Pod Save the World - Trump’s Top Spy Has One Job: Revenge

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Trump says he’s bored with peace talks, American right-wingers flock to Moscow, and the new Director of National Intelligence’s claim to fame is owning an HVAC company. Another fun week!Tommy and Ben discuss why Trump installing Bill Pulte as the new acting Director of National Intelligence should terrify you given his total lack of experience and focus on revenge. Then it's back to Iran, where breathless coverage about a potential peace deal hasn’t changed the reality 3 months into the war. The guys also dig into the growing divergence between Trump and Netanyahu over Lebanon, including a reported phone call in which Trump allegedly told Netanyahu that he’d “be in prison if it weren't for me.” In Gaza, Netanyahu is openly talking about annexing and occupying more territory, while life on the ground for civilians remains hell on earth. Then Russia launches one of its biggest drone and missile barrages of the war on Ukrainian cities, while a parade of American right-wing influencers like Candace Owens and the Tate brothers descend on the country. Colombia heads to a runoff election, with a left-wing Senator facing off against Trump's preferred candidate, “El Tigre,” who wants to copy El Salvador’s approach to cartel violence. And fresh corruption stories will boggle the mind involving Don Jr. and Pentagon loans, and a Trump golf course and graves in Vietnam. Finally, Ben speaks to Aya Ibrahim, Senior Fellow at the AI Now Institute, about Trump’s new Executive Order on AI and what sensible regulation could look like.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, episode title, and episode date.For subscribers, the guys answer questions about the fiction writers they love and Putin’s health.Buy Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches  and subscribe to his Substack here.

Pots Save the World is brought to you by Zbiotics. I'm going to tell you guys about this game-changing product I use before any night out with drinks. It's called pre-alcohol. Z-biotics, pre-alcohol, probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by-dhist. It's a build-up of this by-product, not dehydration. That's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down, just for a remember to make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night, drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. You guys probably know by now that I love Zbiotics. I literally will not have a drop of alcohol without first taking a Zbiotics. It works unbelievably well for me on those nights where you're going out on a weeknight or you're having maybe one extra, one more than you normally would. Zbiotics is a game changer for me. Go to Zbiotics.com slash PSTW to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use the code PSTW at checkout. is backed with 100% money back guarantee.

So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions, asked. Remember, head to zbiotics.com slash PSTW and use the code PSTW at checkout for 15% off. As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's the Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Gasmu Musugian. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News's trusted journalist. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful,

And it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist. Here's the scoop from NBC News. Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, is this the best week of your life? You get the Knicks going to the NBA Finals.

Your second book is now out into the worlds. Are you more confident that the Knicks can beat Wemby or that you can beat Fox and Friends co-host and Real World Star, Rachel Campos Duffy on the New York Times best seller list. That's your competition, buddy. I guess the gauntlet I throw down is I'm probably more confident in the Nix. But that's more because of my competence in the Nix than my self-doubt or anything. That is some tough comp in the book market, though. I mean, Fox and Friends, man.

That's a rabid audience. Yep. And she can market the hell out of it. So that's why you guys got to go buy Ben's book. It's very important. We got a great show for you today, though. we're going to cover Trump's insane new choice to serve as acting director of national intelligence. We are going to explain why this feels like a step towards the intelligence community being

just used and abused to punish Trump's enemies. We're going to walk you through the latest on the mess that is the war in Iran, the failed negotiations to end the war and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. We'll talk about the escalation in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon, and then some conflicting reports about whether Trump maybe or maybe did not yell at Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu about Lebanon. It felt very Biden era, Ben, to read about, you know, private scolding. How upset he was. Nothing changes. Nothing changes. We'll do a Gaza update. We'll update you guys on the war in Ukraine and try to figure out why a bunch of far-right influencers from the U.S. or Europe are descending on Moscow. Finally, we will tell you about

presidential election in Colombia and what's at stake there. And if we have time, maybe some stories about Maga Grift. Ben, you did an interview today. What are folks going to hear? So I talked to A.A. Ibrahim, who's with the AI Now Institute and has worked on AI and foreign policy in the past in the Congress and the Biden White House. We talked about the Pope's encyclical that you and I talked about last week. What's important in it. Trump's new executive order announced today on artificial intelligence, whether the idea of like a race between the U.S. and China on AI's kind of the right policy framework. And just what would the right approach to regulating these technologies look at. like. So we've been talking for a while about doing a little bit more AI on the show because it's coming for everything. So this is a great conversation with A. People should check it out. We should interview Claude Mythos on the show, maybe. See how that goes? We should actually. That'd be quite interesting. Just be like, hello, Claude. How are you? At the very end of the show, our friends of the pod Discord subscribers will hear Ben and I

answer some questions from the Discord community. So stick around for that. So Ben, in summary, I think our ask for listeners today are root for the Knicks, which is a tough pill to swallow for me as a card-carrying asshole, but I will try. Buy Ben's book, All We Say, available now. It's truly excellent. You can also hear Ben with John Fabra talking about speechwriting on the POTSave America feed, but also help him displace racial Campos Duffy

on the best seller chart because that is offensive that she is, I think, number three right now. That's very upsetting. We do have to beat her. You got to do that. Please help us do that. Subscribe to POTSave the World, wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube.

And then if you are horrified by Barry Weiss gutting 60 minutes over at CBS, want to help a progressive media company grow. Consider becoming a friend of the pod paid subscriber. For $10 a month, you get bonus content, bonus Pod Save America episodes, add free episodes, deep dives into polling from Dan Pfeiffer and much, much more. So it's good spent, good value. And Tommy, I have two crooked book crossovers. Today, Wednesday, Alex Wagner and I will be in conversation in New York City at the 92nd Street Y. There are few tickets left if people want to check that out. And then next Monday, John Favre and I will be in conversation in L.A.

You can find links to this. We'll put them in the show notes, but they're also on my website, Ben Rhodes. Dot info. Dot info. Okay. You got the coveted dot info? Yeah, I got the dot info. Every time I have a book, I have to redo a website.

It's all up there. Listen, I get it. I get it. All right. So we were going to lead the show today with this head spinning, you know, like tweets and fucking sirens and, you know, fake scoops about Iran. But then the news broke this morning that Donald Trump has installed a goober named Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.

And to me, that was just a five alarm fire. So just to back up to explain, Bill Pulte, it's this random businessman who Trump installed as the head of the federal housing finance agency or FHFA. Without getting too wonky, FHFA is supposed to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other parts of like the government systems that provide loans, mortgages. But in practice, what Pulte has done is he's use his access to sensitive mortgage data to manufacture criminal cases against Trump's enemies like Letitia James. It is very obvious than what is happening here with this news from today because Pulte has

no experience and intelligence. He has no national security background, literally none. And the only reason you make this guy the top spy in the U.S. government, overseeing the entire intelligence community is to give him access to all of our intelligence data and all of the authorities they have and all of the collection tools they have to use those to go after Trump's enemies.

It's to move that retribution project that started in a backwater housing agency and move it to the DNI's office. And so that is absolutely chilling. This is what dictators do. This is how countries slide into becoming police states. And I'm sure that The Pulte marching orders will include cherry picking data to prove that the 2020 election

was stolen, right? Like the old Trump hobby horses, but it will not stop there. Like, we know this guy is willing to say and do anything to make Trump happy. And so is Cash Patel over at the FBI. And that combination is scary as hell. And Democrats need to fight this tooth and nail. So, Ben, the arguments I would make to Democrats, like listening to this are that I would just scream to the world are, one, putting someone with no intelligence experience

in charge of the intelligence community is self-evidently crazy and makes all of us less safe. And Pulte doesn't meet the statutory requirements for the job. Like they should just raise hell about how unqualified he is. But then, too, I think the leverage for them is I would say I'm not reauthorizing any intelligence collected collection authorities, in particular Section 702 of FISA, which lets the U.S. government force American telecom and tech companies to give over data without a warrant if this guy is in that job, period. Draw a line in the sand. Do it now. This is fucking crazy. Absolutely right. And this is one of those tests of whether Democrats understand what's happening or not. Because Bill Pulte has no interest whatsoever in national security. He's not someone who's thinking about China. He's someone whose pure role is to exact vengeance on Trump's political opponents or to advance Trump's conspiracy theories. If it wasn't enough that he has no experience or background whatsoever in intelligence, to National Security. Tommy, the fact that he's still going to run that housing agency while he's

running the D&I is the, I thought, the most comic part of this. He's going to run all the most powerful intelligence agency community in the history of the world. And he's also going to run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yeah. If this guy could comb through the mortgage records of Tish James to invent a conspiracy theory to try to prosecute her, what's you going to do with the NSA's capacity to collect, you know, all the phone calls in the fucking world, you know? So buckle up here. And absolutely, there's no, if you're concerned that someone's going to say that you don't take intelligence seriously because you're not reauthorizing Section 702, like, do you think Bill Pulte and Donald Trump are taking it seriously? Those are the guys

that don't give a shit about keeping us safe. It does also make me worry, Tommy, about what we're in for for the next two and a half years of the Trump administration. Because remember in the first Trump term, by the end, we were down to the dregs. You know, I don't. I don't. I don't even remember the name of the guy who was Attorney General. Cash Patel was chief of staff at DOD. We had Rick Grinnell as acting director of DNI. We're already kind of entering this phase where the people are just getting weird and we're more and more vindictive. And so I think that's another, we should be ready for that. This Trump crazies is not going to plateau. It's actually going to get exponentially more weird and crazy going forward. I'm glad you said about the dregs because like just in a sign of how extreme the White House is, remember Greg Bovino? Remember the little. like fascist munchkin who was in charge of customs and border patrol and war like his big Nazi coat. That guy popped up over the weekend in Portugal. He was at a far right, someone's called neo-Nazi conference focused on remigration, i.e. like the ethnic cleansing of migrants in various countries.

