Pod Save the World - We booked a Nobel Prize winner

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss the murder of a British member of parliament, Colin Powell’s legacy, missiles, climate change, the fight against Viktor Orban, kidnappings in Haiti, democracy in Sudan, covid in Brazil, her majesty’s cocktails, why Australia hates Ted Cruz, and wizards. Then Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa joins to talk about her battles against President Rodrigo Duterte and Facebook. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Should I start again with talking shit to the world about the Boston Red Talks, or is that going to just lose us all our subscribers? I mean, you should feel pretty good about things. That was a pretty fun game. And I think you might be okay because I don't know how many Houston Astros fans are out. Ted Cruz?

Yeah, so there you go. A bunch of cheaters. Talk away. Just kidding. I get my hypocrisy here, blah, blah, blah. It's been very fun getting back into baseball, Ben. It's been a long time. Today, we've got a great show. We have a Nobel Peace Prize winner on the show.

Somehow we booked a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Second time. That's unbelievable. Who's the first? Obama. Come on, man. Well, this one's warranted. This one's deserved.

Maria Ressa is our guest today. She's the founder of Rappler. It's the digital media company in the Philippines. They've been doing incredible work about President Rodrigo Duterte. We've talked about them before. They've been working under great duress threats from him. You know, they're trying to arrest them, literally, put them in prison. So, incredible interview. She's an incredible person. Ben and I are going to talk about the

murder of a British member of parliament, Colin Powell's death and legacy. Some missile news, Ben, missiles are having a moment this week. Some bummer news on climate change, unfortunately. Thank you, John Hitchin. The fight against Victor Orban in Hungary. Let's do it. We're going back up the roller coaster of emotion here. Kidnapping in Haiti, down, Sudan, down, Brazil, medium. We got the queen. Yeah. I'm going to ask you to put on your royal correspondent, if you don't mind.

I'm ready for this one. I'm ready for this one. I'm ready for this one. Why Ted Cruz still sucks is what I wrote down. And then Wizards. I went deep on the wizard story. The wizard is, I actually didn't read on this because I wanted to be surprised by it. When I saw that, I'm, I'm like, I want to learn about this when you do it.

You are going to, you're going to like this story. Ben, the final episodes of 544. days from host Jason Resign are out. I think that these final episodes are like Argo level thrilling. Totally. They're some of the best episodes. The whole series. If you have not listened yet, check it out. It's on Spotify. It's so good. It's free. Yeah. I'll just preview it a little bit because I'm on the show. But I mean, I guess there's spoilers here. But like I was at the White House and it was like becoming like later in the

evening when we thought Jason was going to get out. And I'd already done the press call because it was leaking, you know, when you were like an embargoed press call. So it was like, hey, this is embargoed. That means you can't report on it until Jason is wheels up and laid it all out. And then he couldn't get out. And you'll have to listen to the show to find out why he refused to leave even when he could have. Yes. And I had to call a lid member of that, like that means you tell the press to go home, you know, to make people not think something was It was very, so it was very, my tiny piece of the Argo experience was like, I was like the guy at the CIA headquarters who just had to clear the flight tickets, you know, like, remember when like Affleck rolls up to the fucking airport and they've canceled the tickets. And there's some guys like, get Hamilton Jordan on the fucking phone, you know, that was kind of like the role.

That's a fun role. That's a good role. Check it out. 5244 days on Spotify. It's amazing. Also, if you're looking for a podcast that goes deep into the deepest nerd news of your favorite franchises, we have the show for you, X-ray Vision from Jason Concepcion. He's talking Batman. He's talking comic books.

And Dave Schilling of the Galaxy Brain podcast is there this week to talk about season three of Secession. The premiere was Sunday night. I loved every minute of it. Crashed. It started. And within five minutes, I was sad that it was going to end at some point. I was like, I was like sitting there. I was like, this is such a wonderful experience watching this again.

I'm already depressed. It's so good. And I'm not going to be able to watch another one. It's so good. You got any announcements? You want to make? Yeah, just one thing for the world those out there. I will be in Washington, D.C. this Friday.

Swamp. October 22nd, returning to swamp. The blob. Yes, I will be interviewing Adam Schiff, friend of the pod, about his new book at G. G.W. University, George Washington University, the Betts Theater on Friday night. Nice. kind of live, you know, Adam Schiff, Ben Rhodes content. Yeah, yeah, Shifty Schiff.

You know what? I hate that Trump has incepted us with these. Benghazi Ben, Shifty Schiff. Trump is incepted us with these stupid nicknames. I can't get them out. That's awesome. That'll be a very fun event. It'll be a good event.

All right, Ben. So let's turn to the UK because there was some really horrifying news out of the UK this weekend. After a member of Parliament named David Amis was fatally stabbed in a church while meeting with constituents. He, Amis was a 69-year-old member of the Conservative Party. He was murdered in his district, which is about 40 miles east of London. A 25-year-old man named Ali Harby Ali was arrested and is being detained under the U.K.'s terrorism laws. There are some reports, I think, today, in the UK media, that Ali had once been referred to a program that's designed to prevent at-risk youth from being radicalized, but they had fallen off to sort of like counterterrorism world's radar. Amos is the second British MP to be murdered in the last five years.

In 2016, Joe Cox, a member of the Labor Party, was shot and stabbed to death by a, a far-right extremists with links to a new noxie group in the U.S. who yelled Britain first as he attacked her. So, you know, the response is that people are just despondent. They're upset. They're shocked by this. There's calls for Parliament to pass. What's being short-handed is David's Law, which would crack down on social media abuse

of public figures and online anonymity. Not totally clear to me here, Ben, what those issues have to do with this specific case. But there is considerable frustration in the UK about the toxicity of the debate. the online abuse that MPs are dealing with, especially women. So this is a horrifying story on so many levels. My heart goes out to Amos's friends, his colleagues. Here's where my morbid brain went. Yeah, my brain probably went to the same place.

Okay. So we're all sitting here. We're all deeply frustrated with watching Republicans sort of spin the January 6th attack on the capital, right? And like, welcome Trump back in the fold. I've always kind of wondered whether if a lawmaker had actually been hurt and God forbid killed, whether it would have forced Republicans to act more seriously about this or force Trump to dialed on the rhetoric. But now I don't know. I mean, maybe this experience in the UK undercuts that.

I know that's a very like America focused view of what happened, but that's where my head went. Well, where my head went was, and first of all, it was terrible. And, you know, British MPs as much as kind of American House members, you know, they just kind of go out and meet their constituents. It's like a town hall. I love that they call them surgeries. That confused me for a while. Such a great British thing. They're like, he was at a surgery.

Yeah. But I mean, you know, the idea that you just, politics is a really direct event is, you know, part of their democracy like it is ours. Where my head went, which includes America, but as globally, is that why wouldn't there be more of these? You know, like we saw, in this country, we saw Gabby Giffords and then Steve Scalese get shot, not killed, thankfully. You mentioned Joe Cox. that's one kind of extremist and extremist of the kind of white nationals variety, then this appears

to be an Islamic extremist. But with the degree of hate and we saw those weird bomb threats and Trump MAGA guys with like vans like Yeah, I mean January 6th there were pipe bombs everywhere. Yeah. That was an attempted mass murder. There's clearly people out there who went to harm lawmakers

and lawmakers in this country in the UK and a lot of democracies are vulnerable. They're amongst the people. And so I think the risk of of the growth of political violence is real. I think in the UK, there's valid questions about, like, do you need some kind of security? And look, as much as you would like to not get rid of that sense of democracy, like, having one person there who's a security person is at least a deterrent and probably would

avert like a knife killing. So I think they have to look at that. And then the online piece, you know, David Lammy, a friend of the pod, is tweeted and talked a lot about this. he gets heaps of death threats online, you know, he's a person of color, women, people of color get it the most. And there is something about the kind of dehumanization of lawmakers. I mean, you hear a lot of concern expressed by like Alon Omar, for instance, about the speech about her online kind of turns her or politicians generally into people who aren't, you know, they're almost subhuman to their detractors. And so there's the physical security for the British politicians generally into people who aren't, you know, they're almost subhuman to their detractors. And so there's the physical security for the British politicians. politicians, there's the meta issue of like, are we going to be in an era of increased political violence? And then there is, I think, the connection to that law is like the degree of hate out there needs to be curbed because it's contributing to this clearly. Yeah, this is going to be

a complicated debate for them. They're going to be talking about sort of like post-9-11 war on terror programs. In 2018, 36 people were killed in four terror attacks in the UK, including that bombing at the Arias on a grande concert. That feels like that. It was like a million years ago. There's going to be conversations about, you know, online abuse and censorship. And then, yeah, you're right. Like, I do think there's clearly like a more parochial answer, which is some sort of security for these MPs when they're out in the world. Yeah.

