Pod Save the World - Trump’s Insane Plan To “Own” Gaza

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Tommy and Ben discuss how Trump’s insane plan to ethnically cleanse and “own” the Gaza strip is destabilizing governments in Egypt and Jordan, and why Trump keeps undermining the Gaza ceasefire deal he helped broker. They also discuss new whistleblower allegations about Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, how the Department of Justice is making it harder to combat foreign election interference and corruption, JD Vance’s speech scolding Europe for AI safety regulations, Trump’s Executive Order cutting off aid to South Africa, the dynastic political battle in the Philippines, and the discovery of new JFK assassination documents. Then, Tommy speaks to Congresswoman Sara Jacobs about the damage from cuts to USAID and what levers Democrats can pull to stop Trump from gutting agencies. 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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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash world to get free shipping and 365 day returns, quince.com slash world. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, so I was a little bit wrong when I said you should never bet against Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl. Just a touch off on that prediction. I mean, you were right about it until you were wrong. Then really wrong. I have to say, I was very excited for that game. I, like, hosted some people.

I made some wings. I made two kinds of wings. And tried to get my kids. I did, like, a buffalo and then like a honey soy, which was a smash success. But I was trying to get my kids into the game. Like, oh, you know, we're going to watch this great football game. And by the second quarter, it was very evident that this was not going to be a very good game. No, it was a pretty bad game.

I mean, my kids will stare at anything that's on the wall on his magic moving pictures, but they could give a shit about the game itself. Well, the humbling things about having kids, too, is that when the ads came on, they didn't really know who the celebrities were. And I'm like, there's Matt Damon, and they have no idea who that is, you know?

So I felt kind of old, you know? Yeah, yeah, welcome to, welcome the middle age. I like love those Duncan ads. I do feel like they're at, at a point where we're just putting too many celebrities into ads. You didn't need Jeremy Strong and Drusky and Maddie. Like, there's just like, there's too many people here. And Maddie McConae showed up multiple times, I think.

So many times. I mean, I'm grunk. Yeah. When I was a kid, like, it was like the Bud Bowl and a bunch of guys going, WhatsApp, you know, like we didn't need all these celebrities, you know? I think they got to dial it back. Yeah, every once in a while, you know, you see the tweets where people are talking about late stage capitalism and I roll my eyes a little bit.

But seeing Seal the singer as a digital actual seal singing about Mountain Dew made me want to blow my brains out before being honest. I was like, I don't know. Yeah, I'm sorry I can't unsee that. This experiment might be over. Anyway, I know everyone's here for our Super Bowl takes. We got a great show today. We're going to cover Trump's brand new plan to occupy Gaza, how it's infuriating basically everyone in the Arab world. We're also going to explain why people are terrified that the Gaza ceasefire deal might collapse.

then we'll talk about why Trump's pick for FBI director might have perjured himself. Interesting story there. How the DOJ is making foreign corruption and kleptocracy much easier. J.D. Vance took his first international trip to Paris to talk about AI. I heard that Donald and Melania let him fly by himself on the plane. You know, they had like an aunt or something pick him up at the hangar, but, you know, he did it. So we'll check in on him. We'll talk about why the U.S. is suddenly welcoming white refugees from South Africa, some crazy

shit going down in the Philippines. And then, Benny, you'll hear my conversation with Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs from San Diego. We're going to talk about the impact of the USAID and foreign assistance cuts. We'll talk about her work to end the civil war in Sudan and then what power Democrats in the House have to stop Trump. By the way, this booking happened at a Votesave America event just south of L.A., so lots of good symbiotic moves here. Sign up for Votes of America. You too might end up on positive of the world. You too. Might end up on. a podcast talking about the UAE. But Ben, let's start in Washington because shortly after we recorded last week, President Trump announced that in addition to his plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip,

he also wants the U.S. to occupy it indefinitely and deny those people he will displace the right to return home. Trump advisors reportedly didn't know he was going to announce this Gaza occupation plan before he did it. And then they seemed to try to walk it all back. But then Trump is just doubling down over and over again. Let's listen to a supercut of some of the things he said about this in the last couple of days. I'm committed to buying and owning us. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it. Other people may do it through our auspices. But we're committed to owning it, taking it. Mr. President, take it under what authority? It is sovereignty. Under the USFAR. We're not going to buy

anything we're going to have it and we're going to keep it and we're going to make sure that there's going to be peace we'll build beautiful communities for the 1.9 million people we'll build beautiful communities safe communities it would be a beautiful piece of land with the palestinians have the right to return uh no they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing much better in other words i'm talking about building a permanent place for that but what about the palestinians who just won't leave we've spoken our king of spoken a million They're all going to leave when they have a place that's a better alternative. When they have a nice place that's safe, they're all going to leave.

It's a hellhole right now. But how are you so surely? The U.S. forced them to me? You're going to see that they're all going to want to leave? So no surprise that this plan didn't go over all that well in Arab capitals, like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan, on Monday. In advance of King Abdullah of Jordan's visit to the White House on Tuesday, today when we're recording, Trump also said you would consider withholding aid from Egypt and Jordan, if they refuse to take in Palestinians. For those who don't know, Jordan and Egypt are some of the top recipients of U.S. military aid and have been for decades in large part because both countries cut the first peace deals with Israel.

And the stability of those governments is seen as the cornerstone for peace in the entire region. So, Ben, you know, there's a lot of debate about this announcement and people wondering if Trump's serious or if he's bluffing and setting up a negotiating position. I think I'd argue that the reaction we're seeing in the Middle East in the pressure this conversation put on King Abdullah who was like sitting there like literally like he looked like he was being physically squeezed between Trump and his own population in the Oval Office that it just shows that it doesn't really matter like in addition to being illegal and unethical calling for the forced migration of Gazans into Jordan is already destabilizing the Jordanian government.

And, you know, Abdullah might have bought himself some time in this Oval Office meeting by saying he take in 2,000 kids from Gaza who are suffering from dire medical conditions. But I doubt the Trump pressure campaign stops here. No. And let's just point out for a second, Tommy, that we or a lot of people in the U.S. have been in this kind of mode since the election of taking Trump more seriously as this kind of, you know, dynamic political figure who is a lot of. able to build a winning coalition and have kind of projected onto him a competence that he doesn't have. And this is clearly evidence of that. This idea is an absolute dead on arrival, crazy thing to be talking about. It's ethnic cleansing of two million people that don't want to leave. It is existential to Jordan and Egypt that don't want to take people in. But, I mean, to, you know, gracefully plug something I wrote about this in the New York Times.

over the weekend. And the point I want to pull out of that is two things, that even if this doesn't happen, because it's almost impossible to foresee how this would happen. And despite the fact that he's been taking questions, he hasn't, when he says he wants to buy it, it's not clear who he's buying it from. When he says he wants to own it, he's not clear how he wants to take ownership. They want to deny that U.S. troops have anything to do with it, but how else could the U.S. kind of take possession of Gaza without troops? But the two things that I want to underscore, are first of all, just by talking about this in the way that he has the last couple of weeks, in addition to what he said about Greenland and Panama and Canada, I guess,

he is completely ignoring the concept of state sovereignty, which is the cornerstone of the international legal system that was built after World War II to prevent big nations from just swallowing up smaller ones or grabbing territory like we used to do back in the colonial days. And the reason that's so dangerous is because that interacts with what Vladimir Putin's trying to do in taking chunks of Ukraine or what China might want to do in taking Taiwan or what Israel might want to do in the West Bank in Gaza. It's treating land like real estate instead of sovereign territory where people live. That's the first thing. And then the second thing is just the total disregard for the opinion of the Palestinians. He has not even solicited the opinion of a single Palestinian.

to inform this plan to take over Gaza. And there are two million people that live there and don't want to leave there. And it just suggests we're going back in time to this kind of pre-World War period where big powers just took land and made deals over the heads of smaller countries or less powerful people. And that led to two world wars. That's why we set up a whole system of international laws to prevent things like this from happening. Yeah, and just again, to hammer this home, I mean, half the population of Jordan is Palestinian.

