Pod Save the World - Tucker Carlson Goes to Moscow

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Tommy and Ben talk about US strikes against facilities in Iraq and Syria used by Iran-backed militia groups, White House denials that the conflict in Gaza has drawn America into a regional war, haunting statistics for children in Gaza, souring public opinion on the war, and dehumanizing commentary about the Middle East. They also discuss how Biden’s foreign policy agenda is being held up by Congress, Zelensky’s potential government and military shake-up, Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s election and Bukele’s rising popularity, polling in Europe that forecasts momentum for far right parties, a historic first in Northern Ireland, King Charles’ cancer diagnosis, Rishi Sunak’s insane fasting regimen, and Liz Truss’ plans to attend CPAC. Then Tommy speaks to Alex Ward, national security reporter at Politico about his new book “The Internationalists”. 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.

Welcome to Pots Day of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I did a cable TV hit the other day. Chris, MSNBC. Welcome to my world, Tommy. It was fun. I really like Chris. I like his show a lot. He's very smart and they cover foreign policy. But he reminded me how in the before times, before Trump, when there was a crisis in the world and a presidential campaign was happening, advisors to the campaign would do conference calls and put out policy papers. And the advisors were like policy people and not like maga lunatic. No, it would be like Dennis McDonough was a campaign advisor, became White House Chief of Staff. Susan Rice was the campaign advisor, became the national security advisor. And then with the Trump team, they just didn't have no comments on everything in the world. Well, you know, nice work. It was a nice trip down memory lane of us in the 2008 campaign having to react to Putin invading the country of Georgia. Yeah, I remember that everybody forgets that they invaded Georgia in 2008. And Bush did nothing, actually.

Bush did nothing. And McCain was like, why are we not there for Sakishvili? And then Chris was what, a nation reporter. Every, you know. Is it the nation? Yeah. That was a long time ago. Long time ago.

Your children, young people. The before times. It was a better time, though, when candidates had to, you know, say what they would do and how they would lead the world. It seems like a better idea. Anyway, we're going to do exactly that today. We're going to cover the U.S. airstrikes on militia group supported by Iran, the latest from Gaza and the dramatic shift against Israeli war effort in the United States. We're also going to talk about the fate of Biden's foreign policy agenda and how it's tied up. in the US Senate and with immigration reform.

We will also cover some, a big shakeup in the Ukrainian government. Tucker Carlson took a little sojourn to Russia. Good for him. Hope he's trying some. Yeah, it's a good weather this time. Caviar or something. I don't know, what do you do over there?

We're also gonna talk about elections, a future democracy in El Salvador, Europe, Pakistan, and Senegal, and then a little on Northern Ireland and some sad news about King Charles. And finally, a little segment called British Conservatives are weird. Well, that's been kind of a standing segment on the show, but we can brand it now. That's true.

That's very true. This is non-Boros Johnson. And then you're going to hear my interview with Politico's Alex Ward about his new book, The Internationalists, which covers President Biden's foreign policy over the first two years

of his administration. So stick around for that. First Biden book. Year three is quite the sequel. Yeah, things, this big shakeup. What's it, yeah, there's that part of the screenplay. It's like the dark period.

I know what it's called. Dark Night of the Soul, something like that. It doesn't save the cat. Read the fucking book. But Ben, should we talk about Iran? We should. All right. So, as expected, on February 2nd, last Friday, the U.S. bombed seven facilities in Iraq and Syria that are used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and militant groups supported by Iran. These airstrikes were in response to a drone attack on a U.S. base in Jordan in late January. They killed three U.S. service members and wounded 30 more. The drone strike in Jordan was one of more than 160 attacks since mid-October on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria by these militant groups with links to Iran. Here's a clip of Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, talking about those strikes on Face the Nation over the weekend.

What happened on Friday was the beginning, not the end of our response, and that there will be more steps, some seen, some perhaps unseen, all in an effort to send a very clear message that when American forces are attacked, when Americans are killed, as three service members tragically were at Tower 22, we will respond and we will respond forcefully and we will respond in a sustained way. I would not describe it as some open-ended military campaign. We have a concept of how we intend to respond. I'm not going to telegraph it on this show. But we will execute that concept with the kind of professionalism that only the U.S. military can bring to bear. So I guess based on that, we should expect maybe some further airstrikes or like cyber operations or sanctions to come.

I don't know. It will take some time to see if this initial set of strikes were successful and these groups were deterred. CNN reported that one main Iran-linked-maligned militia group, Kataa Pesbola or KH, announced the suspension of its military operations against U.S. troops in Iraq in order to prevent the embarrassment of the Iraqi government. That was their rationale. We'll see if that holds.

But on Sunday, there was a drone attack on a base housing U.S. forces in Syria that killed six Kurdish fighters. And the Houthi rebels in Yemen just continue to fire missiles at ships in the Red Sea all day every day. So, Ben, I was relieved to hear that Biden didn't consider attacks in Iran proper and went with this more limited option, but also a little. troubling or worrisome to hear Jake Sullivan say there's no back channel conversations happening between the U.S. and Iran about de-escalation, although maybe there's indirect conversations

through Oman or something happening or you just didn't want to comment. But what did you make of what Biden chose in terms of this response? I think in terms of what they chose, it's pretty clear that they were looking and we joked, I mean, not that any of this is funny, but we made reference last week to when you get three options and you choose the middle option. And this is the option in the sense that if option one was kind of not having a military response that is escalatory and then option three was you know striking IRGC targets Iranian Revolutionary Guard targets inside of Iran they chose an option where they went after these proxy groups and will probably continue to go after these groups in Iraq and Syria and Yemen and so that's these militias

have been active for a long time in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis in Yemen but not going into Iran And the perhaps unseen comment that Jake said seems to be a reference to cyber, offensive cyber, which we don't talk about. The U.S. government doesn't talk about. But I assume that that means there might be some offensive cyber operations against the Iranian government. We're going to sign the Iranians up for like a D-Triple C distro list. Maybe like one of those kind of strange text messages. Yeah, from Hakeem Jeffries or something.

No bad ideas at a brainstorm. So that's what they're doing. and I'd expect a few more air strikes on that network of what is called the axis of resistance, these Iranian-backed groups. We talked last week about the fact that Iran doesn't necessarily pick targets or control these groups. In terms of deterrence, you made this point about the Houthis already attacking shipping in the Red Sea even after these strikes and some attacks on Syria. What I'd say about this is these groups have been operating in war zones for many, many years, right?

You know, the groups in Iraq goes all the way back to the height of the Iraq war. And mostly just won us out of Iraq. Yeah. The groups in Syria withstood the decade-long Syrians of war. So they're not going to be deterred. They're not going to go out of business. They're not going to say, you know, we give up. You might degrade their capabilities.

You might have them shift tactics. But fundamentally, the challenge here is there's not going to be some clear moment in which we can announce the restoration of deterrence because that's not how these groups work. their ethos is to be in confrontation with the United States, in confrontation with Israel, with the dial turned up because of what's happening in Gaza, they can continue to do that, but maybe you make it a little harder for them to do that by doing these strikes. But I don't think you're going to solve the fundamental issue, which is there's an escalation in Gaza, and these groups are participating in that escalation. I think that the KH, the Khatab Hezbollah announcement, is about wanting to make the U.S.

the bad guy in terms of Iraqi sovereignty. Yeah, because I think they did it before we responded with these air strikes. And I think what they're trying to do is they want the Iraqi government to feel embarrassed by the U.S. violating their sovereignty by taking air strikes in Iraq and say, see, like, we're not trying to escalate here because what they ultimately want is the Iraqi government to ask the U.S. to leave. And there was about 2,500 U.S. troops there. And there was a bit of a dust up.

You and I were texting about this, Tommy, like the U.S. government didn't apparently pre-notify the Iraqi government of these strikes. And that's the dynamic that KH is trying to play into. So I don't know. I continue to feel like we are on a ladder of escalation. I'm glad that they put some limits on that in terms of not going into Iran. But I also, it continues to just be the case that in less than until there's a ceasefire in Gaza, I don't know how you have a true restoration of some degree of calm in the region.

Yeah. And it's interesting. I think to your point, Jake's language sort of shift from one about deterrent. to just degrading the capabilities of these militia groups, because you're right, you can blow up some of their missiles, but they're going to get more. The Washington Post reported that the drone that killed the U.S. service members in Jordan went undetected because it flew at low altitude,

and there were no air defense systems on the site capable of shooting it down. That is different from the initial reports that we talked about last week, that maybe this enemy drone came in as a U.S. drone was landing, confused everybody, and was able to hit the target. But I guess the base didn't have weapons that could kill the drones. They just have electronic warfare defenses to sort of, you know, fry their electronics and take them out. So that's bad. And that's insane to me that, you know, you give a forward deployed base like this and not have sufficient air defenses.

But to this broader point, Ben, of whether, you know, the ways this conflict is spilling out into the region, here's another clip from Jake Sullivan. He was on CNN, State of the Union, he did around the Sunday shows this weekend. The question was from Dana Bash. She basically said, you say you want to avoid a broader regional war, but aren't we already in one? we're hitting targets in all these different countries, et cetera, et cetera. Here's a clip. These are distinct but related challenges. For example, what's happening in the Red Sea is obviously, to a certain extent,

triggered by what's happening in Gaza, but it's not the same thing. The Houthis aren't just hitting ships related to Israel. They're hitting a lot of different ships from a lot of different countries. And so we are trying to deal with the challenge to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. That is a distinct challenge. The forces, the militia groups in Iraq and Syria are hitting our forces, we're responding. And then, of course, Israel is dealing both with the challenge of Hamas and Gaza and the threat from Hezbollah in the north. So we will continue to work to deal with the challenge of

escalation and continue to work to ensure we're responding forcefully, but at the same time staying out of the prospect of the United States getting pulled into a broad war in the Middle East of the kind that we have seen in the past. Ben, as Al-Ivaya said to me last week, a ceasefire won't guarantee that Iranian-linked militia group stop these attacks, but not brokering a ceasefire almost certainly guarantees that they continue. It is a little worrisome that the core point that I think most people seem to agree on that Gaza is the driver of this uptick in violence is not echoed by top administration officials. Yeah, because it's not a matter of opinion. It's just a matter of fact that since October 7th and then the Israeli military response, we have seen the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and an uptick in these attacks on the U.S. forces.

