Pod Save the World - Trump’s MAGA Militia

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Tommy and Ben unpack Trump’s cruel and incoherent travel bans, the administration’s callous stranding of migrants and ICE agents in Djibouti, the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US and his immediate prosecution, and the revival of the plan to send thousands of migrants to Guantánamo. They also discuss Trump’s upcoming North Korea-style military (and birthday) extravaganza and Trump’s abuse of the military for his personal interests. Also covered: Israel’s interception of Greta Thunberg’s Freedom Flotilla to Gaza and her subsequent deportation, the continuing chaos of Israel’s disastrous humanitarian aid plan for the strip, Israel arming Gazan clans to fight Hamas, and the intra-MAGA war being waged over Trump’s Iran policy. Finally, they take a tour through Tulsi Gabbard’s dark twisted nuclear fantasy. Then, the guys speak with Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, about how Covid changed global politics, working with big tech to reduce radicalization, and the need to hold two truths at once when it comes to Gaza. Her new book is a A Different Kind of Power. 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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Listen to Missing in the Amazon wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben. It's great to be back. Should I do the whole episode in French? Yes, that'd be super impressive. We. Well, unfortunately, I can... Bien-sur. I can say things like you of a cute dog? And can I have some more wine, please?

Bordeaux. I was over in France at a wedding. I'd tell him the love in genres. I did a little Tom Friedmaning of asking people what they thought about politics and... Uber drivers and the like. Yes. Not a lot of Macron fans at the moment, at least in Southern France, which is more conservative. more rural. Probably not anywhere.

He's one of those guys who's a little more popular outside of France and actually in France. I think that's right. His international adventures maybe don't wear that well in the farmlands. But thank you, Ali Belchie for guests. Fantastic, as always. Just such a smart, thoughtful guy. Great dude. Super clear, you know, super able to distill complicated things into very understandable.

Yeah. And just has a deep experience covering it all. Yeah. Ben, while I was gone, a good friend of ours sent a message to me for our listeners, for you, someone called it a gift even, that he wanted me to air on this show. Let's listen. I said a hip hop, a hip-hop, a hip-and-a-hibbon-a-hap-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I saw this, and I, this is Brett Bear, right?

Brett Bear at some outdoor events on stage. You know, I've become very serene about these people winning so much. And then you see something like that, and you're just too offended by it, that the Walter Cronkite of our time, Brett Bear, feels so on top of the world that he thinks that's cool. That's cool, yeah, Foxy's host, Brett Bear. I don't know where he is. He looks like a drunk wedding guest who decided to kind of commandeer the DJ booth against the wishes of the bride and groom. those of you who are watching YouTube

can actually see Brett and can see the clip so that's another reason to subscribe to the YouTube you'll get some exclusive content on top of that and also help us build up a broader subscriber base

so we get better information into the algorithm but mostly it's to see Brett's really weird shirt because it's white on the front in the back it's like a pattern well he's always been a tight shirt kind of guy too which you know

it's like showing off the workout routine like he'd come to interview Obama you know and it's like just you know it's all right just chill out too we get it you do you do You know to tailor all of those shirts.

We got a great show today, Ben. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of immigration news, including the latest version of Trump's Muslim ban. A crazy story about a bunch of migrants and ICE agents getting trapped in Djibouti. There's an update on some of the migrants who are trapped in El Salvador as well. Then we're going to talk about Trump's military parade this weekend and why it's a little different here in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah, seriously. From Occupy of Los Angeles. Yeah.

We'll cover the news out of Gaza, including Greta Thunberg's Flotilla. the ongoing disaster of aid distribution there. We'll explain why there's this intra-maga war between conservative podcast hosts Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson that might determine whether or not we go to war with Iran. Very fun. Glad it's in their hands. And then finally, Ben, which I want to play the listeners, a special clip from the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

We're big fans of hers here. And then finally, we just wrapped a fantastic in-studio interview with a very special guest. One of the most special guests we've ever had. Yeah, Jacinda Ardurn, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, talking about her new book, a different kind of power and covered a lot. A lot of grounds. So definitely worth people sticking around for this one. Just a cool, casual, super interesting person.

Kind of simultaneously extraordinary and normal person. Yeah. You know, those two things coexisting in one person. This is incredible. Yeah, and just, you know, you kind of talk about this. But I remember when the horrific Christchurch incident. happened and watching her response. And I don't remember what year that was,

it was, 2019? Yeah, they're about 18 or 18. 18 and 19. It's like we were right at the beginning of the Trump administration. And seeing a leader who just kind of like led and modeled with empathy and human decency and contrast to the shit we've been living through,

just remember being so jealous. Yeah, still am. Not of the incident, but of like the leadership. Yeah, still am, by the way. Yeah, still am, still am. Okay, well, speaking of policies, just totally devoid of empathy, Ben. Let's talk about this immigration news.

So the latest iterations. of the Trump Muslim ban went into effect on Monday. Trump now calls it a travel ban, but really it's just like the kind of fourth update to the original Muslim ban, although this time they added some additional countries where non-white people live to kind of up the racism. The ban applies to citizens of 12 countries.

Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. And then people from seven other countries, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra, Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela have more restrictions on travel if you're outside the U.S. and don't already have a valid visa. The order, there's a bunch of confusing rules and exemptions.

I think Afghans who worked for the government during the war are exempted. Athletes and coaches traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup or the Olympics are exempted. But it's a pretty broad blanket ban. I do think, Ben, just to start, it's worth pointing out how incoherent Trump's immigration policies are if you zoom out. For example, the administration says it's not safe for any hate. to travel to the United States from Haiti, but they're also getting rid of temporary protected status for Haitians and trying to deport Haitians here back to Haiti. It doesn't really make sense to me. Similarly, Libyans cannot travel to the U.S., but the administration is trying to deport

a bunch of people from Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, et cetera, to Libya. So, again, pretty fucked up. But then, I mean, I think maybe the most remarkable part about this is just how little attention this is getting. I know there's a lot going on. I know, like, you know, we're dealing with all the stuff we're dealing with here in LA. But it does, it just feels like a really depressing example of how much worse things are under Trump 2.0. Yeah, the first time the Muslim ban evoked this powerful response and people go to airports and people are defending refugees and now we see very little reaction to it. Just to point out a couple of things about this, beyond the fact that it's just crazy to kind of blanket prohibit, you know, hundreds and

hundreds of millions of people from coming to the United States. in addition to singling out non-white people, which just does, in addition to singling out, in some cases, Muslims, a lot of these countries are countries that we broke. And bear in mind, by the way, we've already canceled the refugee program, right? Trump has suspended any refugee admissions. So this is just, you know, not wanting these people to even come here. Go on down the list from Afghanistan, which really jumped out to me because they can say all they want about the U.S. government, I don't believe that they're going to go the extra mile to,

it's hard to, you know, validate this with paperwork. To get the SIB visa holders. Yeah. I agree with you. I don't believe that. Even the Biden administration, which seemed or said it was well-intentioned, had a very difficult time kind of being able to establish, you know, in ways that were easy for those people to come here. So to basically be at war in this country for 20 years, 40 years if you go all the way back to Reagan. And then we helped contribute to breaking this country and then saying, well, now you can't come here. Even if you have family here and there are a lot of African-Americans here, maybe you just want to visit your family. There's a cruelty to that. But you can start with Afghanistan and then go all the way back to Laos, which I worked on a lot in government. And by the way,

there's not like a lot of Lao. There's not some huge, it's a tiny country. Such a bizarre addition to the list. And we just, we dropped, we have 80 million unexploded ordinance in Laos. Another country, we broke decades ago fighting a secret war, and now we're going to say, again, you can't visit your families here because there are a lot of, from that time, while Americans. And so we have to bear in mind that this is separating families, essentially, through your immigration policy, to keep certain people out for seemingly arbitrary reasons. And the only other thing I'd say, Tommy, is Marco Rubio. I'm going to stay on this beat. You know, Cuba piece. Yes, the Cuba piece. This is a guy who, again, built his political career on standing up for Cubans. And now at the same time that America's policies, again,

common theme, America breaking countries and then not letting people in, the same time that American policy is causing huge food shortages, malnutrition, all these challenges for Cubans to try to say you can't come here. You have to stay in the place that we are hurting with our unlimited sanctions. It exposes among many other things, Marker Rubio's personal hypocrisy. Yeah, I mean, I throw Venezuela on that list too. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, same thing. Yeah.