The king doesn't want another huge influx of Palestinians into his country for a bunch of reasons, but starting with the fact that it could topple his regime. But on top of that, Palestinians don't want Jordan to become the de facto Palestinian state because it could deny them the right to return home to areas where they were displaced from in 67 or 48 or wherever in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza. and then Jordanians don't want a huge influx of Palestinians because they want Jordan to be Jordan, not Palestine. So the Jordanians hate Trump's plan. And then he's also leaning hard on the Egyptians to take in a bunch of people.

But Egypt is struggling from massive economic problems. They're currently relying on big loans from the EU and the IMF. And in recent years have taken in a ton of refugees from Sudan, Syria, Yemen, name your country. And they're struggling with that burden. and they don't want Hamas to, you know, reconstitute, you know, if you displace a big chunk of the Ghazan population into Egypt, Hamas reconstitutes there and then attacks Israel from Egypt. That could lead to an Israeli response into Egypt. They don't want that to happen. And they also, and in CC and the leaders in Egypt also don't want Hamas to stir shit up and build support for Islamist parties within Egypt himself.

So Trump just rolled this grenade into the Middle East with this plan. And everyone, else, I guess we're just watching to see if this thing is going to explode. It's a disaster. Yes. And you're right about what you said about Jordan. Look, King Abdullah is married to a Palestinian. There are millions of Palestinians who live in Jordan on the East Bank. And that's often been a source of some tension because of Jordan's peace treaty with Israel. And so if King Abdullah were to participate in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by taking in some of these two million Palestinians who don't want to leave Gaza, I really don't know if his regime could survive that. I think that the boiling frustration with what is already, like not a very good economic

circumstance with already displaced Palestinians could get out of hand. And similarly in Egypt, where you have a brittle military dictatorship with a lot of anger seething underneath, that could explode too, particularly if you have a Hamas introduced into that equation. It also is relevant, Tommy, that USAID funds a significant amount of assistance into Jordan that that government really relies on. And for all Trump's talk about that they've already budgeted. That they've already budgeted. They think already have, yeah. Yeah. And so I guess it could go hat and hand to the Gulf states and ask them to kind of fill this gap the USAID provided. But it's not just money the USAID provides to Jordan, its expertise. It's help in running certain

government programs. That's being yanked away. Trump talks about rebuilding life for Gazans. Guess which agency does that? USAID. And USAID already cannot really fulfill its obligations under the ceasefire agreement, just the short-term ceasefire agreement. When you think about the long-term needs in Gaza to clear rubble, to demobilize and destroy unexploded. bombs that are littering Gaza, never mind, temporary housing and then long-term housing. Without USAID, I don't know how that gets done. It doesn't. We talked about demining being one of the things that Rubio cut off at the State Department,

cleaning up unexploded bombs. Well, there's no place in the world that needs that more than Gaza right now. So Trump is talking about these things while simultaneously handicapping the part of the government, USAID, that would do that. Yeah, and the Jordanians host. multiple U.S. military bases. So, Abdullah's like, what else do you want for me? Yeah.

But, Ben, you mentioned that Trump has not talked to a single Palestinian. We did. We reached out to a Gaza named Shruke Ela to ask whether she would actually want to leave the Gaza Strip. Here's what she had to say. If I have the choice to leave Gaza over this decision, I will never. I did not leave Gaza during the indigenous side. We endured almost one year and a half under heavy compartment.

and under a killing machine, an unstopping killing machine, and we choose to stay not to evacuate Gaza. And I will not do this if I got the choice to evacuate Gaza under the demands of prisons and traps. Ben, I just want to point out that we played a number of audio clips from Gazans over the last 16 months, and we've never once had one where you could not hear a drone, like very audibly in the background.

Yeah, that was a very audible drone. And, you know, to her point, I know, Tom, if you saw when the ceasefire first went into effect, these long lines of Gazins kind of returning to their already destroyed homes, these are people that do not want to leave. They are absolutely determined to stay where they live because they know if they leave that they're not going to be able to go back. And Trump himself said that.

He said, no right of return. And some of these families in Gaza, a lot of them, were already displaced from other parts of what is now Israel and became refugees in 1948 or 1967. And they don't want to live in Egypt and Jordan and quote unquote modern homes or whatever, you know, Arizona-style. Trump is talking about. He's pretending as to be like condos. It's going to be a refugee camp, right? They're going to be a cheap. Like they do everything else.

And I just wonder, Tommy, like, where this came from this idea? because this is not something that had been floated anywhere else. You know, the Greenland thing has been hanging around. I have no idea. It begs the question, you know, because I don't think this came from, you know, Waltz, a national security advisor or Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State. Is Trump just kind of coming up with this on the fly? Is someone whispering in his ear?

Because this is a crazy fucking idea that is not popular anywhere. It's not like Americans want to own Gaza. either. So it does raise a question of how is Trump making these decisions or making these pronouncements that have very real effects in the world? Yeah, even Jared Kushner's ethnic cleansing plan would have pushed the Gazans into the desert in Israel, not into Jordan and Egypt. I want to get into this bigger motivation point in this section because I think you're getting at something important here because we're in the middle of this ceasefire. Listeners probably know this is phase one of what is supposed to be three phases. Phase one has Hamas releasing 25 living

hostages and the bodies of eight hostages who were killed while Israel releases 1500 Palestinian prisoners and they pull back their troops from some population centers. The two sides are about halfway through the agreed upon exchanges. However, Hamas's most recent release of three male Israeli hostages was shocking and it led to outrage across Israel because these men looked like Holocaust survivors. They were so emaciated and sickly. And adding to the horror, these fucking monsters in Hamas forced these men to read prepared speeches thanking their captors. And then one of the men released, Eli Sharabi returned home to learn that his wife and two daughters had been killed by Hamas on October 7th, so it's truly evil. And then at the same time, Hamas said they're going to delay the

next hostage release because Israel is preventing Gazans from returning home to northern Gaza. They're targeting people with shelling and gunfire and not letting in certain kinds of humanitarian release. So Hamas is saying they're not going to continue with the ceasefire agreement because Israel is breaking the terms. There have also been widespread allegations that Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel have been tortured. On top of that, Ben, because he is an arsonist, President Trump decided to weigh in. Let's listen to that. That's Israel's decision. But as far as I'm concerned, if all of the hostages aren't returned by Saturday at 12 o'clock, I think it's an appropriate time.

I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I'd say they ought to be returned by 12 o'clock on Saturday. And if they're not returned, all of them, not in drips and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two. So, Ben, I want to point out there what Trump is saying is not Netanyahu's position. Trump is saying all the hostages. So just complete phase one of the deal. Bibi is saying, yeah, Bibi saying Hamas released the hostages this weekend that you're supposed release where the ceasefire is over. He's basically saying follow the terms of the deal that we all

negotiated that Trump helped get over the finish line. And so like we had said from day one, like the ceasefire deal is very fragile. The Israeli right wing wants to blow it up and resume fighting. Hamas is led by, you know, this band of cruel monsters who seem to be doing whatever they can to, you know, give BB a pretext to walk away. And then Trump makes things worse every time he opens his mouth. And so the question I'm wondering, Ben, along lines what you're saying is Trump and Steve Wickoff, his Middle East emissary, got this deal over the finish line. They deserve a ton of credit. But now Trump is upending his own deal with these comments.