Yeah. And I've, you know, having, you know, there's something different than like secret service. Yeah. And let's be clear. There's a cost to that. There's a cost to secret service. There's a cost. There's a cost.

It creates between you and the people you're trying to serve. We saw it happen when Obama went from primary to general candidate to president. Yeah. I mean, and the question, I'm not the security guy, but like, having, you know, having one guy with an earpiece, you know, standing there, whether that just deters people from thinking they can, like, charge someone and stab them, you know. Yeah. And without diminishing the feel of a politician communicating directly with their constituents, I think that you have to find some middle ground to do that. And, yeah, there's obviously, there's a literal cost to it, too. Right.

Right. You know, this becomes a more, I mean, every five years, that's way too common. Way too common. Way too common. Let's turn to another really unfortunate death here in the U.S. So former Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and National Security Advisor, Colin Powell, died Monday at age 84. Powell's immune system had been weakened by blood cancer, blood cancer treatment, and he died from complications from COVID-19. By any definition, Ben, you know, Powell's career was extraordinary. He was a child of Jamaican immigrants. He rose to the highest ranks of the military in the U.S. government. He broke countless racial barriers. He was someone who was widely respected by his colleagues and across political parties.

And at one point, he was the most popular public figure in America in like the early 90s. But that reputation and the respect he had or people had for him ultimately kind of cut both ways because Powell lent his credibility to make the case for the war in Iraq. And I think many people would argue that his speech, the United Nations in 2003, where he walked through the Bush administrations. deeply flawed or basically entirely wrong case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was one of the most important moments when it came to selling the invasion to the country, to the Congress, to the world. Powell was a Republican for most of his career, but in 2008 he decided to endorse then-Senator Obama over Senator McCain during interview on Meet the Press. And in that speech, he expressed really prescient concern about the direction the Republican Party was headed in, especially the selection of Sarah Palin as VP in the racist

Islamophobic birth or movement that had already popped up. And we were working for Obama then. I remember that being just an incredibly powerful moment in the campaign. It was a huge boost to us. You know, I think we were on a glide path to winning at that point. But it was really meaningful. He later backed Clinton. He later backed Joe Biden.

He, an email that Powell leaked where he wrote, we called Trump a, quote, national disgrace and an international pariah was leaked. So no confusion about where he stood there. So, Ben, what do you think? about Powell's legacy, like, or what it should be? And how prominent do you think the Iraq war is and, you know, that epitaph and that conversation? Yeah, I mean, look, Colin Powell in many ways to

me, like, embodies, exemplifies, like a certain period at the end of the Cold War when America was, like, on top. You know, like, he's there. He's a pathbreaker, is a chairman of the Joint Chiefs. he's there at the Gulf War, which is kind of the height of America, flexing its muscle internationally, whatever you think about the Gulf War. Right. Like Colin Powell kind of stood for competence and, you know, stewardship of like some international order because he he was reliable and credible and had integrity. And look, he was a person of character. Like you mentioned the endorsement. Like he centered the endorsement in a very interesting way.

around the accusations that, you know, accusations, you know, in air quotes here, that Obama was Muslim and he's like he's not. But like the real answer should be like, why does it matter? If he is so what? If he is so what? And if I want a seven-year-old kid in this country who's Muslim to think they could become president. And he talked about a photo of a gold star mother who lost her son at Arlington with the grave. So this is a man of integrity who carried out his jobs very ably, you know, and had a moral compass that obviously the Republican Party lacks. Full stop. Then I think of like two moments for me, though, that are obviously tied to Iraq. And the first is when he made that case before the war, you have to keep in mind that what Powell

used to be known for was something called the Powell Doctrine, which was essentially America should all, it was all the lessons from Vietnam informed it. And it was that America should only go to war when there's a very clear objective and you go on with kind of overwhelming force and you have a very clear exit strategy. And so like Iraq was none of those things. And after you've exhausted all diplomat. And after you've exhausted

Iraq was none of the things literally that Colin Powell was for. And what he did essentially is he convinced Bush to go to the United Nations to get a security council resolution which they did to have inspections. And then when those inspections weren't finding

the weapons of mass destruction, They call and Powell to make the closing argument at the U.N., right? And I'll never forget that. I was working at the Woodrow Wilson Center at the time. I was 24, I think, very new to D.C., maybe 25. And I remember watching it. And, like, Colin Powell was like an unalloyed hero. I mean, it's almost hard for younger listeners to appreciate it.

Like, this man, you know, like he had the credibility of patriotism and national security and winning the Cold War and the Gulf War. I read somewhere he was described as the most distinguished American to never serve as president in the United States. And that was an interesting description given how many of the former presidents are now disgraced, but I thought also kind of apt. Yeah, no, that's exactly what he was. And so when he like laid this out and is holding up like vials of, you know, fake anthrax and like I totally believed it, you know. And sometimes people have asked me, you know, people might have noticed to have a little of a, chip of my shoulder at the establishment foreign policy, it all started there because to me

was like they're all lying to me, even Colin Powell, you know. And what was kind of tragic about it is the second thing I ever thought about is the most time I ever spent in room with Colin Powell's. I was a staff running some called the Iraq Study Group. James Baker and Lee Hamilton were doing this big look at the Iraq War and they're going to make recommendations about it. It was 2006. and Powell came in to meet for like over an hour. And Baker, I remember, knew exactly what Powell thought and was like, so why don't you tell us your story, Colin? And he laid out the most withering takedown of the run-up to the war, the decisions around the war, all the mismanagement of the occupation. And it was clearly not revisionist history.

These were clearly things that he had thought at the time, right? So how do you think about that? I mean, I stop a bit short of the, you know, reading some of this, you'd think that Colin Powell took us to war in Iraq. He didn't. And like, the reality is it's ultimately George Bush's decision. And we shouldn't lose sight of that. You know, I think it's kind of wrong to say that like, because if, look, Colin Powell was the president, we wouldn't have done that. Right. You know, but, you know, like, it's a also reminder that everybody who goes into government, a lot of younger people I talk to who are going to government, one of the questions they asked me is like, Hey, how do I think about my red lines, you know, like when I might quit or what I refuse to defend? Don't announce the met a press briefing. Yeah, there's that too. And look, he's a, like the lesson is you shouldn't go along with things that you know are wrong that are that consequential, you know. Yeah. Because there's a lot of speculation. Okay, let's say Powell resigns would a bunch of the State Department employees resigned in mass, would that have given the foreign secretary in the UK of the standing to, like who knows?

It's impossible to Monday morning quarterback this stuff. But that's sort of like some of the coverage you're reading today. Yeah. I mean, everybody thinks, and he had as good a reason as anybody to think that they're kind of indispensable and if they leave, the thing will fall apart. But then you have to weigh that against. Well, if you stay, is anything changing because you're there. Now, he was, by all accounts, beloved at the State Department and really kind of got

the back of the people who worked there. But, you know, if he'd resign, I don't know. I mean, it would have been much harder to go to war. I mean, if Colin Powell resigned and said, I don't think. think this is a good idea. Would have been a bad news day for Dick Cheney in the gang. Yeah. That's for damn sure. And so, like, you know, in many ways I look at Colin Powell.

