I don't think they've released any evidence against Zardari. But I got on my gut reaction, I guess, was to be a little more concerned about the prime minister locking up political

opponents than even the corruption itself. But I don't know. What did you make of the story? Is there anything about Zardari or the Pakistani political system that you think people should know? Well, you know, it's interesting because we deal with this on the interview. Ayad kind of describes his family's experience with corruption and how however president it was. It's just everywhere in the Pakistani political system, right? So, yeah, these rumors of corruption dogged Zardari, just like they dog Imran Khan, just like they dog every public official in Pakistan. And I think the basic point is if you really want to tackle that, if there's really a sincere desire to get at the endemic corruption in Pakistan, you need to engage in structural changes, not selective prosecutions, right? So Zardari may very well have engaged in corrupt actions.

The problem is when this is how governments act on corruption, it just makes. makes the population cynical, that quote-unquote anti-corruption is not about rooting out corruption. It's just about whoever happens to be in power gets to use corruption as the vehicle for imprisoning their opponent. So, yeah, I think it's concerning to see that trend continue in Pakistan, and frankly, that's not to absolve Zardari of any wrongdoing. It's to say if you want to tackle these problems, you have to come through the doorway of structural changes and transparency measures. and broad accountability. And you actually undermine that effort

when it just looks like you use it to throw your opponent in jail. Yeah, a lot corrupt chance are not good here or abroad or anywhere. Let's talk about Europe for a minute. So the New York Times said a piece on Monday. It was bylined out of London that is about how countries across Europe are seeing second waves of coronavirus outbreaks. But efforts to deal with those outbreaks are being complicated by an increasing number of COVID deniers and rallies against masks

and other restrictions. So I didn't know this. This is very upsetting and will be to our friend Mike O'Neill. Van Morrison apparently released three new songs protesting the lockdowns. Accusing scientists of, quote, making up crooked facts, end quote, about COVID. So that's sad. It sounds like there's, you know, a range of anti-COVID opinion or anti-government opinion here, right? There's some people who just think the response by some governments was disproportionate.

And I think with the benefit of hindsight, you could probably have a reasonable conversation about that. But there's other allegations that are just. conspiracies, right, like 5G towers cause the virus, that there's collusion between scientists and drug companies, et cetera. There's an interesting anecdote in the piece about how Slovakia's ministry of health appointed someone to fight disinformation about the pandemic, which is, by the way, literally the opposite of what our government is doing. But experts in Slovakia say, COVID truthers are just hijacking like anti-vaxxer, anti-government Facebook groups and spreading their bullshit there. And in Slovakia, public support for wearing masks in public went from 94% in March

to 62.5% now. A lot of people predicted there's going to be the second wave when the winter came, people were stuck indoors. But I guess the silver lining so far is that in Europe, it's mostly younger, healthier people getting sick. But health experts assume that any surge in infections will ultimately translate into higher risk populations. So Ben, you know, my big takeaway from this report is it's another data point about

how broken the online information ecosystem is. It's causing real world harm. I can't help but think that if Biden wins, that's got to be at the top of the agenda, like regulations or Facebook and other companies. But, you know, you live in Venice. You visit Orange County a lot. I'm sure you hear these theories a bit yourself. Anything surprised you here?

Yeah, well, two quick personal points, right? Friend of the pod, Mike O'Neill has been keeping me abreast on the Van Morrison development. This has been a troubling trend for a few weeks now. But also, yeah, like, I go down to Hingdon Beach, and it's like nobody's wearing a mask. And they glare it, you know, like I was in one neighborhood. wearing a mask is like you feel like you're going to get beat up or something. There's some wonderful people, by the way, in Huntington Beach, too. But I think you put your finger on it.

This is about online disinformation. That's what all this is about, 100%, right? Which is that, you know, Europe isn't immune to it. We may just be the stupidest country in consuming it and have the most widespread problems, but it's not like there's not the same problems in Europe. And these conspiracy theories and these conspiracy theories and these. communities built around the conspiracy theories grow. So if like six months ago, the 5G Yehus were only so big, they've been growing during COVID, particularly as people were locked down

and they're online. And it's leading to these real world outcomes of people getting sick or people who used to be fine wearing a mask no longer wanting to wear it. It points to the fact that disinformation is not some secondary issue to national security concerns. This is like a front burner priority. Like, like, I put this in the, you know, literally the top slate three or four issues that a Biden administration will have to tackle. Yes, it will help having an American president modeling positive behavior. But if there's not real regulation and meaningful liability and accountability for platforms that allow themselves to be used to harm people in this way, like these, these get worse and worse and worse. And nobody's immune to it. Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg

sucks. It's worth noting we just passed a grim milestone of a million dead from COVID as well. Let's go to Baghdad because the Washington Post reported that the U.S. has warned Iraq that we will withdraw from, and I guess closed down if we fully withdraw, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. If the Iraqi government doesn't take action to end attacks on that facility by Iranian-backed militias, this threat was delivered by Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State to both the president and prime minister of Iraq via phone calls. So just so listeners understand, the U.S. Embassy's in Baghdad is not some like cute country house set back from a road. It is more than 100 acres. It's the size of Vatican City and it cost about a billion dollars to construct. And at its peak,