And the question is why, right? Like a week ago, he wanted the Nobel Peace Prize for getting the ceasefire done. Now he's saying things to push the two sides back to war. And the question is what changed. And one theory I've heard is that Trump suddenly started viewing Gaza as a real estate deal, as this long-term ownership plan for the United States. And he realized that continuing the war, even though it will lead to more death for the hostages, for Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, is a necessary condition for his vision, right?

Because the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip will only get done by force. And Trump needs the IDF to do that work for him. And now he seems to be blowing up the ceasefire. So I don't know. It is like a very dark theory. But I'm trying to understand any other reason why he would suddenly blow up a deal that everyone was crediting for. Yeah, it is odd.

Part of me always thought that he partially wanted this deal announced right before he took office to kind of humiliate Joe Biden in some way, you know, despite the fact that Joe Biden went out and took credit for it and, you know, laughed at the reporter who asked who should get credit. The world looked at that and said, oh, it seems like this is finally happening. In like a Jimmy Carter 1980 situation, right? when the Iranians released all the hostages when Reagan took office. It felt like a bit of a, you know,

chef's kiss to the Biden administration from both Trump and BB that this was agreed on. Now what we've seen, yes, everything you said is true, including the horrific behavior of Hamas and these releases, trying to reassert itself in some ways as the dominating force in Gaza. And, you know, let's be fair, like Israel has not kept the deal in a whole race. of ways, whether it's delivering tents into Gaza or whether it's the treatment of prisoners who have been released from Israeli prisons. But I think you're onto something here, which is that Trump's interest, where they align with the Israeli right wing, the Israeli right wing does not

want anything left in Gaza. They actually want to ethnically cleanse the place. They want to clear out the population there. They talk about this. I mean, you know, Ben Gavir has talked about wanting to depopulate Gaza, wanting to settle, at least northern Gaza. And if Trump really does have some strange fixation on, you know, building it up, I assume what's interesting to me, Tommy, is that the Israeli right wing has welcomed Trump's comments. Yes, big time. And I thought they might do the opposite. I thought they might be offended by it and be like, no, but they loved it. They cheered it. I had the same thought as you. And then they all cheered it. Smotrich, you know, we've talked about the finance minister said this is the death of the Palestinian state.

And because I think what they believe is not that if Trump, you know, builds a wonderful real estate properties on the waterfront there, it's going to be Israelis who live from them, you know. And notice that Trump never says that, you know, he actually is clear in saying that Gazans, Palestinians will not live in the real estate development. And so I think where there's this kind of strange alignment is in Trump's head, whatever's going on there, he's thinking, we'll clear it out, the Palestinians will move out, we'll clear the rubble, we'll build a bunch of stuff, and then people will move in there.

But I think the people that will move in there, at least in the minds of the Israeli right, are Israelis. And then they'll have the waterfront properties. And so there's this kind of, I don't even know if that's what Trump thinks, because he always talks about the people, the region moving there, and maybe he's thinking about his buddies from the Emirates or Saudi, having some nice beachfront property. but clearly there's some sense in Israel that this is good. This can give us the cover of an American proposal to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip,

take ownership of it, and ultimately move in there. And I think that's what's happening. You could also imagine some big, you know, U.S. military base port, et cetera, sitting in Gaza to replace, you know, maybe what we have in Qatar or some other places or just add to them. Also, just a quick note on the arsonist bucket ban. I mean, it is worth noting that last week Trump signed an executive. order, putting sanctions on officials at the International Criminal Court. These are, I think, like economic and travel sanctions, which would mean that ICC prosecutors can't come to the U.S.

to meet with people at the U.N. and do their jobs. Not surprising, really, that he did this because Trump sanctioned ICC officials in the first term, but it's just worth noting that once again, the U.S. government is pretending to stand up for justice, but we're welcoming guys like Netanyahu and Yoav Galant, the former Israeli defense minister who have been charged with war crimes to Washington, punishing the people at this international body that is seeking accountability and justice. So good stuff. An international body that we welcomed when they put forward charges against Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine. And what's interesting about this is that if you look at the ICC, this is a largely kind of Western-created institution, right? European-led, created institution

with U.S. participation. U.S. never really joined it, obviously. But now what's happening is, is the champions of the ICC are increasingly in places like South Africa or in places in the global South. And I think what we're going to see in the Trump administration writ large is the international community, whatever that used to be, is going to increasingly become non-U.S. So all these institutions that were kind of created out of the kind of post-World War II system are going to start to have advocates and champions and supporters in the developing world. and the U.S. is going to become the rogue nation that is outside of international law. And that's going to happen obviously on trade like we've talked about as countries that are getting tired of getting tariffed by the U.S.

start to align with China. So there's a cost. Obviously, we've lost the moral high ground. When you're sanctioning the ICC and welcoming, you know, Netanyan Galant who have been charged with war crimes to Washington, you have no moral high ground anymore. It's gone. It's over. We're not even pretending to be hypocrites anymore. We're just fully owning being the people that are arsonists.

But I think what you'll see is that actually the center of gravity on issues of international law and international cooperation are going to move from Washington and in some cases even Europe to other parts of the world. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your relationship green flags? People that are nice. People that listen. People that don't look over your shoulder while you're talking to find someone else better to talk. I'm just describing things people do in D.C., I guess. But yeah, those are green flags, people that are genuinely caring and love their family and I don't know.

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So the Senate took a procedural vote to advance Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. I think she got 52 votes. So that seems like a done deal and it sucks. However, Ben, Cash Mattel, the nominee to Trump's nominee to be the next FBI director, may have hit a little turbulence. We'll see, first of all, there's just been a bunch of reporting about Cash Patel's bizarre employment history. That includes working for Qatar, a Chinese clothing company called Cheyenne, and what the AP calls a quote, foreign arms conglomerate named the Czechoslovak group. That's a great name for an

arms conglomerate. The country that no longer exists. It's incredible. You and I should work for the Yugoslavian group or something. Just sold grenades instead of underwear. The Washington Post also reported on a $25,000 payment that Cash Patel got from a filmmaker who's a Russian U.S. dual national, but makes like, you know, programs promoting deep state conspiracies. This guy also released a film called the Maidan Massacre that tried to counter the pretty well-established findings that pro-Russian mercenaries killed a bunch of anti-government activists during the 2014 protests in Ukraine. He was very opposed to the, um, resistance groups in Ukraine. So not weird at all there. And then earlier today, Ben,

Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois sent a letter to the Department of Justice Inspector General saying that Cash Patel, quote, has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants, end quote, at the FBI. According to Durbin, Patel is relaying orders for these purges through Stephen Miller. This is a very big deal because during his hearing before the Judiciary panel, Cash Patel had this to say. Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations. I'm not aware of this. Thank you. I think that's a question from Cory Booker. So, Ben, this feels to me like a bit of an existential moment for the Senate. Like, this guy is not

remotely qualified for the job. He has foreign financial entanglements that would spike literally anyone from getting a security clearance anywhere. And now he seems to have perjured himself. Like, what are you guy is going to do about it? Do you exist anymore or not? You could you could not get hired for the lowest level job at the FBI with those kinds of foreign entanglements that cash Patel has, first of all. Second of all, and I guess we have to be careful and I was talking about this Tommy, but there are purges happening at the FBI. We know this. It's being reported, okay? So, you know, thousands of letters going out to anybody that worked on a January 6th associated case, whether or not they chose to work on that case or not, the whole divisions being shut down,

dealing with things like foreign influence that, you know, get at, you know, Russian interference in American politics, which obviously is Cash Patel's hobby horse about the quote-unquote Russia hoax. This is happening. And Cash Patel, you know, has been hanging out with Trump, like he was down at Mar-Lago. Like the idea that Cash Patel, as he testified, and here's wrong. Let's just say it's hard for me to imagine that he had no idea that any of this was going to happen. And he told the Senate under oath that he had no idea that anything was going to happen at the FBI. I mean, do you have any self-respect? I mean, this is the question that comes up again and again with Senate Republicans, but do you really believe that? I mean, already you're twisting yourself

in the knots to pretend that this person is qualified to run the FBI. and to pretend that it's not like a danger to law enforcement in this country, to put in place like a deeply vindictive person that was like hawking supplements and, you know, working for the Czechoslav group or whatever a few months ago or whenever it was, this is a huge warning sign because as Durbin said in his letter, which again, all the letter isn't like remarkable information. This is all happening before our eyes, this kind of purged mentality of the FBI. What happens when this guy is actually in power?

