Pod Save the World - World Reacts to Trump’s Guilty Verdict

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss Biden’s ceasefire proposal and debate whether going public with the plan will pressure Hamas and Israel to accept it, they also try to understand why Democrats agreed to invite Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. Then they discuss global reactions to Trump’s guilty verdict, the debate over allowing Ukraine to use American provided weapons against targets on Russian soil, British PM Rishi Sunak’s decision to call early elections on July 4th, shocking election results for Prime Minister Modi in India, an end of a political era for Nelson Mandela’s ANC party in South Africa, and a tit for tat between North and South Korea involving balloons full of trash and K-Pop songs. Then, Tommy covers the historic election of Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, with Dan Restrepo, a founding partner at Dinamica Americas and President Obama’s former principal advisor on issues related to Latin America. 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 Rhodes. It's good to be back. Welcome back. Thanks for holding it down, you guys. We held it down. We survived. You're talking to the prime ministers of Norway at 3 a.m. in Singapore? Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that the world doesn't see. I was in Singapore.

Well, actually, the worst part is I set my alarm to wake up at like 250, you know, and then I wake up to a message from Malona that he's delayed by 30 minutes. So then I had just kind of to sit around for... Just got to stay awake. 3.30 in the morning, stay awake. Don't fall asleep. Yeah. That's tough.

I might have been up with you, you know. We got some noises coming through the old nanit machines these days. Yeah. Two different babies barking at us. Yeah, that's a, I told you, that's a massive logistics change having to. Oh. Yeah. But I was like you, I, you know, I was mainly responsible for the older one.

So, like it was, you know, lots of stroller walks, you know, lots of QT, Lizette and I are having a good time. James is great. He's a cute little guy, but right now I'm not as useful to him as his motherless. No, no, right? Right now. You have very little offer in that department. Yeah, but a lot has happened. Now I have two kids and the Celtics are in the NBA finals, Ben. Yeah. Well, you missed the heartbreak. The Knicks were, you know, caught lighting in a bottle until every single one of their players, literally every single one of their players is hurt by the end. Tough run. We've currently exhausted our sports talk. Well, I will say. My word, I said this to you on the happy news, but James is my middle name. Yeah. And my father's name.

It's a great name. You have a lot of Rhodes lineage. It's a Rhodes, Rhodes Legacy, Dynasty. We got a great show, Ben. It's good to be back. I miss doing it. You guys did an amazing job, but I do miss getting to talk with you every week about this stuff. So today we're going to cover President Biden's Gaza ceasefire plan that he laid out last week.

We're going to try to understand why on earth a couple Democrats, a bunch of Democrats invited Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to dress a joint session of Congress. It seems like we've seen this movie before. We'll talk about the global response to Donald Trump's guilty verdicts. The Biden administration's major policy change when it comes to the war in Ukraine, huge election news out of the UK, India and South Africa, and a nuclear-armed balloon cigarette standoff. I don't know that you know what that's referring to. I think I do, actually. Okay, I'm excited to talk about it. There's poop involved, too, right? Well, DVD, we'll find out. Then you're going to hear my conversation.

with our former colleague Dan Restrepo about the historic elections that just took place in Mexico and what it means for U.S.-Mexico relations. So stick around for that. Big, big one. It's a lot going on this month, this year, this quarter. Yes, yeah, the year of elections is kicking up in high gear, you know. Yeah, and honestly, and like throwing some curveballs at us and things we did not expect to happen. Yeah, we had some healthy curveballs. We'll get to that in a second. But let's start in Gaza, because it feels like a lot has happened since I left, but nothing has changed, if that makes sense. That's very fair.

So last- Yeah, well, actually, no, you caught my ICC rant, but there were subsequent international criminal decisions. Yeah, a lot going on. Yeah, a lot going on. So, okay, last Friday, President Biden laid out his, a ceasefire deal and long-term plan to end the war. Here's a clip from that speech.

At this point, Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another. October 7th is one of the Israelis's main objective in this war and quite frankly a righteous one and to the people of Israel let me say this as someone who's had a lifelong commitment to Israel as the only American president has ever gone to Israel in the time of war as someone who just sent the U.S. forces to directly defend Israel when it was attacked by Iran I ask you to take a step back and think what will happen if this moment is lost. We can't lose this moment. So the plan by it laid out, it has three phases.

Phase one is a six-week ceasefire agreement. During that period, Israel would withdraw troops from Gaza's major population centers, allow 600 aid trucks per day into Gaza, release some Palestinian prisoners, and allow Gazans to return home to northern Gaza. and in exchange, Hamas would release women elderly and wounded hostages. Then you'd have phase two. That would include an end of hostilities. The Israeli military would withdraw from Gaza completely.

There would be potentially the release of some more Palestinian prisoners. And Hamas would release the remaining living hostages. Phase three is this kind of nebulous, multi-year reconstruction period for Gaza. And Hamas would return the remains of any hostages who died in Gaza and their bodies, you know, hadn't been returned yet. So getting Hamas in Israel to agree to this proposal would be challenging, I think, and under any circumstances. But it got complicated immediately when Bibi Niyahou seemed to deny that Israel had agreed to this deal. The White House is adamant that Biden laid out in that speech in Israeli proposal that had already been sent to Qatar to convey to Hamas. that has been confirmed in a bunch of news reports from Israeli and Katari officials.

The Wall Street Journal reported that in private Netanyahu has been showing cautious support for this peace plan, but wants flexibility to resume fighting later, which kind of seems like a deal breaker for a plan to end the war. Then we were talking about this before we started recording. Axios is reported that Israeli officials are worried that Netanyahu's comments are undercutting this plan in, you know, you know, undermining what they described as constructive ambiguity about some of the ways that negotiators are trying to basically massage a plan that both sides can agree to. The political challenge seems to be the same thing, which is that Netanyahu has these right-wing ministers in his coalition that have threatened repeatedly to pull out of the government if Netanyahu accepts a ceasefire proposal and then Netanyahu would be out of power. But Ben, let's just start

with the big picture. So the White House says this was an Israeli agree-to place. We should talk about whether you think that that's accurate. But also, they said that the goal here, the reason Biden laid this all out publicly, was to put pressure on all sides to agree to it and to build international support. Do you think that's the right way to think about it? Is saying this stuff publicly, does that help put pressure on both sides? So here's what I think's happening, Tommy. And this is really just based on my informed analysis. This isn't something I've heard.

The first thing I'd say is that in my experience, right, particularly on Israeli-Palestinian talks, which happened several times in the Abba administration, there were times when Netanyahu would kind of indicate agreement with some proposal, but not publicly say that he'd agreed to it. And then what he would do is he would wait until the Palestinians didn't accept the proposal. and oftentimes the Palestinians wouldn't accept the proposal because they didn't believe Nanyahu would. And then he'd blame the Palestinians for the proposal not getting done. And, you know, we hear the endless refrain of, you know, the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And his whole game was to blame the Palestinians for the failure to reach an agreement. Now, that was with the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. But I think that's what's been happening here, you know.

He would also deliberately kind of pretend he didn't understand the proposal Obama put for it, right? Bob would say, let's do a two-state solution based on 1967 lines with agreed-upon swaps, and he would pretend he didn't hear about the part about agreed-upon swaps of territory where the Israelis had built settlements for. Yeah, and then he publicly trashed a proposal that he'd been negotiating on private, right? He did this kind of thing all the time. We'd have terms of reference even for getting an negotiation that he would, you know, his negotiators would indicate an openness to.

But yes, if it ever became public, he'd shoot it down, right? So I think that probably what's been happening is, you know, Bill Burns and all these people have been negotiating for months around probably a similar ceasefire proposal. And this kind of blame game has been going back and forth. And I think what the administration chose to do here in kind of a Hail Mary is essentially announce what they think Israeli negotiators had agreed to. But Bibi had not been willing to publicly say he'd support in the hopes that. one of two things would happen. One, by going public, you apply a lot of pressure on all the parties, including Hamas, you know, and you get a ceasefire because Hamas says, okay, you know, the Qatar leans on them, we lean on them, and they say, fine, we'll do this, and then Bibi does it. That's

option one. Option two is you collapse Bibi's government, right? So it may be, and they'll never say this publicly, that part of their intention is, yeah, to force Bibi to choose. And, and, you And because there's a lot of pressure from the United States and from the rest of the war cabinet, people like Benny Gons have presumably signed off on this, that BB has to agree to it. And then those right-wing ministers leave the government and it collapses. And maybe that's something that the U.S. is okay bringing about. So it's like a high-stakes gamble that, you know. But do you think that math works?