I think there were like 16,000 or so personnel working out of it between contractors and staff. So it's a huge, huge facility. The Iraqis seem to think there's like a two-month deadline to take these actions. You know, when Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the former head of Iran's IRGC-C-C-Cuds force, we were told it was to deter attacks. by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq like this. Clearly, that failed. So, Ben, I found this shocking. It's not a discussion about like getting combat troops out of Iraq or getting out of the Middle East, generally. We're talking about a diplomatic facility in a country that we broke and have spent trillions on in an effort to try to help rebuild. Obviously, you know, I'm in favor of doing

whatever it takes to keep the staff safe, but I can't believe that we have to be as draconian as shutting down the embassy. If Obama closed down the embassy Baghdad, Republicans would call it weak and harmful to U.S. interests. And frankly, I think they would be right. But I don't know. What did you make of this story? Well, look, I'm going to go in this direction, right, which may be playing to character. But we were told in January that by killing Qasem Soleimani, the United States of America had restored deterrence. Right. And all these Trump officials, you probably don't even know what those two words strung together mean, you know, we're saying it over and over again. The idea was that by killing this guy, all the threats are people in Iraq would go away.

because that's where they said that they were threatened by a reigning back militias. And then when all Iran did is injure 100 Americans in missile strikes as if that was nothing, everybody went around dunking on everybody saying, oh, see, we restored deterrence. Well, here we are a few months later, and Iran's nuclear program is advancing substantially. And apparently it is so unsafe for our people in Iraq that they're saying they're going to potentially shut down the embassy. What is self-owned on your own policy, Mike Pompeo? you've restored deterrence so successfully that you have to close up your embassy and go home and essentially give this to the Iranian proxies.

Like, we should be talking about this as a humiliating and catastrophic failure of their own policy. Never mind the fact that we shouldn't be talking about it anyway. Like, you're right. We need to protect our people. But the idea that the United States, we built this to be the most secure, like, place on earth. Right. Like, our diplomats are willing to accept a degree of risk. here. And so I think it's about that, but it's about what they're doing is also about just

pushing around the Iraqi government and trying to literally leverage our diplomatic presence to get them to do things, right? This same mindset of treating the Iraqis like supplicants, like people we kick around, is exactly why the Iraqi people are sick of us, right? And exactly, you know, why they're sick of Iran, too. They're only being pushed around by Iran. Can't we engage these people as equals, instead of saying, like, if you don't do everything, we're going to shut down our embassy. Because I don't even really believe that the threat is true. Like, you know, so, you know, I think this is just Mike Pompeo's, you know, completely narcissistic form of diplomacy where you push everybody around, you never accept

responsibility for what you did. We put the Iraqis in a terrible place by killing Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, knowing that it would motivate all these proxies. So I think we, there's, Iraqi people deserve better, so do we. Yeah. So let's talk about Iran for a minute because Bloomberg News reported that the White House is considering sanctioning more than a dozen Iranian banks and basically saying no one in the world could do business with Iran's financial sector without running afoul of the U.S. It would essentially, you know, cut Iran off from the global financial system entirely, except for illegal trade. Unnamed sources in this report told Bloomberg that part of their goal is to make it harder for Biden to reenter the Iran nuclear deal if he wins.

The report says that the administration hasn't yet decided to take these extra sanction steps, but apparently administration officials were initially hesitant because they know it will make it incredibly difficult to provide humanitarian relief to Iran. And Iran desperately needs that relief thanks to COVID and U.S. sanctions. But now it just sounds like the hardliners are okay and finally willing to be honest that they just don't give a shit about hurting the Iranian people. They're just, they're for it now. So proponents of this deal include the sadists over at the foundation for the defense of

democracies, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, all the worst people. So I don't really understand the suggestion that this move could constrain Biden. The report says if they put these sanctions on, the Biden administration would have to prove that Iran was no longer engaged in proliferation or whatever the specifics are to then remove the sanctions. I hope the Biden team would say that is just policy done in bad faith. Fuck them. We're starting over. But Ben, what do you think the impact of these sanctions would be. And if these guys are trying to prevent future diplomacy with Iran, what is this policy other than regime change? What could it possibly be? The policy is just regime change. But I mean, we should, we don't talk enough when we talk about sanctions. We talk about

sanctions like, you know, this is like a baseball card trade or something. Like this kind of sanctions will kill people, right? Like, people will die. Like, they'll die because they're so impoverished. They can't get humanitarian assistance. This sadistic view of Iran from like the, you know, the conference rooms of the foundation of defense of democracies is gross. It doesn't see Iranians as human beings. Never mind that it's totally failed on the nuclear issue. But I think the Biden point, here's what I think their calculation is. I've had a lot of conversations about this with people on Chitami, which is I think the rumor or the, the fear is that, okay, let's say Biden even can get back into the, you know, they want to prevent him going

get a nuclear deal, but the nuclear deal is only a certain set of sanctions. And we want to create so many other sanctions. So I think the idea is basically you add so many sanctions to this picture so that the Biden team has to contemplate both making good our promise of sanctions relief under the Iran deal. But then there are all these other sanctions. And I think their hope is that Biden will find it too politically difficult to just lift sanctions on Iran, right, that are separate from the nuclear deal. And yet, it's hard to see the Iranians coming back into the nuclear deal unless those sanctions are also lifted.