Like he's not even in power yet, and this is already happening. Yeah. In addition to the purges, I mean, the Washington Post had a report on how candidates for national security jobs are facing loyalty tests during job interviews. So there are two people up for intelligence jobs who were asked if the 2020 election was stolen and if January 6 was an inside job. They both said no to those questions and were not hired. And also according to the post over at the FBI, the loyalty questions include, quote, who were the real patriots on January? 6th, who won the 2020 election, who was your real boss? So, you know, this shouldn't surprise us because this kind of like ideological vetting was a core part of the project 2025 project,

but it's pretty goddamn worrisome. And I just like, I don't know. It's just we read the craziest shit every single day and no one seems to do anything about it. And no one, and I don't do a lot of media criticism in this age, but there is this kind of weird thing like Cash Patel is somehow qualified because he worked in law enforcement. enforcement. This is not in any way normal. And the one thing I'd add, Tommy, is I was actually talking to somebody who works at the FBI, you know, not in a deep stay way, just like, and the point that this person was making is that the FBI workforce is probably, if not the most conservative in the government, like pretty close to it. Like, they're not, this is not the

But, you know, let's be honest, I guess. It's not USAID. Exactly. Or CFPB, right? Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or USAID. I never asked those people how they voted. They probably, you know, are more Democrat than Republican. The FBI, like, when we were in office, we were not winning any elections in the FBI.

We were getting blown out in the FBI. And maybe some people in the FBI have suggested that the headquarters, the DC, office is a little bit more, excuse a little bit more liberal, but not that much. I mean, you know, and the people are- Not a lot of pronouns in email signatures. They're not a pronouns email signatures. So they're purging like right-wing people. That's what's so deep about this purge. Yeah. It's not enough to be right-wing. You have to be a complete Kool-Aid drinking loyalist. And that's what's so scary. It's not actually ideology left-right. It is just Trump, Trump, Trump. That's what this is all about. Yeah. And like,

They're also stripping away security clearances from former Biden officials, even Joe Biden himself. And I'll be honest, I don't really give a shit. But in practice, it does mean that, like, if you're a national security advisor, you can't call in Jake Sullivan, your predecessor and ask him about a covert action program that started during the Biden administration or call Tony Blinken about a set of negotiations that occurred with, you know, some foreign country when he was in power. So it's just like you're, you're hurting yourself here. It's fucking. stupid. And the thing about the security clearances and the purges is how do you come back from this? You know, a Democrat comes in. They're going to feel the need to remove all these Trump people, and they're not going to want to give security clearances to the, you know, Stephen Miller's of the world. And all of a sudden, the norm becomes this kind of winner-take-all treatment of the federal government in areas like national security and law enforcement, where you want, people to have like decades of experience. Like it's much better to have FBI agents who've been on the

job for 15 years than like it turns over every four years. That's what concerns me too. Is it this is not stuff that you can climb back from. Yeah, I agree. And Ben, you alluded to this, but, you know, while we're talking about all this stuff, Cash Patel's boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, is doing all these things to make it easier for foreign agents to influence U.S. politics. So on day one of her tenure at DOJ, Bondi issued a series of executive orders that will limit prosecutions under the Foreign Agent Registration Act or FARA. So that'll basically make it easier for foreign autocrats to secretly lobby the U.S. government. Bondi herself, by the way, is no stranger to getting paid under FARA. She was registered under the law for Qatar

and got, I think, $115,000 a month to lobby for them. So interesting, that country's coming up a lot. she's also getting rid of the FBI's foreign influence task force, which is designed to prevent foreign election interference. And she's disbanding task forces that looked for and confiscated kleptocrat assets and work to return those stolen assets. So this is going to severely curtail how, you know, our ability to, you know, find a boat that some Russian oligarch parked in the med and, you know, take it and seize it and sell it off and return it to the Ukrainians, for example. She's also going to curtail how the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is enforced. Trump signed an executive order on Monday directing the DOJ to pause prosecutions under the FCPA,

which has been on the book since the late 70s and forbids Americans from bribing foreign government officials. This unit is now only going to focus on cases involving bribes to cartels in transnational criminal organizations. So it's like a blurry of stuff there, Ben. And to understand what this all means, we caught up with Casey Michelle, the author of the the book, Foreign Agents, How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threatened Democracy Around the World. And he's also the director of the combating Cliptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation.

We had him on the show last fall. Great interview. Check it out. But here's a clip from him. As far as I can tell, this was the single worst day in terms of the broader history of American anti-corruption efforts. And I don't want to sound too doom and gloom, but I am not optimistic whatsoever about anti-corruption moves coming forward from the new administration.

This was, to a certain extent, expected. But it's still one thing to expect it and another thing to actually see it play out in real time. And I think the thing that's most shocking for me is that they're not just even going through the kind of rhetorical approaches of saying, yes, we'll continue these prosecutions. Yes, we'll continue this focus. I mean, they're getting rid of some of the key areas of success in the United States of America's fight against corruption and kleptocracy. They are eliminating completely these task forces that have been targeting oligarchs and dictators

and dirty money around the world. I mean, they're not even making a pretense of any of this. In that sense, I am somewhat shocked that they're not even paying lip service. They're just taking a sledgehammer and a wrecking ball to all of this full stop. So, you know, big week for international bribery. Yeah, I think the thing to know about is that, you know, we've covered this on this podcast for, you know, seven years that I've been here, that a lot of these Trump people, they circulate in this world, this kind of murky world of doing business in places. like the Gulf or Southeast Asia or Turkey, you know, where a bribe gets you this far. And where actually I think there is a belief that the U.S. is somehow disadvantaged by not being

able to play dirty. Trump said as much in the Oval Office too. I'm just going to name it here. Like they would like it to be a situation where you can walk in with a suitcase full of cash, you know, and get something done faster that way. So I actually don't think this is, you know, just seeing this as a kind of democracy agenda that they want to cut back. They are dismantling the parts of the government that aim to prevent corruption. It's not even just deprioritizing.

This is like shutting the whole thing down. And I don't really know what world we enter, but where I think, you know, as one of the things we're trying to do on this pod under Trump 2.0, kind of pull. the thread here on what's happening, they're turning the U.S. into the kind of country where this is normalized, where, you know, you go around, you spread some money around, it's okay, they were corrupt, you know, we're taking advantage of crypto over here to make some money. We've got these kind of family members that are kind of in the government or not in the government who might represent us or not, kind of flying around the Gulf doing stuff like Jared does. you know, we've got people that are kind of associates of the Trump administration.

