Pod Save the World - Why is the US air dropping aid to Gaza?

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the futility of aerial aid drops by the US in Gaza, Kamala Harris’ speech calling for an immediate ceasefire, Netanyahu rival Benny Gantz’s visit to Washington, and do a preview of President Biden’s State of the Union address. Then they discuss the breakdown of order in Haiti as gangs overrun prisons, a German audio leak about long range missiles for Ukraine posted by Russian state media, France enshrining abortion into their constitution, the thousands of Russians who came out for Alexei Navalny’s funeral, repercussions for multiple US leakers of classified intelligence, and Tucker Carlson’s about face on Putin. Then Tommy speaks with Kholood Khair, a Sudanese political analyst and founder of the Confluence Advisory think tank about the civil war in Sudan. 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 Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Roads. Ben, did you see right before we came in, the Department of Justice filed a superseding indictment with more charges for Bob Menendez? I saw that on the elevator walking up. I checked our text chain and I was like, what? But I guess these are just the Qatar. Yeah. That corruption, which you read about now turning into an indictment. Yeah, he got something of value to benefit Qatar. I think they're...

What a surprise. What a shock. What a shock that Bob Menendez is corrupt, yeah? I texted a former... Menendez staffer, who's now got a very difficult job in the Biden administration, asking if you ever wished he was back in the good old days, you know, defending the gold bars shipments. And he said no. But I mean, again, I think I've mentioned this before. But like the funny thing is that I had to deal a lot with the Menenda staff over the years. And the time period in which we did the Iran nuclear deal and the Cuban normalization, he was under indictment for his last corruption charge and therefore was no longer. the chairman of the Farm Relations Committee. And I've always wondered how much more painful that period of time in 2015, 2016, would have been on Cuban Iran if we had like full bore Bob Menendez, who was also probably

spying for multiple foreign governments at the time. Yeah, well, it kind of probably would have depended on how many gold bars you had to give them. Yeah, yeah. But we'll see. But we got a great show for you guys today. We are going to talk about the latest from the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Vice President Harris's strong call for a ceasefire and Netanyahu.

whose rival Benny Gaunt's visit to D.C. Ben, I wish I was there for some of those meetings. That must be kind of fun. We're also going to talk about the State of the Union. What's happening in Haiti, why German military leaders should probably not talk about weapons transfers on open lines, on secure communications lines. That was a good one. The turnout to Alexei Navalny's funeral abortion rights in France and why it's a bad idea to leak classified documents. Talk about some of the fallout here for some of these service members who are getting some jail. Yeah, yeah. It seemed like a fun idea at the time, but it's a bit of a tail to it.

A bit of a tail. Yeah, long tail in this case. And then one last check-in with our friend Tucker Carlson about his trip to Moscow. Not enough. Not enough. We need more content from Tucker. And then, Ben, I did a great interview just before you showed up with a woman in Palut Herr. She's a Sudanese political analyst and the founding director of confluent advisory. It's a think and do tank that used to be based in Khartoum and now is sort of based to everywhere. But she's doing an amazing explainer on, you know, the Civil War in Sudan. how it happened, who the warring parties are, how the UAE is funneling weapons into the conflict, how little the international community is doing, and how different the sort of outside game is, right? Because we talked about how 2003, 2004, there was the saved R4 movement. It was this global star-studded activism, and now there's just nothing like it. Yeah, I'm really interested to listen to that interview, and I've been thinking a lot about that last point. I was even talking to somebody about over the weekend that it's a failure, that there's not more attention, but it's also a

of how the world is so much more just so much more shit going on than even back then. Yeah. When there was a lot of shit going back then, but like there's just so limited bandwidth for people to process all this conflict and war and instability. So we should pay more attention, though, so yeah. It's a great interview. I hope you guys will all check it out. But let's start in Gaza and go to the humanitarian situation because over the weekend,

the United States actually started air dropping humanitarian supplies. into Gaza. So the initial wave of airdrops was 66 bundles containing 38,000 meals. That will likely be the first of many such air drops, but even U.S. officials will tell you that air dropping supplies into Gaza is both inefficient and totally insufficient given the need. The fact that the U.S. had to resort to air drops tells you how dire the humanitarian situation is. Here's a couple of statistics that helped tell that story further. The U.N. says one in six children under the age of two in Gaza is acutely malnourished. 80% of mothers in Gaza are skipping meals to feed their kids. The World Bank says up to 96% of Gaza's agricultural infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. And the UN says

that an average of just 98 trucks of aid crossed into Gaza per day in February, which is just way, way under the goal of at least 200 trucks per day. But even less of that aid is making into northern Gaza, where there are several hundred thousand people who've remained there since the Israeli invasion, and they've basically been cut off. The U.S. UN and the World Food Program have suspended operations in northern Gaza because they can't secure the convoys. So there was a horrific incident last week where 100 Gazans were killed and over 700 were wounded after Israeli soldiers opened fire on these desperate people who swarmed an aid convoy and were trying to get flour and other supplies off the truck. There's also a very real problem of

gangs taking the aid, hoarding it, reselling it at astronomical markups to desperate people. So Ben, I mean, just stepping back here, like, what do you think is? says about the U.S.-Israel relationship at this point that we can't convince them to allow more a-trucks into Gaza this far into the war, and we're now having to air-drop. I think it's the ultimate sign of a broken policy that has become both like a strategic and moral abomination, you know, that we're in a situation where we're arming, you know, it's the obvious point, but we're arming the government that is dropping bombs on these people with U.S. bombs and then we're trying to drop U.S. food that is, let's face it, like a drop in the

ocean of the need in Gaza. And it kind of come at this differently to be specific for people, like to not even respond to all the bits and pieces of news. It's like, well, what should the U.S. be doing differently? What could we be doing differently? Well, look, I think we could vote for a ceasefire resolution of the United Nations and kind of just fully have the position of the world and the quote-unquote rules-based order that we always talk about be behind a ceasefire. We could be saying, you know, the Biden administration clearly doesn't want this Rafa military operation to go forward. They could just say no military support, no more assistance to the Israeli government if that operation goes forward. They could, because there are concerns clearly in the Biden administration about the far-right nature of the Israeli government,

well, Smotrich, the finest minister who's like the extreme far-right settler leader, Ben Gavir, the national security minister we've talked about, you could sanction those people. We've sanctioned some settler leaders, but these are the actual leaders, you know. These are all tools available. And then to the Hamas point, then you could say, you know what we're going to do? Having taken this principle of position, we're going to pull together all the countries in the region and the Europeans to say, we're going to have to really redouble our efforts to go after Hamas's funding and to try to invest in an alternative Palestinian leadership. that's not just the sclerotic PA, but it's like a bottom-up, you know, Palestinian civil society leadership that can emerge into a political leadership as

and kind of really lean on Hamas, obviously on the hostage circumstance, isolate them in that regard, and try to have a viable plan for what the future of Gaza is. These are available options. There's no requirement, you know, that we back Israel while disagreeing with the policy, you know. And look, might that fail to move the Israelis, this Israeli government? I think it might, but better to be in the right place principally and morally and strategically globally. And then I also want to respond to like, you know, like as I'm sure you do, Tommy, like I get I get feedback, you know, from people that I, many from my respect, really, just like,

I don't understand why you're not focused more on the hostages or why. there's not more understanding that Israel shouldn't have to live next to people that want to destroy them. I take that very seriously, but what I'd say is, first of all, the hostage is, the hostage point is the one that is most concerning to me because this military operation is not rescuing the hostages. So I just don't. In fact, a lot of them might have died. In the military operation. So I get psychologically that there's a wanting to center their humanity in the same way. way that there's a centering of the humanity in Gaza. That is correct morally and practically,

but that doesn't lead inherently to supporting this military operation. I actually think it leads the other place. But then the more profound point I just make is this Israeli government is not a trustworthy partner. And even if you are someone who has an affinity for Israel, the country, and Israelis as people, that doesn't require you to support this Israeli government. And what they're doing in Gaza, which is so obviously wrong. I mean, I don't know how you can look at this and say, because then the question becomes, well, if the reason that we need to support them is because we don't like Hamas, well, how many Palestinians have to die? Like, at what point, okay, 30,000 is not enough, 15,000 kids, when it's 100,000 because of famine? Like, at what point does it become

evident that this Israeli government is not going to embed kind of restrain inhumanity? in its military operation. Yeah. And yeah, I want to talk more about the alternatives to BV and also the U.S. response in one second. But just to like drive this home, I mean, there's reports that people are eating animal feed. At least 15 kids have died of malnutrition

or dehydration at the hospital in northern Gaza at this point. And, you know, you can't secure these aid trucks into the Gaza Strip in part because some of the local, yes, Hamas employed police officers were targeted in air strikes. So they're like, no, we're absolutely. not going to continue doing our jobs if we're at risk. And we also reached out to Jan Inklund from the Norwegian Refugee Council,

who was just on the ground in Gaza, working with his aid organization to get a better sense of what the situation is like. Here's a clip. We value that the U.S. cares for the population and has now even done air drops. But an airdrop from one of these Hercules C-130 planes, it's one truck, really. three planes, three trucks.