We're crushing economically with sanctions and then telling anyone here who came to the United States to, often to seek asylum from the Maduro regime, one that the Trump administration suggested they were going to topple militarily in the first term. Now those people aren't allowed here at all. And if you're here, you have to go home. It's disgusting. Another example of the, I think, absurdity and cruelty and incoherence of Trump's immigration policy that's worth talking about was this crazy story in the Washington Post about eight

migrants and about a dozen ice agents who are now trapped at a U.S. Navy base in Djibouti. These guys, I assume it's all guys. They've been literally living out of a repurposed shipping container since late May. Djibouti, for those I don't know, is a tiny little country in the Horn of Africa. It's literally one of the hottest places in the world, like one of the top 10 hottest countries on average. And the people there are, they're at a shipping container. Again, they have respiratory infections. They're trying to avoid getting malaria.

they're at risk of rocket attacks from terrorists in neighboring Yemen. And the administration, the story is even more cruel. The administration have been trying to deport these migrants to South Sudan. None of them are from South Sudan. But a federal judge in Boston ruled that it violated a court order prohibiting the Trump administration from sending people to countries where they aren't citizens. But instead of just flying these like guys back to the U.S. and figuring out a plan B, the administration has just been forcing them to rot there

and in the process is even putting their own agents at risk. For example, there's smoke from these nearby burn pits that locals are using to dispose of trash and human waste. And the smoke is so bad that ICE officers are sleeping in N95 masks at night. There are three sets of bunk beds for 12 total agents. You do that math. The ice officers didn't have any body armor to protect them from rocket attacks. So they're just like completely helpless. And it's just a disaster.

And Ben, I just thought it was an instructive story. because the specifics are absurd, but also it just tells you that the administration doesn't give a shit about anyone's life and safety, including their own people. Yeah, and this will connect to what we're going to talk about with the military here, that among many other things, obviously the most grotesque things that are being done are being done to the most vulnerable people, but they clearly don't give a shit about their own people, too, you know. And what it also shows you that's important is they don't think,

two or three steps ahead ever, you know. They don't, when, it's a very true first, aim later approach to everything, right? So whether it's like the announcement of a major policy without thinking through how to implement it or out thinking through the legal, because they don't care about the legal ramifications or the foreign policy ramifications, even these individual instances, they're like putting people on planes without thinking about what's going to inevitably happen to them. And then when they get stuck, nobody really cares. Like in a normal administration, this kind of thing, like you'd have a meeting and solve it right away.

And they don't seem to give a shit about that. No. Right. And they love places like Djibouti is a fascinating place because in addition to being this major U.S. military base, there's a Chinese military base. I think there's like a French military base. To get money, they just rent land to people, which kind of suits the Trump administration's worldview of these places. It is going to become way stations. for what used to be way stations for the war on terror.

Yeah. Are now way stations for immigration policy. It's an interesting way in which you see the war on terror infrastructure, whether it's Guantanamo, Djibouti, is now like an infrastructure for like, you know, moving around their, you know, inhumane immigration policy. That's exactly right. I mean, Djibouti is a place where they fly a lot of drones. Yeah.

To your Gitmo point in the ready fire aim approach, I just saw the political reported the Trump administration is currently vetting another 9,000 migrants to potentially, send to Guantanamo Bay, where they would be held temporarily before getting deported to their country of origin, that could start as soon as Wednesday when this episode comes out. But like, come on, guys. Like, do you really think that creating, like, sending more people to Gitmo is going to be a simple and easy thing? No, it's going to create massive legal challenges. We've already seen this. Yeah. This was one where, I mean, this is, again, to be self-critical, this is why we should have, like, just, I mean, we tried to shut it down, but the more that thing stays open, it's just, it's just kind

of like one problem begets another. Maybe the original sin was like keeping a military base in Cuba that, you know, wasn't really ours to begin with, you know. Yeah, we should just concrete the thing. I don't know what to do. We should have paid that thing over. One last sort of immigration point, Ben. So after months of being told, we couldn't get it back from El Salvador.

Kilmar Obrigo Garcia has finally been returned to the United States, where the Trump administration immediately indicted him for a conspiracy to transport and transportation of undocumented immigrants. It all dates back to this traffic stop in Tennessee a few years ago. Listeners probably remember that Obrego Garcia was the Maryland man who the Trump administration admitted was wrongly sent to El Salvador. They made a mistake. He will now be prosecuted and presumably face trial.

But Ben, there was a bigger picture thing that I wanted to talk with you about. I was talking to a friend sort of in the human rights world about how Democrats could be going on offense on this issue. And this person pointed out to me that Trump is trying to say that this new partnership with Buckele is about being tough on gangs and tough on terrorism. or whatever. But in reality, like, what it is is him getting into bed with Naya Buckele, whose political career is built on the back of cooperation with gangs like MS-13. Like, he, the Buckele cut deals with these gangs when he was running for office. They helped round

up votes for him in poor areas. He basically, he gave, he protected their leaders. And Buckele's ask of the gangs was not to stop murdering people. It was to stop displaying the bodies publicly and just disappear them better. And so right now, nine of the highest ranking MS-13 leaders are on trial in New York for these terrorism charges. The prosecutors in that case have detailed the way Buckele partnered with these gangs. And surprise, surprise, now Buckele is trying to cut a deal with the Trump administration to bring back these gang leaders to El Salvador before they can testify against him. And there's a court record from back in April that shows how prosecutors are trying to, they're talking about ways to dismiss the charges against one of the gang leaders for, quote, sensitive and important foreign policy considerations.

So clearly, like, they're just saying, like, I don't know, Rubio is telling us we have to do this to get this guy back because Buckely wants him. So it's interesting to me, like, there is an opportunity here. It's a complicated story, but we can make the case that this isn't a tough on crime partnership. This is like a dirty, corrupt deal with an autocrat who is now trying to cover his own ass. Yeah, and it speaks to the broader like corruption thing. And I wrote about this for the times the other day. But essentially, Trump is in league with all these, you know, quote unquote, strong men from around the world who completely personalized power in their interests, right? So Buckele, he wants power.

And if one way he can do that is he cuts a deal with these guys, they get to, you know, take care of a bunch of their most important interests. And people are just being disappeared still in El Salvador. Crime is objectively down. But like some people are just disappearing into prisons. people are maybe just disappearing. Apparently, they're finding mass graves from these gangs, too. Exactly. So he's now just approaching foreign policy in the same way that Buckele does.

He's acting like that. It's like, well, it's all personal. So this guy's my buddy. He's literally in league with the MS-17-type gangs that I demagogue relentlessly on the campaign trail, but I'm actually going to protect him from that being exposed because he's one of my guys, you know? and it's basically Trump being a part of like a global cabal of people. They're all kind of looking out for each other, doing favors for each other, like protection racket style.

While like nothing is, we're not benefiting from this. Like our life is not getting better because people have never committed crimes or being sent to prisons in El Salvador, right? The fact that, you know, we're able to get somebody out of those prisons puts the lie to the fact that somehow like we're powerless to ask Naibu Keli to do anything. and the fact that Nye Bukkele might be able to get MS-13 gang leaders sent, I mean, that's the opportunity. I hate to say it is an opportunity, but like if Trump does that, that's when you're like, wait a second, time out. I thought we didn't like these gangs.

Why are we sending them down to Bukkely? That's what I'd like to see. I'd like to see the entire New York delegation. Maybe Senator Chuck Schumer leads this or somebody who says, like, sends a letter to DOJ saying you cannot possibly deport these, you know, these people who have been indicted on terrorism charges in exchange for this dirty deal on migration. Like, I do think that's a thing that could bring.

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Ben, you just mentioned our, uh, our common military parades. Our listeners in D.C. are going to get to enjoy that parade this weekend. This like a North Korea-Russia-style fascist parade. Um, it's reportedly going to cost $45 million. I think that number will probably go up once, uh, these tanks destroy a bunch more streets in D.C. that were not built for, you know, M1 Abrams rolling around. It's going to feature reportedly 7,000 soldiers, a bunch of tanks, helicopters, even some rocket launchers. I think there's like MLRS systems that the Biden administration fought about around

Ukraine forever. The Army Golden Knights are going to parachute out of a plane to present Trump with a special birthday American flag. So I'm very excited for him there. Here's a clip of Trump talking about his upcoming military parade from Monday. You know, we've rebuilt our military largely. Little low on ammunition. That's because it goes out very fast to other countries, one in particular, but we'll get that back very quickly. There's no military like our military. We showed that with ISIS. I was told by the television generals would take four years to win, and we did it in three weeks, and it was headed by General Raisin Kane, who's now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's great. Just left him. I sort of have to laugh at these people,

well, you know, you're going to spend a lot of money. A lot of that money is being paid for by me and people that make donations. I don't know if you know that. A lot of it won't even come out of the military. I think I can say that, Susie, right? And it's not my birthday. It is my birthday, but I'm not celebrating my birthday. I'm celebrating Flag Day.

It happens to be the same day, so I take a little heat. Oh, my God. So triggering. So we've talked about a dumbness in authoritarian seeming this is. I'm actually serious, though, but like being in L.A. right now, watching, you know, the federalization of the National Guard, 700 Marines being sent to our streets. It does make it kind of hit different.

I'm not suggesting that, like, the D.C. parade troops are going to, like, finish their march and then go sack the Capitol. But, like, it's not a zero chance. It's not impossible, right? Not impossible. I'm going to be pretty dark about this today, and I think it is because we're, like, a few miles away from a totally crazy and unnecessary deployment of National Guard

and Marines in response to, you know, pretty, you know, to protest, largely peaceful, no request for them. But to kind of connect these two dots, right, when you examine the extreme risk of the Trump presidency, the extreme risk of the Trump presidency is the total personalization of the power of the American presidency. And in particular, the personalization of the U.S. military is an instrument of power, right? So we've seen how Trump is willing to kind of corrupt. all parts of the U.S. government to serve his interest, right? Tariffs, you know, he can turn the dial on Vietnam and then something Eric Trump's over there a selling a billion-aft dollar deal.