That's just the reality. It's like Pentagon data. That's just what happened. I mean, people, so, you know, we've seen violence, acts of violence in Gaza and the West Bank, in Israel, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, all go up since October 7th. And so by definition, this is connected and this is part of a regional war. And the hottest part of that war is in Gaza. And the scale the Israeli military operation has been followed by a uptick in the scale of action by these groups. That's just what's happening. And so

to be an option one person, you know, people, sometimes people, you know, I did a cable appearance on me to continue to that theme where someone said, you know, well, isn't it the case that we have to, you know, do we have to respond militarily to what happened at Tower 22? And we don't. I mean, there's not some mandate, you know, that we have to bomb things. The reality is, I believe. believe, ultimately, the thing that will best secure U.S. forces in the region, if that's the objective, is, number one, to have a ceasefire and a de-escalation tensions across the region. And number two, by the way, to not have U.S. forces in some of these places.

I mean, as we talked about last week, I don't think that the threat of ISIS necessitates necessarily a certain number of troops in Syria, you know, where people are vulnerable. They're vulnerable to these drones. And so I just think it's important to at least make sure that we're surfacing the reality that it is an option available to the U.S. government to say we're going to try to double down on a diplomatic approach here. And we're also going to think about whether there's a vulnerability. Because if the idea is that, you know, the one thing that we're going to do to protect U.S. forces

that are in all these disparate places in the Middle East is to essentially have more U.S. forces in the Middle East. You know, that's the definition of kind of getting drawn into something. And again, I think you have to be able to articulate where does this all end? I think that the Biden administration themselves would say that they would like this to end in de-escalation and in some process that could lead to a Palestinian state. And ultimately, there's going to have to be some diplomatic channel to the Iranians. But how do you get there? And right now, we're all about the escalation. And yes, we can talk about there's obviously these efforts, Tony Blum, Lincoln's in the region and we're trying to get a ceasefire, or at least a pause for the release

of some hostages and the delivery of some aid. But otherwise it's kind of this tenuous, tense risk of things continuing to escalate. Yeah, I mean, look, it's just worth pointing out that in 1983 when a suicide bomber hit an American military barracks in Beirut, Reagan's response was to pull U.S. troops out. Reagan's response says, you know what? Actually, I don't think these troops should be there. Yeah. Which is a pretty logical response. And today you'd be called, you know, like cut and run, coward, whatever nonsense. And that's the other thing is that I think we talked about this last week, but it bears repeating that the politics of this are,

there's a sense that the only politics you should be afraid of are being called weak by, you know, Lindsay Graham or having a bad day on cable news because, or having even like an Obama red line kind of thing. When I actually don't, the politics, the bad politics are U.S. troops being vulnerable, bad politics are 27,000 people being done Gaza. their outcomes are ultimately going to drive the policy. Yeah. So let's turn to Gaza. The United Nations World Health Organization says that 100,000 people in Gaza are either dead, injured, or missing, and presume dead. And they say that 60% of the more than 27,000 fatalities reported by Gaza's health ministry have been women and children.

UNICEF says that at least 17,000 kids in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their families and called it the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. It's pretty haunting statistics there. About 85% of the 2.2 million people in Gaza have been displaced. A huge chunk of them have been forced into refugee camps in southern Gaza along the border. The population of Rafa, which is a city on the border of Egypt, is five times what it was before the war. And now Israeli authorities say they're going to expand operations into Rafa in the coming days. So that will be a catastrophe. That context is the backdrop for Secretary of State Tony Blankin's fifth visit to the Middle East that's happening right now.

He met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday. He's got stops in Egypt, Qatar, Israel, the West Bank. More on that in a second. But meanwhile, then, in Israel, the national security minister, this right-wing zealot named Itamar Ben-Givir, told the Wall Street Journal that he would oppose any ceasefire deal that would free Palestinian prisoners being held on terrorism charges or end the war before Hamas was fully defeated. Remember, this is a guy who can pull his support from Netanyahu and topple the government anytime he wants. So, you know, powerful, lunatic but powerful. Ben Gavir also attacked Biden saying, quote, instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy, giving humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza,

which goes to Hamas. If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different. So it's very clear. And a bit of a tell, yeah. Yeah, a bit of a tell there. Ben-Givir's son also tweeted that Biden has Alzheimer's. So cool family. Yeah. There was a little good news right before we started recording. All these Israeli politicians have like asshole sons. Yeah, they call him the Dofen. Yeah. with Don Jr. of Israel. A little good news before we started recording. Qatar said they received

a positive response from Hamas to the proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal. I suspect it's a counteroffer. It will take some time to kind of work through and negotiate, but fingers crossed. But Ben, stepping back, every week we come in here, the situation is worse. The IDF military campaign has failed to take out Hamas's leadership, has failed to rescue any hostages. And yet neither the Israeli or U.S. approach changes a bit. I feel like I'm going to lose my first. fucking mind. It's like at what point, what does it take for people to understand that none of this is working? It's time to change course. They have not rescued hostages. I mean, one. One actually. One in the opening days. Okay. And meanwhile, you got a lot more out during a pause. And

and the Ben Gavir comment about Hamas, we can all agree that, you know, we don't want Hamas to be running Gaza. We can all agree that we don't want there to ever be another October 7th. But Hamas is not going to be defeated. It's, it's, we've talked about this, but that, Their leadership is in part out of Gaza. There are many different elements of Hamas in Gaza. They're not going to surrender. They're not going to say, you know, we're out of business now. And so this constant repetition of objectives that are militarily unattainable,

the kind of military recovery of the hostages and the military destruction of Hamas are the articulation of unattainable objectives, which is a recipe for an open-ended war, which is a recipe for the kind of catastrophic human suffering that you articulated in those statistics. And the fact that this is now kind of coming to Rafa, you know, at the same time that there have been some Israeli politicians, including people like Ben-Givir,

suggesting that what they really want to do is displace all these people in Egypt. You know, I mean, that starts to become more and more a question about what the intention is here as they kind of push South as the population pushes up. of. Sorry, that's pundit, barking recessantly. Very opinionated dog in the community. Yeah, very angry dog.

Want to treat out there. So I, but I think we do have to just kind of keep coming back to the scale of human suffering because it just points to the fact that getting in some more trucks of assistance is not the issue. The issue is the military operation, the nature of the military operation. Some aspects of that military operation have been down back from like at the height of the air campaign. But this is still, there are still people dying every single day. And as you said, I think the point we also want to come back to is because people will say, well, you know, isn't this, how can we trust this count? As you indicated, the count is probably low, okay, because they can't get to everybody under the rubble. Or some people say, well, what portion of these people that are a part of the count are Hamas? Well, 60% at least of these people are women and children. I don't think those people are in him. Yeah, the Israeli estimate of the number of Hamas fighters they've killed, it's like 10,000.

Yeah. And the casualty count is 27,000. Yeah. So this doesn't, the point is at some point, if the rationalization of this military campaign depends upon the dehumanization of the people who are dying. That may not be the intent of everybody who is rationalizing it, but it's the reality that when you have well over 10,000 kids dead and tens of thousands of additions. kids, we'll just focus on the children here at risk of starvation in uninhabitable conditions with over 80% of the housing units in Gaza either destroyed or damaged. What else is going on here? I mean, I don't know what else to say about it. And the Biden people will say, look, we've

really pushed hard on the Israelis to allow more aid into Gaza. And like, I'm sure that is true. But what does it say about your partner, your interlocutor there? You have to fight them to allow an aid so everyone doesn't starve to death. That's not a good. If that's where the bar is here, the bar needs to be raised. Also, Biden did put in place an executive order that will allow the United States to sanction violent settlers or those who support them, which I think is a big important policy in executive order, but that is about the West Bank. It's not about what's happening in Gaza. A couple more things in Gaza, though. So CNN reported that the IDF is pumping large volumes of seawater into Hamas's tunnels. Not sure what that means

for potential hostage rescue. If they're in there, there's also concerned that it could screw up the freshwater tables in the region. But it's a lot of it's a lot of. happening. The New York Times just reported that Israeli intelligence thinks 32 of the 136 hostages have died, which is tragic and awful, but I think also why you always hear the debates about a ceasefire and hostage release deal, including bodies of those who have passed away. The U.S. is reportedly pushing hard for a six-week ceasefire because they believe it will be impossible for Israel to fully ramp up operations again after that is over, which makes sense. And Axios reported today, that the U.S. is working on a separate diplomatic agreement to calm tensions between Israel and

Hezbollah in Lebanon. So that would, of course, be good. One of the thing, Ben, so last week we talked about UNRWA, the aid organization that provides relief to Palestinians, especially in Gaza, it's basically the only organization that has boots on the ground in Gaza that can distribute aid. The U.S. suspended support to UNRWA after Israeli allegations that UNRWA employees were part of the October 7th attacks. There's been sort of a lot more review of that decision happening as we speak, I think the U.S. is kind of walking it back a bit saying, well, actually, we gave them all they had for this year already, right? So maybe this won't have an impact, but there you're seeing other countries kind of follow our lead, which is a problem. But here's a clip of

Prime Minister Netanyahu elaborating on what he wants to see happen to UNR. I think it's time that the international community in the UN itself understand that UNR's mission has to end. Unra is self-perpetuating. It is self-perpetuating also. in its desire to keep alive the refugee, the Palestinian refugee. And we need to get other UN agencies and other aid agencies replacing UNRWA in, if we're going to solve the problem of Gaza, as we intend to do. In that same press event, he also says that, you know, testimony from UNRWA employees were a big part of the ICJ genocide case. and it was interesting that he linked that with these concerns about UNRWA employees, potentially being a part of Hamas or participating in the October 7th attacks. Again, the Israeli concerns about UNRWA are not new, but it was interesting to hear Netanyahu say he basically wants the organization dissolved.