You know, it's a little complicated, right? But the way to think about it is like, you're all your apples. Your apples are the sanctions relief that Iran should get under the nuclear deal. But the Trump administration has added all these oranges, these additional sanctions. The Iranians are going to say, we're not coming back into that nuclear deal unless you lift the apples and the oranges, you know. I hope that Biden people just realize, like, this is nonsense. Just rip the Band-Aid off, move quickly on it.

There's four more years until the election. Like, give me a fucking break. These guys failed. Their policy failed. Time to move on. But this will be an early test of the Biden people. Are they so afraid of the politics of APEC and the stride and op-eds from, you know, these fanatics at the Foundation Defense of Democracy, that they're cautious in doing that?

Because if they are, they'll never get back into the Iran deal, right? You're right. You're right. They just have to rip this bandaid off. If you want diplomacy, you want de-escalation, just do it. And these grotesque sanctions that don't achieve their objectives and only hurt the Iranian people need to go. And by the way, there'll be a course of voices in Washington, the Israeli government, the Gulfies, all the hawks saying, oh, we finally have them on the ropes. Just keep the sanctions going, right? Shut those voices out. Yep, yep. Sticking with sanctions for a minute, Ben, in a move not at all designed to turn out Cuban voters in Miami, the Trump. administration announced new economic sanctions on Cuba. They'd ban U.S. citizens from buying Cuban cigars, rum, and from staying at government-owned hotels in Cuba. They also announced changes that will make it harder for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. Ben, the coverage of this announcement notes that these new tourism policies don't really have any near-term impact, because our COVID situation here in the U.S. is so bad that the Cuban government won't allow

commercial flights from the U.S. But what if you make of these new sanctions? Who, are they going to impact. It's so obviously political. It's almost embarrassing to talk about, but like, does it do anything? I wish that, like, so it hurts the Cuban people, first of all, right? Because if Americans aren't traveling there, that's a lifeline for Cuban small business owners, the people who are not working for the Communist Party, the people who drive taxis, the people who have restaurants, the people who have Airbnbs, these are the people suffering under these sanctions. Ordinary Cubans. Shame. Shame on Marco Rubio and all these people down to Miami who say that they're standing up for the Cuban people

when they're just hurting the Cuban people, right? I've actually met them, unlike Marco Rubio who's never been to Cuba in his life, okay? They're going to hurt because of these policies. It's grotesque. It's grotesque that our media generally covers this as like a political sport, well, in a move that could shore up his support in Miami, blah, blah, blah.

The Cuban people don't even feature in the stories, right? This is nonsense. It's exactly what everybody in this hemisphere hates about how America looks at the countries to its south, chiefly Cuba, right? So yeah, you're right. It won't have a huge impact before the election. And we never, last piece of this time, he's like, it hurts ourselves. Havana Club rum is the best rum in the world.

Cuban cigars are the best row. I want to travel to Cuba and I want to buy rum and cigars and bring them home. So like Trump's just punishing Americans. I know. Because to appeal to a couple, you know, turn out targets in South Florida, the whole thing is ridiculous. And once again, I hope the Biden people, when they come in, aren't looking over their shoulder and thinking like, well, you know, we got to calibrate the politics of this in Miami. No, what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong.

Just set the thing back in motion, reopen this up. Americans want to go down there. Cubans want to engage with us. And it'll have a far greater chance of influencing things for the better in terms of keeping human rights to open things up than to continue the same policy that's failed for decades. Yeah. I totally agree with you there. A few more quick things.

I chose too many topics today because it's too much fun. So dust off your laundry-based puns, Ben, because I got a BB Netanyahu story to tell you. So the Washington Post reported that Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is notorious for bringing extra suitcases full of dirty laundry to Washington. No metaphors there. When a foreign head of state visits, they stay in Blair House maybe or some other U.S. facility, the staff does laundry for you as a courtesy. But apparently, Bibi and his wife only stuffed their bags full of dirty underwear like college kids, like flying home for Thanksgiving. This isn't Netanyahu's first laundry-based controversy in 2016. He sued Israel's Attorney General to prevent the release of his actual laundry tabs.

I guess the government was picking them up. So there's also lots of reporting that Beebe and his wife have done this in other countries. They took 11 suitcases on a one-day trip to Portugal in December. Netanyahu has also been accused of accepting illegal gifts and bribes like champagne and cigars. I don't know what the make of this been. How fucking expensive is it to do laundry in Israel? Of all the things, a places to save cash, I don't get it, but whatever. They must have a washer dryer.