And that included representatives from far right parties like the AFD from Vox. There was fascists, like literal fascists from Belgium and the Netherlands. And he did like a, Bovino did an interview leading up to the conference where he literally gave. a shout out to Irwin Rommel, aka the Desert Fox, the Nazi field marshal who ran the Africa campaign when he was like talking about how

his kind of improbable rise from like agent out into the field to leading organization. So your point about that we're being down in the dregs of the Trump administration landed with me. Well, and it is like the only thing I was going to say too is that cash running the FBI

and this guy running the intelligence community, I do like there are you know terrorists out there there are adversaries like who is mining the store is going to be an incredible story because nobody's minding the store so it's we're getting the worst of their actions and also the worst of their neglect and incompetence everything that happens like Tulsi Gabbard leaves you celebrate because she is obviously not prepared for this job and it's like God careful what you wish for but just just to highlight how truly unsurious putting Bill Pulte in this position has been Michael and our team dug up two clips

that we wanted to show you. This first one is from a conference from back in 2022. At the time, I think Bill Pulte was really into meme stocks. Remember like the game stop phenomenon under-encode-cote. I think I saw this clip. Okay, this is from a conference where he's trying to get people to buy Bedbath and Beyond stock, which did not end well for anyone who did so.

Here's the clip, then let's talk about it. Let's watch. Pulte, look at this fucking thing. all right so what you're watching is a man slap another man in the face with a dildo for those listening not watching you should subscribe to pod save the role there you fucking have it the first dildo slap in history live so bill this says bill palti fucks all right yeah and then if you notice on it's got a tramp stamp with a butterfly i like only the young one ass cheek yes it does say uh it does say only the young on the back here only the young on the December 14.

That looked pretty badass. We have a mushroom stamp on the head of it and bed bath on one cheek and GME. Oh, fuck. GME on the other. I got too excited there. They broke their little statue. So they gave the guy, Bill Pulte was given a little statue by the man who just slapped the other man in the face with the dildo that's a Bill Pulte fucks only the young. This man is now the, they're going to be the acting DNI, Director of National Intelligence, Top spy, overseeing 18 component parts of the intelligence community.

your thoughts i have some more like sober serious friends of mine who are like you and tommy sometimes get a little too immature like you know we are covering the news people we are covering the news the reason that there is a man slapping another man in the face of the dildo and in giving you know some pedophilia reference uh to someone is because that that man who's involved in that is the director of national intelligence now so we just have to you know report what's happening just the facts I will say, like, for an administration that came in committed to depoliticizing intelligence, not weaponizing the justice system, and rooting out pedophilia,

Bill Pulte kind of seems to be checking the box on all three of those things in the wrong direction here. So not exactly promises kept among all the other disgusting and horrifying and troubling things about that video. I saw a nice clip of Ivanka today, Ivanka Trump, I'm talking about how she and her husband were going to build a new paradise on an island. I was like, oh, Epstein has taught these people a lot. To our listeners who think that Ben and I have childish senses of humor, I know. It sometimes occurs to me that we hear from like current and former prime ministers who listen to the show. Yes, yes.

We're talking about this. I do, actually. Listen, these are the facts we were presented by the universe. We're just relaying them to you. Ben, so here's a second clip of Pulte, again, that Michael dug up from a podcast interview he did in 2022. two, I want to know if this makes you feel better about your concerns about his lack of experience. Let's watch. Oh, no.

What did you learn about HVAC that kept you going deeper into that space that leads you to a podcast like we're on today? Well, my first business was a countertop business, kitchen and bath countertops. You know, I don't know if you know a lot about countertops, but I'll tell you one thing about them. They're pain in the ass. And to make, to make, actually, life is so much easier than the HVAC space compared of countertops. That says a lot. That says a lot about countertops.

Yeah. Yeah. The like dying joke that reminded me of the NPR Shweddy Balls. Famous section. So that was Bill Pulte on the To the Point Home Services podcast talking about being in the HVAC business. So I guess if the AC goes down in any of the many intelligence community buildings, Bill Pulte can be there. in the interview, he spends a lot of time bragging about his follower count on various social media platforms. So did that make you feel better about this choice? You know, Tommy, listeners may not know that, like, my first job in Washington was for Lee Hamilton, who was the co-chair of the 9-11 Commission, which recommended the creation of the Director of National Intelligence to better coordinate and manage and connect the dots between the different intelligence agencies of the United States.

And then after that report came out, I wrote a lot of congressional testimony for Lee Hamilton in support of the reforms that created the DNI. And now I'm not so sure about that whole process, not because we don't need that, but because I don't think that the authors of that legislation of the 9-11 commission envisioned someday a man taking the helm of all of the U.S. intelligence agencies informed by his expertise in countertop renovation and various other podcast appearances. No shot to podcasters. But I think when Democrats lost the last election,

there was this debate about showing up on podcasts. I'm not sure they had that one in mind. No, that wasn't the highest traffic podcast. Unless the dots, Lee Hamilton was trying to connect to war between heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. I don't know that we hit the mark here. Apparently, this idea was pushed by Roger Stone. Roger Stone has a big Nixon tattooed on his back and was also found guilty of charges of obstruction, false statements, and witness tampering in 2019 for his role in the Russia investigation into the 2016 election.

So everything is going great here, Ben. I feel really good about this, not at all horrified and excited for Bill Pulte to watch this and for us to get on his radar screen as well. Yeah, well, between him and cash, we're making friends everywhere. The other point I'd make to people is that there's a midterm election coming up. And the basis of whatever fake fraud claims are going to make is going to be some foreign interference thing, because we saw that already when they said that Hugo Chavez and Venezuela intervened in the 2020 election, even though Hugo Chavez had been dead for years. So in addition to the weaponization of justice and, you know, trying to comb through records

and target Trump's enemies, let's keep an eye on the space of whether Bill Pulte's job is also to kind of manufacture conspiracy theories about foreign interference to give a basis for over turning elections in this country, because that would be very bad. Because I remember, you know, Tulsi Gabbard was down and was at Fulton County, Georgia, reviewing an FBI raid on a voting location, and we still don't really know why, and it's all very ominous. Pot of the World is brought to you by fast-growing trees. Did you know that fast-growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery,

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That's BetterHELP.com slash Crooked World. All right, Bill, let's turn into Iran. It's now been more than three months since this war started. But despite weeks of, you know, countless, breathless reports and tweets with sirens in them about some imminent peace deal, there still isn't one. Which means the Strader-Hamuz is still closed. Oil and gas exports are. choked off and every day, we get closer to some kind of breaking point in rupture in the global economy. But besides that is going great. In practice, also, what we're seeing lately is

escalation between the two sides. Over the last few days, there were U.S. airstrikes on Iranian air defense sites and drone sites. And then Iran shot down another American predator drone and fired a ballistic missile at a Kuwaiti air base. Apparently, U.S. air defenses intercepted that missile, but Bloomberg reported that the shrapnel injured five people, including U.S. service, members. It's a pretty serious incident. The outlines of the deal that's being negotiated is reportedly the same as what we've talked about in the following. It's like a 60-day pause in fighting to allow for negotiations over the much harder issues around the nuclear program, unrestricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and then a gradual relaxation of the U.S. blockade on the strait. So Iran has to

move first in this framework. The New York Times said that there could be some sort of post-war investment fund of $300 billion for Iran. That surprised me. Sounds like Trump wants his money to come from Gulf countries so we can pretend the U.S. isn't providing it, but that is insane. Like, I mean, you and I and Obama would have been drawn and quartered if something like this had been proposed during the JCPOA days. And then there's some sort of agreement that looking to reach some sort of agreement over releasing frozen Iranian assets and then some sort of sanctions relief for Iran maybe as well. As usual, the sticking points are Iran wants, the war to be over everywhere. That includes in Lebanon, which the Israelis are not happy about.