Like, that's his goal here. Well, and here's what's happening ideologically. This is an important thing for people to understand about UNRWA and what NetNIA was saying, because actually that doesn't have to do with whether or not some of them were in Hamas or not. actually, it's bigger than that. So UNRWA was set up in the late 40s when the NACBA happened, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced and turned into refugees. By definition, refugees. They're driven from their homes. They're in camps. They're someplace else. The UN set up a special agency UNRWA to deal with those refugee populations to provide services to them. The reason that Netanyahu and people of his ideological inclination in Israel want there to be no

such thing as UNRWA anymore is because they don't want there to be any refugee status for Palestinians anymore. Because if Palestinians are categorized as refugees, maybe they, you know, some of them obviously continue to argue they have a right to return to their homes. And obviously those homes are in Israel. Or, you know, even as refugees who aren't going to be able to return to Israel, they kind of stay where they are. What Netanyahu wants, and certainly a Ben-Gavir once, is he wants essentially those Palestinian populations. And he himself, by the way, said this, the clip we played last week back from the 70s was about there is a Palestinian state, essentially it's Jordan. He wants the Palestinians that are in Lebanon and Jordan to not be thought

of as Palestinians as refugees. He wants them just be thought of as Arabs who live in Jordan or who live in Lebanon. This is like a really important ideological point that he wants to kind of erase a certain international legal categorization of identity for Palestinians. They're no longer refugees. They're just people that live in Jordan. And that's it. And if you want to give them services, well, the UN has other bodies that can provide those services. And that's like a huge tell about what the ideological project is behind this. To people who think, you know, who may listen and think, well, you guys are hard on Israel. What I'd say is that I sincerely believe that the best outcome for Israel, the best way for Israel to live in peace with its neighbors is for there to be a Palestinian state. I think anybody, including myself, who's looked at that doesn't think that you're going to have the right of return wherever everybody's going to move back to their homes in Israel proper. But you have to have a resettlement. of those refugees in a new Palestinian state. And if you wipe out the categorization of them as refugees, you're wiping out essentially the idea of a Palestinian state. So I just, I disagree with Nanyahu about, this is not about even just Palestinian aspirations. It's about whether or not you think

it's best for Israel to have there be a two-state solution. He clearly does not think that. Yeah, he's, this is a long-term project. Yeah. So let's talk about how public opinion of the war has changed in the U.S. There was an Associated Press poll the other day that found that half of U.S. adults think that Israel's war in Gaza has, quote, gone too far. And only 31% of U.S. adults approve of Biden's handling of the war in Gaza, including only 46% of Democrats. 33% of Republicans say Israel's military response has gone too far. That's up from 18% in November. So there's been a huge movement there, including 52% of independence are now in that place. NBC also did a big poll that came out over the weekend. There are some foreign policy

questions. Trump defeats Biden by 11 points on the question of improving America. standing in the world that used to be a strength for Biden. Only 29% approve of Biden's handling of the war in Gaza. It's down five points. And then among voters under 35 years old, only 15% of proof of Biden's handling of the Israel Hamas war, 70% disapprove. So like this war, obviously events are going very badly over in Israel, but the political impact it's having for Joe Biden and the prospect of reelection is incredibly damaging. And I think, you know, what we've talked about, talked about on this show is we know the administration is pushing hard behind the scenes for a ceasefire deal. They want a hostage release and some sort of negotiated solution, but they don't make those

comments as forcefully in public. Politico reported that in private, Biden complains about Bibi Netanyahu. He calls him, quote, a bad fucking guy. And he worries out loud about the risk of Bibi dragging the U.S. into a wider Middle Eastern war because that conflict would buy Netanyahu more time politically to stay in power before is. Israeli voters push him out. All we're asking is say the shit in public, Joe. Like, we agree with you. We know it. Everyone knows this about Nanyahu. Every administration has hated Netanyahu since the 90s. Yeah, except for Trump. Yeah, except for Trump. That's a well point. But like, I mean, even, even Trump, though, soured on him after. Trump's sourd on him because he

didn't back him on January 6th. Yeah. Then he accused him of not supporting the Soleimani's he basically treated Netanyahu like a Republican senator that didn't back him up on January 6, which is kind of funny in a way. That's exactly right. But yeah, the politics of this are obvious, and they've been obvious for a while you could have seen this coming. I think what's telling about that overall number, because we talked about how the biggest problem for re-election is the intensity felt by a sliver of the electorate, right? So it doesn't have to be like an overwhelming majority of Americans singing something. The Democratic coalition is so fragile, you know, the margins are so thin that if a few tens of thousands of people in a few states are like, you know what, I'm out,

I'm voting for a third party candidate or I'm sitting this out. Joe Biden will lose the election. And that's kind of, that's the thing that you should be most concerned about. I'm struck by the overall numbers, Tommy, because as much as I don't want to talk down the scale of our own audience, it's not like 51% of Americans are world those here who are like following this really closely. You don't know that's true. But the reality is that just the background noise of what's happening has reached enough

people that they're like, yeah, I don't know. It's just scary images on TV. Yeah. And it's scary images in a sense that we're getting dragged into something. You know, it's like what, we're bombing Yemen now and we're bombing Iraq and we're bombing exterior, we bomb three different countries, you know. And so I think it's just, it should be a warning sign of why de-escalation is actually the better politics, even if it's not the thing that plays well in Washington day to day.

And foreign policy is not usually the drivers in elections until it is. Until it's bad. Right. But you can watch, like, Biden's approval takes a huge hit around the Afghanistan withdrawal. and it's kind of fallen steadily ever since. There's a real demarcation there you can see in the average of polls. Yeah, you don't really win on foreign policy, but you can lose on farm policy. Certainly you can lose.

Speaking of losing, Ben, there have been some terrible dehumanizing opeds and articles written about the conflict in Gaza. There was a Wall Street Journal op-ed from the director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, which I've never heard of calling Dearborn America's jihad capital. I wonder who funds them. Interesting to find out. And then Tom Friedman wrote an op-ed about how to understand the Middle East through this extended metaphor or comparison to the animal kingdom. Yeah.

And I didn't read it until today because I was like, I saw the outrage. I didn't read the thing. I'm just genuinely shocked that an editor didn't say to him like, hey, man, you've been around the block a while. Like comparing countries and people to animals is going to land as dehumanizing to some people. Maybe just start over. Yeah. And look, the first one, the Wall Street Journal one, was there. of your classic astroturf organizations that, like you said, the funding is like, well,

who are, there's always some group like this, you know, we had to, back in the day, it was like Frank Gaffney, remember that guy? Oh, that guy's crazy. It was always like, Islam watch or something, and it was always, you know, super. Now he's a centrist Republican. Now he's probably like a never trumper. But yeah, maybe think about the idea of dehumanizing an entire city of people that, you know, it's a remarkable community, by the way, Dearborn. But then the Tom Freeman one is even more kind of baffling and astonishing, because comparing a whole region of people to the animal kingdom. And then also, the animals were like wasps and, you know. The U.S. was an aging lion, right?

So we got to be, we credit ourselves. We got to be Mustafa and the Lion King. And then, you know, the bad guys, quote unquote, were, you know, all these various other animals. And it's a definition of dehumanization. I mean, like, literally, it's dehumanizing them and turning them animals. And to your point, it does. you know, speak to this kind of, like, lazy white guy kind of take, oh, I got an idea.

Like, we're going to call them the animals. And actually, I kind of do, like, you kind of fault the, like, does anyone kind of look, like give this a pass? Like, well, you know. Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, Iraq. They're caterpillars. What? Tom, what are you doing?

Yeah. Like a creature you could step on, you know. And again, I'm sure Tom Friedman wasn't thinking that he was doing that. But to your point, that that's when an editor comes in and is like, actually, can we get, maybe there's a different metaphor. Maybe there's a food metaphor. Oh, yeah. Or a, I don't know, a historical analogy. What if the world was flat?

But there's a metaphor. What if you took a cab somewhere and talked to that person and then wrote up some shit? Two quick things where we take a break. This has already been a long election year. It's going to be a long election year. If you need help get through it, pre-order our book, Democracy or Realt. It's How to Save America in 10 easy steps. It is fun. It is funny. It is a useful guide to getting involved in politics and making a difference.

Plus, Cricket is going to donate its profits from the book to support Votes of America and other organizations mobilizing for progressive outcomes in the 2024 election. Democracy or else is available on June 25th, but you can pre-order now. Go to crooked.com slash books. Crooked.com slash books or wherever books are sold. And if you buy now, you help us get on the New York Times bestseller list, maybe. So check it out. Also, we're making a ton of great content here at Cricket. If you're not checking on our YouTube, You are leaving prime content on the table. Hysteria has a great series called This Fucking Guy, where they roast some of the worst men in the country. I have a show with Brian Tyler Cohn called Liberal Tears, where we rank stupid things happening in the world, terrible people. We have a lot of fun. It's very fun. We actually humiliate each other at the end.

And then Love It has a new segment called What a Week Day, where he jokes about early breaking news of the week. So go to crooked.com slash videos to watch now. So Ben, sticking in Washington. So a lot of Biden's foreign policy priorities are now tied up in this. over immigration and supplemental funding requests in Congress. Great PSA, by the way. Oh, yes, right? I recommend the POTS of America.

That show is fine. So remember. This shows is better, but, you know. So remember, like the MAGA Republicans, they've decided that Ukraine is bad, supporting Ukraine is bad. So Biden tried to link funding for Ukraine with a supplemental funding request for Israel

to make it politically palatable or at least hard to vote against. Republicans said, no way. We're not going to provide more funding for Ukraine until we secure our own border. So Senator James Lankford, this conservative Republican from Oklahoma, worked with Democrats like Chris Murphy, friend of the pod from Connecticut to negotiate

an immigration bill. And then they released the final text of that bill on Sunday. It had immigration. It had Ukraine. It had, you know, Israel funding. It had Indo-Pacific countering China funding or the whole smorgasbord. And then it took like 12 hours, 24 hours for Republicans to immediately walk away from the bill, including Langford, who wrote the bill, negotiated the thing and now won't say whether he supports his own bill. Mitch McConnell portrays himself as a cold warrior, staunch supporter of Ukraine. He instantly caved under pressure from Trump, who said this bill would be a gift to Biden because he wants to run on the border being a mess. So, Ben, Ukraine got a little bit of good news recently. EU leaders achieved a breakthrough on a deal to provide 50 billion euros to Ukraine through 2027.