And yeah, like, you know, Q metaphor of BB Nanyahu suffering politically at home and coming to the U.S. and laundering his political reputation. But, I mean, I'll just leave it short, which is, like, would you, like, presidents and prime ministers are, like, people in your life. And you probably wouldn't want someone in your life who shows up at your house with 11 suitcases of dirty laundry. So you probably shouldn't have that person as president or prime minister. It reminded me of me as a freshman when I would, like, duct tape a trash bag shot. My mother hated me. Here's a warning for obnoxious Yelp reviewers.

The New York Times reported that an American man living in Thailand who was pissed off about being charged a corkage fee at a resort was arrested on charges of criminal defamation after he wrote several negative reviews about the place on TripAdvisor. Now he could face up to two years in jail. So if you were considering visiting the Sea View-Cone-Chang resort on the island of Cochang, do not do it. we are sort of joking around about this because it's absurd, but we've previously talked about a law in Thailand that criminalizes insulting Thailand's king. That can get you 15 years. And this defamation law is notorious for helping businesses silence critics. So Ben, I've actually never been to Thailand. I've always wanted to go. But this kind of makes me nervous. It seems like the worst possible PR for a resort in a country that really needs tourism dollars.

Kind of a self-owned here. Yeah, it is. I mean, I guess it's also a lesson that if you really have that wave of rage over something, you know, that went wrong in your hotel, like, you know, the AC didn't work, like, calm down before running the Yelp review. Wait a beat of you. But I think that, you know, Thailand, you know, is, a country we don't talk about enough. Like, they have so much going for it. You know, like the location, the people are wonderful, like the tourism resources, the food. And there's been a lot of self-owness in Thailand recently like this crazy uh the crazy new king the uh dictatorial regime and and now criminalizing yelp reviews so um we we should keep an eye on it but i would advise people like uh take a deep

deep breath and use measured language before writing those yelp reviews as a as a rule of thumb generally yeah that's great i i agree with you unless of course you're smashing the five-star button on missing america and potse's world and and writing emotionally charged positive reviews Those we like. Quickly on Belarus. So French President Emmanuel Macron met with the Belarus opposition leader in Lithuania on Tuesday. It's interesting because Macron has been really out in front on this. He's been pushing for Europe to do more to mediate this political crisis that has paralyzed Belarus since the presidential election in early August. The UK and Canada also announced coordinated sanctions on Alexander Lukashenko, the longtime dictator and hopefully soon former president of Belarus.

Also on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin gave a speech denouncing external pressure on Belarus. So the situation in Belarus has not changed a lot. It's interesting how active Macron has been on the diplomatic front. He also went to Lebanon twice. He's been pushing Putin for more transparency about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. Ben, what do you make of them, like, fill in this void of American leadership? I think it's a really positive sign.

And look, I know the Macron's not perfect. Nobody's perfect. but like if you look at Merkel taking in Navalny after he was poisoned, Macron stepping back from a meeting with Putin, taking the stand on Belarus. The people of Belarus more than anybody deserve credit because they're not going home. They keep coming out.

They had this mock inauguration of the opposition figure that had 100,000 people in the street again. It's very hopeful to see these European leaders and people standing up for things and standing up to Putin and seeing up for people like Navalny at a time when the U.S. is doing nothing. And, you know, I think that indicates that if Joe Biden elected, he can step right into that momentum and try to turbocharge it, right, and get this pendulum swinging back in the direction of democracy and back in the direction of accountability for all these

corrupt autocrats. So they deserve credit, and it's not easy to do, and hopefully they'll have a partner in the U.S. soon enough. Last story, and this is a great one. So move over Pizza Rat because there is a new rat king in town. His name is Magawa. This is a five-year-old African giant pouched rat. And he receives an award from an organization called the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals for his work detecting landmines in Cambodia. Ben, I know this is an issue very near and dear to your heart that you've worked on a lot. I'm a little surprised you didn't get Magawa on Missing America because this stud has sniffed out 39 landmines, 28 pieces of unexploded ordinance. He is better at the job than any human being because he can smell TNT and he can avoid wasting time digging up like scrap metal that

would be detected by a metal detector. And he can search an area in 30 minutes that would take a human being four days. Ben, you want to talk a little bit about why landmines in unexploded ordinance are such a problem in Cambodia and what the U.S. government has tried to do about it? Yeah, well, first of all, like, I mean, you know, AI could do what this rat could do, I guess. I mean, this is like some serious shit. Amazing.

You know, I, this is an issue near and dear to my heart because of Laos, but basically, and I'll come to Laos and second, but, you know, Cambus. Vietnam, Laos were absolutely littered with weapons after the Vietnam War, right? And it was a diversity of weapons. And in Cambodia, there was an acute use of landmines everywhere, right? And so these are weapons that, you know, in often cases, are unexploded so children can stumble on these things. People are still getting killed. In Laos, there are 80 million unexploded U.S. bombs. More bombs are dropped on Laos than on Germany and Japan and World War II. And children are still killed with an alarming frequency. And they matter too, Tommy, not just because the humanitarian

impact of someone could get hurt, but these are agricultural countries, right? They can't farm the land that is littered with bombs or littered with mines. So it's both the humanitarian and economic development issue to clear this stuff. And actually, the U.S. has done a lot in Vietnam, for instance, to clean up Asian orange and some of the chemicals we left behind. We're beginning to do more in Laos invested a lot in Cambodia. I have an organization that I'm involved with that if worlders are ever looking for a non-political NGO that does great work, it's called Legacies of War. And they basically advocate for the resources to clean this stuff up.