We need 500 trucks, loads in. And of course, the most primitive, the least targeted way of feeding a population is to drop pallets on their heads and then hope that the right people distribute. Of course, it's a survival of the fittest. that kind of a situation, the poorest women and children will not get the relief in that kind of a chaotic distribution. And then, you know, Ben, Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland went to the Senate floor today, you know, sort of a middle of the road, relatively centrist Democrat. He was furious about the restrictions on aid trucks getting it to Gaza. And he laid out some of the

similar things that you had just mentioned about what Biden should do about it. Here's a clip from that speech. Unless and until the Netanyahu government allows more relief into Gaza, the President Biden needs to invoke Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act. Madam President, here's the exact language of that section of the Foreign Assistance Act. Quote, no assistance shall be furnished under this chapter of the Arms Export Control Act to any country when it is made known to the president that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts

directly or indirectly the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance. So it just speaks to the fact that there's tools available that could be used right now. And what's frustrating is sometimes in their talking points, the administration's pivots to these things. They say, well, you know, there are conditions for human rights violations and well yeah but if you if you don't enforce them then what's the

point you know and what I think Senator Van Halen saying and look consider aid trucks because we what if the U.S. was like you know what we're going to do we are going to in Egypt with our partners load up 500 aid trucks and just drive them to that crossing and you know is Israel going to stop them you know like because everything is just asking for a couple more trucks and You could just do things, you know. We're currently just airdropping. We're currently just air dropping. So we are doing something that is just we've decided to go around the Israeli government in some way.

But as you heard, just dropping pallets of food on people beyond the optic of it being a little dehumanizing, right? Of course. More than a little. Like it's just like we're just dropping food on people. Yeah, it's dangerous. And it's not at a scale that makes the difference it needs to be made. So I think it just, it is the case that there are alternatives. of Zaville. Yeah. So Vice President Harris delivered a speech over the weekend where she

forcefully called for a ceasefire. Here's a clip from those remarks. And given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table. This will get the hostages out and get us. significant amount of aid in. This would allow us to build something more enduring, to ensure Israel is secure, and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to dignity, freedom, and self-determination. So just to be clear with folks, I mean, the vice president is not proposing any new policy there. The administration has been pushing for a six-week ceasefire for a while. President Biden and other officials have talked about it publicly, including in the Seth Myers interview that we

clipped on this show last week. But the way the vice president spoke there was forceful. It was phrased as a demand. It was delivered at an event about civil rights. So like the context felt different to people. And the result was she got cheers from an audience at a time when every other public event is getting protested. And speakers are getting shouted down, including President and Biden. And I just think like that the speech and that, the speech and that, reaction highlights the flaws with the administration's hug-Bee-Bee-B strategy and not being wanting to be perceived as disagreeing with Netanyahu publicly. It's literally the difference between getting cheered and protested at your own event over the same policy. Yeah. Because we have to

occasionally be a little light here. It was like Jason Kelsey at the Bill's game, like in the audience, there's one guy that was really far enough. Yeah, yeah. Like, but anyway, in Pivin and serious, I think there's a point in which she represents a real difference in a point which she doesn't. To start with the doesn't, yeah, you're right. Their policy, which she then said in the next part of the speech is still that there be a six-week ceasefire around a negotiated release of hostages. And kind of what's weird about that policy is like after six weeks and everything starts

again. Well, the hope I think is that after six weeks it would be impossible to restart. That's exactly right. I think it's actually a smart play. They put all their chips on this play of like, get a six-week ceasefire, get a lot of aid in, and then use that time to kind of just try to more permanently end this through negotiation. If that works, as we talked about last week,

that would make things much better. If it doesn't, like, there's not really another plan. And the question is, like, how long can the humanitarian circumstances merit it? So you're right. What's interesting is that the policy is not different. Now, that leads to what is different. like she just talks about it differently. And, you know, naming something that is a bit uncomfortable,

hearing Joe Biden go out at press conference and being like, I think some of what they're doing is over the top, you know, which is about as critical as he's gotten as Israel, is very different than the emotion in her voice when she says, there must be a ceasefire. The Palestinians deserve self-determination. You can tell, and I'm not suggesting. He sounds like he's observing the events.

He sounds like, she's like trying to dictate them. Yeah, she's feeling the events and trying to do it. dictate them in trying to deliver a strong message. And she deserves, I think, again, real credit. I mean, some people have said, well, yeah, but it's no different. Well, she's not the president. So she's not able to make the policy. And I think that's the first time, you know, and again, this is not to say that Tony Blinken hasn't tried to be empathetic. But there's just such a real, like there's a connection between like how she seems to feel about the issue and what she's saying and the way she's saying it that has been missing. And frankly,

again, as you said, the fact that she got the response that she did, even though the policy hasn't changed, shows you that just doing that would make a difference. Absolutely. In clocking with people, we don't like what's going on. We want it to stop. And like the White House response, I mean, it's super frustrating in any White House when people try to find daylight between the president and his team or the president and the vice president. So they did a lot of work to be like, no, she was saying the exact same thing he did and kind of almost played down her remarks after the fact. NBC news reported that MSC officials actually might have softened some of the tone of Harris's speech. And then they, you know, someone told Politico that Harris's remarks were actually designed to put pressure on Hamas to accept the ceasefire deal because it's on the table. And like, I don't know, maybe that's true.

But something tells me that Hamas leaders sitting in some fucking tunnel somewhere probably weren't listening to the speech. I felt like a, you know, like as you were saying earlier, there's something that she felt and she wants to see the suffering end. But I don't look. Look, as someone, I want to see the administration do more substantively. I want them to stop with these unilateral arms transfers. I want to see conditions on future military aid. I'd love to see calls for, you know, Rochano was making the case that Hamas is not agreeing to these ceasefire deals because they want much longer duration ceasefires.

So if the U.S. started pressuring Israel on a three-month ceasefire, say, we're more likely to get that deal done. I'd be all for that. Like, the longer we can stop the fighting and get humanitarian. support in the better. But, you know, I was like, I saw that clip of the speech going around over the weekend. I knew it was the same policy, but I still was like, yes, this is good. Yeah.

Or on the Hamas point, maybe, like, the arsonists in Hamas, like, don't want to ceasefire because they know that what Israel is doing is massively validating among a lot of people, like their ideology of resistance, you know, like, and not saying that's right. I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying, why are we giving them this enormous agency over what's right or wrong? Like, this military operation is not working. And I don't feel like I need Hamas to make an agreement in order to confirm that this military operation should stop for everybody involved, for the Palestinian people,

for the Israeli people, even if they are out for vengeance, it's not working for them. and certainly for U.S. and global interest. So I just, would it be great if Hamas agreed to the maximum number of hostages release? Absolutely. I also think that stopping the military operation doesn't mean you don't keep trying to negotiate hostage releases. And frankly, if you're moving a bunch of aid in, getting a bunch of other actors into Gaza, it might be, you know, that might give you a different vehicle to try to approach this.

Yeah, maybe time for a more targeted, limited hostage rescue operation. Focus on hostages, you know. And then in terms of the White House dynamic you described, we've all been there. And look, it is what it is. It's pretty obvious. Like, she's in a bit of a different place, at least in terms of how she is interacting politically with the issue. Right.

And you can't really paper over that. You know, the policy hasn't changed, blah, blah, blah. Look, and it speaks again, what's weird about this. She got a good response. And they're trying to clean that up? I know. Like, we've been there in the White House. It's always bad when you're like, no, that thing that you think happened that was good didn't happen.

Well, and again, in full disclosure, like Joe Biden got out ahead of Barack Obama on coming out in favor of gay marriage. And it was a huge dust up and people were pissed at him for it. Right. So, like, we've all been there on the wrong side of these kind of issues, too. But I will, was worth pointing out that the American people are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the war. There was a Wall Street Journal poll out the other day. 42% of voters said that Israel has gone too far in pursuing Hamas. 19% said Israel hasn't gone far enough.

