Pod Save the World - Trump’s military complex

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

Tommy and Ben discuss reports that Trump routinely denigrates American servicemembers and veterans, including those killed in battle, an update on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, trouble for Brexit, the BLOB biting back, another Mulan controversy, a Twitter troll briefing the WH press corps, updates on Belarus and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, why German nationalists and conspiracy theorists are rallying behind Trump, and a climate change scandal.

Welcome back to POTSave the world. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, it's good to be back. The world seems kind of the same. Kind of not great. Although the fires are a new touch here in California. The fires, yeah. Are you getting them where you are? Well, so I woke up this morning, like for those not living in California, it was 98 degrees in San Francisco the last couple of days. It was 118 or 121 in parts of LA. And then this morning, it's cool. But I woke up and looked outside and it's this weird like hellfire orange glow which I think is the result of the smoke. So that's fun. I was looking at my daughter last night and she had this nice glow on her skin.

I was like, wait a second. That's not like, you know, sun that she's absorbed. That's like literally the glow of hellish fires in the air that are making her skin light up, you know. Are they like playing outside and getting covered in ash? Well, yeah, we didn't. So today, yeah, we're staying inside. But the problem is it's hot. Yeah.

They're talking about like a climate change, you know, first world climate change problems. But like we've got the fires bearing down and then it's super hot, but you got to stay inside, no air conditioning and it's, yeah, it's just hot. Totally, yeah. I mean, I didn't have AC the whole time I lived in San Francisco.

Almost nobody did. And my friends up there who have kids can't open the windows. So you're just completely screwed. So that's fun. Yeah. That's good to come back to. Yeah, put a pin in climate change. Yeah, well, I definitely want to get to that at the end of the show.

But I promise we will, I don't know, maybe we'll lighten the mood a little bit until then. Yes. Maybe not. We're going to talk about reports that Trump just routinely denigrates U.S. service members and veterans, including those killed in battle. An update on the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader. Talk some Brexit. Talk about the blob. Talk about Moulon.

Find me another show that gets you Brexit, the blob and Moulon. You will not. We'll talk about Rick Grinnell, our old buddy, our old pal. Belarus, the Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, why German nationalist conspiracy theorists are rallying behind Donald Trump. And then a little climate change from Smoky, California. But before we get to that, Ben, we just, we want you guys to get your shit together. And no, this is not about finally dumping that guy. It's about making a plan to vote. So each state, they have different voting options, different voting deadlines, and many of them have changed.

All of them are complicated. We have an incredible team here at Crooked Media who have called like secretaries of state in 50 states. They've assembled all the relevant information so that you don't have to. So today is officially get your shit together day. Go to vote saveamerica.com slash states. Learn your voting options. Learn your deadlines. Make a plan and get ready to vote because it is so important.

Also, better news, more exciting news. There's a new missing America out today, which is one of my favorite episodes. you talk with this unbelievably brave activist, reporter, like human being named Rana Ayyub, who went undercover to expose Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ben, tell us all about this one because I don't think people should miss this episode. Yeah, this one is really an amazing story. We're telling this story generally about rising sectarian nationalism, religious-based nationalism. But we tell the story of Rana Ayyub, who's this Indian journalist, a Muslim, who, first of all, explains

her upbringing and how she was only Muslim in a Hindu majority neighborhood, and the neighborhood kind of got set ablaze, literally, by the destruction of a mosque that led to kind of sectarian rioting and violence. But then when there were the Gujarat riots that happened when Narendra Modi was running that state, Rana went undercover. She posed as a Hindu instead of a Muslim, as an American, Indian American film student making a film about Modi and his circle. So she got inside the circle, got them to talk, got them to explain

that essentially it was a deliberate strategy of targeting Muslims and stirring up Hindu nationalism. And in microcosm, it's what happened to India. And Modi obviously became prime minister. And so we have this amazing backstory told through the eyes of this remarkable journalist. And then we have got some amazing voices

talking about how the U.S. can do better not setting the wrong example for a country like India by having a Muslim man, but by essentially living up to our own values, but also our own tradition shared with India of progressive social justice. So we've got people like Rokana, as well as Rana, a bunch of Indian voices. You'll hear perspectives you don't normally hear. I think everybody should check it out and also just marvel at Rana's own story. Totally. It is so, so good.

It's a great episode. It's a great series. Subscribe to Missing America. They are flying off the shelves. So you don't want to be left without one. Okay, let's get to the news. And we are going a guest list this week because I just got back from a week off and recorded two shows today. And, you know, a lot to catch up on Ben.

None of it great news, I'd say. But so here's the big thing that's been driving the last five days, which is the Atlantic published this blockbuster story that detailed how President Trump talks about and views U.S. service members and veterans. There were a few different pieces or elements to the story that we'll talk through. The first was when Trump canceled a visit to the On Marn Cemetery outside Paris in 2018 when he was supposed to attend an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. This is not a small event. This is not something in the East. A pretty big anniversary.

A pretty big anniversary. So he reportedly said to his staff, why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers. That's a direct quote from the piece. And later in the same trip, refer to Marines who died at the Battle of Bella Wood as suckers. for getting killed. And that battle is considered one of the most important in Marine Court history. He reportedly also asked who the good guys were in World War I and why the U.S. helped out the allies. There are also less surprising anecdotes about how Trump was angry when

the U.S. government lowered flags to half mass to honor John McCain after he passed away. I guess he also called George H.W. Bush a loser for getting shot down in World War II, which just to pause for a second. I've read the story of that bombing run when he gets shot down. George H. W. Bush actually gets hit. His plane is disabled. He continues the bombing run to drop the bombs on the target anyway before bailing out. And then I think he was able to oar his raft away from an island where other POWs were tortured, executed, and there was actually cannibalism. Almost as much guts as when Trump fired Gary Busey on 12th of the penis. A lot of this story sort of fundamentally boils down to Trump being

unable to understand the concept of service or really like shared sacrifice. Jeff Goldberg writes that Trump said to John Kelly, a four-star general whose son died in battle in Afghanistan in 2010, that, quote, I don't get it. What was in it for them? As they were standing together in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where Kelly's son is buried, where those who passed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. So, you know, since this story got posted, we've gone through like five different rounds of spin from the White House. the flat denials, which are undercut by the fact that even Fox News was able to confirm the story. Others tried to claim that Trump just like hates war so much. And that's why he said those things. No one believes it. Then finally, there was a report in the Daily Beast that basically went with

the line like, look, he's just an asshole, but he didn't mean to like attack the troops specifically. So none of it's believable. Ben, just like a couple thoughts. Like first, it is a fact that Trump has shattered that traditional norms that are supposed to insulate the military from politics. For example, he told a Navy audience to lobby Congress for him, which like anyone, with a brain would interpret as a direct order from the commander in chief to support the Republican Party, which is totally inappropriate. Second, like, despite being the commander chief, he takes no responsibility when service members die.