And there's a bill that's actually sitting in committee now. It looks like it might come out through Congress that would put a lot of funding into cleaning up these weapons in Laos. So this is part of our legacy. We helped destroy these places in the Vietnam War, not just Vietnam, but Laosan. Cambodia and essential to turning the page are cleaning up unexploded ordinance landmines. And by the way, the last piece, which you've mentioned on the pod is the U.S. should join the International Convention banning landmines. That'd be another good step to take.

Yeah, that would be a good step. I know there's the North Korea issue to deal with, but come on, goddammit, guys. Let's just make some progress. Yeah, if we can have a war plan that doesn't rely on landmines, you know, we should maybe look at our war plans. Agreed. Okay. When we come back, of Ben's interview with Ayat-Octar about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a whole other bunch of great stuff. Stick around. So I am very glad that we're joined now by Ayat-Octar. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, author, novelist, A Man of Many Hats. He has a remarkable new novel out, Homeland Elogies, which I recommend to everybody. And it's a novel, but the main character is conspicuously named Ayadoktar, and it combines elements, I know.

of Aad's personal experience and really the experience of being American, the experience of being Muslim American. And it's as profound a statement, I think, as anyone will read about what it feels like to be American under the presidency of Donald Trump and, frankly, under a lot of the trends we've dealt with for the last couple decades. So Aad, thanks so much for joining us on the show. Wow, such a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Ben.

So I'm going to start with a question. I hadn't occurred to me until one of our very intrepid pot say of the world, staff members brought to my attention, which is the fact that this book obviously deals with very political themes and geopolitical themes and came out just a couple of months for our election. Did you have that timing in mind at all? No, I didn't. I mean, I was thinking about it. I was sort of like wondering to myself, you know, with the cascade of sort of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

and the Trump taxes and now the Trump debate, you know, we had an amazing four or five days of press, but it seems like almost last year at this point with the news cycle. You know, we had initially, you know, I finished the book last summer and then turned it in and then, you know, you know, the cycle you've been through publishing. It just takes it takes them forever to get a book out. And, you know, thankfully, if they had gotten it out in the spring, it would have been, I think it would have been even more challenging. But it's a book that sits tidily, I think, in the chaos of the upcoming, you know, I don't know exactly what to call it. Is it an election? Is that what's happening?

It's something, yeah. Well, I wouldn't, you know, to that end, you know, Trump is a character in the book, albeit a small one. He's the sort of spiritual muse of the book, if you will. Exactly. Exactly. In many ways. And you, you know, you became prominent, I think, for articulating, giving voice to a certain

experience in America post-9-11, particularly a Muslim-American experience. And one thing that got a lot of attention in the last election, but less so this one, is how central the demonizing of Muslims in particular was. to Trump's assent. And it was made real in policies like the Muslim ban, as well as many others. How central do you think the demagoguing of Muslims is to the phenomenon of Trump? And what does it like to experience that as an American who happens to be Muslim? Well, certainly I think in the campaign, it was a central part of it. I mean, the sort of Mexicans, you know, anti-Mexican sentiment and the anti-Muslim sentiment were front and center.

I think as time has gone on, the, you know, the antagonists have changed. You know, there's always an antagonist, and the antagonist is usually an outsider of some sort. You know, and I think the drama is going down, going on down on the border with the camps and sort of immigration and all of that. I have obviously, I think, taken, you know, poll position with regards to demonizing others. And I think that, you know, with the pandemic, I think you were the one who'd said, I think when we spoke at one point that, the pandemic really marks the end of the 9-11 era, the post-9-11 era, that we are really officially in a new era. So I do think that something is changing. I know I'm not saying that it's necessarily better for Muslims, but I think that the notion of the Muslim as the contrary par excellence,

you know, that that time seems to be dimming. And, you know, one of the things you do in the book that I think will be interesting to our audience, the pot say, the world that focuses on the rest of the world is you you talk about not just the experience of inside of America, but how America has interacted with part of the world where your family came from, which is Pakistan. So I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about that. There's a remarkable account you give in the book of how your uncle, you know, essentially became a part of the U.S. support for the Mujahideen in the 80s, not wittingly. He just wanted to be a doctor who could open a clinic in his part of Pakistan.

But talk us through your uncle's experience and how it illustrates the shifting priorities of America and the world and what that says about us. So my father's best friend in medical school was a fellow who was very talented. Or best friend. Sorry. Sorry. Well, no, it was an uncle of sorts, you know. And he's the model on whom the figure in the book is drawn. He was an incredible guy. And, you know, I remember growing up around him. And he was one of those people who kind of exuded a kind of nobility and innate sort of, you know, superiority of intellect or of virtue or something, just somebody who just made you, made you better. And we all loved him as kids. And he was a practicing doctor in Pensacola and, you know, had opened a clinic and was tending to the poor.