24% said Israel's response to Hamas has been about rights. But it's a growing number of people that are just concerned about the carnage. Yeah, that's some 19%. Yeah, I don't like those. Well, Trump kind of sits along those lines today. Yeah, he's like finished job. Sometimes you've got to do what you got to do. Yeah, he's just completely amoral about it.

So Ben, pretty much everyone in Washington, I think, is excited about the post-Met and Yahoo era of Israeli politics. One possible successor is a guy named Benny Gantz. Gans spent nearly 40 years in the Israeli military. That included 40 years as the chief of the general staff, which is basically the highest ranking professional soldier in the IDF. Gans got into politics in 2018. He served in a bunch of top political positions, including minister of defense. He was the alternate prime minister in that brief power sharing agreement with Netanyahu.

And then after the October 7th attack, Gantz joined Netanyahu's war cabinet. So that brings us to today. Gantz is visiting Washington on Tuesday, March 5th. He had meetings with the vice president, the national security advisor, Secretary of State and Defense. He was up on Capitol Hill. I think he met with Mitch McConnell, for example. So, Hararez reported that Gantz, the visit itself enraged Netanyahu,

and that B.B. Netanyahu told Israel's ambassador to the U.S. not to assist Benny Gans at all during his visit or to join any of his meetings. Some unity government. Some unity government. Also, Ben, some listeners might remember that back in 2015 Netanyahu went around Obama's back. Scheduled a joint address to Congress with Boehner and Mitch McConnell. So, Bibi getting pissed about Gans.

Shocked, shocks. Going behind his back to visit Washington. It's just, it's beautiful symmetry. I do love when karma happens like that. But what do you make of the Biden team inviting Gantz for a visit, knowing full well, this is going to be the reaction? Look, I think that it's got to be, it's an open secret that they'd much rather deal with the Prime Minister of Gantz than the Prime Minister of Nantyahu.

And also, by the way, Benny Gantz, he's a military guy. He, you know, he's probably someone who's much more qualified to have a conversation about, you know, things like aid deliveries and military strategy. Generally, then, yeah, then, yeah, it was just like a fucking Ron Dermer. Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Well, they sent Ron Dermar to have these conversations. I'm like, General Dermer, you know, this guy is not some expert on, you know, this guy was literally a political operative.

Right. So if people are wondering, what's a difference? I think it is totally the case that Benigantz is a pretty hard ass and has been throughout this operation in Gaza. So nobody should think this is like a peacenik. You would not like his policies on the two state solution or Gaza properly if they were spelled out. The reason why I still think it's far preferable to Netanyahu is Netanyahu is kind of uniquely been duplicitous with the United States government. You know, he, like dishonest, you know, what you just said, like working around presidents, like, constantly playing this far right politics game, whereas Gans has tried to play this center-right political, you know, coalition. So to me, yeah, it doesn't mean that, you know, Yitzik Rabin is now the prime minister of Israel again or Shimon Peres.

But I'd rather have like a more straight shooter center-right version of an Israeli leader than this. Netanyahu, this kind of corrupt, you know, guy that plays to the far right and kind of tries to undermine America. I don't think Benny Gans would be like trying to work around the U.S. president or, you know, so it'd be an improvement. Yeah, I mean, look, to your point, Benny Gantz has real military expertise. He's also not clinging to the job desperately to stay to prison. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, I would rather Nikki Haley be president than Donald Trump. I'm not saying either of them is, you know, but it's just like there is a world in which it's better to have someone that you disagree with

on a bunch of stuff who's not as, you know, unique. Uniquely terrible. Yeah. So Axios reported that Gantz got a ton of frustrated questions and criticism about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. They said that Gantz was surprised at how far apart the U.S. and Israel are when it comes to a potential operation, Rafa, the city in southern Gaza, that Netanyai. says he wants to come in next. So hopefully it was a meeting that was a wake-up call. Useful that he came to town there. Exactly. It confirms, well, anyway. Yeah, if he's surprised by that, he'd pick up any newspaper. What's going on? Ben, so the other big news for Biden this week is the state of the union coming

up on Thursday. You had the pleasure of working on this nightmare of a speech for eight years eight times during the Obama administration. So I wanted to play a quick clip of my favorite Obama State of the Union. I'm pretty sure you wrote this section. Here we go. My fellow Americans, the state of the union is strong. As we build roads here at home between Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, we must also forge ties abroad between Israelis and Palestinians and pave a proper pathway to peace. While we make historic investments in bridges forged with American iron and steel,

we must also fortify our allies with the Iron Dome Missile Defense System. From Keuk to Kiev, our resolve is resolute. our destiny daring and determined, our optimism obstinate. Where'd you summon those words from? Confirming that AI is going to replace all speech drivers. That is outstanding. I've been swearing too much on the show, I've got to stop.

But 11 labs, the AI software are used, will no longer allow me to make Biden voices. I wonder if it was because of that robocall thing. I think because of the election probably. Come on. Yeah, election deepfakes are getting additional attention. Like the joke that you're making that I think is, is hilarious and Favre and I

A joke for like only you and John Favre and I like have like in Cody Keenan like the there's every state of the union had like two parts right it had the domestic policy

and the foreign policy now and these were not equal real estate like we always like because the David Axelrods and David Plus of the world they're like the last thing we want to do is stand in front of all these people and talk about like you know

the conflict in X yeah Myanmar yeah and so you're fighting for real estate But every time there's this hilarious transition, and it's always a version of, and just as we're doing X at home, so must we do Y brought, like, every single year. And every year we're like,

we're going to come up with a better transition. And there is none. There's no better transition. The AI, I'm glad, recognizes it. And every year, Obama's like, we're going to do a short one this year. 30 minutes in and up. Never happened.

Every year, yeah, having worked on 8, which is like a, I think I've told you this joke I told Obama, which is working on eight state of the unions. I may be the only person who's done that as a speechwriter, but it's kind of like if you, and now we're going to get probably alienate, not alienate,

but lose most of our audience because it's both age and sports, but like it's kind of like in Bull Durham, Crash Davis, setting the record for minor league home runs. It just applies to longevity at a certain level that is not the principal level, you know? Great movie. Yeah.

Everyone should see that movie. But those processes were crazy. You remember you when you're working at the end of, like every single director in the NSC like cooks up a memo about why their thing should be in the state of the Union. Can you please say my country's name? Yeah. And it's all. And then it gets circulated and it's like, if you don't say this country's name, it's going to be a big fucking problem.

And then I go to like, you know, David Oxfram, like, we got to say the name of fictional country, you know. And then they're like, are you fucking crazy? Like, we can't do that. And then we wouldn't do it. And guess what? It was a big problem when he wouldn't say the name of this. Like one year he didn't mention like Latin America or something. And it was like, he had to like travel to Latin America because he didn't mention it in the State of the Union.

It's so good. It's also, you're right. It is mostly domestic speech, a foreign policy chunk. They throw, you know, the NSE nerds a bone. There's also the theater elements. You know, there's some like moving moment where you, everyone applauds for the person in the president's box. I like that stuff. I love that.

I'm a little campy. Well, so I just saw a report that Yulia Neval Nia, Alexei Navaldi's widow, was invited to attend, but apparently can't make it. That would have been powerful. I'm kind of curious what the backstory is there. But Ben, I mean, any like any of the favorite moments like that for you? And what do you expect from Biden on this? I imagine we'll get a lot of the supplemental funding bill, Ukraine, you know, Israel's support. We'll probably hear the word Indo-Pacific.

So the favorite moment for me ties to why it be good to have someone like Yulia Navalnya or Dasha, his daughter, is my favorite moment was in 2015, January 2015, we had as part of the key, Cuban normalization secured the release of Alan Gross, who was an older American man who was a USAID subcontractor who been put in prison. For a long time, right? Yeah, for years. By the time he was released. And he'd become a person of interest to Congress.