We all remember in 2017 when he picked a fight with the widow of Sergeant La David T. Johnson who had been killed in Niger, said something so crass, and it made her cry. And then third, the response to this behavior is just the response is partisan, right? I mean, when Democrats vote against wars or try to prevent wars, They are savage. They lose elections. John Kerry ran. He was a decorated veteran.

His service was savage. Trump, until very recently, until maybe this story seems to get a pass. So I don't know. This was a lot to take in. What was your takeaway from reading this piece? Well, you know, just beyond it being yet another confirmation of Donald Trump being a horrible human being. I guess I had a few thoughts beyond kind of what I've seen the main debate be out there. I mean, the first, you know, is in that line, which is that.

Trump basically sees people who are in the military as idiots, you know, as they made a mistake in signing up. You know, Trump is a guy who went out of his way, obviously, to avoid service in Vietnam. And there was another anecdote in the story about, like, he thought Joe Dunford, the chairman of the joint chief staff was smart. So you couldn't figure out why he had ended up in the military if he was smart, you know, which just goes to show you that he thinks that, you know, these are people that are there as Marx as props, essentially, for him to use. So he's more than happy to have the kind of flyover patriotism at football games. He's more than happy to have parades of these people down, you know, the middle of Washington, D.C. And his honor, more than happy to kind of pose in front of a bunch of troops. But he has no respect for them.

It's kind of in microcosm how Trump views everybody who votes for him. He doesn't actually care about them or want to help them. It's all about him. And, yeah, this fundamental lack of understanding that anybody could ever choose to serve a cause bigger than themselves, you know? And like you, I met a bunch of people in the military when we were in the White House. Like, every single one of those people was motivated to sign up, to serve, to some extent, because of wanting to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Yeah, sure. Some people are trying to climb out of poverty. Some people are trying to get skills

for a career. But everybody that I've ever met in the military also was motivated by a sense of common good, a sense of wanting to connect to what America stood for. And he can't even comprehend that, you know, which is, again, how he views all of America and all of American foreign policy. It's just, you know, where his personal interests and nothing else matters or is there to be mocked. I think another thing is because he has that mindset,

he also treats our military like mercenaries, you know, because they're not serving a higher cause. And so we've seen, you know, these clear reports and things he said out loud about, one of the reasons why thousands of additional American troops have been deployed to the Middle East is to defend Saudi Arabia against Iranian threats or just to make Mahmab bin Salman feel better in Saudi Arabia. And Trump has said that they're doing that because the Saudis are paying for those troops to come to Saudi Arabia. Well, that's literally the definition of mercenary.

And, you know, you should not be taking an institution that has been at the center of so much American sacrifice over more than 200 years, including in World War I, and just see them as a rent-a-force for a dictator in Saudi Arabia. And it's that mindset, I think, that contributes this. And the last thing, Tommy, is it cannot be fact-checked enough that he is completely full of shit when he talks about wanting to be the guy who ends war, the guy who doesn't like wars. He made this insane comment over the weekend about kind of the military-industrial complex,

and he doesn't like the defense companies that pay for us to be in these wars. Donald Trump has sent almost 20,000 additional Americans to the Middle East since he was present. He has not ended any war. He increased the troops in Afghanistan. He didn't even take out the troops that he tried to pull out of Syria. He just put them somewhere else in Syria. He has escalated these conflicts. He's boasted of introducing new weapons like the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan.

He's installed a Raytheon lobbyist as a Secretary of Defense. He's posed with pictures of U.S. defense equipment in the Oval Office with Mahal. Mbens Salman and talked about how he doesn't care that he kills a U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi because they pay good money for weapons. So he's completely full of it on every score. He is the worst president we've had for the military industrial complex because that basically guides his defense strategy. And he's just escalated the wars that he's inherited and sent more troops to the Middle East.

So world those who know this stuff are going to have to fact check people because it's not in the media. your friends and neighbors probably think Trump is somehow ending these wars because that's all he ever says, but it's complete BS. Yeah, I mean, a couple of thoughts. And look, him coming out and attacking the military industrial complex after naming Mark Esper, a guy who was basically no qualifications, except for, you know, selling drones to the UAE or whatever is pretty remarkable. Yeah, I mean, on the fact-checking point, though, like, one, he always takes credit for the Veterans Choice Act, which is a law to help, you know, veterans get better health care, but that was signed into law in 2014. You never hear people stepping out to say, sir, that's actually wrong. The sourcing in the story is interesting and it's kind of obvious. It's clearly top military leadership. I think Jeffrey Goldberg refers to like one of Kelly's four star friends as being a source

in the piece. Not quoted since is John Kelly, former general, former chief of staff. And people are saying, oh, he doesn't want to step out and get political and comment on the story. And that drives me crazy because once you take the job of White House chief of staff, you are in a political role that's suggesting that he can't comment on this because he wants to avoid politics after all that. It is absurd. And then lastly, like, you mentioned this moment that I think about all the time, the mother of all bombs. I think you reminded me that Eric Trump, right, bragged about it in his convention speech. Yeah. Yeah. He, you know, unfortunately, I had to watch that.

And he treated the dropping of the mother of all bombs as a great achievement. It was in like, kind of this guy who's never served anything in his life, bragging about dropping a gigantic bomb on Afghanistan. Yeah, it's like, you know, sort of maybe the most indiscriminate killing tool in the U.S. arsenal short of a nuclear weapon. I don't know. I don't have a great handle on all the bombs we have.