They're not like Elon Musk is he either government employee or not. Tom Barrick, for example. Tom Barrick, you know, like, so there's this whole industry around Trump that is very much about dealmaking internationally, and they don't want like a lot of spotlight on corruption. Now, to be clear, this is totally aligned with the kind of kleptocratic world that a Vladimir Putin I mean, these are divisions of the U.S. government that did things like crack down on Russian oligarch money and money laundering, and a lot of the dark money that kind of swashes around and ends up funding far-right politics. So this is both a kind of business interest for some

people, but also the political interest of a lot of the kleptocratic money out there in the global economy ends up washing around kind of far-right parties in Europe and other places. So this is a feature, not a bug, is the point. This is a part of. of the governing ethos of this Trump administration in a way that they might have aspired to the first time around. I mean, it's almost quaint. No, that's a good point because this is like a great example of how everything is accelerationist because there was this, there was this New Yorker piece in 2017 where Trump was ranting about the FCPA to Rex Tillerson, who as the CEO of Exxon was very familiar with, you know, the fact that bribes get shit done to get access to oil fields abroad. And

there was, you know, in this New Yorker piece, Tillerson told Trump, like, actually, sir, like we should bring the world up to our standards, right? And that kind of, you know, like adults in the room, I think kind of prevented some of these excesses. But Trump 2.0, they're like, fuck it. FCPA, gone. I guess we got to feel bad about making fun of the committee to save America, Tommy. I know, man. But I know, because I will say, remember how quaint it feels now to, you know, we used to be pissed at the Saudis would spend a lot of money like Trump hotels? Like, that is literally some change in a tip jar compared to the amount of money that could move

around if you do away with all these constraints. Just buy that Trump coin, baby. That's all you need. We're going to take a quick break, but in case you didn't know, Potta of the World's got its own YouTube channel now. You can find all our interviews, clips, exclusive content, including Roadsmap,

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a paywall to your content. Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com slash world to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com slash world. Let's switch gears here, Ben, because J.D. Vance, our extremely online vice president, who I think doesn't get invited to the real meetings. So we just tweets all day.

He put on his big boy pants. He went overseas and took his first trip to Europe. There, J.D. gave his first international speech since becoming vice president at an AI summit in France that included a bunch of European leaders, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Indian Prime Minister and Render Modi and some tech leaders. Vance declared that America will remain the world's leader on AI, and he scolded everybody who is worried about AI safety. Let's listen. Now, just because we're the leader doesn't mean we want to or need to go it alone, of course. And let me be emphatic about this point. America wants to partner. with all of you. And we want to embark on the AI revolution before us with the spirit of openness and collaboration. But to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that fosters the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it. And we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation. He also took a bunch of swipes at Europe for going after U.S. tech firms and social media companies saying, quote,

it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet. It is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing opinions that the government thinks is misinformation. End quote. Every country at this summit signed a declaration that said they want to ensure AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure, and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all, except for the U.S. and Britain. I guess we abstain from that language. seems pretty vanilla, but I guess we think we're better.

But Ben, like the broader kind of mood music for J.D. Vance's trip to Europe was Trump threatening to put tariffs on the EU and everyone waiting to see what the hell Trump is going to do when it comes to the war in Ukraine. Vance is going to meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Summit on Friday. So maybe we'll get more information then. And while J.D. didn't get the warmest welcome in France, there was a whole conference of Trump fanboys who gathered in Madrid last weekend for the Patriots for Europe conference. It's a far-right gathering that included like every far-right leader on the continent. And they all were praising Trump in talking about the need to make Europe great again.

Here was Hirt Wilders, a right-wing Dutch politician who has been a far-right figure for about 20 years. He's anti-Islamic. He is anti-immigrant. He's terrible. Here he is talking about Trump. The world is changing rapidly before our eyes. and we are at the forefront of this transformation. And as President Trump ushers a golden age for America, we must ask ourselves, are we ready to do the same in Europe?

And the answer, as you just said, indeed, is yes, we will make Europe great again, because we are victors. Some other speakers included Victor Orban, Marine Le Pen, a bunch of other right wing nuts. Ben, it's interesting to me that like the Trump position on AI is just kind of like polar opposite of Biden's. Like the last summit that I think Cabela Harris went to was about AI safety and putting guardrails on the technology. I guess the Trump people just don't think we should do that. I don't know if that's from some genuine feelings or just kind of trolling Biden still. I don't know. What'd you make it?

No, I think it has to come, I think it comes from some of the more Uber libertarian tech bros that J.D. That's true. And Trump hang out with because they see Europe as the enemy because Europe, the European Union is a regulatory superpower. So they're not big AI companies out of Europe. Mistral and France is like one exception. But there are a lot of issues that people are concerned about. If you just take national security, people are concerned about AI. in nuclear weapons command and control.

By the way, just a side note, Tommy, that I was singing as I was reading my Doge, and Doge is instituting AI and all these government places. Like, wait for the moment when some Doge Bros, like Big Balls or whomever, put AI in charge of, like, the nuclear stockpile, you know?

I'd kind of like some scientists to be in charge of that, but put that aside. Biological weapons, you don't want chat GPT to be producing, you know, recipes for 25 COVID-variants. obviously privacy concerns, concerns about deep fake disinformation campaigns, you know, Vladimir Putin creating an alternative reality to destabilize a country by showing videos of

something that's not happening. And then, you know, societal disruption, economic disruptions. And so the EU is a regulatory state. And Biden saw China as a competitor on AI. Biden was like, I got to stop the Chinese from catching up to us on AI. J.D. Vance's speech almost suggested that the European Union and the European Commission is the enemy because they might, so weird. God forbid, they try to regulate these AI safety issues. And what is so whiplashy to these Europeans, Tommy, is that Biden asked them to take on AI safety.

Like the British hosted the first AI safety summit. Right. And now after being patted on the back for taking leadership on AI safety, they have Americans coming and yelling at them about that. And so it must make them want to say, like, well, fuck you. well, we'll go deal with the Chinese in AI. I just want to say on that right-wing summit to make Europe great again, when the, you know, fascists and neo-Nazis and when they're happy, it's not good.

So like the kind of, you know, rally that we saw there, like that, that's a sign that global politics, the momentum is not in the right place right now, and we all have to figure out a way to change that. Yeah, we'll talk about it next week, but I'm very anxious about these upcoming German elections for a variety of reasons. All right, we've got a couple more things. We'll move faster through. So last week, Ben, President Trump signed an executive order

cutting off foreign aid to South Africa. But the EO also offered to resettle white South Africans who are, quote, victims of unjust racial discrimination, and, quote, as refugees in America. Here's what Trump had to say when he was signing this EO. The South African situation is very, very dangerous and very bad for a lot of people. there's tremendously bad things going on, including the confiscation of property, and worse, much worse than that.

You know what I'm talking about. And we're not making any payment until we find out what's going on in South Africa. So here's the backstory on this. Trump is not about a law signed in late January by South African President Cyril Romaphosa that under specific circumstances allows seizure of private land without compensation. South Africa's land ownership is wildly inequitable due to lingering effects of apartheid. White South Africans make up just 7% of the country but owns 72% of private farmland. As the New York Times pointed out, this law has a bunch of checks and balances to guard against

abuse. And the most likely case scenario is that it would be used to seize land that was not being used. But the announcement was easily folded into this long running conspiracy theory on the right that there is this widespread seizure of land from white farmers in South Africa and even an anti-white genocide happening that I remember talking to you about this back in 2019.

Tucker Carlson had started doing a bunch of segments on this alleged wave of murders of white farmers in South Africa. Trump saw one of those segments. He tweeted about it. He ordered Mike Pompeo, then the Secretary of State, to investigate.

I guess they didn't dig much up because we're back at it. But other far-right leaders have taken up this cause too. They've offered special visas to white South Africans. That includes this guy Peter Dutton in Australia's right-winger there in Vladimir Putin. So as usual, good company for Trump. This time, Secretary General Marco Rubio jumped into the fray,

tweeting that he's going to boycott this year's G20 meeting in Johannesburg. This is verbatim from Rubio's tweet, quote, South Africa is doing very bad things, expropriating private property, using G20 to promote, quote, solidarity, equality, and sustainability. In other words, DEI and climate change. My job is to advance America's national interest, not waste taxpayer money, or cuddle anti-Americanism. It's the end of his tweet. Marco, one other option here is you could show up and tell people you disagree.