The Emirates, he can go there, get $2 billion in crypto investments for his company through his family, and then, you know, lo and behold, you know, he's approving sensitive technology going to the Emirates. But the military is the ultimate danger here because our whole system is set up that the military does not serve the kind of personal or political interests of the president, does not serve his domestic interests. It's a institution that serves the United States, the United States Constitution. The thing that links these two stories, L.A. and D.C., is he's using the military for entirely kind of his personal interests. Yeah. So in L.A., the military is being used to serve his personal

interest in his immigration policy and his probably desire to pick a fight with blue state governors in a multicultural city. And that's what's happening. And we, Long Bold, have people like U.S. military in the streets of the city that we're in right now. This is, everything he says is bullshit. Like, oh, it's just a coincidence that my birthday's on the same day as like the U.S. Army's birthday. Everybody knows he's went on a parade. He's said that for a long time. And it's a sign of how much the frog has been boiling, that when he first raised this, like, nine years ago, people are like, this is nuts.

And now it's like, oh, sure he's doing it. My concern, Tommy, is it is fucking month five here. And we're already at a place where it's kind of normal. There's like a huge parade of helicopters and tanks through D.C. for the president's birthday. And then there's deployment, not just National Guard, but Marines, which is totally unnecessary and totally provocative here in L.A., just to be the scared guy.

what if there's like a mega Kent state kind of thing? How is it going to feel to live in this country if a bunch of people are shot? What if these people in L.A. don't go home? What if the troops just stay out? And suddenly we've like kind of almost semi-permanent garrisons in American communities, you know? So yeah, the far end is like, what if the parade is the cover for the military takeover? Okay, doesn't you have to be that to start to kind of create a predicate where what you're worried about is in two, three years from now if he wants to do something super extreme? has he kind of conditioned the military as led by Pete Hegsef and Raisin Cain, I guess, to be more willing to do these things?

And I was just watching his speech at Fort Bragg, where Trump was speaking in front of uniform members of the military and giving a totally partisan political speech, making fun of trans people talking shit about L.A. And these guys are like whooping it up and chuckling behind him, which is, it's just like, look, I know that norms from the before times, like it's a little bit. quaint to talk about that now, but it is outrageous to give a highly partisan speech like that in front of active duty members of the military and have them like cheering you on at highly partisan statements. And, you know, Ben, Trump said Sunday the military parade that protesters will be met with, quote, very heavy force. Like, what are they going to do? We're talking about, what are they going to charge the fucking tanks? Like, what are you talking about here? And, you know, I think both of us have a higher level of anxiety, just to make it even darker. The thing

was thinking about the other day is like like authoritarian's a bouquetelais for example right there was a horrific uh weekend of gang violence he declares what they called a state of exception suspend civil liberties uh and uses that as a pretext uh to just you know eradicate civil society and lock people up that's kind of like the authoritarian playbook right you declare a state of emergency of some sort the thing i've been thinking about is okay so what are the big things trump is going to face during his term AI maybe they they that there is some scary advance in AGI, and they use that to lead to a huge crackdown that, I don't know, curtails our civil liberties in some ways,

maybe cuts off our access to technology or the Internet. Like, there's just all the different weird ways we could go down a very fascist route that doesn't necessarily require tanks in the street. But you're right that, like, we are the frog that's being boiled right now. And the scariest one to me, Tommy, is it could be as simple as its peaceful protest.

And so it could be that the more Trump, does extreme shit, the more people are protesting. And the more the fact of people protesting, that creates the predicate for him to deploy the military. That's what happened here. Those protests were not violent. Yeah, some people wrote fuck ice on a car. Like, and everybody sees the same, you know, video of like a car burning over and over

and again. Like, there's 10,000 people marching peacefully. There's a level of violence that can be dealt with by the LAPD, like any day of the week. Yeah. Because nobody asked for that. Nobody asks. And so the point is. If there's more and more protest of his immigration policy or if the economy goes to shit and people are protesting and then suddenly he keeps calling in the military to quash the protests and then it's like actually we just got to declare a big national emergency here.

Like if George Floyd had happened now, like that would be it. We'd have martial law in this country, right? Or 9-11 happened right now. We could cancel the midterm elections. I mean, this is a scary day. But like we have, this military part is where it gets, should gets real. The only other one thing I say about this is like, again, I was writing this piece about corruption. I was looking at all the other autocrats I've been looking at, and, you know, Orban who comes up on the show a lot.

And I realize, like, Trump is doing shit that Orban has never even come close to doing. You know, like we're beyond Victor Orban in this country, you know, if you think about it, including the way he's beginning to use the military. And I just think we have to take this very seriously. Yeah, I agree with you. Just a quick note on the corruption beat. There's a very fun story in the New York Times from Monday about how Jared Kushner and Rick Cornell's little hotel project in Serbia is kind of unraveling and falling bar. I highly recommend everyone read it because it shows it's just a great example of the corruption that's happening, but also how these guys are bumbling idiots. It's incompetent corruption at times.

All right, Ben, let's turn to Gaza. Listeners might have heard about the Freedom Fotilla, which left Sicily on June 1st, bound for Gaza. This was a ship that had 12 activists on board, including Gretta and Bruton, and French member of the European Parliament, Rima Hassan, as well as a sort of symbolic amount of aid. It was like formula for babies and some other. Diplers. Yeah, stuff like that. So the hope was to defy Israel's military blockade, but the ship was intercepted by the Israeli Navy in international waters on Monday.

The passengers were taken ashore. They were given medical exams. Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, also ordered the IDF to, quote, show the flotilla passengers the video of the horror of the October 7th massacre. That's crazy. And as of this recording, some of the members of the group, including Thunberg, had been deported.

There were some others who refused to sign deportation papers and remain in Israeli custody. Thunberg accused Israel of illegally kidnapping her in international waters. Trump was asked about this earlier today. This is what he had to say in response. Knapped by Israel, as she says? Was she kidnapped?

I find it. I think Israel has enough problems without kidnapping. Greta Thunberg. It's kind of a crazy weird glib response. And the U.S. answer, yeah. Yeah. So, Ben, the Israeli officials were trying to dismiss this, calling it at the selfie yacht

and saying it was a PR stunt, which my response would be like, yes, it was about PR. They're trying to raise awareness. Yeah, that's what activists do. That's a direct action is about. Yeah, that said, I think people who are kind of mocking this. I just wanted to point out that in 2010, there was a much larger flotilla of like six ships that were trying to deliver aid to Gaza. The Israeli Navy intercepted them.

They boarded the ship. On one of them, they met some resistance that led to a firefight. And the idea of killed 10 activists. They wounded dozens of others. Israeli soldiers were wounded. So that incident also led to this, like, massive multi-year rupture between Israel and Turkey because the Turkish foundation was behind the 2010 flotilla. But it's just a way of saying that, like, okay, make fun of these people all you want,

call it a selfie boat. But like, these things can go south real fast. Yeah. And I also think that the reaction is pretty telling because, first of all, to the people, they kind of get bent out of shape about this and they don't like Greta. I mean, what do you have against why are you so triggered by a group of people trying to like sale some baby formula to Gaza? Like just take a step back. Yeah, what is wrong with that in the merits? Yeah, just just yeah, sure, is it going to like fill all the humanitarian needs of Gaza? Of course it's not, but it's designed to

bring attention to the fact that AID isn't getting in. And I would say that the people that are choosing to mock this or to somehow be offended by it, are choosing to look away from the underlying problem that they're trying to bring attention to. It's a lot easier to sit there and make fun of Greta Thurnberg than it is to think about the fact that babies are starving to death in Gaza because Israel's not letting any aid in and is dropping bombs, U.S. made bombs on them, right? So there is a place, I mean, to connect us to even what's happening here, like, there is a place for activism. Like, people, and activists are usually not popular, actually. You know, like, throughout history, activists are meant to make people uncomfortable. They're meant to challenge complacency. They're

meant to be creative. It doesn't mean you have to like every tactic. But on balance, if you look at this and you're kind of not on the side of people trying to bring a little bit of aid into Gaza, like you need to think about why. Like what, and why is it, why are you sitting around like dunking on a 22 year old Swedish person, you know, instead of actually like trying to figure out way to solve this problem?

Yeah. Like, there's a lot that she does and says that it's not how I would do it, that I disagree with, but I have a lot of respect for people that literally put their physical safety on the line for a cause like that. And you just want to make the point that that's what happened here. I mean,

these Israeli soldiers intercepting your vessel is, it's a scary thing. Well, and I have to say, yes, I mean, it's scary, it is a scary thing. And that could go wrong. That could have gone wrong, as you said. I'll also say in defense of her and, like, even some other activists who, like, there is a role for some people who are just totally uncompromising. Right.