They had to overcome opposition from Victor Orban in Hungary, which is not easy, but they did it. But this bill in the Senate contained 60 billion for Ukraine, 14 billion. for Israel, $10 billion for humanitarian aid for conflict zones, including Gaza, and billions to counter China in the Pacific. And like, people need to understand this is existential for Ukrainians. Like there are reports that the Ukrainian military is running out of ammo on the battlefield as we speak. They may lose the battle for the city of Divka. And so I don't know. I guess I'm just sort of like at a loss. If that combination of policies can't get Republican support, what will? Like how do you get these people to be serious and actually govern. I'm out of ideas. Yeah, you saw kind of that when

Mike Johnson, I always forget the, Speaker Johnson, Speaker Johnson, you know, he suggested that he wanted to put up a clean bill of just the Israel aid, right? Yeah, he pulling up the $17.6 billion for Israel. And again, we're getting hard on Biden, like a good message from Biden that he would veto that standalone bill and not kind of succumb to the cynicism of kind of pushing that through. Some also good moves potentially from the Biden administration to try to find other ways to get some assistance to Ukraine, like there's excess stockpiles of U.S. weapons in Europe that maybe you can redirect under existing authorities to the Ukrainians. But just so people understand this, I mean, this isn't just, you know, some new fancy capability wanting to give the Ukrainians. This isn't

like, oh, we're going to send them F-16s. This is like the basic nuts and bolts artillery, the stuff that if you're on the Ukrainian front line right now and you've been fighting your fucking ass off for two years to save your country, to stand up to Vladimir Putin, and you've gotten waves of like Wagner Group convicts coming at you, you've got the Russians bombing, your kids, you know, in your homes back behind you. And you're sitting there and all of a sudden, like someone's going to tell you, you know what, actually, like we have a quarter of the artillery that we need because Marjorie Taylor Green

people are trying to make a point and Donald Trump needs to run on the border. I would be losing my mind. I can't imagine. I mean, I think we should you know, we were texting about this like just be clear about the empathy we feel to the Ukrainians who've done everything that they've been asked and have sacrificed, you know,

about 70,000 casualties at least. Like everything on the line. And there's some dumb political games. in Washington. And look, even if you're skeptical of Ukraine aid, and I think you and I are very open to diplomatic approaches, and I don't think any of those are going to happen for the election anyway, because Putin's going to wait for that, and we can talk about that in the context of Buddy Tucker. But even if you're skeptical about it, as a country, we have led these people to believe that we're there for them. Right. And so whether you agree with the approach in Ukraine or not,

leading these people to believe that we're there, we're in the fight, here you go. go, here's the spigot of weapons that are coming your way so you can get in this fight. To turn that off in the middle is totally reprehensible. It's totally like cutting those people loose when they're in a life and death situation. I usually, as you know, refrain from the like something happens over here in the world and the other people over here are going to look at that and think you're not reliable. I actually make an exception to that rule in this case. Where I usually object to that, it's like, oh, if we bomb this country over here, this other country will be, you know. Yeah, yeah. This is more just like, do we keep agreements, you know? And to lead a country to believe that we're there for them and then remove it. And this is not at all Joe Biden's fault or anybody in his administration. This is entirely on these MAGA people. It's so reprehensible. And it's not kind of breaking through because people substantively are obviously interested in the border. Politically, they're interested in our election. Just bear a thought for like what this means for the Ukrainians. It's good that the EU, it's a good test that they stood up. And we're like, you know what?

At a minimum, we're going to come on and kick in essentially about the same amount of money that the Americans were committing between $55 and $60 billion. Some of that, though, is for like supporting the Ukrainian government. The Europeans cannot make the Ukrainians whole on things like artillery. Like they just don't have the capacity in the pace to do it. So it is what it is, and it sucks is the truth. It's terrible. And this bill that was negotiated in the Senate is like the Republican wish list. It's what they want.

Including, by the way, sport for Ukraine used to be something that was on their wish list. It is the worst politics. Israel, Taiwan. It's literally like a, it's like a right wing Republican bill. I know. Favro made fun of me a little bit for suggesting this, but I do wonder, I mean, being tough on China is like the number one thing that pops in all these Republican kind of primary ads in polling.

I do wonder if you can portray Republican opposition to this bill as being soft on China in some sort of effective way. I don't know. It's kind of a bank shot. It would require, you know, some nimble messaging to make it work. but I'd rather try. If we put this bill forward in like 2015 in the Obama years, people would have thought we'd lost our minds

and like somehow the White House got hijacked by Dick Cheney. By Dick Cheney. Like this is, it's bonkers. And maybe Tommy what needs to be done is someone needs to let Hugh Hewitt know that, not to be too little inside Roldo here, but that there's ships. Oh, funding for building ships? I don't even know if that's in the bill, but like we just, you know. Maybe just send Hugh to the Pacific.

You can find out for himself. Lots of news out of Ukraine itself. too, Ben. So President Zelensky said he's considering a shakeup, not just in the military, but also his political leadership. So last week, there was some reports that he summoned his top general to tell him he'd been fired. Then he seemed to back off that firing. And now it looks like the shakeup might be happening and might be even bigger. Zolensky gave an interview to an Italian TV station over the weekend. He said, a reset, a new beginning is necessary. I have something serious in mind, which is not about a single person, but about my direction of the country's

leadership. So, you know, there's a bunch of things to play here. You know, he might be firing, you know, the folks who were in charge of the failed counteroffensive as a way to show that, you know, they're learning from that mistake. They may just be kind of increasingly at odds with each other, Zlensky and his top generals. Additionally, though, obviously the country is sick of being at war. There's concern about a new mobilization effort that would bring up to 500,000 new conscripts into the fight. There's reports about corruption last week, the Ukrainian Security Service announced it it uncovered a $40 million corruption scheme among military officials who signed a contract for 100,000 artillery shells, none of which were ever delivered. I don't know if you saw Masha Gessen as a piece in the New York

this week. Yeah, the Democratic backsliding Ukraine. The pieces of that are basically, I mean, it's a long piece, but there's the martial law declaration that's been in place since the day after the invasion that controls who can and can't enter the country. The media has been tightly regulated by the government and taken over in some instances. They can't have elections because it's not safe and because a huge chunk of the population is out of Ukraine. So, Ben, I mean, none of us, like, want to fly speck a country at war or a leader at war. Slensky is clearly shown like unimaginable courage in the face of, you know,

the invasion and occupation. But, you know, historically speaking, crises like this can lead to political leaders becoming entrenched and some democratic backsliding. How do you think the U.S. and mostly the EU probably should handle these delicate conversations about, you know, supporting Ukraine at this time of crisis, but also not letting it change. It's like fundamental identity. There's a lot that's been going on and, and, and that's a good summary. Clearly Zelensky and the top general, Zaluzni, is that, is that pronounced her right?

I didn't even try. I'm looking over it alone. I asked for pronunciation and I just rest on it. I just like, I can't even speak. But the General Zaluzni, who's a top commander, is hugely popular in Ukraine, is more popular than Zelensky. And I think there's a long been to thought that that was like a source of tension, that you essentially had, these are the two most popular people in Ukraine. I don't know General Zaluzni has any political ambitions or not. What is the case is that if Zelensky was the guy who, you know, helped save Ukraine by not

leaving their initial days and showing such courage and then mobilizing kind of this world assistance, General Zlusny is a guy who came up with this ingenious strategy, essentially, of, like, baiting the Russians into extending the supply lines and then just relentlessly attacking the supply lines. I mean, I'm not a military guy. Like, you know, I played risk, like some people. I mean, I was, you know, obviously was in a lot of these conversations in the sit room, but I wasn't, like, making military strategy. But I know enough to know that this guy, like, made a lot of, you know, right calls. He also did the kind of fake offensive in the South before the offensive in the North. So clearly this guy knows what he's doing.

Yeah. But lately they've kind of not on the same page. They've not been on the same page. The Bachmood thing, remember, there was like, why are we like so focused on this place? And who knows? Maybe I'm, again, precisely because I'm not a military strategist. Sometimes you need to change commanders, even if they're great commanders. A different phase of the war might need a new person.

I don't know. What is concerning is when you have like this kind of, you know, clearly Zelensky wants him gone, but he's not willing to kind of push him out. He's probably suggested it seems like from. reports that he should resign, but he doesn't want to resign. That kind of civil military tension is just uncomfortable given the stakes for the Ukrainians. And then I think in terms of the broader question about like Zelensky himself or just the risk of corruption as the war goes on, because we should be clear, it's not like Ukraine had like solved all those

problems with corruption and its military and its political system. I think the EU can be really important here because however this war is going to end and it may end in unsatisfying kind of frozen conflicts in a year or two in a negotiation, the best carrot right now, the best incentive for the Ukrainians is EU membership. It's not the same thing as NATO, but it's, in some ways, more important for them as a country to be in that block. A lot comes with that. A lot comes to that in terms of the rule of law, in terms of civil-military relations, in terms of corruption. And I just think the EU providing, and especially given that they just kicked in all this assistance, they can be the, you know, the sunlight, the transatlice,

transparency and the incentive for their not to be backsliding. And so I hope that this is something that can be a real European focus and the U.S. can obviously reinforce it. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Speaking of revered military leaders, Tucker Carlson is in Moscow with David Sachs probably now he's alone. This afternoon he announced in a video posted on Twitter that he has interviewed Vladimir Putin. Here's a clip of Tucker talking about why they went to Moscow for this interview. Here's why we're doing it. First, because it's our job. We're in journalism. Our duty is to inform people. Two years into a war that's reshaping the entire world, most Americans are not informed. They have no real idea what's

happening in this region, here in Russia or 600 miles away in Ukraine. But they should know. They're paying for much of it in ways they might not fully yet perceive. The war in Ukraine is a human disaster. It's left hundreds of thousands of people dead, an entire generation of young Ukrainians, and it's depopulated the largest country in Europe. But the long-term effects are even more profound. This war has utterly reshaped the global military and trade alliances, and the sanctions that followed have as well, and in total, they have upended the world economy. The post-World War II economic order, the system that guaranteed prosperity in the West for more than 80, years is coming apart very fast and along with it the dominance of the U.S. dollar.