And actually, particularly to hardliners, right? Because the hardliners championed Alan Gross's case as evidence of, you know, the Cuban government being terrible for having locked him up. he was working with the Cuban Jewish community. So like there was a like a powerful support for him within the kind of Jewish community in Congress and within, you know, those constituencies. And so Obama did this Cuban normalization, which was, you know, popular with some people, but deeply and popular with others. But then when you have the embodiment of it, when you, yeah, exactly, or a lot of Republicans. But when you get to the moment where you're like, and here, because of what we've done and normalizing. relations with Cuba, we can welcome Alan Gross to the state of the union. You both have a nice

human moment where Alan Gross deserves after these years in prison, this kind of sense of kind of, you know, the validation of the country. But also it's like, what do you do if you're Mark Arrubio? Right. Do you not stand in applaud for, you know, and so the way to be skillful in a human level, and frankly, you know, I don't think it's crass. It's because I think Julian Navalnya would support it is that I'd have people up there, you know, Ukrainians who've suffered acutely in the war, the Navalny family, like the people that will shame those Republicans because what are they going to do? Are they, if we, if there's a veteran who's lost, you know, an amputee, and again, I'm not, this is not using people because these people support these causes, you know, a Ukrainian

parent whose children have been abducted into Russia. Yes. Like, if you have people like that there and they're like, we need to support these people. It is both a powerful human moment. And it's also like, what do you do, Mike Johnson? Do you not stand up and applaud? Is everybody going to look at you and wonder like why you either are heartless or gutless? Yeah. Because you're heartless if you don't stand up and applaud and you're gutless if you stand up and applaud and then don't bring a bill to the floor. Yeah, that's a good point. You couldn't get Fidel Castro. You couldn't, I bet you put that memo in. Yeah. Yeah. Fidel just smoked a cigar. Yeah. Well, that would be another way to go. No, to your point. I mean, the first lady has like special

guest with her in the box. Members of Congress also invite guests. So like Matt Gites will have some intern he met at the bar last night. Wildest one ever? Yeah. Ahmed Chalaby. Whoa. Curveball? No, that, yeah, fucking Bush people had him in Laura Bush's box. It turned out he was like an Iranian agent. Nice. Well done. One of these things that proves it like, I, no, he was, maybe he was. I just point is that none of these scandals stick to these guys. Yeah, no. But, okay, but to your point about Speaker Mike Johnson. So I saw that Evan Gerskovich's parents are attending the State of the Union as a guest of Speaker Mike Johnson. Evan is the Wall Street Journal reporter

who's been held hostage by Putin for nearly a year. It is odd to me that Johnson would not see the irony of hosting Evan while he's simultaneously giving Putin this enormous gift by blocking Ukraine aid. There's a number of family members of American hostages being held in Gaza who are attending his guests of members of Congress. One of those guests is Yaya Alexander,

the mother of Aidan, Alexander. Adon was serving in the IDF and was stationed right near the Gaza border. He called his mom on the morning of October 7th right as the attack began. Right before we like hang up, I told him, listen, Edan, I'm here. I'm with you. Don't forget about it. Whenever you want to text me or to call me, I'm here.

I'm by the phone. I love you. And we hang up. And that was the last time that I heard the sound of his voice. I didn't know. It will be the last time that I will hear my son, you know. I cannot breathe. I stopped breathing since October 7th.

Today it's 150 days. This is pure hell for all of us. We need to get Edans back. And this is something that we are going to say again and again and again. Also in D.C. To tell everyone, listen, we're still in it. We still leave October 7th. my son, all the other loved ones over there, they are alive and they are still waiting

to come to come back, like to be free from this. So, you know, the State of Union is a bit of an anachronistic event, right? Like fewer people watch, fewer people consume the whole thing. But stories like that, moments like that, the guests in these box, the guests of members of Congress, I mean, I think they do really make it a powerful night still and something worth watching. Yeah, and I think it's important to have. constant visibility on on people exactly like that and and that's the the the best use of this is

just just keep a spotlight on things that you know people shouldn't look away from yeah keep a spotlight on the human beings you're hurt or helped by policies they put a human face on it and and again it's a reminder there's a lot of americans you know they're american hostages um they're they're americans in gaza um and just because they're Israeli americans or Palestinian Americans doesn't mean they're not Americans yeah absolutely if you want to join us as we talk about the State of the Union on March 7th, you can watch along on the Pod Safe America YouTube channel, or if you're in the Friends of the Pod Discord community, you can submit questions for us in the main chat. It is very fun. Group Thread is one of my favorite

things to do here. It's a great way to watch a speech, get more context. Here's some jokes. Head to crooked.com slash friends to learn more about joining the Friends of the Pod community or just subscribe to the Pod Save America YouTube. Before we go to break, so Ben, the Cricket Store's latest collection is all about protecting, reproducing. rights and telling lawmakers to keep their bands to themselves. So we got a no trespassing collection with four different designs. I think you're going to speak to you. They're each inspired by a different state.

So there's the stay out of my swamp shirt for Florida, the stay out of my whole collection for Arizona, the stay out of my prickly pear collection for Texas, and the stay out of my strip collection for Nevada. Which one do you prefer? What was the, if I answer that question, I will be. be canceled. Okay. I don't think I'm a loud dance. I said prickly pear. Okay. Then I'll second that, right? I wasn't invited that brainstorm meeting. I want to be clear. But that's just in love it said. It's some excellent merch. It's some excellent merch. It's some excellent merch. I'm bored.

A portion of the proceeds will go to the Votesave America's Fuck Bands Fund. It's currently supporting abortion rights organizations across key states. Go to crooked.com slash store to shop. So Ben, the security situation on the ground in Haiti is just catastrophically bad. it has gotten steadily worse and worse and worse since Jovenile Voice, the president of Haiti, was assassinated back in 2021. So the United Nations has been advancing a plan to send a multinational peacekeeping force to Haiti. The backbone of that force would be made up of police officers from Kenya. Last Thursday, the Prime Minister of Haiti, Ariel Henri, flew to Nairobi to finalize a deal that would help basically authorize the deployment of this Kenyan police force. There was a court ruling in

Kenya that had been blocking it, so they needed to cut this deal. When he left, all hell broke loose. Armed gangs, including one led by a guy named Barbecue, basically took over Porta Prince. They said they wanted to topple the government. They wanted to prevent Henri from returning to Haiti. By the way, he was appointed, not elected after Moy's assassination, and he's refused to schedule election since. A lot of Haitians don't view the government as legitimate. But these gangs attacked a couple of jails. They allowed 4,000 inmates to escape. Haiti's government ended up declaring a 72-hour state of emergency. So the situation right now is just, I mean, it's completely lawless. The Haitian police force is about 9,000 people that's nowhere near enough to combat this level

of violence in a country of 11 million people. It's not entirely clear to me what a thousand more police from Kenya will be able to do in this instance, assuming they get to Haiti at all. It's certainly a good start. But, you know, President Biden has ruled out. sending U.S. troops to Haiti for good reason. The U.S. has pledged money, but I don't know. Like, it's just every time we talk about this, the situation gets more dire. And I'm not sure what the endgame is at this point. No.

And, you know, it's the definition of a failed state. That's a term that kind of gets thrown around, you know, kind of wonky. But like, this is actually a place where there's not really a governing authority. And therefore, it's just, you know, might makes right. And if it's barbecue one day, you know, that's who it is. And, and, um, in that case, and look, I want to just be clear, like, we could do like a several hour podcast on why that dynamic is rooted in a history in which like Haitians themselves are not to blame. Oh, absolutely. You know, I mean, this, you know, the fingerprints of the U.S.,

France, the West white people is all over this. In the current moment, the question is, how do you deal with a failed state of this scale? And again, in a functioning, you know, international community, this would be a case where I think you just need to figure out some way to negotiate a significant international presence and assistance mission that ties into kind of some Haitian civil society that can lead to a governing authority. This, This is the beginning of that. I think just having, you know, the Kenyans at least are showing up without, you know, the kind of corruption or tradeoffs that have had to be made by various Haitian security forces

and gangs. You hope that they can sustain that and therefore just provide some stabilizing entity. It's not clearly going to be enough, but can you build out from that into something that's a larger-scale and more successful international mission that ties into kind of a non-gang related governing authority. Yeah. Well, to your point, I think we want to figure out a way to do a deeper dive on this sometime soon. It gets more of the context. So stay tuned for that. Back in Europe, Ben, there's a very kind of Cold War era feeling scandal brewing in Germany right now. Margarita Simoñan, the head of a Russian state TV network called RT, posted a leaked recording of German

military officials discussing how Taurus long-range cruise missiles could be used by Kiev against Russian forces. So this audio, it is the head of Germany's Air Force talking with three other top officers. They're talking about how the deployment of these missiles would only be possible with the participation of German soldiers on the ground because actually training the Ukrainian soldiers to use them would take a long time. Anyway, this tape leaks. The German chancellor had previously said, Olaf Schultz, had said that Germany will absolutely not be delivering these missiles to Ukraine. The concern is they can strike Moscow potentially. They're too long range and they're worried about them being used for offensive operations within Russia and Germany being blamed.