We've reflected a lot on kind of the end of this era of American, whatever we're going to call it, hegemony. And that has the successes of the post-Cold War years and the failures and the collapse of post-9-11. He, you know, he is a part of all that. And you can find plenty to criticize about. about his service in the Bush administration or frankly, you know, in the Reagan,

Iran-Contra, he was kind of, he was at least a Ron Contra adjacent, you know. But he's a man of integrity, and I think that always kind of came through. And that's why the Iraq thing stung so much because it cut against exactly what you believed in him, which is that he would always tell you the straight truth. Yeah, and, you know, obviously, like,

when you break that many racial barriers, you're an inspiration to a lot of black Americans. Like, Jamal Bowman, super liberal, you know, maybe Democratic Socialist, a member of Congress from New York, tweeted as a black man just trying to figure out the world. Colin Powell was an inspiration. He's from New York City, et cetera, et cetera, like, you know, rest in power, sir, was sort of the end of that tweet. And it was just a sign that, you know, you can have admiration for people who you don't agree with politically or for who have made massive mistakes in their lives while still criticizing

those mistakes. And I think it's a good way to look at things. It is. And look, Obama really looked up to him. And I remember he used to meet with him a lot more than people, like, knew. You know, you'd have men alone, too, though. He'd never meet with him in, like, those groups, you know, former officials. And I think part of the reason why they met alone is I think they probably talked about this piece of it, you know, being a black person in rooms where there were no black people, which is a lot of national security conversations. You could always tell when Powell was there because he drove like a corvette. Really?

So you'd see this, like, that in the West. New or old. Yeah. It was like old enough to be kind of a classic. kind of good for him. Like had a carburetor and stuff. Yeah, you know. But I see like on the one, I had the complicated emotions too of like, I want Colin Powell to get all the love, but also why is it kind of like no left of center figure is allowed to have universal idolatuation. You know, it's always like people on the right that, you know, like you can nothing better than like a never Trump or, you know,

Republican. But the flip side of that is like I, we have to have people that we collectively look up It's part of like having a national identity, you know, and he means a lot to different constituencies for different reasons. You know, he means something to black people. He means something to diplomats. He means something to people who are in the Army, obviously. And like we, like, I'm glad that there's still some people that the nation can stop and be like, yeah, that was like a life worth remembering.

Totally. Talk about the good and the bad. It's okay. You can hold a couple thoughts on our minds at one time. Okay, let's talk about missiles, Ben, because it's been a big week for missile news. Missiles are, they're very hot right now. now, if you haven't noticed. They're back.

They're back. They're back. They're back. So there was an alarming report over the weekend in the financial times that China had tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile that circled the globe before attempting to hit its target. Now, those are some scary sounding words. What do they mean? The short answer is that in theory, a hypersonic missile like this could go at five times the speed

of sound and evade U.S. missile defense systems, which are designed to intercept standard ballistic missiles that basically go into space and then glide down to their path on sort of a fixed parabolic path. This bad boy is maneuverable, so it would be able to evade any missile defenses, right, setting that aside. The Chinese foreign ministry said it was not a missile. It was a spaceship. So for what it's worth.

Just trolling. Just trolling. Like, good. It's a spaceship. Then last night, North Korea decided to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine. Sub-launched missiles are particularly provocative because they're, you know, harder to detect and track. So here's my question for you, Ben.

What's the appropriate reaction or level of freak out to both of these tests or reports, especially the sort of adjacent concern that China test driving a missile that could evade all of our missile defenses might lead to another idiotic arms race where we build a bunch of new missile defenses that will soon someday be obsolete with the next thing. So I saw this and was prematurely annoyed. Me too. Me too. Because like, do you remember like when we were in government, especially the first year, the press, the political press, like, needs to knee-jerk compare something to what happened before.

So whenever anything happened bad, it was Obama's Katrina. So like the oil spill was Obama's Katrina or like the those weird people sneaking into a state dinner were Obama's Katrina. So you knew that this was going to be sputneck. Oh, good call. Yeah. The press is like got like, is totally, you know, committed to a Cold War of China. and this is, and so of course I started to see the Sputnik moment, you know, which is kind of ridiculous given that the Soviet Union had this capacity decades ago. I mean, look, I think missile defense is like useful.

If you look at the history of this, the shorter range, like the more this kind of system saved lives, right? Like we talk about the Iron Dome in Israel. We talked about, you know, like everybody members talk Colin Powell, like the Patriot batteries and stuff. our missile defense has never been able to stop Russia from destroying America with nuclear weapons. And yet we've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on these systems. China has nuclear weapons. They have missiles. They've got a ton of money.

They're going to be able to, like, destroy enough things with nuclear weapons that there's a nuclear war that I don't think the answer to this is spending like a trillion dollars on missile defense. when Joe Manchin wouldn't even spend $150 billion to try to save the planet from impending climate disaster. Like, our spending parties are nuts. And the fact that this is clearly going to be demagogued and used to justify God knows how much money expended into a missile defense system that won't even work in stopping Chinese and Russian nuclear missiles, but is just part of like some Washington flex for right wing and hawkish politicians and a boondoggle for a bunch of defense contractors and is stealing from the money we need to pay for things like, tax credits and climate action is the problem, you know? I'm with you. It's just, it's going to be exhausting.

It's going to be exhausting. Let's talk about the real threat. So unfortunately, you flagged some bad news on climate change and in your answer there. So Joe Manchin has apparently told the White House that he does not support the clean electricity payment program. That's the part of the Biden economic buildback better agenda, megabill that would incentivize power companies to switch to clean energy sources and then penalize the, you. utilities that do not. So that really sucks. Then we learned that Chinese president Xi Jinping is too

busy launching not missiles but spaceships because he can't come to the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. So as we talked about briefly last week, she hasn't left China since early 2020, huge bummer that he's not going to show up at this thing in person. One small silver lining here, Ben, is that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is going to attend the climate summit. He made that announcement shortly after friend of the pod, Dan Illich, his crowdfunded poster in Times Square went live that included a kangaroo hopping around while its ass was burning. So shout out to Dan for trolling your prime minister into going. So I guess in Hope Springs Eternal, right? Like I guess Congress could get his shit together in the next couple weeks, past some sort of bill. She could

have a change of heart and decide to go. But like, what do you think is worse for the future of the planet? Biden showing up empty handed or she not showing up at all? Both of them are not good signals. And look, it's, you cover this well on PSA, but it reminded me of in 2009, we went to Copenhagen empty-handed because the House had passed a good cap-and-trade energy bill and it died in the Senate because a bunch of like retrogrades like, you know, Joe Manchin types at the time was like Ben Nelson and wouldn't pass that bill. And that made it 10 times harder for us to get other countries and twist our arms and get them to make commitments, et cetera, et cetera.

So this is a problem. I think it is worth like from the international. piece of what you said very well on POTS of America, what's always been missing from American climate action, which is generally limited, is often the piece of the toolbox that compels people to stop doing bad things, you know? The stick. Yeah, the stick. So we do the, like, clean energy credits and investments and catalyzing industry.

But when you try to regulate the hell out of these industries, you know, we do. like the right-wing courts, you know, could ultimately strike down your climate regulations. And so Obama basically went as far as you could, regulatory-wise, budding up against the right-wing courts. And then when you try to pass anything through Congress that has a stick, you know, and this is thrown back in our face in international climate negotiations because the Europeans are using some sticks, you know, and the idea of taxing carbon is mainstreamed over there. And so there's just a limit in terms of how serious America can be seen, even if we can

cobble together a bunch of stuff and rightly say that it adds up to this emissions reduction because it's going to turbocharge the transition to clean energy, there's something missing when you're not willing to show that you're going to punish industries that don't make this move. You're terrified that the Koch brothers are going to pump, you know, a couple hundred million dollars into some super PAC to destroy all efforts to regulate their industries. Yeah. And so I think this could be, I mean, and it's not Joe Biden's fault. like, but this will be rough, man.