But the idea that there is this sort of conventional wisdom, even in the mainstream media, that Obama constrained the military because he was worried about civilian casualties and Trump somehow supports them. by allowing them to do things like drop gigantic bombs that probably kill civilians, it drives me a little bit crazy. And I think that's something the press needs to do a better job thinking through and fact-checking. Yeah, I mean, we've talked before about how the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has gone up dramatically in recent years. And you know what?

There's far too little focus on that in the U.S. media. I mean, here we are 20 years into this war almost and we're killing more and more Afghans, in part because what Trump did is not only did send more troops to Afghanistan, but yes, he lifted all those restrictions Obama had on the kinds of things that we were doing in Afghanistan and started this kind of more indiscriminate bombing and then bragged about dropping the largest conventional weapon ever. What did it achieve? Like, Afghanistan is a mess. The Taliban is ascended in Afghanistan. We're not accomplishing anything other than killing people. And the fact that that doesn't seem to bother anybody is troubling. And people will say, well, that's not bad politics for Trump.

Well, then there's something wrong with America if it's not bad to be killing more and more people and bragging about it. Don't think that other countries don't see that. What do you think that the normal Afghan perspective on America is right now? Can you imagine watching this from Afghanistan? So he doesn't value our own troops' lives. He doesn't value our own troop service. And he certainly doesn't value the human life on the other end. of any conflict. There's just this complete lack of regard for humanity generally. That's,

that to me is the biggest takeaway from this thing, not just that some four-star generals might not like Trump. It's that he just doesn't care about all the people who are affected by his own decisions as president. Yeah, it's, it's all about him. Well, I kind of think that this story is not going to be going away, especially since, you know, this is very personal from Joe Biden, having had a son who served in Iraq and he tragically passed away from cancer afterwards, I think we'll probably hear about this again at the debates. On that, Tommy, one thing, I remember Joe Biden used to ask his staff every single day to make him a card with the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan.

And he carried it around like in his jacket pocket. And I used to see him take out this card in the PDB and just kind of glance at it. And it took me while to figure out what it was. I had to ask his national security advisor about it. I mean, that's how much Joe Biden had these men and women on his mind when he was, you know, That says a lot about the difference in people here. Yeah. And frankly, that's how it should be.

Okay, so a little bit of good news here. According to the BBC, the German doctors treating Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, say he is out of a medically induced coma and improving. It's believed that Navalny was poisoned with a Russian nerve agent called Novichok. That's the same toxin that was used in an assassination attempt against Sergei Skripal, the former Russian military officer who became a double agent for the British and for British intelligence. He was poisoned in London. So Navalny was poisoned on August 20th after he drank some tea in a Siberian airport before boarding a flight to Moscow. Very glad to hear he is doing better. That must have been absolutely terrifying. I was not surprised, Ben, but certainly kind of depressed by what I read about Trump's comments when he was asked about Navalny earlier this week, which were, quote, I don't know what happened.

we have not had any proof yet, but I will take a look. It is interesting that everybody is always mentioning Russia. I don't mind you mentioning Russia, but I think probably China at this point is a nation that you should be talking about much more so than Russia because the things that China is doing are far worse. Ben, if the Chinese are poisoning Russian political leaders in Siberia, that would be news, and I'm a little bit confused by it. Yeah, I mean, it's astonishing that he couldn't even mouth any words of concern about this. And look, we obviously know, you know, the one person Donald Trump cannot say a bad word about is Vladimir Putin. Why does it matter, though?

It matters because, like, Putin is trying to establish that there are no rules for what people do, that not only will he repress people, but he will poison people with chemical weapons. In his country, by the way, in other countries, too. Like, the Russians have poisoned people in other countries, as we've talked about. And if the President of the United States is saying that, that is basically, at Putin. I mean, that's a giant green light to Putin to just keep doing this. And unless enough countries say there are going to be consequences for Putin doing stuff like this, he'll keep doing it. To contrast, Germany passed a sanctions bill. They're passing a version of the Magnitsky

bill that allows for human rights sanctions against Russians engaged in these kinds of actions. I mean, we should be working with other countries to impose coordinated sanctions and to figure out other consequences that can be imposed, or else Russia is just going to keep being a country that poisons people it doesn't like, within its own borders and without. Like, that is the most dangerous type of repression I can think of. And for him to not even be able to think of a word to say against it, it tells you everything you need to know again. By the way, the same week that the leading opposition figure in Belarus

seems to have just been kidnapped off the streets. So this stuff is happening, and the U.S. president is completely absent from saying anything about it, which basically is a green light for these. guys. And again, it makes me worried about what are we going to see in these remaining months before Trump is gone. I mean, I said a few weeks ago on this podcast that I was worried that you might see these leaders engage in more aggressive acts because they're worried about Trump losing. I honestly wonder if that's part of Putin's timing on poisoning Navalny. You know, like just he's got a list of stuff he's going down and doing right now before, you know, Trump might be defeated.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Trump also took a moment of that press conference. to again criticize Germany, who is, as you noted, has actually done something in response to the Navalny poisoning, but Trump decided to take a shot at them over buying natural gas from the Russians, as he always does. You mentioned Belarus. I'll just jump to that. So it's been about a month since the disputed election in Belarus, and the protests are still going. Again, just the very short version of the backstory is that President Alexander Lukashenko, who's a dictator who has led Belarus for 26 years. Tried to steal the election in early August.

There have been massive protests ever since. So, you know, Ben, as you noted, initially, these protesters were met with mass arrests. Many were beaten. Many were tortured. Now, like you say, it sounds like protest leaders are just being like plucked up by the state, thrown in, in unmarked vans, you know, which sadly we've seen happen here in the U.S. And then taken out of the country, in some cases to Lithuania or Poland, which are NATO members.

And then Lukashenko's goons say, aha. you know, she's now in Lithuania, that is evidence that this is all a Western conspiracies. It's like ridiculous, typical play. In a little lighter side of this, the Times had a piece about how these aging Belarusian rock stars are suddenly prominent again.

This article had very strong wind of change vibes, the X-O-I podcast, hosted by Patrick Redden-Keefe, because basically a bunch of these Belarusian rock stars got famous recording protest songs in the 80s and 90s around the fall of the Soviet Union, but then they had to go underground again. and were even jailed in some instances when Lukashenko rose to power if they dared to oppose him. So now those songs are being revived and they're becoming part of the new protest anthems.