That was an important part of what he felt he needed to do. And when the war with the Soviets in Afghanistan sort of kicked into gear and the United States started supporting the Mujahideen against the Soviets to sort of, you know, the proxy war there. It was a widespread sort of thing in the Muslim world. You know, we would go to the mosque on Sundays and there would be a collection plate for the Mujahideen. So we would send money, you know, and this was something that was sort of extolled even at the White House.

You know, Reagan trotting out the members of the Mujahideen out into the Rose Garden and comparing them to the, you know, the freedom fighters in Central America and the founding fathers and all of this sort of stuff. And so growing up, you know, that was the mentality that we had sort of that the United States was behind this fight, behind the majority, behind the folks who were giving their lives to stave off a form of imperialism. Anyway, so this guy, this uncle of mine decided that life was a little too frivolous in the United States considering all of the struggles that were going on back home, what my parents would call back home. and he moved his family, went back to Pakistan and opened a clinic that ended up becoming a kind of meeting point really for intelligence and sort of a place where resources would get

resources, intelligence resources and financial resources would get exchange between U.S. support and Mujahideen who were being supported. And then once that war was over, you know, the United States basically, and I don't say this with any animus, but basically abandoned those folks. and they turned their sort of brand of anti-imperialism gradually shifted after Iraq war into an anti-American imperialism. And ultimately, this uncle was fighting for what would become the Taliban, although it's in his own experience, I can imagine that there was a seamlessness to it. He wasn't moving from one side to another. He was just fighting the same fight. It just turned out that the antagonist was new.

And of course, all of this is the latent narrative that is behind what eventually became 9-11, you know, something that we, oddly, 19 years in, still don't seem to have a very good handle on, which is bizarre to me. I mean, with doing press with this book, people keep asking me. I'm like, well, is it hard for Muslims after 9-11? I'm like, really? It's been 20 years, and you're asking me that question? Like, can we talk about something else? It's normal now. Well, what was it like to watch, you know, the U.S. shift its attention to the Taliban and to these areas of Pakistan? You know, on the one hand, you're an American, born and read. In the other end, you have kind of an understanding of that part of the world that almost

nobody in America has. You know, what it was like to watch this kind of massive shift of an American attention to this part of the world that had recently been forgotten? And what does it say about kind of the contradictions of how America engages the world? That it can shift on a dime from, you know, as you said, Ronald Reagan, celebrating the Mujahideen at the White House as freedom fighters and then, you know, George W. Bush, you know, mounting, you know, kind of a global war against them. Yeah. No, it was, it's a remarkable perspective to have on the shift, this sort of, this imperial shift. Like, I lived it as a child, as a, as a young adult. And, you know, it gives you a perspective, I think, on the contingency of, of foreign policy and, and, and

global power. I mean, I think that one of the cases that the book I think makes is that being a Muslim in this country gives you a particularly unique and perhaps a very good perspective on America as a whole because we have diaspora. We have families that have lived the consequences of American foreign policy over the past two decades with a kind of immediacy that maybe almost nobody else has. But we also have this experience of being in the United States, both seen as victims and perpetrators of the 9-11 era, victims of anti-Muslims sentiment, but also subliminal, ideological perpetrators of the anti-Americanism that led to 9-11. So it's a very unique position in which to be able to see the larger American experience. And one more question on this vein is you took me

to a place in the book that I'd only been in Situation Room meetings, which is Abadabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was hold up in a compound and killed. And this is a place that that I came to know because we were observing this compound and trying to see bin Laden was there and seeing that people there burn their trash and seeing that the numbers of people that matched bin Laden and his family. But we didn't really know about about Pakistan. We knew there was a Pakistani military academy there.

Your family in the book is from Abadabad. Yes. You take us there. I spent a lot of time there growing up. I mean, it was shocking that when President Obama in May of 2011 got on the screen and said, we just killed Osama bin Laden and he was in Abadabat. And I was like, wait, what?

Well, that's what I was going to ask you, which is you, I think you make a lot of it. a comment in the book, too, of like, everybody who is Pakistani or a Pakistani descent kind of knew that there was no way bin Laden was there without somebody knowing about it in Pakistani government. We didn't, you know, we genuinely didn't think we knew concretely the answer to that question. But I guess explain your reaction when you saw this announced and what it suggested about, you know, how likely it was that people knew that bin Laden was the guy living there. Well, I mean, it's, you know, I guess it's hard to come up with an

opposite analogy. I feel like this is not a perfect analogy. all, but, you know, years and years spent trying to look for Theater Kaczynski and then you discover that he's living in West Point. He's living at West Point Academy. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a strange confluence. I mean, the thing that I've always thought when you sort of look at the amount of USAID that was going to Pakistan during those years, that 10-year period of trying to find Osama bin Laden, it was an enormous amount of money that was coming in. And a second that Osama bin Laden was no longer, you know, didn't need to find him anymore because he was dead. That money basically dried up and was half of it, half of what went to the country the next year and even less after

that. So I think that the authorities probably felt that Osama bin Laden was a cash cow. This is totally, you know, this is totally speculative on my part. But it does sort of align with what one tends to hear. But certainly the fact that Osama bin Laden was living in the military garrison of Pakistan, which is a military nation, does make one think that somebody in the military must have been knowing and he must have in some way been being protected for whatever reason that we, you know, is probably a cynical reason. But yeah, what a remarkable confluence of the fact that you were, I was writing about that, my family, my family there, and you were on the other side of that equation.