Because I think if, like, Benny Gantz and the moderates pull out of the coalition, Netanyahu still has the numbers to keep the government attacked. But if he loses the right-wing ministers, he doesn't. So this leads to the third and unfortunately, like, you know, likely option, which is that this kind of dies somehow, you know, because Bibi's trying to triangulate between the center and the right. Hamas is trying to renegotiate some element, and it kind of doesn't go through. And then we've kind of set up a dynamic where we've kind of, let's face it, pretty disingenuously, we've kind of kept asserting that this is an Israeli proposal, even though Israel hasn't. formally agreed to it. And so then Hamas, you know, we just blame Hamas for, I mean, Bibi could emerge in a situation where this deal collapses. He maintains his government. He blames Hamas. He blames Hamas by saying the U.S. present this to Amas. He comes to the U.S. to deliver a joint

session as this kind of big hero in front of Congress. And the war is still going and we've kind of legitimized it because we've kind of suggested it's Hamas's fault that the war hasn't stopped, right? That's the scenario that would be bad here, you know? Yeah. And so they're playing a pretty high-stakes game, you know. And look, if it works and they get a ceasefire, that's great. But if it doesn't, there's some real risk that you, you know, you've set up a dynamic, which we, you know, the core dynamic is do you think the ceasefire should happen in any case, right? In other words, ceasefire agreement or not, do you believe this war should end, in which case you'd be threatening to withhold weapons and things like that?

or do you kind of risk saying, you know, we somehow sided with an Israeli proposal, even though Bibi didn't embrace it, and it's all Hamas's fault. And so therefore it's kind of de facto okay that the war goes on, you know. And that's the real risk, I see. Well, so the confusing thing is, you know, you're seeing all these background quotes from the administration saying you put forward this plan to put pressure on Netanyahu to get him to accept it. But also, you know, Biden did this long interview with Time magazine.

Most of it focused on foreign policy. and he was asked, whose fault is it that the deal or cease file for hostages has not been consummated? Is it Hamas or Israel both? He says Hamas. Hamas could end this tomorrow. So he is very publicly and on the record,

just blaming Hamas. Now, in his defense, in Israel's defense, the Wall Street Journal reported that Yaya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas within Gaza, like the guy in the tunnels doing the fighting, not the kind of, you know, corrupt political leaders sitting in Qatar,

that he has told Arab mediators that he's in no rush to end the war, and he wants to drag Israel to a quagmire that creates more sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Yeah, and this is, again, where I kind of philosophically disagreed the administration. Again, if this works, it's great. You get a ceasefire. But, like, Hamas is a terrorist organization. If we believe that to be true, and I do, it's strange to kind of put this all on, like, a negotiated agreement with them. You know, you either think what Israel's doing is the right thing to be doing or you don't.

You know, in other words, by saying this is all up to Hamas, it's kind of suggesting, well, if Hamas doesn't reach an agreement, will the war ever end? You know, because that's what Hamas, if that's what Simwar's position is, then he wants the most destructive, worst possible war so that he can kind of create a open-ended insurgency. and, you know, isolate Israel internationally. And so you're basically saying, if we're backing Israel, we're going to give Hamas exactly what they want if they don't agree to this, you know? Right. And that doesn't make any sense. You know, that's the problem with this whole paradigm.

Yeah. And it's like, look, I can't confirm or deny what this Wall Street Journal report says, but it's worth just considering that, you know, one of the actors involved here, like the leader of Hamas, might have a logic that it makes absolutely no sense to us. It seems completely irrational. It's basically like saying, hey, these guys over here are arsonists. And if these arsonists don't do what we want, we're going to go pour gasoline on their fire. You know, I mean, that really is what we're talking about here.

And that's why it's a high stakes game because, again, maybe it works and you kind of run this air pocket of pressuring everybody into a ceasefire. But if you don't, it's hard to see what a plan B looks like because you've kind of legitimized the idea that so long as Hamas is not kind of negotiating. in the way you'd like, that the war just goes on and on and on and on. Yeah. I heard an analyst on, I think it was on the BBC, suggests that if this ceasefire proposal fails, that President Biden should start a unilateral negotiation with Hamas to free American hostages. Now, hearing that, like, sort of shocked me that I've never heard anyone sort of float that before.

You would imagine in a lot of other contexts that could happen. That's exactly what we do in this context. But, you know, the politics doing that here, I think would probably be unthinkable. Yeah. But, Ben, let's turn to this joint session because, Leaders in Congress, including Democrats, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries on the House side, joined in with Republican congressional leaders to invite Israeli Prime Minister Bibian and Yahoo to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress. There were some reports that it was going to happen on June 13th, but then it turned out that that's a Jewish holiday. So whoopsie-dupsy. Good fact-checking guys. Great work, gang.

And then Biden was going to be in the G7 at the time, so I don't know what happened there. So, Ben, so the date's TBD. I get why Republicans want to do this. Right? Like their right wing evangelical base, they want the U.S. to fully support the Israeli war effort. They are not concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza or anything else. And then, you know, Mitch McConnell, Speaker Johnson, they want to use criticism of Israel by Democrats as a wedge issue to peel off Jewish voters and donors from the Democratic Party, right? Like that's their plan. They say it out loud. For the life of me, I cannot understand what Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are doing here. Like maybe they were. were worried that not joining on this invitation would be used as a cudgel to attack Democrats. But it seems far more likely to me that Netanyahu coming to the U.S. giving this speech will just create like a really high profile way to highlight the splits between the Biden

administration and the Israeli government on policy. And like just a couple of weeks ago, Schumer literally called on Netanyahu to step down and no longer be the leader. Like what what, what happened. Everything about this is wrong and frustrating and what I don't like about Washington, right? Let's just kind of go through the ways in which this is the wrong thing. First of all, right now the U.S. government is in a open facing pressure campaign to kind of squeeze Netanyahu into the terms of a ceasefire that Netanyahu is uncomfortable with. And yet within a week or two, or however long it is, the U.S. Congress is going to give Netanyahu the biggest political lifeline imaginable, which is, hey, you're not isolated. In fact, you're going to come here and you're going to get

standing ovations from a bipartisan group of members of Congress. So it undercuts U.S. policy objectives, right? So that's bad. Politically, I mean, Schumer has said he thinks Israel needs a new leader. I think if you probably poll Democrats in private, the vast majority of them would say that as well. Everyone in the White House would say that. This is clearly going to boost Nanya standing. I mean, there's no question that he will return from this trip to Israel with higher polling numbers. and feeling like he's in a stronger position because he will have proven that he's the guy that can work the U.S.

and manipulate the U.S. He brags about that publicly. There's him on video saying, I'm the guy who can manipulate the U.S., especially the U.S. media. So it's dumb in terms of your Israeli political objectives, domestic political objectives. Whatever these guys think about how they're making it less painful

by, he's coming here to divide Democrats. Bibi Neniaw wants Donald Trump to win the election. No doubt. The Republican Party knows that. The Republican Party will be unified and welcoming Netanyahu, the Democratic Party will be divided. By definition, this is a offensive move by Republicans. The last time he became, he was only invited by Republicans. It was to undercut Barack Obama. So to sum up, it's a self-owned in terms of domestic politics. It's a

self-owned in terms of Israeli politics. And it's a self-owned in terms of the policy. Great work, guys. Like, I just don't know what, like, what is explaining me the logic of doing it beyond not to be cynical, like you get some less pissed off donor calls. Oh, by the way, they're also going to probably roll out a bunch of crazy legislation around him coming here, you know, to sanction the ICC or to, I mean, never mind just the optics. This man is literally just had an arrest warrant sought for him as a war criminal. And then the U.S. Congress that likes to lecture, you know, about Putin's war crimes and, you know, the part of the international order we like, we're going to platform this guy.

just great work everybody, you know. It's just like, I'm so frustrated by this. I cannot understand it for the life of me. Maybe there's like an ICC rendition team that'll like snap, get them on the way in. Yeah, the global police force. You know, it's just, it's, yeah, it's a mess. Last thing on this, so Biden did a long interview with Time Magazine.