And then Trump wants Iran to ship all of its highly enriched uranium out of the country, though he did post something like a week or two ago that suggested he might be okay with that HAU being destroyed in place by the IAEA, by international regulators. So on Monday, Trump called somebody at CNBC, Amin Javers at CNBC, about the peace talks. And he said the following then. I don't care if they're over, honestly. I really don't care. I couldn't care less. If they're over, they're over. If they're not, you know, I think they took too much time. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring. That's an actual real quote that he said to a reporter. So, Ben, this, you know, Trump has been spinning his wheels in place for the same couple weeks on this

policy. I think what's driving me crazy is the White House is able to just churn out all these little mini updates and bullshit and fake reports, whatever, to journalists to manipulate the oil markets. I shouldn't say fake report. They're giving updates that never really bear out or never solve the underlying problem that needs to be solved. But all that kind of minute-to-minute coverage distracts everybody. And there's not a real, I think, understanding or focus on the big picture of what an absolute ongoing massive disaster this war is and remains.

I'll start with the media and then get to the substance of it. It's not just typical media criticism here. What in particular Axios has done in credulously, consistently, constantly tweeting out these reports that a deal is imminent with sirens is allowing themselves to be used to affect oil markets. And whether they know that they're doing that or not, that's what's happening. And probably a lot of people are profiting off of inceditary trading. and it's also kind of giving people this kind of false sense of comfort. Look, I hope we get a deal today, like while we're recording this podcast to reopen the straight and lift the blockade and move towards a nuclear deal.

But that leads to the second part, which is I think what Trump is trying to do that is truly bizarre is he's trying to give people the impression with these leaks and with his own comments downplaying this that it's not really war going on there anyway, you know, because you know, we're not seeing big explosions and there's not. a lot of firing back and forth, although there's some. But the reality is the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Maybe a tiny trickle of ships is getting through. And so the global economic impact and the global shortages of not just oil and gas, but other vital resources like helium and fertilizer, that's getting worse by the day. Yeah, there was a report that the U.S. military

had escorted like 70 some odd ships through the straight over the last few weeks. But that's as compared to like 130 a day during peacetime. Yeah, that's a tiny fraction. So I think we're kind of being lulled into the sense that something is not happening that is happening. And people know it because they're paying more at the pump. But essentially, other nations have been tapping into their reserves to survive this and kind of prop up what is left of global energy markets. But with each passing day, that gets harder to do.

And so there could come a time when what's already. a horrific global economic disruption and disruption in people's lives could become a crash. And so I think there needs to be a little bit more attention, not just on the imminent deal that is constantly being discussed, that everybody knows what it is, but on the consequences that this is still a war. Just because it's kind of a semi-frozen conflict, it doesn't mean we're not still in the state of war with all the consequences. And then on the deal, we've talked before about the elements of it and about how Trump

may try to spin it as a victory when it's not, reopening the straight that was open before the war. I think the other thing I'd say is on this money, because you're seeing the $300 billion investment fund reported in different places. You're also seeing maybe some upfront payment of, you know, $12 billion, some sanctions relief. What I think Trump is doing, he's so fucking fixated on Obama. And look, whatever happens, he's going to have to do that. something that eventually looks like the Iran nuclear deal, which again, shipped the H.E.U. out and did all these other things that he's trying to get. The reality is, I imagine that this money is going to be probably Iranian frozen assets, you know, and they'll try to pretend like it's

they'll say it was released by Qatar, whoever was holding or whatever, and therefore we didn't give it to Iran, which is just like, give me a break. Like, you made the deal that released the money. But, and that's the point. In the Obama deal. Iran got money that had been frozen in other bank accounts because other countries had bought Iranian oil and that they had not been able to access those revenues. And so Trump is probably going to do the exact same thing. This is a message to anybody who follows this and message to the journalists who are going to be covering this.

Just because Qatar or some other country is providing Iran access to that money, it's not like a Qatari check or some other country. It's the exact same mechanism as the JCPOA. And so the fact that we're held hostage to this man's Obama obsession and ego, like, this isn't even about defending Obama. It's about like how absurd it is that he's desperately trying to find some way to spin that he's not going to end up doing something that is somewhat analogous to JCPOA. Yeah, it's going to look like the JCPOA. He just wants it to be able to say it's better. Did this, did this resonate with you, Ben? this is a post from Trump. Iran really wants to make a deal. It'll be a good one for the USA and those

that are with us. But don't the Democrats get it? And various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans understand that it is much tougher me to properly do my job and negotiate when political haps keep negatively chirping at levels never seen before over and over again that I should move faster or move slower or go to war or not go to war or whatever. Just sit back and relax. It'll all work out well in the end. It always does. I feel better. I feel better hearing that. Yeah. Well, first of all, because Trump and the Republicans never chirped at Democratic presidents when they're conducting foreign policy, kind of the biggest glass house anybody's ever been in. I think that what that tells me, though, there's a desperation and a lameness, frankly,

to Trump's efforts to post his way through this and to talk his way through it in friendly interviews. He's finally done something that is the opposite of what he said. It's not going to end that well. It's already been terrible. This has already been a catastrophe. and everybody can see it. Yeah, it's a mess.

There are also some reports that were later denied by the Iranians that President Peseschian had resigned because he'd been cut out of the decision-making process by the IRGC. Very well could have happened, but it came out of a London-based outlet with ties to the opposition and then was denied by the government, so I don't know. We'll see. Then a couple of recent comments that were worth playing for the audience. The first is we just wanted to juxtapose some of Trump's comments about the war and its impact on the Iranian military.

with comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Let's watch. Operation Epic Fury, some of you didn't like it, some of you did, was highly successful in achieving its military objectives, which is dramatically reducing the defense industrial base of Iran, the ability to build these missiles and to build these drones, especially the missiles program, substantially degraded. Their military, we sort of left it alone

because we think that their military is somewhat moderate, they have other people that aren't moderate. We've taken them out. We've taken different forms of leadership out. We've actually left their military alone. People would be surprised to hear that. Yeah, I'd be very surprised to hear that. Because the entire message so far had been

that Hegsef and his team had decimated the Iranian military. It's all you've told us. And now you're saying that they're moderate, so you didn't bomb them? What on earth are we talking about here? It just shows how out to lunch he is and how disconnected he is. But let's talk about Rubio for a second here. Because he gets this kind of participation trophy

for sanewashing what Trump should be saying to spit his war. It's like, what a good job he did spinning this war on Trump's behalf. He should be president or at least Republican nominee. Marco Rubio is fucking lying in that clip. They did not decimate the missile programs. Like, we have reporting that over 70% of Iran's ballistic missiles and launchers remain intact. And so we kind of keep hearing, I mean, like, I know. this is not a shot at the military at all.

But there's this effort to say, well, it was militarily successful. It was not military successful. Like, they said they destroyed the Iranian Navy, and the Iranian Navy is still able to control the Strait of War Moose. They said they destroyed the ballistic missiles, and they still have most of the ballistic missiles, and they're still firing them at us. They don't tell, there were multiple reports, Tommy,

including in the BBC and the Washington Post, about the extensive damage unreported to U.S. bases and facilities across the Middle East that Marco Rubio, and P-Tex has never get around to telling us, even though we are the fucking taxpayers to pay for those bases. Yeah, it's a classic Washington problem of like inputs versus outputs. Like you might have fired a lot of missiles and hit a lot of stuff, but like the outcome wasn't that the Iran's military is no longer functional. And it's what you talked about, which is 70% of the stockpiles still sitting there and they're able to control the straight. And then that BBC report about the satellite imagery about the damage to U.S. bases and assets in the Middle East is like staggering stuff.