That's amazing. Yeah, well, but it speaks to the limits of American foreign policy. Here we are looking at grainy overhead footage and, you know, not talking to people who live there. You know, it's kind of a microcosm of what's wrong with American foreign policy. I mean, I guess one other thing pops in my head is when you look at a country like, Pakistan, Americans can look at it and just think, what a mess, you know, this kind of military behind the scenes, you know, quasi-democracy, corruption, nuclear weapons, terrorism. But America's

been a part of that. I mean, how do you assign, what is America responsible for when it comes to the current state of Pakistan? And how, what lessons can we draw from that? Well, that's a big question. I think maybe a little bit above my pay grade, but I'll give it my best shot. You know, I think, ultimately I think Pakistan's misfortunes have got a fall on Pakistan. They can't, we can't, as Pakistanis, and I, you know, I speak as only, only in a limited form as a Pakistani because I was born here and raised here and basically American. But, but I think as Pakistanis, I don't think we can really bemoan our plight and, and, and link it entirely to the United States. I think that rampant corruption, you sort of IMF as a, you know, anecdotally, I had an uncle who was in charge of

making sure that the money that was deposited in IMF accounts got to the people that it needed to get to. You can imagine what the cut was that, you know, I know firsthand. So the operations of corruption, you know, the United States, again, an idea that I've heard you talk about, which I think is very true, is that, you know, there is some oversight when the United States is giving money. But, you know, to what extent is the United States going to say, well, unless you get your ducks in a row, unless you take care of all the problems that we're seeing in terms of the corruption that you're dealing with, we're not going to give you any money. That's not necessarily the way that foreign policy is done. So at the end of the day, yes, there's been a lot of meddling. You know, there's been meddling since the time of the game with the British and all of that, that whole area, whether it's Afghanistan and Iran and Pakistan and India, all that has been in play.

in various ways with the superpowers for, you know, generations and generations in the United States has played along. I mean, they have opportunistically done battle with the Soviets and opportunistically, you know, use Pakistan in its game with Afghanistan and it's on win its game with India and all of that sort of stuff. But at the end of the day, Pakistanis have to account for their own failures, I think. That's my, that's my opinion. Well, taking it back to home, I mean, this book is so great because basically many, if not all of the, the key American themes are present. And I think I urge people to read it because it, you know, it's the immigrant experience, it's money, it's sex, it's power, it's race, it's Trump,

it's the entertainment industry. There's almost nothing that isn't kind of fundamental to American life. Sounds great. Ben, when you talk about it. Yeah, it doesn't, you know, get the treatment in this book. But fundamentally, it's about American identity. And you made this point that that American identity is unique in the world because Americans come from everywhere. And there's really no other country that can say that. And yet at the same time, this country that has people from everywhere has a president who fundamentally rejects that. And Chloe has the support of a big chunk of the country that doesn't think this country should be for people from everywhere. When you look at American identity, how do we define that post-Trump?

How do we, I mean, what were you trying to say about, through your own experience, what it means to be American, really, in a country where that is so contested between really, you know, you could, there are more than two, but I mean, if I were to distill it, people who believe it's a country that is defined by diversity and people like Trump and his supporters and, frankly, the Republican Party that believes that it's defined by rejecting diversity. How do we reconstruct American identity after that? that's a it's a it's a big question um i think that you know one of the things the book is a little bleak in some ways about some of the things that you're that you're asking about of course it i think it does it with humor and it does it with a kind of a verve and an absorption that i think is is deeply i hope pleasurable for readers but but at the end of the day the core is is is somewhat dark and i think that one of the things that the book might be suggesting is that America is fundamentally about individualism and that America might also fundamentally be about wealth creation. And, and, you know, there's a character in the book of quotes Norbert

Elias, the great sociologist who said once that the dominant majority shapes its we image from a minority of its best. And it fashions a they image of the despised outsiders from a minority of its worst. And so that's how, you know, 19 hijackers can come to stand in for all of Islam, right? But it is also, you know, if we look at what is the we, what is the dominant we defining itself in relation to the minority of its best, it's those who have made it. It's those who have achieved that individual success, those who have expressed their will through the making of money, which I think is the expression of will par excellence in America. American life. And so I think the book makes a case that when you're on the right side of race and when you're on the right side of making money, that's when you represent the best of what Americans believe that they should be. So, you know, and the race thing is a little complicated because in a way, the book seems to be suggesting at times that there are characters who feel that getting into that elite net worth crowd or circle is really what it's going to take for them to break into feeling American fully.