I think it was mostly. Interesting comms decision there, Tommy. Yeah. No offense to Time magazine, but like would you be recommending that that's the... I mean, I think offense to Time magazine. You know, probably not. That would not be my go-to. I think the idea was this setup.

this trip to the G7 next week. But like, they spent a long time talking about other stuff, Gaza, Israel, et cetera. So a couple notable things. So Biden was asked if Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza. He said, quote, the answer is it's uncertain and has been investigated by the Israelis themselves. The ICC is something that we don't. We don't recognize. So sort of a statement of policy there. Yeah, I mentioned how he was asked by who was at fault. He put the blame on Hamas. Biden was asked if Israel is intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. He said, quote, no, I don't think that. I think they've engaged an activity that is inappropriate, then went on, made a comparison to sort of Afghanistan. But it was interesting that he said, no, but they've done things that are wrong. So clearly he's withholding something there. And then finally, Ben, Biden was asked if Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation. And he said, quote, I'm not going to comment on that. There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion, which is not the most successful effort of declining comment I've heard.

Also, like, it's something there was evident to everybody in, like, what, November that that was happening. So, you know, I mean, there's no reason not to say it out loud, you know. Yeah, that's a... But, I mean, the starvation thing, the awkward thing for the administration on all this stuff is that they've said this. They've said, you know, the aid crossings need to open up. You know, so it's hard to square, you know, every day the State Department briefing is like an exercise in trying to square public criticism with Israel with public defenses of Israel. Because we're simultaneously saying they need to. do more let Aiden and then saying they're letting Aiden, you know, and it, you know, those are

hard puzzle pieces. To all the people hating on, you know, Matt Miller and, you know, it's like, he's not the one making, he's not the one who's writing the guidance that's been delivered to him. Yeah, and that's the State Department spokesperson. He's trying to explain a policy that at times could be incoherent. It was interesting, sort of observing this, like stepping away for a month and like reading the news, but not being on it constantly. Like I took a call from a great report at the Washington Post. It was asking about, like, the rock. off a red line debate and the ways the administration was trying to sort of parse the policy to figure out whether, you know, B.B. had tripped their red line considerations if he did X, Y, or Z.

And it just made me realize, like, how much you can miss the big picture when you get bogged down in these kind of technical debates or these euphemistic conversations about war, where you're talking about minor military incursions versus a full-scale invasion. It's like, You know, you just, you missed the big picture, which is that this war is a humanitarian catastrophe. These people are suffering endlessly. It has been going on for months and months and months. And you've got top national security officials in Israel saying that the war could go on through the end of this year. Yeah.

So there's no end in sight. Yeah. And, you know, they don't have, they've never suggested any plan for Gaza that doesn't involve open-ended war. Because if they're administrating Gaza, I mean, you know, then you're still, it's. what Sinwar wants, right? Like an insurgency dynamic, right? But I think the way to some of this whole thing is that when you're inside of it and when you're in government, you can rationalize, well, if we do this, this might happen and we have to kind of shade the facts over here to make this point. And what's missing is to kind of step back what's right and what's wrong here.

And this is wrong and the way in which Israel's conducted this war is wrong. And they just haven't allowed themselves to get to that place because, you know, they're still kind of trying to assemble all these pieces. Yeah, it's hard when you're in it. Let's turn from Israel's corrupt demagogue to our own. So I'm sure our listeners know that last week, Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts and the New York hush money trial. Shout up, Manhattan. Yeah, my people. Thanks to your people. Let's talk about the international response to this verdict. So, first of all, Ben, it's just, it's worth mentioning again that the Republican talking point that indicting a president or former president is Banana Republic stuff. That is just nonsense. Presidents or prime ministers in France,

Italy, Israel, Germany, a whole bunch of other countries. South Korea happens all time. Right. I mean, the Republican favorite BB Netanyahu is currently being indicted on corruption charges. In some cases, the Israeli prime minister was convicted, sent to jail. Yeah, Omer. Yeah, Omer. So pushback hard when you hear folks say that if you're debating this with your Republican. That's kind of racist, like Banana Republic. It feels like. like some kind of retro 70s. It's very dated terminology. They said, oh, this is third world. This is Banana Republic. By the way, it's also kind of a critique of American imperialism because these banana republics were like, it was an American banana company. Right. But anyway, put that aside.

Yeah, setting that aside. Second, it is worth looking at the international reaction to this verdict, especially who came to Trump's defense publicly. So, Alona put these together. These are great. So you got a nice tweet from our favorite Hungarian autocrat, Victor Orban, who said, in part, keep fighting, Mr. President. Dmitri Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said U.S. authorities were trying to eliminate political rivals, quote, by all possible legal and illegal means.

So once again, irony is dead. Did he post that on two social? Pest off. I bet he did. Mateo Salvini, the leader of the anti-immigrant League Party, expressed solidarity over in Italy. And then right-wing British gadfly,

Nigel Farage tweeted or exed. I'm just going to say tweeted forever. Quote, this verdict is a disgrace. Trump will now win big. So basically, the worst of the worst people in political life all over the world came to Trump's defense. It does make you, you know, I wonder if that occurs to him when he sees these. Well, I mean, he likes these people, right? So these are the people that he would align himself, right?

Like Orban and, you know, he just said Orban and Mar-a-Lago probably gave him some of the talking points or exchanged ideas. I mean, I just think that the, you know, you mentioned I was in Singapore. you know, Singapore is a pretty serious place, and they had some conferences going on there when I was there, like, including this Shangri-La defense thing. And we just look ridiculous, you know, I mean, it's part that Trump is aligned with all the worst, you know, autocratic, creepy guys. But it's also that, you know, the United States is this global superpower that is supposed to have some kind of stewardship role for avoiding wars and enforcing norms and democracy. And then meanwhile, we've got like a convicted felon, you know, running around, undermining, you know, the whole system of government in this country. Don't think people don't notice that abroad. It makes democracy, I mean, the serious point is that part of what Putin wants is to undermine the whole idea of democracy itself, right? He wants to, and the Chinese want to make democracy look dysfunctional.

Autocracy works better. It's more efficient, you know. And certainly it's not, you know, it's good that I think it's good to show that we can hold people accountable. obviously it's not good if the convicted felon is then an elected president so that that that ultimately will be the key the key moment here yeah and you know to that point i mean again biden in that time magazine interview was talking about the first g7 he attended after getting elected president and he said to like the assembled leaders there like america is back and he said that french president eminio mcran responded for how long yeah i i i think that's fair rejoinder i have a um

the nerdy thing I'll say today. I have a piece coming out. Debatable. Foreign affairs. Okay. Sure. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. And I start with the America's back thing. And my point was like that actually wasn't the right frame because we're not, first of all, there's no going back. You know, there's kind of a, it's not maga, but it's like make the rules based order and great again or something. You know, like like, like, we're like there's not, we're not going back to something. We're in a post-Trump world. You know. And then the other point is that nobody will believe Trump's gone. until he's fully gone, you know? And so there's this idea of restoration. I think the Biden administration has done well on some of their farm policies when they're kind of fully in the kind of post-Trump world and they're adjusting to it on things like climate, on things like China policy.