These are not small changes. They are history-altering developments. They will define the lives of our grandchildren. So Tucker also says in this little clip, quote, not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin. Now, I actually don't have a problem with Tucker interviewing Putin. I don't think it'll be a good interview. I don't think it'll ask him the right questions. I don't think we'll learn anything from it. But as like a general matter, I'm not someone who's going to shout down someone for doing an interview. That said, that claim that no other journalist has tried is utter bullshit. I'm sure dozens of them have tried. Christian Namunpur immediately said she's been trying

to interview Putin since the day the war started. What is far more interesting is why Putin would give an interview to Tucker. I suspect it's a couple of factors. One, he obviously knows that Tucker opposes U.S. support for Ukraine, that Tucker is influential in Republican circles. He's probably trying to help stymie this supplemental funding bill that's going through Congress right now. He's trying to help Trump because Putin prefers Trump. We just, we know that. But there's also a bigger picture, Ben, that I think Putin's conservative, white, religious, ethno-nationalist worldview is a lot more like Tucker's worldview than I think Tucker's fans would care to admit. Or than Tucker is really alike Joe Biden, for example, at least at this point in his career.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, first of all, something weird with Tucker, you know, he always says like, we and our, like, the royal we like him and his producer. He's just a guy. Like, and he's not even like a network. I guess he's got some people with him. So maybe he's a good team leader. Tucker Carlson.com. It's just kind of, it does seem like a real week.

Grating, yeah. Yeah, I think that the two key points here are one, Tucker will say some things that you find yourself like agreeing with. He's like, Americans have no idea like how fucking crazy this war. and hundreds of thousands of people have died and has had these huge consequences. That's true. And I kind of appreciate when Tucker has this kind of discussed for war and stuff. But Putin's the guy who did the war. Like, what's so maddening about listening to him is it's like, it's not like the Ukrainians, like, invaded Russia, you know.

Even if you, even if you're somebody who thinks that, like, we shouldn't have given Ukrainian, like, NATO membership. Like, Vladimir Putin invaded this country. And he acts like that didn't happen. Like, the war broke out or something. He also has Putin also went through like five different stated reasons why, right? It was like Nazis were committing genocide against Russian speakers. Like there's all this bullshit early on. Yeah.

He just abandoned his rationale. And he also, I mean, he has another piece in this video, which I watched, unfortunately, where he talks about like he's doing this for free speech. Well, guess who doesn't have free speech? Any journalist in Russia, right? So anyway, that's obvious. I think the more interesting point is when you ended on, which is the ideology of this. And there's a bit of a tell in that, you know, when he talks about the system that guaranteed

prosperity in the West. You know, this is a guy, like Putin's ideological project, which we haven't talked about in a while, but we've talked about a lot in the past is essentially this kind of white Christian nationalist, right? It's anti-LGB. It's anti-Muslim. It's anti, you know, he's taken up the cancel culture cause, you know. But he really is this kind of, you know, white supremacist.

Putin is like a white supremacist, right? And I think Tucker really truly believes that that they, you know, that. that we should be allies with Putin, right? And actually Vivek weirdly gave, you know, that somehow we're going to flip Putin against the Chinese, that essentially the natural. Yeah, but I think these guys naturally believe that like there's this kind of white Christian guy,

like in Moscow, like, yeah, maybe they're Orthodox Christians, but like they're all in the kind of white team, the Christian team, and Orbán and we hate Muslims and we hate gay people and we hate, you know, Taylor Swift and, you know, Travis Gatsi. You know, like, I wouldn't be surprised if Tucker asked about that. But like, and that's, but that's truly what these people believe. And I think the reason the interview is useful is I think it does illuminate that that's the stakes, like, in this election. You know, it's, yes, it's about the war in Ukraine, but it's also basically like, Trump wins.

Like, that's actually what we're going to be doing. We're going to be like, you know what? Yeah, we're with this far right kind of white nationalist Christian, us versus everybody else. And the dollar has to be strong to, like, control the economy. of the global south. You know, like, this is, again, like, it's a coherent worldview. Like, I actually give Tucker credits the wrong word, but at least he says the quiet part out loud because you can then, like, think about it and respond to it in ways that the

MAGA people in Congress are too dumb to know, they don't even really know the ideological project they're part of. Tucker actually articulates what this ideological project is all about. And I think that is pretty much where Trump is. You know, Trump himself, maybe not, like, smart enough to fully realize exactly what he's doing. but I think he instinctively gets it, you know, and that's why I'm actually interested to see this interview. And look, Tucker's been, they've been running Tucker on Russian TV. So, like, he's actually a familiar face.

Yeah, he's well known. Because if you watch all these, you know, bloodthirsty Russian TV channels, they always have, like, some Tucker segments. So he's kind of a Russian TV personality, too. Yeah, I mean, obviously, we'll watch the interview when it comes out. We'll probably talk about it next week. You know, we'll see if he asks Putin about the death toll in Ukraine or, you know, the lies about defeating Nazis. Or Lexi Navalny. Yeah, Navalny, Evan Gershkovich, like journalists that are, including American journalists, that are in prison.

But I don't think he will. Yeah. Or he might. And then, you know, Putin's actually not, he gives some weird, like, creepy answer. You know, you kind of have smiles and he's like, oh, we will see what happens to our front. You know, like, yeah. Yeah, and it's to be through a translation. It would be hard to, like, push back in real time.

But, you know, we'll see. Anyway. I'm looking for the Tucker reaction shots. So does he do the kind of befuddled that look he gives people? Or the, like, kind of childish giggle. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Vlad. Yeah.

So funny. All right, a couple more things. We're on a little long, but that's okay. So Ben, El Salvador held elections this past Sunday and the incumbent Raphael Buckele claimed a landslide victory, even though the votes are still technically being counted. But, you know, also little side note here, the Constitution does not allow a president to serve consecutive terms. So this was not, you know, not what he was supposed to be doing. Buckeley put his country into a state of emergency two years ago to take on gang violence. And it has both made him super popular and has done incredible damage to civil liberties. More than 75. thousand people have been arrested and human rights organizations warn that thousands of innocent people have been swept up in the crackdown and are just rotting in jails. Secretary of State Tony Blinken responded to the election on Twitter Monday writing, we look forward to continuing to prioritize good governance, inclusive economic prosperity, fair trial guarantees and human rights in El Salvador. So Tony, I think, sees the writing on the wall there that Bukali likely won the election even if there were some inconsistencies in the reporting and the way it went down.

And that statement is obviously kind of an aspirational set of things we hope to collaborate with El Salvador on. We spoke with Luis Villarera, a democracy activist from El Salvador who founded an organization called Tricoda, which focuses on building technological tool to combat corruption and foster democracy about Buckeli's re-election. Here's a clip. I'm wearing black, like all black, because it seems right because they kill democracy in El Salvador. with the re-election that is not in the constitution, it's unconstitutional. The problem is that at some point, everything is going to explode and then or explode in the country, and that is going to result in migration.

We already see that with Venezuela, with Cuba, and for sure, this is not going to be sustainable in the long run, like the exception state, having, like, all. almost 3% of the population in jail without the process and how people is like saying, okay, the international community is saying it's okay to do that. And the thing is, like other countries in the Western Hemisphere are adopting his measures. In Ecuador, they try to do the same. In Honduras, they try to do the same. So, yeah, and in his speech, for example, he attacked international community.

He attacked a nonprofit. He attacked civil society organizations and journalists. So that's something that we need to be afraid of because things are going to get worse. So Ben, we've talked about Bekele a lot on the show. I mean, his sort of tenure is marked by these crackdowns or he just throws people in jail whether or not they're accused of anything. And also his embrace of Bitcoin and the idiots in the United States who, you know, sort of like took that at face value and supported him. But pretty troubling that this super authoritarian approach to

policing has made Buckele by far the most popular leader in Latin America. In the whole hemisphere. I mean, he pulls 80%. He's legit popular. And look, we are, me, like, you know, we could be too glib about the guy because the crypto stuff and the hat backwards kind of, but he actually had, like Tucker, he hasn't got an approach, right? And the approach is just autocracy and strongman politics and lock people up. And clearly that approach is working politically for him. And it's working substantively in the sense that violence is way down. Actually, El Salvadorian migration to the U.S. border is way down.

It's like the only country where you've seen a huge drop. But I actually think Luis in the clip puts his finger on it. I just think that's a sugar high. You know, like when you bottle things up like this and you put 3% of the country in prison and you just, you know, dismantle democracy, the bill's going to come due, you know? And if, yeah, if I was an ordinary Salvadorian right now, I might be like, well, things are better.