I wrote down a couple details, Ben. 20 U.S. military facilities have been hit. In Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, and Oman. They took up 42 aircraft, F-15s, F-35s, 24 MQ9 Reaper drones and 8-10 attack plane, and then three THAADefat missile defense batteries that cost a billion dollars each. And then they damaged this one E3 century surveillance plane that was worth up to $700 million. So just like a vast amount of structural. economic damage there and also like damage to the U.S. military's ability to station troops in the Middle East for a long time. And look, to draw forward the Axios point, because I've been saying for a few weeks now that the damage is worse than we've heard because I literally just have some friends in the Middle East. Yeah, me too. Sending me pictures. Hey, I'm hearing this is much worse. And the reason that's important is this is the problem with our media. Like, the corporatization and magification of so much of the media means that, like,

Americans know less about what's happened to American military bases than just, like, regular people that live in the Gulf. Like, that is insane. And that, look, there's the Post did a good report here. The Times has done good reporting on this. But, like, that's kind of, there's not much else. And that's by design. I think people have to realize, like, the reason you get corporate authoritarian takeover of media is so that the bad news that the leader doesn't remember reported kind of goes either unreported or underreported, like only a small number of people read a certain set of publications or wherever. Yeah, even today we learned that the Pentagon has kicked the press corps out of their briefing

room because they've declared it's now a skiff because the Pentagon speechwriters need to be able to sit in there. So now it's a classified. I didn't see that. It's crazy. The fucking Pentagon is the second biggest office building in the world. There's something like three million square feet of office space alone. And they're like, oh, no, no, the speech writers doesn't sit here. So we have to kick the reporters out of their area. Last thing, Ben, so Trump waited on the war a bunch last week at the cabinet meeting. A couple comments caught our attention that we wanted to play for you guys. Let's watch.

And we'd like to have the countries we were talking about, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and the others, we'd like to have them immediately joined the NC Woodcoff is working on that with Jared and some others, but would like to have them join the Abraham Accords. It'll be historic if they do it. I think they owe that to us, to be honest. I think because that really would be a tremendous sign. And I think those countries owe it to us. Steve, are you going to get them to side?

We're definitely pushing it, Mr. Preston. I'm not sure we should make the deal if they don't sign. You want to know that they would like to control it. Nobody's going to control it. It's international waters. And Oman will behave just like everybody else who will have to blow them up. They understand that. They'll be fine.

So I'm sure that the folks in Oman, not Iran, were thrilled to hear about potentially getting bombed. And then, you know, this new effort to force everybody into the Abraham Accords seems to be going really great so far. So good stuff. And it's important because we are dealing with a man in the high country rapidly losing his power. That's part of what's happening here. Because look, the Abraham Accords, he did this at the end of his first term in 2020. He got tremendous bipartisan and media validation for it because there's a normalization deal with Israel.

But I think it's just worth saying here, Tommy, the Abraham Accords have been a catastrophic failure, actually. Had they brought peace to the Middle East? The two problems they were supposed to solve is somehow like replacing an Israeli-Palestinian deal and dealing with the Iran threat. Well, look at where we are today. The Palestinians have been subjected to a relentless campaign of war crimes by Israel that is bombing multiple countries in the region, despite the Abram Accords, we're at a war with Iran.

This has been a failure. And Democrats need to be much more outspoken about this. Because frankly, even the Biden administration's efforts to kind of wrap themselves around the Abraham Accords, that ended terribly too. And we just need to name that. And the fact that he's out there saying demanding these countries join this at a time when Israel's never been less popular in those countries and across the Muslim world, it just makes. him look feckless. Because even Whitkoff couldn't say, yes, sir, we'll get the Abraham Accords. He's like, well, we'll push on it. He's like, I'll make some calls, sir. It's not going to happen. Yeah, it's a joke. That's a weak leader right there. That's someone who's like, I got good press on this thing before, and I know I'm pissing off some of the pros real people in my coalition. So now I'm going to demand these countries joining the Abraham Accords. Well,

they're not because nobody's paying attention to what you're saying. I do think the failure of the Abraham Accords is a really important point. I think Matt Dusts had a great piece on this a few weeks or months back in like foreign policy.com or something where he's like, hey, the Abraham Accords a bit of failure. They were agreements between countries that weren't at war that led to a distraction from the real conflict, which was the Middle East peace process and the need to create a Palestinian state. And there's all this reporting that Hamas did that took this, you know, did the evil thing they did on October 7th, the attack because they were concerned about potential normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And they wanted to blow it.

up any prospect of that. And so I think that is a reality of the Abraham Accords that we should talk a lot more about than, you know, direct flights from the UAE to Tel Aviv or whatever people like brag about. Ben, let's talk about the conflict at Lebanon because that's very much part of this broader war with Iran, but it also brings with it like these distinct challenges and complexities that make it all so much harder. So first, we got this voice note from a journalist named Justin Solani from Al Jazeera who's been covering the conflict. that will give you a sense of just how absurd it is, what people refer to there being a ceasefire

between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Let's listen. Just to speak of the disparity of attacks, because Hezbollah and Israel are still trading attacks, the most intense day in the last week, before today I have figures here from May 24 until June 1st that were provided to me by UNIFIL, which is the UN Peacekeepers in South Lebanon.

The most intense day was Sunday, May 3rd, 31st. This is when 61 trajectories were counted by UNIFL going from north to south. So that would be Hasbullah or other non-state actors hitting either targets in South Lebanon or in Israel. And from south to north, so this is Israel firing back, 683. So that's 61 to 683 as the most severe day. Hasbalah's number of trajectories over the past week are often in the double digits. usually somewhere between, let's say, 16 to 45, 46, Israel's lowest was 194, with an average well over 300, 350. So just to give an idea about the disparity of the fighting.

Quite a ceasefire there when you have hundreds of projectiles being lobbied over the border every day. As we mentioned earlier, Ben, so the Lebanon piece of the fighting has become a big sticking point in the peace talks. Iran wants the fighting over in Lebanon as well as everywhere else. The Israelis have said no way. And in fact, I've used this latest round of fighting since February 28th as an opportunity to advance further into Lebanon and take more territory. And unfortunately, before February 28th, the U.S. was facilitating talks between Israel and Lebanese government about trying to disarm Hezbollah and those all ended when the latest round of fighting started. So on Monday, Axios reported that Trump called Netanyahu and yelled at him about Israeli escalation in LeBah. The report said that Trump said to BB Netanyahu, quote, you're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.

Some factual statements in there about Netanyahu. But did that really happen? Unclear. There's an Israeli political analyst who a lot of people in Israel think is basically just another spokesman for the Netanyahu government. He tweeted that the Axios report is false. A friend of mine in Israel told. told me that this person who I'll own that name is often called BB Shofar because Netanyahu

blows air into him and out comes noise, which is really funny and great. But the analyst claimed that Trump didn't mention BB being in jail or that he's hated, but then Alex Ward, our buddy over at the Wall Street Journal, reported that there are actually two calls. The first was about a ceasefire. And the second one is where Trump was like talking shit saying you'd be in jail, if not for me. Regardless, Ben, I think they apparently reach an agreement where Israel is going to hold off airstrikes on Beirut as long as they are not attacked. We'll see if that holds.

And in the meantime, Israel is pummeling southern Lebanon with airstrikes. And they recaptured this ancient hilltop castle called Beaufort, which is Israel held 25 years ago during its previous occupation of Lebanon, which is bringing back terrible memories, both in Lebanon and in Israel, you know,

because that war did not go well. And people were worried that this could become the beginning of a protracted Israeli occupation of Lebanon. And it comes after the IDF displaced like a million Lebanese residents in the South. And the overall death toll is 3,400 dead in Lebanon, 27 Israeli soldiers killed. So been a lot there. But I do think like the Lebanon piece of this is the most clear point where you can see the U.S. and Israeli political interests diverging completely, especially as the Israelis get closer and closer to their election. Yes. And it's because of what the nature of the Israeli military

operation in Lebanon is. And at the risk of making this kind of media criticism day, and again, this is a reason why you should support independent media. If you're watching this from afar, like what you're presented with by most of the U.S. media is that there's a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon in Israel's war against Hezbollah. In fact, there is no ceasefire in Lebanon. There's no such thing as a ceasefire where you're relentlessly bombing a country and occupying almost 20% of it. And at the same time, as much as Israel does have a challenge from Hezbollah, if you actually watch what's happening. And the media criticism is like, these calls are a smokescreen. Like somebody from, you know, Trump's staff is told to call Axios and say he said,

fuck you to BB. Watch what's happening, not what you're told somebody said in a phone call. Exactly. Because Israel's continuing to do all these things. And what they're doing, it does not seem to be about disarming Hezboa. It seems to be. It seems to be. be about taking southern Lebanon, where they're literally occupying like a huge swath of this country and depopulating it, making it uninhabitable, probably for the purposes of either annexing part of that territory or holding it as a kind of so-called buffer zone. But like there's no international legal basis for like just claiming like part of another country and saying that's a buffer zone. And my concern, as you pointed out, is that because there's an election later this fall,

because Bibi completely failed to achieve the objectives he set out for the Iran war, he's just going to keep doing this in Lebanon so that he has some war that he can show the kind of right-wing voters in Israel requires him to stay in office. Yeah, speaking of Bibi's election, I mean, we should talk about Gaza for a minute because Netanyahu, again, as we lead up to this election, is talking about occupying more of the territory in Gaza. So there's a recent press conference, which I think he did from like maybe a settlement in the West Bank or something.

something he did from the West Bank. And he said, quote, we are now in 60% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. We were at 50%. We moved to 60%. My directive is to move to, and then someone in the crowd yells 100%. And he says, take it, he goes, take it step by step. First of all, 70%. We'll start with that. So Netanyahu is like playing to the crowd saying we're going to take 70% of the territory in Gaza. He wants to squeeze 2 million people into 30% of the Gaza Strip, where it was already one of the most crowded places in the world. Then Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, tweeted last week, quote, we pledge that Hamas will not rule Gaza civilly or militarily, and so it shall be. The voluntary migration plan will be implemented all at the proper time in the proper manner. So I guess everyone should get incited for some

ethnic cleansing to happen soon, I guess. And then, as we've discussed, like life on the ground for people in Gaza is hell on earth. There's a recent report from Doctors Without Borders that said, Israel is destroyed or damaged nearly 90% of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza, including desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines, and sewage systems. And as a result of the damaged sewer systems, there's pests breeding in the wastewater, rats are everywhere. There are lice, scabies, fungal infections, bug bites, rat bites, and nowhere near enough health care resources.