But when they kind of think that we can just play the old hits, you know, of the American mega superpower, people aren't buying that. Yeah, it's not the late 90s. If Manuel Macron wasn't buying it in the first G7 meeting, you know Not buy it down Yeah Mr. Boga

Make the rules based order great again Yeah Yeah I actually I think I Boga Boga Boga Just just Boga

Boga Oh no one Oh yeah MTR Boga Okay that's even better We could get the hats With like the NATO symbol on it too

Like the star You know Yeah Maybe we'll just move on from this All right Ben Let's talk about Ukraine So there was a big policy change

last week, the Biden administration officially gave Ukraine's military permission to strike within Russia with U.S. weapons. So, in fact, right before we started recording, the Ukrainians confirmed they'd hit a target in Russia with U.S.-made artillery. So this is now happening. So this permission is limited to only the area near Harkiv in northeastern Ukraine, where Russia has been launching these devastating, relentless airstrikes from just over the border. But it's a big change for an administration that has been worried about the risk of escalation in direct. conflict with Russia. The Germans and the French say they will follow suit, and now they're going to allow Ukrainians to do these cross-border strikes with their weapons, too. So this decision

obviously comes after Congress sat on his hands for seven months, I think, and refused to authorize new military assistance as Ukraine stockpiles dwindled, and the Russians seized the moment to press their advantage. We've been talking about this broader debate, though, over escalation risk since the very beginning of the war. The Ukrainians have been, since really, day one, frustrated with U.S. restrictions or delays in green lighting new more lethal weapons systems, but the administration usually ends up giving them what they want in the end. Here is a clip of Secretary of State Tony Blinken talking about this latest policy evolution. Going forward, we'll continue to do what we've been doing, which is, as necessary, adapt and adjust.

and that, as I said, has been a hallmark of our engagement. It will continue to be. As I've also said many, many times, we want to make sure that we're proceeding deliberately, as well as effectively. So I think time and again, we've adapted, we've adjusted, we provided Ukraine with the systems, the weapons that's needed. But, again, as I've shared with you many times before, for example, when it comes to weapons systems,

we also want to make sure that they've done. have the necessary training to use the weapons, and they have the necessary capacity to maintain them. So, Ben, I think, you know, both of us, we talked about this over years now. We've been pretty worried about this escalation risk. The number one job of President Biden is to avoid World War three with Russia. But this decision did seem like a necessity to me. I mean, you've got, Harkev is about 25 miles from the Russian border. The Russians knew under these previous rules that they could literally just launch these glide bombs or artillery from well inside their border with no risk of retaliation and just, you know, pummel this second biggest, uh,

city by population in Ukraine. Do you think this was the right decision and, you know, in the near term, but also stepping back and just again remembering that like the, the war has been escalating constantly since the very beginning. Like eventually, you know, the U.S. and Europeans and others just get to yes on sending new, more lethal, longer range weapons. And it does seem like they're, you know, We're sort of boiled frogs at this point. I think this is the right decision. And it's because of the proximity to Kharkiv and the way in which, you know, you listen to Zelensky, they're literally massing artillery and forces like right on the border. The Ukrainians are watching them, can't do anything about it.

And then those people come and just by the time they can fire at them, they're on top of them. And if people are wondering, well, why is that the case in this? it's because frankly Russia, a lot of the other front line, there's actually not a Ukrainian border with Russia anymore because the Russians are in eastern Ukraine. And so along the front line, the Ukrainians are actually firing into occupied eastern Ukraine at the Russians. And so this is a very specific contingency where it makes sense to say this is actually like an extension of the front line that goes into Russia. And so I think that makes sense. I also think it makes sense to restrict it because kind of what do you not want? Well, there are, you know, U.S. and European rockets

that could hit Moscow, right? And, you know, that's what, you know, that would be massively escalatory if all of a sudden, you know, you're not just talking about hitting Russian forces that are kind of staging on the border, but you're hitting Russian cities, certainly hitting Russian capital where they're, you know, we actually saw like a Ukrainian drone a couple of times in Moscow. Almost at the Kremlin, yeah. Yeah. So that to me, you know, look, this makes sense and you calibrate it. To your point about like boiling the frog, I think there's some truth to that, which is why I think you need to have this kind of medium term openness to negotiation, which we've talked about. So it's not just kind of perennial escalation.

But, you know, you want the Ukrainians to be in a strong position heading in a negotiation. And one way to think about this is if we didn't allow something like this, the Russians are on the offensive. Maybe they take back Kharkiv. Maybe they think, well, we're not going to negotiate. we're making progress in the battlefield here. You know, you kind of have to, you know, empower your side to get to a productive negotiation. You just to wonder if at some point Zelensky decides, okay, I'm probably not going to get another weapon out of the Americans. Maybe those restrictions don't matter anymore and let's just start firing or we want to fire. One interesting thing to think about is if Trump is elected, you know, and Trump says, I'm cutting you off.

And then Zelensky, you know, one way he could think about that is, well, if they're cutting me off anyway, then why would I abide by any restrictions on anything? And so you're right, in a weird way, Trump cutting them off could incentivize dangerous escalation by the Ukrainians. Because with Biden, he has an incentive to kind of follow the rules so that you can get more stuff, you know. So that, yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's, you know, that's another argument.

It is worth noting that there's been like a half dozen different kind of like mini news cycles over fights over weapon systems. There was the High Mars, the Attackums, the Abrams tanks, the F-16s. And every time that weapon system is treated like the key to victory for the Ukrainian side. But, you know, take the tanks, for example, there were months and months spent lobbying the Biden administration for those new Abrams tanks. They ended up sending them in conjunction with the German Leopard tanks. It was seen as this big package. And I read, I think back in April, there was an AP story about how the U.S.

deliver tanks have been taken off the front lines because they ended up being too susceptible to these, you know, cheap Russian drone attacks. Yeah. Right. So like there is no panacea, I think, is the, is the key. War is flexible and changing. But also, I think the thing to, when you look back on those debates is there were a lot of like non-military expert, like keyboard warriors, like writing pieces for the Atlantic about how the attackans would ensure, you know, like, those people weren't military experts, you know, like in a lot of cases, you know. And so let's be cautious here. Nothing is, I mean, the reality is since that Ukrainian offensive that made a lot of gains at the end of, like, what, 2022, the front line's been, you know, relatively static here. You know, that's the reality of like the kind of trench warfare.

Yeah. Again, from this Time magazine story, which I think was meant to, like, set up Biden's trip to the G7 and basically the conversations around Ukraine. He was asked, what is the end game in Ukraine and what does peace look like there? And Biden said, peace looks like making sure Russia. never, never, never occupies Ukraine. That's what peace looks like. And it doesn't mean NATO. They're part of NATO.

It means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries where we supply weapons so they can defend themselves in the future. Biden also said the Russian military has been decimated. It's been freaking decimated. So I think he's trying to sell that NATO is now stronger. Russia has taken a lot of losses. But there's also sort of a reality of the battlefield where Ukraine's had a tough six months. Yeah.

I mean, what's notable is he's not saying, you know, success is Ukraine taking its territory back. Right. Right. And so that's an adjustment. The scope. Although the administration's usually been more careful about that than others. The one thing to watch coming up is the NATO summit is in Washington this summer. And I'm sure the Ukrainians will come, you know, well, one, they want to be in NATO. Two, they'll have other things that they want.

So the next phase of this drama, I think, is at that NATO summit. because Biden obviously an election year wants to probably make this seem like a huge success, but the Ukrainians will want to get something out of it. So that's the next thing to watch on the calendar. All right, let's go through a tour of elections, Ben. So let's start in the UK a couple weeks back while I was off. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made a surprise announcement that the UK's general election would take place on July 4th, a day famously associated with success for the British Empire.

That tight timeline came as a surprise to a lot of people because, things are not going well for Sunak's conservative Tory party. A recent poll had them trailing labor by 17 points. Imagine being up by 17 points. Yeah. Yeah. That's so sweet. Uh, Sunnex announcement of this news was befitting of a party getting its ass handed to them by double digits. Uh, let's hear a clip. I came to office above all to restore economic stability. Economic stability is the bedrock of any future success. Whether that is rising wages and good jobs, invests, in our public services or the defence of the country. And because of our collective sacrifice and your hard work,

we have reached two major milestones in delivering that stability, showing that when we work together, anything is possible. I recognise that it has not always been easy. Some of you will only just be starting to feel the benefits, and for some, it might still be hard when you look at your bank balance. But this hard-earned economic stability was only ever meant to be the beginning. The question now is how and who do you trust to turn that foundation into a secure future for you, your family, and our country. Now is the moment for Britain

to choose its future. All right, cut this dork off. I can't have to listen to this dork anyway. It just sounds like the joke. So in the background, you can hear protesters playing a song called Things Can Only Get Better, which famously was the anthem for the Labor Party's campaign in 1997 when they beat the ever-living shit out of the Tories and toss them out of party. It's also the, Sunnak's speech starts. He's perfectly dry. And by the end, his speech is soaked through. Starts dumping rain on him.