You are the America's top diplomat. Maybe you could talk about it. But anyway, Elon Musk then weighed in. He tweeted at Rumba Fossa saying, quote, why do you have openly racist ownership laws? So the lingering question here of how much of this is being driven by Elon. Musk, who was originally from South Africa, kind of whispering in Trump's ear about all this shit. Ben, I did want to just note that when Trump was asked if refugees from Gaza could come to the U.S., he said, no, Gaza's 5,000 miles away.

It's inconvenient. They'd rather settle in the region. But when white South African refugees who live on the other side of the planet, like literally, are apparently welcome in the U.S., you know. one might wonder why they're treating it so differently. Yeah, this is actually a really important story to get at the heart of what this whole MAGA thing is all about because it's obviously got a deeply racial component. I mean, to build on your Gaza analogy, Tommy, when, you know, a country in which there was

apartheid and just brutal systemic repression and 70% of land is owned by white farmers who make up 7% of the population, when a portion of that land that is nobody's living on is reallocated, that's a white genocide. But when you blow up all of Gaza and destroy all of it and ethnically cleanse it, it's called like a redevelopment program or something, you know. So they applied their own, you know, feelings about South African white people to Gaza. Imagine what that would look like. I think just to add, you know, something to this, in addition to the Elon Musk of it all, like how much is this white South African, you know, calling the shots? As you point out, Trump, though, said some of this in the first term.

I think that this is also, Trump is trying to kind of, with the people around him, recreate the history of the last, let's say, post-Cold War era, the last 35 years. So for people like you and me, you know, older millennials, the high point of moral achievement in the world was Nelson Mandela becoming the president of South Africa. And they're literally trying to reverse engineer that and say, no, no, no, actually the white people in South Africa were actually the victims. And it's a mirror image of what they've done in this country. Like white people have somehow been the victims of racism. And I think that the true believers, the Stephen Miller types, they actually believe this. And if you look at what

authoritarian regimes do. They do try to kind of recreate history itself. And, and so I think they want to undo the entire liberal consensus around what was good, you know, it was a good thing that apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela came out of prison and became president of South Africa. Like, they'll probably be pulling like Invictus off of shelves, you know, like, like, we can't watch that mate Damon movie anymore, you know? Yeah. But I know I'm not, I'm making light of it, but it's a serious point, like, they're hyper-focused in the same way that people on the left and liberals have focused on South Africa as like a morality play in a good way, they're trying to reverse that from their own perspective, and it's super dark. And it's just glaring. It's just so brazen and

obvious. By the way, the G20 is the most important collection of countries in the world. Just go to the G20. So for Markerubio to not go to that, it's just a cell phone. Yeah, this is the clown. Then, Ben, let's turn to the Philippines because there's some truly wild shit happening there that we wanted to touch on. So first in background, there's two political dynasties. There's the Marcos's and the Duterte's. Those two groups joined forces in 2022 when Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who is the son of deposed kleptocrat and dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda Marcos, who owned all the shoes. He was elected president. His running mate turned vice president was Sarah Duterte, the daughter of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte. Remember,

Duterte was the guy who had a security forces, massacre random people and just call it a war on drugs. So it turns out the political alliance of these two families was short-lived because they disagreed on, among other things, how to deal with China and the South China Sea. Marcos wants to cozy up to the U.S. Duterte wanted to cozy up to China and Russia. And long story short, these families now loathe each other and not in kind of like a grin and bear kind of way in like a I'm going to actually kill you kind of way. In November, in what the AP described as a pre-dawn online news conference, Duterte said she had arranged to have Marcos, his wife,

and the Speaker of the House of Representatives assassinated if she herself was killed. And lest you think she was kidding, she clarified that she was in fact not joking. So for that threat, some other corruption allegations we won't get into, and for not condemning China's aggression in the South China Sea, She was impeached last week by a pretty wide margin in the House of Representatives. And then next up, the Senate turns into an impeachment court where you need a two-third majority to remove Sarah Duterte from office. If that were to happen, Duterte would be banned from public office for good and she couldn't run

again in the next election. Ben, I bet a lot of American vice presidents have thought, I'd love to just whack the boss. I don't know that any of them have said it out loud quite like this, but it was pretty I don't know, bizarre story. Yeah, I mean, totally insane. And I mean, a sign that this idea that you could have this unholy alliance from the corrupt Marcos family and the kind of brutalist Duterte family was always perhaps going to be kind of short-lived.

Yeah, a real bummer. But the bummer is really just the lack of democracy in the Philippines. It's like two warring families, essentially, competing for, like, power. and wealth and spoils. And I would like to see the Philippines, a place that was about the people power movement again to build on what we were talking about with Nelson Mandela. Like that was a good thing when Marcos was ousted by people power

and you had civil society. I hope that that can regenerate because all the people are seeing is that the one thing that these people don't seem to care about is Filipinos. You know, it's just about power. It's just about what I have. the respect I'm treated with. So I'm not sure I'm rooting for in this blood feud. But I guess from the U.S. perspective of like the narrow foreign policy interests,

Marcos is more aligned than due to territories. But yeah, this is, it's hard to figure out whose side you're on here. Yeah, that's a good point. I guess we're just rooting for new leadership. New leadership would be nice. That's what I'm rooting for, yeah. Some fresh blood. And then finally, Ben, don't you hate it when you ran?

uncover 2,400 files related to a 61-year-old case that traumatized an entire nation and fueled conspiracy theories in one very good Oliver Stone movie for decades. I know I do. But apparently in prepping for Donald Trump's executive order to release files related to the JFK assassination, the FBI dug up a couple thousand old files that they just kind of lost in the shuffle. It is unclear what these files contain and if they'll change anything about our understanding of JFK's assassination.

But all the records related to this assassination are supposed to be in the National Archives, and there's a lot of them already there, like 5 million. So 3,000 have not been released. If it all goes, according to Trump's executive order, we will be able to see those files on March 9th. I think past excuses we've heard from administrations were the remaining declassified files, you know, included names of people who are still living, for example, and that's why maybe they weren't releasing them. But I don't know. I'm glad they're getting this out. It's crazy that the FBI just found 2,400 files that they just had misplaced, I guess, about the JFK assassination. Yeah, it doesn't exactly put the conspiracy theory there is to rest, you know. I mean, if I have to give Mr. Trump credit for one thing, it's that his approaching of the presidency as like fantasy camp is usually horrible because it's usually like I would like my own generals and I'd like my own FBI. But the

one place where I kind of respected is it's like, I want to know who really killed JFK, you know. I kind of wish we'd done this. You know, people always ask me, did you get the briefing on Who Killed Kennedy? Did you get the briefing on the aliens? And I'm kind of embarrassed to say, I actually never thought we could ask for that. I mean, even if you ask, doesn't mean they're going to give you shit. That's where the deep state's got some power. They don't have to tell you what they don't have done.

And the Kennedy thing is the root of the whole idea of a deep state, right? I mean, I don't know, man. I don't believe the Warren Commission, you know? Like, I'm not saying I believe the full Oliver Stone version either, but you just get a sense that we were not told the whole truth here. So I do hope this gets out. Maybe that's one good thing that could come out of the Trump presidency. Yeah, I do. I want him to release these documents.

I think he should also release all the Epstein files. Interesting that Mr. Trump has not released those yet. I wonder why. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, we will see. solve the JFK assassination mystery, and you'll hear my interview with Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs. We're going to talk about USAID and Africa. So stick around for that. Positive of the World is brought to you by Lumen. Did you know that when your metabolism is working property, you will feel the benefits in literally every aspect of your life. Lumen is a valuable tool that gives you insights to create a healthy metabolism for your body. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures a metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it tells you if you're burning

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Take the next step to improving your health. Go to loomin. me slash world to get 20% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N-D-Me slash world for 20% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. Our guest today is Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs from the great state of California. She's a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Africa and the Subcommittee on Global Health, Human Rights, and International Organizations. So some real timely expertise there.