Like, her role has always been, whether it's, and it's pretty telling that when it's climate change, some people are like, what a hero, Greta is, you know, and then it gets to something like this. Look, if you don't have people like that, like, she's creating an end to. a certain kind of spectrum here. And we need people to be doing that. And so that's why, yeah, I don't know that I, like, that's not going to solve the problem, but, but that's one form of direct action among many, nonviolent too, by the way. Like, it's nonviolent resistance, which, you know, which is being delegitimized generally here. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, to the underlying

problem that we've covered a bunch with this disastrous new aid distribution process in Gaza. So it's via this Israeli-American, U.S.-backed organization called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF for short. That has been, the Israelis have decided to take the GHF and have it replace the United Nations and all their expertise in aid distribution. On Tuesday, the day we're recording this, Haretz reported that 17 people were killed and about 100 were wounded after Israeli forces opened fire near one of the points where the GHF distributes aid. So it's just another disaster. Gaza health authorities say that more than 160 people in Gaza have been killed since the GHF system was put in place two weeks ago. And more generally, it's just it's not working. Like, Ada's not getting the people.

People are going hungry. There's chaos all the time. People who are sick or old or young can't get to these distribution points. So it's just, it's a catastrophe. And also, Ben, I did not realize, did you know that the Boston Consulting Group had worked on this GHF plan? Not until, but then I saw they pulled out of it. Yes. they're like, this is fucking crazy.

Yeah, so there's Washington Post story reported that the CEO of Boston Consulting Group, which for those who know, they're like one of the big three like consulting firms, he apologized to their full staff and they fired two partners because of their decision to work on this project. I guess I'm mostly just surprised that it was them, not McKinsey, but pretty fucking weird. Well, the whole thing, I mean, it's interesting. I said last week, I kind of was like, you know, not to be cynical, but it feels almost designed. to fail, not only to fail, but to create these scenes of chaos, right? And then the other thing that's come out of the last week is this is really support for like this

kind of Gaza faction that is like, you know, stirring up shit. And again, it's hard not to be cynical about this stuff, but this is clearly, clearly it's not designed to maximize efficient distribution of aid. Because if you wanted to do that, you'd just drive some aid trucks across the border and distribute through the hundreds of channels that exist to distribute aid. But when you add together the Potemkin version of this with them kind of backing these different

kind of thuggish factions in Gaza, it almost, it does feel like they want it to look, like look how chaotic it is. You can't possibly deliver aid here. Or these people couldn't govern themselves. Or these people could go. And so not to be super chaotic, cynical about it, but I mean, I think this is really governed,

it's given us plenty of reason to be cynical. I kind of feel like they, are maximizing these scenes of chaos, which don't need to exist. Because if you rolled trucks across the border and gave it to all the existing sites, you could do this. Yeah. And like, yeah, the reports you mentioned that they say the Israeli government is arming these clans in Gaza who are opposed to Hamas. So there's no way that that will end badly, just arming more people in Gaza. Yeah.

And those clans are not going to like take over Gaza. It's not an alternative leadership. If you wanted to build an alternative leadership in Gaza, get the, we talked about this like in October. after October 7th, get the Gulf Arabs together, get all the Arab states together, find the younger technocratic people. House and authority. It's not just like funding clans to like fight Hamas. It's like that's a recipe for internal conflict and more chaos.

It's like a bottom up leadership building. Yeah. But don't worry. The State Department is considering donating half a billion dollars to the GHF. And instead of going after the people committing war crimes, Marco Rubio, is announcing sanctions on the ICC. that's trying to prosecute them. So everything's going great. Yeah.

In sanctions that are like could obstruct their ability to do other investigations, right, including of Russian war crimes, right? So like because they're so far reaching that it's going to be hard for people to travel or... For Trump, that's a two for the price of one, I guess. Yeah, probably. Texting his boy Vlad. That's a good point. Yeah, I didn't think about that.

Yeah. We're going to take a quick break, but if you want to help some of the great people out there organizing to try to prevent ICE from ripping people out of communities and deporting people wrongly. Our friends at Votesave America are fighting back by raising money for immigration defense groups. Go to www.w.w.votesafeamerica.com and donate what you can to help right now.

Paid for by Votesave America. VoteSaveamerica.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Pod Save the World is brought to you by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Have you ever been on a road trip where one person insists on controlling the music? Yes. You're just trying to enjoy the ride, but now you're stuck listening to nothing but their favorite brand, no discussion, no compromises, just their way or the highway? That's kind of what's happening

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we all deserve to choose our own route. For membership information, text world to 511-5-11. Text fees may apply. Switching gears to Iran, Ben, so listeners to the show probably know the Trump administration is holding talks with Iran about its nuclear program. Trump is trying to cut a deal that substantively sounds nearly identical to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA, just isn't linked to Obama in some way. On the U.S. side, the talks are being led by Steve Whitkoff, Trump's real estate buddy turned diplomat. The sixth round of these talks is going to happen on Sunday in Oman. But, Ben, what is fascinating to me is what's happening behind the scenes in this lobby. being war for and against diplomacy with Iran that's happening within MAGA. So Politico had a

great piece on this with a bunch of interesting detail, like the fact that conservative talk show host Mark Levin had lunch with Trump last week in the Oval Office to lobby him. Levin reportedly told Trump that Iran was days away from getting a nuke, which is not true, and urged him to let Israel strike Iran. Levin was also joined by a Republican mega donor, because why not have a megadona there when you're talking about blowing up Iran? There's also been this coordinated PR campaign. I think we both noticed over the past few weeks

in all the Murdoch, Rupert Murdox publications like the New York Post, attacking Steve Whitkoff personally. And then Ben, last week, you know, off of the week, but I was on a train,

I think, and I was scrolling through, and I came across this, like, op-ed-length screed from Tucker Carlson, attacking Mark Levin on Iran in this meeting. And it includes some lines like,

quote, so why is Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction, to distract you from the real goal, which is a regime change. Young Americans heading back to the Middle East to topple yet another government. That's a part of this long thing.

Levin responded to Tucker on his show. Here's like a little supercut of some of the more unhinged parts. Tucker Carlson is a lunatic. And for those of you who think you know him, you do not. He's a false prophet. And by profit, I mean P-R-O-F-I-T. But I think we'll call him. him now what Rush used to call him of course Chatsworth Osborne Jr. because he looks

like a kook, a nerd. Used to have the bow tie. Why is Tucker a special pleader for Iran? Why is Tucker a special pleader for Qatar? Why is Tucker a special pleader for Putin? He likes to portray himself as an opponent of the elites, but the idea of negotiating with Iran rather than striking its nuclear program militarily is as close as you can get to a Washington elite establishment consensus. By the way, he sounds like a preppy boy, doesn't he? He didn't go to my house going, and tell you that. What hell happen to you?

You jerk? So, Ben, very fun. Oh, God. Fun to watch these guys fight. Weird to side with Tucker on this one. But a little worrisome to know that, like, a Twitter war between Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson could determine whether we go to war. But there's a real war. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, this is, look, to start with the substance and then work or away to this kind of fun intermural activity, all reports are that the Trump people are prepared to accept a deal in which there remains some limited domestic enrichment capability for Iran. Right, with some sort of sunset period, right? Like over the course of a few years before they transition to some other entity that might be internationalized to get through the materials. Which the Iranians don't believe. They're saving a face-saving thing because for the Iranians, they don't believe in more than like, certainly more than four-year time increments. Right.

Because they've seen that no deal. Because they're smart. Every American president, because they're not fucking idiots. and they've seen what's happened. And so they could promise to do things like eight years or now. Like, who gives us shit? Because we've seen America break that promise. But anyway, if they make a deal, whatever they say about it, whatever they say about

sunsetting and everything and all the rest of it, if they allow Iran to continue to enrich any amount of uranium on their soil, and that's like spinning some centrifuges to enrich uranium, it's basically the same thing as Obama's Iran deal. And these people like Mark Levin, like they know that because they lost their minds over that. By the way, knowing fucking nothing. I mean, this guy does not understand, he's not like some expert on nuclear technology, right? Like Mark 11 is not there scrutinizing like the distribution of the uranium mines to the mills, to the centrifuges, and understanding like what can ensure that it's not going to be weaponized. It won't talk about profit. Like this guy's profited

off of fearmongering about Iran like for the last 15 years, you know? And so the first point is I just want to lay the marker down. If they don't dismantle the entire nuclear program, they allow this capability, it's basically just a JCPOA, and the Republicans know that. Now, in terms of their internal... And by the way, it's weird for us to talk about, right?

Because obviously we want this deal to get cut. I wanted to get done. I'm not giving Trump a pass and pretending that in substance it was a good idea to pull out of the JCPOA. No, it's fucking insane. We could have stayed in and renegotiated the terms of the deal and not allowed Iran

to enrich enough, like, what, 60% enrich uranium for like eight bombs, which is where they are now. Trump, like pulling out of this thing, was totally stupid and self-defeating. Joe Biden, not returning to the Iran deal the first week of his presidency, and instead being afraid to touch it, was incredibly stupid and self-defeating. I assume maybe because they were worried about the Saudi reaction? No, they were worried about Congress, I think. You know, they were worried about like losing Bob Menendez, gold bars, Bob.