Then then, this week, things got even worse for Rishi Sunak when right-wing demagogue Nigel Farage announced that he is going to run for election as a member of parliament and lead the reform party, which could split the right-wing vote and hurt the Tories further. Here's a clip from Farage. We think this election needs a... bit of gingering up. Thus far, it is the dullest,

most boring election campaign we have ever seen in our lives. And it's funny because the more the two big party leaders try to be different, the more they actually sound the same. For what it's worth, Farage's run seven previous times and tried to

get a seat in parliament and lost every time. So, Ben, I thought the conventional wisdom was that Rishi Sunak was going to wait as long as possible to hold the election. He wanted to give the economy time to improve, maybe deliver on some of his policy promises, like stopping the boats, maybe see if Trump would win our election, and then they could argue that Tories would have a better relationship with the Republicans. What the hell do you think happened here? Why did they

move this up? I'm just going to go out in a limb, Tommy, and suggest that Bichie Zunach is not a very good politician, and he might not have the best political sense. Yeah. I mean, they had Boris Johnson, well, they had Theresa May, who seemed like someone who was a home minister who happened to find herself living in number 10. Then they had Boris Johnson, who was this kind of absolutely wrecking ball. Then they had Liz Trust, who was like, you know, probably the worst prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom. And now they have this guy that is kind of politically clueless sitting there getting his ass kicked and handed to him, like veering between like giveaways to the far right to keep them on side, like, you know, this weird thing to send people to Rwanda

and trying to be this kind of technocrat who's not as crazy as the list trust. And, and maybe he just got sick of it. You know, he's like, I can't. Like, but it's also, you know, you and I have been in government during bad economic news. It felt like, you know, you get like a decent job numbers and you send the president out to give like a statement, you know, a seven-minute statement that no one's going to pay attention to that mainly makes you feel better. Yes. Like these kind of minimalist positive economic indicators, he's like, oh, this is it, let's go, you know. But it's pretty clear that Rishi Sunak is not going to be prime minister for much longer. He's about to get his ass handed to him in an historic route. And the question is just, can labor kind of hold this

lead that, frankly, if they do, they'll have a bigger majority than even the Tony Blair one, you know, which is crazy to think about because Tony Blair had kind of, you know, with all respect for Kirstarmor, Tony Blair was more of a kind of charismatic change agent kind of guy. But yeah, just we're watching the final implosion of the Tories, which is a very satisfying thing to watch. But the thing we should bear in mind. mind is that the labor majority is going to inherit a fucking mess. So as good as it looks like there's not a lot of money to fix things, the NHS is broke, like Britain doesn't know what it is after Brexit, like they do, they have all these, you know, kind of weird convoluted things like

the Rwanda agreement to untangle. But I don't see anything disrupting this kind of labor march to victory. Yeah. And there was another amazing video out this week where Rishi Sunek was doing some sort of campaign event that looked incredibly boring, sitting at like a picnic table, talking to people about sports next to a river. And then a boat full of Lib Dem party members drove behind him and photobbed him with like orange signed. Yeah. I mean, the energy is clearly with anybody except the Tories.

I mean, the one thing that's tripped up labor is they've had, you know, they're kind of purging some of the, you know, candidates for on the left, you know, the kind of hangover of the party, you know, civil war post-corban. And I think trying to bring that together, you know, is the key thing. You hold your side together rather than succumbing to infighting. And that's the only thing can trip you up. Yeah. This Nigel Farage thing is so annoying.

Twitter reminded me that back in 2021, Nigel Farage got on cameo so we could, you know, charge you 87 pounds or whatever to say happy birthday to your brother. And someone had him read a script where he said, Up the Ra, which is a phrase used by supporters of the provisional IRA, the most militant wing of the IRA, the troubles to celebrate them. So good. Get that guy out on the trail. Good job, Nigel. Good job, Nigel. Let's move on to India's elections, Ben, where after six weeks of voting, there are some early results that are surprisingly bad for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party. So while Modi is still set to win re-election and become the second person ever to start a third term as

Prime Minister of India, the margin of victory is much, much smaller than what Modi's party had promised. So there's 543 seats in the Indian Parliament. You need to secure 277.7.5.5.5.5.5.5.5.5.5,000, you need to secure 272 seats for a majority, the BJP had promised a landslide victory of 400 seats, which would have given them a supermajority and allowed Modi to change India's constitution. But the latest results show that the BJP is only likely to win about 240 seats, well short of their goal and down from the 303 seats they won in the last selections in 2019. This means that for the first time in a decade, the BJP did not win a majority on its own and will have to rely on other parties to form a coalition government. That shouldn't be a problem, but it's, you know, it's new. This election was very much a

referendum on Modi himself. He was literally the face on all the campaign posters. He was not shy about making this a cult of personality. I know while I was out Ben, you talked to Rana Ayub, amazing, you know, brave journalist who's covered Modi forever. And she pointed out how Modi has been even more brazen and open with his anti-Muslim rhetoric in this campaign. So, you know, on the one hand, it's great to see this guy get chopped down a peg or two because he's a scary authoritarian. On the other hand, it's not great that he's still going to form a coalition with even more right-wing parties to form a government. But what do you think this says about Modi's message and staying power? And I don't know, do you think this gets the U.S. to course correct at all when it comes to pushing back on him or we still just, you know, dependent on India, in our own minds, at least, to push back on China?

I think this is like a huge surprise. And part of this is the BJP didn't exactly do a great job of expectation setting, you know? No. Because they did make it seem like this massive landslide was imminent, you know. One of the reasons why people thought Modi might have cranked up the anti-Muslim rhetoric is because they saw, because it was a six-week election, they saw actually, that they didn't like the voting exit polls and stuff that were coming in. but I think the important thing to bear in mind here is that not only is Modi kind of lost a step, you know, lost momentum that he had been trying to build into this transformation of Indian society, but also the opposition kind of, you know, it definitely hit bottom and pressed back up.

Like Congress Party. Congress doubled their. They doubled their seats. A bunch of other parties did well. And so all of a sudden the dynamic is shifted from this sense of a Modi juggernaut rolling over everybody and the opposition collapsing to like the opposition's recovering a bit. Modi's losing a bit of altitude. And importantly, Modi is the best asset that the BJP has.

It's not like the BJP is more popular than Modi. And he's, you know, happens to be the prime minister. Like he's dragged his party to new heights. And, you know, he's in his 70s, not clear that he'll be leading the BJP in the next election. There's no clear succession. There's not exactly like the next guy. line, Amit Shah is kind of like Modi without the charisma. Like all the bad autocratic tendencies without any of the kind of public facing charisma.

So I think this spells some real trouble for Modi and the BJP and their kind of transformation agenda and hopefully some of the scarier autocratic scenarios like remaking the Constitution. That said, nothing that we know about them suggests that they'll curb their emissions that much. They'll try to cobble together as some right-wing coalitions. But what it does suggest is they may be facing more pushback. So I'd expect them to push forward. But I think you'll see some more energized opposition to what they've been doing to kind of make this a soft autocracy. The U.S., I think it should indicate that the U.S. needs this India strategy that is not entirely Modi-centric and Modi kind of dependent

and might be more willing to criticize certain actions of Modi's. But I'm not expecting that. You know, I mean, it feels like the, you know, Biden, like, you know, has decided I'm just doing any trouble with this guy, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff. It's not a great options. This is a banal observation, but it's wild that the Brits, you get to announce an election and it happens six weeks later.