Like this guy, you know, the gangs aren't in charge anymore. It's safer on the streets. But then you look up in five years, and you've got like a corrupt despot. Right. And he's, you know, there's some version of the gangs back. Throwing your totally innocent cousin in jail. And, yeah, and you have no recourse anymore

because the democracy's gone. So you can't vote him out. And that's what's so scary about these moments is, yes, if people want to say, well, he is democratically the most popular guy, well, he just changed the Constitution, basically, to let himself stay in power. And if you think that the first thing he's going to do now is not to further dismantle democracy, you don't pay attention to these things. And again, I think Louise, what's going to need to happen is some kind of long-term building of some alternative here because, yeah, like, I don't know, I could be proven wrong, but I just have a feeling that this approach in the long run, and the long run might be, years, suddenly what felt really good for a couple of years, you look up and you're like, oh, fuck. Yeah, strong men don't always wear well over time. Big picture, Ben, looking forward,

2024 is going to be a big test for the future democracy all over the world, including the United States. A couple races and data points that we're watching. So first, there were some polls recently out of Europe that are forecasting far right parties are going to gain a number of seats during the EU elections in June. That is troubling. And that rise in these far right parties is going to come with the center-left parties taking a big hit. Second, Pakistan is holding an election on February 8th, but it is shaping up to be anything but free and fair. So former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly leaking state secrets. A lot of people think that sentence is just a pretext for the Pakistani military to crack down on

Khan and put restrictions on his political party, like removing their logo from the ballots, et cetera. There's all kinds of shit happening. And then third in Senegal, President National Sassal signed a decree postponing their election. It was supposed to be on February 25th, but has been pushed. The government is also disqualifying opposition candidates and restricted internet access on mobile phones after protesters took to the streets. So, Ben, we're talking about very different countries, regions of the world here, systems of government in some cases. But the common theme is a threat to democracy in democratic norms and a trajectory that does not feel very good. Yeah, the year of elections is not off to the roaring start.

democracy. I mean, I think you're right to point out that these places are different, and we're right to put this in the same segment, because what is so troubling is countries as different as El Salvador and Senegal and Pakistan are all showing that they're kind of part of this trend of essentially extraditional approaches to politics, right? BKLA changes the law, lets himself stay in office, the Pakistani military, whomever is like, you know, orchestrating Imran Khan's removal from the scene to kind of pick the leader, however they want. And in Mackey Saul, like, he was the guy that he had surprised people in a good way by saying he wasn't run for the third term. Everybody's happy about that.

I think we welcome that on this show. And actually, like, weirdly, like, his party was already primed to kind of win. So it's just ambiguous, like, why he's doing this. And again, keep in mind, this is in West Africa. Echoas is the regional group of countries. It includes all these coup states. And Senegal is usually the more, you know, advanced, committed to democracy in the neighborhood. So it does just tell you where the pendulum's going and it's not going in the direction of the small D Democrats.

Not great. Not great. But let's turn to Northern Ireland where it was historic weekends. So for the first time in 100 years, the top job of first minister is going to be held by a nationalist member of the Sinn Féin Party, Michelle O'Neill. Sinn Féin has historic ties to the IRA, the former extremist group. Well, I guess still an extremist group. But this is a, you know, so it's a huge moment for them in their evolution into politics from something else. Recent polls across Ireland suggest a majority people still do not support unification, but the very fact that O'Neill was appointed to the position would have been unthinkable until recent years.

This once fringe political wing of the IRA won the popular vote in 2020, and they've gained momentum among young people in particular by supporting causes like housing and representing a shift away from the status quo. Here's a clip from O'Neill's appointment. I am honored to stand here as First Minister. We mark a moment of equality and a moment of progress, a new opportunity to work and to grow together. Confident in that wherever we come from, whatever our aspirations are, we can and we must build our future together. So, Ben, what do you think this means for the future in Northern Ireland?

First of all, I could listen to any, you know, can we get some more Irish clips on the show? Any Irish voice. It's my fault. That clip started, 66. seconds. I cut it down for time, but I wish I hadn't. Also, Michelle O'Neill, not to be confused with Michael O'Neill, very good. Former roommate. I'm in the pod. Look, it's a huge deal. I mean, to have someone, you know, Sinn Féin, obviously, legacy IRA, you know, they go on this political journey to the Good Friday Accords and to have her standing up there. And talking about, I mean, number one, the fact that

someone from Sinn Féin is giving a message like that, like, I want to govern for everybody. And I'm sure, you know, maybe there are people on the other team that don't believe. that. But just the fact that that's the kind of political orientation, I think is important and powerful. And it's, look, if you're going to have a good Friday accord and you're going to have power sharing, you're going to have a Sinn Féin leader at some point, you know, or else what is it really? It's not really power sharing. And at the same time, the fact that she's trying to identify this agenda that, you know, whether you're Catholic or Protestant or a Republican, you know, unification person or not, you care about housing, you care about education compared to the economy. That's smart. I do think that this question lurks in the backdrop.

This is also post-Brexit, right? And so part of the reason that Sinn Féin won this election is because of the post-Brexit politics of Northern Ireland. And, you know, some of the Sinn Féin has a presence in the Irish Parliament, too, and some of them are like, well, this is great. We can finally see unification on the horizon. I do think that at some point, and I'm not taking a position on this, I swear to God. I'm just saying at some point in the not too distant future, I don't think there's going to be, you know, this will be an issue. Like this is going to, you know, God forbid, hopefully not a violent one, but like I do think, you know, at some point, Brexit, you know, Brexit made this more of an issue because people in Northern Ireland, a lot of them want to be in the EU,

you know, and so I don't think that's the headline of what's happening here, but, but it is in the backdrop. Yeah, to the extent the Good Friday Agreement kind of healed the wound, it was pretty recently, we're doing with the 90s, you know, this isn't like ancient history. So, a pretty remarkable evolution. Interesting too that she actually in that same talk, I think, called for a ceasefire and express solidarity to the Palestinians. It reminds you that there's this kind of

solidarity, you know, ANC, IRA, you know, it was interesting callback to that era. Yeah. And you know, Ben, look, I know the Irish aren't the biggest fans of the monarchy as a general matter, but... Great transition. Thank you. But I suspect many of them were still saddened to hear the news

that King Charles has been diagnosed. I'm not sure that they were some type of cancer. Come on. So I guess he was being treated for an enlarged prostate when doctors discovered some cancer elsewhere in his body. We don't know exactly what's going on. But to King Charles's credit, he went public with this news in an effort to encourage others to get screenings in the past. Royal Health News has kind of stayed within the palace and not necessarily been public. So good on him for going public with this. You don't have to be a monarch fan to know that it's actually a good thing if you have to have a monarch to have one who's like really, really interested in.

combating climate change, for example, which King Charles is. So I think, you know, he can be a force for good if he wants to be. I'm not saying I'm like a pro-monarchy guy in any way. Charles staying over here, yeah. No, you're right. You're right. I mean, like he, like there's a lot, the monarchy we can talk about and Charles has, you know, had some hiccups along the way. There's, you know, but as a public figure, like he's embraced climate change. He's embraced kind of mental health. He's embracing health transparency here. That's good. And frankly, it's just a human, like, seriously, like, you know, Kate, you know, just had some nasty health about, you know, she was hospitalized for a while. Now, Charles. It is, you know, it's been a rough

year for the Royals. I mean that. I mean, Queen Elizabeth dying and all these health issues. I saw World Correspondent of me saw that Harry is going to see his father. Flying back to see dead. Yeah. So who knows? Maybe we'll get a reconciliation. Which honestly makes me a little worried about what the prognosis is, right? If you, like, jump on a plane and immediately fly home, that makes you worry. It's kind of serious. That's true, actually. And that, like, yeah, I really hope that's not the case. And, and, um, I was going to say something about another season in the crown, but now I realize that that's probably important taste. Yeah, you do you.

Last segment, we're going to do a little something called conservative politicians are weird. So this is according to a report in the Sunday Times, Ben, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fasts for 36 hours at the start of every single week. He only drinks water, tea, or black coffee from 5 p.m. on Sunday to 5 a.m. on Tuesday. obviously when you are starving your body breaks down fat and not energy or carbohydrates some people think this diet helps you live longer

but that science is like based on starving mice and shit so I don't know all I know is that like first of all I reached you soon like you're kind of a bean pole so I don't know that you need to be starving yourself for you know 36 hours

but also if I fasted for 16 hours let alone 36 I would be in the worst mood imaginable I can't even imagine doing that Well, you know, you should have some of that, like, what are we used to endorse the athletic greens? Yeah. Can you have that? I don't know if that sounds like you're cheating.

That is part of, I guess that's cheating. It's not tea. I'd add to the weird Rishi Sunak and British Tories segment, too, that do you see the, like, 1,000 pound bet that Piers Morgan made with him about whether any planes would go to Rwanda? Like, it was very odd to see, like, a prime minister, like, shaking hands to bet Piers Morgan a thousand pounds about sending people. the one was it Mitt Romney who bet somebody like $10,000 you try to bet someone $10,000 on stage during

a debate yeah he tried to bet that idiot Rick Perry listen when you're a fucking rich dude yeah exactly that's right half a billionaire yeah yeah don't bet someone a thousand pounds if you are Rishi Sunak

who's half a billionaire and who presides of her party that is fucking destroyed the NHS National service through austerity. Maybe you don't just like drop a thousand pound bets on whether you can send some migrants on a plane to Rwanda. You can send some like some destitute people fleeing persecution, whether you can send them to a country they've never been to, never heard of.

Don't speak the language and don't own it. Hey, I bet you a thousand dollars I can torture these people before the election. This is the kind of thing that I see and I kind of like, it'd be fun to be in the labor campaign. Oh my God. I would just destroy them. Because he's such a big, easy, skinny target. but like it's a big target you know like yeah so speaking sticking with this theme then uh former

british prime minister liz truss is speaking at seapac this year so for those who don't know sepac stands for the conservative political action conference it is this far right conference that republicans host it was once like kind of kind of kind of like fringe and wacky kind of like the bar scene from star wars the republican party barra showing up or something yeah now it's like maga centrist right it's just kind of like the trump show i'm kind of interested to see how this goes because Because I'm not sure that these little, like, culture war freaks want to hear from a boring loser who was prime minister for 50 days before being bounced out of office. Like, I don't know. That's not like the kind of leadership they're looking for down at CPAC.

Yeah, why is she what, I guess she wanted to cut taxes a lot so they like her? I mean, I just understand, like, what is the appeal? When you're, when you're heading the CPAC meeting, okay, let's put ourselves in the whatever brainstorm, you know. and you're going through all the list of potential speakers. And it's kind of like the Dr. Evil headquarters and Boston Powers. You're like, we got Dan Bonjino. Or deep callback, like the naked gun opening, you know. Okay, yeah.