Like, he's going to go, if he hasn't passed this bill, too, that the press will be, you know, they'll be just terrible. They want to write the story that, like, his agenda's dying at home and, you know, he has no juice on the world stage because he can't even get Joe Manchin and spend this money. And none of that is Joe Biden's fault,

but it is going to be like what shapes this, and Xi Jinping's not even there. And then, you know, then everybody's going to look into Modi's, like, what's he going to put on the table? and the risk that this climate summit just undershoots the runway, like from a narrative perspective and a substantive perspective, it continues to build. I think there have been a lot of good commitments, including China's in terms of not financing coal. So people shouldn't lose sight of the forest for the trees here. Like we're making progress with the commitments that are being made by governments and by companies and, you know, by philanthropies.

But yeah, there is a problem when you don't have the leader of the world's largest emitter in Xi Jinping, and you're not sending the president of the United States with as strong climate bills as you should have. So frustrating. It's so frustrating. Just so frustrating. And this is not, none of this is the Biden team's fault because they want to be doing, they want to have the right ambition here. It's just Joe Manchin being like a stubborn, you know, whatever. Thanks, Joe. Okay, so little good news.

Listeners of this show know that we are not big fans of Victor Orban, the far. right autocratic prime minister of Hungary. But it looks like he might have some pretty formidable opposition this time around. Ben, what do we know about this guy, Peter Marquis-A and whether he's a real threat to Orban or why he's a threat to Orban in the Fides party? So what's so interesting about this and why I think it's good that we're highlighting it, it's first of all, the strategy of the opposition was really smart here. They have multiple opposition parties from like an established socialist party to the younger, you know, momentum party that I profile

my book. To this guy, he's like a pretty conservative mayor. Pretty small town mayor. Small town mayor. Catholic. Former Fides Orban party guy who basically broke and said, you know, kind of a never Orbáner, you know? And what they said is like we're going to have one primary

so we run one candidate to be the opponent Victor Orban in kind of one list so that we maximize our chance of beating him. The reason why that's important is because in the past Orban will run against all these parties, divide them against each other. His party would only get, like about half the votes, but they dominate because he didn't have a unified opposition. So the primary allowed them to both motivate people and get people more engaged in their democracy, to have this kind of open competition for who

would be the best person to run against Orban. And essentially then what ended up happening is they'd already made this pragmatic decision to unify a bunch of different parties that run an ideological gambit. And then at the end, people may remember the kind of progressive mayor Budapest that we had on. They had a first round of this primary in which that guy got more votes than the person who ended up being the candidate. He dropped out before the final round because he calculated, you know what, this guy's got a better shot of winning than I do or the woman who runs the Socialist Party does because she is married to the former prime minister who's like, you know, kind of the Clinton family type, you know, like easier to demigod for Orban. And so it was just this

pragmatic decision of saying like, hey, you know what, this guy isn't everything we'd hope. He's certainly not some big progressive, but he's saying the right things about any corruption. He's saying the right things about democracy. And job one is to get Orban out. And they gave themselves the best shot to do that. I don't blame Ralph Nader or Jill Stein for all our problems. But imagine if those fucking idiots had not said things like Al Gore and George W. Bush are exactly the same. Yeah.

Well, and that's the thing is the lesson here, because people always ask me after my book, like, what's the word of a lesson? One of the lessons is when you're in an existential threat to your. democracy, everybody who's for democracy has to just put one big tent over every party in movement and say, hey, we'll debate things, we'll fight it out, but come election time, we're all just going to decide to vote for the same person. And they've only tried to do that with smart voting in Russia, too. And that's why Putin was so threatened by that that, you know, leaned on Apple to cancel the app.

Yeah. And credit to the Democratic Party, I think, in 2020 for actually doing that, right? You know, like Bernie to, you know, conservative never Trumpers. It is also just notable in a good reminder that since. May of 2012, Victor Orban's government has spent more than $4.5 million on lobbyists. Mike Pence was recently in Hungary for an Orban-sponsored conference. Jeff Sessions apparently went to, although do you think anyone noticed him, that little elf running around? CPAC is going to be there next year.

Yeah, they're planning their own version of Hungarian CPAC and Budapest, Tucker Carlson anchor to show there for a week. Please, Sasha Baron Cohen, can we get a Borod appearance at the Hungarian CPAC? That's not a bad idea. I hope you're listening. So anyway, one very important election that we will continue to cover here. Okay, let's talk about Haiti because there was some scary news out of Haiti over the weekend where a gang kidnapped 16 Americans and one Canadian citizen who were visiting an orphanage while traveling with the U.S.-based Christian aid group. Five of the victims are children, Ben, ranging in age from eight months to 15 years. So that's pretty horrifying. The Wall Street Journal reported that this gang is demanding a $17 million ransom, so a million dollars per captive. of gangs control, many parts of Haiti.

The security situation was bad before the president was assassinated several months ago. It's gotten far worse since. An organization called the Center for Analysis and Research for Human Rights said that this year alone in Haiti, 628 people were reported kidnapped, and that's reported. The FBI is on the ground now working on the case. The State Department's talking to whoever they can talk to. And the government, Biden is getting briefed every day. So, you know, Ben, there's like two parts of this.

One, you know, the situation for people in Haiti is just. horrible and terrifying. The security situation is awful. And the other piece of this is just like the Biden-led effort now to get these Americans back and this Canadian citizen back. And I was just thinking about how brutally difficult that must be because you're trying to work with a government partner that is like barely functional. You're going to have to navigate these ransom demands and then the sort of demagoguing of people who say, no, we should never pay ransoms under any, you know, scenario, you know, Jason Resign talks a lot about the policy around this in 544 days and how complicated this is. But I imagine, like, this is the kind of situation and thing that can all

of a sudden take dozens of hours a week for the National Security Council. You know, it's like all-consuming. Yeah. And you want, you know, like how far a spectrum of options you're looking at. Like, yeah. Are there military? It's like a Delta Force raid. Yeah. Or, yeah, to ransom adjacent kind of you know, because some of these families, you know, like, because it's both the question, the U.S. government's not going to pay the ransom, but do you punish people who might choose to do it on their own? I mean, like, these are the most difficult issues because whenever you're dealing with people who have been taken prisoner hostage, like, you, there's so little you control, you know, like it's usually in a place where you don't have a governmental partner. In this case, it's not because it's an adversary. It's just because there's not really a government.

and you just have to explore every option. And what you usually have to test is who do we know who may know someone who knows these gangs? Like you try to find any line in to someone who might have influence over the people holding those people and to leverage that. And that can lead you down roads to people that are like fixers and not the most pleasant characters. Yeah, real criminals. And then the big stepping back, the bigger issues like the gangs control Porta Prince, you know, There needs to be some wholesale look at like the Haitian security and policing circumstance that is not the U.S. military going down there, but is rather like how in the past we've tried

to help them build up a police capacity and then what it builds up and then it always collapses and, you know, but you just need some policy informed by Haitian voices to look at what are the policing needs here that allow you to tip the balance. Because what ends up happening is like if you're a policeman in Haiti and you're making X amount of money and then the gangs are paying Y amount of money, like it becomes a simple math equation in a lot of cases. Yeah, it is a really, really, really difficult situation. So we just hope for everyone's sake to get them back. Ben, so Jeff Feltman, someone we know well worked with back in the day, he's the U.S. envoy for the Horn of Africa, is visiting Khartoon this week. he's heading to Sudan because the prime minister called the situation there currently the worst and

most dangerous crisis that the country has seen for its nascent, you know, fragile transition to democracy. Axios had a good piece on the broader political situation. So listeners might remember that Omar al-Bashir, who is the war criminal slash former president of Sudan, he was deposed in a coup in 2019. A joint military civilian council has been in power ever since. They have been given the task of leading a transition to democracy in free elections by the end of 2023. But that transition has been complicated by more democracy, by major protests. Some protesters are calling for a return to military rule. Others want the transitional government to just fully hand things over to civilians right now. There's fear that this civilian military alliance that led to Bashir's ouster will just kind of

crumble and unravel. There was a failed coup attempt in late September. So the Biden administration, Tony Blinken specifically has spoken out in support of the civilian leadership and the democratic transition. But there's this, you know, sort of geopolitical wrestling happening where countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE have closer ties with the military. And there's a question of whether they're going to throw their support towards the guys we don't like. So I'm positive that I oversimplified this. But it sounds like an incredibly, you know, tense moment for Sudan and their democratic transition. Yeah, look, I think this was always, it was a long transition plan. about this way back when I was agreed to.