So now the Germans are saying they're launching an investigation into how this audio fell into Russian hands. I suspect that investigation will start and end with because these guys were using like a WebEx unsecured program and not, I don't know, whatever military comms they normally would use. But the leak also comes right after French president Emmanuel Macron said that Europe shouldn't rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine, which is kind of a bizarre and influence. comment that seemingly was vetted by no one else beforehand. So, Ben, this whole thing made me think back to 2014. When audio of a conversation between a top Obama administration official named, Tori and Newland,

appeared on YouTube. She was talking to the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. They were disparaging the European Union's lack of support for Ukraine at the moment. What do you think Putin has to gain from plucking out this German audio and leaking it on to the, into the, well, to R.T.

in this case. Well, so in that case, uh, that was a really interesting case because I remember coming to work. The Toria case. Yeah, the Toria case.

It came to me first because it was a community, it was seen as a communications issue. It was like, there was a press story, you were all these press stories because he basically just put this up on YouTube. And, and so you know,

you know what it's like when it's weird, it's like a policy thing, but it's actually coming in from a communications store. and what she, so Tori Newland, assistant secretary of state for Europe at the time, was talking on a cell phone, which I'm sure she regrets, with Jeff Piot, the U.S. ambassador in Kiev,

and there were two things that stood out. One is she was talking about who could be prime minister of Ukraine. That's right. And she said, Yachts would be good, Yotsen Yuc, who, by the way, ended up becoming prime minister of Ukraine. So it sounded like the U.S. was picking Ukraine's leader, validating Putin's theory that we were engineering regime change.

You know, what she was doing is what a diplomat does is thinking about like, well, this shit hits a fan, like who's, you know, like she's, you know, so you can debate whether she should have been even having that conversation, but I think she would say it was more just like you make all kinds of plans and speculate all kinds of ways about who could be a political leader.

But so that served the particular interest of showing like some validation of some Russian conspiracy theory. Then the second piece was the EU wanted to do something different than Tori did, and she said, fuck the EU. that's right um and that created a huge problem because i remember angloa merkle was like what the hell this is your chief diplomat to europe who's saying fuck europe and we troy i think i'd apologize and like

obamma had to call merkle and like but the point is i tell that story for two reasons one it was this threshold i mean one of the you know i think a lot of people know that there's information that is collected you know but what russia's done that's different is they release it, you know? So there are even some conversations you might have that are like not sensitive, but they're about foreign policy, but like the Russians know it anyway. So maybe you're just doing it an open line because you're like, it's not the end of the world. They know it. But it is the end of the world if they release it, you know. It's embarrassing. But then also like what is the policy objective? And here I think, you know, he wants to show, just think about what his

objectives. He wants to show European, you know, this kind of rudderless European policy. there are differences inside of Europe about how to approach this. Anything that is like, you know, to carry forward the Tory example, anything that shows division within the coalition opposing him and they kind of validate some narrative of his, that's why he's doing it. Yeah, it's a good point. And, you know, listen, Putin didn't love those comments by Macron about setting Western troops.

That's why he, again, threatened to use nuclear weapons. More broadly, the French and the Germans have been in a bit of a pissing match over Germany's feeling that the French are not providing enough aid. The Germans gave 17.7 billion euros so far. France said they gave 2.6 billion euros. They ended up releasing these figures after some German think tank publisher report saying that the French had only given 635 million euros. This is from a really good political report on the issue. So there's been some back and forth there. I did see in response to this dust up, this tourist missile can travel 300 miles that is some sort of like stealth technology. It's designed to hit hardened targets in bunkers. And I guess

these generals were talking about whether it could hit the Kerch Bridge, which links Crimea to Russia, which has been, you know, a big target that the Ukrainians have gone after a bunch. But in the wake of this coming out, the German foreign minister, Annalina Beyerbach, called on the German government to intensively reconsider that decision and consider giving the tourist missile to Ukraine. In response, Olaas Schultz is basically like, no, and shut up, this is my decision. But it is, it's highlighting fractures between Germany and France and within this German coalition. So pretty useful politically probably for Putin. Exactly.

And that's the point. You want to kind of sow division, may people not trust each other. You know, it is interesting on that as questions. I'm a little bit, I'm sympathetic to Olaf Schultz. Like, Germany, I think, has provided more military assistance than any other country other than the U.S. And you wouldn't know that because, like, Boris Johnson and every British politician is constantly flying to Kiev. beating their chest. Emmanuel Macron is constantly holding summits.

And somehow the Germans end up getting all the shit. And they're literally writing bigger checks and sending more stuff. And by the way, hosting a lot more Ukrainian refugees. Like they're spending billions of euros on that. What's interesting with the Byerbach thing is she's a green. And it's interesting that the German greens are these hawks, you know. Love it. It kind of runs.

Yeah, it's always been an interesting phenomenon to me that like the green party is like wants to send all the weapons, you know. Also interesting cert speaking the strange bedfellows. In the White House last week, in the Oval Office of Joe Biden, is Georgia Maloney, the one-time Mussoluni fan-turned Prime Minister of Italy, who's pretty good on Ukraine policy, surprisingly. Yeah, I'm just going to mention that clip you sent me about the Georgia on my mind or something. Yeah, they start.

So Biden's like, we played Ray Charles, Georgia on my mind, I think, when she walked in or something. And she was just like, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was trying to imagine her face on that. But look, I'll say, like, clearly what he's doing is two things. Like, he's trying to just shore up the Ukraine coalition. But also, like, I think what they've been trying to do is have, like, right-wing Europeans to, because that might be better with MAGA people, you know.

So they had, you know, and some of it, you know, like the Tories they had talking to the Republicans on the Hill. That's good point. I think Liz Tross probably was involved. And so I think this is like a bank shot there. I do think we should not put too glossier sheen around Georgia Maloney. Maybe she hasn't brought out the jackboots and she's still supporting Ukraine. But like there's some pretty harsh stuff happening in Italy related to basically vulnerable people, immigrants, LGBT community. You know, so I don't know.

There's a real poll. T-Kare, I understand. but like I hope that we temper our affinity in this case. Totally with you there. Let's use a little good news again from our buddies in France. So France will become the first country in the world to enshrine the right to an abortion into its constitution. A joint session of Parliament overwhelmingly approved the measure with a vote of 780 to 72. So I can't believe they have that many people in Parliament.

And the event culminated in a longstanding ovation in the chamber. The reminder, part of the reason this is happening is it was a drive. response to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade in the Dobbs decision. Congratulations, Supreme Court for getting that done. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Brett Kavanaugh for inspiring the French. Yeah, a French senator who filed the amendment in the first place, woman named Melanie Vogel said, quote, I was inspired by the fact that in the U.S. abortion rights were not in the Constitution. Reproductive and sexual rights are shrinking in the world. And here today, we want to show that this is not the only path that you can follow. It can be reversed. So I am very happy for

our friends in France for getting this done, but also once again embarrassed by the ridiculous backwards reactionary path that U.S. politics is on because it's abortion rights. Now states are coming from contraception. They're coming for IVF. The list goes on and on. Yeah, it just is embarrassing. I think the one thing to watch, Tommy, is whether this spreads other European countries, which it might. I know some people who are kind of campaigners in this space. And, and, you know, when the French, a big, you know, player in Europe obviously makes this move. And by the way, like a, you know, heavily Catholic, well, in the history, at least a country, I think you might see similar moves in other European countries. And I hope there are. I hope this effort of codifying

it constitutionally is powerful. I mean, shit, we thought we'd done that here with the 14th Amendment. I guess we hadn't. So we have to go back at it. But you hope this is contagious. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a powerful way to motivate your base and get people out. Let's talk about Russia because Alexei Navalny's funeral was held last Friday, March 1st in Moscow, two weeks after he was pronounced dead by prison authorities for what they said were natural causes, but everyone, including President Biden, assumes, was a state-sanctioned murder. Despite the atmosphere of fear of warnings from the Kremlin that people could face arrests, the heavy police presence, thousands of people came out to publicly mourn Navalny. They stood in line for hours to lay flowers at his grave, and they kept doing so for days after, there are these really unbelievable pictures showing where he was buried that now looks like it's just completely covered in a gigantic mound of flowers, several feet tall. During the funeral on Friday, a report said you could hear chance of no to war and other Navalny's slogans, which is incredibly brave in Russia.