So I don't know, man, maybe we just need the Scorpions to play a gig there and this thing is, you know, game over. Well, they definitely should. I mean, I think what's happening here is Lukashenko figured out that he couldn't wait out these protests, right? So strategy won, you know, hunker down, expect that the people are going to go home, kind of grind them down with cynicism. That didn't work. The people kept protesting, people kept turning out, people kept striking. So now we've moved on to phase two of the dictator's playbook when he loses an election and claims that he wins it, which is you try to decapitate the opposition. You try to discredit them, arrest them, arrest them, cast them as tools of foreign influence. And that's what he's trying to do now. And the question is whether that will be sufficiently demoralizing to the opposition that the protest die down. We see kind of the opposite. And the reason that the aging rock stars matter, as well as some of the younger artists as well, is that this has got a feel of a cultural movement, too. It's not just politics now, right?

And these movements, when they cross over into pop culture and culture and kind of other sectors of society, they don't go away. And even if they are squelched for some time, they pop back up. And so that to me is a very hopeful sign that something fundamentally is broken in Belarus for Lukashenko. And he may be able to hang on for some period of time, but it's very hard, I think, to see him putting this genie all the way back in the box. Ben, we haven't talked about Brexit in a while. And someone even asked me the other day,

hey, what's going on? And I was like, I'm not sure. I think they're still negotiating. But it is another one of those issues that it's kind of looming out there unresolved. And there's some reports over the weekend that negotiations between Britain and the European Union over basically their trade relationship are breaking down. And that British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has threatened to break off the talks if they don't figure out a deal by October 15th, which is actually well ahead of the actual deadline. So, like, some of these disputed areas are things that might sound mundane, like fishing rights, which I think, you know, it's a good example of just how much of a pain in the ass this process is, because you have to negotiate over so many different sectors and industries. But the big challenges are

still the same, like what to do about Northern Ireland. Both sides want to avoid putting up roadblocks or some sort of hard border between Ireland, which is part of the EU and Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, because of concerns that doing that could unravel the Good Friday agreement, which ended decades of violence in the area. So initially, it seemed like the UK and the EU had cut sort of an interim deal to manage that Northern Ireland process. But the British side seems to be threatening to basically disregard that interim agreement, which could make the EU negotiator decide, well, you know, if they're going to walk back their commitments on Northern Ireland, maybe that means it's not worth negotiating at all because Boris Johnson doesn't

honor his agreements. There's also talk in Scotland more. more talk in Scotland about leaving the UK. But so, you know, this challenge could balloon is basically the point. Phorst Johnson's popularity has been hurt by his handling of the coronavirus, so it's unclear how much, you know, political running room he has here. You know, Ben, always good to check in on a global challenge like this, find out it's still bad. What do you think the odds are that the Labor Party can maybe use this moment to try to, like, showcase competent leadership or tell a story about how much better things could be? Is there any silver lining? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I think what they did with Brexit, right, is when Boris Johnson won, it seemed like, oh, great

victory they're going to get to do there at Brexit, but it's still looming there. And the consequences that people have talked about for years could still become manifest based on what they can negotiate with the EU or not. And the reality is that the UK economy is already taking this huge hit from COVID and leaving the European market is just going to be further destabilizing. And this idea that they can just jump into some trade agreement with the U.S. and other countries to make up for it has always been flawed. And it's even more challenged, I think, in a post-COVID environment.

And so Boris Johnson is having trouble, again, you know, marrying his kind of rest of right-wing base at once a stronger Brexit and is now basically threatening, as they themselves admitted, to kind of break international law and how they want to pursue this Northern Ireland agreement. He's playing brinksmanship with the EU because he doesn't know what else to do. Right. And, like, they're acting like they have the leverage when they don't have this much leverage. Like, they have to figure this out at some point. I do think that the U.S. election could play some role here in the sense that he's trying to get some stuff done by October 15th before the election. But I think, you know, Boris Johnson has pointed to Trump as evidence of the direction of things as a government to be more willing maybe to negotiate some politically motivated trade deal with him. You know, the picture changes a little bit with Joe Biden. And I think the argument the Labor Party can be making is like we need a softer Brexit here, right? We need to maintain.

our obligations obviously with respect to Northern Ireland, but also, you know, our connectivity to the world if we want to have a chance in a post-COVID environment. And by the way, that's the trend of things if Joe Biden's coming in. So I think the Labor Party can put itself forward as, you know, maybe we're not going to be able to revisit that Brexit decision. Right. But the way that it's done can be less disruptive. And by the way, hey, we're the competent ones who can manage things like COVID, manage the economy and help this country pick up the pieces and move on from all the damage that Boris Johnson and his people have done. Yeah, yeah, well said. So switching gears a little bit, Ben, I want to ask you about the blob. Yeah. Because the Spectator magazine, they ran a piece the other day

with the headline, the return of the blob. And sadly, listeners, that is not a new Mark Morrison track. It is rather a defense of the revolving door between foreign policy jobs in government and then the think tank community in Washington. And so the kind of like Stromian argument in this piece was basically the Trump administration refused to hire any, like, competent people, any real professional foreign policy thinkers if they opposed him. So the revolving door, uh, between government and think tanks is now broken, but basically, hey, it's okay, it'll come back under Biden. And I guess that's not like wrong per se, but like this is where the piece got weird to me, which is it says the blob shouldn't be demonized, like they aren't responsible for the Iraq war, they claim. And that the quote,

signal flaw of the blob is that it wants activism and that it can only think in terms of American greatness and that means an expansive foreign policy. Now, Ben, is a guy who like coined the phrase the blob? I imagine, I want to hear where you think the problems are with the blob. Just some thoughts from from my perspective. First, like the piece doesn't really mention funding. A lot of these organizations get huge checks from governments like Saudi Arabia or the UAE. They can become vehicles for them to essentially illegally lobby Washington. That's a problem. Second, they tend to skew Republican or at least hawkish and interventionist. That's changing a little bit, but not enough. And then third, you know, like, they call them think tanks, but I feel like a lot of these places have an identity or philosophy and they become like group think tanks rather than like vigorous debates between both sides.