And then, shockingly, then, the Board of Peace is accomplished exactly nothing. there's no funding, there's nobody on the ground, there's no nothing. So, like, maybe Jared Kushner got a good meeting at Davos out of it, but that seems to be the only accomplishment there. Yeah, I mean, I think we have to, again, consider that there's this veneer of a ceasefire in Gaza. What part of the ceasefire terms that were announced to such fanfare with all these foreign leaders and all this credulous media attention back last fall, what part of that ceasefire agreement permitted Israel to take 70% of the Gaza Strip and then talk about, quote, unquote, the voluntary migration, aka the ethnic cleansing of the remaining two million people that are

in these horrific conditions. And the problem is there's no rooting in any of these policies in concern for the actual Palestinians who are there. Like there's no discussion about getting assistance into those people, addressing those horrific conditions. We still don't have international media access to Gaza to see what's happened and to get an accurate death count, which is probably far higher than the 70,000 that's already been reported here. And so just goes to show that, again, while attention, the camera keeps swirling around and it's largely been focused on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, like, the situation for the people in Gaza has continued to deteriorate since the ceasefire was announced in the

same way that the people of Lebanon are suffering such extraordinary consequences. And the absence of any kind of moral framework of concern for those people, not just out of the United States, but frankly, out of a lot of governments, speaks to kind of the broken moment that we're in geopolitically. Yeah, I mean, you're not seeing any real international support for Gaza. Like, I'm not seeing any action really at the UN. I'm not seeing a lot of fundraising. You would imagine there's just nothing. There's nothing. I mean, we got the UK saying that Jenk Weeger and Hassan Piker can't come because they're a threat to British society in some way because they criticize the occupation or the war in Gaza, but there's just nothing to help

the actual human beings on the ground who are suffering every single day, including lots of kids. And I'm just going to say, like, the idea that that tells you a lot about the priorities of the Starmor government. And we should call this out because like whatever you think about Chank and Hassan, the idea that that government has a time to say that because of their views on Israel, they're not even allowed to enter the country. But what do they, doing to help the people of Gaza? What is the Starmer government doing to help them? It's absolutely ridiculous and outrageous. Even if you disagree with Hassan Piker, by the way, he was going there to have a debate at the Oxford Union. So the form that was set up was for someone else to be able to tell him

he was wrong, right? And so the idea that we're more afraid of free speech in places like the United Kingdom than we are of like risking the ire of Donald Trump by expressing concerns. concern for the people of Gaza. This is a, it was a shameful moment for the Starmer government. Yeah, son told me he was going to go to the Oxford Union and do a speech. And the last one he did there was about the danger of conflating Judaism and Zionism. He was trying to disaggregate them to talk about combating anti-Semitism. But then he was told by the British government that his, you can't travel because, quote, your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good. It's just such a vague kind of, you know, 1984.

notice that anyway, it's just really fucking weird. It's chilling. It's actually, it's absolutely chilling. And for a center left government to be doing it. Yeah. For a center left government to be doing it, it's absolutely chilling. Or maybe they're not a center left. And like, if you, if you find the comments that either of those two guys made to be offensive or wrong or upsetting anyway, that's totally fine. I respect that. But like, yeah, I guess this is just the American in me, the First Amendment supporter in me thinks it's crazy to tell someone they're barred from your country for political opinions. I think it's bonkers. Potsy of the world is brought to you by Hymns.

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So we have some bad news and some weird news at Russia. First of all, it's just been a horrifying, like, awful week for Ukrainians. Russia launched a bunch of major strikes against a bunch of cities across Ukraine, including Kiev. The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched 665 drones, 73 missiles, 20 people were killed and 100 were injured. It was a big barrage. Russia was signaling that this attack was coming. They said it was in response to a Ukrainian drone strike on what they described as a Russian college dorm.

They killed 21 people. I think the Ukrainian say no, it was a military drone site. Also alarming, Ben, was a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania over the weekend. Romanian officials said the drone probably went into their territory because it was hit by Ukrainian air defenses and I think got knocked off course or something. But this is a big deal. we're going to watch and see if NATO responds in any way. But that is the political backdrop here as we get to our next point about Russia, which is the Russians are hosting this annual investment conference in St. Petersburg.

And this year there is a much increased American presence. The White House is sending a representative. It is some dipshit named Rodney Mims Cook Jr., who is chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. He's from Georgia, some whatever. And then a bunch of far-right influencers are heading over. So check out this clip we put together to show you who's going. Okay.

So the first thing we saw was RT, the Russian Propaganda Network, put together some sort of video. They took a bunch of Candace Owens' photos she posted on social media and commentary. Candice Owens is a far-right podcaster and influencer. She posted a bunch of stuff, including commentary, like, I'm starting to understand why the talking heads panic and shout and lie about Russia collusion when they learned an American with a platform is traveling here. It's Plato's allegory of the cave. It is genuinely shocking how clean, beautiful, and ordered the city is. It's so far removed from media depictions. Yes, I too am stunned that famously beautiful Moscow looks beautiful.

And then there were the Tate brothers who were indicted a couple years back on charges like R. rape in human trafficking, who are also in Moscow, I guess, for this conference, but I don't really know. So I hope they have a good time. Ben, what do you think is happening here? Why are these goobers descending upon Moscow? Well, I'm sure they're getting paid in some fashion here and or they're just trolling people like us. But the reality is that like Russia has managed to make these kind of consistent inroads in the right wing of the United States without doing anything at all differently in the conduct of their war or their repression. The war just keeps getting worse. They've just been relentlessly bombarding Ukraine more under Trump than they did before

that. They have not made any meaningful concession towards peace whatsoever. The repression inside of Russia has gotten much worse. Frankly, they've been, you know, restricting internet access in ways that, you know, influencers in Russia, like, don't have the capacity that the Tate brothers or Candace Owens have to go there and post things. And so it's quite remarkable to watch people kind of go there and claim that they're, like, discovering some different Russia when, in fact, like, if anything, repression in the war have just been deteriorating. By the way, the fact that Moscow's clean, I mean, Piyang, Yang is pretty clean too. Like, uber repressive societies, like, can kind of keep the streets pretty clean sometimes.

That doesn't mean that people have any political rights whatsoever. And it kind of connects to the Romania thing because part of what's happening is Europeans are seeing this, right? So they're seeing kind of Trump's thirst for investment in Russia. They're seeing Trump's total disregard for Ukraine. At the same time, that there have been, like, meaningful. Russian sabotage operations in European countries, some of which have destroyed significant amounts of property. Now we have this drone attack. And so if you talk to people in Europe, like the actual

fear that Russia might do something that is a military escalation in Poland or the Baltics or a place of Romania, that's going up. And the more they kind of see this kind of weirdness and brokenness in the American right wing drifting in Russia's direction, I think it more it's going to just contribute to those anxieties. At the precise time, by the way, Tommy, that Trump's threatening to pull U.S. troops out of Europe because he's mad that they didn't open the straight of Hormuz. Yeah, there was a weird back and forth last week about the U.S. maybe pulling troops out of Poland and then not. There's all sorts of weird threats than they know. It's always so, it's so funny when influencers like Candace go over to a place like Russia. Like, yeah, obviously it's not

binary. It's not like America, good, Russia bad. Like Russia's an extraordinary place, incredible cultural. Or Russian people bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. American people. Incredible history. Incredible architecture. Like, no one's arguing otherwise. The architecture that she's taking photos of and posting has existed for a very long time. A lot of people were well aware of it. These people are just like never, they're never like self-aware enough. Wait till she finds out about Tolstoy or ballet, you know? Yeah, yeah. Dolly? Have you guys heard of this guy? But it's like, hey, you're there with like a minder probably taking you around to all these great cultural sites for a reason. Like the same thing happened with Tucker Carlson when he was like,

look at this unbelievable subway. And it's like, you know, who built the subway? You know, the cost was there? Like, then he went to the supermarket. It's like, guys, come on. Just like, give us a little more nuance. And everything you're saying will be fine. And also, like, nobody does a goodwill tour better than an autocratic country.