I know. Mind you we've been doing this for a while. Yeah, yeah. But you got to stick to the plant. Like I'm, you know, I think they're like, because once you start deviating from like an agreed upon meticulously negotiated, civilian military transition leading to an election, once you're off the course, like, then all bets are off and everybody's tried grabs for power, you know. And in terms of like what we can do beyond like diplomacy and our voice and.

the rest of it is the Saudis, the Emirates, and the Egyptians, like, don't want to see democratic transition succeed. The same thing happened in Egypt, right, where you had street protests that removed a dictator that had been there too long, and you were going to have a transition to elections. That time, the transition to the elections happened fast, and so then the Saudis and Emirates just funded a coup, including paying for people to protest in the streets, by the way. And so the idea that they would run the exact same play in Sudan was always. something lurking in the backdrop that they might just, hey, tell the military at some point,

wait for the right moment to where you can put yourself forward as the representative of the people and take back power. That's what CC did. And the name of stability or whatever. Yeah. And so if I'm the Biden team, like, that's where I'm focusing some of my efforts. Like just get in line here. Like, don't, at least don't be a spoiler and try to support the program here that results in an election, by the way, that you have to accept the results of. And look, if we're going to continue, I mean, the amount of love showered on the Emirates. I, you know, like I just foreign policy. I know.

I know. I know. U.S. foreign policy, Twitter. Like, you would think we have no closer partner in the world today than the UAE. I'm just going to be blunt about it. Like, I know sometimes because of the evacuations from Afghanistan they help with, but like maybe they could not, like, support a military takeover in a country that doesn't want to have that, you know?

Good. Like, we got to be getting something like. Otherwise, why are we constantly lauding these, the autocratic, you know, junior partner of the Saudis? Like, I just don't. Yeah, I noticed that too. Yeah. There's a lot of that. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, a lot of fancy dinners in Georgetown. There's a lot of dinners. Here's a story that broke just before we started recording about another shitty autocrat. So this is the New York Times. they reported that a Brazilian congressional panel is going to recommend mass homicide charges against President Jair Bolsonaro saying that he intentionally let the coronavirus tear through the country and kill hundreds of thousands of people in a failed bid to achieve herd immunity and revive his economy. This report apparently recommends criminal charges against 70 people, including Bolsonaro, senior members of the government and three of his sons. the Brazilian center, who is the lead author of the report told the times, quote,

I am personally convinced that he is responsible for escalating the slaughter, end quote. There's a bunch more charges made. The attorney general now has about a month to decide whether to pursue charges. It'll go into the Congress if he does. All of this seems highly unlikely. But, whoof, tough newsday for Bolsonaro here. I mean, here's the thing. Like, Brazil's had backs and forth where you basically, like, you end up fighting your political opponents, you know, usually through corruption,

charges, not murder. Bolsonaro is like a big enough asshole that I wouldn't be shocked if he literally like said out loud or like even wrote an email. Like let's let people die. Her immunity. The economy going and I've heard immunity. Like that's and like there's a part of me that's kind of like. Trump's kind of flirted with it.

Well, and there's a part of me that's kind of like, you know what? People on the left should be trying different shit, you know, like, like Dan Illich, like taking out, you know, billboards with, like, kangaroos with their ass on fire is one way of doing it, and charging Bolsonaro with murder is another way. And maybe the, the kangaroo billboards is, like, a better, more sustainable approach. Different strokes for different folks is what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, so I, like, I, you know, the particularities of the case I can't speak to, and it's probably not the, the, the most stabilizing way to take Bolsonaro out. The best way is to just beat him at the polls and hold the center when he tries to over the election.

but people out there thinking you know like uh got our attention different stuff that hungarians are having a primary Dan's got his billboards the Brazilians are like charging people with murder you know charging their leaders with the the death of 300,000 people yeah yeah yeah yeah you know whatever works

seems a little over the top I'm gonna give you that like it seems a little over the top good because like also like where do you what makes someone culpable for that I don't know it's a hard thing to establish just rub a little ivermectin on it it'll all be better all right enough of the serious stuff and I'm gonna need you to put on

your Ponce of the World Royal Correspondent hat for just a moment, please. Because there was a report in Vanity Fair, let it be known that Benis switching hats. There we go. This report in Vanity Fair said that the Queen of England has been advised to give up her evening martini as she prepares for her busy fall schedule. She reportedly enjoys a drink most evenings. Her go-to is a dry martini. At dinner, she likes sweet wine.

The piece quotes her late cousin saying that the Queen has been known to drink a glass of champagne before bed. apparently it was once reported that she drank four alcoholic beverages per day. Here's my question, Ben. Did you know that the queen went this hard? There's no way I could drink four drinks a day. And I'm not 95. Completely aware that the queen went this hard.

Actually, Obama used to say, like, the lunches with them, like, he went up to lunch with them at one of their, you know, I think it was at Windsor Palace. And, like, Phillips just crushing beers at the lunch, you know, like, they're fun people hanging out with. I hate this. I'm totally against this. If it's worked for the woman for like 90 plus fucking years, including like, you know, like however many is queen, like why mess with it now? You know? Like I just like a dry martini feels like what the queen should be having every afternoon.

I'm not doctor. But like, I mean, watching this from afar, it seems like that's worked for her. Yeah, most people don't live to 95. So she's already kind of ahead of game. That's what I'm saying. It's like gravy. She's been playing with house money for a while. Like give the woman her corgi.

and her martinis and her movies, as we talked about. Do you think that if you're slamming drinks with the queen at Buckingham Palace, that they just, like, run down to the basement and dust off, like, a 1962, like, Chateau Nuf de Pop de Rothschild, some other fancy thing? So that's why Obama told me the story, because he was so impressed at Phillips, is like, I'm just going to crack a beer. It's just like, you know. These guys could have the Chateau de Bop.

Yeah, yeah. And instead, he's just like, you know, pop top, you know. I think they had like sherry too, which is so British. Like who drinks sherry? A sherry. But yeah, the queen should be able to have her martini. Come on. Yeah, look, if you're listening, Your Majesty.

I mean, she could shift edibles. I mean, that's another way. I just love the idea of like a little glass of champagne before bed. You know, like you're a little nightcap. Slamming it in bed. I'm into it. The other thing we try to do here besides keep a tab on the royals is keep tabs on. Oh, one other thing on this, by the royal correspondent.

The queen mum. right the queen the queen's mother okay you know uh played ably by helena bottom carter in and the movie uh the king's speech um she used to drink like a like and people could add me if i'm wrong but like i think she drank like a bottle of gin a day like no fucking fucking around yeah and she lived to be like a hundred right so these people have they've got like the jeans for this stuff yeah and we know that those gene pools don't mix very often yeah you know Yeah, maybe there's something to that. Something to that.

Okay. So again, the other person we keep tabs on here is Ted Cruz because there's just so many people who hate him in America and around the world. You know, he's talking to far-right nationalists in Spain. This week, he is pissed off the good people of Australia. So here's a backstory, Ben. Cruz went on Twitter to declare that Australia's northern territory that their COVID vaccine mandate was tyranny and disgraceful and sad. Those are the words he used. The region's chief minister, I named Michael Gunner, responded with a barrage of statistics about how much better his territory is from COVID in Texas.

The one stat that tells the entire story is 70,000 COVID deaths in Texas, zero in the northern territory. There you go. Gunner said, quote, we don't need your lecturers. Thanks, mate. You know nothing about us. And if you stand against the life-saving vaccine, then you sure as hell don't stand with Australia. I love Texas. Go Longhorns. But when it comes to COVID, I'm glad we are nothing like you.

So, Ben, it's been a tough couple of years. You know, I think, like, I've never felt quite as isolated as I do from the rest of the world. But it's just so nice to know that Ted Cruz can bring us together to call him a doucheback. Yeah, that was my reaction. And Gunner points out, by the way, that they also, their kids are in school. Like, they're returning one lockdown for 18 days. They're not locking down because they've fucking handled their business, unlike Ted Cruz in Texas. It's a tough time that we live through.