And so, you know, I have no problem with ex-government staffers having a place to go when their party's out of power. It's like think and read and write and like recharge, whatever. But I don't think the criticism of the blob was about professionalism per se. Now, I don't know. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Yeah. Now, you know, this is worth revisiting. As you said, I coined this phrase, and it's since then been turned into all these other things. You know, what was I referring to? I was basically referring to kind of a core of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that is overly preoccupied with the Middle East, overly inclined to intervene militarily, and it refuses to kind of question their own assumptions, including a lot of the catastrophic failures, of the post-9-11 foreign policy. You know, why was it so much easier to go to war in Iraq

than it was to do a nuclear agreement with Iran, right? Like, there is this kind of group thing mentality. You're right, that is in many cases funded to those sink tanks. A lot of people at those sink tanks have high-paid speaking fees and, you know, places like the Emirates. A lot of those people go and do some consulting work for defense contractors. And it kind of creates this core to the U.S. foreign policies establishment that is overly inclined to make the kinds of mistakes we've made for 20 years,

including some in the Obama administration, right? Like going into Yemen in a Saudi-led war, or, I think, in retrospect, the surge in Afghanistan, right? Since then, there's been a very concerted effort by, I think, people in the blob to define the blob as actually much bigger as being anybody who's an expert, anybody who's a foreign service officer, anybody who has ever worked in the U.S. government on foreign policy, or to say, oh, you made the same criticism of Trump, and Trump, you know, Trump is basically running an anti-Blob foreign policy, and that proves that the blob is right. No, no, guys, this is about the fact that America's post-9-11 foreign policy has, to a large extent, been insane, right? We've spent trillions of dollars in wars and Iraq and Afghanistan.

We've broken kind of American legitimacy in the world. We are responsible for the displacement. there's a story today that suggested that over 30 million people worldwide have been displaced by America's post-9-11 wars. I could go on and on and on, never mind how it's going to broken our politics in the way that national security has been used as this divisive wedge issue and led to kind of xenophobic efforts like the Muslim ban, right? So I'm talking about this toxic interventionist, Middle East obsessed, Iran-obsessed, post-9-11 foreign policy.

I'm not talking about like we shouldn't have any experts in the government, you know, but that's what they say to avoid the harder debate. about why are we doing this? And I think the Trump issue is really important here because Trump, yes, he disdains expertise. But in many ways, he's done exactly what the blob used to criticize Obama for not doing. The United States has never been closer to Israel and the UAE and Saudi Arabia than right now. Obama used to get hit all the time for the fact that he didn't get along well enough with those countries. The United States left the Iran nuclear deal. There was a target for so many of these talks. And Iran announced today that they're launching new advanced centrifuge initiatives. They're

growing their stockpile. That's been a disaster. The United States has sent more troops to the Middle East, not less, right? Donald Trump, in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack, did what they said was the biggest mistake of the Obama administration, right? He bombed the runway from where the chemical weapons attack happened. Nothing changed. The direction of the Syrian civil war didn't change whatsoever here. So, you know, I think that there's a lot of people who are going to use the Biden win, if there is a Biden win, knock on wood, everybody go out and figure out how you're going to vote, to kind of launder the failures of post-9-11 American foreign policy and say, oh, now we have to just kind of go back to the things that we're working.

A lot of things were not working. And a lot of the reason that those things were not working is this revolving door, is this group think, is this influence of foreign governments, is this influence of defense contractors on American foreign policy, particularly with the Middle East. So I think that there's going to be this fight for the next months to define how a Biden foreign policy should be viewed, who should be in a Biden administration. And I think it would be a big mistake to succumb to some thinking that like, no, no, something called the blob is great. And we just need to go back to all the same faces and everything will be fixed. A lot of those faces are great.

And a lot of them are you're my friends, Tommy. But like, a lot of the better ones recognize that things need to change too, you know. So I think there's kind of a lazy reflex here to say, oh, because Trump criticized, you know, experts that that ergo, let's go back to the blob. There's another way of doing this. Yeah. I loved the line that the blob can only think in terms of American greatness. Do you remember that debate in 2007 or 2008? It was like Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton, and they were all asked to say something about themselves that's a weakness. And John Edwards was like, I just care too much about solving poverty. It was like, completely absurd straw man responses. It was not even close to a real conversation. Yeah. I mean, that's how far this, because they don't want to debate, why did the Middle East policy get so screwed? up, they say, no, we're for American greatness, we're for international order. Like, well, who's not for those things? To me, the definition of the blob is when Barack Obama said that, that don't do stupid shit should be a starting point for American foreign policy, anybody who got offended by that statement is in the blobs, because like, like, why would you be offended by

someone saying, don't do stupid shit? And just because you did the stupid shit because of a belief in American greatness, well, like, that doesn't justify it, and that's how we get the Iraq war. Yeah, a little too much talk about all the good we did in World War II and not, you know, some of the mistakes since I would argue from the blob. Ben, let's talk with something very important here. And please don't tell the vice president, Vice President Pence that is, that we're going here. But there is a new live action version of Mulan that's available on Disney Plus. And in case listeners don't know why Mike Pence might have a problem with that, it's because in 1998, Mike Pence wrote an op-ed where he whined that he was victimized by the original animated. Mulan movie because it's secret liberal propaganda advocating to have women serve in combat. So that's the brand of weirdo he is. But good news, we have a new Mulan scandal that I think is actually more serious. So Isaac Stone Fish wrote a piece for The Washington Post where he pointed out that the new Milan movie was partially filmed in China.

And in the credits Disney thanks for Communist Party propaganda departments in Xinjiang province and a security service in the region for their help, their cooperation, whatever. So these are organizations that are part of the Chinese effort to put millions of Chinese Uighurs in concentration camps to re-educate them, to torture them, to do worse. So in other words, Disney worked with regional governments participating in what many believe is a genocide. So I watched the movie before I read this piece. I'd say it was good. It was not great. I did kind of wonder as we watched where they shot it, and I have to admit that I'm a little bit shocked that they would go to Xinjiang of all places.

and I kind of now regret paying for it. But I don't know. Like what, how do you think about this stuff? Well, I think that, you know, there's been a two problems, at least, with how the American entertainment industry looks at China. One is very specific things like this, you know, where they're making, you know, moral compromises in terms of who they're dealing with. And we'll come back to that in a second.