Right. You know, of course they're ruling out the red carpet and they're super nice. And like, oh, these people are so lovely. Like, of course, that's what happens. Again, it's not just similar than Gaza. Like, go outside of Moscow and go into some of those cities. where people have been conscripted and their disabled, broken veterans are turning home. And you'll get a better sense of what the cost of Putin's policies are.

Yeah, it is embarrassing. Excited to see what content they crank out. Hopefully we'll talk about it next week. A couple more things, Ben. Voters in Columbia went to the polls this past Sunday. And now there are two candidates heading to a runoff election on June 21st. So the contest will be between Senator Yvonne Sepeda, who's a left-wing candidate running on a continuation of President Petro's policies, Petro's term limited. He's running against a right-wing candidate that is backed by Trump named

Avalardo de la Espritia, who calls himself the tiger, not the tiger king. We're not going back to like COVID era, just the tiger. The big choice for voters is about security and how to deal with the enormous amount of violence from drug cartels and rebel groups in Colombia. The kind of left approach to violence is negotiations and peace pacts. Well, the conservatives basically want to return to a policy of war on the cartels. And also, now they want to build out a detention system like the one Naibuquele created in El Salvador, where he is thrown hundreds of thousands of people in mega prisons, often without charges. Senator Sepeda was from the left, was directly involved in Colombia's peace deal with a FARC rebel group back in 2016. Again, he wants to continue Petro's policies.

The problem with that pitch politically in this moment is that the violence, has gotten really bad. Last year we covered this, I think, at the time, a conservative politician was shot on the campaign trail. He later died. He was at a presidential campaign stop. And then there's criminal organizations who are launching armed attacks. They're carrying out drone strikes.

There's kidnappings. There's homicides. And thousands of thousand people have been displaced. Ben, the Trump White House has made no secret of the fact that they want to see this, like, right-wing wave in elections in Central and South America. and they will overtly meddle in elections to do it. I think they've been a less overt in Columbia so far. What do you think, though?

What do you think is going to happen here? Is Columbia next? You know, it certainly feels like that. I mean, they're going to make a push Trump is because, you know, they're trying to construct like a critical mass of right-wing leaders that are kind of with this imperial project where the deal is that the United States gets to kind of do whatever it wants in the hemisphere. But we kind of back up, prop up, or provide.

private security forces or what have you or maybe even direct military support to some of these autocratic leaders and Colombia's been like a key bellwether like kind of swing state in that competition it's a country that tends to veer back and forth between left and right wing leadership by the way you have an incredibly important election that we'll be talking a lot about later this year in Brazil that'll be the key test of this so I'd expect them to kind of lean in here Look, whoever comes next is going to have to pursue some policies to try to get their arms around the security situation. Because what you kind of have is kind of cartel and other violence, like migrating around different places. We've seen in Ecuador.

We've seen a lot of this in Colombia now, too. But I do, I worry about the kind of construction of like this collection of bouquets and milays and right-wing leaders that we've seen in places like Honduras and Ecuador. Because, again, like it's going to polarize politics. on a left-right basis across the hemisphere. And in history, when the United States is kind of invested in like a right-wing block against a left-wing block in Latin America has not ended well. Does not go well. In fact, the conflicts in Columbia were partly in outgrowth of that.

Yeah. Also not going well. The New York Times, I think, just had a big piece about how we've reached this grim milestone of more than 200 people killed in the Trump, Pete Hegseth, extraditional murder, boatstrikes. in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. So far, experts say, it is just as easy to find cocaine in the United States as it was before this policy started. The street price of the cocaine has not gone up, which means there's less availability.

There's no scarcity. The purity of the cocaine is about the same. But then the cost of the Pentagon policy to just murder people, murder fishermen, is about 4.7 billion and counting. So smashing success, would you say? I mean, the one thing I'd add to this is that there's going to be a lot of things that people go back and investigate and try to bring accountability to after the Trump administration is over. This should absolutely be one of them. Because there's no legal or policy basis for this.

It's just murder. Like, there's not some authorization for the use of force against boats. There's credible reports that at least some of these strikes. And it wouldn't be okay if it was even drug traffickers because, you know, didn't just like murder. drug traffickers, but there's credit reports that some of these people are just fishermen. So, like, keep in mind, like Pete Heggsett's orders, Donald Trump's orders through Pete Hex-F have been murdering people and have now murdered 200 people. It has no impact whatsoever on the amount of drugs in the United States, as you point out.

For a time, it seemed to be part of the Venezuela operation, and yet it still continues, even though that's over. Like, what is it about other than the use of brute force because it seems to make Trump and Hegs-F feel tough? And that's a, it's grotesque. So there's going to, there should be investigations into this. And by the way, as has been pointed out to me by experts repeatedly, it's not a war crime. It's just murder. Just murder. Just murder. Because it's not a war. Yeah. It's just murder. Good, good point. Two quick, just quick things.

I was, um, I picked back up Reagan land, like great Rick Pearlstein book on Ronald Reagan. There was a part on Jimmy Carter where it talked about how some members of Congress called for an investigation into Billy Carter. Jimmy Carter's kind of jerk off jackass brother for a getting a sweetheart deal on like wholesale gasoline for two gas pumps he owned back in Georgia, right? So like that's the level of grift we're talking very, very low. That made me think of a story I read last week in ProPublica about a $620 million loan from the Pentagon to a company called Vulcan Elements, Vulcan Elements, the little startup in North Carolina. They think they can reduce America's dependence on rare earth materials, rare earth elements.

that are critical for U.S. weapon systems and our phones and electric vehicles and like everything we do now. But remember, we talked about this in the context of the China trade war. The Chinese have an absolute monopoly on the, on what's the processing of these rare earth elements, and they were able to choke them off to great effect and put pressure on the United States. So the timeline of this story goes as following. August 2025, 1789 capital, Don Jr.'s venture capital firm, they took a stake in Vulcan elements. At the time, the company was valued at $200 million. Three months after that investment, Ben, the U.S. government gave them a $620 million Pentegon loan, and I think like $50 million that were part of the Chips Act. So $670 million all in.

And by January of 2026, so a few months ago, Bloomberg said the company was valued at $2 billion, So a 10x increase in value in five months. And what ProPublica dug up was that the loan only happened after Peter Navarro, remember Trump's trade advisor who was like thick as the east with Don Jr. Made a call from the White House over to the head of the gun. Convicted felon. Convicted felon. Yes.

To say, get this on. And you know who visited Peter Navarro in jail? Donald Trump Jr. And he has mentioned in the fucking acknowledgement of his book. Unbelievable. Yeah. I mean, it's just rank corruption. and what they're doing is they're migrating to the biggest kitty that there is, which is the Pentagon budget.

I mean, one reason out of many that they want a $1.5 trillion defense budget is probably because they want to profit off of this. I mean, this is absolutely outrageous level of corruption. And again, like to go all the way back to the craziness of Bill Pulte and what it says about the last two years, the looting that is going to take place, Tommy, in the last couple of years here, when they can control these budgets is just going to be extraordinary. I mean, what is Don Jr.'s particular expertise in, like, defense companies? Contracting. Rare earth elements? This is just nothing. Yeah. Yeah. This is just pure payment, right, to like the Trump family via the Pentagon budget. There needs to be like if Democrats do win back control of one or both houses of Congress, like burying in the corruption at the Pentagon and the Trump family, which seems to be an overlapping bend diagram. Like that should be like an essential priority. And then if we do get a Democratic president, like let us inhabit that hopeful future. Like there's going to have to be a lot of effort.

to kind of like uproot whatever like corrupt contracts have been planted at the Pentagon because it seems like a complete fucking boondoggle over there. A total boondoggle. And apparently they're also considering giving a similar loan to a company called Unusual Machines, which is a drone part manufacturer in Florida that, oh, who would have thunk it? Don Jr. is on the board of it and owns like millions of dollars worth of shares. So yeah, it's all on the up and up. Also, Ben, we talked on the show a couple times about how the Trump organization got this

sweetheart deal to build a bunch of real estate, including a golf. course in Vietnam. The Financial Times reported that families in northern Vietnam are digging up the graves of their relatives in order to accommodate the Trump org's $1.5 billion luxury golf club hotel and villa project that's going to be built there. You'll be surprised to learn that some locals are not thrilled about uprooting the cemetery, but that's the price to do in business these days. If you want to police dear leader, you got to dig up your uncle's grave or whatever so he can have his golf course. And just to drill the continuum, right? The backstory in this is Liberation Day happens. Trump announces this huge tariff on Vietnam. Conspicuously around the same time, this golf course deals announced with, I think, Eric Trump. And here we are fast forward and we're digging up graves. Right. So this is all a case where like the power of the United States, this is not just a country trying to gratiate itself. The power of the United States was leveraged via tariffs. The strategy for managing those terrorists by the other country was.

was let's kind of wink, wink, like, approve this golf course. You know, it doesn't have to be the, it's Vietnam. It's like a one-party state. I'm sure that this development doesn't happen without the government being involved. All I'll say, Tommy, is I think whatever karma is going to accrue to the Trump family for digging up Vietnamese graves is not good. Oh, I've seen some bad intergenerational. I've seen several alter-guise films. Doesn't go well.