And then it takes six weeks of voting in India. And for us, we're just trapped in one endless doom loop of an election that, in fact, has been the same election now for several, several years. For eight years, yeah. Love it. Okay, so we also have some big results in South Africa then where the African National Congress, or ANC party, the party that Nelson Mandela was part of, which freed South Africa from apartheid, fell short of winning 50% of the national vote for the first time in 30 years. So this election, the ANC got about 40%, which is an 18 point decrease from 2019. The ANC now has just a few weeks to forge a coalition government with one of their rival parties. These are the parties that spent the campaign brutally attacking the ANC as corrupt, in very important.

not to work with them. And now the knives are out for ANC leader and South African president Cyril Romaphosa, who was being blamed for this collapse and his party support. Former ANC leader, Jacob Zuma also played a huge role in this outcome. Six years ago, Zuma was pushed out of the ANC for corruption. And then six months ago, he started a new political party that got 15% of the vote, which is remarkable, also remarkable given that this guy spent two months in prison for corruption back in 2021 and was accused of much worse things. Yeah, he was acquitted, but yeah. So, Ben, it's not clear how this will shake out, what will happen next. And there's a lot of

South Africans, I think, are understandably concerned about adding political instability to the long list of challenges the country is facing. But I guess the broader question is, is this the end of an era for the ANC in South Africa? It certainly feels like it, right? And so the ANC, the party Nelson Mandela, the party that delivers liberation, you know, sweeps into power under Mandela with this massive, massive majority and have dominated South African politics ever since. But it's been a kind of slow, steady deterioration because it kind of all the worst things that can happen and kind of one party dominance happened in the sense that there are patronage networks and corruption and everybody's trading favors. And the people were getting older and they weren't letting younger people kind of come up for the ranks. And so for a lot of reasons, A&C's been part of the kind of political and economic paralysis where they haven't solved problems like inequality. You know, if you look at South African data, you know, yes, apartheid's over it, but, you know, income inequality is pretty comparable, you know. And so people had a lot of good reasons to be pissed off.

And so I think, you know, the A&C is going to continue to be the leading player. But they're going to have to kind of, I think, whether they choose to do so now or later, depends to be seen, but they're going to have to kind of reimagine who they are. They can't just keep dining out on, hey, we're the ones that ended apartheid. And, you know, this is, and, you know, Xuma was part of that degradation, too, so he's not the answer. Yeah. You need to give some space for younger people to either take over the ANC or for younger people that start these other parties to kind of move to the forefront. So there may be some dysfunction for a while, but I think ultimately it's to the good for there to be a regeneration. The other thing I'd say to just connect all these is

what it's kind of interesting to me Tommy the Tories the BJP and the ANC are all very different parties it seems like people are not happy with incumbents no around the world and maybe that like I think cost of living issues you know always that may not bode well for Joe Biden you know because I mean that if we can see one trend it's just kind of like a loss of altitude for incumbent political parties yeah a lot of like burn it down send in around the world uh last topic before we get to the interview with Dan about Mexico. So listeners probably know, by the way, that's an exception to the burn it down rule. That's true. Yeah, she was obviously, yeah. Yeah, and Amla has been very popular in part because he's delivered on these social programs.

Listeners know that we usually try to close it out with something lighter. Uh, give you guys a laugh after, you know, 45 minutes of shitty global news. It's not often that we source these stories out of North Korea, but today we're going to try. Uh, so is anyone who has followed the, the passive aggressive flag raising at the Alito household knows. There are many ways to deal with a shitty neighbor. North Korea has taken a creative and fresh approach that really caught our eye. Over the past week, they have launched over 1,000 balloons filled with cigarette butts and other trash across the border into South Korea, which they claim totals about 15 tons, 15 tons of balloon trash

dumped into South Korea. So the office of the president of South Korea called the balloons, quote, dirty provocations no normal country would think of true and as a result has rescinded a 2018 deal that limited hostile activity at the border that means that south korea is now free to take what it calls unbearable measures in response against the north the terminology is so great yeah yeah all this just makes me just working with danny russell and him sending us his favorite like classified north korean propaganda stuff anyway so those measures include uh resuming loudspeaker broadcasts North Korea of criticism to their human rights record, world news reports, and then K-pop songs,

which I guess... It's like, Blas in K-pop, right? Kim Jong-Kun is called, quote, a vicious cancer. I don't... Maybe you could explain this to me. I don't totally get how blasting wildly popular music back at someone is kind of like the tat for the tit of sending tons of cigarette butts into my house. But what do you make of this?

Yeah, I... It's a bit like, you know, if you have, like, a neighbor, I mean, that's... suggesting this has always happened to me. And like you get in one of these kind of weird disputes where they're like not taking their trash out or they're doing like work on the house. And so then you in a passive aggressive way, start playing your music really loud. I mean, this kind of just, it does just kind of feel like a really ugly fight between neighbors. Yeah, I guess it is.

If it wasn't like a nuclear flashpoint. Nuclear arms petty war. It'd be, it'd be funnier. I mean, I think what is interesting is there's a kind of, you know, the tell is you learn something about both sides. So like the North Korean tactic is just kind of pure thuggery, you know, like, we're just going to dump our shit on you, like, quite literally. And then the South Korean tactic is like, we're going to, like, demonstrate our, like, cultural supremacy. Like, we've got K-pop here. We've got, like, you know, broadcast about what's

really happening in the world. I mean, I remember when we were in government, you heard that some of the most effective, you know, cultural, whatever you're going to call it, like propaganda or or impactful human rights messaging into North Korea was smuggled copies of South Korean soap operas. Yeah, like thumb-drys of it. Yeah. And by the way, this wasn't the U.S. government doing it. It was just like people wanted to watch these South Korean soap operas.

And the reason why is because the North Greens have been taught their whole lives about how awful and what a wasteland the capitalist world is. And people have no access information. And so people were watching soap operas and were like, oh, wait a second. That apartment looks pretty nice. Those people are eating in the soap opera. You know, like we were told that the capitalists had no food. We were told that they lived on the street in destitution, you know. See a shot of the skyline of soul and you're like, what?

Yeah, exactly. How does this happen? So that's why I think that K-pop is actually a good, you know, like anything that kind of illustrates, like actually like, you know, this system over here, we're not going to just lecture you about democracy. We're going to show you like, we can produce K-pop and we can like, you know, live this nice life in Seoul and look at the, you know, look the food we have over here. Like, that to me, you know, but it does, I mean, the serious point is tension seemed to be ratcheting up. And I think Kim Jong-un feels like, you know, he probably got some sweet deal from Putin, you know, in exchange of artillery, he's getting a bunch of stuff. And so the worrying thing is that he seems to just be, you know, pushing the envelope. He's filling himself a little bit.

Yeah. So I'll see some big speakers to blast out K-pop all the way to Pyongyang. Yeah, and is there a friendly fire? Like, like, what if you live in South Korea on that? that's out of the border. Are you, are you just hearing? Rick rolling back? Yeah. We'll find out. Well, if you live near the DMZ, give us a message. Yeah, yeah. Tweet us or Discord or whatever. Get the Discord. Yeah, get the Discord.

We're going to take a quick break, but before we get to break, Ben, we have some amazing news to share. So thanks to support from people like you, Ben Rhodes. Vote Save America hit $1 million total raise through the Anxiety Relief Program. But they are not done yet. Every additional donation helps support grassroots organizations and key down ballot races across country. So if you haven't already, please consider donating to the anxiety relief program today and helping Vote Save America make the biggest impact when it's needed most. And to everyone has already donated, thank you. Let's keep the momentum going and continue making a difference together. Visit Votesaveamerica.com now to get involved. This message has been paid for by Vote Save

America. You can learn more at Votesaveamerica.com, and this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Also, Ben, June is Pride Month. And the Cricket Media Store has launched its new pride or else collection. It includes amazing designs for everyone, whether you're leading the parade or just showing up as an ally. A portion of the proceeds from every order go to support organizations working to support queer and transgender communities across America. Check them out now at crooked.com slash store. We're going to take a quick break, but stick around when we get back. You hear Dan Restrepo talk about Mexico's historic election results. The Mexican elections wrapped up this weekend in Claudia Shanebaum, a protege of the current

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was overwhelmingly elected as the country's first female president. Joining me to discuss what we might expect from her is Dan Restrepo. My old friend, former colleague on the national security staff at the White House, Dan was the principal advisor to President Obama on all things related to Latin America. You had my favorite title in the whole place, Dan. You're in charge of the Western Hemisphere, which is like there's nothing sweeping massive. He is currently a founding partner at Dynamica Americas. Dan, let's start with Claudia Seenbaum herself. So she will be the first woman to serve as Mexico's president.