And the second is the more subtle, like, what is the subject matter of these movies? how is China depicted in these movies? How is the Chinese government depicted? And I think the simple truth there that is a little chilling is if you step back and think about it, American movies are often critical of the American government,

but they're almost never critical of the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, because they want it in that market and they know that the Chinese government won't allow certain movies to be screened in China if they're at all critical of the Chinese.

Just a quick anecdote on that. Apparently there was a pro-Dali-Lama movie in like 1996 that Disney put out that they've been apologizing for ever since, that I think Michael Eisner later said was a mistake. I didn't know about that until I read about this new Milan piece. But yeah, I mean, what you said is very specifically true, and they've been getting brushback pitches for a while. Yeah, and I don't want, it's not that I want to see anti-China movies or anything. I just wanted to be the same for everybody. If a filmmaker

wants to make a movie about the dialami, he doesn't have to worry that it can't get made because an American company doesn't want to piss off the Chinese. The reality is the movies, you know, like often it's like the Chinese scientists helping to get George Clooney down from space and gravity, but nothing about putting Uyghurs in concentration camps, you know? And for Disney, I think this is a specific issue because, you know, we've had the nine dash line, the insane Chinese maritime border that claims the entire South China Sea. Like ESPN was showing it on certain maps of China. Abominable.

A movie that I watched with my kids also had this kind of nine dash line subtly in it. So Disney, as an entity, clearly has made these decisions, you know, because they have a lot of business in China. Two, I think, in many ways, you know, we're going to change the map or we're going to change a subject matter. Or now, you know, I'm sure the Chinese want to kind of legitimize these entities in Jingjing province by including them in a big international project like this. And I think that's like a problem. And, you know, the NBA got all that shit for the response to one tweet over Hong Kong. I think it's right for people to ask tough questions of American companies that make these kind of compromises. And in the long run, this is something that Congress might have to look at, which is, you know, both who are you doing business with in China?

And if there are people involved in mass repression, then you shouldn't be doing business with them. But also how are we making sure that American companies are protecting the speech of their employees and not, you know, cracking down on it at the request of the government of China too. So there's a lot of questions that flew out of a seemingly simple story like this. Yeah, you do have to wonder how the new, and thankfully, very social justice conscious NBA would have treated Rockets GM, Darry, for his tweet about Hong Kong if it happened today versus a couple years ago. Before we move on from this subject, though, I do want to give a shout out to BuzzFeed News, which did some really, really great reporting on this exact issue of these Uighur detention camps, concentration camps in Xinjiang province.

So BuzzFeed noticed that on Baidu maps, it's Chinese mapping software, you can only zoom in to a certain level on like suspected campsites or military sites or any sort of sensitive sites before the images are replaced with a blank gray tile. So the reporters, they compared the areas with these sort of like blanked out tiles to more recent satellite imagery they got elsewhere.

And then they believe they were able to use that comparison to identify 400 plus, locations in Xinjiang province that appear to be prisons or these detention centers. They also helped explain how massive these facilities are. There's one prison they believe is capable of holding 32,000 plus people. We were talking about facilities that are the size like of, you know, a third or one half of Central Park. Like they're that scale.

So they also interviewed a bunch of like former prisoners, including people who were arrested and held for months for the crime of like downloading WhatsApp or, or, you know, something so unbelievably mundane. So highly recommend that work, great reporting by BuzzFeed News, and anyone who continues to put attention on this because it's the crime against humanity. Yeah, and the Chinese want people to become kind of numbed to it. And because international journalists can't easily get access to it, you don't read about it that often. And so I think that means it's incumbent on all of us to stay engaged with it and hopefully to put pressure on a new American administration to make this a higher priority in the relationship.

with China. Yeah. And if you want to learn more about it, check out that bussy report. Check out amazing reporting by the BBC. Isabel Young advised at an unbelievable report where she went to Xinjiang. So truly harrowing stuff. Check out also Human Rights Watch. Maya Wang has some great reports in Human Rights Watch, including interviews with a lot of people who have been detained. Yeah, it is harrowing stuff. Okay, so we have talked probably too much about former director of national intelligence and sentient Russian Twitter bot Rick Grinnell on this show. So I didn't want to talk about him more. But then last week, I'm minding my business on vacation.

And Rick strolled his obnoxious, arrogant ass into the White House briefing room and just started berating reporters about a supposed historic breakthrough in relations between Serbia and Kosovo. He claimed that Serbia and Kosovo had agreed to normalize economic ties. Though when politely asked what that meant specifically by, I think, Jeff Mason from Reuters, he was incapable of describing what it actually meant, you know, some pretty basic stuff for someone briefing on an issue. He also claimed that Serbia was moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem like the U.S. had and that Kosovo and Israel would recognize each other diplomatically, basically. So Grinnell's announcement came as a surprise, I guess, to the European Union, which holds the longstanding

view that the diplomatic status of Jerusalem has to be figured out in peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and that any end run of that process is harmful. But despite, you know, the Granales briefing room scolding of the press, I guess the deal is falling apart. Serbian officials, I guess, said that there is no final decision to move the embassy. It's not clear if that broader reproachment between Kosovo and Israel is going to happen. So, Ben, it just doesn't seem like they did any of the diplomacy that actually had to happen before making this announcement.

These guys are just solely focused on trying to present a case to the media about all they did for Israel and sell that to voters. in advance of the election. I don't think we've ever talked about Serbia and Kosovo on this show. Do you want to explain just briefly why, like, disrupting European-led peace talks between these two countries in service of Trump's re-elect might be a bad idea? Yeah, this was an astonishingly strange interlude. But just to roll back the tape, right? So the United States in the late 90s intervened in Kosovo to protect Kosovo's against efforts at ethnic cleansing by the Serbian government.

This is in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia and a whole range of conflicts from Bosnia and ultimately to Kosovo. And the United States and NATO, through basically an air campaign, were able to stop the Serbian attacks on Kosovo, defend the people of Kosovo, and then kind of midwife Kosovo to some form of independence.