Like, but they're, yeah, you've got a wall with all the potential speakers. And we got, we got Orban over here. Don Jr. Maybe Bukkele make an appearance if we ask him. And is there some, like, like, right-wing, like, RSS, like, Hindu nationalist. Do you want to come speak or something? Like, you have all these people to choose from Ben-Givir. Ben-Givir consuming.

A neo-Nazi meeting in Eastern Germany that caused all that trouble. Yeah. Yeah, get one of them. Like, you know, why would you basically like, yeah, actually the person we wanted Liz trust? Yeah, maybe a decade ago you're like, oh, there's some prestige from a former prime minister. But like, you got Trump. You got Orban. I'm sure you got Nigel Farage.

I'm sure he's going to be there. Bolsonaro will probably be there. Oh, Bolsonaro will be there, like, spend COVID, you know. I mean, the serious part of this is there is this just like connective tissue between all these, like, sort of fringe, super right-wing nationalists, usually racist. leaders. I mean, Listeros, I'm not saying that she was specifically racist. I've talked about some of the others at CPAC. She was just kind of ridiculous. She was just an idiot. Yeah, yeah. She's put forward a tax planning to tank the entire economy. That almost broke the Bank of England after like hundreds of years. Wild story. But yeah, I mean, I guess she's been spotted in Congress, I think, having meetings with

tea party types. I think the extreme tax cut caucus like likes her because she was willing to break the global economy to cut taxes, I guess. I don't know. Bizarre. Very strange. All right, well, that's enough of, you know, weirdo conservative Tories. But we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to hear from Alex Ward. He's a writer for Politico and the author of the new book, The Internationalists, which is about President Biden's first two years in office and his foreign policies.

Stick around for that. Alex Ward is a writer for Politico and the author of the new book, The Internationalists, which chronicles the first two years of President Biden's foreign policy and administration. Alex, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Tommy. I need to first admit that you do an excellent. National Security newsletter for Politico. How often does it come out again?

I read it every time. Yeah, it's Wednesday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern. So it's a big project that we do every day. And nothing is more helpful for me in producing the show and the team here. So thank you for that. But let's talk about the book. So you finished this deep dive into President Biden's foreign policy in the first two years of the administration.

Was there anything you learned reporting out the book that surprised you or was different from, you know, things you'd taken away from just sort of day-to-day reporting those first couple of years. And at the risk of asking a question that used to drive me insane when I was a spokesperson in government, did you come away feeling like there was a Biden doctrine when it comes to foreign policy? I think what surprised me most is that there was a lot of Trumpism that was brought in to a Biden foreign policy, right? Because Biden, you know, three years old in World War II ended. He is an avatar for the traditional democratic foreign policy world. liberal international order, defensive democracy, that kind of thing. And Trump wins in 2016

and the team around him, mostly Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, go, wait a minute. Trump did not necessarily win on his foreign policy views, but he didn't lose on them either, that there's clearly something in that thinking and in the stuff that he was promoting that the traditional foreign policy, folks on the Democratic side and the Republican side, had not internalized and not consider. And so thanks to Sullivan and others, Ben, we should note, and his work in National Security Action, helped develop this framework. And even though, especially Ben may not like my saying that a bit of Trumpism got in, let's say a bit of focus on the domestic front, a bit of populism got in and thinking about, okay, you can still defend democracy, you can still

uphold the international order, but maybe it needs a reframing. Maybe it needs a bit of renewing in order to matter to people, which is why the moniker you constantly hear from team Biden is a foreign policy for the middle class. Now, is that the doctrine? I don't think it is. I would say the doctrine is more along the lines of the absolute prioritization of defense of the liberal international order of democracies and democracy at home and abroad, but with the twist of reframing it so it can last and not crack under the populist pressure that Trump and others I've been putting on it. I want to talk more about the fight for democracy in some of the, you know, those bigger picture themes here. But some of the chapters that really were like searing for

me to read were about the Afghanistan withdrawal and those last few weeks and days and just how horrifying it was, most of all, obviously, for the people of Afghanistan. But also, this was clearly a scarring experience for the administration officials involved in Afghanistan policy or in the White House generally. How do you think that period of time? time and that outcome impacted Biden's decision-making going forward? Quite significantly. I mean, look, we should note that Biden in the moment of deciding to withdraw through now stands by the decision, despite, you know, all the chaos around it and the fact that 13

service members were killed in the terrorist attack outside of Kabul's airport. But what I think happened is that team Biden, more than Biden himself, were like, wait a minute, we got kind of flat-footed here. Yes, we made a decision, but look at how quickly the Taliban stormed to power. Look at how chaotic this withdrawal turned out to be. Look at how it's, look at the optics of it, even if you can still agree with the strategic decision overall, maybe tactically it led to some problem. So there was a sense within Team Biden to kind of go, okay, well, we need to prove ourselves again. And we need to internalize a lot of these things that we learned or rather unlearned from the Afghanistan situation and apply it to some future

crisis. Unfortunately, in world politics, that's when Putin was basically starting to think about taking Ukraine. And so if there was a lick the wounds moment, it didn't last long because they had to quickly go, okay, well, what did we mess up in terms of like our processes and thinking? And how can we switch that quickly to apply to, of course, a wholly different situation, which was Russia, Ukraine? Yeah, I mean, on the decision itself, I mean, my view on Biden's decision to end the war is that it was the right. one. And I also think that the responsibility for the outcome in some of the images we saw and, and, you know, the horrifying images at the end, the responsibility for those lie with every

administration. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. Trump in particular, like, cut the withdrawal deal, right? He all but shut down the processing of visas for Afghans who worked with the U.S. military, the S.I.V visas, which made it so hard to ramp that process back up at the end. So I get all that. And I'm like, I think Biden deserve some of the blame, but certainly not all of it. And I would say that as someone with humility who worked on this policy. At the same time, you know, I did feel like in those final weeks, the administration's response to questions about the withdrawal were very defensive. They primarily focused on this being the largest, you know, airlift of people in history and not on the fact that it wasn't necessarily all the people we wanted to get out who were getting out, right? like a lot of like SIB visa holders were left behind.

Did that kind of defensive crouch change over time as you revisited this in your reporting and went back to the same people like six months or a year later to talk about that time? No. I mean, look, they gave me the kind of the spiel that you did, which is, look, Alex, you can hold two thoughts in your head. This is the most impressive logistical, you know, moment arguably in modern, you know, military history in terms of airlifting all these people out. what a coordinated feat this was, considering all the chaos that was surrounding Kabul and Afghanistan. And also, yes, we can recognize that there was humanitarian tragedy. But they would say, after 20 years of war, what did you expect? Like, did you expect this to go cleanly? And I think

those are genuinely two fair arguments. What I would say, though, and when I try to write out in the book, is that there was a very important baked-in assumption in the decision to withdraw. And that was that it would take 18 to 24 months for the Taliban to take Kabul and, and, you know, and and effectively control all of Afghanistan. So because of that, I don't want to say the administration slow-walk moves on SIVs or getting folks out. And in fact, it's hard to say that because the military was like, if you're getting us out, speed is safety. We're moving. Right.

You know, the White House was sort of taken aback by how quickly that military withdrawal took. But anyway, to the main point, 18 to 24 months was how much time they basically thought they had to produce as orderly an exit as possible. the fact that it crashed down on them so quickly, they had to improvise. They improvised, I think you can say, relatively well based on the airlift and all that. But there's no question that that improvisation and forced upon them led to a chaotic withdrawal process where those who were actually in Kabul having to make decisions on like life or death decisions, quite literally, you know, had to do it on the fly, that you saw the death of the service members, and you saw just the general humanitarian devastation outside the airport.

So was there going to be an orderly and good, quote unquote, withdrawal of Afghanistan? No, did it have to be as bad? No, I don't think so either. Yeah, I think if you gave President Biden truth serum and said, knowing what you know now, would you have pushed to withdrawal four or five, six months to get all the SIVs out? I'm sure he'd say yes. The very hard thing, I think, for you, for writing a book like this in the middle of a term, is that events change.

And in this case, you know, you finished the book before the October 7th attacks and before things started to go pretty badly in Ukraine, do those events and changes kind of make you rethink anything you wrote? How has that, you know, sort of impacted your view of the Biden foreign policy since? Yeah. Whenever the paper book comes out, I'm going to have to probably write a new epilogue. A little forward. Yeah. For forward or something. Yeah. Look, I mean, I think it's true that when the time I finished writing the book, which was roughly the February of last year, things were looking really up, right? I mean, you had Ukraine. Ukraine, was defended, these side issues that the Biden administration would put it, which at the time

would have been the Israeli-Palestine conflict, those were still quiet. I mean, just even before October 7th, you had Jake Sullivan say, you know, things are quiet in the Middle East. Like, that's how they were thinking about it. That's how they were feeling. And so there was a bit of optimism, like, okay, we got through this period. The West has stood up. Here we go. It hasn't gone as well. Of course, the counteroffensive shortly afterward did not work as planned. So, you know, Biden's sort of like campaign rally for NATO in Eastern Europe, you know, sort of did not go as hoped in Warsaw and, of course, later in NATO and Lithuania. And then, you know, Israel Hamas pops up and you have one of the core assumptions of Bidenism or a Biden doctrine, which was we can put these

not unimportant, but in terms of the main things they care about, side issues, we can keep them quiet throughout so we can focus on the core things. That assumption, proved relatively untrue, of course, because now it's dominating the entire agenda and threatening, you know, to destabilize quite a bit. Now, you hear Team Biden now say, well, we've always cared about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. This was something that we were working on throughout, you know, as part of Abraham Accords, et cetera. I think you kind of have to call BS on that a bit. There's no question that they cared about it in the months leading up to October 7th as they were doing the Israeli-Saudi normalization deal, right? that part of that deal had to be, not concessions, but some improvements for the Palestinian cause.