Thank you so much for joining the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. So as we've talked about on the show, and as you know, better than anyone, the Trump administration has spent the last few weeks just gutting the United States Agency for International Development or USAID, gutting foreign aid. it is going to have a disproportionately large impact on a bunch of countries in Africa, like South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, the Congo, et cetera. What are you hearing from people on the ground about the impact these aid? They call them a freeze, but I think we all should assume that their permanent cuts are already having. We are already seeing more people facing starvation. We are already seeing more people, you know, not having access to the life-saving health care that they need.

And that has real implications for our national security. Right. There is an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, for instance. And normally USAID would be helping to screen passengers before they come to the U.S. But because of the funding freeze, they haven't been able to do that. I've talked to humanitarian organizations on the ground who say they have food literally rotting in warehouses. And in DRC, for instance, they have about 800,000 people who need that food that would be fed by that food that they just can't actually deliver it. So we are seeing these real implications on the ground.

We're seeing even the things that Secretary Rubio says has gotten a waiver, like life-saving treatment, like PEPFAR, which is the HIV-AIDS programming. What we're hearing from folks on the ground is that because the payment system still doesn't work, they are actually the waivers. are basically fake and that, you know, people are not getting their life-saving HIV treatment. We're seeing some things that could actually cause, for instance, drug-resistant strains of HIV if people don't receive the medicine that they need. So again, like real people on the ground are hurting, and this has real serious negative implications for U.S. national security. I really just can't get past the first thing you said, which is that there's an Ebola outbreak, and we're now not screening inbound passengers to the United States because of this.

freeze. That seems like a five-alarm fire. I remember well when there was an Ebola outbreak back in what was that, 2014, 2015. And the Obama administration searched resources abroad to help combat it. And Donald Trump took to the television every single day to demagogue the issue and attack him. But now it sounds like we're just kind of flying blind when it comes to an Ebola outbreak. Well, that's exactly right. Because what USAID does is it works with CDC to help strengthen the health systems in other countries like in Uganda and to help make sure they're doing what they need to stem this outbreak and to screen passengers. And all of that funding is now cut and isn't, there's no plans to restart it. So yeah, it's really dangerous. Yeah, there's a Marburg

outbreak out there too. Don't, don't Google that if you want to sleep at night. You mentioned PEPFAR, this wildly successful bipartisan HIV AIDS treatment program created by President Bush. I don't think arguably the best thing he did as president, probably, period. What are Republicans you talk to, you serve with, telling you about the cuts to PEPFAR? I mean, this was a program that had basically universal support, and now they're watching it being gutted. Are they, are they outraged? Are they worried? This is probably one of the most frustrating parts is that Republicans will privately tell me how outraged they are, but only a handful have been willing to say so publicly.

And, you know, I introduced a bill that will protect USAID from Elon Musk's takeover. And it is a very straightforward bill. It just says that any reforms to USAID should be consistent with U.S. national security and that no funds, it's illegal to dismantle it without an act of Congress. And no funds should be used to dismantle it. If I had introduced this bill in December, it would have been, had broad bipartisan support. It would have passed with flying colors. and now we haven't been able to get a single Republican to sign on. And honestly, we use Secretary Rubio's own language in the bill

to show just how hypocritical this all is because, like, they claim they care. Every single Republican on the select committee on the Chinese Communist Party signed off on a report that says that fully funding USAID is one of the most important things they can do to compete with China. And every single one of those Republicans now is silent. Yeah, it is infuriating. You can look through Marco Rubia's old tweets where he was singing

USAID's praises and now he's gutting it. The Wall Street Journal had a recent report on how the aid freeze could hamper effort to prevent cartels from trafficking drugs into the U.S. For example, in Colombia, they reported on how there's 18 Black Hawk helicopters provided by the U.S. to use for anti-nacrotics missions. And these helicopters are now grounded because Trump, through this foreign aid cut, cut off their fuel and cut off their maintenance. You represent San Diego, which is right on the border with Mexico. I know combating drug trafficking and cartels is a huge focus in your area. I mean, do you think, does Rubio and other leaders in the DEA not realize that this broad-based freeze is going to hurt their efforts to target these cartels who I believe we just declared terrorists?

Well, I think what we're seeing is that Secretary Rubio had no idea that. the real ramifications of this. And I think it's clear that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't really understand how foreign assistance works. And we know that because Nancy Mace challenged me to get ready with me video about it. And I was happy to explain how this prevents terrorism. But the fact of the matter is foreign assistance is more than just the important life-saving health care. It's more than just economic development. A lot of this is the very kind of support we give other governments to literally do the security things we need them to do to keep us safe. So, for instance, foreign military sales, for instance, support for international narcotics

and law enforcement training and support to other countries. These are all things that have been cut along with this foreign assistance freeze. And I think what we're seeing is actually that the Trump administration wants to treat the cartels and the, you know, Frenchmanian issue as a military issue. That's why he did the FTO designation. But that's actually the opposite of what we need. Tommy, as I know, you know, when you do these FTO designations in other countries, a lot of the impact is actually that it makes it harder for nonprofit groups to work with the affected community because they're so worried about, you know, potentially having law enforcement. And these nonprofits are who help us with migrant flows and help provide services so migrants don't need to fall into the

cartel. But also, So we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places that a military first approach to this kind of problem doesn't work. And the last thing we need is in Afghanistan on our southern border 20 minutes from San Diego where I represent. Yeah, 20 years of failed policy is a good, a good what not to do list there. By the way, she challenged you to a get ready with me video on terrorism? Yes.

What? What does that even mean? She asked me to do a get ready with me video to explain why. I support terrorism when I tweeted in support of USAID. And so I did one explaining to her how USAID actually prevents terrorism, which is, you know, a big part of what it does, providing economic development and governance and all these other things that help make sure people don't actually get recruited into terrorist groups. Servant in the house is wild. I hope you have all your vaccinations because shit's getting weird out there. Okay.

You're a member of the subcommittee on Africa. you, I think, very admirably, have put a lot of focus and work into ending the Civil War in Sudan. A lot of experts you talk to say that, you know, key to ending the war is cutting off support to the RSF, which is this main rebel group fighting the Sudanese military, is cutting off support from the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. Can you talk about how the U.S. can help do that and what role you think the UAE is currently playing in this conflict? Yeah. So Sudan is currently the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, the largest displacement crisis in the world.

We're seeing famine in lots of parts and famine-like conditions in other parts of Sudan. I last year went to visit the Chad Sudanese border and met with Sudanese refugees. And, you know, I worked at the UN before I came to Congress. I've been to my fair share of refugee camps and meeting with refugees. I've never seen people so traumatized. These were kids who wouldn't even engage at all. Normally when you go to a refugee camp, the kids like want to come up and ask if you have candy. Like they would not even look at us.

And a lot of these people were telling us that they survived the genocide in Darfur in the 2000s, which I know a lot of our generation is familiar with. But now they're leaving and never want to go back. And so this is a real issue. And what we're seeing is that the U.S. UAE is funding and providing weapons to RSF, who is committing genocide and crimes against humanity. There's lots of documented evidence of them bringing cargo planes into Eastern Chad, for instance, now they're diversifying their network to be able to bring in from places like Uganda,

South Sudan, Libya. And this is like, to me, such a difficult thing because the U.S. is the number one provider of weapons to the UAE. We are who they buy their weapons from. So there is a very high likelihood that the weapons they are giving to the RSF originated in the United States and therefore we are complicit in this. And so what I'm working to do,

and I have a bill that would do this, is say we should not sell any more weapons to the UAE until we can certify that they are no longer supporting and arming the RSF. There was recently a $1 billion weapon sale that just went through. Senator Van Hollen and I introduced a joint resolution of disapproval, which is how Congress would be able to stop that sale. The Biden administration decided to accept fake assurances from the UAE that they weren't doing this despite, again, evidence by our own

intelligence community that they, in fact, never stopped funding and arming the RSF. And so we will reintroduce one another time an arm sale comes through to Congress. Yeah, that's a really important point, I think about the degree to which the U.S. is providing the weapons that the UAE then provides the RSF. I mean, the Abraham Accords Agreement that the Trump administration cut between, you know, the UAE and Israel was basically just a huge arm sales deal to the UAE. And so we're giving them some very advanced stuff. But, you know, what I especially respect about what you're doing here is, you know, when you talk to Africa experts, they say, you know, look, President Biden named a really diligent, well-meaning representative named Tom Perriello to lead his efforts to be the special representative to end the war in Sudan.