And, you know, a lot of the political news can be upsetting every day. It can be difficult to open Twitter. You look around the world and there's so much division and divisiveness. There's like a new Cold War brewing with China. And the fact that there's this thing where billions of people around the world want Ted Cruz to go fuck off, it's a hopeful thing. It's really something that makes me feel – gives me strength. It makes me feel seen and present as a human.

it makes me feel dignity. So every time someone around the world is able to throw a ferocious dunk on Ted Cruz, like I just feel a little less alone. And I like that we always seem to be circling back to Australia when there's something like this. Like every now and then they pop up, take a massive whack call like it is, including to their climate-denying prime minister.

And like, you know, it's good to know that we got Aussies out there like that. Love the Aussies. Hope you enjoy those nuclear sites. You guys earned them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the French got Steve Clemens' Les Jean d'Enours, so even trade, right? We, wait, wait. Okay, last story is out of New Zealand, their neighbor, the Aussie's neighbor.

So this is a little bit of sad news, Ben. The official wizard of Christchurch, New Zealand was fired. Wait, stop. I got a question already. Yeah. There's an official wizard? Official wizard of Christchurch, New Zealand. He was on the job for 23 years.

This is according to a New Zealand-based news outlet. called stuff. It's like stuff. It's like stuff.com. Go. It's, this guy's name is Jack

Bakenbury. His contract called for him to quote, provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services as part

of promotional work for the city of Christchurch. Wizard Jack had been making a cool 16 grand a year, which is,

my sources told me that's a pretty good rate in the wizarding community. Fired or not, Jack says he's going to keep showing up at

the Christchurch Art Center and talking with tourists. He's sort of a tourist attraction. He said, quote, they will have to

kill me to stop. me, I don't like being canceled. Why did they shake in the wizard? I think that maybe just didn't seem like the path they wanted to go tourism-wise. So he's sort of an interesting duck. According to this, another article in Stuff from 2013, this guy first showed up in Christchurch. And he thinks of himself as living performance art.

And so in the mid-70s, he first got attention. Did he go to wizard school, though, like Harry Potter? Unclear, unclear what his pedigree is. But he, in the mid-70s, he publicly cast a spell to, quote, bind the bowels of an officious assistant town clerk. Well, yeah. And the guy had to do a news conference to clarify that things were just kind of moving okay, that he wasn't bottled up. I mean, we could kind of merge these stories because casting a spell on Ted Cruz that would lead him to not be able to have a bowel movement could be an interesting. He's already given off real constipated vibes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently another city council member had to publicly testify that his head had not shrunk after the wizard announced a spell to shrink it. He used to do big public debates with someone just referred to as the Bible lady. He refused to get a driver's license passport or social security number. The wizard wrote a manifesto called mine cop. All right, wait. Now the wizard is getting a little problematic. I went to the wizard's website.

This is it here. He's like a Maga Wizard? No, it's just a fucking weirdo. He's got a bunch of podcasts. So people can't see, but the website has like that kind of scroll color to it, like a yellowish tint with like the wizardish handwriting and a very good beard. Yeah. All required for Wizards.

So if you want to listen to his podcast, you have to click on some like weird Dropbox. and I just wasn't, I wasn't down on that. Yeah, no, no, no, no. Like, don't give the Wizard an entry point. You've got some Pegasus vibes. Suddenly you won't be out of a bowel movement. Wizard, if you're listening, it would be, could you do a spell on Ted Cruz? Like, we could solve a lot of problems with the good Wizard here.

I'm just saying, so if he has the goods and he's out of work, there's plenty of spells that we could use over here. I mean, I will say, like, I want to spend more time in New Zealand. I never been. I was there once, and it is the kind of place where you might come upon a wizard, you know? Like you're like rolling green hills and like ancient landscapes and kiwis like a night we went out and found those kiwi birds and stuff. Like, I mean, they should own it. They should just kind of go with the wizard. Don't they film all those like elfin movies there, the Lord of the Rings and stuff?

Oh, Peter Jackson stuff. So Peter Jackson is a Kiwi and like he built like all the sets were on like his land. Like he owns like this land, I think, where they made all the Lord of the Rings movies. So there's a lot of wizardry, you know, that's taken place on those shores. I wondered if they were tied together this wizard and those movies. But it sounds like he just came out of some sort of like countercultural revolution in the 60s in Australia. So they, yeah, I mean, look, there was like weird stuff gone on the 60s here in Australia, New Zealand, like, golly knows. There is a huge tourism.

there was a Lord of the Rings kind of tourism boom. Oh, I could see that. When I was there, I was at this dinner with Peter Jackson. And he was talking like that you could, I think you could go and see like where the, you know, some of the movies were and like pilgrimages were made. I mean, these were like, I liked those movies, but I kind of saw them once and you think about them again. They're on cable and you're like, I watch 20 minutes of this. They're like deeply important to some people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'd say own it. Just stick with the wizard thing. Maybe make another Lord of the Rings movie. Maybe you need another trilogy to bring it back, you know? Yeah, or just switch them into the Harry Potter mode, you know. Make him make him the new, I don't know, some sort of muggle hating, you know, bad guy. I went to Harry Potter World once with Hannah, my wife and two friends. And it took like hours to get there.

The lines were just ungodly awful. There's one cool ride. We went on it. Everyone but me got super seasick from all the motion, and then we had to leave. And then we forgot where we parked our car. It was a nightmare. Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you, like, you can, like, people can be condescending about this, right?

When you'd see the people at, like, the Harry Potter movie openings and they're, like, wearing, like, you know, hats and face pains. I read all those books. They're great. But here's the thing about it. Like, if you think of the more commonly accepted forms of behavior, what's weird, right? Going to, like, a movie dressed as, like, a character in the movie. or like what you and I did in college, going to a parking lot,

like shotgunning like 17 beers, vomiting on yourself, and then watching a college football game. I mean, hey, man, like it's all, like people can do whatever the fuck they want. Totally. So if this guy wants to be a wizard, like, why not? I thought you were going to say,

what's weirder, you know, going to like Harry Potter World and dressing up like a wizard or like going to an Obama or a Trump or a Trump rally and getting five hours early and standing in the freezing cold to hear a political speech. To me, that's kind of crazy.

What's crazier is like, I know, because I know you've had to do this, you know, I did it once, the Politicon thing. Awful. That's weird. I've never felt worse about myself. People were like freaking out because they saw like some pundit, like some asshole like us, you know, like,

oh my God over there. Look, it's, you know, Howard Feynman. I was in a green room and Tommy Laren walked in with a camera crew following her and I was like, I fucking hate myself. for being here. I can't do this. I can't do this. Whoa, I forgot to mention Barack Obama is going to Glasgow for this climate conference. You're going to hitch a ride? I'm hitching a ride. I will be at an international summit. What are you going to do? We're going to hang out. Like, no pressure on us, right?

That's so sweet. Going to like a G20 with no role. Yeah, we see like Lammy, you know, like I. That's cool. I mean, I think he'll, you know, he'll give a speech. he'll meet with young activists and young people working in climate. I mean, that's the main thing. I think he wants to kind of be this person who can both like speak to leaders and speak to like where we are in the climate fight, but also try to like, you know, be able to speak to younger people, encourage them to keep putting pressure on the leaders. But yeah, it'll be very interesting.

You know, in the Trump years, it wasn't really an option for Obama to show up at a national summit, right? But this one, it's like, it's also like it's an all. on deck thing, right? Everybody should go. You know, like, anybody with like a platform on this kind of stuff should go. And I think it's, you know, this is the first kind of summit like this that Obama's gone due since he was president. And I think that's a sign that he fuels a lot of, you know, pride in Paris. And this is obviously like the update to that. But also like that this is an issue he's going to be involved in going forward. Yeah, we all should be. He's got kids. He'll have grandkids someday. We're all pretty nervous about this stuff. Thanks, Joe Manchin.