She's also the first Jewish president of Mexico. Can you tell us a little more about who she is, her background, and just how historic it is for Mexico to elect its first female president? Certainly. It's quite historic. You have a country that is kind of known for its machismo, electing a woman president of the country. You have a wildly, predominantly Catholic country electing a Jew as president of the country. you have a woman who was a very capable technocrat as mayor of Mexico City, that she served as

mayor of Mexico City for most of the last six years. She had to step down to run for the presidency. She's a climate scientist by training. She's part of a Nobel Prize winning climate team, worked at the United Nations, has been educated outside of Mexico. But at the same time, is a Mexican nationalist. She has allowed very much. little daylight during the course of this presidential campaign between her political patron, Andreas Manuel Lopez-Urador, the outgoing president. So she's a bit of an enigma, despite the fact that she just won the largest number of votes anyone has legitimately won in Mexican political history. So there's a lot that we're all going to find out about what she actually believes

and how she's going to govern once she takes office on October 1st. Yeah, I mean, you hit it something that I keep seeing over and over again, which is every article, every analysis piece about Shane Baum says something like this election is historic. It's just seismic for Mexico, but she's a bit of a black box in terms of her policy views in terms of how she'll govern. I mean, do analysts think she'll be represent more of a continuation of Amlo's administration, something different, or we just don't know? So there's going to be a fair amount of continuity, certainly kind of policy continuity. Both. of them, both Lopez-Oradador and Shenbaum, kind of believe in Mexico for Mexicans, very much kind of a Mexico-first

approach to how the country should be governed. They believe in a very active role of the public sector in the economy, so a kind of statist approach. She believes kind of more in a competition stance, his was a more combative stance between the public and private sectors on the economic side. but fundamentally there's a lot we just don't know about how she's going to govern because she's been so disciplined in her approach and because Lopez-Odod has occupied so much political space in Mexico, not just in the last six years, but certainly kind of on Mexico's kind of non-establishment. He's occupied a lot of space for at least 12, kind of almost 15 years. and so we're passing for a moment where he has been the dominant political figure.

She's going to come to office and kind of the sorting out of the relationship between the two of them, quite frankly, is I think one of the kind of known unknowns to paraphrase Don Rumsfeld. Our old friend Don Rumsfeld. You wrote this great analysis piece of this election for the Center for American Progress. And you noted that in addition to the presidential election, there were tons and tons of regional elections, something like 20,000 seats were up for grabs across the country. It looks like the Morena Party, Shane Bond's party, is on track to have supermajorities in both houses of Congress in about three quarters of the governorships, I believe.

Is Mexico just fully on a path to one party rule? It's really interesting. So in my lifetime, I'm a little bit older than you, Tommy, but in my lifetime, we've seen Mexico, really in kind of my professional career, I've seen a Mexico that was a one-party state, but one party stayed for 70 years, and the anti-democratic wanted that. Transitioned to a competitive democracy. In 2000, you have the first kind of legitimate transfer of power. You have three elections that take place where the electorate is divided in thirds.

And then in 2018, Lopez Obrador comes along and wins a majority of the vote in what was surprising then. And now you have what Morena did on Sunday, which, you know, Shame Bum had had a pretty significant. lead in the polls throughout. There was always the question of how accurate the polls were, but she outperformed even the most kind of optimistic polls. And they really had a very good day. But I think the better way of thinking about it is the old Mexican political establishment had a horrific day and has kind of collapsed under its own weight and under the weight of Lopez deodor kind of beating on it for the last six years. And so yet we might be on the verge of Mexico, kind of the pendulum swinging back. We certainly have a Mexico where you have a politically

dominant party, which is Morena, an electorally consolidated party in a way that I think surprised some. The real question is going to be how consolidated it is governing going forward, because that was the trick. Under the kind of one-party state, the party was a very institutionalized thing and was the instrument of power in the country. Morina's not that yet. And whether they can do, whether they can consolidate it that way is one of the big questions for these six years going forward. Yeah. So Dan, I mean, Amlo gets credit for for lifting millions of people out of poverty with social programs, but he's often criticized in the same breath for failing to curb the power of drug cartels, failing to reduce gang violence across the country, et cetera. I mean, even this.

campaign season was incredibly violent. At least 15 candidates for office died after the campaigning started last October, including several who were just straight up gunned down by, you know, what I guess were assassins. How do you think we should judge his tenure in office? And how do, you know, how do the people of Mexico view him now that he's departing the scene? So it's complicated in terms of kind of the objective take on what Lopez-Oradot has represented in Mexico. As you rightly point out, and quite frankly, I think as Sunday's result points out, he delivered for his core constituency. Mexico is a country of deep poverty, as well as kind of deep integration with the North American economy in kind of very sophisticated ways. But at its core, it's a country that

is majority poor. And that's who Lopez-Oredador has always fashioned himself as a champion of the dispossessed. And on the kind of pure day-to-day economic well-being of that portion of Mexico, of the majority of Mexicans, Lopez-Oro delivered. You know, basic income in the country today, the minimum wage today in Mexico, in real terms, is 116% of what it was when Lopez-Oro took office. So he more than doubled the minimum wage. Just by comparison, the previous three governments, right, of the two different parties of now the opposition, in the Pena Nieto government, which was immediately before, it increased in six years 13 percent in the total of those six years.

In the six years before that, it increased half a percent. Right. So his ability to deliver on the kind of core economic well-being of kind of day-to-day Mexicans is impressive. The sustainability of it, the kind of transactional nature of it, and how kind of you used it for political purposes, is, you know, subject to kind of analysis and criticism. But again, if you view it from the, from kind of just grassroots, base population in Mexico, the man delivered, and they in turn

delivered for him, politically, this past Sunday. On security, he's been a, he's been a disaster. Mexico is far more insecure today, and that's saying something, because the baseline six years ago wasn't exactly great. Mexico has a real challenge with transnational. criminal organizations that have kind of become these diversified enterprises that traffic in kind of anything you can traffic in. Fed, you know, in no small measure by an iron river of guns that flows out of the United States into Mexico, fueled by the consumption of illegal drugs in the United States and the cash that goes back to these cartels and these organizations. But Lopez deodor has done very little to confront them. And on that score, I think it's

pretty clear that he's, he's been a failure as Mexico's president. Interestingly, Claudia Shinebaum, as mayor of Mexico City, has a pretty good record on security. And also has demonstrated a willingness to cooperate with the United States on security in ways that Lopez-Oradod, her political mentor, wasn't. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as things go forward. Yeah, I mean, the cooperation point is so important because, again, Amlo and Trump, it's sort of like a weird bromance thing, right? I mean, Trump talks about him favorably still to this day. I don't know exactly how to characterize the Biden-Amlo relationship. Like, at times they

seem to get along and then Amla would flip out about a press report and demand an apology from Biden about something ProPublica had reported that that literally happened, I think maybe a couple times. What do you expect in terms of the U.S.-Mexico relationship under Shanebom? I mean, Should we, would you expect continuity in terms of cooperation on like core issues? On core issues, yes. I think the question of kind of how noisy the relationship will be depends in large measure on, you know, what we do here in November. Whether Claudia Seymum has to deal with Donald Trump or if she gets the opportunity to spend four years with Joe Biden, those will be two different relationships, certainly from an atmospherics perspective and kind of a surround sound perspective. I think the kind of understand, I think Cleaely Shankba understands that Mexico's economic destiny is tied to the United States.

We'll have a review of the USMCA, the trade agreement among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It's up for formal review in 2026. That's going to be all about China's role in Mexico's economy at some level. But I think Shanebaum understands that that's where Mexico's economic well-being lies, is being. closely tied to the United States. Migration will continue to be a friction point and a point of the need for real cooperation. Guns and drugs, as I mentioned a second ago, will continue to be a friction point. But the U.S. and Mexico are so kind of intimately connected day in and day out that almost despite the personalities and despite this, again, the surround sound, the need for continuity, I think kind of overwhelms even the kind of personal proclivities.

of either U.S. or Mexican leaders. It is so funny to imagine, you know, going from a U.S.-Mexico relationship that was dominated by the loudest voices imaginable. Donald Trump, with everybody here knows. But then down in Mexico, you had Amlo doing these, what, like hour and a half long press conferences, what, daily at times? No, no, no, not at times. Daily.