Serbia never accepted, essentially, losing Kosovo, another piece of what used to be Yugoslavia and then what became Serbia. And so there have been these ongoing simmering tensions in the Balkan region. And yes, the EU has played this kind of key role in trying to develop closer ties that could lead to normalization between Serbia and Kosovo. The U.S. obviously remains deeply engaged because of our role at the outset, because we're hugely popular in Kosovo as kind of being the party most responsible for their independence. So that's the background. Now, what they were trying to announce was so crazy about it is all they were doing is taking things that they'd already agreed to do with the Europeans and kind of announcing them again with us. So the people who actually looked at this, you know, they've made some commitments to try to establish greater trade and travel links and things like this.

And they've already made those commitments in the EU context. They were just kind of remaking them. And they've stalled, by the way, in implementing them. Right. But just to have a photo op, and I guess for Serbia and Kosovo, you get to come to the White House and get a red carpet and God knows what else they were promised. And I'll come back to that in a second. Just to kind of reannounce stuff that they're already trying to negotiate that isn't complete. And then Rick Rinell, who, by the way, where did he come from? He was the ambassador of Germany and then he was the acting DNI. And then he was at the Trump campaign. I last heard he was literally an employee of the Trump campaign. And he's negotiating between Serbia and Kosovo. And why is Israel a part of this negotiation? So basically they're coming here to announce nothing new, basically to talk about what they're already negotiating with Europeans and just do it with us, and then promised to do some things on Israel that they aren't doing, by the way. Serbia didn't even seem to know that they were agreeing to move the embassy. I mean, this thing was so amateurish. Again, I just imagine how that looks from Moscow or Berlin to be looking at this, and Rick Grinnell yelling about a peace deal between Serbia and Kosovo.

And it's nothing and it's repackaging stuff that's already happening and it's trying to bring in Israel and even that stuff is so half baked, it falls apart. I mean, I don't know what else to say other than Rick Grinnell was an unregistered foreign agent of Victor Orban before he came in the Trump years. He's clearly saturated in kind of the corruption of Central Europe. I couldn't help but look at this and wonder whether there's a corruption nexus that we're not seeing of why Rick Grinnell wants to get involved in trade. negotiations involving Serbia and Koso. I don't, you know, I'm going to stop there. That's all I'm going to say, because I don't know anything about this. I just, there's something that doesn't smell right at all about any of this, Tommy. And with the Trump people, you always think, well, is there a corruption nexus? And that's all I could come up with. Yeah, it was just so perfect

to just completely come in and be that obnoxious, berate the press corps, refuse to answer basic questions, and then have the whole thing fall apart. That is vintage Grinnell, you know, in honor of Rick Connell. Let's talk about Germany for one second. We have a couple more things before we're done. So this is a fun headline then. Trump emerges as inspiration for Germany's far right, end quote. This is a story in the York Times. They detail how far right nationalists, far right activists, conspiracy theorists, Q&N people have come together in Germany and rallied under the banner of Trump. I missed this when I was gone, but I guess several hundred far-right activists tried to storm the German parliament on August 31st and to fire up the crowd before they made their charge. One of the leaders told everyone

that Trump was in Berlin and to do it on his behalf. They were repelled by cops. Of course, he wasn't actually there. And, you know, Trump is generally very unpopular in Germany among the broader population, but the QAnon people, the people angry about coronavirus restrictions and And the neo-Nazis, they love them. And apparently Germany's Q&N community has grown exponentially since the coronavirus hit. It's like second or third largest after the U.S. and the UK. So that's another, you know, just like toxic thing we're exporting. I should also note that Robert F. Kennedy, the infamous anti-vaxxer was at this event too. So that's wonderful. Anyway, I don't need to explain to people why an ascendant far-right German nationalist party is a bad thing. But if you ever hear

someone say that Biden and Trump would be the same on foreign policy, here's a good data point for you to push back on them quite hard. Well, it's a data point, too, that like foreign policy is not just your initiatives, your Serbia-Cosovo negotiations, for instance. It's who you are and the impact of who you are, the impact that has on the rest of the world. And the United States is destabilizing the world with the example of our president, with our social media platforms like Facebook, with our broken brains in Q and on, like the stuff that has gone wrong with American society is having as negative an impact on the world as Trump's, I think, disastrous foreign policy. And look, if the Nazis, if the German Nazis think you're one of them, like, that's

not a good thing. No. No. Like, that's not where anybody in America should be. And that's certainly not where the American president should be. It kind of encapsulates everything that's wrong with this moment and with Donald Trump and what he's become. And again, I think the hard truth is it's easy to also

to say, well, that's Trump. He's the leader of a major political party in this country. So basically, these German Nazis can look at the American Republican Party and find something to draw motivation from. Like, this rot is deep and just electing a new president isn't going to fix it. Like, Republican Party's got to figure out how it became an inspirational force for far-right extremism around the world. and we're going to have to deal with why disinformation and conspiracy theory has become such an American export here.

Talked about on Missing America episode four, by the way, if people want to go back and binge listen. Excellent episode. Yeah, in headlines over vacation that would worry me if I read the Republican Party, I had this one there, and then the New York Post story about Osama bin Laden's niece saying that only Trump can stop ISIS. That would have bum me out a little bit if I was on the campaign. Talk about endorsements you don't want or need. You can have bin Laden. Let's talk about Saudi Arabia for just a second. On Monday, a Saudi court announced verdicts in the case of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. He's the former Washington post columnist and Saudi critic who was murdered in Turkey in 2018 by the Saudi government.

Five of eight defendants in this case got 20 years each in prison. Two got 17 years. One got 10 years. They were all spared the death penalty in a country that is more than happy to dole it out because some members of Khashoggi's family said they forgave the killers, although it seems highly likely that those comments were given under duress, given that they live in Saudi Arabia, still some of them. So these cases are part of the Saudi government spin that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wasn't part of this, that he didn't order the killing, but rather this was like Saudi agents gone rogue.