Navalny's wife and children could not be there because it's frankly just too dangerous for them to travel back to Russia, but his widow posted a message on Twitter, thank you people for coming out writing, quote, many people wonder why Alexei fought. so hard and never gave up for your sake, for the beautiful, brave and honest people who now come in an endless cue to say goodbye to him. Thank you. This is the true love of the people. According to a human rights monitoring group, over 100 people were detained across the country at events paying tribute to Navalny. But overall, these events went on pretty peacefully. Ben, I mean, we were sort of all texting about this at the end of last week. The crowds were shocking to me. They were

surprisingly moving, given the obvious risk to anybody who attends these events and knowing that you're probably getting picked up on, if not that day, on some sort of video camera. So now you've been ID'd for the future. But what did you make out of the turnout and what it might say about, you know, the enduring strength of the Nalmany movement? Well, it's interesting. I recall for me, you know, I did that podcast with Jana Namsova, whose father, Boris Nemtsov, was the other prominent oppositionist, literally assassinated by Putin. And we, you know, I remember, that one of the episodes of the show was basically about after Nemtsov was assassinated, Jana started to notice this mountain of flowers that started to build at the site of his assassination.

And this was not even around a funeral. This is just people being like, you know what, like fuck this. And it was an enormous amount of flowers. And the reason I tell that story is not to plug the podcast. I mean, people have already heard me do that. It's because I think we make a mistake sometimes, you know, every now and then there'll be like a public opinion poll from Russia and it'll be like Putin is wildly popular I don't think there's any way to really measure public opinion in a you know gangster police state you know and and this is a sign that there are

because for every I was incredibly moved like you were Tommy that there were thousands of people being seen in public and knowing that their face is being you know recorded by facial recognition technology that was probably going to be held against them, you know, for the near future. If that many people are willing to take that risk, to me that suggests that there's like probably 10 other people for each one of those people that feel the same way, but are just like, yeah, I'm not really willing to go down there.

So to me, it's not just about the incredible bravery of those people and what a testament that is to Alexei Navalny. It's a sign that there's an even bigger political opposition. And they may be people that are, you know, like maybe they, we tend to think of as binary. they like hate Putin and love Navalny. There are people that might be like Putin adjacent, but they're like, you know what? And Navalny was right. Like, this is fucked up.

I shouldn't kill the guy. Yeah, we killed the guy. And that's wrong. And so I think it's a sign. We should be reminded that there are Russians that oppose this, this being the war and Putinism and everything. And it's probably bigger than we think it is. And that you don't know what the thing is that's going to remove the jenga piece that kind

of breaks the fear factor that allows more of those people to come out. But something could happen. I mean, the reason. Putin killed him is for that reason. It's because he knew that he had a base of support in this country. And it's going to endure, by the way. I think he will be, you know, they'll be an Alexei Navalny Square one day, you know. I mean, that's kind of what I took away from it.

Yeah, and it was, I mean, obviously, the events were in Moscow, and a lot of the reporting was out of Moscow, and it talked about how people felt the sense of solidarity and togetherness and, I don't know, just content being together. But I think one of the strengths of Navalny was his ability and willingness to get outside of Moscow and travel to all 11 time zones and appeal to people in more rural, communities and build support there. So yeah, I think you're right. It's probably an indication of a much broader and deeper sense of support for Navalny. Some of the most moving anecdotal reporting

was people that had traveled, like long distances to be there. Yeah. You know, from like Siberia. I mean, that, you know, the guy had a national base, not just Moscow based. Yeah, he did. A couple of things before the interview. So just a quick public service address for members of the Air Force who have access to classified information and are tempted to share it with people outside of the organization. Do not. Two reasons. Why, Ben, first. So the Massachusetts Air National Guard member, Jack Toshera, the so-called Discord leaker that we talked so much about a while back,

pleaded guilty on Monday and will be sentenced to between 11 and 17 years in prison. So not worth it to shit post on Discord if you get 11 to 17 years in prison. It was good content for this podcast. It was in for the Washington Post. For a few weeks, yeah. But yeah, no, I mean, in all seriousness, like, there are consequences that people sometimes can forget that. We're trying to impress their friends and stuff. By the way, it also shows that, like, you know, Trump is going to be facing prosecution and, you know, for the same kind of thing.

He didn't post it on Discord, but he actually posted some of this stuff on social media. Yeah, he did back in the day. Back in the day. So anyway, hopefully there's not two standards of justice in this country, but count me as concerned. So also this week, we learned that another Air Force employee has been arrested for leaking classified information online. This was a 63-year-old guy named David Franklin Slater. He was working as a civilian employee at U.S. Strategic Command. So this guy previously had spent 30 years, more than 30 years in the Army and the Army Reserve. He had a top secret clearance. He attended classified briefings on the war in Ukraine from February through April of 2022. And then he shared classified information from the briefings via email and via like an

online messaging service with a quote, women living in Ukraine that he met on a dating site. Here are some of the messages from this woman in Ukraine in air quotes that were sent to him. Dear, probably somebody who looks like Klichko, you know. Dear, what is shown on the screen in the special room? It is very interesting. That's one quote. Second one. You are the first to tell me that NATO members are traveling by train and only now, early evening. This was announced on our news. You are my secret informant, love, how are your meeting? Successfully, beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us? Dave, it's great that you get information about redacted country first. I hope you will tell me right away. You are my secret agent.

Sweet Dave, the supply of weapons is completely classified, which is great. The list goes on and on. Ben, what are the odds of this Air Force employee with top secret clearance met an actual woman in Ukraine who's very interested in NATO capabilities? Yeah. The first takeaway is just, it's kind of sad, you know? Like, Dave is probably like send picks or something, you know, and it's, it's, it's, It's just like every time that there's one of these things, you remind of there's like a human dynamic, right?

Like to share a guy was kind of trying to impress these. Showing up as gamer buddies. Yep. Gamer buddies. Like, you think you fucking beat me at Call of Rudy? Well, check this out, you know? And this is like a, it's sad. This is like a, you know, older dude.

We could all end up, you know, like hopefully we won't end up on a dating site in our 60s with secret agents, you know. The other thing that reminds you of, too, though, that I, you know, people forget, is it oftentimes, like, some of the more aggressive intelligence collectors on the U.S. government are friends? Like, you know, when we were, I don't know. Oh, yes, friendly government. I don't think it's like revealing that much, but like, well, let's just say Israel, for instance, is a healthy consumer and collector or France has a reputation, you know, the, like, it's not just the Russians and Chinese that are trying to figure out what the U.S. is doing. It's, it's also your friends, you know. Yeah. And if I'm the Ukrainians, I would fucking do it. it. I'd be like, I'd create a dating, you know, I'd create a bunch of Tinder profiles and find

some lonely contractors and be like, hey, guys, you want to share some classified information? Yeah, or just some FSB person trolling, but I do love it. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dave, it makes me so hot when you talk about naval assets in the Indo-Pacific. Yeah, it's more likely like some troll farm being like, you know. Got one. It actually makes you wonder how many Russian accounts are on dating sites and stuff, probably. This would be an interesting plot line for like a sports. spy show, I might need to...

The creativity of spy services is impressive. Remember, there was a big scandal. There was a running app called Strava where basically you could track your jogs. And a bunch of, like, U.S. service members serving on, like, secret bases in Syria or whatever, would jog the perimeter of these forward operating bases that they were not supposed to be known to be at.

And it would publicly post and people were able to find them. Right. Like, also this is this frontier of getting on Discord and getting information. is fascinating. The day, like the honey trap is the oldest intel play in the book. Of course they're going to take it online. Yeah.

Well, like all of, you know, that, all of that has moved online. Why not? Like, that's interesting about the runners. I had a friend who was clearly not one of these people responsible, but who told me that, like, running on the airstrip that you're in an Eastern Syria was like basically the only way to be outside and get exercise. Yeah. My map, my run app, though, I'd probably have to disable.

Yeah, you might not want it to publicly. post to Facebook or whatever the default is, but, you know. Or the reality is, and again, this shows you the depth of the SpyCraft. It's like, I bet even if you didn't post to the app, like, they're collecting any, like, if

your iPhone is, well, if you have an iPhone, like, they're probably in it. And so you don't even have to be using the app for them to be able to trace your, you know, I mean, this is the degree to which our, we don't realize how much we leave an online footprint to a country like Russia that wants to

know about it. Yeah. Dave. Dave. Your, your Poland-based interceptor missiles are so sexy.

Dave. Not great. Poor Dave. Good luck, Dave. Hope you hire a good lawyer. Finally, Ben. We talked a few times about Tucker Carlson's visit to Moscow,

his interview with Vladimir Putin. Putin then saying he was disappointed in the interview. Because Tucker's questions were so soft. Tucker's excitement about the metro and the grocery store. So Tucker did an interview of sorts with a podcaster named Lex Friedman

about the Putin interview. This clip caught our eye. What do you think of Putin saying that justification for continuing the war is denotification? I thought it was one of the dumbest things that I'd ever heard. I didn't understand what it meant.