But that, again, only a couple months before October 7th, for the majority of the time of this administration, this was a totally backburner issue. Yeah, I mean, it just shows any. You can go into a presidency with a doctrine or an idea for what you want to do, but events are always going to happen and overtake those things. The book made me think a lot about my time in government because you really got into the details of what the NSC does. And when I was in government, there's so much focus on inputs, basically like things we're doing versus outcomes. What I mean by that is like you total up the number of meetings you had on an issue or diplomatic touches with, you know, foreign counterparts about something.

And you use those as evidence that we're on top of things, but not necessarily the outcomes themselves, right? For an example would be the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration, they released intelligence. There were these like tiger team meetings to plan for what might. happen. There's lots of coordination among allies. All of that made it a lot easier to respond quickly once the invasion happened, but it didn't prevent it. How do you think you judge, like, the efficacy of an administration when you're looking at the inputs versus the outcomes,

while also knowing that obviously, like, the U.S. can't control all events around the world. We don't get to tell Vladimir Putin what to do, for example. Yeah, one of the quotes that I most remember in doing this book, and I should have it committed to memory, but paraphrasing was effectively this, which was, we did this about as perfectly as we could do it, and we still failed. I remember that, yeah. So, and when, you know, the person I talked to told me that, I was like, man, that must just suck. Like, you think you did about as, I would give the administration credit. I think they did about as well as any administration could do in an attempt to prevent something

like this. They were even open to diplomatic negotiations with Putin over some sacred cows, including NATO enlargement or Ukraine's position in moving further westward. There were genuine conversations and tough conversations with European allies, with Zelensky himself, who we must remember, was pretty brutal with the U.S. and critical for saying, you guys are out of control. This is not going to happen. You don't know the Russians like we do. So when you consider the fact that the administration helped effectively warn the world that this was happening, war in Ukraine that this was happening, set up a sanctions regime, convinced some skeptical Europeans to. go pretty hard on Europe, that they were willing to talk with Russia and make some sort of

deal, but basically be caught trying because no one expected Putin to actually make a move. But regardless, they got everything in train. They got everything prepared. They got the intelligence. They warned the world. They changed an intelligence practice to declassify information and explain what was going on. I mean, it was a pretty good response that unfortunately did not lead to its intended goal. Now, there are the critics who would say, well, the big mistake team Biden did was not sanctioned Russia early or send weapons early.

That would have been a deterrent. Of course, the Biden administration's plan was, well, that if you do the thing, then you're no longer deterring. Then Russia's already punished and they're going to do it anyway. We can't change the past. We don't know if that would have worked. But I think outside of that, knowing what we know, I've talked to no one really that thinks that it was a bad response. It's just if Putin's going to do it, Putin's going to do it. Yeah, I find it very hard to believe that like some sanctions or sending a thousand javelin

missiles in advance of the invasion would have deterred Putin when he wanted to take Ukraine. It was interesting remembering how challenging the U.S. Ukraine relation was, particularly relations between Zelensky and Biden in advance of the invasion, how much the administration was trying to convince Zelensky that his country was about to be invaded. and he just wouldn't believe them. Either he genuinely didn't believe them or he just didn't want to believe them. I can't really tell. I don't know if you know.

But, you know, that sort of period of the relationship feels like it's kind of been forgotten at this point. Yeah, I mean, if there's anything sort of scupy or newsy in the book, I mean, I think there's a lot of bits. But one of the sort of bigger thematic ones is we all knew that the U.S.-Ukraine relationship was tense. I don't think we know it was this bad. And that's what the book tries to chronicle.

I mean, Biden and Zelensky were in yelling matches. some points. I mean, it was really, really bad. And there was a moment where Biden was basically telling Zelensky, like, defend your city, defend your country. Mobilize. What are you doing? And I think what I've, you know, I was not able to talk to many Ukrainians for this book. That's one of my regrets. But what I, the folks I did talk to and those who were close to the Ukrainians, they were, it's not that there was necessarily a political ploy. There was, of course, a political element to not saying we're about to get invaded because it's bad for the economy and all that. but there really was a sense that you Americans, your intelligence about war is constantly wrong.

You know, we know the Russians better than you do. And they wouldn't do this. They've already invaded us. They're not going to go all out. That would be stupid. And so for Biden and, of course, other officials to come out and say, here's intelligence. Here's what the Russians are planning. You know, we're warning the world. Ukraine, be careful. You know, Putin be careful. Zelensky's like, stop doing that. Stop doing it. And it was rancorous. And I should say, nothing. sharpens the mind more than an invasion because the moment Russia got in, Zoninsky was like, all right, send me weapons, send me money. Like, what can we do? This is happening. And so, you know, he, of course, his tune changed and he's led a phenomenal defense of his nation. But in the walkup, he was about as skeptical as anybody that was going to happen. Yeah, and I guess in his defense, I mean, you look at the intelligence around the Iraq war. You look at the intelligence around the Afghan withdrawal. It's understandable that he might question the products at that point. But, you know, That said, the intelligence was like 100,000 troops on the border.

So it was a little more obvious that he was planning an invasion of some sort. Last question for you. When I was in government, there were lots of great people I worked with, well-meaning people who would like earnestly, but I think a little performatively say, you know, like politics has no place in the situation room, right? Which, of course, is like patently ridiculous. The only reason we all were allowed in that room is because Barack Obama was elected president. So politics is inextricably linked to everything you do, foreign policy, including. I was wondering what you're the folks you talk to in the Biden administration, how they feel about how politics is impacting their ability to do the things they want to do these days. Because the book ends like America is ready for renewal.

The world was there to remake. There are at least two more years to get it done. Early on, Republicans were playing ball on some of those renewal efforts. Now they are absolutely not, including, you know, aid for Ukraine, other things that were seen as bipartisan in the past. So I'm wondering how, like, you know, politics is now in the minds of someone like a Jake Sullivan who's trying to run the foreign policy apparatus. Yeah, I can't say I spoke to them directly on this question, but I have an informed guess, which was, you know, in the first year two, the assumption was if we connect politics to foreign policy. Because, again, implicit in foreign policy for the middle class is you are doing something for the American people, ergo it will be popular. So there's no question there's a domestic political part here.

So I think they felt that in the first two. years or so, if there was success in Ukraine, if, you know, we got Afghanistan and things were all right. If we righted the relationship with China, if we focused on climate change and that kind of thing, that eventually the people would go, our lives are better. America's in this better place. And then there would be, let's say, more popularity or more support for Biden foreign policy because it could be working. And one could argue that roughly around the time I stopped writing this book, they had that moment. They kind of were there. I mean, granted, politics are what they are. There will always be critics among Republicans. And I'm not saying it's a perfect foreign

policy by any means. But I think that was the level of optimism that they felt and that I was picking up on it when I tried to write it. Now, I don't think anyone's there. And of course, at the moment that we're chatting, it looks like this, you know, border deal, Ukraine thing is, is dumb. So we're now in the grind moment, the 2024 election moment. And what's fascinating to me is, you know, as Biden and likely Trump comes up, Biden was really planning to go on the strength this foreign policy. And look what we did. Look how we saved America after what Trump did to us in the world. That's their thinking. And now it's not so clear he has that advantage. And now that that that debate has now turned into like visions of the world and what way America should go.

And it's turned into who won't start World War III. Yeah. I mean, I think unfortunately foreign policy has turned into a challenging position for Biden vis-a-vis Trump because the things that, you know, actually break through in the press are events like the Afghanistan withdrawal and people have a negative opinion of those. But I also think that there was an NBC poll the other day that talked about, you know, who is better Trump or Biden on improving America's standing in the world and Trump was up 11 points, right? You know, that might just be like when your approval is underwater, your approval is underwater across a whole host of issues. But it doesn't make it feel like, you know, foreign policy is a real wind at their back at the moment in particular with Gaza

and what it's doing to the Democratic Party. Yeah, if I recall, and I don't have polls in front of me, but if I recall that, you know, Biden had stronger numbers on that aspect in general, not necessarily against Trump, but just in general, you know, far before Israel, Hamas. So it's, you know, this is very much impacting him. And I should note, you know, Biden's numbers sunk pretty strongly around the Afghanistan withdrawal. So it's, it's one of those things. There's a maximum in foreign policy that, you know, foreign policy can't make a presidency, but it can break one. And in this case, you know, You could argue that Biden did a lot of great things.

Is the liberal international order more secure? You could make that case. Is West more rallied together in United? You could make that case. Has climate change been prioritized as an issue slightly? But you can make that case. But when most people think of Biden's foreign policy, my guess is they go, Afghanistan withdrawal and Israel Hamas, and those aren't good stories to tell.

Yeah. The good news is there's some time to fix that and to write the ship there. But yeah, at the moment, I think it's a bit of a need year. Alex, thank you so much for talking with me. The book is The Internationalists. Everyone should go pick it up now. It's coming out, what, a couple days? February 20th, yeah.

Excellent. Well, everyone should check it out and check out, you know, all the writing you're doing over Politico because you guys do great work. And thanks for helping us produce the show. Thanks for having me, Tommy. I'll look forward to my residual checks.

Yeah, here you go. I want my cut. Just kidding. Thanks again to Alex Squirt for joining the show. And that's all I got. Thanks to Liz trust. Thanks to Liz. and Rishi Sinojee is always hanging out in Santa Monica, so I'm surprised we haven't seen it.

I'm going to miss Rishi Sionak when he's defeated because, like, he's actually turned out to be good content. He will probably end up living out here, and he will probably at some point through an intermediary, ask you for a meeting. And his life will be really good, you know. I mean, the thing about Rishi is that I don't, you know, he'll be rich guy. Like, he's a smart guy. Like he'll probably get into like tech or something and make gobs of money. Tom's the cash. Yeah.

He'll probably be on this podcast, actually. He'll be a VC. We had David Cameron on the podcast. Yeah. We should come on. Who kind of is on the world stage now looking like the prime minister and it's got a pissing neck off. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not going to go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He floated that they were going to recognize. Palestinian State. Palestinian State with the UN and then he could walk it back. Yeah, the Cameron Declaration. Yeah, tough. Like the balfour. Okay, that's enough for us.

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