There's a very bad intergenerational energy coming their way. So maybe that's where they'll pay the price. Yeah, even Ivana is buried on a golf. of course somewhere at a Trump resort and that's funnish done well. Oh, I figured about that. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But we come back. You're going to hear Ben's interview with Aya Ibrahim about artificial intelligence.

What's coming down to pike? The Trump administration's efforts or lack thereof to regulate it. So stick around for that very, very important topic. POTTA of the world is brought to you by Helix. Sleep is maybe the most important thing we all do every day for our health. A good night's sleep for me means a great day, usually. A bad night's sleep can be. just ruin the entire thing. You wake up in the morning, you feel terrible, and you just know

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sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. We have a Helix mattress at our house. Super comfortable. Everyone who's ever slept in that bed says, I love that mattress. Where'd you get it? And the truth is, it's from Helix and it shipped right to our door and it couldn't be easier. And you could have one tomorrow if you wanted. Go to Healy's. Helixleep.com slash world for 20% offsite wide. That's Helixleep.com slash world for 20% offsite wide. Helixleep.com slash world. All right. I'm very pleased to be joined by Aya Ibrahim, who is a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute

and a former White House and State Department advisor in the Biden administration. Aya, it's really good to see you. Likewise. Thanks for having me. So you and I've been talking about having this conversation about AI for a little bit. And I think that the encyclical by Pope Leo presents a good opportunity for jumping off point. And actually, we also got an executive order from the Trump administration today. But I wanted to start with that encyclical that was released last week in which the Pope tried to apply a humanistic lens to AI, which has notably been missing from the creators of it

all too often. He talked about the need for regulation. He raised issues like the risk of AI in warfare, obviously the risk of job dislocation, and also just kind of the risk to our humanity from the kind of omnipresence of this technology. Let's just begin with a kind of broad question about what you thought about the encyclical. How important do you think it was? What influence do you think it can reasonably be expected to have? Well, you know, you're always going to be excited when something this big comes out that

confirms a lot of your priors. But, you know, I would say, look, like, engineers can and do build systems, but it's always been humanities that the humanities have built and sustained societies. And the Pope's entry into this conversation, I think, is so critical because there is this vacuum of moral authority and moral leadership on the questions of AI and what it's going to do to the world, even though it has such profound moral implications. And, you know, the question of human data. dignity and the value of our labor and the value of our lives. I mean, he seems to be the only person who is taking these guys at their word about their desire to renegotiate the social

contract. And one thing, you know, we have talked about that I find a bit frustrating is that we treat moral authority having the moral high ground and exercising power as almost these mutually exclusive things. But the Pope stepping in here is a demonstration of actually the point of moral authority is to create space for you to exercise power and service of your vision for a more moral and just world. And you've worked on, I'm going to talk about a couple more questions about the Pope. And you've worked on, I should say, foreign policy and on AI policy. So you're kind of uniquely positioned to talk about this part of it. I mean, one thing that struck me is the timing. I mentioned this last week that it was, you know, probably not intentional but notable,

that this encyclical came right after the summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump kind of was a big nothing burger on AI. The people who watch AI like you and me were kind of expecting maybe something. And all we got was like a promise that they might talk about it. I'm wondering if you could talk to people about what the vacuum is that the Pope is trying to feel like. Do you see any leaders globally who are bringing both a moral and policy lens to these enormous challenges from AI that we're all kind of feeling. Do you think that, you know, maybe this is a leading question, but I mean, to what extent did the Pope step into a gigantic vacuum? Or do you think there are other voices that have been putting forward constructive ideas? So I think he has been the most clear about the entire picture, right?

So there's the political economy questions that he tackles, again, that this is about the allocation of resources. and capital and labor and energy and so on. And what that means for people's sort of station in their own, in their own societies and in their own economies. He talks about the moral pieces. He talks about the spiritual ones. So, you know, there's like a very holistic kind of approach that only very few people, I think, can take in the way that he did.

That being said, there is such a culture of fear and frankly, like, learned helplessness among our policymakers here in the, the United States when it comes to questions of technology and technology policy. It's as if they themselves cannot build it, they can't code it, then they don't get to have a leading role in what this technology looks like and how it shows up in our lives. And the reality is that, like, our energy and commerce committee is not stacked with chemists, but yet we have members of Congress that sit on that committee that oversees the FDA and prescription drugs. So I don't really understand why there's such hesitation. You know, more recently, Representative Alexandria

Casio-Cortez and Representative, excuse me, Senator Sanders, they have their Data Center bill, which had some responses from members and other parts of the party that felt like it was kind of a Luddite approach to this question. I think people are trying, but there's, like, there are structural constraints to how we would have the conversation here in the U.S. And then as it released to the rest of the world, if most of the compute sits here, it's really on us to figure it out. And, you know, the EU has had their conversations. But it's the United States and it's China.

Yeah. I mean, it's a good point in the sense that there have been efforts. The European Union passed an AI act. They would have imposed a regimen for reviewing models before the release. And we'll get to this Trump executive order. But at the end of the day, and Rishi Sunnick actually had an AI safety summit at the end of his tenure as British Prime Minister. But at the end of the day, it's the U.S. and China. And to your point, there's just a remarkable deference to the leaders of tech companies in this country as if they're the only ones to understand it.

I was curious, you know, one last thing on the Pope. I was curious what you made of the participation, the kind of clear influence of an anthropic co-founder, Christopher Ola, on the announcement. of the encyclical, you know, on the one hand, I'm glad to see, you know, anthropic advocating for regulation and, you know, working with the Pope. On the other end, they obviously have, you know, they're also going public as a company. What do you think, because you actually, obviously, do need some participation from these people. How do you think the role, the relationship between governments, regulators, and these tech companies, leaders, what would be a healthy version of that? And also just kind of what did you make of

the participation of an anthropic co-founder and essentially the Pope's rollout of his encyclical? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty consistent with the whole shtick of like we are the good guys. And I think the key here is you're all just guys. These are all companies that all have a bottom line. Many of them are rushing to IPO. So there are financial incentives here. And I don't want to assign like some greater nobility because fundamentally you're building. a technology that you're saying might destroy the world. And we shouldn't have feelings about it because, hey, at least you told us. And you said that you wanted to do the right thing. But you're definitely going to make money off of this technology either way. I think on the balance

and the, or imbalances, I guess, in the relationship between governments, regulators, these companies, I think that's a good segue to the executive order that was issued today, which is entirely voluntary. Again, it's like, would love a preview of your potentially world-ending technology, but like, no pressure if not. And I, to me, that does not feel consistent with what they themselves have named as the potential impacts of this technology. Like, you're not asking someone on a date. You are asking for oversight over technology. They themselves have said will change the way that we interact with one another, that we structure. our economy and our societies and our governments, like our world. And that's to say nothing of the

actual characters at the helm of this ecosystem, which we should talk about that at some point, too. Yeah. I mean, some of these people don't inspire a ton of confidence. I mean, on the executive order, it's interesting to me because it's been a journey and just to get catch people up, not everybody follows the twist in terms of this that closely, but there's an executive order in the Biden administration that similarly was focused on trying to set up a framework wherein new models are the government has access to them before they're released. Then the Trump administration comes in. David Sachs has made the AI czar. He's one of the guys maybe we should talk about. And all they care about is essentially removing any guardrails,

any regulation. J.D. Vance flies to Europe and gives a speech, scolding them for caring about AI safety, saying that it's innovation, not safety, that should be driving this. And then Anthropic has a new model coming out Mythos that was so powerful that it freaked everybody out because nobody thought that they could defend against potential cyber attacks from Mythos, for instance. And that seemed to have propelled this executive order, although to your point, it seems like it was pretty watered down. I guess, Mike, the question is, what do you think this executive order matters and what would a credible policy look like? Like let's say you're you're David Sachs, right?