Oh, no, not him. The chair of the foreign relationship. See that prick fucking advocating for a pardon saying Obama locked him up because he opposed the Iran deal? Yeah. And by the way, lying when he said that, too, because he had the dates all wrong. Right. He's like the day before the Iran deal was announced, they were brought up in charges.

In fact, those were months before the Iranians. Everybody's full of shit. Bob, go buy some Trump coin. Yeah. Don't tweet. We all know how you get a pardon this administration. Get your gold bars guys to buy some meme coin. And so, but there is, as we've talked about, there's a, because subs, there is a real

substantive divide in the Republican Party between the guys like Mark Levin who can't stop playing the old hits. Yes. You know, they're still on the, like, neocon, like, regime change in Iran. And, like, you know, we've got to go and fight everybody. And then the guys like Tucker and Steve Bannon, who are like the populace, like America Firsters. And it's a pretty, there's an interesting intellectual difference underneath this guy, a grown man being like, he has a bowtie and he's a nerd. We call him a nerd. The clip is so unhinged.

Yeah, it's, it's, look, like, I don't like Tucker Carlson, but God damn it, does he make some sense sometimes? Here's another from this screen, quote, a war with Iran would amount to a profound betrayal of Trump supporters. It would end his presidency. That may explain why so many of Trump's enemies are advocating for it. So he gets a little crazy at the end by calling Mark Levin an enemy, but it is, it's fascinating that, you know, Tucker is able to spay the truth. Unlike a lot of senior Democrats, by the way, who are like, you know, like throwing cold water on a potential Iran deal attacking Trump over it. The Democrats should not fucking do that.

We should not be doing that. You know, moving to the right of a Trump-Iran deal, I mean, attack him for being a hypocrite, attacking him for wasting everybody's time, attacking him for pulling out of the Obama deal, whatever. But attacking him from the right, I mean, this is where Levin is also wrong. The Washington elites, like, did not support the Iranians. No. Like, they looked down their nose at, oh, what is Obama doing? Like, all the think tanks and, like, sure, we held, like, some. our own nerds, like, you know, like the non-pro experts.

I mean, it's like the plowshares. Yeah, exactly. Like, my guys. Yeah. But like we didn't, the kind of foreign policy establishment was very skeptical, like, you know, making a deal with Iran. Because they're always worried about their right flank. And our party needs to have a more mature version of the debate the Republicans are having. Yes.

Because our reflexive caution on diplomacy, lifting serious sanctions, doing a deal with Iran, is incredible. self-defeating. And the good test of this will be if there is a Trump-Iran deal, the Democrats are like, you know what? Like, this is poorly handled and stupidly done and he's a hypocrite, but I'd rather have this deal versus those Democrats are going to be like, I will, you know, I stand with Israel and we need to like not a screw of Iranian nuclear facility should exist. Like, that's going to be heard by Americans as like, these guys don't get it. They're still the fucking war party. Yes. On the on the politics, on the merits, like Democrats need to embrace diplomacy. A friend of the pod, Matt Duss, had a great piece on this in foreign policy.com.

We should be for Trump's Iran diplomacy. If it fails, it fails, but we should be in favor of diplomacy. We should be in favor of lifting sanctions on this new Syrian government and trying to, like, give it, it's help it, you know, succeed. There's plenty of other things that Trump's doing for you to be angry. So many bad things happen. So many bad things he's doing. I could make you a long list if you need it. But yeah, I don't know why, like, Chuck Schumer is attacking. Trump for being all over the place on Iran. Because on foreign policy, it's never stopped being like, you know, November of 2001 to Chechammer.

It's so frustrating. Yeah, it's deeply frustrating. Finally, Ben, speaking of foreign policy, Illuminati, the biggest thinkers out there, the most influential and important and brilliant people. We wanted to play you guys some excerpts of this truly insane video that our director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, tweeted out earlier today. Let's listen. I recently visited Hiroshima in Japan and stood at the epicenter of a city that remains scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945, 80 years ago.

Yet this one bomb that caused so much destruction on Hiroshima was tiny compared to today's nuclear bombs. Just one of these nuclear bombs would vaporize everything at its core. People, buildings, life itself. And then comes the fall-up, radioactive poison spreading through the air, water, and soil, condemning survivors to agonizing deaths or lifelong suffering. Political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers. Perhaps it's because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families. What? What the, I didn't see that coming? What the fuck?

So it's up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust. Okay. So many thoughts. The score. Yes, that was one of them. It came from her personal account. We cut it down from like three minutes to whatever that was, a minute 20 because it was just way too long.

But there was like no idea. context? Like, is she talking about Iran? She's talking about Ukraine. I share her desire to not live through a nuclear holocaust. She lost me a bit. Like, the elites all have bunkers, fallout shelters? Like, what the hell was that? I don't know. Why is the DNI doing this? All right. I have thoughts here. Number one, if you end up, if you and I end up in a white, padded cell with no furniture and lights on 24 hours a day, the third. The third, thing that will happen in that cell is that voice will be piped in with that score and we'll go fucking out of our minds. We'll be like in a fetal position in the corner. That violin

at the end of the end of like, I will never unhear that. That's the first thing. Second, what is absolutely so fucking frustrating about the whole Trump milieu, right? From Maha to Tulsi to Trump to Ben and to Tucker is they talk about this stuff. I, agree-ish, I guess I do, with what she's saying, she's a part of administration that is going to spend more and more money building and modernizing nuclear weapons, part of an administration that has no arms control agenda to negotiate with the Russians and the Chinese to reduce nuclear weapons. Pulled out a bunch of treaties. So they pulled out in the first Trump term of like the last remaining treaties, except for Obama's

New Star Treaty with Russia. So they banked the credit for being like, isn't it crazy that we have these nuclear weapons and we have to live in the sphere? When then they at the same time, they're the ones tearing up arms control agreements and spending trillions of nuclear weapons. And also, and this is the last thing, the people with the bunkers are their supporters. The people that finance their entire political project are the exact people who've got property in the Canadian Rockies and fucking New Zealand. The reason that they probably want to conquer Western Canada is because they already have land there. Because they want to land there after the nuclear or climate apocalypse or wherever apocalypse it is. Tulsi will be on one of her own helicopters up there.

And so she's like playing this kind of weird populism about it. But it's their movement. Dude. Sorry. The part where she starts talking about how the elites have their own fallout shell, that was the most shocking sort. You know, stop calling people like you and me elites anymore. You guys are the elites. You're in charge.

charge of the U.S. intelligence community. You're in charge of everything. Like, what's more elite than running the U.S.S. You guys are in charge of the White House, Congress, every agency, the courts, the media. Have you looked at the ratings numbers

for Fox News versus, like, CNN? When does that become the establishment media? They get better ratings than, like, you know, networks? It's wild. It's wild. She is just such a confusing person. She's confusing because I'm like, well, I kind of agree with some of this,

but then like, wait a second, you know? Also, what if we just had that score playing behind us? Yeah, that's just, I would love to know who made it. I just, I want, some reporters listen to this, if you're still listening, please someone just dig in. Like Alex Ward, like someone in Politico,

just dig into how this thing got made, what the context was, why it came out now. Is this her responding to like Mark Levin? Like, what is happening here? I don't know. Is there going to be nuclear war? Or is this like her like, we need to side with Russia instead of having like a,

I heard it as like, the elites are trying to get us into war with Russia. Yeah, I heard it as. Yeah, I could hear it as Russia. that I could hear as Iran. I don't know. I don't know. Finally, Ben, before we go to our interview with Jacinda Ardern, we wanted to send lots of love to our producer Alona

and her new baby boy, Luca. Excellent name. Welcome, Luca. Excellent, excellent name. We miss you, Alona, but we're so happy for you guys. Yeah, very excited for you and very excited for you to get to spend time with that little guy. Yeah, and, you know, two kids, it's not one plus one. It's not three, but it's not two.

It's an exponential change. It's simultaneously much easier with the baby, an exponentially a logistical challenge. Yes, the logistics. The logistics get hard. Yeah, you're lining up, like, logistics for you are more like

play dates in this. It's an Uber driver for me, yeah. Yeah, for me, it's like, is there any chance we could line up like one hour of the naps on Saturday so that I can just lay down? No. And usually no.

Although my kids, like, Hannah and I have been so jet lagged from getting back from Europe. Like, both of us were up at like 4.15 today. It's great. And I recommend it. Well, the kids slept till 7. So I feel like I've lived like four days.

Yeah. I've gotten so much done. Love the mornings. I'd read everything before like 6 a.m. It's the only way to get time is just get up earlier and earlier. Yeah. Because the nap time where it kills you is like they'll both, it'll happen, but then it'll last like 15 minutes.

Oh yeah. And you almost wish you didn't have that 15 minutes. I also, I can't really nap usually. Like sometimes I can. No, it's just more the quietude. Yeah. It's a miracle when it happens. Okay.

We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, you'll hear an excellent interview with former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardurn, about her fantastic new book. So stick around for that. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The House recently voted to defund Planned Planned Parenthood. That's right. They voted to block care and potentially shut down nearly 200 health centers. Without Planned Parenthood Health Centers, no other provider can fill that health care gap.