Yeah. Well, and, you know, to get a little literary here for parts of the world, but, you know, one of the things that I take away, right, is that your character in the book kind of has to confront their own demons and their own darkness to kind of figure out who they are. And you could say the same thing about America, right? And if you look at the Black Lives Matter movement, a lot of that is about, no, no, we need to look squarely at our trauma at the darkest parts of our history in order to move forward. If you even look at the news of Trump, and you talk about money and his tax returns, like we need to look at a country that allows billionaires to pay no taxes while working people are paying almost half of their paychecks and taxes. How essential do you think that is, particularly coming out of an experience like Trump, that you can't really figure out what America is unless you look pretty directly into the darkness and not just the light as it were? Well, here's the good news or the bad news, depending on how you're looking at it. There's no way for us to avoid it. The disrepair is so clear in the wake of the pandemic that we can't avoid it.

I think ascribing cause, you know, one side will say it's this for this reason, another side will they say it's for that reason. But the observations of fact, the sort of collapse of the administrative state, the collapse of our national infrastructure, the collapse of any collective agreements to be able to minister the health of the people, all of that is a function of a kind of crumbling of collective agreements and also of our sense of ourselves as a nation. And I think that we're going to have to. Sure, I guess some people think, leave me alone, government, and let me live on my land with my guns, is going to solve that problem. It's clear that that's not going to solve that problem. And sooner or later, we're going to get to a reckoning of some sort,

you know, whether we're there now and whether that's what's happening or whether that's ahead of us. I'm not sure. But, you know, I do think it would be good for us to want to look at this stuff and to make a decision somehow to have a real conversation about what's wrong with our country, together, all of us, not just folks like us who, you know, tend to vote one way versus another. How is that, how is that unify the American consciousness enough to have that conversation? I don't know.

I mean, in a way, in a very humble, small way, my book was an attempt to do that. I wanted to fashion a voice that was going to speak to all Americans. But, you know, it's, as you said earlier, it is literature. And so it really is a limited, it has a limited impact. Well, that was one last question I wanted to ask you, which is, you know, and this is why I'm so glad we had you on the show, Aod, is that, you know, America, you know, there's usually different conversations. There's a conversation happening in politics, which is a pretty trivial conversation,

given the stakes. And then you're in this world, you know, plays and novels, you know, there's a kind of cultural conversation happening. there's an entertainment industry that is churning out, you know, everything from superhero movies to, you know, pretty high-end television these days. But these conversations don't always intersect, you know, which is again why I was happy to have you on this show. I mean, is there something we can do to try to break down some of these walls? Because I often found, like, you know, there was thinking that was ahead of where I was in politics and foreign policy that was happening in academia or in the arts or even on television, right? I mean, how can we have one conversation instead of having this multitude of conversations that are disconnected from each other?

I mean, that's a great question. I'm reminded of something Harold Bloom once said, which was that our strongest poets, you know, by which he meant, our strongest artists were people who could fashion the essential currents and the national myths, right? And so I'd like to think that that's something that an artist can do. I'm not sure, you know, maybe there are moments, like, for example, David Simon with the wire. You know, certainly season three of the wire seems to distill so much that is essential about municipal American life and cast against a much wider sort of horizon. It's hard, but you're right. We live in a world where everything is increasingly atomized and where now even those atomized communities are further fractured by social media followings and all of the sort of, you know, categorization that the computers do and all of that. So it's hard, but I think I hope that strength of the imagination, I hope that people, you know, like yourself, who have wide ranging interests and see multi-valent pictures can speak to what they see.

And you've got to hope that that can move the needle. It's good to end the conversation on hope. Everybody should check out Ayad's book, Homeland Elegies. Believe me, you won't read another book like it. And it will speak to something that you've experienced in the last. few years. It's only did for me. So thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Thanks again to Ayad Oktar for joining the show. Ben, thank you. By the way, I have Ayad's book teed up, but first, I'm reading Leopold's Ghost. That was your recommendation to me. Yeah, King Leopold's Ghost,

right? Adam Hothschild, yeah. Yes, I just started it last night. I just finished this massive book about how evil Alan Dulles was and all the awful things the CIA did in the 50s, 60s. to include allegations that the agency was behind the assassination of JFK and RFK. It's an intense book. I don't know that they totally nail the evidence. The factuary case on the last part, but there is a lot in between, including in Congo, that is, you know, I think unexplored history of U.S. mistakes in the past. Congo is a place that, like, there's a lot of history there and it's not good for the CIA.

And, well, following in the Belgium, of course, but, Yeah, I remember reading Legacy of Ashes, another great book about all the things the CIA we created this kind of mythology. One of the interesting things is pop culture always makes the CIA look hyper-competent in the same way that they make, you know, the FBI always in the cops look like good guys in ways that, you know, we're now wrestling with this country. And look, there's some wonderful, wonderful people at the CIA who do wonderful work. But particularly in their history there, there's some pretty huge blind spots and

and less good things that were done. And it's worth reading it. So Legacy of Ashes is another one in that genre. Great book. This book was called The Devil's Chess Board. So, you know, check it out if you want six, seven hundred pages of some depressing as shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, some spy stories thrown in.

Yeah, that's good. That's true. All right, man, good to see you. And we'll talk to guys next week. Patsy of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil.

Kyle Segglin is our sound engine. Special thanks to Quinn Lewis for production support. And thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.