Thanks, Joe Manchin. Hopefully they'll get something done. There's all these weird reports. They'll get something. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. It'll be like not what needs to get done, but it'll be much better than more things were. And you just got to keep pushing. Keep fighting. Okay, we're going to take quick break. And when we come back, we'll have my interview with Maria Ressa, who is the recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. No Big Deal. Stick around for that. I am so excited to invite my next guest onto the show. Maria Ressa is a journalist. She's the co-founder of Rappler, which is a fantastic digital media company in the Philippines. And she, along with a Russian journalist named Dmitri Muratov were the recent recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maria, thank you so much for joining the show and congratulations. Thank you. And thanks for having you. A quick question to start before we get serious. How does one celebrate winning the Nobel Peace Prize? You know, you don't really celebrate. I just feel like it's already been an intense whirlwind the last five years, you know, just trying to do our jobs on digital, which you know, it doesn't stop. And then when it happened, everything exploded on my, on my laptop. I, you know, it's what a long answer except to say, I don't know if I've celebrated. I think I'm still stunned, but I have my inbox, which I used to call Narnia is now,

Narnia times, you know, 100. And I am, I'm trying to focus this bright light that the Nobel committee gave us to the countries that, I mean, there are countries that are even worse than the Philippines on the World Press Freedom Index. And so, you know, talking to editors in Venezuela, for example, talking to journalists in India, in Pakistan, I mean, it's, it's also been an education the last week. Oh, short answer. I don't know what celebrating means either. It's a good, look, you're just, your commitment to the cause, you know, transcends every single day. So let's get to the mission. So basic question to start.

For listeners to the show who might not know about Rappler, why did you start it? Why was it so necessary in the Philippines? So I spent almost two decades with CNN. I started the Manila Bureau and then the Jakarta Bureau. And after doing breaking news, I decided when I turned 40, I was going to choose home. So I came home to the Philippines and headed, I left CNN and then headed the largest news organization, which lost its franchise to operate. right last year. That's part of the intimidation tactics of this administration. I suppose that's not intimidation. That's real action. After, while I was with ABS, CDN, the largest network,

I realized that traditional news, traditional journalists didn't quite get how pivotal and how transformative technology was going to be. And it's hard, it was harder to turn, to change a legacy news organization, along with its processes and mindset and culture, then it was to start from scratch. So we created Rappler because we embrace the technology, you know, and this is the sixth year in a row that Filipinos have spent the most time online and on social media globally. So we really are a little ahead of the practice. I hope what happened to us doesn't go all the way to you. Yeah, me too. You know, one of the things you've done just incredible coverage of is President Duterte's so-called war on drugs. That really has been a war on innocent civilians.

I mean, there's estimates of tens of thousands of innocent people being killed in the name of preventing the sale or use of drugs. There have been so many deaths that the UN Human Rights Council I believe voted to launch an investigation into the drug war. Can you describe that drug war? for listeners and why it was so important for you to really dig into that in your coverage. Yeah, I think there are three points there. You know, the first is that it is part of President Duterte's leadership style. You know, he uses, and in his words, he says it's violence and fear. I asked him about that again.

He believes it's important to use fear to govern Filipinos. And he has been in power in the southern city of Davao since 1988. So this is part of his psyche. The second thing is, you know, this to khang is what he called this drug war. Tokang means knock. So literally when he was in this town in the southern Philippines, police would knock at your door. And, you know, that is both an intimidation tactic as much as it can be a law and order tactic, right? But you don't know why someone will knock at your door.

And then finally, I guess the last part was just a shock. hours after he took his oath of office in 2016, the first death, you know, the first body was dumped on the sidewalk. And the months of July, August, September, we had one team assigned on overnights and they would come home with videos of at least eight dead bodies a night. You know, there's one body was dumped in front of a school, you know, and it would be like gargoylish, like Batman and Robin type. Gotham City would have a... a cardboard thing saying don't be a drug pusher. And the body would be gagged and mass, right?

So, yeah, so it was horrific. We knew something bad was happening. And at the beginning, the police would announce all the drug deaths. So we watched the drug deaths rise. So in January 2017, the police had already said there were 7,000 people killed. And then they realized that when they announced that, that it works against them. And so in plain view, they just rolled back the number to 2000 plus, 7,000 plus, 2,000 plus by creating another. It's like atomizing to meetinglessness.

And, you know, it is what we did in Rappler is to try to make these numbers real. And that was what we did in our impunity series. Yeah. Well, again, I guess no surprise that a leader who would lie with such impunity would not be thrilled by your coverage. I noticed that he congratulated you, however, on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He called it a victory for a Filipina. I don't know. In the past, he's called you fake news.

In the past, he said you were part of a, you know, I guess a CIA operation. What do you make of this apology? Is it a bit of a concession that you've, you know, had an enormous impact? Or how did you read it? It wasn't really an apology. It was the presidential spokesman, Harry Rockett, who congratulated me. And then in the next breath, then said that this is evidence that press freedom is alive in the Philippines. So it's kind of like, you know, okay, take credit. Go for it. Right. And then the second and then the next, the succeeding statements were all about the cases that the government has filed against me. And a repeated lie is that the case that I was convicted, a former colleague and I were convicted on cyber libel last year was actually filed by a private individual. It's a half truth.

Right, but what the government has always said is it's a private individual. It's not us. Well, a criminal case requires the Department of Justice to advocate for a criminal, you know, a jail time. And it also used state prosecutors to do it. So let me not dive into that. But, you know, it is what it is. It's the air we breathe, you know, similar to you, disinformation. And these types of manipulative tactics on social media creates the enabling environment.

for the weaponization of the law. And that has happened in many countries around the world. Yeah. And sort of core to creating that environment has been the use of social media and the use of Facebook. You've been talking about this leading on this for a very long time. And you recently said that Facebook is biased against facts. It is biased against journalism.

We have our own set of enormous frustrations with Facebook here in the U.S. or at least some of us do. But can you talk a little bit for listeners about what the impact of Facebook has been on the discourse and the politics in the Philippines? I would say it's in the Philippines and all around the world. And the reason I say it with such certainty is that we have the data. We began to be alarmed in 2016. Rappler was formed first on Facebook, right?

If Facebook had better search, I may not have launched the website itself because that's how much I believed in Facebook. And it is transformative. Social media and the technology is transformative. But I think it crossed the line around 2014, 2015, 2015, in the Ukraine, 2015 was when instant articles, all news organizations were brought in without any algorithmic change, right? So all of a sudden, facts were being compared to what you had, you know, the joke you heard or what you had for dinner or a little lie that you heard,

that you may not have fact check and that made you angry. And so you put it in and it spread like wildfire. This is what the research has shown us. And this, This is research outside of the Philippines that lies, laced with anger and hate, spread faster and further than facts. So I looked at our ecosystem here. We called it the shark tank because initially it was really something we put together to look at disinformation networks. And they were inevitably connected to the state as early as 2016. State fueled and then the main content creators that were given government positions after the election of D.T. So what we saw is that the end goal, there are several algorithmic choices.

Because I feel like the world, America in particular, was lost in this debate over content moderation. That's like a distraction because it's not about content. It is about the choices of algorithmic distribution and amplification. So that's kind of what we showed. I'm really glad to see after our latest whistleblower, you know, bipartisan kind of cooperation. And now finally, we're talking about what we should have been talking about five years ago. Yeah, totally agree with you. I mean, it's also, you know, it's quite clear that Facebook is extremely interested in gaining market share abroad.