Over 1.1 million patients could lose access to birth control, STI testing, abortion, cancer screening, and more. Who would suffer most? People who had already had a harder time than they should get. basic care, women, people with low incomes, blacks, Latinos, and other communities, and people in rural areas. Donate to support Planned Parenthood at planparenthood.org slash donate. That's planparenthood.org slash donate. Okay, we are very pleased to be joined by the author of the new book, A Different Kind of Power, Jacinda Ardern. Welcome to Potsie of the World. We have a question,

Tommy was asking me, are you, Prime Minister, are you Dame? Or are you Jacinda? This is a really common question, particularly in the United States. I mean, my preference is Jacinda. But in New Zealand, we don't hang on to the title of Prime Minister. That is only for the time that you were in office. After that, you depart with right honorable, but that means nothing outside of New Zealand. And Dame, I just think is aging. So please, Jacinda.

It's my preference. That's good. It's weird that we call former presidents, Mr. Or president. Yeah. They're not president. Yeah, it is really, it is interesting. I mean, this is why I think in New Zealand you end up with a few honorifics, a few titles that are unrelated, just to spare confusion.

Yeah. Because you do find in New Zealand in the preferred prime minister polls, ex-primisters will still exist there for a while. So let's just not confuse things by people believing that's still in office. Yeah. Well, and when I hear Dame, I think of like Judy Dent or something. Me too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, a great, wonderful, like, privilege and honor to be in that company. But I just prefer to keep it simple.

Well, we're going to get to the book, which is incredible. But I do want to ask you one question just to start. You're here in Los Angeles on this tour, like a few miles from here. The U.S. Marines are deployed. The National Guard is deployed. what is it like as you've been living in the United States for a brief time now but as someone who's not American can you share a perspective of like what this looks like kind of from the outside in to see the U.S. military in the streets like this?

Well I've been here going on two years now and I'm always really aware that I'm an observer and that's a really privileged position to have and always have a little bit of caution you know commentating on other people's democracy as an observer but it really does feel like the United States is the epicenter of a globalisation of political culture. And so you are not the only ones who are having this experience of the perfect storm, of the disruption to what healthy democracies need. But you are having the experience first in the most extreme ways. You know, when you think from the trajectory of January 6th,

then of course through the Trump re-election and the manifestation of his particular style of politics and leadership to now what we're seeing manifesting in the streets added with mis and disinformation on top of that. It's a pattern that we are seeing in other places, but you are seeing it first and you're seeing it in a very extreme way. Well, yeah, I mean, I want to take this back into the book because, I mean, one of the things has been interesting watching your political career is not by any choice of yours. Your leadership is sometimes contrasted with our current presidents. But, you know, you write about a different kind of power. You know, you've talked a lot about bringing empathy to leadership, empathetic leadership. And reading the book, which people should definitely, it's personal, it's evocative, it's funny, it's very, it's not like a traditional

political memoir, it's very human kind of like you were as leader. He's an excellent bloop on the bag from Ben Rhodes. I'm not, yeah, forgive me, even repeating the blurb. No, I appreciate it. But you trace all the, you know, we learn about your community. We learn about like your faith journey from Mormonism out of the church. We learn about mentors. You don't need to know about New Zealand politics to find this interesting because you're also telling me like I was struck.

Your staffer became prime minister. It's like every staffer's like secret dream, right? It was not my secret dream, by the way. Well, it was unlikely, right? But the question I would ask is on this question of, yes, you have this kind of theory of empathetic leadership. But in writing the book and telling your own story, what did you learn about yourself as a politician

by going back and trying to put about where it came from? Yeah, I think that in itself is something because you get so used to as a politician talking about your origin story. How did you end up on the pathway to politics? And people ask you the question because they, I think, understandably, see politics as an unlikely career choice, particularly in these times.

So people want to know why you're motivated. to be in that place. And for me, there were certain things I could always point to. It wasn't politics itself. It was the fact that politics was a place where you could make change. Most of the politicians I worked with have been motivated by that more than the cut and thrust. But, you know, as I was writing that story that I thought was really familiar to me, the thing

that stood out to me was all of these early manifestations of some traits that I've had my entire life that I saw as weaknesses, you know, imposter syndrome or my mind. call in a confidence gap, the fact that I was, you know, always wore my heart on my sleeve. And so that meant from time to time, you know, that I would come out and, you know, perhaps bring a bit of emotion to an issue. You hug people. I hug people because that's instinctively what, you know, I lean into. All of these things that, you know, we're taught, and I certainly believed were weaknesses

that I had to somehow overcome. You know, the course of writing the book, I really reaffirmed to me. Actually, they brought strengths with it. when you think about what you do to overcome a confidence gap, when you think that you're not the right person for the job or the best person, you prepare. You bring in advisors, you bring in experts because you've got a bit of humility

in the way that your decision-making processes work. And in crisis or unknown circumstances like a pandemic, those are probably pretty helpful traits to have, let alone, I think, the strength of empathy as well. So it was reaffirming, I guess, in some ways. I want to ask about what you as a leader learned during COVID about the value that citizens put on life. The kind of jumping off point for this question was there was an article in a New Yorker that said the following. An opposition politician named Brooke Van Velden declared at a medical technology conference that Ardurance administration had put far too much emphasis on saving lives.

Quote, when it came to COVID, we completely blew out what the value of life was, she said. I've never seen such a high value on life. Van Veldon became a minister in the new government in this article. That quote is so crazy on its face. But I want to sort of unpack the sentiment a bit and understand like maybe what you learned about what value people put on the lives of others versus their own personal freedom and how that impacted choices you had to make. Yeah. And this is such an interesting question because in policymaking and in government policy, you know, there are some areas where there will be called to put a number or a calculation on human life in that way.

And when I think about, for instance, we have a scheme called ACC in New Zealand where, you know, you are compensated for injury or accidents or, you know, in some cases, loss of life. And so there are some areas of government policy that quantify these things. But the idea of doing that, the idea of saying, well, at this particular point, that investment, that trade-off means that, you know, that we'll have this hit to our economy and that cost is too high. That seemed both crude to me, but it was so wrong. And I think the point that perhaps is being missed in her statement was that she's making a claim that there was a trade-off when actually our view was a strong response to COVID was a strong health response was the best economic. response. If we didn't respond to the fear that people had, people would self-exclude from the economy anyway. And so managing and trying to pursue the strategy we did, which was elimination

of COVID, we felt did both. A similar experience, I remember when we were working on mental health, it was a big focus for us as a government. And we were called upon to come up with a target for suicide reduction. And I remember really grappling with that, the idea that setting a target and somehow putting on display that you had a tolerance for something where we clearly had a role to play as government in the provision of mental health service. And so in the end, even though I knew it was unrealistic, we said our target is zero. Because why say you have a tolerance?

And in many ways, I think we took a similar approach with COVID. If it could be, if lives could be saved, we should. should be saving them. It also made me think about how frustrating it is in politics as a leader to try to get credit for avoiding bad things. Like I think about the early Obama years, the financial crisis, him rescuing the auto industry, pointing those things out quickly war thin with voters because they were just pissed about the recovery not being fast enough, you know, and sort of like the political incentives. You're showing people like, hey, this could have been so much worse. Yeah. Like, how do you get credit for that as a leader? I don't know if you can't.

Look, yeah, I don't know if you can either. I mean, in New Zealand, it's often, you know, the fact that some researchers said that up to 20,000 lives were saved in New Zealand as a result of the COVID policies. But that won't diminish the fact that it was hard. Yeah. That won't diminish the fact that, you know, it's caused, you know, ongoing grievance for many. It won't change the fact that people have felt now that there's this uncertainty in their lives because, you know, it's caused, you know, ongoing grievance for many. now that there's this uncertainty in their lives because the thing that you thought you could guarantee is no longer guaranteed.

And I think in a way that we just, politics is about human behavior. We have to accept that that's been a consequence of the pandemic and work really hard to plan for the next experience. Yeah. And so one thing that impacted views on the pandemic and COVID everywhere was there was this global deluge of Russian disinformation during COVID, including in New Zealand. Yes. This New Yorker story reported that during the final month of the COVID lockdown in Auckland,

consumption of Russian disinformation was 30% higher in New Zealand than in the United States. Yes. What do you think the impact of that disinformation was? Why New Zealand? Yeah, I have asked that question, and I cannot be an answer it. I don't know why, but I do know that our we, in New Zealand, interestingly, the claimants that were so possibly the Solomon Islands as well, were amongst the highest consumers of Russian disinformation at this particular. particular time in early 2022.

And the result of that was six days after, well, one of the results we see in that time period is six days after the convoy in Canada causing the blockade. We had the same in New Zealand. And I think this comes to this wider issue. And this is not to say that government shouldn't take responsibility for whatever contribution may be the role are playing for any kind of disquiet in their own country. But at the same time, we are interconnected. And back to this issue of the globalization of political culture

and the issues, the things that are challenging our Western liberal democracies, this idea of disinformation. We talk about it almost as if it's just singly this issue of freedom of speech. But when foreign interferences involved, it is much, much more than that. And most countries and most people, I would have thought, would hate the idea of their people being manipulated. And yet that is exactly what is happening. It's interesting in the book, you kind of re-experience this arc of time that on the surface is not super long, right?