But when Tom would go into meetings with the UAE, he like, they knew that President Biden had a lot of priorities ahead of, you know, cutting off arm sales to, to the RSF. And it just wasn't seen as a priority for the administration. And I'm worried that that's going to be the same case here. And on top of that, the UAE is seen, you know, look, they have an ambassador who's kind of a man about town who's very social, has lots of glitty parties. Like, people just seem scared to criticize the UAE. And I'm wondering why you think that is in whether people are ignorant of what's happening or afraid to say something or what the deal is. Yeah, look, this is one of my big frustrations with the Biden administration, which is every time they would have a meeting with the Emirates,

anytime any high-level person would, I would have to work incredibly hard to make sure they even brought Sudan up. And it was very clear to both me and the Emirates that it was sort of an offhand thing at the end. At most, they were going to get a slap on the wrist. And it was clearly not what the U.S. cared the most about. And I think, you know, obviously there are other things going on in the region.

We wanted that the Biden administration wanted the UAE's help with Israel and Gaza and what's going on there. I do think there is a real fear of, you know, know, the scale and scope of Emirati sort of influence and money. We see that with the Trump folks, right? Donald Trump himself has financial interests in both the UAE and Saudi. So it will be interesting to see what he does. I don't know which side he's going to take. But I think it's a real indictment on us as a country that there's a place, the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world with 14 million people who are displaced and many more experiencing salmon-like conditions, this should be a

priority. And it shouldn't just be about who's willing to sign a trade agreement with Israel. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And also, you know, maybe you're some cold-hearted person who works at Doge and you're like, I don't care about people starving in Sudan. I care about here at home. Well, refugee flows out of Sudan into Egypt are also destabilizing Egypt. in leading them to have all kinds of economic problems that could disrupt their peace agreement with Israel. So there's a lot of ramifications here. Not to mention that in addition to that, the Trump administration now with the funding freeze has actually cut off our ability to help provide assistance to these refugees in Chad, in Uganda, elsewhere.

And I remember I was there right before we passed the supplemental. And they were telling me they had about a month's left worth of food to feed the people in those refugee camps that literally had nowhere else to turn. And we're in the same situation now. I mean, these people rely on assistance. They're fleeing a literal genocide. And we've cut off all assistance. And there's just no one who can fill that gap.

I mean, the private, you know, NGOs will try to raise money. You're seeing panicked emails from the IRS, for example, and other groups that are like doing the Lord's work. But there's just no way to fill that gap. Yeah, it's a really bad situation. It's dark. A lot of Democrats, you know, not in Congress, you know, sort of like voters out there are really angry about these cuts to USAAD. We want to see elected officials fight them.

But obviously, you know, you're in the minority in the House. You have limited power when it comes to day-to-day business. But that can change around major spending bills when the math gets really tough for Speaker Johnson. What points of leverage do you think Democrats will have in like, how do you think we should use them? It's a really good question. So I think Democrats have sort of a multi-pronged approach. So first of all, because we're in the minority, we don't have standing to sue. So we need to work with outside groups to do litigation. But we are working on efforts on how we can support from here, the litigation effort that are ongoing. And there are now three litigation efforts. And we've seen they've been successful with the freeze on the administrative leave for USAID employees, for instance. The second is oversight, right? Like members of Congress have been showing up to USAID to figure out what is. going on to ask questions. We have a hearing this week on USAID in the Foreign Affairs Committee, where we will be, you know, trying to figure out what's going on. And then last, we have legislative.

So I've introduced a bill that would, again, say that it is existing law that it is illegal to dismantle USAID using Secretary Rubio's own language about the importance of USAID and how reform should be done, and then saying that no government funding can be used to disqualify. mantle it. Again, if I had introduced this in December, it would have had broad bipartisan support. So I think making sure we are targeting the Republicans who have historically been supportive of foreign assistance and PEPFAR and getting them on the record trying to get them to sign on to this bill is an important thing that we all need to be doing because, you know, if they care about foreign assistance, like they say they do, this is a great way to make sure we are doing

the reforms that are clearly necessary. But that's different than what's happening right now, is the dismantling it. And, you know, we call it the Protect U.S. National Security Act, and that's intentional. It's because this really is about our national security. But then we also have these leverage points in terms of the government funding deadline on March 14th, in terms of what else they might need our votes for. And it will be interesting to see because the government funding bills are what fund USAID, right? There's a whole state and foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee that basically just does the state and USAID budgets. If they try and do a budget, a continuing resolution that doesn't include any funding for USAID, I'm hard pressed to see how

they will get Democratic votes. Obviously, you know, leader Jeffries is trying to negotiate the best deal possible for the American people when it comes to these spending bills. But I think we all feel that we need some sort of agreement that whatever we are able to pass will actually implemented by the executive branch. Yeah. I mean, I think the other sort of worst case scenario that a lot of people are worried about, myself included, is, you know, one of these judges or courts blocking, you know, Trump and Elon's efforts to gut and name your agency and Trump just ignoring it. I mean, do you think that we're in a constitutional crisis? I think that's a very real fear. I will say so far, for the most part, I don't want to give them too much credit, but for the most

part, we are seeing them abide by them. For instance, they sent an email out to all USAID employees taking them off of administrative leave. Now, there's still difficulties because they've still turned off the payment systems and the, you know, they still don't have access to all the computer systems, all of these things. But, you know, I think for the most part, we're seeing that hold. But I think that is exactly the fear we all should have. And when I talk to my Republican colleagues, that is what they say will be their red line. We'll see if any of them grow a spine. But I think that's also where public pressure really comes in because we've seen that public pressure is the only thing at the end of the day that will really get Trump to change course. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, look,

I think people have been kind of shell-shocked at Trump 2.0. There hasn't been the kind of direct action we saw the first time around. But boy, if he ignores an order from a court or the Supreme Court, I think that's when you need millions and millions of people taken to the streets and showing that we're not cool with that. Exactly right. Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs, thank you so much for caring about these issues and for joining the show. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me and for talking about them. Thanks again to Congresswoman Jacobs for joining the show. And Ben, you're cruising over to Munich soon. Yeah, I'm going to see, you know, I'll be there with J.D. Vance and Zelensky. Well, I won't be physically in that meeting. Try lat. But I will be in the Munich Security Conference. I will be probably one of the very few Democrats in attendance at the Munich Security Conference.

So I'm looking forward to the kind of looks I get in the lobby of the, you know, Bonderhof Hotel in Munich or whatever. It's where everything takes, where all the shit goes down. It'll be interesting. Yeah, there's something like military attachase. I'm like, it smells like sulfur. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those are roads.

God save the world. Oh, God. No, but I always get, I always get people like come up to me. And, you know, if it's a Trump, you know, year. it's kind of under their breath like, I'm a whirledo. So there's like worldos there. They just can't be out and proud about it, you know. Well, tell them thanks for the downloads and see you in four years.

Yeah, see in a few years. All right, buddy. Safe travels. Great. See you. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content,

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