I mean, I'm happy you would ever be David Sachs. But let's say you're in that role as AIs are. What kind of elements do you think you'd want to look for in an actual credible start at regulation? Well, when the myth of stuff was first happening, I, you know, having a background in financial regulation too. I just thought it would be so funny if the reason that we got AI regulation is because the banks were now exposed. And that's because they're exposed to cyber tech, right? Like, that's the thing to freak them out.

Yeah. And, you know, they met with the Treasury Secretary and with the Fed chair. And it's this whole big to do. But at the end of the day, they may end up releasing it anyway. So, again, this tech that's so dangerous, but there's always a path to making some money off of it. in terms of what, you know, an ideal framework would be, I would just take a step back and say that questions of technology policy are often about everything but the tech itself. And so we have more

fundamental questions about, one, the way that we value and compensate and tax capital versus labor, the way that we protect or don't Americans' privacy, the use of technology for purposes of surveillance and targeting and enforcement, it is not going to be limited to, okay, this is how much compute this model can have. How do you apply it? What are the consequences? And what are the structural and systematic questions or issues that this raises independent of the technology? And, you know, one of the things that I worked on when I was in the White House was the Blue print for an AI Bill of Rights, and it lays out five things that should hold true regardless of the technology or its application. And so having a rights-braced framework would be my go-to. But I think,

regardless, this technology is sort of a forcing function for a lot of the issues that we haven't dealt with, whether it's intellectual property or the fact that wages have not kept up with productivity for 50 years. This is interesting, and I think it's really important. So what you're saying is there's a kind of lowest common denominator, which the Trump EO represents, which is like, yeah, like the government should be able to look at these things before they're released and maybe raise some questions, whereas actual regulation would look at different issues and basically say, we need to regulate for people's privacy. We need to regulate for mass surveillance. We need to regulate for the capacity of AI to create a biological weapon, you know, putting on a national security hat.

or we need to regulate for the capacity of AI to do offensive cyber. Essentially, and to your point, like, we also maybe need to tax these companies in a different way because right now they're making potentially trillions of dollars where ordinary people can afford groceries. Is that a fair, like you're smarter than me about this? Essentially, the point is it like rather than just kind of some broad, yeah, we'll look at the model, it's more like, let's kind of make a list of the things that, the problems that are raised and have an approach for each of those? Yeah, I mean, it's looking at the underlying policy question itself.

And then whether or not you actually need an AI-specific answer for it. I mean, one of the things that these folks do over and over again is they say, like, this is a novel technology. It's like the issue itself is not new. Whether it's a person or an algorithm that has made a lending decision, if that lending decision is biased, then fair lending laws would apply. And they tried to argue that actually, no, we have to, you know,

relitigate settled matters because this technology itself is novel. And I think this just circles back to the broader push that they're making, like actually the social contract itself we need to renegotiate, which personally feels an insane premise and particularly insane, given the specific cohort of people that are pushing for it. You're saying you don't want like the small collection of Silicon Valley AI investors and developers to rewrite the social contract? I am saying that. You know, one of the things that I thought was really important in the Pope's encyclical is he says that the technology is never neutral and it's always going to reflect those who devise it, those who finance it, those who regulate it and those who use it.

So I'm just thinking about like the people who are devising it and financing it, you know, you have characters across Silicon Valley and venture capital, men who brag about having zero introspection, you know, men who refer to people as meat computers who have espoused all kinds of misogynistic and xenophobic rhetoric. And these are the people that we are supposed to entrust to design this technology that again will remake the world. No, thank you. I hear you on that. I do want to ask on a kind of a foreign policy angle to this given potts of the world. There's a, I think most people who work in foreign policy and national security policy, and you and I have been kind of a part of her adjacent to those fields, has kind of accepted the premise that there's an AI race between the United States and China

that kind of conveniently overlaps with a lot of these, you know, hyperscalers and large language models. the sense of that we shouldn't put any guardrails on our development of this technology because we had to beat the Chinese Communist Party to it. And I'm wondering, and similarly, there were policies in the Biden administration that were devoted to kind of restricting inputs into Chinese AI, like, you know, export controls on certain chips and, you know, advanced semiconductors. Do you, I feel like right now there's a reconsideration of this happening. What do you think about the frame of an AI race between the U.S. and China? Should we be thinking about a different paradigm prior to approach it?

I can see why, obviously, you would want, you know, the U.S. to have a technology that China is developing. But I also kind of feel like who's actually winning this race other than the, you know, people with AI, which is a relatively small number of people here in the Chinese. I mean, how are you thinking about that right now? I have always viewed it as a as a false choice, right? Like it's either our biggest companies or it's our biggest competitor, either when we maintain our technological edge or we have privacy and competition and governance. As if there can be like no third option and this race paradigm, it's like it feels like a race to the bottom because those who are driving the race are willing to sacrifice anything and everything, right?

It's innovation at any cost, even if the cost is democracy itself, and increasingly humanity itself. And they themselves have gotten, like those who are driving this ecosystem have gotten very comfortable just saying that outright. And so do we win if we let, you know, seven guys decide the fate of this country, it's capital markets, people's 401Ks, the distribution of water and electricity? I don't know that that, I don't feel like a winner in that instance. And then allow Pete Hacks at to use AI for autonomous weaponry.

Exactly. Exactly. And I guess, you know, you have had your own experiences with emerging technology, right, drones specifically. Knowing what we know. And social media. And social media. Knowing what you know today, looking back, would you have considered a different approach to how we leverage the edge while we had it? And that is the question that I think policymakers need to have front of mind.

You hope, and we work towards having an edge for as long as possible, but you should not policy make on the assumption that that edge has no end. I'm really glad you raise this because the answer is yes, obviously, on drones and social media where I actually think the Obama administration should get more flack in some ways. But drones is a great example because part of what we've also learned that could be replicated with AI, right, is that we had this, you know, the U.S. had this advantage. We were out ahead of everybody. But part of what's happened now is if you look at Iran, they're making cheap drones that have done extraordinary damage to the U.S. presence across the Middle East and, you know, probably contributed to their capacity to shut the street for Muz in the sense that they don't need a big, fancy, expensive drone. like American defense contractors make, like they can make this in their garage. Something similar may happen with AI, right? Where, you know, if there's no thought put into how this technology goes out in the world,

maybe you don't need the compute power that the U.S. and China have, but in a few years, people could be doing incredibly disruptive things, right, with pretty cheap, open-source technology. That's exactly right. You don't actually need the most powerful or the largest model in order to do damage or to do harm, if that's your intention. You can do quite a bit of harm with a fairly simple and small model. And we, I think, over-indexed our focus on the largest model,

because, again, we're just in the competition frame, as opposed to, like, do we have baseline, like, constraints and safeguards on traditional and conventional means of doing harm or conducting conflict and warfare? because the technology is just going to reflect or exacerbate what's already there. Like, AI will give you speed and scale to what you might already want to do. Well, one last question, I mean, because we can go on and bet this forever, but you're working with the AI Now Institute Now, which is like does research and work on developing, understanding analysis of these things.

If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably, you know, take an interest in, you know, geopolitics, foreign policy, issues like that, and probably are wondering about AI, but it's hard for people to keep up, you know, and make sense of it all. Do you have any advice? What should people be following, whether that's people, places, publications, trends, like just, you know, I know there's a kind of broad question, but what would you tell someone who's like, you know what, I try to follow the news, but it's kind of hard to keep up on this AI stuff? Like, do you think there are pretty good places to go. Yeah, I mean, it's like a bit like drinking out of a fire hose.

I, like the syndicamy wants to say, just follow the money. And I think that actually a lot of the story will be covered in the IPOs, in the investment, in all of the activity around data centers. But I think that there are good publications like the Virgin Wired and they do really good reporting. Obviously, I have to plug AI Now and a lot of the research that they're doing. doing and we will continue to do. And one of the things that I'll be working on is how do we take this incredibly rich research and make it so that anyone who is interested in these or worried about these issues can can follow. There's almost too much out there. That's a good place

to start. And actually, the Virgin Wired may not be on like the normal information diet for like all of our listeners. They've actually done quite good work on both the people involved and the technology involved and obviously people should follow your work. Well, thanks so much for joining us day. I'm sure we'll have occasion to talk about this again at some point. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Ben. Thanks again to I, I, Abraham, for joining the show, and we will talk to you guys next week. Ponte of the World is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGrope, Ben Hethko, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffat, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Her staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild

of America East.