It's a few years. But you kind of enter office before all of this, you know, and, you know, you're getting your arms around things. You're doing well. You're up to this job. There's no imposter syndrome. Like, you're in the right place. I had a baby that came in as well. Yes.

Well, it's actually amazing. You basically find out you're going to be the leader at the same time that you find out you're pregnant. So your baby's kind of along for the journey. Yeah. But then what's interesting, you have this testing and crisis when there's a horrific shooting at Christchurch. And you handle that in your own style. Like you let yourself lead with empathy. And you get a lot of kind of positive feedback for that.

And then COVID happens. and you kind of bring a similar approach to it. And the results are really good, as Tom I was saying, like, objectively, New Zealand had perhaps the best reaction in the world. And yet, in part because it's disinformation, in part for other reasons, you have this kind of, you know, negativity starts to pile up. And the question I wanted to take out of that is, you know, I met you in part at some of these global conferences where progressives meet and try to figure out the political strategy that's going to lead us out. of the wilderness or deal with right-wing authoritarianism or disinformation. But I keep wondering, and a lot of people obviously have wondered this too, like, do we even have our minds around how much COVID changed politics globally? Like the before and after of COVID? And not just in

terms of like, hey, they're these right-wing parties that took advantage of, you know, grievances over lockdowns, but that there's something that happened in kind of the society itself or even inside of individuals where things just seem to get meaner and more us versus them and people got kind of flattened, you know, like we project our worst version of our adversaries. And the right wing is always going to win. If it's a fight between people who are otherizing, you know, and I'm just wondering how you reflect on, you know, we can sit here and talk as we do every week about like whether progressive politics and does it look good because the Labor Party more in Australia or the Liberals won in Canada, but are we missing like a full reckoning with,

does the right understand better than we do that COVID kind of flipped something in ways that we still don't understand? Or did it build on something? And I can't answer whether or not it exacerbated a trend that we were or a trajectory that we were already on, whether or not it in itself was a triggering event. Either way, you're right that we have seen a change over a period of time. And I'm really interested in what some of the global surveys tell us and the Edelman survey on trust, for instance,

which tries to take a but more of a global perspective. You know, in there you can see that there has been an erosion in institutions over time that did predate COVID. But now when you look at the 2025 numbers, it's really interesting there is you don't just see the trust issue. You see an increase in grievance, a deep sense of grievance. 60 plus percent of people with a sense of moderate to severe grievance,

not just in governments, but also in private institutions. And then stemming from that, four out of 10 people believing that hostile action is justified as a result, whether or not that's the deliberate use of disinformation or damage to private or public property as a result. So you can see now so many of the trends that, you know, the reaction that we're seeing in our environments to political acts or indeed, you know, to decision-making by even private institutions, you see that particular response we're getting

now from the public coming through in those surveys. So what does that mean for progressives? You know, I think what we have to understand is they don't feel that their needs have been met. They have that sense of grievance and mistrust. is that in part because our political systems have not been as good at delivering to those needs or that we haven't been as good at recognising either way what the right is really good at is channeling that grievance into fear and blame.

And I've always been good at it. And this environment is ripe for that right now. And so I think the challenge is progressives because there will be, I think, a point where people see that that fear and blame is actually not leading to a place that improves people's lives. So the role, I think, the progressives need to play is the much harder one, but the much more sustainable long-term solution, which is, again,

mastering the delivery of solutions that will have a positive impact on people's lives. One more question on the kind of problem set here, though, because I think it's important. I mean, because it's true, and we've all talked a lot about how institutions have failed, and certainly in foreign policy, there's ample evidence and we can get into some of them.

But tech is a piece of this, right? And Tommy talked about disinformation. But some of this is also just like the design of these platforms. You, after a Christchurch shooting, led this initiative. It's one of the few initiatives that actually made some progress, where you kind of got tech companies together to make commitments to, you know, because the Christchurch shooting among other horrible things was kind of live streamed on platforms. And so part of what you wanted to do is reduce obviously those kinds of extreme instances, but also even just hate speech, like better content moderation, better, you know, taking down hate speech. And there was kind of peer pressure on the tech companies to do that. I'm wondering, you fast forward to now, and you see, you know, the Trump inauguration, everybody capitulating. You see, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, you know, being his inner man-averse guy, you know, saying he's going to get rid of to eat.

and he's going to get rid of content moderation and kind of going swinging vast in the other direction. And it's not just meta, but they're easy to pick on. And they deserve it. And they deserve it. But like what do you, I mean, because like sometimes I am like, well, yes, it's all true. We need to do better all these things. But it's a little bit hard when in addition to having like a belligerent far right that's good at grievance, you have platforms designed to supercharge it.

How do you look at some of these people that you partnered with in the Christchurch call? as you watch them take down the guardrails and kind of become almost defiantly the worst version of themselves at the most dangerous time for that to be happening. I think one of the reasons why the Christchurch call was successful was because the rallying cry, the unifying factor was the agreement that we didn't want a world where terrorism and violent extremism, existed online and in the offline world, and that's still the case now. You know, again, just to put a bit more detail behind the reason that it was established, yeah, we had a white supremacist from Australia who came into New Zealand with the objective of trying to create a pseudo-warfare between cultures and groups because he believed New Zealand was too multicultural and inclusive.

So not only did he target Friday prayers to maximize the number of victims and took the lives of 51 members of our Muslim community, he live streamed it on Facebook for 17 minutes. And then that video was uploaded onto YouTube once every second for the first 24 hours. So we had two goals on the face of it was if an incident like this happens, how do you stop the spread of it as a further weaponization, as a further victimization? And there the tech companies, we work closely together.

We created a crisis protocol that's been deployed more than 300 times since the crash huge call. And we just haven't seen that same proliferation that we did in our experience. But more than that, how do we address radicalization in the online environment? And so coming back to that unifying feature of targeting violent extremism and terrorism online, because we at least surely can all agree that we're safer without that, that has to be the call to maintain people at the table, but we can't have this disconnect where somehow we just focus on the manifestation

without any acknowledgement of the environment that's creating that in the first place. And that's what we continue to work on. One of the arguments that we've made is we have to understand the algorithmic journey that individuals are on in the online environment. So let's just give researchers the ability whilst protecting the privacy

and of course the proprietary issues that need to be protected because we believe in a free, open and secure internet. How do we still give, though, researchers access to understand that journey because our terrorist very openly claimed to have been radicalised on YouTube and if we understand that journey,

then we're better equipped to address it and surely, Republican, Democrat, progressive conservative, surely it is in our interest to answer those questions. The other things are sort of, spreading like wildfire on social media has been anti-vaccine sentiment here in the U.S. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our Secretary of Health and Human Services, just fired 17 experts

who oversee, you know, the data that decides whether you should get a vaccine and when. And he's, you know, arguably the most prominent face of this movement, but it's one that is across political perspectives. I mean, Ben, you live in Venice. I'm sure you talk to a lot of acquaintances and friends who are like, I don't know, this kind of, Robert Kennedy guy saying some interesting things. Oh yeah. This make America healthy again. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with making America healthy again? Maybe he does have a point on these vaccines. And I just wonder again, like given your experience living through this, what you make of the fact that we had this miraculous, unbelievably fast development of highly

effective COVID vaccines followed by a bump in anti-vaccine sentiment. And like if you have thoughts on how we can make sense of that, but also get those people back and get their trust in science again. Yeah. And there's so many things at play here. One being that actually for vaccines, this is long, but vaccines almost feel in some ways, like it's in its category of its own, because it has been, you know, there's been that push and pull and that, you know, the issue of, you know, particular groups in our communities who have had that hesitancy for decades. You know, I still remember some of the debates over MMR in the 1990s. So I think the bulk of the groups that we're talking about are in the hesitancy category

rather than the smaller subset of the anti-category. And when you're in the hesitancy category, it is about understanding the human, the question of human behavior, you know, how do we ensure that people are able to access information that they trust? And so that again plays into all of these other issues that are at play here. When you've got an environment where there's an erosion. of trust in institutions, an erosion in trust in government, there's a big job to be done to rebuild because the consequence is, I think, a growth in some of these issues and questions by community

and the public. And the elevation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a leadership role. Not great for us here. And all I think about, you know, from my own region is the impact of measle outbreaks, you know, and the very real consequences on children's lives. And it's devastating to know that these preventable diseases are increasing in prevalence. Yeah, I called our doctor and said, should we vaccinate our one-year-old, now one-year-old, early because there's this growth and the prevalence outbreak. One very different question. Vice News described New Zealand as, quote, Apocalypse Escape Destination for America's Elite.

What's up? Why are all the billionaires building bunkers in New Zealand? I mean, maybe this is where science kicks in. I've always been told that New Zealand's the best country in the world to be for nuclear fallout. So maybe this is. Did you get, like, lobbied by people who wanted to, like, build a concert? No, I wouldn't call it lobbying. I get a lot of commentary around how do I come, you know, what's the process?