Denotification? It literally means what it sounds like. You know, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this. I don't, I hate that whole conversation because it's not real. ad hominem. It's a way of associating someone with an evil regime that doesn't exist anymore. I just, it literally means what it sounds like. It's so funny. And Tucker, it's not the first time like Putin's ever mentioned denatification. So don't they won. And Tucker's his ability to sound

incredulous about anything when he knows, he didn't challenge Putin when he said that. Like he didn't in his like hagiography of Russians metro, like he didn't say, oh and by the way, what they said about denatification is bullshit. Like he's weird, like he weirdly swerving in a defensive direction on this stuff. Like,

but sounding incredulous at things that he was literally being a propagandist for a few weeks ago. I love it. I love it. Great timing, Tucker. Great interview.

Okay, that's it for the show. But stick around and you'll hear my interview with Hulud Hare. She's a Sudanese political analyst and the founding director of a think tank that used to be based in cartoon.

We're going to talk about the Civil War in Sudan, what the international community could be doing stop it and much, much more. So check that out. It has now been almost a year since Sudan spiraled into a civil war between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary group known as the RSF. Joining me to talk through all of this and what's happening is Khaludh Khaer, a Sudanese political analyst and the founding director of the Confluence Advisory. Thank you so much for joining the show.

Thank you so much for having me. Let's just start with the basics. Can you give us a sense of the backstory about how things devolved between these two warring parties, these two warring generals, and spiraled into this massive civil war? Sure. You know, both Burhan, who's the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Hemeti, who is the head of the rapid support forces or RSF, both of them were sort of working together for quite some time during the Darfur genocide of 2003 to 2005.

They were working hand and fisted glove effectively on that genocide. And they forged a relationship, a very strong working relationship at that time. And they both were integral in their personal capacities, but also within their institutions for Bashir, General Bashir, Sudan's 30-year-long dictator who had used this coup-proofing method of engendering different elements and different strands of his security network to be very much loyal to him, but somewhat in opposition to each other. So they couldn't club together and usurp him. And so they, you know, were sort of in relative competition,

but then in 2018, 2019, when a popular protest, when popular protests broke out and a revolution started in Sudan, that was Sudan's third revolution since independence, against Bashir, they spied an opportunity to claim that power for themselves. And so they both helped unseat Bashir. In fact, we believe Hamiti was the one to personally arrest him. and then they positioned themselves as sort of the saviors of the country. And together they ruled alongside a civilian government for a short period of a short transitional period.

But there came a point where both of them realized that they wanted to take the whole cake for themselves, rather than increasingly smaller and smaller slices of the pie. And so together they worked to sort of set up a coup against the civilian cabinet of Dr. Abdullah Hamdok, and there really started the differences between them to come to the four. We saw them cultivate different income streams, particularly around gold and other national resources. We saw them sort of cultivate different foreign policies with, you know, one, one actor going after some in the region and the other sort of pursuing a relationship with the others in the region. And that really set them on a path to us.

confrontation. Effectively, the coup they led together in 2021 couldn't serve both of them. And in a very sort of Cain and Abel-like story, these former brothers in arms are now fighting each other for effectively total control of the politics and the economy and the future of Sudan. And I remember, you know, the fighting started in Khartoum and there was a lot of reporting, you know, about like heavy weaponry being used in the city. It quickly spread to the Darfur region. It's been hard for me to get a sense of just sort of what the impact has been countrywide. I know there's reports that specific tribal groups are being targeted. I've seen reports about the RSF going after doctors or medical infrastructure. Can you give us a sense of what the humanitarian impact has been

broadly for the people of Sudan? I think it's an understatement to say it's been devastating. We have seen, you know, the near total collapse of the health sector, which means only, you know, a small fraction of hospitals are still functioning. We have seen, schools almost entirely shut, which means 19 million children out of the 23 million children of Sudan are now currently out of school. And I think that is a conservative estimate. We have seen WFP last week reporting that 95% of people in Sudan can't afford even one meal a day, which means that the famine that we've all been concerned about is actually upon us. The UN has not yet declared a famine in Sudan, which means we're not seeing the requisite response.

both financial and political, but we can see from reporting on the ground that people are very much suffering the devastating impact of this. And as you said, you know, there are also, have been the lootings, the sexual assault, the ethnic-based atrocities that many aid and human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, have said, could amount to genocide. So we've seen an almost total state collaboration, because, as you say, this conflict did start off in Khartoum, and Sudan's conflict is the only conflict in the world today, where it is the capital city that was hit first and hit hardest, which means the already crumbling government infrastructure and already crumbling service infrastructure

has now practically gone. What this means is that, you know, people staring down the barrel of a very long conflict were increasingly deteriorating. situation. And actually, considering it's been, what, 10 months of fighting, we have seen already very, very rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Sudan. And to add, you know, insult to injury, we're seeing both sides restrict aid and try to capture aid from those people who needed the most in order to divert that aid to their own troops. So there are issues with access, there are issues with getting that aid delivered to where it needs to go. Yeah, I think your point that the humanitarian nightmare cannot be overstated, was reinforced by a recent report I read in the Washington Post that said the RSF was subjecting women into sexual slavery that they had captured in the fighting. So just the worst thing you could ever imagine. There have been a number of reports about the United Arab Emirates role in this war, specifically that they've been funneling weapons to the RSF. Do we know if these weapons shipments are still happening and have a sense of how important they are to continuing the conflict?

According to reporting from the ground, those shipments are still coming in. The RSF has just suffered something of a defeat in the twin city of Umburman, which is a twin city to the capital of Khartoum. And it has been recruiting and re-arming itself in order to launch a counter-offensive. The weapons that are coming in from the UAE, as reported by the New York Times and CNN, have been coming in through neighboring countries, through Chad, through Uganda, through Kenya. But recently, in the past few months, the RSF has taken over the city of Niala, which is the capital of South Darfur. And that city has an airstrip. And it's now believed that much of the traffic coming in, the air traffic coming in, is coming in directly through Niala,

which means that the RSF have effectively a way of directly getting weapons from the U.S. and elsewhere, Wagner is also a supplier of weaponry to the RSF, that is the Russian paramilitary group operating in much of Central Africa and the Sahel. And so what we're seeing is there's ramping up, a continuous ramping up of this conflict on both sides. You know, now we're seeing the Sudanese armed forces getting closer to Tehran, and that has resulted in increased weapons supply to the Sydney's armed forces via Port Sudan. You mentioned Chad earlier, a neighboring country to Sudan. They've obviously had their own internal political challenges last few years.

You know, you had a leader killed at the front lines. The sun took over sort of questionable legitimacy. But I've also seen reports that refugee flows from Sudan into Chad have been exacerbating the problems and leading to stability. Do you have a sense of the ways this conflict in Sudan may or may not be spilling over into the region? The threat of spillover has always been really, really high because Sudan has seven neighbours, all of whom, with the exception of one, Eritrea, are undergoing some kind of transition themselves and a very fragile transition at that in various stages of it. And, you know, surrounded by countries with which it has very porous borders, which means that weapons flows, for example, from Eritrea can come in very easily or indeed from Chad for the RSF, which means also that refugees fleeing, the violence in Sudan can also, you know, move over to other countries. So Chad is currently hosting half a million refugees, Egypt, much more than that.

And other countries such as South Sudan already very much sort of crumbling infrastructure and on the poverty line also hosting many Sudanese refugees. So it's quite an unsustainable spillover, I would say. And that is just in terms of, you know, sort of initial refugee flows. if this conflict lasts much longer, we can expect that, for example, some of the ethnic groups that are shared between Sudan and its neighbors could also be embroiled in the conflict. And in fact, with Chad, we're already seeing this. Something of a non-Arab Darfurie alliance has sprung up between armed movements in Darfur

that are from the same ethnic groups as, for example, the Zaghawa leadership in neighboring. Chad, and that has created quite a complex mosaic of problems on that border, but also in the Chadian capital of Injumena and the various state capitals in Darfur. Yeah, I mean, you make a good point there. There's been enormous instability regionally, especially with the Ethiopian Civil War, the number of coups across the Sahel, et cetera. I know that the United States, Saudi Arabia, some others have been trying to get the RSF and the Sudanese military to sit down, work out a ceasefire agreement. Those talks have failed repeatedly. Do we know why they keep failing?