That bullshit is undercut by evidence gathered by the U.S. intelligence community, United Nations, and reports that the Saudi government has carried out or tried to carry out similar assassination plots elsewhere, including in Canada. So Ben, you know, this is far from closure, another story that I guess we'll just need, you know, a new White House to really try to reckon with. But it was worth updating. Yeah, there's no, there's no reason to believe the credibility of an investigation led by the people who ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, right? I mean, ultimately, from what we've seen about reports of what the U.S. Intelligence Committee thinks, they think that this lands at the feet of Mohamed bin Salman, but also just anybody who understands how Saudi Arabia,

works, knows that this kind of complex operation against Washington Post journalist would not happen without Mahab and Salman ordering it or at the very least knowing it. So I don't think we should take this that seriously as resolution of any way, shape, or form. You mentioned the election. It's an interesting question, though, Tommy, because after Joe Biden is elected, knock on wood, hopefully that happens, he'll be in charge of the U.S. intelligence community. And these questions about accountability, I think should come up again. You know, I think we have a right. to ask an incoming Biden administration, hey, can you tell us now the truth about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi? And what are you going to do in response to that truth? I don't think this

should go away just because it's been a couple years old. And we're coming up on the two-year anniversary here of October 2nd of Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance and killing. I mean, this is something that should be seen as a live issue in terms of our politics. Yeah, for sure. I totally agree. As should arm sales to the Saudi government in the general relationship. It's high on that agenda. last thing then, I just want to sort of, I guess, end where we started, which, you know, as Hannah and I were huddling in our house over the weekend, it's like 110 degrees, I got all the lights off because I'm, like, trying to think, what can I do to limit our energy consumption and not

lead to, like, rolling blackouts across L.A. I saw this story from the nation. The headline was, the sitting president has no climate plan. Why isn't that headline news? And I thought, you know what? Andrew McCormick at the nation? Great question. Like, obviously, it is absurd that the entire GOP has its head in the sand when it comes to climate change. But the piece also points out that, you know, during the Republican National Convention, you got two hurricanes barreling down on the Gulf. None of the combined 50 segments on the hurricanes on broadcast news during that time connected the storms to climate change or to Republican policies. Other outlets did a far better job, notably CNN, notably the major print outlets. But I found that pretty jarring and frankly

part of the problem. I mean, like coverage of Democratic climate plans, they obsess about the price tag, right? That's all we talk about. The Green Deal deal will cost $2 trillion, or whatever the fuck it is. But the price tag of inaction rarely gets hung around the Republican Party's neck. And we got to figure out how to change that. And part of it's on the media, and part of it's on us. Yeah, I think it is both. I mean, I think with the media, yeah, a very simple point would be if you just report the reality of climate change being totally relevant. to all the weather events people are experiencing, I think that would change things a bit. And there's this kind of going out of your way

to avoid saying it, you know, that just needs to disappear. I mean, it should not be this fucking hot. You know, and there should not be fires like this all the time. And the fires that are happening out here in California didn't used to happen this way with like mass lightning strikes that start apocalyptic fires, right?

Or that idiot with a gender reveal party. They don't get a pass either. We've got to ban those stupid gender reveal parties. sorry that's not a climate issue, but come on people. Yeah, come on people. I mean, and so I think the media has to lay this on the table. And you're right. Like, they'll say, well, people aren't talking about it more.

No, I think that the media jumps on certain things, right? So there are certain stories that politicians know they like to cover, right? So like Trump knows they love like a good suburbs slash race story. And so he just starts yelling about the suburbs and get, you know, infiltrated by black and brown people. And he knows it'll get covered in a way. that, I mean, I used to say, like, Barack Obama tweeted climate change is an existential threat to the planet. And like, there wouldn't be a single news story written off that. Okay. If Donald Trump were to tweet today that there's a caravan coming from Mexico that's an existential threat to

America, we'd have a seven-day news cycle about it. So there is something about how the media both reports on weather events and just kind of thinks about politics and the intersection of politics and issues where this one, they just see as off limits or is not interesting. that leads to the politics side is, yeah, like, people have to just demonstrate that this is a voting issue and a mobilization issue. And what's interesting is that's already happening in the Democratic Party, right? And so you saw, you know, Ed Markey defeat Joe Kennedy in a Massachusetts Senate primary in large part because he embraced the Green New Deal. Clearly, to win Democratic Party elections, it's important to care about climate. I think it's going to have to become clear that that same dynamic is true of the country. But we just haven't for some reason adjusted. to how unusual it is that we have a whole major political party that denies it exists. The media doesn't have to kind of assign that equal credit credence as what Democrats think.

And Democrats don't have to be afraid of this anymore. Like the public opinion is on our side on this issue. And yet there's still, as there is on so much foreign policy, kind of this defensive frame. No, like there's nothing to be defensive about. People should be defensive of the people who are doing nothing about a problem that is already on top of us here. Yeah, agreed. And, you know, look, there is great work being done if you want to support some of it. Check out the Sunrise Movement, right?

I mean, they were a huge player in that Markey Kennedy primary because of all the work they did on the Green New Deal. So, you know, worth checking it out. We're supporting groups that are doing the work like they are. And I should say there's great climate reporting, but that's part of the problem, is it's like climate reporting, right? So you could open the New York Times, and the New York Times is some of the best coverage of climate change. But it's kind of over here. You have to look for it. The political reporting doesn't bring climate change in as a leading issue in our country, right?

And so this is the problem. Like there's, you have to kind of seek out the environmental reporters, right? But when it gets to basic politics, climate change is just not treated as as a voting issue for some reason. Yeah. And frankly, you know, policy reporting generally was like completely dwarfed by, say, Hillary's emails, right? I mean, I think the total sort of broadcast news stat from, January through, you know, late October 2016, Vox set a piece on this was there were about, you know, 100 email coverage stories per every 30 some odd, you know, policy stories.

So that just has to change. But, you know, that's part of the niche we're trying to fill here at Pod Save the World and Cricket Media. Ben, that's all I got, man. Great to see you again. Everybody go to vote saveamerica.com slash states. Learn your voting options, learn your deadlines, make a plan, vote. and then maybe we can address some of these problems and not just talk about them.

Yeah, let's see. I'd look forward to that. I really would. Totally. Like, let's just get to a new reality and then we can argue about how to actually solve these problems. I cannot wait to not ever talk about Donald Trump ever again and just fight about like Biden's policy on climate or whatever. It's going to be great. Yeah.

It'll be great. Knock on wood. Let's get there. Let's get there. All right, buddy. Talk to you soon. See it. Positive of the World is a crooked media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. Pod Save the World is mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our amazing digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmel Coney and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes and videos every week.