You know, I remember during the first Trump election, there was a spike on immigration, New Zealand's website for people looking up, relocating to New Zealand. So it's been a thing for a while. I think it's probably just carries that perception, understandably, as being a, you know, as being a beautiful place, a beautiful place to be. So if you're going to leave home, maybe that's not a bad alternative. And do you, can you put into context for us the friendly or rivalry with Australia? Like how should we?

Canada in the United States. Okay. Yeah. Similar. So you're similar. So we are. So you're Canada in this analogy. Yes, that's right.

So at least Australia is not trying to take you over. No. In Australia. Look, from time to time, there's, you know, jokes about, you know, New Zealand is a state of Australia. But the thing that I think might be slightly different, I can't comment on this, though, is that we have a very, very, you know, friendly rivalry, except if we find one another out in the wild in the world,

then immediately it's very familiar. It's, you know, it's almost as if you're found a fellow country person. So it's a very close relationship. We have the ability to reside in one another's country, So it's, it's, it's pretty special. So I'm going to like pivot off of this to like a much wager thing, but I did want to ask you about it. As opposed to every other topic. Well, I did want to ask me.

Because actually, and it actually does connect to the Australia, New Zealand point, right? And so here's how I'm going to walk into this subject. Which is, I've seen like Australia, New Zealand, like every other U.S. ally and traditional support of Israel. over the course of the last, you know, since October 7th, essentially. Try to figure out, you know, you can kind of sense a discomfort, in some quarters at least, particularly progressive circles about like we kind of plug into this global security architecture that rutanizes kind of taking Israel's side, you know, and supporting them. and and yet, you know, in certain places, and certainly we've seen this in certain European countries,

you can sense that that is creating real tensions inside of their own, certainly the center left to the progressive side of politics. That's also happened here in the United States, where inside the Democratic Party there are these splits between people who kind of, you know, kind of instinctively are supportive of Israel, but are than other people who are like absolutely horrified at what's happened in Gaza. and to kind of connect this whole circle we've been talking about. Because it connects to everything from like prioritizing life, you know, like we were talking about with COVID, to addressing the cynicism that people might feel about institutions. The way I want to put this question to you is for people on that center to the left, how do you balance between the fact that you want to maintain kind of

of a unity, you know, in our coalitions. And yet there are people who understandably are just like, this is not, this is becoming just fundamentally like a moral question, you know, like the difference between whether or not we should provide military support to Israel while tens of thousands of Palestinian children are being killed and starved is not like a tactical, political question.

It's like, this is a gut check. Like, do we actually stand for the things we say we stand for? Because if we believe in dignity of every person, it shouldn't be that complicated to say, hey, what happened on October 7th is absolutely horrific, and that should never happen. But what's happening in Gaza is so far beyond the pill, that shouldn't happen either. Like, is there a way to center, you know, foreign policy, which I think is contributed to the citizen people feel. Like, you give these speeches, I wrote some of these speeches about human freedom and dignity, and then you give bombs that are

being dropped on children. And people say, well, this whole thing is fucking bullshit, you know. The whole enterprise of kind of center-left governance. I mean, I know it's a huge wind-up. Like, how do you, what prism do you evaluate how people should make decisions about an issue like Gaza when it seems like at court we're now in a moral space and not just a tactical policy or political question? Children. Yeah, yeah.

The moment children are at the center of, you know, this question, you know, this, you know, what you're framed as a foreign policy question and they are paying the price, then you're absolutely right. It is a question of morality. But if I were to pan back a little bit and look at the positioning of various friends or allies of the United States,

what's interesting to me is that actually, I would say that New Zealand, even for the fact it currently has a conservative government, has maintained a fairly consistent position, and not unlike Ireland. Long being a proponent and advocated for a two-state solution, been fairly consistent on that. And there are a group of countries that I would say have,

throughout, generally speaking, throughout since October 7, tried to maintain the fact that two things can be true. And this is the thing I've found so striking around where we find, find ourselves with the horror of Gaza is that two things can be true. You can both stand against what happened on October 7 and condemn absolutely the violence that was thrust upon people in those events, call for the return of those who were taken and simultaneously take a position that what is happening now in Gaza is absolutely wrong. Two things can be true, and yet we seem to be in a situation where holding one seems in some people's minds to be in opposition to the other.

And so interesting to me today that we have now the UK, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia who have placed sanctions on two members of the Israeli government for the fact that they have taken positions which they consider to be inflammatory inciting violence and creating greater distance. from the idea of a two-state solution, regardless of how realistic you believe that currently is. Now, that's interesting. Yeah. Because you take out Norway, and that's usually five-eyes minus one. Yeah. And so, you know, I do think you see that there are those who are perhaps positioning in a particular way, but in the absence of the United States.

your reflexive answer on how to view this war in the moral way, just saying children, it's so obvious to me. In the United States, and it's exactly my reaction too, but in the United States, do you have a six-year-old, right? Do you know Ms. Rachel is? Yes, I think so. She's a YouTube content creator has about 100 trillion views. She makes stuff, videos for kids.

Yes. Right? If you need a half hour as a parent to just, sit on the couch, Ms. Rachel is your person. She has been just talking about children in Gaza, holding up photos, highlighting their stories. She's getting attacked for it and told, like, how dare you not also talk about October 7th in the same breath or like all this what aboutism? And I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the reaction you see, especially online to the war. The fact that someone just highlighting the humanity of children is not only not, was it whatever I look for.

I mean, she's being attacked for it. That is what I'm getting at. Two things can be true. And actually it's, you know, and here when you hold to the importance, I mean, of course, you should value all lives, but there's something always very unifying when you're talking about the impact of a conflict or a policy decision on children. You know, and equally, of course, everyone should be and is, I would hope, horrified by what happened on October 7 with the involvement of children. air and the weaponization of children there.

Two things can be true. And, you know, every day that this continues is a day that I do think people lose their belief in systems, diplomacy, multilateralism, and, you know, at its more extreme, and their sense of humanity. And as long as kids are involved, you know, that's a feeling we should all carry. Yeah. And it's ultimately like our, like, if we're building back a different kind of politics that can overcome what we're dealing with a few miles from here, right? You know, military and streets, all the things we've talked about, right? Like, it has to be centered on something, not talking points or like some strategy that some people, you know, put together at a conference or it's got to be like what is this grounded in, right?

I mean, that's like to kind of come back to where we started. I mean, the reason people should check out your book and follow the work you're doing is I think you're modeling a different, I'm not just saying this. I mean, we talked a bunch over the last couple years. You're modeling a different kind of approach to politics that is less about just, you know, trying to find the right set of policies and talking points, but actually like, hey, why are we in this? And how do we treat each other? And we're not going to be meaner than them or more cynical than them. And I think this is what got the Democrats in trouble in Gaza or more, you know, while we, you know, we're going to say one thing, but anybody's watching what we're doing

is thinking like, well, they're not prioritizing children if they're giving $2,000. But across the board, I think it's something to think about for people is that sometimes you get back to kind of first principles of like, what are we in this for? Sorry, I'm not. No, no. I was growing around for the word controversial, and I couldn't find it. Yeah. With respect to Miss Rachel talking about kids.

Well, I got it too. It's not controversial. I, like, posted something on my Instagram story, just the Greta Thurneberg. And I actually got all this, like, how dare you support her? She's just, I'm like, whatever you think about the, she's just a 22-year-old trying to bring food to some people. Right. You know, like that. If we, if our tent isn't big enough for that, like, we got a problem.

But, uh, anyway, thanks for, um, um, You know, doing a tour through some very light issues today. Well, was Oprah a little like, I guess we're, you know, I mean, we're, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we talked a little less about IVF and conception in this podcast than, uh, than some of the other interviews I've had. I mean, you know, we can stick around. I got some experience there. Why would I went on that road? That's one of the, you know, I didn't want to, I didn't want to write, you know, a book that was. focused on, you know, the ins and outs of New Zealand politics from 2017 to 2020.

Instead, it's just a story of how it feels to lead and what it's like behind the scenes. And for me, it was, yeah, it was trying to also balance a surprise pregnancy after not being able to, after failed IVF and all ups and downs. And maybe a little bit of humor in there is as well. What is she watching if she's not? watching Miss Rachel? We still watch a little, we still watch from time to time a little bit of bluey. Little other plug for, so that's okay.

Can I also put in a plug for as the bluey, as your bluey cohort moves through investigators and little lunch, great, again, another two great Australian shows for probably more a six or seven year old audience. And this is a demonstration that we can get along. Yeah, you can get along. and also that there's a lack of investment in public television in New Zealand. Louis. What a guy.

I love Louis. We really encourage people to pick up the book, a different kind of power. And really thank you for dropping by here in person. Thank you so much for having me. Best of luck with the rest of the, you know, appearances. Thank you so much. Take care, guys. Thank you.

Thanks again to Jersinda for joining the show. I couldn't call her Dane. No way. Yeah. I mean, these British titles or British Empire, or Commonwealth titles, I swear to everyone would call them. It's hard to keep track.

I can't keep track of them either. It's too many. It's like the military. We'll be back next week. Potside World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Mikovsky. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor,

and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben. Hi. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Kanner is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Segglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Hefcoat. Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolls, and Molly Lobel, Matt DeGroote is our head of production.

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