Yes, it's very simple. You can't have two actors out of myriad actors that have vested interest in Sudan, sit down at the table and effectively ask, merely ask, the two sides to sign a ceasefire agreement. That's not how you get a ceasefire signed and then sort of committed to, let alone a lasting one. And that's exactly what we saw with the Jeddetox, led by the EU. US and Saudi. There was initial resistance to getting the Egyptians who support the

Sudanese armed forces to various extents and the United Arab Emirates that supports the RSF to also join that mediation platform. And if you don't make the sort of central backers of the two sides part of the solution, they are of course going to continue to be part of the problem. And so there has been some level of evolution from the JEDA talk format which relied basically on only, you know, two sort of guarantors, the U.S. and Saudi, but also did not bring any real leverage to the table against the two sides, particularly economic leverage. There has been some evolution from that in recent talks held in the Bahraini capital of Manama.

But those talks, even though they sort of brought in different regional actors like Egypt, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi, as well as, of course, the host Bahrain, And they brought in the deputies, not asking for Burhan and Hamiti to come in, which is, of course, going to be very difficult. But this was an effort mostly led by the intelligence departments of those different countries, not the diplomatic core, which means that what you're going to get effectively out of such talks is sort of some power sharing deal between the belligerence that leaves very little room for civilian engagement and very little room for democratic dispensation. So what more do you think the international community should be doing or needs to do? And do folks feel like, you know, this issue is just not being focused on because of Gaza, because of Ukraine, because the world is distracted? I mean, I think, you know, it's sort of a cop out to say the world is distracted because I think, you know, the world should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. And in fact, it has done so before when there was a lot of focus on Darfur.

in the early aughts. It was the war on terror time, and a lot of the media as well as policy attention was on that. And yet, for example, the Bush administration at the time found time to dedicate to Darfur appointing an envoy as such and sort of pushing for different sort of political, diplomatic measures economically funding those measures and those initiatives to make sure that Darfur had the requisite. Focus. That is now completely gone. So, you know, Gaza and Ukraine are, of course, taking a lot of attention, as they should. They are, you know, quite big conflicts. But that doesn't mean, I think, that there should be no attention on Sudan, as we have seen. It's been, you know, commensurate to the level of devastation we've seen, the prospect of state collapse, the spillover effects. There's very little media attention on Sudan. So one thing that I think the international community needs to do,

And, you know, we have to use that term lightly. You know, the Matashikamuti is very many actors with very, very different and often diverging interests. You know, what the UAE wants in Sudan is not what the US wants in Sudan. But I think there's a need to bring in this very diverse and very divergent mediation efforts that have taken place. You know, you have the neighboring countries initiative led by Cairo. We've just mentioned and talked about the JEDDA initiative led by the US and Saudi. you have the AU, which has recently put, that's African Union, put together a panel of three experts. But to me it seems as if they're sort of farming out this, the Sudan file on those experts so that they could concentrate on their own elections this year.

Of course, that is also the case in the UK and the US where it's an election year. You have the intergovernmental authority on development, which has had a sort of heads of state initiative that it was leading also, again, very much divorce from the other initiatives. now more recently you have the Manama talks that I mentioned just now. And none of these are working together in any kind of coherent or concerted way, which means, you know, the prospect of foreign shopping is very high. You know, if you are one of the belligerent parties, you can just ice out one of those mediations and go to the one that you think will give you what you want. And that's been happening in Sudan's history, you know, for a long time. And it should have been anticipated. Yeah. And, you know, to your point, I mean, the Bush administration was,

at the height of the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war was raging. It was recently after 9-11. They were able to focus on what was happening in Darfur. And that was in part, I think, due to political pressure from this large international movement called Save Darfur that raised awareness about the atrocities that were happening, that demanded intervention or at least some sort of diplomatic action. Is there any similar non-governmental effort being marshaled that you've seen that people can support or aid organizations or groups that are at. advocating on behalf of more action to help people in Sudan? There are, but I would say nowhere near the level we saw during the Save Darfur movement. And I think what's interesting about the Save Darfur movement is that actually many of those,

you know, celebrities, academics, researchers who were active during the Save Darfur period are, you know, they're still very much around, but the level of focus and attention just isn't there. saved R4, I think, was very much a product of its time. But what people have relied on, you know, in the absence of the kind of saved R4 setup is social media. So there have been campaigns that have been launched on Twitter, on Instagram, you know, trying to raise attention, mostly led by Sudanese activists or Sudanese actors either in Sudan or in the diaspora. We're trying to raise attention on this. But of course, that's not going to be enough of a critical mass to be able to get attention on this in the same way.

So there are also NGOs, for example, like crisis action, which is US-based, and a few others in the UK, mostly outside of the country and outside of the region. There's Africans for the Horn of Africa, a group of lawyers, as the name suggests, in Africa, that are trying to raise attention on this. But, you know, these are all, again, very disparate efforts, much like the mediations. and there's no, currently, there's no sort of center of gravity for a lot of those efforts. And I think one thing that would improve that is if there was some kind of impact on the policy space, if there was an entity, it doesn't have to be a government, that was able to say, okay, we will now put a lot of focus on this in the same fashion as saved our four and be able to propel this issue at the global stage. Yeah, that's really well said. I do think it would probably be helpful.

You know, people who are listening to the show right now could call their congressmen, their senators and say, we want more focus to be put on what's happening in Sudan. You can call the White House. You can call the State Department and say, you know, we need more pressure from an envoy. We need to consider, you know, a carrot and stick approach. We need to consider pressure on the UAE to stop the arms transfers. I mean, these are supposed to be our closest allies. People in Washington go to fancy dinner parties with the, you know, ambassador from the Emirates all day long. I hang out at Cafe Milano. Yeah. So, you know, maybe let them know that you're not thrilled with funneling arms into a civil war if you're listening and you see the guy. Absolutely. I mean, the thing about the U.S. government is that, you know, we're seeing different levels of efforts and different levels of focus from the different branches of the U.S. government. So, you know, from the Hill, for example, we have seen far more attention and far better attention, the right type of attention on Sudan, you know, sort of privileging the new.

need to engage civilians, privileging the need to engage with the belligerents more in a sort of a stick fashion rather than the carrot fashion, which the State Department seems to prefer. And then conversely, we see that the State Department actually has much more of a sort of gently, gently hand-holding approach to the generals, which arguably it has always had, certainly since the coup, where it actually failed to even characterize the coup as such. And I think this sent a signal to the generals in Khartoum that, effectively they could get away with quite a lot. Whereas with the White House, we're not getting any attention at all. Just recently, there was a special envoy that was appointed. Tom Perello,

I believe he started yesterday on Monday, and he seems to have, you know, sort of the right energy, the right characteristics as a politician to really understand the nuances of what's going on in Sudan. He has a history of working on Darfur during the genocide in the early aughts. But we're not seeing the requisite, you know, sort of backup. If you're you will, from the White House, which will really send the message, not just to the people of Sudan, but crucially to the Gulf countries, U.S. allies in the region, that the U.S. is taking more of an interest in what's going on and not really turning a blind eye, as we have seen for the last decade or so. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Well, listen, thank you so much

for talk with me through all of this and explaining what's going on, and for all your work and advocacy. It's really important. And, you know, maybe we'll get Tom Periel on soon. He's the, we should, actually, I met him back in the day. He was a congressman during the early Obama days and took a courageous vote for health care that lost him his seat, but, you know, sort of says a lot about his character. Absolutely. And that's exactly the kind of character I think you need for this. Because his role primarily to corral all these different actors, particularly in the mediation space,

to get them to work towards a common goal and build some consensus. And I think, you know, a politician, maybe more than a diplomat is well positioned to do that. Yeah, very well said. Well, listen, thank you so much and talk soon. Thank you. Thanks again to Hulud Hare for joining the show. Good luck at the state of the union, Ben. You're glad I'm not working on this one.

Come on. Send a couple of lines to the crew over there. Well, I think our AI teed up a few because they've had infrastructure bill, you know? That's true. Just as we are rebuilding roads and bridges in swing states. So, too, are we rebuilding... democracy I like it

yeah yeah that worked sure sure we'll do that rebuilding the Ukrainian I don't know economy or some might not something that's gonna they'll spend like

a thousand hours on the speech and then some like idiot MAGA member of Congress will shout you lie in the middle of it and that'll be all we talk about yeah that'll be fun there's a possibility

that like a from the from Kiev to Kentucky enters into the speech oh yeah there was a big bridge to Kentucky right yeah and there's like a Democratic governor there maybe there's some democracy

good call Great idea. Okay, well, we'll check in next week and we'll let you guys know our favorite transition sentences from the speech. And talk to you soon. If you want to get ad-frey episodes,

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