Monday through Friday, six years. Like, he does it every day. And he's on from at least two hours every morning. attacking reporters by name, demagoguing people. I mean, like kind of reading cell phone numbers, putting people at risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, doxing, New York Times,

bureau chief, attacking Supreme Court justices in Mexico, attacking electoral authorities, a kind of constant drumbeat of, and unbelievably effective as a tool or as an instrument of political control. Kind of, for our listening purposes, everybody should think of it as kind of the, Trump Twitter feed at the peak of its powers.

But if it were being handled by someone who had a coherent plan, right? That is scary. But that's what these two-hour press conferences, they're called mananitas, his kind of morning press conferences were. Like, he sets the agenda every day. People, like, what the press is going to chase and what everybody's going to be talking about is what he rolls out of bed every morning and decides he's going to put on the table between 8 and 10 a.m. every day.

It's amazing. Yeah, as you described, I think surround sound, it's going to be so different now. Last question for you is just on immigration, which you also mentioned. I mean, obviously, immigration the southern border, they're the central focus of Donald Trump's campaign. I think if his advisors had their way, they would have him talk about nothing else. In fact, Trump cares about it so much that he killed a bipartisan Senate bill meant to address the challenges at the southern border. Today, Tuesday, June 4th, President Biden announced an executive order that will allow him to essentially shut down the border to asylum seekers at non-official ports of entry once a certain quota has been reached. Dan, you spent years and years of your life working on immigration policy

at times, I imagine, to your great frustration. Do you think this EO is likely to solve the problem? And then really, if not, can any step taken via executive order alone solve the problem? Yeah. So I think there's kind of three big takeaways from this executive order. The first is that, like all of us, President Biden wants to see order at the border, right? The kind of chaotic baseline at the U.S.-Mexico border is in no one's interest. It's not in the U.S.'s interest, it's not in the interest of folks legitimately seeking asylum. It's not in the interest of folks migrating for any number of reasons, right? So the president wants to see order at the border.

What's kind of inherent in your question is the EEO also, I think, underscores the he does not have at his disposal the tools necessary to achieve order of the border. That those tools, Congress needs to be a part of the solution set here. There was a deal on the table that was this plus a bunch of other stuff, and that other stuff is important, that Republicans decided that they would prefer, because Donald Trump decided he would prefer to have this issue to scuttle it. And I think this is the president kind of, you know, saying very clearly, and you can see in all the language around the EO, like Congress needs to be a part of the solution. Congress has abdicated its responsibility because Donald Trump wants to put himself ahead of U.S. interests.

So I'm going to do this. The third thing that I think is pretty important to remember, it's unlikely that this is going to survive a legal challenge. This is roughly something that Donald Trump tried doing in 2018. It was more extreme, not surprisingly, when Donald Trump tried doing it. But the courts came down pretty quickly and pretty emphatically that the president doesn't have this authority. And that Congress needs to be a part. Like if the U.S. wants to do this, it needs to change laws. And it needs to do it through the legislative process.

We all want to see order at the border. This president has been working not just at the border, which kind of draws all the attention, but also in the region. because one of the really important things to keep in mind on migration in the Americas. So Latin American and the Caribbean represent 8% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's displaced population, right? And those numbers sound really scary, and there's this impression in the United States that all of those people are trying to come to the United States.

But if you actually stop and look, more than 80% of displaced people in Latin America and the Caribbean over the course of the last decade, stay in Latin America and the Caribbean. Folks want to be as close to home as they can. And this administration, the Biden administration, has been working with the countries that matter

through something called the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection to help kind of integrate migrants where they are, right? Because if we're all a lot better off if people can stay closer to home, and if we're working to incorporate people in communities that want them, that they want to be in, and kind of avoiding further migration than trying to prevent the last step of migration, which is at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Right. And I mean, I guess that root cause piece has always been the hardest part of this. I mean, I wonder if you think that Biden has done enough to help, you know. But tell me, it's a little different than root cause, right? So root cause is to say, so if you really look at it, there's four countries where most of the migrants in the Western Hemisphere are coming from. Most of them are coming from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Right. Right. Right. A root cause strategy says you have to fix Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti, right? Good luck, right? Those countries are, they're not easy fixes there. But take the example of Venezuela. So Venezuela, since 2015, almost 8 million, 7.7 million

Venezuelans have left Venezuela, right? From a population, the starting population of 32 million. So a quarter of the country since 2015 has left the country. Three million of them, right, almost half of that number, live right next door, live in Colombia. Right. Columbia, yeah. And so the idea here is, okay, so the Colombians have been wildly successful in helping Venezuela and stay closer to home. So we should help the Colombians do that, and we should help the Ecuadorans and others. So this is how do you help kind of what the region is already doing successfully is to integrate these new populations in a way that's actually ends up being economically beneficial. And so the administration actually, I think, has been doing, they don't particularly tell the story particularly well, but they've been doing a bunch of work in this space. And that's how ultimately that plus legal pathways, plus some enforcement, that's how you get to the order at the border that we all want to see.

No, that makes total sense. And, yeah, of course. I mean, your average person, no one wants to travel thousands and thousands of miles and pay a, you know, smuggler and endanger their family, right? But no one wants to do that, of course. You'd much rather stay in Bogota or someplace in Colombia if you're a Venezuela. I do think, you know, I do wonder, hopefully the politics will allow the Biden administration to do more to maybe help reduce sanctions or, you know. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Stop doing some of the things that are, you know, hurting the economy in Venezuela, causing people to leave. Although, of course, I'm not blaming it on them, obviously. Maduro is the root cause of this. But an enormous challenge, and I think you're right, though, the executive order, it might not last very long. That's sort of the problem here. This might be more about campaign optics than policy solutions. Well, listen, Dan, thank you so much for talking through all this. I really appreciate it. And great to see you, man. Certainly. Thank you very much. Thanks again, Dan Restrepo for joining the show. Good to be back, man. Sorry about, you know, my Celtics making it in and... Yeah, I was looking forward to losing to the Celtics.

I mean, I never expected to beat Celtics, but I thought, you know, Eastern Conference finals for the first time in the 21st century would be nice for the Knicks. But apparently we can't have nice things. You weren't really gone. I mean, I heard you. I know it was weird. It's because Love it is, you know. Live Laff, Loved. I want to, like, hearing you guys, you know, make fun of Love It, I want to introduce something that I have not heard, which is, presumably he's in a foreign country, right?

He's in like, and apparently it's been dumping rain and cold. But is it good for American Farm Relating? to have John Lovett in another country, like might he cause an international incident? Is he like our, you know, a K-pop balloon? Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, like, B.B. Now a strategic, you know, it's an important country

in the US-China dispute over the Pacific. Yeah, we're pivoting. Something tells me that Lovett is probably not advancing the cause of, you know, the Chinese would be smart to come and after Lovett and to sweep up. And to sweep up, you know. Borge relations. Yeah.

It is just so weird that we have no idea of what has been going on in his life for a month. someone you see every day, all day, just disappears. Well, he's doing his own version of the anxiety reduction program. The Midlife Crisis production program. Yeah, we'll see. But again, thanks again for giving me. Yeah, I was sort of partially off, came in once a week to do Potsave America.

Not ideal, but, you know, it's fine. Well, you know, your heart is truly with Pots of the World. I know. I love doing the show. We had some, I mean, last week was like a nerd fest. We had three guests. It was like, you know, it was crazy. You're like a pig and shit.

Yeah, exactly. Well, it's good to be back and talk to you guys next week. See it. If you want to get ad freak episodes, exclusive content, and more. Consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. Don't forget to follow Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Plus, find Pod Save the World on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more.

And if you're as opinionated as us, consider dropping a review. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Cherlin. Our producer is Alona Minkowski, and Associate Producer is Ashley Mizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seaglin and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls, thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.