They seem much less interested in the impact the platform might have in other countries in moderating content and supporting. service in other countries. You know, you have the genocide against the Rohingya being fermented on Facebook. You have other ethnic violence being fermented in Ethiopia right now against people who live in Tigray. So, you know, they seem sort of impervious is the wrong word, but Facebook seems less interested in those concerns than in criticisms you hear from a U.S. audience. So my question is, there's a lot of talk in the U.S. right now about the need to regulate Facebook. Are there things that the U.S. Congress could do that might help people. in countries like the Philippines, like Ethiopia, that might have less, you know, direct sway

over a company abroad. There's a lot that they can do. And, you know, let me start with something positive that these social media platforms have proven to us, right? I've been a journalist. This is my 35th year as a journalist. And, you know, I spend a lot of time in different cultures. And as a reporter, you focus on the differences or you focus on reporting that nation, that

culture, different languages. But what the social media platforms proved is that we all have far more in common than we have differences, right? Because the very same algorithms that manipulate you are the same ones used to manipulate us in the Philippines, Sri Lanka. We got to add that onto the list because that has had tremendous impact, right? So in that sense, I actually, you know, the biggest thing that I think they could do, which would be enlightened self-interest is that they now know how they've been. been manipulated for bad, for evil, for power, for money, how states have used it for geopolitical power play. We already have the data. Facebook released some of that data of which states have done this, right? The reason why we set up Rappler was to try to understand information in cascades

and to try to amplify the good. Because the other part that these social media platforms have forgotten is that yes, anger does spread, but on Rappler on our mood meter and our mood navigator, happiness and inspiration spread. It was the number one mood on our mood navigator from 2012 to 2016. Now granted, we don't have viral spread and news organizations. We don't manipulate our people. We didn't have algorithmic amplification. But I feel like actually it's not just Facebook.

It is the social media platform. let go of the resilience and the goodness of human nature by amplifying what they have. So I think the first is, you know, stop the insidious manipulation, turn up new ecosystem quality. That's something they finally admitted after January 6 in the United States that there is a ranking for facts, fact-based, evidence-based. And when after January 6 in the U.S., when they turned up the NEQ, like a button, like a dial, and crowd-tangle then showed which ones were, through 10, the top 10 were NPR, New York Times, CNN, you know, fact-based, evidence-based, accountable to the people. And then after a while, they realized that when news, when facts are actually in the public sphere, it doesn't make them as much money. And so they dialed it back

now. I think that, you know, this is enlightened self-interest. They have to decide. This is why All the points for legislation will still take years to do, but we and the Philippines have elections in May 22. And we will not have integrity of elections without integrity of facts. Yeah, it's a very good point. It's a very good point that you can dial up the quality of the news people are getting. And also the idea that only negative, angry, overheated conversations go viral is kind of undercut by the existence of TikTok, which based on my experience is lots of fun. happy, silly shit that makes me feel okay. You mentioned the election. President Duterte says he's resigning next year. Fingers crossed. There will be an election, nay. What do we know about who might

come next or if it's a relative of his, perhaps? Two points. I think one is that the Duterte family has introduced something to national politics in the Philippines. It's never really happened before, which is this concept of substitution. You know, this family has held the southern city of Davao since 1988. And so what substitution means is that we don't know who the final candidates for presidency will be supposedly it ended a week ago, right? The Friday that I found out about the Nobel Prize was the last day of declaring your candidacy. But we don't know because the period of substitution goes until November 15th. So let's see what the Duterte's do then as they could substitute. But I think the second thing is that this is going to be a

battle for facts. Our elections is again your microcosm because 35 years after the Marcos family was chased out of the Philippines by a people power revolt and they fled to Hawaii, the son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Bongbong Marcos declared he is running for president. And, you know, Rappler has exposed his disinformation that works in 2019. We did a three-part series to just show how we are being insidiously manipulated to in plain side, revise history, right, polish the Marcos name. And here's the connection to geopolitical power play. When Facebook did its fourth take down in September last year, they took down an information operations from China. And they took it down for several reasons. One, it was creating fake accounts for the U.S.

elections using AI generated photos. But the main targets were Southeast. Asia, and it was most successful in the Philippines, where it was one already campaigning for the daughter of President Duterte, for president. So that was September 2020. It was also polishing the Marcos image, and it was attacking me and Rappler. So I have to thank Facebook for taking this down, but that is geopolitical power play. So they're actually already doing information operation September last year for our May 2020 elections. We already have evidence. happening. That is remarkable. Maybe we can trade you Donald Trump Jr. or maybe even Eric for Duterte's daughter. Just sort of swap them, get them off the field. I don't know. I'm just a

spitball in here. Last question. How to listeners support your work? Can they subscribe? Is there like a contribution jar? Like how does this work for them? Well, thank you for asking. You know, we like most news organizations, our business model crumbled, the advertising model. But now our readers have come to our rescue. You know, we had, we have a membership model, so I will send you a link, please. But I think more than that, you know, please look at where you are, your area of influence. Social media has made democracy a man-to-man woman-to-woman defense. And the lie spread faster, but civil society still moves at the pace of human comprehension and human action.

So in your area of influence, police for facts. I hate to use police. But, you know, please, it's kind of, I always, I'm writing it this book, right? So I went back to the honor code in the college I graduated from where we said every exam, we pledge on our honor that we don't cheat. But beyond that, that in our area of influence, if we see anyone violating, that we jump in and report them. I guess that's, you know, this is it. I think the Nobel Committee gave this to journalists because we are an existential moment. And the last time this prize went to a journalist, he languished in a Nazi concentration camp.

So we're there again. So please help us maintain keep the facts alive. That is a great, great admonition. Maria, thank you so much for the work you're doing. I know journalism is a team sport. So thank you to your entire team, who I know is working under duress 24 hours a day, cranking out articles about, you know, some scary people. And, you know, it's amazing.

It's really, it's really incredibly powerful. And thank you again. Good luck to you as well. Thank you. Thanks again, Maria Ressa for joining the show. Thanks to our wizard friend, Jack is his first name. Wizard.g.g.n.n.n. if you want to experience it in all its glory.

I just want to learn that like he's like canceled for some horrible things. Yeah, that's going to suck. Disclamer, we didn't know. Yeah. If we have a bunch of Kiwis tweeting at us, we didn't know. Yeah, I didn't read that many articles about the last. He has sort of like a bulleted resume and one of them just says, living work of art. He's describing himself.

That's fine. I'll take it myself like that. Yeah, me too. Awarded the Queen's Service Medal, 2009. Well, that's legit. Okay, so he vets. All right. Marie Arresta, amazing woman.

Incredible. And Rappler, people should support. Yeah. You know. Come up with a subscription. And the one thing I'll foot to stop me with this is that great video of her learning about winning the award. In part, because she's talking like Southeast Asia needs, she was talking to other journalists from Southeast Asia. Like, I mean, all regions need this, but like, man, it takes some guts in that part of the world to be like a real investigative, unbowed journalist.

So, yeah, I mean, hopefully she, there are many other people that share in that award and, yeah, just a bit of this. Yeah. When the dude you're reporting on is, you know, his lackeys are killing people in the streets. Killing people. And putting signs on them as threats to others. Yeah, it's real bravery. The best is there's a, there's a YouTube up of the Nobel Committee calling her. Yeah, so in the video, when she learns about it, she's being interviewed by this guy, Ian Yee, who was an Obama Foundation leader from Malaysia, right? another tough place. And what's so funny about this video, everybody should watch it because it's super heartwarming because she is it, it looks like you're pretty ordinary daytime Zoom,

you know, like a Zoom panel like there's like four boxes. And suddenly like one woman is like crying and they're like they don't know what's going on. She's like, I just won the Nobel Peace Prize. And it's like, think about when you've been interrupted in a Zoom and it's like, I'm sorry. You know, my dog barked or like the, you know, the garbage trucks outside. That's a pretty good like thing to drop on your Zoom. It will be announced that you are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021. And we will come back to you later with more information. But I would be delighted to hear your immediate spontaneous reaction to this news.

I'm speechless. Thank you so very much. I'm glad to hear. And please, Maria, you must not tell others about this until 11 o'clock. when the news is officially broken from here. Is that fine? Yes, until 11 o'clock. Until 11 o'clock.

Great. Okay, I have to say goodbye now. He sounds delighted. She's so great and such a human. No, my favorite is me. He's like, I'd like to hear your spontaneous reaction. Because it's not spontaneous. It's so dry.

Please be spontaneous. Yes. Good. It's so good. Are we still on? Okay, we're out. There's good. Good to see you. Talk to guys next week. Potsave the world is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.